Trina's Kitchen: Place all candidates on the ballot in the 2nd round of the UAW elections!

From Will Lehman's campaign:

Dear fellow workers,

The votes cast in the first-ever election in UAW history have been tallied, and I am proud to announce that my campaign to abolish the bureaucracy and give power to the rank-and-file won 4,777 votes, or almost 5 percent of the total votes cast. Given the efforts of the UAW apparatus to suppress voter turnout, this is a big step forward.

To each and every worker who supported me, helped campaign for me and talked to me about what we are fighting to do: Thank you. The results show that a growing section of workers want to throw off the weight of the UAW apparatus and unite internationally to reverse decades of betrayals and corporate concessions.

While I am grateful for the votes, the outcome leaves no doubt that the process was corrupted by the deliberate suppression of the right to vote by the bureaucracy. This was not a valid election!

Only a tiny percentage of the union membership even knew that there was an election at all. There were only 103,000 votes cast out of a membership of over 1.1 million, roughly 9 percent!

In some areas, the turnout was even lower. For example, of the 48,000 UAW members currently on strike against the University of California system in Locals 5810 and 2865 and Student Researchers United, only 1,200 ballots were cast—a turnout of 2.5 percent. At Local 4123 at the California State University system, 11,000 ballots were sent, but only 29 voted, or 0.26 percent! At the University of Washington, out of over 9,000 ballots sent, only 74 votes were cast, or 0.8 percent.

The UAW suppressed the vote because it wants workers to only have the “right” to vote for a candidate chosen by the apparatus: Ray Curry or Shawn Fain. Now the Monitor says there will be a run-off between these two candidates, even though they won only seven percent of the total eligible membership, combined.

As result, my campaign—as well as the campaigns of Brian Keller, Mark Gibson, and candidates who ran for other positions—are being excluded from the race.

Two weeks ago, as evidence of voter suppression mounted, I sued the UAW and the Monitor because workers everywhere were telling my campaign that they never knew there was an election or didn’t receive a ballot on time to vote. I sent reports to the Monitor, who was proposed by the UAW and chosen by the court to oversee the election, warning of widespread voter disenfranchisement at workplaces across the country. However, these reports were ignored.

In court, the UAW, the Labor Department and the Monitor all agreed there was nothing wrong with the election. All we asked for was a 30-day delay and for steps to be taken to really inform the members that an election was taking place. This was denied.

Now the results have revealed the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of members. This is a violation of all members’ rights! Each worker, no matter who they support, has the right to vote in a fair election for whichever candidate they want.

In this context, accepting the notion of a “runoff” between Curry and Fain would make a mockery of workers’ rights.

This is why I am demanding that all candidates should be on the ballot in the second round. This time, however, the entire membership must be informed of the election and able to vote in it.

The Monitor isn’t going to enforce it, since they haven’t “monitored” much of anything during the election. They said they see no problem with 40,000 less workers voting in the direct election than in the 2021 referendum to hold direct elections. They said it was not their responsibility to do anything beyond politely requesting the bureaucracy inform the membership of its right to boot them out of power. Through the Local Union Information System, the apparatus only informed its own internal network of their “right” to go vote in defense of their positions. The Monitor said they had no problem with that. Now we know why the UAW apparatus suggested this Monitor to the court in the first place.

The rank-and-file must fight for its rights in order to win them. If you agree with my demand for all candidates to be put back on the ballot and that the membership be truly informed, make your voice heard! Talk to your coworkers and encourage then to support this demand.

Form rank-and-file election committees in your workplace to demand that every worker has the right to vote in a meaningful election that expresses the genuine will of the membership.

Get in contact with my campaign by emailing me at WillforUAWpresident@gmail.com or calling/texting me at 267-225-6633.

Share this statement with your coworkers and on social media:

SUN, DEC 04

Place all candidates on the ballot in second round of UAW elections!

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Monday:

Monday, December 5, 2022. A reporter harms his own story, more questions about the Talibanis, closet case Moqtada declares war on Iraq's LGBTQ community.

About 70 e-mails have come in asking why I'm ignoring the report regarding Twitter and censorship.

First, I've posted several videos about those Tweets. Like this one.

Second, Tweets. Not reporting.

The journliast has made himself a joke and legacy media is mocking him. If you care about the story, you don't set yourself up to be a joke.

Friday, he Tweeted.

He did not report. I've waited for him to come off his manic high, get some sleep and actually report. That still hasn't happened.

Tweeting is not reporting.

I love Cher. She Tweets. Love her singing, love her as a friend, in awe of her acting when she totally commits. But her Tweets?

Please.

I have issues, vision issues, yes, but also medical eye issues. I now have to limit the amount of screen time. I do not have time to scroll through over thirty Tweets and try to provide the context that the reporter was too lazy to do.

If he will stop partying and start reporting, I'm happy to note it. But stop pretending that he's reported. He's Tweeted. It's not reporting -- it's not even reading the headlines in a news break.

"An appeal for your patience." Sabby notes he said that online. If you want to break a story on Friday, break it on Friday. Report on Friday.

"Information.'' That's what he said he was posting. And that is what he post. It's not curated. It's not journalism. If he had worked at Twitter you could call it whistle-blowing.

He did an information dump and then he went away. Days later, there's still no report. Sabby in her video rushes to defend him.

I'm not attacking him. But I am making the very obvious point that Tweets are not reporting. This demanded a reporter, this topic, who could go through this information and explain what was going on, examples could be supplied, reporting could be done.

Equally true, if an agreement was made -- and one was with Musk -- then you disclose what the agreement was. That's basic when it comes to ethics.

He has been attacked by the media.

A lot of those attacks? He brought on himself. There are basics and the most basic of all basics? You have a report before you go public. That's how you avoid being scooped. Peter Baker isn't going to go on ABC THIS WEEK and tell viewers, "In a day or two, at THE NEW YORK TIMES, I'll have a great story for you about . . ." He writes the story before he promotes it.

You know who does the opposite way? Liars and whores. Like in 2008. Barack Obama was talking about the rights of unions and how trade deals harmed US employees. Then THE ASSOCIATED PRESS found out and reported that Barack's campaign was telling Canada not to worry, that this was just talk to get votes. That's when John Nichols goes on DEMOCRACY NOW! It turns out, John maintains, it was Hillary, it was all Hillary. St. Barack was innocent and still walked on water and Johnny 5 Cents would be reporting this at THE NATION.

There was no such report because John Nichols was lying. He was trying to provide cover for Barack until interest moved on to another story.

Those are the type of people who brag about stories before they're published.

If you want to be taken seriously -- or your work taken seriously -- you publish it and then you talk about it.

"I sincerely hope that Tara Reade can get some sort of justice," says Sabby Sabs.

Can we f**king focus?

Apparently, we can't.

Yes, Tara Reade came forward. Yes, she told the truth. She's an awful bitch but that doesn't change the fact that she was assaulted. It also doesn't have to do with the Tweets released on Friday.

Had the reporter issued a report, we might be better able to focus.

Instead it's nonsense -- it's ice cream left in the sun, melting with Sabby and others trying to scoop it up in their hands. And doing a lousy job. Why is she bringing in Tara? Well, she and Tara are friends, for one reason. Another bad behind the scenes move. But also because Sabby doesn't understand the information because the reporter didn't do the work required.

Some newbies are going to say 'reporter'? About 18 years ago, as a favor, I was asked not to name the reporter here ever. This was by someone who loves the reporter. I didn't. I haven't. He's popped up in videos but I haven't commented on him until now. When we interviewed Evan Bright ("Evan Bright Puts Big Media To Shame") about his coverage of Stephen Green's trial (March 12, 2006, Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi's parents Fakhriya Taha Muhasen and Qassim Hamza Raheem) and five-year-old sister (Hadeel Qassim Hamza) were taken into the parents' bedroom by US soldier Steven D. Green where they were murdered. Abeer was in the living room with Paul Cortez and James Barker who were gang-raping her. It is one of the most explosive of the War Crimes from the Iraq War.) , Evan brought up the reporter. After that, the big question was do we name the reporter -- due to my promise? Name but no comments are printed but Evan's, was my reply. That way I kept my promise not to discuss the reporter.

What the reporter has now done with Twitter goes to exactly why someone who loves the reporter would worry I would rip him apart. It's not up to standard and I know what's going on when reporting isn't taking place.

I can't evaluate the story or its claims because there is no story. The reporter has failed to file one. It's as though Woodward and Bernstein wrote, "There was a break-in at The Watergate Hotel and President Nixon was behind it. That is all. We're rushing off to snort coke and we'll be back in a few days with more." That's not reporting. Hell, it's not even good gossip.

The reporter needs to do his job which is to file a report. A series of Tweets is not a report.

Some of the criticism the reporter is now facing is of his own creation and could have been avoided if he'd done his job. Instead, he Tweeted on Friday and it's now Monday and we still have no report.

Staying with bad journalism, last week, we called out IRAQ OIL REPORT for its bad fluff piece on Bafel Talabani. From Thursday's snapshot:

Turning to Iraq, we're reminded that 'access journalism' is all about whoring. IRAQI OIL REPORT is an outlet that charges for its mediocre content. Despite charging for its content, it breaks no news, it produces nothing of value. So I generally ignore it.

But they decided to really whore this time. The interview Bafel Talabani with one soft ball question after another and pretend he's answering truthfully. They can't even get to truth in the 396 words of the preamble to the interview.

Lot of words to pretend Bafel's not part of the problem. The issues with Bafel go beyond he's PUK and the dominant party is KDP (PUK has still not rebounded from the lies of Jalal and Hero Talabani when they spent months defrauding the country and pretending that Jalal was healthy enough to govern as president of Iraq when, in fact, he couldn't speak and he couldn't move and, per the Constitution, he should have been removed from office). Bafel can't even get along with other member of the PUK -- and that includes his failure to get along with his own blood relatives.

At the start of November, Amberin Zaman (AL-MONITOR) noted:

The difference today is that not only are the parties at odds with each other, they are also mired in internal rivalries. Lahur Talabany, former co-chair of the PUK who led the Sulaimaniyah region’s intelligence services and the US-trained Counter Terrorism Group, was ousted by his cousins Bafel and Qubad Talabani last summer in a Byzantine power grab. It was the most overt manifestation yet of the intra-family feuds simmering in the Talabani and Barzani dynasties.

If you're still not getting it, check out the latest this morning from REUTERS:

On Oct. 7, shortly after Hawker Abdullah Rasoul set off in an SUV from his home on a leafy street in Erbil, a bomb ripped through the car, killing him and wounding four family members.

Rasoul was an intelligence officer, and a defector.

After nearly two decades with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a party dominated by the Talabani family, he moved to Erbil this year and switched sides, three security sources and a Kurdish source told Reuters.

When he was killed, Rasoul, 41, was helping the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the party ruled by the Barzani family that he had been keeping tabs on for years, the sources said.

The brazen assassination was captured by security cameras and the KDP released a 27-minute video about the killing, pointing the finger of blame firmly at the PUK.

The PUK has strongly denied the accusations, saying they are politically driven, but the killing has triggered a series of incidents that have strained the power-sharing arrangement.

Let's wind down with notorious closet case Moqtada al-Sadr. Moqtada al-Sadr is scum of the earth. He leads a cult and, over the years, the US press has decided to go soft on him and present as a leader (he's not) and a kingmaker (never) instead of as the cheap ass thug he actually is. He's flaunting his true colors again. Daniel Stewart (360 NEWS) notes:

"I vow to confront homosexuality or the LGBTQ community through ethical, peaceful and religious means, against this violation of the innate characteristics on which humanity is built," according to a statement accompanied by his signature and posted on Twitter by his spokesman Salé Mohamed al Iraqi.

The cleric has reiterated his message by calling for the creation of an abolition of the alleged law of homosexuality in Iraq because "it cannot be a door to generalize this affliction".

In reality, homosexuality has been legal in Iraq for 20 years because the country does not have a law explicitly criminalizing it.

However, it does have a regulation prohibiting "immodest acts," probably the one Al Sadr was referring to, which Human Rights Watch has described as a "vague provision that could be used to target minorities."

Poor, dumb and uneducated Moqtada. He can never by a religious leader above 'cleric' because he doesn't have the background and couldn't get it even when he ran off to Iran in 2007. Poor idiot Moqtada.

And, please don't forget, that two years ago, he explained 'the gay' caused other things as well:

And maybe those who've been stupid enough to promote Moqtada over the last three years could wake up to reality?

The following sites updated: