6/01/2017

stop presidential welfare now

barack was always a fake ass.


Nothing says "hope and change" like buying an $8.1 million mansion after spending your presidency bombing country after country.






and they gave him cover and shelter.

the amy goodmans, the matthew rothschilds, the john nichols, all of those losers and liars.

he is a fake ass.

and we need to end presidential welfare.

if he can afford an 8 million dollar home, he doesn't need free bodyguards or a pension.

there should be a check on it.

he's going to rake in so many more millions from corporations.


we need to stop this nonsense.

let him fend for himself.

he's got millions now, he can do it.

he didn't enter the white house a millionaire.

but he left it one.

let's all pretend he worked for the people.

(and i'll pretend glenn greenwald held barack accountable - he didn't.  his sermons were always on others.  with barack it was this neutral and neutered tone.)


let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'



Thursday, June 1, 2017.  Chaos and violence continue, The Mosul Slog continues, the crimes begin to get attention, and much more.




considering she voted to send him to Iraq: I really doubt my boyfriend will ever talk to me the way he talks about Clinton








Amanda Marcotte thinks she knows everything.  It's the curse of those rejected by love.  It's what allows her to ignore Hillary Clinton's long support for the Iraq War, for war on Syria, for war on Libya.

Oh, Amanda, go try to hit up another man for abortion money when you're not sure if he's the father.

It's funny how Iraq mattered to Amanda whens he worked for John Edwards (who apologized for his vote in a column for THE WASHINGTON POST) but now doesn't mean a thing -- funny in a sort of pathetic way but everything about Amanda's pathetic.

She doesn't care about the war built on lies because, again, she's the woman who publicly whined that her boyfriend offered to marry her when she told him she was pregnant and all she wanted was for him to cover half the abortion -- she also confessed that she wasn't sure he was the father.  That's trash, that's Amanda.




Day 225 of The Mosul Slog.

The Islamic State seized Mosul in June of 2014.

It's now June of 2017.

Three years later and they've still not been run out of the city.


The current operation began in October of 2016 because the government of Iraq clearly wasn't too concerned about a terrorist group seizing a city as evidenced by their do nothing attitude for over two years.







map update. Green= completely liberated. Orange= frontline clashes. White= control.






What's been accomplished in these 225 days?

ALJAZEERA notes:

The UN estimates almost 10,000 people fled from Mosul’s northwest and the Old City every day last week.
More than 750,000 people have been displaced from the city since October.


But it's not easy getting out of Mosul.  The Iraqi government told residents to stay in their homes until late April, they never offered safe passage out of Mosul and now they're targeting vehicles.  RUDAW reports:


Any motorized vehicles in western Mosul are considered to be a threat and subject to strikes by the US-led international coalition and the Iraqi forces, while authorities have encouraged civilians to leave the war-torn areas by foot in the face of starvation and hunger.

"Iraqi Security Forces transmitted information to residents of West Mosul a week or two ago telling them that, due to ISIS' use of vehicles (both automobiles and motorcycles), moving or static, could be considered a threat," US Col. Ryan Dillon, the spokesperson for the coalition told Rudaw English.

As many as 180,000 people are reportedly hungry and living in miserable conditions, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).



It's been one nightmare after another including Iraqi forces torturing and killing civilians.  James Gordon Meek, Haider Newmani, Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz (ABC NEWS) report:


 In hours of footage captured by Iraqi photojournalist Ali Arkady, licensed by ABC News and broadcast on World News Tonight with David Muir and Nightline last week, officers of an elite Iraqi unit called the Emergency Response Division (E.R.D.) are shown directing the torture and execution of civilians in Mosul late last year. A U.S. military spokesman said that while an investigation of new evidence of atrocities committed by the E.R.D. is warranted, there is no legal reason the U.S. cannot continue to work with the unit.
The unit had already been blacklisted in March 2015 under the Leahy Act, which requires foreign military units to be banned from receiving U.S. military aid if there is "credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.” Top American commanders, however, have continued to praise the successes of the E.R.D. and boast of a "fruitful partnership" between the U.S. military and the unit, including coordinating airstrikes on ISIS.
“The photos are sickening. They clearly depict war crimes,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who authored the federal law 20 years ago, said in a statement to ABC News. “That they were brazenly lauded by the unit’s leader suggests that they were far from aberrations. It is my understanding that the United States no longer supports the Iraqi unit involved, but we should insist that the individuals responsible, and particularly the leaders, be prosecuted and appropriately punished. The fact that U.S. military personnel praised the Iraqi unit’s cooperation is deeply disturbing and requires further investigation by the Pentagon.” 





Turning to the US and Detroit . . .




Detroit Regional Chamber And Detroit Public Television Bring the 2017 Mackinac Policy Conference to Michigan
 
Watch LIVE online at http://miweek.org
 
For the seventh consecutive year, the Detroit Regional Chamber and Detroit Public Television (DPTV) will collaborate to provide Michigan citizens with the highest level of access to the Mackinac Policy Conference’s content. Viewers can watch the conference live online by visiting the MiWeek website at http://miweek.org.
 
Since 2011, the Chamber and DPTV have worked together to significantly broaden access to the event.  Each year, an average of nearly 50,000 unique audience members watch at least some part of DPTV’s Mackinac Policy Conference coverage via computers, phones and tablets during and immediately after the event.
 
All content, including livestreams, will also be offered, at no cost, to any public or commercial broadcast outlet, as well as all other news organizations in Michigan, to continue to make coverage of the Conference as accessible as possible.
 
DPTV plans to broadcast and/or webcast:
 
  • Streaming coverage of virtually every Conference session (with the exception of those not allowed under speaker contracts), featuring keynote addresses and panel discussions.
  • A daily half-hour recap of Conference activity at 7:30 p.m. on TV.
  • Live and recorded interviews with speakers, Conference participants and analysts.
 
DPTV coverage will be anchored by award-winning journalist and host of MiWeek, Christy McDonald, with analysis from Detroit Free Press Pulitzer Prize-winning Editorial Page Editor Stephen Henderson, and Detroit News Editorial Page Editor Nolan Finley.
 
News organizations may access the embed code required to run the coverage on their own websites via: http://bit.ly/MPC17embed
 
Coverage Schedule
 
Wednesday, May 31
9:00 – 10:00 a.m.
Special Livestream: The Skillman Foundation Hosted Session – Rebuilding Detroit Schools
Break
11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Full-Day Livestream Coverage
 
Thursday, June 1
10:30 a.m. – 5:15 p.m.
Full-Day Livestream Coverage
 
Friday, June 2
8:30 – 10:45 a.m.
Full-Day Livestream Coverage
 
DPTV’s coverage of the Mackinac Policy Conference begins on Wednesday, May 31st, at 9:00 A.M. ET on http://miweek.org. Follow the conversation around the conference on social media using #MPC17.
 
 
Rich Homberg
President and CEO
Detroit Public Television
248-640-4169 - rhomberg@dptv.org  - @RichHomberg
 
Detroit is in the center of everything.”
 

Tomas Hook/President/International Association of Great Lakes Research (IAGLR) - 5-17-17


The following community sites updated: