Stan called and noted an e-mail he got from someone who felt there was nothing to watch this summer. During the regular season (fall and spring) we usually cover a number of shows. I don't think we've been doing that recently though -- I know Mike covers SUPERMAN AND LOIS (see "Ticket about SUPERMAN AND LOIS
" for his latest and he's doing a summary of the latest episode tonight). Rebecca covers DYNASTY and will continue to do so when the final episodes air next month. She also covers animal kingdom' is back
"" which just returned and MOTHERLAND: FORT SALEM (I always type that as MOTHERHOOD: FORT SALEM and have to go back and fix it).
I watch more probably now than I used to because the kids have left the nest.
Stan and I talked about THE BOYS.
In a lot of ways, I'm very disappointed in this season. Maeve is one of my favorite characters and she's been used for nothing this season but to funnel information to Butcher. She has no need to use her powers and she's now sleeping with Butcher. In last week's episode, Homelander found out what she was doing to her and he's 'disappeared' her.
Annie knows this but apparently can't do much of anything. Which is why she's never been my favorite. She's a cheerleader with a smile. That may be why, on the show, she's so popular with the public. But I find her boring.
Butcher and Huey are using a drug to give them superpowers. For Huey, this has been interesting. He has the power to transport. Annie was made when she found out that he had done it just once and them madder when he revealed that, okay, not just for once.
Kimiko lost her powers when the gang freed Solider Boy (Jensen Ackles) in Russia and he exploded a burst of power -- like a bomb. Frenchie has been by her side waiting for her to come to. She finally did. They ended up watching a Judy Garland movie in her hospital bed and this lead to a really great fantasy number where she sang "I Got Rhythm" with Frenchie and the two danced through the hospital while singing. (It's from the Judy movie they were watching, 1943's GIRL CRAZY.) I really enjoyed it and the woman who plays Kimiko has real talent in dancing and singing. Frenchie? He was endearing with his dancing. Seriously. They need more moments like this for Frenchie, his storylines and his life are always so dark.
Like/ Right now, he's go back to work for the Russians. Butcher made him be an in-between with the Russian mafia to figure out where Solider Boy was. Doing that destroyed the Russian mafia. The woman in charge -- who has desires for Frenchie - has told him he now works for her as a result of all that has gone wrong.
She and Frenchie apparently had a past relationship as sub and dom -- Frenchie being the sub.
:Has Kiminko really lost her powers? I hope not.
Annie is mad in the latest episode because Huey and Butcher were not trapping Soldier Boy, they were meeting with him because they want to partner with him. To destroy Homelander -- who is out of control even more this season.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Wednesday, June 22, 2022. The persecution of Julian Assange is a war
on the press and a war on the truth, Moqtada al-Sadr remains out of
power, and much more.
Around the
world, everyone watches as US President Joe Biden continues to persecute
Julian Assange. The Geneva Press Club Tweets:
This persecution of Julian is about silencing the press.
Monday April 5, 2010,
WIKILEAKS released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two
Reuters
journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. That is when the
persecution begins. It was an intimidation carried out by multiple
presidents starting with Barack Obama, continuing with Donald Trump and
now the baton for killing the press has been handed off to Joe Biden.
This has had the effect of scaring off many traditional news outlets.
They once partnered with Julian to report and now they act as though
they've never heard of him. Saving their own asses? They may think
that. If they do, they're dead wrong. An attack on Julian is an attack
on all. And if the attack on Julian is not loudly and publicly
rebuked, you can be sure that next up will be THE WASHINGTON POST or THE
MIAMI HERALD or some other institution -- despite the US Constitution
-- the same one that's being ignored in this attack on Julian.
We now know, courtesy of a Yahoo News investigation, that through 2017 the CIA hatched various schemes either to assassinate
Assange or to kidnap him in one of its illegal “extraordinary
rendition” operations, so he could be permanently locked up in the US,
out of public view.
We can surmise that the CIA also believed it needed to prepare the
ground for such a rogue operation by bringing the public on board.
According to Yahoo’s investigation, the CIA believed Assange’s seizure
might require a gun battle on the streets of London.
It was at this point, it seems, that Cadwalladr and the Guardian were encouraged to add their own weight to the cause of further turning public opinion against Assange.
According to her witness statement, “a confidential source in [the]
US” suggested – at the very time the CIA was mulling over these various
plots – that she write about a supposed visit by Farage to Assange in
the embassy. The story ran in the Guardian under the headline “When Nigel Farage met Julian Assange.”
In the article, Cadwalladr offers a strong hint as to who had been treating her as a confidant: the one source mentioned
in the piece is “a highly placed contact with links to US
intelligence”. In other words, the CIA almost certainly fed her the
agency’s angle on the story.
In the piece, Cadwalladr threads together her and the CIA’s claims of
“a political alignment between WikiLeaks’ ideology, UKIP’s ideology and
Trump’s ideology”. Behind the scenes, she suggests, was the hidden hand
of the Kremlin, guiding them all in a malign plot to fatally undermine
British democracy.
She quotes her “highly placed contact” claiming that Farage and
Assange’s alleged face-to-face meeting was necessary to pass information
of their nefarious plot “in ways and places that cannot be monitored”.
Except of course, as her “highly placed contact” knew – and as we now
know, thanks to exposes by the Grayzone website – that was a lie. In
tandem with its plot to kill or kidnap Assange, the CIA illegally installed cameras inside, as well as outside, the embassy. His every move in the embassy was monitored – even in the toilet block.
The reality was that the CIA was bugging and videoing Assange’s every
conversation in the embassy, even the face-to-face ones. If the CIA
actually had a recording of Assange and Farage meeting and discussing a
Kremlin-inspired plot, it would have found a way to make it public by
now.
Far more plausible is what Farage and WikiLeaks
say: that such a meeting never happened. Farage visited the embassy to
try to interview Assange for his LBC radio show but was denied access.
That can be easily confirmed because by then the Ecuadorian embassy was
allying with the US and refusing Assange any contact with visitors apart from his lawyers.
The war on Julian is a war on the press and a war on the truth.
Kevin Gosztola discussed the issues in the video below.
US House Rep Ilhan Omar Tweets:
The prosecution of Assange is still indefensible!
On his show @mehdirhasan makes the case for why the prosecution of Assange is indefensible. Give it a listen
At TRUTHOUT, Marjorie Cohn notes, "This the first time the United States has prosecuted a journalist or
media outlet for publishing classified information. The extradition,
trial and conviction of Julian Assange would have frightening
ramifications for investigative journalism. On June 17,
the editorial board of The Guardian wrote, 'This action potentially
opens
the door for journalists anywhere in the world to be extradited to the
US for exposing information deemed classified by Washington'."
Turning
to Iraq, the government remains without a prime minister, without a
president, all this time after the October 10th elections. Some in the
western media are apparently butt hurt over getting it so wrong last
fall when they praised Moqtada al-Sadr as a "kingmaker" and ran all
these puff pieces on the man who leads a cult, on the man responsible
for the deaths of US troops, on the man who has terrorized minority
groups in Iraq, etc. If you missed it, after months of being unable to
form a government, Moqtada announced he was taking his toys and going
home. The 73 MPs in his bloc have resigned from Parliament.
Now the western press whores are trying to sell that as a victory.
Moqtada has a master plan! He's playing three dimensional chess! This will force everyone to bend to his will!
Dubious claims at best.
Moqtada
couldn't hack and he left. Arabic social media has been addressing it
for the last two weeks. The government in Iran put pressure on the KDP
leadership (the Barzani family) and Moqtada was about to experience a
very public break in coalition. The KDP got a huge number of votes.
Without them, Moqtada was nowhere near getting enough members in his
coalition to form a government.
It would have
been an even bigger failure so Moqtada elected to take his toys and go
home -- hoping there was a least one shred of dignity left that he could
cover himself in. (There wasn't.)
After
winning last year’s election, Sadr appeared to be in the driver’s seat
of Iraqi politics — and claimed to be on a path to form a majority
government and sideline his main rivals, former prime minister Nouri
al-Maliki and parts of the Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces
(PMF).
Eight
months later, Sadr seems to be walking away from the
government-formation process, throwing Iraqi politics into uncertain
terrain.
What’s
his end game? Our interviews with senior figures within Sadr’s group
suggest he may now focus on leading protests against political
opponents. The protest space is where Sadr has been uniquely powerful as
the leader of one of the largest Islamist movements in the region, organized around his personal authority as a charismatic, religious figurehead.
For Iraq, the result now may be further political instability — and
potentially another early election. But more critically, the approaching
summer will put added pressures on Iraq’s government amid scorching
heat and growing public anger over the lack of jobs and basic services.
This summer may see a repeat of last year’s blackouts,
for instance — and protests. And supply disruptions could exacerbate
ongoing protests over unemployment, wages and working conditions in the
public sector.
A replay of the delicate balancing act that served Sadr well in the past
seems likely. He reportedly will now try to retain his influence across
the government’s most powerful institutions while rallying anti-establishment protests in the streets. But will it work this time?
It's
a strong piece. At last, a report at THE POST treats Nouri al-Maliki
as the instrument of power he remains. I think he's a thug. My
thoughts don't do a damn thing to alter the power he does and the power
that he's used in 2021 and still today. It was a huge mistake for the
US media to impose a blackout on Nouri in order to sell Moqtada as some
form of leader. They also note -- as we've for years now -- Moqtada is
not the protest leader. He controls his cult, yes. The October
Revolution that emerged in 2019 was not led by him. He attempted to
co-opt it and, when he failed, he began attacking them. These were
young Shi'ites. Too many e-mails come into the public account that
still don't grasp that point. Sunnis were not part of The October
Revolution. Moqtada's hold on the average Shiite was never that strong
to begin with. It's grown weaker. (As has his hold on his cult which
is why he got so many fewer votes this go round. Despite ordering his
cult to vote in these elections.)
So let's add to the analysis with some other basics.
Nearly
20 years after he emerged as the angry young man opposed to US forces,
he's no longer young. He does not speak for the youth. Nor do they
want him to. He wants to be the face of protests. He wanted that in
2019 so he tried to co-opt the movement. He realized in early 2020 that
he couldn't, so he attacked the movement. By the time he was ordering
them, April 2020, to not allow males and females to protest together,
they were openly laughing at him and carrying protest signs that
ridiculed him.
His aging out as the 'voice of
youth' is not uncommon in any country. It is especially not uncommon in
a country where so many have died due to the war that the median age is
now is now 21-years-old.
Here's another reality he's going to have to come up against.
If
he starts the protests up again, his cult will turn out, yes. Other
Shi'ites? He's going to be protesting against a new government. How is
that going to work this summer?
Let's say
everything breaks the way they need it for Nouri's group. So in 30 days
or so, they're in power. And there's Moqtada, in early August, calling
them out for what they haven't done?
They will
only have been in power a few weeks and the entire country is aware
that it was Moqtada who, for over eight months, was unable to deliver.
That it was Moqtada who finally stepped aside and quit. That had he
done this earlier, a government could have been formed before the
obscene summer heat hit Iraq.
Anything can
hapen. But Moqtada's got a lot of negatives and they make his ability
to recapture the days of 2005 much, much more difficult.
We'll wind down with this from Ms.
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