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:







  • hillary has to go

    hillaryrebel


    that's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Rebel Hillary."


    i am so sick of the excuses for that awful candidate.

    hillary is responsible for her loss, no 1 else.

    Here's a List of Everyone & Everything Has Blamed for Her Loss




    talk about damage.

    she should have been graceful and shut the f**k up.

    instead, she's giving the impression that a female candidate will never accept the results and will constantly make excuses.

    DNC Ex Head of Data Science Hammers Hillary Clinton After She Blames His Team for Loss


    she has got to go.


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


    Wednesday, May 31, 2017.  Chaos and violence continues as so much of the dead are rendered invisible.




    Recent violence in Iraq has been largely ignored by the western press.  One event this week, the bombing of an ice cream parlor in Baghdad, has gotten some attention.


    Replying to 





    Russell Goldman offers a thirteen paragraph report for THE NEW YORK TIMES.


    Read over it and see if you can see the major flaw.


    Megan Levy (SYDNEY MORNING HERALD) reports:


    An Australian schoolgirl was one of more than a dozen people killed when a massive car bomb tore through a popular ice-cream parlour in the Iraqi capital Baghdad this week.
    Zynab Al Harbiya, 12, was with her family at the Al-Faqma ice-cream parlour in Baghdad's central Karrada district in the early hours of Tuesday, local time, when a jihadist blew up an explosive-laden car parked outside.


    Liz Burke (NEWS.COM) notes:

    Foreign Minister Julie Bishop this morning confirmed the year seven student was killed in a suicide bombing that targeted an ice cream parlour in the Iraqi capital.
    Accompanied by family members, the young girl had just enjoyed an ice cream on Monday night, breaking the daily fast undertaken during the holy month of Ramadan when a car bomb was detonated outside the popular eatery.
    “She broke her fast and she just wanted to go and get some ice-cream from the parlour,” Zynab’s cousin Layla Al-Saabary said through tears on The Project.


    The violence in Iraq is repeatedly ignored.

    The victims of the violence are immediately forgotten.

    Go read Russell Goldman's article.

    The problem?

    There's not one name in it.

    Don't give him credit for 'time rush.'

    There was no time rush.

    We're calling it a Tuesday attack due to the time change.

    But this is the same attack that we first covered in "ISIS attacks Baghdad" which posted here Monday at 8:14 PST.


    And how do you not get the name of one person killed even if the blast was four hours ago?


    At THIRD, on Monday night, we offered "Editorial: Do the deaths matter?"


    We included two Tweets in the editorial:




    Iraq, just like Syria, has endured the most death & ruin at ISIS's hands. But sadly, the global outrage and MSM coverage is slim to none. 💔







      5 hours ago

    Replying to 
    How many monuments around the world will be lit up in Iraq's colours to show solidarity with tonight's victims? How many minutes airtime?




    Maybe the world would take notice if the western press did?


    Taking notice means you include the dead.


    Including the dead does not mean you give numbers, it means you give details.


    You have to wonder how the impersonal 'reports' of this violence could impact other violence?


    The reports indicate -- by failing to cover the victims -- that lives don't matter.

    How does that impact readers in Iraq?


    Because a westerner was one of the victims, we have a name.

    We have no names of the Iraqis, though.


    And we're treating this as normal.

    It's not.

    It's not even reporting.




    They need to dig a little deeper.  And the video is Ella Eyre performing "Deeper."


    Violence isn't limited to Baghdad and Mosul.


    Bomb attack in Iraq's Hit city In Anbar province kills 14, injures 23




    Meanwhile, it's day 224 of The Mosul Slog.

    On The Mosul Slog, James Cogan (WSWS) reports:



    Secretary of Defense James Mattis has again declared, during a lengthy interview with CBS News on Sunday, that the US-led campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has shifted from “attrition tactics” to “annihilation tactics.”
    Mattis implied these “tactics” included the extra-judicial execution of wounded or captured people suspected of being ISIS militants—a flagrant war crime under international law. The former marine general, who directed the murderous US military assaults against Iraqi insurgents in the city of Fallujah in 2004, told CBS: “Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa. We’re not going to allow them to do so.”
    The current focus of the US-directed war on ISIS is the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which once had a population of over 1.6 million. After months of relentless air strikes and bloody street-to-street fighting, the Iraqi government claims that the remaining ISIS fighters are trapped in the compact and densely-populated suburbs of Mosul’s west, known as the “Old City.” What is left of the ISIS leadership is believed to be holed up in the 900-year old Great Mosque of al-Nuri, where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a “caliphate” three years ago.
    In October 2016, a massive force of Iraqi troops, Kurdish peshmerga militias and Shiite militias began the offensive to retake Mosul. The assault has been supported from the air by jet fighter-bombers and helicopter gunships provided by the US, Australia, Britain, Canada and France. Iraqi ground forces are being accompanied into battle by special forces personnel from the same countries. Iraqi military commanders have boasted they will complete the recapture of Mosul over the coming two weeks.
    Earlier this month, Iraqi commanders claimed that some 16,000 ISIS fighters had been killed in the Mosul area since October. When the offensive began, the number of ISIS fighters in the city was generally estimated, by both US and Iraqi government sources, at around 5,000, and at the most, 10,000.
    How many of the purported ISIS dead were in fact non-combatants may never be known. What is known, however, is that all males from Mosul older than 14 have been interrogated by government forces as potential ISIS fighters. An unknown number have not survived the process.
    In now widely published images, taken between October and December 2016, photographer Ali Arkady captured, in photo and film, some of the horrific torture inflicted during interrogations. According to a March report by Human Rights Watch, some 1,269 people, detained during the earlier stages of the fighting, were being held in “horrendous” and “degrading” conditions in makeshift prison camps. Some 700 others had been transferred to prisons in Baghdad.



    The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley -- updated: