Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude: 01/31

2/05/2021

it really is over for michelle williams

my 1st thought?

michelle williams has gotten ugly! u-g-l-y ugly! she looks like her best friend busy!!! ew. yuck.

2nd thought, her career may be even uglier than her face.

she's going to star in a todd haynes movie. he's never had a hit movie and he's probably not mattered since 2002's 'far from home.'

and this 1? it's going to flop. big. real big.

they're using an unfinished nora ephron screenplay. oh, and it's not a comedy.

it gets worse.

the film's a biopic.

of?

peggy lee.

no 1's life was more boring than peggy lee's, no one's life.

there's not any great accomplishments or any great tragedies.

she drinks a lot. she's unhappy. she sings. she wishes she were an actress. she makes a mediocre movie.

that's it. now if they go into her over 40 life - and michelle could play old, look at her face - i guess we could watch her try to be in touch and usually fail.

but there's really nothing there.

i like peggy lee's voice. i like it enough to have read 3 books about her. it's not a cinematic life.

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

Thursday, February 4, 2021. Two UK troops injured in Iraq, Mustafa consolidates power making a recent CIA assessment highly probable, and much more.

Starting in the US, Katie Halper spoke with Margaret Kimberley and Justin Jackson.

Margaret Kimberley: I mean the fact that military spending is 60% of the discretionary budget. It's literally why we can't have nice things. How do you talk about the need for infrastructure, healthcare. education? You name it, anything that we don't have that we ought to have. It's the elephant in the room. How do you not talk about the $740 billion budget, the 800 military bases, the environment? The US military's the world's biggest polluter. And you're not going to have a different society at home. You're not going to have unjustice around the world and then have justice at home, it's not going to work that way. You're either going to have it everywhere or no where and I'm not trying to quote Dr. King but I just mean that quite literally. You can't have US soldiers allowed to kill people, Obama claiming the right to kill anybody he wanted and then have justice with policing in this country. It's not going to happen.

Thank you to Katie Halper for expanding her range of guests. Margaret Kimberley is a gifted voice who can nail many topics. It's good to see her on Katie's show and hopefully other of the progressive shows will consider having her on -- HARD LENS MEDIA, THE JIMMY DORE SHOW, Jackson Hinkle and others.

On the topic of programming . . . I call out WBAI and have for years. Some of these conversations here are mirrored in conversations with friends at WBAI. A friend called yesterday, WBAI, and I didn't have time to return the call until this morning. Point? WBAI is in fundraising mode.

Normally, my attitude would be, "Your on your own." I'm not really pleased with how PACIFICA turned itself into the organ for the Democratic Party. I'm about to ask you to consider pledging to WBAI. If you don't have any money, don't you dare. Or if it's going to hurt you to donate, don't. But if you do have something to spare, even two dollars, please consider donating.

What changed?

WBAI is broadcasting GUNS AND BUTTER. If you've forgotten, the David Corns and Norman Solomons got Bonnie's show pulled from KPFA. Bonnie does groundbreaking work. She covers various topics. You may agree with her, you may not. (9/11 is the area that has the David Corns and others spitting on her.) But her programs do make you think and she is fearless in a time when so many people are timid.

"Behind the Green Mask" is the name of the episode of Bonnie's show that was broadcast yesterday morning at 9:00 am. People want to talk about censorship but they never want to talk about Bonnie. She's a real journalist and she has a big following. She made tons of money for KPFA in fundraising drives -- no one matched her. Despite this, she was attacked. She was attacked for covering this topic and that topic. She stayed true to form even in the face of attacks. KPFA dropped her and she didn't falter or cower, she took her show to her own website.

People sometimes sneer at Gary Null and there were efforts to run him off WBAI. I believe they were successful for awhile. But Gary is on WBAI -- they realize they need him every fundraising cycle. I see medical doctors. That may be my failing but that's what I do. I have friends who use healers and that's their right. Clearly, Gary serves a public interest with his programming, there is an audience that actively seeks him out. His being on WBAI should never have been an issue -- he delivers listeners, his listeners deliver fundraising money.

If it weren't for Bonnie, a lot of the special programming KPFA and PACIFICA did over the '00s and 10s would not have happened. PACIFICA was founded to offer differing opinions and to be a voice for dialogue and free speech. I honestly loathe most music programs on PACIFICA. I think it's a waste, for example, to have a DC station that can't really originate coverage of DC and should be the home for a national PACIFICA program but instead offers a lot of record spinning. Dee jays playing records.

But I'm not screaming, "Take them off!" I can find something else to listen to. The David Corns think it has to be their way and that anyone they want to censor should be censored. I don't know when WBAI brought Bonnie back, my friend didn't either, but I will applaud them for doing the right thing politically and the smart thing financially.

So that's my pitch -- WBAI, airs in NYC on 99.5 FM, And there are various ways to make a financial donation. You can stream the show anywhere in the world. I believe it's still true, but any donation you make to a PACIFICA RADIO station lets you vote in that station's elections if they have them the year of your donation. So you get another way to make your voice heard.

I wish I'd had time to return the call yesterday, my friend wanted to tell me about GUNS AND BUTTER and that it would be airing that day (Wednesday). I'm not asking for anyone else, by the way. I think most of the outlets used us and misused our money and we can do a whole snapshot on that and how they used Iraq as a fundraiser and then walked away from the topic. But no one deserved what happened to Bonnie Faulkner and Bonnie especially didn't deserve that treatment.

Turning to Iraq, Alice Fordham reports (NPR, link is text and audio):

With the gold domes of the famed Kadhimiya shrine as a backdrop, nearby streets full of shops, markets and tea-sellers in Baghdad look bustling and vibrant, even at night. Tempting windows display sparkly clothes and cascades of candy in rainbow colors.

But shopkeepers say no one has been buying much since Iraq devalued its dinar against the dollar last year.

"Regarding the economic situation and the rise of the dollar — it destroyed the people," says Saad Salman, the owner of one of the sweet shops. "Purchasing power has fallen. Someone who used to buy a kilogram, now they buy half a kilogram, you know?"

Around the world, economies have been crushed by the pandemic. The International Monetary Fund reported in October that most Mideast economies plunged into recession. But some places are especially vulnerable, among them Iraq. Its economy depends overwhelmingly on oil exports, and as travel halted and demand for fuel dwindled, government revenues tumbled along with oil prices.

Alice got Mustafa al-Kadhimi to speak in the segment -- good for her. But other than getting "a get," it doesn't amount to much of anything. What listeners needed was to hear from economic analysts and not just one because we didn't need the pro-off-the-hook-capitalism. Iraq is being pushed and prodded and this is a battle that has gone on every since the 2003 US-led invasion. The IMF is not the answer and, as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani noted several years ago, it is actually the problem.

On Mustafa, Suadad al-Salhy (MIDDLE EAST EYE) offers:

Two weeks ago, the Falcons Cell was one of the Iranian-backed factions’ most-prized assets in Iraq.

The elite intelligence unit, hailed as Iraq’s “most dangerous” spy network, is CIA and MI6 trained. It boasts hundreds of successful operations against militant operatives, and rivals all other Iraqi intelligence services in its scope and prowess.

Yet in one swoop, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has changed its leadership and snatched this prize from his Shia rivals, securing for himself an organisation that gives him knowledge and power that his political enemies will find deeply troubling.

By any measure, it is a coup for Iraq’s embattled prime minister.

Since taking office in May, the former intelligence chief has struggled to control his country’s various security and military agencies, most of which are under the control of political and armed factions backed by Iran.

The Falcons Cell, which is affiliated with the interior ministry’s Federal Intelligence and Investigations Agency, has training and equipment that are among the region’s finest.

Taking control of it means Kadhimi now oversees the second-most effective government spying system operating in Iraq, whose human and technical resources have been exploited occasionally to target and terminate political rivals and civilians over recent years, security officials and politicians told Middle East Eye.

Mustafa isn't inept, he's dangerous. And that, by the way, isn't my opinion. That's the CIA's assessment. Now we talked here during Nouri's first term about how the US installed Nouri al-Maliki because his CIA assessment noted his massive paranoia and how the US government thought they could play to that to keep the puppet in line and on string. We told you about that long before WIKILEAKS was a public term and long before they released cable after cable noting the US government assessing Nouri's level or paranoia. The CIA considers Mustafa dangerous and has briefed the Biden administration on that. They consider him a despot in the making and note all the consolidating of power that he's done in his brief tenure (he became prime minister on May 7th).

What should the US role in Iraq be -- you see that topic all over -- from pro-War Hawks to well meaning people and everyone in between. But the hurdle for the new administration right now is trying to figure how accurate the CIA assessment of Mustafa is.

While they figure out what to do in Iraq, the Biden administration is relying heavily on the KRG -- a semi-autonomous area in Iraq and one that better have gotten something in return, something of real value for the trades being made because the people of the KRG are now fully educated and up to speed that Joe Biden is not their friend and that the US has lied to them over and over -- betraying them over and over -- since the days of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. MEHR NEWS notes:

The New Arab Newspaper reported on Thursday that US forces are expanding the Al-Harir base in the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

The report quoted Iraqi sources as saying that the Al-Harir base has been developed for the first time in years and that the process has been underway for about two months.

An Iraqi Defense Ministry military intelligence officer also told the New Arab that the development of the Al-Harir base includes the construction of underground shelters and several warehouses.

The officer further noted the military base has recently become the center of US operations management in neighboring areas of northern Syria, which are controlled by Kurdish militias known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.

At WAR ON THE ROCKS, Raad Alkadiri and Chrstine M Van Den Toorn offer:

If the United States is to restore some of its influence as a first step towards a sustained and mutually beneficial alliance with Iraq, it needs to become a credible partner again beyond the security sector. In policy terms, the Biden administration’s immediate focus will need to be on stabilizing the Iraqi economy and helping the country through elections. But more broadly, the United States needs to deepen its influence in Iraq from the bottom up and needs to reset U.S. ambitions. Security cooperation will remain a priority, but U.S. policymakers should also consider economic and institution-building initiatives that, while less grandiose than some past efforts to “fix” Iraq, actually address crisis areas that matter to everyday Iraqis and which have been the source of their discontent. The United States also needs to hold its erstwhile Iraqi allies to account, making sure that their agenda is aligned to U.S. interests rather than simply using U.S. support for their own narrow ends. In other words, to promote its national interests successfully, Washington needs to think smaller, and it needs to be much more conditional in its financial, institutional, and security support.

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto!

The domestic changes that Iraq has witnessed over the past four years have been profound. The most obvious difference is that Iraq is no longer at war with the Islamic State. Since that conflict was won, Iraq has undergone internal political turmoil. Beginning with the independence referendum in Kurdistan in 2018, and the subsequent protests in central and southern Iraq, the very basis of the 2003 political compact that has underpinned the Iraqi state has been tested and found wanting. The Kurdistan plebiscite, in which Iraqi Kurds voted overwhelmingly for independence in a vote that the federal government — and most of the rest of the world — refused to recognize, illustrated the corrosive impact of not resolving Iraq’s federalism dispute. The Tishreen protests of 2019, meanwhile, represented a breaking point for young Iraqis frustrated with the unyielding corruption, kleptocracy, and maladministration of Iraq’s political elite.

The elite’s refusal to change, and the violent repression of the protests by a murky mixture of armed groups, some part of the Iraqi security forces, has deepened the divide between citizens and their government. So has the rise of Islamist Shia militias, many of which are linked to Iran. Over the past four years, these groups have become perhaps the biggest barrier to political and economic reform. They have challenged state sovereignty and the government’s management of security affairs within Iraq’s borders.

All of this is taking place amidst the worst financial crisis that Iraq has faced since the 1990s, when it was subject to crippling U.N. sanctions. A fall in oil prices and production has left the government facing a growing fiscal deficit that has so far proved insurmountable. Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and his team have preached reform, but they have yet to introduce meaningful change, raising the specter of eventual catastrophic financial collapse in the absence of external assistance.

I think the US needs to let the Iraqi people self-determine. But we don't have articles about that. Those who fund raised off the Iraq War long ago lost interest. We'll examine that more tomorrow.

Whatever the Biden administration decides, the American people better grasp that the Iraq War continues and that people continue to be injured and continue to die. That's the Iraqi civilians, that's the foreign forces that shouldn't be there. Case in point, the UK MIRROR reports:

An SAS soldier was critically injured in a horror parachuting accident during a covert night-time operation against the Islamic State in Iraq.

The trooper suffered horrific injuries when he crashed to the ground in a mid-air collision with a US special forces soldier who was also severely injured.

They managed to raise the alarm which sparked a major rescue operation over fears that the injured soldiers could be captured by IS jihadists.

Both soldiers were working on the same secret operation and had jumped from planes at 18,000ft before they crashed into each other, Daily Mail reports.

The following sites updated:

2/04/2021

no ethics in the biden family

that's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Fraud Squad" from tuesday night.

if there's anything that's a bigger joke than the squad these days, it would be the biden family. cnn reports:

President Joe Biden said at the start of his administration that family conflicts of interest would not be tolerated in his White House, but not two weeks into his presidency, his brother's actions as a part of his employment at a law firm in Florida are raising questions about how he'll implement that pledge.

Francis "Frank" Biden, the President's brother, was hired as a non-attorney, senior adviser for Berman Law Group, a Boca Raton law firm in 2018. The firm frequently touts Frank Biden's ties to the President, featuring Frank and his family connections prominently on their website, in ads and on social media.

As Frank Biden was with his brother in Washington for the inauguration last month, the firm placed a two-page "advertorial" in a local Florida newspaper emphasizing the shared values between "the two Biden brothers." With Frank Biden's image placed prominently in the center of the ad, it also mentioned the firm's lawsuit against sugar cane growers "filed against the backdrop of incoming President Joseph Biden Jr.'s commitment to environmental and social justice(.)"

Last week, the White House said that it is its policy to not let businesses imply they have Biden's support or endorsement. But they declined to comment on the record specifically about the advertisement.

joe biden is just empty words. people should be paying attention and grasping that it didn't even take 30 days in office for joe to break a promise.

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

Wednesday, February 3, 2021. Lesson of the day? Get drunk off your ass and you can assault whomever you want and not have to pay a price for it.

Before we get to that, as Rebecca notes in "the idiot krystal ball," Krystal Ball and RISING are making idiots of themselves bringing on 'friend of the show' Ryan Grim to lie and gush over AOC. Ryan Grim is garbage. He's now lying, not just whoring. HARD LENS MEDIA notes it in the video below.

Ryan has sided with professional whore Ana Kasparian. As for National Nurses United? They didn't push the vote. There are some good members. A few. But that's a whore's organization. We really need to know our past -- not just long ago but recent. A number of nurses were active before NNU was created. Why?

They were calling out Mitt Romney. Mitt delivered universal insurance in his state as governor -- or that's what he claimed. These nurses calling him out went all over the country calling him out. They were on KFPA, for example, and, honestly, in San Francisco, we didn't have a say over what Mitt Romney did in a state miles and miles away from California. But they'd go anywhere because this was not universal insurance -- passing a law making people buy health insurance is not providing universal insurance.

NNU wanted a public option but what they wanted more than anything -- and this comes from nurses who were speaking out -- was to ensure that ObamaCare passed -- that's why they were created in 2009 -- it was a mirror image of Romney care -- it was a fraud and a fake.

I've given nurses credit for the work they've done creating support for Medicare For All. I didn't give that organization credit.

So I really don't give two s**ts what NNU says or does. They're whores. They're not here to move the conversation forward, they exist to derail it. That's why they were founded.

Yes, nurses spent years working on this issue. No, NNU was not part of that. I'm real sorry that people don't learn the past -- especially the recent past.

Medicare For All is not even on their about page -- grasp that. This organization that wants to pretend it's fighting for Medicare For All doesn't even include it when explaining who they are and what they stand for. Are people stupid? Yes, there are stupid people. There are also uninformed people and that's because of a media failure and here I'm not blaming the corporate media. I'm talking about THE PRORGRESSIVE, THE NATION and IN THESE TIMES, DEMOCRACY NOW!, etc. Then US House Rep Dennis Kucinnich called out ObamaCare and stated he would not vote for it -- then he took the plane ride with Barack and voted for it.

Dennis is an idiot. Dennis has always been an idiot. As he explained to me, he was told by Barack on that flight that Barack would ensure that Dennis face a tough primary and that Dennis would not be re-elected if he didn't vote for ObamaCare -- that's what was discussed on the plane ride. As I told Dennis to his face, "You're a f**king idiot. If you'd made that stand you would have support. Watch now as your friends scurry away and as you do face a primary because Barack always lies." Guess what? I was right. Barack got the vote he wanted but he then used the DNC to primary Dennis and get him out of Congress.

This story wasn't reported by your so-called 'independent' media in real time. Once Dennis caved, they moved on -- if they even covered it when Dennis was saying nothing could make him vote for the bill.

So it's not that everyone's stupid and unable to learn as much as it is that everyone's not being informed. DiFi and her latest scandal? If Katrina vanden Heuvel had published the article she commissioned all those years ago about Dianne's inappropriate business relationship with her husband, that unethical trash might have been forced out of the Senate. Instead, she nixed the story and the writer had to take it to a local weekly alternative paper that you get on the street for . . . free. If THE NATION had published the story, it might have had legs.

Over and over, your 'independent' media betrays you. THE YOUNG TURKS and JACOBIN's podcasts are only the latest example. Podcasts -- plural. I'm not just talking now about the garbage Ana spews, I'm talking about the mid-week one now. When two adult women act like giggly girls find everything an asshole says funny? They're garbage. They did not even object when the toxic male began calling people "pu**ies" and using the vagina as an insult, as a term of weakness. Equally sad, the topic was Iraq and they didn't give a damn about the Iraqi people as evidenced by the absence of the Iraqi people from the so-called discussion.

Big Fat needs podcasts to tell her what to think. They told her the lies about Russia were true. They told her a hundred and one lies. Then she got a crush on Glenn Greenwald and for a minute and a half she was sane -- or as close as she'll ever be. But then Glenn told the truth about THE INTERCEPT and published the e-mails. Instead of siding with her guy, she began repeating the lies of TYT and others. Because that's what the stupid do. She's an idiot and she's always been one. For example, in 2020 she was finally riding high in the art world. For the first year I've known her, she wasn't begging me for money constantly. And on that phone call when it all ended, when she started trashing Glenn and I told her I couldn't go through this again like I did during Russia-gate, she said the reason she had called was my son asked her for money. That shocked me but okay. How much did he borrow and I'll message it over to you if you need it in cash. Oh, he didn't get any money. He bumped into her at an LA gas station and he had put gas in his car up before realizing his wallet was left at a friend's house. He looked over and saw her and asked for ten bucks. She didn't give it to him. She told him she didn't believing in loaning money.

How many thousands has she 'borrowed' from me over the years -- after the first five years, it was obvious I was never going to see that money again. But she couldn't give my son ten bucks to cover gas?

Not very smart. I'm either on the board of this museum or friends with someone on the board of that one and, goodness, there's just not going to be any need now for her art work. Her 'career' will be a COVID casualty that, if remembered years from now, will be guessed to have lost steam when COVID erupted. It's over for Big Fat and she's just starting to realize that because she's left three messages since Sunday begging for money. That well went dry. Guess what? She was supposed to get a grant in the new year but somehow -- mmm-hmm -- that got pulled. Now she's in real hardship -- she might have to get an actual job. Stupid people like Big Fat believe TYT and they're so stupid that they tick off the person who funded their life.

Stupid people can't learn But most people aren't stupid. They're just not given the tools they need. Presenting National Nurses United as a real group is something Ryan Grim does because he whores. That's why he gushes every time AOC burps. "The revolution has started!" No, Ryan, AOC just had gas.

The people pimping National Nurses United are either whores or uninformed. When THE MAJORITY REPORT was Janeane Garofalo's show, her worthless sidekick was pimping AARP. And he was aghast that AARP backed this or that Bully Boy Bush policy that actually harmed seniors. I said, "Janeane, is Sam so stupid that he doesn't know that the AARP is not an activist group? It's a lobbying body but it's in the business of insurance. For profit. Janeane educated her audience on it. I'm not sure that the whorish Sam Seder ever got the point.

But that's why AARP was fine with Bully Boy Bush creating the 'doughnut hole' and not storming the streets as Sam just knew they would be.

NNU will weakly support a bill put forward -- say by Bernie Sanders. They will not call for real action and they won't challenge any proposal put forward by a Democratic administration. That's their history and that's reality.

A lot of people are scared of reality -- including the Biden administration. Caitlin Johnstone (ICH) reports:

A new exclusive from The Daily Beast titled “White House Reporters: Biden Team Wanted Our Questions in Advance” reports that the White House press corps is being pressured to provide briefing questions ahead of time in a way that makes even mainstream media journalists uncomfortable.

“While it’s a relief to see briefings return, particularly with a commitment to factual information, the press can’t really do its job in the briefing room if the White House is picking and choosing the questions they want,” one White House correspondent told The Daily Beast. “That’s not really a free press at all.”

“It pissed off enough reporters for people to flag it for the [White House Correspondents Association] for them to deal with it,” another source reportedly said.

While Obama’s deputy press secretary Eric Schultz calls the move “textbook communications work” designed to ensure that Biden’s press secretary has answers ready instead of having to “repeatedly punt questions”, clearly the reporters on the job feel differently.

“The requests prompted concerns among the White House press corps, whose members, like many reporters, are sensitive to the perception that they are coordinating with political communications staffers,” writes the Beast.

And the press is eager to serve who? Not the people. Not democracy. They're eager to whore for the administration -- as NEWSWEEK did.

There are a lot of fakes and frauds. "The Fraud Squad," in fact.

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Fraud Squad" and "DiFi Ethics" went up last night.

Moving over to Iraq, SPUTNIK reports:

The United States has not yet decided on its military postures in either Iraq or Afghanistan, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday.

"I think the current level in Iraq is around 2,500 - I have no changes to that to report out to you today," Kirby said.

With regards to Afghanistan, Kirby said "no posture decisions have been made" and the US remains committed to a political settlement.

I had to check the dateline. John Kirby? He was the Pentagon's spokesperson at the end of 2013 until he moved over to the State Dept in 2015 and left to to CNN when Donald Trump was sworn in as president. Now he's back. Jen Psaki's back, so many are back. Apparently, there was no need for fresh blood in the vampirish Biden administration.

In other news, AP reports:

The U.S. Navy on Tuesday dropped sexual assault charges against an enlisted SEAL in a case involving a female sailor at a Fourth of July party in Iraq that had prompted the rare withdrawal of the special operations unit from the Middle East in 2019.

Under the agreement accepted by the military court at Navy Base San Diego, Special Warfare Operator First Class Adel A. Enayat pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of battery and assault for biting the sailor’s face and grabbing her neck during what his lawyer described as rough, consensual sex. He will serve up to 90 days in the brig.

At the special court martial Tuesday, a masked Enayat wearing his Navy dress uniform said without emotion that he was guilty.

He told the judge he did not have a “solid memory” of what happened in his room because of the “copious amounts of alcohol I’d consumed.”

The same story at another website includes this detail:

Colleen Grace, a former U.S. Navy intelligence specialist who had planned to testify at the trial, told The Associated Press in August that when she saw her friend after the barbecue that night, she had a giant black bruise that marred her jawline and several other marks that lined her neck.

She said her friend told her that the sex started out as consensual in the SEAL’s room, but then he started biting and choking her so hard she couldn’t breathe and she thought she was going to die. Grace said her friend flew to Baghdad in the early morning hours after the barbecue to be examined at a military hospital and report being sexually assaulted.

So he gets away with assault because he claims he was too drunk to remember? And yet they want to pretend that they treat assault and rape seriously in the military. This is why criminal charges need to be pulled from military courts, there is no justice.

Earlier this week, community sites did a theme post -- favorite grunge song from the 90s -- Stan went with "P.J. Olsson's "Visine"," Mike went with "Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box"," Betty went with Soundgarden's "Fell On Black Days," Trina went with "STP "Creep"," Ruth went with Alice In Chains' "Rooster," Rebecca went with the Afghan Whigs' ''mr. superlove," Elaine went with "Afghan Whigs' "When We Two Parted"," Kat went with "Tori Amos' Pretty Good Year," Ann went with "Fionna Apple's "Limp"" and Marcia went with the Afghan Whigs' "Creep."

New content at THIRD:

The following sites updated:

2/03/2021

the idiot krystal ball

that's the hideous dianne feinstein from Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "DiFi Ethics."

2nd, i'm sick of krystal ball and 'rising.' they brought on ryan liar grim again. why? why else, so he could lie yet again about aoc and pretend she does something besides tweet.

what a liar. on krystal, this is from ava and c.i.'s 'TV: The lack of self-awareness:'

We watch and so often wonder, "Do they not get what they're actually doing?"

That's especially true of RISING, the public affairs program THE HILL offers. Go back to May and watch the episode where hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti pretend to respect citizens and how they vote including those who choose not to vote. Watch them pretend that for about 30 seconds before informing you of their moral superiority and how that means that they would never do that -- the same moral superiority that they're calling someone else out for in the same segment. You watch and you get their intent -- or at least their stated intent -- while you marvel over their inability to see their own actions.

We were reminded of that last week when, on Monday, Krystal wanted to insist that, as President Joe Biden was breaking one promise already ($2,000 stimulus checks), she was going to wait to render judgement.

Makes sense, right, he's a neophyte who's just joined the world of politics and needs some time --

Oh, wait. It's Joe Biden. He was elected to the US Senate in 1972 and he didn't leave the Senate until January 15, 2009. Equally true, he only left to become Vice President of the United States on January 20, 2009 -- a post he held until January 20, 2017.

Joe Biden began officially campaigning for the presidency in 2019. And he was portrayed by the press as most electable not because he was a great thinker, not because he was a great communicator, not because he was running on a great platform and not because he was a great beauty. They said he was most electable because of all of his years in public office.

He ran for president during a pandemic and an economic collapse. These were not new conditions that sprung up after the election or after he was sworn in. So Krystal's ridiculous attempts to rescue him and claim that she was going to hold off on judgment spoke to her own hypocrisy and stupidity.

Somehow, even she grasped that which is why, the very next day, she did a twelve minute segment entitled "How I Will Judge The Biden Administration." Twelve minutes. And not a one of them made sense. She was eager to castigate the press for not holding Joe accountable -- forgetting both that she was part of the press and that she had cut Joe plenty of slack for Joe on Monday. As she went on and on, serving up a tasteless soup of words that rivaled Rachel Maddow for the use of so many words to say so little,

"We are way beyond the point where incremental is remotely good enough," she huffed at one point, apparently forgetting her remarks on Monday. 24 hours took the country "way beyond the point where incremental is remotely good enough?"

Krystal's happy with his executive orders. But it's not enough, she says while insisting she doesn't want to be a "hater."

How about just being an "honest broker." The executive orders that she waffled over are useless. Take the one on abortion. It's useless. As long as he's in the White House, it's in effect. That's all. As BBC NEWS pointed out, "The Mexico City Policy was first enacted by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and has been repeatedly renewed by Republicans and cancelled by Democrats. For decades, the US has barred money from being spent on overseas abortions but the Mexico City policy takes that a step further. It prevents federal funds from going to organisations that provide abortions, abortion counselling or advocate for the legal right to abortion."

What's needed, if you really care about the issue, is a law. And guess what? He has a Democratic Congress -- House and Senate. A law is possible, easily possible. But instead, he's doing an executive order that will be overturned when a Republican comes into the White House, the overturning will be overturned when a Democratic comes into the White House, and on and on and on.

That's not helping women. A law on this would help women.

Again, worry less about being a "hater," Krystal, and more about being an honest broker.

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

Tuesday, February 2, 2021. How to solve the problem of the many displaced in Iraq? Just evict them, close the camps and pretend like you addressed the issue.

At the end of October, we noted:

It's amazing how the western press misreports. Earlier this week, it was 'concern' for the people in camps -- the displaced in Iraq. Supposedly, everyone, including the UN was concerned. I ignored the story because it felt false on the face of it. And it was. DAR ADDUSTOUR gives you the truth about this 'concern' that western media left out. The 'concern' is only that they exist. The 'concern' doesn't translate into finding homes for the displaced or meeting the needs of the displaced. What the 'concern' means, DAR ADDUSTOUR reports is that the camp in Baquba, the sole camp for the displaced, will be closed in five weeks. 150 families will be evicted from the camp. Where are they to go? No one cares. Certainly, no one in the western press cares because they couldn't take a moment from acting as a megaphone to tell you what was really going on. Again, just on the face of it, it was obvious that there was no 'concern' for the displaced.

And the concern for the displaced still remains a minor key with few bothering to note it. An exception?

Kelley B. Vlahos: Entire city blocks are just rubble now in places like Mosul. And these people have no homes to go back to. A lot of them face persecution when they get back because either they were tied to ISIS or their family were tied or there was some connection to Sunni radicals who did not denounce ISIS at the time so there's a lot of social dynamics going on that prevent some of these people from going home. And then there are people who had children at the camps and those children are not considered Iraqi citizens because either they had the children during the so-called caliphate so Iraq is not recognizing those children as Iraqis so they don't qualify for any of the assistance that the government -- even if the government could be providing any livable assistance, these children wouldn't qualify. So you have this real damaged part of the population that numbers about a million right now who can't go home and, you know, frankly the Iraqi government can't afford to rebuild these cities like Mosul because they just don't have the budget for it.

Kelley was speaking to Scott Horton on his THE SCOTT HORTON SHOW.

They may not have money today due to COVID but they did have money. COVID didn't hit until February 2020.

As we noted in Friday's snapshot:

There are many problems with what Kullab wrote -- not reported, typed. Including where did the reconstruction money go?

Recently, the last seven or so months, the Iraqi government has claimed (lied) that they diverted it to COVID relief. Again, that's a lie. But if they had diverted it, it still wouldn't explain where all the money was prior to the COVID emerging on the world stage in February of last year. Mosul should have been rebuilt long ago and it is an example of the ongoing corruption of the Iraqi government that continues year after year, regardless of which coward who fled Iraq is installed as prime minister.

In 2020, AFP noted, "Iraq gathered $30 billion in pledges from international donors in Kuwait in 2018 to rebuild, but virtually none of the funds have been disbursed." 30 billion. And yet no real rebuilding -- the rebuilding that has taken place has been done by the United Nations.

$30 billion. Wasted. A corrupt government that pockets the money -- over and over, we see this.

At RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT, Kelley writes:

Hobbled by corruption, ineffective intelligence, and festering sectarianism ignored if not inflamed by the Shitte administration of then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (Washington’s man in Baghdad), the U.S.-trained Iraqi military didn’t stand a chance. As the United States was preparing to leave in 2009, then-Gen. Ray Odierno said the Iraqi forces were “ready” to take on their own security. In 2014, as ISIS raced across Iraq like a cancer, they fled. Several divisions “evaporated,” with 60 out of 243 battalions unaccounted for, all equipment lost.

“ISIS took 40 percent of the country. Some of these cities were completely destroyed,” said Kadhim, noting that much of the real destruction came when the areas were later liberated in 2017 by Iraqi forces with the help of U.S. airpower and Iranian militias. At its peak, ISIS territory included the provinces of Mosul, Anbar, Saladin, as well as major portions of Kirkuk and swaths of outer Baghdad. Entire religious sects like the Yazidis in Northwestern Iraq were massacred, kidnapped, sold, and blown to the mountain winds like sand.

“You’re talking about cities that are no longer habitable,” some, like Mosul still have unaccounted-for bodies lying under rubble, IEDs and unexploded ordnance still dotting the urban landscape, said Kadhim. There are booby traps everywhere. Reporter Mizer Kamel, writing in October, was overwhelmed by the apocalyptic scene in Mosul, two years after the city’s “liberation” from ISIS.

At one point he entered a house that served as an ISIS headquarters, with several families — a total of 64 people — living there during the central government’s fight to retake the city in 2017. Two missiles had hit the home at one point, igniting oil barrels stored in the basement. Men, women, and children were set on fire, their screams heard for two hours before an eerie silence. The injured had been taken away by ISIS, a neighbor told Kamel, who spotted human bones in the remains of the building. Some 50 bodies were never recovered.

“[Neighbourhood] residents, without exception, speak of the heavy psychological toll on their mental and physical health due to the unrecovered bodies under the rubble,” Kamel writes. “The house has become a health hazard, a breeding ground for stray dogs and a den for snakes, scorpions and insects.”

He said 80 percent of old Mosul was “wrecked” with many residential neighborhoods completely flattened. “Al-Shahwan (district) feels like a Second World War movie set. The destruction is terrifying, with torched cars piled up on tons of rubble, wreckage from destroyed houses, and skeletal human remains.”

There is no where for these people to go. Mustafa al-Kadhimi, prime minister of Iraq, is attempting to push the problem off on others, not to solve it. Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim (WASHINGTON POST) report:

Prime Minister Mustafa al- Kadhimi has promised to resolve the displacement crisis by closing Iraq’s camps and finding ways to reintegrate their residents into wider society.

But the pace of recent camp closures has alarmed humanitarian groups, which say that residents are often not given enough warning — what used to be months’ notice is now a matter of days — leaving them unable to find safe harbor and, in some cases, forcing them to sleep on roadsides or on rooftops in the rain.

On Monday, authorities began gradually vacating the Jeddah 5 displacement camp in Nineveh province. Residents said security forces had entered the facility, home to 7,000 people, and told families uprooted from three villages in the province to leave or be ejected.

Most of Iraq’s displaced are women and children. More than a dozen camps are still open in Iraq’s semiautonomous region of Kurdistan, housing 182,000 people.

“They told me to leave with dignity or be dragged from my tent,” said one man in Jeddah 5, reached by phone and speaking on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from security forces if he was known to have spoken to a journalist.

Smoke and mirrors from the failed and corrupt Mustafa. He'll declare the crisis ended by closing the camps. The crisis is not ended, it's just pushed off on cities. He's an abject failure and he should be called out on the world stage for evicting people from a displacement camp when they remain displaced. The Iraqi government wasted $30 billion of funds the world gave it to address the issue by rebuilding. They elected not to do so. It was more important that the billions go into the pockets of corrupt officials. Now Iraq is shutting down the camps.

Shereena Qazi and Kareem Botane (ALJAZEERA) report:

Activists and aid groups on the ground, who wished to remain anonymous, said on Monday that the Ministry of Displacement and Migration had instructed the camp mukhtars – men who often serve as heads of their communities – to inform all families from Tal Abta, al-Mahalabiya and al-Jaban districts to depart immediately.

The Iraqi government decided to close IDP camps last October and has since been pressuring IDPs to return to their homes in other parts of Iraq. But aid groups say those areas lack basic infrastructure and the homes refugees fled have still not been rebuilt since the territorial defeat of ISIL in 2017.

In November, humanitarian agencies raised concerns about the government’s decision. Refugees are also afraid that their old neighbours might assume that they are associated with ISIL and kill them for that.

That is true, by the middle of November, there were a few mute cries from humanitarian agencies. And that's really all there was. The minute the press started promoting the story in the last week of October, they were doing so with a lie, they were acting as though this was good news and failing to point out that there was no place for the displaced to go. That's how we got here. That's why these people are being evicted.

I'm looking around at the Twitter feeds of various people with humanitarian agencies. I don't see Iraq. I see many places and many issues -- including facial recognition technology -- but I don't see Iraq and the displaced. They picked the ball up late and then they dropped it and forgot it.

And this isn't just Mustafa's failure. The US government has given a ton of US tax payer dollars to Iraq. Where's the accountability and what's the plan? That's the type of question Jen Psaki needs to be asked. She's got her binder with her, in case she hasn't paid attention to Iraq since her days at the US State Dept -- where she'd always have to flip to Iraq in her binder if she was asked a question about the country on a day that there wasn't a bombing. In her binder

In her binder, she'll find this statement to the UN Security Council from the US Mission to the United Nations' Rodney Hunter last Friday:

Rodney Hunter
Political Coordinator
U.S. Mission to the United Nations
New York, New York
January 29, 2021

AS DELIVERED

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much. And thank you to SRSG Gamba, as well, and Under-Secretary-General Voronkov, for your remarks today. This is such an important issue, and we’re really glad to be focusing on it today.

Ambassador Ilyassov, thank you in particular for sharing your country’s experiences with us during your briefing: we applaud the efforts made by Kazakhstan to repatriate, rehabilitate, and reintegrate more than 600 foreign terrorist fighters and their associated family members from Syria and Iraq. We especially commend your focus on meeting the needs of returned children, including psychosocial recovery, and efforts to prevent their stigmatization.

The current situation we face – with more than 8,000 children of foreign terrorist fighters residing in camps in Syria and Iraq – is not tenable. The international community can and we must do more. We cannot continue to let these children languish in overcrowded environments where they suffer from inadequate shelter, food, sanitation, educational opportunities, and health care.

We acknowledge that this is a complex humanitarian and security issue made even more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic; we also understand that repatriation efforts must be handled with sensitivity and with each child’s best interest as the paramount consideration.

To address these challenges, states must first take responsibility for their citizens who engage in and support terrorism, including by repatriating, prosecuting, rehabilitating, and reintegrating their nationals who have traveled to conflict zones, as is appropriate.

States must also repatriate their most vulnerable citizens – children – from these conflict zones. The United States, for our part, has repatriated 28 Americans, including 16 children, from Syria and Iraq. Repatriation is not only the best security solution to prevent these fighters from returning to the battlefield – it’s also the right thing to do morally to prevent an already dire humanitarian condition from deteriorating further.

I’d like to take a quick moment just to stress a few key principles that must shape any efforts to repatriate children from conflict zones. First, we remind states that we must treat children formerly associated with ISIS primarily as victims.

Second, it is of the utmost importance that any effort to repatriate foreign terrorist fighters and their family members are undertaken in compliance with states’ obligations under international law – including international humanitarian law – as applicable, and that states respect the principle of non-refoulement.

Third, every child has the right to acquire a nationality, and states should seek to prevent their nationals and the children of their nationals from being deemed as stateless. Children moved to or born in conflict zones should be provided immediate adjudication of their citizenship status and provided all of the appropriate civil documentation necessary for their travel and access to healthcare, education, and other basic services.

Without this needed documentation, as we all know, children can become invisible to responders and be excluded from receiving family tracing and reunification services, child protection assistance, or the ability to participate in civil registration and vital statistics systems.

Along these lines, Mr. Chair, the Biden-Harris Administration believes that children should not be separated from their parents or caregivers whenever possible. If family preservation or reunification cannot support the safety and well-being of a child, other family care options that are in the best interest of the child should be made available. And finally, we must recognize that children are not a monolithic group, and that our rehabilitation and reintegration programs must account for different needs and capacities based on gender, age, and other factors.

As today’s briefers have mentioned, the phenomenon of foreign terrorist fighters has not ended with the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. We see foreign terrorist fighters travelling with their families to join ISIS affiliates around the world, including in the Sahel and in the Horn of Africa. But there is hope, as demonstrated by the decisions of Kazakhstan, North Macedonia, the Maldives, Kosovo, Italy, Bosnia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, France, Finland, Germany, Ukraine, and others who have repatriated their citizens. Where there is the political will, we can overcome even the most difficult challenges together.

To conclude, Mr. Chair, the United States will continue to invest in preventive and responsive programming to protect children who have not yet been repatriated from conflict zones from violence and abuse. The United States sees the work of SRSG Gamba’s office, the UN monitoring and reporting mechanism on children and armed conflict, and UNICEF as critical in this regard, and we welcome the SRSG’s ongoing engagement in Syria. As UNICEF’s largest donor, the United States calls on other states to join our partnership with UNICEF and other multilateral organizations by increasing your contributions so we can better leverage their expertise and capabilities in responding to the needs of children in conflict.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

###

Maybe she can expand on that?

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