Trina's Kitchen: Ginger and Soy Salmon Fillets with Broccoli in the Kitchen

Wednesday, September 13, 2023. Julian Assange remains persecuted, Glenneth Greenwald continues to (mal)pracitce law, when you run for Congress and took money to conduct sex acts online there's no privacy shield there, Moqtada and his supporters get no punishment while Iraqi police officers get a slap on the wrist, and much more.

Starting with Julian Assagne.

Julian Assange remains persecuted, held for no real reason with no real charges in the UK while the US works to extradite him and charge him with the 'crime' of truth telling.

After years and years, finally Australian politicians are listening to the Australian people somewhat. A delegation of members of Parliament will be visiting the US later this month to lobby for the US government to end the persecution of Julian. One of those MPs is Monique Ryan and she writes:

In 2006 Assange – a former computer hacker turned editor, activist and publisher – founded Wikileaks, a non-profit online document archive. In 2010, WikiLeaks published a trove of US intelligence about American activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. That data had been leaked by a US intelligence officer, Chelsea Manning, who was subsequently charged by the US government with 22 offences including violating the US Espionage Act and aiding the enemy. She pled guilty to 10 charges but was imprisoned for only three years before her sentence was commuted by President Obama in 2017.

The many tranches of documents released by Wikileaks were damaging and embarrassing for the US intelligence services; hence their ongoing, relentless attempts to secure Assange’s extradition to the US from the UK to face charges under the Espionage Act. Politically, the Democrats’ dislike of Assange was not helped by WikiLeaks 2016 publication of Hillary Clinton’s emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee. WikiLeaks subsequent release of the largest CIA leak in history in 2017 won Assange no friends in the Trump administration.

Assange has been an inmate of the UK’s Belmarsh Prison (dubbed “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay”) since April 2019, having previously taken refuge within the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for almost 7 years. The US-UK Treaty under which Assange’s extradition is being sought explicitly bans extradition for political offences, but the proceedings continue despite the obvious political overtones of this case. Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers exposing US misconduct in the Vietnam War, was also prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Ellsberg, whose case was dismissed with prejudice. Ellsberg described Assange’s prosecution as a greater abuse of process than his own. Assange’s position has been defended by the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, media and human rights organisations, and politicians from around the world.

Assange’s lawyer, London-based Australian Jennifer Robinson, has argued that his indictment represented “the most terrifying threat to freedom of speech in the 21st-century”. When she spoke at the National Press Club last year, Ms Robinson repeatedly referred to claims that in 2017 the CIA plotted to kidnap or assassinate Assange while he was a political refugee in London. She suggested that, if extradited, he might be subjected to Special Administrative Measures, a regime of extreme isolation described by human rights groups as inhumane and possibly amounting to torture.

There is some urgency to this mission because of the imminent possibility of Mr Assange’s extradition to the US, and his deteriorating physical and mental health. He had a minor stroke in 2021 and is described by family members as increasingly frail. His wife, Stella, has stated that she believes he will commit suicide if extradited to maximum security conditions in the US.

There have been mixed messages from the US Government this year: Caroline Kennedy, the US Ambassador to Australia flagged a possible plea deal in August. More recently, however, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, stipulated that “The actions that he has alleged to have committed risked very serious harm to our national security, to the benefit of our adversaries, and put named human sources at grave risk – grave risk – of physical harm, and grave risk of detention.”

President Biden is perhaps constrained in his ability to intervene in this case by the ongoing legal cases against his predecessor and his son. The president has indicated that he is “committed to an independent Department of Justice”, but the commuting of Chelsea Manning’s sentence by President Obama seems at odds with the Biden administration’s ongoing pursuit of Assange. This is especially true given the absence of repercussions for the major newspapers which published the Wikileaks documents – media organisations like the Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel and Le Monde.

Turning to Iraq, a sentencing and what passes for 'justice.' Following an Iraqi refugee burning a Quran in Sweden, a judicial verdict has been reached. AFP reports:

An Iraqi court gave 18 police officers jail sentences of up to three years Tuesday for failing to stop protesters storming and torching Sweden's embassy in Baghdad, security officials said.

Supporters of the powerful Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr set the Swedish embassy in Baghdad alight on the night of July 20, after a Stockholm-based Iraqi refugee desecrated the Koran in Stockholm.

Three years? That's a joke but then so is refusing to punish the rioters who attacked the embassy and portly, plus-size model Moqtada al-Sadr who sicked his cult on the embassy. Nothing was achieved with this 'verdict' and certainly justice was not restored.

And "up to three years." THE NATIONAL explains that sentence didn't even go to all 18, "Eight police received three-year jail terms, seven were given two years and three months, and three were sentenced to 18 months in prison, an Interior Ministry official confirmed."

That was July. Earlier this month, in Kirkuk, 'violence' ensued. Turns out, the four dead and the many wounded? That violence was likely carried out by Iraqi security forces. COUNTERVORTEX explains:

Iraqi security forces appear to have opened fire on demonstrators without prior warning in Kirkuk on Sept. 2, killing at least four people and injuring 16, Human Rights Watch has found. The violence comes amid months of increasing tensions between Kirkuk’s Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen populations. An inquiry into the incident opened by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani should be independent and impartial in its investigation of allegations of excessive use of deadly force by Iraqi security forces, HRW urged. “Time and again, the Iraqi government has responded to protests with lethal force and arrests of journalists,” said HRW Iraq researcher Sarah Sanbar. “The government needs to take concrete steps that result in accountability for these actions.”

The tensions center around a building in Kirkuk that once served as the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the largest party in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The building has been occupied by Iraqi federal security forces since 2017, when central government forces seized Kirkuk in response to the Kurdish independence referendum. The tensions flared after Prime Minister al-Sudani ordered the return of the building to the KDP on Sept. 1 under an agreement made with the KRG when al-Sudani formed his government in October 2022.

Meanwhile, in the US, efforts at censorship and spreading hate continue. Hate merchants like Katie Halper and Matt Taibbi, Max Blumenthal, John Stuaber, et al pretend to be concerned about censorship -- at least when they feel their inbred right wing buddies are being censored. But when it's the kids of America? They don't give a damn. Hunter Buchheit (TEEN VOGUE) reports:

The silence on a recent sunny Friday morning outside Walton High School was broken by a car horn. I stood there, holding a sign that said, “You Can’t Love Freedom and Ban Books,” and watched the culprit in a tan minivan peel out of the parking lot and into the road in front of us. “Ban the perverts!” the driver screamed out her window. She was dressed in workoutwear, ponytail pulled tight, and sunglasses concealing most of her face.

Around me, on the sidewalk in front of the school’s carpool entrance, were adults and a few of my classmates with a smattering of signs, books scattered at our feet, and a “Read Banned Books” flag waving in the air. We were there that August morning to take a stand against the removal of several books from Cobb County school shelves. Normally, books are reviewed for violations after a parent complaint. As WSBTV reported, these were removed after Libs of TikTok, a right-wing social media account operated by former real estate agent Chaya Raichik, contacted county officials, concerned over the books’ “pornographic” subject matter.

One of the two banned books is Flamer, a graphic novel detailing the experiences of Aiden, the queer main character, at Boy Scouts camp in the summer between middle and high school. Taking inspiration from author Mike Curato’s own childhood, Flamer features sexual plot points integral to Aidan’s coming-of-age experience, but there are no visual depictions of genitalia or any other overtly explicit images. The other is Jesse Andrews’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, a frequently banned book about a teen boy who befriends a girl who is dying of leukemia. It has been criticized for containing some sex scenes.

One of my fellow dissenters at the August 25th protest was Becky Albertalli, the author of the Simonverse novels, the first of which was adapted into the 2018 film Love, Simon.

When I spoke with Albertalli after the protest, she talked about the positive reactions we received from onlookers driving by, “People were so thrilled to receive books. Parents rolling down their windows and taking it all very seriously. Truck drivers waving in solidarity.”

Still, she says, she was most concerned about the parents who expressed their fury — not behind a screen, but directly to our faces. They were, Albertalli said, “real people with their full chest and whole face, shouting at their kids’ classmates’ parents.”

Amid the mix of support and shouting, one group was conspicuously absent: teachers themselves. A few weeks ago, Katie Rinderle, a teacher at Due West Elementary School, was fired after reading My Shadow is Purple, a children’s book that discusses gender identity, to her fifth-grade class. She bought the book at the school’s book fair.

Soon after, Cobb County superintendent Chris Ragsdale recommended that she be fired and a tribunal composed of three former school principals convened. Although they found that Rinderle demonstrated a lack of judgment, the tribunal determined that Rinderle should keep her job. But she was fired anyway.

For Georgia, this type of state-sanctioned classroom intervention isn’t new. Laws passed in recent years have set the bar for governmental overreach in schools, like House Bill 1084, passed in 2022, which targets the teaching of vague “divisive concepts.”

Now's a good time for an excerpt from the ACLU's podcast about Texas eliminating school libraries:

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:00:01] From the ACLU, this is At Liberty. I’m Kendall Ciesemier, your host. Welcome back to At Liberty! We missed you so much in the month of August. We’re so happy to be back with you and we’re excited to bring you some really important stories impacting students over the next few weeks. Back-to-school season is upon us, and here at the ACLU, we’ve been following the nationwide campaign to censor education. Be that the censorship of important historical and social context in school curriculums or the recent rise in book bans. All of these efforts threaten students’ right to learn. As we chart this issue our eyes are squarely on Texas. The state is banning more books than any other, eliminating libraries and through these decisions, targeting low income students of color. This year, some students in the Houston Independent School District—the largest district in the state of Texas—may be headed to schools with no libraries or librarians. In August, the state announced plans to convert libraries into disciplinary centers, eliminating librarian positions at 28 elementary and middle schools. Another 57 schools are being assessed for the same outcome, with the goal of “addressing low academic performance in certain schools.” This alarming change comes as part of a sweeping reform program led by the Houston Independent School District’s new superintendent, Mike Miles, and a new state imposed school board, both which replaced the district’s formally elected school board and superintendent in the spring.

FOX 26 HOUSTON [00:01:54] They say cut back. We say fight back. That fight back. The idea of turning a library into a detention room is nuts. And here’s what I’d say not only to the superintendent, to the board, would any of you put your children in a school that does not have a library? Hell no.

KENDALL [00:02:17] The situation in Houston signals what’s been happening and what’s also to come in schools across the country. Attacks on the freedom to read are on the rise, threatening the vital jobs of librarians. Despite this, librarians are still holding out hope and taking action.

BECKY CALZADA [00:02:39] Hello, my name is Becky Calzada. I’m a district library coordinator in a suburban school district northwest of Austin, Texas. I’ve been a library coordinator for just over ten years and a librarian for about 20. But I am starting my 36th year as a public education teacher, so I’m just thankful to be here.

DEBORAH HALL [00:02:59] My name is Deborah Hall and I started as a school librarian in 1972. Teachers were on strike and I had to cross the picket line to get to my first job. And I have been with Houston ISD for my entire career, serving in several libraries, and eventually I became the library technology administrator for the district.

KENDALL [00:03:27] Today, we’ll hear from Becky and Deborah about the value of librarians and what they’re doing to advocate for their profession. Then we’ll hear from the ACLU of Texas attorney Chloe Kempf, who will help us understand how the rise in education censorship infringes on students’ civil rights.

KENDALL [00:03:48] You both have decades of experience as librarians. And so I can imagine how frustrating it is to be both facing threats to your profession, but also to the entire function of what a library serves in schools. Deborah, I’ll start with you since you spent about 40 years as a librarian in the Houston Independent School District, which, as you know, has recently made headlines due to the changes being made to school libraries there. Can you explain to us what’s happening to libraries and librarians in Houston?

DEBORAH [00:04:26] One of the first things we heard from the new superintendent was “all librarians do is check out books.” And “I need this space because I’m going to be corralling a lot of kids who are not behaving. And then once they get themselves under control, they can go back to class.” That label of changing a wonderful room of learning to a detention center. And that’s what it’s been called a punishment center, a detention center.

KENDALL [00:04:55] What’s your understanding from being on the ground there?

DEBORAH [00:04:58] It’s all about test scores, that is the target. That’s why supposedly Houston ISD was targeted because of low test scores in certain schools. We’re a large, primarily urban school district with a very diverse population, but those schools weren’t performing that well on the state test. And so the district became vulnerable to takeover. And that is what happened 12—almost 12 weeks into a takeover by the state that removed our board and hired a superintendent who is not certified and who had a failing agenda in his last run at being a superintendent. And we’re under the gun to do his bidding. Communication is limited and a lot of things are happening behind closed doors. The teachers and librarians and various personnel are not encouraged to share information, so it’s not really forthcoming. In some cases, furniture is going to the warehouse, books are being boxed up. Children at those schools will not have access to the library as we knew it.

KENDALL [00:06:21] These changes are taking place in a district where nearly 80% of students are economically disadvantaged and students of color make up an overwhelming majority of the district’s enrolled population. The largest groups being Black and Hispanic students who account for 84%. But westward just outside of Austin, Texas, we see a different side of the story. There Becky works in a district where libraries are changing for the better and where white students make up more than half of the enrolled population.

BECKY [00:06:53] I think just like other libraries, we’ve had experiences with, you know, issues with censorship and that sort of thing, too. But in terms of changes, if we’ve had any changes, it’s been because we’re actually adding some programming to our campuses. So I know Deborah mentioned, you know, about there being books, and of course libraries will always have books, but we recently had a bond passage passed a couple of years ago. And so that bond package allowed us to bring some 3-D printers into our libraries. And it’s also going to bring some iMac computers so that we can do some video production. And this will be all elementary, middle and high school campuses. So this allows us to provide that kind of equipment at no cost to the kids, but also to allow them to have access, to build and create and think outside the box.

KENDALL [00:07:44] But what has impacted predominantly white schools, like the one where Becky works is a flurry of book bans. The bans are particularly targeting books written by LGBTQ+ and nonwhite authors or books that discuss the experience of people from marginalized groups. With all of this, school libraries and librarians have been thrown into the political fray, and Becky and Deborah are having to learn how to contend with that.

DEBORAH [00:08:12] These kinds of controversies can—when librarians and libraries are targeted because of what kinds of books we might have on the shelf or what we may be teaching. It’s scary. It’s concerning. But we just need to stick together and work to change the view and to erase the negativity and, you know, the contrast like in Houston to libraries, some libraries become a detention centers when before they were sanctuaries, you know, they were places where kids got support for learning, for social emotional support. It was a place where a student could get connected to other people, to a caring adult. It was a place where they could be listened to. And we have to counter with the reality and not the imagined evils that are lurking. Tyranny of the minority. The loudest voice is making decisions, and there’s a lot of silence that needs to be awakened and voices brought forward. Because if people knew what was happening, they would speak out. But so many people are not aware of it.

KENDALL [00:09:45] I’m wondering, you know, as educators yourselves, you both speak so beautifully and clearly about the value that libraries, librarians give to students. And I think people would be surprised to hear about all the ways that librarians support students. What would you want to say about the role of the librarian and the role of libraries and all the ways that libraries support students today?

The last thing the country needs is less libraries. And grasp that Hunter and other young people around the country have been fighting censorship and doing so without any help from the so-called 'independent media' of YOUTUBE. They're too busy sucking up to Tucker Carlson who is calling for the National Guard to shoot people from the Texas border. That's who they stand with, not the children of America fighting the fight that these YOUTUBERs should have been leading.

They have plenty of time for nonsense, though. For creating it and spreading it and being 100% wrong, yes, we are talking about Glenneth Greenwald. We need to turn to a story Rebecca covered yesterday:

A Democratic candidate vying for a House of Delegates seat is under criticism after videos were allegedly found of her performing sex acts with her husband for tips.

The Washington Post was the first to report about several videos it says show Susanna Gibson and her husband performing sexual acts on a live website called Chaturbate. She neither confirms nor denies the online activity but calls the entire situation an invasion of privacy.

Gibson is running against David Owen in the 57th District, which encompasses parts of Henrico and Goochland counties. With less than 8 weeks until election day, The Post says these live Chaturbate broadcasts were recorded and put onto another website. Allegedly, Gibson, in the videos, is asking viewers for tips to perform certain acts.

The newspaper was tipped off by a Republican operative, who is said to have no ties to Gibson’s opponent.

I'm sure this is embarrassing for the woman. But it's not a violation of anyone's privacy. The videos were streamed live on CHATURBATE -- a porn site. Sorry, you're an adult performer.

You may be other things and I certainly don't condemn adult performers. Conner Habib is a great guy, for example. But if Conner ran for the House of Representatives and someone came out announcing he was an adult performer, they would not be violating his privacy.

The great Glenneth Greenwald, as Rebecca notes, insisted this was an invasion of privacy. No. Taking a photo of Jack Nicholson on his balcony to embarrass him -- taking it from a long distance away -- is an invasion of privacy in my opinion but in the eyes of the law it's not. So you certainly give up any reasonable right to privacy when you broadcast yourself in a film online. They made it a public act when they utilized Chaturbate.

"I didn't know anyone was recording!"

Well, sorry, that's your problem. You knew you were broadcasting yourself having sex and you should have known anyone could have recorded it and/or taking screen shots. Your stupidity is not a valid legal defense.

Alex Griffing (MEDIAITE) notes, "A candidate in a high-stakes legislative contest in Virginia had sex with her husband in live videos posted on a pornographic website and asked viewers to pay them money in return for carrying out specific sex acts."

So she did do it for money.

Sorry, Glenneth, it was never a privacy issue to begin with -- I'm so very glad you no longer practice law in the US -- but it was a source of income which makes it a job and, no, work history has no right to privacy in any instance but especially not when we're discussing someone running for higher office, someone running for public office.

Glenneth is an idiot and always will be one. Starting to get why he's always wrong whenever he wades in with a legal opinion? Some of us noted that reality back in 2005.

Can she win office? Possibly. Should she? In terms of the Democratic Party, no. Any thing she does in office, any thing she votes for or proposes will be under intense scrutiny. If she'd come out and said, "Look, I did it. Get over it." -- if she'd done that I might feel differently. But her mealy mouthed response indicates she can't handle pressure and she's just going to create a problem for the Democratic Party for the next two years if she makes it into office.

That said, the judges are the voters -- not the Democratic Party. They'll determine whether or not to back her.

Let's now turn to stupidity on the campaign trail -- that of Chris Christie (seeking the GOP's presidential nomination) and that of MEDIAITE. At MEDIAITE, right-wing troll Isaac Schorr writes:

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski scoffed at former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s suggestion that his state allows abortion through nine months of pregnancy on Tuesday morning.

While making the case for state-by-state regulation of abortion law during an appearance on Morning Joe, Christie compared states with more restrictive statutes to New Jersey, which he said allowed “abortion up to nine months.”

“Okay, it’s not an abortion at nine months,” asserted an exasperated Brzezinski, “and there’s not a doctor that would do it, and it only happens in extremely severe circumstances. You can come back and bring me the evidence of women across the state of New Jersey having abortions in the ninth month. It’s not happening, Chris, come on.”

“You said this the last time you were on and I let it go, I can’t let it go again,” she added. “There’s no abortions in the ninth month.”

If that’s true — if no one would ever consider an abortion in the later stages of pregnancy — why did New Jersey’s state legislature pass and governor sign a bill ensuring that abortions could be performed at any stage of pregnancy last year?

The 2022 Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act argued that “governmental restrictions on reproductive choice, by their very nature, impinge on the constitutional right to reproductive autonomy” and included a provision stating that “Any law, rule, regulation, ordinance, or order, in effect on or adopted after the effective date of this act, that is determined to have the effect of limiting the constitutional right to freedom of reproductive choice and that does not conform with the provisions and the express or implied purposes of this act, shall be deemed invalid and shall have no force or effect.”

Let's bring some reality to this. Isaac, I don't now if your mother should have had an abortion but I do know she should have your ears pinned back. They're the only thing more ridiculous than your writing.

Mika's right. That is not what the law says. It's the interpretation Chris Christie gives to it and that the idiot at MEDIAITE gives to it. The law has no such writing in it. An interpretation is just that and only that. A court would have to rule on it. The law itself does not say what Chris Christie says it says. Or what MEDIAITE lies and says it says.

Do we not the difference between an interpretation and a ruling? Are we that stupid as a country?

If it's not in the law, if it's not written into a law, if the wording is not there, it's open to interpretation. That's why courts often have to rule on laws that seem so clear to lawmakers but, in fact, is not as clear.

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Wednesday, September 13, 2023

Ginger and Soy Salmon Fillets with Broccoli in the Kitchen

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