Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude: 02/05

2/09/2023

burt bacharach

i typed 'i'm grabbing burt' in a group text as soon as i saw today that burt bacharach had passed away. he was a songwriter. his early partnership was with hal david. mr. david passed away in 2012.

together they wrote a string of hits. holland-dozier-holland was a songwriting team that worked at 'motown' and wrote for diana ross & the supremes but also wrote for others.

hal and burt's chief artist in the 60s was dionne warwick. she did an excellent job with their songs. 'do you know the way to san jose,' 'don't make me over,' 'anyone who had heart,' 'i say a little prayer for you,' 'message to michael,' 'you'll never get to heaven (if you break my heart),' 'i just don't know what to do with myself,' 'the windows of the world,' 'this girl's in love with you' and many, many more including my all time favorite 'walk on by.'

'walk on by' is perfection. 1st up you have the lyrics - if you see me walking down the street and i start to cry walk on by.' they grab you immediately. and the way dionne sings it with just the right amount of tension is amazing. and then you've got the production that's so amazing and really highlights the music burt wrote for the song. bomp-ba-bomp-ba-bomp. i love that. you hear that with nothing else and you know the song. it's 1 of the best recordings of the 60s. i don't mean 1 of the best recordings sung by dionne or 1 of the best recordings written by burt and hal. i mean 1 of the best recordings out of everything recorded in the 60s. historic and legendary.

now other artists recorded burt and hal as well. dusty springfield is one example. she had a huge hit with 'wishin' and hopin' which you may know from the soundtrack to 'my best friend's wedding' (ani difranco covers it on the soundtrack).

in fact the entire soundtrack to that film was people covering burt and hal songs. dusty would also have a hit with 'the look of love' - which is featured in the 1st austin powers film with burt at the piano while mike meyers sings the song. the 1st song of burt and hal's to chart was 1957's 'the story of my life' recorded by marty robbins. in the 60s, jackie deshannon would take burt and hal's 'what the world needs now is love' all the way to number 7 on the pop charts.

the 5th dimension would climb all the way to number 2 on the pop charts with burt and hal's 'one less bell to answer.' and it's a song that's been covered repeatedly - including by barbra streisand, shirley bassey, vanessa williams and dionne.

for the film 'butch cassidy and the sundance kid,' burt and hal wrote b.j. thomas' number 1 hit 'raindrops keep falling on my head.' in the mid 70s, the 2 stopped writing together.

burt had always written with others. he wrote 1 of the best hits for the shirelles 'baby it's you.' in 1982, he married songwriter carole bayer sager. before they divorced in 1991, they would write many hits together. 'stronger than before' was a hit for chaka khan, the theme to the movie 'arthur' (peter allen wrote that song with them), roberta flack's 'making love,' patti labelle and michael mcdonald's 'on my own,' and, of course, they wrote the huge hit 'that's what friends are for.' carole bayer was a great writing partner for him. he would go on to work with elvis costello and they wrote 'toledo' among other songs from the album they did together entitled 'painted from memory.' my favorite track on the album is 'god give me strength.'

and that's the track that started the partnership. they worked together for the allison anders' film 'grace of my heart.' illeana douglas plays a songwriter in the 60s who is similar to caroe king. she writes with eric stolz who is supposed to be like carole's first husband gerry goffin. then, like carole, she gets divorced and moves from new york to california. there she meets a brian wilson type (played by matt dillon) who records her in the studio singing 'god give me strength.' after they wrote that song together, they recorded their album 'painted from memory.'

he was 1 of a kind. a songwriting great whose hits were in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s (tevin campbell charted in 1994 with burt's 'don't say goodbye, girl'). 5 decades of hits - 5 decades of writing hits. by that i mean, his hits weren't just covers of his 60s hits. each of those decades he wrote new songs that charted.

carole king would probably be the closet to some 1 with that kind of distinction. she wrote hits in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. 1 decade less than burt. she's the closet to being a true peer. and, in terms of volume, she may have actually written more hits than burt.

her co-writing and solo writing of hit songs includes 'it's too late,' 'go away little girl,' 'the locomotion,' 'now and forever,' 'sweet seasons,' 'pleasant valley sunday,' '(you make me feel like) a natural woman,' 'i feel the earth move,' 'one fine day,' 'will you still love me tomorrow,' 'jazzman,' 'up on the roof,' 'chains,' 'only love is real,' 'something tells me i'm into something good,' 'oh, no, not my baby,' 'just once in my life,' 'don't bring me down,' 'you've got a friend,' 'take good care of my baby,' 'some kind of wonderful,' 'so far away,' 'nightingale,' 'been to canaan,' 'corazon,' 'believe in humainty' and 'one to one.'

burt was 94 years old. (carole's 81, if any 1's wondering.)

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

Thursday, February 9, 2023. Today we look at truth, partisanship, lies and more.

I'm not a fan of the Twitter dumps. I don't see them as reporting. They're Tweets. They're not reporting. I've also noted that if a deal is made with Elon Musk to have access to the Tweets in the first place, that deal can't be private. Basic journalism has always made that clear.

With that in mind, let me now call out the embarrassing AOC at yesterday's House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing entitled Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter's Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Sotry. Republicans are now in control of the House so the chair of the Committee is James Comer -- a man who needs to buy a comb. (Although, scary, I was told yesterday that he's actually going for that look. You're a fifty-year-old man in Congress, you're not playing Amanda Woodward on MELROSE PLACE, lose you're very bad attempt at 'bed hair.') Jamie Raskin is the Ranking Member. As the Republicans on the Committee noted in a press release, "Under the leadership of former Twitter employees Vijaya Gadde, James Baker, and Yoel Roth, Twitter coordinated extensively with the FBI to disproportionately target Republican leaders, conservative activists, and certain media outlets. In October 2020, Twitter censored the NEW YORK POST's story about the Biden family’s business schemes based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, despite the article not violating any Twitter policies." That sentence is probably the least controversial -- and truest -- of any remarks made about or during the hearing.

But we can't deal with reality. I'm about to call out a number of Democrats and before someone whines that the Republicans also obscure and spin, yes, they do. They do it very often and if I was a fan of that, I would be a Republican.

I'm not a fan of it and I do not like organized attempts to lie. I don't like organized attempts to trick people.

Something truly disgusting happened when THE NEW YORK POST was censored. But instead of working for We The People, Democrats on the Committee and the White House tried to turn it into a football match. I'm so sorry to break it to you but democracy is much more important than any Superbowl ring. The only 'side' that anyone should aspire to is truth. But instead, Democrats worked from a playbook to attack the hearing itself and to avoid the reality of what was done.

For example, AOC idiotically huffed, "A whole hearing about a 24 hiccup in a right-wing political operation! We could be talking about health care, bringing down the cost of prescription drugs, abortion rights, voting rights, civil rights, but instead we're talking about Hunter Biden's half-baked laptop story."

Cool your jets, Entitlement Barbie.

First off, all you do -- all you have ever done -- is talk. You're all talk. You take no stands. You not only wouldn't take part in Force The Vote, you then claimed that calling you out for that was a physical attack, a threat. When you wonder why more young people aren't in Congress, look no further than AOC whose vast immaturity does no one a favor.

The hearing is not a waste of time. The oldest daily paper in the United States was censored. That's worth looking into.

I'm not a fan of THE NEW YORK POST. It's slightly above garbage. But it was only slightly above garbage when Dorothy Schiff owned and mis-ran it all those years, serving those stupid roast beef sandwiches to various leaders -- the ones who were Democrats would get raves in her paper. Rupert Murdoch did not destroy the paper, he just had it do more of the same.

THE NEW YORK POST, ahead of the 2020 election, broke the story on the laptop. And it was censored for that. And it was attacked for that. THE NEW YORK TIMES, for example, invested no money, no resources, no reporters into investigating the laptop. They did put resources and money into the hit job they did on THE POST where multiple anonymice were given space to attack THE POST and we were told that the newsroom was in an uproar over the publication of the story.

Lies.

It was never true.

The article was suppressed. Some are insisting that another report is being suppressed and that we are part of a group suppressing it.

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW has an article about how Russia-gate was lies and how THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE WASHINGTON POST. Why, oh, why, are we ignoring it, e-mails ask.

First off, we never spread the lies, we called them out in real time. So we don't need to do a corrective.

Secondly, those hailing the article are idiots with no knowledge at all.

I don't scapegoat Asian-Americans.

If that doesn't explain why we're not highlighting the article, how about this: Jeff Gerth wrote it.

The liar Jeff who destroyed Wen Ho Lee's life. I'm sorry that you don't know history. I'm sorry you are so stupid that you glorify a presstitute like Gerth who not only nearly got Wen Ho Lee tossed into prison with his lies and bad reporting but it could have led to Wen Ho Lee being executed.

No, this is not a site that's ever going to praise Jeff Gerth. And, no, I'm never going to offer an apology for not highlighting the writing of a man who trafficked in lies and stereotypes to convict an innocent person in the press. Were Wen Ho Lee not Taiwanese-American, he wouldn't have been the target.

So, no, not interested in promoting The Garbage That Is Gerth.

We didn't spread lies about Russia, so there is no reason for us to offer Gerth's article. And it's not being banned on FACEBOOK and Twitter. People are sharing it -- people who want to. It is not the same thing as the government working to suppress a newspaper article. And the government did work to suppress it.

It should be remembered that the article didn't just emerge out of nowhere. Already questions were being raised about Hunter's dealings. Sarah Chayes had rightly called out the unethical nature of Hunter's business dealings. Joe was going around saying A) His son did nothing wrong and B) His son did nothing illegal. His son clearly did something wrong. Legality is a matter for the courts. Into this world, THE POST broke their story. And it was a valid story. But instead of exploring the facts, it became attack and silence THE NEW YORK POST.

In September of 2020, at THE ATLANTIC, Sarah Chayes wrote:

Let’s start with Hunter Biden. In April 2014, he became a director of Burisma, the largest natural-gas producer in Ukraine. He had no prior experience in the gas industry, nor with Ukrainian regulatory affairs, his ostensible purview at Burisma. He did have one priceless qualification: his unique position as the son of the vice president of the United States, newborn Ukraine’s most crucial ally. Weeks before Biden came on, Ukraine’s government had collapsed amid a popular revolution, giving its gas a newly strategic importance as an alternative to Russia’s, housed in a potentially democratic country. Hunter’s father was comfortably into his second term as vice president—and was a prospective future president himself.

There was already a template, in those days, for how insiders in a gas-rich kleptocracy could exploit such a crisis using Western “advisers” to facilitate and legitimize their plunder—and how those Westerners could profit handsomely from it. A dozen-plus years earlier, amid the collapse of the U.S.S.R. of which Ukraine was a part, a clutch of oligarchs rifled the crown jewels of a vast nation. We know some of their names, in some cases because of the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office: Oleg Deripaska, Viktor Vekselberg, Dmitry Rybolovlev, Leonard Blavatnik. That heist also was assisted by U.S. consultants, many of whom had posts at Harvard and at least one of whom was a protégé of future Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

Burisma’s story is of that stripe. The company had been founded by Mykola Zlochevsky, who, as Yanukovych’s minister of ecology and natural resources, had overseen Ukraine’s fossil-fuel deposits. When Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board, $23 million of Zlochevsky’s riches were being frozen by the British government in a corruption probe. Zlochevsky fled Ukraine. The younger Biden enlisted his law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, to provide what The New Yorker describes as “advice on how to improve the company’s corporate governance.” Eventually, the asset freeze on Zlochevsky was lifted. Deripaska defeated U.S. sanctions with similar help from other high-profile Americans.

Recently, Hunter Biden told The New Yorker that “the decisions that I made were the right decisions for my family and for me” and suggested Trump was merely using him as the “tip of the spear” to undermine Joe Biden politically. There are no indications that Hunter’s activities swayed any decision his father made as vice president. Joe Biden did pressure Ukraine’s fledgling post-Yanukovych president to remove a public prosecutor—as part of concerted U.S. policy. So did every other Western government and dozens of Ukrainian and international pro-democracy activists. The problem was not that the prosecutor was too aggressive with corrupt businessman-politicians like Hunter Biden’s boss; it was that he was too lenient.

Attention had been on how Hunter had used his father's influence -- without Joe's knowledge or participation, Joe insisted back then -- and here was Hunter's abandoned laptop with various details on it.

The response was to attack.

Why?

They didn't want Donald Trump re-elected. I didn't want that to happen either but we covered the laptop here because it was news. And because I trust people to be mature enough to vote for who they want to vote. The only wasted vote is a vote you don't believe in. I don't mean years later, I don't think we're a nation of psychics. That's the only wasted vote. And not voting is also a vote. Sorry, poli sci major as an undergrad (double majored as an under grad, triple majored in grad school). We are not the USSR so I'd never be proud of a 100% voter turnout or even a 90%. We're a democracy where we have the right to vote. And if someone earns your vote, you'll vote for them -- provided you can jump through all the hurdles which include registration, changing locations, understaffed locations, etc, etc. I'm all for a voting holiday -- a national holiday. Even then, I wouldn't expect 100% voter turnout or see that as a good thing. 100% of the people aren't following the issues and shouldn't be voting. Again, the USSR had huge voter turnout. I never thought that was a good thing or actually reflective of the people's belief in that system.

'Oh, no, you critiqued the USSR!' I critique all governments.

A major story emerges immediately before an election and the corporate press -- and the trashy beggar media like THE NATION, et al -- work to silence the story.

If that doesn't bother AOC then she is even more stupid than I thought she was.

This was an attack on the freedom of the press. It was also the press picking who they wanted to spin for. And Donald Trump supporters aren't the only ones bothered by it. But, yes, Donald's supporters are bothered by it -- as is Donald himself -- and he and his supporters have every reason to be upset. AOC wants the press to treat her like a national celebrity but she doesn't want to be a national politician. If she did, she'd stop offering lies and grasp that whole groups of people will never listen to her or trust her because of garbage like ""

"A whole hearing about a 24 hiccup in a right-wing political operation! We could be talking about health care, bringing down the cost of prescription drugs, abortion rights, voting rights, civil rights, but instead we're talking about Hunter Biden's half-baked laptop story" -- she declared. It's not an either/or. You can talk about those things and pursue what took place with regards to the laptop. Is she afraid it might make her late to The Met. Does she have another trashy outfit to put on? Exactly what is the hearing keeping her from that's so important?

Nothing.

She's lying and dismissing because she doesn't like the reality of the laptop. By attacking and dismissing, she can distract others and possibly avoid dealing with it.

Corruption needs to be called out. And if she doesn't get that Congress is obligated to provide oversight with regards to potential corruption, that bad hair dye she's been using must be leaking through her scalp onto her brain. I'm always amazed by someone who will spend a fortune on an outfit but, when it comes to her hair, goes for something out of the box that she can do at home. Not knocking anyone who has no choice in the matter due to economics but AOC doesn't have budget issues.

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the dishonesty.

I don't like members of Congress who mistake our lives as their partisan fight. I'm tired of all the spinning. Again, if Liked spinning and lying and partisan fights, I'd be a Republican.

Hunter Biden used his father -- his father's name and, yes, access to his father -- to make money. That's unethical. It's a real issue. And since we now know Joe knew about it, it also goes to corruption above Hunter.

US House Rep Barbara Lee is a constant embarrassment and this continued today as she insisted -- offering no proof -- that this hearing was going to allow people to get a pass on using speech that incites. I'm not sure that 76 year old Barbara understands, first off, the internet and, second off, how Twitter works. Everything on there is basically inciting something. That is how Twitter works -- or doesn't work. We've always had laws on the books -- laws that still exist today -- to address any truly inciting speech. And I'm not sure that Americans want to turn over the censoring tools to the likes of Barbie Lee.

She's bothered, she insisted, by the treatment of the poor Twitter employees.

Why doesn't she deal with their actions. I don't give a damn about Yoel Roth's 'hard times.' He did actions at Twitter that he shouldn't have. Does that mean he should have been smeared as a pedophile? No and we called that out here in real time. But don't confuse two responses: Harsh critique and response from the people over his role in the censorship and then a response from people who always run crazy on every topic.

Eleanor Holmes Norton. Is there a reason that stupid and elderly woman (85) is still in Congress. I know she's got no real power, she's the DC delegte, but she's an idiot and she's a liar. In late 2009, I lost all use for her. She'd been lying to the press for months about something that on the face of it was obviously a lie. And then a Barack appointee comes before the Committee and Eleanor goes into the lie and thee man stops her and correct her. Later that day, she's back before reporters repeating the lie as though the expert witness from Barack's administration hadn't just corrected her on the claim she's been falsely making. (It was a lie that Matthew Rothschild pimped at THE PROGRESSIVE as well. They were heavily invested in the lie.)

Eleanor decried that the hearing was about partisanship while . . . making the hearing about partisanship.

It was "a match to a powder keg," she insited looking like the senile, old fool she's always been.

The playbook the Democrats were working from was to distract from reality and to try to get a 'win' for the new gipper Joe Biden.

They weren't working for the people -- despite the House long being seen as the people's House.

And it's disgusting.

THE NEW YORK POST was censored. The laptop has been 'vetted' by THE NEW YORK TIMES, POLITICO and THE WASHINGTON POST. Yes, they and other outlets waited years to do so but we all know -- unless we're liars like AOC -- that the laptop is for real.

Who did AOC, Eleanor and others think they were reaching?

They sat there raving about Joe Biden's snazzy wardrobe while most of the country already knew the emperor had no clothes on.

They just lied. And the lie had already been exposed as a lie long before the hearing. So they worked from a playbook that made a large part of the country yesterday see them as liars -- see them as they really were, I guess.

I don't see how that is good for the Democratic Party but I know it's not good for democracy.

Donald Trump, while president, asked Twitter to censor. That emerged in the hearing.

Good, call that out. It needs to be called out. It needs to be expanded on.

We need to know all the censorship that has taken place.

Which is why more hearings are necessary.

But grasp that when you sit through a hearing attacking a known fact repeatedly and then your ears perk up over Donald also doing something wrong -- no one sees you as trustworthy or fair. And, thing is, you're not a star in a reality show, you're a member of Congress and, as such, you need to have some integrity. When you demonstrate -- when you sport -- your whorish side in front of the people, don't expect anyone to show you any respect. Whores get money, whores get gifts, but they don't get respect.

"There's a peace action coming up and you're not promoting it!"

No, I'm not promoting that 'peace' action. THE VANGUARD did a great job in the video below covering the problems with that action.

At the end of last month, we wrote "David Swanson finds his Maddie Albright moment" at THIRD:

With 935 words, you'd think David Swanson could make a point. You'd think.

"How Dare I Oppose War with Libertarians" is how you find the column but, grasp, even if you find the column, you'll never find the point.

He's getting complaints, he writes, for announcing he'll be speaking at an anti-war rally with Libertarians.

Which Libertarians is the obvious question.

This isn't just about the government's war, a fact that escapes David.

A lot changed on June 24, 2022. Prior to that, we could easily speak with non-leftists against the war. There were rights and legal protections.

Then DOBBS was handed down and ROE V WADE was struck down while Justico Clarry Thomas made clear in his concurring opinion that he now wanted to take on birth control rights (do away with them), to take on marriage equality (do away with it) and to take on what two adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom. Justico Thomas -- a huge consumer of porn -- suddenly sees himself monitoring every bed room.

No, we're not going to stand next to anti-abortion crazies, homophobes or people who want to terrorize trans persons.

Is that who David is going to be standing with? We have no idea because, despite using 935 words, he never names any speaker he'll be appearing with on stage.

That does make us wonder: Is he doing that intentionally? Does he grasp that he has to cover these people up or he won't get support?

We have no idea but without knowing who he is standing with, in the climate we now live in, he's on his own and he made it that way.

We found out who he is standing with and it's homophobes and it's registered sex offender Scott Ritter and so many other disasters.

Aaron Mate, did you read the comments to THE VANGUARD segment? One of your fan bois is hoping you would never stand with Scott Ritter. They missed the part where you already had stood with him, had brought the convicted sex offender on your program THE GREY ZONE and promoted him (and never noted his conviction).

THE VANGUARD didn't really go into that. I think they were being kind. But a lot of people on the left who were participating and have now dropped out because of the backlash? They've been embracing Scott Ritter for the last year. We've been calling them out for that right here.

THE VANGUARD wrongly praised BLACK AGENDA REPORT for calling the faux-test out. One article that didn't mention names called the faux-test out . . . for being White. The reality is that BAR's Danny had Scott Ritter as a guest on the LEFT LENS over five times in the last six months of 2022 and that BAR published Scott Ritter as 2022 was winding down. Margaret Kimberley reTweeted him.

Too many people have decided to get into bed with a pedophile. That's on them. But don't make the mistake that THE VANGUARD did of thinking people have called Ritter out when they haven't, when instead they've promoted him.

The following sites updated:

2/08/2023

babs to release 'my name is barbra' in november

1st off, thanks to c.i. for last night's 'Talking post on Iraq, registered sex offender Scott Ritter, the programs that promote him and much more' - i just did not feel good. sorry.

so barbra's finally finished the autobiography that she's been working forever on. at 1 point, it was expected in 2014 if that gives you an idea of how long every 1 has been waiting. 'a.p.' says it's entitled 'my name is barbra' and will be released november 7th.

they note she's been working on it since at least 2009. she's had to have her researcher pull things from the online site 'the barbra archives' because a lot of the stuff is stuff she can't remember.

why write the book?

autobiographies are usually dull. few have it in them to write a good 1. i don't mean a great literary voice. i mean that when you are the subject of your writing, there can be a lot of nonsense because you don't want to admit when you were wrong or when you did wrong.

faye dunaway, for example, wrote beautifully but it was a lot of stylized nonsense because she said nothing of value. if that's what streisand's been working on for all these years, the world's going to let her have it and should.

no 1's expecting proust. we are expecting some honesty. if it's not there, don't write.

be sure to read ava and c.i.'s 'TV: Now the hate mongers come for WOLF PACK.'

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

Wednesday, February 8, 2023. The hate merchants will destroy us all as they target LGBT+ persons, as they target women, as they target everyone that they can get away with smearing.

The editorial board of THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER and THE RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER notes:

At the end of the day, North Carolina’s so-called Parents’ Bill of Rights isn’t really about giving parents more control over their child’s education. It’s about telling LGBTQ kids, especially trans kids, that they don’t matter. That is the impact, whether Republicans originally intended it to be or not. But it’s certainly intentional now, considering they have ignored the many parents, community members, experts and advocates who have voiced concerns about the bill over the past week. They voiced the same concerns last year, when Republicans first brought the bill to the floor.

As GOP lawmakers fast-track the bill through the Senate and onto the House, they’ve been careful to frame it as common sense legislation. According to the bill’s sponsors, the provision that bans instruction on sexuality or gender identity in most elementary school classrooms only exists to ensure “age-appropriate instruction.” A requirement that schools notify parents when a student asks to change their name or pronouns — or if there are changes in their “mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being” — is supposedly just about communication and transparency. The reality is far more grim. As experts have pointed out, forcing teachers and school administrators to out kids to their parents against their will is dangerous. Oftentimes, students who are questioning their sexuality or gender identity just need someone to confide in, and school may be the only place where they feel safe enough to do so. Not every parent is supportive of their child’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and having a supportive teacher or coach who can affirm their identity can be life-saving.

Yes, in the United States, the war against the LGBTQ+ community continues.

Even US President Joe Biden had to acknowledge it last night in his endless, never-ending State of the Union Address:

Let’s also pass the bipartisan Equality Act to ensure LGBTQ Americans, especially transgender young people, can live with safety and dignity.

Our strength is not just the example of our power, but the power of our example. Let’s remember the world is watching.

43 words. In a speech of 7, 223 words. Call it an afterthought. I guess if you're really generous, you can quote Joe using the construct from a song in YENTYL as 'gay friendly' or 'gay adjacent'?

"Where is it written," Joe wondered, "that Americans can't lead the world in manufacturing again?"

Where? Just tell him where. It all began, the day Joe found, that from his Oval Office window, he could only see a piece of sky . . .

You know, Joe had more to say in that MEET THE PRESS segment when he was vice president and spoke of marriage equality. In an overly long speech that cribbed Streisand, Bernie Sanders and so much more while acting as though policies Joe Biden had actively promoted in the Senate for years were policies he'd never even heard of, you'd think he could have spoken of the real horrors facing the LGBTQ+ community today.

GLAAD made sure to highlight it.

Sorry, GLAAD, but I don't see anything that great about a brief aside to the attacks on the LGBTQ+ community or using them as an easy applause getter.

Exactly.

And around the world, closed minded hate merchants attempt to destroy the right to thrive. Tiba al-Ali was thriving in Turkey. Was. She was killed by her father -- again, as I've said before, 'alleged'? No, he went to the police and confessed. He killed her. Amy Goodman summarized it on DEMOCRACY NOW! as follows:

In Iraq, human rights groups are demanding justice for Tiba al-Ali, a 22-year-old YouTube star who was killed by her father last week. The two were reportedly in a dispute involving al-Ali’s decision to live alone in Turkey. She was visiting Iraq when her father strangled her to death. Rights advocates are calling on the Iraqi government to enact legislation against gender-based violence, as no current laws criminalize domestic violence. This is activist Hafsa Amer speaking from a protest in Baghdad Sunday.

Hafsa Amer: “Tiba is a famous person, well known on social media. Just as there are many women who don’t have a voice and who can’t make their voices heard, we are here to represent the voices of oppressed women, the victims who don’t have a voice.”

So why did he kill her? Religion gave him his excuse -- a perverted belief that he was the judge and jury and the agent of a higher power. You see that crazy in many religious idiots who confuse hate with love. It's an 'honor' killing. That's when these psychos kill someone to protect 'honor.' Of course, Tiba was killed but her rapist wasn't. She was killed. He killed his daughter. He didn't kill his son -- the man who raped her. But that's how these psychos behave.

Cathrin Schaer (DW) notes:

On the Sunday after Ali's death, Iraqi women's rights activists staged a protest in Baghdad. They called upon local authorities to better protect women and to finally enact domestic violence legislation.

