Blog Betty (Thomas Friedman is a Great Man was an online novel): 3/6/22

Thursday, March 10, 2022

CONVO COUCH

Do most people get how much the corporate media is lying regarding Ukraine?

It has never been the simple media narrative ("Russia bad"). It's a lot more complicated and the US government is lying and the US government forced most of what happened.

It's amazing to watch the self-righteous thinking they're on the side of 'good' when they are nowhere near it.

Again, it's always been much more complex than the corporate media has wanted to admit. They've been too busy trying to pour gasoline on a fire.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Thursday, March 10, 2022. The Iraqi people continue to suffer because of the actions of the US government, Julian Assange remains persecuted by Joe Biden and the US corporate media continues to push for war with Russia.

US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange, the publisher of WIKILEAKS. For the 'crime' of informing the people, Joe is attacking Julian and attacking a free press all the while strutting -- as best as a feeble old and lazy man his age can -- around and hectoring other governments about freedoms and the neceesity for freedoms.

Because the corporate media is useless, no one bothers to put that reality to him and get a response.

But that's how it works and that's why the children's parable (later a children's story by Hans Christian Andersen) The Emperor Has No Clothes existed in the first place. Two weeks ago, Chris Hedges (SCHEER POST) observed:

We know what Julian did. We know the great public service he provided. We know that he and WikiLeaks, aided by courageous figures such as Chelsea Manning, gave us the most important journalist coup of our generation, ripping back the veil erected by the ruling political, military, and financial elites to expose their mendacity, their corruption, and their crimes. We know that populations around the world, from Haiti to Tunisia, were empowered by this information to hold these elites accountable.

But today I want us to reflect on Julian himself. For Julian, endowed with precocious skills, could easily have been someone else. He could have sold his talents to Silicon Valley, to Wall Street or to intelligence and surveillance agencies, who would have paid handsomely. He could have built a lucrative career, one where he was financially secure, perhaps wealthy. He could have obtained the possessions we are told in our consumer society we should aspire to, an opulent house, luxury cars, financial security, fine clothes, and the status that comes with material acquisition and advancement within the structures of power. No worries. No controversy. No persecution.

But to follow this route, a route many have followed, would have required Julian to surrender his integrity and dignity. It would have required him to forsake justice and freedom to suppress and control the aspirations of the vast majority locked outside the golden gates of privilege and power. It would have placed him within the interlocking systems designed by the ruling elites to concentrate privilege, wealth, and power among themselves. It would have required Julian to become a cog in the megamachine, to play a part in constructing our corporate totalitarianism.

Julian chose not to do this. He turned away from the siren call of success, at least as it is defined by the powerful. He set out on the difficult road taken by all who fight the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed.

A life of meaning is a life of confrontation. When you resist radical evil you jeopardize your career, your reputation, your financial solvency and at times your life. It is to be a lifelong heretic. When you stand with the oppressed, the crucified of the earth, then you are treated like the oppressed. You too are crucified. And that is what is happening to Julian.

Those that care the most, are targeted and killed by those who care the least.

Miruna Soare Tweets:

#JulianAssange told #thetruth. #corrupted government officials and private #warmachine didnt like their dirty secrets exposed. So, they have been trying to silence #Julian for good. Dont let that happen! #KeepFighting to #freeAssange 🎗🎗🎗🎗

Evan Jones (DISSIDENT VOICE) notes:

Julian Assange is being tortured to death in a British prison. How can this be?

Assange has an army of supporters across the globe. Their support has had little to no tangible impact on Assange’s fate. How can this be?

Among the rest (the majority) are the indifferent and those who are hostile to various degrees, precisely because the US and the UK have captured him and put him on trial. Assange has to be guilty of something or other. After all, these countries are pivotal leaders of the “free world”!

The UK government is assisting the US government in the torture and persecution of Julian Assange. At THE INTERCEPT, Guillaume Long notes:

The U.K. High Court ruling that Julian Assange should be extradited to face trial in the United States — a decision that Amnesty International has called a “travesty of justice” — came as no surprise to me. It’s what the U.K. government always wanted. I know because the British deputy minister of foreign affairs told me.

Many pundits and politicians talk of the extradition proceedings against Assange as if they were an unforeseen legal outcome that came about as Assange’s situation unfolded. This is not true. My experience as the foreign minister of Ecuador — the South American country that granted Assange asylum — left me in no doubt that the U.K. wanted Assange’s extradition to the United States from the very beginning.

One encounter I had with Alan Duncan, the former British minister of state for Europe and the Americas, in October 2016 really let the cat out of the bag. At our meeting in the Dominican Republic, Duncan went on extensively about how loathsome Assange was. While I didn’t anticipate Duncan to profess his love for our asylee, I had expected a more professional diplomatic exchange. But the most important moment of the meeting was when I reiterated that Ecuador’s primary fear was the transfer of Assange to the United States, at which point Duncan turned to his staff and exclaimed something very close to, “Yes, well, good idea. How would we go about extraditing him to the Americans?”

His advisers squirmed in embarrassment. They had spent the last four years trying to reassure Ecuador that this was not what the U.K. was after. I responded that this was news indeed. I then wondered whether Duncan left the meeting feeling he had made a mess of it.

When not persecuting Julian, Joe Biden can be found trying to destroy the Russian people. Bryce Green (SCHEER POST) notes:

Many governments and media figures are rightly condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine as an act of aggression and a violation of international law. But in his first speech about the invasion, on February 24, US President Joe Biden also called the invasion “unprovoked.”

It’s a word that has been echoed repeatedly across the media ecosystem. “Putin’s forces entered Ukraine’s second-largest city on the fourth day of the unprovoked invasion,” Axios (2/27/22) reported; “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered its second week Friday,” said CNBC (3/4/22). Vox (3/1/22) wrote of “Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked and unnecessary war with the second-largest country in Europe.”

The “unprovoked” descriptor obscures a long history of provocative behavior from the United States in regards to Ukraine. This history is important to understanding how we got here, and what degree of responsibility the US bears for the current attack on Ukraine.

At BLACK AGENDA REPORT, Ajamu Baraka observes:

U.S. determination to be the world's hegemon created the crisis in Ukraine. The impacts are felt by working people in this country, who must look outside for solidarity and leadership as they struggle in a political system that offers them no representation.

“As a radical standpoint, perspective, position, the politics of location necessarily calls those of us who would participate in the formation of counter-hegemonic cultural practice to identify the spaces where we begin the process of re-vision” (bell hooks)

+The constant morality play that the U.S. public has been exposed to has resulted in mass support for war. Of course, ordinary people will pay the price, the ruling class will get over once again and Biden achieved his bipartisanship the old fashion way - through war!

+The U.S. corporate media frames the Ukraine conflict as a premeditated, unprovoked attack by the maniacal government of the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. But from the very beginning of Biden’s administration, it seemed like his agenda was to create the conditions in Ukraine that would evoke a conflict with the Russian Federation. It has turned out to be one of the few objectives of his administration that was met.

+The claims by commentators in the U.S. that war crimes and crimes against humanity that are being committed by the Russian state perfectly reflect the psychopathology of white supremacy, a narcissistic cognitive disorder that renders the afflicted with an inability to see objective reality in the same way as others.

+It is not just gas prices going up. These bumbling incompetents thought they could impose sanctions on a country fully integrated into the world capitalist economy without it hurting consumers in the U.S.- will now have to explain why food prices will go up.

+It appears that along with Russia, consumers in the U.S. will feel the effects of economic sanctions with higher prices and austerity while U.S. energy companies experience windfall profits. Perhaps with those profits that will be realized by the energy companies and the military/industrial complex they might have enough tax money to provide a little relief for workers through Build Back Better legislation. Oh, but my bad! The biggest corporations do not pay taxes in the U.S.

As Joe Biden and other blood thirsty trash try to whipe up anti-Russian sentiment, no one's supposed to note that the Russian people are people. Both Joe and corrupt Hillary Clinton have called for the Russian people to be grought to their knees. Both Joe and Hillary supported the Iraq War. It would be fair for the Iraqi people to call for Joe and Hillary to be brought to their knees. But that's not how it works, the corporate press just props up the crooks like Joe and Hillary who, like other useless leaders, will retire to comfy lives and never be confronted for all the people who are dead as a result of their actions. Margaret Kimberley (BAR) points out:

Anyone who speaks out against imperialism, capitalism, or racism with concrete examples of the terrible harm they do, can expect to be charged with the dreaded term “whataboutism.” Like clockwork, the act of revealing American crimes will result in an accusation that is used to silence dissent.

When war propaganda prevails regarding Ukraine or any other place where the hegemon is doing its dirty work, it is reasonable to ask probing questions. Why are the deaths of 14,000 people killed by Ukraine's civil war swept under the rug? Why is it forbidden to ask about the U.S. destruction of Libya? But once having asked a good question, one will be told that raising the topic is proof of the whataboutism sin.

The word whataboutism is in the dictionary and is defined as, “the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse.” That meaning is accurate and also completely defensible.

The charge is meant to censor the speaker, excuse U.S. actions, and defend its human rights violations. The denials and apologies are exactly why whataboutism should be defended. It is terrible when lies and crimes are not countered with verifiable information exposing them.

The term has gained popularity in part because there is so much hypocrisy to point out and there are so many adherents to American exceptionalism who defend what they should condemn. When the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it would begin investigating “the Situation in Ukraine” corporate media and their political partners gloated and pointed fingers at Russia. They didn’t point out that the U.S., like Russia, is not a signatory of the Treaty of Rome which brought the ICC into existence. Not only is the U.S. not a member state, but in 2002 Congress passed the American Service Members Protection Act , popularly known as the Hague Invasion Act. It gives the U.S. the right to extract any American held at the court in the Hague. The removal part isn’t even necessary because the act prohibits the extradition of Americans to the ICC.

The chest thumping about the investigation into Ukraine should surely be followed by a discussion of U.S. hostility to the ICC. It is a clear example of when and how whataboutism should be practiced. Not mentioning the U.S. relationship or rather lack of relationship with the ICC would be an indication of agreement with exceptionalist doctrine.

If Vladimir Putin is described as a war criminal, thug, dictator, and a modern day Hitler, it is appropriate and indeed necessary to ask about American presidents. For brevity’s sake consider only those American presidents who served since 2001. U.S. invasions and interventions in western Asia, North Africa, central Asia and the Horn of Africa have displaced more than 37 million people since the “war on terror” began. Why shouldn’t George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden be called war criminals too? Silence in the face of their criminality gives license and approval to U.S. aggressions.

American exceptionalism is an illness which infects most of the population of this country. Unfortunately most people need little prompting to defend their nation’s misdeeds. George W. Bush is now thought of as a kindly old man who paints pictures of puppies. There is little inclination to acknowledge the one million dead from the Iraq invasion. Doing so would create great discomfort.

Iraq? It's March 10th. Many months ago, on October 10th, Iraq held elections. And all this time later, there is still no prime minister or president. A vie month political stalemate continues. And there's no end in sight. There's also no real plan since the Constitution's been kicked aside. Dana Taib Menmy (THE NEW ARAB) explains:

Legal experts and politicians say Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court has breached the country’s constitution in a decision on 1 March to rule against parliament's decision to accept more nominations for the long-delayed presidency after a 30-day constitutional period expired in early February.

However, the court, Iraq’s highest judicial authority, has decided that the Iraqi parliament can make another decision with an overall majority vote of its members to reopen nominations for the presidency.

