Saturday, September 17, 2022

Russell Brand, Chris Hedges

Some reality from Russell Brand.


Anyone out there fighting for you?  Hell no. C.I.'s written about this and what a hypocrite Joe Biden is for these speeches attacking 'MAGA' Republicans while Joe has the DNC pouring money into the campaigns of 'MAGA' Republicans in primaries so they will win those primaries.  Which is it, Joe?  Are they going to destroy everything?  If so, why are you pumping money into their campaigns.


He's a hypocrite.  Read Elaine's "Joe Biden's the bastard -- Biden family values" and Ruth's "The Bidens have no family values -- only greed" for more hypocrisy on Joe's part. 


Leaders are hypocrites.  Chris Hedges (ICH) notes this:


No institution helps obscure the crimes of empire and buttress class rule and white supremacy as effectively as the British monarchy.

The fawning adulation of Queen Elizabeth in the United States, which fought a revolution to get rid of the monarchy, and in Great Britain, is in direct proportion to the fear gripping a discredited, incompetent and corrupt global ruling elite.

The global oligarchs are not sure the next generation of royal sock puppets – mediocrities that include a pedophile prince and his brother, a cranky and eccentric king who accepted suitcases and bags stuffed with $3.2 million in cash from the former prime minister of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, and who has millions stashed in offshore accounts – are up to the job. Let’s hope they are right.

“Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories,” Patrick Freyne wrote last year in The Irish Times. “More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown.”

Monarchy obscures the crimes of empire and wraps them in nostalgia. It exalts white supremacy and racial hierarchy. It justifies class rule. It buttresses an economic and social system that callously discards and often consigns to death those considered the lesser breeds, most of whom are people of color. The queen’s husband Prince Phillip, who died in 2021, was notorious for making racist and sexist remarks, politely explained away in the British press as “gaffes.” He described Beijing, for example, as “ghastly” during a 1986 visit and told British students: “If you stay here much longer you’ll all be slitty-eyed.”

 The cries of the millions of victims of empire; the thousands killed, tortured, raped and imprisoned during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya; the 13 Irish civilians gunned down in “Bloody Sunday;” the more than 4,100 First Nations children who died or went missing in Canada’s residential schools, government-sponsored institutions established to “assimilate” indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture, and the hundreds of thousands killed during the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan are drowned out by cheers for royal processions and the sacral aura an obsequious press weaves around the aristocracy. The coverage of the queen’s death is so mind-numbingly vapid — the BBC sent out a news alert on Saturday when Prince Harry and Prince William, accompanied by their wives, surveyed the floral tributes to their grandmother displayed outside Windsor Castle — that the press might as well turn over the coverage to the mythmakers and publicists employed by the royal family.

The royals are oligarchs. They are guardians of their class. The world’s largest landowners include King Mohammed VI of Morocco with 176 million acres, the Holy Roman Catholic Church with 177 million acres, the heirs of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia with 531 million acres and now, King Charles III with 6.6 billion acres of land. British monarchs are worth almost $28 billion. The British public will provide a $33 million subsidy to the Royal Family over the next two years, although the average household in the U.K. saw its income fall for the longest period since records began in 1955 and 227,000 households experience homelessness in Britain. 

Royals, to the ruling class, are worth the expense. They are effective tools of subjugation. British postal and rail workers canceled planned strikes over pay and working conditions after the queen’s death. The Trade Union Congress (TUC) postponed its congress. Labour Party members poured out heartfelt tributes. Even Extinction Rebellion, which should know better, indefinitely canceled its planned “Festival of Resistance.” The BBC’s Clive Myrie dismissed Britain’s energy crisis — caused by the war in Ukraine — that has thrown millions of people into severe financial distress as “insignificant” compared with concerns over the queen’s health. The climate emergency, pandemic, the deadly folly of the U.S. and NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, soaring inflation, the rise of neo-fascist movements and deepening social inequality will be ignored as the press spews florid encomiums to class rule. There will be 10 days of official mourning.

In 1953, Her Majesty’s Government sent three warships, along with 700 troops, to its colony British Guiana, suspended the constitution and overthrew the democratically elected government of Cheddi Jagan. Her Majesty’s Government helped to build and long supported the apartheid government in South Africa. Her Majesty’s Government savagely crushed the Mau Mau independence movement in Kenya from 1952 to 1960, herding 1.5 million Kenyans into concentration camps where many were tortured. British soldiers castrated suspected rebels and sympathizers, often with pliers, and raped girls and women. By the time India won independence in 1947 after two centuries of British colonialism, Her Majesty’s Government had looted $45 trillion from the country and violently crushed a series of uprisings, including the First War of Independence in 1857. Her Majesty’s Government carried out a dirty war to break the Greek Cypriot War of Independence from 1955 to 1959 and later in Yemen from 1962 to 1969. Torture, extrajudicial assassinations, public hangings and mass executions by the British were routine. Following a protracted lawsuit, the British government agreed to pay nearly £20 million in damages to over 5,000 victims of British abuse during war in Kenya, and in 2019 another payout was made to survivors of torture from the conflict in Cyprus. The British state attempts to obstruct lawsuits stemming from its colonial history. Its settlements are a tiny fraction of the compensation paid to British slave owners in 1835, once it — at least formally — abolished slavery. 

During her 70-year reign, the queen never offered an apology or called for reparations.


Piss on her grave.  She was a hideous ruler. 

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Friday, September 16, 2022.  We note the fluff parade that still has ended over a recent death, Iraq remains mired in the stalemate and the US Senate talks monkeypox.



Senator Patty Murray: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. now has over 21,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox -- more than anywhere else in the world, and my home state of Washington has over 500 cases. I've heard from families who are rightly concerned by how bad this has gotten.  And public health officials -- including back in Washington state -- who are frustrated to see our response run into issues we should be prepared for by now. That’s why I continue to push the Biden Administration about my concerns with the monkeypox response, and urge quick action: on testing, treatments, and vaccines, and on clear guidance to the public, health care providers, and state public health officials.  So it's reassuring to see we are making progress. On testing, capacity has increased one thousand percent, and FDA just approved a faster track for additional tests. On vaccines, BARDA is helping to stand up a new vaccine fill and finish site in Michigan, HHS is working to expand the number of distribution sites in states, and the Administration's advice for splitting doses has greatly stretched our vaccine supply.  On outreach, the Administration has started working with states to make vaccines available at events with many people from the LGBTQ+ community in attendance. And perhaps most importantly -- the rate of new cases is going down.  Now that is all encouraging news, but let me be clear -- we must remain vigilant in our response. And these promising improvements don;t excuse the issues I have been hearing about from communities, state health officials, and advocates from the start of this outbreak. Patients have spoken out about how hard it is to get tested -- some even waited days, despite having clear symptoms. Providers have had to jump through hoops to get their patients treatments. And I'm constantly talking to public health officials in my home state of Washington, who have told me how communications with states could have been far clearer -- and faster, and how the challenges in accessing tests and vaccines have delayed our response. I know states have especially struggled with the federal government's decision to forgo the system we typically use to distribute vaccines, the one we are already using for COVID vaccines. When it comes to vaccine distribution, some shipments have been sent to the wrong state, and even spoiled after storage at the wrong temperature. There have been issues with vaccine supply too -- like when thousands of vaccine doses were delayed because FDA had yet to inspect the new plant they were from, or when the Biden Administration missed an opportunity to procure more vaccines at a crucial point in this outbreak. And again, we are seeing inequities worsen this outbreak for some communities. Advocates in the LGBTQ+ community -- who have faced the vast majority of cases -- have also made clear they feel they are being overlooked, or in some instances stigmatized. We need to keep focusing and improving on outreach and on getting information and resources -- like vaccines-- to those who are most in need, and most at risk. And that must include communities of color, who we know don't have equitable access to vaccines. This is especially important as early data suggest Black and Latino communities are disproportionately burdened by this outbreak. We must do better. We need to be applying what we learned from the COVID response, and providing the resources communities have made clear they need.  Of course, there is an enormous difference between this and the COVID pandemic, which is: thanks to decades of investment in smallpox research, we already had tests, treatments, and vaccines ready to go before this crisis even began. That should serve as a reminder to all of us about the immense value of investing in public health preparedness. But it's also why the stumbles in getting these tools deployed were especially frustrating and inexcusable. To learn from this, we need to be clear-eyed about what went wrong. Not just on challenges we faced in the last several months, but that we have faced for decades --challenges that, to be frank, have spanned many Administrations, not just this one. For example, we had over 20 million vials of smallpox vaccine in our national stockpile -- but they weren;t replaced as they expired over the course of a decade. I know I join my Ranking Member and members of this Committee when I say we have to do better -- not just on COVID, not just on monkeypox -- but on public health threats, period. Because we know there will be more. Just last week New York declared an emergency due to polio -- yet another public health risk we need to watch closely. So I want to hear from our witnesses today about not just what they are doing right now to improve our response to the monkeypox outbreak  -- and fast -- but also how we can fix this in the long term and make sure the stumbles of the past couple months never happen again. I want to know what you and the Administration are doing to make sure we have enough tests, treatments, and vaccines for this outbreak-- and get them where they need to go while also maintaining an adequate stock of supplies for any smallpox threats. What are you doing to improve outreach to the LGBTQ+ community, address the disproportionate harm to Black and Latino communities, fight stigma and misinformation, and right the inequities we[ve seen in our response so far? How are we making the most of new research to develop promising vaccines and therapeutics, and then make them more quickly available -- while continuing to uphold the gold standard of safety and effectiveness? And are we getting schools and colleges everything they need to stay open and keep students and the school community safe? I'm glad CDC has provided guidance for K-12 schools -- and fortunately the science tells us elementary and secondary school kids are not at high risk right now, and CDC has also released resources for colleges which is critical with students returning to campus this fall. We need to make sure colleges and universities are equipped to prevent potential outbreaks as students move into dorms and live in close quarters with each other. I realize you've got your work cut out for you on all of this, especially with COVID still raging -- but there's no reason for us to fall behind. So I'm going to keep pushing you here, because families back in Washington state and across the country are counting on you to get it right. That's also why I'm going to keep pushing my colleagues here in Congress about the need for funding to support all this work. I know I'm not the only one here with concerns about the monkeypox response but we can't just say 'this isn't working' without providing the funding to end this outbreak and build the public health system Americans deserve.  So I will continue to work with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and push to deliver the resources that will help get families the testing, treatments, and vaccines they need.  And I'm interested in hearing from the witnesses on what the needs are when it comes to investing in our monkeypox response. It is also important to me we continue to keep our eyes on the horizon when it comes to future outbreaks and pandemics, and build a stronger public health system for whatever threat comes next.  As the saying goes -- an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That starts with building a world class public health system, rather than one that lags behind our peers. Our communities deserve to be as safe as anyone in the world, which is why Senator Burr and I are continuing to work to pass our PREVENT Pandemics Act.  Our bipartisan legislation implements the lessons from our COVID response and improves our policies and processes on issues like strengthening supply chains, improving management of our national stockpile, modernizing data systems, and other items which would address many of the challenges we've faced with monkeypox. But a strong public health system also requires strong investments. Because our public health system was underfunded before COVID struck -- and it has been overwhelmed ever since. We have to end the cycle of crisis and complacency by making sustained investments that allow us to build, and maintain, robust public health infrastructure at all levels.  And I'm going to keep pushing for all of these steps, because we should all know by now just how much is at stake. I can tell you, families in Seattle know, parents in Spokane know, nurses in Yakima know, workers in Olympia know, people across Washington state, and across the country, know: COVID was never going to be the last public health crisis we face -- and neither is monkeypox. The question is not whether there will be a new threat -- it is when it will strike and whether we will be ready. The truth is, the monkeypox response so far has not been encouraging -- but there are some clear signs of progress, and there are clear steps we can, and should, take to improve. And I don't just want to hear today about the steps you will be taking -- I want to see action. And you better believe I'll be watching closely.


She was speaking Wednesday at the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.  Appearing before the committee were Dr Rochelle Walensky (Director of the CDC), Dawn O'Connell (Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response), Dr. Robert Califf (FDA Commissioner) and Dr Anthony Fauci (NIH Director).  Murray is the Committee Chair, Senator Richard Burr is the Ranking Member.


Committee Chair Patty Murray: [. . .] I say, frankly, too many missteps were made early on in the response and a couple hundred cases turned into 21,000.  It is unacceptable to communities who already experience barriers to accessing healthcare like the LGBTQ+ and the Black and the Latino communities that are hardest hit by this outbreak.  Access to testing was an early challenge in the monkeypox response with many people reporting significant delays in both accessing the test and learning their results.  To continue to have these challenges around testing is just simply unacceptable.  So, Dr Walensky, let me start with you.  How is the CDC working to make sure that tests are more accessible and results are available earlier?


Dr Rochelle Walensky: Thank you, Senator, for that question.  One of the big challenges that we had in terms of access to testing was both patients understanding that they were presenting with a new infection and providers understanding that this was a new infection that they had to test for. Indeed, another important clinical consideration was that people were coming in requesting a test when they had no symptoms and they had no rash.  As Dr Califf noted, the test for this infection is a swab of the rash so if there is no other FDA approved test, we need to have a rash in order to conduct those tests.  So much of what we've done -- and I should mention that we've always had more capacity than we've had tests coming in -- to date, we've used about 14 to 20% of our capacity.  But to address these access issues, we had to work with clinicians, we had to work with patients, we had to do an extraordinary amount of outreach so that providers would understand how to test, patients would understand when to come in for a test and our public health partners would know not to gatekeep those tests.  And so that was a work that we did early on.


Yes, Walensky, and that is your job.  That is your defined job.  That's what the CDC does.  Stop making excuses and pretending you were suddenly tasked with new responsibilities.


Chair Patty Murray: Dr Califf, Secretary [Xavier] Becerra recently declared that FDA can use the emergency use authorization pathway for monkeypox tests.  How will that improve the availability of new tests and what steps are you taking to improve on the progress that you've made?


Dr Robert Califf:  First of all, let me concur with Dr Walensky, there's never been a shortage of tests but there's been a shortage of access to tests because of inefficiencies in the system so the EUA authority has enabled us -- we've given one EUA already but we also have five commercial labs which are offering the tests at this point and we issued a guidance just the other day which, uhm, makes it clear that individual institutions that are developing laboratory developed tests should proceed ahead and we've given people clear guidance templates for developing their tests and figuring out if they work.  So I'd say, on all fronts, the gates are open under a watchful eye because we also must keep in mind that one of the lessons from COVID was that when the gates were open a lot of the tests turned out to be not so good, got a lot of them out there and we had to reign them back in.

Chair Patty Murray:  I -- Well, look.  I'm encouraged by the declining cases.  But it really is imperative that we remain vigilant.  And despite efforts by HHS to increase access to vaccines, some people in my home state of Washington still go to great lengths to get one -- including crossing the border into Canada to get one.  Now people, understandably, want to be vaccinated before they get exposed but that means we need more vaccines.  Ms. O'Connell, some serious stumbles were made this year when it came to our vaccine supply.  What have you done to make sure that never happens again? And what are you doing to increase the supply and distribution of vaccines right now.


Dawn O'Connell: Chairman Murray, thank you so much for that question.  What's most important to us is that those who need access to this vaccine get it.  So if you continue to hear from constituents that are unable to access the vaccine or having to cross the border, please let us know.  We are in the business right now of knocking down those hurdles and making sure the vaccine can be accessed.  We did take a very small stockpile that was intended for small pox that was eventually intended to be lyophilized -- freeze dried -- for small pox and converted it to this active monkeypox response.  And that required a couple of challenging problems to solve.  We moved the fist 372,000 vials, as I mentioned in my opening statement, immediately.  We needed FDA to approve -- and they were terrific partners moving quickly -- to approve that second manufacturing line that began, uh, drew the 800,000 vials we were waiting for.  That's what it manufactured on. We needed that approval to happen before we could deploy those. FDA worked quickly and we got those out in July.  We have also ordered an additional 5.5 million vials of the bulk drug substance that was intended to be lyophilized for small pox -- we have ordered that to be filled and finished and shipped to the United States.  And the 2.5 million of those will be manufactured in the United States. 

 The hearing can best be summed up with one statement from Ranking Member Richard Burr, "You failed on vaccines."

There's no real progress here and things haven't changed much since Senator Murray sent the following letter last month:


 The Honorable Xavier Becerra

Secretary

Department of Health and Human Services

200 Independence Ave SW

Washington, DC 20201

Dear Secretary Becerra:     

The United States is reporting a historically high number of monkeypox cases with over 1,970 cases confirmed in 43 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.[1] As I have raised on multiple calls with the Administration, I am concerned with the state of the U.S. response to monkeypox. The spread of monkeypox is a reminder that our work to protect families and strengthen our preparedness and response system is far from complete and cannot end with the COVID-19 pandemic. Communities across the country are relying on you to do everything you can to protect them from the threat of monkeypox. I write to request a briefing from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS or the Department) on the domestic response to the monkeypox outbreak, including understanding how it is applying the lessons learned from the COVID-19 response, as well as the additional resources and authorities it needs to respond to and stop the disease from spreading further.

The global monkeypox outbreak was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) in May 2022, and today, 13,340 cases related to this outbreak have been detected in 69 countries.[2] Over the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has not only highlighted the dangers of a fragmented, understaffed, and underfunded public health system, but has put an unprecedented strain on our front line public health and health care workers, who are now being tasked with addressing yet another emerging public health threat. It is critical that lessons from COVID-19 are incorporated into our monkeypox response.

HHS has already taken a number of steps to respond to the domestic monkeypox outbreak, include activating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emergency Operations Center, releasing updated guidance and training for health care providers, mobilizing the Laboratory Response Network and working with commercial labs to expand testing capacity, deploying medical countermeasures, and releasing a vaccination strategy for close contacts.[3],[4]

However, it is clear more work is necessary to ensure that public health officials at all levels have the information and resources they need to respond quickly to this outbreak. 

Various reports indicate challenges at the local level, with some patients and providers stating they do not have the information and resources necessary to understand, test for, or respond to the disease, which is now presenting with uncharacteristic features.[5],[6],[7],[8] Since the disease spreads through close, intimate contact, some patients are seeking care at sexual health clinics, which are frequently under-resourced despite providing critical services to underserved communities, including the LGBTQ+ community.

Ensuring the public health system responds appropriately to monkeypox will require both decisive action from the Department and its state, local, and Tribal partners, as well as robust, sustained investments in public health. History repeatedly shows the critical importance of providing long-term investments in our public health and medical response systems to ensure the U.S. is prepared to respond to a variety of threats. The global eradication of smallpox, a virus in the same family as monkeypox, is a public health success story – and is a credit to sustained, bipartisan investment into the research and development of medical countermeasures.  The federal government stockpiled countermeasures, practiced responses with state and local health departments, and educated the public about smallpox.

While this investment in countermeasures has been sustained over decades, funding for the broader U.S. public health system has instead been subject to a cycle of crisis and complacency. That lack of consistency is why I have pushed for passage of the Public Health Infrastructure Saves Lives Act[9], which would provide the sustained funding we need to handle emergencies such as monkeypox or COVID-19. Additionally, to ensure HHS has additional tools to respond efficiently to public health emergencies, I have worked with Senator Burr on our bipartisan PREVENT Pandemics Act.

Given the continued spread of this virus and the need to ensure that all public health officials have the guidance and resources necessary to respond, I request a briefing by August 2, 2022 to better understand both HHS’s immediate response and the additional resources and authorities it needs. Specifically, I request updates on: (1) HHS’s plan for responding to the current domestic monkeypox outbreak, including the guidance being provided to state, local, and Tribal health departments and to health care providers; (2) the current status of monkeypox vaccines, tests, and therapeutics, including their manufacture and guidance on the distribution of those countermeasures; (3) an overview of how the Department is applying lessons from the COVID-19 response to the monkeypox response; and (4) what additional resources or authorities are needed to respond to and stop the disease from spreading further.

Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter. Please direct correspondence pertaining to this request to Jane Bigham at Jane_Bigham@help.senate.gov or Greg_Carter@help.senate.gov. 


Maybe the next hearing can find witnesses less eager to pat themselves on the back and more willing to offer apologies to the citizens of this country for the lousy response.


THE WASHINGTON POST's Dan Diamond Tweeted this regarding the hearing.


Kicking off Senate hearing on monkeypox, retiring GOP
@SenatorBurr
praises FAUCI — comments that weren’t in Burr’s prepared remarks. BURR: Tony, I can’t thank you enough for your years of service. It’s been incredibly beneficial to the American people… I hate to see you go.


Turning to Iraq, at FOREIGN POLICY, Ahmed Twaij offers an analysis of the ongoing stalemate:

The catastrophic spiral of events that peaked with parts of Baghdad turning into a war zone was triggered by a largely overlooked statement by a religious leader. On Aug. 28, the Iraqi Shiite spiritual leader Ayatollah Kadhim al-Haeri shockingly announced his retirement from his position of religious authority with immediate effect. More surprisingly, Haeri proceeded to ask his followers to back Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei instead. Although Haeri is unknown to most outside Iraq and even to some Iraqis, he is a highly influential spiritual leader (marji) for Sadr’s supporters.

One central doctrine in Shiite Islam is the concept of marjiya, which is the need for every Shiite Muslim to have a selected spiritual leader whose edicts and fatwas are unquestionably followed. In order to become a marji, a religious cleric must go through decades of religious studying, as well as earn the support of fellow senior clerics, before being given the title of ayatollah. In Iraq, it is Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who yields the greatest influence over spiritual decrees, and he chooses to maintain a distance from politics. In Iran, however, the marji is the country’s supreme leader, Khamenei, who is very much involved in ruling his own country and attempting to influence its neighbor Iraq.

 Moqtada’s father, Ayatollah Mohammed al-Sadr, did have the qualifications to be both a spiritual leader and political leader. But upon the elder Sadr’s assassination in 1999, his loyalists split their political and religious allegiances. As the younger Sadr is not a qualified marji, his supporters—duty bound, according to Shiite Islam, to follow another cleric on matters of belief—turned to Haeri, who had earned the elder Sadr’s endorsement, for religious guidance.

Haeri’s decision to resign from religious authority is unprecedented in the marjiya system. The role is one usually held until death, regardless of age or well-being. Sistani, for example is 92 and continues his duties. Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah continued on as a marji despite his multiple hospitalizations, right up until his death in 2010. It is also not common for a living ayatollah to appoint his successor, much less for an Iraqi ayatollah to recognize the religious authority of Iran’s clerical city of Qom over the Iraqi city of Najaf. For Haeri to ambiguously claim health-related issues at the age of 83—the same age as Khamenei—and to endorse Khamenei as his successor suggests Iran’s political influence was at work in his decision, with an aim toward reducing Sadr’s influence.

Let's note this Tweet from John Pilger:


The dark power of royalty. In 1971, the Chagos Islanders were expelled by the British to make way for a US base. This was made possible by a meeting of the Queen's Privy Councillors (advisers) and approved in person by the Queen. Using the same power, Blair invaded Iraq in 2003.

And that brings us to the topic of the fluffing that never ends over the 'shocking' death of a 96-year-old -- so young!!! Taken so soon!  Robert Stevens (WSWS) notes:

Amid the mind-numbing eulogies to Queen Elizabeth II, it is frequently asserted that she was “one of us” and “everyone’s grandmother”. 

Commentator Andrew Marr, a pillar of the media establishment, wrote a fawning comment the Times, headlined, “Queen Elizabeth II: the majestic enigma who was one of us”. He went as far to declare, “During the rawest, roughest years of the Thatcherite experiment, the Queen even seemed dryly oppositionist.”

This claim has been made throughout the media and parroted in ruling circle everywhere. Nothing was ever further from the truth. The queen heads a family of billionaires and lived a life of fabulous and unearned wealth and privilege. She ended her reign at Balmoral Castle, her £140 million private residence, as over 14 million of her “subjects”, including over 4 million children, live in poverty.

As well as Balmoral, Sandringham, valued at £600 million, was also privately owned by the queen. 

Everything she and her family and relatives possesses is thanks to centuries of pillage and plunder by her forebears. Moreover, most of this staggering wealth is assiduously protected from taxation by the state.

The fortune of the monarch is shrouded in secrecy, but it runs into the many billions of pounds.

According to the Sunday Times Rich List, the queen was personally worth around £370 million. But this was only identifiable wealth. The Paradise Papers, leaked in 2017, show that among the queen hidden dealings, via the Dutchy of Lancaster estate she owned, was the parking of millions of pounds in a Cayman Islands fund. Part of that fund went to a retailer, BrightHouse, cited for exploiting poor UK families through its hire-to-own scheme.



Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Question" went up and the following sites updated:




 

Posted by at

Thursday, September 15, 2022

Isaiah, House Democrats, Phil Butland

Starting out with Isaiah's latest THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Question."


don





Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer believes that Democrats are likely to lose their control of the House of Representatives in the November midterms, Punchbowl News reported.
In the same exchange he gave Democrats a 60% chance of retaining control of the Senate.
According to the outlet, Schumer made the remarks at an Italian restaurant in Washington, DC, with a group of other Democratic senators.
The remarks were loud and could be overheard by several other patrons, Punchbowl said.
His prediction that Democrats would lose control of the Senate contradicts that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said the party would not only hold the House but increase its majority.
Per Punchbowl, at the dinner Schumer described Pelosi as being "in trouble." If Democrats lose the House, she would also lose her position as speaker.

Yeah, I don't blame Chuck for saying it.  It's most likely the truth.  Nancy is trying to bluff and spin.  I heard her on the radio insisting that she knew what she was saying and she'd done it before.

Done it before?  What she's done before is lose.  In 2010's mid-term elections, she lost control of the House.  She was wrong throughout 2010 with her predictions.  She's wrong now too.  And it's not really what she believes.  She's lying intentionally.  She's trying to bluff.  
She's a lousy politician and it's way past time her ass got removed from leadership.  83-year-old Nancy needs to leave the House and go home and she needs to take the other geriatrics with her.

She's accomplished nothing in Congress.  She's made plenty of promises -- give us one House in the (2006) mid-terms and we'll end the Iraq War.  Uh-huh, liar.  She always lies.

Now, on another elderly woman -- Elizabeth -- this is from Phil Butland (COUNTERPUNCH):

Labour leader Keir Starmer tweeted “Above the clashes of politics, she stood not for what the nation fought over, but what it agreed upon” (you can read the full, sickening statement by the Labour Party here). But just how much did the life of this privately educated woman with 30 castles resemble that of a normal pensioner?

One of the last acts of Elizabeth Windsor was to pay £12 million to cover the court fees of her son Andrew. Andrew is accused of sexually abusing Virginia Giuffre when she was a teenager, and the evidence against him looks compelling. It is not even a matter of dispute that he regularly partied with known paedophiles and sex traffickers.

Andrew is not the first sexual predator to visit royal palaces. Serial rapist Jimmy Savile used palace visits to seize young women and lick their arms. When Prince Charles and Princess Diana had marital difficulties, they employed Savile as a counsellor. Charles asked him to help improve the image of his brother’s soon to be ex-wife Sarah Ferguson.

How much?

While many British pensioners die of hypothermia each Winter, the Royals have an annual gas bill of £2½ million. This is not something they find difficult to pay. Forbes magazine estimated last year that the Royal Family is worth $28 billion. Last year, the Sovereign Grant, which replaced the Civil List, allocated them £86.3 million, compared to £42.8 five years previously. This money is paid by the British tax payer.

As Bailey Schulz reported in USA Today, the queen’s “personal assets from investments, real estate, jewels and more have an estimated worth of $500 million”. Prince Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall inherits all the wealth of people who die in Cornwall without making a will. His estate, worth £1billion now passes to Prince William.


Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Thursday, September 15, 2022.  Joe Biden's lies exposed as he continues to persecute Julian Assange, a documentary filmmaker calls out Hillary Clinton and chaos and climate destruction continue in Iraq.



When US President Joe Biden isn't lying, he's busy persecuting Julian Assange.  Julian is guilty of . . . exposing the truth.  War Crimes were committed.  Joe Biden's not going after those.  He's going after Julian for exposing the War Crimes.  An outraged world watches as Joe tries to destroy freedom of the press and continues the persecution of Julian.  EFE reports:

The mayor of Mexico's capital presented the keys to the city on Wednesday to the father and brother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, currently jailed in London facing possible extradition to the United States on charges of violating the Espionage Act.

"It is an honor to give you the keys to the city. It is a act symbolic of what Mexico City represents: freedom of expression," Claudia Sheinbaum said.




Gabriel Shipton said the ceremonial gesture of awarding Mr Assange the keys to the city was a "surprise" and he was "blown away" by the support for his brother in Mexico.

Mr Assange has been in British custody since being expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2019.

The WikiLeaks founder could face a 175-year prison sentence if extradited to the US and convicted of the charges.


TELESUR offers this video report.




Lopez Obrador has often pledged his support for Assange, urging US President Joe Biden to release Assange, whom he considers "the best journalist of our time."

The Mexican president has also said that "Mexico's doors are open for Assange," offering him political asylum.

"I left a letter to President Biden explaining that he did not commit any serious crime, Assange, he did not cause anyone's death, he did not violate any human right, and that detaining him would mean a permanent affront to freedom of expression and freedom. And I explain that Mexico offers protection and asylum to Julian Assange", Lopez Obrador said in July.

He said if the US does not free Assange, he would start a campaign to remove the Statue of Liberty in New York City.​​​​​​​


In June, Assange’s lawyers sued the CIA, accusing the agency of spying on him while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy. 

“The legal proceedings in the U.K. are just a thin veil that is held in front of Julian’s persecution,” said Gabriel Shipton at Tuesday's conference.

He called the security company hired by the Ecuadorian embassy a “CIA asset” and accused the agency of installing cameras and microphones in the facilities in order to record Assange’s meetings with lawyers, doctors, journalists and other visitors.

“This legal proceeding — you have one side that has all the knowledge of the legally privileged conversations with Julian and his lawyers, all his legal documents, which is no legal proceeding at all,” he said.

Gabriel also extolled the effects of his brother’s work with WikiLeaks on Mexican society, saying that it allowed people to make more informed decisions about their government.



The world is watching.  Joe Biden doesn't care because he keeps getting away with lies.  In Philadelphia, he gave a very divisive speech.  But there's more to it than just that and his and Kamala Harris' efforts to demonize people they call election deniers.  These comments are to make you scared.  Should you be scared?  You should be scared of Joe Biden.  Barry Grey (WSWS) reports:


In the final primary contests before the November midterms, the Democratic Party once again spent millions of dollars to help fascistic Trump acolytes and “stolen election” liars defeat more moderate Republican opponents and advance to the general election.

The final three primaries were held Tuesday in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware. Attention was focused on New Hampshire, where the state’s two House seats and one of its Senate seats, currently held by Democrats, are considered vulnerable. In the narrowly divided House of Representatives, the Republicans need to pick up only five seats to win the majority.

The Senate is currently split 50/50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting a tie-breaking vote. It will take only one seat changing hands there to tip the balance to the Republicans.

Trump did not endorse any of the Republican primary candidates in the three states’ races, unlike earlier contests in states such as Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Illinois, Arizona, Ohio, Washington, Wyoming, Nevada and West Virginia, where Trump-endorsed candidates were victorious. Trump-endorsed candidates lost their primaries in Georgia, Alaska and Wisconsin.

However, in New Hampshire, Republicans who ran as full-bore MAGA Republicans and promoters of the lie that Biden’s election was the result of massive vote fraud defeated more moderate candidates who were backed by Republican Governor Chris Sununu, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell or House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

In at least two of three critical races, the most fascistic Republicans benefited from TV ads paid for by Democratic political actions committees or other Democratic campaign groups.

[. . .]

While Biden and the Democratic leadership as a whole either tacitly or openly support the policy of boosting fascistic Trump Republicans against more moderate candidates in the Republican primaries, scattered voices in the party establishment are denouncing it as a disastrous policy that plays into the hands of Trump.

Former Indiana congressman Tim Roemer, who headed up a letter from former Democratic lawmakers criticizing the party for using the tactic, said: “This is a deeply, deeply precarious and dangerous strategy to deploy. It risks elevating these liars and giving them a platform for another three or four months—even if they end up getting beat—to drumbeat their message into the electorate and further erode trust.”

In fact, it thoroughly exposes the fraud of the Democrats’ claims to be defenders of democratic rights and the Constitution against the openly fascist politics of the Republican Party under Trump.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the Democratic Party has spent $53 million in Republican primaries this year. It has intervened in nine states and at least 13 primaries to boost the most far-right MAGA candidates, many of them Trump-endorsed. These include criminals such as Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who were present at the White House and the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and personally participated in the events that culminated in the attack on Congress.


These people are awful, Joe screeches and he screeches this as the DNC pumps money into to make them the candidates for the GOP.  It's the sort of rat f**king that Republicans did in the late 60s and 70s.  So the Democratic party elevates the campaigns of these 'deniers' and then Joe Biden trashes these 'deniers' and insists you must not vote for them.  It's hypocrisy and it's stupidity.

ROE V WADE is over for a number of reasons.  No, Barack wasn't the first feminist president -- MS. MAGAZINE can you please correct that cover.  And Kim Gandy, can you apologize for pimping Barack in 2007 and 2008 and telling us that he would codify ROE?  He didn't.  And that's one reason ROE's dead.  Not the only reason.  The justices that Donald Trump appointed to the Supreme Court?  Slice off a piece of the blame for Donald.  But don't forget Hillary Clinton.  What's being done right now?  Democrats elevating the worst candidates on the GOP side because they 'know' they can win against those?  That's what Hillary and her campaign did in 2016.  Hillary just knew she could win against Donald Trump.

How'd that work out again?

Oh, that's right.  She lost.  She was publicly humiliated -- something she's been her entire life.  No, Hillary, it is not gutsy to stay in a bad marriage where your husband repeatedly cheats on you.  And, no, Hillary it is not gusty to lose to Donald Trump.  That is how awful she is -- she lost to Donald Trump.


And because of what she did, ROE is dead.  And now the Democratic Party wants to risk us being screwed over even worse?  Joe Biden should be ashamed of himself and every outlet should be calling this scheme out.

But few have the courage to speak the truth. Laura Poitras is one of the few with courage.  Adam Benzine (VARIETY) reports:

  Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras slammed the Venice and Toronto film festivals for “providing a platform” for the Clinton family to engage “in a kind of whitewashing.”

Her comments come as TIFF this week hosted the Canadian premiere of Poitras’s “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” a documentary about the artist and activist Nan Goldin, and just days after the film won Venice’s top prize, the Golden Lion.

It is the rare doc to land slots at the superfecta of Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York, and Poitras said she thought “long and hard” about whether or not to voice criticism at the same venues feting her latest work. Nevertheless, she said, “journalists need to ask hard questions.”   



  Poitras argued that Clinton was “engaging in a form of whitewashing,” accusing the former secretary of state — who was at TIFF to promote the upcoming Netflix doc In Her Hands, about one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors and the first doc from her own production company — of being actively involved in and supporting the increase in U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan while in office.

The documentarian — speaking following All the Beauty and the Bloodshed‘s screening at TIFF on Monday — raised the subject of Clinton, which she admitted she was initially hesitant to do, while discussing Julian Assange (who featured in her Oscar-winning doc Citizenfour and was the subject of her 2016 film Risk) and the current attempt by the U.S. government to extradite him from the U.K. and charge him under the Espionage Act. The effort, she claimed, was “literally the most important issue facing journalism globally right now.”

Poitras said there was “nothing more serious that threatens the First Amendment,” because what the U.S. was trying to do was charge Assange for “publishing, for literally revealing war crimes in the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

She offered Clinton “a challenge”: to call for the end to the “prosecution and persecution” of Julian Assange. “Because all she has to do is pick up her phone, because she has all their numbers on her phone, and these are the most powerful people in the world.”


“This is literally the most important issue facing journalism globally right now is the U.S. prosecution of Assange over the Espionage Act,” Poitras said. “There is nothing more serious that threatens the First Amendment, not just in this country, but also threatens journalism globally, because what the U.S. government is doing is they are trying to extradite him, bring him back, try him under the Espionage Act for publishing, for literally revealing war crimes in the U.S. occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan.”

She continued, “The last years have been terrifying for journalists. First, the Obama administration — it mobilized the Espionage Act more than it had ever been used, targeting whistleblowers and journalists. And now it’s escalated not just to whistleblowers and sources under Obama, now it’s being used towards a publisher [Assange].”

Poitras also suggested it was hypocritical for Venice and TIFF to simultaneously program the Clintons’ work while showcasing No Bears, the latest film by jailed Iranian director Jafar Panahi. She noted, “The U.S. government’s effort to indict and prosecute Assange is, I would say, not dissimilar to imprisoning Jafar Pahani in Iran.”


Turning to Iraq -- the country Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden helped destroy -- Fawaz Turkey writes at GULF NEWS:

Why is it that certain states, which seemingly have it all — abundant wealth, a storied history, an educated elite, a distinctly articulated cultural heritage and a collective will-to-meaning by the populace — botch their chances at becoming prosperous, stable nations, thus denying the citizenry their place in the sun?

This is the question that we have been asking in recent months as we contemplated the anarchy that has come to define Iraq’s political culture in our time — certainly since 2003, when the US earnestly attempted but dismally failed to graft on the country a neoliberal system of government.

Anarchy, we all remember from Poli-Sci 101, is not anarchism. The latter (from the Greek anarchos, “without authority”) is a political philosophy that, as a movement, seeks to abolish those institutions in society that exercise authority over people’s lives, leaving it to citizens to arbitrate their own disputes and determine their own destiny (sure, dream on, utopians), whereas the former refers to the falling apart in a polity of the social contract between ruler and ruled, leading to endless suffering and widespread despair, often followed by intercommunal violence.



Yes, the political stalemate continues.  11 months and counting.  October 10th, Iraq held elections, all this time later, still no prime minister or president.  The answer, some now insist, is to dissolve Parliament and hold new elections.  


And after Moqtada doesn't like those results, will it be time for another early election?  And then another?  And then another?


Because Moqtada is the most likely loser in any snap election.


People who sat out the election in 2021 are not planning to do that again.  Arabic social media expresses the outrage many feel towards Moqtada.  And he wasn't popular before he had his cult storm the Parliament.  He's only gotten less and less popular and that rejection of his father's spiritual leader -- that man rejecting Moqtada?  It registers a lot more in Iraq than the western media seems to notice.







Iraq continues to suffer, the US Institute of Peace notes.





Iraq is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. Amid a protracted political crisis, sweltering temperatures, water scarcity and other climate-related challenges threaten the country’s stability and add to Iraqis’ grievances. Zena Ali Ahmad, the United Nations Development Program’s resident representative in Iraq, analyzes how climate change impacts Iraq and its stability and discusses solutions to address these impacts.






The following sites updated:


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