Thursday, August 5, 2021

Yeah, it matters

Same as the last two posts ("Matt Damon, please stop talking" and "Suck a dick, Matt, suck a dick") still on Matt Damon. Why? I was going to cover something else but then read 15 e-mails defending Matt and excusing his use of the word f**got, explaining that he's one of us (meaning Democrats, not the LGBTQ+ community) and we need to look the other way. Oh, hell no.

Rolling Stone reports GLAAD's response:

“The conversations that have arisen after Matt Damon’s original interview and subsequent remarks today are an important reminder that this word, or any word that aims to disparage and disrespect LGBTQ people, has no place in mainstream media, social media, classrooms, workplaces, and beyond,” Anthony Allen Ramos, GLAAD’s Head of Talent, wrote in the statement. “There needs to be accountability at a time when anti-LGBTQ slurs remain rampant today and can fuel discrimination and stereotypes, especially when used by those outside of the community to defame or describe LGBTQ people.”

At USA TODAY, David Oliver writes:

Not to mention the fact the word has a deadly connotation, too: "Countless gay men have been attacked, beaten and even killed with that word being the last thing they hear, but sure, go Matt," Twitter user @TJ_Knight wrote.

Straight and cisgender people often wonder why the LGBTQ community doesn't shut up about their queerness.
To those people, let me say: This is why.
If someone as high-profile as Damon, with unfettered access to educational materials, has just learned that you can't say the "f-word" anymore, no matter the context – and that you shouldn't have said it at all in the first place – what stops anyone else?
[. . .]
Statistics bear the importance of promoting acceptance. Queer kids contemplate killing themselves at alarming rates. According to The Trevor Project, 42% of LGBTQ young people "seriously considered" suicide this past year alone. That's nearly half of LGBTQ youth. Read that back: Nearly. Half. And more than half of them were transgender and nonbinary.
Every time someone slips in a slur like the "f-word," they should stare at that statistic until it sinks in.

Like a lot of us at first, Michael J. Stern felt the interview had to be misrepresented, that surely Matt Damon didn't say what he was being said to have said. So he subscribed to The Times of London to read the original source. He found that it was exactly as reported:

In the past few months, while eating a meal with his family, Damon made a joke and referred to a gay man as a “f-----.” This upset one of his daughters, and when Damon defended himself by saying he had used the word in a 2003 movie, suggesting that if it was in a movie it was OK, his daughter was having none of it. She went to her room and wrote what he called a “treatise” on why it’s wrong to use that word to refer to gays. It was his daughter’s effort that persuaded Damon to, as he put it, “retire the f-slur.”
So we’re clear, the "f-slur" is a hateful term used by people to demean gay men. It is frequently connected with the threat of violence – like when a bunch of thugs thump baseball bats on the side of their truck and scream it as they drive by a gay man. And it is often twisted into the malevolence of actual violence – like when one of the men who murdered Matthew Shepard referred to him as a “f--” who "needed killing," after beating Matthew bloody, tying him to a rail fence and leaving him to die on a cold Wyoming prairie.
That it took Damon’s daughter, in 2021, to explain to him why it’s wrong to use this slur left me in a state of nausea composed of equal parts shock, anger and sadness.

At The Mary Sue, Briana Lawrence notes:

I really don’t need to know that, in 2021, there are people who still don’t get why an extremely common gay slur in use for more than a century is bad. I don’t need to know that their children are having to teach them something that should be common knowledge at this point. It’s not like this slur is new territory, for decades its primary use was to hurt the queer community.
And really, the most frustrating part is the fact that the queer community is expected to accept what Matt Damon’s saying here. We’re supposed to praise him for altering his mindset, focus the narrative on his feelings and his supposed growth instead of the horrific realization that in 2021 people are still using gay slurs at the dinner table in an attempt to tell a joke.
And even worse, we’re supposed to congratulate them for stopping.
While you were going through this moment of self-discovery, Mr. Damon, I was having to come to terms with the fact that people like you still have a lot of learning to do in regards to not calling me a slur that’s older than my 30+ self. By you revealing this bit of information about yourself, you now have folks telling the queer community that they shouldn’t be so hard on you because at least you made an attempt.

From GAWKER:

Because the comment received reactions online that were decidedly not “we are proud of Matt Damon for his fearless retirement of the ‘f-slur,’” Damon has released a lengthy statement to Variety in an effort to correct, or at least an attempt to adjust, the record. Instead of the family scene he described, during which his daughter wrote him a letter to explain why his recent use of a word in a joke was incorrect even after he told her it was “a joke!,” it seems the scene was actually … a different scene entirely. A scene during which the whole family united in their non-use, ever, of the “f-slur” (now referenced, somewhat jarringly, as “f*g” and “f****t”) and their commitment to supporting the LGBTQ+ community; a hot commodity lately.

 



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


 Thursday, August 5, 2021.  What's going on with the Talabanis?


Starting in the US where THE HILL reports: 


Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Wednesday said her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney (R), is “deeply troubled” about the state of the Republican Party.

“My dad is deeply troubled about where our party is, deeply troubled about where the country is,” Cheney said during an event hosted by the Aspen Institute.

She said her father, who served under former President George W. Bush, has been a “tremendous source of advice and guidance and wisdom for me.”



That's where she gets her "advice and guidance and wisdom" from?  Well that certainly explains why she's so damn stupid, doesn't it?


I thought she was just so repulsive and stupid because of karma for being a deferment baby.   That's what she was.  Her father who destroyed Iraq was a young man once.  And the US was at war with Vietnam.  And Dick Cheney didn't want to go.  So he had Liz and the others in the litter.  


As Timothy Noah (SLATE) explained in 2004:


 Cheney’s unself-consciousness about this is (or at least was) so pronounced that in 1989 he told George C. Wilson of the Washington Post, “I had other priorities in the ‘60s than military service.”

What Chatterbox never realized until recently, however, is that Cheney’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth Cheney, likely owes her very existence to her father’s avoidance of the Vietnam draft.

The Washington Post’s Phil McCombs made the intimate calculations in a profile published in April 1991, when Cheney was defense secretary. The timeline:

Aug. 29, 1964: Dick and Lynne Cheney marry.May 19, 1965: The Selective Service classifies Dick Cheney 1-A, “available immediately for military service.”July 28, 1965: President Lyndon Johnson says draft calls will be doubled.Oct. 26, 1965: The Selective Service declares that married men without children, who were previously exempted from the draft, will now be called up. Married men with children remain exempt.Jan. 19, 1966: The Selective Service reclassifies Dick Cheney 3-A, “deferred from military service because service would cause hardship upon his family,” because his wife is pregnant with their first child.July 28, 1966: Elizabeth Cheney is born.Jan. 30, 1967: Dick Cheney turns 26 and therefore becomes ineligible for the draft.

Dedicated students of obstetrics will observe that Elizabeth Cheney’s birth date falls precisely nine months and two days after the Selective Service publicly revoked its policy of not drafting childless husbands. This would seem to indicate that the Cheneys, though doubtless planning to have children sometime, were seized with an untamable passion the moment Dick Cheney became vulnerable to the Vietnam draft. And acted on it. Carpe diem!

Who says government policy can’t affect human behavior?


That's Dick Cheney.  A War Hawk unless he has to serve and then he has 'better' things to do.  And he's hailed as hero by his daughter that got him out of serving.  Liz is a War Hawk as well.  Why didn't she serve?  It's interesting how so many War Hawks are so quick to find something else to do but are more than happy to send others to fight wars.  


Iraq is an ongoing tragedy.  Maybe Liz Cheney needs to grasp that her father is a War Criminal and no one needs to hear from him or her?  Sorry that I can't join the faux resistance in rooting on a piece of trash like Liz Cheney or her father.


Sorry that I can't overlook the million-plus Iraqis who are dead or the others who have been left wounded, the ongoing suffering, to celebrate the hideous Dick Cheney and his butt ugly daughter.


Before we move outside the US, we'll note this statement from Senator Dick Durbin's office:


Durbin Statement On Senate Committee Vote On Repeal Of 2002 Iraq AUMF

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) released the following statement regarding today’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote on the repeal of the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) in Iraq:

“Our Constitution is clear—only the United States Congress has the power to declare war.  For too long, Congress has abdicated this most serious of responsibilities.  I support this bipartisan effort to terminate the Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Iraq.  As one of only 23 Senators to vote against the 2002 Iraq War authorization, it is long overdue that we turn the page on this war.”

In a speech on the Senate floor today, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) reiterated his intention to bring the repeal up for a vote in the Senate later this year.


Let's move over to northern Iraq, to the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region.  Amberin Zaman (AL-MONITOR) reports:


The power struggle for leadership of Iraqi Kurdistan’s second most powerful political party has escalated once again, as one of the contenders declared he was not pulling out of the fight, raising fears of protracted instability in what remains the most secure and Western-friendly part of Iraq.

Lahur Talabani, the ousted co-chair of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), declared Tuesday that authorities had issued a warrant for his arrest and dozens of men both armed and unarmed had gathered outside his home in Sulaimaniyah over the past two days in a bid to scare him into leaving the country.

He was shorn of all of his powers in a bloodless coup by his cousins Bafel Talabani and Qubad Talabani last month. He said he had no intention of caving and would “face this plot head-on” and “will not leave my nation until my last breath.”

The drama is unfolding against a backdrop of mounting public fury with the elites that share power in the Kurdistan Regional Government — namely, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by the Barzani family, and the PUK that was founded by Bafel and Qubad’s late father, Jalal Talabani. Nechirvan Barzani is the president of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and his cousin Masrour Barzani is the prime minister. Qubad Talabani is the deputy prime minister and, unlike Lahur Talabani who is openly hostile to the Barzanis, has excellent relations with the KDP.

 
The Talibanis continue to struggle.  It's hard to overcome lying to the voters.  That's what the Talabanis did to hold on to power.  They betrayed the people.  Jalal was presidnet of Iraq.  He had a stroke and they lied for over a year.  Jalal wasn't able to speak.  He wasn't aware of his surroundings for the bulk of the eighteen months he was out of Iraq -- he was in Germany.  And, no, he couldn't carry out his duties.  But the Talabani family lied over and over to the Iraqi people.  The Talabani family even posed his body for photos to try to trick people.

They are still having to address that.  It's what fueled Groan's prominence.  It was just another struggling political party with CIA-seed money until the Talabanis tripped over their own ego.  It's so very interesting how you have a huge story that has impacted the PUK, has harmed it and it's a story that the western press really never told -- not then or since.  

We'll note a Tweet from Joel Wing:

After Lahur Talabani refused to leave Iraq PUK and KDP media posted video accusing his brothers of corruption
PUK media outlets release video accusing Lahur Sheikh Jangi’s brothers of extortion
nrttv
rttv.com
1:05 PM · Aug 3, 2021



Head of the Kurdistan Veteran Peshmerga Association Jamil Hawrami said on Wednesday (August 4) that no conclusions were reached during a meeting of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s (PUK) Politburo earlier in the day with regard to the power struggle between party co-presidents, Bafel Talabani and Lahur Sheikh Jangi.

The meeting was chaired by Talabani, but Sheikh Jangi was absent. The two are engaged in a battle for factional primacy within the party.

A readout of Wednesday’s conference lacked substance about what was discussed, beyond the general political situation within the party and the upcoming parliamentary election in October.

Although it had been simmering for months, Talabani and Sheikh Jangi’s rivalry exploded into public on July 8, when Talabani and his younger brother, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani, began a campaign to oust Sheikh Jangi’s allies from leadership positions within the party’s affiliated security forces.

During an appearance on NRT’s Tawtwe interview program, Hawrami said that the powerful PUK General Leadership Council is expected to meet soon to discuss the dispute, appearing to indicate that that body’s role could be more influential than the private meetings between the major players in the party that have taken place so far.



The family dysfunction plays out on the public stage.  Ara Tweets:


Bafel Talabani has sent forces to Lahur Sheikh Jangi his house. Bafel sent him a final letter giving Lahur the opportunity to leave Kurdistan but Lahur rejected it.
4:57 PM · Aug 4, 2021



There is a whole story about the betrayals of the Talabanis.  They are out of touch and have demonstrated that repeatedly.  After deceiving the country about Jalal's health -- he should have been removed from office for being incapacitated -- what was the family's next big public move?  To do the US government's bidding.  A Talabani rushes back to Iraq, from his home in the US (his home in the US, that's where his home is) and opposed the KRG non-binding resolution asking whether Kurds would rather be part of Iraq or their own autonomous nation.


Cheered on by the US press, he was a bit of a celebrity . . . outside of Kurdistan.  That resolution passed by approximately 95%.  Do you get how out of step the Talabanis are with their fellow Kurds?  Do you get the damage the family continues to do to the PUK.


Sure, they get US tax payer money to line their own pockets but, at some point, they need to grasp that they won't get that money if they have no influence over the Kurds.  And they're approaching that point.  Soon they may not be able to afford pricey homes across the US.  Zack Kopplin (THE NEW REPUBLIC) noted last year:


Bribing one politician is bad. Bribing all the politicians is worse. The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating a group of companies in Kurdistan, Iraq’s semi-independent northern region, that appears to be doing the latter in order to secure a monopoly on Pentagon fuel contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

A previous New Republic investigation outlined how Kurdish and American firms used shell companies with connections to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the region’s two major political parties, to dominate fuel sales to the U.S. military and inflate prices. But PUK-aligned groups aren’t the only ones cashing in on these American fuel purchases: A tangled network of corruption illustrates how ostensible rivals can cooperate to rip off the Defense Department.

According to Kurdish government documents provided to the Government Accountability Project, where I work, additional shell companies also connect the fuel-fleecing to the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the region’s other major political faction, led by former President Massoud Barzani and his powerful family, a clan of American-sponsored kleptocrats. The billionaire Barzanis are Kurdistan’s “unofficial monarchs,” said Kamal Chomani, a nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and editor in chief of the Kurdistan Times, an independent news outlet. “We always referred to them as the Mafia,” said a former U.S. government adviser in Iraq, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

The Barzani family’s assets span the globe. “It was never practical to keep track of that stuff,” a former U.S. anti-corruption official said about the vast Barzani holdings, which were spread from Syria to Switzerland. And, in an awkward twist, some of the millions swindled from the U.S. military may have ended up as investments in California’s luxury real estate market.

While the scope of the Barzanis’ wealth is vast, its source is simple: The money comes from Kurdistan’s rich oil and gas industry and deals like the Pentagon fuel purchases. Requests for comment sent to an adviser for Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, as well as to a public relations firm that previously worked for the Barzani family, went unanswered. 

Tracing the Kurdish fuel deals leads to a Virginia-based logistics company, DGCI. For at least half a decade, DGCI has been the Pentagon’s go-to fuel provider in Kurdistan and has been dogged by questions about its connections to Kurdish politicians.

Most recently, DGCI was contracted by the U.S. military to deliver wildly overpriced jet fuel, at rates as high as $10 a gallon, to an American base at the international airport in Erbil, Kurdistan’s capital. The Erbil airport is a key staging point for fuel deliveries into Syria, part of America’s continued involvement in that country’s civil war.

[. . .]


In Kurdistan, monopolies happen because you have power or pay off those who do. DGCI is paired with a Kurdish conglomerate called Zozik Group; together, they share ownership of a subsidiary called Triple Arrow. Zozik, which did not respond to my requests for comment, has faced long-standing allegations that it’s a channel for bribes to PUK officials, as detailed in the earlier New Republic investigation.

But PUK connections alone don’t explain DGCI’s overpriced deliveries to Erbil, which is outside the party’s primary territory. Even early in the U.S. occupation of Iraq, State Department officials conceded internally that corruption in Erbil “centers more on the Barzani clan,” according to diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks. In Erbil, “the Barzanis have to have at least half of the shares of big businesses,” said Abdulla Hawez, a Kurdish journalist and researcher. Sources said that Zozik and DGCI cooperated with companies linked to Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party bloc in order to deliver fuel to the U.S. government.


The Barzanis greed is so obvious that even THE NEW YORK TIMES has covered the $47 billion Beverly Hills mansion that US taxpayers appear to be fotting the bill on.


Kanaa Ayoub Tweets:


Red circleRed circleDozens of unknown armed men flocked to Beit
@LahurTalabany
after the PUK leadership asked him to hand over all wanted persons and leave Kurdistan. Lahur Talabani is Iran's upper hand in Kurdistan and the architect of the 2017 delivery of Kirkuk to alhashd Alshabi and Iran
Image
Image
Image
Image
11:12 AM · Aug 3, 2021



There is a huge story that's being ignored by the bulk of western media.



The following sites updated:






Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Suck a dick, Matt, suck a dick

anak

 

 

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Scary and Repugnant Ana Kasparian" went up earlier this week.

 

 

 

 Let me return to Matt Damon and his ever changing stories (see "Matt Damon, please stop talking "). I. Do. Not. Care.


Just shut up. I'm not big on his efforts to spin this. Right now, he's saying, "I do not use slurs of any kind." Really? So your daughter just got up and left the dinner table for no reason? Maybe it was something you did? Did you fart, Matt? Cut a cheesy, greasy one at the dinner table and that's why she fled?

Matt used the term and used it in front of his daughter last month. I don't need to hear anything else. He keeps changing his story and trying to dig his way out. It's not happening. Before, he seemed really out of it (to not know in 2021 that calling someone a f**got wasn't funny). Now he seems like a big liar.

He really needs to just shut up. He gets more homophobic each year and we've all noticed it. Ben Affleck has never once whined, "People thought I was gay!" or "People joked I was gay!" But little Matty had to have a freak fest just a few years back about how mean people were to say he and his childhood buddy Ben were lovers.

That's one of the main reasons I respect someone like Ben. But I have no use for Matt. And for him to claim he didn't realize it was wrong to use that term? Gee, Matt, guess that explains why you had your little hissy fit over people thinking you were gay. Guess that was about the meanest thing anyone could ever say about you. Suck a dick, Matt. 

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
 

Wednesday, August 4, 2021. The AUMF is back in the news, the Senate pretends to do its job, are Iraq's militias terrorists or gangsters, and much more.


Is Congress going to actually do something and repeal the 2002 AUMF that was cited as the permission to go to war on Iraq?  Congress, do something -- sounds like  a good opening to a joke, right?  Supposedly, the Senate is on the verge of saving the day, but let's all be skeptical.


?This is not the end of our military engagement in Iraq,"  the State Dept's Wendy Sherman declared at yesterday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, "as our consultations with the Iraqi government has highlighted.  The progress of our Iraqi partners in their capabilities will allow for the full transition later this year of US and coalition forces to a mission that is focused on training, enabling and advisory tasks."


So nothing's changed.  But no one wanted to go there.  Certainly not Senator Cory Booker whose question she was responding to.  It was as though the baby needed changing and everyone in the room was averting their eyes because no one wanted to do the needed but dirty task.  That's why they're elected to office, those sort of tasks.  But they don't have the backbone or the honesty to tell the truth or to demand real answers from witnesses.


Combat missions are ending!!!! Againa!!!! Mission Accomplished!!!! Again.  We are only there to train!!!! Again.  When the can stand on their own, we leave!!!! Again.


If, after 18 years of training, the Iraqi forces still can't 'stand on their own,' when do you think that they finally will?  


To be fair, there's no buy-in.  Why would you risk your life to fight for a country that doesn't represent you?  Why would anyone be surprised of this reality?  Did no one hear Mohammed Ali' speak as to why he would not serve in Vietnam?  When you don't feel your country represents you . . .


And thses days, there's also the fact that the mafia has infiltrated the security forces in Iraq.


At any rate, Lee Camp could say, last week, what the senators refused to say yesterday.



Four other times, as Lee Camp notes, we've been told the combat mission is over.  


They keep lying but they keep getting away with the ie because we're too damn stupid to call the lie out -- or too busy.  Is that it, THE PROGRESSIVE, THE NATION, IN THESE TIMES, etc?  Oh, WSWS, don't forget those lovelies.  Too damn busy doing nothing.  They can't stop doing nothing.  Plenty of nothing. 


Jamie McIntyre (WASHINGTON EXAMINER) reports this morning:


This morning, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will consider S.J.Res.10 to repeal the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force against Iraq. The full committee markup comes one day after testimony from the Biden administration that the 2002 AUMF, which was based in part on flawed intelligence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, was no longer necessary.

“I want to state clearly that the Biden-Harris administration believes the 2002 authorization for use of military force against Iraq has outlived its usefulness and should be repealed,” said Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. “And the administration has made clear that we have no ongoing military activities that rely solely on the 2002 AUMF.”

“The fact is the 2002 AUMF is no longer necessary to protect the American people from terrorism, to respond to attacks on our personnel or facilities, or to ensure the safety and security of our people,” Sherman testified. “The president has other tools available to achieve these objectives.”


Andrew Desiderio (POLITICO) offers, "In many ways, the Senate — which has routinely spurned similar AUMF repeal efforts in the past — will be catching up with public opinion, which has long turned against America's seemingly endless involvement in Middle East wars, especially as the U.S. prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks."


They'll repeal it or they won't.  At the end of the day, it won't make that much of a difference.  The AUMF really wasn't the fig leaf for the war they wanted that they always pretended it was.  There was no attack on the US.  The most basic principle for a just war.  They overturned norms and conventions and they lied -- yes, the Congress lied.  They were as guilty as the Bully Boy Bush White House in starting the illegal war.  And as guilty for not stopping it.


Even this week, they can't be honest about what's going on in Iraq and they lie to the American people that something is changing with the US mission in Iraq.  No, it's semantics.  That's all it is.  And we've all seen them do this before if we were paying attention.


Even Dick Cheney's former aid John Hannah can admit the truth at FOREIGN POLICY:


A big deal? Not really. The fact is that the vast majority of the 2,500 U.S. service members in Iraq have been in noncombat roles for more than a year. Consider this headline from a July 2020 U.S. military press release: “Coalition Task Force-Iraq transitions to Military Advisor Group.” Sound familiar?

Last Monday’s announcement of a so-called withdrawal was more about semantics than policy. It was an exercise in political theater aimed at helping Kadhimi appease elements in Iraq that are opposed to the U.S. presence—above all, powerful Iranian-backed Shiite militias and their supporters among Iraqis, who will be voting in national elections in October.


Yes, we also pretend that Mustafa al-Kahdimi is a great prime minister and butt into Iraq's affairs to ensure he gets a second term.  Biden's in the White House!  When he was 'just' the Vice President, he overturned the Iraqi people's vote.  That was 2010 when the US orchestrated The Erbil Agreement -- a legal contract Patrick Cockburning still has never found time to write about, all these years later.  Well if Cockburny couldn't protect US empire, do you really think there would be a place for him inthe US?  No.  He'd probably be barred from entering and sent back home.  Does he point to his brother and sister-in-law and promise that, like them, he'll do limited hangout 'reporting'?  Nothing that really ever challenges but is full of faux roar and pretense?  

That whole family has made a career out of fakery which is why it's so surprising that Olivia is such a bad actress.  (Not surprisingly, bad actress Olivia -- despite multiple chances -- was never able to nail down acting and never became the star she so wanted to be.  Oh well, maybe her legacy will be as the answer to a trivia question in an online game?)


Joe overturned the 2010 election results (giving Nouri al-Maliki a second term and leading to the rise of ISIS).  Moqtada's not really out of the elections, Moqtada al-Sadr, Shi'ite cleric and one time movement leader.  One of his tribe explained in an e-mail that no one is very excited about the elections and, in fact, they're all waiting to see what Joe Biden plans to do this go round if he doesn't like the results?  (Those under Moqtada, like the e-mailer, will be seeking office despite Moqtada's statements.)

(If you're surprised by the contact from Moqtada's campaign, don't be.  They've long e-mailed and it's a rare election cycle that they don't ask for some campaign material to be posted here.  We always do as we do for any campaign.)


Nancy Ezzeddine and Erwin van Veen (WAR ON THE ROCKS) offers this morning:

Who calls the shots in Iraq — the government or the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF)? Some observers think it is the latter, especially in light of recent events. On May 26, 2021, Iraqi police arrested Qassem Musleh — the commander of the PMF in Anbar province — in connection with the assassination of a prominent Iraqi activist. Immediately after, PMF militias circulated videos purportedly showing their fighters driving heavily armed trucks around Baghdad’s “Green Zone” in a show of force designed to compel Musleh’s release. When he was set free two weeks later, some analysts interpreted it as another exhibit of state weakness vis-à-vis the PMF, an umbrella organization of mostly Shiite, pro-Iran paramilitary groups that have fought the Islamic State.

In reality, the PMF has some pronounced weaknesses and faces growing challenges. Instead of viewing Musleh’s arrest and release as a victory for the PMF in a trial of strength against the Iraqi state, what actually occurred was a scramble by different PMF elements to maintain a united front against the prime minister when faced with the detention of one of their own. During Musleh’s two weeks in custody, it became clear that the PMF — which was incorporated into the Iraqi armed forces in 2016 — is more divided and weaker than it used to be, even though the shared interests of its main armed factions keep it afloat.


Simona Foltyn (POLITICO) serves up a lengthy article supposedly about the Iraqi militias but it only reveals gross ignorance:


The PMF were formed in 2014, and initially saw success fighting the Islamic State alongside U.S. and coalition forces. But following the territorial defeat of ISIS in 2017, the simmering differences between Iranian-backed militias and U.S. forces began to boil over. 


We're grabbing that at random.


That's not based on reality.  That's not based upon what happened.


There was a little whore -- well, there have been many, I know -- but once upon a time, there was a little whore who wanted to make a name for herself so she lied and stretched the truth and instead of her career ending, she ended up where, boys and girls?


That's right, THE NEW YORK TIMES>


And while many wrongly praised her (Glenn Greenwald, I am looking at you but you were far from alone), we called her out from the start of her Iraq 'coverage.'  We were the only ones noting that the whore was embedded with the militia.  We were the only ones noting that the whore was eating meals with the militia's family, was being provided shelter by the militias, etc.


Her glowing reports -- as an unbiased 'reporter' -- on the militias shaped a lot of thinking on what took place.


They may have battled ISIS, yes, but they also terrorized the people supposedly being rescued.  


The whore forgot to include that.  She forgot to include so much.  She did steal from the Iraqi people to do a 'report' (as laughable as everything else she ever did) that people found to be a dramatic podcast -- drama is easy to supply when you dispense with facts.  And when you dispense with facts, your podcast gets retracted -- just like happened with CALIPHATE.


Finally exposed, the whore continued to be employed by the paper of no record.  And while the country appears to have caught on finally that she was a whore, the damage she did remains.  And you can see it when the militias are presented as a positive force in 2014.


If they were so positive, please explain to me the actions that then-President Barack Obama repeatedly took to curtail their actions and their involvement.  


When you're ready to explain that, maybe you won't be such a damn whore.  Until then you're just another Rukmini Callimachi serving up half and halfs, hand jobs, you name it.  Doing anything but actual reporting.  (But Rukmini will always have those bad reports she filed and she'll always have the memories -- especially of the militia member she is said to have had sex with -- a detail I'm told that she never informed NYT higher ups about.)


At Brookings, Ranj Alaaldin writes:



Iraq faces a potential moment of reckoning that could mirror the events that unfolded just seven years ago when ISIS seized a third of the country. The U.S. remains integral to the painstaking campaign to combat ISIS, which has ramped up attacks in recent months. The group is co-opting, extorting, and coercing communities to establish the infrastructure that allowed it to seize large swathes of territory in 2014. Without continued U.S. military support, the jihadis may revive their so-called caliphate.
The necessity of defeating ISIS cannot be overstated, but one of the more understated enablers of the group’s preeminence is the continued dominance of Shiite militia groups tied to Iran. They directly undermine the government by attacking its security forces, while also enabling ISIS through the casualties they inflict on the Iraqi population. Responsible for killing more than 600 Iraqis tied to the protest movement, for wounding thousands, and routinely assassinating or kidnapping activists, Iranian proxy groups are turning Iraq into a republic of fear.
They hold the state hostage through the barrel of the gun while enjoying constitutional legitimacy as members of the Popular Mobilisation Force (PMF), which has access to a federal budget worth at least $2 billion. They also exploit the religious legitimacy that was bestowed upon the PMF by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in 2014, when the organization was formed to fill the void left by the collapse of the army. Since then, those groups that were aligned with Ayatollah Sistani and not tied to Iran have left the PMF, out of protest against their human rights atrocities and abuse of power.
Seventy-seven percent of Iraqis, including 76% in Shiite areas, are skeptical that forthcoming elections, scheduled for October, will deliver accountability and justice because of the control Iran-aligned militias have over the political environment. The despair is such that there are growing calls for a boycott, which could produce a re-run of the 2018 elections that were tainted by fraud and saw a coalition led by Iran-aligned groups finish second on its electoral debut. Since then, the Iraqi state has been in a state of crisis not seen since ISIS seized Mosul. Tens of thousands have protested against Iranian proxy groups to no avail and at great human cost.

That's an excerpt and may not accurately represent his piece.  I'm honestly not getting his point.  And I'm sure that's my lacking.  But I'm reading it and waiting for the moment where they are terrorists.  Now I consider them organized crime and would advocate, were they in the US, for the FBI going after them.  But they are part of the government -- a move we opposed loudly here for years before they were finally made part of the Iraqi forces.


I absolutely agree that they terrorize the Iraqi people -- that was what we first objected to in Rukmini's whoring -- where she tried to pretend that they were beloved by the 'rescued.'  (The 'rescued' are still waiting, all these years later, for any sort of efforts to help them rebuild.)

But they are part of the government now.  They aren't responsive to the government.  Though legally under the control of the prime minister, they rebuke him.


But they are part of the government.  So maybe I'm using a poli sci definition of the term "terrorist" and Ranj is using some other definition.


They are a problem and that I think we do see eye to eye on.  They do harm and terrorize the Iraqi people.  But for me, they're more like organized crime that has infiltrated the Iraqi government.


Staying on the Iraqi government but moving to another problematic area, the United Nations issued the following yesterday:


While acknowledging legal changes against torture, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said that “the authorities need to effectively implement the provisions written in the law in each and every detention centre”.  

“If not, they remain a dead letter”. 

Shocks and beatings 

Covering 1 July 2019 to 30 April this year, the report is based on interviews conducted with 235 detainees, along with prison staff, judges, lawyers and detainees’ families. 

“I experienced the worst days of my life”, one prisoner told UN staff who helped draw up the report. “As soon as I arrived, the officers beat me using metal pipes. The following days, they used two exposed electricity wires to electrocute me”. 

Another detainee said that “they cuffed my hands behind my back and hanged my handcuffs from a hook on a chain from the ceiling…they didn’t really ask me questions, they just kept shouting to confess”. 

The report, Human Rights in the Administration of Justice in Iraq: legal conditions and procedural safeguards to prevent torture, states that legal procedures designed to bring interrogations and detention under judicial control within 24 hours of the initial arrest, are not respected; and access to a lawyer is systematically delayed until after security forces interrogate suspects.  

“Eradicating torture will be one of the most effective tools to start to build public trust in the State’s ability to deliver justice and uphold the principle of fairness”, Ms Bachelet said. “However, when the authorities themselves break the law, it has the opposite effect”. 

Lack of trust 

The report also raises concerns that the authorities ignore signs of torture; complaints procedures appear to be neither fair or effective; and an apparent lack of accountability for these failures.  

“The fact that many detainees choose not to report such treatment due to lack of trust, or fear of reprisals, indicates their lack of trust in the system”, said the UN Human Rights Chief.  

“This needs to be addressed”, she added, pointing out that “specific recommendations on how to tackle this scourge” are included in the report. “The UN is ready to help the Iraqi Government in this endeavour”. 

Recommendation 

The authors recommend the adoption of a comprehensive Anti-Torture Law and national action plan – fully in line with international human rights law, particularly the UN Convention against Torture. 

Upon arrival at detention centres, detainees do not procedurally receive medical examinations and often face significant delays before being granted permission to make a phone call, according to the report. 

Moreover, official detention site locations remain opaque, said the report. 

Aiding terrorist propaganda 

“Effective prevention and prosecution of torture and other forms of ill-treatment would counter the narratives of terrorist groups and reduce their ability to exploit such practices to justify their own acts of violence”, said Ms. Bachelet.  

“The prevention of torture in reality, and not just on paper, would contribute to peace and stability in the long-term, and is therefore in the State’s interest as well as the victims”, she concluded.


For more, see Louisa Loveluck's (WASHINGTON POST) report that we noted in yesterday's snapshot. MEMO covers the report as well:


The United Nations Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights yesterday accused the Iraqi government of "torturing" detainees held in the country's prisons and detention centres, Anadolu reported.

In a publication entitled 'Human Rights in the Administration of Justice in Iraq' which covers the period from 1 July 2019 to 30 April 2021, UNAMI said it had collected testimonies from 235 detainees, prison staff, judges, lawyers and the families of detainees.

"More than half of all the detainees interviewed by UNAMI/OHCHR for this report provided credible and reliable accounts of torture," it said, adding that the observations are consistent with patterns and trends previously documented in UN reports of torture in Iraq, including the Kurdistan region.

"Although the Iraqi legal framework explicitly criminalises torture and sets out the key legal conditions and procedural safeguards aimed at its prevention, respect for these provisions is lacking," it said.

According to the report, one of the prisoners, a UN staff member who helped prepare the report, said: "I lived the worst days of my life. As soon as I got to the prison they beat me with metal pipes. In the following days, they used two exposed power cords and electrocuted me."


The following sites updated:








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Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Matt Damon, please stop talking

Oh, no, Matt Damon. It's not that damn easy.

If you missed it, Matt's self-bragging in the way that only a very short man with a complex can. Last month, he stopped using the f-word. His daughter told him it was hurtful.

So a big f-you to Matt Damon. He doesn't get off that easy.

He thought it was appropriate to call people f**got? To make jokes calling people f**got?

No.

He is an idiot. A dumb college drop out who should have known better.

He needs to go away.

What kind of an idiot doesn't know that you don't say that word in 2021? What kind of idiot needs his child to tell him that?

And what's he doing saying it in front of his child anyway.? He's a homophobe. He truly is. I also love how he was whining a few years ago about people thinking he was gay. Matt, no one made you go on WILL & GRACE and say that you were in a longterm relationship with Ben. No one made you do that. You made a joke about it over and over. A GQ article --- cover story on you -- used the term "catamite." That was in 2000. So stop whining that people think you're gay and you don't know why. You've spent your whole pathetic career trying to toss that out as a maybe so that you could try to interest people in your films.

No one likes you, Matt. No one ever has. As C.I. documented, the Bourne films were a hit in spite of you -- not because of you. You've never delivered seats in the theaters.

 

 

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

 

 

Tuesday, August 3, 2021.  LaVena Johnon's murder remains covered up all these years later and the United Nations notes the reality of Mustafa's Iraq: No real justice system and lots of torture.

 


Starting with LaVena Johnson who was most likely murdered while serving in Iraq.  It's strange, isn't it?, that what would pass for evidence in most trials was dismissed and ignored by the US military which ruled the death a suicide.  The parents have always felt differently and they are most likely right.  Andrea Cavallier (NBC NEWS) reports:


Army Private LaVena Johnson called home every day while she was deployed in Iraq. Her last conversation with her parents was on July 17, 2005. She excitedly told them she would probably be able to come home for Christmas.

“She told us not to decorate the tree until she got home,” LaVena’s mother, Linda Johnson, told Dateline. “We said we’d wait for her, of course. She was so happy to be coming home.”

But she would never make it home.

It was around 7 a.m. on the morning of July 19, 2005, when the doorbell rang at the Johnson home in Florissant, Missouri.

“There was a soldier on our front porch,” Linda told Dateline. “He told us LaVena was dead. And he said, well, he said she had killed herself.”


In April of 2009, Cindy Sheehan spoke with Sara Rich (peace activist, activist to end assault and mother of Suzanne Swift) and with retired State Dept diplomat Ann wright on CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX.   
 
 
Sara Rich: Well I've always been a human rights activist -- even before she [her daughter Suzanne Swift] joined the military.  And when she joined the military she was told by the recruiter that she -- if she signed up for five years, that she wouldn't be deployed to a combat zone. 
 
Cindy Sheehan: Right.
 
Sara Rich: And basically she was sent to a combat zone.   Neither of us had any idea about military sexual assault or that there was a term called military sexual trauma -- MST -- or anything about command rape.  Suzanne was more than just harassed, she was actually raped  by her commanding officer in Iraq and we didn't understand quite what was going on but it was she was harassed by one of her commanding officers, raped by another and then harassed by another.  So it was three different men, all who had direct authority over her in a combat zone because she did see combat.  It wasn't  that she was stationed somewhere safe.  She was shot at, she was doing combat patrol.  She was the driver of a Humvee doing combat patrol in Karbala '04 - '05.  And the whole time she was there I kept thinking this isn't right, something's wrong, what can I do and then finally when she got out of Iraq I said "Now can we say something?  Can we do something?" Because she was too scared for me to say something while she was in Iraq because you know we have cases like LaVena Johnson.
 
Cindy: Absolutely

Sara Rich: Where, you know, women speak out and they're murdered.  So she was too scared to say anything and finally she was being redeployed to Iraq for a second time and her PTSD and Military Sexual Trauma just exploded and she went AWOL instead of returning which was a huge turning point in our whole family.  She refused to go back.  She went AWOL.  We got an attorney and a psychologist and that's when we finally started coming out about the sexual assault and the rape and all of the trauma that she experienced while in Iraq because up until that point it was just too raw for her to talk about.  So she was seeing a psychologist, we had an attorney, we were trying to work with the army to get her so that she could turn herself in and get the help she needed but nobody would work with us so finally the AWOL Apprehension Team called their good buddies down here in Eugene [Oregon] at Eugene police department and they sent people to our home at ten-thirty on a Sunday night and took her in handcuffs.  You know here we have this -- by then she's  how old was she about 22 by then.  A 22-year-old who had been raped, who had Combat Trauma and they put her in handcuffs and threw her in jail.
 
Cindy Sheehan: She had been raped, she had been the victim of a crime actually while she was stationed in another profound crime -- a crime against humanity, an international crime, the occupation of Iraq.  Were her assaulters, were her rapists and harassers, were they hauled off in handcuffs at any time?
 
Sara Rich:  No.   [. . .]  They just stripped her of her rank and sent her to prison.
 
Cindy Sheehan:  And ultimately nothing has happened to the people who raped her?
 
Sara Rich:  No.  No.  The one, the man who raped her, his wife ended up calling us about a year ago saying she was divorcing him.   I always called him the molester because his name is Mark Lester
 
Cindy Sheehan: Uh-huh
 
Sara Rich: And she told me that he had been hired as a police officer in Kent, Washington and so I put a blast to my friends saying, you know, call the mayor, call the police chief and by the end of the week he was fired.
 
Cindy Sheehan: Well at least he had a little bit of accountability but you know there was Mark Lester that raped Suzanne but actually the entire system raped Suzanne.
 
Sara Rich: You better believe it.
 
Cindy Sheehan: And this is an absolute tragedy.  I have read statistics where at least 30% of females are sexually harassed or raped in the military and of course that's probably a much higher number and we read and are still hearing about cases where female soldiers have died of dehydration in Iraq because they don't drink water because they don't want to get up to use the latrine in the middle of the night because they don't want to be raped so here Suzanne was in a war zone battling the resistance -- the Iraqi resistance -- but she also had to battle her own, her fellow soldiers -- her colleagues.  You know, to me, if this isn't a reason to not join the military, I don't know what could be the reason.  So thank you, Sara, we'll come back to you in a second.  Ann, Sara talked about the case of LaVena Johnson and I know you have worked with the family and you know about the case.  Can you tell my listeners about the case of LaVena Johnson?
 
Ann Wright: Sure I -- I will tell them about it.  Let me just mention though that on the statistics on sexual harassment well over 90% of the women who are in the military say that they have been sexually harassed.  Sexual assault and rape, the crimes of sexual assault and rape, that's where one-in-three soldiers, service members, are saying that they have been sexually assaulted or raped while they've been in the military and these are figures, statistics, that are given by the Veterans Administration
 
Cindy Sheehan: So but sexual harassment -- sexual harassment is almost 100%?
 
Ann Wright: That's right.  That's right.  Yes, it is.  The case of LaVena Johnson, a young woman, twenty-one-years-old who had -- or pardon me, nineteen-years-old.  Nineteen-years-old who had gone to Iraq.  Within two weeks of her having been there, she ended up being found in a tent, a burning tent, she had been shot in the head and uh when her parents uh were notified of her uh death uhm they were told she was dead of a noncombat related incident.  [. . .] 104 have been killed in Iraq and 43 have been killed in what they call noncombat related incidents and of that 43, there are 15 of them that when you look at the cases you think, "Mmm, there's something really strange."  And one of them is LaVena Johnson who was found shot in a tent.  When her body came back to her home in Missouri and they had the body at the funeral home, her mom and dad touched their daughter's body.  The mother tried to rub her [LaVena's} hand and the gloves the military had put on her hands would not move and they looked at the gloves and they had been glued on.  And so they went to the mortuary guy and said, "What's going on here?  We want to see why these things were glued on."  And when they cut those off they saw that her hand had been burned and indeed her whole body, one side of her body, had been burned. So how was this noncombat related incident?  Why was she burned? Well over a period of two and a half years as the family kept begging the military for information -- first to get the autopsy, then, later on, to try to find documents about the death.  Try to get information that is held by the military but they won't give it to the families  unless you file a Freedom of Information Act on it.  Well ultimately, after two and a half years they finally got the CD that contained the photographs of her body as her body was undressed in Iraq before it was shipped back to the United States and the -- the body showed that she had been beaten in the face that her nose had been broken, that there were -- the father says that it appears that there were bite marks on her body, that one of her arms had been distended and dislocated  that there were -- that her vaginal area looked as though she had been sexually assaulted and then a caustic acid poured in her genital area.  So, um, the Johnson family has been demanding that the US military review thsi case.  That they do not believe that um, well, the military has said that she committed suicide.  that on one killed her, that she commited suicide. With all of those injuries, she committed suicide.  So I've been assisting the family to try to get a hearing before the army to make the army reopen that case.  And we've gone to Congress to try to get Congress men and women involved in this and it's a real slow process of making the army reopen cases.  You know, the Pat Tillman case, here after three Congressional hearings on his death in Afghanistan  we now know that he was shot by friendly fire, he was shot in the head, it looks like he was assassinated and yet after three Congressional hearings, the parents of Pat Tillman don't know who among that small unit that Pat Tilman was a part of, who killed Pat Tillman and why?  So for a family like LaVena Johnson's who have no political pull, there daughter was not an NFL star, she was just one of hundreds of thousands of young men and women who decide to join the military and then terrible things happen to them.  The family is still pushing very, very hard on the military to try to get more answers on what happened to their daughter. But one thing for sure, they do not believe that she comitted suicide nor do I.  
 
[. . .]
 
Sara Rich: It's interesting when I -- when I found out about LaVena's case, it just sent absolute shivers up my spine, thinking this is what would have happened to my daughter if she had told about what was going on to her to her superior officers in Iraq.  This is what would have happened, she would have been murdered, they would have said it was a suicide.  Their birthdays are very close to each other, there a few years apart, but their birthdays are within a couple of days of each other.  And it just, it made me feel so -- so thankful for my -- that my daughter was -- you know, still with us.
 
Cindy Sheehan: Right.
 
Sara Rich: LaVena is not.  And it made me feel the Johnsons and I have a real heart connection.  They're very protective of Suzanne and I think about LaVena every day.  It's just, we have a very deep, very deep connection about that.  And when Ann and the Johnsons and I were going to Congress men and Congress women and senators, trying to talk to them about reopening LaVena's case and showing them that it was not a suicide, it was a murder, they were treated in a way that just infuriated me.  I mean here they have a fallen soldier who is obviously raped and murdered and they were seeing -- taken to these little teeny rooms with junior staffers and weren't even given the respect and care that we as military parents of combat veterans should be absolutely demanding from people that say that they run our country.
 


Failed by the US military, failed by the US Congress.  Remember that the next time someone hops a high horse and tries to pretend they care about eliminating assault.  Or when they pretend that crimes can be left to military 'justice.'


May 22nd we noted Lavena Johnson who died while serving Iraq and whose parents do not buy the official 'explanation' of Lavena's death.  As KMOV reported (link has text and video) last year, "Lavena was apparently abused" and it was impossible for her to have used the gun she's said to have killed herself with.  Veterans For Peace notes "After viewing the black and white copies of crime scene photos, viewing multiple bruises on her body, and speaking to different military personnel as they prepared for her burial, her father and uncles realized that LeVena had been murdered.  Eight days before her twenthieth birthday, LaVena was beaten, raped, set on fire, shot, and left in a contractor's tent in Iraq.  Her family has been fighting for justice for LaVena for over two years now."  They are asking you to help Dr. John Johnson (LaVena's father) find out what really happened to his daughter in Iraq by calling 202.225.2876 which is Ike Skelton's number, Skelton is the chair of the House Armed Service Committee. This will be picked up tomorrow and be a regular part of the snapshots.

The very people that sent LaVena to Iraq failed her.  They did not protect her in life and they did not protect her in death.  They were happy to send her to Iraq with lies and they were happy to send her body home with lies.


There are many other women who died in the military and it was not suicide despite the military classifying the deaths as suicide.  From December 3, 2009:


 We'll note this from yesterday's snapshot:

In the US, Colleen Murphy searches for answers to her daughter's death. Staff Sgt Amy Tirador was serving in Iraq when she was killed at the start of last month, shot in the back of her head. Russell Goldman (ABC News) reports Murphy has many questions including, "How could this have happened on a secure American base? I don't know why they can't rule some things out. This can't be a suicide. But there are so many probabilities and prospects and guessing games. They've given me no hints, and I can't stop thinking about all the different scenarios. Am I aggravated? Absolutely. Thursday will be a month. I want the truth. I will be patient and I will wait. But I want the truth."

Lavena Johnson was murdered in Iraq. It was not a suicide and the military's suicide 'finding' does not hold up. That finding should have resulted in Congressional hearings. Just as Lavena Johnson was not a suicide it is not likely Amy Tirador would commit suicide by shooting herself in the back of the head.


Amy Tirador, LaVena Johnson and many more.  Their deaths are hidden, their murders are covered up with the false classification "suicide."  


From NBC's report:

While Dr. Johnson has fought for answers in his daughter’s death for 16 years, it has slowed this year due to his recent hospitalization.

But his wife told Dateline that he refuses to give up and continues to fight. While in the hospital, he never misses a chance to tell someone, a nurse, a doctor, about LaVena.

“After a 16-year-long nightmare, now we’re going through this,” Linda said. “Her death has really taken a toll on her father.”

They are hoping someone will come forward with information that will push the CID to reopen the investigation.


Dr. Johnson spoke about his daughter at Protect Our Defenders.



Two weeks ago, INTERSEXUAL MEDIA offered this report.




In other news, Louisa Loveluck (WASHINGTON POST) reports this morning:


Iraqi authorities are routinely denying prisoners of their rights from the point of arrest through prosecution, according to the United Nations, leaving tens of thousands vulnerable to violence and other forms of abuse while in custody.

The report, released Tuesday by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, details a labyrinth of unfairness with detainees often denied due process at every turn. Confessions frequently come through torture. Few detainees see a lawyer until they appear in court. In some cases, they do not even know which authority is holding them.

Four years after the U.S.-backed defeat of the Islamic State group here, more than 40,000 prisoners are packed across prisons in Iraq’s federal and Kurdish regions. Judicial records and court visits suggest that roughly half were arrested on terrorism charges, then tried in a system that affords little effort to weight specific evidence against them.

The U.N. report is based on 235 interviews with current or former detainees, as well as discussions with prison staff, judges, lawyers, families of the detainees and other relevant parties.

At least half the detainees said that they had been tortured during interrogations aimed at eliciting some form of confession. Human rights groups have criticized the practice, saying that detainees frequently end up agreeing to sign documentation saying they have committed crimes that they had no part in.

Remember the above the next time someone shows up pimping current prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi as a success and someone who deserves a second term.


Winding down.  An e-mail asks that we address Glenn Greenwald.  Here's the Tweet:

Robin D'Angelo said today that

@SethMacFarlane

-- now the Moral Conscience of our Nation -- has long used the excuse of comedy to justify and spread his white racism to millions of Americans with "Family Guy." See the next tweet as she explains how his racism infected many.


