In fact, if it weren't for the baby boom reaching retirement age, the jobs picture would be even more bleak.
I always love Ava and C.I.'s writing at Third (check out their latest "TV: All the chattering stupidity") but my favorite is anytime they talk about the economy such as "TV: The meanings of OZARK."
Nick Beams (WSWS) breaks down some hard truths about the never-recovered economy:
The Dow Jones Industrial Average recorded its seventh straight record high yesterday after reaching 22,000 on Wednesday, powered by a 4.7 percent jump in Apple stocks. The Dow has nearly tripled in value since it reached its post-2008 financial crash low point of 6,547 in March of 2009.
The record stock market boom has continued despite the turmoil in Washington surrounding the Trump administration and the growth of geopolitical tensions, with the US simultaneously threatening war in Europe against Russia, in the Middle East against Iran, and in East Asia against North Korea and China. On the very day of the Dow’s triumph, President Donald Trump signed into law new sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea. The European Union is unravelling in the aftermath of Brexit and the alliance between the United States and Germany is turning into mutual and open hostility. Amid continuing economic stagnation, global trade relations are breaking down, giving rise to trade war and beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism.
None of this has halted the juggernaut on Wall Street and stock exchanges around the world. So far this year, the Dow has risen by some 11.5 percent. An investment of $10,000 made a decade ago would now be worth $33,600. These enormous gains have not flowed to the population as a whole—the Federal Reserve estimates that only 15 percent of American households hold stocks—but to the financial elites.
In the early decades of the post-World War II period, a rise in the US stock market reflected a general strengthening of the American economy, which was powered by huge industrial corporations that embodied the overall superiority of American production methods. Those days have long since passed. The rise of the stock market today is an expression of the immense and growing chasm between the financial markets and the underlying real economy.
The jubilation in corporate boardrooms, official Washington and the mass media over the Dow’s surge above the 22,000 mark coincided with Depression-like scenes of tens of thousands of workers, young and old, in economically devastated cities and towns across the US, lining up for job applications with the online retailer Amazon in the hope of securing positions at just $12.50 an hour.
The jobs picture is not improving.
But that's okay with the 1%, they don't mind shipping the jobs elsewhere.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Friday:
Friday, August 4, 2017.
ALSUMARIA reports that early this morning the security forces began cutting off the roads to Baghdad's Tahrir Square.
Why?
They always do this when they know of a planned protest. It's to intimidate people with the hopes that they won't participate and to make it hard for those who still want to participate to reach the square.
Haydar Majid (ALSUMARIA) reports many came out to demonstrate today following Shi'ite cleic and movement leader Moqtada's call on Thursday to protest. XINHUA notes:
"I wish the people are aware of what corrupt politicians are engaged with a dirty scheme to restore corruption which will not only control the people's food, but also their necks and blood. So that they would stage demonstration by millions to determine their fate," Sadr said in a statement by his office.
Sadr pointed out that the "sectarian storm," which engulfed the Iraqi people after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, made many Iraqis to close their eyes about what the politicians and the parliament blocs were doing.
He said the politicians, who were seen as corrupts by many Iraqis, are planning to bring a new electoral commission and to approve an election law for the provincial elections that would take into account the interests of the same old large parliamentary blocs, according to the statement.
Provincial elections were due in March but Hayder refused to hold them. It was thought they would be held in September -- thought and publicly stated. Yet again they've been pushed back. It's now said they'll be held in 2018.
Earlier this week, Moqtada met with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
# BREAKING : # Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman receives Muqtada Al-Sadr, leader of the Sadrist Movement in # Iraq on Sunday
Madawi al-Rasheed (MIDDLE EAST EYE) offers:
This is not Sadr’s first visit since the 2003 American occupation. He arrived in Riyadh in 2006 at the height of the Iraqi resistance to the occupation and the Iraqi civil war. But the visit was unsuccessful then. It yielded little benefits to either side. Like other aspiring clerics turned politicians, Sadr entered Iraqi politics with his own Jaysh al-Mahdi militia that later changed its name to the Peace Brigades.
Saudi Arabia grew very frustrated over the Iranian expansion in Iraq after 2003 and found itself constantly backing losing Iraqi horses. From patronising Sunni tribal chiefs in 2005 as part of al-Tawafuq electoral list to backing the Iraqi Sunni-Shia coalitions under Iyad Allawi in 2010, Saudi efforts to find an entry into post-Saddam Iraqi politics led to further frustration amounting to hostility on several occasions.
Saudi relations with Iraq deteriorated so much during Nouri al-Maliki’s premiership with Iraq bluntly accusing Saudi Arabia of sponsoring terrorism and precipitating a sectarian war in Iraq as a result of its Wahhabi ideology and the Saudi jihadis found in Iraq. Only in 2015 did a Saudi ambassador return to Iraq after almost 25 years of absence.
Sadr’s recent visit to Jeddah is a break from past Saudi practices and strategies. Mohammed bin Salman and his Trump administration backers want to limit Iranian expansion in the Arab world without outright military confrontation with Iran or its various militia that operate in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
In familiar news, Mustafa Habib (NIQASH) reports:
Last week, unknown assailants broke into the medical clinic of Iraqi doctor, Salim Abdul-Hamzah, in the Maamel neighbourhood of Baghdad. In other parts of Baghdad, two doctors were kidnapped: Mohammed Ali Zayer who works in a hospital in the Sadr City area and Saad Abdul Hur who had a private clinic in the New Baghdad neighbourhood. In the same week, a dentist, Shatha Faleh, was killed in a medical centre in the Washwash area.
All of the above happened within the space of just one week in Baghdad. No wonder Iraqi doctors are worried.
“The recent crime wave targeting Iraqi doctors is catastrophic for the country,” Jasib al-Hajami, a senior official in the Baghdad health department, told NIQASH. “The doctors and medical staff are the real wealth of our country and these crimes targeting them will push medical professionals out of Iraq. In fact, many of them have migrated or are thinking about migrating. More efforts must be made to protect them.”
On June 25, doctors in Baghdad and in other parts of the country organised sit-ins inside their local hospitals to protest the crime wave that appeared aimed at them and their colleagues. Their banners called upon the Ministry of Health to offer them better protection and the individuals protesting also warned of a decrease in the number of trained professionals in Iraq.
Familiar?
Longtime observers will read the above and nod while thinking of the "brain drain" as it was called in earlier waves. Shi'ite militias targeted doctors throughout the Iraq War. In part, it was a war on science. The doctors and others with technical expertise that fled Iraq during the waves were part of a "brain drain."
In other topics, let's move over to the Yazidis.
Oh, those poor persecuted Yazidis.
I'm really getting tired of their p.r. efforts. Not surprised to see the right-wing US p.r. firm that trolls the press to give them coverage is now reaching out to the University of Chicago -- a hot bed of neocons and among the universities that sold the Iraq War.
It's amazing that the Mandeans are suffering and are being ignored but neocons continue to 'just know' that one more push will help sell both the Yazidis and further war. Neocons are not just Jewish (though Peggy Noonan described them as such in her first book decades ago), the ones working on this were ignorant of Christianity. They honestly believed they could sell the Yazidis to Christians in America (to further war) -- this despite the reality that Yazidis are known as "devil worshipers" -- Excuse me, were known as such every year of the Iraq War in the western press -- in all of the western press -- until the p.r. firm was hired. Strange how up until 2014, they're "devil worshipers" in one report after another but they hire a p.r. firm and suddenly the press no longer describes them this way. However, the press describes them, American Christians were never going to embrace them -- especially when you consider the assault on Iraqi Christians which the press tends to ignore.
As we noted in yesterday's snapshot, 'comic' Samantha Bee needs to first practice no harm.
It's clearly too much for her.
Or for her ugly followers in the press.
Who is Matt Wilstein I asked a friend on the phone a few minutes ago? An actor on a long running series, he laughed and replied, "Proof that celebrity 'reporters' only got into reporting because they're so butt ugly."
Oh, yes, I see.
And big boned and fey (hat tip to Joanna Newsom) Matt watched Samantha's KRG segments religiously and felt he was getting truth.
At THE DAILY BEAST, Matt attacks the Kurds. They love US President Donald Trump and only do so, he explains (thanks to Samantha's 'reporting') because Trump has armed the Kurds.
No, you stupid -- and ugly -- idiot, that's not reality.
Just because you're too stupid to know the facts (and so stupid you see a comic's special as reporting), doesn't mean the rest of us are idiots.
Some Iraqis were naming their babies after Donald right after the election and before he was sworn in.
In fact, see these reports: Ben Wedeman and Elizabeth Roberts (CNN) and Stephen Kalin (REUTERS) for Donald's popularity in the KRG before he was even sworn in.
Matt and Samantha re physically ugly.
Even worse, they're ugly in the soul -- and no plastic surgeon can ever fix that.
They sneer and mock a people (the Kurds) which is bad enough but they hold the Kurds up for ridicule by distorting reality.
The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley -- updated:
iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraqiraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq
iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraqiraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq
iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraqiraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq
iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq Iraq
ALSUMARIA reports that early this morning the security forces began cutting off the roads to Baghdad's Tahrir Square.
Why?
They always do this when they know of a planned protest. It's to intimidate people with the hopes that they won't participate and to make it hard for those who still want to participate to reach the square.
Haydar Majid (ALSUMARIA) reports many came out to demonstrate today following Shi'ite cleic and movement leader Moqtada's call on Thursday to protest. XINHUA notes:
"I wish the people are aware of what corrupt politicians are engaged with a dirty scheme to restore corruption which will not only control the people's food, but also their necks and blood. So that they would stage demonstration by millions to determine their fate," Sadr said in a statement by his office.
Sadr pointed out that the "sectarian storm," which engulfed the Iraqi people after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, made many Iraqis to close their eyes about what the politicians and the parliament blocs were doing.
He said the politicians, who were seen as corrupts by many Iraqis, are planning to bring a new electoral commission and to approve an election law for the provincial elections that would take into account the interests of the same old large parliamentary blocs, according to the statement.
Provincial elections were due in March but Hayder refused to hold them. It was thought they would be held in September -- thought and publicly stated. Yet again they've been pushed back. It's now said they'll be held in 2018.
Earlier this week, Moqtada met with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
# BREAKING : # Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman receives Muqtada Al-Sadr, leader of the Sadrist Movement in # Iraq on Sunday
Madawi al-Rasheed (MIDDLE EAST EYE) offers:
This is not Sadr’s first visit since the 2003 American occupation. He arrived in Riyadh in 2006 at the height of the Iraqi resistance to the occupation and the Iraqi civil war. But the visit was unsuccessful then. It yielded little benefits to either side. Like other aspiring clerics turned politicians, Sadr entered Iraqi politics with his own Jaysh al-Mahdi militia that later changed its name to the Peace Brigades.
Saudi Arabia grew very frustrated over the Iranian expansion in Iraq after 2003 and found itself constantly backing losing Iraqi horses. From patronising Sunni tribal chiefs in 2005 as part of al-Tawafuq electoral list to backing the Iraqi Sunni-Shia coalitions under Iyad Allawi in 2010, Saudi efforts to find an entry into post-Saddam Iraqi politics led to further frustration amounting to hostility on several occasions.
Saudi relations with Iraq deteriorated so much during Nouri al-Maliki’s premiership with Iraq bluntly accusing Saudi Arabia of sponsoring terrorism and precipitating a sectarian war in Iraq as a result of its Wahhabi ideology and the Saudi jihadis found in Iraq. Only in 2015 did a Saudi ambassador return to Iraq after almost 25 years of absence.
Sadr’s recent visit to Jeddah is a break from past Saudi practices and strategies. Mohammed bin Salman and his Trump administration backers want to limit Iranian expansion in the Arab world without outright military confrontation with Iran or its various militia that operate in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
In familiar news, Mustafa Habib (NIQASH) reports:
Last week, unknown assailants broke into the medical clinic of Iraqi doctor, Salim Abdul-Hamzah, in the Maamel neighbourhood of Baghdad. In other parts of Baghdad, two doctors were kidnapped: Mohammed Ali Zayer who works in a hospital in the Sadr City area and Saad Abdul Hur who had a private clinic in the New Baghdad neighbourhood. In the same week, a dentist, Shatha Faleh, was killed in a medical centre in the Washwash area.
All of the above happened within the space of just one week in Baghdad. No wonder Iraqi doctors are worried.
“The recent crime wave targeting Iraqi doctors is catastrophic for the country,” Jasib al-Hajami, a senior official in the Baghdad health department, told NIQASH. “The doctors and medical staff are the real wealth of our country and these crimes targeting them will push medical professionals out of Iraq. In fact, many of them have migrated or are thinking about migrating. More efforts must be made to protect them.”
On June 25, doctors in Baghdad and in other parts of the country organised sit-ins inside their local hospitals to protest the crime wave that appeared aimed at them and their colleagues. Their banners called upon the Ministry of Health to offer them better protection and the individuals protesting also warned of a decrease in the number of trained professionals in Iraq.
Familiar?
Longtime observers will read the above and nod while thinking of the "brain drain" as it was called in earlier waves. Shi'ite militias targeted doctors throughout the Iraq War. In part, it was a war on science. The doctors and others with technical expertise that fled Iraq during the waves were part of a "brain drain."
In other topics, let's move over to the Yazidis.
42) Nechirvan Barzani's speech today was highly disrespectful to the survivors of the Genocide—such disgusting remarks only cause more pain.
40) Instead, Nechirvan used his genocide commemoration speech today as a platform to attack Baghdad ahead of the KRI Independence Referendum
39) #Yazidi survivors of genocide do not need more empty and false excuses—they need a genuine apology.
38) That #KRG officials cannot honestly face up to these facts continues to be a painful thorn in the side of those who lost everything.
37) Everyone knows the truth about Sinjar, and these continued excuses are downright embarrassing.
36) Whether a calculated decision or simply sheer cowardice, the #Peshmerga withdrawal allowed the #Yazidi Genocide to take place.
35) Though it is nice to see the PM now calling the event the "Yazidi Genocide," the ongoing attempts to avoid responsibility do not help.
34) In previous commemorative events on the Genocide's anniversary, officials called it "the Sinjar crisis" or the "Sinjar genocide."
33) In the first couple years after the Genocide, the KRG would not use the language "Yazidi Genocide."
32) < "…weapons in their hands there was no way the Peshmerga could defend Shingal.” This statement is offensive to every Genocide survivor.
31) In his speech today, Nechirvan said “When IS came with those weapons they were more advanced than our Peshmerga. And with the old >>
30) Such is the brazenness of this hypocrisy: Presenting an instance of cowardice and negligence as the selfsame group's bravery and heroism
29) Next, the KDP built a monument to the incident, memorializing the vehicle and placing a large image of Masoud Barzani next to it.
28) Poor rural people with no power or education, and no sense that they have any voice in politics, can be easy to intimidate or co-opt.
27) << but which broke down. Later, the KDP put the poor mechanic on their payroll, as they typically do, and made him a "commander."
26) Sinjar was saved, in part because of an accident, a vehicle that the Peshmerga tried to take with them, against the cries of Yazidis >>
25) This is how effective one single gun can be—imagine the outcome if all the Peshmerga had stayed and fought.
24) << airstrikes helped repel IS advances on the mountain. The mechanic may have single-handedly saved the mountain from IS.
23) Because of his high-ground advantage, the jihadists were not able to continue their ascent. This bought time until coalition >>
22) << Yazidi mechanic with no military background climbed into the vehicle, took hold of the gun, and aimed it at the ascending jihadists.
21) The vehicle had a heavy weapon mounted on the back. As IS later pursued Yazidi civilians up the mountain road, a poor, uneducated >>
20) As the Peshmerga withdrew, one of their vehicles broke down on the main road leading from Sinjar City up the mountain.
19) << of those weapons to the Yazidis who were begging them to leave anything that would help them defend their families.
18) Nechirvan is talking a lot about the inferiority of Peshmerga weapons, but it is interesting that they refused to leave behind any >>
17) He also didn't mention that on Aug 2 the local Yazidis asked Pesh leaders whether they should evacuate the area, but were told to remain
16) << once IS had already taken the area (rather than having had the advantage of holding the area to begin with, as the Peshmerga did).
15) In his speech, Nechirvan did not explain how the YPG, who were less equipped than the Peshmerga, were able to fight through IS lines >>
14) << stayed and fought to defend Tal Afar until gradually being forced to withdraw. The "we had no weapons" excuse is baseless and a lie.
13) Further, the Peshmerga in Sinjar looted the weaponry and vehicles of sections of the Iraqi army that did not dissolve, but which >>
12) << likewise fell into the hands of the Kurds. If fact, entire weapons depots in Nineveh were seized by Kurdish forces.
11) He also emphasized that Iraqi weapons fell into the hands of IS after the Iraqi army collapsed, but failed to mention that weapons >>
10) Nechirvan focused on the collapse of the Iraqi army, not drawing attention to the fact that it was the Peshmerga who controlled Sinjar.
9) Instead, they fled the entire region and left the civilians defenseless, after promising to protect them.
8) << plains near the mountain, they could have remained on the edges of the mountain and provided cover to fleeing civilians.
7) << how much more effective the defense would have been if the Peshmerga had stayed. Even if they felt unable to defend areas in the >>
6) If local people with no combat training or equipment used the high ground to prevent the jihadis from taking the mountain, imagine >>
5) Nechirvan should be asked how handfuls of Yazidi farmers w/ hunting rifles were able to prevent IS' ascent in some parts of the mountain.
4) Nechirvan repeated the tired claim that the Peshmerga were not sufficiently equipped to defend Sinjar, lacking adequate weaponry.
3) Nechirvan's speech contained many false and misleading statements that sidestep the uncomfortable realities of the Genocide.
2) In today's speech, Nechirvan tried to shift responsibility for the abandonment of #Sinjar from the Peshmerga onto the Iraqi army.
1) Today in Dohuk, KRG PM Nechirvan Barzani gave a speech to commemorate the #Yazidi Genocide:
http://www.rudaw.net/mobile/english/kurdistan/030820172 …
#Iraq #Kurds #Sinjar
Oh, those poor persecuted Yazidis.
I'm really getting tired of their p.r. efforts. Not surprised to see the right-wing US p.r. firm that trolls the press to give them coverage is now reaching out to the University of Chicago -- a hot bed of neocons and among the universities that sold the Iraq War.
It's amazing that the Mandeans are suffering and are being ignored but neocons continue to 'just know' that one more push will help sell both the Yazidis and further war. Neocons are not just Jewish (though Peggy Noonan described them as such in her first book decades ago), the ones working on this were ignorant of Christianity. They honestly believed they could sell the Yazidis to Christians in America (to further war) -- this despite the reality that Yazidis are known as "devil worshipers" -- Excuse me, were known as such every year of the Iraq War in the western press -- in all of the western press -- until the p.r. firm was hired. Strange how up until 2014, they're "devil worshipers" in one report after another but they hire a p.r. firm and suddenly the press no longer describes them this way. However, the press describes them, American Christians were never going to embrace them -- especially when you consider the assault on Iraqi Christians which the press tends to ignore.
As we noted in yesterday's snapshot, 'comic' Samantha Bee needs to first practice no harm.
It's clearly too much for her.
Or for her ugly followers in the press.
Who is Matt Wilstein I asked a friend on the phone a few minutes ago? An actor on a long running series, he laughed and replied, "Proof that celebrity 'reporters' only got into reporting because they're so butt ugly."
Oh, yes, I see.
And big boned and fey (hat tip to Joanna Newsom) Matt watched Samantha's KRG segments religiously and felt he was getting truth.
At THE DAILY BEAST, Matt attacks the Kurds. They love US President Donald Trump and only do so, he explains (thanks to Samantha's 'reporting') because Trump has armed the Kurds.
No, you stupid -- and ugly -- idiot, that's not reality.
Just because you're too stupid to know the facts (and so stupid you see a comic's special as reporting), doesn't mean the rest of us are idiots.
Some Iraqis were naming their babies after Donald right after the election and before he was sworn in.
In fact, see these reports: Ben Wedeman and Elizabeth Roberts (CNN) and Stephen Kalin (REUTERS) for Donald's popularity in the KRG before he was even sworn in.
Matt and Samantha re physically ugly.
Even worse, they're ugly in the soul -- and no plastic surgeon can ever fix that.
They sneer and mock a people (the Kurds) which is bad enough but they hold the Kurds up for ridicule by distorting reality.
The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley -- updated:
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iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraqiraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq
iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraqiraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq
iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq Iraq
