Monday, October 09, 2023

When a piece of crap craps on Florida

 Are you a Joni Mitchell fan?  I am.  My folks named me after her song ("Michael From Mountains").  Dad loves  Kat's "Kat's Korner: Put away 'the hammers and the boards and the nails'" which is a review of JONI MITCHELL ARCHIVES -- VOL. 3: THE ASYLUM YEARS (1972 - 1975) that came out Friday.  So be sure to check that out.  Now time for a comic, this is Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Sitting Behind Daddy Donald,"  



stankasstrump



THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER is calling Iowa Doo-Doo Ron Ron DeSantis' last stand.  That would be January 15th.  I'm not sure I can endure Doo-Doo for that long or that the country can.  Is he really unable to take a hint and drop out?   Brandes Gress (WEALTHY LIVING) notes:


Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is facing a barrage of criticism following his administration’s formal approval of far-right PragerU videos for use as educational materials in the state’s K-12 schools. 
While the initial outrage focused on the videos’ distortion of American history and whitewashing of slavery, a new dimension of concern has emerged—PragerU’s dissemination of false claims about climate science, as reported by Scientific American.

[. . .]

These videos come under scrutiny for presenting misleading information, particularly concerning the role of carbon emissions in the current climate crisis.


We're all in trouble if Doo-Doo's deciding what we can and cannot learn.  NEWSWEEK notes:


Amid a continuous battle regarding banned books throughout the country from conservatives, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was confronted on his stance on the matter in a Fox News interview on Sunday.
DeSantis, a Republican who is running for president in 2024, has been an outspoken critic when it comes to removing books from Florida schools that he has deemed inappropriate and has since faced backlash over a law passed last year requiring teachers to remove books that do not appear on a state-approved reading list until they are reviewed by an employee with a media specialist certificate. School officials across the Sunshine State have scrambled to comply with the law, with some saying it has created confusion about which books are allowed in the classroom.

Republicans have said the legislation prevents students from obtaining books that are not age-appropriate, but critics view the law as an attempt to stifle discussion about issues including race, gender, and the LGBTQ+ community in public schools, raising concerns that many topics may be censored by this law, which has been met with staunch opposition from Democrats.

In a Sunday interview with Fox News host Shannon Bream, the Florida governor maintained that books have not been outright banned in the state, but rather a simple removal of what he says are "inappropriate" books from the classroom.

"I was at a gathering of women the other night, but one of them said, 'I think it's terrible in Florida that they are banning books.' She has a child that's in the LGBTQ community and said, 'I don't want my child to go somewhere like that,'" Bream said.


He tries to lie his way out of it.  Just like he lies about everything else.  His hair color's fake (C.I. pointed that out, I hadn't realized it until she did) and he wears high heeled cowboy boots that also have lifts inside.  He's all fake.  And he's destroyed Florida:



The tourism promotion group Visit Lauderdale reported that over half a dozen organizations planning conventions in Broward County changed their minds citing “what the Governor is doing in the education/schools.”
One canceled convention by the Supreme Council of America Inc., Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite Masons, led to the cancellation of 885 rooms. Another, the 2024 National Family and Community Engagement and Community Schools Conference, led to the cancelation of over 2000 rooms. But, it is not only about hotels. Attendees spend money in restaurants, shops, theme parks, etc.

[. . .]
The American Specialty Toy Retailing Association will host their 3000-person convention in Milwaukee instead of Florida.


Doo-Doo is bad for education and he's bad for the economy.  Dee Brenner (BACK END NEWS) also notes the hit Florida's taking:


Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a number of controversial laws throughout his tenure, but his recent legislative actions which affected how the state teaches African-American history and treats its LGBTQ community appear to do a major disservice to the state when it comes to attracting visitors.

Florida tourism officials claim DeSantis’ recent clashes with the LGBTQ community, Disney, and, migrants are costing the state money. 

They say the governor’s rhetoric and policies are hurting the state’s tourism revenue.

Florida’s Broward County, which includes the resort town of Fort Lauderdale near Miami, reports increasing losses as Conventions turn their back on the state. 

More conventions are avoiding the area, concerned about the safety of diverse attendees in an “unfriendly political environment.”

Up to this point, a total of 14 conventions that were originally planned for Florida have been relocated to other locations, as reported by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Four conventions backed out in August alone, according to Visit Lauderdale, the agency that’s charged with promoting city and county tourism. 




Two years ago, the State of Florida was sued after the Florida Department of Health refused to continue to post data on covid to their public dashboard under orders from Governor Desantis. They just lose the case, will now begin to publish the data again to the public, and have to pay out $152,500 in legal fees to opposing attorneys.

Several different First Amendment advocacy groups and media outlets filed the suit, alleging that the act violated Florida's open government "Sunshine Laws."

The state must now post daily covid data again, including number of cases, vaccinations, and deaths.

Former State Representative Carlos Guillermo Smith, who first filed the lawsuit, told WSEH news in Orlando that the state "lied to the Judge in court that they didn't have these Covid-19 records and that was the reason they weren't producing them. They know they were wrong. They know they broke the law, and our lawsuit caught them red-handed."


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


Monday, October 9, 2023.  Julian Assange continues to be persecuted while some pin hopes on a meet up between the President of the United States and the prime minister of Australia, Iraq sharpens its international focus, and much more.


Starting with Julian Assange who remains persecuted for the 'crime' of journalism.  A year ago, Amy Goodman and Dennis Moynihan (DEMOCRACY NOW!) noted:

"Journalists are allowed to request documents that have been stolen and to publish those documents." So wrote U.S. federal Judge John Koeltl in a 2019 opinion dismissing a lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee against Julian Assange, Wikileaks and others. Assange published documents on the Wikileaks website in the very manner the judge described. Despite this, Julian Assange has been in solitary confinement in Britain’s maximum security Belmarsh prison for over three years. Before that, he spent seven years living in the cramped Ecuadorian embassy in London. Ecuador granted Assange political asylum as he faced mounting persecution from the U.S. government for his role in exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. is seeking Assange’s extradition from the United Kingdom to face espionage and conspiracy charges and up to 175 years in prison. Assange’s legal team is appealing the U.K.’s approval of the extradition request. Meanwhile, a new case related to Wikileaks is before Judge Koeltl: journalists and several of Assange’s attorneys have sued the Central Intelligence Agency and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, alleging the CIA spied on them when they visited Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, recording conversations and secretly copying their phones and laptops.

 Julian Assange remains imprisoned and remains persecuted by US President Joe Biden who, as vice president, once called him "a high tech terrorist."  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.


Yet Julian remains persecuted. 


It’s long past time for the U.S. and U.K. to free Julian Assange. His flagrantly unjust incarceration is a global scandal, and the world is quite upset about it. Indeed, on September 19 at the United Nations, heads of state denounced this phony prosecution for the fraud and subterfuge it is – an assault on a free press, and an attack on Assange personally, for practicing journalism. For over four years, this publisher has been left to rot in a dungeon in Britain’s notorious maximum-security prison, Belmarsh. The reason? Well, they might not admit it, but U.S. sachems want him crushed for embarrassing them, by revealing the murderous criminality of the American military in Iraq and elsewhere.

Periodically, some world leader lets loose a geschrei of protest. “It is essential to preserve freedom of the press. A journalist like Julian Assange cannot be punished for informing society in a transparent and legitimate way,” railed Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva to the assembled UN diplomats. Honduran president Xiomara Castro also denounced the official abuse of Assange. And on September 20, a delegation of Australian politicians brought a letter to Washington officials, demanding the U.S. drop its grotesque prosecution of Assange.

This is not the first time heads of state or other political bigwigs have urged American President Joe Biden to end Assange’s ordeal. Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has twice written Biden, imploring him to release Assange and rightly fulminating over the damage done to a free press by his incarceration. In late 2022, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan leaders called for the publisher’s freedom. Colombian president Gustavo Petro vowed on social media to “ask President Biden…not to charge a journalist just for telling the truth.” Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese also petitioned the U.S. on his Canberra constituent, Assange’s behalf. So far Biden appears unmoved.


Yesterday, SKY NEWS noted, "Julian Assange’s family hopes a meeting between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden will help stop the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder to America." Kieran Rooney (SYDNEY MORNING HERALD) reports:

Julian Assange’s family is working out of the United States to fight his extradition, beseeching lawmakers there for help ahead of a looming meeting between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and President Joe Biden.

They live in fear that their phones will light up with news that the WikiLeaks founder is about to be whisked from detention in the United Kingdom to a US prison – where they will lose him forever.

This heightened anxiety is fuelling their efforts to campaign for Assange’s release. They are meeting with key Democrats and Republicans, seeking the support of international leaders and drumming up public support to end the 13-year saga over his fate.

Speaking to The Sunday Age, Assange’s half-brother Gabriel Shipton said there were reasons to believe the long-running battle over his extradition could end without him sitting in a US prison.

Albanese’s US trip this month – during which he will meet with Biden – marks a key moment in their campaign.


Otis Grotewohl (WORKERS WORLD) concludes, "Despite the threats on Assange’s life, there is support from all around the world, and that brings his family some hope and optimism. People who defend Assange for leaking facts about U.S. war crimes outnumber the U.S. ruling class. History will show that those who support Assange are on the side of truth, peace and social justice."



Meanwhile, Iraq continues to build it's international presence.  Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani recently concluded a week-long visit to the US where he met with business leaders and politicians.  MEMO notes he's schedule to visit Russia October 11th where he will meet with the president of Russia Vladimir Putin.  A violent conflict, meanwhile, is taking place between the government of Israel and the Palestinians.  MINT notes:


In a statement, Hamas commander has said that it launched attacks on the Israeli territory ‘in defense of Al-Aqsa’ which was stormed by Israeli settlers a few days ago. Al-Aqsa has been the flashpoint between Palestine and Israel. Hamas military commander Muhammad Deif, who released a recorded message after the attack, said the strikes were in retaliation for Israel’s “desecration of the Al-Aqsa" mosque in Jerusalem.


Government officials and political leaders in Iraq on Saturday issued statements of support for the people of Palestine following a deadly Hamas attack on Israel.

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed group of the Hamas movement, claimed responsibility for more than 5,000 rockets fired at Israel in a surprise attack early Saturday morning. Israel’s health ministry said that at least 150 Israelis have been killed and about 1,100 more injured. 

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have retaliated with airstrikes that have killed 198 people in Gaza and injured another 1,610, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

The Iraqi government expressed its support for Gaza and the Palestinian people and called the rocket attack on Israel a "natural result of the systematic oppression... at the hands of the Zionist occupation authority," according to a statement from spokesperson Basem al-Awadi.

Iraq’s presidency also expressed its “full support” for Palestine in a statement on X (formerly known as Twitter). 

 Iraq on Saturday condemned the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip after Hamas launched an offensive, saying it always stands by the Palestinians.

Government spokesman Bassim al-Awadi called on the international community to stop the injustice done to the Palestinian people and to intervene to restore the rights of the Palestinians.

Al-Awadi warned that the escalation and continuation of the tension in Palestinian territories will have negative repercussions on the region. He also called for an extraordinary meeting of the Arab League.

Iraq has every right to exercise its voice in the international realm. The current prime minister, unlike two-term prime minister and forever thug Nouri al-Maliki, appears interested in something more than using Iraq to enrich his own pocket.  That may be one difference between the two, another being that Mohammed never fled Iraq the way Nouri -- and all the other previous prime ministers since 2003 -- did.  

At ASHARQ AL-AWSAT, Farhad Aladdin (advisor to the prime minister for foreign affairs) writes:


Ever since the Iraqi government assumed its responsibility in October last year, our administration has focused on extending the roots of Iraqi diplomacy across the region and beyond; practicing a policy of balance in foreign relations, and moving away from the policy of adversary. As stated in Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, the goal of this policy is to “preserve the security and stability of the region, its progress and economic prosperity, in order to achieve the welfare of its people.”
From this standpoint, the Prime Minister’s visit to Moscow is consistent with the principle pursued by the Baghdad government, which is one of productive diplomacy.

Following the formation of the government, the Prime Minister has been keen to visit many European countries including Germany and France, and neighboring countries such as Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Türkiye, as well as participating in the Arab-Chinese summit held in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His goal has been to strengthen relations and build partnerships around common interests with countries across the board, and it is with this approach that he is now responding to an official invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The visit to the Kremlin coincides with the Russian Energy Week Forum, where the Prime Minister will deliver an address as a keynote speaker.

Turning to the US, later today professional time waste Robert F. Kennedy Jr will be in Philadelphia where he will make "a historic announcement" -- he's the new spokesmodel for DEPEND MENS.  

New content at THIRD:



Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Sitting Behind Daddy Donald" and Kat's "Kat's Korner: Put away 'the hammers and the boards and the nails'" went up.  The following sites updated:


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