Friday, December 24, 2021

Joni Mitchell's "River"

 That's Joni Mitchell's new video for her classic song "River" from BLUE:


It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

But it don't snow here
It stays pretty green
I'm going to make a lot of money
Then I'm going to quit this crazy scene
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
I wish I had a river I could skate away on
I made my baby cry

He tried hard to help me
You know, he put me at ease
And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on

I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Oh, I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I made my baby say goodbye

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river I could skate away on

© January 18, 1971; Siquomb Pub Corp

It's one of my all time favorite Joni songs, glad to have a video for it. 

Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Friday, December 24. 2021.  Joe Biden needs to end the persecution of journalist Julian Assange and THE LOS ANGELES TIMES needs to end their sexist coverage of Iraq.


The most persecuted journalist in the world remains Julian Assange as the US government continues to demand that he be handed over for the crime of 'reporting' and as the UK government continues to hold him in prison while they decide whether or not they're going to hand him over.  Two goverrnment persecuting him while his own government, Australia, sports its own impotency on the world stage.


Whistle-blower Edward Snowden observes:

This Christmas may well be the last that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will spend outside US custody. On December 10, the British High Court ruled in favor of extraditing Assange to the United States, where he will be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for publishing truthful information. It is clear to me that the charges against Assange are both baseless and dangerous, in unequal measure — baseless in Assange’s personal case, and dangerous to all. In seeking to prosecute Assange, the US government is purporting to extend its sovereignty to the global stage and hold foreign publishers accountable to US secrecy laws. By doing so, the US government will be establishing a precedent for prosecuting all news organization everywhere — all journalists in every country — who rely on classified documents to report on, for example, US war crimes, or the US drone program, or any other governmental or military or intelligence activity that the State Department, or the CIA, or the NSA, would rather keep locked away in the classified dark, far from public view, and even from Congressional oversight.

I agree with my friends (and lawyers) at the ACLU: the US government’s indictment of Assange amounts to the criminalization of investigative journalism. And I agree with myriad friends (and lawyers) throughout the world that at the core of this criminalization is a cruel and unsual paradox: namely, the fact that many of the activities that the US government would rather hush up are perpetrated in foreign countries, whose journalism will now be answerable to the US court system. And the precedent established here will be exploited by all manner of authoritarian leaders across the globe. What will be the State Department’s response when the Republic of Iran demands the extradition of New York Times reporters for violating Iran’s secrecy laws? How will the United Kingdom respond when Viktor Orban or Recep Erdogan seeks the extradition of Guardian reporters? The point is not that the U.S. or U.K would ever comply with those demands — of course they wouldn’t — but that they would lack any principled basis for their refusals.

The U.S. attempts to distinguish Assange’s conduct from that of more mainstream journalism by characterizing it as a “conspiracy.” But what does that even mean in this context? Does it mean encouraging someone to uncover information (which is something done every day by the editors who work for Wikileaks’ old partners, The New York Times and The Guardian)? Or does it mean giving someone the tools and techniques to uncover that information (which, depending on the tools and techniques involved, can also be construed as a typical part of an editor’s job)? The truth is that all national security investigative journalism can be branded a conspiracy: the whole point of the enterprise is for journalists to persuade sources to violate the law in the public interest. And insisting that Assange is somehow “not a journalist” does nothing to take the teeth out of this precedent when the activities for which he’s been charged are indistinguishable from the activities that our most decorated investigative journalists routinely engage in.

 If you’ve been tuning into the bad news this past week, you’ve certainly encountered a version of precisely this question, is Assange an X or a journalist? In this inane formula X can be anything: hacktivist, terrorist, lizard person. It doesn’t matter what noun you put into this MadLibs, because the entire exercise is pointless.

This kind of sincere, credulous, smug, and gloating inquiry is just the most recent, just-in-time-for-Christmas, example of in-the-flesh-and-in-the-word bad faith, presented by media professionals who are never in worse faith than when they report on — or pass judgment on — other media.



Meanwhile, WSWS notes:

More than 300 doctors and medical professionals from around the world have issued an appeal for the immediate release of Julian Assange from prison in the UK because of the serious deterioration in his health indicated by the stroke he suffered in October during his UK High Court extradition hearing.

On December 22, Doctors for Assange released an open letter, published below, to Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, imploring him to seek the WikiLeaks founder’s urgent release on medical grounds. The letter makes that request based on Joyce’s recent statements suggesting that the US extradition request against Assange should now be dropped.

That hundreds of doctors have again written, warning of Assange’s dire medical situation, underscores the grave dangers he faces as he spends yet another year behind bars with extradition hanging over his head and the prospect of being incarcerated for life on trumped-up US espionage charges.



His health has deteriorated throughout his inhumane treatment -- and the two are related: The inhumanity is destroying him.  That is the point: To destroy him.  This is revenge against Julian by the US government.  They want to destroy him to scare off anyone who might be able to provide the people with real information in the future.

In the future.

So it's 2048 and the world wonders how Julian was persecuted, how this happened, how a tidal wave of outrage didn't compell US President Joe Biden to end the persecution?

Most of us will be 27 years older then, some of us will be dead.  And the young will wonder how did we look the other way?  How did we fail to use our voices, to amplify them, to demand justice?

Right now?  Right now, Joe Biden and the US government have a lot to answer for.  If this persecution continues, we all have a lot to answer for.  

Australia's ABC reports:

Julian Assange's legal team has filed an application to appeal to Britain's Supreme Court against a lower court's ruling this month that he could be extradited to the United States.

US authorities accuse Assange, 50, of 18 counts relating to WikiLeaks' release of vast troves of confidential US military records and diplomatic cables, which they said had put lives in danger.

On December 10 the WikiLeaks founder moved a step closer to facing criminal charges in the United States after Washington won an appeal over his extradition in London's High Court.

The court said it was satisfied with a package of assurances given by the US about the conditions of Assange's detention, including a pledge not to hold him in a so-called "ADX" maximum security prison in Colorado and that he could be transferred to Australia to serve his sentence if convicted.

The Supreme Court is the United Kingdom's final court of appeal.



ALJAZEERA notes, "He has been in custody since 2019, despite having served a previous sentence for breaching bail conditions in a separate case, and spent seven years at Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid being removed to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations that were later dropped."  RT adds, "The WikiLeaks publisher sought asylum from Ecuador in 2012, suspecting -- correctly, as it turned out -- that the US sought his arrest and extradition via unsubstantiated charges pressed in Sweden. He ended up stranded at Ecuador’s embassy in London for years, until his asylum was revoked under pressure from Washington, and British police arrested him in April 2019. He has been held in the maximum-security Belmarsh prison in south London ever since."





Yesterday, the SEP held an online conference on the dire need to end the persecution of Julian.




I get what the US government is doing.  I do.  I get it, they want to silence anyone else, they want to put fear into the public.

Here's what I don't get.

They're public servants.  Joe Biden is a public servant.  Why are we so scared to put the fear into him?  This is his legacy -- an old fool bumbling around trying to live down valid and credible accusations of assault.  If it weren't for Donald Trump, not only would Joe not be president, he wouldn't be the object of endless ridicule.  We've not had a more questionable president.  His iq and his coherence is constantly questioned by the public -- the press carries him along but the public is not so kind.

Joe Biden should be verys cared because there is no second act post-presidency.  He is an old man in poor health.  He will have no accomplishments after he leaves the White House.  This is the final determination and he needs to understand that and we need to make clear to him what a drag persecuting Julian will have on how he is remembered.

Put the scare to us? No, put the scare into him.

Turning to Iraq . . .

I don't know.  

I sat through that hideous Aaron Sorkin garbage.  Nicole Kidman's great, others overcome casting obstacles to deliver but Aaron's problems remain and I'm just damn sick of it.  Yes, Ava and I broke the ground on this back when Aaron was flying high and 'feminist' media from Gloria Steinem and others were praising Aaron and treating him like a god when he was nothing but a jabber jaw with a sexist attitude towards women which only made his writing more limited.  And, yes, all these years later, we can hear jokes an adult cartoons about how sexist Aaron is and how his female characters are underwritten and poorly framed.  I'm glad about that. 

I am.

But this garbage needs to stop.

And nobody's calling it out.  

Nabih Bulos is part of this problem.  And I have called him out here and the response has been whining from friends at THE LOS ANGELES TIMES.  And others calling him out?  Oh, I guess I can do another ten years of documenting the sexism and maybe then others will emerge to make easy jokes?

I don't know that I have ten years.  

So how about we all wake up to what's going on and agree, right now, right here, that it's wrong.

Nabih is writing this week about an issue that's been documented over and over -- drought in Iraq -- and he has nothing to new to offer on the topic and that should be a big problem to his editors but even more so they should be talking to him about his contacts.  Yet again, he's filed another Iraq report that fails to quote or note even one Iraqi women.

Drought doesn't effect them?

Women don't water?

It's 2021.  

Where are the Iraqi women?

And this is THE LOS ANGELS TIMES --t he paper loves to strut around proclaiming just how advanced and current it is.  Yet this is the same paper that has struggled throughout 2021 to even acknowledge that there are women and girls in Iraq.

Exactly how backwater is the editorial staff at THE LOS ANGELES TIMES?

Last month, FRANCE 24 delivered this.


 






I know that will shock anyone who depends upon THE LOS ANGELES TIMES for their news coverage, but there are women and girls in Iraq.  

Earlier this year, ALJAZEERA reported . . .




Here are a few more reports that all emerged in the last few weeks.  Other outlets can find women in Iraq.  Why can't THE LOS ANGELES TIMES?












t







It is unacceptable that THE LOS ANGELES TIMES coverage of Iraq is so sexist.  It needs to be called out and called out by everyone.   


Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Bette Midler does it again, sadly

I hope you read Ruth's "Sad Bette Midler."


I don't know what to say about Bette's latest embarrassment.  She really is an embarrassment.


She was never that talented.  She was driven, yes.  And few have achieved so much off so little.  As a singer, she's always been wanting because she has no range.  "From A Distance" was done better by Nanci Griffith (who did it years before Bette) and even by Judy Collins.


She's not much of an actress. She can't create a character.  But she can mug.  She can eat up the scenery.  And as long as that's what's called for, she can be entertaining onscreen.


In the nearly 30 films she's made, most aren't worth watching.


BIG BUSINESS is her mugging so she works in it.  The same for OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE.  FIRST WIVES CLUB is watchable for Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton, not really for Bette.  I'd say BEACHES is a good weepie (and Barbara Hershey does all the acting in that film).  That's really about it.  And then there are the bad movies and then the hideous STELLA which depends on a real actress which she's not and makes the film a freak-fest. 


Closing with  C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Wednesday, December 22, 2021.  Iraq, Julian Assange, and two US whores who exposed themselves but think we should still listen to them.


Someone forgot to take the trash out.  Which is how Norman Solomon's latest garbage is where we start.  I have no idea why COUNTERPUNCH continues to run his garbage.  They shouldn't and they owe their readers an apology -- that's not opinion, that's fact.  For violating journalistic standards, they owe their readers an apology.


In 2008, 'antiwar' Norman was published over and over by COUNTERPUNCH.  I liked Alex and I had more important issues with Norman to call out.  So, for example, ehere and with Ava at THIRD, the focus was on how nOrman was lying to listeners of KPFA -- among others  He went on that radio station and on programs on other platforms to give 'independent' analysis of the election.  As an 'independent' analyst, Norman managed to trash Democrats running for the presidential nomination except for one.  No, not Dennis Kucinich.  Norman ignored Dennis.  


The one Norman kept promoting?  Over and over, Barack Obama.  But from an independent and netrual stance, you understand.


He wasn't.


He was a pledged delegate for Barack Obama.  Living in California, we were aware of that.  We were also aware of the fact that this detail was included when his weekly astroturf masquerading as "columns" were published by real news outlets.  When that happened, Norman made sure that a little note was attached identifying himself as that.


That disclosure was never made when he was on KPFA.  And we called it out and were part of a call that grew louder and louder until a call-in raised it on the air.  Poor Norman.


Whore.


THat's what he was.


COUNTERPUNCH published his articles during that period.  I've checked.  No disclosure.  


He's a whore.


And if you let whores in, you're a bordello.  I'm not running a whore house, thank you very much.  Norman has never gotten accountable for his actions in 2008 which were so much worse than just whoring for Barack.  He walked away from the Iraq War.  Which, considering how he almost destroyed Lt Ehren Watada, may have been a good thing.  Ehren was fighting for his future when Norman started attacking him regarding a female journalist that the court wanted to hear from.  I have been told that woman had nothing to diwht the war Norman waged nd we now highlight her as a result.  I'm not going to bring her name into this but it's out there and anyone confused should be able to Google.  Ehren refused to take part in the crime that was the Iraq War.  And in the middle of being tried by the US government, Norman starts popping up on various give-me-meony platforms to take the focus off Ehren who's future is at stake and to put it on a woman who has to do nthing but say she won't disclose her sources.  

