Thursday, July 23, 2020

Was Casey Sheehan a War Criminal?

As I noted last time, I tried to leave a comment on Cindy Sheehan's site.  She approves them.  If she doesn't, they don't go up.

Mine didn't go up.

Now I didn't attack Cindy in the comment.  All I did was say it was an awful interview and that Dario hurt his own campaign, that I started off for him but he wouldn't promote his own campaign so I went with Howie and that all of this was at my site in real time.

Apparently White Mama didn't like it.

Yeah, I'm going there now.

I was being kind in the comment I left -- that she refused to allow through -- Cindy Sheehan, gate keeper --  but I'm not going to be nice now.

Cindy, check your racism. Check your White privilege.

In the midst of that bad interview with Dario Hunter, Cindy shares that Howie Hawikin is bad because he fought in Vietnam.  He, Cindy tells us, is a War Criminal?

Really?

Is her son Casey a War Criminal?

I don't think so. 

And I don't believe that those who fought in Vietnam are War Criminals.  I believe those in Vietnam who did illegal things -- rape, whatever -- those are War Criminals.

But I am not going to call someone who fought in a war that the US government sent them to fight in a War Criminal.

That's insulting and it's racist with regards to Vietnam considering the statistics on Black soldiers in that war.

It's just beyond insulting though.

It's rude ass and kiss my Black ass, Peace Mom, if you think I'm going to pretend like you didn't say that on your stupid ass program.

You let Dario lie and pretend others harmed his campaign and that was bad enough.

But you then called all US service members who served in Vietnam "War Criminals."

That's outrageous and shameful.

Cindy's always been an air head and I'm seeing why CODESTINK tried to control her back during Camp Casey.  Of course, she's too dense to realize how she was controlled and managed. 

She needs to take a look at the hate inside her because to make that sweeping statement, she has to have a lot of hate inside her.

She's just so smug during the interview and thinking she knows so much.  She's just a stupid woman who wasted her time and life.  She cheered on Barack Obama -- a fact she likes to lie about today -- and I don't forget that.  She had made some true comments about Nancy Pelosi and it was 2008 and the faux left had turned on her.  She tried to get back in their good graces via comments at Common Dreams about Barack. 

And let's face it, she hasn't done s**t on Iraq in years. 

If you need to nurse your wounds, go nurse your wounds.  If you want to be a public personality, then use it for good.  She's wasted it.  She's part of the pretense that the Iraq War is over and that the US isn't still engaged in Iraq.

I'm saying my peace here, I don't plan on repeating it.  I'll let it go and forgive and forget in a few days.  But what I've written here is truth.

And I'll add a little more truth -- her b.s. about that general that was killed in January, where she wants to worship him?  F**K YOU, CINDY.

That man was a monster and Iraq's LGBTQ community can tell you that if you'd bothered to listen.

Air head.


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


Thursday, July 23, 2020.  A briefing on Iraq lets the press show their real colors, a high profile kidnapping takes place in Iraq, Turkey continues to terrorize Iraq and, remember, it's safe to talk about Joe Biden and Iraq if you only focus on when he was a US senator.



Yesterday, US Maj Gen Kenneth P. Ekman ("deputy commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve") gave a briefing via satellite from Baghdad.  He's been deputy commander in Iraq since April 2020.  Prior to that, he was stationed for two years at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida.





At the end of his opening remarks, Ekman noted that a US service member had died in Syria the previous day.  Here's the DoD release on that death.

SOUTHWEST ASIA — A service member with Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve died in Syria, July 21.

Initial reports indicate the incident was not due to enemy contact.

The incident is under investigation. 

It is CJTF-OIR policy to defer casualty identification procedures to the relevant national authorities after the next of kin have been notified.

Attending the press conference was NPR's Tom Bowman.  As usual, Tom ignored Iraq.  He asked about Syria and he asked about Turkey.  Ekman reminded him that Turkey wasn't OIR's focus ("As you know, we're focused on Iraq and Syria.").  It's a pity NPR never reminds Tom Bowman that US service members are stationed in Iraq and a press briefing from Baghdad should include questions about Iraq.  

But Tom Bowman's been allowed to blow off Iraq for a decade now.  

Courtney Kube is with NBC.  So let's guess what her focus was.  Iraq?  No.  No. And no.  Russia.  She's part of the crazy Russian madness -- obsessed with it.  But if that wasn't the case, she wouldn't work at NBC, now would she?  And you can't be a cable crazy without asking about Russia which explains CNN's Ryan Browne's wasting everyone's time with his Russia conspiracy theories

Who asked about US forces?  I'd love to tell you it was ABC . . .

After Tom ignored Iraq, after AP's Lolita Baldor focused on Iraq and Iran (valid) and after Courtney obsessed over Russia, we finally got this: "This is Lucas Tomlinson with Fox News. General, how many U.S. troops are in Syria and Iraq right now? And are there any plans to remove some of those forces?"


Maj Gen Kenneth P. Ekman: Yeah, so on numbers, first I'll just tell you that our coalition and U.S. troop presence varies somewhat as we go through the various phases of the operation in both Syria and Iraq.
With regards to U.S. force presence in Iraq, that is something that we continually coordinate with the government of Iraq, and right now the number is 5,200. That is the enduring number that we've coordinated with our hosts, as they invited us here. I will tell you that those numbers are subject to some discussion as we progress our way through the campaign and as we work our way through the strategic dialogue that will negotiate and sort through our relationship with Iraq in the future.
With regards to Syria, those numbers are managed very carefully to make sure that we have sufficient forces to achieve our objectives in Syria, and those have been fairly stable for a while.
Lucas Tomlinson:  So you said 5,200 in Iraq, and I didn't hear the number for Syria, General.
MAJ. GEN. EKMAN: Yeah, and we try to keep those pretty constant just because the numbers in Syria tend to point to specific capabilities. We're careful about how specifically we cite them, just given kind of our limited footprint there.
Thanks, though.

I believe the next section is AFP's Sylvie Lanteaume.

STAFF: Moving back to the phone line, Sylvie of AFP.
Q: Hello. Hello. Thank you.
You say that you are getting smaller, but answering Lucas' questions, you seem to say that the number is stable. So how are you getting smaller?
MAJ. GEN. EKMAN: Yes ma'am. Hey, thanks for your question. I didn't catch your name in the introduction.
And so we're at that point in our campaign -- and I covered this some in my opening remarks -- where we've been quite successful. We're continuing to transfer bases back to our Iraqi hosts. The most recent will be Basmaya, where the transfer ceremony occurs on the 25th of July. All of that is a sign of progress. What that has allowed us to do is to reduce our footprint here in Iraq. We're going to do that slowly, and we're going to do that in close coordination with the government of Iraq. But both for U.S. forces and coalition forces, we continue to work with our hosts so that our footprint here supports our mutual objectives.
Q: So excuse me, sir. I can follow up. So you are saying that it's not done yet. You are going to get smaller.
MAJ. GEN. EKMAN: Yes, ma'am. I think over time what you will see is a slow reduction of U.S. forces here in Iraq in coordination with our Iraqi hosts.


Russia fear mongering was also provided by TASK & PURPOSE's Jeff Schogol who attempted to cite his false god Brett Blue Balls McGurk.  Jeffy loves Brett's balls -- blue and all.  But he's too busy fantasizing about being in Brett's arms to keep up to date.  Brett has a title.  Consultant to the United Nations investigative team on ISIS.  This was announced July 20th:



SA
@KarimKhanQC
is delighted to welcome
@brett_mcgurk
to #UNITAD as a senior consultant. Brett’s vast diplomatic experience and expertise as the former head of the Global
@Coalition
to Defeat #ISIL will add immense value to our efforts


Could there be a more stupid move?

For those who've forgotten, Sunnis and Kurds were not fond of Brett and were the loudest objecting when Barack Obama tried (and failed) to make Brett US Ambassador to Iraq.  He's not seen as fair.  He's not seen as impartial.

We'll return to the press conference tomorrow.  For now, let's note a kidnapping in Iraq. Murtada Tweets:


Hella Mewis a #German artist and curator based in Baghdad. Was kidnaped today at 20:00 in the center of #Baghdad #freedom_for_hella
Image
3:32 PM · Jul 20, 2020


 

"I love Iraqi food, I love the Iraqi people," the art curator told Sary Hussam, an Iraqi journalist, in an interview in January 2020 posted on YouTube. "Of course I have difficulties with the social customs here, but as a foreigner I can enjoy my freedom and am not involved."
There can be no doubt that Hella Mewis, who has lived in Iraq for years, was aware of the omnipresent danger for foreigners. Many live barricaded behind thick concrete walls and barbed wire, protected and escorted by armed security personnel. Not so Hella Mewis. "I can't live without Baghdad," Mewis said in the interview. "If I leave Baghdad just for an hour, I already feel homesick!"
Born in then-East Berlin and educated as a theater manager, Mewis discovered her love for Iraq in 2013, when she went to Baghdad for a project sponsored by the Goethe Institut. "I got off the plane, set foot on Baghdad's soil and knew: This is home," Mewis was quoted two years ago in the German daily Frankfurter Rundschau (FR), which continues, "She came to Baghdad with the aim of giving the city of car bombs, suicide bombers and militias a different look."


Hella was featured in an April 20, 2019 NEWSHOUR (PBS) report:

  • Hella Mewis:
    When we did the first installation, exhibition, people we were shocked and said This is not art. This is a question: what is art?
  • Simona Foltyn:
    Bait Tarkib is run by Hella Mewis.
  • Hella Mewis:
    The Iraqi society, some of them of course are conservative, but some of them are simply afraid to make a change. So this is why what we are trying to do — not to be afraid to make a change and other people will follow, I'm sure, they started to follow us.
  • Simona Foltyn:
    Bait Tarkib organizes exhibitions and workshops to help emerging artists develop their portfolios and get exposure through events like the art walk. It receives funding from French and German cultural institutes, but not the Iraqi government.
  • Hella Mewis:
    The government doesn't care at all about the young generation and art especially. Culture, no, nothing. Grants like we have in Europe so we have grants for the young generation, grants for cultural institutions, here is nothing.


    • On Monday evening, as-yet unidentified perpetrators carried out the kidnapping of Hella Mewis, a German national and curator who was working as the head of the Tarkib art center in Baghdad. According to reports, Mewis was apparently in the process of leaving the Tarkib offices last night at approximately 8 p.m. when a white pickup truck and another car approached and she was taken away. Additionally, according to the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, police officers in Baghdad witnessed Mewis’s kidnapping but did not intervene. The newspaper also stated that instances of kidnapping of foreign nationals living in Iraq have increased significantly in 2020.

    Meanwhile, the government of Turkey continues to assault the country of Iraq, international law and Iraq's national sovereignty in what should be called acts of terrorism because that's what they are.  Orhan Coskun, Daren Butler and John Davison (REUTERS) reports:
    Turkey is taking its decades-old conflict with Kurdish militants deep into northern Iraq, establishing military bases and deploying armed military drones against the fighters in their mountain strongholds.
    [. . .]
    Baghdad summoned Turkey’s ambassador last month to formally complain, but the central government has limited authority in the autonomous region, while the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq is wary of antagonising Turkey, which has NATO’s second largest standing army. 

     Earlier this week, George Mikhail (AL-MONITOR) noted:

    Egypt has been facing off against Turkey not only in Libya, but also in Iraq, where the Turkish army has launched attacks in the north targeting the Kurdistan Workers Party, according to a June 15 Turkish Ministry of Defense statement. Meanwhile, Iraq has been accusing Turkey of violating Iraqi sovereignty and disrespecting the principles of good neighborly relations.
    The Iraqi Parliament called on the UN Security Council July 6 to step in to stop the Turkish military incursions.
    Egypt took advantage of the Iraqi-Turkish dispute to step up its efforts to cement ties with Iraq. Cairo offered diplomatic and political support to Baghdad against Turkey and the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the Turkish military intervention June 19.
    In an earlier statement on July 3, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned ongoing Turkish violations of Iraqi sovereignty under what it called unfounded national security allegations and asserted that its actions are unacceptable and undermine regional peace and security.
     
    Joe Biden gets softballs in interview after interview.  No one asks him about the Kurds, about what Turkey's doing, about anything to do with Iraq.  But, as he endlessly boasts, when he was Vice President, Barack put him in charge of Iraq.  Reality, that didn't work out very well.  Does the press plan to ever examine that?

    At FOREIGN POLICY, Robert Draper looks at Joe Biden's relationship with the Iraq War as a senator (yes, it's ground that's been traveled over and over -- playing it safe gets you published in FOREIGN POLICY):

    Not by design, my book arrives at a time of national crisis, when polls suggest that Americans are fed up with the Trump administration’s pervasive amateurism. But Biden is not yet a shoo-in in the November election. Though the pandemic has revealed a nationwide yearning for straight talk and scientifically validated guidance, recoiling from the White House’s antics has not translated into a reacquired appreciation of old hands on the Hill like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for example—or, for that matter, of the media. Respect for such institutions remains abysmal.
    Biden therefore remains afflicted with an indelible weakness—an inability to convince voters that 45 years’ worth of government experience represents a surefire cure for what now afflicts the United States. After all, what did all that expertise get Americans two decades ago? George W. Bush brought with him to the White House a highly skilled staff, featuring a star-studded foreign-policy team that had worked in government going back to the Ford administration. The new president managed to pass major bipartisan legislation with a Congress that was enjoying a relatively even-tempered interval between Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party. Meanwhile, newsrooms were well resourced and not yet convulsed by the internet. All of which is to say that Bush’s first year in office came at a time when Washington was at a peak of functionality.

     [. . .]
    During the campaign, Biden has passed on opportunities to elaborate his lessons learned from the Iraq experience. That’s not to say he hasn’t learned any. A nuclear physicist on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s payroll, Peter Zimmerman, had warned the committee’s chairman, Biden, of flaws in the prewar intelligence. Biden later apologized to Zimmerman for not listening. The question is, who would a President Biden listen to now?


    The following sites updated:





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    Wednesday, July 22, 2020

    Some Green news

    From NEWSWEEK:

    As the 2020 presidential election is now less than four months away, Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins and Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen are registering support in national polls, signaling that their respective messages resonate with a segment of voters frustrated with Democrats and Republicans.
    "The two governing parties are presiding over a failed state. The coronavirus epidemic, the climate meltdown, inequality with declining working-class life expectancies and a nuclear arms race out of control with none of the candidates talking about it," Hawkins, 67, who co-founded the U.S. Green Party in the 1990s, told Newsweek in an interview. "So, we need to go in another direction."
    Jorgensen, 63, has voiced similar frustration. "There is an ugly two-headed monster ruling our country who is destroying our economy, invading our privacy, and eating away our rights," a recent campaign email for the candidate said, taking aim at Republicans and Democrats.

    In other Green news, Cindy Sheehan allowed Dario Hunter to spout some big time lies.  It was awful.  He just smears Howie and the Green Party for his own failed run.  He is the reason for his failure.  Dario ran a half-assed campaign.

    I left a comment at Cindy's website.  That was four hours ago.  It's still not up.  I'm going to give it 24 hours.  If it's not up by tomorrow night, I'll write about it here.

    But that interview was hideous and I am offended by it.

    I'll be dealing with it tomorrow.  And the lies about Howie weren't the worst of it.  There was an attack on him that was beneath Dario and certainly beneath Cindy.

    The Green Party needs to respond to Howie's charges.  Read C.I. in the snapshot below.


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

     
    Wednesday, July 22, 2020.  Dario Hunter wants to blame everyone else for his failed campaign and Cindy Sheehan gives him a place to throw a public temper tantrum.


    Starting in the US where there's another candidate trying to win the presidency.  Dario Hunter.  The Green Party candidate?  Yes.  He lost that nomination to Howie Hawkins and now is attempting an independent run for president.  Cindy Sheehan spoke with him on her latest CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX.  He tells Cindy he's "a fighter."

    He tells Cindy Sheehan, "I wanted to take that fight to the country as a whole" -- Green Party issues -- "to ensure to move that agenda, that platform forward."  Really?  He lies so very well, doesn't he?

    Gate keepers are in the Green Party, he insists.  He doesn't want to tell the world that, you understand, but "It's a truth that I have to share."  He says he and other Green candidates had to claw their way to get access to the voters to . . .

    Oh, shut up.

    The Green Party may be all of those things.  Howie co-founded it.  He might have reaped the same backdoor benefits that Hillary Clinton did in 2016.  He might not have.

    But Dario is not the one to make those charges.  Lazy Dario is not the one to make those charges.

    Did the Green Party stop him from Tweeting?  Did the Green Party stop him from posting to FACEBOOK?  

    He was a lazy ass candidate.

    I agree with Dario on the issues probably 100%.  I was hoping he'd get the nomination.  But months ago, when Jess and Ann turned against him and decided to support Howie, it was because lazy Dario wasn't running a real campaign.  You don't control the media or what it covers.  You do control your campaign site and you do control you social media.  

    We started out noting Dario here every Saturday or Sunday that we noted Howie.  Then I wasn't noting Howie.  Why?  I had nothing to note from Dario's campaign.  Was that fair to Howie -- or anyone running a real campaign -- that they didn't get noted because their opponents were too lazy to even Tweet once a week?

    No.  

    Dario's nonsense plays with Cindy because (a) she likes him and (b) she wasn't paying attention to his campaign -- as she notes, she's not a Green.  I'm not either but we try to note all candidates for president and have done that from the beginning.  Much to David Cobb's displeasure in 2004.  I believe he was our first e-mail complaint from a non-journalist.

    I wish Dario had gotten the Green Party's presidential nomination.  I think he has a great stand on the issues.  But Dario didn't get the nomination -- apparently he's this year's Hillary Clinton in that he's just not going to go away -- and that is his fault.  He needs to own that.  

    His criticism of the Green Party may be accurate, it may not.  But he needs to start taking ownership for the fact that he didn't run a real campaign.  If Dario was not happy that a co-chair of the party (I believe he means Dr. Margaret Flowers) was on Howie's campaign, guess what?  He had months to object to that.  He could have Tweeted and reTweeted that.

    He would have had to have named her and he's too much of a chicken s**t to name her, but we would've noted it.

    After he fails as a candidate, he refuses to look at his mistakes, he refuses to be honest.  He also refuses to discuss anti-war or peace in anything but platitudes which may have been the second most disappointing thing about the interview.  And, so no one e-mails me, I don't call US troops War Criminals.  I don't do that for Iraq, I don't do it for Vietnam.  Stephen D. Green was a War Criminal.  His actions were War Crimes.  But I do not use him to smear other troops.  I don't know why, in that interview, we're calling Howie Hawkins a War Criminal because he served in Vietnam but, to be clear, that's their interview, that's not me.

    The Green Party needs to respond to Dario's charges.  Flowers -- with or without her husband Kevin Zeese -- needs to respond to this.  If they don't, these charges are going to linger all the way through November.

    And people need to tell him that a Green Party convention is not "fascist."  He has no idea what fascism is when he trots out that.  

    And he's got no idea of anything.  He needs to close his mouth right now and work on his campaign site.  He's too late on many ballots and he's too stupid to use his campaign site.  Click here.  It's a list of state's where he has ballot access and where he's working on it and --

    Oh, no, it's not.  That was published at least three months ago (see bottom of the page).  He's supposedly campaigning as an independent and working on ballot access . . . but he hasn't even updated his campaign site.  If someone believed in him and wanted to work for ballot access, if they visited his site, they would either be misled or wasting their time.

    He says he's running as an independent and he says he has left the Green Party but the bottom of this page -- his official campaign site -- says "Green for President."

    I'm really disappointed in this interview.  It's one thing to allow Dario to come on and trash the Green Party -- I've got no problem with that -- but considering how lazy he was -- not to mention he hid out in California for weeks not working on his campaign -- to allow him to whine that the nomination was stolen from him, that's outrageous.  

    Dario's sour grapes are his own, the rest of us don't need to share them and we don't need to pretend that he was denied anything except by himself.  I've never seen a more fake ass run for a nomination than Dario's and he needs to grow the hell up and grasp that Howie Tweeted repeatedly each day, that Howie's campaign site updated many times a week.  Dario didn't.  



    That's him hurling accusations again.  They may be true, they may be false.  But the reality is that no one harmed his campaign more than he did.

    And the Green Party better start responding to these charges.  If they don't, they're going to spread and they'll be believed because that's the only information that's out there.


    From yesterday, here's Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins speaking on REAL PROGRESSIVES.



    Joseph Kishore is the SEP's presidential candidate.  In the last 24 hours, he's Tweeted this:






    And this:

    Bezos makes $13bln in one day. Meanwhile the #coronavirus rages out of control.
    Image
    6:45 PM · Jul 21, 2020


    And this:

    Trump's creeping coup: White House sending federal police into major American cities. On Portland: "They grab a lot of people and jail the leaders... These people are anarchists, people that hate our country and we’re not going to let that go forward."
    President Trump sending federal police agents into major American cities
    Trump said on Monday said that he was extending the use of federal law enforcement officers to New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore




    When Dario was seeking the Green Party's presidential nomination, those three Tweets would have been all he offered for a whole month.  Joseph Kishore's done them in one 24 hour period.  It's about being a real candidate.  Every day, you need to be offering something so that people have a reason to discuss your campaign.  



    As ALJAZEERA notes above, Iraq's prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, arrived in Tehran yesterday and met with the country's president Hassan Rouhani.  The leaders share a border and many other things.  Mustafa repeated that he would not allow Iraqi soil to be used for war on Iran.  He's made that comment before.  

    Iraq's airports aren't yet open for international travel but Mustafa visited Iran and his oil minister visited Saudi Arabia.  In a country already plagued with corruption and where the leaders are not trusted, how wise is it for them to be traveling when the Iraqi people cannot?  

    The pandemic continues around the world and in Iraq.  MIDDLE EAST EYE reports:


    Iraqi health workers are warning that patients in need of critical medical care are at risk of death as a result of increased restrictions at checkpoints at the border between Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region and the rest of the country.
    Following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, travel between much of Iraq was heavily restricted, particularly between the areas in northern Iraq controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
    This has left Iraqi patients in need of life-saving treatment unable to travel to better-equipped and resourced hospitals in the KRG.

    The following sites updated:















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