Monday, July 31, 2017

The Bronze



Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Little White Devil" went up Sunday.

Please read WSWS's latest on the Google censorship.


The Bronze.

That's what I'm writing about tonight.

Nothing heavy.

Have you seen this film?

I've probably seen it 12 times at least in the last year.

I first saw it on a cold and snowy Sunday when there was nothing else to do.

The main actress had a characterization that honestly irritated me but I was knitting and had already set everything up on the coffee table so I let it play.

By the July 4th point of the movie, I was hooked.

It really is a hilarious film.

And everyone -- including the main actress -- gives an incredible performance.

I looked it up at the time and it was a film that is slaughtered in reviews.

But it is funny.

It may take you some time to get into it but if you ever have a chance to watch, do so.

It's a vulgar comedy.  Hope's a one time Olympian who suffered an injury and has a chip on her shoulder.

It's really hilarious.  Cecily Strong plays the mother of the teenager Hope ends up training and she and everyone else are hilarious.

The language is sexual and I wouldn't watch it with a young kid -- also Sebastian Stan shows his butt multiple times during a gymastic sex marathon with Melissa Rauch (Hope)  in a hotel room -- you see her butt and even her breasts but they aren't the focus of the scene the way Sebastian's (attractive) buns are.



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


Monday, July 31, 2017.  Chaos and violence continue, the Islamic State continues, Tony Blair continues to walk on war crimes, the US government continues to fail veterans, and much more.



Starting in Afghanistan . . .


Gunfire heard after several explosions hit Afghanistan's Kabul, reportedly near the Iraqi embassy
 
 

The Islamic State group claims responsibility for an attack on the Iraqi embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul
 
 


Amir Shah (AP) reports, "The Islamic State group targeted the Iraqi Embassy in Kabul on Monday, with a suicide bomber blowing himself up outside the gates, followed by three gunmen who stormed into the building. The assault set off a four-hour firefight that ended only after Afghan security forces said they had killed all the attackers."




Ret. Army NG Staff SGT Will Thompson has had double lung transplant - retirement pay kicks in at 60, but he is pretty sure he won't make it
 
 


Last week, BURNPIT 360 was in DC providing a Congressional briefing.  Veteran Will Thompson was among those participating.

Will Thompson: My name is retired Staff Sgt William Joseph Thompson.  I have served 23 years, 3 months, 11 days in the United States Army and the West Virginia Army National Guard.  I have deployed twice with the West Virginia Army National Guard to Iraq. During my last deployment, I was stationed at Camp Striker on the Victory Complex.  My symptoms of frequent coughing started on September 2009 while in Iraq. I was treated for allergies by the doctors and PAs.  I returned to Fort Stewart Georgia and after I mentioned to the doctor that I had been having frequent cough, they did a chest x-ray that revealed bilateral pneumonia.  They treated me with an antibiotic and sent me home to West Virginia and told me to follow up with my PCP in one week. After a week, I followed up with my doctor [. . .] and after a CATSCAN he discovered that I had coronary fibrosis with pulmonary nodules.  He stated my lungs looked like an 80-year-old coal miner's lungs. He referred me to Walter Reed Army Medical Center where I was treated by Dr. Jacob Collen for six months.  He admitted me to the Warrior Transition Unit at Walter Reed and, after six months of testing which included an open lung biopsy, I was informed that I had titanium, magnesium, iron and silicon in my lungs.   


The ones paying for the war -- in Iraq and elsewhere -- are not the ones who started it.




Tony Blair being responsible for the murder of a million Iraqi civilians should be enough to prosecute him.
 
 

Disgusting decision. You could be prosecuted for harming a cat or a dog but not for killing a million people.
 
 





Tony Blair skates again.

He lied a country, a world, into war.


And he won't stand trial.



Will Thompson: My life and my family's life has changed since I returned home from deployment in 2010. Due to my low immune system now, I have to wear a mask in highly populated areas to prevent infection.  I challenge you to go into a store wearing a mask like the one I have on right now and see how people treat you.  I have been treated like I was contagious and I have had to explain many times that it was for my protection.  And with that it's even hard to hang out with my kids during the day when they say, "Daddy, can we do this?" and I say, "No, we can't do that." Or "Daddy, let's go skiing."  I can't do that. "Daddy, let's go swimming."  I can't do that. "Daddy, can I have a piggy back ride?"  I can't do that.  "Daddy, let's go to the beach."  I can't do that. I can't do that because of bacteria in the water [. . .] I don't feel like a man because my role as a husband has been taken over by my wife.  She now does everything that I used to do.  There are so many things that I can no longer do. I am a warrior of the United States of America. I gave my lungs for my country.


The suffering gets dispersed to the 99%.

The 1% just get dividends.

Tony's certainly gotten richer and richer since starting the Iraq War.



MINT PRESS NEWS notes:

Writing for Middle East Eye, Mansfield and Antonia Benfield, who represented the former Iraqi general at the high court, said the ruling has “brought to an end the hope of prosecuting Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Peter Goldsmith for the crime of aggression”.
They said: “On the national and international stage the failure of the British government to give a tangible commitment to the prosecution of the crime of aggression undermines the rule of law.  It sets a dangerous precedent in times of global insecurity and sets an example to the rest of the world that states can wage aggressive war with impunity.

“The devastation that has been caused to millions of Iraqi civilians leaves the world with only one lesson – how to commit the most serious of crimes, and get away with it.”


Tony Blair skates again.

While the dead and the living victims continue to be scarred.

Will Thompson is still fighting for his rights with the VA.

Grasp that.

The fight continued throughout Barack Obama's 8 year presidency and continues to this day.

Grasp that the VA issues are still not fixed.

Grasp that even the basic issue of one uniform electronic record that would follow a person from service member status to veteran status didn't accomplished.

In 8 years.

What a proud moment for Barack and part of the reason veterans still have to fight so hard to get the appropriate disability ratings.

In what world is right that Barack's raking in millions while Will Thompson has to depend on charity for medical and treatment needs because the US government is still refusing to cover the disabilities their burnpits created?

This is shameful.

Politicians are seen as slime for exactly this reason -- they smile and brag about how great they are when all they do is destroy the people they are supposed to be representing.

Remember that the next time hair plugs and pot-bellied Bruce Springsteen publicly pretends to care about veterans.

No one caring about veterans would be partying on a yacht with Barack.


Meanwhile Nahwi Saeed (AL-MONITOR) writes:


In a July 19 statement, Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani said that holding a referendum is a natural right of the people of Kurdistan that they will not back down from. According to the spokesperson for the Independent High Electoral and Referendum Commission (IHERC) in Kurdistan, around 6 million people in the Kurdistan Region and the disputed territories such as the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, Sinjar, Makhmour and Khanaqin have the right to vote in the referendum. Forty-eight percent of the Kurdistan Region’s land is still disputed between Baghdad and Erbil and some 2.7 million people live in the disputed territories.
According to Article 140 of the constitution, the territorial disputes between Baghdad and Erbil was set to be settled by the end of 2007, but the Iraqi government never implemented this article. For Barzani, the nonimplementation of the Iraqi Constitution is one of the main reasons he wants to hold a referendum Sept. 25 in the Kurdistan Region and the contested areas. However, there are many challenges that may eventually keep the referendum from happening on the scheduled date, especially in the disputed territories.
Barzani’s referendum decision was preceded by a vote of the Kirkuk Provincial Council (KPC) April 4 to hold a referendum to decide the future administration of the province. However, many of the Arab and Turkmen members of the KPC boycotted the vote altogether. The KPC’s vote came after a call March 14 by Kirkuk Gov. Najmiddin Karim to raise the Kurdistan flag over the government buildings in Kirkuk province. But the Iraqi Turkmen Front opposed this move and filed a case against the acting head of the KPC, Rebwar Talabani, in Baghdad. By the same token, the Arabs and Turkmens of the disputed territories are expected to boycott the upcoming referendum and ask Iraq’s supreme court to declare that holding a unilateral referendum in the disputed territories is illegal. If these measures fail, they may eventually resort to violence. Nationally, Baghdad is not happy about the planned referendum either.

It's interesting, can you write about this topic and not know ARTICLE 140?

Because it doesn't appear AL-MONITOR understands ARTICLE 140 at all.

Article 140 of Iraq's Constitution is rather straightforward on oil-rich Kirkuk:

The responsibility placed upon the executive branch of the Iraqi Transitional Government stipulated in Article 58 of the Transitional Administrative Law shall extend and continue to the executive authority elected in accordance with this Constitution, provided that it accomplishes completely (normalization and census and concludes with a referendum in Kirkuk and other disputed territories to determine the will of their citizens), by a date not to exceed the 31st of December 2007.   


Are writers for AL-MONITOR illiterate?

ARTICLE 140 calls for a census and a referendum.

It was always to be settled by a referendum.

This isn't a Barzani creation.  It's the Iraqi Constitution.

There's also a 'lightness' about AL-MONITOR's writing on this that needs to stop immediately.


Newsflash: Iraq's supposed to have held provincial elections already this year.

They have kicked it back.

And there's a good chance that, before September arrives, they'll try to do it again.

Elections are not held when you're ready -- they're to be held as defined by law.

Hayder al-Abadi is in violation of the law at present.

Treating this as a non-story is appalling.

September 25th is when the referendum is supposed to be held -- as noted in the article.  Not noted in the article?  That's also when the provincial elections are now supposed to take place.

That needs to be noted repeatedly.


Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Little White Devil" went up last night as did new content at THIRD:









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Saturday, July 29, 2017

Squash casserole recipe in the Kitchen

Candice has a problem.  She's tired of squash casserole with Ritz crackers.

And her garden's produced more squash than she can give away.

So here's a variation on the standard squash casserole.


Peel and cube 5 large squash, mince 2 cloves of garlic over the squash, add a dash of salt (I use sea salt) and a dash of pepper, chop 1 medium onion and add  and mix.  Place in a large sauce pan on a stove burner on medium heat and stir for five minutes.

Remove from heat.

Add 1/2 cup walnuts, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of milk (remember if you have a diabetic in the family, new studies show you should be drinking regular milk and not one of the percents) and a cup of mozzarella.

Add to a greased dish (I use Pam or butter).

Place in a 400 degree oven and bake for a half hour.




Joseph Kishore (WSWS) reports:
The World Socialist Web Site is published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the world Trotskyist movement. Since the launching of the WSWS in February 1998, the site has posted thousands of articles that reference Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the October Revolution and the founder of the Fourth International.
WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North is the author of In Defense of Leon Trotsky. Other prominent members of the international editorial board of the WSWS--Nick Beams and James Cogan in Australia, Chris Marsden in Britain, Peter Schwarz and Ulrich Rippert in Germany, Keith Jones in Canada and Wije Dias in Sri Lanka--have been active in the Trotskyist movement for decades. All are well-known authorities on Trotskyist history and politics.
This year, the ICFI is marking the centenary of the Russian Revolution. It has posted throughout this year a historical chronology, This Week in the Russian Revolution, which has referenced Trotsky in every installment. The series has been extremely popular with readers. For example, according to Facebook, the May 29-June 4 video for the Chronology has been accessed more than 21,000 times, which has driven thousands of readers to the WSWS.
Between March and May, the ICFI held a series of on-line lectures on the history of the revolution, in which the role of Leon Trotsky was a major area of concentration. The lectures attracted a large audience on both Facebook and YouTube. According to the figures recorded by Facebook, the first lecture by David North, delivered on March 13, has been viewed 6,300 times. Another video posted initially in March, in which North previewed the ICFI’s lecture series, has been viewed more than 120,000 times.
We cite these figures—and could reference many more—not to boast, but, rather, to establish that the speeches and writings of the ICFI, which are posted on the World Socialist Web Site, are very widely followed. To a politically knowledgeable audience, Trotskyism and the World Socialist Web Site are synonymous.
And yet, following Google’s implementation of its new censorship algorithm, the World Socialist Web Site began disappearing from search results, even when users sought information on Trotsky.
In the month of July, the number of Google searches for “Leon Trotsky” return a grand total of... zero impressions for the WSWS, down from 5,893 in May.
In preparing this article, we searched Google for “Who is Leon Trotsky.” We conducted this experiment with Chrome, Google’s browser, using “incognito mode” to ensure that results were not affected by previous searches. The search term was used without quotation marks.
All manner of right-wing essays and articles come up. The first page includes an essay posted on rbth.com (Russia Beyond the Headlines, put out by the Russian government), “Leon Trotsky: 6 facts about the disgraced Russian revolutionary.”
On page three, there is an entry from Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary about Leon Trotsky… the piglet, an animal rescued by the farm in Australia in April 2014, who, we are informed, “has more spunk than most who are ten times his size.” There is also an article in Slate, published in 2007, warning readers, “Don’t idealize Leon Trotsky” (the revolutionary), and an entry in the right-wing Conservapedia.
Page four includes a Leon Trotsky flashcard from Quizlet, notes from TVTropes.com, and a reactionary and ignorant entry from the satirical Uncyclopedia informing its readers that Trotsky’s greatest legacy is “his philosophy of permanent factionalism and split-hair revolutionary dialectics.”
Going deeper, on page six, we find pages that collect “Leon Trotsky GIFs” and an essay, “Frida’s Red Hot Lover” from an obscure site, Lisa’s History Room, that, according to Alexa, has global ranking of 1,078,957 (compared to the WSWS at 40,677). Also on page six is an essay on Trotsky and Orwell’s book Animal Farm, written by a high school student and published on Prezi.com.

WSWS is among many sites under attack.

Fake News?

NYT and Washington Post are the fake news.

The whole 'fake news' cry was an effort to destroy independent voices and outlets.


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


Friday, July 28, 2017.


Let's start with things that are beyond stupidity.


This vote is this decade's Iraq war vote. Except no Senator will be able to say they weren't warned by the experts.






Andy Slavitt's one of those ugly whores who wormed his way into government (via Barack) from Goldman Sachs.

He's also got a face that looks like someone ran over it with an 18-wheeler.

Which could explain the possible brain damage.

ObamaCare does not help America.

Nor will TrumpCare.

The only answer is Medicare for all -- an answer a Goldman Sachs whore will never support.

Andy's not the first ugly piece of trash to lie.

But he had to lie about Iraq.

Why?

Because he's not just a whore, he's also a War Hawk.

His comments are not just ridiculous, they're xenophobic.

The Iraq War has resulted in the immediate deaths of over a million civilians.

It has left hundreds of thousands living in a war zone with severe injuries.

Do not compare this to the US healthcare system.

The weapons used by the US and others have destroyed areas like Falluja and will result in birth defects for decades to come.

Iraq did not attack the United States.

Add to that, no one can say they weren't warned ahead of voting for the Iraq War.

They chose not to pay attention -- like Blood Thirsty Hillary Clinton -- but they were warned.

They wanted war because they're whores just like Andy.

The US government has destroyed Iraq.

Don't you dare show up at this late date pretending to suddenly care so you can do a Tweet you filthy piece of trash.  But it's what he wants to do, it's what the laughable Obama whore Daniel Benaim wants to do.

Next up, watch Daniel compare his issues with the McDonald's menu to the plight of the Palestinians!
Seriously, people need to realize how stupid they sound when they liken this to an ongoing, 14-year war that has decimated a country, turned it into a country of orphans and so much more.


Let's stay with stupidity:

Openly gay Iraq War veteran on transgender military ban: “I thought we were done with this”


Gay men and lesbians are not transgendered.


CNN can't find a transgendered person to speak with?

That's insulting.

It's like bringing on an Anglo White person to discuss what it's like to be African-American.

Rob Smith is not qualified to speak and needs to sit his tired ass down.

It's like when the Native Americans told Jane Fonda they could speak for themselves and didn't need a savior to speak for them.

Rob Smith needs to sit his tired ass down and CNN needs to grasp that if you are covering transgender issues, you bring on guests who are transgender.

He is not an expert on being transgender.

Shame on CNN for refusing to invite a transgendered guest to the table and shame on Rob Smith who thinks he can speak on any topic.

There are many who could speak including Chelsea Manning.



  1. so, biggest baddest most $$ military on earth cries about a few trans people 😩 but funds the F-35? 😑 sounds like cowardice 😎💕🌈
  2. wrote about trans ban (and war against trans) in 😌 big setback 😬 but we will move forward 😎🌈💕



Shame on anyone taking a seat at the table on this issue from a transgendered person.  It's a bit like the way Gloria Steinem derailed feminism by refusing to step aside (she had no qualms about knocking Betty Friedan out of the way, did she?).

Even in the so-called age of diversity, seats at the table are hard to come by.  If you're taking up someone else's seat, you need to step back.

And shame on CNN for the garbage they offer including "Ten years on: How Iraq's soccer stars brought warring nation together."

Was someone at CNN inhaling fumes from their dirty jock strap?

How else to explain such garbage?

They can't cover the War Crimes but they're propaganda central, aren't they?

Bill Van Auken (WSWS) reports:

Two weeks after the Iraqi government hailed the “liberation” of Mosul, the scale and criminality of the mass slaughter carried out during the US-backed siege continues to emerge.
Iraqi soldiers and officers speaking to a reporter from Middle East Eye (MEE) have revealed that during the assault on the densely populated Old City of western Mosul, the order was given to massacre everyone remaining, men, women and children.
“We killed them all,” an Iraqi soldier told MEE. “Daesh [ISIS] men, women and children. We killed everyone.”
An Iraqi major told the web site, “After liberation was announced, the order was given to kill anything or anyone that moved.” He added that most of the remaining fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Sunni Islamist militia that took control of the city in June 2017, had surrendered to the army. “They gave themselves up, and we just killed them,” he said.
The report, one of the few from Mosul, from which US-backed Iraqi security forces have barred the media, paints a horrific portrait of what was once Iraq’s second-largest city:


To be clear, many US reporters were covering -- or miscovering -- Mosul.  Including THE NEW YORK TIMES' new Judith Miller -- who, no surprise, Rachel Maddow's reTweeting.


RUDAW reminds:

Because of alleged killings committed by the 16th division of the Iraqi army in Mosul, the United States should stop assisting Baghdad militarily, argues a human rights monitor.

“The US government should make sure it is no longer providing assistance to the Iraqi unit responsible for this spate of executions but also suspend any plans for future assistance until these atrocities have been properly investigated,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The group released a report on Thursday claiming two international observers witnessed “the summary killings of four people by the Iraqi army’s 16th Division in mid-July 2017.”

HRW argues that US government should suspend all assistance and support to the 16th Division pending Iraq’s full investigation of the allegations and appropriate prosecutions.

Its basis is that the Leahy Law prohibits the US from providing military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights with impunity.



Let's turn to numbers.  Qassim Abdul-Zahra (AP) reports that the Iraqi government estimates there are 7,000 members of ISIS still in Iraq.  Another number, via Patrick Cockburn's reporting last week, was 40,000 civilians killed in the 'liberation' of Mosul.  One number getting less attention -- in fact, no attention outside Arabic and Russian media -- is 20,000.

That's the number of Iraqi forces killed in the 'liberation' of Mosul per Nouri al-Maliki.

Ahead of his trip to Russia and after reaching Russia, Nouri gave numerous interviews stressing that 20,000 Iraqi forces had been killed.

Considering that the Iraqi government had clamped down on the number and that UNAMI storpped recording the number of dead Iraqi forces at the Iraqi government's request, Nouri's 20,000 should have been big news.


The following community sites -- plus PACIFICA EVENING NEWS and DISSIDENT VOICE -- updated:















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