We'll forget -- or at least set aside -- how druing the time he also broke up the marriage of two friends of mine.  Norman, you don't want that story told, do you?  DIn't think so.

But the Barack aspect is important.  During the Barack years, Norman lost interest in the Iraq War.  He was too busy covering for Barack.  


That matters because he's still doing it.  His latest garbage is a 'response' to an NYT article.  It's the article we've now noted three times at this site.  Here's the fourth time.  


Azmat Khan (NYT) Tweeted:
 


After years of reporting — more than 1,300 hidden Pentagon documents, ground investigation at the sites of 100+ U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and scores of interviews — we present part 1 of THE CIVILIAN CASUALTY FILES:

Azmat authored "Hidden Petnagon Records Reveal Patterns Of Failure In Deadly Airstrikes" which went up over the weekend:



Shortly before 3 a.m. on July 19, 2016, American Special Operations forces bombed what they believed were three ISIS “staging areas” on the outskirts of Tokhar, a riverside hamlet in northern Syria. They reported 85 fighters killed. In fact, they hit houses far from the front line, where farmers, their families and other local people sought nighttime sanctuary from bombing and gunfire. More than 120 villagers were killed.
In early 2017 in Iraq, an American war plane struck a dark-colored vehicle, believed to be a car bomb, stopped at an intersection in the Wadi Hajar neighborhood of West Mosul. Actually, the car had been bearing not a bomb but a man named Majid Mahmoud Ahmed, his wife and their two children, who were fleeing the fighting nearby. They and three other civilians were killed.
In November 2015, after observing a man dragging an “unknown heavy object” into an ISIS “defensive fighting position,” American forces struck a building in Ramadi, Iraq. A military review found that the object was actually “a person of small stature” — a child — who died in the strike.
None of these deadly failures resulted in a finding of wrongdoing.
These cases are drawn from a hidden Pentagon archive of the American air war in the Middle East since 2014.
The trove of documents — the military’s own confidential assessments of more than 1,300 reports of civilian casualties, obtained by The New York Times — lays bare how the air war has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children, a sharp contrast to the American government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs.
The documents show, too, that despite the Pentagon’s highly codified system for examining civilian casualties, pledges of transparency and accountability have given way to opacity and impunity. In only a handful of cases were the assessments made public. Not a single record provided includes a finding of wrongdoing or disciplinary action. Fewer than a dozen condolence payments were made, even though many survivors were left with disabilities requiring expensive medical care. Documented efforts to identify root causes or lessons learned are rare.
The air campaign represents a fundamental transformation of warfare that took shape in the final years of the Obama administration, amid the deepening unpopularity of the forever wars that had claimed more than 6,000 American service members. The United States traded many of its boots on the ground for an arsenal of aircraft directed by controllers sitting at computers, often thousands of miles away. President Barack Obama called it “the most precise air campaign in history.”
This was the promise: America’s “extraordinary technology” would allow the military to kill the right people while taking the greatest possible care not to harm the wrong ones.     



Please note, DEMOCRACY NOW! speaks with Azmat about her report on today's show.  


The report she wrote focuses on Barack Obama's drone war and the many dead as a result -- the many civilians.  It doesn't really address all the lies Barack told while in the White House about the use of the drones.  But it's about his Drone War.


Norman decides he wants to write about that.  But what's a pledged delegate for Barack to the 2008 DNC convention supposed to do?  


Norman decides the thing to do is to write an 887 word commentary that somehow manages to never use two simple words: Barack Obama.


Whore.


You whored.  You whored and Iraq suffered.  All these years later, you've yet to acknowledge, let alone apologize, for the damage you did.


Take your STD laden ass somewhere else.  You're an unrepentant whore and no one should ever trust you again.  You're trash.


I can admit when I was wrong and I've been wrong many times.  One of the biggest times I was wrong was when I took you seriously and at your word.  You are trash.  Looking back, you were trash then as well but I was tood amn stupid to realize it.  You have nothing to offer.  You are not independent.  You are a whore.  Well the world is full of whores Norman and you've reached the retirement age.  We need toa ll ensure that by noting your past whoring so that young people just getting political are not unaware of what you did and how you whored.  


That really is the amazing thing about the internet.  It exposes and you don't have to, ten years later, run to the dark basement of a libray and get out the microfiche to find out what happened.  


John Nichols is a dirty whore to wand he also exposed that when he went ga-ga over Barack.  And when someone makes the mistake of interviewing him on a program today, we get e-mails about it from people who looked him up and found out what a whore he is.  


It's your rap sheet, Norman, and you can't escape it.  


Either COUNTERPUNCH knew or didn't know when they published Norman's 2008 garbage that he was a pledged delegate for Barack Obama.  Either way, that should have been disclosed and the readers are owed a public apology.  In addition, having failed to disclose something that important, Norman should not be published by COUNTERPUNCH anymore. 


Since John Nichols was brought up in the above let me note something e-mails came in on.  A few were noting that I had missed John Nichols' Julian Assange column.


I didn't miss it.  I was trying to be kind.  


It's the typical crap the whore writes.  


I'm not a Julian Assange groupie. 


Some people, like John Pilger, still hate me for some of what I've written.  (And yet we still link to John when it's important because we're not the catty bitches of WSWS.)  I've not retracted anything I've said and stand by it.  I think we are, in fact, the only outlet that reported the court trial accurately.  Lovers of Julian couldn't deal with reality.  Haters of Julian tried to make things worse than they were.  We reported the testimony and noted the important parts -- which includes how Julian ended up in the mess to begin with.  John's not told you that ever.  Glenn Greenwald hasn't.


Hopefully, Julian will be free soon and we can talk about the truth.


But what I'm talking about is not anything that matters today in terms of Julian's life.  


Meaning, I'm not making it an issue in the commentary, I'm not noting it and don't plan to until Julian's free.  By contrast, John Nichols wants to imply that he himself is better than Julian and that we should all be disgusted by Julian but support his cause.


Julian's not a disgusting person.  Nor am I any better than Julian.  


He dserves to be free and I can write that and mean it.  I don't need to couch that argument with qualifiers.  


Nor will I.


End the persecution of Julian Assange and set him free.


It's that basic.


John wants you to know that he did a little research -- on things having nothing to do with Julian.  And he's got some historical examples!!!!  No, he's got some factoids from long ago that have nothing to do with Julian or his case.  He uses his column for crap like that and to let you know that he holds his nose when he speaks of Julian.


That's not a defense.  That's just disgusting but John Nichols is a disgusting whore who knowingly and willfully lies in print and on the air.  When he was out to defeat Hillary Clinton, for example, there was no lie he wouldn't tell (Hillary, not Barack, was the one who met with CAnada and told them NAFTA had her support! -- lie told on DEMOCRACY NOW!; Samantha Power calling Hillary a monster was a-okay because Samantha and Hillary were longtime friends -- lie told at THE NATION -- they hadn't even spoken to one another at that point.)  Dirty, lying whore.


Again: The US government's persecution of Julian Assange must stop immediately.  Julian needs to be set free from the UK prison at once.


And the world needs to pay attention to Iraq.  MEMO notes:


Iraq, along with Palestine, is a clear example of the environmental crisis resulting from war, occupation and neo-colonial policies in the Arab world, which undermine the social and economic basis of life in the region. The effects of this environmental crisis appear in devastating climate change, the pollution of extractive industries, the depletion of natural resources, the scarcity of water, and the pollution of air and soil due to the use of modern munitions, such as depleted uranium and white phosphorous, as has been seen in Iraq and Gaza. It is estimated that the war against Iraq caused the release of 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide between 2003 and 2007. That's more than 60 per cent of the total for all countries in the world.

Despite the availability of this data and its documentation by international human rights organisations, and the fact that the internal environmental situation is largely linked to the outside world, Iraq remained, until recent months, at the bottom of government and public lists of concerns. It is hardly mentioned except on the margins of international conferences or among the lists of "worst" countries in reports and statistics issued by UN bodies and organisations concerned with the environment and its economic and societal repercussions. Only then does it rank in a high position that no one else matches.

Iraq is stable at the top of the most corrupt countries in the world, and it tops the list of the most corrupt Arab countries. Iraqi President Barham Salih is unable to cover the financial loss from corruption in the country over the years. Iraq has lost hundreds of billions of dollars, including $150 billion smuggled abroad through lucrative deals since 2003, a figure that seems smaller when the dinar and dollar are compared, and the word "trillions" comes into play.

Iraq is also among the most dangerous countries according to the security risk index, competing with Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Mali and Afghanistan. This is based on the documentation of the war and information on terrorism, infighting, insurgencies and politically motivated unrest. It was also the second deadliest country for journalists in 2020, according to Reporters Without Borders. Once-beautiful Baghdad, with its ancient civilisation, is not spared from inclusion in the list of the least clean cities in the world due to the neglect of the reconstruction of the buildings and structures that the occupation destroyed, as well as the infrastructure, including the sewage system, roads, water drainage and power plants.

In a recent report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Iraq ranked fifth in the list of countries most affected by climate change and global warming. The repercussions can be summed up in the lack of water safe for drinking and irrigation, the indiscriminate use of groundwater, and the lack of water in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers due to the construction of dams upstream by Iran and Turkey, in violation of international agreements. This has caused agriculture to be abandoned and the displacement of rural populations to cities that were not prepared to receive them. The Norwegian Refugee Council declared last week that nearly half of the Iraqi population is in need of food assistance in the areas affected by drought.



Iraq had had many schools built in recent years.  Laura Zhou (SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST) reports:

China has signed a deal to build 1,000 schools in Iraq as Beijing pushes for a bigger role in the Middle East while the United States retreats.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi oversaw the signing of 15 contracts on Thursday, with representatives of the Power Construction Corporation of China and Sino Tech.


Hopefully, unlike the bulk paid for with US taxpayer dollars, these will be built correctly.  


The political paralysis continues in Iraq.  October 10th, the country held elections.  Parliament has still not been convened (it was dissolved days before the election).  No prime minister-designate has been named.  Layal Shakir (RUDAW) reports:


A high-level Shiite delegation arrived in the Kurdistan Region’s capital on Wednesday to meet with Kurdish leaders, discussing the new government formation in Iraq following the parliamentary elections where the Iran-backed Shiites were defeated.

Headed by Nouri al-Maliki, the Coordination Framework, which was formed by some losing party leaders, arrived in Erbil in the morning hours.

The framework met with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani in Pirmam, according to a statement from Barzani Headquarters.

The meeting highlighted “the need to review Iraq’s governance, take advantage of past experiences and considering the principles of partnership, compromise and balance in the governing process,” read the statement.


Nouiri al-Maliki.  Hmm.  If only the press had realized he wasn't dead -- certainly not politically -- and bothered to pay attention to him.  We did.  We noted ahead of the election, months ahead, that he wanted to be prime minister again.  We noted days after the election that he was meeting with various groups in an attempt to form an alliance.  It's a shame that the western press -- so busy with their paint-by-number pieces on how Moqatada was a "king-maker" couldn't notice reality.


The following sites updated:




Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Nate Bargatze

 

For the last two days, that routine of Nate's has been going through my mind.  Not just the part above, though, the whole routine -- including the fight that broke out at a wedding.  


I really think he's one of the best comics today.  I live for his NETFLIX specials.  



Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Tuesday, December 21, 2021.  Julian Assange remains persecuted by the US government, Iraq's election results remain uncertified, WSWS gets even nuttier, and much more.



Journalist John Pilger Tweets:

Recently I passed Tony Blair's £8million mansion in London's Connaught Square. It's an hour's bleak journey to Belmarsh prison, where Julian #Assange 'lives' in a small cell. This is Britain Christmas 2021: the war criminal rewarded, the truth-teller punished, perhaps to death.


Julian Assange, an Australian citizen,  is being persecuted by the US government.  He not only remains in UK custody, the UK government now says they will hand Julian over to the US.  Why?  What is the crime?


Not just in terms of the US, but in terms of the UK?  How does the UK justify keeping Julian behind bars when the case against him was already settled.  That case against him was dropped by the prosecution which stated that they did not believe they had enough evidence to support the charges.  That means you let the person go.  Somehow, in the UK, they retain him and hold him with no real chrages.  He's not under investigation in the UK, the case was dropped.  That means the person is set free.  Two years and eight months after the case has been dropped, Julian remains in prison.   


Jack Hunter (THE WEEK) notes:


Controversial Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is wanted by the United States for leaking classified government information in 2010 and 2011 that revealed potential war crimes perpetrated by the United States. The U.S. wants him tried for espionage, and, late last week, a U.K. court granted his extradition.

Assange and his defenders contend leaking secret government information to the public is what any journalist might do on a regular basis. Basic reporting.