According to the second provision of Article 72 of the Iraqi constitution of 2005, the parliament must elect the president within a maximum period of 30 days from their first session after the election. The parliament held this session on 9 January and the period for electing the president expired on 8 February.

“One duty of Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court is preventing breaches towards the constitution, but unfortunately the court itself has side-stepped the constitution in its recent decision,” Latif Sheikh Mustafa, a constitutional law expert and former Iraqi MP told The New Arab in a phone call.

"The 30 day period outlined in the second provision of Article 72 is not subject to extension in any way, thus all measures that have been taken after that era are contrary to the constitution. The court should not have overridden its duties and breached the constitution to find legal exits to appease political sides.”

It's a disaster and it's a US-created disaster. The Iraqi people suffer as a result.

AFP reports:

Protests erupted Wednesday in Iraq’s impoverished south over a rise in food prices that officials attributed to the conflict in Ukraine.

For about a week, the price of cooking oils and flour have skyrocketed in local markets as government officials have sought to address growing anger with various statements and measures.

More than 500 protesters gathered in a central square in the southern city of Nasiriyah -- a flashpoint of anti-corruption protests that gripped the country in 2019.

“The rise in prices is strangling us, whether it is bread or other food products,” retired teacher Hassan Kazem said. “We can barely make ends meet.”

We'll wind down with these observations from Debra Sweet (World Can't Wait):

This war is dangerous for humanity and the planet! We shouldn't support either "side."

It's no exaggeration to say that the showdown between Russia and the U.S./NATO bloc has profound dangers for the people of Ukraine. Millions are already facing death and displacement from the immediate incursion of the Russian military. Russia doesn't want NATO at its borders in its mission to control Eastern Europe.

Many hundreds of millions more are endangered by the U.S. missile launchers recently installed in Poland and Romania, on the border of Russia. These are MK 41's, the same weapon the U.S. used thousands of times on people of Iraq, Syria and Yugoslavia. The U.S. wants to encircle Russia with NATO countries in its mission to maintain imperialist dominance.

Claiming the "high ground" by imposing sanctions, as the U.S. is doing, is not done to avoid war. It's aggression, part of making war, with potential devastating consequences, as we saw in years of deadly sanctions on Iraq, when an estimated 500,000 children died of hunger and lack of medical care.

The following sites updated:

Wednesday, March 09, 2022

Aretha Franklin's SPARKLE

SPARKLE was Whitney Houston's final movie and I think she did a good job but I prefer the original film made in the 70s.

I think everyone did a wonderful job -- especially Irene Cara.

But, that said, I think SPARKLE the album was better than the songs in the film.

In a break with tradition, the soundtrack was not released as a soundtrack. Instead, Aretha Franklin went into the studio with Curtis Mayfield and recorded every song in the movie. Aretha and Curtis really cooked up something excellent.

"Giving Him Something He Can Feel" we all know -- even if it's just from En Vouge's version in the 90s. But Aretha really set the standard with her 70s recording. Same is true with "Hooked On A Feeling." In fact, let me put those two in this post.

"Giving Him Something He Can Feel"

and "Hooked On A Feeling" are good in the film SPARKLE but they are good in different ways.

Aretha recording the songs gave it a cohesion. She and Curtis crafted it in a way that didn't require that you see the movie, their recordings worked all on their own.

SPARKLE is one of Aretha's great albums and I was thinking of that when I heard another favorite song from that album today "Jump."

Here is my top ten for favorite Aretha albums.

1) YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK
2) WHO'S ZOOMING WHO
3) LADY SOUL
4) A ROSE IS STILL A ROSE
5) HEY NOW HEY THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SKY (and "Sister From Texas" is really amazing)
6) ARETHA NOW
7) ARETHA FRANKLIN SINGS THE GREAT DIVA CLASSICS
8) I NEVER LOVED A MAN THE WAY THAT I LOVE YOU
9) LOVE ALL THE HURT AWAY
10) ARETHA IN PARIS

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Wednesday, March 9, 2022. And the wars drag on, yeah, the wars drag on.

The US government continues to persecute Julian Assange. Don't tell John Nichols. He's got another useless column. Russia! Russia! Russia! Does he think he looks smart or brave? Only to the deeply stupid. He's a craven whore who pushed for Bull Boy Bush to be impeached - even wrote a book on impeachment and was promoting it but then Nancy Pelosi announced that impeachment was off the tble and like a good whore John Nichols dropped the topic -- enraging the publishing house tht had put out his book. When he had a world of US government officials to call out for the Iraq War, John Nichols zoomed in on the most 'dangerous' of all . . . Barbra Streisand. He's a coward and a whore. Today he wants you to know that Russia is crqcking down on media. Just Rissia, you understand. Any unbiased outlet has already told you that both Russia and Ukraine are cracking down on their media. But whore's got whore, right, John?

Which is why he's outside pointing the finger again instead of directing it t his own country. Joe Biden's crcking down on media. He's gotten a lot of help from the media itself. They knew Tra Reade was probably telling the truth but like some 'feminists' they insisted it didn't matter, they were still supporting Joe. There's been no bigger buffoon in the White House in the last 100 years yet the press has gone so easy on liar Joe who most recently lied about how many times he'd been to Iraq and Afghanistan claiming 40 when it's only been 21 -- a lie he made during the campaign and got slammed for and a lie he continues to make. It's not smart to lie in a Statue of the Union address.

Joe was unable to do whatever one before him in 'modern times' has done, deliver the speech in January. But his lying about basic facts? The SOUA is a mandated speech, mandated in the Constitution.

He can't stop lying. He lies about the big stuff, he lies about the small stuff. He is forever inflating his own miniscule record. Remember when he was telling us he was arrested while visitng South Africa as a US senator?

Despite the very easy ride that Joe's gotten from the US press, the White House is still miserable, is still attacking reporters, has asked THE NEW YORK TIMES to reassign one reporter (if the reporter's learning of it here, check iwth your editor, you'll be informed then). He's a petty man who can't deliver for the American people because he's too busy having tantrums over how he is being portrayed in the press in the here and now. Joe's an old man and he's going to die soon. But he's not concerned about how history will receive him because he's too obsessed with the here and now.

The whores of journalism like to pretend they're doing something of value but they're forgotten near instantly and history is a little more harsh. Jeh Johnson. He got a lot of good press. Some called him out -- a few -- for his role in Barack Obama's inhumane response to immigration. Some of us knew it would come back to bite him in the ass. He didn't get it. He thought he could manage it and the press was all that mattered and . . .

Poor little Jeh, dopped as a speaker to Vassar.

How humiliating for him.

How fitting.

The press may have gone easy on him in real time but that didn't mean a damn thing. Truth will out -- always. And Jeh better get used to the fact that this is just the beginning. He might want to drop to his knees and publicly beg forgiveness for the vile and disgusting things he'd done.

Some might forgive him if he did that.

I'm not the Pope. I'm not granting him forgiveness. I'll stand with the epople whose lives he destroyed.

Again, congratulations on being ruled unfit to speak before a college -- being ruled that by We The People. Not the press. Not his hero Barack. By We The People and, in a democracy, we are always the final voice.

Julian Assange is persecuted for attempting to tellt he truth and for supporting an informed citizenry. He shined a light into the shadows and so Joe Biden is determined to destroy him. A) It's about revenge. B) It's about making an example of Julian, trying to put the fear into the press.

But, by all means, John Nichols, waste all of our time with another useless column.

Ueseless hsi whole life.

We'll note this Tweet:

Seems accurate

7:30 AM · Mar 8, 2022

Richard Medhurt speaks with Jeffrey Sterling about the presuction of Julian Assange and other issues.

Julian tried to inform. The US media lives to distract and to deny reality. CJ Hopkins (DISSIDENT VOICE) takes a humorous look at how the media is currently conducting itself:

And they’re back! It’s like one of those 1960s Hammer Film Productions horror-movie series with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee … Return of the Putin-Nazis! Revenge of the Putin-Nazis! Return of the Revenge of the Bride of the Putin-Nazis! And this time they are not horsing around with stealing elections from Hillary Clinton with anti-masturbation Facebook ads. They are going straight for “Democracy’s” jugular!

Yes, that’s right, folks, Vladimir Putin, leader of the Putin-Nazis and official “Evil Dictator of the Day,” has launched a Kamikazi attack on the United Forces of Goodness (and Freedom) to provoke us into losing our temper and waging a global thermonuclear war that will wipe out the entire human species and most other forms of life on earth!

I’m referring, of course, to Putin’s inexplicable and totally unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, a totally peaceful, Nazi-free country which was just sitting there minding its non-Nazi business, singing Kumbaya, and so on, and not in any way collaborating with or being cynically used by GloboCap to menace and eventually destabilize Russia so that the GloboCap boys can get back in there and resume the Caligulan orgy of “privatization” they enjoyed throughout the 1990’s.

No, clearly, Putin has just lost his mind, and has no strategic objective whatsoever (other than the total extermination of humanity), and is just running around the Kremlin shouting “DROP THE BOMBS! EXTERMINATE THE BRUTES!” all crazy-eyed and with his face painted green like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now … because what other explanation is there?

Caitlin Johnstone observes:

Just your regular reminder that the US empire (A) had solid intelligence that this war was coming, (B) knew they could prevent it by making very reasonable, low-cost concessions like promising not to add a nation to NATO that they didn’t want to add anyway, and (C) chose not to.

❖

It’s 2022 and people still believe the US is pouring weapons into a foreign country to protect freedom and democracy. That’s like being 57 and still believing in the Tooth Fairy.

❖

The US empire has had a standing policy of preventing the rise of any rival superpowers since the USSR collapsed, by which I mean that policy was explicitly laid out in writing within months of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. Both Moscow and Beijing have refused to kiss the imperial ring, and crippling Russia is an essential part of hamstringing China’s rise. This was all planned years ago.

Gilbert Doctorow described back in 2017 how Moscow and Beijing have formed a mutually beneficial “tandem” based on their respective strengths; Russia as a major military force who is willing to confront the US empire, and China as a rising economic superpower. Empire managers had previously expected that Moscow would be forced to pivot to Washington and become a member state of the empire. The fact that it chose Beijing instead to retain its sovereignty is what set all this in motion.

This was all planned years in advance. It’s no coincidence that we were hammered with narratives originating from US intelligence agencies which inflamed hysteria about Russia in the years leading up to this, most of which had nothing to do with Ukraine. I mean for Christ’s sake, even the one narrative that did involve Ukraine occurred because a CIA officer (ridiculously labeled a “whistleblower” by the mass media) just so happened to be in the right place at the right time to get it rolling.

So we’re all going to suffer financially and live under the risk of total obliteration via nuclear war in a long-planned confrontation geared toward obtaining total planetary domination, just because a few manipulators in the US government decided that would be a good thing.

It doesn’t need to be this way. Never did. There’s no good reason why nations can’t just get along and work together for the common good of all. The only reason that’s not happening is because of this insane desire to dominate and control instead of collaborate and thrive.

Where's the coverage of Iraq in the US media? It had to vanish. What the US government did is a crime. Iraq has been torn apart by the US government. The suffering has not gone away. But they can't champaion another war, the media, while providing reality about what happened and continues to happen in Iraq.

It's a tragedy. Iraqis have to live with it but the US government inflicted it.

And the US media rushes to run from it.

UN Women Iraq Tweets:

UN staff in Erbil gathered to celebrate International Women’s Day and reflect on the progress and achievements made on women’s rights as well as to recognize the importance of achieving gender equality for a sustainable future free from violence against women and girls
@UNHCRIraq