Blog Betty (Thomas Friedman is a Great Man was an online novel)

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

FRINGE season three

FRINGE was a really great show. I think it ended far too soon. Season one was an interesting series but each season after got better. I think season three is when the show really hit its stride.

I'd forgotten how amazing season three was until I started watching it this week on IMDB TV (on AMAZON). They could have made three seasons out of season three. The stories are that rich and complex. Peter trying to get home.

Take the two scenes where Peter is with his mother on the Walternate universe. Those could have been expanded to two full episodes. Time and again, these moments deliver so much.

One of the things I really liked about the show is that Peter and Olivia became involved. I like that it happened naturally. A lot of times when two leads have chemistry, they string it along and string it along in that will-they-or-won't-they tease. Peter and Olivia's relationship seems natural and not rushed and that's why we care so much about them.

I still don't understand why FOX killed off the show. They needed it. It was a show that people watched and will continue to watch for some time. It's not unlike STAR TREK which NBC killed off but the show refused to die. It was a time of stupid when FOX axed FRINGE. A few years later, THE CW would axe NIKITA and that was a similar mistake.

Is there a show like either FRINGE or NIKITA on right now? I really can't think of one. Maybe that's because the fall season's only half-started and won't offer that much? Maybe. But I really don't see efforts being made to make involving shows. NEXT may turn out to be involving but right now it's just another show starring way too many men and one woman and, most important, a show that would rather be confusing than satisfying.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Wednesday, October 21, 2020. Mustafa learns how unpopular of a prime minister he is in Iraq while, in the US, Joe Biden goes back into hiding.

Starting with Glenn Greenwald.

We've made many of the points Glenn does and they're strong points. But one point we haven't made that he makes above is the collaboration between journalists and the spy agencies (including former spooks) to spread propaganda domestically.

Joe Biden took himself off the campaign trail on Saturday allowing him to avoid the press and allowing his whores to work overtime. Sam Seder is a damn dirty whore. Janeane Garofalo may forgive his back stabbing but no one else should. A failed comic who flamed out at one audition after another (he even failed at his audition to play Jim's brother on LIFE ACCORDING TO JIM), he got his break finally when he got to be her co-host on THE MAJORITY REPORT and he quickly stabbed her in the back. He had a lot of help with that. Hey, Bill Scherr, you still pretending that you have ethics?

Those of us who listened to the pro-homophobic interview that you and Sam conducted with Simon Rosenberg would beg to differ. Whatever else she's done, Rachel Maddow stood up to Simon Rosenberg. Rosenberg was preaching homophobia and pro-Iraq War and Sam and Bill Scherr just coddled him. The anger? That was saved after the interview when Sam lashed out at the listeners who had openly called him a whore on the show's official message board.

Again, Rachel asked him hard questions and didn't let him spew his homophobia. Sam and Bill were happy to whore for a New Democrat (the new name, at that time, for the DLC-ers). There was no excuse for the soft-balls and whoring that Sam and Bill offered. Not only had Rachel already demonstrated how to stand up to Simon but it's also true that the day before the interview, we posted a series of problems that Simon should address. And Sam got very mad at all the people on the message board posting parts of that throughout his soft ball, hand holding with Simon Rosenberg.

Sam was also "Ad Nags" which goes to what a damn coward he is. Ad Nags was a parody of NYT reporter Adam Nagourney. It was the only thing funny that Sam had ever done. But THE NEW YORK TIMES complained to AIR AMERICA RADIO, threatened to pull their advertising and Sam caved.

Sam's a whore. I have no idea why RING OF FIRE employs him (especially considering the trash he talks about RFK Jr.). But they do or they distribute him. And he's using his tiny post to whore for Joe Biden. It would be sad if it weren't so predictable. Sam won't deal with the e-mails or what they say. He'll just spew lie after lie trying to discredit them. Because he's a whore.

When you see people lying, you shouldn't cheer them on. You shouldn't think, "Oh, this is great for our side." It's not great for our side. It's part of the David Brock-ization of the Democratic Party where we've become as appalling and disgusting as the GOP was in the 80s and 90s.

Sam Seder is continuing his long, long history as a whore for powerful Democrats. He's not there to tell the truth, he's not there to help your life be better. He exists solely to promote centrist Democrats and to lie for them. (He also exists to lie about himself but that's a story for another time.)

