Indira Lakshmanan
This story is jaw-dropping:
Ex-British spy says FBI ignored Trump allegations while singleminded pursuing Hillary
No, what's jaw dropping is calling the man ex-MI6 or ex-British spy.
It's a cute little mislead -- done intentionally.
Do you know what he did as a spy?
Or whether he was effective?
No, you don't.
But whores know how to whore -- no one ever has to teach them that.
It takes guts and spine to stand up.
Whoring requires neither.
He left that service in 2009.
He wanted to make money by doing dirty and cheap -- and, for all we know, that's also what he did in MI6.
Back then, he was assigned to Moscow in the 90s.
He's now in hiding.
Because of his actions in Moscow while a spy.
Two decades later and he has to hide?
Doesn't sound like he did anything of value but a great deal of destruction and why are we surprised?
He's a cheap suit with grubby fingers who was working for the Republican Party to turn up dirt on Donald Trump.
They don't appear to have felt it was that valuable, do they?
So then he decided to go elsewhere with their work product -- that they paid for.
Well, no one accused him of integrity.
It's called reality, try visiting sometime if it's too much for you to live here.
And if this ALSUMARIA report is true, this is treason. If US intelligence agencies told the government of Israel not to include the White House in information sharing now that Trump will be president, that's treason.
That's reason to clear house and even reason to finally close these lawless US agencies that we did very well without for most of the country's history.
That report should be the focus of the Sunday chat & chews.
No one elected spies to office.
How dare they try to subvert an American leader.
That would be treason.
I know it's confusing for the buttinskies and busybodies like "NotMyPresident/France4Hillary."
#NotMyPresident
The fact that Trump insults heros like John Lewis & worships dictators like Vladimir Putin shows how TERRIFYING his judgment is. #StopTrump
Tone down the hysterics, honey.
You and your spouse aren't even living in the United States.
THE COMMON ILLS started over 13 years ago.
Back then, a certain Australian blogger got on our nerves. Community members who've been with us for a long time will know who I'm talking about. We'll call him Luke -- because that was his first name.
Luke couldn't shut up -- five days a week -- about Bully Boy Bush.
Now we called Bully Boy Bush out here every day, all the time.
But I live in the United States and am an American citizen.
Luke? Australian.
John Howard?
Australian.
John The Stupid led Australia into the Iraq War.
But, funny thing, Luke never, ever called out John Howard.
Day after day, he raged against the Iraq War but never, ever called out his own country's leader.
How pathetic is that?
It would be very easy for me to make Tony Blair my main focus or Angela Merkel.
Doesn't take a lot of guts to call out a foreign country's leader.
Luke is like that Franco-American couple in France.
They Tweet constantly -- one hysterical Tweet after another.
I'm confused though, since they live in France.
I own property in France and I love France.
But if I were living there?
I'd certainly be talking about the issues of integration in that society. I'd be trying to balance identity and inclusion in various posts -- because that's France's big issue for the future. What happened in the US would not be my obsession.
But our little couple that's decided to live in France thinks it can live in France and also weigh in on American elections.
Seems to me if you wanted to impact American elections . . . you'd need to be . . . where?
That's right, in the United States.
At their 'France' account, they Tweeted twice on January 12th (nothing on the 13th or the 14th) and both Tweets were about Donald Trump:
- En venant à Trump Tower, Marine Le Pen exprime le souhait que le monde soit dirigée par elle, Trump et Poutine. JAMAIS ! #JamaisMarine
- Selon Marine Le Pen, un trio Trump-Poutine-Le Pen renforcerait la paix dans le monde. Délirant, Poutine étant un criminel de guerre !#AntiFN
#RévolutionEnMarche 
They're trying (this year) to elect the next president of France at their France account.
Since January 12th, they've Tweeted twice there.
At the account that's all about War Hawk and Corporatist Troll Hillary? They've Tweeted 19 times since January 12th.
Who's obsessed?
Do they really want other people nosing in their elections?
Maybe pointing out that a Mama's Boy candidate isn't the best choice or making jokes about the fact that their boy's wife is 24 years older than him and, get this, was his high school teacher?
We can work up all sorts of funny little gifs about Mama's Boy Wants To Rule France.
Or we can talk about how this buttinsky couple is applauding ObamaCare and what does that mean for France's medicine?
France has great medical care and, yes, it's socialized medicine.
What does it mean that the buttinsky couple can't stop applauding corporate takeover of medicine and that they're endorsing Emmanuel Macron for president of France?
Macron?
The joke tells itself.
I love how these two busybodies are jumping on the unproven myth that 'the Russians' 'hacked' or 'interfered' with the US elections as they, from France, can't butt the hell out.
Nobody likes a busybody, get it through your damn head.
If you're working to elect someone in France and you're living in France, stay the hell out of American electoral politics.
Bruce A. Dixon (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) points out:
The truth is that if Hillary was being sworn in Friday instead of Big Cheeto we’d still be spending half the nation’s wealth yearly on a murderous global military empire with over a thousand overseas bases. We’d still be bombing seven countries and operating networks of global torture, kidnapping and secret prisons. If Hillary was president the US would still have the two biggest air forces on the planet, the first being the USAF, the second being the US Navy.
#StopTheHate. #DumpTrump. #BeUngovernable. #StopTrump and #NotMyPresident and most of the meme stashes and joke repositories do not scare the Pentagon because they offer no door for people to recognize, let alone question the system, not the personalities it throws up. They DO allow the lazy and credulous among us to imagine as Democrats tell us, that “character is destiny,” and Democratic operatives to reinforce that message.
But if a Democrat were installed in the White House till 2020 the black unemployment rate would be about the same as it’s been the last half century, about double the white rate. If a Democrat were in the White House hundreds of thousands with full time jobs would still be homeless and millions more an arbitrary paycheck from it. If a Democrat were in the White House we’d still have 2 million plus people in prisons and jails, mostly black and brown, and gentrification of inner cities and privatization of public education and public resources would continue apace. Big Pharma and Big Insurance, military contractors and corporate media monopolies and parasitic hedge funders would get still fatter off privatized nature, racketeering and theft of the commons.
This is from New York's Dept of Labor website:
Date of Notice: 1/12/2017
Event Number: 2016-0132
Rapid Response Specialist: Stuart Goldberg
Reason Stated for Filing: Plant Layoff
Company:
The Clinton Foundation
1271 Avenue of the Americas, 42nd Floor
New York, NY 10020
The Clinton Foundation
1271 Avenue of the Americas, 42nd Floor
New York, NY 10020
County: New York | WIB Name: NEW YORK CITY | Region: New York City
Contact: Veronika Shiroka
Phone: (646) 775-9184
Business Type: Social Advocacy Organization - Clinton Global Initiative
Number Affected: 22
Total Employees: -----
Layoff Date: 4/15/2017
Closing Date: -----
Reason for Dislocation: Discontinutation of the Clinton Global Initative
ERNUM: 86-83268
Union: The affected workers are not represented by a Union.
Classification: Plant Layoff
Some are seeing this as proof that the Clinton Foundation was all about pay-to-play (meaning, now that she won't be president, no one has any interest in donating). That may or may not be true.
What's interesting to me is that in the state of New York, the 22 employees are non-Union.
Oh, Hillary pretended to be the friend workers -- despite NAFTA, etc.
But look, 22 New Yorkers and not one was a union employee.
How telling.
As is this:
Scott Presler VA
To this day, this is the worst message I've received since coming out as gay.
He's a Hillary voter.
#SaturdayMorning #JohnLewis
May he and other LGBTQs who voted for Trump be killed by ISIS?
It's that sort of hatred that the Temple Prostitutes for Hillary spat out throughout 2016 -- mainly at Bernie supporters. And then they wonder why so few turned out for her?
Staying with Tweets, in Friday's snapshot, we noted:
Maybe . . . don't take your eyes off Iraq? Don't ignore it?
Kenneth Roth
Terrorism in Iraq gets far less attention, but Iraq was the site of the deadliest terrorist attack in 2016.
Yep, it does get less attention.
Why is that, Kenny boy?
Because you used your Twitter feed to campaign for Hillary Clinton?
I'm sorry, I thought Human Rights Watch was politically neutral.
Had you just focused on Iraq, maybe it would get the attention it needs.
Had you just Tweeted about HRW's Iraq reports, it might have gotten attention.
But before the election you thought you were slyly promoting Hillary and post-election you've had a tantrum or two.
Maybe if you'd focus on human rights and the work of HRW, Iraq could get the attention it deserves.
If you're part of the problem, that's on you.
Kenneth Tweeted that January 12th. Or, as I like to think of it, 52 Tweets ago.
52.
The number of Tweets Kenny has Tweeted since his Tweet noting Iraq gets so little attention.
52 Tweets.
And not one of them about Iraq.
Brett McGurk wants to Tweet about Iraq.
Brett McGurk89 days after the operation to liberate or 'liberate' Mosul begun, the forces have taken Mosul University.
The Mosul Slog continues.
Meanwhile ALSUMARIA reports that Jaafar al-Moussawi, head of Moqtada al-Sadr's political bloc, is calling for protests against the proposed Iraq legislation on the upcoming elections (provincial) saying the proposal is unfair and exists to keep certain rulers in place and not to give voice to the people. Moqtada is the Shi'ite cleric who is also a movement leader. ALL IRAQ NEWS notes that the first vote on the proposed legislation is scheduled to take place Sunday.
Still on the government, Wael Grace (AL MADA) reports that a vote Thursday found the Parliament agreeing to put the approval of the Supreme Court judicial appointees under the Parliament. Some see the Judicial Council Act as a violation of the country's Constitution. AZZAMAN reports that Cabinet of Ministers has been put on notice that if harassment of female employees does not stop, harassers will be publicly revealed -- this would include officials in the Ministry of Education where at least 3 female workers have reported harassment.
In other news, the US Defense Dept announced today:
Strikes in Iraq
Attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted seven strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government: attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft against ISIL targets
-- Near Haditha, a strike destroyed a bunker.
-- Near Kirkuk, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a tunnel.
-- Near Mosul, four strikes engaged an ISIL tactical unit; destroyed four fighting positions, two heavy machine guns, two watercraft, an ISIL headquarters building, a car bomb and damaged eight supply routes.
-- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed a mortar system and a fighting position.
-- Near Mosul, Jan. 12, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a fighting position. This event was not previously reported.
Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.
In other news, wire reports note:
Residents of the Iraqi city of Mosul have said up to 30 civilians were killed in an airstrike on a district held by Islamic State this week.
The witnesses said it was not immediately clear if the attack was carried out by the US-led coalition fighting Isis, or by Iraqi forces that have been making advances in the city.
They said they saw at least three missiles hit the western Mosul al-Jadida area on Thursday, in a raid that appeared to target the house of senior militant Harbi Abdel Qader.
Lastly, Dina Habib Powell has been appointed by Donald Trump to be the assistant to the president and senior counselor for economic initiatives. ALSUMARIA notes that she is Arab-American, was born in Cairo, moved with her family to Texas where her father drove a bus and owned a grocery store. ARAB NEWS notes:
Ziad Asali, former president of the American Task Force for Palestine, told Arab News that Powell could play a key role “in helping Trump and the Kushners (Ivanka and her husband Jared) navigate the Washington scene” and its many policy quarters.
Asali said he would not be surprised if Powell acquires a lead role in driving Middle East policy, improving Trump’s image in Middle Eastern countries after a campaign that saw a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment. Trump called for a Muslim ban in December 2015, before walking back on those plans less than a year later.
Powell follows in the footsteps of Donna Shalala, Ray Lahood, John Sununu, and a large league of Arab-Americans who made it to the White House and served US presidents.
That's not me endorsing Dina Habib Powell (or not endorsing her). I'm just noting how the news of her appointment is being received in the Arab world.
The following community sites updated:
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
Iraq
