Friday, January 7, 2022

Grocery shopping

I was so ticked off this afternoon.  I got off early and knew I was getting off early.  I used Instacart to get some groceries including what I was cooking tonight.  It got to be four o'clock and I had selected 3 o'clock for delivery.


Where was it?


They need to be clearer.  They told me delivery by three but there was one more click I had to do.  This is why my grandmother will not do delivery on groceries.  It's too confusing.  I was confused and, unlike her, I don't have bad vision (she's diabetic).  It needs to be clearer and its needs to be larger.  


So I had to hit another button and then the earliest was six o'clock.  It didn't arrive until 6:50 and I've thrown it in the oven and we're starving -- the kids, Cedric and me.  


Meant to post that.  But didn't.  We ate dinner instead.


Since I didn't post yet, I can note that Call Me Kat returns this Sunday (January 9th) on Fox with new episodes.

 

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

 

Friday, January 7, 2022.  The Iraq War continues and the persecution of Julian Assange continues?  Who's the president?  Pin the blame on him.


US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange.  


Julian Assange: "A knowledgeable public, is an empowered public, is a free public" #FreeAssangeNOW
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Why does Joe Biden insist upon persecuting Julian Assange? 

He needs to be asked that.  He's the one with the power here.  Make it personal.  For Julian Assange, this is his life.  It is very personal.

So, Joe, why are you persecuting Julian?  

What's it going to take for you to stop persecuting him?

Time to put Joe on the spot.

He wants to do this, make him justify it.  

Julian Assange revealed the truth -- that's not a crime.


Julian Assange is the founding editor and publisher of Wikileaks, the pioneering transparency website. Wikileaks exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, torture at Guantanamo and other abuses of power, releasing thousands of secret U.S. government and military documents that major news organizations worldwide, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian then used as the basis for award-winning reporting. Assange is currently locked up in England’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison, which has been described as the “British version of Guantanamo Bay,” as he fights the U.S. government’s attempt to extradite him on espionage and hacking charges. If extradited, he faces up to 175 years in prison if found guilty.

On Wednesday, activists marked Assange’s 1,000th day of incarceration at Belmarsh with a rally demanding his release. Prior to Belmarsh, he spent almost seven years inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, under political asylum.

Among those protesting was Stella Moris, Assange’s financĂ©e and the mother of his two youngest children. “It’s really taking a toll on him,” Stella Moris said on the Democracy Now! news hour in November, speaking from outside the UN climate summit in Glasgow. “There’s no end in sight. This can go on for years, potentially.”

Stella Moris announced the 1000th-day vigil in a tweet that included an audio recording reportedly made inside Assange’s Belmarsh cell. Men screaming, guard dogs barking, and the incessant clang of metal doors slamming open and closed echo through the recording, painting a stark picture of the harsh conditions inside Belmarsh.

“The U.N. special rapporteur on torture has said that he is being psychologically tortured,” Moris continued. “His physical health has seriously deteriorated. They are killing him. If he dies, it’s because they are killing him. They are torturing him to death.”

Moris recently revealed that Assange had suffered a mini-stroke in prison on October 27th, the first day of his High Court appeal hearing. That court ultimately sided with the U.S. government, ordering that his extradition could proceed. Assange is currently seeking permission from that same High Court to appeal the ruling to the UK’s Supreme Court.

Threats to journalists and media workers worldwide have been on the rise. The Committee to Protect Journalists stated that, as of December 8th, 24 journalists had been killed in the line of duty in 2021, with eight more whose deaths may have been linked to their work. A record-breaking 293 journalists were imprisoned last year.

President Joe Biden opened his “Summit for Democracy” on December 9th, saying, “Free and independent media. It’s the bedrock of democracy. It’s how the public stay informed and how governments are held accountable. Around the world, press freedom is under threat.”

Biden’s words are true, but ring hollow as his Justice Department seeks to imprison Julian Assange for life, simply for performing those very functions of a free press that Biden praised.

“On the same day the Nobel Peace Prize honors journalists, a UK court ruled that the United States can extradite Julian Assange, a move that seriously damages journalism,” CPJ Deputy Executive Director Robert Mahoney said on December 10th, referring to Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia for their courageous reporting while under threat from their governments. “The U.S. Justice Department’s dogged pursuit of the WikiLeaks founder has set a harmful legal precedent for prosecuting reporters…The Biden administration pledged at its Summit for Democracy this week to support journalism. It could start by removing the threat of prosecution under the Espionage Act now hanging over the heads of investigative journalists everywhere.”

A coalition of 24 groups, including Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, PEN America and Reporters Without Borders called on the Biden administration to halt its Assange prosecution, saying it “threatens press freedom because much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinely—and that they must engage in in order to do the work the public needs them to do.”


It's not 'the Biden administration.'  Have the guts to speak up or go cower in the corner, RABBLE.  It's Joe Biden.  One person holds Julian Assange's fate in their hands -- just one person.

Call him out or shut up because we don't need you.  We don't need you distracting or diverting attention.

Hang this around Joe Biden's neck, where it belongs.  Hang it around his neck and force him to face reality: History will punish him forever if he does not stop persecuting Julian.

Hang it around his neck. 

He wants it so make him own it.



"The future of journalism is at stake - it will not stop with Julian Assange" #FreeAssangeNOW
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Let’s talk about what is indisputable, who really was endangered and by whom.

The United States of America jeopardized the lives of Iraq’s entire 25 million people with an illegal and reckless invasion based on the lies that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had direct ties to al Qaeda.

It’s indisputable that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi combatants and civilians were killed in the eight-year war because of violence and war-related causes. (Research in 2013 put the total at 400,000). It’s indisputable that four million Iraqis fled their country. Millions more were displaced internally.

It’s reasonable to say millions of Iraqis were wounded by violence or suffered illness from war-related causes. It’s fair to say millions of Iraqis will struggle with trauma and mental illness for life, that a countless number have already killed themselves.

American families suffered too: 4,431 U.S. soldiers were killed in the war and 31,994 wounded. Hundreds of thousands of American veterans have PTSD or moral injury, affecting millions of loved ones and friends. Same goes for any other foreigner who spent time in Iraq – soldier, security contractor, truck driver, cook, journalist.

And in case people think the Iraq War is over, Islamic State rose from its ashes. Yet no American government or military leader has ever been held to account for the lies and misrepresentations over Iraq. Meanwhile, the United States brazenly misrepresents the facts in its case against Assange with the blessing of successive Australian governments.

That’s why we need to make Assange’s freedom an election issue in Australia. It’s why we need to make noise on social media, in the mainstream media, to politicians, and on the streets. Because Assange is being tortured in a foreign country for telling the truth about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he will be extradited to America where he will likely die in prison.

Remember — the Australian government eagerly took part in the invasion of Iraq. His case is the biggest test of press freedom in decades. Make some noise Australians! Bring Assange home.



According to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Assange has been arbitrarily deprived of his freedom since he was arrested on December 7, 2010. Since then he has been held under house arrest, confined for seven years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London while he was protected by the administration of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, and jailed in Belmarsh.

"The U.S. government is trying to put an Australian publisher on trial in a U.S. national security court, where he faces a 175-year sentence and imprisonment in conditions of torture and total isolation, simply because he was doing his job," Morris said. "He received true information about the victims and the crimes committed by U.S. operations in Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq from Chelsea Manning, and he published it."



Lisa McCormick Tweets:

After American leaders dismissed human tragedies as "collateral damage" #JulianAssange & released more than 490,000 documents about the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is journalism, not a crime.


And Desiree notes:

~ Julian Assange ~ "The Iraq War was the biggest issue for people of my generation in the West. It was also the clearest case, in my living memory, of media manipulation and the creation of a war through ignorance."
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It meant a lot to people around the world -- the illegal war.

It never meant much to US politicians which is why so many whores were on the floor of Congress Thursday gushing over War Criminal Dick Cheney.

They're whores.

They don't represent the people and they never did.  Dick told them to go F**K themselves on the floor of Congress and that's forgotten as are his lies and his crimes because whores don't have ethics.

You should write your whore and ask them what they're doing for you and how embracing Dick Cheney helps put food on your table?  Maybe they'll reply with a list of their services and how much they charge for each act?  Whores.  

The Iraq War goes on because Congress is a bunch of whores.

Big, tough Congress.  They were going to cut off the funding of the war.   Remember that?  If meassures of success weren't met they were going to . . . Then the tired whores went to sleep and forgot all about it. 




A veteran US diplomat says American forces are not leaving the Middle East in the near future despite Washington’s announcement of an end to its “combat mission” in Iraq.

Last month, the US announced an end to its combat mission in Iraq, but many Iraqi leaders have warned that nothing has changed in the number of American troops and the relabeling is a cloak to deceive the Iraqi people who are fiercely opposed to the presence of American forces.

In an article published by the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, Robert Ford, a former US ambassador to Syria and Algeria, said it was “ridiculous” to believe the US was leaving the Middle East, adding “the American forces are not leaving Syria and Iraq in the near future.”

“First, the Americans are keeping their bases in the [Persian] Gulf region in countries like Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. They are expanding the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. At the same time, the American navy continues to operate in the [Persian] Gulf and near the Arabian Peninsula,” Ford explained.

Second, he continued, neither of the former and current US presidents, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, withdrew all the American forces out of Syria or Iraq.

“In fact, the number of soldiers hasn’t changed for about two years and will not change much during the next few years. The Americans have promised not to undertake unilateral combat missions in Iraq and that is new,” the retired American diplomat pointed out.


Along with serving as the US Ambassador to Syria during Barack Obama two terms as president, Robert S. Ford served from 2008 to 2010 as the US Deputy Ambassador to Iraq.



The main political parties that won sizeable blocs in Iraq’s October 10 parliamentary elections are yet to reach agreements on power-sharing as the country’s parliament is scheduled to hold its first session Sunday.

After Iraq’s Supreme Court endorsed the results of the election, Barham Salih, Iraq’s President, on December 30, called on the new legislative body of 329 seats, to convene on January 9th.

Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein, it is a political tradition that the country’s three presidencies are shared among the three main components; the Prime Minister for the Shias, Speaker of the Parliament for the Sunnis and Iraq’s Presidency for the Kurds.  

As time is running short, the Shia parties have yet to settle their disputes. Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr’s bloc, which has 73 seats, wants to establish a national majority government, and to sideline the pro-Iran militia groups gathered under the Shia Coordination Framework. But the latter have threatened to destabilse Iraq if Sadr were to try to marginal them.

According to Iraq’s constitution, in the first session of Iraq’s parliament, lawmakers must swear in a speaker and two deputies. To slip away from this constitutional obligation, however, it is expected that the session would be left open until all the sides would reach agreements to satisfy the different sides.  

The disputes among the Sunnis and the Kurds on who will be nominated for the Speakership and the Presidency have not been settled yet. This is expected to delay the process of power-sharing, as the country faces crucial security and political challenges.  

“Naming Iraq’s three presidencies would take some extra time,” Masaud Abdulkhaliq, a Kurdish political observer told The New Arab.


Still no government.  In fact, "If you need to reach is 163, then 73 isn't really that close " remains true and we posted that back on October 23rd.  



The following sites updated:

Thursday, January 6, 2022

Adele

 

That's Adele doing "I Like Wine."  I love that song and I love 30 because it's go tmusic.  The piano on that song above really helps put it over.  For me, 25 didn't sound like music.  I missed the instruments.  Way too much synthesizers for me.


I was just going to highlight Adele but then I saw this from NPR:


According to MRC Data's 2021 U.S. Year-End Report, the big winners of 2021 were Morgan Wallen, Adele, world music, old favorites and vinyl. The annual report is presented in collaboration with Billboard.

Wallen's bad-boy behavior likely helped sales of his release, Dangerous: The Double Album. The album was the top seller across genres, with 3.2 million units sold. In February, 2021 Wallen was caught on video using a racial slur. About four months earlier, Saturday Night Live canceled his debut appearance when he was caught violating the show's COVID protocols. But in 2021 they invited him back. As Stephen Thompson of NPR Music put it, "Wallen has long had a 'repeatedly arrested outside Kid Rock's bar' vibe to him, although to be fair, he's only been arrested outside Kid Rock's bar once."

UK pop star Adele charmed millions of fans around the world with 30. In its first week, the singer's fourth studio album sold 839,000 copies, making it the highest album sales debut in four years. In separate record-breaking news, Adele made music history in 2021 when she became the first female artist to have an album spend 10 consecutive years on the Billboard Top 200. That album, 21, was released a decade ago. 


There was an issue that Beth addressed regarding whether Morgan Wallen wasn't getting the credit he deserved in Kat's "2021 in music"  She went with sources -- and linked to one -- that were saying it was Adele who had the best selling album.  Apparently it was Morgan.


This was not an attempt to deny Morgan.  This community didn't give a damn about the manufactured incident that had him being attacked publicly.


I'm African-American.  Morgan was not screaming in anger at somebody the N-word.  He was talking to a friend of his and saying goodnight.


Sadly, in my community, too many people do that.  I odn't.  But we send  a message and Morgan picked up on it.  He wasn't trying to be racist, he was trying to be ool.


I took no offense and I still don't.  I don't see him as racist now and didn't then.


If he had the highest selling album, more power to him.  Congratulations to him.  But Adele made my favorite album of the year (followed by Chase Rice's The Album).

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


Thursday, January 6, 2022.  A lot of people are in hot water, Nate Silver, Pfizer, Tony Blair . . . 


Nate Silver shot off his stupid mouth and a horde came out to pretend that the Iraq War mattered.  Pretend?  All have platforms.  All use the smugness to attack Nate, none use their platforms to highlight what goes on in Iraq and none have done so in years.  Here for NEWSWEEK's coverage.


In the real world, Iraq remains without a government.  The Parliament dissolved immediately ahead of the October 10th elections.  January 9th, the new Parliament is supposed to meet long enough to name a (ceremonial) President and a prime minister-designate (who will then have 30 days to form a government) and a prime minister.  That will be three months after elections.  


For now the political stalemate continues and Iraq remains without a Parliament.   AL-MONITOR highlights the following:


The Parties: 

  • The Sadrist bloc led by populist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr won the most seats (73). Sadr has declared his intention to try to form a "majority" government if he can cobble together support totaling 165 seats (minimum for a majority).
  • The other major block vying to be tasked with forming a government is the Coordination Framework composed of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law (33 seats); the Fatah Alliance (17 seats), which is the political wing of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), headed by Hadi al-Amiri and perceived as aligned with Iran; Aqd al-Watani Coalition, headed by Falah al-Fayyad (4 seats), also linked to the PMU and Iran; former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s Nasr Coalition (2 seats); cleric Ammar al-Hakim’s Hikma bloc (2 seats); and Kataib Hezbollah’s Huqooq movement, also a member of the PMU (1 seat) — a total of 59 seats (at time of publication). Ali Mamouri has the scoop here.
  • Other key parties and players include the Kurdistan Democratic Party, headed by Massoud Barzani (37 seats); Halbusi’s Taqadum/Progress Party (37 seats); and 43 seats for independents not affiliated with any party. You can see the full election results here.

 
165 is the number that needs to be reached which is why meetings continue to take place.  RUDAW notes:


A delegation from the Sadrist bloc met with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani in Erbil on Tuesday, discussing the October 10 elections and the formation of a new government for Iraq, according to Barzani’s office.  

“They talked about the political process in Iraq, election results and the efforts to hold the first meeting of the Iraqi parliament and the formation of a new Iraqi government,” read a statement from Barzani’s office. Both sides emphasized on overcoming challenges in the country as well as the resolution of Erbil-Baghdad issues, it added. 

Hassan al-Athari, head of the bloc, led the delegation. 

“They [Sadrist bloc] believe that the next government should be different from the previous ones which were formed based on consensus. They think that some of the winners who have gained most of the seats should form the [new] cabinet while some others remain as opposition,” Mahmoud Mohammed, KDP spokesperson, later told Rudaw’s Hawraz Gulpi. 


Outside Iraq, War Criminal Tony Blair remains in the news -- and in the hot seat.  From their house of shame -- racism accusations, hanging out with pedophiles, Prince Andrew being accused of rape -- England's royal family decided the way to celebrate the end of 2021 was to knight Tony.  It has not gone well. ALJAZEERA notes "an opinion poll published by UK polling company YouGov revealed 63 percent of Britons are opposed to Blair being knighted."  THE WALL STREET JOURNAL points out some of the backlash.  Some, not all.  The so-called royal honor comes as more of Tony's lies and deceptions float from the gutter he lives in.  YENI SAFIK reports:


Former British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, who was in office during the Iraq War, claimed he was told to burn a memo from the attorney general that said the invasion of Iraq could be illegal, local media reported Wednesday.

Hoon served as defense secretary between 1999 and 2003 under former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Iraq was invaded in 2003 by a coalition led mainly by the US and the UK.

Hoon made the claim in his recently published memoir See How They Run.


Jessica Elgot (GUARDIAN) draws the connection:


In revelations that critics say cast further doubt on the decision to award the former prime minister a knighthood, Hoon recalled in extracts from his recently published memoir that Blair’s chief of staff had instructed him to burn the document.

Hoon wrote in his memoir, See How They Run, that he had had been under pressure from Mike Boyce, the chief of defence staff, to provide him with clear legal direction that his forces could take action in Iraq, in lieu of a UN resolution authorising force, the Daily Mail reported.


RT adds:


In disclosures that have boosted ongoing attempts to strip the former prime minister of his recently conferred knighthood, Hoon reportedly revealed that Blair’s chief of staff Jonathan Powell had instructed him “in no uncertain terms” to destroy the legal document.

When reports of the allegation first surfaced in 2015, they were dismissed by Blair as “nonsense.” But Hoon has resurrected the claim in a tell-all book, titled ‘See How They Run’, according to the Daily Mail. The paper said Hoon has provided details of a “cover-up” at Downing Street.

The former Labour minister said he was sent a copy of the “very long and very detailed legal opinion,” written by then-Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, “under conditions of considerable secrecy” and told he should “not discuss its contents with anyone else.”


British MP Jeremy Corbyn Tweets:


This underlines once more what a disastrous act of aggression the war on Iraq was. Parliament must never be misled into backing an illegal war again.


While Peter Wilson reminds:


Tony Blair had a child rapist from Pakistan made a Lord - "Lord Ahmed of Rotherham". Rotherham as we know is world famous for industrial scale abuse of this sort. Sordid stuff.



The tide is turning against Tony.  ITV reports:

A mother from Abergavenny whose son was killed in Afghanistan in 2009 said she's "devastated" at plans to award former prime minister Sir Tony Blair a knighthood.

Hazel Hunt has written an open letter to the Queen alongside five other women who lost children during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

In the letter they ask the Queen to reconsider the honour which "tramples on our son's sacrifices."

Carol Valentine, Caroline Whitaker, Caroline Jane Munday-Baker and Helen Perry also put their names to the plea.

In the letter they write: "The news of Tony Blair's knighthood has set us back years.

"It makes a mockery of our children's lives, and we are struggling to cope with it."

It continues: "Our young sons were in the prime of their lives when they died fighting a war we should never have been at.

"We can never get over that loss, but our misery is compounded knowing that the man responsible is being honoured."







Meanwhile greed may land a few corporations in some trouble. Michael Scarcella (REUTERS) explains:


A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday revived a lawsuit against AstraZeneca Plc (AZN.L), Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and other companies over allegations their contracts with Iraq's health ministry helped fund terrorism that killed Americans during the war in Iraq.

The plaintiffs contend that the militia group Jaysh al-Mahdi, sponsored by Hezbollah, controlled Iraq's health ministry and that the 21 defendant U.S. and European medical equipment and pharmaceutical companies made corrupt payments to obtain medical-supply contracts.



The following sites updated: