"FAT. I GET CALLED FAT A LOT. PEOPLE SAY WHY WOULD JOE BIDEN ASSAULT YOU -- LIKE I LOOKED LIKE THIS WHEN I WAS YOUNGER. OR THEY SAY, 'WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST USE YOUR GIRTH TO SMUSH HIM LIKE A BUG WHEN HE ASSAULTED YOU?' 'OR WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST DROWN HIM IN YOUR BOOB SWEAT!' I GET A LOT OF FAT JOKES," READE BRAGS.
OH. OKAY.
''OR LIKE," TARA READE CONTINUES, "'WANT TO GET TARA TO LOSE WEIGHT? PAY THE ICE CREAM TRUCK GUY TO KEEP DRIVING'."
ALRIGHT.
"OR THEY SHOUT AT, 'YOU SO FAT, THE ANIMALS AT THE ZOO FEED YOU!' OR LIKE THEY SAY WHEN I ACCUSED JOE BIDEN OF ASSAULT, JILL BIDEN SNAPPED BACK, 'WHY DON'T YOU PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE -- LIKE SHAMU!' OR --"
SHE DRONED ON LISTING ONE FAT JOKE AFTER ANOTHER FOR OVER AN HOUR.
WHY, WE ASKED HER, WOULD SHE, A SURVIVOR OF ASSAULT, PROMOTE A MAN ARRESTED MULTIPLE TIMES FOR ATTEMPTING TO USE THE INTERNET TO ENGAGE IN SEX WITH UNDERAGE GIRLS, A MAN CONVICTED OF THIS AND SENT TO PRISON FOR THIS, A REGISTERED SEX OFFENDER -- WHY, WE ASKED, WOULD SHE USE HER TWITTER ACCOUNT TO PROMOTE HIM?
WHY?
DOESN'T SHE CARE ABOUT OTHER VICTIMS?
You’re unable to view this Tweet because this account owner limits who can view their Tweets. Learn more
WE'LL ASSUME SHE WAS YET AGAIN MUNCHING ON HIGH FAT AND GREASY FOOD THIS MORNING AND ONE OF HER LARGE, ROTUND, PUDGY AND SAUSAGE-LIKE FINGERS ACCIDENTALLY HIT THE WRONG BUTTON RESULTING IN HER MISTAKENLY BLOCKING US.
IN OTHER WORDS, TARA READE GOES TO A RESTAURANT AND IS HANDED A MENU. SHE SLOWLY LOOKS OVER EACH PAGE AND THEN TURNS TO THE WAITER AND SAYS "YES."
It took a year and three days after the election, but Ira finally announced a new president yesterday. The moment was not without drama. ALJAZEERA reports, "Rashid replaced fellow Iraqi Kurd Barham Saleh as head of state after the two-round vote in parliament on Thursday, winning more than 160 votes against 99 for Saleh, an assembly official said. Saleh reportedly walked out of the parliament building as the votes were tallied." Saleh finally leaves. He wasn't content to be president of Iraq, he tried to ignore the Constitution during his tenure and elevate the position of president to that of prime minister. A complicit foreign media helped him out -- in part to make it appear Iraq was more stable than it actually was.
Saleh's hissy fit might make some believe that Abdul is from a different political party. Nope. PUK. They performed dismally in the 2021 elections -- a pattern they've had since the party lied to the Kurds about the health of Jalal Talabani but they got to hold on to the presidency.
War turned Iraq into a land of widows and orphans. The median age in Iraq is 21-years-old. But the leadership never reflects the country which is how 78-year-old Abdul is now president.
78.
You'd think that would bother them after Jalal. 78 is how old Jalal was when he had his stroke and the Talabani's began deceiving Iraq.
As 2012 drew to a close, Jalal, then president of Iraq, had a stroke. The incident took place late on December 17, 2012 (see the December 18, 2012 snapshot) and resulted in Jalal being admitted to Baghdad's Medical Center Hospital. Thursday, December 20th, he was moved to Germany. He remained in Germany for over a year and a half. The Talabani family refused to allow people to visit him in while he was in the hospital for that entire time -- including Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi.
When the first wave of rumors that Talabani had either died or was permanently incapacitated, took hold in May of 2013, Jalal was posed for a series of photos that appear to indicate his body was present but that was all.
The photos were compared to the film Weekend At Bernie's in Arabic social media. (In the 1989 film, Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman play two men who drag the corpse of their boss, Bernie, around and pretend he's alive.)
When Jalal left Iraq the Talabani family was down playing his condition. They were falling back on the 'knee surgery' nonsense.
In May of 2012, Jalal stabbed many Iraqi political leaders in the back and outraged many in the KRG by refusing to allow the no-confidence motion to be passed on. As a result of the outrage directed at him, Jalal retreated to Germany where he remained for months. He needed to have, his flunkies and family insisted, immediate surgery to take care of a life threatening condition. This lie was repeated for weeks and weeks. Jalal had knee surgery.
Karama bit him in his fat ass. Jalal snuck back into Iraq July 19, 2014. He couldn't speak, he couldn't move his own body. He wasn't fit to be president and his family lied to the Iraqi people. That destroyed confidence and its why the PUK continues to suffer each election.
Well suffer in that the voters don't want them. The system is so corrupt that they continue to hold onto power.
Here's fat ass Jalal with Abdul.
That's right. They were brother-in-laws. Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed has held many jobs -- currently she's the Executor at the Political Bureau of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). She and Abdul have three children sons Azos (1982) and Zagros (1988) and daughter Sara (1987). Shanaz and Hero are the daughters of Ibrahim Ahmed -- a Kurdish novelist who rose to be the Secretary General of the KDP in 1953 -- in other words, the same faces, the same family and why Iraqis feel betrayed over and over by the entrenched corruption in the system.
Ahmed has named Mohammed Shia Al Sudani as prime minister-designate.
Neanderthals and humans lived alongside each other in France and
northern Spain for up to 2,900 years, modeling research suggested
Thursday, giving them plenty of time to potentially learn from or even
breed with each other.
While the study, published in the journal
Scientific Reports, did not provide evidence that humans directly
interacted with Neanderthals around 42,000 years ago, previous genetic
research has shown that they must have at some point.
Research by
Swedish paleogeneticist Svante Paabo, who won the Nobel Prize in
Medicine last week, helped reveal that people of European descent— and
almost everyone worldwide — have a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA.
Modern humans and Neanderthals met—and made love, or at least babies—at
some point in prehistory. But how long and exactly where the two
species intermingled has been a mystery. Now, a reevaluation of
radiocarbon dating at archaeological sites in France and northern Spain
indicates that some 40,000 years ago, our ancestors overlapped with
Neanderthals in the region for up to 2800 years, sharing not just genes
with each other, but potentially culture as well.
“The time span is insignificant on a geological scale,” says Antonio
Rodríguez-Hidalgo, an archaeologist at the Catalan Institute of Human
Paleoecology and Social Evolution who was not involved with the study.
“But on a human scale, there is enough time for very interesting things
to happen.”
Other scientists, however, say the wide margins of error for many of
the dates analyzed in the study undercut strong claims about the
identities of the inhabitants and whether they indeed overlapped. It’s
“a good starting point,” but the conclusions could change based on more
accurate dating, says Sahra Talamo, a chemist who directs a radiocarbon
laboratory at the University of Bologna.
Radiocarbon dating estimates the age of organic objects such as bones
and charcoal based on the steady radioactive decay of their carbon-14
isotopes. Scientists have used the method for decades—and they’ve been
refining it for just as long.
A major revision came in 2020, when radiocarbon scientists announced
that a brief reversal of Earth’s magnetic field about 42,000 years ago,
known as the Laschamp event, had temporarily supercharged the amount of
carbon-14 in the atmosphere. Anything living at the time incorporated
extra amounts of the isotope as a result, throwing off modern efforts to
radiocarbon date their remains.
“It pushed dates that were around 40,000 years further back in time
and made things that were older than 43,000 or 44,000 years appear
younger in time,” says Igor Djakovic, an archaeology Ph.D. student at
Leiden University.
So that's mind blowing. And if you're needing to relax, perfect film for you: MOONFALL.
Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson star. It's on HBO MAX. I saw it at the movies but never had time to write about it. Now that it's on HBO MAX, I'll note it and tell you that I loved it.
It got some bad reviews. I don't think it was for the film itself. I think the reviews were based around the fact that the moon is occupied by aliens and the government is covering it up. I think that made some reviewers nervous because it was just too much for them.
It's a movie, people. It's not saying, "This is a documentary and there was a coverup of the moon landing and what the astronauts encountered."
Take it for an exciting movie with great shots of space and you're in for a thrill ride. The actors all do a great job and it's an exciting film.
So if you have a second, make a point to check it out. Then you too can sing "I miss the rain down in Africa" (Patrick Wilson's character gets the lyrics wrong.)
Friday, October 14, 2022. The political stalemate in Iraq appears to be
over as a president is elected and a prime minister-designate is named.
Abdul Latif Rashidf. Who?
It
took a year and three days after the election, but Ira finally
announced a new president yesterday. The moment was not without drama.
ALJAZEERA reports, "Rashid replaced fellow Iraqi Kurd Barham Saleh
as head of state after the two-round vote in parliament on Thursday,
winning more than 160 votes against 99 for Saleh, an assembly official
said. Saleh reportedly walked out of the parliament building as the
votes were tallied." Saleh finally leaves. He wasn't content to be
president of Iraq, he tried to ignore the Constitution during his tenure
and elevate the position of president to that of prime minister. A
complicit foreign media helped him out -- in part to make it appear Iraq
was more stable than it actually was.
Saleh's
hissy fit might make some believe that Abdul is from a different
political party. Nope. PUK. They performed dismally in the 2021
elections -- a pattern they've had since the party lied to the Kurds
about the health of Jalal Talabani but they got to hold on to the
presidency.
War turned Iraq into a land of
widows and orphans. The median age in Iraq is 21-years-old. But the
leadership never reflects the country which is how 78-year-old Abdul is
now president.
78.
You'd
think that would bother them after Jalal. 78 is how old Jalal was when
he had his stroke and the Talabani's began deceiving Iraq.
As 2012 drew to a close, Jalal, then president of Iraq, had a stroke. The incident took place late on December
17, 2012 (see the December 18, 2012 snapshot) and resulted in Jalal being admitted to Baghdad's Medical Center Hospital. Thursday, December 20th,
he was moved to Germany. He remained in Germany for over a year and a
half. The Talabani family refused to allow people to visit him in while
he was in the hospital for that entire time -- including Speaker of
Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi.
When the first wave of rumors that Talabani had either died or was permanently incapacitated, took hold in May of 2013, Jalal was posed for a series of photos that appear to indicate his body was present but that was all.
The photos were compared to the film Weekend At Bernie's in
Arabic social media. (In the 1989 film, Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan
Silverman play two men who drag the corpse of their boss, Bernie, around
and pretend he's alive.)
When Jalal left Iraq the Talabani family was down playing
his condition. They were falling back on the 'knee surgery' nonsense.
In May of 2012, Jalal stabbed many Iraqi political
leaders in the back and outraged many in the KRG by refusing to allow
the no-confidence motion to be passed on. As a result of the outrage
directed at him, Jalal retreated to Germany where he remained for
months. He needed to have, his flunkies and family insisted, immediate
surgery to take care of a life threatening condition. This lie was
repeated for weeks and weeks. Jalal had knee surgery.
Karama
bit him in his fat ass. Jalal snuck back into Iraq July 19, 2014. He
couldn't speak, he couldn't move his own body. He wasn't fit to be
president and his family lied to the Iraqi people. That destroyed
confidence and its why the PUK continues to suffer each election.
Well suffer in that the voters don't want them. The system is so corrupt that they continue to hold onto power.
Here's fat ass Jalal with Abdul.
That's
right. They were brother-in-laws. Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed has held many
jobs -- currently she's the Executor at the Political Bureau of
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). She and Abdul have three children
sons Azos (1982) and Zagros (1988) and daughter Sara (1987). Shanaz and
Hero are the daughters of Ibrahim Ahmed -- a Kurdish novelist who rose
to be the Secretary General of the KDP in 1953 -- in other words, the
same faces, the same family and why Iraqis feel betrayed over and over
by the entrenched corruption in the system.
Ahmed has named Mohammed Shia Al Sudani as prime minister-designate.
Mr Al Sudani, who was nominated for the post by the Iran-backed Co-ordination Framework, has 30 days to submit his Cabinet line-up to Iraq's Parliament for approval.
[. . .]
In his first statement, Mr Al Sudani thanked those who supported him and promised to submit his cabinet “as soon as possible”.
He
also promised to form a “strong government" that was able to "build the
country, to serve the citizens, to preserve security and stability and
build balanced international relations”.
Mr
Al Sudani started his political career as a member of the Shiite Dawa
Party and then ran for election with the State of Law Coalition led by
former prime minister Nouri Al Maliki. He has won three terms in
parliament since 2014.
That's right,
Nouri al-Maliki. Former prime minister, forever thug and, you know this
is biting Motada al-Sadr's ass, "kingmaker."
That's Nouri, not his bitter rival Moqtada.
It
was a year ago that a whorish western press was hailing sociopath and
cult leader Moqtada as a "kingmaker." He isn't. He wasn't. As Aretha
and Whitney sang, "It ain't never gonna be."
There's
a thirty day period that Iraq's now in the midst of. Per the
Constitution, the prime minister-designate must form a complete cabinet
-- nominees that the Parliament then votes to confirm. Failure to do so
means someone else gets named prime minister-designate.
That's what is supposed to happen.
But it's not how it's ever gone. Instead, the person can name an incomplete cabinet and still move to prime minister.
So, per past history, this will probably be the prime minister.
In other news, US President Joe Biden continues his ongoing persecution of Julian Assange. Julian's 'crime' was revealing the
realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the
information to Julian. WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs.
And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own.
For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War
Logs. Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:
A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the
Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the
whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident
US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have
leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters
and civilian killings in the Afghan war. The new logs detail how: •
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse,
torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct
appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
• A US helicopter gunship involved in a
notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after
they tried to surrender. • More than 15,000 civilians died in
previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no
official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081
non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical
evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or
ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric
shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.
And closer to my own work as a writer and editor, journalists and
their sources are being targeted by governments, especially our own, for
revealing inconvenient, embarrassing and criminal acts by those very
same institutions. This censorious enterprise is entirely bipartisan.
Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers than Bush or Trump. At this very
moment, Julian Assange is confined in a bleak cell in Belmarsh Prison
(now stricken with Covid) awaiting extradition to the US on charges that
could lock him away in a super-max for the rest of his life. His crime?
Disclosing documents leaked to him by Chelsea Manning and others
revealing atrocities committed by US forces in Iraq.
If the Biden Justice succeeds in prosecuting and convicting Assange,
all kinds of prosecutorial authorities will be emboldened to come after
any of the rest of us who excavate and publish stories about official
corruption and villainy or film cops films as they beat the crap black
kids. As writers and readers, we must resist these moves to criminalize
journalism and to enforce a suffocating stupidity upon the population.
The inconvenient truths about our own nation’s past–including the
very recent past–are the truths it is the most urgent to hear, to learn
from and work to rectify.
Thanks to the Before Columbus Foundation and the San Francisco Public Library for being at the forefront of this struggle and for honoring our work at CounterPunch.
That's from his October 9th speech accepting the Before Columbus Foundation's Anti-Censorship award. Also noting Julian is Will Lehman who is running to be the next president of the United Auto Workers:
I am writing to you today, however, on another matter that is critical to the interests of all workers, in the US and throughout the world. That is the case of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. Assange is currently imprisoned in the United Kingdom and faces extradition to the US, where he would be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. He could receive a 175-year sentence or even be executed.
Julian Assange (Photo by David G. Silvers, Cancillería del Ecuador / CC BY-SA 2.0)
Assange is being persecuted for one reason and one reason alone: He revealed the truth about the actions of the American government abroad, the same government that represents the corporations that exploit us here in the United States.
One of the most significant initial exposures by WikiLeaks was a video, released in 2010, depicting the US Army killing unarmed civilians and journalists in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The footage was filmed three years earlier, in 2007, in the early years of the US occupation of Iraq. I urge all of you to watch this video, which is titled “Collateral Murder.”
The video was followed by the release of the Iraq and Afghan war logs in 2010 and the Guantanamo files in 2011. These documents, which were made available to the public thanks to the heroic actions of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, exposed a lie that is central to the propaganda of the US government, Democrat and Republican alike: that the wars abroad are about defending democracy.
For this reason, Assange has been subjected to more than a decade of vicious and uninterrupted persecution. He is currently in London’s Belmarsh maximum-security prison, where he recently contracted COVID-19. The UK High Court ruled late last year that he could be extradited to the US, even though the trial itself revealed that the CIA had plotted to kidnap and murder him.
Beyond his personal fate, there are two critical issues for workers in the defense of Assange.
First, the persecution of Assange is an attack on basic democratic rights, including the First Amendment right to free speech and a free press. Assange is guilty of telling us the truth, of exposing lies that the government does not want exposed.
The corporations and the wealthy in this country depend on a bought-and-paid-for media, which parrots whatever the government tells them. We experience this every day, when workers are denounced in the media for our efforts to secure a decent wage and a future for ourselves and our families. If an individual can be jailed and prosecuted for revealing true information, it sets a dangerous precedent that will be used against any worker who speaks out and opposes the demands of the corporations, aided and abetted by the union apparatus.
Second, Assange has helped to expose the reality of American militarism. How much money has been spent and how many lives lost, including of US soldiers, to wage endless war abroad? And for what? They throw around words like “democracy” and “freedom” to convince workers that these wars are worth the cost, but the reality is that they are about securing the domination of American corporations over the entire globe. More than 1 million Iraqis and Afghans have died to achieve this end.
The consequences of these wars are felt by all of us. More than $1 trillion is expended on the US military every year, while they claim that no money is available to provide decent living conditions for workers. One veteran kills him or herself every 80 minutes in the US, the consequence of post-traumatic stress disorder from what they saw and experienced at war. As soon as their bodies are no longer useful to the ruling class, veterans are essentially discarded by the government.
