Thursday, January 12, 2023

Graham Elwood, THE GOLDBERGS, Don't Run Joe and the awful Ezra Miller

Starting with Graham Elwood.


 THE GOLDBERGS?


Oh, no.  Just no. 


I can't take much more of this Adam.  I really can't.  I'm about to bail on the show.

Erica and Geoff were apparently spending too much time together because he was going to her mommy group.  He thought it was a parent group.  She enlisted Barry to try to get him out of it.  There were jokes in there and it was a good story.


But then Adam.  A failure and a whiny one.  I just can't.  He needs to grow the hell up.  I don't stop watching.  Maybe I'll just start muting when it's Adam's storyline.

Okay now for a press release:

For Immediate Release – Thursday, Jan. 12th, 2023

Full-Page Ad on Capitol Hill Calls for Primary Challenger to Biden

The Hill newspaper today published a full-page ad in its print edition calling for a progressive Democrat to step forward with a primary challenge to President Biden, who has said he intends to run for re-election.

The ad, which appears under a big “Help Wanted” headline, says that a “historic position” is available for an “articulate and principled Democrat willing to show political courage on behalf of party and country.”

The notice goes on: “Qualifications include a record of progressive advocacy, effective leadership and proven integrity. Capacity to withstand intensive pressure from corporate interests and the Biden White House a must.”

The complete full-page ad, as it appeared in The Hill, is posted here.

The ad was placed by the Don’t Run Joe campaign, which is sponsored by the activist group RootsAction. The organization’s co-founder Jeff Cohen said Thursday: “A healthy political party requires healthy political debate about its future. President Biden should not be enabled to coast to renomination without such a debate, especially in light of recent polling that shows most Democrats don’t want him to seek a second term.”

Recent polls by CNBC and CNN found that nearly 60 percent of Democrats nationwide do not want Biden to be the party nominee in 2024.

“A presidential nomination should not be a coronation,” RootsAction national director Norman Solomon said. “Voters in the Democratic presidential primaries next year should not simply be told to rubber stamp a choice handed down from on high.”

For further information, contact RootsAction cofounders:
Jeff Cohen, jeff@rootsaction.org, phone/text (914) 388-1431
Norman Solomon, norman@rootsaction.org, phone/text (415) 488-3606

For background, see the Don’t Run Joe website and Frequently Asked Questions.

###

Contact: info@rootsaction.org | Learn more at our FAQ

That was mailed to the public e-mail address for THE COMMON ILLS.  I grabbed it to post here because I do not want Joe to run for re-election.  We need someone who can lead.  Inflation is Joe.  The lack of seriously addressing climate change?  Joe.  We need a future to work towards.  Joe has no vision, he can't lead.  I'd love it we could get some nominees who weren't over 70.


Joe needs to just go away.  He's not the only one. Ezra Miller's going to plead guilty in court on the burglary issue -- guilty to trespassing.  And they are still going to release THE FLASH movie?  Nothing says "Take the kids to the superhero film" like "starring the actor who just pled guilty to a crime."  DISCOVERY-WARNER BROS-HBO MAX is killing hundreds of projects but this nightmare they let stand?  We can't get BATGIRL, we can't get Patty Jenkins directing another Wonder Woman film, we can't get Henry Cavill as Superman but we can get jail bird Miller as The Flash?  



They should have redone the scenes with Grant Gustin.  This is their own mess  


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


Thursday, January 12, 2023.  A major event will take place next week in defense of Julian Assange and The First Amendment, in Iraq a trial is taking place today on corruption, and much more.

Starting with this announcement from DEMOCRACY NOW!:

On Jan. 20, Democracy Now! will live-stream the Belmarsh Tribunal from Washington, D.C. The event will feature expert testimony from journalists, whistleblowers, lawyers, publishers and parliamentarians on assaults to press freedom and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Watch here live at 2 p.m. ET on Friday, Jan. 20.

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman and Srecko Horvat, the co-founder of DiEM25, will chair the tribunal, which is being organized by Progressive International and the Wau Holland Foundation.

Members of the tribunal include:

Stella Assange, partner of Julian Assange and member of his defense team

Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower

Noam Chomsky, linguist and activist

Jeremy Corbyn, member of U.K. Parliament and founder of the Peace and Justice Project

Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent

Kevin Gosztola, managing editor of Shadowproof

Margaret Kunstler, civil rights attorney

Stefania Maurizi, investigative journalist, Il Fatto Quotidiano

Jesselyn Radack, national security and human rights attorney

Ben Wizner, lead attorney at ACLU of Edward Snowden

Renata Ávila, human rights lawyer, technology and society expert

Jeffrey Sterling, lawyer and former CIA employee

Steven Donziger, human rights attorney

Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief, WikiLeaks

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher, The Nation

Selay Ghaffar, spokesperson, Solidarity Party of Afghanistan

Betty Medsger, investigative reporter



US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian and, for those who've forgotten, Julian's 'crime' was revealing the realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the information to Julian.  WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs.  And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own.  For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War Logs.  Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:



A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent deat



The Biden administration has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal assaults under Donald Trump.

The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”.

But the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used before for publishing classified information.

Whether the US justice department continues to pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to protect the press.

Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.


Lee Camp spoke with Stella Assange about the risks and persecution Julian continues to face for revealing the truth.



As you listen to Stella describe the inhumane conditions Julian's being held in, you really have to ask yourself why does Joe Biden continue to persecute Julian?  Eric Zuesse (DISSIDENT VOICE) observes, "Julian Assange has been imprisoned by the UK on the demand by the U.S. for over a decade now, though never convicted of anything, but ONLY because he was the world’s most effective champion against censorship and for international democracy and personal accountability. To call either of these countries a democracy is to lie, and to insult the very term 'democracy'."





Okay, now we're going over to Iraq.  There's an issue that we've been ignoring -- my choice to do so.  We'll go into why in a minute.  AL-MONITOR reports:

Iraq has not apologized to Iran after several Iranian parliamentarians slammed Iraq for using the term "Arabian Gulf" as it hosted the 25th Gulf Cup in Basra and asked for an apology.

Alireza Salimi, a member of the Board of Directors of the Iranian Parliament, attacked Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Sudani and the leader of Sadrist Movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, for what he termed a hostile action.

“I advise the Iraqi prime minister and Muqtada al-Sadr to apologize and stop these kinds of contentious actions that are against the interests of the two nations and create disputes between the two nations,” Salimi said according to Iranian media reports. 

Observers and experts, however, said Iraq has so far ignored the complaints because it does not want to become embroiled in a diplomatic dispute with Iran, especially as Baghdad is playing a key role in achieving rapprochement between regional countries, most notably Saudi Arabia and Iran. 

While Baghdad has not officially commented on the “Arabian Gulf” dispute, the Sadrist movement, led by influential cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, rejected Tehran’s summoning of the Iraqi envoy. 

Leading member of the movement, Issam Hussein said on Wednesday that Tehran is not justified in summoning the envoy. 

Moreover, he noted that the move gives Iran’s supporters in Iraq the “green light” to criticize the naming of the tournament. 

He remarked that Iran is “greatly bothered” by the rapprochement between the Iraqi and Gulf people. 

It fears that this rapprochement could develop into an increase in tourism and later development in economic and investment, he added. 


First, as a US citizen, I don't have an opinion on which of the two names Iraq chooses to use for the competition.  Second, I'm not Condi Rice. 

The US government has too often seen Iraq and Iran as twins or as potential twins.  They are neighboring countries.  As we have noted for years now, they will have many disagreements -- and have had many disagreements.  They may act together but they will also act in opposition.

Condi Rice, whenever things were going the way she wanted between Iran and Iraq (at odds) or at any time (like when Moqtada's influence was ebbing) would insert herself into the process.  It was stupid to begin with because the disagreement then becomes with the US.

We're noting it now to explain to all those e-mailing why we aren't obsessing over this news and to again remind that neighbors will always have frictions.  The two countries are not twins.  They aren't individual nations that share a border and will work together on somethings and not work together on other issues.  When government officials in the US fret over Iraq and Iran it's as though they're still addicted to the domino theory.

The above disagreement is not a US issue.  I don't plan to comment on it and say someone's right and someone's wrong, it's not my business and I don't see how it helps.  If outlets from the region choose to run columns or editorials, we may note those.  But this is something that needs to be between those two counties.  And, if that really makes you butt hurt because -- like Condi -- your goal is to drive a wedge between Iraq and Iran, grasp what Condi never could, a chorus of US voices is just going to turn attention towards the US and make it the target of frustration.  So let it play out for that if you just can't support the notion that we don't need to stick our nose into everything.



I picked the morning paper off the floor
It was full of other people's little wars
Wouldn't they like their peace
Don't we get bored
And we call for the three great stimulants
Of the exhausted ones
Artifice brutality and innocence
Artifice and innocence

-- "The Three Great Stimulants," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on DOG EAT DOG



The trial of an adviser to the Iraq ex-Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Khadhemi on embezzlement charges will take place today.

The suspect is likely Haitham al-Juburi, who has been charged in a wider corruption scandal surrounding the disappearance of $2.5 billion worth of tax revenue. It is the biggest corruption of the previous al-Kahdimi governemnt, involving businessmen and former high-ranking officials. Al-Juburi has already returned $2.6 million, a mere fraction of the total loss.

The scandal has angered Iraqis, many of whom are dealing with poverty, decaying infrastructure, unemployment and a near total absence of public services. Corruption has long been at the core of Iraqi politics. It a serious challenge to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and his new government, having vowed to lead a crackdown on corruption. The country ranked 157th out of 180 in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index in 2021.



Mustafa's adviser?  Let's drop back to last month when  Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim (WASHINGTON POST) reported:


Kadhimi, who left office in October, came to power in 2020 after mass anti-corruption demonstrations felled his predecessor. His government’s high-profile campaign to tackle graft in one of the world’s most corrupt countries drew widespread international encouragement.

Central to the effort was a series of highly publicized night raids in late 2020 on the homes of public figures accused of corruption, conducted under the authority of the Permanent Committee to Investigate Corruption and Significant Crimes, better known as Committee 29. The architect of the raids was Lt. Gen. Ahmed Taha Hashim, or Abu Ragheef, who became known in Iraq as the “night visitor.”

But what happened to the men behind closed doors was far darker: a return to the ugly old tactics of a security establishment whose abuses Kadhimi had vowed to address. In more than two dozen interviews — including five men detained by the committee, nine family members who had relatives imprisoned, and 11 Iraqi and Western officials who tracked the committee’s work — a picture emerges of a process marked by abuse and humiliation, more focused on obtaining signatures for pre-written confessions than on accountability for corrupt acts.

Those interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters or, in the case of detainees and their families, to protect their safety.

“It was every kind of torture,” one former detainee recalled. “Electricity, choking me with plastic bags, hanging me from the ceiling by my hands. They stripped us naked and grabbed at the parts of our body underneath.”

In at least one case, a former senior official, Qassim Hamoud Mansour, died in the hospital after being arrested by the committee. Photographs provided to The Post by his family appear to show that a number of teeth had been knocked out, and there were signs of blunt trauma on his forehead.

Allegations that the process was riddled with abuse became an open secret among diplomats in Baghdad last year. But the international community did little to follow up on the claims and the prime minister’s office downplayed the allegations, according to officials with knowledge of the issue. Although a parliamentary committee first revealed the torture allegations in 2021 and Iraqi media have raised the issue sporadically, this is the fullest attempt yet to investigate the claims and document the scale of the abuse.


We'll wind down with this Tweet:




The following sites updated:


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