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Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Grab a towel, we're headed for a blood bath

Recent Democratic rhetoric and the longer history of Congress and midterm elections remind us that parties on their way to losing congressional majorities often talk the following way about their legislative agendas:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York declared last week that the party-line passage of the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act “will endure as one of the greatest legislative feats in decades” and that the current Congress has had “one of the most productive stretches in recent Senate history.” President Joe Biden’s pollster, John Anzalone, told Politico that “we’re on the offensive” and that the Democrats’ spending bills would boost them in the midterm elections.

But experience suggests that these kinds of congressional activities do little to change the trajectory of midterm elections. In 2017 and 2018, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, they enacted a string of legislative victories – despite Democratic resistance.

Included were Department of Veterans Affairs personnel reform, a farm bill, a water infrastructure bill, an aviation bill, a NASA modernization bill, an opioid treatment bill, music digital copyright reform, the First Step Act criminal sentences reform and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reconciliation bill. Two new Supreme Court justices were also confirmed during that time.

But neither those legislative achievements nor the strong economy was sufficient to enable Republicans to hold the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections. They did maintain a narrow majority in the Senate.

Joe's done nothing to help us -- by "us," I mean citizens of the United States. If I meant the nazi regime in Ukraine, well, he's done a great deal for them.

Joe destroyed our country and that's reality. As C.I. noted repeatedly, the price of milk may or may not go down. But when Campbell's soup increases its price, it doesn't knock it back down. So thanks for destroying people's lives, Joe Biden. People are already dealing with job insecurity and food insecurity and fears over COVID and monkeypox. Joe's inflation -- while he gives billions to Ukraine -- helped no one in the US.

And I do believe that this will be reflected in the mid-terms.

That's before you factor in that historically there is a flip during a mid-term election when the White House and the House of Representatives are controlled by the same party.

He's done a miserable job and that alone is enough. Then there's the historical trend. Then there's how they've angered Donald Trump's supporters with that raid. So that faction is going to turn out for sure. They stirred up a hornet's nest, as my grandpa would say. :D

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

Tuesday, August 23, 2022. A war hawk dies (don't praise him), Julian Assange remains persecuted by Joe Biden and Moqtada al-Sadr throws another public tantrum when he doesn't get his way.

That's Dr. Céline Gounder, Infectious Disease Specialist and Epidemiologist addressing monkeypox. "It is not limited to that population." When you hear someone, say a YOUTUBER, who can barely conceal their disgust and anger at gay people, remember not what the YOUTUBER 'learned' but what a medical professional is telling you. Changing topics . . .

In other news, the persecution of Julian Assange continues. Julian came up during Kevin Gosztola's discussion with journalist William Arkin on SHADOW PROOF.

GOSZTOLA: Finally I want to put to you the issue of the Espionage Act being part of the conversation. A lot of my work has been watching and monitoring and covering the developments in individual Espionage Act prosecutions over the last decade-plus. Those individuals and their attorneys would also say that they were charged for materials that would not cause exceptionally grave damage, and yet the book was thrown thrown at them and they had their lives ruined and their careers ended. So why shouldn’t the same be true for Donald Trump?

I think it presents a crisis. I think it’s part of this crisis of the liberals and the Democratic Party establishment really feeling strongly about pushing forward with whatever the Justice Department is about to do. What’s your sense of the risk if Donald Trump were to be charged with violating the Espionage Act?

You’re talking to people about the potential charges that could be brought. Is this even a distinct possibility? You said unlawful possession, which can be within that law. But there are other laws. Do you think it would be a more minor law to keep the Espionage Act out of the conversation?

ARKIN: We now know that the Espionage Act was only being referenced because of section 793(d) of the Espionage Act, which is an area of the Espionage Act that deals with if you are in possession of classified documents and the federal government asks you to return them, and you don’t return them, you’re in violation of 793(d) of the Espionage Act.

It’s called the Espionage Act, what it’s been called since 1917, but it also happens to be just one of a handful of laws that deal with security classification. The rest of the security classification system exists under executive order. That’s why Donald Trump and his people are arguing that he declassified everything. But it’s not altogether true. Some elements of classified information do fall under statute, such as atomic energy information or information about the identities of CIA sources, etc. Those fall under statute.

So it’s unfortunate that the Espionage Act is the place where this is contained, this provision about returning classified material in your possession, because it’s abused in a way because we don’t have modern legislation. Perhaps one of the solutions will be that we will finally have a law passed, which will specify what is classified and unclassified information and what is the modern security classification system and where are the authorities and what’s against the law and what’s not against the law.

That does influence Julian Assange’s problems in the courts. It influences other whistleblowers who have been charged with the Espionage Act, and even if they were not guilty of espionage, as we think of it, they are charged under the Espionage Act. So we need to clean this up because I don’t think that we have a law in a proper way that really specifies what the true state of play is here.

If I support Julian Assange, I want Donald Trump to spur along a better articulation of what is the actual purpose of the Espionage Act. To have say for instance Julian Assange, a foreign national charged under the Espionage Act—espionage against who? If he committed espionage against Australia, then he should be charged in his own country of his nationality.

In some ways, if I’m a supporter of Julian Assange, I want to see that Donald Trump helps to clarify what is this law and what it can really be used for. Because in the cases of [Chelsea] Manning, in the cases of Tom Drake, in the case of Julian Assange, I think it’s been misapplied. And in the case of journalism, there have been attempts at various times within our recent past going back to the Reagan administration, where the federal government has sought to use the Espionage Act as a way of suppressing a free press.

Again, if I’m really interested in the future, I would want to see Congress step in finally and establish an omnibus law that deals with security classification in this country. That’s more important than Donald Trump.

For a full transcript of the interview, click here. The world watches as Joe Biden persecutes Julian Assagne. Jeff Mackler (LA PROGRESSIVE) notes:

Of the estimated 1.4 million top security clearance U.S. personnel employed by one or another of the government’s 18 branches of its $81 billion annually budgeted “U.S. Intelligence Community,” perhaps one or two individuals each year are designated as “whistleblowers” and persecuted to the high heavens.

Today WikiLeaks founder and journalist/publisher Julian Assange stands at the top of the list, currently imprisoned in London’s Belmarsh Prison and fighting against the Biden administration’s – and Trump’s before him – heinous efforts to extradite him to the U.S. on spurious charges under the witchhunt era Espionage Act. Revealing the truth about U.S. war crimes around the world, not to mention exercising a journalist’s right to free speech and a free press, is unacceptable to the U.S. imperialist beast that daily wages wars against poor and oppressed nations around the world. That the single dissident voice of a far off non-U.S. citizen must be silenced forever, informs us of the disgusting arrogance of those who command the seats of U.S. power.

Similarly, heroes like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning today, and Daniel Ellsberg, the renowned Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers defendant of yesteryear – whose revelations educated millions about the U.S. horrors committed against the Vietnamese people – are unacceptable to today’s modern day thought police.

And we'll quote again from Eve Ottenberg's column, now at CITY WATCH:

For a good while one could blame Trump for the prosecutorial monstrosity perpetrated on journalist Julian Assange.

But now it’s time for Trump to move over. The single worst assault on the first amendment and a free press in recent centuries is no longer solely his. Biden owns it. Biden could end this state persecution of a journalist today, if he felt like it. A persecution that a U.N. expert has called torture. A persecution that could easily lead to Assange’s death.

But maybe that’s the point. Indeed, if killing Assange isn’t the point, Biden should prove it, by pardoning him now. Biden doesn’t feel like it. Unlike Jamal Khashoggi, whose murder he deplored before he didn’t, Biden never censured the years of abuse heaped on Assange by the U.S. government. He enabled it. Unlike Trump, who may very well have been threatened with impeachment by senators like Mitch “Democracy’s Gravedigger” McConnell, if Trump dared dream of pardoning Assange, Biden was never vulnerable to such a hypothetical menace. In fact, he’s in McConnell’s corner. By his inaction, it’s clear that Biden approves of the criminal state attack on Assange.

Both Biden and Trump look like moral midgets compared to Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who last month handed a letter to Biden about the besieged journalist. In this epistle, according to Reuters July 18, Lopez Obrador “defended Julian Assange’s innocence and renewed a previous offer of asylum to the Wikileaks founder,” in Mexico. This offer came in the month after the U.K. approved Assange’s extradition to the U.S., where he faces up to 175 years in prison on what everybody knows are trumped up charges under a law that shouldn’t even exist, the Espionage Act.

This law served solely as a bludgeon against political enemies and their speech since it was enacted in 1917. It battered socialists and communists like Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden. According to the PEN American Center, this edict “had been used inappropriately in leak cases that have a public interest component.” That’s putting it mildly. One year after enactment, by 1918, 74 newspapers had been denied mailing privileges under the Espionage Act. This law was birthed to harass and jail opponents of what nowadays many knowledgeable people regard as a catastrophe that should never have happened, namely Woodrow Wilson’s blood-drenched folly, World War I. This law exists for one purpose: chilling freedom of speech.

Indeed, that’s why the Espionage Act shouldn’t exist. Lopez Obrador said that arresting Assange “would mean a permanent affront to freedom of expression.” He sure got that right. But nothing other than sour silence about his latest offer has emanated from the white house. In fact, Lopez Obrador never got a response to his first letter to Biden over a year ago. When faced with a gracious gesture to do the humane, moral, civilized thing and end this grotesque perversion of justice, Biden just acts like he hopes this opportunity for compassion will go away and everyone will forget that he’s doing something unspeakable.

Joe Biden stands as a hypocrite on the world stage and everyone is watching.

Meanwhile, David Kay is dead. Lydia O'Connor (HUFFINGTON POST) writes:

David Kay, the weapons inspector who disproved the United States’ main rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, died earlier this month, his wife told The Washington Post and New York Times.

He died from cancer on Aug. 13 at the age of 82, said his wife, Anita Kay.

Kay was a prominent figure in the early 2000s for his role searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He ultimately resigned when he concluded the weapons stockpiles simply did not exist.

“We were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here,” Kay said in bombshell testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2004. “It turns out we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.”

The CIA tapped Kay, who’d already surveyed Iraq for weapons in the 1990s, to lead the search for WMDs there after President George W. Bush’s administration said it had evidence the country was stockpiling weapons. That supposed stockpile was Bush’s main justification for invading Iraq following the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda Islamist militants.

By 2004, Kay concluded that CIA intelligence about the weapons had been faulty and that it was extremely unlikely any WMDs would be found in Iraq.

David Kay is dead. No tears should be shed. Not for him. For the Iraqis whose deaths he's responsible for? Sure. Cry for those innocents. But not only did he believe a lie (and offer cover for it when he admitted it was a lie), he also approved of the illegal war on Iraq even after he knew it was a lie.

He was no hero.

He was just a killer and a crook who had little more honesty than most in the Cheney-Bush dynasty.

He died at 82. He did a lot of damage in his lifetime. PBS was among his enablers.

In Iraq today, cult leader Moqtada al-Sadr has his followers targeting the judiciary.

Shiite cleric Sadr's supporters launch sit-in outside top Iraq judicial body https://f24.my/8qVt.t

6:29 AM · Aug 23, 2022

His attackers occupied the Parliament. That didn't work for him. He demanded the judiciary dissolve the Parliament, they explained that they did not have that power. Now the obsese Moqtada sends his followers to target the judiciary.

Iraqis watch this and they're not impressed. They weren't impressed when Moqtada failed over and over for months at organizing a government. Or when he made his MPs resign.

When he had MPs in Parliament, he could have a move to dissolve the body.

But tubby never knows what he's doing, he's just throws one tantrum after another.

And though the western press laps it up, the Iraqi people see him as the logjam that has created and maintained the political stalemate. His failures and his tantrums are seen as the biggest reason for a ten month political stalemate. October 10th, Iraq held elections. Tubby Moqtada has prevented any prime minister from being named and any president from being named. It's getting to the point where Iraqis are really suffering -- there's lost wages, for example, sky rocketing food costs, etc, etc.

They're not enthralled with the cult leader -- despite the press pimping him over and over -- the western press, let's be clear.

The following sites updated:

Monday, August 22, 2022

Graham Norton, Lee Camp, immigration, Jordan Elsass

Starting with this video of Graham Elwood and Lee Camp discussing our government.

And, another topic, AP reports:

The Pentagon on Monday once again denied a request from the District of Columbia seeking National Guard assistance in dealing with thousands of migrants being bused to the city from Texas and Arizona.

According to a copy of a letter to the city reviewed by The Associated Press, the Defense Department said use of the D.C. National Guard would be inappropriate and would hurt the overall readiness of the troops, forcing some to cancel or disrupt military training.

The letter said the department also is concerned about putting uniformed military members in direct contact with migrants to provide food, sanitation or other support, saying the troops have no real experience or training for that mission.

Good. The US borders and the US immigration policies are a national issue. For far too long, those of us who didn't live on the borders have said this is what needs to be done and that is what needs to be done. And most places aren't dealing with an influx of migrants. I don't have sympathy for DC or NYC. The border states have been forced to deal with this issue.

To be clear, I am for open borders and I say "undocumented immigrant" and not the other term. But this is not just a problem for those living on the border to live with. We all need to grasp what it means and work towards solutions. I agree with Ann who wrote about this awhile back and stated that immigrants from the south of the US should be re-settled in Iowa. She's right, it's the most Anglo White of any state. It's past time that they opened their arms to migrants.

Lastly, I'm a big fan of SUPERMAN AND LOIS and I'm going to miss the original Jonathan Kent now that the actor is leaving. Here the actor explains his decision to leave.

Via

@jordanelsass1

Cameo (1/2) #SupermanAndLois

1:29 PM · Aug 22, 2022

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

Monday, August 22, 2022. The persecution of Julian Assange continues as the world watches the hypocrisy of Joe Biden, a landslide hits Iraq, Moqtada makes a new demand and much more.

Starting in Italy, Olivier Turquet (PRESSENZA) interviews Lorena Corrias who is staging a street theater act where she 'lives' in a space as tiny as the one that Julian Assange is being held in:

-Lorena, how did you get the idea to do this?

-For months I wanted to do something that would have a strong impact on people; then on Instagram, I saw a girl from Berlin – Raja Valeska – who went down to crowded places in the city every day to protest with a sign indicating how many days Julian had been detained in Belmarsh and drew a rectangle on the ground with the dimensions of Assange’s cell (2 by 3 metres). I thought it was a great idea, very impressive, and so I tried to apply it in my city as well. I also contacted her and today we are still looking for new projects together. She has been my muse. I was deeply moved by her idea and her courage.

-What particularly moved you about Julian?

-I can’t list just one aspect.

I was moved by the injustice he has been subjected to, but also by his immense courage and loyalty to us: he risked everything to let us know what was really going on in the world. He challenged an unjust and corrupt system.

He is undoubtedly a great hero, a unique, tenacious man of enormous intelligence, an example to us all.

Then, of course, it struck me that he had such an out-of-the-ordinary, super-innovative and revolutionary idea (WikiLeaks) and that he managed to put it into practice. It would probably have seemed to all of us to be an almost impossible undertaking, but he did it! For a few years he was the protagonist of the news to which only he, the whistleblowers and his collaborators had access; he was the inventor of a new world, a just world where the weakest were no longer hidden by secrecy and where we all had access to the information that mattered to us. He told us what the states wanted to hide from us.

I was shocked to learn the story of the detainees in Guantánamo, many of them innocent; to see how US soldiers enjoyed shooting from helicopters at unarmed civilians who were simply walking down the street… It was like watching children playing Play Station (I refer to the video called Collateral Murder). I was shocked to see states like the US, Australia, Sweden and England breaking numerous laws to teach a lesson to an innocent person, who was just doing his job for free in the interest of the population.

Around the world people are watching as Julian Assange remains persecuted by US President Joe Biden. 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 death.

The persecution has resulted in spying on reporters and attorneys as was revealed last week. Marjorie Cohn (TRUTHOUT) notes:

Attorneys and journalists whom the CIA spied on when they visited WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London have filed a lawsuit against the CIA, its former director Mike Pompeo, UC Global and its director, David Morales, in U.S. District Court.

Assange is in a London prison fighting extradition to the United States. He is charged with violating the Espionage Act for exposing U.S. war crimes and faces 175 years imprisonment. During the seven years he lived in the Ecuadorian Embassy under a grant of asylum, Assange was visited by more than 100 attorneys, journalists and doctors. They included Assange’s criminal defense attorneys in the United States, international human rights lawyers, national security journalists whose sources could be jeopardized if exposed, and physicians and medical professionals.

The CIA commissioned Undercover Global (UC Global), a private Spanish security company, to send images from Assange’s visitors’ cellphones and laptops as well as video streamed from their meetings to the CIA.

“Unbeknownst to anyone there, they actually put recording devices and cameras in the rooms where Mr. Assange was, which essentially live streamed what he was doing and saying back to Washington,” attorney Richard Roth, who filed the lawsuit, told me and my co-host Michael Smith on Law and Disorder radio. “I think that there was clearly a desire to bring down Julian Assange any way possible.”

Defendant Morales announced to his employees that UC Global would be operating “in the big league” and on the “dark side” with the CIA, the complaint says. Former employees of UC Global said the deal included selling information gathered as a result of the illegal surveillance.

For the LAW AND DISORDER RADIO episode Marjorie is writing about, click here. It will air later this morning on WBAI but it already up at the program's website.

The world is watching as Joe Biden trashes the freedom of the press, the Constitution, human rights and so much more. The hypocrisy is on full display. DEVDISCOURSE notes:

China on Friday said that if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had disclosed the "dirty secrets" of a country other than the US, Assange would not have been put him behind bars and he might have received honor from the CIA. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin made these remarks in response to reports that lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, along with two journalists, have recently sued the Central Investigation Agency for unlawfully obtaining information from their electronic devices and recordings of their conversations with Julian Assange, violating their privacy.

"We can all imagine, had Assange disclosed the dirty secrets of not the US, perhaps he would not have been put behind bars and might even receive a medal or some kind of rewards and immense honor from the CIA," Wenbin said during a media presser. "What has happened to Assange and his lawyers has again made one thing clear: in the US, the sanctity of human rights and press freedom comes with strings attached. The exercise of such rights and freedom must not come into conflict with the interests of the US. For if it does, they will surely come under high-handed restriction and ruthless suppression," he added.

If you missed it last week, here's the press conference -- moderated by attorney Heidi Boghosian who also co-hosts LAW AND DISORDER RADIO.

The death toll has risen from a landslide that took place Saturday in Iraq. BBC NEWS reports:

On Saturday, an earth mound adjacent to the Qattarat al-Imam Ali shrine gave way as a result of moisture saturation.

The landslide hit the ceiling of the shrine, which then collapsed on to visitors.

"Any mistake could lead to further collapses," said Abdelrahman Jawdat, a civil defence spokesman.

ALJAZEERA adds:

Between six and eight pilgrims are trapped in the shrine, civil defence spokesman Nawas Sabah Shaker said.

Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed, reporting from the capital Baghdad, said many worshippers had gathered at the shrine during the Shia Muslim holy month of Muharram.

“Heavy machinery was brought to the scene including bulldozers and diggers,” he said. “Family members are standing by, waiting for any news about their loved ones.”

REUTERS notes that six people have now been rescued from the the collapse. AP notes that the death toll has now risen to seven. Sinana Mahmoud (THE NATIONAL) offers this background, "For Shiites, the site is a revered one. They say that when the fourth Caliph Imam Ali, the Prophet Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law, was on his way to the Battle of Siffin in 657 AD (37 Hijri) against Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan, the rebellious governor of Syria, his army was thirsty so he removed a huge and heavy rock to reveal a water spring."

In other news?

October 10th, Iraq held elections. All these months later, they have failed to name a prime minister or a president. MEMO notes:

Sabreen Khalil lost her husband to COVID last year, leaving her to raise seven children alone, but Iraqi government funding to help her and hundreds of thousands of families in poverty is blocked by political stalemate, Reuters reports.

With politicians deadlocked over forming a new government since an election in October, rival Shia Muslim factions in Baghdad, on Friday, continued their weeks-long protests which have prevented Parliament from meeting.

The standoff has raised fears of renewed unrest in a country where militias wield significant power and is already taking a toll on the most vulnerable.

"I am a woman and, all of a sudden, I had to take the responsibility of seven children alone … it broke my back," Khalil said, speaking of the impact of her husband's death.

Sitting on the floor in her one-bedroom brick house in the village of Saada on the outskirts of Baghdad, she said she cannot afford treatment for her chronic illness and that her children have to skip some meals as food prices soar.

People are suffering and many are blaming cult leader Moqtada al-Sadr who took months and months to form a government and failed over and over. He then stomped his feet and had all of his MPs resign from Parliament. They have been replaced with the second runners up in the October vote. Now he wants the Parliament dissolved by the judiciary who has responded that only Parliament has the power to dissolve itself. The United Nations has called for dialogue. Iraq's caretake prime minister echoed that call and organized a meet up this past week.

Guess who chose not to participate?

That's right, cry baby Moqtada.

And yet, he now tries to issue another demand. PRESS TV notes:

Prominent Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr says he has submitted a proposal to the United Nations to hold a public debate with all political factions in Iraq, as the country’s political crisis continues to deepen.

In a post on his Twitter account on Saturday, Sadr wrote that he has not received a tangible response from the Iraqi political parties in this regard, adding that their response did not address the demands of the people or the revolutionaries.

No dialogue unless he controls it? Yes, he's blocking movement again while the Iraqi people suffer. And why does he want to be in charge of a dialogue anyway? Mid-week he explained he boycotted the meeting of various political heads because "I will not sit with the corrupt and those who want evil." Unless, of course, he can be in charge.

We'll wind down with this from Black Alliance for Peace:

The U.S. plan to draw Russia into a proxy war in the Ukraine has turned out to be a monumental debacle, exposing the United States’ cynical plans as well as the limits of U.S. imperial power.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) has consistently analyzed the conflict as manufactured, one that could have been avoided with a real commitment to peace in that part of the world.

But the Biden administration decided war was the method. It needed to suppress Germany and disconnect the Russian economy from the Western European economy.

In May, we called for states to boycott the Summit of the Americas, an event through which the United States has attempted to maintain hegemony through manipulation. The people of our region declared opposition to it, saying one cannot be a partner and a hegemon at the same time. As long as the United States sees our region as its backyard—or its front yard—we will struggle against it.

All of these are indications we are witnessing the development of a new world, in which the possibility of equality, peace, development and stability can be achieved. But it’s quite clear it can only be achieved with collective humanity putting a break on the U.S./EU/NATO axis of domination.

We are proud that BAP has become an integral force in dismantling the U.S. empire. In this issue of our newsletter, you will see some of the political work BAP has been involved in, both in the media and on the ground.

We hope to continue with your support to bring about peace and justice in this world.

RECENT WORK

BAP issued a statement on African Liberation Day. We pulled off a webinar in May to introduce our SOUTHCOM campaign. Then we did another webinar in June about the connection between health and People(s)-Centered Human Rights. Meanwhile, the Ukraine resources page has been updated. Check out the latest AFRICOM Watch Bulletin, featuring an interview with BAP member organization All-African People’s Revolutionary Party member Ahjamu Umi. Plus, keep up with what’s happening in Afghanistan with the Afghanistan News Update.

The following sites updated:

Saturday, August 20, 2022

Idiot of the week

Idiot of the week? Brian Selter.

CNN fired him and cancelled his awful show RELIABLE SOURCE. If you don't know who he is, you missed some major boot licking on live TV over the years. Remember Hunter Biden's laptop? Bri-Bri was among the leading voices saying it wasn't real and that the press should ignore it. And you're saying, "Well a lot of people were wrong in October 2020."

Yes, they were. But most stopped lying by 2021. Two months ago, Brian Stelter was participating in a media disinformation thing on a college campus and he again said there was nothing wrong with any of that. Any of that?

As only C.I. has pointed out, ''that'' included a 'news report' by NYT (B.S.'s former employer) that attacked THE NEW YORK POST for running the story and relied on anonymice supposedly at the paper to tell you that it wasn't an accurate story (it was) and that most of the employees at NYP were unhappy their paper ran the story. Lie.

He didn't think it was wrong that NY POST was banned and kicked off platforms -- Twitter, Facebook, etc.

That lies were used to insist the laptop was fake.

No, even after THE WASHINGTON POST and THE NEW YORK TIMES had finally agreed and published that the laptop was real -- POLITICO beat them on that by several months -- there was Brian Stelter polluting a college campus with his partisan nonsense.

He was useless as a media critic. He was a boot licker and he sucked up to corporate Dems. Some who are glad he's gone are calling him a "leftist." He wishes. I am a leftist. He is a centrist who is a partisan Democrat -- and a corporatist. That's not a leftist.

He thinks he has a glorious career in front of him.

Really?

Is radio staging a comeback?

Because with that face, I don't see him getting another TV show.

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

Friday, August 19, 2022. Joe Biden needs to stop the persecution of Julian Assange, Iraq's stalemate continues as the effects of climate change become worse, Caitlin Johnstone sends Brian Stelter off, and much more.

US President Joe Biden continues to persecute truth teller and journalist Julian Assange. Why? I'm guessing because Julian didn't commit War Crimes. Joe and the US government have avoided punishing those who committed War Crimes but they're going after Julian for exposing War Crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Carlos Rodrigo Zapata Tweets to remind us of a 2020 editorial from THE GUARDIAN:

"The charges against him [Julian Assange] in the US undermine the foundations of democracy and press freedom in both countries."

"Joe Biden may be more willing to listen. The incoming president could let Mr Assange walk free. He should do so."
THE GUARDIAN

#AssangeFree

Quote Tweet

WikiLeaks

@wikileaks

 · 3h

The Guardian view on Julian Assange: do not extradite him | Editorial

"This attack on press freedom must be rejected" @guardian #FreeAssangeNOW https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/18/the-guardian-view-on-julian-assange-do-not-extradite-him?CMP=fb_cif

3:29 AM · Aug 19, 2022

Thus far, Joe hasn't been willing to listen. We need to get louder and demand that Joe listens and stops persecuting Julian Assange. Lorraine Harvey Tweets:

This bogus case against Julian Assange must be dropped. Legal processes have been defiled at every stage of ‘due’ process.
Drop the charges @POTUS
 #USA

The USA constitution’s First and Fourth amendment are at stake.

Quote Tweet

@RT_com

Russia state-affiliated media

 · Aug 17

Julian Assange's lawyers have filed a lawsuit against the CIA, as well as against its former head Mike Pompeo, accusing the agency of illegally recording their conversations and copying data from their devices.

2:11 AM · Aug 19, 2022

At COUNTERPUNCH, Eve Ottenberg points out:

For a good while one could blame Trump for the prosecutorial monstrosity perpetrated on journalist Julian Assange. But now it’s time for Trump to move over. The single worst assault on the first amendment and a free press in recent centuries is no longer solely his. Biden owns it. Biden could end this state persecution of a journalist today, if he felt like it. A persecution that a U.N. expert has called torture. A persecution that could easily lead to Assange’s death.

Amy Goodman and Dennis Moynihan (DEMOCRACY NOW!) note the development this week about illegal spying on attorneys and reporters visiting Julian:

“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.

“I’m a New York lawyer,” Deborah Hrbek, an attorney who met with Assange at the embassy several times, said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit. “I have the right to assume that the U.S. government is not listening to my private and privileged conversations with my clients, and that information about other clients and cases I may have on my phone or laptop are secure from illegal government intrusion. This is not just a violation of our constitutional rights. This is an outrage.”

CIA spying on Julian Assange and his visitors became public through a Spanish court case against a company, UC Global, and its director, David Morales. UC Global was hired by Ecuador in 2012 to provide security for its embassy in London. The CIA, the new lawsuit alleges, recruited UC Global in January 2017, with the help of the late casino billionaire and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, when Morales was at a gun convention in Las Vegas. Morales returned to Spain and, according to the lawsuit, told his employees that “the company would now be operating ‘in the big league’ and for the ‘dark side’ with the CIA.”

This persecution of Julian and the spying on reporters and attorneys demonstrate and out of control US government, one willing to break the law, one willing to go against the Constitution. The persecution has always been outrageous but as we learn just how far the US government has been willing to go, it's even more shocking. "The buck stops here." That means Joe Biden. The world is watching. They are seeing how meaningless claims of democracy and human rights and free speech coming from the US actually is. They are seeing an unethical and out of control government being used to attempt destroy a person. This is outrageous and Joe Biden better grasp this is on him. He could end it -- as he should. His refusal to do so will be noted historical. It will be his legacy. He won't be able to finesse it. He needs to stop the persecution because it's the right thing to do. But if wrong and right don't register with him, he should end the persecution for vanity because, one way or another, this story is coming to a conclusion on his watch and history will remember how he chose to respond.

"This has effectively been a war against truth tellers since the beginning," Sam Husseini observes in the video above and he's right.

Turning to Iraq . . .

Climate change isn't a few years away in Iraq, it's impact can be clearly seen already as the sand storms have increased, as drought has become more common. NEWS.AM noted:

The so-called Garden of Eden in Iraq has suffered from a three-year drought and low rainfall, as well as reduced water flow from rivers and tributaries originating in neighboring Turkey and Iran, AFP reported.

Vast expanses of the once lush marshes of Khuvayza, bordering the border with Iran, have dried up and their vegetation has turned yellow. The same fate befell the popular tourist areas of the Chibaysh swamps.

The swamps are our source of livelihood – we used to fish here, and our livestock could graze and drink, said Ghassed, 35, from a village near Huwayza.

Tony Gamal-Gabriel (PHYS.ORG) adds:

Nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Mesopotamian Marshes suffered under the former dictator Saddam Hussein, who ordered that they be drained in 1991 as punishment for communities protecting insurgents, and to hunt them down.

The wetlands have sporadically gone through years of harsh drought in the past, before being revived by good rainy seasons.

But between August 2020 and this month, 46 percent of the swamplands of southern Iraq, including Huwaizah and Chibayish, suffered total surface water loss, according to Dutch peace-building organization PAX.

THE DAILY SABAH publishes an AFP photo essay on th topic here. What climate change isn't destroying in Iraq currently, its neighbors seem to be. RUDAW reports:

Turkey’s upstream dams have blocked the flow of water into Zakho’s Hizel river, drying it up and leaving many farmers in the area without water.

Farmer Tahir Asaad, who has a garden and about 200 sheep, told Rudaw’s Yousif Mousa that they are now forced to buy water in tankers for irrigation.

"Turkey has blocked the water flow ... we used to have a river where we would wash our utensils and give water to our sheep. It is gone and they [Turkey] have built a dam on it,” Asaad said.

The Hizel river crosses the border of Zakho for 36 kilometers until it reaches the Tigris river, which is a common waterway between the Kurdistan Region and Turkey.

Water scarcity is a severe issue in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region. The war-torn country is the fifth-most vulnerable nation in the world to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity, according to the UN.

However, the issue is exacerbated by the Turkish and Iranian damming of rivers that flow into Iraq, cutting off the increasingly dry nation from much-needed water relief. Ankara has built a mega-dam on the Tigris.

Meanwhile, Iraq's political stalemate continues. October 10th, elections were held. All this time later, no prime minister has been named, no president has been named. It's getting closer to eleven months since the election. THE NEW YORK TIMES' Alissa J. Rubin writes:

Iraqi political leaders spent the last 10 months struggling unsuccessfully to form a government, their country sinking deeper and deeper into political paralysis in the face of growing drought, crippling corruption and crumbling infrastructure.

Then in June, those talks imploded. And now, there is a scramble for power as Iraq’s main political factions vie for the upper hand.

The powerful Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who leads the largest bloc in Parliament, quit the negotiations in frustration, then urged his followers to take to the streets to get what they wanted. Heeding his call, they set up a tent encampment that has blocked access to Parliament for more than two weeks to prevent any government from being voted in.

No, Moqtada does not lead the largest bloc in Parliament. He had a hissy fit, hopped on his Huffy bike and took his marbles and went home when he didn't get his way. He ordered his followers in Parliament to resign. They did.

Moqtada has no bloc in Parliament. They resigned. They can't call the resignations off. They resigned and they've been replaced with the second runners up. ALJAZEERA on June 12th:

Iraqi lawmakers from firebrand Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s bloc resigned on Sunday, the parliamentary speaker said, a move ostensibly designed to end eight months of political paralysis.

“We have reluctantly accepted the requests of our brothers and sisters, representatives of the al-Sadr bloc, to resign,” parliament’s speaker Mohammed al-Halboussi said on Twitter after receiving resignation letters from the 73 lawmakers.

He most recently stamped his feet while insisting that the courts should dissolve the current Parliament. To no one's surprise, the court responded back that only Parliament can do that.

Moqtada doesn't care about the laws, doesn't care about the process.

While Iraqis watch, the western press misses the point.

A historic low participation rate allowed Moqtada to do well. That won't be repeated. If you're following Arabic social media, you know that. You know the outrage building against cult leader Moqtada among Shi'ites. He alienated them before the elections and now he's just outraging them.

Safaa Khalaf (THE NEW ARAB) offers:

The ruling consensus on the formation of an Iraqi government from 2018 until 2022 sacrificed what was left of ideas like a citizenship-based social-political contract and "individual political freedoms". Instead, ever-widening sectarian divisions continued to sow chaos and torpedo aspirations for political consciousness to play any role in the country, in place of which arms were increasingly endorsed as the only guarantor of a temporary and fragile stability.

This consensus ultimately led to the mass uprising known as the 2019 Tishreen protest movement - which could have succeeded in forging a new political system, were it not for the Sadrists' success in infiltrating its ranks.

The current crisis in Iraq cannot be understood without understanding Iraq's Shia-Shia divisions and the declining faith in the idea of "hybrid sectarian harmony".

The fragility of Shi'ite cohesion was clear at the 2018 legislative elections: internal divisions revealed growing aspirations for sole power and control of Iraqi wealth – entailing the removal of competitors. Militarisation and arms proliferation were growing apace. The most dangerous tool being groomed for managing political rivalries, however, was the rage and frustration of Iraq's youth.

"The fragility of Shi'ite cohesion was clear: internal divisions revealed growing aspirations for sole power and control of Iraqi wealth – entailing the removal of competitors"

In the 2018 elections, different Shi'ite groups tried to gain an absolute majority to allow them to discard the old power-sharing structure of the Muhasasa system (the post-2003 ethno-sectarian power-sharing-quota arrangement) – which provided Shia representation within the framework of the state.

Its destruction would allow for a new formula based on handing power to the parliamentary majority. Broad sectarian representation would be replaced with exclusive sectarian representation, while maintaining the entrenched "theo-kleptocratic" system which oversaw the mutual management of corruption.

However, it was the early elections in 2021 which removed the remaining pluralism (within each ethno-sectarian group) and allowed the concentration of power within homogenous blocs which refused to share it with groups with a lower vote-share.

In this way, the Sadrist bloc became representative of the Shias, the Sovereignty-Progress Alliance of the Sunnis, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of the Kurds. Rival forces were sidelined to reach a more stable Muhasasa government which still represented the sects and ethnicities of the three Iraqi regions (north, west and south). More entrenched regional division appears the likely result, as does the slide towards dictatorship.

On the media, Caitlin Johnstone notes CNN has fired Brian Stelter:

I may not always have agreed with Brian Stelter, and he might not have been the most talented or most hardworking or smartest or best looking guy on TV, and sure he's made a lot of mistakes and has spent his entire career kissing up to power, and nobody wanted to watch his show,

5:34 PM · Aug 18, 2022

And this is from Margaret Kimberley's latest at BLACK AGENDA REPORT:

Progressives love the FBI? Leftists embrace the Espionage Act? Of course, one man is responsible for this madness, and he is none other than Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States. The fallout from the FBI search conducted at Trump’s home shows the rank confusion spread by people who call themselves liberal but who are as dangerous as anyone on the right. From the moment that Trump announced the raid they were in full fascist mode, even as they claimed to be fighting fascism.

Trump did what he usually does, play fast and loose with the truth. Of all former presidents only he would ignore subpoenas and claim to have declassified documents when he hadn’t done so. He can’t get out of his own way and thus makes himself a target. But Democrats should know that the search is seen as nothing more than a personal attack against him. Millions of people who love Trump will love him all the more and conclude that the raid was meant to keep him from running for president again. Liberal dead-enders will be happy, but everyone else will say that something rotten was conducted at Mar a Lago.

Attorney General Merrick Garland says that the documents were subpoenaed but the former president didn’t respond. The FBI search warrant states that the search encompassed three different issues: gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, which is part of the Espionage Act; concealment, removal, or mutilation concerning the handling of records and reports; and the destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy, which is part of a section dealing with obstruction of justice. The warrant also states a search for information on Roger Stone and on the President of France.

Aside from the item descriptions, no one knows what Trump had or what the FBI found. Leaks from the Justice Department indicate something about nuclear weapons, but no one knows what that means. The lack of information hasn’t stopped the speculation which Trump always causes. There is conjecture that he was selling information to Russia or to Saudi Arabia or was plotting some other treason. There are even claims that documents were buried with his recently deceased ex-wife. It is fascinating that there can be so much guesswork about issues no one can know.

The years long Russiagate investigation is responsible for ordinarily sensible people losing their minds. Hardly anyone recalls that the charge of collusion was actually disproven, that Robert Mueller only indicted for process crimes, such as those which occur when people let down their guard and talk to the FBI. Most Americans who know the name Paul Manafort think he was a Russian spy but don’t know that he went to jail for tax and bank fraud. Propaganda works very well when it is repeated over and over again.

Worse than the silly Trump inspired derangement is the way that those who call themselves left or progressive have chosen to defend federal law enforcement and bad legislation like the Espionage Act. The Espionage Act is a relic from the earliest days of the cold war, and Woodrow Wilson’s infamous Palmer Raids which targeted the left for persecution and prosecution. Barack Obama used it more than all previous presidents combined in order to prosecute journalists who published what the state didn’t want us to know. As for the FBI, its Counter Intelligence Program, COINTELPRO, created dissension in the liberation movement, targeted individuals for prosecution, spied on Martin Luther King and told him to commit suicide, and killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark among others. The FBI continues to use informants to entrap Black people in phony terror cases.

The following sites updated: