"NOT TRUE, NOT TRUE," SAID SENATOR SCHUMER WHEN ASKED BY THESE REPORTERS -- MUST CREDIT .
"I SAID 'HELL.' I SAID 'JARED'S GOING TO HELL'."
WHEN WE GOT BACK WITH KUSHNER AND REPEATED WHAT SCHUMER HAD TOLD US, A CHAGRINED JARED SHOOK HIS HEAD IN EMBARRASSMENT WHILE ADMITTING, "I CAN'T ARGUE WITH HIM THERE."
Allies of former President Donald Trump such as Steve Bannon had encouraged Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to enter the 2024 presidential race as a means to harm the prospects of President Joe Biden.
However, Salon's Amanda Marcotte writes that this move now looks like it could backfire after RFK Jr. announced his own independent candidacy for the presidency that could siphon votes away from Trump.
I don't have time for this but a number of e-mails came in from people fretting over the above.
No one knows what the impact would be.
The guess Amanda's making does not strike me as an educated guess.
Allowing for the reality that primary voters are more passionate than general election voters, even allowing for that, I don't see how you can make any kind of educated guess at this point. If you had to, I don't think you'd say, "He'll pull from Trump!" Indictments haven't pulled from Donald significantly. People turning on him and ratting him out has not resulted in the grand walk away.
If I had to make a guess right now, gun to the head, Junior's pulling from Joe if he pulls from anybody.
There is no polling -- it's being done right now -- available yet. Despite this idiot saying Junior's at 14.5% -- no, he's not. He might be higher, he might be lower. But that number was before he declared himself an independent.
You see people who want to trick and lie.
Chris Christie.
I have not promoted him here. If he's made a point worth noting, I've noted it here -- including his not knowing what the question was in a debate. There are some in the center on the left who are promoting him, elevating him. Some may be sincere. Some are not. They're inflating him to make it look like he's doing better than he is. To hurt the Republican Party.
I was oblivious to this sort of trick until 1992. That's when it was pointed out to me by a state official that Dems would carry our state (California) and if I wanted to do some real damage, I should vote in the Republican Party and vote for Pat Buchanan. The homophobe? No, forget it, I said. But, I was told, it would look bad for Poppy Bush who was running for re-election if Pat Buchanan got significant numbers. Sorry, not in the mood to play that game -- or to vote for Pat Buchanan. But a lot of other people I knew were willing to play that game.
But, especially in state's with open primaries, these games are played all the time.
Point: Junior is not as popular as some think he is.
Or was.
Some of his popularity, when he was a candidate for the Democratic Party, was right-wingers who wanted to make Joe Biden look weak and vulnerable. Now that he's a potential challenger to the GOP, some of his cheerleaders are going to fall away. (Didn't Kim Iverson already?)
He just announced this week that he was now an independent. Polling is taking place on that right now. We may have some results by Monday. It will be interesting to see the results on that. But right now, without that data, no one knows anything -- including me.
On the topic of Junior, I'm not a fan of Seth Meyers work (this goes back to when he blamed the collapse of the housing bubble on low income African-American home owners -- he did 'jokes' about it on WEEKEND UPDATE -- and his sick crush on Rudy G) but I will applaud him for the joke below:
Seth Meyers bashed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his vaccine lies and longshot presidential bid in one fell swoop.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced yesterday he is dropping out of the Democratic primary and running for president as an independent,” Meyers said on “Late Night” Tuesday. “Cos’ like his vax card says, he never had a shot.”
I frequently wonder if George Santos and Robert Menendez
could have been separated at birth despite the huge age difference.
When Shady Menendez isn't the poster boy for a Crooked Congress, Santos
is. ABC News reports:
Federal
prosecutors on Long Island filed new criminal charges against Rep.
George Santos on Tuesday, accusing him of stealing people’s identities,
making charges on his donors’ credit cards without their authorization
and lying to federal election officials.
Specifically,
in Tuesday's 23-count superseding indictment, Santos has been charged
with "two counts of wire fraud, two counts of making materially false
statements to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), two counts of
falsifying records submitted to obstruct the FEC, two counts of
aggravated identity theft and one count of access device fraud," the
United States Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York said
in a release.
"As
alleged, Santos is charged with stealing people’s identities and making
charges on his own donors’ credit cards without their authorization,
lying to the FEC and, by extension, the public about the financial state
of his campaign. Santos falsely inflated the campaign’s reported
receipts with non-existent loans and contributions that were either
fabricated or stolen," Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the
Eastern District of New York, said in a statement. "This Office will
relentlessly pursue criminal charges against anyone who uses the
electoral process as an opportunity to defraud the public and our
government institutions."
"Santos
allegedly led multiple additional fraudulent criminal schemes, lying to
the American public in the process," FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge
James Smith said in a statement.
"Anyone
who attempts to violate the law as part of a political campaign will
face punishment in the criminal justice system," he added.
What
a prince, right? He has no ethics and neither does the GOP since they
refused to expel him when his lies first came to light. These are new
charges, remember? David Hudson (Queerity) explains, "Santos
was already facing 13 charges leveled against him in May. These include
wire fraud, money laundering, and theft of public funds. He has denied
them. Santos now faces 23 charges in total." and AP reminds:
Santos, a freshman congressman who represents New York's 3rd Congressional District, has been dogged by allegations that he inflated his resumeand
lied about his past experience to bolster his election chances in his
2022 political campaign. He has admitted that he "embellished" his
resume. He has spent much of his tenure in Congress haunted by questions
about his education and professional experience, as well as his
finances and campaign spending.
Wednesday, October 11, 2023. The Middle East remains on fire.
Starting in the Middle East, Jake Johnson (COMMON DREAMS) notes,
"The United Nations' emergency relief coordinator warned Tuesday that
devastating violence in Israel and Gaza has pushed the entire region to a
'tipping point' and demanded an immediate cessation of all attacks as
the civilian death toll continues to climb." Alex Lantier (WSWS) writes:
On Sunday, three days after Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip
launched an offensive against Israeli occupation forces blockading the
region, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s regime announced a
siege of the Gaza Strip. After Netanyahu pledged to extract an
“unprecedented price” in lives from Palestinians in Gaza, the Zionist
regime is preparing bloody mass repression.
The fascistic outlook of top Israeli officials was bluntly expressed
by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. After of a meeting Monday morning of
the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Southern Command in Beersheba, which is
currently carrying out large-scale bombings of Gaza, Gallant declared:
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no
electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
To justify
his decision to target Gaza’s entire population of 2 million, Gallant
compared them to animals, saying: “We are fighting human animals, and we
are acting accordingly.”
In a nationally televised speech
yesterday, Netanyahu stressed that Israel’s current bombings of Gaza are
“just the beginning” of the planned onslaught against Gaza. He
declared, “I said that every place from which Hamas operates will turn
into ruins. It is already happening today, it will happen even more in
the future.” He echoed Gallant’s langauge, calling the Palestinians
“animals.”
Netanyahu added in a post on Twitter, “We will extract a
price that will be remembered by them and Israel’s other enemies for
decades to come. … They are savages.”
That's
not the rhetoric of peace, it's the rhetoric of unhinged madmen. It
does not need to be applauded, it needs to be called out. Olivia Roseane (COMMON DREAMS) explains, "Gaza is a 141-square mile stretch of territory where 2.3 million people reside. Around half of its population are children, and at least 140 of them have been killed in the bombardment so far, according to CBS.
Israel has blocked all entrances and exits to Gaza except for the
border crossing into Egypt at Rafah, which was shuttered Tuesday due to
nearby bombing, according to AP." Yesterday on DEMOCRACY NOW!, Amy Goodman noted:
Israel’s
military says it has retaken control of the Gaza separation barrier
breached by Hamas and is laying landmines in the area. On Monday, an
Israeli airstrike hit the Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza,
temporarily closing the territory’s only link with Egypt. The crossing
was reportedly struck again on Tuesday, injuring two people and leaving a
crater obstructing the movement of people and supplies across the
border. This comes after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed to
completely cut off the Gaza Strip and its 2 million inhabitants from the
outside world.
Yoav Gallant: “I have ordered a complete siege on
the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel.
Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act
accordingly.”
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “deeply
distressed” by Israel’s siege of Gaza. The U.N.’s top human rights
official wrote in response, “The imposition of sieges that endanger the
lives of civilians by depriving them of goods essential for their
survival is prohibited under international humanitarian law.”
On Tuesday, journalist Saeed al-Taweel, editor-in-chief of Al-Khamsa News,
was killed while reporting, along with two other members of the press.
“Unfortunately, they have sent a warning notice to the Hiji building
just now that it will be bombed,” al-Taweel said shortly before being killed, according to Al Jazeera. “The area has been evacuated entirely. Women, men, the elderly, kids have all completely fled the area.”
Al-Taweel and the other members of the press had been standing
hundreds of meters from the stated target, but the air attack instead
hit a building closer to them. All members of the crew had been wearing
clothes and helmets that clearly identified themselves as members of the
media.
On Saturday, two other journalists, Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi and Mohammad Jarghoun, were shot dead while reporting,
according to the Palestinian press freedom group Palestinian Center for
Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) and the Journalist Support
Committee (JSC). The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also
reported on Saturday that freelance journalist Mohammad el-Salhi had been shot dead
in the central Gaza Strip. Two Palestinian photographers, Nidal
al-Wahidi from the Al-Najah channel and Haitham Abdelwahid, have been reported missing since Saturday.
Let's note this from yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!
AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!,
democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. We’re joined now
by Mohammed El-Kurd, Palestinian journalist, poet, writer,
correspondent for The Nation, culture editor at Mondoweiss, born and raised in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
Mohammed, can you comment, overall, on this situation right now and what you think needs to happen?
MOHAMMED EL-KURD: I honestly —
AMYGOODMAN: Mohammed — Mohammed, you’re muted. We cannot hear you.
MOHAMMED EL-KURD: I think —can you hear me now?
AMYGOODMAN: Yes, we can.
MOHAMMED EL-KURD:
I honestly do not know what to tell you. It feels to me as though we
are living in the very first few days of an unfolding genocide. I mean,
not only are Israeli politicians and journalists alike and global forces
calling for the annihilation of the Gaza Strip, for bombing it into the
Stone Ages, declaring that they are interested in inflicting damage and
not really precision, but these images that we are — these images that
we are seeing coming outside of the Gaza Strip are so harrowing and
devastating that one wonders — one wonders how much bloodshed, how much
Palestinian death is necessary for people to realize that violence
begets violence and that the occupation and the colonization of
Palestine, the blockade of the Gaza Strip needs to end for all of this
violence to end.
I mean, I am incredibly angered that word-of-mouth, unverified
reports of, quote-unquote, “rape and decapitation,” which obviously draw
on Islamophobic tropes, have garnered more and more political and
global outrage than those very images, than a video of a nurse
announcing and screaming in distress that her husband has been killed in
an Israeli airstrike. And, you know, the PR strategy of the Israeli
regime throughout all of this has been to invoke those Islamophobic
sentiments, like calling it Israel’s — quote-unquote, “Israel’s 9/11.”
And media outlets and journalists who have taken on this framing without
any questioning not only work to equate the violence of a besieged,
politically isolated group like Hamas with the violence of al-Qaeda and ISIS
and so on, but they are also doing the dirty work for Israelis. They
are preemptively justifying the genocide of hundreds and thousands of
Palestinians. They are justifying a brutal onslaught that is about to
come globally. And that should be alarming.
I mean, we have seen this unfold during 9/11. We have seen this
unfold in history, the utilization of Islamophobia, the dehumanization,
the constant dehumanizations of Palestinians, the refusal to see them as
human beings who have the right to resist and to defend themselves and
to be angry and to want the right to self-determination and to not want
to live in siege anymore. All of this refusal to see all of this is
contributing, is contributing to this oncoming onslaught, where Israeli
politicians can just call Palestinians “human animals,” can just say
that they are not really concerned with saving anyone, can threaten to
bomb aid envoys coming in from Egypt. This should be concerning to
everybody around the world. It is terrifying times we are living in.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this
whole issue [inaudible] hostage situation, as well. Hamas has reported
that in one of the bombing attacks, some of the hostages were killed
along with those Hamas militants who were guarding them. What do you
think the Israeli government posture will continue to be on this issue
of the hostages?
MOHAMMED EL-KURD:
I mean, so far Hamas has said that they are willing to release all of
the female detainees, if Israel is going to release the 36 Palestinian
female prisoners currently lingering in Israeli prisons, but the Israeli
government has refused to negotiate. In fact, Israeli ministers, like
Smotrich, have said that they could not care less about the hostages,
and their goal is to inflict as much damage as possible on the besieged
Gaza Strip.
And I also want us to get one thing correctly: Holding 2 million
people under blockade is a very serious hostage situation. This is what
we’re dealing with, the fact that the Israeli regime has been holding
Palestinians in Gaza as hostages to exert political pressure on groups
like Hamas. The fact that a quarter, 25%, of Palestinian prisoners held
in Israeli prison are held without detention — are held without trial or
charges is a hostage situation. The fact that even in death,
Palestinian corpses are held in mortuary chambers to be used as
bargaining chips is a hostage situation. But time and time again, we are
shown by the world its double standards. We are told that the only
violence that matters is the violence inflicted upon Israelis, and the
only lives that matter are the lives of Israelis. Palestinians have been
living as hostages for the past 16 years in this blockade. That must,
must end. And it is incumbent upon us as journalists to make this
context clear.
AMYGOODMAN:
We just have 30 seconds, Mohammed El-Kurd. You’ve been in the United
States a lot. Of course, you live in Sheikh Jarrah. President Biden is
about to give an address. What do you want to hear him say?
MOHAMMED EL-KURD:
Well, I know what he is going to say about his biggest, biggest ally in
the region. But I also know that my family and my neighborhood have
experienced settlers attacks, who — they throw Molotov cocktails
overnight. I know that settler violence has been intensifying both in
the Old City of Jerusalem and all around the occupied West Bank and even
in 1948 territories. And I know that lip service from Biden is not
going to address it. But the world needs to know that as long as the
occupation persists, as long as the apartheid system persists,
resistance to it is going to persist. It is not a difficult equation to
understand. People deserve dignity and freedom and to live safely in
their homes.
AMYGOODMAN: Mohammed El-Kurd, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian journalist, writer, correspondent for The Nation, culture editor at Mondoweiss.
Some
members of Congress has mistaken Israel for the 52nd state of the
United States (they already believe that Ukraine is the fifty-first).
It is not. And all this talk from various members of Congress -- on
both sides of the aisle -- is distressing for a number of reasons.
First, we've gone from the police of the world to the credit union? Is
that what's happening because Americans aren't seeing any financial
improvement. Second, it's really past time to tell the Israeli
government to get their feet off the neck of the Palestinians. Third,
this is an ally? How many times are spies for Israel caught in the US?
Or let's drop back to 1967:
SC No. 01415/67
Washington, June 13, 1967.
THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON THE USS LIBERTY
The US Naval technical research ship Liberty was
attacked by Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats off the Sinai Peninsula
on 8 June. The following account of the circumstances of the attack has
been compiled from all available sources.
1. The Liberty reported at 9:50 a.m. (2:50 a.m.
Washington time) on 8 June that it had been orbited by two delta-wing
jet fighters, presumably Israeli Mirages. At 3:05 p.m. (8:05 a.m.) the
Liberty was strafed by unidentified jet
aircraft. The Liberty apparently was not able to
establish communications with other units of the US Sixth Fleet during
the air attack, and the first information available to the US commanders
was after the subsequent attack by unidentified torpedo boats, which
occurred at 3:25 p.m.
2. At 4:11 p.m. (9:11 a.m.) the US Commander in Chief, Europe, notified
the National Military Command Center in Washington that the Liberty was under attack and was listing to
starboard after being struck by a torpedo. The Commander of the US Sixth
Fleet declared the attacking units hostile and sent attack aircraft from
the carriers America and Saratoga to protect the Liberty. A good
part of the ship’s communications equipment was destroyed by the crew
during the attack but emergency communications were soon established
with the Saratoga and with the naval
communications station in Greece. Because of the tenseness of the
situation and the communications delays, the initial reports from the
Liberty were sketchy and somewhat
confusing.
Specifics of the Attack
3. According to these reports, however, the sequence of events took place
as follows. The ship was attacked at 3:05 p.m. (8:05 a.m.) by [Page 470] unidentified jet fighters,
believed to be Israeli, at position 31–35N, 33–29E. Six strafing runs
were made by the jets. Twenty minutes later three torpedo boats closed
at high speed and two of them launched torpedoes after first circling
the Liberty. One torpedo passed astern, and the
other struck the starboard side of the ship in the spaces occupied by
the SIGINT collectors. One of the boats was later identified as Israeli
and the hull number of one unit was noted as 206–T. Some 50 minutes
later two Israeli helicopters arrived on the scene.
Israeli Identification of the Ship
4. None of the communications of the attacking aircraft and torpedo boats
is available, but the intercepted conversations between the helicopter
pilots and the control tower at Hatzor (near Tel Aviv) leave little
doubt that the Israelis failed to identify the Liberty as a US ship before or during the attack. Control told
(helicopter) 815 at 3:31 p.m. (8:31 a.m.) that “there is a warship there
which we attacked. The men jumped into the water from it. You will try
to rescue them.” Although there were other references to a search for
the men in the water and although US units later searched the area, no
survivors were recovered from the sea, nor were there any indications
that any of the 22 missing personnel from the Liberty had been lost overboard.
5. A subsequent message from the control tower to the helicopter
identified the ship as Egyptian and told the pilot to return home.
Although the Liberty is some 200 feet longer than
the Egyptian transport El Quesir, it could easily
be mistaken for the latter vessel by an overzealous pilot. Both ships
have similar hulls and arrangements of masts and stack.
6. The weather was clear in the area of attack, the Liberty’s hull number (GTR 5) was prominently displayed, and
an American flag was flying. The helicopter pilot was then urgently
requested to identify the survivors as Egyptian or English speaking
(this being the first indication that the Israelis suspected they may
have attacked a neutral ship). The helicopter pilot reported seeing an
American flag on the Liberty. In another
intercept between an unidentified Israeli controller and the helicopter
number 815, the pilot reported that number GTR 5 was written on the
ship’s side. The controller told the pilot the number had no
significance.
7. Thus it was not until 4:12 p.m. (9:12 a.m.) that the Israelis became
convinced that the Liberty was American. This was
about 44 minutes after the last attack on the ship and the attack had
apparently been called off, not because the ship had been identified,
but because it seemed to be sinking. (The US Defense Attaché in Tel Aviv
reports that Israeli helicopters and the three torpedo boats searched
the area until 6:04 p.m. (11:04 a.m.).) The Israeli offer of assistance
was declined [Page 471] because of the
sensitive mission of the ship. According to US Navy reports, the ship
was saved only through the efforts of her crew.
Damage and Personnel Losses
8. The ship suffered heavy material and personnel casualties. A hole
estimated to be 39 feet wide at the bottom and 24 feet wide at the top
near the waterline was opened by a torpedo. The ship is flooded below
the second deck between frames 52 and 78 (36-inch frame spacing). The
crew carried out emergency destruction of classified communications and
radar equipment, but the ship’s engineering plant is intact. Several
flash fires and cannon holes throughout the superstructure caused some
minor damage and the ship’s motor whale boat and virtually all of its
life rafts were lost. Personnel casualties include 10 killed, 90
wounded, and 22 missing, most of whom were probably trapped in the
flooded compartments. The wounded and the dead have been removed from
the ship and some additional crew members put aboard. The ship is
expected to arrive in Malta on 14 June for dry docking and hull repairs.
Security precautions are being taken to protect the classified intercept
equipment in the flooded spaces. The US Navy has convened a board of
inquiry to look into the incident.
The Ship and Its Orders
9. The USSLiberty is a converted Victory class merchant
ship utilized as a SIGINT collector. The unit had moved from its normal
station off West Africa to provide additional SIGINT coverage of the
Middle East crisis. Official US statements, however, have described the
Liberty as an electronics research ship which had been diverted to the
crisis area to act as a radio relay station for US embassies.
10. The Liberty sailed from Rota, Spain, on 2 June under orders to patrol
no closer than 12.5 miles of the UAR
coast and 6.5 miles of the Israeli coast. A modification of orders
issued by the Commander of the US Sixth Fleet at 12:17 p.m. (5:17 a.m.)
on 8 June had not been received aboard the Liberty, according to the
ship’s commanding officer, before the Israeli attack. This change,
together with messages from other commands which ordered the Liberty to
approach no closer than 100 miles of the coasts of the UAR and Israel and 25 miles of the coast of
Cyprus, was delayed in transmission in part because of a
misunderstanding of responsibilities for delivery.
11. At annex is a listing of events in chronological order.
The
state of Israel was placed on top of occupied land, the Palestinians'
land. They are the ones occupied. It's a basic point made and, as
Jacquie Luqman said on BLACK POWER MEDIA's THE MORNING REMIX SHOW
yesterday (video below),
Jacquie
Luqman: I'm not sure whatpeople think decolonization is supposed to
look like? Like what ya'll think that's supposed to be? What ya'll think
happens? The Palestinians are supposed to --
Kamau Franklin: Ask nicely.
(He was being sarcastic).
Jacquie
Luqman: Right! Seriously, you're going to ask your imprisoners not to
nicely? You're going to ask the people who've stolen your land and are
in the process of ethnically cleansing you from the land that's yours?
You're going to ask the people who have penned two-and-a-half million of
you into an open air prison, keeping you from your own homes that you
still have keys for -- that the government, this illegitimate government
has given to a bunch of White people who don't live there, ain't from
there? You supposed to ask them people nicely?
While the White House and members of the US Congress cheer this destruction on, it looks different to the rest of the world. REUTERS notes:
Hadi Al-Amiri, a powerful Iraqi politician close to Iran and a key
figure in the cross-party alliance backing Iraq's government, has
threatened to target U.S. interests if Washington intervenes to support
Israel in its conflict with Hamas
in Gaza. Amiri leads the Badr Organisation, a Shi'ite political group
supported by Iran that makes up a big part of Iraq's Popular
Mobilisation Forces (PMF), the state paramilitary organization that
contains many Iran-backed factions.
"If they intervene, we would
intervene...if the Americans intervened openly in this conflict...we
will consider all American targets legitimate ... and we will not
hesitate to target it," al-Amiri said during a tribal gathering in
Baghdad on Monday night.
Staying with
Iraq, the northern section, the Kurdistan, remains threatened and
terrorized by the government of Turkey. Turkey violates the sovereignty
of Iraq by bombing the Kurdistan, by sending troops in, by setting up
bases, by burning down forests. All in the name of fighting
'terrorism.' AFP reports:
Turkey's president on Wednesday vowed to intensify strikes against Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq.
Turkey
has been bombing sites in northeast Syria since Thursday, hitting
civilian and military targets and infrastructure and causing casualties,
according to Kurdish authorities.
"We have already intensified air
operations and we will continue, and show the terrorists that we can
destroy them anywhere and at any moment," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said,
referring to fighters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- listed as
a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.
Seventeen-year-old Samir
Saado was finishing his cleaning shift at the village medical centre
when an airstrike hit the building.
"I didn't see anything
other than dust and smoke," said Saado, a member of Iraq’s minority
Yazidi community. "My leg was stuck under the rubble. I called for help
and people were coming but the planes kept striking.”
At least four civilians
were killed that day, Aug. 17, 2021, local officials said. Among the
dead was Saado’s father, who worked as a cook at the centre in Iraq’s
northern Sinjar province, about 100 km (62 miles) from the Turkish
border. Saado suffered a broken pelvis and a cracked skull.
The strike was part of
escalating attacks by Turkish aircraft and drones in mainly Kurdish
areas of Iraq and Syria, which have since continued, a Reuters data
analysis shows. Western firms have supplied critical components for the
drones, which Kurdish and Iraqi officials say Turkey is deploying with
increasing frequency.
[. . .]
Reuters analysed violent
incidents recorded by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data
Project (ACLED), a global research organisation that collects reports
from media outlets, government reports, non-governmental groups and
other sources. This analysis shows that in 2022, Turkey carried out at
least 2,044 airstrikes in mostly Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria, a 53%
increase on the previous year and the highest number since ACLED began
documenting strikes across the two countries in 2017. The figure is
likely a conservative estimate because Reuters’ analysis excluded
airstrikes that may have been conducted in battle.
ACLED draws information
about airstrikes in northern Iraq and Syria from sources including the
PKK’s military wing, the Turkish state-owned news agency Anadolu and
conflict monitors the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Airwars and
Liveuamap.
We're moving over to film and Julia Ormond. I am not a friend of
Julia's so keep that in mind -- I'm not rushing to rescue her. She is
one of the two foreign actresses that CAA tried to pimp out to Harvey.
Last Friday, she came forward with a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein,
MIRMAX, THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY and CAA. That day's snapshot originally
had two paragraphs about this but they were pulled for space and also
because I thought that they could have been worded better. Kept meaning
to get back to it. In the meantime, e-mails. I'm silent it must mean
she's lying! I could be silent just because I don't know anything. In
this case, I do know. This did happen to her. We've noted her and
another actress who were basically set up -- noted them for five years
now? They were both non-Americans and they both appeared in a few hit
movies and then were disappeared due to Harvey.
Julia's
telling the truth. I believe her because I heard about it repeatedly. Many
women were offended by it and a few left CAA as a result. Again, I'm
not Julia's friend -- we aren't close and never were -- but I did hear
about that over and over. As I noted when mentioning the two unnamed
actresses, they need to sue. I'm glad Julia is suing. The other
actress works constantly in film but she doesn't make films many films
in the US as a result of Harvey blackballing her. (You have to go back
over 40 films to find her in a US production. She works constantly but
not in the US.) CAA willingly and knowingly set actresses up with
Harvey and the actress was always told it was about a job when there was
usually no role being offered or considered.
Staying
on films, SOUND OF FREEDOM. The right-wing tried to make it a cause
celebre over the summer. It's apparently some fright wing fringers idea
of a family movie. CRAPAPEDIA notes:
While the film does not mention any QAnon conspiracy theories,[78][79][80][81] some
critics and anti-trafficking experts have opined that the film
embellishes the reality of child exploitation and stokes QAnon
conspiracy theories,[5] referring to a "belief that a core group of devil-worshiping elite run the world".[82] Both Ballard and star Caviezel have been public about their belief in conspiracy theories of the QAnon movement.[75][83]
On NPR's All Things Considered, Mike Rothschild, author of The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything,
argued that the film is "being marketed to QAnon believers, it's being
embraced by this community, and its leading actor is a huge part of the
QAnon community".[84]
Ballard
has criticized those drawing a connection between the film and QAnon,
saying, "They make zero connection to the actual story. It's very
difficult to make that connection when it's actually based on a true
story." He told The New York Times,
"Some of these theories have allowed people to open their eyes, so now
it's our job to flood the space with real information so the facts can
be shared."[76][85]
In
addition, embarrassments and closet cases rushed to endorse the film --
Mel Gibson, Elon Musk, Jewel (she showed her true self on that COMEDY
CENTRAL roast, didn't she?), Donald Trump and Ben Shapiro.
So
we've had the charges of child kidnapping filed against one of the
funders and we've had another producer bragging about grabbing women's
breasts. As Elaine noted last night Tim Ballard is now being sued for
abuse and harassment by five women. And then Ryan Smith (NEWSWEEK) reports:
Eduardo Verástegui, one of Sound of Freedom's
producers, has shared footage of himself engaging in target practice as
he suggested it represented the actions he would take against members
of the LGBTQ+ community, among others.
Dressed
in a black ensemble, Verástegui is seen aiming a firearm at a target
while standing outdoors in a walled space. The 12-second footage showed
him firing several rounds.
While
Verástegui did not speak in the footage, the 49-year-old's choice of
words in his accompanying caption captured the attention of social media
users.
"Look
at what we are going to do to the terrorists of the 2030 agenda,
climate change and gender ideology," read the caption, which was written
in Spanish. "I'm reading you [your comments]."
It
was always a leering film but especially now it need to be called out
for the garbage it is. There's a reason the film sickened so many -- it
was made by sick people and for all the pretense that it was about
ending exploitation, there's not a single shot in that film that doesn't
qualify as exploitation.
That
so many crooked and hateful people were involved in the project is no
surprise -- that's made clear with the final product shown on screens.
Staying with hate merchants, Aila Slisco (NEWSWEEK) reports on a woman apparently assaulted in NYC because a deli worker thought she was transgendered:
A New York City woman has sued a deli, alleging that a former employee assaulted her as he mistook her for being transgender.
Jasmine
Adams, a 35-year-old mother of two, filed a lawsuit on Monday, alleging
that she was attacked by a cashier during a visit to purchase marijuana
for a friend at Staten Island's West Brighton Deli Grocery & Grill
on July 28, according to New York's Daily News.
Following
a dispute over the marijuana—which has become widely available at
retail stores in the city since it was legalized in 2021—the worker
purportedly became hostile and threatened to call police, prompting
Adams to urge him to follow through with the threat.
Adams, who is bisexual and was wearing an Apple Watch
wristband featuring rainbow Pride flag colors at the time, alleges that
the worker then called her a "transvestite" and flew into a violent
rage.
"I heard him call me a transvestite," Adams told the Daily News. "I'm like, 'Transvestite? I'm a whole female. I have lady parts.'"
The
lawsuit accuses the deli worker of spraying Adams in the face with mace
before running from behind the counter to further assault her. Adams
said that she attempted to hit him with a coffee pot when he grabbed her
hair and dragged her out of the store while calling her a "b****,"
according to the suit.
A
video of the incident reviewed by the newspaper purportedly shows the
worker dragging Adams down a set of concrete stairs as bystanders react
with shock. With Adams on the ground, the worker proceeds to kick her in
the head.
"Next
thing I know when I opened my eyes, I was outside next to my car on the
floor," said Adams. "I said to myself that I gotta get outta here
because I don't know if he's going to kill me."