I don't know Robin D'Angelo or her work.  I don't have time to study it.  But, first off, yes, Seth's work is racist.  And Glenn wouldn't know that because he's part of the frat boy mentality.  He was in a pass with a certain crowd of men and adopted their mindsets.  That's always at the heart of any problem I have with Glenn.  I know his kind very well.  The beta gay who wishes he were an alpha.  So he poses and struts.  And refuses to note anything that might be seen as weakness, instead laugh at the jokes at the expense of people of color, of women . . .  


ADDED -- all in bold added at 1:25 pm EST due to an e-mail from someone close to Glenn.  Beta? Yes.  He refuses to break with the pack.  A true alpha would.  What Glenn can do in his professional life, he can't do in his personal.  And that's a real shame for someone with two beautiful children  -- children  who would easily be mocked and made fun of FAMILY GUY.  I haven't called for FAMILY GUY to be banned -- nor would I -- but I'm not going to pretend it's not a racist program -- sexist as well.  To ignore the racism is to be an idiot.  In the early days, they flaunted it constantly.  Back then, it was 'funny,' for example, that Brian was a racist.  The show repeatedly punches down, not up.  If Glenn can't admit that, he's either not very observant or not very honest.  It would be great if he could, as an exercise, try putting himself in the place of any of the groups mocked -- African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, all women -- and see if he could get how offensive the show can actually be.


I would've thought that, by now, as he grew older, he'd have aged out of it.  He hasn't.  FAMILY GUY is a very racist show and that goes beyond the refusal to hire people of color for voice work.  Time and again  the fact that Peter is challenged is used as a cover to get in very racist jokes.  It's reflective of what a certain mindset of  some White men in terms of what they think about people of color.  Is it a funny show, it's a derivative show (thanks, Seth, for turning our years of critiques into an episode -- it was the best episode of the show but still not a great episode) but it's not really a stand out.  (AMERICAN DAD is consistently a better show than FAMILY GUY.)  


Instead of rushing to attack Robin, maybe Glenn could take a moment to consider the actual episodes and the things that are said and done with regards to people of color on the show.


Seth's an embarrassment who can't get a live action hit to save his ass and who imploded as a host on the Academy Awards.  He's also not very bright.  Glenn reTweeted this from Seth:


Tucker Carlson’s latest opinion piece once again makes me wish Family Guy was on any other network. Look, Fox, we both know this marriage isn’t working anymore. The sex is only once a year, I don’t get along with your mother, and well… I’ve been having an affair with NBC.
3:27 PM · Aug 1, 2021


Tucker Carlson is on FOX NEWS.  FOX and FOX NEWS are no longer linked.  ABC owns former 20th CENTURY FOX in all its variations.  Rupert Murdoch and his family continue with FOX NEWS, they sold the entertainment division to ABC-DISNEY.


And Seth knows that.  But he also know that he could get more money from another network so instead of being honest, he lies in Tweets to try to create some sort of uproar that might force a renegotiation of his current contract or even a cancellation.


He probably thinks, "Hey, David Chappelle got COMEDY CENTRAL to give him more money."  Yes, Seth, he did.  But David is a genius talent.  You're not.  And you never have been.  David's an artist.  On a good day, Seth's a crowd pleaser.  On a good day.


Okay, let's do THIRD.  Last night, Ava and I posted our piece "TV: Xenophobia and racism alive and thriving thanks to PBS and Norman Lear."  We had warned, before we wrote it, that we considered it timely and if we were going to write it, it would need to be posted no later than Monday.  When we wrote it, we worked forever on it and that did not just include pulling out my journals and going through letters Marlon Brando wrote me.  We struggled over many things that could have been included.  Whoopi Goldberg shouldn't have been included in the documentary but she's a Norman Lear groupie and a partisan so they make room for her and let her lie.  She goes on and on about EGOT as though she did something.  She says of herself and Rita, "when we . . ."  No.  No.  No.  Rita had won The Emmy, The Grammy, The Tony and the Academy Award by the mid-70s.  Whoopi doesn't become an EGOT until the '00s.  And this notion that everyone's angling for it, based on what?  That bad episode of 30 ROCK that Whoopi appeared in?  Where she calls someone "colored man"?    Whoopi's a liar.  Lies are told about Rita and the EGOT all the time.  Her Emmy for THE MUPPETS is often called a daytime Emmy.  No, it was not.  THE MUPPETS?  A syndicated show and it was in competition in the primetime Emmys.  Equally true, Rita won a Grammy in the 60s but no one ever notes that.  WEST SIDE STORY won the Grammy for Best Soundtrack Album: Original Cast in 1962.  Rita was part of that film.  Some would argue we're splitting hairs and maybe we are.  That's why we pulled that section and the EGOT section and many more sections that dealt with reality as opposed to the nonsense offered in a film that was supposed to be about Rita Moreno but had Rita take a back seat so that they could make a partisan push instead.   And to glorify Norman Lear as well.  ONE DAY AT A TIME, the reboot, was a show that should have had more seasons, yes.  It was not, however, on the level of WEST SIDE STORY yet it takes up just as much time in the documentary -- because Norman produced ONE DAY AT A TIME and he produced the 'documentary.'  It was an amusing sitcom.  Let's stop pretending it was on the level of a classic.  We praised the show, Ava and I, at THIRD and stand by that praise but this was not one of the huge accomplishments in Rita's career and yet it was treated as such while many other moments were ignored.  Her real life was ignored pretty much throughout.  We noted the documentary never details why her mother divorced her father or the impact of that in the 1930s (he had a series of affairs, that's why he divorced her mother).  They don't deal with her young life in the US -- including, when she couldn't speak English, being taken to an infectious-disease war of a NYC hospital with no idea what was going on.  


They ignore everything.  They might try to argue, "We were trying to get to her career."  Okay, well her career beginning include a lengthy hitch on a radio program but that's not noted.  Her career includes making her Broadway debut at the age of 13 but the documentary doesn't tell you that.  


It has no time for Rita because it keeps working back to its agenda (if Norman Lear wants to make a documentary on Brett Kavanaugh, he should do so and stop trying to use Rita to sneak one in).


After writing it, we pruned and pruned and spent easily ten hours on this.  


And the deal was it would be posted Sunday -- with other items -- and if not we would post our piece on Monday.  They have various pieces.  Monday evening, Jim asked us to do another piece.  On Jimmy Dore.  We were half-way through writing it (it's noting the stupidity of the attacks on Jimmy and the attackers in their glass houses) when we looked at each other and said "No."  We'll do it for next edition.  Finish the piece.  But, no, we're not spending Monday night writing another piece.  I was exhausted Sunday night.  That's why I stopped posting here.  I just fell on the bed around eight or so and put on music.  I was too tired to move.  And now, on Monday, we're going through it all again?


Sorry, no.


The well is dry.  


As for why we didn't post the other pieces that were finished?  The editorial was not done.  So what was the point in posting the other pieces.  They can all go up next week and, as a result, maybe THE THIRD ESTATE SUNDAY REVIEW will actually once again publish on a Sunday?  


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