Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Your history lessons aside, what is to become of the residents of Camp Ashraf?

Thank you, Justin Raimondo, for ruining my morning with your sexist b.s. Antiwar.com is not concerned at all with building a right-left coalition.  For all his whining, Justin just wants things the way he wants them.  Which mainly means he wants women in no positions ideally but in token positions if they have to be present at all -- which is why there are three and only three women at Antiwar.com.  But tons and tons of men.  And don't you dare point that out because they get so damn sensitive and start acting as if making a very basic and obvious observation has now somehow harmed them greatly.

I'm really sorry for whatever Justin's Mommy did or didn't do for him or to him.  But he really needs to grow the hell up.  His piece is called "Hillary's Terrorists" and that's because stoning a woman is a lot of fun to the misogynist Justin Raimondo.  Remember, boys and girls, libertarians are all for individual rights!  Except at Antiwar.com when it comes to abortion rights . . .  And birth control . . . And anything else that has to do with women's lives more than men's lives.  The men of Antiwar.com write about every topic under the sun -- not just war -- but they don't fret over the status or rights of women.  Not domestically, not internationally.

And then they can't understand why women try the site out and then flee it in disgust.  This despite the fact that many women over the years -- including TCI community members -- have left comments on posts calling out the sexism.  But they just dismiss it while still whining about how they want to grow their audience.

They want readers . . . if the readers have a penis.

So the 'scary' vagina results in another attack from Antiwar.com on Hillary.  It really is something to watch little boys play Kill Mommy.  Hillary's what?  Secretary of State?  Barack's president.  But the little boys scared of vaginas and hating women don't care about that.  They're just hoping to put their toxins out in the environment and they do as much damage as air pollution.  The world is weary of this crap.

Forget what was said in open court just last week, Antiwar.com wants to 'report' things that didn't happen.  We covered this yesterday in the snapshot -- in fact, I continued that thread at Betty's site last night where I wrote "The Glenn Greenwald Brigade (C.I.)."

They're completely nuts, we're talking loony conspiracy world.

It is no secret that I do not care for Barack Obama.  I would not be idiotic enough to call the MEK "Barack's terrorists" (or Hillary's or Joe Biden's or Arne Duncan's or . . .).  The administration has not sought to do anything with the MEK's status.  A court has ordered them to.  Over two years ago.  They have resisted and resisted.  That's why it's two years later and nothing's been done.  The legal system wasn't really impressed with the foot dragging and maybe if Antiwar.com -- an alleged 'news outlet' -- had gotten someone into that courtroom, they'd be able to report on what was said.  Or maybe if they interviewed someone in that courtroom, they'd be able to report that.

But that would require dealing with reality and instead it's so much more fun to them to foam at the mouth repeatedly and act like crazy people.

The State Dept's position -- as stated in court by the attorney of record -- is that they are currently in the process of a review.  They state that they expect to form a conclusion.  In sixty days?  Possibly but they can't promise sixty days because, among other things, they will be evaluating the move of the Camp Ashraf residents to Camp Liberty and they will also be searching Camp
Ashraf after it's empty.  During that period, they might discover something they didn't previously know.  As a result, the ideal 60 day time period might be extended.

That was stated in court to the judges.  Yet Antiwar.com continues to proclaim that the State Dept will be taking the MEK off the terrorist list in 60 days.  That's not what was stated in court.  If you've got reasons for thinking the judge was misled, why don't you make that argument but don't provide us a link to yet another report from an outside source that Antiwar.com has failed to read properly -- leading them most recently to claim that Ed RendEll was convicted of a crime (hasn't happened yet and, again, falsely reporting that is actionable) and that the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy to Iraq Martin Kobler decleared 600 people had died in Iraq since the start of the year (no, he didn't say that, he said 600 in Baghdad) -- both of these things were covered in yesterday's snapshot.  Again, your outlet's inability to accurately address facts from other outlets doesn't instill confidence.

But if Antiwar.com knows that the State Dept lied to the judges, please come forward with that information.  I'm sure that the judges wouldn't appreciate being lied to and would move to sanction the State Dept in some manner.

Saturday, we were sent something that Antiwar.com had posted and I spent an hour debating whether or not I should write about it.  It was one error after another.  I finally justified ignoring it with there was too much out of Iraq that day.  And then finally got to work on writing the two Saturday night entries so I could go on help out on Third's edition.  I don't set out each day to trash Antiwar.com.  I would prefer not to have to say a damn word about it.  But that would require them doing their job and apparently their job is making up 'facts' and distortions and repeating them.  Where's the accountability?

I'm happy to put up any message of error and happy to write "My mistake, my apologies."  And admit that I was wrong and have been many times before and will be many times more.  I'm not seeing the same from Antiwar.com although it does love to criticize other outlets for getting things wrong.

Ditz article from Monday still wrongly states that Ed Rendell violated federal law -- a charge that has not been proven.  (Again, I know and like Ed.) I'm tired of trying to run interference.  If you get sued, go whine to someone else.  I've stated it as actionable and I have noted that as someone who knows Ed, I would suggest you correct your error by putting in the term "allegedly."  If Ed does decide to sue you in a few months, it's really your own damn fault at this point.  And if he does sue, he wins.  There is no defense for your false assertion that Ed's been convicted of a federal crime when he's not been.  You can call him a "dirt bag" or "scum" or a "whore" or any other judgment call you want and be on firm ground.  But when you say he's been convicted of a federal crime, the courts don't see that as opinion.  It's actionable and a real outlet would have rushed to have added "alleged" while being embarrassed that they didn't in the first place.

Maybe we should just be glad Justy's finally found a woman he can praise?  Elizabeth Rubin for her "remarkable piece"?  Except what was remarkable about Rubin's column for the New York Times isn't how fact-free was it but how fact mangled it was.  She deliberately distorted a RAND report to come up with a "fact" that was clearly not a fact (and not in the RAND report but in an appendix). We called out that awful report.  Justin rushes to embarace it because he's apparently ethically challenged.  If the left (Justin's not left) wanted to be smarter, we would have tried to pursue Bob Somerby's path and not Media Matters' path.  Somerby's path means you do criticize your own.  Media Matters path means you spend all day hurling stuff at the people across the aisle hoping something sticks and you ignore it when shoddy work comes from your own side.

That relates to Raimondo in that he slams the New York Times repeatedly but he rushes to embrace a bad column (bad factually, badly written) just because he agrees with the opinion of the writer.  He's just like the looniest lefty enthralled with one of Frank Rich's bad columns a few years back.  Frank Rich couldn't even get the facts right when he was reviewing plays.  Nothing in his body of work -- columns, reviews -- stands up to a serious fact check.  But he said just what some on the left wanted to hear so they rushed to embrace him.  (I am particularly harsh face to face with a friend who cried over what Rich wrote about one of her performances but suddenly found Rich to be a genius in the Bush years and began praising him publicly.  He's the same ass who distorted her to attack her.  That's all he's ever done.  And he is an ass.)

The US will never get anywhere until a left-right coalition is formed against wars.  But a coalition will not be formed when women are either tokens or targets of public stoning.  When those are the only roles that are offered, there will be NO left-right coalition.





And apparently Antiwar.com isn't too concerned about that because the criticisms of it in this piece are not unique to me, I'm not the first one to make them, I'm not even the first one to make them publicly.





And nothing has changed at Antiwar.com.  It remains a place where -- on staff -- women are a tiny, tiny number and where women are mentioned most frequently (and prominently) to attack them.

On another topic, as I explained at Betty's site last night, if the MEK is their big issue -- the Glenn Glenn Brigade -- they're idiots because they should have spent the last years addressing the issue of Camp Ashraf, not ignoring it or attacking the residents.

Justin wants to give the world a history lesson on the residents -- at a time when Antiwar.com's already seen as estranged from the factual -- and anyone reading it will most likely think, "What a dick?"

And they'll be right.

What is to be done with the residents of Camp Ashraf?

It's a point that doesn't concern him.

They can't remain in Iraq and countries are reluctant to take them because the MEK remains on the US terrorist list.

So what's supposed to happen to them?

According to the shrill Raimondo, they apparently get whatever comes to them because they worked with Saddam Hussein.

Petty minds with petty scores forever intent to hold the whole world back.  What happened in 1980 or 1970, it really isn't the issue right now.  The issue right now is getting Camp Ashraf residents out of Iraq before the end of the year.  If he's got any suggestions on that, he should offer them.  If all he's got is more hate, the world has enough.  I don't care what they did or what they allegedly did.  They are protected persons under international law -- a fact that the writer Justy loves ignored in her NYT column --  those of us who care about the law and who care about human rights wonder how they get out of Iraq safely?

Then there's Justin Raimondo with his nasty little rants and skewed history lessons, stomping his feet and not understanding why the whole world won't embrace him and his site.

(I'm not looking for a world embarce.  My role is the critic.  My role, in fact, is to be the bitch who annoys the hell out of so many.  That's fine and dandy.  I'll live with that online role.  And we'll continue to be the advocate for those who are ignored whether it's Iraqi women or Iraq's LGBT community or Iraqi youth or the religious minorities or the Camp Ashraf residents or -- get the point?)

My apologies that this is going up late but there was a lot to cover and I had to do it in shifts because we're in a hearing and I'm also taking notes on that.


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.






 
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