But even if Iraq did have such a law, could it have saved Ali and the many others who have been victims of familial violence and so-called "honor killings" before her?

"I don't think a law would stop violence against women here totally but it might reduce it," Kholoud Ahmad, an Iraqi journalist based in Baghdad, told DW. "If people knew they could be punished for this, or if women in trouble even had somewhere to go, that would help," she said. "Right now, it really feels like there is no serious punishment."

Iraq doesn't have a law dedicated to dealing with domestic violence. In fact, its current laws offer multiple ways for anyone who does beat or kill a female family member to avoid prosecution.

Paragraph 398 in Iraq's penal code says that in a sexual assault, the case will be dropped, if the rapist agrees to marry the victim. Another part of the penal code, Article 409, says that if a husband kills his wife because he discovers she committed adultery, the maximum sentence is three years in prison. And Paragraph 41 says that "there is no crime if the act is committed while exercising a legal right." Legal rights in Iraq include "the punishment of a wife by her husband … within certain limits prescribed by law or by custom."

In a statement about Ali's death, the United Nations in Iraq urged the Iraqi government to repeal some of these articles.

"Iraq lacks a central and effective reporting mechanism for victims and survivors of domestic violence or sexual and gender-based violence," said Razaw Salihy, a researcher on Iraqi issues for Amnesty International.

To lodge a complaint of this kind, Iraqi women only have two offices they can report to and both are "not founded in law," Salihy continued. "Women and girls who report incidents to police stations inevitably have to go home as there is no referral system, meaning the majority will not report anything for fear of repercussions at home. There is nowhere for them to go," she told DW.

All of this is why it is hard to get genuine figures on domestic and sexual violence committed against women in Iraq. Official statistics on domestic violence cases that go to court in Iraq hover around 15,000 a year. But if these are to be believed, then the rate of this kind of crime per head of population is not actually all that high when compared to countries in Europe.

AMWAJ observes:

The killing has seemingly divided Iraqi social media, with the hashtags #Tiba_AlAli and #Tiba’s_Right in Arabic trending for days.

Twitter user Ali Bey on Feb. 3 wrote that women should “behave or face the same fate as Tiba Al-Ali,” while another user, Aqil Badran, on Feb. 2 criticized those who are “upset over the killing of a girl who abandoned her family…to live with her boyfriend.”
On the other side of the debate, influencer Omar Habeeb on Feb. 1 wrote that “some still perceive women as property whose life they can end.”
Iraqi political activist Hasanain Al-Minshid held police responsible for having failed to stop the killing, “knowing that her life was at risk.”

The context/analysis: Ali is alleged to have on Jan. 31 been strangled to death by her father in his southern Iraqi home over a “family dispute.”

Following her death, a series of unverified recordings of alleged conversations between Ali and her father surfaced. In the recordings, a man claimed to be her father is heard expressing dissatisfaction with his daughter living with her partner in Turkey.
The recordings also feature the voice of a woman said to be the victim asserting that she fled to Turkey after being sexually harassed by her brother. The woman is also heard accusing her parents of knowing about the harassment and covering it up.

Ali is not the only female influencer in the country to lose her life to femicide over apparent “honor” as well as political motivations.

As previously reported by Amwaj.media, Iman Sami Maghdid—also known as Maria—was in March last year reportedly shot dead by her relatives. The murder was described in local media as an “honor killing.”
In 2018, Iraq saw the mysterious deaths of model Tara Fares as well as beauticians Rafeef Al-Yaseri and Rasha Al-Hassan.
While seemingly motivated by politics rather than “honor,” prominent female opposition activists Zahra Ali and Reham Yacoub were killed in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

Available data suggest that “honor killings” have been a longstanding and recurrent phenomenon under successive governments in Iraq.

That last Tweet is from the UK Ambassador to Iraq. The United Nations and Amnesty International have also weighed in. The US government? Nah. Blame them and blame the lazy US press that refuses to raise this killing when attending press briefings.

The following sites updated:

2/07/2023

Talking post on Iraq, registered sex offender Scott Ritter, the programs that promote him and much more

You've got me tonight -- C.I. of THE COMMON ILLS. Rebecca wasn't feeling well tonight so I told her I'd do a post for her. I'm just going to write about TCI.

Emma Willman. She's a comedian. We used to highlight her and then we stopped. Why?

It's got nothing to do with her comedy. It does have to do with shorts.

It's impossible to embed a video from YOUTUBE if it's a short. Matteo Lane will sometimes convert his shorts into typical videos. If he doesn't, we don't post them.

Now I know HTML and I could play with it and repost Emma. But I don't have that kind of time. When we first started pausing her for that reason, I thought she'd vary them. She hasn't. You've got to go back three months for when she posted a video and not a short. That's the last one we posted at TCI.

It has nothing to do with a judgment of her comedy or of who she is. She seems great and she's very funny. But I'm not going to spend an hour trying to get the HTML to post a short.

I understand the importance of them but I've got other things to do.

Matteo Lane is posted regularly. And I'm glad. One thing we're trying to do is to feature more voices -- especially more LGBTQ+ voices since that community is under attack.

Matteo is hilarious. I'd love to be able to tell you that someone recommended him. No, I got lucky and stumbled onto him on YOUTUBE.

We note AZB -- Alastair and Zac's pop culture program (and Zac's MY BLOODY JUDY which focuses on horror films and TV shows). And we note Fortune Feimster's comedy. We note QUEER NEWS TONIGHT. We note Laverne Cox. We note Matt Baume's excellent work on how the LGBTQ+ community is portrayed in film and on TV. And others and are always eager to find more voices and absolutely need to.

Now there are people we drop.

I'm a feminist and I will not look the other way while a pedophile is paraded on one YOUTUBE left program after another. Scott Ritter is a convicted pedophile. He was first arrested when Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House. His lie back then was he was being persecuted -- with the multiple arrests -- because he was speaking out against the Iraq War.

Let's deal with Iraq first. Mad Maddie Albright is rightly called out for the US sanctions against Iraq in the 90s (and for saying that they were worth it when Leslie Stahl pointed out to her that you've got millions of Iraqi children who are dead because of sanctions). Guess who supported sanctions? Scott Ritter. If you're INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE and you posted the Mad Maddie video years ago -- and it's still up there -- how, much of a hypocrite are you to run Scott Ritter's writing -- as they did months ago.

Another Iraq truth, like John Kerry, Scott Ritter was for the Iraq War before he was against it. People look the other way on that too.

I am opposed to the Iraq War -- an ongoing war, US troops remain on the ground there (Staff Sgt Samuel D. Lecce -- a US Marine -- died in Iraq back in December). I've never needed Scott Ritter to make point about Iraq or how the war is wrong.

He was arrested multiple times while Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House. We ignored his 'wisdom' then. We did call him out. And we were right to do so. The last arrest came nearly nine months after Barack Obama had been sworn in as President. Couldn't blame it on Bully Boy Bush. And this time, there was no sealing the record, no slap on the wrist, no probation. This arrest saw the case go to court. And the court found Scott Ritter guilty. He went to prison for it.

He was let out way too early. He now continues to lie but he is a registered sex offender. He tries to act like he's tough -- prison didn't toughen dough boy -- and he says he'll beat up anyone who calls him a pedophile. Want to start with the court system, Ritter?

So, no, I'm not highlighting that piece of crap. Jimmy Dore was the first to bring him on and, when that happened, we stopped highlighting Jimmy Dore's YOUTUBE program. We then stopped highlighting Richard Medhurst's program, then THE CONVO COUCH and on and on and on.

I got blocked by Tara Reade. Now Ruth and others that got blocked Tweeted her to hold her accountable. I never Tweeted her .

I believe her that Joe Biden assaulted her. But I don't like her. I know all about her. I don't like her. Again, I do believe she's telling the truth regarding Joe Biden and I've defended her for years.

At THE COMMON ILLS, I noted that Tara was awfully good at pretending to care about assault but that people who really care about assault do not reTweet a registered sex offender.

For that, she blocked me. Ruth had been blocked for Tweeting to Tara to call her out. And Tara needs to be called out for that because it goes beyond hypocrisy -- shame on you -- but I went to see what Ruth had Tweeted and that's when I found out I'd been blocked.

It's not surprising. We were among her strongest defenders -- both online and with the actual press (you know, the people who ignored her or called her a liar) -- and the _____ [use the term of your own choosing] never had the good manners or grace to say thank you. She just expected everyone to help her. That surprised me in 2020. As I've learned more about her, it really doesn't surprise me.

Scott Ritter hates me (probably more than Tara does) because I got him shut down back in the '00s. By pointing out -- rightly -- that shows and publications promoting Scott Ritter were responsible if he went after another girl. Even Arianna Huffington got that.

But creeps let him back in about two years ago.

We stopped noting LEFT LENS because the hideous Danny Haiphong began bringing on Ritter over and over. That was hard to do, to drop what was BLACK AGENDA REPORT's online YOUTUBE presence. I knew Glen Ford a little and I knew Bruce Dixon very well. But BLACK AGENDA REPORT -- as imagined by them -- would not have a YOUTUBE presence fronted by an Asian-American, nor feature episode after episode with no African-American guests. I continued to highlight BLACK AGENDA REPORT. Then they began running Scott Ritter's writing.

We don't highlight anymore.

And as a friend of Bruce Dixon's, let me say for the record that he wouldn't have put up with that. For very personal reasons, he would not have allowed any registered sex offender to be published by BAR -- let alone a White man. And I know this because we spoke about it many times during the '00s.

THE GREY ZONE felt the need to bring on Scott Ritter? Bye.

And we get along without them just fine.

I will gladly defend those in need of defending. I will not promote any man -- and child abusers are mainly straight and mainly men -- who is a threat to young girls.

I don't have time for those who promote Scott Ritter -- and I certainly don't have any respect for them.

Sy Hersh (who I've known for years)? He tried to promote Ritter in the '00s. End result? THE NEW YORKER wouldn't publish him anymore. They'd warned him. They'd told him he was dragging the magazine's name down by promoting Ritter. But he kept on. And they stopped publishing him and he had to resort to THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS.

CNN, of course, banned him as a guest once they learned of Ritter's multiple arrests for seeking sex with underage girls.

By the way, the ones promoting him today are worse than the ones in the '00s. In the '00s, they would raise the issue of the arrests. The ones who bring him on now don't raise that issue, don't note that he went to prison, don't note that he's a registered sex offender. They leave all that out. If you ask him about it, he won't do your program. So excuse me if I no longer have respect for 'truth teller' Jimmy Dore. Truth tellers don't go silent for registered sex offenders.

Closing with today's "Iraq snapshot:"

Tuesday, February 7, 2023. Julian Assange remains persecuted, Colin Powell roams the earth with no consequences, James Zogby remembers trying to get elected Democrats to stop the Iraq War, and much more

Starting with Julian Assange. Paul Dougan (TIMES-CALL) notes:

As Americans, we should be angry and disgusted that our government, and now the Biden administration, has been engaged in the persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Assange is a political prisoner. He has never endangered the lives of Americans, and there is no evidence otherwise. “He went to extraordinary lengths to anonymize the sources and protect the sources at the same time. He was extremely responsible in his journalistic approach to this,” says Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of UK’s Labor Party. When WikiLeaks source Chelsey Manning was tried, she was acquitted of “Aiding the enemy.” If she’s not guilty of it, how can Assange be?

Yet, the U.S. security-state crowd vengefully want him punished — silenced. His “crime” has been to embarrass the powers that be by publishing accounts — confessions, really — voluntarily given him by former U.S. military personnel (whistleblowers), who have committed war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. By the way, you can’t rape someone in self-defense, and you can’t rationalize it as “collateral damage.” You don’t promote democracy, human rights and U.S. national security by using Black Ops death squads against innocent civilians. You don’t protect America by recklessly killing dozens of civilians in mistargeted and then covered-up drone strikes that make the locals hate us.

We the people, in whose name and with whose tax dollars these wars are waged, have the right to know, the need to know.

Julian remains imprisoned and remains persecuted by US President Joe Biden who, as vice president, once called him "a high tech terrorist." Julian's 'crime' was revealing 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 deat

Eric Lichtblau (GUARDIAN) observes:

The Biden administration has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal assaults under Donald Trump.

The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”.

But the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used before for publishing classified information.

Whether the US justice department continues to pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to protect the press.

Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.

We highlight Julian's plight here, we call for his freedom. That doesn't mean we note all the crazies are all the bulls**t from macho idiots. Papsmear? We're not interested. You don't know how to make an argument, not one that wins people over. If you're not the worst person online making an argument 'for' Julian, it's just because Andrea de Luca Valerie Myers exists. For those not aware of that crazy, she regularly attacks Stella Morris as a fake -- a deep state fake -- because, she tells us, she (Andrea) is actually Julian's fiancee. Also someone who needs to take a look at their work? The Twitter account entitled Free The Truth: Free Assange Documentary. You're not helping anyone, you're just pissing people off with your garbage. Taking a Julian quote and then Tweeting that same quote four times in a row, then taking another quote and Tweeting it four times in a row over and over all day does not help Julian Assange, it just makes everyone want to look at something else because they're looking for news about Julian and all they're getting your useless crap in their Twitter threads. This account is the reason the block feature exists exactly for those type of accounts. But do check out Andrea de Luca Valerie Myers if you want to marvel over just how insane some people are. She's preserved his CD Walkman, baby, she's keeping it for you until you return to her!!!! The Walkman, baby, she saved the Walkman!!!!

Instead, let's note journalist Chris Hedges.

THE REAL NEWS NETWORK offers a transcript of the above interview:

Chris Hedges:

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have carried out the most important investigative journalism of our generation, revealing to the public the inner workings of power through the release of luminous documents. No other news organization has come close. This information has exposed the crimes, lies, and fraud of the powerful, sparking the judicial lynching of Assange who awaits extradition to the US in a high security prison in London. It allowed people across the globe to understand what their governments are doing behind their backs. In this show, we will speak with the Italian investigative journalist, Stefania Maurizi, author of Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies, about some of the most important information provided to the public by WikiLeaks. These include the US War logs from Afghanistan and Iraq, a cash of 250,000 diplomatic cables and 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, along with the 2007 collateral murder video in which US helicopter pilots banter as they gunned down civilians, including children and two Reuters journalists in a Baghdad street.

They include the 70,000 hacked emails copied from the accounts of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, that exposed the sleazy and corrupt world of the Clintons, including the donation of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the $657,000 that Goldman Sachs paid to Hillary Clinton to give talks, a sum so large, it can only be considered a bribe and her dishonesty, telling the public she would work for financial reform while privately assuring Wall Street she would protect their interests. The cash of leaked emails showed that the Clinton campaign interfered in the Republican primaries to ensure that Donald Trump was the Republican nominee, assuming he would be the easiest candidate to defeat. They exposed Clinton’s advanced knowledge of questions in a primary debate and a role as the principal architect of the war in Libya, a war she believed would burnish her credentials as a presidential candidate.

Joining me to discuss these and other revelations and their importance is Stefania Maurizi, who is an investigative journalist. She is the only international reporter who has worked on the entirety of the WikiLeaks secret trove of leaked documents. So why don’t we begin actually with a phone call you get in the middle of the night. It’s in the book. And I’ll let you take it from there. And you have one hour. So they call you, what, at two in the morning or something? Go ahead.

Stefania Maurizi:

Yes, yes. So first of all, thank you for having me, Chris. And I like your idea to discuss the very first time I work as a media partner with WikiLeaks. It was back in 2009 and WikiLeaks was not as famous as after the release of bombshells like the collateral murder video. And it was a tiny little known media organization. And I was looking at them at least since 2008 when one of my sources, journalistic sources, suddenly stopped talking to me. And it was at the point that I realized I needed better source protection because the old-fashioned techniques that basically are still at work in these days in newsroom, the use of mobile phones, emails, are no longer suitable in these days where heavy surveillance is the rule. So it was at that point that I realized that I needed good source protection. And since I’m a mathematician, for me, it was natural to look at cryptography as a tool to protect sources.

And at that time, there was only one media organization in the world using cryptography systematically. And that media organization was not the New York Times. It was not The Guardian. It was not the Washington Post. It was a tiny media organization founded by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks. And so I started looking at this work, but I had no contacts. I was just looking at them and the kind of documents they were publishing and I was deeply, deeply impressed. And I was deeply impressed, first of all, for the kind of very sensitive document they were able to get. But also, because of the courage. They were very courageous people because, for example, when they published the Guantanamo Manual and the Pentagon asked them to remove the document from their website, they said no. And in those days, it was not really common to have a media organization saying no to the Pentagon. Quite the opposite. After the 9/11, we had media reporting whatever the intelligence organizations were telling them with very few exception, of course.

And so I looked at them, but I didn’t know them. I was deeply interested in them in the work and learning from them. So it was that night in July 2009, that suddenly, they contacted me. They had my contacts because I had approached them and it was in the middle of the night and I was sleeping. And it was very sticky and hot. And the last thing I wanted to do was to wake up and answering my phone. But my phone kept ringing. So at the end, I woke up and I was told, “This is WikiLeaks.” And I could barely understand what was going on. I mean, I was sleeping. And I understood that I had to rush to my computer and download the file because I had an hour, just an hour, to download the file. And after an hour, they would remove it because others could download it.

So I went to the computer, I downloaded the file, and I started listening. It was an audio file. And it was very interesting audio file about the garbage crisis in Naples in 2009. Basically, Naples was drowning into garbage, into trash. And we had these images of Naples drowning in trash, which basically hit the headlines all around the world. So it was a conversation, a secretly recorded conversation by some people who had a conversation with a counselor discussing the alleged role of the Italian Secret Services in this garbage crisis. As many people don’t realize that garbage is a really important resource for mafia for the mafias. They are trafficking this trash. So this counselor was discussing the alleged state mafia deals behind this crisis. And without WikiLeaks, this information would’ve probably never surfaced.

I remember the morning after I called the counselor and I verified the files. WikiLeaks had done its own verification process, which, for me, was really important, because it confirmed that WikiLeaks was working as a media organization. It didn’t just put online whatever it received. It did its own verification process. And then, of course, it was trying to do its verification process in parallel with other journalists, because of course, no newsroom has the technical and journalistic skills to verify whatever it receives. And even traditional media often partner to verify and publish information with an impact. So for me, it was really important that they wanted to verify this information to establish whether it was genuine and to understand the local context. They didn’t just put on the internet whatever they received.

And I verified in parallel with them. And there was no doubts. The file was genuine. And at the time, I was working for the Italian leading news magazine, L’Espresso, which had done important work on the garbage crisis and the role of the mafias and so on. So I was even able to put in the context of this information. And that was the first time I work as a media partner with WikiLeaks before the collateral murder. And after that, basically after something like six months, WikiLeaks published the collateral murder video. And they, of course, became so famous, so well known all around the world. And since then, I basically never stopped working on the WikiLeaks secret documents. I have worked on the full documentation and I have worked on this case for the last 13 years.

But you have to realize that while I had no problems, I had some intimidation. And if you want, we can discuss what kind of intimidation. I was physically attacked in Rome, stolen important documentation. I was physically [inaudible 00:10:46] inside the Ecuadorian Embassy and I had several intimidation, but I was never put in prison. I was never arrested. Whereas for Julian, he has never gained known freedom. This is also one of the reason I’m so focused on this case because it’s like your editors tell you to go out with a colleague and your colleague falls out of a cliff. And you don’t abandon it. You don’t abandon him. You try to call people for help. You try to make people realize that this person is in danger. His life hangs in balance. And this is what also I’m trying to do. In addition to this, I have been litigating my FOI case to obtain the full documentation on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for the last seven years, which has been very, very intense.