There are real issues here. Corruption is a real issue. Joe Biden should be answering basic questions (instead of hiding, yet again). The American people deserve to have those questions asked and answered -- and deserve to have the claims investigated. Instead, whores like Sam Seder run interference to try to bury the issues that should be raised -- while pretending to give a damn about free speech and about democracy and about blah blah blah.

He's just a dirty whore. Not unlike Heather Schwedel who is a sad, sad person. Looking at photos of Hunter in the throes of an active addiction, Heather's rush was to drool online about how 'sexy' he was.

Heather would like to be a feminist. She'd also like to lose weight. Neither is happening. Feminists don't glorify men who refuse to admit that they are a father -- men who have to be taken to court to force them to admit that they are a father, men who are dead beat dads who don't paid child support until the court orders it (and threatens a messy public hearing). Heather's not a feminist.

I hope she finds her type of man in an NA meeting -- keep going back, Heather, he comes if you jerk it.

Sunday night, we noted this:

Back to social media, a big story in Iraq this weekend has been a woman apparently throwing her two children to their deaths off the Imamas Bridge into the Tigris River. Surveillance cameras caught the alleged act and video of it has been all over Arabic social media.

For two drive-bys to the public e-mail account, it's not a made up story. There's the video that was captured by the surveillance camera.

This was a huge story Saturday and Sunday on Arabic social media. It's the sort of story that gets no play from the US media because the US media -- guilty dog that they are -- wants not part in covering Iraq. They helped create the tragedy by promoting the rush to war and the false claims and outright lies of the Bully Boy Bush administration. They continued to lie in the early years of the war to keep it going. They only got honest when public opinion shifted. Now? They act as though Iraq doesn't even exist. To acknowledge Iraq now might mean people noticing that all those promises to go back and look at those stories and to offer something more than those 2004 mini-culpas never took place.

On Iraq, we'll note this Tweet:

@AngelaMerkeICDU
  has met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in Berlin, confirming that Germany 
 will continue to support Iraq as part of the anti-IS coalition. 
#germany #Deutschland #Iraq 

Source & Image - Deutsche Welle

5:08 AM · Oct 21, 2020

While he visits Germany, France and the UK, Iraq struggles. THE JORDAN TIMES notes:

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi is facing a pressing challenge that threatens to push Iraq once more into a sectarian furnace. He needs the political will and the means to isolate and neutralise tens of renegade pro-Iran militias. Two events that took place this week underline the limited capabilities of the federal government and its military and security arms. The first was the burning on Saturday of the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in central Baghdad by loyalists to the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) while the second was the gruesome execution of 12 citizens in Salahuddin province, also on Saturday, allegedly a pro-Iran militia. Sixteen other victims remain unaccounted for.

The kidnapping and execution of the victims is said to be in retaliation for the killing a few days before of a member of a pro-Iran militia in an attack blamed on [ISIS].

The massacre has focused attention on the presence of pro-Iran militias in liberated Sunni provinces and their refusal to allow tens of thousands of displaced people, mostly Sunnis, from returning to their homes. The case underlines the limitations of the federal government in Baghdad in extending its authority over a number of provinces that the PMU had entered to clear them from [ISIS] terrorist groups between 2014 and 2017.

Mustafa should be at home, in Iraq, addressing the many problems. Instead, as many observers have noted, he's now trying to be more than a one-term prime minister -- despite earlier claims. This trip to Europe is about building up his image. And the Iraqi people suffer. As he realizes how unpopular he is and how so many are opposed to him, Mustafa gets desperate to retain power. REUTERS notes:

It was a series of intercepted phone calls on a tense night in June that made Iraq’s new prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi fully realise how few friends he had.

During one call, a senior Iraqi leader with strong ties to Iran instructed the security chief for Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, which hosts government buildings and foreign embassies, not to stand in the way of militiamen who were storming the area, two Iraqi security officials said.

The militiamen were angry at the arrest of comrades accused of firing anti-U.S. rockets. During the hours-long standoff, the militia detained several members of a U.S.-trained counter-terrorism force, according to the security officials and two militia sources.

On the June 25 call, the leader with ties to Iran warned the Green Zone security chief, Shihab al-Khiqani, that “a clash would open the gates of hell” between the militias and the forces guarding the area, according to one of the security officials, who viewed a transcript of the call. The second security official and the two militia sources corroborated that call and said Khiqani was told by militia commanders in other phone conversations that night to avoid any standoff with the paramilitaries.

In other news, At Human Rights Watch, Belkis Wille observes:

A well-known TV station in Baghdad was torched by protesters after it broadcast a music concert during Ashura, a Shia holy day which was underway at the time. The offices of Dijlah TV station, which has links to Jamal Karbouli, a Sunni politician from Anbar, were badly damaged in the incident, which took place on August 31. But how have Iraqi officials since responded to this dangerous act? Not by investigating those who set the fire, but by issuing an arrest warrant for Karbouli, claiming the broadcast offended religious views under article 372 of Iraq’s Penal Code.

Meanwhile, three Dijlah staffers told Human Rights Watch that they have received numerous threats during phone calls and on social media, and that armed men came looking for them. The threats have now forced all of them to resign from their jobs, via public announcements posted on Facebook. But even that was not enough to stop the threats, and all three have now also fled their homes.

One employee said that after the governor of Diwaniya told government departments “not to deal with” Dijlah staff, he could no longer rely on local security forces to keep him safe. In Wassit, where another of the staffers lived, the governor called on security forces to prevent anyone with a Dijlah badge from reporting from the governorate. A total of six colleagues from Dijlah have now reportedly gone into hiding. The journalists’ fears for their safety are not unfounded - four reporters have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of 2020, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Earlier this month, several weeks after Human Rights Watch released a report on the growing number of prosecution of journalists under defamation and incitement laws in the country, the Iraqi embassy in Beirut finally responded, saying that the government had formed a ministerial committee to “look into cases of assaults against journalists” back in 2016. The committee was still in operation, the embassy said, but did not provide evidence of any reports or other outputs by the body.

Over the last few years Human Rights Watch has interviewed over a dozen journalists who were victims of violent attacks, including by state forces, and not a single one of them knew of this committee or had ever been contacted by it. If it exists, it is clearly not taking its job seriously. After the public torching of a TV station, what more needs to happen for Iraqi authorities to take these attacks seriously?

The following sites updated:

Monday, October 19, 2020

Bennu

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Everybody but Bo Erikson."

Okay, this is a NASA video.

That's Bennu. Bennu is an asteroid. NASA notes:

Now, thanks to laser altimetry data and high-resolution imagery from OSIRIS-REx, we can take a tour of Bennu’s remarkable terrain.

Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This video is public domain and can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio.

1. IT’S VERY, VERY DARK...

Bennu is classified as a B-type asteroid, which means it contains a lot of carbon in and along with its various minerals. Bennu’s carbon content creates a surface on the asteroid that reflects about four percent of the light that hits it — and that’s not a lot. For contrast, the solar system’s brightest planet, Venus, reflects around 65 percent of incoming sunlight, and Earth reflects about 30 percent. Bennu is a carbonaceous asteroid that hasn’t undergone drastic, composition-altering change, meaning that on and below its deeper-than-pitch-black surface are chemicals and rocks from the birth of the solar system.

This mosaic image of asteroid Bennu is composed of 12 PolyCam images collected on Dec. 2, 2018 by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from a range of 15 miles (24 km).

Credits: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

2. ...AND VERY, VERY OLD.

Bennu has been (mostly) undisturbed for billions of years. Not only is it conveniently close and carbonaceous, it is also so primitive that scientists calculated it formed in the first 10 million years of our solar system’s history — over 4.5 billion years ago. Thanks to the Yarkovsky effect -- the slight push created when the asteroid absorbs sunlight and re-emits that energy as heat -- and gravitational tugs from other celestial bodies, it has drifted closer and closer to Earth from its likely birthplace: the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.

3. BENNU IS A “RUBBLE-PILE” ASTEROID — BUT DON’T LET THE NAME TRICK YOU.

Is Bennu space trash or scientific treasure? While “rubble pile” sounds like an insult, it’s actually a real astronomy classification. Rubble-pile asteroids like Bennu are celestial bodies made from lots of pieces of rocky debris that gravity compressed together. This kind of detritus is produced when an impact shatters a much larger body (for Bennu, it was a parent asteroid around 60 miles [about 100 km] wide). Bennu, for contrast, is about as tall as the Empire State Building. It likely took just a few weeks for these shards of space wreckage to coalesce into the rubble-pile that is Bennu. Bennu is full of holes inside, with 20 to 40 percent of its volume being empty space. The asteroid is actually in danger of flying apart, if it starts to rotate much faster or interacts too closely with a planetary body.

