Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Kos is awful


  1. the co-founder of Vox Media everyone
  2. it's the smile that really sells it
     


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


Tuesday, December 13, 2016.  Chaos and violence continue, the Mosul slog continues, the attempts of partisans to use the Iraq War (and to pretend to care about it) continue, the Arab Women Organization's sixth conference kicks off in Cairo today, and much more.

There you go. They're putting the Iraq war band back together!
 
 
 
What do you think when you see a Tweet like that?
I hope you don't think, "Oh, Susie cares about Iraq!"
She doesn't give a s**t.
She's just a partisan hack who throws out Iraq when she can use it to justify her insult of whomever her whore ass is going after this time.
Susie's a whore -- plain and simple, she's just a whore.
She whores for Hillary, she whores for the Hillarys (plural).
I'm getting real damn sick of the supposed concern and compassion of the Temple Prostitutes for Hillary Clinton.
You're either stupid or you're a liar.
Those are your choices, I'm tired of being nice.
You don't care about Iraq or the Iraqi people if you supported Hillary.
And this goes beyond Hillary's vote for and years of support for the Iraq War.
It goes to her picking that twerp to head her campaign -- that grotesque abomination named John Podesta.
The world got the Iraq War for many reasons.  One of the main ones is John Podesta.
Francis A. Boyle is an attorney and a professor of international law.  He's also the author of many books including, most recently, United Ireland, Human Rights and International Law.    Here he is talking about the efforts to stop the Iraq War before it started.
 
Francis A. Boyle: We just need one person to introduce the bill with courage, integrity, principles, and of course a safe seat. In Gulf War I, I worked with the late great Congressman Henry B. Gonzales on his bill of impeachment against Bush Sr. We put that one in. I did the first draft the day after the war started. So in my opinion there is no excuse for these bills not to have been put in already. In fact, I think I mentioned to you before, on 11 March 2003 Congressman John Conyers convened a meeting of 40 to 50 of his top advisors, most of whom were lawyers, to debate putting in immediate bills of impeachment against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft, to head off the war. And there were draft bills sitting on the table that had been prepared by me and Ramsey Clark. And the Congressman invited Ramsey and me to come in and state the case for impeachment. It was a two hour debate, very vigorous debate, obviously all of these lawyers there. And most of the lawyers there didn’t disagree with us on the merits of impeachment. It was more as they saw it a question of practical politics, namely, John Podesta was there, Clinton’s former White House chief of staff; said he was appearing on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and they were against putting in immediate bills of impeachment because it might hurt whoever their presidential candidate was going to be in 2004. Well at that time no one even knew who their presidential candidate was going to be in 2004.
I didn’t argue the point, I’m a political independent, my position, and it was not for me to tell Democrats how to elect their candidates. I just continued arguing the merits of impeachment. But Ramsey is a lifelong Democrat and he argued that he felt that putting in these bills of impeachment might help the Democrats and it certainly wasn’t going to hurt them in 2004.
Well the Democrats did lose in 2004 but as Ramsey and I were walking out after a two hour debate adjourned and I had offered to stay as long as it took to polish up my bills of impeachment and get them put in right away, because the war started, it was going to start in four days. I turned to Ramsey and I said Ramsey I just don’t understand it, their arguments make no sense, why did they not take me up on my offer to stay and polish up those bills of impeachment and put them in right away to head off a war. And sadly, Ramsey said, “I think most of the people there want a war.” That was 11 March 2003.
It’s very clear that the high officials in the Democratic Party, certainly on the DNC, have been complicit with the Bush Administration in this war against Iraq from the get go. The Democratic national committee still vigorously opposes putting in any bills of impeachment against Bush and Cheney. Podesta made that very clear to us on 11 March 2003. 
You don't get a pass anymore.  The election is over -- whether you choose to accept the results or not -- and you have chosen to continue to stand with War Criminals who put politics above human life.  That's on you.

I'm tired of you dragging your trash through our streets.
You don't care about Iraq, Susie, you don't write about it.
But you damn sure want to promote war with Syria.
Mia Farrow -- anti-choice Mia who believes abortion is a sin and should be outlawed -- wants war on Syria.  She also wanted war on Sudan.
She Tweeted her alarmists Tweets then.  She does it now.
Susie -- an idiot whore, like so many other Hillary supporters -- reTweets elderly embarrassment Mia.
Susie doesn't know where she stands on war because she needs someone to tell her.
She's a robot who needs to be programmed.
She can't take a stand against war -- even illegal war -- because that would require ethics and whores don't have ethics.
So she runs around championing war on Syria.
Whatever is happening in Syria is happening in Syria.
The US should not be "The Cops of the World" (nod to Phil Ochs).  Add in that they've played both sides in Syria.  Add in that the war against Syria actually started when Bully Boy Bush occupied the Oval Office.
The Susies are alarmed by what's happening in Syria.
They don't give a damn about Iraq.
UN Agency Says 35,000 Children Have Fled Iraq's Mosul
 
 
 
They don't reTweet that.  They don't show any concern at all.
Despite the ruins that are Iraq and Libya, idiots like Susie just want to Give War A Chance.
That's all they are saying: Give War A Chance.
Now once war's been given that chance, grasp that the Susies will flee.
Just as they have with Iraq.
They'll champion the war but once it starts and they're bored, they're moving on to something else.
The Iraqi people don't have that luxury, do they?
The US government destroyed Iraq.
And Susie can't be bothered with the topic.  But she can call for more war.
Because whores have a price and they'll always shake that ass to make sure they get paid.
Good job, Susie, tell your pimp you worked hard last night.
The member states in the Arab Women Organization are: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Sultanate of Oman, the Lebanese Republic, the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, the United Arab Emirates, the Republic of Tunisia, the Republic of the Sudan, the Republic of Iraq, the State of Palestine, the state of Libya, the Kingdom of Morocco and the Republic of Yemen.
International Women's Peace Group issued the following:


International Women’s Peace Group (IWPG) as a global women network group takes part in the sixth conference of Arab Women Organization (AWO) in Cairo, Egypt on December 13th to 14th. With the vision of empowerment of Arab women, AWO discusses how to seek a necessary change in Arab women’s role in societies and strengthen their participation in societal development.
Ms. Nam Hee Kim, Chairwoman of IWPG, the only Asian speaker in the first ministerial conference held by the Arab League last September, emphasized that she was inspired by the passion and warmth of the women of the Arab region and would be a bridge to interact with the international network established through the organization “The International Women’s Peace Group (IWPG)” to voice the development of peace and empowerment of the Arab women. In the sixth conference, Ms. Kim will state with an emphasis on concrete action plans for women’s expanded roles in peace and security, which are to be discussed at the UN and international communities.
In the conference, sessions include problems of female refugees and victims of violence, extremism, and terrorism. With these, female leaders will figure out measures to strengthen financial abilities in an international economy and to develop a sense of responsibility based on their experiences of their leadership.
According to a press release HWPL sent to WIC, Arab Women Organization is leading a movement to improve women's role in changing society. Furthermore, it coordinates international/regional women issues in Arab countries, fosters cooperation and exchange of experience to enhance the status of women, and provides essential education services for women.

IWPG is a non-governmental organization, closely cooperating with women all across the world, regardless of age, to come together to achieve peace. It has a vision to end war and achieve peace with spirit of peace by women referred to as "motherly hearts" to protect our children and hand down a legacy of peace.
It engages in the establishment of strategies to achieve world peace by facilitating active communication among women from all walks of life, such as holding Global Women Leaders Seminars and World Women Peace Forums.
Here are some Tweets about the conference:
  1. استقبلت السفيرة مرفت تلاوي المديرة العامة لمنظمة المرأة العربية،رئيس البرلمان الافريقي السيد روجيه نكودو دانغ، والوزيرة الليبية أسماء الأسطى
     
 
 
 
غدا مؤتمر منظمة المرأة العربية تحت شعار" نعم .. معا نستطيع"
 
 
 
منظمة المرأة العربية تدين العمل الإرهابي بالكنيسة المرقسية
 
 
 
اللجان الاستشارية الدائمة لمنظمة المرأة العربية تعقد إجتماع هام
 
 
 
 
منظمة المرأة العربية تعقد مائدة مستديرة بعنوان : " دور سيدات الأعمال في تحقيق التمكين الاقتصادي للمرأة "
 
 
 
It's an event that could have serious implications.  But the Susies will ignore it because . . . well, they've been trained to be useless.
Like the US media.  Last week, news consumers learned 3 Americans were being held prisoner in Iraq.  Excuse me, last week Canadian news consumers learned that.  The US media never covered it and still hasn't.
The State Dept has said nothing and no one's asked them about the 3 Americans at any of the daily State Dept press briefings.
But the State Dept did have time to start a campaign.
hypoc
The Problem From Hell Samantha Power gets to author the self-congratulatory pose press release which includes:

This holiday season, as families in the United States gather, we are reminded of all the missed holidays, bittersweet birthdays, and family occasions where a mother, brother, friend, or neighbor was missing because a government chose to muzzle their voices and lock them up.
So throughout this holiday season, the United States government will be profiling the cases of prisoners unjustly held around the world and the families they leave behind. The stories of these individuals will highlight the broader struggle faced by so many families of political prisoners, who have to commemorate countless family occasions with loved ones behind bars.
By the way, on the disgusting Sammy Power, I don't have time to do all the heavy lifting.  
I've made a few points on the 'fake news' circus.  I'm against it, it's nothing more than censorship.  But those of you who pretend like you own the story?  Please grow up.
That means use your brains. 
This isn't new.
This an effort that Samantha Power's husband attempted.  
You'd do well to connect the two.  When Papa Cass started his nonsense, there was pushback on the left.  You'd do well to connect the two.
You could do really well by bringing in Rosa Brooks -- while part of the administration -- arguing that journalists needed to be licensed by the government.
This latest attack is only part of a larger wave and connecting it all together would prove illuminating for many.

The defense secretary [Ash Carter] said taking back Mosul is key to the fight against ISIL, because it’s where the group began. “ISIL needs to be destroyed because it’s a group that, in addition to having torn through Iraq with great savagery, also threatens directly the American people, the American homeland and our friends and allies around the world, as well as civilization and common decency in terms of the ideology that they espouse,” Carter said. “So ISIL must be destroyed. And because this was the place from which it began and from which it sprang, it must be destroyed here, as I said a moment ago, in both fact and idea.”
He said the goal is to destroy ISIL and restore sovereignty to the Iraqi government.  
Mosul was seized by the Islamic State in June of 2014.
Day 57 of the slog to liberate or 'liberate' Mosul.
 AL BAWABA notes that "the government is trying to play down concerns about the slow pace of progress. Elite troops have retaken a quarter of the city but they are facing fierce resistance from the extremist group"
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Hayder al-Abadi got a 2017 budget last week.
Austerity will be imposed which means the Iraqi people will be screwed.
It is not going over well.
ALSUMARIA reports a protest in Kirkuk today with participants insisting that oil dollars produced by Kirkuk are not being factored into the providing for the people of Kirkuk in the budget.
Let's wind down with some videos.
Iraq War Tribunal: Testimony on the Costs by Noor Al-Samarrai
 
 
 
Iraq War Tribunal: Testimony on the Lies by Birgitta Jonsdottir
 
 
 
  1. Iraq War Tribunal: Testimony on the Costs by Dr. Helen Caldicott
 
 
 
Colonel Ann Wright's Testimony for the People's Tribunal on Iraq
 
 
 
This is from an event earlier this month.  CODEPINK remembered Iraq.  All the sudden.
Not really interested in pretending that the Iraq War ended or that it was valuable to ignore it from 2009 until this month.
Not really interested in promoting nonsense.
We'll note the videos above because the people speaking in them tend to tell the truth.
It may be something I agree with or something I disagree with.  But they're honest people.
Sadly, we can't say that of a lot of other participants in that action.
The following community sites updated:

Monday, December 12, 2016

Jill Stein destroyed her own legacy

So other than giving Trump an even wider lead, what exactly did the Wisconsin recount accomplish? cc




Exactly.

Jill Stein never should have pursued recounts.

If she was going to, she shouldn't have just sought states Hillary lost.

It looked one-sided.

It looked stupid.

In 2012, she ran a weak campaign.

In 2016, she didn't try to play like she was a Democratic Party helper, she acted like she belonged to a real political party.

Then after the election, she pulls this crap?

Add in that her campaign manager was the disaster from 2004.

The asshole that the Green Party got stuck with who 'campaigned' by asking people to vote Green -- if they were in a safe state!!!

He's a loser and so is Jill.

Her recount nonsense (and her attacks on Russia) have destroyed all that she accomplished during the campaign.


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


Monday, December 12, 2016.  Chaos and violence continue, the Mosul slog continues, more austerity for the Iraqi people, and much more.


Let''s start with Madonna.  E-mails pile in from non-community members saying that I should be defending Madonna from sexism.

Okay.

Seth MacFarlane has been hostile and sexist.  His shows have done one crack on Madonna after another that are not funny and that are filled with hatred of women.  These include but are not limited to the episode where Peter, Peter's father and Brian can all agree they hate Madonna and Brian adds that she only had sex with Dennis Rodham to get back at her father.

Because that's what a White frat boy has to believe.

It's racist and sexist.

Then there's homophobia where they repeatedly try to brand Madonna's audience as made up solely of gay men.  They're not idiots.  They know this nonsense was used in the early eighties to get Barbra Streisand off popular radio.

Long before FAMILY GUY ever aired episode one, Quentin Tarantino had opened his first film with a scene set in a diner and gangsters arguing over Madonna's music.

You don't sell as many albums as Madonna has without appealing to a very mass market.

That's about all I can offer on Madonna because we're not the loony HUFFINGTON POST.

Madonna whines about Prince getting away with outrageous costumes on stage.

I believe that's the period where pop radio largely ignored Prince.

But, more to the point, Madonna's behavior was outrageous.

She'd really kicked things off with the video for "Justify My Love" -- and the ABC NIGHTLINE special.  It was 1990 and she seemed obsessed with sex -- as the video made clear.  This was followed by TRUTH OR DARE which was similarly sex obsessed (not limited to her use of a bottle in one scene of the film).  Then there was her get-out-the-vote spot -- her nude with the American flag draped over her.  This was followed by the book SEX -- a nudie clip job posing as a book.  Then came EROTICA -- an underrated album but again with an obsession on sex.  This was followed with the hideous film BODY OF EVIDENCE which was just out right trash on every level including the promos.  And, guess what, we've only gone from 1990 to 1993.  We could continue, the next year, she would toss a pair of panties at David Letterman on his show and suggest he sniff them.

It was just so much overkill.

And so hysterical because she repeatedly tried to portray herself as a great beauty.
She's never been beautiful.  On a rare day, she can pass for pretty.  Mainly, she's just been well groomed.

She meets Tony Ward -- a present her brother bought for her -- and puts a cigarette out on his chest?

I don't know what we're supposed to talk about here but I did think it was clever that when she'd gone way too far and was trying to walk it back she came up with "Human Nature" and the line "Oops, I didn't know we couldn't talk about sex."


Prince did not pose nude for dozens of photos in a book called SEX.  Prince did not present himself as the kinky lover in BODY OF EVIDENCE.  Prince didn't toss his briefs at TV hosts (or launch into a series of f-word rants as Madonna did).

More importantly, Prince wrote songs.

He didn't put his name to songs he didn't write.

He didn't get a songwriting credit for one word added to a song (as Madonna did).

Prince explored sex as did (briefly) George Michael.  But Madonna did it in a way to designed to shock and in a manner that was tawdry.  America recoiled.

Had she done what Prince did, would she have gotten into trouble?

Maybe, maybe not.

They'd both ruled for the second half of the 80s and pop isn't a world known for long careers.

Madonna was smarter than Prince or George when it came to fighting with labels.  She won the battles that consumed the two men.  She also made millions off her own label -- chiefly via Alanis.

For an artist whose voice is created in the studio and whose songwriting talents are questionable -- and non-existent since 2000 -- she's had a remarkably long run.  Or had.  She's not been able to go top ten solo since 2005.  But she once had a strong run of hits.

As Ava and I noted in 2006's "TV Review: Confessing to no talent:"


Madonna in concert, to your average broadcast TV viewer, is going to mean some of the hits. Maybe you won't hear them all, but how could you? 1997 and 2004 are the only years she didn't release a top forty hit. Many years have contained multiple hits. So hopes of "Into the Groove" (not technically a single -- though played constantly on radio, it was on the dance mix of "Angel"), "I'll Remember," "Dress You Up," "Keep It Together," "Rain," . . . well it just wasn't going to happen. What Sheena Easton calls hits are blips for Madonna.
But is it too much for the average viewer to assume that a special starring a performer with something like 46 top forty hits might offer up at least five of those hits over a two hour span?





Myself, I'd rather listen to Janet Jackson who's an actual artist.


Meanwhile, the US Defense Dept announced yesterday:


Strikes in Iraq
Attack, bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft as well as rocket artillery conducted nine strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

-- Near Bashir, two strikes engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a vehicle bomb.

-- Near Beiji, two strikes destroyed a cave entrance, four ISIL fighting positions, two weapons caches and a heavy machine gun.

-- Near Mosul, four strikes engaged two ISIL tactical units, destroying seven front-end loaders, three fighting positions, two ISIL-held buildings, two tractor trailer trucks, a vehicle, a land bridge and three tunnels. Six tunnels were damaged and two bridges were disabled.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed an ISIL armored vehicle.


Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.


And this morning, they noted:


Strikes in Iraq
Rocket artillery and attack, bomber, fighter rotary and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 10 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government:

-- Near Beiji, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Haditha, a strike destroyed an ISIL bunker.

-- Near Mosul, five strikes engaged two ISIL tactical units; destroyed five ISIL-held buildings, two vehicle-borne-bomb facilities, three vehicle-borne bombs, six fighting positions, three mortar systems, a heavy machine gun, a weapons cache, two front-end loaders, two tactical vehicles, a tunnel and two pieces of engineering equipment; damaged 15 supply routes; and suppressed an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Rawah, a strike destroyed an ISIL dump truck and damaged an artillery system.


-- Near Tal Afar, two strikes engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a tactical vehicle.



The State Dept doesn't offer anything like that.

They used to.

Until Hillary killed that weekly update.

And Congress went along with it.


Now billions of US tax payer dollars go to Iraq and there's not even the slightest pretense of accountability to the American people.


June 19, 2014, US President Barack Obama publicly insisted the only answer to Iraq's various crises was a political solution.

But while he began dropping bombs on Iraq daily in August of 2014, he hasn't had time for diplomacy efforts during the same period.


Stratfor Enterprises notes the recently passed 2017 budget for Iraq:


Baghdad is caught between a rock and a hard place where its budget is concerned. Discontent is growing among the Iraqi people after years of austerity measures, but between stagnant oil prices and the conditions of Iraq's World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans, there is no end in sight to the spending cuts. Iraq, whose oil production is second only to Saudi Arabia's among OPEC members, is one of the most oil-dependent countries in the Middle East. In 2015, 85 percent of the nation's budget derived from oil export revenues. Despite OPEC's recent decision to cut oil production in 2017, the odds are low that oil prices will make a dramatic recovery in the next year. Assuming that the country would sell its oil at a modest $42 per barrel, Iraq's lawmakers arrived at a budget of 100.7 trillion Iraqi dinars (about $85 billion), a 6 percent reduction from this year's.




And this austerity nonsense is exactly why Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani repeatedly warned Iraq taking money from the IMF.

But Hayder al-Abadi, like so many fools before him, couldn't resist the immediate cash.

Now Iraq will be enslaved the way so many other countries have been.

Maybe Hayder will be forced to resign?


Remember when we were calling out the nonsense of Hayder's popularity?

Others are finally starting to notice it as well.


The Mosul operation has not made him an untouchable by any means.

Day 56 of the never-ending slog.


And what can people point to?


How about the success of the operation in . . . creating refugees!


100,000 people displaced since Mosul operation began: Iraqi Minister


Mosul's just one 'success' after another.

Mosul doctors struggle to save civilians on Iraq front line



Just one 'success' after another.


Iraqi Sunni civilians killed by Iraq army airstrike on
 



. . . after another . . .


15 civilians killed in Mosul


. . . after another . . .






Day 56 and remember when Elise Labott (CNN) exploded in an October State Dept press briefing when a reporter dared to rightly call it a slog?


Poor, stupid Elise.

Maybe today she'll try to make up for that stupidity by asking about the three Americans being held by Iraq?





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