Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Sitting Behind Daddy Donald" went up yesterday.
See the problem?
Instead, we got Gavin, last week, gushing, "Yes, I love Dr. West."
What do you say to that besides, "Ick!"
It's
getting close to twenty years since the two of us wrote our oft
repeated remark, "We don't fall in love with politicians -- we're not
that pathetic."
Yet sadly some people are, some people like Gavin are.
And
their love prompted them to yet again excuse Cornel instead of holding
him accountable for his actions. Instead, Kit and Gavin (and others)
blamed the Green Party.
Gavin whimpered, "I've been increasingly frustrated with the whole third party movement now. Basically since 2020 when the Green Party debacle with Howie Hawkins went down and they kind of turned up their nose at Jesse Ventura who was another candidate I thought could get them to 5%."
First off, what debacle with Howie Hawkins? You mean when Dario Hunter refused to campaign -- couldn't even manage one Tweet a week -- and then starts spreading lies about how Dr Margaret Flowers conspired to give Howie the nomination? Those were lies from a lazy ass who couldn't campaign because he was so lazy. Howie was nominated (and voted as the nominee) at the 2020 Green Party convention.
If the 'debacle' is supposed to refer to the turnout, he got 0.26% of the popular vote. Not very impressive, no. But in 2012, Jill Stein only got 0.36% of the popular vote so let's not pretend it was all that astounding or surprising.
Second, frustrated with the whole third party movement? But you voted Green in at least 2016 and 2020 that we know of. So why the pissing of the panties and the stomping of the feet now?
Third, "They kind of turned their nose at Jesse Ventura who was another candidate I thought could get them to 5%"? You thought that of Jesse and of Cornel? You really are stupid.
But, more to the point, stop pretending you believe in democracy. We've already called out Jimmy Dore for this Jesse Ventura nonsense. Like Jimmy, Gavin has a hissy fit that Jesse was not the Green Party's 2020 nominee for president.
Why?
Because, like Jimmy, Gavin doesn't really believe in democracy.
He's upset, when his guy (Bernie Sanders) is screwed out of the nomination due to backstage planning but he's okay with rigging a nomination if it means his guy wins.
See Jesse didn't get to be the nominee for a number of reasons -- chief among them, he didn't run.
He refused to run for it. He said, publicly, that if they'd give it to him, he'd accept it.
Oh, how kind of him, right?
Political parties aren't supposed to give out nominations. Their members are supposed to vote on people running for the nomination.
Jesse didn't get it and Gavin still doesn't.
Don't pretend you're for democracy when you have a hissy fit that someone who wouldn't even campaign for the nomination didn't get it.
And this goes to the backdoor deals that were always a part of Cornel's campaigns.
As we noted long ago, Cornel went on BLACK POWER MEDIA after he gave back the nomination from The People's Party and gave an interview that everyone wants to pretend didn't take place.
In that interview, he revealed that Chris Hedges, his friend, came up with the idea. It was originally that he and Chris would be on the same ticket. And Chris spoke to The People's Party and they were fine with that. Then it changed because Mrs. Hedges told Chris he wasn't running.
So it was Cornel all by himself. And it was Chris, in the press, pretending that he had no role in this process and interviewing Cornel about how it came about. That write up never noted that Chris was the intermediary who secured the nomination for Cornel.
And then with the Green Party? Chris and Jill Stein (some say Ajuma Baraka as well) tried to strong-arm the Green Party leadership into giving Cornel the nomination. The party stood firm against that -- and rightly so.
When he couldn't steal the nomination, Cornel and Jill decided to present him as the nominee -- even though he was not -- because they knew that would scare people off. As usual, they didn't know dookie.
And not one but two people declared their intent to run while Cornel was claiming to be the party's nominee. And that number was only going to grow because real Greens -- not YOUTUBE Greens such as Kit and Gavin -- were offended that a non-Green (Cornel) was trying to steal their party's nomination.
They were right to be offended and Gavin needs to clarify whether he's a hypocrite or whether he just didn't grasp all of this?
The whole thing was sick and pathetic. It was also a joke.
Over at RISING, Bri-Bri Joy Gray was trying to get attention for her breasts by sporting a cleavage revealing blouse. Problem was she really has no breasts. So it didn't help to wear a blouse slashed across the top of where her boobs should have been when she had no cleavage to sport in the first place. As always, her mind was as empty as her bra. That explains why the supposedly educated woman kept using "independents" over and over when, often times, she actually meant swing voters. There is a difference as poli sci majors know.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
"Journalists are allowed to request documents that have been stolen and to publish those documents." So wrote U.S. federal Judge John Koeltl in a 2019 opinion dismissing a lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee against Julian Assange, Wikileaks and others. Assange published documents on the Wikileaks website in the very manner the judge described. Despite this, Julian Assange has been in solitary confinement in Britain’s maximum security Belmarsh prison for over three years. Before that, he spent seven years living in the cramped Ecuadorian embassy in London. Ecuador granted Assange political asylum as he faced mounting persecution from the U.S. government for his role in exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The U.S. is seeking Assange’s extradition from the United Kingdom to face espionage and conspiracy charges and up to 175 years in prison. Assange’s legal team is appealing the U.K.’s approval of the extradition request. Meanwhile, a new case related to Wikileaks is before Judge Koeltl: journalists and several of Assange’s attorneys have sued the Central Intelligence Agency and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, alleging the CIA spied on them when they visited Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, recording conversations and secretly copying their phones and laptops.
A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the
Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the
whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident
US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have
leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters
and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
•
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse,
torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct
appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
• A US helicopter gunship involved in a
notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after
they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in
previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no
official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081
non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent deat
The Biden administration has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal assaults under Donald Trump.
The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”.
But the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used before for publishing classified information.
Whether the US justice department continues to pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to protect the press.
Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.
It’s long past time for the U.S. and U.K. to free Julian Assange. His flagrantly unjust incarceration is a global scandal, and the world is quite upset about it. Indeed, on September 19 at the United Nations, heads of state denounced this phony prosecution for the fraud and subterfuge it is – an assault on a free press, and an attack on Assange personally, for practicing journalism. For over four years, this publisher has been left to rot in a dungeon in Britain’s notorious maximum-security prison, Belmarsh. The reason? Well, they might not admit it, but U.S. sachems want him crushed for embarrassing them, by revealing the murderous criminality of the American military in Iraq and elsewhere.
Periodically, some world leader lets loose a geschrei of protest. “It is essential to preserve freedom of the press. A journalist like Julian Assange cannot be punished for informing society in a transparent and legitimate way,” railed Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva to the assembled UN diplomats. Honduran president Xiomara Castro also denounced the official abuse of Assange. And on September 20, a delegation of Australian politicians brought a letter to Washington officials, demanding the U.S. drop its grotesque prosecution of Assange.
This is not the first time heads of state or other political bigwigs have urged American President Joe Biden to end Assange’s ordeal. Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has twice written Biden, imploring him to release Assange and rightly fulminating over the damage done to a free press by his incarceration. In late 2022, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan leaders called for the publisher’s freedom. Colombian president Gustavo Petro vowed on social media to “ask President Biden…not to charge a journalist just for telling the truth.” Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese also petitioned the U.S. on his Canberra constituent, Assange’s behalf. So far Biden appears unmoved.
Julian Assange’s family is working out of the United States to fight his extradition, beseeching lawmakers there for help ahead of a looming meeting between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and President Joe Biden.
They live in fear that their phones will light up with news that the WikiLeaks founder is about to be whisked from detention in the United Kingdom to a US prison – where they will lose him forever.
This heightened anxiety is fuelling their efforts to campaign for Assange’s release. They are meeting with key Democrats and Republicans, seeking the support of international leaders and drumming up public support to end the 13-year saga over his fate.
Speaking to The Sunday Age, Assange’s half-brother Gabriel Shipton said there were reasons to believe the long-running battle over his extradition could end without him sitting in a US prison.
Albanese’s US trip this month – during which he will meet with Biden – marks a key moment in their campaign.
Meanwhile, Iraq continues to build it's international presence. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani recently concluded a week-long visit to the US where he met with business leaders and politicians. MEMO notes he's schedule to visit Russia October 11th where he will meet with the president of Russia Vladimir Putin. A violent conflict, meanwhile, is taking place between the government of Israel and the Palestinians. MINT notes:
In a statement, Hamas commander has said that it launched attacks on the Israeli territory ‘in defense of Al-Aqsa’ which was stormed by Israeli settlers a few days ago. Al-Aqsa has been the flashpoint between Palestine and Israel. Hamas military commander Muhammad Deif, who released a recorded message after the attack, said the strikes were in retaliation for Israel’s “desecration of the Al-Aqsa" mosque in Jerusalem.
- Truest statement of the week
- A note to our readers
- Iraq
- Media: What was the plan? (There was none)
- From The TESR Test Kitchen
- The Cracked Face
- Books (Elaine, Ava and C.I.)
- Video of the week Cornel West Green No More!
- Great Grandpa's got advice that no one asked for (...
- Tweet of the week
- Someone's cooking in the Kitchen
- Stan goes to the movies
- Books
- Musician Hussein Rassam plays on after fleeing Iraq
- This edition's playlist