Wednesday, November 28, 2018

The hideous Jeffrey Epstein

C.J. Hopkins (DISSIDENT VOICE) offers:

Unless you move in certain leftist circles, you may not have heard about one of the Russians’ most insidiously evil active measures, an active measure so insidiously evil that it could only have been dreamed up in Moscow, the current wellspring of insidious evil. Its official Russo-Nazi-sounding code name is still being decided on by leftist cryptographers, but most people know it as the “Trumpenleft.”
The Trumpenleft (or “Sputnik Left,” as it is also called by professional anti-Putin-Nazi intelligence analysts) is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It is a gang of nefarious Putin-Nazi infiltrators posing as respectable leftists in order to disseminate Trumpian ideology and Putin-Nazi propaganda among an assortment of online leftist magazines that hardly anyone ever actually reads. The aim of these insidious Trumpenleft infiltrators is to sow confusion, chaos, and discord among actual, real, authentic leftists who are going about the serious business of calling Donald Trump a fascist on the Internet twenty-five times a day, verbally abusing Julian Assange, occasionally pulling down oppressive statues, and sharing videos of racist idiots acting like racist idiots in public.
The Trumpenleft is determined to sabotage (or momentarily disrupt) this revolutionary work, mostly by tricking these actual leftists into critically thinking about a host of issues that there is no good reason to critically think about … global capitalism, national sovereignty, immigration, identity politics, corporate censorship, and other issues that there is no conceivable reason to discuss, or debate, or even casually mention, unless you’re some kind of Russia-loving Nazi.

Angela Nagle’s recent piece in American Affairs is a perfect example. Nagle (who is certainly Trumpenleft) puts forth the fascistic proposition that mass migration won’t help the world’s poor, and she claims that it creates “a race to the bottom for workers” in wealthier, developed countries and “a brain drain” in poorer, less developed countries. After deploying a variety of Trumpenleft sophistry (i.e., fact-based analysis, logic, and so on), she goes so far as to openly suggest that “progressives should focus on addressing the systemic exploitation at the root of mass migration rather than retreating to a shallow moralism” … a shallow moralism that reifies the dominant neoliberal ideology that is causing mass migration in the first place. 


Hopkins Tweets at CONSENT FACTORY:

In the USA, if you're a multi-millionaire sexual predator, and get caught running a child sex ring for VIPS like Trump, Clinton, Hollywood celebrities, et al, you'll do 13 months in county jail, and you'll have to write your own plea deal. No exceptions!



He's referring to this MIAMI HERALD report and it's really worth reading:


There would be many more Jane Does to follow: Jane Doe No. 3, Jane Doe No. 4, Jane Does 5, 6, 7, 8 — and as the years went by — Jane Does 102 and 103. 
Long before #MeToo became the catalyst for a women’s movement about sexual assault — and a decade before the fall of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and U.S. Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar — there was Jeffrey Edward Epstein.
Epstein, a multimillionaire hedge fund manager whose friends included a constellation of entertainers, politicians, business titans and royalty, for years lured teenage girls to his Palm Beach mansion as part of a cult-like sex pyramid scheme, police in the town of Palm Beach found.
The girls arrived, sometimes by taxi, for trysts at all hours of the day and night. Few were told much more than that they would be paid to give an old man a massage — and that he might ask them to strip down to their underwear or get naked. But what began as a massage often led to masturbation, oral sex, intercourse and other sex acts, police and court records show. The alleged abuse dates back to 2001 and went on for years.
[. . .]

Documents nevertheless show that Acosta not only buckled under pressure from Epstein’s lawyers, but he and other prosecutors worked with them to contain the case, even as the FBI was uncovering evidence of victims and witnesses in other states, FBI and federal court documents show.
A 53-page federal indictment had been prepared in 2007, and subpoenas were served on several of Epstein’s employees, compelling them to testify before a federal grand jury. The court records reveal that emails began to fly back and forth between prosecutors and Epstein’s legal team. Those emails show that federal prosecutors kept acquiescing to Epstein’s demands.
Prosecutors allowed Epstein’s lawyers to dictate the terms of each deal that they drew up, and repeatedly backed down on deadlines, so that the defense essentially controlled the pace of the negotiations, the emails and letters show.


Epstein should have been sent to a federal prison and should still be there.  Read the article in full.


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Wednesday, November 28, 2018.  Protests continue in Iraq as the government continues to falter.



How bad are things in Iraq?  RUDAW reports:

The government in Baghdad is tackling the country’s dirty water problem, Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi said on Tuesday.

“We have held a series of important meetings with senior experts to stop water pollution, typically in rivers,” he told reporters during his annual press conference.

Iraqis are concerned about the health of their water supply after a series of crises this year – water levels in the Tigris were at historic lows this summer, polluted and very salty water sent thousands to hospital in Basra, and mass fish deaths sparked concerns that the Euphrates River had been poisoned. 



The water problem is being tackled!  Why, there have been meetings!

Wait, comedian Adil Abdul al-Mahdi wasn't done with the laughs: "He said that recent rains – which caused deadly floods in the centre of the country – had improved water supplies in Basra."


The floods!  He's using the floods as a selling point!  That would be the floods that have claimed lives and displaced so many.

 
 


More than 15 schools badly affected in Thi Qar province after recent floods.
 
 
The scale of damage caused by flooding at Qayara cano was heart breaking. Over 2,000 families had their tents completely flooded with no dry space to even sit on.
 
 



Emergency workers in Iraq struggle to help flood victims
 
 


In Southern Iraq, water levels usually rise slightly in November with the rainy season in late December or early January, where sudden transient floods are expected. So this may just get worse unfortunately. May God keep them safe and secure always.
 
 



This is the prime minister's selling point?  We've held meetings and, by the way, the flooding has made the water better -- while also killing people and displacing them and creating a crisis -- rah rah!  That's his selling point?

In other 'great news,' he promises -- continues to promise -- a full Cabinet -- some day.


PM : A number of oversight bodies including the Accountability and Justice Commission are carrying out due diligence work and vetting of nominees for the remaining Cabinet posts. We will present our nominees to parliament once this process is completed
 
 



Had the Iraqi Constitution been followed, October 24th wouldn't have found him moving from prime minister-designate to prime minister.  He would have either come up with a full Cabinet in the 30 days or he wouldn't be prime minister.  That's all you have to do per the Constitution.  The president names your prime minister-designate and then you have 30 days to form a Cabinet -- that's what you do in order to become prime minister.

But he couldn't do it.  Not even after drastically reducing the Cabinet to 22 posts, he still couldn't fill it.  He couldn't even fill the security posts: Minister of the Interior and Minister of Defense.

He couldn't fill the Cabinet and people are losing patience.

Iraq's Sadr calls on prime minister to finalize cabinet
 
 


Iraq's Sadr calls on prime minister to finalize cabinet
 
 


The new appointed PM of Iraq Adil AbdulMahdi is going no where with his efforts to form a cabinet of Ministers that can work with him to provide essential services to the people. The guy is passive and lacks the determination to do what he was asked to do.
 
 


Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said the ministries of defense and interior in the new should be filled with independent cadres or commanders who played a major role in the war against .
 
 



And while Minister of Defense and Minister of Interior should be the focus, let's remember they are only two of eight posts that the prime minister still hasn't filled.  Repeatedly, it's going to happen . . . next week.  In fact, the posts were supposed to be filled yesterday but now that's been postponed to . . . next week.

The last time a prime minister failed to fill the posts of Ministers of Defense and Interior, what happened?  The rise of ISIS in Iraq.  It was Nouri al-Maliki, in his second term and Iraq's still dealing with ISIS to this day.

Dealing poorly with ISIS in many ways.  For example, ANADOLU AGENCY reports:

Around 1,900 bodies have been pulled from the rubble in the northern city of Mosul following Iraq’s three-year conflict (2014-2017) with the [ISIS]  terrorist group, a local civil-defense official said Wednesday.
"Civil-defense teams have so far recovered some 1,900 bodies found under the rubble of destroyed buildings in Mosul's Old City district," Fahed al-Abed, a civil-defense official in Iraq’s Nineveh province (of which Mosul is provincial capital), told Anadolu Agency.


Under the rubble?  Hmm.  Rubble?  Oh, right from all the bombs dropped on a city with civilians in it.  Dropped from war planes -- planes in the US-led coalition because what better way to save the occupied city of Mosul then to bomb it?


At least al-Mahdi can take comfort in the fact that the timeline there is on the previous prime ministers Nouri al-Maliki and then Hayder al-Abadi.  However, the Basra protests?  They started in July.  He became prime minister in October.  And he's issued a lot of statements -- he does love those statements -- but he's done nothing to meet the demands of the protesters -- demands that include safe drinking water which won't result in another 100,000 residents being sent to the hospital.



“We've been sleeping on the streets for 30 days…I told the governor, the youth is a ticking bomb,” a protester told the media today in light of renewed street blocking protests in due to lack of government response to address deteriorating living conditions
 
 
Following 5 months of continued street protests accompanied by 27 nights of sit-in demonstrations in front of Oil Company, time has expired on yet another set of promises. Dire living conditions in are not addressed and today marks a new phase in .
2:13
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On the issue of protests, THE NEW ARAB reports:

"Raise your voices! Where are your voices? Raise your voices against killings of women, raise your voices for women!" exclaimed the scores of women and men at a demonstration in central Baghdad this month.
Activists gathered near the al-Mutanabbi Statue in downtown Baghdad on November 16, calling for the end to violence against women. Hundreds of others in the area joined the activists, reinforcing their outcry for women and freedoms of women.

Every year up to hundreds of women in Iraq are killed by men belonging to tribes. They accuse women of immorality and they proudly claim to possess them and their honour, while impeding them from any decision in life or free movement.
The protests were planned by the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), with demonstrators holding large red banners stating that tribal killings of women should be treated in the same way as the Anti-Terrorism Act. Activists said that these unjustified killings destroyed the woman’s family life and endangered her children for the rest of their lives.
"Every tribe man who takes a woman’s right to life must be punished - not defended or protected by the state," said activist and founder of OWFI, Inar Mohammed.
"The state is collaborating with tribes in the killings of women under the guise of dishonour to society. We are here today against these tribal killings, against child marriages and against all violence women endure."


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