Saturday, October 07, 2017

CONSORTIUM NEWS publishes liar Crooke of MI6

In the years online, one thing we've attempted to repeatedly stress is that a government is not its people.  When they sell wars, they do it by hiding the people.

We're not supposed to, for example, picture Iraqi families dying when we drop bombs.  Instead, it's supposed to just be this abstract "Iraq" being targeted.


It's awful when governments do that.

It's awful when they get away with it.

But, let's be honest, they couldn't get away with it unless they had the press on their side to whore for them.

That said, sometimes the press chooses to go to war all by itself.

Take CONSORTIUM NEWS.

They've published a piece by -- who exactly?



Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum.


Thank goodness.

Because it's so sad how intelligence agencies have so little control over the press.

That was sarcasm.

So an MI6-er shows up at CONSORTIUM NEWS and writes a piece revolving around AEI -- you know, the neocon American Enterprise Institute.

The piece is an epic fail on every level.

Try this:


 And now, presidential and parliamentary elections — hastily called in the wake of the Oct. 3 death of former Iraqi President and Kurdish political leader Jalal Talibani — have descended into a mess. Rather than settle “the succession” upon his eldest son, Masud Barzani may instead have opened a wider struggle over leadership of the Kurdish people.


I'm sorry, I didn't realize that CONSORTIUM NEWS was now using the slogan "We're a bunch of lying bitches."


Let's go to RUDAW:

Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani has set November 1, 2017 for parliamentary and presidential elections in the Kurdistan Region. In a decree signed on July 12, a copy of which was obtained by Rudaw, Barzani officially called the elections, saying the date was set in accordance with the presidential law passed by the Kurdistan legislature in 2005. 
 “All concerned parties are committed to do the necessary work and will support and coordinate with the Kurdistan Higher Independent Election Commission and Referendum to implement this decree,” the decree continued.


What's the date on that story?

Oh, yeah, July 19, 2017.

Sometimes "Crooke" is a fitting name.



The election were announced in the summer.

They were not announced last week and only a very stupid, lying piece of trash would think they could get away with claiming otherwise.

Shame, shame, shame.

How did this happen?

Robert Parry has integrity so how could he publish such crap?

Because the people of Kurdistan are not people.

Instead, they and the entire country are proxies of Israel.

That's how they're seen.

Regardless of where the government of Israel stands on Kurdish independence, the fact does not change that 90% of the Kurds in the KRG voted for independence.

You don't like the government of Israel, I get it.

That doesn't mean you treat the Kurds like crap.  That doesn't mean you get to lie about them or distort reality.

WSWS and CONSORTIUM NEWS -- among others -- have refused to stand with the people.  The people voted for independence.

And another thing on the CONSORTIUM piece, Barzani?

Massoud Barzani is now a hero.

That will not change -- barring some sex scandal.  He could even survive a money scandal at this point.

Kurds around the world want to see a Kurdish state.

No one has ever brought them closer than Massoud.

No matter what happens next, he is a hero.

He didn't throw in the towel -- the way Jalal Talabani did in 2009.

And we were the only ones to call it out, weren't we?

As usual we do the heavy lifting here and everyone else gets to lie and gas bag.

We said it was awful and harmful in real time.

And we weren't at all surprised to see Talabani's party take a dive in the 2014 elections -- losing not only to Barzani's party but also to the upstart (and CIA-backed) Goran.

It must be nice just to make up stuff.

Must be real easy too.

NPR did it this week.  They offered a 'scoop' (we'll address it at THIRD).

Funny scoop though.  Ruth, Ava and I reported it years ago.

But then we actually attended Congressional hearings as opposed to take political party talking points and pretending that was 'research.'

Back to the Kurds.

It's a shame that a people who have been so mistreated by so many are not seen as people but instead as the latest thing to bash in the war against the government of Israel.

They're people, not proxies.

They are persecuted throughout the region and refusing to see them as people is appalling.


ALSUMARIA reports that today Massoud Barzani met with Iraqi vice presidents Ayad al-Allawi and Osama al-Nujaifi regarding the sanctions the Baghdad-based government has imposed since the independence vote.

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Vietghanistan’s New Year, War Lies’ New MillenniumVietghanistan’s New Year, War Lies’ New Millennium





By David Swanson

http://davidswanson.org/vietghanistans-new-year-war-lies-new-millennium/
The Afghanistan War documentary by Ken Burns III may someday be set for release in Spring 2074.
Or maybe not. The peace movement in the U.S. made Vietnam, rather than Korea, a topic for Burns. The peace movement is struggling to make people in the United States aware that the war on Afghanistan even exists, much less that it is entering its 17th year — making it something that people who still don’t recognize Native Americans as full humans call “the longest U.S. war.”
If there ever is such a PBS account of Vietghanistan, it will no doubt steer clear of the illegality, the lasting damage, and the wisdom of those who rightly opposed the crime before it began and all the way through. Yet such a film’s content will likely be so awful, and depict such evil madness, clearly counterproductive on its own terms, that some people will finally catch on.
Or we could skip to the future and just watch War Machine with Brad Pitt right now, which gets a lot of it right.
In Burns’ Vietnam, Harry Truman “inherited” a world in which the U.S. alliance with the USSR “had collapsed” — all by itself apparently. Poor wittle Harry! From there, people of “good will” almost helplessly stumbled into the slaughtering of some 3.8 million Vietnamese plus hundreds of thousands each of Laotians and Cambodians, really with the best of intentions imaginable.
Now, of course, they’ve learned their lessons. Now their wars are run on a much higher moral plane — often a robotic plane armed with missiles in which their commander in chief owns stock — but still a much higher plane, killing hadji instead of gooks, and doing so with yet better intentions than before, and so even-handedly that it’s become necessary to threaten 25 million gooks with extinction (John McCain’s word) or total destruction (Donald Trump’s words) as well.
It occurs to me that even though I wrote a book cataloging types of war lies and pleading with people to be prepared to recognize them — and updated the book last year — the world’s second-oldest profession remains very much alive and has entered a new millennium with a bang — not to mention some “fire and fury.”
Despite North Korea’s clear openness year after year to reasonable negotiations, Trump has simply declared talking to North Korea impossible. And the very real failures of North Korea’s government, and its actual possession of weapons, are bizarrely depicted as reasons to attack it, if not to commit genocide and risk nuclear apocalypse — as if the United States doesn’t have grotesque failures and possess doomsday weapons itself.
Weeks back, Trump proposed finding some way to pretend that Iran was not complying with the agreement created two years ago as an alternative to an illegal, immoral U.S. attack on Iran. Now, Trump has given up and announced that he will simply declare the agreement to not be in his interest — that is, the interest of war, the interest of someone seeking the profits and political high and domestic distraction of mass-murder-leadership and the music and flags and horse manure that accompany it.
Meanwhile, the permanent U.S. bureaucracy, the mass media, and every friend of the Clinton family who hopes to retain that status, has persuaded most of the country on the basis of no evidence that Russia is an evil threatening demon that put Trump in office — and persuaded Trump not to pursue peace with Russia.
Add to that the — thus far evidence-free — Trump administration claims that Cuba has been attacking U.S. personnel.
And all of this is just the hunt for new wars that can be piled onto the almost unnoticed existing ones, including the war on Yemen waged by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, the war on Syria based largely on lies about a government actually guilty of other crimes (including, not many years back, crimes in partnership with the U.S.), the war on Libya that rolls on despite the successful destruction of that country’s basic institutions, and of course the wars on Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Afghanistan — the latter a nation that even U.S. think tanks categorize as a dictatorship or failed state after 16 full years of liberation-murders.
John Lennon once wrote these words. If you feel em, please scream along:
I’m sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
I’ve had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
--
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio.He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.
Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook.
Help support DavidSwanson.org, WarIsACrime.org, and TalkNationRadio.org by clicking here: http://davidswanson.org/donate. 

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Is The FBI Concocting A Terrorist Threat Out of Racial Justice Groups?



If you are black and angry about police violence, you are a potential terror threat.
Or so says a newly released FBI Intelligence Assessment that concocts a non-existent movement they dub “Black Identity Extremists.” According to the assessment, “premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement” has been spurred on by “Black Identity Extremist (BIE) perceptions of police brutality against African Americans.”
The problems with this report are manifold. First, and foremost, it places the blame for violence on actual concerns with police brutality and racial justice, thus delegitimizing dissent.
Second, as numerous former FBI officials and counterterrorism experts have attested the moniker “Black Identity Extremist” has no history of prior usage and it appears to have been dreamed up by the authors of this report. In doing so, the FBI has lumped together a diverse range of beliefs into one non-existent movement. As former FBI Agent Mike German told Foreign Policy, “Basically, it’s black people who scare them.”
Raising the alarm about “Black Identity Extremist” is eerily similar of when Hoover’s FBI went after civil rights groups, including Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as part of counterintelligence operations against what they called “Black Nationalist–Hate Groups.”
The FBI from its very inception has viewed racial justice movements as a threat. Its invention of “Black Identity Extremist” in order to justify treating opponents of police brutality as potential terrorists is just more of the same.
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Chip Gibbons
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The elites “have no credibility left:” An interview with journalist Chris Hedges

From WSWS:



This morning the WSWS published an interview carried out by International Editorial Board Chairman David North with Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former New York Times correspondent. Hedges discussed the anti-Russia campaign, the attack on democratic rights, and the role of the capitalist media.

Among Hedges’ best-known books are War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt.

In an article published in Truthdig September 17, titled “The Silencing of Dissent,” Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google’s censorship of left-wing sites and warned about the growth of “blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of ‘fake news.’”

Hedges wrote that “the Department of Justice called on RT America and its ‘associates’—which may mean people like me—to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents, meaning we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent.”

Read the full interview with Hedges here. Share it widely on social media and with your friends and co-workers. Also see today's WSWS perspective, which contains a detailed review of the social and economic basis for the attack on democratic rights and the campaign of Internet censorship.

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A Canadian Doctor Walks Into A Bar…And Schools Us on Single-Payer



The Working Life Podcast with Jonathan Tasini
If Danielle Martin tells you that single-payer is more popular in Canada than ice hockey and the Royal Mounted Police, trust me, it’s worth believing this doctor from the North—Bernie Sanders does, inviting her to stand with him when he recently unveiled his single-payer, "Medicare for All" plan.

Martin is a clear, smart advocate for single-payer health care and she joins me for an in-depth conversation that answers everything you ever will be asked, and wanted to know, about how the Canadian system works—including how it needs to be made better even as it is undeniably better, by far, than the bankruptcy-causing, sickness-encouraging system in the U.S.

Our Robber Baron of the week is Tom Rutledge, the CEO of Charter/Spectrum. 

Please consider becoming part of our community by supporting the podcast here.

In today's Working Life Podcast:

Episode 50: A Canadian Doctor Walks Into A Bar…And Schools Us on Single-Payer


Episode 50: If Danielle Martin tells you that single-payer is more popular in Canada than ice hockey and the Royal Mounted Police, trust us, it's worth believing this doctor from the North—Bernie Sanders does, inviting her to stand with him when he recently unveiled his single-payer, "Medicare for All" plan. Martin is a clear, smart advocate for single-payer health care and she joins Jonathan for an in-depth conversation that answers everything you ever will be asked, and wanted to know, about how the Canadian system works—including how it needs to be made better even as it is undeniably better, by far, than the bankruptcy-causing, sickness-encouraging system in the U.S. Our Robber Baron of the week is Tom Rutledge, the CEO of Charter/Spectrum.
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Friday, October 06, 2017

Michigan Greens Oppose Push for Hunting of Sandhill Cranes

From the Green Party of Michigan:

Green Party of Michigan
=======================
grassroots democracy  •  social justice
ecological wisdom  •  non-violence


For Immediate Release:  October 5, 2017


Contact:  John Anthony La Pietra, Media Committee/GPMI
            jalp5dai@att.net
        (269) 781-9478


Michigan Greens Oppose Push for
Hunting of Sandhill Cranes
==========================


    The Green Party of Michigan has come out in opposition to Michigan 
State House Resolution 154, which urges the opening of a recreational 
hunting season on sandhill cranes.

    GPMI's consensus decision matches its opposition to a similar proposal 
for hunting mourning doves, which voters rejected by over 2-1 in a 2006 
referendum.

    Hunting and loss of habitat almost wiped out sandhill cranes from 
Michigan in the mid-20th Century.  Sound, scientific non-game 
conservation policy has helped the birds recover to a stable population; 
hunting them is not a vital part of anyone's way of life or subsistence, 
and there are effective non-lethal means of preventing conflict with 
farming activities.

    Linda Cree, a longtime Green living in the Upper Peninsula, observes: 
"That awed sense of stepping back in time one feels when a crane flies 
over or calls from a nearby marsh isn't surprising. They're believed to 
be the oldest bird species on Earth, going back over 9 million years 
just as they are today!

    "It would be tragic if these great birds were to become simply trophies 
for hunters and a few more dollars for the DNR through hunting licenses!"

    Aimee Cree Dunn of the national Green Party's Animal Rights Committee 
points out:  "To the Anishinaabe, Sandhill Cranes are a symbol of 
leadership and a key clan animal.  To kill these birds for sport is not 
part of an honorable harvest and can't be justified."

    Wade Roberts, GPMI candidate in the 109th State House district special 
election in November, says he saw thousands of sandhill cranes flocking 
together just north of Trenary last fall.

    "Natives and tourists alike enjoy the opportunity to see these 
magnificent animals in their natural environment without having to go 
birding to find one.  But these migratory groupings would be interrupted 
by hunting – and these very intelligent birds, who frequently grace the 
roadside on the drive along Lake Superior, would be inhibited from 
showing themselves year round if hunted."

    And John Anthony La Pietra, a member of GPMI's platform committee, adds 
that CraneFest at Baker Sanctuary near his Marshall home draws thousands 
of visitors every October to come see and hear the iconic species. 
"Even economically, the bottom line is that a properly managed and 
protected population of sandhill cranes is good for Michigan."

    La Pietra communicated GPMI's opposition to House Resolution 154 to the 
House Natural Resources Committee, which considered the non-binding 
resolution at a meeting yesterday morning.

    To track the status of House Resolution 154, see


    For more information on the history of sandhill cranes, visit


    For information on this year's CraneFest October 14-15, see


    For more information on the Green Party of Michigan, its values, and 
its platform -- and how you can get involved -- please visit the party's 
Website at www.MIGreenParty.org, or the migreens Facebook page.


#  #  #


Official Press Release of the Green Party of Michigan
    www.MIGreenParty.org
    www.facebook.com/migreens
    PO Box 504; Warren, MI  48090-0504
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