Now, the Biden administration is escalating a conflict with Russia that Biden himself said last week could lead to “Armageddon”—that is, the annihilation of the entire planet in nuclear war. And what is this all about? The government of Vladimir Putin represents the oligarchs in Russia, and the invasion of Ukraine must be opposed by all workers. However, this invasion was a response to the expansion of the US-led NATO military alliance up to Russia’s borders and the massive armament of Ukraine by the US.
Everything that the media tells us about this war is a lie. It is not a war about “democracy.” Ukraine’s government is comprised of neo-Nazis who praise people who helped carry out the Holocaust during World War Two. The oligarchs who run Ukraine recently passed a labor law eliminating the right of millions of workers to collectively bargain. You won’t hear that on the nightly news.
The same military-industrial complex that provoked the war in Iraq is escalating war against Russia today, but on an even larger and more dangerous scale. The US banks and corporations are fighting to control Eastern Europe at the expense of their Russian rivals. The US ruling elite is prepared to make the working class suffer greatly, and even sacrifice millions of lives, to expand the domination of American corporations.
Workers in the US and throughout the world have no interest in the war. We have the same interests as workers in Russia, Ukraine and in every country. We are exploited by the same corporations. We confront the same problems. We will suffer the same consequences if the catastrophe of nuclear war is not prevented.
Workers should know that the labor movement has a long and proud tradition of defending democratic rights, as these rights are critical for all workers. It should also be recalled that the UAW withdrew from the AFL-CIO in 1968 in opposition to the Vietnam War. The fact that the trade unions no longer even raise these critical issues is part of the same process that has led to their domination by a privileged apparatus that serves the interests of the companies.
For these reasons, it is critical that all workers take a stand in defense of Julian Assange. It will not be through appeals to the ruling elite and their politicians that his freedom will be secured, but only through our intervention. We must connect the fight to defend our interests with the defense of Assange, the defense of democratic rights, and opposition to war.
That's comedian Matteo Lane discussing trick or treat candy. Now let me note BIG SKY.
The young woman that's missing? Walter does have her. He's lied about that. And she and her boyfriend? They probably stole the money flashed in an earlier episode. Ren wasn't on but she referred two men to Tonya and they want to find the two people who stole the money.
Reba's Sunny is just a liar protecting her son -- even from her husband. It's a great role for an actress but Reba's no actress.
Cassie and Walter's brother Cormac found the dead hiker.
Meanwhile, Jenny and Beau solved a murder. Hopefully, that was not connected to a larger story. We didn't see Jenny's mom (Rosanna Arquette).
We did meet Beau's ex-wife. She's dark haired. I thought Jenny was going to comment on that. Instead, she just told Beau that he was still in love with his ex-wife (which he denied).
Jensen Ackles has been a really good addition to the show as Beau.
Thursday, October 13, 2022. No president named in Iraq as yet, we
look at fake ass Tulsi Gabbard and the stupidity of referring to her as
'anti-war,' we look at the sexist nature of some people and explain why
it's not a feminist's job to defend women under attack when these women
promote a pedophile.
I've noted this before but there's
an issue in the e-mails -- both the public and the private accounts --
so let me repeat: Posting doesn't mean I agree with something. It
doesn't even mean, if it's a video, that I've streamed it. There are
all sorts of opinions in the world and not everyone has to agree with
me. "BJG Calls Out Tulsi Gabbard on The Hill’s Rising / Michael Tracy vs Fiorella Isabel (Twitter Beef!)"
has a video by THE VANGUARD that's bothered a few people. I can tell
you it was posted because of the BJG aspect. I don't think Bri's
right. THE VANGUARD does and I was planning on addressing BJG and Tulsi
Gabbard today and thought I'd offer their take. We'd already posted
Bri's take and I'll probably include in this snapshot as well.
I
didn't stream the video. I've seen it this morning -- the second part
which is the part that's upset people. THE VANGUARD are two males, they
are both Anglo-White and they are proof that so-called 'identity
politics' are needed and necessary.
They're tickled pink by
Michael Tracy's latest sexist attacks. They're not aware enough to
grasp that these are sexist attacks. He's attacked this go round Tara
Reade and Fiorella Isabella. And they're chuckling and they're laughing
at it and they make asses of themselves in the process and flaunt their
stupidity.
When you're a White male, you can be stupid
with regards to Michael Tracey because it doesn't effect you. So
they're like ''damn, son." And just tickled by what he's done.
Why do we need identity politics? So that everyone's included.
2006
isn't that long ago. There is no reason in the world that I should
have been the only one calling out THE NEW YORK TIMES for the way they .
. . buried Coretta Scott King. She was a legend, she was the widow of
Dr. Martin Luther King. Instead of her getting her due, the paper went
on board with Gail Collins' friend -- a bad writer popular with
post-menapausal women.
Now I never liked what Wendy
Wasserman tried to pretend were plays. But I had no need to say it.
She was unimportant and, in the years since, she's proven to be
unimportant. Jamie Lee Curtis loves Wendy. Loves her so much she
couldn't stop talking about Wendy's death. The unimportant dead
playwright had nothing on Coretta -- yes, Coretta was a friend. But
Coretta was also a historical person, a legend.
Yet piece after piece, column after column was done on Wendy. Even an editorial was done on Wendy.
It was everything that people mean when they talk about 'White feminism.'
I
had to scream, beg and guilt trip to get Coretta mentioned in a column
-- and that was weeks after she died and that was a mention -- not even
the focus of the whole column.
In what world is this White writer as significant as Coretta?
In no such world.
By
the way, long before Oliver Stone concluded Sy Hersh wasn't
trustworthy, Coretta and I already came to that conclusion and purposely
dropped out of an action because he was spying on it. Oliver jokes --
or maybe he's serious -- that Seymour is CIA. We didn't think that. We
thought it was a whorish reporter who would go back to his CIA sources
with anything in the hopes that they would feed him something in
exchange that he could write up. Sy's going to pop back in, give it a
minute or two.
But that's why identity politics
matter. It is not an equal playing field. Some failed writer who had
no success outside of NYC is applauded by Gail Collins who misuses her
position at the paper and Coretta is ignored.
And we
shouldn't have to be the only site calling it out but drop back to that
week of coverage and you'll see we were the only ones to say something
-- and we did so daily.
The two hosts of THE VANGUARD are not
idiots. But they have failed repeatedly to overcome their limited scope
and to see the world beyond themselves.
Michael
Tracey is a sexist pig. We noted that here and, since the math is
always trusted, we made it clear when we noted how he tore apart Kamala
Harris when she dropped out of the race for the Democratic Party's
presidential nomination.
What Michael did to Tara Reade was a sexist attack and so was what he did to Fiorella.
Bob
Somerby's learned -- after years of critiques here -- that he will be
held accountable. He does -- He did the same thing Tracey does -- he
critiques men and he rips apart women.
I'm not the tone
police. I own no pearls to clutch. You want to go to town on Kamala,
I'm not going to be bothered unless I start noticing that you use kid
gloves when it comes to men. Bob loved to go after Kit, for example.
And she wasn't the only one. And he'd tear them apart. Men who did the
same things he accused the women of? They would get a pass and they
could be redeemed.
You started to grasp, if you paid attention, that something more was going on.
And it's the same with Tracey.
Some people e-mailing -- even some community members -- argued that it's my role to defend Tara and Fiorealla.
When prosecutors were successful in moving to unseal his New York files
and presented evidence from those arrests too, Ritter steadfastly
maintained that he was aware, in both instances, that he was talking to
undercover cops. He knew his online activities needed to be stopped,
Ritter said, so he arranged to meet the officers involved, playing along
with the notion that they were teenage girls, so that he could get
himself arrested and be forced to face his demons. This would have been a
more persuasive defense, perhaps, had one of the arresting detectives
not testified that Ritter, upon seeing the police lying in wait for him,
tried to evade capture by slamming down the gas pedal and jumping a
curb, T.J. Hooker-style.
I love that story, don't you?
How
many times has Scott Ritter been arrested now for seeking out girls,
not women, online for sex? When Bully Boy Bush occupied the White
House, Pig Ritter would insist those arrests (plural) were political
targeting because he spoke out against the Iraq War and that there was
nothing to them. There was everything to them because they were true.
Barack Obama becomes president and Pig Ritter loses his excuse when he's
busted yet again and this time they don't do a slap on the wrist as
they did more than once previously. This time he has to go court. And
he's convicted. And he serves time in prison.
Somehow, he's being propped up now by members of the left and 'left.'
Not
by me. I called that piece of garbage out and pointed out that if you
were promoting him, you were promoting assaults on girls. I pointed out
that his lies were lies and, if Amy Goodman continued to promote him,
she should accept any blame the next time he was arrested. Now Goodman
grasped that and Ritter no longer appeared on her show. That was before
his last known arrest on this -- the one that sent him to prison.
I
have no sympathy for Jimmy Dore, Danny Haiphong, et al, who think you
put a pedophile on your show, you applaud him and talk about how great
he is, and never let you audience know that he is a convicted pedophile,
that's he has had to register as a sex offender. I have no sympathy
for them.
In their limited scope, they don't think
about what happens if some young girl watches their show and is led to
believe that Pig Ritter is a great guy and then she becomes the target
of his pervy desires.
Fiorella put him on. I believe
my response to that was to post that video with a note that he was a
registered sex offender, a convicted pedophile and that if you were
going to have him on your show then you needed to note that. None of
them do.
After that, when he came back on CONVO COUCH, we never noted it again.
I'm not here to promote a man who is danger to young girls -- such a danger that he was sent to prison for it.
Sy
Hersh, I told you we'd be coming back, destroyed his own reputation He
went around the country with Pig Boy. That's why THE NEW YORKER lost
interest in publishing Sy. I was corrected on that when I was
questioning why he had to publish in THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS. It was
because Sy had joined at the hip with Scott Ritter and THE NEW YORKER
had warned him against that. Then Pig Boy got convicted and sent to
prison. That's why THE NEW YORKER lost interest in Sy -- and he was
told that but he didn't tell the world that, did he?
It ruined his repuation.
What's
the guy's name? Seth Rich? Is that his name? Sy thought he had some
story there -- all he had was the closing shot of his career. He's seen
as nuts now and I don't shed a tear for him. He chose to promote a
pedophile, he can live with the damage.
And Fiorella
did as well. I'm not shedding tears for her. Tara likes to pretend
she's all about defending women and girls but Tara has never called out a
convicted pedophile named Scott Ritter.
It is not my
job to defend every woman. Being a feminist does not mean that I have
to. It especially does not require me to defend them when they are
enabling someone like Scott Ritter.
They are on their own.
Now Briahna Joy Gray.
Everything
Bri says may be true. That's not my problem with her statements. My
problem is she doesn't say enough. Tulsi Gabbard announced this week
that she was leaving the Democratic Party. Bri is appalled because
Tulsi's statements may make it seem that the GOP is the party of
anti-war because of Tulsi's brave stand because of --
Cut the crap. It is appalling that men like Jimmy Dore lie to their viewers and insist Tulsi was some great anti-war voice.
She
wasn't. She had no concern for the Iraqi people -- a fact evident in
her 2020 campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
Now she wants to call Joe Biden all these things.
And I'm not having it from fake ass Tulsi.
In the final debate that candidate Tulsi made the stage for, we
were all expecting the big showdown. This was anti-war Tulsi. She'd
played that anti-war arm chair zealot over and over. And the war, she'd
tell voters over and over, was her biggest issue. It effected
everything -- including how much money we had to spend on other issues
-- needed issues.
Bill de Blasio and others had
confronted Joe Biden during the debates of the candidates for the Democratic
Party's presidential nomination. Tulsi hadn't. And she had an excuse,
she wasn't on the stage with him. The field was so crowded back then
that they had to divide them up into groups.
So she'd
go on MSNBC, for example, on June 26, 2019 and slam Joe for his actions
regarding Iraq but she wasn't on stage with him.
But
Wednesday, July 31st, she was finally on stage with Joe Biden. And big
talking Tulsi, whose big issue was the war, was on stage with Joe Biden
who voted for the Iraq, War, who did a pre-war hearing that was stacked
with war supporters though Joe tried to pretend it was fair and
balanced, the man who voted over and over to keep funding the war, the
man who defended it over and over (despite his 2019 lie that he had
turned on the wr the minute bombs started dropping). Here was Tulsi's
chance to finally take the fight to Joe.
It was going to be an epic throwdown, right?
Wrong.
We recounted it at length and repeatedly over and over. For example, see the next day's snapshot.
Joe
Biden was on the ropes. He was struggling and he could have been
eliminated that night. If Tulsi had done the job she should have, he
could have been out of the primary and someone else would have had the nomination.
But she refused to do a thing.
Read
the transcript -- or read the snapshot -- because Tulsi went after
Kamala and Kamala was no threat. She was never going to get the
nomination. She had no large base of support. Most women did not rally
to her. African-Americans in the south did not relate to her.
But Tulsi used her time and her ammo on Kamala. Not on Joe.
This was her chance to show that she was anti-war. And she refused to do so.
If
you missed that debate, you may join the liars and insist that she was
making statements and -- B.S. That's a damn lie. Jake Tapper was a
moderator. He specifically called on her regarding Joe Biden and the Iraq War. And Jake was
puzzled -- watch his face -- by her remarks which were rescuing Joe and
excusing his actions.
He looks like he's
wondering if she understood the question. So he then goes back to her
for a second time and is more specific. And Tulsi again takes a pass.
That
night, the next day and through the weekend, Tulsi shows up where ever
she could on TV and repeatedly insisted that Joe said his vote was wrong
and that was good enough for her.
His actions
went far beyond just his initial vote but Tulsi buried that in hre
comments and buried Joe's Iraq issues for the press. When the
self-promoted anti-war candidate told the American people and the press
that Joe had nothing to apologize for or make amends for that everything
was fine? There was no longer a story there. The media wants
conflict. And it wants conflict is can hide behind to pretend to be
objective. Had Tulsi held Joe accountable on the stage, the issue of
the Iraq War would have been forced into the conversation by the
national press.
.
Tulsi
is one of the reasons Joe Biden is in the White House and not Bernie Sanders or any other Democrat.
She's a fake ass piece of trash and she showed the world that at the debate.
Bri offers a lot of words but she also offers Tulsi as anti-war and she's surprised that now Tulsi --
No. She's not anti-war. She proved it when she gave Joe a pass on the Iraq War.
Joe Biden incorrectly described himself as the father of a man who "lost his life in Iraq" at a speech in Colorado on Wednesday.
Speaking
near the town of Vail, Biden designated Camp Hale, a 436-square-mile
site where the 10th Mountain Division were trained during World War II,
as a national monument.
"American soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division scaled that
1800-foot cliff, at night, caught the Germans by surprise, captured key
positions, and broke through the Germans' defensive line at a pivotal
point in the war," the president stated before mentioning Beau. "Just
imagine — I mean it sincerely — I say this as a father of a man who won
the Bronze Star, the conspicuous service medal, and lost his life in
Iraq. Imagine the courage, the daring, and the genuine sacrifice —
genuine sacrifice they all made."
The White House did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Biden was slammed for claiming that his son, who died aged 46 of brain
cancer, lost his life in Iraq. The president made the remark while
announcing the Camp Hale Continental Divide a national
monument, Washington Examiner reported.
Thanks, Tulsi. It could have been Bernie, it could have been anyone. Generic Democrat could have carried the 2020 election.
In
Iraq today, there is hope that the Parliament might be able to finally
name a president. But there are, at best, distractions. REUTERS notes, "Nine rockets landed on Thursday around the Iraqi capital's Green Zone,
home to government buildings and foreign missions, the military said,
shortly before parliament began a session to elect a new president amid a
protracted political deadlock."
OCTOBER 7, 2022 — The Haitian people have been protesting for months against ongoing foreign occupation and U.S. support for a corrupt government that was not elected by a popular vote or mandate. In the last weeks, popular protests and uprisings have intensified, but the U.S. and its allies have responded by claiming all the disruption in the country amounts to “gang violence” that needs to be quelled with increased foreign intervention, on top of the ongoing BINUH occupation. In addition to the ongoing UN occupation, nine thousand Dominican soldiers are stationed on the border with Haiti and videos have recently surfaced of Dominican military forces entering Haitian territory. Given the Dominican Republic’s history of anti-Haitian sentiment and violence, this is particularly concerning.
Responding to these circumstances, on September 30, The Black Alliance for Peace delivered an open letter to CARICOM (the Caribbean Community), urging the 11-nation group to support Haitian sovereignty and oppose further calls for foreign intervention. BAP reminded the leaders of CARICOM that the situation in Haiti could not be reduced to a sensationalist assertion that so-called gangs were behind the popular uprisings on the island:
"...the latest demonstrations are a direct result of two factors. First, they are a response to the everyday economic misery caused by rising inflation, especially through the staggering increase in the price of fuel. Second, they are part of a long history of demands for the end of foreign meddling in Haitian affairs, especially via the installation and maintenance of an unelected and illegitimate government by the Core Group, of which the United Nations is a part."
BAP member Netfa Freeman delivering open letter to CARICOM to the Embassy of the Republic of Suriname
BAP member Rebecca Bonhomme delivering open letter to CARICOM to the embassy of Antigua and Barbuda
BAP urges popular mobilization against continued U.S. intervention in Haiti and in support of Haitian sovereignty. This Sunday, October 9 at 4pm EST in Washington, DC, leaders from 87+ Haitian-American, faith, and human rights organizations will convene at Black Lives Matter Plaza and march to the White House “to demand the Biden Administration stop propping up a corrupt regime that has plunged Haiti into chaos, and to let Haitians decide their own future, including creating a legitimate Haitian-led transition back to democracy and security”. We encourage all who can to show up and support the Haitian people to decide their own future.
The Black Alliance for Peace has been consistent. The crisis of Haitian democracy is the result of the colonialist interventions of the U.S. and other Western powers. As we said in our communication with CARICOM:
"BAP absolutely stands against any foreign armed intervention in Haiti, and continues to demand an end to the unending meddling in Haitian affairs by the United States and Western powers. We call for the dissolution of the imperialist Core Group, an end to Western support for the unelected and unaccountable puppet government of Ariel Henry, and for the respect of Haitian sovereignty."
We say No to Occupation. Yes to Self-Determination.
Banner photo: Canada Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly, U.S. Sec of State Anthony Blinken, and OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro in a meeting regarding Haiti. (courtesy of @Almagro_OEA2015 on Twitter)