Chris Hedges:

So this leak essentially tied the intelligence services, the Italian intelligence services, to the mafia in Naples. Would that be a summation of what you found out?

Stefania Maurizi:

Yeah. I mean, there was a kind of negotiation according to the source, according to the counselor discussing this crisis. There was a kind of negotiation between the state and the mafia about this crisis.

Chris Hedges:

I think this is something lost on many US viewers and readers, and that is the impact that WikiLeaks has had in countries, not just Italy, but Tunisia and Haiti. Maybe you can talk about the impact in Tunisia, the impact in Haiti. Because suddenly, countries around the globe were able to see not only what their governments were doing, but the interference, especially in Haiti, of the US embassy in attempt to crush a drive to raise the minimum wage, which, I can’t remember what it is, $2 an hour or something. But talk a little bit about the global impact these revelations had.

Stefania Maurizi:

Well, of course, for the first time, if you are referring to the Afghan war logs, Iraq war logs, or the cables, all these files allowed for the first time to access to this information which was secret. So I mean, there was no way to obtain this information unless you got a copy after 25 years, 30 years, maybe 40 years when no one care anymore. Maybe the historians, the professional historians, care at that point, but it was no longer relevant for the public opinion to take informed decisions, of course.

So that was the explosive part of this secret documentation. For the first time, we got access to secret information about how the Afghan war work, about the Iraq war, about the US diplomacy and their deals, their pressure, the political pressure, their crimes behind the scene. And we could get access as facts were still very relevant, not after 20 or 30 years or 40 years. And we could get access without the reductions. Because when you require request these documents using freedom of information. You often got completely redacted documents to an extent that they are useless. As a journalist or as a citizen, they have are of little use. So this information was really game changing, really allowed to take the public opinion, the decision they need. The information they need to take informed decision as citizens.

Julian Assange is held prisoner yet Colin Powell walks free. What a world.

James Zogby's column is being published by Pakistan's THE NATION (we highlighted it already once before from another publication):

Twenty years ago this month, the U.S. was rushing headlong into war with Iraq—one of the most consequential travesties in modern American history. Here’s how one congressman and I tried and failed to get the Democratic Party on record opposing that war. After 9/11, neoconservatives began their campaign to invade Iraq. Their arguments included: that Saddam Hussein was linked to the 9/11 terrorists; that Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was secretly buying components to build a nuclear bomb; that the U.S. was attacked because our enemies saw us as weak, and demonstrated our strength and resolve we needed a decisive victory somewhere (anywhere); and that a complete victory in Iraq would be quick, easy, require few troops, be welcomed by the Iraqi people, and result in the establishment of a friendly stable democracy. 

These outright fabrications or, at the very least, matters that demanded vigorous debate were not challenged. The mainstream media largely served as an echo chamber for the war hawks, and most leading politicians were shy to criticize. 

In advance of the February 2003 meeting of the Democratic National Committee, Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. and I submitted a resolution to encourage debate on the impending war. Using temperate and respectful language, it called on our party to urge the Bush administration “to pursue diplomatic efforts to achieve the disarmament of Iraq, to clearly define for the American people and Congress the objectives, costs, consequences, terms and length of commitment envisioned by any U.S. engagement or action in Iraq, and to continue to operate in the context of and seek the full support of the United Nations in any effort to resolve the current crisis in Iraq.”

Polling indicated that the majority of Americans and a supermajority of Democrats supported these positions. And we knew that if Democrats failed to challenge the rush to war, we would not only risk losing the support of voters but also shirk our responsibility to avert a war that would prove devastating to our country and the Middle East region. 

We'll wind down with this from GLAAD:

Since 2015, GLAAD’s annual Accelerating Acceptance study has measured Americans’ attitudes and comfortability towards LGBTQ Americans, highlighting the progress we’ve made and the challenges that still need to be addressed in pursuit of full acceptance for the LGBTQ community.

Since the study’s inception we have recorded a steady increase in many key figures of acceptance, but this year we found key changes of note: Non-LGBTQ Americans feel increased confusion around the letters and terms used to describe the community, with a majority inaccurately associating the term LGBTQ with being mostly about sexual orientation. Most alarmingly, LGBTQ people are reporting an increased incidence of discrimination, falling in particular on LGBTQ people of color, and transgender and nonbinary people. These disconcerting results prompted us to go further to explore LGBTQ Americans’ sense of being unsafe in America.

A significant majority of the LGBTQ community—a startling 70%—says that discrimination has increased over the past two years. It is taking place not in distant, seldom-visited corners of their experience, but in their daily lives—with family, in the workplace, on social media, in public accommodations, and in interactions with people at their children’s schools.

We found that more than half (54%) of transgender and nonbinary people feel unsafe walking in their own neighborhoods, compared to 36% of all LGBTQ adults, as well as less safe in various environments, from work, to social media, or in a typical store. More Gen Z Americans as well are out as LGBTQ than any other generation, yet a majority (56%) are more fearful for their personal safety in 2022 than in the prior two years.

These findings are distressing, but not unforeseen. Legislation targeting LGBTQ people and youth, including censorship in classrooms, book bans, bans on evidence-based healthcare and access to school sports, has ballooned since 2020 to nearly 250 bills introduced in statehouses across the nation. Eight in ten LGBTQ people strongly agree they wish there was more legislative action at the federal level to protect them as an LGBTQ person.

The good news is that the LGBTQ community is aligned, activated, and united. Three out of four LGBTQ adults strongly agree that visibility in society is essential to gaining increased equality and acceptance. A significant majority are committed to maintaining their visibility and supporting everyone in the community. Representation in the media is more important than ever, and 64% strongly agree to feeling proud and supported when there is accurate LGBTQ inclusion in the media, a core mission of GLAAD’s work.

The 2022 Accelerating Acceptance study clearly shows the destructive repercussions of inaccurate rhetoric and baseless legislation, and underscores the necessity of GLAAD’s crucial role in the ongoing fight for full LGBTQ equality and acceptance. The rise in discrimination in public, political, and private spheres makes it very clear that passing the Equality Act, legislation which will secure federal protections for the LGBTQ community in areas of life that have long remained vulnerable, has never been more critical.

GLAAD remains committed to amplifying stories that present audiences everywhere with the richness and humanity of our communities, that challenge harmful narratives, and educate audiences, voters, journalists, and politicians about our everyday lives. This report is more information regarding what’s at stake for LGBTQ people and what all voters need to know.

—Sarah Kate Ellis, President & CEO, GLAAD

Read the report

The following sites updated: