Glen Ford (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) writes:
With their pell-mell rush to construct a martial, McCarthyite domestic order, the Deep State Democrats have mooted the debate over lesser evilism. The orchestrated hysteria against Russians and their domestic “agents” and “front groups” targets as an enemy of the bipartisan State anyone that questions the rationale for imperial warfare and the rule of the rich. The shock of Donald Trump’s victory tore away the Democrats’ masks, revealing the fascists beneath. When Wall Street’s “core values” are threatened -- meaning, the right to move money and jobs across borders at will, and to forcibly extend corporate power throughout the globe -- civil liberties go out the window. Thus, all but a slim slither of the Wall Street-dominated Democrats now march in lock step with Republicans -- the main difference being that the Democratic ranks are racially integrated. In Democratic America, the fascists adhere to the rules of diversity.
The bill to fund intelligence agencies that passed the House on November 30 established “an executive branch interagency committee to counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence over peoples and governments...through front groups, covert broadcasting, media manipulation, disinformation or forgeries, funding agents of influence, incitement, offensive counterintelligence, assassinations, or terrorist acts.” Every category listed, except assassinations and terror, is actually a code word for political speech that can, and will, be used to target those engaged in “undermining faith in American democracy” -- such as Black Agenda Report and other left publications defamed as “fake news” outlets by the Washington Post. The bill passed overwhelmingly, with only six Republicans and 24 Democrats voting “nay.” Of these dissenting lawmakers, only five are Black: Barbara Lee (CA), Karen Bass (CA), John Conyers (MI), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ), and Yvette Clarke (NY).
Yes, the Democratic Party has been a wondrous vehicle for integration of Black America into the mainstream – of fascism.
The Democratic Party is a huge disappointment.
It's become one big Red Scare attempt.
They are shameful.
And they're all for war and have been throughout Barack's two terms in Congress.
Barbara Lee is a joke.
She never stood up on Afghanistan.
She's a joke.
Now let's move over to Nicky Kristof:
- You call it a "conspiracy theory hit piece" when it's based on CIA/DNI/FBI? You trust Assange more than CIA? http://nyti.ms/2hToKLT
Nicholas Kristof
WikiLeaks Task Force
Revealing tweet by CIA's @NickKristof CIA has a documented history of fabrications & lies. Assange has a perfect record for leak accuracy.
When this was a comic novel site, I had Nicky K as the best friend of Thomas Friedman and he was part of the 'helping' culture based on his efforts to buy people.
He's trash.
No punch line, he's just trash.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Wednesday, December 21, 2016. Chaos and violence continue, the US media
continues its silence on Hoshyar Zebari, Ayad Allawi works diplomacy,
and much more.
Let's start with fake news.
Liars across America are concerned with 'fake news.'
The Shrill Hillary contingent will always lie so let's not even factor them in.
But the ones who consider themselves journalists?
Let's pretend they have ethics for a moment and can recognize their own hypocrisy.
Hoshyar Zebari is no longer the Finance Minister of Iraq. Since 2006, he's been the Foreign Minister of Iraq and/or the Women's Minister, etc.
Now he is not in the Cabinet.
Let's start with fake news.
Liars across America are concerned with 'fake news.'
The Shrill Hillary contingent will always lie so let's not even factor them in.
But the ones who consider themselves journalists?
Let's pretend they have ethics for a moment and can recognize their own hypocrisy.
Hoshyar Zebari is no longer the Finance Minister of Iraq. Since 2006, he's been the Foreign Minister of Iraq and/or the Women's Minister, etc.
Now he is not in the Cabinet.
Unfortunately lost our appeal to Iraqi Federal Court 6 by 3 votes. Now I am a private citizen after 13 years working for the new Iraq
He Tweeted that yesterday and we noted it yesterday.
Why are we bringing it up again?
Other than Nouri al-Maliki (prime minister from 2006 to 2014), no Iraqi politician got more US press attention than Zebari. And he visited the US more than any other Iraqi politician.
Newspapers and networks and magazines in the US treated him as a sage, a fount of wisdom.
And yet where are the stories about him today?
He was sacked in September, yes.
But other than UPI, no US outlet covered that.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES OF LONDON, for example, is not a US outlet -- nor is REUTERS or AFP or RUDAW, to cite but a few that did cover the story.
He was fired in September and you could give various US news outlets a break by saying, "Oh, it's Iraq, things change often. Zebari says he's appealing so they're just waiting for the verdict on his appeal."
And that might have been true.
If Zebari had won his appeal, the US press might have suddenly covered the story yesterday.
But they've ignored it.
Why was he removed from office?
Corruption is the reason the Parliament gave. (Zebari has maintained he was removed as part of a plot by Nouri al-Maliki to discredit Hayder al-Abadi's government and stage a coup that would allow Nouri to become prime minister yet again.)
Supposedly, corruption is a topic the US press is interested in.
They certainly sang hoseanas for Hayder when he announced he was addressing corruption and for Nouri when he, years earlier, announced he would end corruption in less than 200 days.
Those were big stories in the US press.
But now their hero Zebari has been removed from office due to charges of corruption.
And they're silent.
Fake news?
Try their ignoring the ugly stories/truths about the man they spent years propping up and promoting.
I don't think you can get any more fake than that.
As usual, it's the corporate media in the US that traffics in fake news.
Moving to an update, in Monday's snapshot, we noted:
Reporters Without Borders notes at the top of their webiste:
Since January 2016 :
Here, we call it 75 journalists.
Somehow, they end up with 74 journalists killed this year and they note in (PDF format warning) "ROUND-UP 2016 of journalists killed worldwide:"
A total of 74 journalists were murdered or killed in connection with their work in 2016, compared with 101 last year. This significant fall is due in part to the fact that more and more journalists are fleeing countries that have become too dangerous: not only Syria, Iraq, and Libya, but also Yemen, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Burundi, which have now also become, to varying degrees, news and information black holes where impunity reigns.
The five deadliest countries were Syria (19 killed), Afghanistan (10 killed), Mexico (9 killed), Iraq (7 killed) and Yemen (5 killed).
Actually, Iraq was a lot more deadly. And it's new numbers put it behind Syria and ahead of Afghanistan making it the second most deadly country for journalists.
MIDDLE EAST MONITOR reports:
As many as 13 Iraqi journalists were killed and 179 others were attacked across Iraq during 2016, a rights group has revealed in a new report. Most of those killed lost their lives at the hands of [the Islamic State] militants while covering the war in the country, said the Iraqi Journalists’ Rights’ Defence Association.
Apart from physical violence, many journalists have also been threatened by persons unknown for publishing stories about corruption in state institutions. “There is a lack of interest shown by Iraq’s security services in following up such threats and initiating formal investigations,” the report noted.
State institutions are deliberately obscuring and withholding information from various media outlets, it explained. They tend to deal negatively with journalists and correspondents for satellite TV channels.
Grasp that: In Iraq, Iraqi journalists are threatened for reporting on corruption.
Yet Iraq outlets reported on Zebari.
Here in the US where no such threats take place, US reporters just stay silent to avoid admitting that all those puff pieces on Zebari missed the truth.
Still on fake news:
Glenn Greenwald
This @NewRepublic investigation found MediaMatters wasn't really a media watchdog group but arm of Clinton campaign!
Meanwhile, Maher Chmaytelli and Sandra Maler (REUTERS) report a Tuesday evening bombing of the Koy Sanjak offices of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan left 6 people dead. BBC NEWS updates the death toll to 7.
REUTERS also notes that the group of Iranian dissidents are blaming agents of the government of Iran for the bombing.
Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman Tweets:
Day 65 of the Mosul slog.
In June of 2014, the Islamic State seized the city of Mosul.
65 days ago, the Prime Minister of Iraq, Hayder al-Abadi, finally began an operation to liberate or 'liberate' the city of Mosul.
It's still ongoing.
Stephen Kalin (REUTERS) notes that they've taken yet another pause and are pulling troops in from other angles of the operation. He doesn't question that.
He doesn't question why they're being pulled or why they're needed. 100,000 fighters deployed (not counting foreign fighters) and that's not enough to decimate ISIS?
Supposedly, they numbered about 30,000 in all of Iraq. And that was at their height.
That was back before the US was daily boasting of killing X number.
Briefed WH press corps following meeting with @POTUS and confirm of three more dead #ISIL leaders in #Raqqa. Replay: whitehouse.gov/live/press-bri…
100,000 is not enough?
How many are enough?
A million?
What's the magic number going to be?
Meanwhile, the US Defense Dept announced this morning:
Strikes in Iraq
Attack and fighter aircraft and rocket artillery conducted five strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:
-- Huwayjah, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL-held buildings, a tunnel, and a supply cache.
Near Mosul, three strikes destroyed eight fighting positions, five ISIL-held buildings, two land bridges, a vehicle bomb factory, an artillery system, an anti-air artillery piece and a weapons storage facility; damaged 11 supply routes; and suppressed a mortar team and two ISIL tactical units.
-- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed a weapons storage facility.
Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.
I hope I live long enough to see the children of Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria wake up to the sound of birds not bombs
Agreed.
But that won't happen without a political solution.
Apparently, the only one doing real work on diplomacy is not the prime minister but the man who should have been in 2010 (but Barack Obama went around the election results and the Iraqi people via The Erbil Agreement to give Nouri a second term even though Nouri lost).
Ayad Allawi
أكدنا على ان المنطقة برمتها بØاجة الى اعادة نظر لترتيب امنها واستقرارها - مع جلالة الملك عبدالله الثاني
Ayad Allawi, one of the last Iraqi politicians to believe in or work for a political solution.
But how can there be a political solution when there is no future for Iraq.
The corrupt and the greedy have pawned -- if not outright sold -- Iraq's future to yet again line their own pockets.
The IMF and the World Bank came sniffing and Hayder al-Abadi sold Iraq for cash. (Thug Nouri, there's your issue to ride back into power.) Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani warned repeatedly against it -- and the Iraqi press covered those warnings, it was just the US press that ignored them -- but Hayder made the deals.
In the US, no pundit disappointed me more in the last 8 years than Norman Solomon who once titled a book WAR MADE EASY before spending the last eight years . . . making war easy.
We'll note him on the topic of the election:
This week began with a mass email from the head of the Democratic National
Committee, who declared: “By now, Americans know beyond any reasonable doubt
that the Russian government orchestrated a series of cyberattacks on political
campaigns and organizations over the past two years and used stolen information
to influence the presidential campaign and congressional races.” DNC chair Donna
Brazile went on: “The integrity of our elections is too important for Congress
to refuse to take these attacks seriously.”
The importance of election integrity had eluded Brazile when she was a regular on CNN, posing as neutral in the Clinton-Sanders battle. “Brazile is not apologizing for leaking CNN debate questions and topics to the Hillary Clinton campaign during the Democratic primary,” the Washington Post reported last month. “Her only regret, it seems, is that she got caught.”
Many big factors affect any presidential race, and the Russian government may have tried to be one of them for the 2016 election – though it’s hardly the slam dunk that agencies like the CIA and U.S. mass media are now claiming. But in any event, this month it has become routine for a lot of progressive organizations and individuals to descend into a dangerous mode of partisan flackery.
The importance of election integrity had eluded Brazile when she was a regular on CNN, posing as neutral in the Clinton-Sanders battle. “Brazile is not apologizing for leaking CNN debate questions and topics to the Hillary Clinton campaign during the Democratic primary,” the Washington Post reported last month. “Her only regret, it seems, is that she got caught.”
Many big factors affect any presidential race, and the Russian government may have tried to be one of them for the 2016 election – though it’s hardly the slam dunk that agencies like the CIA and U.S. mass media are now claiming. But in any event, this month it has become routine for a lot of progressive organizations and individuals to descend into a dangerous mode of partisan flackery.
First, there is NO evidence that Russia hacked anything -- let alone e-mails.
Second, the old Norman would have been calling for Brazile's resignation.
She fed questions to Hillary.
This is known.
What a slap in the face to the millions who supported Bernie Sanders that this liar is still head of the DNC.
The following community sites -- plus BLACK AGENDA REPORT -- updated:
