I've been asked by many the last few weeks, including some who should know better, why I didn't pick up the phone and call the leaders of #BlackLivesMatter before publicly quoting and critiquing their written statements actions and interviews on July 23 and August 6. It's not the first time, not even the tenth time.
I was asked the same question in August 2014 when I criticized a letter from Rev. Jesse L. Jackson apparently penned on behalf of his corporate sponsors, and many other times. The answer is the same today as it was last year and ten years before that. Public interviews, speeches and writings are just that, they are public. Particularly when written or stated by prominent figures in what we call the movement, these are not private and personal conversations, they are the collective property of the movement, available for us all to agree or disagree with, to learn from or to dismiss.
Sure, I could have called Jesse or Ms. Garza or others and asked them privately what they meant. But if one has to contact everybody one quotes, presumably to give them a chance to review and re-interpret privately for you what they wrote publicly, one sets up a situation in which no public figure ever needs to mean what she says or say what she means.
Exactly.
I can remember when that creepy Dave Zirin was trying to bully me with e-mails (lots of luck, shorty).
It was wrong,he insisted, for me to call out his statements in an interview.
I was wrong, he insisted, because I didn't first contact him.
What a load of garbage.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Haider al-Abadi can't stop shooting his stupid mouth off.
He's always declaring war on someone -- mainly logic and intelligence are the targets whenever Haider opens that stupid mouth of his.
Reuters notes Abadi's "media office said it was surprised at the comments attributed to Odierno, which it considered 'irresponsible and reflecting ignorance of the Iraqi situation'."
There was nothing irresponsible or ignorant about Odierno's remarks.
There was something grossly irresponsible about someone threatening to kill Americans over what Congress might do and the person making those threats publicly was a member of Haider's cabinet and yet the grossly obese Haider had no comment on that. (See May 4th's "Barzani visits the US and did the Badr militia just threaten the US?" about the remarks of the Transport Minister Hadi al-Amiri.)
Public threats of violence made by a member of his Cabinet and Haider didn't open his yap for one second.
Here's the actual exchange that has Haider soiling his underwear and screaming his head off.
[Q:] General, given your experience in Iraq, and you talked earlier about the growing conflict between Shia and Sunni, and the increased influence now of Iran inside Iraq, even militarily, do you see any possibility that there can be any reconciliation in Iraq between the Sunni and Shia?
GEN. ODIERNO: I think it's becoming more difficult by the day. And I think there might be some alternative solutions that might have to come into this sometime in the future, where Iraq might not look like it did in the past. But we have to wait and see how that plays out.
I think we have to deal with ISIL first, and then we have to decide what it will look like afterwards.
Q: Are you talking about the possibility of partitioning?
GEN. ODIERNO: Well, I mean, I think that is for the region and politicians to kind of figure out, diplomats to figure out how we want to work this, but that is something that could happen. It might be the only solution, but I'm not ready to say that yet.
He was asked his opinion and he answered.
And now Haider wants to whine like the little bitch that he is.
Haider doesn't want to stop bombing civilians in Falluja.
The fat ass liar pretended he did on September 13, 2014 when he opened his big mouth and announced that those bombings were wrong (they are wrong, they're War Crimes) and that he had ordered the Iraqi military to stop the bombings.
And how the press rushed to prop the puppet up.
But 24 hours later it was September 14, 2014 and the bombings continued.
Continued, never stopped.
Continue to this day.
And honestly, is the US government unable to find one thin Iraqi politician to put in power?
What is this obsession with one grossly obese figure after another being put in power?
Maybe the White House needs to start shipping treadmills to Iraq?
And if Florida's Cabana Bay Beach Resort hotel can open a Jack LaLanne fitness center, maybe it's time to open one in the Green Zone as well?
If I were one of the millions of struggling Iraqis, I don't think I'd be looking at the likes of never-miss-a-meal Haider or Jalal Talabani or Nouri al-Maliki or . . . favorably.
Odierno did not bring up the topic, he was asked about it and he offered an opinion.
In that opinion, he did not call for Iraq to be partitioned and noted that if the day came for that it would be a decision for the region.
The US is not in the region.
Does Haider not get that?
I get that some outlets -- such as Iraq Times -- went with screaming headlines proclaiming that Odierno had just called for Iraq to be partitioned. But even those outlets in their actual reports went beyond the hysterical headlines.
Of course, Haider al-Abadi is a fake ass and his latest public tantrum is a distraction -- one that Reuters plays along with -- which allows the press to avoid addressing what took place in Falluja today.
These bombings by the Iraqi military that began in January 2014 and target the civilians are War Crimes. Kitabat reports that today 70 civilians were wounded or killed by the warplane bombings which targeted a maternity hospital in western Falluja -- at least 23 children were killed. Dr. Fadel Ahmed states that premature infants in incubators were "charred beyond recognition."
B-b-b-ut I don't read Arabic! I have to take your word for it.
Russia Today notes:
Iraq’s Air Force has bombed a maternity hospital in Fallujah, located west of Baghdad in Al Anbar province. Over 20 people died in the blast, including women, children and medical personnel, according to local media. Another 30 were injured. “Iraqi army planes dropped three barrel bombs on the city’s maternity hospital, killing 31 people, including 23 women and children, and injuring 39 others,” al-Araby quoted Dr. Fadil Ahmad from the hospital as saying. “Some of the bodies are so badly burnt it is difficult to identify them, especially the babies. The maternity hospital is far from the fighting and it’s an old building and known by everyone.”
Where is the outcry?
Where is the outrage?
#IRAQ شمرية العراق
When I hear American idiots and asses rush to prop up this politician they drool over or that one they want to finger them, I think their hypocrisy is revealed by their inability, after 20 months and counting, to speak out against the bombings of civilians in Falluja.
They can't be bothered.
They can jerk off in public to everything else.
They can waste our time on their erotic fantasies of Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton (or Barack Obama or Bully Boy Bush), they just can't move beyond faux outrage to real outrage over the killing of innocent civilians by the Iraqi military which is intentionally targeting the Sunni civilians.
So spare me all your pretense that you are an ethical or caring person because you're just another whore in the main room of a bordello looking to turn tricks for the night.
Case in point: Elderly Prostitute Bob Somerby.
Here's Bob showing his wares, a hint of nipple on display, as he attempts to entice you (he just repulses me):
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First, a minor puzzlement. Early on, in paragraph 7, the two reporters offered the highlighted statement:
SHANE AND SCHMIDT (8/9/15): Mrs. Clinton, who has said she now regrets her unorthodox decision to keep private control of her official messages, is not a target in the F.B.I.’s investigation, which is focused on assessing security breaches. Against the backdrop of other current government computer security lapses, notably the large-scale theft of files from the Office of Personnel Management, most specialists believe the occasional appearance of classified information in the Clinton account was probably of marginal consequence.Say what? Most specialists believe the matter is probably of marginal consequence?
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This thrills Bob.
He's thrilled. He's happy.
Let's be clear what has him thrilled and happy: The newspaper just made a claim it does not back up and uses unnamed and unidentified sources ("most specialists").
So in other words, unnamed sources are allowed to speculate and the paper presents it as fact.
And Bob's thrilled.
But, at the end of last month, when the newspaper did the same thing but what got repeated wasn't pro-Hillary, Bob had a hissy fit.
How do you reconcile the two?
You don't.
He's not a media critic.
He hates unnamed sources when they don't back his beloved but when they do back his beloved Bob's jerking off and moaning in public.
One reason nothing changes for the better in terms of American media is because of this whoring.
When Bob puts his Clinton crack pipe down and is actually semi-functional, there's nothing he does that hasn't already been done by someone else -- and done better.
Take Nora Ephron.
The late film maker left journalism -- left media criticism -- specifically because of this crap.
Daniel Schorr was a damn liar.
But the left wanted to build him up into a hero.
He had a Congressional report, as a CBS News employee, entitled The Pike Report. The Congressional committee decided not to release it.
He took it to The Village Voice which published it.
No problem there and you could even hale him as a whistle-blower.
Except the story didn't end there.
CBS News wanted to know who leaked it.
Schorr could have remained silent and that would have been fine.
What was not fine was for him to lie that Lesley Stahl was the one who gave the report to The Village Voice, to use as 'proof' that she was dating Village Voice reporter Aaron Latham (he and Lesley have been married since 1977, at the time they were not married).
The person responsible was going to be fired.
Daniel Schorr knew that.
And he deliberately lied.
His not confessing it was him?
Fine.
Stay silent.
But when you lie to cover your own ass?
That's not a whistle-blower and his actions were outrageous.
Nora wrote about them in the essay "Daniel Schorr."
She was then the media critic for Esquire magazine -- which paid her to be provocative and initiate debate.
But Esquire refused to run that column and she had to take it to More magazine to get it published (that was a 70s journalism review magazine and not the Cosmo wanna be that's published today under that same title).
Nora named names and the press acted as though she didn't.
Not only did Esquire refuse to print it, but as Ava and I noted in April 2014, the 557 paged The Most of Nora Ephron (published after her death) refused to include the June 1976 essay.
This despite the fact that it was something Nora was very proud of.
It led her to leave media criticism -- the reaction to this essay -- and turn to screen writing and directing, so she saw it as important for that reason. But she was also glad, in the face of all the how-could-yous, that she had the courage to write the piece in the first place.
And she should have been proud -- it's a strongly written piece, it's a truth telling piece.
It did more than Bob Somerby could accomplish in 20 years.
You may be aware that he's always whining that the press won't name each other's names.
But when one does name, he ignores it.
He is completely ignorant of Nora Ephron's career as a media critic or why it ended.
But he wants to drone on endlessly about his college roommate Al Gore and pretend like that makes him a media critic.
He's just a partisan whore.
And he's far from alone.
I thought, for example, we were seeing something important in the Bully Boy Bush years as there was a revival of interest in the work of the late I.F. Stone.
But, you'll notice, we on the left lost interest in the truth teller once Barack Obama was sworn in as president.
When a Republican's in the White House, Pacifica Radio and The Nation feel the need to 'educate' the country (indoctrinate?) about how an I.F. Stone stood up to government, said not to trust any politician (not just don't trust Republicans) and how his work mattered.
But when Barack -- whom they rush to cover and excuse -- is in the White House, they're not so eager to 'educate' their listeners and readers about the importance of speaking out.
In "Oh, Obama," Elaine noted Glenn Greenwald's latest:
As everyone knows, “closing Guantánamo” was a centerpiece of the 2008 Obama campaign. In the Senate and then in the presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly and eloquently railed against the core, defining evil of Guantánamo: indefinite detention.
On the Senate floor, Obama passionately intoned in 2006: “As a parent, I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantánamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence.” During the 2008 campaign, he repeatedly denounced “the Bush Administration’s attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantánamo.”
In the seventh year of Obama’s presidency, Guantánamo notoriously remains open, leaving one of his central vows unfulfilled. That, in turn, means that Democratic partisans have to scrounge around for excuses to justify this failure, to cast blame on someone other than the president, lest his legacy be besmirched. They long ago settled on the claim that blame (as always) lies not with Obama but with Congressional Republicans, who imposed a series of legal restrictions that impeded the camp’s closing.
Bob Somerby and Kevin Drum planning on writing those truths?
Of course not.
Truth doesn't matter to partisan whores.
For a prostitute like Somerby or Drum, words are things you twist and use against your enemy.
Which is why, as Rebecca noted in "mother jones and other fakes," Tuesday's 'battle' was reduced to 'idiot Jeb!'
Jeb Bush attacked Hillary for the current crises in Iraq maintaining she had responsibility for them due to having been US Secretary of State from 2009 to 2014 -- to be clear, Jeb was not blaming her for her 2002 vote backing war on Iraq.
That is a stupid charge -- and we went over that in Tuesday's snapshot.
That's not all we went over because, honestly, the 'news' that a Bush says something stupid really isn't news at this late date. It's expected, to be sure. It's common place. But it's not breaking news that's going to shock the world.
But Mother Jones based their only report on the exchange or 'battle' on how stupid Jeb was.
I'm not debating or questioning Jeb's stupidity.
But the news factor in the 'battle' was Hillary dispatching Jake Sullivan to speak for her and Sullivan declaring not that Hillary believed her 2002 vote was a mistake but that the problem with the Iraq War was that Bully Boy Bush did not send enough troops in.
This claim was made despite the fact that as Senator Hillary Clinton, she opposed Bully Boy Bush's 2007 'surge' (sending more US troops into Iraq).
Hillary's position has changed repeatedly and twists and turns and coils against itself.
There is no consistency, there is no logic and she's looking more and more like a politician who will say anything to be elected and never sticks to her word.
That was the big story of the 'battle.'
But partisan whores didn't want to tell their readers, listeners, et al that Vote-for-me-Hillary-because-I-realize-finally-that-my-2002-vote-was-a-mistake was now insisting that the real problem was not the war and the lies told about it but instead the real problem was now that Bully Boy Bush didn't send enough US troops in.
How many exactly did or does Hillary want to have died in Iraq?
What number of kills will satisfy her blood lust?
Those were questions to ask.
Especially after Leo Shane III (Military Times) reported last week, "About 3,500 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq, and seven have lost their lives in connection to the new military operations there."
How many more deaths does the Vampire Clinton need to feed on before she's satisfied her blood lust?
The media will never get better in this country because too many supposed media critics are nothing but partisan whores who only call out the media to advance their special gal or fella.
None of that whoring has ever helped Iraq and it never will.
Maybe sometime after January 2017, when Barack is finally and thankfully out of the White House, we can discuss how President ____ [whomever] is backing an Iraqi prime minister whose army is bombing civilians?
Maybe we can discuss how international treaties the US government has signed on to and how US law (including but not limited the Leahy Amendment) requires that the US government immediately stop supplying the government of Iraq with weapons and military aid as a result of these weapons being used to attack Iraqi civilians?
Maybe.
Or as Cat Power sang, "Maybe Not."
Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) counts 282 violent deaths across Iraq today.
iraq
leo shane iiinora ephron
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margaret griffis
