I'm pushing the start of the post down because something happened. I did not know Chase Rice's new album came out last Friday. It's called I HATE COWBOYS & ALL DOGS GO TO HELL. I thought it came out the same weekend as the new Ant-Man film. That's this Friday and I'm excited to see it and thrilled to see anything with Michelle Pfeiffer. And I thought the album was out the same Friday but I was wrong.
I'm at C.I.'s and I was going through her new vinyl that she hadn't put on the shelves yet. I saw four things that I have to listen to and then squealed because there was Chase's new album (it's his dad on the front cover). I said, "Is this an advance copy!" It might have been, she's been listening for over a week. But it's out and she thought I'd listened and didn't like it.
I'm all: Why didn't you ask me what I didn't like because if that were the case, I would've told you?
She said that I get e-mails and enough friends already asking me to justify my opinions and she wasn't going to add to that list.
So I'm listening and loving it and ask her to post a video -- anything -- at THE COMMON ILLS. She posts the one below.
Is that the single? I have no idea. But it is a great song.
Now I've got bad news. I go to AMAZON. They are out of stock on the album if you're trying to get vinyl. I went to Barnes & Noble while madly dialing Elaine -- she loves Chase as much as I do. It was only on CD at B&N. C.I. said, "Go to WALMART, they're always the last to sell out when it's a new album on vinyl." So I'm on with Elaine who also doesn't have it and also forgot. I'm searching WALMART and they have five copies. They now have three because I ordered two -- one for me and one for Elaine. They'll be delivered, it says, on Friday.
Now for what was to be the opening that I moved down to type the above . . .
Tuesday, February 14, 2023. The 20th anniversary to a massive global
protest is tomorrow, a faux action loses their convicted pedophile
speaker but still remains too toxic for most people to get on board
with, toxic is what Iraq's become as a result of the never-ending wars,
and much more.
On the weekend encompassing Friday 14 February to Sunday 16 February
2003 in Australia, coordinated mass protests against the impending Iraq
War occurred around the world in over 600 cities. This global mass
protest was described as the largest protest event in human history.
According to the BBC 6-10 million people protested in a total of about
60 countries. In Italy the Rome protest involved about 3 million people,
and in Spain the protest in Madrid involved 1.5 million people.
On Friday 14 February the protesters totalled 150,000 people in my
city Melbourne (I and family were there with highly visible black on
white STOP WAR placards). On 16 February 250,000 people protested in
Sydney, and 100,000 in Brisbane. About 600,000 demonstrated against the
impending Iraq War in cities around Australia [1-5]. Between January 3
and April 12, 2003, 36 million people across the world globe
participated in some 3,000 protests against the Iraq War [5].
(A). The ongoing carnage anti-war demonstrators unsuccessfully tried to stop in 2003.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq War was conceived by the war criminal
Americans as part of the absurdly named post-9/11 US War on Terror that
in horrible reality became a genocidal War on Muslims from West Africa
to South East Asia. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was presaged by 13
years of crippling Sanctions and US, UK and Apartheid Israeli bombing
that devastated Iraq in the period 1990-2003. The US had “greenlighted”
the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 but as soon as the invasion
occurred the serial invader America and its allies turned on Iraq –
200,000 Iraqis perished in the 1990-1991 Gulf War and an estimated 1.7
million Iraqis (mostly children ) perished under genocidal Sanctions
that devastated a formerly prosperous Arab country that had a secular
administration.
The “excuses” for invasion of Sanctions- and bombing-crippled Iraq
in 2003 were utterly false. No Iraqis were involved in the 9/11 atrocity
in 2001 according to the “official lying Bush conspiracy theory about
9/11”. However the US and UK governments presented their people and the
world with utterly false assertions about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda
terrorists (the opposite was true, with the secular Iraqi regime being
opposed to Islamist terrorists), and with falsely alleged Iraqi
possession of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMDs) that after the
conquest of Iraq were simply not found. The invasion of Iraq by US, UK
and Australian forces formally commenced on about 20 March 2003. The
already economically and militarily devastated Iraqis having no air
force, no navy and no defence industry were quickly defeated by the
genocidal US Alliance “shock and awe” tactics.
Nevertheless Indigenous resistance continued. The Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussain was hunted down and killed (the same fate befell Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi after the France-UK-US (FUKUS) Alliance invaded and
destroyed Libya) [6, 7]. The US Alliance mostly left devastated Iraq in
2011 having installed a Shia-dominated government to their liking. The
subsequent Sunni revolt gave rise to the Islamist ISIS and thence the
excuse for the return of the US Alliance to further devastate Iraq, and
to also wreck and Balkanize Syria [6-20]. Fallujah (the City of
Mosques) was destroyed in the Iraq War but was again besieged and
devastated a second time by the barbaric Americans in the subsequent war
on the barbaric ISIS insurgents [17-19]. The western half of the huge
city of Mosul was destroyed by the US Alliance together with the lives
of 40,000 of the residents (pre-war Mosul population 2 million) [19].
The Iraq War and the Syrian War continue. The US has a large number
of temporary military bases in Iraq, mostly a type of forward operating
base (FOB), plus 2 major airbases [21]. In January 2020, the Iraqi PM,
the Iraqi Parliament and the Speaker demanded that the US Alliance
forces leave Iraq. The US, UK, Australia, Canada and Germany rejected
the Iraqi Parliament’s Quit Iraq demand, with the US threatening to
instantly collapse what was left of the Iraqi economy by a banking
freeze if Iraq insisted on US Alliance withdrawal from its territory
[22]. Syria is largely held by the Syrian Government with the help of
Russia. However Turkiye occupies a northern strip, US-backed rebels
occupy a north western enclave, Kurdish forces occupy a north eastern
region, ISIS remnants still exist, Apartheid Israel has illegally
annexed the Syrian Golan Heights, and the US illegally maintains a
major base in Syria. The active and passive killing of Iraqis and
Syrians by the US and Apartheid Israel continues. Despite the immense
earthquake horrors in north east Syria, the US and its allies maintain
deadly sanctions against war- and earthquake-devastated Syria. Apartheid
Israel continues to routinely bomb Syria and Iraq. Indeed Apartheid
Israel tried to broker a Ukraine-Russia peace deal to bolster Russian
cooperation over Israeli warplanes in Syria but this was scotched by the
genocidal US [24].
Tomorrow is the
anniversary of the massive, worldwide protests against the Iraq War.
You had people taking to the streets and making a huge statement. You
had people like Janeane Garofalo, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Harry
Belafonte, Danny Glover, Jane Fonda, Ani DiFranco and many others
speaking out and being attacked for it. And Meg Ryan. She got trashed
by Al The Pig Franken. His embarrassment of a radio show needed guests
because Randi Rhodes was outdoing him daily on AIR AMERICA. So he gets
Meg to be a guest while he's doing a show on a college campus. Meg
calls out the war and says the troops need to come home. Al grins and
chuckles and as soon as she's gone explains on air that she's just too
stupid -- unlike him -- to know about stuff like war. He was a piece of
filth ahead of the war, by the way, urging Democrats in Congress to
vote for the authorization.
Hans
Blix, Clare Short and Tony Benn may be names from the past for many
people in Britain but the wider world has not moved on from the war they
tried to prevent in Iraq, says the filmmaker Amir Amirani, and neither
has he.
After spending nine years interviewing such people for his film We Are Many, about
the global anti-war marches on February 15, 2003, Amirani is still
engrossed in the topic: working on a release in America, thinking of
writing a book, and developing an offshoot project he is keeping under
wraps for now.
Tim Stickings (THE NATIONAL) reports:
Hans
Blix, Clare Short and Tony Benn may be names from the past for many
people in Britain but the wider world has not moved on from the war they
tried to prevent in Iraq, says the filmmaker Amir Amirani, and neither
has he.
After spending nine years interviewing such people for his film We Are Many, about
the global anti-war marches on February 15, 2003, Amirani is still
engrossed in the topic: working on a release in America, thinking of
writing a book, and developing an offshoot project he is keeping under
wraps for now.
Hans
Blix, Clare Short and Tony Benn may be names from the past for many
people in Britain but the wider world has not moved on from the war they
tried to prevent in Iraq, says the filmmaker Amir Amirani, and neither
has he.
After spending nine years interviewing such people for his film We Are Many, about
the global anti-war marches on February 15, 2003, Amirani is still
engrossed in the topic: working on a release in America, thinking of
writing a book, and developing an offshoot project he is keeping under
wraps for now.
There were many brave
people speaking out -- most are forgotten especially by the idiots
propping up registered sex offender Scott Ritter. I hit campuses
starting in February of 2003, one month ahead of the war, filling in for
a friend who got a more prominent campus speaking gig and needed to do
that to reach a larger audience. I was asked to fill in and I did that
for years and years until the pandemic hit. My point in raising that
now is I never even heard of Scott Ritter until long after the war
began. He was not the brave voice everyone thinks he was. He wasn't,
for example, Katharine Gun -- but don't they try to rewrite history and
make him that.
And on the rewriting of history:
Sy Hersh. I have a long history of him and I noted that when I
reviewed his bad book here. If you're late to the party, you can read
Elaine's "
Seymour Hersh"
for a primer. And, yes, I know it and Coretta knew it, that Sy was
feeding information about us and others to his government sources in
exchange for tidbits. He's a snitch. And I love how his 'greatest
hits' being listed currently never acknowledge the reality that he had
many, many 'scoops' implode over the years. He's only as good as his
source because he's just a stenographer. The JFK book really damaged
his legacy -- but don't expect the political equivalent of twinks to
know about that. We should all know that he pimped the narrative that
Seth Rich was murdered not in a robbery but for leaking to WIKILEAKS.
Was
Seth murdered by the DNC or the government? I have no idea but my
guess would be no. Until Sy starts appearing on shows dropping crumbs
here and there. The fact that he's doing that means it may be true. Or
it could be a bad source. Again, Sy is not an investigative reporter.
He writes what he is told. That's all he's ever done. Some sources
are solid and some are not.
It's a shame that the shallow are so shallow yet so convinced that they learned something.
Real actions took place 20 years ago today.
The Scott Ritter fan club is not holding a real action in DC.
The Final Deathblow to Imperialism Will Only Come Under The Leadership of The Organized Colonized Masses
Efforts to marginalize, disregard, and erase the presence of radical Black-, Brown-, and Indigenous-led anti-imperialist organizations, as well as our political positions, is proving to be endemic to the politics of too many who consider themselves radical anti-imperialist and anti-war activists. For this reason, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) reiterates that the peoples who bear the brunt of the brutal and lethal practices of U.S. imperialism are at the forefront of the struggle to dismantle the global system of white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism.
The colonized within the U.S. settler state see more clearly than the privileged the holistic nature of the system as well as the interdependencies between our domestic repression and U.S. wars abroad. Some forces that claim to be anti-war have an unsophisticated understanding of peace.
We understand that peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather the achievement, by popular struggle and self-defense, of a world liberated from the interlocking issues of global conflict, nuclear armament, and unjust war. A condition for real peace is the defeat of global systems of oppression that include colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy and white supremacy. Anyone with genuine concern for the well-being of humanity and the planet should be deeply concerned that some supposed “leftist” forces consider it easier to find common cause with right wing libertarian forces than with the Black radical movement, as BAP Coordinating Committee member Jacqueline Luqman writes in this Black Agenda Report piece.
And as Chair of the BAP Coordinating Committee, Ajamu Baraka points out:
“The white left in the U.S. is deeply delusional. Elements of the left actually believe a radical movement leading to revolutionary change will be led by white activists with Black & colonized people as backdrops. #AntiWarSoWhite”
We cannot afford any confusion, complicity, silence, or outright collaboration with some “liberal/left” forces on armed intervention into Haiti, the reactionary role of NATO, the intensification of state repression in the United States, the plight of the working class being subjected to an induced recession, and austerity. For BAP, all of these contradictions reaffirm why it is absolutely necessary for colonized people to be organized or face an inescapable subjugation and eventual annihilation. The comfortable will dismiss this as hyperbole.
We—the colonized, the exploited, the oppressed—are in the midst of a war. It is clear that the colonial-capitalist rulers will continue to deceive, mislead and co-opt to maintain their dominance. Our responsibility in opposition is to keep the focus on the imperialists and not be confused by the machinations of their supporters. That task and responsibility will continue to inform our work in 2023.
It's
amazing to look at these people -- THE CONVO COUCH, for example -- and
note that they've been willing to spend years now rescuing the
right-wingers, defending the hate merchants to build up to this moment.
They claim to be left but that time wasn't used to defend transgender
people, for example, or to reach out to the left. Mabye tht's because
they'd need to do real work for that. And, check out RT when Fiorella's
on and you'll see she does no real work. She just goes on air,
Russia's own Judith Miller, and 'reports' by saying, "Russian
intelligence has learned . . ."
Get your cash
however you can, Fiorella, but be a smart whore: Get it up front.
Customer's always going to want to pay you less after he shoots his wad.
"Russian intelligence has learned"?
What a propagandist.
And
I've defended her. She has every right to work for RT. But when
that's what she's 'reporting' -- spitting back out what a government --
any government -- has fed her? She's a propagandist and I look at her
with the same disgust I would if she were reporting for a US channel and
saying, "The CIA has learned . . ."
They're idiots, this group of people.
They
aren't going to sway anyone with her being seen as Tokyo Rose and
registered sex offender Scott Ritter being their cause celebre. Yes, at
the end of last week, Scott Ritter finally took a hint and dropped out.
Though there are rumors that he will show up and speak as a 'surprise
guest.' Parents, protect your daughters.
But this is what it came to. Fiorealla and other embarrassments and they're going to do something major. No.
They're
bringing on homophobes, on a FOX NEWS personality who FOX fired because
of complaints from young men that the judge was harassing them, they're
a disgusting group of people.
And no one's going to take you seriously when you're putting on a White man convicted and sent to prison for being a pedophile.
White
privilege is what kept Scott out of prison the first two times he was
arrested for being a pedophile. He was able to whine to the people he
met while working for the UN and they wrote character letters insisting
that Scott was wonderful and this was a momentary lapse of judgement.
The third arrest didn't work out for him.
No man of color would have been able to avoid prison on two arrests for pedophilia but White Scott Ritter did.
And
maybe that glorification of Scott by the group is really the
glorification of White which is why it's a White Power 'action.'
You're
putting people on the stage who attack Civil Rights, who attack LGBTQ+
persons, who attack women's right (including with regards to
reproductive health) and you want to build that coalition. It's not
going to build for you. Even if you hadn't spent weeks promoted
pedophile Scott Ritter, it still wouldn't work. Hate merchants are not
the answer, they never are.
But the Jimmy Dores
can't get accepted among the left so they'll be a face of the left for
the extreme right. That's how they'll earn their bread and butter, as
trained monkeys doing the tricks that they were taught.
Tara Reade will be there -- in all her girth and non-glory.
Marcia noted last night, "
In
other news, the ultimate Karen -- Tara Reade -- is now reTweeting
Marjorie Taylor Greene. Tara, we knew you were ugly and fat, we just
did not know you were also a homophobe."
There's
a reason that the so-called left speaking at this event don't speak out
against the hate campaigns the extreme right launches -- they agree
with them. They would rather be around their friends and
fellow-thinkers than defend the LFBTQ+ community. Tara has destroyed
her own reputation. Some day they should make a movie out of her -- it
would be a non-stop laugh riot.
The combination of destroyed health care infrastructure, medicine
shortages, limited resources, high levels of heavy metal contamination,
and poor sanitation is likely to blame, they argue.
Antibiotic resistance, or AMR for short, is rising globally at an
alarming rate and is expected to cause 10 million deaths a year by
2050, if nothing is done about it, point out the authors.
Largely attributed to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics,
attention is now turning to other factors, such as heavy metals and
disinfectants containing quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs), which are
widely used in the health care and hospitality sectors.
War has been implicated in the emergence of AMR as far back as the 1940s, but has received little attention, say the authors.
Iraq is a stellar example of this neglect, as the country has
experienced a sequence of conflicts since the 1980s that have coincided
with the emergence and spread of pathogens with specific patterns of antibiotic resistance, they highlight.
The following sites updated:
