Wednesday, October 29, 2014

The Mysteries of Laura gets full season pick up

In case you missed the news, The Mysteries of Laura has a full season order from NBC.  This is Debra Messing's follow up to Smash (I blogged about Smash here while it was airing new episodes on NBC).

The Hollywood Reporter explains:


Thus far this season, Laura has helped NBC improve its 8 p.m. Wednesday slot by 58 percent year-over-year. Through its first six episodes, the series has collected a 1.8 rating in the demo and 10.4 million total viewers. NBC is touting that Laura is the only new broadcast drama on the Big Four networks this season to maintain its demo haul within 0.2 of a rating point through four broadcasts. 
[. . .]
So far this fall, only one series has been canceled (ABC comedy Manhattan Love Story). Laura marks NBC's first full-season pickup of the 2014-15 broadcast period. No decisions had been made for the rest of NBC's freshman class.



Good for Debra.

The report notes that her show has been slammed by some critics.

Yeah, you could say that.

You could also, as Ava and C.I. did, note that it was being slammed by sexists, "TV: The pack goes after Debra Messing and mothers."

Ava and C.I. have actually written about the show three times now.

They've been its strongest critical defenders.

Strange isn't it, the audience loves the show.

The Water Cooler Set hates it.

An entertaining show, a strong show, isn't good enough for them.

Give them a blood spurting show about a serial killer who eats people and these same 'critics' will try to insist that the show (Hannibal) is a "feminist" show.


"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Tuesday, October 28, 2014. Chaos and violence continue, the murder of civilians in Falluja continue, the State Dept gets asked about the empty words, Erik Prince tries to rewrite history, and much more.



Erik Prince is back in the news but all those who had "glory hole scandal" haven't won -- yet.  No, Prince has a book and is busy promoting it.  Justine Drennan (Foriegn Policy) reports:


In his book Civilian Warriors, as well as in a relatively rare interview ahead of its paperback release Tuesday, Prince vehemently rejected such claims and argued that Blackwater was scapegoated by vindictive Democrats and a State Department and Pentagon that couldn't come to terms with the government's growing dependence on private contractors. "I'm no hero. The world knows all too well about my mistakes. But I was never meant to play the villain," he wrote in his book. "Seeing the company I'd built torn down for no reason was almost too much to bear." 



Really?


Democrats kicked his Blackwater out of Iraq?


The State Dept and the Pentagon sued his mercenary company Blackwater?


He doesn't own Blackwater anymore.


He sold it to escape legal culpability.


Now he attempts to escape reality.


Ali Abbas Mahmoud can't escape the reality of what Blackwater did back in September of 2007.  Last week, Ali Abbas Mahmoud spoke about it to Jonathan S. Landay (McClatchy Newspapers) following the convictions of four men who had worked for Blackwater and took part in the attack:

One of the dead boys was Mahmoud’s 11-year-old nephew, Qasim Muhammad Abbas. Qasim’s father, Muhammad Abbas Mahmoud – Ali Abbas Mahmoud’s elder brother – also died. The boy’s mother was wounded.

The family was sitting inside a pickup when the shooting broke out. Members of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority, they were hauling furniture to a new home in a Shiite neighborhood after tensions with minority Sunni Muslims forced them to leave their old house.
Ali Abbas Mahmoud, a 52-year-old Ministry of Housing employee who agreed to speak by telephone but refused a face-to-face interview, said he’d never forget how his sister-in-law, frantic with grief and terror, called him as she sat bleeding inside the pickup.
“She made me hysterical when she called me and told me that my brother had just been killed,” he recounted. “She was in the vehicle. She screamed, ‘They slaughtered your brother and they slaughtered your nephew and I’m injured.’ She made me as hysterical as she was.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/10/23/244476/in-iraq-blackwater-verdict-provides.html?sp=/99/117/416/103/#storylink=cpy




Is Ali Abbas Mahmoud a Democrat?


A Pentagon official?

A State Dept official?

No, he's an Iraqi citizen.



Erik Prince is very good about rewriting history.  Some day, the pool may pay off and he may get busted on his knees in a truck stop men's room -- at which point, he'll try to rewrite that as well.


But all the revisions don't change the fact that his company killed innocent Iraqis.


His company was out of control.


It was out of control because that's the way he wanted it.


There was no training on the need to avoid wounding or killing civilians.


Iraqis, the same people who do not matter to him today, did not matter to him when he ran Blackwater and the actions of his employees reflected that.




At the Pentagon today, spokesperson Rear Adm John Kirby declared, "While we recognize that a major Iraqi offensive against ISIL may still be a ways off, these are encouraging reports that highlight Iraq's determination to take the fight to ISIL."


They continue to spin the inability of the Iraqi military to do its job as 'good news.'


But every day that the Iraqi army fails to do its job, more US taxpayer dollars are thrown away in Iraq, "millions a day," Kirbay declared today.


And the tab for the latest wave of the never-ending Iraq War just keeps growing.



Q: On ISIS. Does the department anticipate forwarding a request for additional money to Congress for 2015 for the ISIS fight?


REAR ADM. KIRBY: I think you've heard [Defense] Secretary [Chuck] Hagel and the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsy] talk about this. I think certainly there's going to have to be some considerations going forward, but I wouldn't get ahead of specific budget moves that haven't been made yet.

I think, you know, we've gone to the Hill, we've testified to the operations, and again, Secretary Hagel has been very clear that certainly considerations for added funding are going to have to be part of the calculus going forward. But we're just not in a position right now where we can detail what that would look like, what form it would be, how much it would be, that kind of thing.


Going to nail down the cost someday soon, huh?  Like they nailed down what was happening in Iraq?

The administration failed to heed warning, failed to listen to intelligence, failed to use common sense and was completely surprised this summer to discover the Islamic State in Iraq.


Tonight PBS' Frontline examined the Islamic State and how they came to be major players in Iraq.  Michael Iskikoff (Yahoo News) recaps:



The film, reported by correspondent Martin Smith, offers a richly detailed account of how the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki alienated the country’s disenfranchised Sunni population, making reckless accusations of terrorism against Sunni leaders — including the country’s Vice Prime Minister Tariq al-Hashimi. Those allegations flatly denied by al-Hashimi on camera — were based on the testimony of bodyguards who, it is strongly suggested, were tortured.

With little pressure or engagement from Washington, al-Maliki’s anti-Sunni agenda driven by his  “paranoia,” as one of Smith’s interlocutors says — paved the way for ISIS radicals to march through huge swaths of Iraqi territory this spring, seizing arsenals of U.S.-made weapons from a collapsing Iraqi army. This, of course, was the same army that the U.S. spent billions arming and training. In fact, terrorism expert Ken Katzman suggests in the film, they were a phantom led by do-nothing officers.


Nouri was only in office, in his first term as prime minister, for a few months when we noted in 2006 his paranoia which the US government thought (at that time) would make him more "manageable" (as the CIA analysis termed it).  By the time WikiLeaks was publishing the State Dept cables in 2010, the US government's knowledge of Nouri's paranoia was on full display for anyone who wanted to see.

Yet the White House, Barack's White House, continued to support Nouri.

They demanded he get a second term as prime minister even though he lost the 2010 elections.

To get around the voters and the election results, the US brokered The Erbil Agreement, a legal contract singed by the political leaders -- including Nouri al-Maliki -- which gave Nouri a second term in exchange for Nouri making promises -- legal ones -- as well.  But Nouri used the contract to get his second term and then refused to honor it.

As Rafi al-Essawi told Frontline, "All the commitments that Maliki gave to the politicians in what’s called the Erbil Agreement -- that’s the agreement that formed the government at that time -- nothing from that agreement was fulfilled or implemented."

The US government swore The Erbil Agreement was legally binding and had the full backing of the US government.  When Ayad Allawi walked out of Parliament following the signing of the agreement -- and Nouri announcing he couldn't implement it immediately -- US President Barack Obama personally spoke to Allawi on the phone to get him to drop the boycott and return to Parliament.

But when it became obvious, months and months later, that Nouri was never going to honor his part of The Erbil Agreement, the White House said nothing.

They said nothing.

And they did nothing.

And things got worse and worse.

At Frontline, Priyanka Boghani gathers various comments from four Sunni officials reflecting on how Nouri targeted the Sunni community.  We'll not the Minister of Finance Rafi al-Essawi.

RAFI AL-ESSAWI: The environment was really very, very poisoned because of the behavior of Maliki and the government. And everyone, Shiites and politicians, advised Maliki that this is not the way of dealing with Sunnis.
There was no direct relationship at all between the demonstrations and tribes from outside and Al Qaeda on the outside. People got very upset, very angry about the government’s behavior and the Iraqi army’s behavior. … The people started to look at the army as an enemy rather than as a national army.
Everyone participated in the demonstrations, every Sunni. I can say every Sunni, not as a person, but as groups, because everyone felt that they were either not represented in the new Iraq or felt that they didn’t receive a just trial.
No one thought that the Iraqi army could attack demonstrators in Hawija. They were demonstrating for months at a time, peaceful, calling for their rights.

So when they brought their tanks, heavy army vehicles, and SWAT teams, the security forces of the ministry of interior attacked. They killed the people in a very criminal model. This added to the upset of the people. This was not their government. And the people who killed them, these were not Iraqi army personnel. These were militias who were killing them.


And the White House continued to back Nouri.

For four long years, throughout his second term, they allowed him to break the legal contract they brokered and they allowed him to target the Sunni population.  They looked the other way until the spring of this year when they finally pulled support for the US-installed puppet.

Nouri was using the security forces to violently attack protesters -- wound them, kill them.  And the US government looked the other way.



RAFI AL-ESSAWI: [For Sunni people] participation in the political process ended in nothing. Demonstration ended in nothing. Asking the government constitutionally to change their province into region was not accepted. They started to be convinced that there is no benefit of constitutional solutions.
So the government pushed and squeezed people towards supporting the terrorists. And I can’t say that it is — again, it is not direct support. It is only creating an environment — and this was a very fatal mistake of the government.
When ISIS came as defenders of Sunnis, we knew that they were criminals, that they were not Sunni defenders. When they presented themselves, people said, “Well, it may be possible to save us from the government, from the army which is not a professional national army, but one that killed and arrested Sunnis.” That is why people in these provinces stayed silent. They are not supporting ISIS. They are not opposing ISIS.
No one wants to fight against ISIS now, [because they would] appear to be pro-Maliki or supporting the militia that is killing Sunnis in Baghdad. You see, when [Sunnis] fight ISIS, people would blame them for fighting Sunnis who are protecting you, while no one is fighting Shia militias that are killing our brothers, Sunnis in Diyala.
If the government came to the Sunnis now to fulfill their requirements, the rights of the Sunnis, no one would accept ISIS. By the way, even now, despite being very upset against the government, Sunnis are not accepting ISIS.

To me, at the end of the day, it is the Sunnis who will defeat ISIS, exactly like in 2007 and ’08 when the Sunnis made the decision of fighting Al Qaeda.


The administration continues to spin.

But things don't always go there way.  Even the press doesn't always cooperate.

At today's US State Dept press briefing, spokesperson Jen Psaki faced some questions from Al Quds' Said Arikat.


QUESTION: Can I ask a question on Iraq?

MS. PSAKI: Sure.

QUESTION: Before Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was sworn in, I remember Brett McGurk, your colleague, had a hearing on the Capitol Hill.

MS. PSAKI: He’s above me in the food chain, but keep going. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: Okay. Yeah, he told senators that, quote/unquote, “it was unacceptable” for Baghdad to stop sending the revenue share of the Kurdistan region. He said it was unacceptable. But months have passed since he made that statement, and the Kurds don’t receive their budget yet from Baghdad. I mean, one could wonder whether the United States has done anything concrete to make sure that that decision by Baghdad would be reversed, or you just made that promise in order to make sure that you had a government in place to fight ISIS?

MS. PSAKI: Well, I would completely disagree with the premise of your question, which I’m sure you’re not surprised by. This is an issue we have raised many times publicly. It comes up in meetings that we have on the ground. And our position hasn’t changed on this; we’re continuing to press on that. But obviously, it’s up to the officials on the ground to make progress.

QUESTION: But why hasn’t Baghdad done anything? Is Baghdad not willing to listen to what you are telling them?

MS. PSAKI: I think, obviously, there are a range of steps that the central government is working to implement. I’d point you to them for more answers on that question.

QUESTION: Considering that this is 17 percent of the budget, why, in your opinion, is the Baghdad government withholding all that for so many months?


MS. PSAKI: Said, you’re familiar with the history here. I would point you to the government there. I don’t have any more analysis for you.




As noted in yesterday's snapshot:


Barack spent the summer insisting that Iraq required a political solution.  His point then was that the second term of Nouri had left the Sunnis 'estranged' from their own government and that a new government needed to demonstrate it was inclusive.  Iraq has a new prime minister today, Haider al-Abadi, but where is the progress on the political?
Nouri should have put through a 2014 budget no later than September 30, 2013.  That's because the 2014 Fiscal Year kicked off October 1, 2013.
Fiscal Year 2015 kicked off at the start of this month.
Guess what?
Iraq still has no 2014 budget.
Yes, al-Abadi's only been prime minister for a short time but he's been prime minister long enough to push through a budget.  Certainly he could have done that if the US government had made helping him on that a focus.  But they didn't.



There's been no real work on any political solution for Iraq, not by the US government.

They've instead poured all their time and energy to get other countries to agree to bomb Iraq.

That's the military procedure Barack once declared wasn't a solution.


Let's go back to what Said said today at the State Dept:

Okay. Yeah, he told senators that, quote/unquote, “it was unacceptable” for Baghdad to stop sending the revenue share of the Kurdistan region. He said it was unacceptable. But months have passed since he made that statement, and the Kurds don’t receive their budget yet from Baghdad. I mean, one could wonder whether the United States has done anything concrete to make sure that that decision by Baghdad would be reversed, or you just made that promise in order to make sure that you had a government in place to fight ISIS?



Yeah, it does appear that the White House "just made that promise in order to make sure that you had a government in place to fight ISIS."



They do nothing to help the Iraqi people

September 13th, Haider al-Abadi declared an end to the ongoing War Crimes of bombing civilians in Falluja as payback, Collective Punishment, for what the Islamic State has done.  NINA notes Falluja General Hospital today recieved the corpses of 7 civilians and treated 14 people injured from these ongoing bombings -- these bombings that the new prime minister declared an end to but yet they continue.

Because the forces aren't listening to the new prime minister.

And the White House doesn't give a damn.

The same White House that did nothing while Nouri targeted Sunnis from 2010 to this year wants to pretend they're 'helping' but they're not, they refuse to.  They do nothing but add to the violence.


So it's no surprise that Middle East Monitor reports:


A prominent member of Al-Ahrar (Freedom) parliamentary bloc of Al-Sadr movement, led by Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, said today that his bloc is determined to end the presence of American advisors in more than one Iraqi province. He pointed out that his bloc would take all necessary measures to end what he called "the new American occupation".
In a statement to a reporter from Anadolu Agency, Mithaq Al-Mozani said: "No legal cover justifies the presence of US advisors in Iraq and their presence is part of a plan for occupation different to the 2003 occupation."

And that was before news broke about US efforts to establish a new base in Iraq.  National Iraqi News Agency reports:

On the news of the establishment of a US military base along the lines of the Turkish Incirlik base, in the Kurdistan region, the spokesman for the provincial government, said that "in this regard the talks are continuing," but he also said, "they did not take a final decision in this regard yet.
It was a high-ranking source in the government of the Kurdistan Region, recently revealed talks by the regional government on using the al-Harir / silk / airport located within Erbil province near Iraq's eastern and northern borders as a military base for US forces in the framework of the international coalition operations to fight the IS in Iraq.



Asked about the base at today's Pentagon press briefing, John Kirby played dumb.


Q: Some reports from the Iraqi Kurdish region of -- particularly Iraq Kurdistan region, say that the U.S. is going to establish a military base in Irbil. Can you confirm this, Admiral?


REAR ADM. KIRBY: I don't have anything for you on that today? Sorry.



 We continue to see that these combined targeting efforts are disrupting ISIL and forcing them to consider changes -- more changes in their tactics to try to avoid being targeted.












  
mcclatchy newspapers 




pbs
frontline

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Chris Hedges is just another slave



Kat's "Kat's Korner: Stevie Nicks' 24 Karat Classic" and "Kat's Korner: Aretha Knew You Were Waiting For This" and Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Barack Prepares" all went up Sunday.





I love the comic.

Chris Hedges' latest is "The Myth of a Free Press" (ICH):

         There is more truth about American journalism in the film “Kill the Messenger,” which chronicles the mainstream media’s discrediting of the work of the investigative journalist Gary Webb, than there is in the movie “All the President’s Men,” which celebrates the exploits of the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal.
The mass media blindly support the ideology of corporate capitalism. They laud and promote the myth of American democracy—even as we are stripped of civil liberties and money replaces the vote. They pay deference to the leaders on Wall Street and in Washington, no matter how perfidious their crimes. They slavishly venerate the military and law enforcement in the name of patriotism. They select the specialists and experts, almost always drawn from the centers of power, to interpret reality and explain policy. They usually rely on press releases, written by corporations, for their news. And they fill most of their news holes with celebrity gossip, lifestyle stories, sports and trivia. The role of the mass media is to entertain or to parrot official propaganda to the masses. The corporations, which own the press, hire journalists willing to be courtiers to the elites, and they promote them as celebrities. These journalistic courtiers, who can earn millions of dollars, are invited into the inner circles of power. They are, as John Ralston Saul writes, hedonists of power.
When Webb, writing in a 1996 series in the San Jose Mercury News, exposed the Central Intelligence Agency’s complicity in smuggling tons of cocaine for sale into the United States to fund the CIA-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua, the press turned him into a journalistic leper. And over the generations there is a long list of journalistic lepers, from Ida B. Wells to I.F. Stone to Julian Assange. 



Among the ones who aren't free include Chris himself.

In the excerpt above you may notice a silence -- it's in the larger article as well.

Chris won't be honest.

He won't call out The Nation magazine.

He gets money from its foundation, after all.

So despite the fact that David Corn and The Nation attacked Gary Webb's writing, Chris ignores that.


He writes, "Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, in the 2004 article 'How the Press and the CIA Killed Gary Webb’s Career,' detailed the dynamics of the nationwide smear campaign."


At the end of that 2004 linked to article, in the notes, you'll find out that Corn, on the pages of The Nation, also attacked Webb.

Chris can't tell you that in his own voice.


"TV: The axe falls" (Ava and C.I., The Third Estate Sunday Review):
Some wrongly felt the show was trafficking in Women Are From Venus, Men Are From Mars.

No.

It was Men Are Jim Belushi, Girls Are Bimbos.

Girls, not women.

Despite the best efforts of the three actresses, they were playing girls.  They couldn't overcome that built-in device of the script.

And girls are such little bimbos that they can't handle this modern technology like this new thing they're calling the internet.  Stumbling on the net, Analeigh's Dana wrongly posts a man's name (McDorman's character) to her Facebook leading everyone to believe they're a couple.

Manhattan Love Story apparently takes place in the same world where Mattel's Barbie says, "Math is hard."

The show took six actors inexperienced in the romantic comedy genre and refused to put them before a studio audience.

It may not have saved the show but the silence from a studio audience would have given ABC a heads up that Manhattan Love Story was a dud.

In a way, we're sad the show's become the first to get the axe this fall.

While each episode failed to provide laughs, the publicity material the network kept putting out was unintentionally hilarious.  Our personal favorite was a bio sketch of Jake McDorman which insisted that the actor left the Boy Scouts to pursue acting.  We weren't aware that the Boy Scouts, like a monastery, placed such demands on young males or stood in their way of becoming bad actors.  We now picture the Boy Scouts as Lori Singer's father in the original Footloose, bound and determined to snuff out any and all fun.

If that is indeed who and what they are, they can take pride in the fact that McDorman, even post-Boy Scouts, continues to carry out that mission as one viewing of any episode of Manhattan Love Story will make clear.




I love Ava and C.I.'s latest.  :D


"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Monday, October 27, 2014.  Chaos and violence continue, Iraq still has no budget, but the cost of US President Barack Obama's 'plan' continues to increase, we note Sean P. Neal and Jordan L. Spears who died in Barack's operation this month, we note the sexism -- the ingrained sexism -- of The Intercept, and much more.


Let's start with inflation.  Sky News notes that the US Defense Dept stated previously that the Iraq and Syria air strikes were costing "more than $7 million" per day but now the cost has risen to $8.3 million per day.  US President Barack Obama still has no actual plan -- supposedly, it will be proposed after the US-midterm elections -- but he's spending US tax dollars freely in his non-stop bombings.

Non-stop bombings that aren't accomplishing anything, non-stop bombings that even the Pentagon notes has led the Islamic State to both adapt and anticipate.   The 'plan' is a failure.  Ali Mamouri (Al-Monitor) notes:

Since Oct. 13, IS has moved on Baghdad from the northern and western sides. At the same time, it relies on the southern and sympathizing areas where large Sunni segments reside. The group has recently dominated most parts of Anbar province, and still retains many areas in the provinces of Diyala and Salahuddin, north and east of Baghdad. It killed Anbar police chief Maj. Gen. Ahmed Saddak al-Dulaimi on Oct.12, upon whom the government relied to control the province, given his tribal affiliation with the area and his long military experience and harsh manner in dealing with terrorists.

August 8th.

That's when Barack's 'plan' was implemented.  In 12 days, Barack's 'plan' will have been carried out for three months and there's so little to show for it.

Earlier this month on Meet The Press, administration liar Susan Rice declared that rescuing the Yazidis on Mount Sinjar had been a success.

But (a) the rescued were rescued by the Kurdish Peshmerga and (b) as the world learned last week, the 'rescue' did not rescue all the Yazidis.  At least 700 families are said to remain trapped on Mount Sinjar.


Where are the successes in Barack's 'plan'?

The White House struggles to find them, the State Dept as well.

Yet Barack continues his (failed) open-ended war, wasting millions of US tax payer dollars despite the fact that he, as a US Senator, attacked Bully Boy Bush for his failure to clearly present an economic price tag on the Iraq War.  Now that he occupies the White House, he's fine with using the US Treasury as his personal ATM to fund the illegal war.

Where are the questions, where are the demands on Barack?

Maybe more will be made after tomorrow night's broadcast of Frontline?  The PBS program examines the rise of the Islamic State in the episode most PBS stations will be broadcasting Tuesday night.

It'll be a surprise to so many -- and a number of whores will pretend to find it surprising -- but the reality is that what took place was not a surprise.  The broadcast makes that clear but so do our archives here.

While whores like Jane Arraf (remember, she whored for Saddam Hussein when he was in power too) treated chief thug and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as, at worst, a scamp, we were pointing out he was breeding terrorism with his attacks on the Sunni population.  We were pointing out that they'd tried the ballot box (Nouri lost the 2010 elections but the White House demanded he get a second term as prime minister), that they tried peaceful protest and at what point do you lose faith in the process?  That's the time when you turn a blind eye to the Islamic State or maybe you help them or maybe you even enlist.

The Islamic State did not appear in the blink of an eye.

Years and years -- you could say Nouri's entire second term -- brought Iraq to where it is now.

It's an interesting hour of TV.

More interesting, of course, will be failed journalist Robert Parry.  Frontline is his only connection to respectability at this late date.  Will he yet again lie and whore to protect Barack?  Doing so would require him to attack Frontline.

Again, it's his only link to respectability.

And if he loses it, he loses everything most likely.

So what will Robert Parry do?

Such a sad sack.  Such a tiny, shriveled sad sack.  Remember, Cedric and Wally are sending the tired whore up in their series of joint-posts where Parry proclaims he's pregnant and carrying Barack's baby.  Thus far, that ongoing novelization includes:

 "THIS JUST IN! OCTOBER SURPRISE!," "The shocking news," 
"THIS JUST IN! THE OCTOBER SURPRISE ARRIVES!," "Parry talks of naming the expected First Child," 
"THIS JUST IN! PARRY TALKS BIRTH NAMES!," "It's about the babies!," 
"THIS JUST IN! HE WANTS TO BE WELCOME AT THE WHITE HOUSE!," "Child birth fears
and "THIS JUST IN! FRIGHTENED MOMMY-TO-BE ROBERT PARRY"


Parry has no questions for Barack -- other than what night he gets to be concubine -- but some questions are starting to emerge.

Elizabeth Norling writes the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times wanting to know, "What is the perspective of the Yazidi or Christian woman who has seen her husband murdered, her daughters taken captive, her sons decapitated, and who has been sold into sexual slavery?"


The Yazidis are only one religious minority under fire in Iraq currently.    Cathy Otten (Religion News Service via Huffington Post) reports on the Iraqi city of Alqoosh:

The Assyrian Christian town of around 6,000 people sits on a hill below the seventh-century Rabban Hormizd Monastery, temporarily closed because of the security situation. Residents of Alqosh fled this summer ahead of Islamic State militants. Around 70 percent of the town’s residents have since returned. Still, a sense of unease hangs in the air.
Below the monastery in the boarded up bazaar a lone shopkeeper waits for customers. At the edge of town local Christian fighters staff lookout posts, checking for danger. With Islamic State fighters just 10 miles away, these men and most residents of the town are scared that they may have to flee again.
In August, the Christian town of Qaraqosh, 18 miles east of Mosul, was overrun, along with neighboring villages, home to Iraqi Christian communities for centuries. Islamic State forces came close but never entered Alqosh.

The targeting of Iraqi Christians has been non-stop since the US-invasion of 2003.  Currently, there are efforts to aid the Christian community in Iraq and displaced from Iraq.  Syndicated right-wing columnist Cal Thomas notes:


Reality television producer Mark Burnett and his actress wife, Roma Downey, are trying to raise awareness and money to help displaced and threatened Iraqi Christians who survived the genocidal attacks against them.
Burnett and Downey, who produced the highly rated “The Bible” for The History Channel and are working on another biblical epic, “A.D.”, which NBC will broadcast next Easter season, have announced a campaign to raise $25 million to aid homeless Christians in the region with housing, food and clothing. They say they are donating the first $1 million and have set up a website called “The Cradle of Christianity Fund” through which people can give. They promise the money will go directly to the churches for distribution to those in need.


Last week, Catholic News Agency noted another effort to aid Iraqi Christians:



Crowdfunding campaign aims to raise $1 million for Iraqi Christians



The crowdfunding campaign will run from Oct. 14-Nov. 24, and can be found on Indiegogo, which is one of the largest crowdfunding platforms in the world. Almost $5,000 of the $1 million goal has been raised so far.

“We invite all of our brothers and sisters in Christ to join us and contribute, from as little as $10, to the crowdfunding campaign that we have initiated,” stated Eduardo Paz, co-founder of La Filotea Productions.



There are so many tragedies in Iraq.


And Barack should be asked about them.  Why is there no televised prime time press conference focusing on Iraq?

Oh, that's right.

Because the US press can't focus on Iraq.


If Helen Thomas were still around, you can be sure she'd be asking about one topic  everyone should be asking about?





That's Lance Cpl. Sean P. Neal (photo from Facebook).   We noted his death in Saturday's snapshot.

Missy Ryan (Washington Post) notes, "The Pentagon said Neal’s death was the first U.S. casualty in Iraq since the Obama administration began its 'Inherent Resolve' mission, which now includes airstrikes against the extremist group in Iraq and Syria and a growing number of U.S. military personnel on the ground in Iraq in August."

Murtaza Hussain (Intercept) offers:

Cpl. Neal was only 19 years old. He would have only been eight at the outset of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and merely six on 9/11 – a child at the time of both these events.  The fact that he ended up losing his life in Iraq is on one hand tragic, and on the other completely absurd.
The tragedy here is that a young man with a long future ahead of him ended up dying in a distant country before even reaching the age of twenty. The absurdity is that men such as him are still losing their lives as a result of still-inexplicable decisions made over a decade ago. The Iraq War never ended, but now it’s being fought by men who were just children when it started. Walter Lippman once said, “I don’t think old men ought to promote wars for young men to fight.” In our time, old men have been promoting wars that kids would ultimately end up fighting.

You know what?

Those statements are offensive.

And it's why the Intercept is such a lame venture.

It's a bunch of   sexist jerks like Murtaza Hussain, Glenn Greenwald (if his sexism is news to you, where have you been the last decade), Jeremy Scahill and so many others.

And when you hire sexists, you get garbage like what Hussain's offering, garbage that renders the US female service members who've fought in the ongoing Iraq War -- and who've died in it -- invisible.

It is a complete, 100% tragedy that Sean Neal is dead.  It is a huge loss.  But Hussain makes an ass out of himself by reducing it to "men."

If the Intercept wants to have any future at all -- most likely it doesn't, Libertarians online have long been sexist -- it's going to have to accept the fact that half the world is female.

Shame on all the useless jerks (Dan Froomkin, that means you) who have treated Hussain's sexist rambles as manna from heaven.  Shame on you.

Last May, The Daily Beast offered Kate Hoit's "The Names You Don't Hear: Nearly 200 Women Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan."  Froomkin, who has made time to attack female artists, didn't really have time to give props to Hoit for that piece.

Too bad.  The sexism needs to end and it needs to end now.

It is insulting to the women who have served -- and to the memory of the women who died -- to write such sexist nonsense as Hussain did.  Hussain, The Intercept and every man who Tweeted that article without pointing its fatal and sexist flaw should issue an apology -- but they won't.  The day will come when sexists are shunned in the same way that racists are.  That day is in the future.  When it does come, history will not be kind to the many men -- including those at Intercept -- who regularly engaged in sexism -- history will not be kind, nor should it be.


Spencer Ackerman (Guardian)  points out, "Technically, Neal may not have been the first US fatality of the Iraq-Syria war against the Islamic State. Naval forces assigned to US Central Command, which has operational control of the war, acknowledged on October 3 that a Marine, Corporal Jordan L. Spears, went missing at sea in the North Arabian Gulf after bailing out of his MV-22 Osprey. Spears took off from the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island, which carried Marines of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, assigned to support the war in Iraq and Syria."  UPI notes Spears was (or is) 21-years-old.  RT notes that the commander of Spears unit wrote online, "Cpl. Spears was a cherished member of our MEU family, and he fulfilled a key role in our aviation combat element."  Stars and Stripes notes:



Cpl. Jordan L. Spears, 21, of Memphis, Ind., was one of two aircrew members who went into the water when the Osprey’s pilot lost control of the aircraft, which the Navy said was participating in flight operations in support of the missions over Iraq and Syria. The pilot regained control of the Osprey, and the other aircrew member was recovered.


I have no idea about Sean Neal's unit, but the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, Jordan Spears' unit, there are women in that unit -- I know that would shock Murtaza Hussain -- there are several women who are part of the current deployment of that unit.

Turning to violence . . .

Michael Georgy, Dasha Afanasieva,  Isabel Coles and Angus MacSwan (Reuters) report that a Jurf al-Sakhar suicide bomber took his own life and the lives of "at least 27 Shi'ite militamen" today.  BBC News notes it was a car bombing and a Humvee was used, one "likely to have been captured from government forces, reports say."



Al Jazeera notes it was a suicide car bomber and the reason Jurf al-Sakhar is so important at this moment:


Jurf al-Sakhar is part of a predominantly Sunni strip of territory that runs just south of Baghdad and lies on a road usually taken by Shia pilgrims, when they head in large numbers to the holy Shia city of Karbala further to the south.
Pilgrims will be taking the route again next week in order to commemorate the death of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, Imam Hussein --  one of the most revered Shia martyrs.


In addition, Iraqi Spring MC reports a central Baghdad car bombing left 9 dead and twenty-seven injuredBBC News notes the death toll rose to 10.  In other violence, National Iraqi News Agency reports  1 person was shot dead in Baghdad while World Bulletin News notes "a bomb-laden motorcycle killed two and injured 20 in Tuzhurmatu district of Salah ad Din Province."  Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) notes, "At least 317 people were killed, mostly militants. Another 145 were wounded, about half of them security members."


Barack spent the summer insisting that Iraq required a political solution.  His point then was that the second term of Nouri had left the Sunnis 'estranged' from their own government and that a new government needed to demonstrate it was inclusive.  Iraq has a new prime minister today, Haider al-Abadi, but where is the progress on the political?

Nouri should have put through a 2014 budget no later than September 30, 2013.  That's because the 2014 Fiscal Year kicked off October 1, 2013.

Fiscal Year 2015 kicked off at the start of this month.

Guess what?

Iraq still has no 2014 budget.

Yes, al-Abadi's only been prime minister for a short time but he's been prime minister long enough to push through a budget.  Certainly he could have done that if the US government had made helping him on that a focus.  But they didn't.

National Iraqi News Agency reports:

MP for the Kurdistan, Abdul Bari Zebari held the federal government responsibility for the delay in the adoption of the current year's budget. 
He told the National Iraqi News Agency / NINA / that "the Parliament has long been calling for the federal government to quickly accomplish what is required from its side in the budget, including the employees' salaries in Kurdistan after the Parliament put its remarks upon in order to bring it back and start reading and approve it as soon as possible."


All Iraq News notes that MP Wafaa Kadhim states the Council of Ministers is supposed to send the 2014 budget bill to the Parliament on Tuesday.  Whether it's sent or not, it won't be discussed tomorrow.  All Iraq News points out the budget didn't make the topics on the agenda.



Here's the State Dept's Brett McGurk getting giddy on the fumes of a nasty jock worn by a member of the US military:




Yeah, Brett, you should be working on diplomacy.

There's something very sad about a grown man, a middle aged man, who's obsessed (sexually obsessed?) with the military that he never elected to serve in.

I have a relative who's even more gung ho that Brett about the military but the difference?  My relative enlisted.

Brett's just an old man trying to look manly by standing close to the US military.  Someone needs to ask him to step out of the picture, explain that it's only for those who served in the military.













iraq





missy ryan