Another horrible mass shooting took place in the US on Wednesday night, the 307th such episode on the 311th day
of the year, according to a website that tracks gun violence.
A
28-year-old Marine Corps veteran of the Afghanistan war walked into a
country music dance club in Thousand Oaks,
California on Wednesday night and opened fire with a handgun, killing
12 people and wounding 25. The attacker, Ian David Long, who lived with
his mother in the Newbury Park section of Thousand Oaks, some six miles
away, then apparently turned the weapon on
himself.
The incident is the deadliest in the US since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
Florida in mid-February, in which 17 people were killed and 14 wounded, a tragedy that sparked mass outrage and protest.
Hundreds
of college students and others were on hand late Wednesday at the
Borderline Bar & Grill, some 40 miles
west of downtown Los Angeles, when the gunman entered. The club,
located near both California Lutheran University and Pepperdine
University, has a College Country Night on Wednesdays, permitting those
under the drinking age to enter, with a black X marked
on their hands.
By all accounts, Long, armed with a Glock 21, whose magazine had been illegally extended so it could hold more
than the standard 10 rounds, carried out his attack with precision and determination.
According
to witnesses, the gunman—dressed entirely in black and wearing a black
baseball cap, sunglasses and
a bandana covering the lower half of his face—first shot a security
guard standing outside the club. Tim Dominguez told KABC television in
Los Angeles that the intruder “shot the doorman, bouncer … just a young
man. Then, he shot the cashier, just a young
girl.”
Ian Long is a child of God the same as
anyone else. Ian Long was not raised to be a killer. But what he
experienced in Afghanistan led to this moment. It’s a lie to pretend
otherwise.
It’s also a lie to give Bully Boy Bush
any award for helping veterans. He helped make more veterans, some of
whom died, many more were left injured. That’s all he did. That’s all
he does.
I could have considered Joe Biden as a
candidate for president. Not now. He is handing out the award and
I’ve covered this topic before (“F**k
you, Joe Biden”).
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Friday, November 9, 2018.
Dog Eat Dog
It's dog eat dog
I'm just waking up
The dove is in the dungeon
And the white washed hawks
pedal hate and call it love
Dog Eat Dog
Holy hope in the hands of
Snakebite evangelists and racketeers
And big wig financiers
Dog Eat Dog
On prime time crime the victim begs
Money is the road to justice
and power walks it on crooked legs
Prime Time Crime
Holy hope in the hands of
Snakebite evangelists and racketeers
and big wig financiers
Where the wealth's displayed
Thieves and sycophants parade
And where it's made
the slaves will be taken
Some are treated well
In these games of buy and sell
And some like poor beasts
Are burdened down to breaking
Dog Eat Dog
It's dog eat dog ain't it Flim Flam man
Dog eat dog you can lie cheat skim scam
Beat' em any way you can
Dog eat Dog
You'll do well in this land of
Snakebite evangelists and racketeers
You could get to be
a big wig financier
Land of snap decisions
Land of short attention spans
Nothing is savored
Long enough to really understand
In every culture in decline
The watchful ones among the slaves
Know all that is genuine will be
Scorned and conned and cast away
-- "Dog Eat Dog," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her classic 1985 album DOG EAT DOG
Thieves and sycophants parade? Hey, Joe, where you going with that award in your hand? Off to War Hawk Land? To give it to Bully Boy Bush?
Dog Eat Dog
It's dog eat dog
I'm just waking up
The dove is in the dungeon
And the white washed hawks
pedal hate and call it love
Dog Eat Dog
Holy hope in the hands of
Snakebite evangelists and racketeers
And big wig financiers
Dog Eat Dog
On prime time crime the victim begs
Money is the road to justice
and power walks it on crooked legs
Prime Time Crime
Holy hope in the hands of
Snakebite evangelists and racketeers
and big wig financiers
Where the wealth's displayed
Thieves and sycophants parade
And where it's made
the slaves will be taken
Some are treated well
In these games of buy and sell
And some like poor beasts
Are burdened down to breaking
Dog Eat Dog
It's dog eat dog ain't it Flim Flam man
Dog eat dog you can lie cheat skim scam
Beat' em any way you can
Dog eat Dog
You'll do well in this land of
Snakebite evangelists and racketeers
You could get to be
a big wig financier
Land of snap decisions
Land of short attention spans
Nothing is savored
Long enough to really understand
In every culture in decline
The watchful ones among the slaves
Know all that is genuine will be
Scorned and conned and cast away
-- "Dog Eat Dog," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her classic 1985 album DOG EAT DOG
Thieves and sycophants parade? Hey, Joe, where you going with that award in your hand? Off to War Hawk Land? To give it to Bully Boy Bush?
A war criminal will get the Liberty Medal and Joe Biden will hand it to him. @JoeBiden is not your friend. www2.philly.com/philly/columni…
- Brittany DeBarros Retweeted
As the far-right is emboldened across the country, the "compassionate conservative" George W. Bush is being awarded for his service to veterans. Sign and Share this petition.
Thank you, FL veterans for letter...a medal for Bush, the one who lied us into war with Iraq, causing deaths of thousands, horrific physical, and mental devastation to thousands...beyond the pale, disgraceful. Shame on you, Joe Biden.
Damn It, Joe Biden and Michelle Obama, Stop Rehabilitating George W. Bush! | The Nation
@ConstitutionCtr, why is war criminal, Geoge W. Bush, being presented with the Liberty Medal? @JoeBiden, why are you participating in this travesty?
Will Bunch:
It's a pretty safe bet that no one on the Constitution Center's panel that selected the Bushes for the now-tarnished Liberty Medal consulted with the Iraq-born novelist Sinan Antoon, who wrote in the New York Times in March that "Fifteen Years Ago, America Destroyed My Country" and noted that estimates of as many as one million dead mean the war "is often spoken of in the United States as a 'blunder,' or even a 'colossal mistake,' " but, he writes, "It was a crime."
Nor did the panel likely investigate the "blessings" that America under Bush's leadership bestowed upon Lakhdar Boumediene, a Bosnian national scooped up in 2001 by U.S. intelligence on baseless allegations and flown to the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, where during nine years of imprisonment he said he was kept awake for days at a time, forced into uncomfortably painful positions, and brutally force-fed during a hunger strike. "These are things I do not want to write about," he wrote. "I want only to forget."
Apparently America only wants to forget the Bush years as well. (The Iraqi Antoon complained of our "mostly amnesiac citizenry" after watching Bush do a happy dance with liberal TV host Ellen DeGeneres.)
Repeating:
Where the wealth's displayed
Thieves and sycophants parade
And where it's made
the slaves will be taken
Some are treated well
In these games of buy and sell
And some like poor beasts
Are burdened down to breaking
War Criminals are celebrated. Everything comes with a price tag, eh, Ellen?
US Senate Affirms Support for Child Soldiers and Child Sex Slaves.
BREAKING: Calif. bar mass shooting suspect identified as Ian Long, 29, several law enforcement officials tell @NBCNews - @PeteWilliamsNBC
#LIVE: Neighbors are saying David Ian Long was a veteran who suffered from PTSD, "I have no idea what he was doing with a gun" abc7.la/2yZhMMl
He suffered with Post-Traumatic Syndrome? But, by all means, let's give Bully Boy Bush an award for his 'work' with veterans -- you know, for killing them and wounding them. For using them to try to distract from his War Crimes?
And let's pretend, while we're at it, that the wars themselves don't destroy the Ian Longs. No, every veteran is not going to end up hurting people. (Veterans with violence issues traditionally turn the violence on themselves. Which does explain the high rates of suicide.) And there's no need to give rise to a stereotype. But there's also no reason to deny that these ongoing wars effect a large number of people -- including those who serve in them.
Now it doesn't effect Bully Boy Bush. He's still dumber than dirt. His wallet's a lot thicker but he's still Satan incarnate and, if there's a hell, he'll get to know it quite well.
But Bully Boy Bush didn't serve in Iraq. He sent others to serve. He didn't serve himself. He was too busy doing other things. Hence the incomplete National Guard records.
Bully Boy Bush was happy enough to send men and women into war and he was happy enough to not "do body counts" (a lie, as we found out during the last week of KNIGHT RIDDER", in a Nancy Youssef report). Now he thinks he can emerge from beneath his rock and accept an award. The delusions of the entitled.
Shame on Joe Biden. I love Joe but I'm appalled and this isn't something I'll forget. If he gives out that award, I will not support him in a 2020 run. His presenting that award shows he learned nothing from the Iraq War -- that he voted for. He's learned nothing. That makes him worse than Hillary. Yes, she gave a weak ass apology but it's a hell of a lot better than what Joe Biden's about to do.
The Iraq War continues and bully Boy Bush is getting an award -- and Joe Biden's handing it to him.
XINHUA reports of 'liberated' Mosul, "At least three people were killed and 11 others wounded in a car bomb explosion near a restaurant in the west of the city of Mosul, the capital of Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, a local police source said Thursday."
That's Bully Boy Bush's legacy. "The war on terror." He was the terror. Iraq, Afghanistan, these wars continue and their death toll increases. AFP notes:
A report of the study conducted by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs put the toll between 4,80,000 and 5,07,000 people, but said the actual number is likely to be higher since there are “limits in reporting”.
Now those deaths do not rest solely with Bully Boy Bush. Barack Obama continued those wars. Donald Trump continues them now. And there were a lot of people in Congress -- Joe Biden, that includes you -- who signed off on them.
For Iraq alone, Brown's study counts 295,00. And, as the study notes, this is an undercount.
How many people have to die before Joe Biden's bothered enough not to hand an award to Bully Boy Bush?
Jason Ditz (ANTIWAR.COM) observes:
This is admittedly a dramatic under-report of people killed in the wars, as it only attempts to calculate those killed directly in war violence, and not the massive number of others civilians who died from infrastructure damage or other indirect results of the wars. The list also excludes the US war in Syria, which itself stakes claims to another 500,000 killed since 2011.
The report also notes that over 60,000 US troops were either killed or wounded in the course of the wars. This includes 6,951 US military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11.
The Brown study also faults the US for having done very little in the last 17 years to provide transparency to the country about the scope of the conflicts, concluding that they are “inhibited by governments determined to paint a rosy picture of perfect execution and progress.”
Iraq remains destroyed. The war continues. The occupation continues.
Kirk Sowell (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) examines the latest government:
Adel Abdul-Mahdi—a former
minister of finance, minister of oil, and vice president of Iraq—barely
managed to secure a confidence vote for two-thirds of his cabinet on
October 25. The former member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq
(ISCI), a Shia Islamist party, was nominated prime minister on October
2. But he has since nearly failed to launch his government, which will
face pressure from a population frustrated by years of failures on
security and public services.
The roots of Abdul-Mahdi’s weak
government lie in the manner in which the prime minister himself was
elected. After he resigned as minister of oil in 2016, Abdul-Mahdi left
ISCI to become an independent and did not run in the May 2018
parliamentary elections. However, on May 23 he published a Facebook post explaining
why he could not be prime minister because all the reforms he would
want to implement would be opposed by many. These included such broad
changes as moving away from the rentier state, strengthening state
institutions and ensuring their independence from political influence,
reining in illegal militia activity, and reducing the influence of
tribalism.
This pitch aligned well with the
rhetorical vision of populist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has long
associated himself with such themes. The political class was focused for
much of the summer on the struggle over Haider al-Abadi’s effort to
secure a second term. Yet once the fallout over Basra’s massive water
pollution crisis ended Abadi’s hopes in early September, Sadr quickly backed Abdul-Mahdias a replacement, and Barham Salih designated him
to head the next government immediately after his own election as
president on October 2. Sadr conditioned his support two days later by declaringthat
he was giving Abdul-Mahdi “a period of one year to prove his success.”
This gives Sadr the option to take credit for the government’s success
if it does well or turn against it next year if protests over poor
public services swell again.
Moreover, the coalition
nominating him was unclear and fractured. Although Sadr was the driver
behind his nomination, the only figure who actually ran in the election
whose approval was
essential for Abdul-Mahdi’s candidacy was Hadi al-Ameri—leader of the
Badr Organization and head of the Fatah Alliance, which with 48 seats is
the second largest in parliament after the 54 for Sadr’s Sairun. The
process was so opaque that Iraqi journalists were uncertain which of these blocs had nominated him.
Sadr and Amiri, being political
rivals with very different worldviews, also never agreed on a specific
policy program or even a method of choosing ministers, with Sairun
giving Abdul-Mahdi full discretion to nominate their share of the
ministries while Amiri’s Fatah insisted on naming specific ministers.
Furthermore, Abdul-Mahdi conducted separate bilateral negotiations for
ministerial positions with Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law Coalition (SLC) and the Sunni Arab National Axis Alliance,
even though they were technically both part of Amiri’s Construction
Bloc (Bina). Without agreements with both parties, they likely would
have blocked passage of his cabinet, but this situation also underlines
Abdul-Mahdi’s lack of a unified coalition. His bilateral agreements with
parties do nothing to bind them to each other into a working majority
capable of passing legislation or approving executive appointments.
The lack of a real coalition
behind the new government became evident when parliament met to approve
the proposed cabinet on October 24. Abdul-Mahdi got off on the wrong
foot during his speech presenting his government program by failing to
make more than passing reference to the demands of Sunni Arab MPs—such
as reconstruction and the return of Sunni provinces’ displaced citizens.
This led Speaker Mohamed al-Halbousi of Anbar to push through a motion to
incorporate a list of Sunni demands into Abdul-Mahdi’s prepared text
regarding the government’s program, holding a vote to approve his
statement before the body could proceed to consider ministers.
15 years and counting, still the Iraq War continues and no one responsible for starting the war or continuing it deserves any award.
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