This is not new. When The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers in 1971, which showed how the president had deceived the public about the Vietnam War, the Richard Nixon administration sued the paper. Henry Kissinger called the leaker, Daniel Ellsberg, "the most dangerous man in America." Nixon reportedly raged at his aides over Ellsberg, telling them to "destroy" that "son of a b---h" and "I don't care how you do it."

Successfully representing The New York Times then was attorney James Goodale. When former President Barack Obama was seeking to punish Assange, Goodale compared the situation to the Pentagon Papers case, telling The Guardian in 2013 "it's the very same thing ... [Y]ou've got to remember, [Chelsea] Manning's the leaker. Everyone says Assange is a leaker. He's not a leaker. He's the person who gets the information." That means "if you go after Wikileaks criminally, you go after the Times," amounting to "the criminalization of the whole process," Goodale argued.





Julian's 'crime'?  Releasing the truth.  Letting the people know.  Providing some much needed sunlight in what's supposed to be a democracy.  As we've noted many times,  such as here, the one person the US government wants to punish for the Iraq War is WIKILEAKS publisher Julian Assange.  Julian's 'crime' was revaling the realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the information to Julian.  WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs.  And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own.  For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War Logs.  Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:



A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.


How telling of the pathetic and degraded society we currently live in that the only person whom the US government wants to punish for the Iraq War is the one who told the truth.

Last Thursday, Katie Halper hosted a discussed on Julian Assanbge.






If Julian's 'guilty' of getting the truth out, who's next?  Azmat Khan?  THE NYT journalist Tweets:



After years of reporting — more than 1,300 hidden Pentagon documents, ground investigation at the sites of 100+ U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and scores of interviews — we present part 1 of THE CIVILIAN CASUALTY FILES:

Azmat authored "Hidden Petnagon Records Reveal Patterns Of Failure In Deadly Airstrikes" which went up over the weekend:



Shortly before 3 a.m. on July 19, 2016, American Special Operations forces bombed what they believed were three ISIS “staging areas” on the outskirts of Tokhar, a riverside hamlet in northern Syria. They reported 85 fighters killed. In fact, they hit houses far from the front line, where farmers, their families and other local people sought nighttime sanctuary from bombing and gunfire. More than 120 villagers were killed.
In early 2017 in Iraq, an American war plane struck a dark-colored vehicle, believed to be a car bomb, stopped at an intersection in the Wadi Hajar neighborhood of West Mosul. Actually, the car had been bearing not a bomb but a man named Majid Mahmoud Ahmed, his wife and their two children, who were fleeing the fighting nearby. They and three other civilians were killed.
In November 2015, after observing a man dragging an “unknown heavy object” into an ISIS “defensive fighting position,” American forces struck a building in Ramadi, Iraq. A military review found that the object was actually “a person of small stature” — a child — who died in the strike.
None of these deadly failures resulted in a finding of wrongdoing.
These cases are drawn from a hidden Pentagon archive of the American air war in the Middle East since 2014.
The trove of documents — the military’s own confidential assessments of more than 1,300 reports of civilian casualties, obtained by The New York Times — lays bare how the air war has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children, a sharp contrast to the American government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs.
The documents show, too, that despite the Pentagon’s highly codified system for examining civilian casualties, pledges of transparency and accountability have given way to opacity and impunity. In only a handful of cases were the assessments made public. Not a single record provided includes a finding of wrongdoing or disciplinary action. Fewer than a dozen condolence payments were made, even though many survivors were left with disabilities requiring expensive medical care. Documented efforts to identify root causes or lessons learned are rare.
The air campaign represents a fundamental transformation of warfare that took shape in the final years of the Obama administration, amid the deepening unpopularity of the forever wars that had claimed more than 6,000 American service members. The United States traded many of its boots on the ground for an arsenal of aircraft directed by controllers sitting at computers, often thousands of miles away. President Barack Obama called it “the most precise air campaign in history.”
This was the promise: America’s “extraordinary technology” would allow the military to kill the right people while taking the greatest possible care not to harm the wrong ones.     



Summing up its efforts to probe the US wars in the greater Middle East region, the newspaper wrote: “The promise was a war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs.” But the documents NYT obtained showed “flawed intelligence, faulty targeting, years of civilian deaths — and scant accountability”.

The newspaper got access to the Pentagon documents about the war through Freedom of Information requests beginning in March 2017 and lawsuits filed against the US Defence Department and the Central Command.

NYT reporters also visited more than 100 casualty sites and interviewed scores of surviving residents and current and former American officials. The findings, published this week in a two-part report, revealed that the US air war was “deeply flawed” and the number of civilian deaths had been “drastically undercounted”, by at least several hundreds, NYT reported.  


Barack Obama flat out lied.  For those who either didn't pay attention or don't remember, here's REUTERS reposting Barack's lies on January 30, 2012:

President Barack Obama on Monday played down the use of U.S. drones in Iraq, saying the program was very limited and focused mainly on protecting the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

“The truth is we’re not engaging in a bunch of drone attacks inside Iraq. There’s some surveillance to make sure that our embassy compound is protected,” Obama said during an online question-and-answer session with users of YouTube and Google+.

“I think that there’s this perception that we’re just sending in a whole bunch of strikes willy nilly,” Obama added. “It is important for everybody to understand that this is kept on a very tight leash.”



October 10th, Iraq held national elections. The new Parliament has yet to convene, no prime minister-designate has been named. 20 days from three months later and nothing.  In fact, the results have yet to be certified by the judiciary.  All that the election produced was talk.  ABNA offers

Reports suggest that the leader of the Sadrist Movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, as the winner of the October election, plans to offer the post to former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi if the political factions fail to reach a consensus on the extension of al-Kadhimi term. Undoubtedly, the most important opponents of al-Abadi will be the Kurds and Sunnis since none of them are satisfied with his administration's management to finish ISIS terrorist organization. 

In addition to al-Abadi, another option over whom the Shiites can reach a consensus is Nouri al-Maliki, the former prime minister and leader of the SCF. Of course, re-election of al-Maliki will be very difficult due to his differences with al-Sadr. The only way al-Maliki can once again take over the post of prime minister is accepting al-Sadr's special conditions, which, of course, seems highly unlikely. 

Other options include Mohammad Shia Al-Sudani and Asad al-Aidani. Al-Sudani was born in 1970 in Baghdad and is the former governor of Maysan. He was minister of labor and social affairs under al-Abadi from 2014-2017. He also served as minister of commerce. 

Asad al-Aidani, another option, served as minister of labor and social affairs, minister of industry, minister of trade, minister of human rights, and also mayor of Maysan. When the political circles discussed a replacement to PM Adel Abdel Mahdi, he was an option. 


Let's move over to Glenn Greenwald for a moment.


This WPost op-ed by "3 retired Generals" - calling for the US military to turn its planning against the citizenry on domestic soil in the name of stopping "insurrection" and "misinformation" - is vastly more dangerous and anti-democratic than 1/6 itself.
Remember: **before 1/6**, the "US intelligence community" was claiming the greatest threat to the US Homeland is "domestic extremism." It's long been clear that this "Insurrection" narrative is so vital because it justifies any domestic powers in the name of stopping it.
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Those are strong points and very common sense.

I have no idea what to term the latest WSWS piece by Patrick Martin other than something written in a high fever of hysteria. 

WSWS wants you to question . . . unless the story of the moment backs up whatever nutty conspiracy theories that they've spent months promoting -- even though they never panned out.

I honestly -- and wrongly -- thought the ridiculous presidential 'campaign' of Joseph Kishore would have hamred the outlet's credibility.  Maybe it idd somewhat.  But far more damage is being done by their rush to throw their arms around authoritarianism.  They're an embarrassment at this point.   I don't know that they can come back from this one.  More importantly, I'm not sure that they should be able to.  For months they've been selling their nutty garbage as news.  They've avoided real stories as a result.  When forced to cover real stories, they've gutted whole portions of it.  

For example, 'reproting' on YAHOO NEWS' actual reporting that the CIA discussed assassinating Julian Assange, they ignored the efforts to strip Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras of journalist status.  A huge part of the story and ignored by WSWS because they're petty little bitches who put their own vindicitve ways ahead of actual news.

WSWS loathes Glenn so they aren't going to cover that aspect of the story.  That is WSWS today.  The US government tries to target journalists and wonders if it can get around their being journalists (and around The First Amendment) and that's not news to WSWS because they're too petty and bitchy to be vested in the truth.  

WSWS needs a reset.  I don't think it's upt to it.  Reflection is not something the outlet has provem capable of.  





The following sites updated: