Here’s how corporate-controlled Wikipedia
describes In-Q-Tel: “An American not-for-profit venture capital firm
based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in high-tech companies to keep
the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies,
equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United
States intelligence capability.”
While you gossiped about Will Smith or waved a Ukrainian flag, did you have any clue that the CIA has had its own venture capital firm since 1998?
On the In-Q-Tel (IQT) website, they openly explain
their mission: “To invest in cutting-edge technologies to enhance the
national security of the United States.” (See some of the companies
they’ve invested in here.)
Jeffrey Smith, the former general counsel of the CIA, was one of a
small group of intelligence community insiders who helped set up
In-Q-Tel. He explains the firm’s name as such: “We really needed
something that also had appeal to a wider audience and, frankly, had
some sex to it.”
While I like the article, that second paragraph above is bulls**t. If the venture has been ongoing since 1998, I don't think any topic of the last two weeks prevented anyone from learning of it. I also don't think people can't cover more than one topic at a time. And since he's linking to Will Smith, I have to pull a Phoebe from FRIENDS and say, as she did to Monica, "Hello Kettle? This is Monica. You're black."
I like Mickey Z and I like the article but that paragraph appears to be some form of holier-than-thou and there's been a lot of that in the last two weeks. Don't expect a global broadcast to include unplanned violence and for people not to discuss it. This isn't -- "Saw on a tabloid that so and so are sleeping together! Do you think it's true!" This is an assault that was carried out on live TV where millions saw it and was then all over YOUTUBE where even more saw it.
By the way, Will?
He's the Idiot of the Week. When you're seen as a kook and a cuck, you've earned it and then some. He seems to think that checking into rehab is going to erase what happened. Nope. And that 10 year slap on the wrist is a joke as well.
Will's destroyed himself. He was a star of action movies. That's the only way he sold tickets. And no one believes a little cuck can be a bad ass, sorry, Will.
Friday, April 8, 2022. We're staying brief to make one key point: NYT owes NYP an apology.
Do we ever learns? Or maybe the better question is: Do they ever learn>
As
2001 drew to a close, the US press began destroying their own
reputations. It was one act of professional suicide after another.
October 2001, for those who don't know, is when THE NEW YORK TIMES ran
their first cover story linking -- falsely linking -- the 9/11 terrorist
attacks on the US to the government of Iraq.
There was no link.
Saddam
Hussein ruled Iraq at the time. He did not allow al Qaeda to operate
in Iraq. Had they operated there freely, they would have overthrown him
because he was over a secular government and because they were
sympathetic to those who were not in power in Saddam's Iraq.
But
NYT, THE WASHINGTON POST, the broadcast networks, the cable networks,
etc, etc repeated one lie after another to start that illegal war.
It's
probably hard if you weren't there when it happened and if you weren't
of an age to have grasped it as it happened -- hard to now understand
what took place. Back then, the media could talk of nothing but Iraq.
That's the same US media that ignores Iraq today that barely noted that
the war hit the 19 year mark last month, that acts as though US troops
are no longer in Iraq and that the US created (imposed) some wonderful
government there.
They lied. They lied over and over.
Liars got rewarded.
Kevin Drum is at MOTHER JONES. No consequences. It's not just big media that rewarded liars, little media has done the same.
But they lied.
Oprah
didn't suffer. She brought Judith Miller onto her daily program to lie
and when an audience member challenged the lies Judith was spewing,
Oprah attacked the audience member.
No one ever took accountability.
And
the media suffered. In the aftermath, they wanted to pretend as though
there was no reason for so many to distrust them and even now they act
that way. Especially now. They don't mention Iraq and they hope
everyone else has forgotten.
But that was a sea change for perception of the media.
It
appears it was also a behavior shift because the media had not only
done nothing to restore trust in their own profession, they have
continued to present lies as fact and ignore reality while silencing any
questioning.
The rolly polly and disgusting
Brian Stelter of CNN was speaking this week about disinformation. No,
he wasn't finally taking responsibility for his multitude of
journalistic sins. The idiot really thought he had a soap box to stand
upon and lecture others from. A conservative student commented with a
list of the most recent appalling journalistic sins -- or some of them,
there are far too many for one person to ever list unless they're
delivering a 24 hour filibuster -- and Brian avoided the question and
wanted to instead wanted to talk about Ukraine and how others worked
with FOX NEWS there regarding a journalist and -- I'm sorry, we aren't
that stupid.
And we're not whining, "Why can't you all work together!"
In
fact, the problem has often been that you do work together -- right and
left -- such as when you sold the illegal war on Iraq.
Working together is frequently the only work you ever do.
You're certainly not working for the public good.
You 'work' to advances causes and candidates.
You're not telling the truth. You're actively suppressing the truth.
Anne
Applebaum, after disgracing herself as THE WASHINGTON POST for years
(Bob Somerby long ago dubbed her Annie Apples_ wanted to tell people
this week that there was no reason to cover Hunter Biden's laptop and
the proof of corruption it contained.
It appears that some media have a new narrative after admitting that the Hunter Biden laptop is legitimate after all.
According to Atlantic Magazine writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Anne
Applebaum, the story never did matter because it was just not
interesting and “totally irrelevant” to her. Strangely, however, it once
did. Applebaum pushed the false narrative as she was slamming others
for publishing “Russian disinformation” and using the Hunter Biden story
as an example. It only became uninteresting when it turned out to be
true. The one convincing assertion, however, is that it was simply not
viewed as “relevant.” What was clearly relevant for Twitter and most
media outlets was the election of Joe Biden. Otherwise, as captured by Gaston de La Touche, it is a matter of sheer boredom.
Applebaum was at my alma mater, The University of Chicago, for the Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference on
Wednesday. The conference appeared largely an echo-chamber, a
disappointing lineup for UChicago which is known to value a diversity of
opinion. Applebaum slammed Fox and its viewers: “Those who live outside
the Fox News bubble and intend to remain there do not, of course, need
to learn any of this stuff.” (For the record, I work as a legal analyst
at Fox).
What an idiot and what a
liar. She's at THE ATLANTIC now so she can probably lie more freely.
But the country's not better off because of it.
Hunter
Biden's laptop was a news story THE NEW YORK POST can claim credit for
having broken in October 2020. I keep waiting for their triumphant
column. If i'ts run, I haven't heard of it. To be honest I don't have
time to comb through the web for it and depend on friends to keep me up
to date.
So when one called last night and
was reading from THE POST online, I was really sad. I thought it was
Miranda Devine and I thought she was a better writer than what was being
read. She is. It was by John Stossel. I loathe John and always
have. He can argue he's been mis-portrayed by the media and that may be
the case. I loathe him because he's an off-putting ass and that's from
his on air personality when he used to be on 20/20.
Is he as big of an idiot as I've always thought?
Yes, he is.
I
was going to destroy Mrianda for the column I thought she wrote. But
it was John. Writing at THE NEW YORK POST, he wanted you to know how
bad it was with the attacks on THE POST.
I'm tired of stupidity.
Ava and I covered the most important point regarding THE NY POST and the laptop and the media's response.
Do not offer that the report was dismissed.
That's not good enough.
If you're on some basic cable show, that might pass for informed.
You're not informed.
And only John could be so stupid to write for THE POST and to leave the most important detail out.
Yes,
as we all know, the report was censored -- TWITTER and FACEBOOK. And
as we all know, opinion columns insisted it wasn't true.
That's not the worst thing.
The
worst thing? THE NEW YORK TIMES did a 'report' that they called an
investigation and the 'report' centered on how supposedly people working
at THE NEW YORK POST were furious with their paper over that story and
did not feel it was accurate or truthful or even journalism.
NYT relied on no named source and most people in the kow say that NYT did a work of fiction (I believe that they did).
So grasp that NYT did not investigate the laptop but they did make time to 'report' on a rival paper, to attack the rival paper.
That's out of bounds. I twas out of bounds when it happened.
But that was part of the attack strategy to dismiss the story.
THE
NEW YORK TIMES owes THE NEW YORK POST an apology because when they ran
that article -- unsourced -- attacking the paper's integrity, they made
it personal.
THE SIIIMMMPPPPSONS. :D I liked Kat's "" and Stan's "" so I thought I'd weigh in. THE SIMPSONS is usually a very funny show. I have three all time favorite episodes.
The first one? The one about Lisa and Mr. Burns being in big conflict and Mr. Burns is buying up every media outlet. So Lisa starts THE LITTLE RED PRESSS. And it's a hit but he's trying to destroy her. Like by projecting Milhouse and Lisa kissing onto the Moon. Milhouse see its and says, "Way to go, Moon Milhouse." But THE LITTLE RED PRESS is in trouble of going under. Milhouse quits and admits he lied in his Iraq coverage -- he was never in Baghdad, just Basra. :D And Ralph gets poached by THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE. :D Ralph is funny. I sometimes forget what a great character he can be.
When it looks like it's all over, Homer surprised Lisa by printing and distributing her paper and soon everyone is inspired to do their own publication ensuring that Burns doesn't own the entire media landscape.
The next one is also a press one. This time, Homer gets a computer. It's the family's first computer. Homer doesn't know how to care for it, let alone set it up. After Lisa's set it up and has tutored him, Homer creates his own web site where . . . he posts everything already popular on the internet. So no one's coming to Homer's page. Lisa tells him he has to give people soemthing, a joke, an opinion. something.
So Homer, as Mr. X. writes an expose and wins a Pulitzer. ("Finally," he tells Marge.) And then since he has no more exposes, he decides he'll make it up. Lisa is appalled. But Homer does it anyway and one of his made up stories turns out to be true and he's kidnapped and taken off to the island. Which is a spoof of the old British TV show for ITV entitled THE PRISONER. I'm such an expert!!! Actually, my dad explained that to me. He loved that show.
So they create a fake Homer -- who sounds like Ahnuld when he speaks -- and he replaces the real Homer. Marge is okay with it since he's going to take her out to dinner. Eventually Homer escapes and makes it home. But then the whole family ends up back on the island with Lisa repeating "The island." :D
My third all time favorite is when Bart gets a party. He's been promised one for a good grade so he's never had one. But once, he was trapped in the supply closet by the map while Principal Skinner and Ms. Crabapple are making out so he studies the map instead. Then he aces the geography test.
No one ever believed that this would ever happen.
But they honor it . . . as best they can. His guests include Grandpa and Selma and Patty. Marge also invites Ralph. :D Bart hates the party. Milhouse, his best friend, isn't even there in person, he's there by phone.
My favorite part is Ralph running around in circles, around empty chairs, going "Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck . . ." Even when playing with the other children, Ralph didn't want to say "Goose" causing Bart to yell at him.
There are a lot of good episodes of that show but those are my three all time favorites.
Thursday, April 6, 2022. As US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange, people begin to notice how deep Hunter Biden's corruption actually is and the Iraqi people remain betrayed by the government the US installed.
Starting in the United States, where Jonathan Turley observes more evidence of how US President Joe Biden's claims regarding his involvement with his son Hunter's 'business' opportunities have been revealed to be falsehoods:
Several weeks later, on Feb. 18, 2017, Eric Schwerin, who served as president of Rosemont Seneca, replied to Li. Schwerin states “Jonathan, Hunter asked me to send you a copy of the recommendation letter that he asked his father to write on behalf of Christopher for Brown University.”
Once again, it is baffling how Attorney General Garland can ignore the myriad of references to Joe Biden in refusing to appoint a special counsel.
The email direct reference to Joe Biden is a departure from the practice in these communications. People apparently were told to avoid directly referring to President Biden. In one email, Tony Bobulinski, then a business partner of Hunter’s, was instructed by Biden associate James Gilliar not to speak of the former veep’s connection to any transactions: “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u [sic] are face to face, I know u [sic] know that but they are paranoid.”
Despite President Biden’s repeated claims he knew nothing about these dealings, Bobulinski has said he personally met with the senior Biden to discuss Hunter Biden’s business activities. Bobulinski had been selected by the family to handle these deals.
As vice president, Joe Bidenflew to China on Air Force Two with Hunter Biden, who arranged for his father to meet some of his business interests. Hunter Biden’s financial interest in a Chinese-backed investment firm, BHR Partners, was registered within weeks of that 2013 trip. Yet, President Biden repeatedly insisted that he never discussed such dealings with his son, a claim Hunter Biden has contradicted.
Justice Department regulations allow the appointment of a special counsel when it is in the public interest and an “investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances.”
There was something grotesquely familiar about last week’s revelations about Hunter Biden’s business dealings abroad, both in the story’s particulars and in the more general saga of sleazy self-dealing into which it fits. The idea that these latest revelations definitively vindicate or villainize any party except Mr. Biden himself, however, is misplaced.
The Post reported Wednesday on the multimillion-dollar deals the president’s son made with a Chinese energy company. The investigation adds new details and confirms old ones about the ways in which Joe Biden’s family has profited from trading overseas on his name — something for which the president deserves criticism for tacitly condoning. What it does not do, despite some conservatives’ insistence otherwise, is prove that President Biden acted corruptly. This is a reality that an election-year probe by Senate Republicans into improper influence or wrongdoing has already confirmed. The Justice Department, meanwhile, continues its inquiry into Hunter Biden’s tax affairs and foreign lobbying.
For now, what’s more compelling than the assorted accusations about the Bidens’ behavior is this question: Why is confirmation of a story that first surfaced in the fall of 2020 emerging only now? When the New York Post published its blockbuster exclusive on the contents of a laptop said to have been abandoned at a Delaware repair shop by Hunter Biden, mainstream media organizations balked at running with the same narrative. Social media sites displayed even greater caution. Twitter blocked the story altogether, pointing to a policy against hacked materials, and suspended the New York Post’s account for sharing it; Facebook downranked the story in the algorithms that govern users’ news feeds for fear that it was based on misinformation. Now, The Washington Post and the New York Times have vouched for many of the relevant communications.
The appointment of a special counsel is way overdue.
Biden is a bad actor and a poor celebrity, plain and simple. No matter how much the liberal class has attempted to portray Biden as the hallmark of “competence,” the exact opposite has proven true. He began his 2020 presidential campaign promising rich donors that “nothing would fundamentally change.” Yet Biden’s presidential bid came amid a period of profound crisis under Donald Trump. A global pandemic and economic crisis forced one of the most loyal servants of the ruling class over the last five decades to adopt an anti-Trump persona that included a moderate but substantial “Build Back Better” agenda for the masses.
Biden was never capable of playing the role set out for him. Runaway inflation and mounting COVID-19 deaths have stymied his efforts to pose as the face of economic recovery and normality. His “gaffes” haven’t helped, either. In a recent speech in Poland, Biden appeared to suggest that the United States is pursuing regime change in Russia. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” exclaimed Biden.
Since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Americans have been conditioned to despise Russia and have seen their Russophobia elevated to new heights in response to an intense propaganda blitz from the corporate media. Few have any love for Vladimir Putin. Still, Biden’s reference to regime change has only added onto mounting anxiety and confusion about the U.S.’s role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. U.S. sanctions have facilitated a spike in energy prices and the cost of living. Legitimate fears of a nuclear war have surfaced among the public despite most Americans having little understanding of the Russia-Ukraine conflict beyond the lies and distortions told to them by the mainstream media.
Public concern about the U.S. role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is an unintended outcome of Biden’s foreign policy. The hope was that Russia’s military operation would conveniently fuel the New Cold War on Russia and achieve the domestic aim of boosting the Biden administration’s credibility with the electorate. Biden seized the opportunity to “slap” Russia economically and militarily, believing that the consequences would impact Russia and Russia alone. He miscalculated. Instead of public enthusiasm for a “tough” stance on Russia, Biden has only placed himself under further scrutiny for the fear and blowback that his administration’s response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict has engendered.
Biden’s decline in popularity was theoretically avoidable. The 46th POTUS could have fought for his “Build Back Better” agenda to pass in Congress instead of placating to Senator Joe Manchin and the so-called “conservative” wing of the Democratic Party. He could have used the power of executive order to cancel student debt and provide immediate economic relief to working people instead of increasing the military budget to a whopping $800 billion. And he certainly had the opportunity to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict before it started by actually negotiating in good faith with the Russian government when it presented its security concerns to the U.S. and NATO in December 2021.
But this would have meant living under a different system, one dictated by the interests of the people rather than private profit. Under the current system of neoliberal imperialism, Joe Biden IS the “conservative” wing of the Democratic Party. When Biden says he wants to increase funding for the police and the military budget, he means it. Joe Biden isn’t just constrained by an imperialist system that gave birth to his career. No, this system is also in crisis, and Biden is perfectly fine with riding its turbulent waves to their logical conclusion: endless war and austerity.
Biden’s problem is that he is a bad liar and his slaps don’t land. He is an unpopular politician within a capitalist culture where Americans are more likely to pay ample attention to media celebrities who take them away from reality than to politicians who make their reality worse while sporting a smile on their face.
Joe tried to harness Barack Obama's celebrity yesterday at the White House but it only further demonstrated how lackluster Joe himself is. Miranda Devine (NEW YORK POST) offers this analysis:
In C-SPAN videos, you see Biden, quite cheery, glad-handing the crowd, Harris at his side, when suddenly, from stage left, emerges Obama, face creased into a handsome smile, eyeing the same group that Biden is schmoozing.
Harris senses Obama’s presence and whips around with a joyous expression, and they meet each other’s gaze for an instant. The smile vanishes from Biden’s face as Harris turns away. He spots Obama and a frown furrows his brow. Obama, by way of greeting Harris, tosses his head like a horse and she responds by hunching her shoulders like an excited kid. As a frowning Biden moves closer, she pirouettes to face him, looking faintly amused, her lips pursed in a sort of private “uh oh, lol.”
Biden’s face grows thunderous. He opens his mouth in a snarl, looking straight at the side of Obama’s head, and says something that sounds like: “It’s not my . . .” and then stops himself.
Obama ignores him and reaches into the little group of admirers before him, shaking hands and creasing his face into a handsome smile. At this stage, Harris has turned away from Biden and positioned herself between the two men, mirroring Obama’s charm pantomime.
Biden grimaces. Then he fixes his eyes on Obama. He reaches around Harris to touch Obama’s arm and attract his attention. Obama, smiling animatedly, ignores him, before maneuvering out of arm’s-length.
Biden scowls over his shoulder. Obama’s escape is foiled by a short, blond woman who lunges in to shake his hand. Biden looks stricken, staring at this woman who has eyes only for Obama and Harris at his side.
A few moments later, he makes his move. He thrusts out his left hand and places his long, white fingers on Obama’s right shoulder. You can tell Obama feels it, because he involuntarily jerks his head away, a micro-expression of what looks like disgust flitting across his face.
Biden is concentrating intently on his hand now gripping tightly onto Obama’s shoulder.
Obama’s eyes swivel in Biden’s direction but his head does not move. He lets go of the blond woman’s hand with a smile and leans away to shake off the hand now firmly attached to his shoulder. He and the blond woman start bantering. He laughs at something she says.
Biden looks desperate and disbelieving as he clings to the shoulder of a man pretending he doesn’t exist.
Obama drops his shoulder, but can’t shake off the hand. A shadow passes over his face — anger, maybe, or exasperation. He raises his right hand high in the air and then dips it down into the crowd to shake another hand. He swings and dips and leans forward but the bony, white hand clings on.
Iraqi politicians are struggling to form a government as the country gets closer than ever to dissolving the parliament and holding new elections over five months after the last parliamentary elections.
Previous elections have shown that it takes time to decide upon the three presidencies – the speaker of parliament, the president, and the prime minister. Only after these presidents are elected can a new cabinet be formed.
However, this time the situation is much more problematic. It is a matter of life or death for some parties. It is not about getting more or less ministerial positions. It is about being in or out of government altogether.
'Mohammed seems unaware of amny things. For example, in the next paragraph, he will insist that Moqtada al-Sadr, Shi'ite cleric and cult leader, got the most votes.
No, he did not.
He got zero votes.
He wasn't on the ballot. He wasn't running for office. His group got the most votes this go round -- they got far less votes than they'd ever gotten before.
Moqtada has been trying to form a government since the October 10th elections took place and he has repeatedly failed. Iraq has still not named a president or a prime minister. Six months later, the political stalemate continues.
This is not Iraq's first political stalemate following a national election. This took place when Joe Biden was Vice President of the US in 2010. Then-President Barack Obama had put Joe in charge of Iraq.
Which is how Joe steered the US effort in 2010 to overturn the votes of the Iraqi people who, in March 2010, voted thug Nouri al-Maliki out after one term. Joe led the US effort to overturn that vote -- despite the fact that we already knew Nouri was running secret prisons and torture chambers. Joe led the US effort to negotiate The Erbil Agreement -- the legal contract that overturned the votes of the Iraqi people.
In March of 2010, Nouri lost the election. He refused to step down. His refusal, for eight months and several days, brought the Iraqi government to a standstill. This period was called a "political stalemate" (we used the term, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, many press accounts used the term). Did it end in October with Iran's blessing of Nouri?
March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted in August, "These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they may add more which could increase the number of seats needed to form the executive government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with other slates, parties and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament seats were awarded, for example, to minority candidates who represent various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad Allawi is the head of Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the biggest seat holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki, the current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show of lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing coalition with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this coalition still does not give them 163 seats. November 10th a power sharing deal resulted in the Parliament meeting for the second time and voting in a Speaker. And then Iraqiya felt double crossed on the deal and the bulk of their members stormed out of the Parliament. David Ignatius (Washington Post) explains, "The fragility of the coalition was dramatically obvious Thursday as members of the Iraqiya party, which represents Sunnis, walked out of Parliament, claiming that they were already being double-crossed by Maliki. Iraqi politics is always an exercise in brinkmanship, and the compromises unfortunately remain of the save-your-neck variety, rather than reflecting a deeper accord. " After that, Jalal Talabani was voted President of Iraq. Talabani then named Nouri as the prime minister-delegate. If Nouri can meet the conditions outlined in Article 76 of the Constitution (basically nominate ministers for each council and have Parliament vote to approve each one with a minimum of 163 votes each time and to vote for his council program) within thirty days, he becomes the prime minister. If not, Talabani must name another prime minister-delegate. . In 2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister-delegate. It took eight months and two days to name Nouri as prime minister-delegate. His first go-round, on April 22, 2006, his thirty day limit kicked in. May 20, 2006, he announced his cabinet -- sort of. Sort of because he didn't nominate a Minister of Defense, a Minister of Interior and a Minister of a Natioanl Security. This was accomplished, John F. Burns wrote in "For Some, a Last, Best Hope for U.S. Efforts in Iraq" (New York Times), only with "muscular" assistance from the Bush White House. Nouri declared he would be the Interior Ministry temporarily. Temporarily lasted until June 8, 2006. This was when the US was able to strong-arm, when they'd knocked out the other choice for prime minister (Ibrahim al-Jaafari) to install puppet Nouri and when they had over 100,000 troops on the ground in Iraq. Nouri had no competition. That's very different from today. The Constitution is very clear and it is doubtful his opponents -- including within his own alliance -- will look the other way if he can't fill all the posts in 30 days. As Leila Fadel (Washington Post) observes, "With the three top slots resolved, Maliki will now begin to distribute ministries and other top jobs, a process that has the potential to be as divisive as the initial phase of government formation." Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) points out, "Maliki now has 30 days to decide on cabinet posts - some of which will likely go to Iraqiya - and put together a full government. His governing coalition owes part of its existence to followers of hard-line cleric Muqtada al Sadr, leading Sunnis and others to believe that his government will be indebted to Iran." The stalemate ends when the country has a prime minister. It is now eight months, thirteen days and counting.
November 10th The Erbil Agreement was signed and November 11th the Parliament was finally in session after eight months of nothing. November 11th, the KRG website announces:
Baghdad, Iraq (KRP.org) - Iraq's political leaders yesterday agreed to hold the parliamentary session as scheduled on Thursday and to name an individual for the post of Speaker of the the parliament (Council of Representatives). The Speaker post will go to the Al-Iraqiya bloc, which is headed by former prime minister Ayad Allawi. During the meeting, which was attended by the leaders of all the winning blocs at President Masoud Barzani's Baghdad headquarters, agreement was reached on two other points: to create a council for strategic policy and to address issues regarding national reconciliation. President Barzani, who sponsored the three days' round of meetings, stated that today's agreement was a big achievement for Iraqis. He expressed optimism that the next government will be formed soon and that it will be inclusive and representative of all of Iraq's communities.
The agreement that they are discussing is The Erbil Agreemen
Joe was obligated, in 2010, to do what was best for the Iraqi people if he truly realized he made a mistake. In no world is overturning election results a good thing. Joe doesn't think overturning the results are a good thing here in the US. He can't stop pushing the fantasy that Donald Trump won't honor the election results from this upcoming November. And yet it is Joe who overturned an election. The Iraqi people voted out thug Nouri al-Maliki and they risked their lives to do so. Instead of backing the Iraqi people, instead of fostering trust in the ballot box and in the notions of democracy, Joe pushed for the votes of Iraqi people to be overturned.
This decision was wrong. It was wrong if you were trying to foster democracy in Iraq. Voter turnout has steadily decreased each election since 2010's votes were overturned. 2020's election was the lowest turnout ever.
The decision was wrong also because the US government knew what Nouri al-Maliki was. That includes Joe Biden.
"We are told that we must continue to support a strong central government, when that government does not enjoy the trust of many Iraqis, and has little capacity to deliver security and services."
Who said that? Joe Biden when he was a US senator. He said it in April of 2008 at a Senate hearing he chaired -- we noted it here. Two years later, he's supporting Nouri for a second term whent the Iraqi people made clear with their votes that they didn't want him to have a second term.
Nouri's secret prisons and torture chambers were already known when Joe worked to give him the second term the voters had denied him. Nothing good could come of that and nothing good did.
One of the responses to Nouri's second term was the rise of ISIS. Yes, US governmental actions fueled the rise of ISIS.
Now we've got another stalemate and, once again, Joe's leading the Iraq effort -- this time as president of the US.
Iraq on Wednesday is plunging deeper into a constitutional crisis as the deadline by Iraq's Supreme Federal Court to elect a president was not met.
The country now faces various scenarios, commentators say, ranging from forming a pro-Iran national consensus government, holding fresh early elections, or an eruption of violence between political rivals.
On March 30, the Iraqi parliament failed for a third time to ensure a constitutional quorum of 220 lawmakers out of 329 to be able to elect a new president for the country.
The parliament postponed the session indefinitely after pro-Iran Shia parties and several Kurdish and independent lawmakers boycotted the sessions.
Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange for the 'crime' of journalism. He is demanding that the UK government hand him over so that Julian -- an Australian citizen, -- can be taken by US aturhoitites where he can face what will receive a kinder name but what is torture. He will be tortured. Why?
That is a funny skit and it's also accurate -- people like David Axelrod keep us from getting Medicare For All. And then David did complain recently about how his prescription jumped to over $630 a month.
We need Medicare For All. If we had a functioning system, we'd have it. If we didn't have members of Congress who are whores to Big Pharma, we'd have it.
We didn't have a new SUPERMAN AND LOIS this week. A few of you e-mailed asking why I didn't cover it last time? That's why. And there was no new episode of THE GOLDBERGS either. Instead, ABC whored out the first hour of prime time to that 'reality' garbage of the Kardashian family -- see Ann's "The Kardashians."
Also don't miss Ava and C.I.'s "Media: Theater of the Absurd" which not only addresses some real issues about Will Smith assaulting Chris Rock that never got addressed or even raised before, but also covers the media's suddenly discovering the Hunter Biden laptop.
We have been discussing the Hunter Biden scandal and the increasingly untenable position for Merrick Garland and the media as evidence contradicts past representations of President Joe Biden. That position further to deteriorate today with a Fox story
that, in 2017, President Biden, wrote a college recommendation letter
for the son of a Chinese executive who did business with Hunter Biden.
President Biden has long denied any knowledge or involvement in his
son’s dealings — a claim that has been contradicted not only by emails
found on the laptop but statements by Hunter Biden himself.
The letter is on behalf of the son of the CEO of
BHR Jonathan Li. BHR features prominently in the influence peddling
scandal. It was in a joint venture with Biden’s Rosemont Seneca. Hunter
held a 10% stake in BHR and, while he claimed that he was entirely
divested, he continued to hold shares as recently as last year.
Fox News Digital obtained emails between Hunter Biden
and his business associates, including one dated Jan. 3, 2017, and sent
to Hunter Biden and his business associates Devon Archer and Jim
Bolger, CEO of BHR Jonathan Li writes:
“Gentlmen[sic], please find the attached
resume of my son, Chris Li. He is applying the following colleges for
this year,” Li writes, listing Brown University, Cornell University, and
New York University.
Li goes on to attach an “updated version” of his son’s “CV” and listing Brown, Cornell, and NYU as target schools.
Hunter’s associate, James Bulger, responds with “Lets [sic] see how we can be helpful here to Chris,” Bulger writes.
Several weeks later, on Feb. 18, 2017, Eric Schwerin, who served as
president of Rosemont Seneca, replied to Li. Schwerin states “Jonathan,
Hunter asked me to send you a copy of the recommendation letter that he
asked his father to write on behalf of Christopher for Brown
University.”
Once again, it is baffling how Attorney General Garland can ignore
the myriad of references to Joe Biden in refusing to appoint a special
counsel.
For two years the left has championed
policies of surveillance and exclusion in the form of: punitive vaccine
mandates, invasive vaccine passports, socially destructive lockdowns,
and radically unaccountable censorship by large media and technology
corporations. For the entire pandemic, leftists and liberals – call them
the Lockdown Left – cheered on unprecedented levels of repression aimed
primarily at the working class – those who could not afford private
schools and could not comfortably telecommute from second homes.
Almost the entire left intelligentsia has remained psychically stuck in March 2020. Its members
have applauded the new biosecurity repression and calumniated as liars,
grifters, and fascists any and all who dissented. Typically, they did
so without even engaging evidence and while shirking public debate.
Among the most visible in this has been Noam Chomsky, the self-described
anarcho-syndicalist who called
for the unvaccinated to “remove themselves from society,” and suggested
that they should be allowed to go hungry if they refuse to submit. [1]
In Jacobin, a magazine claiming to support the working class in all its struggles, Branko Marcetic demanded
the unvaccinated be barred from public transportation: “one obvious
course of action is for Biden to make vaccines a requirement for mass
transport.” [2] Journalist Doug Henwood has scolded the unvaccinated with: “Get over your own bloated sense of self-importance.” [3]
But Henwood has championed shutting down all of society in the name of
safety, while refusing to engage counter-arguments – a combination that
suggests a bloated sense of self-importance of his own.
Other left intellectuals, like Benjamin Bratton, author of a Verso book on the pandemic called Return of the Real,
are notable for hiding amidst academic blather: “the book’s argument is
on behalf [of] a ‘positive biopolitics’ that may form the basis of
viable social self-organization, but this is less a statement on behalf
of ‘the political’ in some metaphysical sense than on behalf of a
governmentality through which an inevitably planetary society can
deliberately compose itself.” [4] This is, as the late Alex Cockburn
once said, “what dumb people think smart people sound like.”
Even the American Civil Liberties
Union – long a bastion of objective thinking and civil liberties
absolutism – has supported the mandates, lockdowns, and censorship.
David Cole, the group’s legal director, debased himself in the New York Times with
a tortured op-ed explaining how everything the ACLU stood for over the
last 100 years suddenly did not apply during the season of freakout and
overreach. [5]
The pandemic brought out a lot of ugly in some people.
What
we really needed was Michael Ratner to povide the voice of warning that
he so foten did when rights and liberties were under attack, when the
people were under attack. Naomi Wolf, who saw eye to eye with Michael
on many civil liberty manners, tried to raise issues and was attacked
and deplatformed for it.
There were serious
conversations that should have taken place and because she dared to
rasiet hem, she was attacked, her words distorted and the corporate
press ridiculed her. I'm sure they would have tried something siilar
with Michael but I would've hoped that he had enough frineds who were
willing to step up and refuse to allow him to be disappeared from the
conversation.
Whole rights were removed and
people were attacked. All the while, I don't remember the people
working to malign Naomi also taking the time to note the real crooks --
the ones making money off the pandemic.
In the second year of the pandemic, the chief executives of the top
US corporations are on track to set new compensation records while the
wages of their workers were reduced. This is the conclusion drawn by
several analyses of pay data submitted by a group of S&P 500
corporations to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as part
of their annual filing requirements.
On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal
reported that median pay for CEOs rose to $14.2 million last year, up
from a record $13.4 million in 2020. The report said that half of the
companies reported median wages for their workers increased in 2021 by
3.1 percent. However, this is less than half of last year’s inflation
rate of 6.7 percent, and it means that these workers took an effective
paycut.
The Journal report noted, “Most CEOs received a
pay increase of 11 percent or more, and pay rose by at least 25 percent
for nearly one-third of them.” It also reported that for one-third of
the companies, median employee pay declined last year.
These figures are based on a review by the Journal
of “pay data for more than half the index from MyLogIQ LLC.” MyLogIQ is
a provider of SEC compliance services and has access to the government
agency public filings database.
But Naomi Wolf, not these greedy opportunists, was the one villified?
I
watched a NETFLIX special the other day -- or I tried to watch it.
Ronny Chieng was funny in his previous special. So, with SPEAKEASY, I
tried to endure it and hoped he'd turn it around. After eight minutes, I
couldn't stomach anymore.
How brave he must
feel to ridicule people. Not the powerful, of course. Cowards like him
never ridicule the powerful. Instead he goes after We The People. A
man with no science background wants to ridicule others for asking
questions regarding science. A man raised under a totalitarian system
has obviously instilled those lessons and feels no need to fight for
democracy or free speech. He instead tries to shame We The People and
tells people to shut up and go along with what they are told. How dare
they ask questions, why, they are like the person who skips calass all
semester and then shows up for the last day of the semester and is
failing the final and screaming that it doesn't make sense and is just
too stupid for words.
Do you ever have that dream, where you wake up and it's a final and somehow you managed to miss the entire semster of a class?
It's a nightmare I have repeatedly and that's, in part, because it did actually happen to me.
Because
I wouldn't go along with what others had planned for me, I had to pay
my own college costs (not the end of the world, many have to do the
same). As a result, I always worked at least two jobs each semester in
addition to classes. The last or the second to the last semester, I had
16 hours of classes and was working three jobs. I went to the first
two weeks of a class and that was it. It was the second to the last
semester. It was December when the final rolled around.
Sorry, Ronny, but I aced thefinal. I didn't scream or whine.
I guess that's how it happens in your world. Not in mine.
and
in mine world, we don't attack people for daring to demand answers and
acountability from tehir government. As you mock the so-called
stupidity of others, I hope you grasp in a few years, just how stupid
and pathetic and craven you sounded.
I don't
care who is in the White House, people should always demand
accountability, they should always question their government. That's
what a democracy is about.
Children say
inappropriate things. Especially when they're trying to be funny.
That's why I don't supoprt anyone using the n-word. A seven-year-old
watching Dave Chappelle (a great comedian and a friend) thinking he's
cool and wanting to be like him just knows the laughs came when he said
this or that. They copy it with no understanding of, for example, the
historial harm of that term, the n-word. They don't get it, they don't
have the history to understand it. They ust know that DAve's cool, Dave
said it and it' got laughs. Huge laughs. So they mimic.
I
bring that up because the post-Jon Stewart version of THE DAILY SHOW is
pure and utter garbage. And Ronny has worked there. His squeals were
apparently funny there. He'd squel about some Republcian and they'd
love it. And, like a child, he didn't really understand what was
getting the laughs. So now he makes a fool of himself in his NETFLIX
special that is so undemocratic, it's practically a parody. It's the
sort of thing you'd see some boot licker perform in the movie V FOR
VENDDETTA with Natalie Portman. And because Ronny's high pitched
squeals struck comic gold in the past, he assumes he knows how to make
people laugh. He might be making some people laugh, but I worry about
their state of mind.
In recent days, a longstanding investigation by the Department of
Justice (DoJ) into the taxes and financial affairs of Hunter Biden, the
son of President Joe Biden, has become the subject of prominent news
reports in the mainstream press. The reports, nearly all citing
anonymous sources within the DoJ, confirm that the investigation, which
began during the Trump administration but was not disclosed by Hunter
Biden until December 2020, has broadened in scope.
As of this writing, no official charges have been made against Hunter Biden or any other member of the Biden family.
Prominent articles on the federal investigation into the younger
Biden’s international business dealings began to appear in mid-March. On
March 16, the New York Times reported that the president’s son
recently paid off an outstanding tax liability of over $1 million.
Nevertheless, “a grand jury continued to gather evidence in a
wide-ranging examination of his international business dealings,
according to people familiar with the case,” the newspaper wrote.
Subsequent
reports, citing sources within the DoJ, confirmed that witnesses with
close ties to Hunter Biden, including former business and romantic
partners, are being interviewed by a federal grand jury located in
Wilmington, Delaware. Among them is former business associate and fellow
Yale University alumnus Devon Archer.
Archer was sentenced to 13 months imprisonment in February for his
participation in a fraud scheme, following his conviction in 2018. The
operation involved defrauding the Oglala Sioux tribe of roughly $60
million in bonds.
While Hunter Biden was not involved in Archer’s
fraud case, the former friends and business partners both sat on the
board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, which, the DoJ
has confirmed, is under investigation.
Hunter Biden was appointed
to the Burisma board, despite having no experience in the field, during
the period when his father, then vice president, served as the point-man
for the Obama administration’s imperialist operations in Ukraine
following the US-backed Maidan coup of February 2014.
Burisma
paid Hunter Biden roughly $50,000 a month between 2014 and 2019. The
money was wired to a Delaware-based corporation called Rosemont Seneca
Bohai LLC, which was owned by Archer and registered by him on February
13, 2014. The company, according to a September 2020 report by Senate
Republicans, acted as “a shell entity” to receive an estimated $3.5
million in payments from Burisma to Archer and Hunter Biden. In the same
report, the Republicans detailed Hunter Biden’s business dealings in
China.
People need tod emand answers.
It
appears the Biden family, while pretending to be in public service, was
trading on Joe's name and his public service for years. It ceratinly
explains how a man who served on the public dime for his entire career
ended up out of ofice with millions and millions of dollars. It's
graft. It's corruption. And , in a democracy, politicians have to
answer for that.
Ronny wants everyone to shut up and just go along. This as the US government is pimping another war. Andre Damon (WSWS) reports:
In yet another major effort to escalate NATO’s proxy war against
Russia, the Biden administration is seizing upon claims by Ukrainian
officials of a massacre by Russian forces in the Kiev suburb of Bucha to
implement a new round of sanctions and undermine any effort at a
peaceful settlement of the war.
“I got criticized for calling
Putin a war criminal,” US President Joe Biden said Monday. “Well, the
truth of the matter, you saw what happened in Bucha. He is a war
criminal.” Biden added, “We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the
weapons they need in order to fight.”
The American government,
along with the media, proceeds according to the principle: first the
conclusion, then the investigation. Biden, who more than one year after
the January 6 coup attempt cannot make up his mind whether Trump is
guilty of a crime, has already decided that Russian President Vladimir
Putin is guilty of “war crimes” in Bucha.
The actual facts,
however, do not prove the conclusion. Russian troops withdrew from Bucha
right after the Kremlin promised to dramatically reduce its forces in
the direction of Kiev in peace negotiations last Tuesday. For days, no
significant civilian casualties were reported. On Saturday, Ukrainian
forces—including members of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion—entered the
town, and a torrent of reports were unleashed in the Western press about
alleged atrocities.
The images shown widely only indicate that bodies were found, but not
who killed whom, when and under what circumstances. While video
evidence has emerged of Ukrainian forces executing and torturing unarmed
people, no similar evidence has emerged for Russian troops.
Given
the systematic use by the United States of false allegations of
atrocities to justify wars all over the world, and absent clear and
convincing evidence, there is no reason to view the claims of a massacre
in Bucha as anything other than war propaganda, aimed at enraging the
population to justify military escalation.
Even if it were
established that Russian troops fired on civilians—and that has not been
established—that would not mean that they were acting under the
instruction of the Russian government.
In the world Ronny promotes in his new special, you don't ask questions, you just go along.
Actually, that's the formula for a disaster -- as most people already know -- people far wiser than Ronny.
Sergeant
Tim Gordon is home and I'm very glad of that. I'm also glad that Sgt
Jake Pietsch, whom we noted earlier this week, is home as well.
I
hope people who learn of those two returning from Iraq grasp that US
troops remain on the ground there. And I hope that they grasp this is
troop rotation, not a withdrawal. I hope they question why, all this
time later, US troops are on the ground in Iraq and, maybe, they
question why two members of the National Gaurd were there to begin with?
A
lot of actions shold be raising questions but the Ronnys of the world
are bothered by that. I'm bothered by the people who don't ask
questions. Demadning accountability is more of a civic duty.
A number of Democratic Party strategists spoke to The Hill seven months ahead of the November midterms. One of them concluded the party is doomed.
With record gas prices and four-decade high inflation pricing some Americans out of basic commodities, party insiders weighed in. The consensus was President Joe Biden and Democrats are in serious trouble.
Worried about not only losing a majority in the House, but also in
the Senate, top strategists spoke of the issues Democrats face in
convincing Americans to turn out and vote for them in the fall.
Bill Galston, who advised former President Bill Clinton, said Biden’s approval numbers can only go so high right now.
“My hypothesis is that, unless and until inflation comes down
appreciably, that there’s going to be a ceiling on his job approval
that’s a lot lower than the White House wants it to be,” Galston said.
Gallup senior editor Jeff Jones concurred. “High gas prices are
one of the biggest anchors on presidential approval,” Jones said.
Biden’s approval rating is hovering at a round 40 percent. The RealClearPolitics average shows 41.0% approve of Biden’s job performance, while 53.8% disapprove.
The Biden administration has repeatedly attempted to attribute pain at the pump to Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. There was a consensus among experts that the message is not helping the president with voters.
When
you fail to deliver, when inflation rises and your predecssor at least
gave out toekn, tiny checks hwile you do nothing, when you have the
nerave to try to normalize a possible food shortage in the us, maybe
you've done enough harm to yourself and to your party.