4. ASTEROIDS MAY HARBOR HINTS ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF ALL LIFE ON EARTH...

Bennu is a primordial artifact preserved in the vacuum of space, orbiting among planets and moons and asteroids and comets. Because it is so old, Bennu could be made of material containing molecules that were present when life first formed on Earth. All Earth life forms are based on chains of carbon atoms bonded with oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and other elements. However, organic material like the kind scientists hope to find in a sample from Bennu doesn’t necessarily always come from biology. It would, though, further scientists’ search to uncover the role asteroids rich in organics played in catalyzing life on Earth.

5. ...BUT ALSO PLATINUM AND GOLD!

Extraterrestrial jewelry sounds great, and Bennu is likely to be rich in platinum and gold compared to the average crust on Earth. Although most aren’t made almost entirely of solid metal (but asteroid 16 Psyche may be!), many asteroids do contain elements that could be used industrially in lieu of Earth’s finite resources. Closely studying this asteroid will give answers to questions about whether asteroid mining during deep-space exploration and travel is feasible. Although rare metals attract the most attention, water is likely to be the most important resource in Bennu. Water (two hydrogen atoms bound to an oxygen atom) can be used for drinking or separated into its components to get breathable air and rocket fuel. Given the high cost of transporting material into space, if astronauts can extract water from an asteroid for life support and fuel, the cosmic beyond is closer than ever to being human-accessible.

6. SUNLIGHT CAN CHANGE THE ASTEROID’S ENTIRE TRAJECTORY.

Gravity isn’t the only factor involved with Bennu’s destiny. The side of Bennu facing the Sun gets warmed by sunlight, but a day on Bennu lasts just 4 hours and 17.8 minutes, so the part of the surface that faces the Sun shifts constantly. As Bennu continues to rotate, it expels this heat, which gives the asteroid a tiny push towards the Sun by about 0.18 miles (approximately 0.29 kilometers) per year, changing its orbit.

7. THERE IS A SMALL CHANCE THAT BENNU WILL IMPACT EARTH LATE IN THE NEXT CENTURY.

The NASA-funded Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research team discovered Bennu in 1999. NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office continues to track near-Earth objects (NEOs), especially those like Bennu that will come within about 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers) of Earth’s orbit and are classified as potentially hazardous objects. Between the years 2175 and 2199, the chance that Bennu will impact Earth is only 1-in-2,700, but scientists still don’t want to turn their backs on the asteroid. Bennu swoops through the solar system on a path that scientists have confidently predicted, but they will refine their predictions with the measurement of the Yarkovsky Effect by OSIRIS-REx and with future observations by astronomers.

8. SAMPLING BENNU WILL BE HARDER THAN WE THOUGHT.

Early Earth-based observations of the asteroid suggested it had a smooth surface with a regolith (the top layer of loose, unconsolidated material) composed of particles less than an inch (a couple of centimeters) large — at most. As the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was able to take pictures with higher resolution, it became evident that sampling Bennu would be far more hazardous than what was previously believed: new imagery of Bennu’s surface show that it’s mostly covered in massive boulders, not small rocks. OSIRIS-REx was designed to be navigated within an area on Bennu of nearly 2,000 square yards (meters), roughly the size of a parking lot with 100 spaces. Now, it must maneuver to a safe spot on Bennu’s rocky surface within a constraint of less than 100 square yards, an area of about five parking spaces.

Captured on Aug. 11, 2020 during the second rehearsal of the OSIRIS-REx mission’s sample collection event, this series of images shows the SamCam imager’s field of view as the NASA spacecraft approaches asteroid Bennu’s surface. The rehearsal brought the spacecraft through the first three maneuvers of the sampling sequence to a point approximately 131 feet (40 meters) above the surface, after which the spacecraft performed a back-away burn.

Credits: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

Full story

9. BENNU WAS NAMED AFTER AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DEITY.

Bennu was named in 2013 by a nine-year-old boy from North Carolina who won the Name that Asteroid! competition, a collaboration between the mission, the Planetary Society, and the LINEAR asteroid survey that discovered Bennu. Michael Puzio won the contest by suggesting that the spacecraft’s Touch-and-Go Sample Mechanism (TAGSAM) arm and solar panels resemble the neck and wings in illustrations of Bennu, whom ancient Egyptians usually depicted as a gray heron. Bennu is the ancient Egyptian deity linked with the Sun, creation and rebirth — Puzio also noted that Bennu is the living symbol of Osiris. The myth of Bennu suits the asteroid itself, given that it is a primitive object that dates back to the creation of the Solar System. Themes of origins and rebirth are part of this asteroid’s story. Birds and bird-like creatures are also symbolic of rebirth, creation and origins in various ancient myths.

10. BENNU IS STILL SURPRISING US!

The spacecraft’s navigation camera observed that Bennu was spewing out streams of particles a couple of times each week. Bennu apparently is not only a rare active asteroid (only a handful of them have been as of yet identified), but possibly with Ceres explored by NASA’s Dawn mission, among the first of its kind that humanity has observed from a spacecraft. More recently, the mission team discovered that sunlight can crack rocks on Bennu, and that it has pieces of another asteroid scattered across its surface. More pieces will be added to Bennu’s cosmic puzzle as the mission progresses, and each brings the solar system’s evolutionary history into sharper and sharper focus.

This view of asteroid Bennu ejecting particles from its surface on January 19, 2019 was created by combining two images taken on board NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Other image processing techniques were also applied, such as cropping and adjusting the brightness and contrast of each image.

Credits: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin

Full story

Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator, and the University of Arizona also leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the spacecraft and is providing flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, visit:

www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Monday, October 19, 2020. Moqtada on the ropes, Iraqis prepare to take the protests to another level, a detail I share with Rudy G, and much more.

Follow DSA's International Committee on social media and online: https://www.facebook.com/DSA.Intl.Com... https://twitter.com/DSA_Intl_Comm http://international.dsausa.org/

Saturday, the Democratic Socialist of America's International Committee held a teach-in on Iraq focusing on the year long protests that have been taking place. The protests are expected to grow more intense on October 25th. Sarhang Hamaseed of the United States Institute of Peace offers:

Many of the grievances propelling protesters into the streets last October have yet to be addressed and in some cases have become more complicated. While the movement has lost momentum in terms of number of protesters on the street and fragmented some, its spirit and key pressure factors remain. With considerable public support from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme Shia cleric, the protest movement managed to make important, but provisional gains:

The protests signified a deep societal desire for change, primarily represented by youth. The youth took their peaceful resistance to the religious space during Shia religious ceremonies and rituals like Arabaeen, which commemorates the 40th day of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. These Iraqi youth are presenting themselves as representing Imam Hussein’s symbolism of standing up to oppression and injustice in an effort to supplant Islamic religious parties’ legitimacy.
The movement forced Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to resign last November, paving the way for Mustafa al-Kadhimi to become the new premier. Despite many obstacles and exasperation with the slow pace of change, Kadhimi has shown he is serious in wanting to address the grievances of the people and the international community.
Last fall, the Council of Representatives voted on a new election law, which was meant to break the control of the traditional powerholders. A key component of that law remains to be finished, requiring an annex that would set the electoral districts—a contentious issue in its own right. How those districts will be set up will have significant implications for the balance of power within and among Iraq’s communities, political parties, and beyond.
Judges have been appointed as commissioners in Iraq’s High Electoral Commission (IHEC) to replace the commission that was perceived as representing partisan and confessional interests. However, the IHEC’s bureaucracy has legacy issues and other concerns that are yet to be addressed.
Kadhimi has set June 6, 2021 as the date for early elections.

These changes have kept the international community engaged—even those who thought Iraq was a completely lost cause. Sistani met with the U.N. special representative in Iraq twice, and his most recent statement in September stressed, among other things, the importance of monitoring and supervision of the election in coordination with the U.N.

The protest movement is gearing up for a strong showing on October 25, a key anniversary date. However, there is skepticism that they will be able to muster up the kind of crowds that they had last year. That’s because of several factors: continued violence against the protesters and assassination of civic leaders; coronavirus restrictions; fragmentation among the protesters, some wanting to give the Kadhimi government a chance while others are skeptical that protests will yield results; and concerns that political parties and armed groups have infiltrated or coopted the movement or parts of it. Although there is a perception the movement has lost momentum, Iraq’s financial crises could once again ignite mass protests—and political parties may exploit them to undermine Kadhimi, if not fully aim to unseat him.

Alex MacDonald (MIDDLE EAST EYE) offers:

In the year since Iraqis took to the streets en masse to protest against unemployment, corruption, foreign interference and a creaking political system, the country has seen major upheavals and societal change - but not necessarily of the sort that the anti-government protesters were calling for.

The period since the beginning of the demonstrations on 1 October 2019 has seen the ousting of prime ministers and prime ministerial candidates, an international proxy conflict spilling over into assassinations, and the outbreak of a deadly pandemic which has pushed Iraq's healthcare system to the limit.

In all the chaos, there has been little attention paid to the demands put forward by Iraq's activists, who continue to demonstrate where they can despite being hobbled by the coronavirus and despite the deaths of more 600 of their number since the start of their campaign.

Ali Khrypt, a Baghdad-based activist who had already been involved in anti-government protests prior to October 2019, said there had been very little in the way of real political change in the last year.

"In my opinion, it did not achieve anything in terms of political reality," he told Middle East Eye.

"As for the street and the Iraqi youth, it had a great impact. In the past, a small group was rallying to the regime and the devastation that befell the country after the fall of [Saddam Hussein's] regime - but now every Iraqi home and every young woman and young man rejects and knows what the mistakes are and criticises the work of government."

THE GLOBE POST notes:

The nationwide demonstrations which broke out on October 1, 2019 spiraled into a decentralized movement slamming unemployment, poor public services, endemic corruption, and a political class more loyal to Iran or the US than to Iraqi citizens.

It led to the shock November 1 resignation of then-premier Adel Abdel Mahdi, succeeded after months of political deadlock by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi, who pledged to integrate protesters’ demands into his transitional government’s plans.

But on the ground, little has been achieved.

Kadhemi has set an early parliamentary vote for June 6, 2021, nearly a year ahead of schedule.

“Protesters wanted early elections and a new electoral law. We’re doing that,” Abdelhussein Hindawi, Kadhemi’s advisor on elections, told AFP.

But while parliament approved a new voting law in December, essential points including the size of electoral districts and whether candidates would run independently or on lists have yet to be agreed by lawmakers.

And despite repeated claims he has no political ambitions and would only serve as a transitional premier, Kadhemi himself appears to be preparing for an electoral fight.

Several MPs and members of rival parties told AFP the prime minister’s advisors are scouting candidates for the 2021 elections, hoping he could secure a new term in office.

Shi'ite cleric and one-time movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr lost his power and influence (beyond his cult) as a result of his inability to stick to one position or another with regards to the protesters. After supporting them for months, he turned on them and seemed shocked to discover that his word wasn't law. The protests remained popular. At which point, he said he supported them but had conditions -- including that males and female not protest together. The protesters responded by not just ignoring his edict but by mocking it. Moqtada blew his influence. He's just another Shi'ite cleric in a country with hundreds ARAB WEEKLY is one of the few outlets to note the waning of Moqtada:

Sadr had hesitated a lot before siding with the protest movement that began in October 2019. Activists said that the Sadrists, the moniker given to Sadr’s followers, did not join in the protests until they realised that they were overwhelming; so they jumped on the wagon of the protests for fear to see their place on the street disappear.

During the months-long series of demonstrations, the relationship between the protesters and the popular current affiliated with al-Sadr was erratic at best. The two parties converged repeatedly at some points but also diverted repeatedly at some others. This relationship, however, witnessed a clear turning point when the United States killed the commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Soleimani, and the field commander of the Popular Mobilisation Forces, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a raid near Baghdad airport in early 2020.

While the protesters welcomed the US action and saw in it an opportunity to reduce Tehran’s dominance of political, security and economic decisions in Iraq, Sadr and his followers sided with Iran and participated in a partisan demonstration demanding the condemnation of the United States, before the representatives of the Shia cleric in the Iraqi parliament participated in drafting a resolution compelling the government to remove US troops out of the country.

As the Sadr current re-joined the mantle of Iran to be on the side of armed militia leaders who are challenging the state, Sadr’s name became anathema in the protest squares of central and southern Iraq’s Shia cities.

In a desperate effort to appear relevant, Moqtada issued a statement on Sunday. BASNEWS Tweets:

The Sadrist Movement, led by powerful Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said on Sunday that it would no longer support the anti-government protests.

Iraq: Sadrist Movement Says It Won't Support Anti-government Protests

Iraq: Sadrist Movement Says It Won't Support Anti-government Protests

Where are Moqtada's supporters? He has the cult. That's about all he has. One former supporter conveyed via e-mail last week that they were supposed to all Tweet "God supports Muqtada because he is a lover of peace." But look it up -- under Muqtada or Moqtada -- and you'll see six Tweets. Once upon a time, in fact, just a year ago, that would have been pages and pages of reTweets.

This week's podcast by THE ECONOMIST looks at Joe Biden, his 2020 campaign for president ("Hidin' Biden") and at his history with the Iraq War. Pay attention to the discussion of 'Democrats' who might defeat Republicans in the Senate -- like Lindsay Graham's opponent -- and how their success would only water down the Democrats in the Senate. Republican-lite may beat a Republican (it may not) but it will infect and water down Democrats in the Senate. That's a detail the cheerleaders for Jaime Harrison ignore. Also ignored are the Hunter Biden e-mails and the reaction to it. Branko Marcoetik (JACOBIN) offers:

On Wednesday, the New York Post published a major story about the Biden-Burisma affair (aka “Ukrainegate”), the still-developing controversy over Hunter Biden’s presence on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma at the same time that his father, then vice president, spearheaded anti-corruption efforts in the country and ultimately fired the prosecutor investigating the company.

The Post published e-mails purportedly drawn from a copied computer hard drive that belonged to the younger Biden, allegedly showing a Burisma executive thanking him for introducing him to the then–vice president, and imploring Hunter to “use your influence to convey a message/signal etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions” -- meaning the “one or more pretrial proceedings” the Ukrainian government had launched against the company.

The contents of the hard drive, passed on to the Post by Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, are clearly an attempt at one final, desperate “October surprise.” Trump’s shot at reelection certainly looks to have all but collapsed after an unhinged debate performance that was soon followed by the mass spread of coronavirus within the White House. He’s in desperate need of something to turn around what seems to be shaping up -- at least as far as the polls can be trusted -- as a landslide defeat.

While the e-mails, if authentic, are not great for Biden — they flatly contradict his implausible September 2019 claim that he has “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” --they’re far from a game changer.

They mostly back up what basic common sense and closed-door testimony from Obama administration officials already told us: that Burisma’s hiring of Hunter, with his zero experience in either Ukraine or natural gas, was an obvious attempt to curry favor with the US government, and that it undermined the Obama administration’s anti-corruption messaging in the country. In fact, they shed absolutely no light on Trump’s actual central and still unproven charge against Biden in the whole affair: that he fired the Ukrainian prosecutor to shield his son from prosecution.

No, in many ways the bigger story here is the response to the story. Because seemingly every major scandal damaging to Biden and, therefore, beneficial to Trump’s reelection has, during this election, been simply labeled Russian disinformation and ruled out of bounds -- from his sexual assault allegation to this matter -- social media companies quickly leapt into action to do what they could to make sure no one would get to even read the story and judge it for themselves.

Shortly after the Post story went live, both Facebook and Twitter -- two of the several tech giants that are now more integral to the news publishing business than ever -- announced they were stepping in to prevent the story from spreading on their platforms. Facebook, wrote spokesperson Andrew Stone, was “reducing its distribution on our platform” until it could be fact-checked, while Twitter simply blocked users from posting the story at all, citing its “Distribution of hacked material policy.”

This rush to censorship is equal parts absurd and chilling.

I find Branko's take very disappointing.

But let's get to Rudy G. I was hoping to write about this topic. On THE ECONOMIST podcast, they talk about it "he somehow turned it over to Rudy" and that Rudy didn't turn it over to the FBI. Blah blah blah. The FBI already had it. Second, somehow?

Rudy G is not a friend of mine -- I've never even bothered to learn how to spell his last name. I don't care for him or for his trashy family (yes, his daughters are trashy). I have numerous reasons. Some would argue that one of the reasons is that Rudy and I are rivals.

From time to time, we are rivals. From time to time, we are both offered the same information. I prefer to purchase letters. I was not offered the Biden hardriver nor would I have been interested in it, frankly. But we have been opponents/rivals on other treasure troves of information.

How did Rudy G get the hard drive? Because he's a well known consumer of information. He pays very well for it.

I don't understand the skepticism of the information based on Rudy G. The press knows he buys information. He's far from the only one. We don't generally bid on the same things -- again, my preference is letters and journals. In 2007 and 2008, it was widely known that Rudy was buying up everything he could -- and it was widely assumed that he sat on most of the information he bought.

I don't doubt the e-mails because of the Rudy G connection -- in fact, that connection makes them more believable to me.

[Added: Before I'm accused of being coy, I buy other things. I do own the 'dead grandmother tape' as it's known in DC social circles and I did play it at many a DC party. That's the last recorded interview -- the only one -- dead grandmother gave about her grandson Barack.]

As for Branko's "they're far from a game changer"? That's so disappointing. The corporate press may cover for Joe but Branko shouldn't. Branko should be sharing and leading the outrage. Hunter made money off his father being a public servant. He offered access to his father -- that his father participated in. This is unethical and it's wrong.

Instead of addressing that, people want to offer nutty Russian conspiracies. David Swanson notes:

When the Democratic Party decided it preferred Trump to Bernie and would rather nominate to run against Trump a more corporate-friendly candidate who was polling more weakly against Trump, there were — in theory — at least two choices.

First, millions of people could have publicly announced that they would not vote for either rotten candidate but only someone who stood for a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, public education through college, demilitarization, and massive taxation of corporations and billionaires — or at least one of those things. Either a candidate would have credibly changed or a message would have been sent very loudly to all future candidates. I tried promoting this plan, and a relative handful of people mumbled their agreement. Apart from the Green Party doing its thing, and a new party being started, there was no more organizing around this than there was to reject the Supreme Court handing George W. Bush the crown.

Second, people could vote for a lesser evil while organizing educational and activist campaigns to try to save the world from that evil. There’s a credible, though uncertain and muddy case, that the lesser evil is Joe Biden. Thousands of people have enthusiastically screamed this case at me at the top of their lungs, and accused me of racism, sexism, and working in the employ of the Russian government — even though my actual, real-world employment includes working for an organization pushing just this approach. I’ve pushed just this approach because it’s my second choice and my first choice above has gone nowhere. I’ve also maintained honesty about the rottenness of both candidates, which has angered and confused many supporters of both who believe that part of supporting a candidate is lying about him.

Now, when/if Biden loses or has the election stolen, I would like to point out just a few of the reasons that it’s not my fault or Russia’s or Ralph Nader’s or the Green Party’s.

1) There is no evidence that Russia has had any influence over the 2020 (or 2016) U.S. election. (But please do send me hundreds of angry evidence-free denunciations of the supposed lunacy of saying so.) (I would much rather you blame me than Russia because I don’t have any nuclear weapons.)

2) The Green Party got a teeny tiny bit of the vote and probably gained Biden as many votes in Maine and places that have ranked choice voting as it cost him elsewhere, and is the most likely party to challenge any of Trump’s election-related crimes.

3) I supported Bernie.

4) I didn’t advise campaigning on a promise to keep fracking. I didn’t even pretend that campaign was a mistake driven by ignorance of polling rather than subservience to funders.

5) I didn’t declare “The Party c’est moi!” and run screaming from every popular position.

6) I live in a non-swing state.

7) The notion that I decided the election through my failure to push scheme #2 above aggressively enough is exposed by my utter inability to advance scheme #1.

8) I didn’t create the electoral college — I’m trying to abolish it.

9) I don’t run the corporate media outlets that bow before Trump — I’m trying to break them up and regulate them.

10) I didn’t tolerate Trump’s hateful instigation of violence and intimidation. I’ve been trying to get him impeached, removed, and prosecuted for it since before his first inauguration — but a certain political party preferred a bunch of dangerous lies about Russia and a Ukraine story that made their own guy look bad.

11) I didn’t lie about voting by mail, strip names off rolls, create long lines, or utilize unverifiable machines and scanners. That was your elected officials.

12) I didn’t kneel down and let Trump put a George W. Bush election thief on the Supreme Court. I proposed impeaching Trump for a legitimate offense from the long list of indisputable public outrages, and forcing the Senate to deal with it.

Now, if you want to spend the next couple of weeks telling everyone for the 10 millionth time to vote for Biden, knock yourself out. I’ve had a job doing that for months. But let me offer three pieces of unsolicited and unwanted advice:

1) Bring back honesty as soon as possible. Every bit of bad news about your candidate is not false, is not created by Russia and therefore in need of being ignored regardless of whether it’s false, and is not an assertion of equivalence between your candidate and the other one. If you go into a Biden presidency believing your own BS about him, his presidency will turn out as putrid and disastrous as Clinton’s or Obama’s and lead straight to one as openly fascist as Bush’s or Trump’s.

2) Bring back understanding of activism as soon as possible. Restore remembrance of the nonviolent activist campaigns that created the right to vote, rights for various groups, fair treatment and humane policies and peace. Voting is an important tiny bit of civic duty that alone will never change the world.

3) Bring back politeness and respect as soon as possible. Stop all the screaming and denunciations and baseless accusations and xenophobic coldwarism so you can work with people to do the things actually needed to turn the U.S. government into what it’s nice but dangerous to imagine voting for one lousy candidate over another will do.

We're going to wind down with this that Ms. sent out yesterday (which means today, Monday, is the last day to get the masks):

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