Saturday, January 26, 2019

CNN gets paid for their one-sided 'journalism'



  1. What did they think stone was going to barricade himself in his home and shoot it out with the FBI? No, that scene was for you. It is part of the conditioning process. Its like how you don't notice when you come back from a trip abroad how militarized the U.S. is.
  2. If you don't have questions about how CNN was with FBI and wondered why they had such a show of military force to arrest an elderly middle-class individual, it is because the conditioning process to accept a police state has been largely successful and you are exhibit A.



What's obvious is that the one-sided coverage CNN has provided got paid off.  Clearly, Robert Mueller feels indebted to them. 

A built-in bias got rewarded. 

Ethics no longer matter.  Don't expect Brian Selter to explore that on his CNN show.

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Friday, January 25, 2019.  The Iraq War continues -- with oh, so little attention from the media.


This morning at NYT's AT WAR blog, Melissa Thomas shares:


When the doorbell rang on New Year’s Eve four years ago, I knew something was wrong. It was 9 p.m. I was alone. I opened the door to three men in uniform. This was something I had imagined many times before, although in my visions they wore Army dress blues instead of the grays worn by the El Paso County sheriff’s deputies.
My husband, Maj. Christopher Thomas, left in the morning to go snowshoeing in the mountains west of Denver. When he did not return after dark I started to expect the worst. He was trained as an outdoor guide and had been to the summits of Mount McKinley, Mount Rainier and too many of Colorado’s tallest peaks to count. Yet the sun was down, and he hadn’t answered my phone calls or text messages all day.
Chris and I were both in the military. Between us we had six deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. We met in 2000 as cadets at West Point. He had previously served in the Army and was two years ahead of me in school. We went on our first date a few days before the Sept. 11 attacks: a picnic at a Labor Day concert by the academy’s band. He brought a blanket, sandwiches and a gorgeous smile over a sophisticated cleft chin. After Chris graduated that December, we kept up a long-distance relationship, including writing letters in 2003 during the invasion and early occupation of Iraq. Chris sent a marriage proposal in one of those letters, writing, “We don’t need a lavish affair, just a ceremony that lets us tell the world how we feel about each other, and that our family can come together to celebrate with us.” Then he jokingly offered to trade vows at home plate at Fenway Park in Massachusetts, where I grew up. He didn’t often show his emotions; I treasured his loving words.


Melissa Thomas and her late husband served in Iraq at the start.  All this time later -- the Iraq War turns 16 years old in March -- US troops are still being sent to Iraq.  Indiana's TIMES-HERALD reports:


Private First Class Kyle Montgomery, Bravo Company, 326th Brigade Engineer Battalion deployed, from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Jan. 5 to Iraq. He will be clearing IEDs and will be a primary gunner. In March of 2018 he graduated IAIT combat engineering at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and in June he completed 40 hours of combat lifesaver course.

He served as the primary gunner for the platoon sergeant during rotation 18-10 at the Joint Readiness Training Center in Fort Polk, Louisiana. On Aug.3 he graduated from the Sabalauski Air Assault School 101st Air Borne Division (Air Assault) and earned the Army Achievement Medal as a machine gunner in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.


The Iraq War doesn't end, it just goes on and on.



My name is Penny Evans and I've just gone twenty-one
A young widow in the war that's being fought in Vietnam
And I have two infant daughters, I thank God I have no sons
Now they say the war is over but I think it's just begun



The Vietnam War dragged on for years and years.  One difference?  Each year the American people grew more and more vocal about calling for an end to it.  Of course, back then, the network news was the only televised news outlet.  You didn't have idiots like Rachel Maddow posing as reporters -- MSNBC presents her as a 'reporter.'  She's not.  She's a talk show host and she does not do "in depth reporting" -- or any reporting at all -- for that matter, no matter how many press releases MSNBC issues.  With all these hours to fill, the cable channels do not do reporting.  They'll do an interview and pass that off as reporting or news but it's not. 

And it's always about a 'hot' topic that's 'trending.'  It's not about issues that actually matter.  I doubt anyone watching an evening newscast in the US in, say, 1967, would have thought the day would come where the US could be at war (multiple wars today, actually) and the war wouldn't be a nightly staple on the news.  

But we don't have news.  We have feel good clips.  We have interviews.  We have opinions.  And the opinions aren't even on things that matter.  

The American people are shaped by their media.  I don't deny that.  But let's get honest about how willfully stupid so many are -- especially over here on the left.  The Iraq War continues but they'd rather bore you with any number of other topics.

NEWSWEEK proclaims that the only winner in the Iraq War, per the US military, is Iran.  And they do it on the 22nd of this week.  It's the report we covered on the 18th.  That day, NEWSWEEK was too busy with Jason Leopold's latest implosion.  It hadn't imploded yet, so they spent forever running with it.  But it did implode, didn't it?  Maybe the next time the US military releases a report that they've refused to release for years, NEWSWEEK focuses on that and not the conjecture of a reporter who has had one scoop after another explode in his face?

There are real issues at play here.  But the media is too busy playing to notice.  There are exceptions.  For example, the editorial board of THE TOLEDO BLADE observes:

Toxic smoke from open burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan may be responsible for sickening countless Americans who served there.
Just how many veterans may have suffered cancer and other illness caused by the burn pits remains unclear because military doctors are not even examining service members and veterans during regular medical exams to discover whether those who worked near the burn pits may have been affected by the toxic smoke.

A bill that would have required such screening died in Congress last year. Then, earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in a lawsuit filed by service members who claim their illnesses were caused by burn pit exposure.
[. . .]
In the case of Agent Orange the government dragged its feet for decades before acknowledging its responsibility and compensating victims for birth defects and other health issues related to the chemical. The U.S. must not repeat this mistake.


Supposedly, the answer is Congress.  Again.  And again and again.  They're noting one overruling by the Supreme Court.  But this issue has been going on forever.  What's going to change this?  Maybe some real attention.  Maybe the Court would feel more vested in doing the right thing if the American people actually paid attention to these issue and the media fully covered them?


Last week, Burn Pits 360 noted:






We're heartbroken right now...

Dear friend,

Today we got some very upsetting news. The U.S. Supreme Court made the decision to not take up the case involving a class-action lawsuit from many veterans against KBR, the corporate military contractor that was negligent in their burn-pits operations. This is absolutely a kick to many of our already suffering veterans, including myself.

I'll be honest -- we are coming across roadblocks at the judicial level, and a lot of it has to do with the lack of understanding and education on how burn-pits affect our veterans post-deployment. I saw it when recent local judges ruled against me when I sued to get my job back with a state law enforcement agency. Just because we suffered a setback, that doesn't mean we stop fighting.

I need your help -- I'm looking for 100 donors tonight to pitch in $10 right now so we can continue to put funding towards educating our legislators in D.C. If we can't win at the judicial level, then we will succeed at the legislative level, but we can only do it with your help. Please chip in $10 right now to help us pass meaningful legislation for our veterans this year. 
Thank you for your continued support.
Best,
CPT Le Roy Torres, U.S. Army, Retired
Texas Highway Patrol, Retired
Founder of Burn Pits 360



The useless cable talk shows have hours to waste.  A real shame they can't highlight issues that actually matter instead of the conjecture and gossip they specialize in.





Equally true, the evening news broadcasts have no reporters stationed in Iraq.  They don't cover the war (or the other wars).  Even though US troops remain there.  You'd think they'd at least manage to cover these wars until the troops came home.  Apparently, that's expecting too much -- despite all the profits ABC, CBS and NBC generate.  Once upon a time, they were expected to meet certain public needs.  Not anymore, clearly.


The media rushed to declare ISIS defeated and vanquished in Iraq (December 2017).  Maybe so they'd be able to stop talking about Iraq?  It seemed to tax them so, didn't it?  As we noted repeatedly, ISIS was not gone.  This morning, XINHUA reports:

 Iraq's security forces' increasing dependence on thermal cameras is now met by a new tactic from the Islamic State (IS) militants, who tried tinfoil cloaks to evade detection by the cameras.
"Thermal cameras played a major role in monitoring IS militants' movements in rugged areas in northern Diyala, such as Himreen mountainous area," Abu Ahmed al-Shammari, leader of Hashd Shaabi, told Xinhua.

According to Shammari, Hashd Shaabi foiled an infiltration attempt by IS militants four days ago in al-Safra area, some 90 km north of Diyala's provincial capital Baquba despite tinfoil cloaks worn by some of the extremist militants.

Other news?

ASHARQ AL-AWSAT reports:


The Iraqi Parliament failed on Thursday to vote on Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s new candidates for the education and justice ministries, respectively Safana al-Hamdani and Rakan Qader Wali.

Parliament voted Wednesday on the country’s general budget for 2019. On Thursday, it was set to approve the PM’s proposal for the two cabinet posts. However, Abdul Mahdi, who should have attended the session to present some clarifications about a decision by the cabinet secretariat general to restrict the powers of deputies, failed to show up. He did not give any reasons for his absence.




And he still hasn't been able to select a Minister of Defense or Interior despite the war continuing in Iraq.  He's a failure and US troops have to remain on the ground to prop him up.  It's the 'strategy,' US troops must repeatedly prop up these puppets until one finally takes.

No wonder the war never ends.




The following community sites -- plus Jody Wately and PACIFICA EVENING NEWS -- updated:












  • Thursday, January 24, 2019

    Racist Alyssa Milano points the finger at others

    If you missed it, aged out hag Alyssa Milano has not apologized for trashing kids.  In fact, at The Wrap, she's now proclaimed that MAGA hats are the new white hood -- KKK.

    What hat, Alyssa, were you wearing as a producer of Charmed?

    You know, back when you wouldn't hire African-American men to be Phoebe or Paige's lovers, boyfriends?  When you wouldn't hire African-Americans to be the guest of the week?  Or when you wouldn't hire African-Americans to be recurring characters?

    Daryl wasn't hired by Alyssa, she wasn't a producer then.  Debbie Morgan wasn't hired by Alyssa, she wasn't a producer then.  She was a producer for seasons 5, 6, 7, 8.

    It's really easy to smear some kids, really trashy if you're an adult too.

    But, pay attention, Alyssa, you're the racist because you were in a position of power for four years on a TV show and you didn't use that power -- the power of thee! -- to make life better for people of color.

    Hell, fake ass, your show was set in San Francisco and you didn't even have gay characters.

    Alyssa needs to stop Tweeting and spend some time thinking about her own actions and she made the decisions that reinforced racism.


    This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

     
    Thursday, January 24, 2019.  The Iraq War continues and embracing someone who lies about Vietnam is not going to end it any sooner.

    We haven't spent time on the rorschach test -- others have -- especially as media criticism, and good for them.  But we are going to weigh in on one aspect.  Nathan Phillips is a liar and is not worthy of support from the true left. Elaine made that clear in "Nathan Phillips is a disgusting attention whore" where she quoted his declaration of how he was called a "baby killer" and spat on by a "hippie girl" when he returned from Vietnam.  First the nonsense of the spitting.  Jerry Lembcke has addressed a lie for years, repeatedly debunking it, over and over.  For NYT on October 30, 2017, he wrote:


     Acknowledging that I could not prove the negative — that they were not true — I went on to say there is no corroboration or documentary evidence, such as newspaper reports from the time, that they are true. Many of the stories have implausible details, like returning soldiers deplaning at San Francisco Airport, where they were met by groups of spitting hippies. In fact, return flights landed at military air bases like Travis, from which protesters would have been barred. Others include claims that military authorities told them on returning flights to change into civilian clothes upon arrival lest they be attacked by protesters. Trash cans at the Los Angeles airport were piled high with abandoned uniforms, according to one eyewitness, a sight that would surely have been documented by news photographers — if it had existed.


    And some of the stories have more than a little of a fantasy element: Some claim the spitters were young girls, an image perhaps conjured in the imaginations of veterans suffering the indignities of a lost war.
    Listeners, I speculated, are loath to question the truth of the stories lest aspersion be seemingly cast on the authenticity of the teller. The war in Vietnam was America’s longest war at the time, and its first defeat. The loss to such a small, underdeveloped and outgunned nation was a tough pill for Americans to swallow, many still basking in post-World War II triumphalism. The image of protesters spitting on troops enlivened notions that the military mission had been compromised, even betrayed, by weak-kneed liberalism in Congress and seditious radicalism on college campuses. The spitting stories provided reassuring confirmation that had it not been for those duplicitous fifth-columnists, the Vietnamese would have never beaten us.






    We betray Jerry and his work when we side with liar Nathan.  Nathan was not in Vietnam.  There's a rush of publications -- including THE NEW YORK TIMES as Elaine notes in "Nathan Phillips kept the US safe from the Maytag Repair Man" -- who are covering for Nathan and doing corrections with 'he didn't claim he was a Vietnam veteran' type b.s.  In some instances, he has claimed to be a veteran of the Vietnam era or Vietnam times.  That's misleading and he knows it.  More to the point, before he learned to fudge, he resorted to outright lying.


    New conversation


  • 🚨Nathan Phillips, January 3, 2018🚨 "I'm a Vietnam Vet. I served in Marine Corps 72 to 76. I got discharged May 5, 1976. I got honorable discharge and one of the boxes shows peacetime or, what my box says is that I was **in theater**. I don't talk much about my Vietnam times."


    0:31
    90.8K views







    Phil Kerpen has several videos on his Twitter feed and a friend -- an actual Vietnam veteran -- asked that we note that and that we note that GATEWAY PUNDIT has the story here.  They're covering the story from the right and that's fine.  But we're covering it from the left.

    I have no problem with someone who chooses to resist war and I will defend their right to anytime.  But let's be very clear that Kerpen's multiple stints of going AWOL were not about war resistance -- he wasn't in Vietnam and he was never going to be in Vietnam.  He's someone who is troubled.  And that was his problem for years and years -- you can see the toll on him when he speaks -- but then he went after kids and then tried to use his 'Vietnam veteran' status for his bullying.

    I won't deny that he needs help.  He does and I strongly urge him to seek professional care.  His attack on kids is an issue for this community because we don't tolerate that here.  But his attack on the peace movement?  He needs to be kicked to the curb.

    He's a tiny, powerless man who thought he could harness lies and make himself look better.  As Elaine said, he's an attention whore.  He begged to be in the spotlight.  It's about time the press showed how liars get treated -- especially liars who claim combat service that they do not have.  His lies about his service in Vietnam are so vile that it's one thing that we on the left and the right should agree deserves to be called out -- one thing we should easily agree on.

    Again, Nathan's AWOL was not about war resistance.  And his repeating lies to smear the peace movement are disgusting.


    Let's note a real war resister: Jeremy Hinzman.


    I followed the link and what did I see? A more recent photo of Jeremy Hinzman, Nga Nguyen, and Liam ! Their photo from their time at Quaker House in Fayetteville, NC, is still on our wall. Loved seeing the newer photo.





    Jeremy remains in Canada after self-checking out.  Near the end of 2015, John Hagan (NOW) reported:

    Beginning with Hinzman in 2004, U.S. war resisters chose to make Canada their home because of our reputation for fairness and compassion and our history under another prime minister named Trudeau of welcoming 50,000 resisters during the Vietnam War.
    Hinzman, a soldier in the 82nd Air-borne Division, was the first American Iraq War resister to seek refugee status in Canada. He served in a non-combat role in Afghanistan in 2002-03 after applying for conscientious objector status. 
    Denied that status and told he was to be deployed to Iraq, Hinzman, his wife and young son sought asylum here in 2004. He was granted a last-minute stay of deportation in 2008. But his request to stay in Canada on compassionate grounds is still wending its way through the courts.
    Rodney Watson, who spent a year deployed in Mosul, Iraq, could not stay silent about unnecessary violence he witnessed by the occupying troops. He has been in sanctuary for over half a decade, inside a Vancouver church to avoid deportation after the Harper government ordered him returned to the U.S.
    Kimberly Rivera refused further deployment after witnessing mistreatment of Iraqi civilians. She carried an empty rifle while in Iraq because she could not stand the thought of killing a human being. 
    Despite the support of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and a petition signed by more than 20,000 supporters, Rivera was forced from Canada in 2012 into the custody of the U.S. Army and a military prison, where she gave birth. Conservative MPs cheered in the House of Commons at news of her prosecution.
    The Harper government targeted about 50 American veterans living in Canada, directing that their cases for entry be treated as potentially “criminally inadmissible.” 

    I see the War Resisters Support Campaign hasn't Tweeted in a while, here's the most recent Tweet:

    These American deserters from the Iraq war may finally get refuge in Canada:





    Two years and five months ago.  It is difficult to write the same story over and over or Tweet the same thing over and over, I grasp that.  Maybe some people can find a way to cover today's War Resisters?  They have not been granted asylum and they still remain at risk.


    Like their struggle, the Iraq War goes on and goes with little press coverage. Ahmed Rasheed (REUTERS) notes a new development, the Parliament has passed their 2019 budget. It should read "has finally passed their 2019 budget."  Rasheed also writes, "Iraq’s infrastructure is wrecked after years of war against Islamic State and alleged corruption that has left thousands of people without power and water."  That's in need of an addition as well -- unless the destruction from the war itself is no longer counted.  Are we now blaming the 2003 US-led invasion on the Islamic State?  Well serves us all up some 'freedom fries' with that whopper.



    Replying to 
    US intervention in Iraq transformed the country into a modern day utopia? NO. It started a cycle of violence that claimed a million lives. Spare us your nonsense please.





    When it comes to the media, the war resisters who took brave stands are as forgotten as the war itself.

    Silent wars: Why we don’t pay attention to the world’s worst violence








    The following community sites -- plus PACIFICA EVENING NEWS -- updated: