Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Joe Biden sewing conflict intentionally


President Joe Biden recently stood in front of a blood-red background in Philadelphia, framed by two Marines, to denounce millions of “MAGA Republicans” and his political opponents as “semi-fascist” extremists. In Wilkes-Barre, Pa., former president Donald Trump stood before his followers and denounced Biden as an “enemy of the state” and the FBI as “vicious monsters.”

Although I have previously expressed alarm over what I call the “age of rage,” we are seeing a more serious turn as our leaders fuel that rage in hopes of retaining or regaining power.

Not surprisingly, polls show more than 40 percent of voters now believe we are heading into a civil war. Not only are more columnists discussing the approach of a possible civil war, President Biden reportedly told a senior Democrat: “I certainly hope [my presidency] works out. If it doesn’t, I’m not sure we’re going to have a country.”

A Trafalgar poll shows a majority of Americans believe Biden tried to “incite conflict” with his Philadelphia speech. Given an opportunity to assume higher ground after that speech, Trump instead engaged in the same kind of unhinged rhetoric. Liberal and conservative pundits add to all that by discussing the gathering clouds of civil war while blaming each other.


Joe Biden was out of line.  His remarks were beneath the office and there's no excuse for them.  There's also no excuse for whoring and pretending that there was nothing wrong with what he said.

"TV: Jen Psaki isn't capable of explaining what's going on to others" (Ava and C.I., THE THIRD ESTATE SUNDAY REVIEW):
Jen Psaki is a dishonest person.  She was the mouthpiece for various campaigns and politicians before becoming attached as a press secretary to the Obama White House.  She would return as the White House press secretary under Joe Biden.

Her remarks are lies.  She lied on a daily basis. She was especially pathetic when attempting to dance and dodge on Hunter Biden's laptop.  Back in October and November of 2020, Jen was able to lie because the press was helping her lie and insisting it was Russian propaganda.  They all rode the high horse -- especially NPR's ombudsperson.  But the laptop was real.  POLITICO was the first to verify this (2021).  THE WASHINGTON POST and THE NEW YORK TIMES would follow. 

Jen would lie still.

And that's rather sad for a grown woman but she worked for the White House -- so lying was a natural pose for her.

And we didn't spend a lot of time focusing on her (here or at THE COMMON ILLS) but now she's going to be a member of the press?  She needs to get accountable for her public lies if she wants anyone to trust her.

But she doesn't want to be accountable and she doesn't intend to do news because news is beyond her.

She's already demonstrated that.


Jen insists her business is not rage and that she has a "passion" for "explaining things, debunking things, calling out BS."  Furthermore:



She also called it "bizarre" that many found President Biden’s recent speech in Philadelphia partisan, suggesting that "there’s a tactical component of what he’s saying publicly…but it’s not a reflection of a change in his view."




A number of people were offended by Joe's Philadelphia speech.  This included veterans who called out Joe's use of Marines as props for his political speech.  It also included many Republicans, a number of Democrats and others.  That she thinks it is 'bizarre'' goes to how she has nothing to offer.  She's either lying again -- spinning for her politician of choice -- or she's a stupid idiot.  




The Washington Post reported Friday that ABC, CBS, and NBC all declined to carry President Joe Biden’s Thursday remarks because they were viewed as too “political.”

The Post also reported after viewing the speech beforehand, Biden’s criticism of former President Donald Trump was a turnoff to networks that aired reruns and a game show.



Even the networks saw a problem but Jen's clueless and finds it "bizarre."  This is someone who can offer news or analysis?  

She can't see what most people can and she's an 'expert' to bring on the air?

No, she's just a spinmeister.  

We wondered what kind of a show Jen would bring to MSNBC and we were planning to review it.  Now?  We're going to take a pass.  When her former boss gives a divisive speech and she can't understand why some might take offense, it's clear that she's got nothing to offer but spin.  

Life is too short.  That's a reality that will probably only come to Jen on her death bed, when it's far too late for her to change the way she wasted her life -- and, yes, whoring for a political party is wasting your life.

This nonsense of hiring known liars, giving them faux news shows and pretending they're journalists is why our country is in the mess it's in and has been for so many decades.

It's this nonsense that allows Hillary Clinton to lie and pretend she did nothing wrong.  Crooked Hillary:




But the FBI had access to only some of Clinton’s emails. Why? Despite congressional directives and subpoenas ordering her to preserve her records, more than 30,000 documents were destroyed while her server was wiped clean by using file-deleting software. Her mobile devices were demolished with hammers. This constituted obstruction of justice and other crimes.

Throughout the investigation, Clinton attempted to cover up her actions by peddling a series of arrant deceptions that are strikingly similar to her latest tweet pretending she had "zero emails" that were classified.

At first, Hillary claimed, "I did not email any classified material to anyone on my emails. There is no classified material." When evidence surfaced to the contrary, she changed her story to say, "I never sent or received any information that was classified at the time it was sent or received" (emphasis added). As more facts emerged contradicting this preposterous claim, Clinton altered her story for a third time by asserting, "I never sent or received any email that was marked classified." That, too, proved to be untrue since many of the emails showed marked classification. Even Comey called her statement false.

Then, Clinton revised her story yet again by confessing that she had not realized that the parenthetical "C" meant classified material at the confidential level. As ludicrous as that sounded, she was effectively arguing her own incompetence. Besides, the markings were irrelevant under the law, since the content—not the markings—made them classified. Finally, she abandoned all of those excuses and resorted to the blanket assertion that "Everything I did was permitted by law and regulation." It was not.


People who do nothing wrong don't need to use bit-bleach on their e-mails or to destroy the communication devices with hammers.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Tuesday, September 13, 2022.  The fawning never ends for the imperialists, Joe Biden can't find Jackson, Mississippi but he's gearing up to visit London, a rally for Julian Assange took place in Mexico City, and much more.




On July 24, 2020, a false tweet was posted that claimed Queen Elizabeth II had posed in front of a gold-colored piano that was “stolen” from former Iraq President Saddam Hussein. It read, “The golden piano is owned by the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. It was stolen from Iraq during the Gulf War. And it was recently seen behind Elizabeth the Queen of Britain in the Royal Palace!”


SNOPES then wants to offer background on Saddam Hussein.  Why not background on the Brit royals who have over $80 billion?  


King Charles III attended a special meeting of both houses of parliament held at Westminster Hall Monday. He was greeted with fawning speeches from Lords Speaker, Baron John McFall, and Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, both former Labour MPs.

They delivered a “humble address” agreed by each of the houses of parliament while Charles sat on a raised podium surrounded by assorted figures in outlandish costumes, including the King’s Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard and the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms.

The ceremony was meant to sanctify “our constitutional monarchy”, as “a symbol of stability in an ever-changing world”, in Hoyle’s words. He noted that the late queen had visited Westminster Hall many times to mark historic occasions, including the 300th anniversary of the “Glorious Revolution”. In an example of the rampant cynicism of the event, Hoyle commented, “It is perhaps very British to celebrate revolutions by presenting an address to Her Majesty, but those revolutions led to our constitutional freedoms.”

Like most of the historical references thrown around in the days following the queen’s death last week, it is best for the ruling class that they remain vague. The Glorious Revolution refers to the 1688 war of succession that began with an invasion of England by William of Orange and which deposed the Catholic James II, after which the protestant King William III and Queen Mary swore an oath to uphold the laws made in parliament.

What was therefore being celebrated at Westminster Hall is the ability of Britain’s imperialist bourgeoisie to utilise the monarchy as a means of sanctifying and reinforcing its own power.

This is the essential function of all the daily rituals surrounding the queen’s death that have been given saturation coverage by Britain’s media, presented always in solemn tones no matter how ludicrous the events being reported.


Don't know who is the worst liar and enabler these days on the royal family?  Two worth naming right away.   Patrick "We are the Communist Cockburns!'' writes of his mommy's coming out as  a deb at Buckingham Palace.  The other? Ava and I were going to reference Riverdaughter on something she'd written in 2009.  But it's . . . Riverdaughter.  So we checked her site and the second newest entry was on Queen Elizabeth and wanted the world to know "she's the only queen I've known in my lifetime" or some such garbage.  Riverdaughter met the Queen?  No.  She knew of her but Riverdaughter always struggles with writing.  (Her garbage meant we didn't highlight her from 2009.)  


The uproar over the tweet posted by Carnegie Mellon University professor Uju Anya has revealed the hypocrisy of the democratic pretensions of the ruling establishment, and its readiness to resort to censorship to silence dissenting or unpopular voices.

The Nigerian-born Anya, an associate professor in the linguistics department at CMU in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, tweeted last week, upon hearing that Queen Elizabeth II was near death, “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”

Among those quickly responding to the tweet was Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, currently listed as the third-wealthiest billionaire in the world. “This is someone supposedly working to make the world better,” tweeted Bezos. “I don’t think so. Wow.”

Anya’s post was quickly deleted by Twitter, which claimed that it violated the social media company’s guidelines.

Anya’s employer also responded, with the following statement: “We do not condone the offensive and objectionable messages posted by Uju Anya today on her personal social media account. Free expression is core to the mission of higher education, however, the views she shared absolutely do not represent the values of the institution, nor the standards of discourse we seek to foster.”

In the typical two-faced style perfected in such circles, the university pledged its commitment to free expression and attacked it at the same time. Anya was using her personal account and was not speaking for the university. If free speech is “core,” why was the statement necessary, not simply dissociating the university from Anya’s views, but also denouncing them?

Multi-billionaire Bezos, it turns out, donated $2 million to Carnegie Mellon in the last few years. The Chief Financial Officer of Amazon, Brian Olsavsky, is the recipient of an MBA degree from the same institution. The statement from CMU was issued quickly after Bezos’ tweet. It is hard to imagine a more direct expression of the way in which today’s institutions of “higher learning” are tied to their wealthy donors. CMU was evidently concerned about its “image,” but this means above all its reputation within the ruling elite.

The professor refused to back down. “If anyone expects me to express anything but disdain for the monarch who supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family and the consequences of which those alive today are still trying to overcome, you can keep wishing upon a star,” she said in a further tweet. She later sent an email to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette declaring, “I stand by my tweet and do not have any regrets ... I am the child and sibling of survivors of genocide. From 1967-1970, more than 3 million civilians were massacred when the Igbo people of Nigeria tried to form the independent nation of Biafra. Those slaughtered included members of my family. I was born in the immediate aftermath of this genocide.”

British imperialism, under the Labour government headed by Harold Wilson, secretly supplied arms, and ammunition to the Nigerian government during the civil war of the late 1960s. Nigeria had been granted formal independence only at the beginning of that decade, after a period of British colonial rule spanning three-quarters of a century.

Anya’s tweets and other statements reflect a pan-Africanist outlook, one that separates the history of colonialism and imperialist exploitation from the international class struggle as a whole. In any case, billions of people around the world, the descendants of those ruled by the British overlords on almost every continent, in Ireland, Kenya, India and elsewhere, have no reason to mourn the passing of the Queen. The current social media storm has brought to the fore the issue of the history and legacy of colonial rule, and the justifiable hatred it engendered.


This reality was also addressed on DEMOCRACY NOW! yesterday.



Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden's prepping to attend the funeral which begs two questions.  First, didn't the US fight a war to be free of British royalty?  Second, I'm sorry but what funeral did Liz attend.  Liz didn't show for Ronald Reagan's funeral or George H.W. Bush's or Lyndon B. Johnson's or JFK's or . . .


Why the hell does our president need to fawn over Liz and leaves his duties in this country?  


She's dead.  Rich and privileged, allowed Liz to live to an elderly age (96). That's 15 years longer than the average British citizen and much, much longer than the citizens of the countries the UK robbed and enslaved.

Elderly Joe needs to get his fat and flabby ass on a plane, alright, but not the UK.  He needs to go to Jacksonville, Mississippi.  Cordell Gascoigne (WSWS) notes:

The 150,000 residents of Jackson, Mississippi once again have water running to their homes and businesses after the city’s public water and sewage system collapsed amid flooding at the end of August. However, the water remains undrinkable and the city remains under a boil-water notice, which has been in place since July, before the current crisis hit.

Despite officials reporting water pressure having normalized, many residents of Jackson have reported very low water pressure and discolored water coming from their taps. On Friday, Molly Minta, reporter for Mississippi Today, recorded herself turning on the faucet at her home in the Belhaven neighborhood of Jackson, only to reveal an ongoing social crime: coffee-brown water. The video was posted on Twitter and has been widely circulated, garnering more than 12.5 million views. 

Notwithstanding the the lack of clean drinking water, as of Friday, Jackson’s public schools resumed in-person learning, doubly endangering students in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Last week, Mississippi Republican Governor Tate Reeves said, “This water system broke over several years and it would be inaccurate to claim it is totally solved in the matter of less than a week,” continuing, “There may be more bad days in the future. We have, however, reached a place where people in Jackson can trust that water will come out of the faucet, toilets can be flushed and fires can be put out.”

On Tuesday, Democratic Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said there was “some optimism” about samples being taken of the city’s water.

For the water to be declared safe and the water boil advisory to be dropped, two days of successful testing is required for health officials in Jackson to issue a declaration clearing the water for consumption. But emergency repairs are temporary, given the system’s aged infrastructure that could malfunction at any point, as it did during the colossal winter freeze of 2021, and again this year.


Joe Biden had no plans to help anyone as president.  He ran for the yearbook credit only.  Now he hears the clicking of cameras in London and, attention whore that he is, he wants to be part of that.  He doesn't want to roll up sleeves and work to address this very serious problem in the US.


Turning to Iraq, ARAB WEEKLY notes:

As he received Turkish intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, in the capital, Baghdad, the head of the Sunni Sovereignty Alliance Khamis al-Khanjar, sparked a widespread controversy in Iraq, especially, since he does no official capacity to hold such meetings with top foreign intelligence officials.

Political analysts said that Khanjar's hosting of Fidan, in the presence of a number of deputies and leaders of the Sovereignty Alliance, reflected the growing political clout of Ankara among Iraq's Sunnis.

Along with its ties to Khanjar's alliance, Turkey maintains a close relationship with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which runs the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, as well as the Turkmen Front, which is influential in Kirkuk and Mosul, in particular.

Analysts do not rule out the possibility that the meeting took place based on an understanding between Ankara and Tehran to convince the Sovereignty Alliance of the need to meet the demands of the pro-Iran Coordination Framework amid the current political crisis, especially over the choice of a president and prime minister and the formation of a cabinet.

The head of Turkish intelligence visited Baghdad, Saturday, the first such Iraqi trip by a high-ranking Turkish official  since the Turkish attack which last July targeted a tourist village in the Dohuk governorate in northern Iraq, causing many civilian casualties and sparking a diplomatic row between Ankara and Baghdad.

The political stalemate continues.  People continue to either lie or not know the facts -- I'm looking at a man writing for THE NATIONAL.  I'm not in the mood for it this morning.


Let's note Julian instead. Sunday, Sarah Abdallah Tweets:


Today we remember Julian Assange who is facing life in prison for publishing evidence of US war crimes in Iraq. Meanwhile, those who invaded Iraq on a pack of lies, launching an illegal war that killed and displaced millions and gave rise to ISIS, remain free. #911NeverForget


Joe Biden needs to be called out for the persecution of Julian Assange.



"Congress shall make no law (. . .) abridging the freedom of speech, or of th press; (...)."
-- First Amendment of the US Constitution

With this part of the First Amendment of the US Constitution in mind, one should assume that these rights are actually being granted for everybody in the United States.  This should also apply to the US government requiring it to be transparent and to treat the press accordingly.  Nobody should be infringed in these fundamental rights of freedom, even if the execution of this law may harm the government.
However, the government is often in a superior position and abuses its power to the disadvantage of the individuals.  In the US, a  man striving for governmental transparency and open communication is charged for over 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act . . . 

So opens Hannes Matthias Faulhaber's LEGAL PROCEEDINS AGAINST JULIAN ASSANGE: A SYMBOL FOR US PRESS OPRESSION.  US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian.  In Joe's decaying mind, the US government is supposed to punish those who reveal War Crimes, not those who commit them.  Back to Faulhaber:


In summer 2010, Assange was contacted by an IT-speicalist of the US Army (who was at the time deployed in Iraq).  He possessed secret files about the Guantanamo-prison, the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war filled with a lot of until then unpublished data, reports, pictures and videos.  As time went by, the soldier, now called Chelsea Manning, provided Assange with more and more secret documents -- about 750,000 in total. 
[. . .]

If the US really wants to limit the damages to its reputation and even repair its image, it should follow a wiser theory.  Instead of continuing to evade responsibility, it should take corrective action as its repair strategy.  Including the First Amendment of the Constitution mentioned in the beginning, the appropriate corrective action would be the unlimited freedom of the press.
 

Sunday, a protest took place in Mexico City calling for Julian to be set free. 



The protest took place  in front of the US Embassy in Mexico City.  SPUTNIK spoke with the John Shipton, the father of Julian who states that his son is a symbol of freedom of the press around the world.  MERCO PRESS reports:

Relatives and supporters of Julian Assange's gathered Sunday in fron of the US Embassy in Mexico City to protest against the impending extradition of the Wikileaks founder to the United States to face espionage charges, on the wake of Secretary of State Antony Blinken's arrival.

Joining Assange's father were the #24F Coalición Vida y Libertad collective who called for a rally and demonstration prior to Blinken's visit. ”I want to thank Mexico for its hospitality and support for Julian Assange, their support has been tremendous particularly (President) Andrés Manuel López Obrador,“ said John Assange.

Julian's brother Gabriel Shipton argued that Blinken could not travel around the world ”lecturing countries about their freedom of press, while keeping one of the most important editors in the world [under arrest] in Great Britain.”



"I want to thank Mexico for its hospitality and support for Julian Assange. Its support has been tremendous, particularly President Lopez Obrador," Assange's father said.

Blinken "travels the world saying that free speech is a top concern in Washington, but they continue to persecute Julian Assange... He is a global symbol of free speech," Gabriel Shipton said, adding that the U.S. cannot give lessons on free speech while "the best journalist in the world" remains in prison.


And the world is watching.  As Joe persecutes Julian and attacks freedom of the press, the world watches.  October 8th, there will be a rally in London.  Graham Elwood has  already announced that he will be taking part in the rally.



There are actions taking place around the world.  October 8th will also see action in the Bay Area.

Here in the Bay Area please join us as we participate in this worldwide solidarity event of the Surround Parliament human chain. We will meet at noon on October 8th at Harry Bridges Plaza in San Francisco. Bring #YellowRibbons4Assange, signs, your family & friends, or just yourself. We will form a human chain of yellow ribbons, come rain or shine. If you can’t make it to San Francisco, create a chain or stand alone in your city and let us and/or @Candles4Assange know about it.

When:

Where:

October 8, 2022 - 12:00 pm

Harry Bridges Plaza

Market St. and The Embarcadero

San Francisco, CA 94111 


October 8th, a protest rally is planned for DC, in front of the US Justice Dept, starting at noon.


The time to find your voice is now.


New content at THIRD:



The following sites updated:






Posted by at