Saturday, March 31, 2018

Spring Pasta Salad in the Kitchen

Wendy loves Two Peas and Their Pod -- a cooking website.  And she suggested this recipe from the site for Spring Pasta Salad:

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1 pound DeLallo’s Organic Whole Wheat Farfalle Pasta
  • 1 pound fresh asparagus, cut into 1-inch pieces, ends trimmed and discarded
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 cups baby spinach, roughly chopped
  • 1 1/2 cups peas (we use frozen)
  • 1 (14 oz) can artichoke hearts, drained and roughly chopped
  • Juice of 1 large lemon
  • 2/3 cup crumbled feta cheese
  • 1/4 cup chopped basil
  • Salt and freshly-cracked black pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta to al dente texture, according to package instructions. Three minutes before the pasta is done cooking, carefully add in the asparagus pieces. When the pasta is done cooking, drain the pasta and asparagus. Rinse cold water over the pasta and asparagus.
  2. Pour the pasta and asparagus into a large bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and stir. Add the spinach, peas, artichoke hearts, lemon juice, feta cheese, and basil. Toss until combined and season with salt and black pepper. Serve!
Note-the pasta salad will keep in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. If storing it in the fridge, freshen it up with an extra drizzle of olive oil and squeeze of lemon juice before serving.


One thing to especially enjoy about this recipe is that there are no tomatoes.  I love tomatoes but there are many times I'm planning to do a dish and then realize I have no fresh tomatoes.  So here's a pasta salad that's easy to make, tasty and perfect for when you have no tomatoes.


Meanwhile, the 'resistance.'  They're fighting so hard against Donald Trump, right?  Wrong.


Without any opposition from the Democratic Party and little attention in the corporate media, President Donald Trump and his fascist advisors are quietly carrying out the most dramatic rightwing shift in US immigration policy in a century. They are laying the basis for mass roundups and the brutalization of hundreds of thousands of immigrants in an expanding network of internment camps nationwide.
The Trump administration announced a series of new policies on Thursday. The first policy change targets the poor and working class by blocking immigrants who have used a broad array of social programs from receiving legal permanent residency.
While immigrants were previously denied permanent residency if they had used cash programs, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced a change on Thursday that adds almost all forms of government support to the list of banned services, including noncash programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), food programs for women and infants (WIC), school lunches, housing and heating assistance, health care subsidies, and the earned income tax credit, which is used by about 20 percent of the population.
Any immigrant who uses a social program will be labeled a “public charge” and found ineligible for legal status. Immigrant parents will be penalized even if their US citizen children use social programs to which they are legally entitled.
As a result of this policy change, hundreds of thousands or millions of workers will go without food, health care, housing and other basic needs for fear of deportation. The Trump administration’s strategy is to create a permanent underclass of deeply impoverished people who can be scapegoated for society’s ills.


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


Friday, March 30, 2018.  So many enable the current war and occupation of Iraq.


The key to understanding Gary Younge is to remember he lies frequently.  When he writes for THE GUARDIAN (writing often reproduced in THE NATION), he's one way.  When he's writing for a Socialist publication, he's another way.  He can tailor himself to fit any outlet.  He did so this week at THE GUARDIAN where he made two key points about the Iraq War:

First, because many are still living with the consequences. Amnesia is the privilege of the powerful. The powerless do not have the luxury of moving on, because their nations have been flattened, economies ruined and sectarian divisions deepened and weaponised as a result of a war that was prosecuted in their name.
Second, it was the greatest foreign policy error of a generation or more, in which most of the political class and the media class were entirely complicit. We cannot walk away – because it has changed who we are, and so wherever we go, this dark shadow follows us.

It was really hard for him to get there because he had to provide links and he was writing for a UK audience.  This meant noting some of Tony Blair's claims (lies) in the lead up to the war.  It also means he can't note the Downing St. Memos that document so much about how Tony and Bully Boy Bush worked it out ahead of time.  In the US, much was made about the corporate media ignoring the memo but the reality is that they weren't the only ones.  The blessed GUARDIAN, to this day, has never mentioned them.  (THE TIMES OF LONDON is the British paper that first reported on them.)  That's because you can't call out Labour too harshly in the New Labour outlet that THE GUARDIAN is.

Now you can write any truth about the United States in THE GUARDIAN and Ajay Singh Chaudhary gets a few in:


Although Trump still has plenty of time to catch up (and I fear he will), his crimes do not come close to the crimes against humanity committed by members of our ruling class from political leadership to the media in our lifetime. I won’t list names here because it would be too inflammatory, but there are dozens, hundreds, who would be facing tribunals if they were not American.
They not only walk free but are rewarded for their complicity in one of the key moments that is the short walk to now. Watching the sickening rehabilitation of political and media figures of this period – and for some the simple continuity – is also a reminder of the partial utility of that term “totalitarian”.
No matter how much they destroy, how many lines they cross, whom they murder en masse, their respectability is unaffected, their leadership de rigueur. This was not the failure of the rule of law: this is the rule of law in a system in which any attempt to transform power or even challenge it has been silenced.
This was not because “norms” or the constitution were violated; this was the absolute functioning of norms and the constitution. This was the America that some tell me was already great.

But you cannot tell the truth about the UK government in THE GUARDIAN -- which is why Gary's links in his article to opposition go to GUARDIAN articles published . . . after the war had started.

From Gary, let's go to another whore of Babylon, Jane Arraf (NPR at this moment):

In 2014, tens of thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority, facing genocide from ISIS, escaped to the mountain from the town of Sinjar and surrounding villages in northern Iraq.
The United States said it entered the war against ISIS partly to protect Yazidis trapped on the mountain with no food and water.
Four years later, several thousand of them remain there. Destitute and living in tents, they are still too afraid to come down.


True Barack story, in late 2015 as the Yazidis were still refusing attempts to 'rescue' them by getting them off the mountain, then-President Barack Obama wondered "what the f**k do they want?"  A very good question.  But not one that should have surprised him or anyone else.

In real time, in 2014, with this situation, we were quite clear.  We said don't send in US troops.  We said do air drops of packages so that they didn't starve.

That's what should have been done.

The US forces and the Kurds both provided every opportunity for the Yazidis to get off Mount Sinjar.  Not for one day, not for one week, not for one month, not even for one year.  Over and over they provided that opportunity.  The Yazdis wouldn't -- and still won't -- leave.

"I'm trapped!  I'm trapped! Rescue me!"

Save yourself.

Seriously.

Are you a kitten caught in a tree?



I am not a pretty girl
That is not what I do
I ain't no damsel in distress
And I don't need to be rescued, so
So put me down, punk
Wouldn't you prefer a maiden fair?
Isn't there a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere?
[. . .]
And what if there are no damsels in distress?
What if I knew that, and I called your bluff?
Don't you think every kitten
Figures out how to get down
Whether or not you ever show up?



The Yazidis don't figure it out because they don't want anything but to start more wars.  I don't know if that has to do with their worship or what.

But they have certainly been vocal about how the Kurds abandoned them!  Left them on Mt. Sinjar!  They are trapped!

No, you had you chances to come down but you refused to.  That's on you.  And everyone knows the Yazidis will use the same sentences to gripe about the US just as soon as they figure they've drained the US out of all the sympathy they can get.

The Yazidis are victims of their own making.

PIX 11 reports:

A native son of Carmel, Indiana, who served with New York City's fire department and died in Iraq received a send-off punctuated by crisp military precision, appreciation and moments of joy.
Capt. Christopher "Tripp" Zanetis was celebrated at New York University by Mayor Bill de Blasio, fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro and many others after a solemn ceremony in nearby Washington Square Park on Thursday.
On Long Island, a funeral was held for Staff Sgt. Dashan Briggs, another of the four New York Air National Guardsmen killed in a March 15 helicopter crash. Funerals will be held Saturday on Long Island for Master Sgt. Christopher Raguso, another fire department veteran, and on April 6 in Tampa, Florida, for Capt. Andreas O'Keeffe.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS notes:


Amid the chaos of 9/11, as the fires burned at Ground Zero, volunteer Christopher Zanetis worked alongside the FDNY members searching in the rubble for their lost brothers.
Three years later, he joined their ranks. And in 2008, the heroic Zanetis became a member of the Air National Guard.
The 37-year-old FDNY fire marshal and U.S. Air Force major, who was killed March 15 in a helicopter crash in Iraq, was honored Thursday for a life driven by service for city and country at an emotional Greenwich Village sendoff.
The “Celebration of Life” began at his old East Village firehouse and continued in Washington Square Park, where his his brown wood casket arrived beneath its massive marble arch.
From LONG ISLAND NEWS 12:


Funeral services were held today for Tech. Sgt. Dashan Briggs, of Port Jeff Station – one of four members of the Air National Guard's 106th Rescue Wing who died earlier this month in a chopper crash in Iraq.
Friends spoke Thursday about how giving he was, how great he was as a father, and how honored they were to have served with him.

Would those service members have died were it not for the Yazidi spokespersons (and the neocon p.r. firm in the US)?  Maybe not.

They refused to be rescued after their spokespeople insisted they needed to be rescued.  They should accept the fact that many have tired of their little-boy-who-cried-wolf ploys.

Again, we didn't play heartless here.  We said if they're trapped, drop food on the mountain for them.  But instead it was send more US troops into Iraq.  Where they remain.

Melissa Steininger (WTAJ) reports:

The men and women salute in honor of their country at the Punxsutawney Community Center Wednesday morning. 
The same group will soon put their lives on the line. They're the 665 Engineer Utilities Detachment and they will be deployed to Iraq at the end of the week.  


The Iraq War never ends. Remember what Anthony H. Cordesman (CSIS) argued earlier this year:

The United States, its allies, and international organizations are just beginning to come to grips with the civil dimensions of "failed state" wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, the Sudans, Syria, and Yemen. In each case, it is clear that the civil dimension of the war will ultimately be as important as the military one.
Any meaningful form of "victory" requires far more than defeating the current extremist threat in military terms, and reaching some temporary compromise between the major factions that divide the country. The current insurgent and other security threats exist largely because of the deep divisions within the state, the past and current failures of the government to deal with such internal divisions, and the chronic failure to meet the economic, security, and social needs of much of the nation's population.
In practical terms, these failures make a given host government, other contending factions, and competing outside powers as much of a threat to each nation’s stability and future as Islamic extremists and other hostile forces. Regardless of the scale of any defeat of extremists, the other internal tensions and divisions with each country also threaten to make any such “victory” a prelude to new forms of civil war, and/or an enduring failure to cope with security, stability, recovery, and development.
Any real form of victory requires a different approach to stability operations and civil-military affairs. In each case, the country the U.S. is seeking to aid failed to make the necessary economic progress and reforms to meet the needs of its people – and sharply growing population – long before the fighting began. The growth of these problems over a period of decades helped trigger the sectarian, ethnic, and other divisions that made such states vulnerable to extremism and civil conflict, and made it impossible for the government to respond effectively to crises and wars.
These issues are analyzed in depth in a new study by the Burke Chair at CSIS entitled Iraqi After ISIS: The Other Half of Victory, which is available on the CSIS web site at https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/180109_iraq_other_half_cordesman_civilian.pdf?8SEsjcRdOq.sakyQJ_PN3RKfCGlBCgs4It is being circulated in working draft form in order to seek comments, directions and additional data, which should be sent to Anthony H. Cordesman atacordesman@gmail.com.
The study shows that the economy and infrastructure of Iraq and the other countries involved in "failed state" wars have now been further crippled by years of war. As a result, each conflict has changed the country to the point where it creates a need to establish a new structure of governance and economy that reflects major shifts in the population, the balance of power in each state, and its real-world post-conflict opportunities for development.
The cumulative result is to make "stability operations" a key part of grand strategy. Defeating a given mix of terrorists or insurgents requires aid and assistance efforts that look beyond the fighting and the short-term priorities of conflict termination. Negotiations and new political arrangements, emergency humanitarian aid, and recovery aid are all critical steps towards lasting stability.

This is about occupation.  "Stability."  It's not ending.

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  • Friday, March 30, 2018

    Be careful when you eat out


    Okay, we’re talking food again.  Just a recap, the economy was tanking when this site started.  The only thing that I felt I could contribute was cooking.  As the mother of eight kids, I knew about stretching a dollar.  And it can save money if you eat a meal or two or three or . . . at home.  Well here’s another reason to have a meal or two at home.  Ed Cara (Gizmodo) reports:

     



    The more you dine out, the more you’re getting exposed to potentially hazardous chemicals known as phthalates, suggests a new study published Wednesday in the journal Environment International.


    Phthalates are a group of chemicals used to help make plastics more flexible and durable. They can be found in everything from cosmetics to children’s toys to medical devices. Most of us, though, are exposed to low doses of phthalates through contamination of our food. Research, mostly in animals, has suggested that certain phthalates can muck with the organs and glands responsible for making hormones, particularly androgens like testosterone.


     

     

     



     


    The onus on reducing exposure to phthalates is on policymakers rather than the public, suggested Zota. However, she said preparing food at home is a “win-win” in terms of protecting one’s health.


    "Home-cooked meals can be a good way to reduce sugar, unhealthy fats and salt. And this study suggests it may not have as many harmful phthalates as a restaurant meal."


    Here’s more disturbing news, Will Morrow (WSWS) reports:

     



     


    The American payment-processing corporation PayPal has blocked sales of the World Socialist Web Site pamphlet, The Struggle Against Imperialism and for Workers’ Power in Iran.


    The effective banning of the sale of a book represents a dangerous new stage in the ongoing campaign to criminalize political expression and censor freedom of speech on the Internet.


    Mehring Books customers who attempt to purchase the pamphlet using PayPal currently receive the following message: “PayPal gateway has rejected request. This transaction cannot be completed because it violates the PayPal User Agreement (#13122: Transaction refused).”


    When a Mehring Books representative contacted PayPal’s customer service team on March 27 to inquire about the error, a PayPal representative confirmed that the pamphlet’s sale had been deliberately blocked because “the government has given us certain policies that we have to block transactions.”


    The staff member’s supervisor stated further, “It is something where we can’t change it. You are not going to be allowed to process [sales of the book], based on compliance reasons.” She said she “can’t provide further information” and that Mehring Books would receive no explanation for the action “except via a subpoena.”


     

     

     
    Talk about censorship.  No one should be using PayPal and the government should be explaining where they get off blocking payments.  This is a First Amendment issue.


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

    Thursday, March 29, 2018.  The feel good nonsense or the reality of death and destruction?


    RT reports:

    The US-led coalition fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) on Wednesday admitted to killing at least 855 civilians in airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in the past four years. “To date, based on information available, CJTF-OIR assesses at least 855 civilians have been unintentionally killed by coalition strikes since the start of Operation Inherent Resolve,” the US Central Command said in its monthly civilian casualty report. The coalition conducted a total of 29,225 strikes between August 2014 and the end of February 2018, and during this period the total number of reports of possible civilian casualties was 2,135. The total number of credible reports of civilian casualties during this time period was 224, according to the statement. It said that 522 reports are still open.

    That's what they are now admitting to.  You can be sure the actual count of civilians killed in airstrikes is much higher.




    All across the nation, people are protesting against "violence," and yet not one demonstration about the government's violence in , , , , , . Millions have died since 2003 and it doesn't even register on the outrage meter.









    Not that I think the gun violence march in America was irrelevant but the children of Iraq, Syria, and Palestine would like to be safe
    in school and at home.
    Where are the marches for these children? Why is the world so silent when it comes to them?







    Yes, we're back to the issue of does violence only matter when effects White kids in the US?  Do the lives of Iraqis -- including Iraqi children -- not matter at all?

    Ajamu Baraka (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) observes:



    So, it was a good week for both bourgeois parties. The Democrats didn’t get called out for their collaboration with Trump and the Republicans on the budget. The Trump folks have more ammunition to use to mobilize their supporters in opposition to what they will frame as efforts to violate the constitution and take away their guns and give more power to a repressive government. Even the intelligence agencies benefited from the week’s events with attention being shifted away from the FBI scandal that is threatening to blow the cover off of official criminal activity to undermine the electoral process, not by the Russians, but unelected forces in the U.S. state.

    But for those of us from the colonized Black and Brown zones of non-being, we can never allow ourselves to be distracted by the diversionary and accommodationist politics of the latest carefully crafted spectacle, especially one that purports to be advancing a superior moral politics.

    We must always remind ourselves that some can march with the confidence that “their” government might be trusted with regulating weapons and protecting their lives but that the protection of our fundamental human rights rest with our ability to defend our collective rights, and no one else.

    Through our painful lived experiences, we understand and must live by the insight provided by our dear brother, James Baldwin, who counseled us that we must be vigilant when our oppressors speak of morality and the sanctity of life:

    “The “civilized” have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their “vital interests” are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death; these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the “sanctity” of human life, or the conscience of civilized world.”

    Distraction can be deadly, let’s us get and stay woke.
    Saturday's look-at-me-look-at-me tantrum accomplished nothing and was never going to accomplish anything while rubbing elbows with the likes of Senator Dianne Feinstein and others.  It was an effort to release some steam from the system, a moment to distract from reality.  When elements of Congress and the press stroke themselves to stroke the event, you know it was meaningless.  As Glen Ford (BAR) points out:


    There is “movement” afoot in the U.S., but it does not “arc towards justice.” Ever since Trump’s electoral victory, the collective national consciousness has been smothered in a maddening fog of manic, industrial-scale propaganda, spewed non-stop by corporate communications conglomerates working hand-in-glove with the most aggressive elements of the surveillance-intelligence “community” and the bi-partisan War Party. We are enveloped in a toxic miasma of Russia-hate that, by sheer weight and repetition, has infested every aspect of American political thought, distorting and subverting even the most progressive-minded “movements” struggling to find a way towards human dignity under late stage capitalism in a profoundly racist country. Voices for peace and social justice are asphyxiated in the pestilential plume -- unless they find their own air.

    Damn right, there is a conspiracy -- possibly the loudest one in history! -- megaphoned by a billionaire-owned media screaming “War, War, War” day and night, fouling the public mind with pure reactionary malice. The duopoly contest has devolved into a dance of death between Donald Trump’s raw white supremacist nationalism and Democratic Party corporate imperial warmongering. Only fools claim there is space for progressive maneuver in the interstices between such forces.



    We've been "Down So Long" Jewel notes but doing for-show and feel-good fauxtests won't change a thing ("Down So Long" first appears on Jewel's SPIRIT).

    The realities of faux 'protest' and real protest were addressed when Ann Garrison interviewed Riva Enteen (BAR):


    AG: Some March for Our Lives supporters are likely to get defensive and ask whether you're refusing to support their cause. What would you say to them?



    RE: Of course we support the cause of protecting lives, but there is an exceptionalism to believing it only applies to American lives and especially white lives. In a promotional video that Democracy Now played repeatedly during their broadcast of the Washington, DC March for Our Lives, former US soldiers said that they’d learned how to put assault rifles to good purpose in US wars, but didn’t want them aimed at US citizens.

    Isn’t it time to stop aiming those guns—and our missiles, fighter jets, and drones—at the rest of the world? My mother was a member of Women Strike for Peace, founded in 1961 with the slogan “Stop the Arms Race, Not the Human Race,” and that has never been more true.

    Women, the givers of life, are confronting the Pentagon in Washington, DC, October 20-21. We hope that all peace-loving people will consider this a chance to make a stand for peace. There will be local antiwar actions springing up, as they did during Occupy, so keep your ear to the ground, and watch for updates on our websiteand our Facebook page .
    The action in DC is the Women's March on the Pentagon.  This is the event Cindy Sheehan is one of the organizers of and that we've been noting here:


    An Open Invitation:
    Women's March on the Pentagon
    UPDATED ENDORSER'S LIST:
    CLICK HERE
    ***

    UPCOMING LOCAL ORGANIZING MEETINGS FOR
    THE MARCH
    (CINDY WILL BE LEADING):
    NATIONAL ORGANIZING CONFERENCE CALL
    WED, MARCH 21 (COMPLETED)
      CLICK HERE FOR SUMMARY AND RECORDING OF CALL
    *
    April 5th in Washington DC

    CLICK HERE FOR WDC MEETING INFO
    *
    April 9th in Boston  
    *

    April 12th in Long Island
     

    APRIL 13TH: LANCASTER, PA



     



    JUNE: CHICAGO, IL


     contact Cindy Sheehan for

    more info, to organize a meeting/action
    in your area or ??
    CindySheehan@MarchonPentagon.com












    TAX DEDUCTIBLE 


     People are dying.  Don't expect kids raised on media fawning to tell you that.  Certainly don't expect the corporate media to tell you that.  All the corporate media does is lie.



    Iraq has defeated IS and avoided the wave of Shia-on-Sunni violence that many thought would follow









    Things are great in Iraq!

    If you forget the fact that people are protesting in the streets because there are so few jobs.  Or that the medical situation in Iraq is actually worse now than at any point in the history of this wave of the Iraq War.  The brain drain got a big kick in the last six months but no one bothers to notice that -- the flight of needed professional from Iraq.  There are enough beds for the orphans but Iraq did open a cat hotel this year so I guess that's the 'great' that THE ECONOMIST sees taking place.


    B-b-b-but ISIS is defeated!  Except they are not.  ANADOLU AGENCY reports that yesterday saw 5 Iraqi soldiers killed when ISIS ambushed them at "a fake checkpoint on the road linking Mosul and the Tal Afar district."


    But the corporate press can't stop their waves of Operation Happy Talk.  It's been going on for years now and it's never turned out to be true.  Hayder al-ABadi, for example, has promised to get the trains running.  When I saw that a few days ago, I rolled my eyes as I remembered when we were sold that lie -- in THE NEW YORK TIMES, among other places.  The trains were working, running and doing great!  It took Deborah Haynes (TIMES OF LONDON) to expose that as a lie.  But here we are, about twelve years later and they're trying to re-sell that failed talking point.



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