Thursday, February 04, 2021

Truth, truth and more truth

First up, Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Fraud Squad"

 

fraud squad

 

 

Love that comic!  Now Jimmy Dore.

 

 

 And staying with the truth theme of this post, here's James O'Neill (DISSIDENT VOICE):


The least surprising news item in the past week was that the United States government under President Biden had decided that American troops would after all, despite Ex- President Trump’s order, remain in Afghanistan. This breaks an agreement that had been reached by the Trump administration and the Taliban that US troops would all be gone by May 20 21.

It was unclear in the Trump agreement whether the withdrawal of “US Forces” included the United States mercenaries who for at least the past year have outnumbered formal US troops. What Trump’s negotiated agreement meant for the other “allied” forces in Afghanistan remained unclear at the time of the announcement and remains equally unclear today. The mainstream media persist in referring to those troops as NATO forces, but they include Australian troops who are not members of NATO.

The Australian government has been strangely silent in the light of Trump’s original announcement that US troops would be leaving, and they remain quiet in the light of the new administration’s revision of the Trump plan. It is a safe bet that whatever the Americans finally do will be agreeable to the Australians. There has not been the least hint of an independent Australian position. The actual role of the Australian troops remains a non-topic of discussion in the Australian media.  Even the recent scandal of Australian troops abusing and killing locals was a five-day wonder and has now disappeared from media coverage.

The ostensible reason for Australian troops remaining in Afghanistan is to “train” the Afghan forces. This was always a singularly unconvincing reason, not least because such “training” has been spectacularly unsuccessful with the high death rate of those troops, their even higher rate of defections, and a singular unwillingness to actually fight being their dominant characteristic.

The ostensible reasons for the Biden administration’s change of heart about withdrawing US troops was the unsettled nature of the government and their inability to control the countryside which is variously described as overrun with foreign ISIS fighters; not under Afghanistan government control (certainly true); or uncertainty about the political directions of a Taliban government, including protecting the rights of women in the country.

What never ceases to amaze one is the inability of the western media, and the Australian version are a classic example, to even hint at the real reasons for staying, when the foreigners who occupy Afghanistan are manifestly unwelcome. The protestations of the Afghan “government” that they appreciate the presence of foreign troops on their soil is manifestly self-serving. Their survival rate post liberation could be counted in days.

The real reasons for the American intention to stay were concealed from the very beginning. United States president Bush justified the invasion on the alleged refusal of the Taliban government that then ruled the country, to give up Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the attacks in New York City and Washington DC on 11 September 2001.

Even if that was a legitimate reason, and it manifestly was not, the refusal to surrender bin Laden surely disappeared the day he died, which was in December 2001 from natural causes. His obituary was even published in the New York Times. We were later treated to the charade of an American foray into Pakistan to “capture” bin Laden with the body then being buried at sea. The troops responsible for this charade were later all killed in a helicopter crash. The mainstream media remained singularly incurious about the amazing sequence of events.

The real reasons for the invasion, and the continuing occupation nearly 20 years later, and the reason the Americans and their lackies will stay as long as they can are twofold: drugs and geography.



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

 

 Wednesday, February 3, 2021.  Lesson of the day?  Get drunk off your ass and you can assault whomever you want and not have to pay a price for it.


Before we get to that, as Rebecca notes in "the idiot krystal ball," Krystal Ball and RISING are making idiots of themselves bringing on 'friend of the show' Ryan Grim to lie and gush over AOC.  Ryan Grim is garbage.  He's now lying, not just whoring.  HARD LENS MEDIA notes it in the video below.



Ryan has sided with professional whore Ana Kasparian.  As for National Nurses United?  They didn't push the vote.  There are some good members.  A few.  But that's a whore's organization.  We really need to know our past -- not just long ago but recent.  A number of nurses were active before NNU was created.  Why?


They were calling out Mitt Romney.  Mitt delivered universal insurance in his state as governor -- or that's what he claimed.  These nurses calling him out went all over the country calling him out.  They were on KFPA, for example, and, honestly, in San Francisco, we didn't have a say over what Mitt Romney did in a state miles and miles away from California.  But they'd go anywhere because this was not universal insurance -- passing a law making people buy health insurance is not providing universal insurance.


NNU wanted a public option but what they wanted more than anything -- and this comes from nurses who were speaking out -- was to ensure that ObamaCare passed -- that's why they were created in 2009 -- it was a mirror image of Romney care -- it was a fraud and a fake.  


I've given nurses credit for the work they've done creating support for Medicare For All.  I didn't give that organization credit.

So I really don't give two s**ts what NNU says or does.  They're whores.  They're not here to move the conversation forward, they exist to derail it.  That's why they were founded.  


Yes, nurses spent years working on this issue.  No, NNU was not part of that.  I'm real sorry that people don't learn the past -- especially the recent past.  


Medicare For All is not even on their about page -- grasp that.  This organization that wants to pretend it's fighting for Medicare For All doesn't even include it when explaining who they are and what they stand for.  Are people stupid?  Yes, there are stupid people.  There are also uninformed people and that's because of a media failure and here I'm not blaming the corporate media.  I'm talking about THE PRORGRESSIVE, THE NATION and IN THESE TIMES, DEMOCRACY NOW!, etc.  Then US House Rep Dennis Kucinnich called out ObamaCare and stated he would not vote for it -- then he took the plane ride with Barack and voted for it.  


Dennis is an idiot.  Dennis has always been an idiot.  As he explained to me, he was told by Barack on that flight that Barack would ensure that Dennis face a tough primary and that Dennis would not be re-elected if he didn't vote for ObamaCare -- that's what was discussed on the plane ride.  As I told Dennis to his face, "You're a f**king idiot.  If you'd made that stand you would have support.  Watch now as your friends scurry away and as you do face a primary because Barack always lies."  Guess what?  I was right.  Barack got the vote he wanted but he then used the DNC to primary Dennis and get him out of Congress.


This story wasn't reported by your so-called 'independent' media in real time.  Once Dennis caved, they moved on -- if they even covered it when Dennis was saying nothing could make him vote for the bill.  


So it's not that everyone's stupid and unable to learn as much as it is that everyone's not being informed.  DiFi and her latest scandal?  If Katrina vanden Heuvel had published the article she commissioned all those years ago about Dianne's inappropriate business relationship with her husband, that unethical trash might have been forced out of the Senate.  Instead, she nixed the story and the writer had to take it to a local weekly alternative paper that you get on the street for . . . free.  If THE NATION had published the story, it might have had legs.


Over and over, your 'independent' media betrays you.  THE YOUNG TURKS and JACOBIN's podcasts are only the latest example.  Podcasts -- plural.  I'm not just talking now about the garbage Ana spews, I'm talking about the mid-week one now.  When two adult women act like giggly girls find everything an asshole says funny?  They're garbage.  They did not even object when the toxic male began calling people "pu**ies" and using the vagina as an insult, as a term of weakness.  Equally sad, the topic was Iraq and they didn't give a damn about the Iraqi people as evidenced by the absence of the Iraqi people from the so-called discussion.


Big Fat needs podcasts to tell her what to think.  They told her the lies about Russia were true.  They told her a hundred and one lies.  Then she got a crush on Glenn Greenwald and for a minute and a half she was sane -- or as close as she'll ever be.  But then Glenn told the truth about THE INTERCEPT and published the e-mails.  Instead of siding with her guy, she began repeating the lies of TYT and others.  Because that's what the stupid do.  She's an idiot and she's always been one.  For example, in 2020 she was finally riding high in the art world.  For the first year I've known her, she wasn't begging me for money constantly.  And on that phone call when it all ended, when she started trashing Glenn and I told her I couldn't go through this again like I did during Russia-gate, she said the reason she had called was my son asked her for money.  That shocked me but okay.  How much did he borrow and I'll message it over to you if you need it in cash.  Oh, he didn't get any money.  He bumped into her at an LA gas station and he had put gas in his car up before realizing his wallet was left at a friend's house.  He looked over and saw her and asked for ten bucks.  She didn't give it to him.  She told him she didn't believing in loaning money.


How many thousands has she 'borrowed' from me over the years -- after the first five years, it was obvious I was never going to see that money again.  But she couldn't give my son ten bucks to cover gas?  


Not very smart.  I'm either on the board of this museum or friends with someone on the board of that one and, goodness, there's just not going to be any need now for her art work.  Her 'career' will be a COVID casualty that, if remembered years from now, will be guessed to have lost steam when COVID erupted.  It's over for Big Fat and she's just starting to realize that because she's left three messages since Sunday begging for money.  That well went dry.  Guess what?  She was supposed to get a grant in the new year but somehow -- mmm-hmm -- that got pulled.  Now she's in real hardship -- she might have to get an actual job.  Stupid people like Big Fat believe TYT and they're so stupid that they tick off the person who funded their life.


Stupid people can't learn  But most people aren't stupid.  They're just not given the tools they need.  Presenting National Nurses United as a real group is something Ryan Grim does because he whores.  That's why he gushes every time AOC burps.  "The revolution has started!"  No, Ryan, AOC just had gas.


The people pimping National Nurses United are either whores or uninformed.  When THE MAJORITY REPORT was Janeane Garofalo's show, her worthless sidekick was pimping AARP.  And he was aghast that AARP backed this or that Bully Boy Bush policy that actually harmed seniors.  I said, "Janeane, is Sam so stupid that he doesn't know that the AARP is not an activist group?  It's a lobbying body but it's in the business of insurance.  For profit.  Janeane educated her audience on it.  I'm not sure that the whorish Sam Seder ever got the point.  


But that's why AARP was fine with Bully Boy Bush creating the 'doughnut hole' and not storming the streets as Sam just knew they would be.

NNU will weakly support a bill put forward -- say by Bernie Sanders.  They will not call for real action and they won't challenge any proposal put forward by a Democratic administration.  That's their history and that's reality.


A lot of people are scared of reality -- including the Biden administration.  Caitlin Johnstone (ICH) reports:


A new exclusive from The Daily Beast titled “White House Reporters: Biden Team Wanted Our Questions in Advance” reports that the White House press corps is being pressured to provide briefing questions ahead of time in a way that makes even mainstream media journalists uncomfortable.

“While it’s a relief to see briefings return, particularly with a commitment to factual information, the press can’t really do its job in the briefing room if the White House is picking and choosing the questions they want,” one White House correspondent told The Daily Beast. “That’s not really a free press at all.”

“It pissed off enough reporters for people to flag it for the [White House Correspondents Association] for them to deal with it,” another source reportedly said.

While Obama’s deputy press secretary Eric Schultz calls the move “textbook communications work” designed to ensure that Biden’s press secretary has answers ready instead of having to “repeatedly punt questions”, clearly the reporters on the job feel differently.

“The requests prompted concerns among the White House press corps, whose members, like many reporters, are sensitive to the perception that they are coordinating with political communications staffers,” writes the Beast.


And the press is eager to serve who?  Not the people.  Not democracy.  They're eager to whore for the administration -- as NEWSWEEK did.



There are a lot of fakes and frauds.  "The Fraud Squad," in fact.




Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Fraud Squad" and "DiFi Ethics" went up last night.


Moving over to Iraq, SPUTNIK reports:


The United States has not yet decided on its military postures in either Iraq or Afghanistan, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday.

"I think the current level in Iraq is around 2,500 - I have no changes to that to report out to you today," Kirby said.

With regards to Afghanistan, Kirby said "no posture decisions have been made" and the US remains committed to a political settlement.


I had to check the dateline.  John Kirby?  He was the Pentagon's spokesperson at the end of 2013 until he moved over to the State Dept in 2015 and left to to CNN when Donald Trump was sworn in as president.  Now he's back.  Jen Psaki's back, so many are back.  Apparently, there was no need for fresh blood in the vampirish Biden administration.  


In other news, AP reports:

The U.S. Navy on Tuesday dropped sexual assault charges against an enlisted SEAL in a case involving a female sailor at a Fourth of July party in Iraq that had prompted the rare withdrawal of the special operations unit from the Middle East in 2019.

 Under the agreement accepted by the military court at Navy Base San Diego, Special Warfare Operator First Class Adel A. Enayat pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of battery and assault for biting the sailor’s face and grabbing her neck during what his lawyer described as rough, consensual sex. He will serve up to 90 days in the brig.

At the special court martial Tuesday, a masked Enayat wearing his Navy dress uniform said without emotion that he was guilty.

He told the judge he did not have a “solid memory” of what happened in his room because of the “copious amounts of alcohol I’d consumed.”


The same story at another website includes this detail:


Colleen Grace, a former U.S. Navy intelligence specialist who had planned to testify at the trial, told The Associated Press in August that when she saw her friend after the barbecue that night, she had a giant black bruise that marred her jawline and several other marks that lined her neck.

She said her friend told her that the sex started out as consensual in the SEAL’s room, but then he started biting and choking her so hard she couldn’t breathe and she thought she was going to die. Grace said her friend flew to Baghdad in the early morning hours after the barbecue to be examined at a military hospital and report being sexually assaulted.


So he gets away with assault because he claims he was too drunk to remember?  And yet they want to pretend that they treat assault and rape seriously in the military.  This is why criminal charges need to be pulled from military courts, there is no justice.





Earlier this week, community sites did a theme post -- favorite grunge song from the 90s -- Stan went with "P.J. Olsson's "Visine"," Mike went with "Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box","  Betty went with Soundgarden's "Fell On Black Days," Trina went with "STP "Creep"," Ruth went with Alice In Chains' "Rooster," Rebecca went with the Afghan Whigs' ''mr. superlove," Elaine went with "Afghan Whigs' "When We Two Parted"," Kat went with "Tori Amos' Pretty Good Year," Ann went with "Fionna Apple's "Limp"" and Marcia went with the Afghan Whigs' "Creep."



New content at THIRD:


The following sites updated:




 

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Wednesday, February 03, 2021

Jimmy Dore, DiFi, WSWS

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "DiFi Ethics" went up Tuesday night.  

diannesethics


 She should be tossed out of the Senate for her latest nonsense but instead she insists she's willing to pay a fine.  She's a joke.


This is Jimmy Dore.



NEWSWEEK is trash.  It's lying for Joe Biden and Jimmy Dore documents it.  They're just cheap whores.  And they're whoring for Joe Biden.


It's disgusting.


You know what else is disgusting?  WSWS and their attacks on Jimmy Dore and others.  Go read Ava and C.I.'s "The WSWS embraces censorship and derangement (Ava and C.I.)" and grasp that the SEP runs WSWS and they have done no analysis of their massive failure in the 2020 elections.  But they can slime and lie about Jimmy Dore.

This is from Ava and C.I.'s piece:



Which brings us to Jimmy Dore.  We like Jimmy, we like THE JIMMY DORE SHOW.  That doesn't mean the show can't be better.  We could all be better -- including us.  But, December 30th, one of us was noting that Jimmy, Katie, Krystal and others needed to expand their guest lists.  Jimmy invited WSWS' Jerry White on last week and it all went to hell.  Our first thought, "We didn't push that, did we?"  No, thankfully, we were arguing just for Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford to be featured as guests.  So this can't be pinned on us.


Jimmy did try to expand the range of his guests and invited Jerry White of WSWS on which would provide Jerry with an audience he might not usually reach.  It could be good for the SEP, good for WSWS and good for Jerry.  It could be good for viewers to hear a Socialist explain what the people need from the current administration.  There was a chance for a real dialogue that could really have an impact.


Jerry blew that chance and blew his appearance on THE JIMMY DORE SHOW.  Jimmy hosts a talk show.  He interviews many people.  Jerry was ticked over the guest before.  He didn't like the guest before.  That's his right.  He can be as queeny as he wants.  Bette Davis used to pitch a fit over some of the women on talk shows -- once she was over fifty, she could be a real bitch about a 20-something female being featured on the same episode she was guesting on.  


But while Bette kept her anger off camera, Jerry decided to play queen bitch on camera and have a freak fit.  That's how he used his time.  


It wasn't, as Ann pointed out, time used wisely.  He attacked the guest from the previous segment, he demanded the guest be censored, he yelled and hollered and ensured that he wouldn't be invited back on -- probably that no one from WSWS would be brought on.  His antics didn't paint WSWS or the SEP in a kind light.  


Again, most people don't know the SEP and aren't aware of the connection it has to WSWS -- even people who read WSWS.  This was a major interview opportunity.  This was a chance to create interest in the SEP and its positions.  Instead, Jerry was a flamer carrying out a flame war. 

 

WSWS looks like an idiot and worse.  

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

 

 Tuesday, February 2, 2021.  How to solve the problem of the many displaced in Iraq?  Just evict them, close the camps and pretend like you addressed the issue.


At the end of October, we noted:


It's amazing how the western press misreports.  Earlier this week, it was 'concern' for the people in camps -- the displaced in Iraq.  Supposedly, everyone, including the UN was concerned.  I ignored the story because it felt false on the face of it.  And it was.  DAR ADDUSTOUR gives you the truth about this 'concern' that western media left out.  The 'concern' is only that they exist.  The 'concern' doesn't translate into finding homes for the displaced or meeting the needs of the displaced.  What the 'concern' means, DAR ADDUSTOUR reports is that the camp in Baquba, the sole camp for the displaced, will be closed in five weeks.  150 families will be evicted from the camp.  Where are they to go?  No one cares.  Certainly, no one in the western press cares because they couldn't take a moment from acting as a megaphone to tell you what was really going on.  Again, just on the face of it, it was obvious that there was no 'concern' for the displaced.  



And the concern for the displaced still remains a minor key with few bothering to note it.  An exception?


Kelley B. Vlahos:  Entire city blocks are just rubble now in places like Mosul.  And these people have no homes to go back to.  A lot of them face persecution when they get back because either they were tied to ISIS or their family were tied or there was some connection to Sunni radicals who did not denounce ISIS at the time so there's a lot of social dynamics going on that prevent some of these people from going home.  And then there are people who had children at the camps and those children are not considered Iraqi citizens because either they had the children during the so-called caliphate so Iraq is not recognizing those children as Iraqis so they don't qualify for any of the assistance that the government -- even if the government could be providing any livable assistance, these children wouldn't qualify.  So you have this real damaged part of the population that numbers about a million right now who can't go home and, you know, frankly the Iraqi government can't afford to rebuild these cities like Mosul because they just don't have the budget for it.



Kelley was speaking to Scott Horton on his THE SCOTT HORTON SHOW.



They may not have money today due to COVID but they did have money.  COVID didn't hit until February 2020.  


As we noted in Friday's snapshot:


There are many problems with what Kullab wrote -- not reported, typed.  Including where did the reconstruction money go?  


Recently, the last seven or so months, the Iraqi government has claimed (lied) that they diverted it to COVID relief.  Again, that's a lie.  But if they had diverted it, it still wouldn't explain where all the money was prior to the COVID emerging on the world stage in February of last year.  Mosul should have been rebuilt long ago and it is an example of the ongoing corruption of the Iraqi government that continues year after year, regardless of which coward who fled Iraq is installed as prime minister.  


In 2020, AFP noted, "Iraq gathered $30 billion in pledges from international donors in Kuwait in 2018 to rebuild, but virtually none of the funds have been disbursed."  30 billion.  And yet no real rebuilding -- the rebuilding that has taken place has been done by the United Nations.


$30 billion.  Wasted.  A corrupt government that pockets the money -- over and over, we see this.



At RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT, Kelley writes:


Hobbled by corruption, ineffective intelligence, and festering sectarianism ignored if not inflamed by the Shitte administration of then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (Washington’s man in Baghdad), the U.S.-trained Iraqi military didn’t stand a chance. As the United States was preparing to leave in 2009, then-Gen. Ray Odierno said the Iraqi forces were “ready” to take on their own security. In 2014, as ISIS raced across Iraq like a cancer, they fled. Several divisions “evaporated,” with 60 out of 243 battalions unaccounted for, all equipment lost. 

“ISIS took 40 percent of the country. Some of these cities were completely destroyed,” said Kadhim, noting that much of the real destruction came when the areas were later liberated in 2017 by Iraqi forces with the help of U.S. airpower and Iranian militias. At its peak, ISIS territory included the provinces of Mosul, Anbar, Saladin, as well as major portions of Kirkuk and swaths of outer Baghdad. Entire religious sects like the Yazidis in Northwestern Iraq were massacred, kidnapped, sold, and blown to the mountain winds like sand.

 “You’re talking about cities that are no longer habitable,” some, like Mosul still have unaccounted-for bodies lying under rubble, IEDs and unexploded ordnance still dotting the urban landscape, said Kadhim. There are booby traps everywhere. Reporter Mizer Kamel, writing in October, was overwhelmed by the apocalyptic scene in Mosul, two years after the city’s “liberation” from ISIS.

At one point he entered a house that served as an ISIS headquarters, with several families — a total of 64 people — living there during the central government’s fight to retake the city in 2017. Two missiles had hit the home at one point, igniting oil barrels stored in the basement. Men, women, and children were set on fire, their screams heard for two hours before an eerie silence. The injured had been taken away by ISIS, a neighbor told Kamel, who spotted human bones in the remains of the building. Some 50 bodies were never recovered.

“[Neighbourhood] residents, without exception, speak of the heavy psychological toll on their mental and physical health due to the unrecovered bodies under the rubble,” Kamel writes. “The house has become a health hazard, a breeding ground for stray dogs and a den for snakes, scorpions and insects.”

He said 80 percent of old Mosul was “wrecked” with many residential neighborhoods completely flattened. “Al-Shahwan (district) feels like a Second World War movie set. The destruction is terrifying, with torched cars piled up on tons of rubble, wreckage from destroyed houses, and skeletal human remains.”


There is no where for these people to go.  Mustafa al-Kadhimi, prime minister of Iraq, is attempting to push the problem off on others, not to solve it.  Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim (WASHINGTON POST) report: 


Prime Minister Mustafa al- ­Kadhimi has promised to resolve the displacement crisis by closing Iraq’s camps and finding ways to reintegrate their residents into wider society.

But the pace of recent camp closures has alarmed humanitarian groups, which say that residents are often not given enough warning — what used to be months’ notice is now a matter of days — leaving them unable to find safe harbor and, in some cases, forcing them to sleep on roadsides or on rooftops in the rain.

On Monday, authorities began gradually vacating the Jeddah 5 displacement camp in Nineveh province. Residents said security forces had entered the facility, home to 7,000 people, and told families uprooted from three villages in the province to leave or be ejected.

Most of Iraq’s displaced are women and children. More than a dozen camps are still open in Iraq’s semiautonomous region of Kurdistan, housing 182,000 people.

“They told me to leave with dignity or be dragged from my tent,” said one man in Jeddah 5, reached by phone and speaking on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from security forces if he was known to have spoken to a journalist.



Smoke and mirrors from the failed and corrupt Mustafa.  He'll declare the crisis ended by closing the camps.  The crisis is not ended, it's just pushed off on cities.  He's an abject failure and he should be called out on the world stage for evicting people from a displacement camp when they remain displaced.  The Iraqi government wasted $30 billion of funds the world gave it to address the issue by rebuilding.  They elected not to do so.  It was more important that the billions go into the pockets of corrupt officials.  Now Iraq is shutting down the camps.  


Shereena Qazi and Kareem Botane (ALJAZEERA) report:


Activists and aid groups on the ground, who wished to remain anonymous, said on Monday that the Ministry of Displacement and Migration had instructed the camp mukhtars – men who often serve as heads of their communities – to inform all families from Tal Abta, al-Mahalabiya and al-Jaban districts to depart immediately.

The Iraqi government decided to close IDP camps last October and has since been pressuring IDPs to return to their homes in other parts of Iraq. But aid groups say those areas lack basic infrastructure and the homes refugees fled have still not been rebuilt since the territorial defeat of ISIL in 2017.

In November, humanitarian agencies raised concerns about the government’s decision. Refugees are also afraid that their old neighbours might assume that they are associated with ISIL and kill them for that.


That is true, by the middle of November, there were a few mute cries from humanitarian agencies.  And that's really all there was.  The minute the press started promoting the story in the last week of October, they were doing so with a lie, they were acting as though this was good news and failing to point out that there was no place for the displaced to go.  That's how we got here.  That's why these people are being evicted.


I'm looking around at the Twitter feeds of various people with humanitarian agencies.  I don't see Iraq.  I see many places and many issues -- including facial recognition technology -- but I don't see Iraq and the displaced.  They picked the ball up late and then they dropped it and forgot it.


And this isn't just Mustafa's failure.  The US government has given a ton of US tax payer dollars to Iraq.  Where's the accountability and what's the plan?  That's the type of question Jen Psaki needs to be asked.  She's got her binder with her, in case she hasn't paid attention to Iraq since her days at the US State Dept -- where she'd always have to flip to Iraq in her binder if she was asked a question about the country on a day that there wasn't a bombing.  In her binder


In her binder, she'll find this statement to the UN Security Council from the US Mission to the United Nations' Rodney Hunter last Friday:



Rodney Hunter
Political Coordinator
U.S. Mission to the United Nations
New York, New York
January 29, 2021

AS DELIVERED

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much. And thank you to SRSG Gamba, as well, and Under-Secretary-General Voronkov, for your remarks today. This is such an important issue, and we’re really glad to be focusing on it today.

Ambassador Ilyassov, thank you in particular for sharing your country’s experiences with us during your briefing: we applaud the efforts made by Kazakhstan to repatriate, rehabilitate, and reintegrate more than 600 foreign terrorist fighters and their associated family members from Syria and Iraq. We especially commend your focus on meeting the needs of returned children, including psychosocial recovery, and efforts to prevent their stigmatization.

The current situation we face – with more than 8,000 children of foreign terrorist fighters residing in camps in Syria and Iraq – is not tenable. The international community can and we must do more. We cannot continue to let these children languish in overcrowded environments where they suffer from inadequate shelter, food, sanitation, educational opportunities, and health care.

We acknowledge that this is a complex humanitarian and security issue made even more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic; we also understand that repatriation efforts must be handled with sensitivity and with each child’s best interest as the paramount consideration.

To address these challenges, states must first take responsibility for their citizens who engage in and support terrorism, including by repatriating, prosecuting, rehabilitating, and reintegrating their nationals who have traveled to conflict zones, as is appropriate.

States must also repatriate their most vulnerable citizens – children – from these conflict zones. The United States, for our part, has repatriated 28 Americans, including 16 children, from Syria and Iraq. Repatriation is not only the best security solution to prevent these fighters from returning to the battlefield – it’s also the right thing to do morally to prevent an already dire humanitarian condition from deteriorating further.

I’d like to take a quick moment just to stress a few key principles that must shape any efforts to repatriate children from conflict zones. First, we remind states that we must treat children formerly associated with ISIS primarily as victims.

Second, it is of the utmost importance that any effort to repatriate foreign terrorist fighters and their family members are undertaken in compliance with states’ obligations under international law – including international humanitarian law – as applicable, and that states respect the principle of non-refoulement.

Third, every child has the right to acquire a nationality, and states should seek to prevent their nationals and the children of their nationals from being deemed as stateless. Children moved to or born in conflict zones should be provided immediate adjudication of their citizenship status and provided all of the appropriate civil documentation necessary for their travel and access to healthcare, education, and other basic services.

Without this needed documentation, as we all know, children can become invisible to responders and be excluded from receiving family tracing and reunification services, child protection assistance, or the ability to participate in civil registration and vital statistics systems.

Along these lines, Mr. Chair, the Biden-Harris Administration believes that children should not be separated from their parents or caregivers whenever possible. If family preservation or reunification cannot support the safety and well-being of a child, other family care options that are in the best interest of the child should be made available. And finally, we must recognize that children are not a monolithic group, and that our rehabilitation and reintegration programs must account for different needs and capacities based on gender, age, and other factors.

As today’s briefers have mentioned, the phenomenon of foreign terrorist fighters has not ended with the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. We see foreign terrorist fighters travelling with their families to join ISIS affiliates around the world, including in the Sahel and in the Horn of Africa. But there is hope, as demonstrated by the decisions of Kazakhstan, North Macedonia, the Maldives, Kosovo, Italy, Bosnia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, France, Finland, Germany, Ukraine, and others who have repatriated their citizens. Where there is the political will, we can overcome even the most difficult challenges together.

To conclude, Mr. Chair, the United States will continue to invest in preventive and responsive programming to protect children who have not yet been repatriated from conflict zones from violence and abuse. The United States sees the work of SRSG Gamba’s office, the UN monitoring and reporting mechanism on children and armed conflict, and UNICEF as critical in this regard, and we welcome the SRSG’s ongoing engagement in Syria. As UNICEF’s largest donor, the United States calls on other states to join our partnership with UNICEF and other multilateral organizations by increasing your contributions so we can better leverage their expertise and capabilities in responding to the needs of children in conflict.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

###



Maybe she can expand on that?



The following sites updated:


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Tuesday, February 02, 2021

Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box"

Tonight, we're doing favorite grunge song and I'm going to be doing an obvious pick, sorry.  :(


Nirvana.  The grunge band -- no one was ever better.


And that means the song is going to be obvious because they've got like ten or twelve that are classics.  I'm going with "Heart Shaped Box."


 


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

Monday, February 1, 2021.  The KRG remembers a 2004 attack, Hobby Lobby continues ripping off the world and more.



As the new month kicks off, Margaret Griffis (ANTIWAR.COM) reports of January, "At least 168 people were killed, and 295 were wounded during January. Furthermore, mass graves gave up at least 248 known victims. In December, 172 people were killed, and 200 were wounded."


Meanwhile, one US company continues to rip off the Middle East and all it takes is one 'woopsie!' and we all pretend like it didn't happen.  Anugrah Kumar (CHRISTIAN POST) reports:

Weeks after the Museum of the Bible in Washington transferred control of 5,000 disputed manuscripts and bits of papyrus to the U.S. government, officials have repatriated the artifacts to Egypt, from where the items were thought to have been illegally shipped during the Arab Spring.

The handover of the artifacts, which included manuscript fragments, funeral masks, parts of coffins, and the heads of statues, was preceded by extensive discussions with Egyptian officials that started in late 2017, MOTB Chairman of the Board Steve Green said in a statement last week.

Green, president of Hobby Lobby, an arts and crafts retail chain, explained that while the talks with Egyptian officials had been “cordial and promising, we were not able to finalize the desired agreements nor resolve the logistics of shipping the items to Iraq and Egypt,” after which MOTB sought the help of U.S. government officials to assist with the delivery of the items.

[. . .]

In July 2017, Hobby Lobby agreed to pay $3 million and forfeit thousands of biblical cuneiform tablets and clay bullae to settle a civil complaint the U.S. government filed against the company, alleging that the Christian-owned arts-and-crafts retailer acquired artifacts originating in modern-day Iraq that were unlawfully smuggled from the United Arab Emirates and Israel as “ceramic tiles” or “clay tiles (sample).”


Hobby Lobby keeps ending up with items that they have no right to.  In 2018, Jane Arraf (NPR) reported on Hobby Lobby:


But looters know. The roughly 250 tablets Frahm examined in 2016 were among 5,500 objects, including ancient cylinder seals and clay seal impressions known as bullae, smuggled into the U.S. starting in 2010. Shipped from the United Arab Emirates and Israel without declaring their true Iraqi origin, some of them were marked "ceramic tiles" or "clay tiles (sample)."

They'd been purchased by Hobby Lobby for $1.6 million.

In a settlement last year with the Justice Department, Hobby Lobby agreed to forfeit the objects and paid a $3 million fine. In May, about 3,800 objects were handed back to the Iraqi government at a ceremony at its Washington, D.C., embassy, and will be returned to Iraq later this year.

Last November, Hobby Lobby president Steve Green, the son of the craft store chain's founder David Green, opened a Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., which contains another $201 million worth of ancient artifacts tied to Hobby Lobby. The museum said in a statement last July that "None of the artifacts identified in the settlement are part of the Museum's collection, nor have they ever been."


Why is Hobby Lobby still in business?   The Gilgamesh Tablet is another 'issue' for Hobby Lobby.  How many times are they going to be caught with items that shouldn't have been in their possession?  And what does it say about Hobby Lobby customers that they keep going to the stores despite this ongoing scandal?  Supposedly, we're in 'cancel culture' times.  Yet no one wants to take their buying power to a US store that doesn't exploit and grave rob?


WIKIPEDIA notes:


Beginning in 2009, representatives of Hobby Lobby were warned that artifacts they were purchasing were likely looted from Iraq.[22] The purchases had been made for the Museum of the Bible, which they were sponsoring. In 2018, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York directed Hobby Lobby to return the artifacts and pay a fine of US$3,000,000. Hobby Lobby returned over 5500 items in May 2018.[23][24][25] Among these, were nearly 4000 tablets supposed to be from the lost city of Irisagrig which had been delivered to Hobby Lobby marked as "tile samples."[26]

In April 2020, the centerpiece of the Museum of the Bible's collection, the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, were declared to be fakes.[27]

After its authenticity was questioned, the museum removed the display of a miniature bible which a NASA astronaut had purportedly carried to the moon.[28]

In a further blow to the Museum of the Bible's credibility board chairman, Steve Green, who is also president of the Hobby Lobby stores, announced the museum will be returning over eleven thousand artifacts to Egypt and Iraq. The collection includes thousands of papyrus scraps and ancient clay pieces. Manchester University papyrologist Roberta Mazza stated that the Green family "poured millions on the legal and illegal antiquities market without having a clue about the history, the material features, cultural value, fragilities, and problems of the objects."[29]

In early July 2017, US federal prosecutors filed a civil complaint in the Eastern District of New York under the case name United States of America v. Approximately Four Hundred Fifty Ancient Cuneiform Tablets and Approximately Three Thousand Ancient Clay Bullae.[30] On July 5, 2017, Hobby Lobby consented to a settlement requiring forfeiture of the artifacts and payment of a fine of $3 million and the return of over 5500 artifacts.[31][32][33] In January of 2021 Museum of the Bible’s Chairman of the Board, Steve Green released the following statement “we transferred control of the fine art storage facility that housed the 5,000 Egyptian items to the U.S. government as part of a voluntary administrative process. We understand the U.S. government has now delivered the papyri to Egyptian officials.” This in addition to 8000 clay objects also being transferred to Baghdad’s Iraq Museum.[34]

This return includes the "Gilgamesh Dream Tablet," containing part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, discovered in Iraq in 1853, sold by the Jordanian Antiquities Association to an antiquities dealer in 2003,[35] and sold again by Christie's auction house to Hobby Lobby in 2014 for $1.6 million. The auction house lied about how the artifact had entered the market, claiming it had been on the market in the United States for decades. In September 2019, federal authorities seized the tablet, and in May 2020, a civil complaint was filed to forfeit it.[36][37]


Again, I don't understand how people know this and continue to shop at Hobby Lobby.  I guess theft and stolen history don't matter that much?  I guess some Americans who pretend they're politically aware would rather lie and Tweet that Senator Tom Cotton is guilty of stolen valor then call out real theft.  


In other news, Massoud Barzani Tweeted:


Had a productive meeting today with the British ambassador to Iraq,
@sblhickey
where we discussed the latest developments, particularly insofar as the relations between Baghdad and Erbil are concerned.
Image

5:28 AM · Feb 1, 2021 


There is no progress in Iraq.  Massoud could have Tweeted the above any year since the US-led invasion of 2003.  Massoud is no longer president of the KRG, he's now just president of the KDP political party.  But there is never any progress in Iraq.  


I can remember Bully Boy Bush occupying the White House and various bodies -- including Brookings -- warning that the issue of Kirkuk needed to be resolved before Iraq could move forward.  All these years later, Kirkuk remains a disputed area of land -- both the central government out of Baghdad and the KRG continue to claim it.  Nothing gets accomplished, nothing gets settled.  The way to settle the issue of Kirkuk was written into Iraq's constitution; however, Article 140 has never been implemented -- all these years later.  In 2019, Hawre Hasan Hama wrote a piece of INDIA QUARTERLY: A JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS which noted:



The Iraqi state and the Kurds have always been at the odds over the territory around Kirkuk, particularly following the discovery of oil in the province in 1927. Both sides have claimed ownership of the province since that time and have sought to gain advantage over the other through various means. The region was subjected to a forced demographic change under the Arabisation policy during the reign of Ba’ath Party between 1968 and 2003. Following the overthrow of Saddam’s regime in 2003, the status of Kirkuk was to be constitutionally and peacefully resolved according to Article 58 of the 2004 interim constitution and then Article 140 of the 2005 permanent constitutions, which called for normalisation, a census, and a referendum in Kirkuk and other disputed areas to determine the will of their residents. Practically, however, various Iraqi governments and the two dominant Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, were able to politicise implementation of Article 140. Although each blame the other, all share responsibility for the lack of implementation. This research investigates that experience and argues that the joint administration is the optimal scenario in the short run and independent region within the Iraqi state would be the best-case scenario in the long term.


Today, the Kurdistan Parliament Tweets the following from Speaker Rewaz Faiq:


@KurdistanParl
Speaker Dr
@Rewaz_faiaq
on commemoration of Erbil twin terrorist attacks of 1st February 2004 “17 years ago terror darkened our lives when leaders & Peshmerga gathered to celebrate the holy Eid festival. This memorial comes as Kurdistan faces many challenges...”
Image
4:48 AM · Feb 1, 2021


...”in the face of threats to stability of Kurdistan & Iraq, it is a basic duty to unite & speak with one voice, so that we can overcome the crises & serve our people’s highest interests. We honour the victims of 1st February 2004, and our thoughts are with their families” /End
Image
5:04 AM · Feb 1, 2021


The bombing of Erbil in 2004?  The Australian Government notes:


Twin suicide bombings blamed by Kurds on local Islamist militant groups killed approximately 101 people in Erbil in February 2004 (‘Irbil bombings toll reaches 101’ 5 2004, BBC News, 3 February http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3457065.stm – Accessed 24 June 2009 – Attachment 9). 



The death toll eventually reached 101 while those injured numbered 246.  In 2017, RUDAW issued the following.





Today?  Where are the promised elections?  Adil Abdul-Mahdi was Prime Minister of Iraq from October 25, 2018 to May 6, 2020.  No, that was not a full term.  October of 2019 (actually September 30, 2019 but the press narrative has gone with October 1, 2019) protests start in Iraq and continue to this day.  These protests against corruption, lack of jobs, lack of basic services and more eventually forced Adil to announce his resignation because his term was such a failure.  May 7, 2020, Mustafa al-Kadhimi became prime minister.  He was supposed to call for immediate elections -- his was to be a brief term.  But when he finally called for elections, it was for June of 2021.  And now?  They've been futher postponed to October.  Dana Taib Menmy (ALJAZEERA) reports:


Iraq’s leaders pushed to postpone parliamentary elections fearing public discontent would lead to their removal from power, an analyst with ties to the government says.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, President Barham Salih, and Speaker of the Parliament Mohammad al-Halbusi wanted a later vote over concerns about their prospects for re-election and sought to buy time, said Mohammad Bakhtiar, a Kurdish political analyst who meets regularly with Iraqi decision-makers.

“At least two of the three leaders of Iraq who favoured early election have realised that their chances of being re-elected are minimal,” Bakhtiar said.

In a bid to delay the elections, the three Iraqi leaders met on January 12 and later with the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and election commission officials, he told Al Jazeera.

After a request from Iraq’s Independent High Election Commission (IHEC), the government last week announced the postponement of the country’s elections from June 6 to October 10.

Bakhtiar said it was unlikely the vote would take place in October and suggested May 2022 was more likely.


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