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

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Dylan

From Sunday, Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS"Dianne Does Her Duty."

Kat's "Stevie and Bob's big payouts" noted Stevie Nicks and Bob Dylan selling their songs for millions.

And what is one to make of Dylan’s evolution himself?

Now that he has signed away the ability to use or control his own music as he sees fit, one senses only the formal conclusion to a decades-long process of social and artistic retreat. It does not appear as though he has anything critical left to say. From an artistic and personal standpoint it is a sad affair.

or a number of years, Dylan was able to convey something truthful, which resonated especially with large numbers of young people, about American life and society in the early and mid-1960s, the period of the Civil Rights movement and important political and cultural shifts. To the pleasure of many, Dylan articulated disdain for official hypocrisy, including a mockery of anti-communism, and a more free-spirited attitude toward personal and social relationships that belied the establishment’s stupid and empty claims about the greatness of the “American way of life.”

Certain early Dylan songs between 1962 and 1966 captured emerging angry moods with memorable imagery, including “Masters of War,” “Chimes of Freedom,” “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” and “With God On Our Side.”

Other songs of the time, perhaps less well worked through, nonetheless had a defiant and gripping quality to them, such as the already mentioned “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Only a Pawn in Their Game” and “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” In 1963, Dylan refused to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show when CBS officials did not allow him to sing “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” which satirized Cold War hysteria in the US. A number of his love songs, with their footloose and occasionally self-critical edge, also carried real weight.

However, as we noted when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, Dylan’s transformation from a sharp-eyed and anti-establishment artist into a relatively harmless icon has been a lengthy, drawn-out process, with much of the transformation well underway before the late 1960s.

Guess money meant more to him than his art.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS:

Tuesday, December 15, 2020. Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States.

It's over. Yesterday, the electoral college voted -- as noted in Wally's "THIS JUST IN! IT'S OVER (TELL SIDNEY POWELL)!," Cedric's "Another voting sham cries Sidney Powell!," Ann's "The electoral college conspiracy!" and Betty's "To the Supreme Court!" -- and Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States.

Some people had little fits and had to whine that Donald Trump was challenging this or that. It's the process. It played out. There was never a need to panic of have a hissy fit. Al Gore should have been president in 2000. Hopefully, the next time there's a need to challenge, the person will do so and we'll all remember that, in 2020, when Donald exhausted every option, the world did not fall apart.

What took place was transparent and the rulings from various courts were clear and concise. We say how the system was designed to work and it did.

Observers, fair ones -- not just Donald supporters, can rightly note that the media didn't play fair in any manner. Their behavior was embarrassing and shameful. But the election results are what they are and the process worked.

Is Donald still fighting/soldiering on? At 10:30 pm EST, his campaign was sending everyone -- every e-mail address they had -- an unnamed prize ("weekly impact offer") that you would find about after -- after -- you donated money (a minimum of five dollars). So it looks like even Donald has accepted the results -- though clearly he's still on the grift.

If he doesn't accept them?

It's over. The electoral college voted. Joe Biden could be revealed tomorrow as the Son of Sam who'd kept it hidden all these years. Joe would be arrested but that wouldn't make Donald president. Kamala would be next in line. The electoral college, as set up in the Constitution, is the last chance. After they vote, that's it.

January 20th, Joe Biden is set to be sworn in as the next president of the United States.

Right now? Donald Trump remains president.

His legacy isn't much of note. He could try to change that in his final days in office.

Pardoning Ed Snowden would be a major step and it would be something many would praise him for. Pardoning Ed and Julian Assange both would do a lot to improve his poor image.

More likely though, he'll just pull the nonsense Bill Clinton did at the end of his second term when Bill did a lot of executive orders as he was on his way out the door, knowing full well that they weren't laws and that Bully Boy Bush would immediately overturn them.

If that's all Donald has to offer, his historical note will be a sad and ugly one.

He wanted to remove all US troops from Iraq, we're told. Well we all have wants, it's our actions we're judged by. Wasn't that Jimmy Carter's point when he confessed to lusting after other women in his heart? That we all have wants but it is our actions that count?

He wanted to release all of the JFK files that were supposed to be released. However? He didn't.

He was persecuted and I won't deny that reality. The press and the DNC and ex-CIA trash worked together to destroy him before he was ever sworn in. That's reality. And it's part of his legacy. Yes, they put up walls.

But he was the leader and he should have managed to get around those walls.

His failure to publicly call out James Jeffrey after Jeffrey revealed that he and others intentionally lied to Donald Trump about the number of US troops in Syria after Donald had ordered them to be reduced to a certain number? That's appalling. He's exploded on Twitter repeatedly but this was an issue that actually should have had a response. What Jeffrey was confessing to was treason. There is no other word for it. Donald, the president of the United States, in his position of commander-in-chief, gave an order and Jeffrey and others worked behind his back to keep the order from being carried out. That's treason.

Jeffrey can resign in protest and go public. That's allowed. But what he did is not allowed.

Now maybe Donald is being nice (it could happen) because treason can result in execution. Maybe he wants to spare Jeffrey and others a trial.

I think they should be tried. Failure to hold them accountable (they can be tried without being executed) sends a message to everyone that you can get away with this.

This especially effects Joe Biden.

We all know Joe is in mental decline. He shouldn't have run for the presidency. But he did and now he's the president. Do we really want to say it's okay for people serving in the administration who disagree with Joe's policy to just lie to him and tell him that it's being carried out? It goes beyond insubordination, it's treason. And it shouldn't take place regardless of who is president.

At ALJAZEERA, Zeidon Alkinani writes:

For more than 17 years since its invasion of Iraq, the United States has failed to present itself as a partner interested in supporting Iraqi efforts for democratic and economic development. It has continued to pursue its military and geopolitical interests at the expense of the Iraqi people, their security and wellbeing.

This became clear once again at the beginning of this year when, amid a popular uprising against rampant corruption, sectarian politics, political violence, unemployment, and Iranian interference in Iraq, the Trump administration decided to assassinate in Baghdad top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Instead of backing the Iraqi people’s democratic aspirations, Washington once again propped up the dysfunctional political status quo by escalating its confrontation with Iran and in this way, undermining the movement for reform and political change.

In this context, the fact that US President Donald Trump is pursuing his own narrow political interests in Iraq in the last months of his presidency is hardly surprising to Iraqis. His decision to withdraw more US troops from the country is another attempt to present himself as fulfilling his election promises while setting yet another foreign policy trap for the incoming administration of Joe Biden.

In his pursuit of disastrous policies in Iraq, however, Trump is no different from his predecessors. And many Iraqis fear that his successor may bring more of the same.

[. . .]

Having gone through the same failed policies of three consecutive US presidents since 2003, many Iraqis are cautious about expecting much from the upcoming Biden administration.

The Iraqi Kurds are probably the most optimistic about his presidency. They hope he could be “America’s most pro-Kurdish president”, given his past statements on Kurdish statehood and ties with Erbil’s leadership.

Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, who once denounced the US occupation because of their marginalisation on the political scene, are now in favour of a US military presence against the enormous Iranian influence. Biden’s willingness to expand the deployment of US troops will probably be welcomed by Sunni Arab political circles.

The Shia Arabs are ambivalent at best. The elites – the majority of whom adopt a pro-Iran discourse – will probably evaluate Biden’s administration based on its approach to de-escalation with Iran. But there are also many among the ordinary Shia population who are frustrated by both Tehran and Washington. They would like to see the Iranian grip on Iraq relax and a strong Iraqi national state emerge, but their bitter experience with Trump during the protests of 2019-2020 has dampened their hopes that the US can be an effective anti-Iran influence.

Biden himself has a mixed record on Iraq as a senator and vice president. In June 2006, he proposed a soft partition of Iraq to allow for federal autonomy for the Shia Arab, Sunni Arab, and Kurdish communities, which was welcomed by the Kurds, but rejected by many Arabs.

He continued to promote his plan even amid the war against ISIL (ISIS), calling in a 2014 Washington Post article for “functioning federalism… which would ensure equitable revenue-sharing for all provinces and establish locally rooted security structures”.

Biden would do well to drop this proposal from his foreign policy objectives in Iraq. Solidifying political divisions between the different communities would encourage more political fragmentation and provide even more ground for the expansion of Iranian influence. A semi-autonomous Shia region would most likely fall completely under the control of Tehran.

At FOREIGN POLICY, Farhad Alaaldin teams with Kenneth Pollack to argue for international aid to Iraq:

Iraq is headed for a financial collapse, and in its current fragile state, fiscal ruin is likely to bring down its rickety political system, which could then ignite yet another round of civil war.

[. . . .]

Iraq’s coming crisis is a crisis of liquidity. Iraq will need money to prevent the collapse of its financial system, which would be the first domino to fall. If the United States were willing to pledge a significant amount, perhaps $1 billion, it should be possible to put together a larger package of $5 billion to $10 billion for Iraq with other countries chipping in.

The idea of providing $1 billion in emergency budget support to Iraq may seem impossible at this moment. It shouldn’t. It wouldn’t come out of the pockets of ordinary Americans in the form of increased taxes—and the last 12 years should have taught the United States two important lessons about this part of the world.

First, what happens in the Middle East does not stay there. And second, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure—as Washington’s tragic policies toward Iraq, Syria, and Libya have all demonstrated.

They also insist on tying the future of Iraq to Mustafa al-Kahdimi -- ignoring the reality that he said he'd be a one term prime minister. They ignore the fact that more money poured into Iraq doesn't end the corruption.

They want to pretend that the state has the problems it does because it has so many government workers. I'm sorry, which ones are getting $100 million pay checks? Iraq's population isn't even 40 million. They bring in how many billions a year? The state payroll is not the problem -- not when it comes to actual workers. Now that payroll is padded and that needs to stop.

But quit pretending that the 'corruption' is the system Iraq has (Kenneth is screaming for them to have capitalism and do away with the safety net). The problem is the various leaders and officials who steal from the public moneys.

And more aid isn't going to stop that.

Transparency International finds, yearly, Iraq to in the top five of the most corrupt countries in the world.

As for the shaky government, of course it is. Mustafa, like every prime minister before him, fled Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The US and Iran keep putting cowards in charge of the country.

Equally true, when the people do vote, what do they see? In 2010, they watched as Joe Biden overturned their votes with The Erbil Agreement. But we want them to believe voting matters? And that they have a say in the system?

They only have a say in their government if the US and Iran sign off on it.

Get honest about that.

This 'crisis' by the way? It was completely anticipated. That's why Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for the government to refuse the IMF. He did not see the point in borrowing and certainly not in putting 'austerity' thugs in charge of Iraq.

Protests continue in Iraq:

Dhi Qar: Demonstrators continue to arrive at Haboubi Square in the center of Nasiriyah, despite preventing entry to the square by the government forces .

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هيئة علماء المسلمين في العراق

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الهيئة نت| ذي قار: استمرار توافد المتظاهرين إلى ساحة (الحبوبي) وسط مدينة الناصرية، رغم منع القوات الحكومية الدخول للساحة بالقوة.

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3:30 PM · Dec 14, 2020

Murat Sofuoglu (TRT WORLD) explains:

While protests have occasionally hit the Kurdish region since 2015, the latest demonstrations have been more intense.

In recent months, many civil servants and their families in Iraq’s Kurdish region have been stuck in a growing political disagreement between Erbil and Baghdad over how the regional government should operate its energy sources, primarily, oil exports.

Since April, the Iraqi central government has not paid the salaries of the regional government’s civil servants. This includes Peshmergas, the armed forces of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), all with the aim to punish the Erbil government’s direct oil exports to other countries without the consent of Baghdad.

Most of the protests have been concentrated in the cities of Sulaymaniyah and Halapja, which are located in northeastern Iraq near the Iranian border. In both cities, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the main parties in the Kurdish region, which has long been at loggerheads with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the region’s leading political movement led by Masoud Barzani, has a powerful presence.

Pope Francis is scheduled to visit Iraq in March. Father Rif’at Bader (VATICAN NEWS) explains the whys for the visit:

Pope Francis goes to Iraq at a time when his predecessors were unable to do so due to the complexities of the pressing conditions that prevailed recently, including wars, sectarian violence, terrorist attacks, and the complexities of the political affairs in that fraternal country.

Pope John Paul II had an earnest wish to visit Iraq in 1999, but due to the blockade which was imposed on Iraq at the time late President Saddam Hussein postponed the visit that was scheduled that year. Thus, the saint pope made a "spiritual" pilgrimage to this country, on March 12, 2000, in order to start the pilgrimage journey in the year of the great jubilee from the country of Prophet Abraham which was fulfilled with a visit to Egypt, Jordan and Palestine. A year later he walked in the steps of Paul the Apostle to Syria.

Today, Pope Francis--who always focuses on respect for the poor, the refugees and the immigrants, as well as their right to a safe life-- goes to Iraq where in recent years Christian and Yazidis, especially from the Nineveh Plain and Mosul and from neighboring towns and cities, have been forcibly displaced to countries of the world in the wake of the terrorist acts conducted by ISIS at the time.

Pope Francis comes to Iraq in the first place to encourage the Christian community in Iraq which has withstood political “turbulences” that took place including foreign wars or in-fighting. There is still a bright and glorious Christian presence despite the dramatic decrease in numbers.

Consequently, the Pontiff wants to encourage those who are steadfast in the land of their ancestors in spite of the successive disasters especially during his scheduled visit to the city of Erbil, where there are currently good numbers of forcibly displaced people from Mosul and the towns of the Nineveh Plain. His Holiness will also visit Mosul and Qaraqosh township to further encourage the forcibly displaced who live abroad to possibly return to the land of their ancestors and grandparents.

Pope Francis wants in the second place to promote dialogue and common living between all the religious components, whether at the ecumenical level between sisterly Churches, or through Islamic-Christian relations. It is well-known that there is not only Christian-Sunni dialogue, but there is also Shiite-Christian dialogue. On the land of Iraq, there is a historical presence of Sabean-Mandeans, Yazidis, Baha'is, as well as other religions and traditions.

Furthermore, Pope Francis--who is the man who supports dialogue-- wants to emphasize the feeling, the duty and the responsibility of fraternal common living among the various components of the Iraqi people, under the umbrella of citizenship, especially a few months after he signed an important document called "Fratelli Tutti" or "We are all brothers and sisters."

Pope Francis will definitely send a message for the pursuit of paths of peace, dialogue, fraternity, cooperation and constructive cooperation among the various politicians in Iraq in order to rebuild a strong modern Iraqi state after years of hard and bitter wars, sectarian squabbles, and attacks by terrorist groups, so as to restore the spirit of hope among all Iraqis, especially the youth, for a better future.

The following sites updated:

Monday, December 14, 2020

To the Supreme Court!

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & ANN'S MEGA DUB & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN -- THE KOOL AID TABLE

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE COMPLETED ITS VOTE AND JOE BIDEN WON WITH 306 VOTES TO DONALD TRUMP'S 232. FOLLOWING THE VOTE, DONALD REFUSED TO CONCEED THE PRESIDENCY INSISTING THAT OTHER OPTIONS WERE STILL AVAILABLE SUCH AS CHOOSING STRAWS AND ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS. MEANWHILE HIS ATTORNEY SIDNEY POWELL DEMANDED A HAND RECOUNT AND INSISTED THAT VENEZUELAN SOCIALIST POSED AS IOWAN ELECTORS TO ALTER THE VOTE.

POWELL DECLARED, "THIS PLOT WAS LED BY HUGO CHAVEZ, GEORGE COSTANZA, AND CHELSEA CLINTON'S REAL FATHER BIGFOOT. WE HAVE VIDEO. VIDEO. VIDEO."

NEXT UP, THE SPANKING OF BAD BOY HUNTER BIDEN -- DID HE GET A CHUBBY DURING?

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Hunter Biden Finally Gets A Little Press Attention"

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Over the weekend, Adam Goldman, Katie Benner and Ben Protess (NEW YORK TIMES) reported:

But the disclosure of a criminal inquiry into his son thrust Mr. Biden into a charged position as he prepares to take office. Republican senators called for an independent special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, and Mr. Trump complained that the Delaware inquiry did not surface before the election.

“I’m proud of my son,” Mr. Biden told reporters on Friday.

Why not? He bedded his brother's widow. He had to be hauled into court to pay child support for a child he denied -- denied even after the test concluded he was the father. He spent millions on drugs and hookers according to his first wife -- that would be the mother of his children (plural) whom he left to bed his brother's widow. "Hey, kids, say hi to Aunt-Mommy!" And we didn't even get into his drug addiction. An African-American with the same drug problems would be in prison -- as a result of the laws Joe championed as a US senator. But Hunter gets a pass over and over. He needs something to make his sad resume look impressive? Daddy Joe -- then the Vice President -- cuts all red tape and gets him instantly in the reserves. But f**k up Hunter can't even last a month before he fails a drug test and is kicked out.

"I'm proud of my son." If that's true, Joe, that might be part of the problem.

Brian Stelter has long been part of the problem. When will CNN hire a woman as ugly as Brian? Never. It's a visual medium so why did they hire Brian to begin with? He spent his Sunday show spouting more nonsense. He thinks attacking FOX NEWS makes him a critic. No, Brian, a real critic can turn the eye on their own network and, in the case of Hunter Biden, absolutely should. Mark Hemingway (REAL CLEAR POLITICS) notes:

Hunter Biden announced Wednesday he is under federal investigation for his financial dealings in foreign countries, including China. While the news sent shockwaves through Washington, D.C., it shouldn’t have been surprising. The announcement confirms many of the allegations of corruption that were leveled against Hunter Biden in the months leading up to the November elections – allegations the media steadfastly refused to cover.

The nation’s largest social media companies went further: They made the shocking decision to actively censor the New York Post’s eye-opening scoop revealing evidence of Joe Biden’s son’s influence peddling that was recovered from an abandoned laptop. Twitter locked the newspaper out of its own account for weeks. Facebook prevented the Post’s story from being widely distributed, even though neither Joe Biden nor his campaign disputed the authenticity of the documents published by the paper.

In retrospect, not only do the documents appear to be authentic, but a Daily Beast reportThursday notes evidence that the Hunter Biden investigation was hiding in plain sight. One of the FBI documents from the laptop published by the Post “included a case number that had the code associated with an ongoing federal money laundering investigation in Delaware, according to several law enforcement officials who reviewed the document. Another document — one with a grand jury subpoena number — appeared to show the initials of two assistant U.S. attorneys linked to the Wilmington, Delaware, office.” Hunter Biden claims he only learned of the investigation this past week, but these documents suggest otherwise.

Even a cursory inquiry by the New York Post’s competitors would have confirmed that Biden was under federal investigation. One journalist did behave like a reporter. In late October, Sinclair Broadcast Group correspondent James Rosen reported that Hunter Biden was under active investigation and a Justice Department official confirmed his scoop. Almost without exception, America’s press corps refused to follow up on Rosen’s revelation — or even report it.

The corporate media has a great deal to answer for. Trash like Erica Jong's daughter work overtime to enure that no answers ever come. Ross Barkan (JACOBIN) writes:

In 2017, MSNBC, unable to marshal much of an audience during Obama’s presidency, became a place where every Trumpian outrage and conspiracy could be parroted and expanded to maximalist proportions. Ratings soared. Rachel Maddow became one of the biggest stars in television, rivaling the reach of any Fox host. CNN, too, made a fortune on liberal angst and rage, branding for the Resistance.

For mainstream liberal outlets — both those that openly identify that way, and those that keep up the pretense of neutrality — the future is less clear. For four years, the top media organizations in America universally benefited from Trump. The New York Times and the Washington Post, which received a remarkable surge of subscriptions from beleaguered readers, almost all Democratswho turned to them for news of Trump’s potential downfall, also rebranded for the Resistance. From Russiagate to impeachment to Trump’s unhinged tweets, content was never lacking — the show always went on. The Post even devised a new grandiose motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Smaller liberal outlets like the New Yorker, New York magazine, Vox, and the Daily Beast trod a similar path.

Many media organizations played a role as an aggressive and necessary watchdog in the Trump years. The bankrupt access-journalism model, in which reporters allow themselves to be co-opted by powerful actors for mostly meaningless scoops, lost favor in the Trump years, as more journalists and readers recognized that it could not function with a White House that offered so little in the way of reliable information. Trump did revive gossip-infused palace intrigue reporting, with so many staffers cycling in and out, but that did not cause mainstream outlets to abandon their adversarial stance, at least toward Trump himself. The Mark Halperin model of reporting was rightfully discredited.

But a new problem arises now: Can these many media organizations, so closely linked to the project of anti-Trump resistance, leave behind their role as Democratic Party activists and Biden apologists? As Branko Marcetic wrote in Jacobin in October, the collective decision to entirely suppress the New York Post’s dubious, though hardly fabricated, reporting on Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and cheer on the censorship efforts of Facebook and Twitter — the latter social media giant, in an unprecedented move, locked the Post’s main account and temporarily blocked sharing of the story — could be a harbinger of what’s to come. The Post’s story should not have been promoted uncritically, but most media outlets failed in their first duty to the public: to report and find out what’s true and what’s false. Instead of attempting to verify the facts of the story and then deciding whether to dismiss all of it as bunk, media organizations blacked out the story without making even a perfunctory attempt to explain what it was that had been revealed in the first place and if any of it could be relevant to the public.

Still traumatized by 2016, when Democratic Party operatives attributed Trump’s victory to Wikileaks’ release of hacked emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, media organizations were determined not to be perceived as aiding and abetting a candidate they regarded as a threat to democracy itself. Once Trump was deemed a fascist — never mind that Trump was a historically weak president who accomplished relatively little beyond judicial appointments, as Corey Robin has convincingly argued — any and all reporting that could be perceived as damaging to his rivals was viewed by the Democratic readership as the greatest of transgressions.

But as long as Trump was president, at least none of this hindered the practice of accountability journalism vis-à-vis the executive branch.

What now? There is a real danger of slipping into a new normal, in which liberal-leaning newspapers and websites fail to report as aggressively on the Biden White House as they did on its predecessors. Aaron Rupar, a prominent Vox editor, recently dismissed an investigative reportinto the lucrative private-sector careers of Biden’s wealthy foreign policy team. “Blinken participated in society. The horror,” Rupar tweeted, referring to Biden’s pick for secretary of state, Antony Blinken.

Apparently, to some journalists, founding a high-dollar consulting firm with clients in the defense industry, Silicon Valley, and various hedge funds while also being a partner in a private equity firm can now be equated to the mere act of “participating in society,” as if this were an unavoidable part of everyday life. Had a Trump cabinet pick boasted a similar background, it’s unlikely Rupar would have been so blasé. The danger is that in the post-Trump era, Democratic corruption will be seen as acceptable because it’s not Republican corruption.

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