Friday, February 09, 2018

Syria and non-visionary syfy

Bill Van Auken (WSWS):

US warplanes and artillery batteries carried out an unprovoked massacre of up to 100 pro-government troops in the northeastern province of Deir Ezzor Wednesday, signaling the initiation of a new and far more dangerous stage in the more than three-year-old direct US military intervention in Syria.


The Syrian government denounced the attack as a “war crime” and “direct support to terrorism,” insisting that its forces came under US attack as they were carrying out an operation against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) elements between the villages of Khasham and al-Tabiya on the eastern side of the Euphrates River.


While the Pentagon proudly claimed to have killed 100 pro-government fighters, Damascus allowed that the US strikes claimed “the lives of dozens, injuring many others and causing massive damage in the area.”


The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, meanwhile, said it had confirmed only 20 dead among the pro-government forces.


Whatever the precise number of casualties—the Pentagon’s figures are suspect given that the bombings and artillery barrages were not followed up by any ground attack—the incident marks a major escalation of US aggression against Syria, eclipsing the firing of 59 US cruise missiles last April in response to an unsubstantiated allegation of a chemical weapons attack in Idlib province.


The only previous US attack resulting in comparable bloodshed was the September 17, 2016 US airstrike against a Syrian army position near the Deir Ezzor airport, which killed 62 soldiers and wounded some 100 more. The Pentagon claimed that attack was the result of an “unintentional, regrettable error.”


This time around, the US military said that it was exercising its “inherent right of self-defense” in attacking the forces of a government whose territory American troops are occupying without either its consent or any mandate from the United Nations.

I'm going to say something and I know it's . . . troubling.

We have too many wars.

Yes, I know, we shouldn't have even one war.

But can we maybe all agree -- or at least plurality of people agree -- that we have too many wars?

This is disgraceful.

What's more disgraceful?

You have ANTIWAR.COM, BLACK AGENDA REPORT and THE COMMON ILLS and that's about it online that realizes we are at war and that argues for them to end.

Go to the website of THE PROGRESSIVE and search in vain for any article about any of the ongoing wars.  You won't find any.

The fake assery is appalling.

Wonder where the anti-war rallies are?

Ask where the opposition to war is at our so-called 'left' outlets.

"TV: Look who's naked and look who isn't" (Ava and C.I., THE THIRD ESTATE SUNDAY REVIEW):

But then there's Joel Kinnaman in the lead role of Takeshi Kovacs and he shows off his butt, his rear, his tail bone, his tush, his behind, his ass, his culo, his glutes, his can -- repeatedly, in fact, make it a drinking game -- but his manroot never shows.
It's not a minor issue -- regardless of the size of Joel's pleasure pump -- because Martha Higareda, as the female lead police detective Ortega, has to do full frontal and women's bodies are repeatedly used as ornament and as props for violence.
As Sophie Gilbert (THE ATLANTIC) observes, "Scene after scene features gory shootouts, and there are recurring interludes of stabbings, butchered bodies, and graphic torture. All too often these scenes involve women, which feels provocative at best and exploitative at worst. In one particularly gratuitous moment, a sex worker’s body is seen butterflied on an autopsy table, while another fight scene features a woman’s various clones littered naked around a room like sexually explicit Barbie dolls."

In addition, there's something deeply homophobic about the world ALTERED CARBON is set in.

2384 and where are the gay characters?

Better yet, why is gender even an issue?

All the couples are male-female despite the fact that most aren't in bodies they were born in.

In this distant future, your body is a sleeve and, if you die, you can be brought back in another sleeve.

So why is everyone paired off in boy-girl couples like they're on Noah's Arc or trapped in a Ron Howard film?


Ava and C.I., name another writing team -- or critic -- capable of making that observation?

That's why they make a difference.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Friday, February 9, 2018.  The same corporate press (and complicit Dems) that rehabilitate Bully Boy Bush continue to lie about Iraq.



Baby, I got your number and I know that you got mine.



Tracy Chapman performing her hit "Give Me One Reason" with Eric Clapton.


"Baby, I got your number and I know that you got mine," which TELESUR appears to be singing to the US government -- will they be the next media outlet forced by the US to register as a foreign agent?



The CIA of the United States helped overthrow Iraq's first independent government on February 8, 1963, starting a decade-long purge of leftists and leaving the country in disarray, a reality that continues today.


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The US government's been attacking Iraq for decades.  It's never about 'helping' unless you mean "the US government helps itself to Iraq's resources."  It's never about 'liberating.'  It's always about destroying.

And this go round, which began in 2003 and continues to this day, has been the worst of the worst thus far.

Earlier this week, some of the fools who aid in destruction and then work to cover reality up were pimping that ISIS was responsible for the greatest destruction in Iraq -- as though the US hasn't been bombing Iraq since 2003?  As if the US didn't use White Phosphorus and Depleted Uranium in Iraq?




2012 ~ World Health Organisation reveals its view on the legacy of the 2 battles for the town of Falluja, a new study reports a "staggering rise" in birth defects among Iraqi children conceived in the aftermath of the 2004 war.










That is the reality that they work so hard to obscure.

Obscuring reality is how trash like Bully Boy Bush gets 'redeemed' by Hillary Clinton and Her Vaginal Secretions.


He lies about the Russian Scare and they decide he's on their side! and rush to embrace him.

He actually is on their side, Hillary voted for the Iraq War and demonized those opposed to it.  Under pressure, she said her support was a "mistake" only to later insist that the "mistake" was to believe that Bully Boy Bush would send even more troops than he did.  (A functional press would have confronted her on that and they would have also asked her why, if she truly believed that more troops were the answer, she went on to oppose Bully Boy Bush's 'surge'?)




Replying to 


If Colin's WMD cartoons were good enough for George Bush & your girl Hillary Clinton, they should be good enough for you.









Does she look heartbroken above?

No, because she's not.

She's fine with the destruction of Iraq.  That was apparent when she made no efforts as Secretary of State to help Iraq -- not even Iraqi women.

And she didn't just vote for the war, she demonized those who didn't.

She also supported it until after the American people walked away from it.

She's a liar.

And the 'secretion' her cult is covered in?  That's the blood of the Iraqi people.


Their complicity and guilt is what allows them to try to redeem Bully Boy Bush today.  BBB is a War Criminal.


Replying to 


He was a bad president-illegal wars, dead Iraqi children, a recession, a world-wide torture program. His opinion is without any value.









Whenever you see George W Bush’s name in the news please remember countless unwitting US troops burned alive in Humvees & countless Iraqi children watched their parents shot to death in their bedrooms all because of his intentional lies—just so his pals could make more billions











I mean brass tacks - all of them should swing.

Bill Clinton's govt helped starve like 500K Iraqi children because "it was worth it"

Bush should swing, Cheney should swing; Nancy Pelosi knew and she let these guys walk - that seems like abetting war crimes no?










Since when did W. Bush become a credible authority on intelligence evidence of foreign wrong doing? Have we forgotten how wrong he was on claims of evidence of WMD in Iraq. & other media should demand inspection of DNC servers, rather than relying on discredited authorities.















Well if war criminal George W. Bush says it then it must be true, right? Just like when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?














I can't believe I have to say this to Dems again, but here goes:

George W. Bush is not good now. He started the Iraq war and destroyed the economy. Just bc he supports the Russia story doesn't make him a hero of the left. Please stop normalizing this clown. Christ.











The bar is so low in the US political arena that George W. Bush is now considered a "sane" and "balanced" voice. Don't forget - Bush was one of the most unpopular presidents ever. Many people around the world also consider him to be a legit war criminal for what he did in Iraq.











New "Resistance" hero W says there's undeniable proof Russia hacked elections.

The same W who also said there's undeniable proof Iraq has WMD's & tied Saddam to 9/11.

Yup, new centrist Dem "Resistance" hero Der Shrub. Desperate times we live in, eh?












Remember when he said there were W.M.D IN Iraq? Yea so why would I trust you now?











Replying to 


Wasn't George W. Bush the same President that told us along with Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld that Iraq  had weapons of mass destruction? I bet he forgot to mention over 6,000 US servicemen died there.











George Bush, who committed a genocide against & unleashed crimes against humanity from Baghdad to Mosul & beyond, has the audacity to say interfered in our elections. People who interned victims should not be talking about other nations interfering in our affairs.









There is no comeback for Bully Boy Bush -- no matter how desperate Hillary and her fan club are for him.

The Iraqi people matter.  Maybe not for those supporting Hillary Clinton, but to the world they matter.

And those desperate to prop up Bully Boy Bush better remember what it really comes down to.







  

I thought, thought that I could find a way
To beat the system
To make a deal and have no debts to pay
I'd take it all take it all I'd run away
Me for myself first class and first rate
But all that you have is your soul
Don't be tempted by the shiny apple
Don't you eat of a bitter fruit
Hunger only for a taste of justice
Hunger only for a world of truth
'Cause all that you have is your soul
Here I am I'm waiting for a better day
A second chance
A little luck to come my way
A hope to dream a hope that I can sleep again
And wake in the world with a clear conscience and clean hands
'Cause all that you have is your soul
-- "All That You Have Is Your Soul," written by Tracy Chapman, first appears on her album CROSSROADS


Iraq today?



One in four Iraqi children impacted by conflict and poverty








UN: Millions of Iraqi Children Affected by Conflict, Poverty Face Grim Future





This is reality.

Reality's apparently too much for some people -- even too much for some 'news' outlets.  THE GUARDIAN, for example, offers "Al-Hudood: the Onion-style website poking fun at the Middle East" this morning.  Because we haven't been entertained enough in our lives?  Because things are so wonderful in Iraq that we need chuckles?  Because THE GUARDIAN's done some hard hitting reporting on Iraq all week (it hasn't) and now needs a moment of rest?

No, because the rule of the day is always distraction.

Jack Moore (NEWSWEEK) recycles:

U.S. relations with Iraq have undoubtedly worsened under President Donald Trump, not least when the country was added—although later removed—from his so-called travel ban on six Muslim majority countries last year. 
And the latest revelations about Trump's private comments about Iraqi officials are unlikely to smooth things over: It has emerged that after an Iraqi delegation visited the president in the Oval Office last year, Trump described them “the most accomplished groups of thieves he’d ever met,” a former U.S. official told The Washington Post.
The comment was made in jest, the official said, but Trump appeared to suggest that the Iraqis had stolen from the U.S. Washington has given $1.7 billion in humanitarian assistance to Iraq since 2014 to help its war-ravaged infrastructure and economy.


Donald Trump was exactly right.

They are thieves, they're also cowards.

They fled Iraq under Saddam and didn't have the guts to fight Saddam.

They spent decades after agitating for the US government to send the US military in.

They're cowards and they're thieves.

And they continue to steal from the Iraqi people which is how a country that generates billions via oil sales each year has a population struggling in poverty -- a population of about 30 million.

They steal from the Iraqi people, they're thieves.

Jack Moore pretends this is news.

Here's news that Jack Moore and everyone else ignored.

The most difficult period between the US and Iraqi governments?

2009 through 2012.

Why?

Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

Who was prime minister?

Nouri al-Maliki.

Though the US media ignored it, she called Nouri a "thug" in a public hearing in 2008 (we covered it in real time).  Nouri was then prime minister of Iraq.

He was still prime minister when she stepped down as Secretary of State.

While the US media ignored her remarks, the Iraqi press did not.

"Thug" or "thieves" -- which is worse?

Don't ask Jack Moore, he's an uninformed liar.



The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley, THE DIANE REHM SHOW, GORILLA RADIO and PACIFICA EVENING NEWS -- updated:





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