Monday, July 29, 2024

Robert Downey Jr.

It's not the return of Iron Man, but I'll take it.  Big news from Marvel regarding Dr. Doom:


Robert Downey Jr has stunned fans with the news that he is returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The actor, 59, will be starring as the villain Doctor Doom in a new Avengers film titled Avengers: Doomsday.

The Oppenheimer star surprised crowds at Comic-Con in San Diego on Saturday night (27 July) as he was dramatically unveiled in the new role during a Marvel panel.




It was also revealed that the casts of Fantastic Four (Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Thunderbolts* (Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, and more) would be part of the next two Avengers films Doomsday and Secret Wars.

Kevin Feige also confirmed that Joe and Anthony Russo, directors of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, would be returning to direct the two upcoming Avengers movies. That's despite Kevin Feige previously stating that wasn't happening.

The Russo brothers is actually the  best news of all.


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


Monday, July 29, 2024. A woman was shot in the Green Zone and Iraqis say the shot came from the American Embassy, Iraqi women protest child marriage, the government of Israel continues bombing schools in Gaza, and much more.


Last night, we noted the following:

Iraq's the focus tonight.  There's too much going on and practically zero US coverage.  That includes an incident today that could end up international incident.  Dr Abdul Amir al-Hazali is an Iraqi MP.  His wife was apparently shot today and he is placing the blame on the US government.  The wife is reported injured, not dead.









 











 




Not really sure why the US media hasn't covered this.  Is this not a real story?  Is it made up?  Especially if it's made up -- some internet hoax -- that would be reason to note it. 



Though it remains uncovered by the US press, it's not made up.  The incident happened last week.  Abdul Amir Al-Ghazali spoke with ALSUMARIA and explained to them that the shooting took place on Friday while his wife was praying.  The Badr Organization accuses the US government of converting the US Embassy in Baghdad into a "military base," condemns the action citing the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961, and, citing the Iraqi Constitution (Articles 1, 15, 50 and 109) calls for Iraq's legislative and executive branches to expel the US military from Iraq.


I did not have a good Sunday health wise, so maybe it's just me, but I fail to see how this news was ignored by the US media and continues to be.  Exactly what are they paid for.  This is rather basic.  Iraqis are outraged because a woman was shot and ended up in the hospital.  The shooting took place in the heavily fortified Green Zone and, they say, came from the US Embassy.  


The Badr Organization is part of the alliance that controls the Parliament.  


All by itself, a shooting of a civilian in the Green Zone is rare enough to qualify as news.  When the Iraqi people are saying that the shot came from the US Embassy, that makes it even more newsworthy and that's before you get to the fact that the shooting could lead to (something needs to) the withdrawal of all US military from Iraq.


In other news, IRAQI NEWS AGENCY reports on the death of an MP, "Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani offered his condolences on Sunday on the death of Member of Parliament Gandhi Mohammed Abdul Karim Al-Kasnazani, saying that "with this loss we have lost a national figure with a good impact."  The fifty-two year-old 


Baghdad's Tahrir Square was the scene of a protest Sunday.  SHAFAQ NEWS reports:


Hundreds of Iraqi women took to the streets of Baghdad on Sunday to protest against proposed amendments to the country’s personal status law, expressing particular outrage over provisions that would legalize child marriage.

Demonstrators, including members of women’s rights organizations, gathered in Tahrir Square, carrying signs that read "No to child marriage" and "The era of child brides is over." The protesters denounced the proposed amendments to Law 88 of 1959, arguing that they would roll back women’s rights.


Here are some photos of the protest. 





AP's Hadi Mizban has a photo of the protest here.  ALSUMARIA notes that some participants carried sings stating "THE ERA OF THE CONCUBINE IS OVER."  Not really sure why AL-MONITOR's Shelly Kittleson is insisting few turned out.   ALSUMARIA's video report here also doesn't bear out that only a trickle of people were present.  It also needs to be remembered that protesting in Iraq is not as easy as protesting in Iraq.  Those who protested showed determination and courage.


Turning to Gaza,  ALJAZEERA notes, "The Israeli army is investigating a video posted by its soldiers showing Israeli troops blowing up Rafah’s main drinking water tank, according to the Haaretz newspaper."  War Crimes.




 

Only 14 percent of the Gaza Strip is not under the Israeli military ongoing “evacuation orders”, according to the UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini.

Recurrent mass enforced displacement is the dominating scene with the Israeli military ordering the residents of the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps to leave their homes.

The majority of the displaced population is flowing to the Deir el-Balah city that is already packed with displaced families and has no sufficient space or resources to accommodate people.


Community members e-mailed on Sunday asking that Monday's snapshot include a long section from Saturday.  I was responding to an e-mail from a crazy Jill Stein supporter.  They noted that it also responded to a segment on a show that we didn't highlight.  Honestly, I only heard the segment this morning -- and only part of it.  I'm real lucky that it didn't post here on Friday.  It's a topic that would normally get posted.  I got lucky.  It should never be posted and it will never be posted here.  And, yes, my comments to the Jill Stein supporter could equally have been addressed to the host and her two idiot guests.  So here's part of Saturday's entry that applies to who actually has power to end the US arming of the Israeli government and I'm putting it between dashed lines:

------------------------------------------------------------

Why don't you and Jill Stein put some pressure on Joe?

He's the only one who can stop the assault on Gaza -- the only American -- at this point.

In this community, we've focused on reality and what can be done.  That's why we've called out Josh Shapiro this entire month.  Elaine's "Hell no to Shapiro" and Ruth's "Josh Shapiro adds nothing to the ticket" and Rebecca's "shapiro not only supports genocide, he also covers..." and this from the July 5th snapshot:


Are you getting just what a piece of crap David Sirota is?  

Why bring this up now?

David's been in the conversation regarding the nominee.  David wants Joe Biden out.  Okay, he's not alone on that.  There are others who want the same.  But David's also pimping a replacement: Josh Shapiro the governor of Pennsylvania who doesn't believe in mask mandates or addressing climate change.  But for our focus here?  Let's note this from ALJAZEERA:

While he may not have the national name recognition that his fellow governors Newsom and Whitmer enjoy, Shapiro is considered one of the top candidates to potentially replace Biden.

The governor, who previously served as Pennsylvania’s attorney general, comfortably won his election in the Mid-Atlantic swing state in 2022. Since taking office, he has had positive approval ratings.

With regards to the war in Gaza, Shapiro has been a staunch supporter of Israel.

“The whataboutism used by some to justify Hamas’s unprovoked actions is ignorant and wrong,” he said last year. “There is no moral equivalency here. Israel has a right to defend itself.”

Shapiro has also been outspoken in denouncing what he describes as anti-Semitism by protesters who oppose the war in Gaza.

In April, he likened pro-Palestinian student protesters to the Ku Klux Klan. The campus protests, however, have been largely peaceful, and student leaders say accusations of anti-Semitism misrepresent their aim: to encourage their universities to divest from Israeli companies linked to the country’s human rights abuses.

“We have to query whether or not we would tolerate this if this were people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about people who are African American in our communities,” Shapiro told CNN.


And that's who David Sirota supports.  David wants Joe Biden out and he wants Shapiro in.  How exactly is David a progressive whatever it is that he calls himself these days?  (I just call him an ass regardless.)  Maybe David Sirota needs to sit his tired ass down and keep it down?  (For the record, he never apologized to Tina.)




This is a hopeful moment for the whole left-liberal coalition. The vibes, for once, are good. Almost every leftist I know is excited about Harris and thinks Trump is beatable. With a newly united party behind her, there are only so many ways Harris can screw it up, but one seems all too plausible: She could select Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate.

On paper, it’s understandable why Shapiro is among the leading candidates reportedly being vetted by Harris. Like nearly all of the veep contenders, he’s a white male governor with a centrist reputation. At 51, he’s even younger than Harris and a fresh face, having only held his current job for 18 months. He has already shown himself to be a more than capable administrator, generating a lot of good publicity for repairing a damaged section of Interstate 95 within two weeks. Most importantly, Pennsylvania is the most valuable swing state in play, worth 19 electoral votes, and Shapiro is very popular there.

Unfortunately, Shapiro also stands out among the current field of potential running mates as being egregiously bad on Palestine. It’s not just that he, like many Democrats, is an outspoken supporter of Israel—though he certainly is, having championed Israel’s war against Hamas consistently and without any apparent concern for Palestinian civilians. Shapiro has, moreover, done far more than most Democrats to attack pro-Palestine antiwar demonstrators, in ways that call into question his basic commitment to First Amendment rights.

In his previous role as Pennsylvania attorney general, Shapiro championed the state’s constitutionally dubious anti-BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) law against Ben & Jerry’s after the ice cream maker refused to license its product for sale in Israeli settlements. “BDS is rooted in antisemitism,” Shapiro wrote in a statement in 2021, as he condemned a company named for its two Jewish American founders. “The stated goal of this amorphous movement is the removal of Jewish citizens from the region and I strongly oppose their efforts.”

As governor, Shapiro’s particular animus against pro-Palestine activism has only grown more apparent and troubling. Last December, he played an active role in the GOP-orchestrated sacking of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill. During a visit to Goldie, the popular Philadelphia restaurant co-owned by the Israeli-born celebrity chef Michael Solomonov, Shapiro condemned Magill’s testimony on alleged antisemitism on the Ivy League campus before Representative Elise Stefanik, the MAGA right’s grand inquisitor. “That was an unacceptable statement from the president of Penn,” Shapiro said, referring to Magill’s unwillingness to accept Stefanik’s slippery framing on what constitutes antisemitism. “Frankly, I thought her comments were absolutely shameful. It should not be hard to condemn genocide.” Magill resigned four days after her testimony and three days after Shapiro’s statement, legitimizing the GOP’s wider assault on academic freedom, which would be repeated successfully against Harvard President Claudine Gay weeks later.

In April, Shapiro’s office baselessly claimed that a peaceful pro-Palestine encampment on the Penn campus threatened student safety. “If the universities in accordance with their policies can’t guarantee the safety and security and well-being of the students, then I think it is incumbent upon a local mayor or local governor or local town councilor, whoever is the local leadership there, to step in and enforce the law,” Shapiro told Politico at the time. In May, he urged Penn to shut down the encampment completely. “The University of Pennsylvania has an obligation to their safety,” he said, once again alluding to nonexistent threats to the physical well-being of Jewish students. “It is past time for the university to act, to address this, to disband the encampment, and to restore order and safety on campus.” The university complied; one day and 33 arrests later, Shapiro’s office said Penn “made the right decision.”

That same week, The New York Times profiled Shapiro as one to watch in his party with the headline “A Rising Democrat Leans Into the Campus Fight Over Antisemitism.” In that piece, Shapiro made clear the low regard in which he holds pro-Palestine campus activists. “If you had a group of white supremacists camped out and yelling racial slurs every day, that would be met with a different response than antisemites camped out, yelling antisemitic tropes,” he told the Times. (This echoed a statement made in an earlier interview in which he compared campus protesters to the Ku Klux Klan.) Then, in an executive order, Shapiro updated his administration’s code of conduct to forbid state employees from engaging in “scandalous or disgraceful” behavior, a vaguely worded instruction that civil libertarians immediately interpreted as threatening pro-Palestine speech.

Shapiro is an observant Jew with personal ties to Israel; on October 7, he tweeted, “Our family has shared many special moments in Israel and our hearts break for those living this horror now.” If selected as Harris’s running mate and subsequently elected, he would become the first Jewish vice president in American history (a distinction narrowly missed by the late Joe Lieberman when Republicans stole the 2000 election).



Get it?  You focus on what is doable.  If you want to call out Kamala, call her out for considering Josh Shapiro as a running mate.  He cannot be the running mate.  If you want to end the assault on Gaza before the end of the year, pressure Joe Biden who remains the president.


Need more realities?  Jill Stein's not going to be the next president.  Here's some more: And she shouldn't.  She's a Karen that traffics in racism and flies to Moscow to sit with a butcher -- sit at a table with a butcher and an abuser of human rights.  You can feel whatever you want about Ukraine.  You can be backing that government or you can be against it.  But that doesn't change who Vladimir Putin is and has been for years.  I do not want the US (further) involved in that war.  But long before that, Vladimir -- who's held power since 1999 -- had earned his reputation as a despot.  

Jill flew to Moscow to make nice with him, sit at his table and get her picture taken.

She's not fit to be president and, again, she fortunately never will be.

But she can mislead people, she can fool and trick people and, in doing so, still real votes.


Donald Trump met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Friday, claiming that "no president has done what I've done for Israel".

The meeting signalled that both men are looking to ease tension that developed since Mr Trump left office in January 2021.

Warmly clasping hands, Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu greeted each other outside the former president's home in their first face-to-face meeting in almost four years.

About 50 pro-Palestinian protesters were on the bridge leading to the resort.

Given a possible return of Mr Trump to the White House, Mr Netanyahu – whom CNN reported had requested the meeting – was expected to be driven to mend fences.


If you care about Palestinians, you're not voting for vanity candidate Jill Stein -- 74 years old and planning to be the Green Party's presidential nominee for the third time.  It's a wasted vote.

I don't say that about Chase Oliver or about Cornel West or about Claudia De la Cruz.  I don't think they're going to win but they are running real campaigns.  If they speak to you, you should absolutely vote for them.

But there are people who are not real candidates -- Jill Stein is one, Robert Kennedy Jr is another and Joseph Kishore is a third.  They're jokes, at best.  

You vote for who you want.  It's your choice.  I'm not going to judge you on it unless you vote for destruction and that's what a vote for Donald, Jill, Junior or Kishore is.

---------------------------------------------------------

Direct your criticism to Joe Biden.  He's the only one with the power to end this currently.  Otherwise, you're just wasting time while Palestinians die.


THE NATIONAL notes this morning:

An Israeli air strike near a school in Rafah killed five Palestinians on Monday, the official Wafa news agency has reported.

Paramedics from the Palestinian Red Crescent retrieved the bodies following a strike near the Al Firdaws school in the west of the city, Wafa said.

It comes after five others were killed in shelling on the nearby city of Khan Younis.

Almost 39,400 Palestinians have been killed across Gaza since the war began on October 7, according to figures from the enclave's health ministry.



Saturday, the government of Israel attacked a Palestinian school.   AP's Wafaa Shurafa and Sam Metz report, "Israeli airstrikes hit a school used by displaced Palestinians in central Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 30 people including several children, as the country’s negotiators prepared to meet international mediators about a proposed cease-fire."  Since October 7th, the Israeli government has attacked over 200 schools and universities in Gaza. Along with the thirty killed, at least 100 more people were left injured.  NPR explains, "Blood was everywhere in the minutes that followed the strike, with pieces of flesh visible on the stairs and handicapped residents trying to flee, according to NPR reporter Anas Baba, who witnessed the immediate aftermath."  Australia's ABC notes, "At Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, ambulances raced wounded Palestinians into the medical facility. Some of the wounded also arrived on foot, their clothes stained with blood."  This was supposed to be a safe area -- as defined by the Israeli government.  However, this week, they began demanding evacuations.  NDTV notes, "The United Nations said more than 180,000 Palestinians have fled Khan Yunis since the Israeli operation began on Monday."  NPR adds, "The United Nations currently estimates more than 80% of Gaza's residents -- more than 2 million people -- are under similar evacuation orders across the territory."
 

Gaza remains under assault. Day 297 of  the assault in the wave that began in October.  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence."   CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund."  ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them."  NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza."  The slaughter continues.  It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service.  Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide."   The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher.  United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse."   THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza death toll rises to 39,363 killed with 90,923 wounded." Months ago,  AP  noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing."  February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home."  February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:

  



April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons.  In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."
 

As for the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."


This morning, THE NATIONAL reports:


A six-year-old child has died of starvation at a hospital in central Gaza, taking the total official number of malnutrition-related deaths to 39.

Ali Anas al Tatar, 6, was pronounced dead at the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, according to the official Wafa news agency.

Earlier this month, a group of UN experts said there was "no doubt" that famine is spreading across the enclave.

Images of emaciated children have become commonplace as Gazans starve, with aid deliveries blocked after Israel's seizure of the Rafah border crossing. 

The following sites updated:





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