Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Birds

Okay, Kate Nash has a great song called “Birds” and here’s the video. 


She was waiting at the station
He was getting off the train
He didn't have a ticket so he had to bum through the barriers again
Well the ticket inspector saw him rushing through
He said "girl you don't know how much I missed you but
We'd better run 'cause' I haven't got the funds to pay this fine"
She said "fine"
Well so they ran out of the station and jumped onto a bus
With two of yesterdays travel cards and two bottles of Bud
And he said "you look well nice"
Well she was wearing a skirt
And he thought she looked nice
And yeah, she didn't really care about anything else
Because she only wanted him to think that she looked nice
And he did
But he was looking at her, yeah all funny in the eye
She said "come on boy tell me what you're thinking
Now don't…
But he was looking at her, yeah all funny in the eye
She said "come on boy tell me what you're thinking
Now don't be shy"
He said alright, "I'll try
All the stars up in the sky and the leaves in the trees
All the broken bits that make you, each part and grassy bits in between
All the matter in the world is how much I like you"
She said "what?"
He said "let me try and explain again"
"Right, birds can fly so high, or they can shit on your head
Yeah they can almost fly into your eye and make you feel so scared
But when you look at them, and you see that they're beautiful
That's how I feel about you
Right birds can fly so high and they can shit on your head
Yeah they can almost fly into your eye and make you feel so scared
But when you look at them, and you see that they're beautiful
That's how I feel about you
Yeah that's how I feel about you"
 
 
And that’s setting us for the topic we’re covering which is birds.
 
Birds fly in the sky and maybe we notice and maybe we don’t.  But they are alive today and other birds died out with the dinosaurs.  Why did the parents of today’s birds survive that event?
 
 
From John Pickrell (NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC):
 
 
When a nine-mile-wide asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, it exploded with a force greater than a million atomic bombs and wiped out three quarters of life on Earth, including the nonavian dinosaurs. But we know that some members of the dinosaur family tree survived, eking out a living in the post-impact world and eventually proliferating to become today’s birds.
The long-standing question, then, is why certain birds lived while others died in the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period?
Perhaps it’s because the impact and its aftermath obliterated forests worldwide, leading to the mass extinction of prehistoric tree-dwelling birds, researchers argue today in the journal Current Biology.
The only birds that survived were ground-dwellers, including ancient relatives of ducks, chickens, and ostriches. Following the cataclysm, these survivors rapidly evolved into most of the lineages of modern birds we are familiar with today, according to paleontologists led by Daniel Field at the University of Bath in the U.K.
 
 
 
 
Carly Cassella (SCIENCE ALERT) adds:
 

 
 
"The ancestors of modern tree-dwelling birds did not move into the trees until the forests had recovered from the extinction-causing asteroid," says Field.
The researchers looked at the fossil record from right after the asteroid impact, which showed huge amounts of charcoal from burnt trees, and an abundance of microscopic fern spore fossils afterwards.
"After a disaster like a forest fire or a volcanic eruption, the first plants to come back are the fastest colonisers - especially ferns," explains palaeontologist Regan Dunn from the Field Museum in Chicago.

The tree-dwelling species of birds would have had a tough time surviving in this environment, and clues in the evolutionary branches of modern bird species further support this idea.
 
 
 
 
  Birds.  We see them all the time, flying overhead, perched on power lines, in trees.  And their history is so fascinating.
 
 
 


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Wednesday, May 30, 2018.  The nonsense never ends.  Far too many participation trophies have been handed out and far too little accountability has taken place.


They think they know what they're talking about -- because someone put a gun in their hand.

But they don't.

 May 28
Iraq War veteran Pat Ryan is running for Congress. He’s calling for an assault weapons ban: “The weapons that I carried in combat for 27 months should not be on our streets. Period.”
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Tell you what, Patty Cakes Ryan, when you get smart enough to grasp that you shouldn't have been carrying those weapons on the streets of Iraq or even been in that country, maybe then you'll have something to share.

Right now?

You don't know a damn thing.  Doesn't mean you won't get elected -- ignorance is one of the chief qualifications for Congress.

Iraq didn't attack the US.  The US did attack Iraq.

It'd be great if the Tammy Duckworths and Patty Cakes Ryan and Vote Vets would grasp that they really owe Iraq an apology and need to stop scratching their nuts in public.  


We noted Anne Sexton last night in "Anne Sexton: THE COMPLETE POEMS" and this is her poem "The Firebombers:"


 We are America.
We are the coffin fillers.
We are the grocers of death.
We pack them in crates like cauliflowers.

 The bomb opens like a shoebox.
And the child?
The child is certainly not yawning.
And the woman?
The woman is bathing her heart.
It has been torn out of her
and because it is burnt
and as a last act
she is rinsing it off in the river.
This is the death market.

 America,
where are your credentials?



Tammy and her fellow nut scratchers who feel the need to go on and on about Iraq?  It's about time they started speaking about "Abeer."  They're the ones so proud of what took place in Iraq.  That would include killing and maiming civilians.  It would also include Abeer:  Abeer Qassim Hamza was murdered on March12, 2006 in the town of Mahmoudiyah along with her parents Qassim Hamza Raheem and Fakhriya Taha Muhasen and her five-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza. Originally, an investigation into their deaths pegged the killer or killers as "insurgents."


14-years-old and gang raped by US soldiers.  14-years-old, gang raped by US soldiers while she hears her parents and her sister killed in the next room by, yes, US soldiers.

I'm sorry, where was #MeToo and Mira and Ashley and all the other fake assees -- especially Ashley who worked both sides of the street when securing jobs but now is astounded that anyone would have ever propositioned her.

Apparently the only lives that matter are forty-something faded starlets who never had the talent they thought and whose efforts to park their work on their boobs -- natural and enhanced -- didn't work out quite the way they thought it would.  No, Mira, no one needed to see you try to play Marilyn Monroe.  You were called out in real time.  At best, you were quirky.  At worst, your looks were kind of repulsive.

But it's all about you, Mira, right?

Not about a 14-year-old girl who was gang-raped by US soldiers.  It was five of them but many observers feel the only one who was forced to pay was Steven Green -- who also happened to be the only one who was out of the military and the only one tried in civilian courts -- as we all know "military justice" is a joke.

Iraq is a country that has been destroyed by the United States.  It had no Weapons of Mass Destruction.  It did not attack the US.  And that the Tammy Duckworths think they can scratch their nuts in public and act like they've accomplished something?

Oh, honey, no.

No.

You destroyed a country.  You were ordered there by the failure of  a government we have here in the United States.  I get that.  And I am sympathetic to you for it.  But stop with your tales of heroism because there are none.  The Iraq War is a crime.  Stop acting like you've got something to brag about.  My heart breaks for you in the abstract but that doesn't mean I act stupid and pretend like you've done something that we need to applaud.

Your government sent you to destroy a country.  That's nothing to brag about.


The US government used chaos -- planned chaos -- to destabilize and destroy Iraq.  The rights of women were destroyed as the US put in charge fundamentalists and cowards.


Picking up on a topic from yesterday's snapshot, the attempts to steal the vote by screaming fraud.  MIDDLE EAST ONLINE explains:

Close to three weeks after parliamentary polls, confusion reigns in Iraq as allegations mount of election fraud even with negotiations to form a government well underway.
Since the May 12 victory of anti-establishment electoral lists, long-time political figures pushed out by Iraqi voters hoping for change have called for a recount -- with some even calling for the poll results to be cancelled.
Iraqi authorities have agreed to review the results, but have yet to take any concrete measures.
Experts say claims of fraud are more likely to stem from frustrated outgoing politicians, rather than any major electoral manipulations in a country determined to turn the page after a brutal three-year fight against the Islamic State group.



The results were surprising to those who repeated the garbage of the US government.  Hayder al-Abadi was a leader!  Iraq had been saved by him!

The votes made clear that wasn't the case.  In fact, collectively, the Iraqi people sang Shania Twain.



Media whores peddled US government lies and assumptions as fact in the lead up to the Iraq War.  That's why they were so shocked.

It's being a Tammy Duckworth and looking at Iraq from far away while imposing your values on the people.

The reality is Hayder allowed the US, Turkey and many other countries to bomb Iraq.  That's nothing that Iraqi people are going to applaud and you really have to have your head up your ass to think otherwise.

Why is this site the only one that can ever ask, "If this happened in the US, would we be thrilled?"

Because instead of common sense, so many operate from the belief that 'those people' should be grateful for whatever we (the US) decides to do.  After 15 years of non-stop war on Iraq, we're apparently still that collectively stupid.

'Liberation' was spun by many in the western media but spin couldn't conceal that Anbar is under siege, not liberated.  There is no liberation.  Mosul remains destroyed and haunted.


 2h2 hours ago
In 2017, conflict forced 11.8 million people to flee their homes. Over half of those displaced were in these 5 countries. - Syria: 2.9 million - Iraq: 1.4 million - South Sudan: 857,000 - Philippines: 645,000 - Central African Republic: 539,000 via
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There was nothing that Hayder delivered on.  Lives were as bad as they were before he became prime minister (before Barack Obama made him prime minister in 2014).

All elections are local but all the so-called experts in the US couldn't grasp that and thought the Iraqi people would vote not their own interests but what the US thought they should care about.

That's not just stupid, that's not just insulting, it's harmful.

MEMO notes, "Iraqi leader Muqtada Al-Sadr yesterday rejected meddling by both Iran and the United States in the next government which is being formed in the country."  As well he should.  Neither supported him, first of all.  Second, its the will of the Iraqi people that resulted in his victory, that's who he better please and better focus on.

RUDAW reports, "Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi rejected foreign intervention in government formation talks, condemned the electoral commission’s statement of an impending civil war, and said he wouldn’t mind another term."





I'm sure Hayder al-Abadi wouldn't mind another term but that's not what the Iraq people wanted, is it?  Last time the US overruled the Iraqi people in an election?  2010.  They rejected Nouri al-Maliki.  The US wanted Nouri (Samantha Power convinced Barack that Nouri would bring 'stability' which would allow US goals to advance to the front of Iraq).  Barack overturned the votes of the Iraqi people (via The Erbil Agreement) and installed thug Nouri for a second term.  By June of 2014, even Barack had to admit publicly that Nouri was responsible for the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq.

Despite bluster and bravado, the US government holds neither a patent on wisdom nor even a basic grasp on common sense.  This has been repeatedly demonstrated in the Iraq War.

The US would love to have Hayder for another four years.

He did nothing for the Iraqi people but the US government has never been about improving Iraqi lives.  There's propaganda they offer ahead of going to war with Iraq and there's the US government actual actions ever since the start of the war.  It's never been about helping Iraqi people or improving anyone's lives.  It has been about attempting to push an oil & gas law (one Iraqis don't favor but the US government wants).  It has been about putting despots in charge.  It has been about destroying the Iraqi people's way of life.  It's a land of widows and orphans.  Do the Tammy Duckworths honestly believe they accomplished one damn thing to be proud of?

If so, they need professional help.

Hamza Mustafa (ASHARQ AL-AWSAT) reports:
 
Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission has warned of a potential civil war after the Iraqi parliament decided on Sunday evening to cancel some of the parliamentary elections results and manually recount 10 percent of the votes.
The head of the commission, Riyad al-Badran said that the failure to comply with the official poll results could have dire political repercussions.
On Monday, Iraq’s parliament decided to annul the expatriate vote and recount about 10 percent of all ballots cast due to evidence of fraud.
Poll results from major displacement camps in the Anbar, Salaheddine and Diyala provinces were also canceled.


As Jamal al-Asadi points out, the actions of Parliament are illegal and the courts are the rightful avenue for any determinations.

 


The following community sites -- plus The ACLU and PACIFICA EVENING NEWS --  updated:


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