Saturday, February 23, 2019

The useless ensure that the Iraq War continues


Nazli Tarzi (ARAB WEEKLY) reports:

 Calls by Iran-backed Iraqi militia leaders for the withdrawal of US troops have grown in the past month but it’s far from clear the efforts will be successful.
The militia leaders have the loyalty of fighters enlisted in the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) and are represented by the Fatah Alliance and its allies in parliament. They are rallying behind legislation that proposes to sever military and, by extension, political ties with the United States.
Fadhel Jabir, a member of the Fatah-aligned al-Sadiqoun bloc, said the bid to expel foreign troops is not exclusive to US servicemen, hinting that Turkish soldiers would also be asked to leave their bases in Iraq.

Jabir’s remarks echoed calls by the leader of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq militia, Qais al-Khazali, who confidently predicted that the legislation would pass with ease in parliament. “I think more than half the members of parliament reject the presence of American military forces as a matter of principle,” Khazali, who represents a 15-member bloc in parliament, told the Associated Press.


And, to be clear, there's nothing the Iranian government is doing that the US government isn't also doing.  Both want to control (enslave?) Iraq.


Too many times, we're derailed by idiots who say things like, "At least I never doubted Richard Nixon cared about the US!"

You never doubted it?

You stupid ass.  What a stupid thing to say.  Take your ass off the stage.  No one remembers you.  No one wants to hear from you.  We've been exceedingly kind to you and let you rewrite history to where you were a confused young woman not sure of your own sexuality when, in fact, you were nailing every woman you could and then some.  You weren't experimenting, you knew you were gay, and that, Janis Ian, is why THE VILLAGE VOICE outed you.  You were living like you were Robert Plant, grabbing any woman you could.

And we're kind to you and applaud you and let you lie about what really went down.  We look the other way as you celebrate Kenny Loggins and this man and that man all while pretending to be a pro-woman lesbian.

But now you're lying that Richard Nixon cared about the US?

And that Donald Trump doesn't?

Why don't you stop projecting on both men and instead get honest about your whoreful ways back in the day?  Why don't you stop pretending that every woman cheated on you but you were steadfast and loyal and never, ever cheated on any woman.

In other words, keep lying but just keep lying about your own personal life.  How about that?

Donald Trump loves the United States.  He doesn't love what I love about it, but he does love it.

Suggesting otherwise is b.s. 

And whether he loves the US or not, people in Iraq are dying.  And Janis, you don't give a s**t.  You've made that clear.  So go finger yourself while you moan about Hillary Clinton being your commander in chief, but stop pretending that you have anything to offer the world.

We get it, Bob Dylan thought you were sexy when you were underage.  So you suck up to him.  We get it.  You're useless to the world.

And Ava and I will write about that at THIRD but I just saw Janis' latest b.s. and want to scream.  Were I Cher, I would be using the c-word to describe Janis right now.



 27 seconds ago
Replying to  
And have we also forgot about Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Guatemala, Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran.... and 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤨🤨🤨 when has the U.S. ever been the good guys other than world war 1 and 2????
 
 



Where's Janis?

The reality is that Janis Ian has never helped out when it was required.  The reality is that she pretends to care about causes but doesn't.  When she was rightly outed by THE VILLAGE VOICE all those years ago?  Read what she wrote about that.  And she wrote it decades after she came out but it is still nothing but shame.  Shame is in the remarks she makes about how she lives in Nashville even though she knows some people there wouldn't want her to watch their children because she's a lesbian.  First off, who really thinks like that about their neighbors?  (I'm talking about who sits around wondering whether their neighbors would want them to watch their children.)  Second, she wants tolerance, not acceptance.

Grasp that.  Grasp that she made those remarks in the last 12 months.

Grasp that today, 'liberation' to Janis is tolerance.

She is right now where 'liberal' politicians were in the 90s.

How pathetic.

People like that need to sit down and not speak.  Their cowardice is not only embarrassing, it stunts the whole world.

There are wars taking place.  Janis will never call them out -- while pretending to be a social activist.  She'll instead focus on the b.s. of telling the world that Donald Trump hates the United States.  How does she know?  Her vibrator -- one that she probably hides even from her wife -- told her.


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    • Posted by at

    U.S. Sale of War Planes to New Zealand Faces Popular Resistance in U.S. and New Zealand

    The U.S. State Department uses public funds and public employees to market private products designed for mass killing to foreign governments. Few corporations have benefitted more from this socialism for the oligarchs than Boeing. In one recent example, the U.S. government has persuaded the New Zealand government to buy four “Poseidon” planes from Boeing that are designed for working with submarines, of which New Zealand possesses zero.
    The purchase price of $2.3 billion in New Zealand dollars, $1.6 billion in U.S. dollars, may be too small for White House occupant Donald Trump to hold an illustration-enhanced media event about. And “at least they buy our instruments of death” is not a case that needs to be made for New Zealand in the way that it apparently does for Saudi Arabia. Still, the deal is troubling to people in both countries, and they are speaking out.
    The focusing of the U.S. economy on military sales is a drain, not a boost, for the U.S. economy, because the devotion of public U.S. dollars to weapons purchases is so much less economically helpful than other forms of spending or tax cuts.
    While much of the talk about this purchase mentions “humanitarian aid” (shout that in a square in Venezuela, I dare you) or “surveillance” (for which the Greek God of the Sea comes equipped with torpedoes, missiles, mines, bombs, and other weaponry), New Zealand’s “Defense Minister” (New Zealand living under the threat of attack from exactly nobody) openly says that the planes are for use against China. But the things won’t even work, er, excuse me, “become operational,” for four years, so the possibility of developing peaceful relations with China is being systematically eliminated.
    While New Zealand is a small country very far from much of humanity, humanity has a need of small countries with some history of sanity hanging onto that history. A country that has opposed nuclear weapons and not always aligned itself with military powers can benefit a global culture that has just about lost its damn mind. It can do so by taking steps toward neutrality and disarmament, not by aligning itself with an aggressive military force and fueling its weaponization craze.
    World BEYOND War’s New Zealand Chapter has produced a petition that is gathering signatures in New Zealand. It reads:
    To: New Zealand House of Representatives
    I urge you to oppose the $2.3 billion purchase of four P-8 Boeing Poseidon surveillance planes, which are designed for anti-submarine warfare. The scheduled purchase of these war planes signals a troubling shift in foreign policy, towards an increased military alignment with the United States, reflecting badly on New Zealand’s non-aligned status. The $2.3 billion to be spent on the P-8 planes could be better spent on social needs, like fixing infrastructure, and improving healthcare. Let’s make New Zealand a leader in championing peace and progressive policies. Don’t waste our tax dollars on weapons of war!
    Those of us outside New Zealand, and especially those in the United States, and near Washington, D.C., and near Boeing’s home in Washington State, have a responsibility to make this opposition known on both sides of this dirty, bloody weapons deal.
    --
    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. 

    Sign up for these emails at https://actionnetwork.org/forms/articles-from-david-swanson.
    Posted by at

    ACLU Urges Pa. Supreme Court to Find Death Penalty Unconstitutional

    :
    From the ACLU


     Funding Disparities Between Counties Leads to Extreme Inequities, Numerous Committees Find 


    February 22, 2019


    PHILADELPHIA — The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Pennsylvania filed a friend-of-the-court brief today asking the state Supreme Court to hold Pennsylvania’s capital punishment system in violation of the state constitution, given the vast disparities across the commonwealth in the quality of representation for capital case defendants who are unable to pay.
    Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that fails to provide any state funding towards the representation of defendants who are too poor to pay for private attorneys. As a result, the responsibility to fund public defense is relegated to the counties, resulting in the highest disparity in capital sentences between counties of any state in the country. More than 80 percent of the people accused of crimes in the commonwealth can’t afford to pay for their own defense.

    The brief states, “Pennsylvania’s condemned prisoners have not received the death penalty for committing the most heinous crimes or for being the most culpable offenders, but because they had deplorable representation.” It goes on to site an observation by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.”

    Over one-third of the death sentences imposed in Pennsylvania since the state’s death penalty was reinstated in 1978 have been reversed on the basis of poor lawyering alone. Many more have been reversed on other grounds, in which poor lawyering likely also played a part. Court-appointed committees and task forces have been examining the use of death penalty in the commonwealth since 1989, but the issues highlighted and recommendations have been ignored.

    “The Legislature has failed to address the problems with capital punishment in Pennsylvania, despite the recommendations of every group that has ever looked at it,” said Reggie Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “We can’t wait for the Legislature to fix this unconstitutional system. The court needs to act.”

    The burden of these disparities falls disproportionately on the state’s most vulnerable populations, particularly people of color and the poor. People of color make up more than half of the state’s death row population. Stories in the brief include those of defendants who were represented by lawyers who were drunk, extremely overburdened, or otherwise ill-equipped to defend capital cases. One anecdote cites a civil lawyer with no experience on capital cases who didn’t even realize that capital punishment was a potential outcome until the trial was well underway.

    “Given the numerous, well-documented flaws with the death penalty nationwide — from racial bias to arbitrary application, and the execution of innocent people — it’s time for the United States to abolish it,” said Anna Arceneaux, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project. “But what’s happening in Pennsylvania is extraordinary. It is state-sanctioned death sentencing for people who had the worst representation, and they are almost all poor and from the most vulnerable communities.”

    The brief is online here:

    https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/cox-marinelli-v-pennsylvania-amicus-brief



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    Center for Constitutional Rights Weighs in on Right of Young U.S. Mother Detained in Syria to Return Home

    From the Center for Constitutional Rights:


    Contact: press@ccrjustice.org
    February 22, 2019, New York – In reaction to the Trump administration’s determination that Hoda Muthana, a 24-year-old U.S.-born woman of Yemeni origin, who is currently detained in Syria with her 18-month-old son, is not a U.S. citizen and will not be readmitted to the U.S. despite her pleas, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement:
    Trump is taking his lawlessness and anti-Muslim and -immigrant racism to yet another level, this time asserting the power to determine by executive fiat whether an individual is or is not a U.S. citizen and has the fundamental rights that citizenship affords – in this case, to return home from the horror of Syria, as Hoda Muthana is pleading to do. Ms. Muthana is entitled to a meaningful opportunity to challenge the administration’s purported determination that she is not a U.S. citizen, and if she is a citizen, she has the right to return to the U.S. The administration’s position to the contrary is a breathtaking claim of executive power, going even beyond Muslim bans and border walls, now to excluding U.S. citizens by stripping them of their citizenship without process. It should alarm us all, if any were not already on edge about the clear direction this president is taking us.
    This is also a thinly-veiled way for the U.S. to wash its hands of the mess it has helped create in Syria, ridding itself of apparent responsibility for detainees that it may have questionable basis to federally prosecute – we would be in new legal territory if Ms. Muthana’s tweets and marriage alone were to constitute material support to ISIS – and that it would face fire for if they were sent to the irredeemable prison at Guantánamo. This approach would ostensibly leave Ms. Muthana and her baby indefinitely detained in foreign custody in a Syrian camp with an estimated 1,500 other women and children, effectively Gitmo-izing their status through other means – statelessness. 
    The Center for Constitutional Rights works with communities under threat to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications. Since 1966, The Center for Constitutional Rights has taken on oppressive systems of power, including structural racism, gender oppression, economic inequity, and governmental overreach. Learn more at ccrjustice.org.







    Posted by at

    Some Tweets from Marianne Williamson


  •  42 minutes ago
    Sometimes Love says “No”...
    7 replies10 retweets40 likes
     
     
  •  2 hours ago
    I agree. We need to hire an inspirer...marianne2020.com
    3:39
    The question on everyone's mind right now is who can defeat Trump and reclaim the White House in 2020. Here are some tips on what to look for in the candidates.
    12 replies34 retweets135 likes
     
     
  •   Retweeted
     Feb 21
    POLITICS: Presidential hopeful wants return to love, end to ‘moral rot’; ‘Oprah Winfrey Show’ star, top author Marianne Williamson campaigning in Carroll, Denison, Jefferson. Read more from in today's DTH or online here.
    4 replies26 retweets67 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 22
    Our campaign is already influencing the conversation, but the goal is to do much more than that. Just changing the conversation of itself isn’t going to change America. We need to turn the new conversation into a political force. .
    28 replies87 retweets293 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 22
    Please check out the Issues section of my campaign site. Philosophical inquiry does not indicate lack of policy proposals ...
    5 replies49 retweets110 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 22
    A better version of the same old same old is still the same old same old.
    8 replies47 retweets232 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 22
    Millions of American children live in chronic trauma, many with severe PTSD simply from living in our domestic war zones. This should be seen as a humanitarian crisis & America’s collective child neglect. As president, I’d have a Children’s Council or even Cabinet level position.
    16 replies117 retweets428 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 22
    This is not the time for incremental changes or simply small random acts of kindness; it is time for huge strategized act of doing the right thing. On the issue of racial reconciliation…
    13 replies49 retweets189 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 22
    The only way to defeat dog whistles Is to drown them out with angel voices. We need to rise up now not in anger but in song. A reborn world is possible on the other side of the mess we’re in, and if we devote ourselves to it fully then our part in creating it will be made clear.
    25 replies101 retweets488 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 22
    We're in the midst of a breakdown - emotionally, politically, economically, environmentally. It's like a skidding car; you have to let go and let nature realign it. We all have to enter a deep place within ourselves now, in order to summon the forces that will repair the world.
    32 replies153 retweets666 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 21
    Adding to already extreme wealth inequality, a massive wave of destruction (white collar & blue) will hit the job market over next 10-15 yrs due to automation. Every American should read Andrew Yang's "The War on Normal People."We must rethink our entire economic system, quickly.
    35 replies212 retweets692 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 21
    They never talk about "a plan that would lead to" cutting taxes for the richest Americans, invading a country, etc. Yet it's always "a plan that will lead to" universal health care, "a plan that will lead to" reparations, "a plan that will lead to" anything like justice for all.
    4 replies49 retweets177 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 21
    "Race-conscious policies" and "some kind of reparations" are like when fossil fuel companies talk about how much they care about the environment. Sometimes we just need to guffaw.
    6 replies37 retweets122 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 21
    The status quo has a brilliant way of protecting and perpetuating itself; it simply co-opts disruptive language.
    8 replies46 retweets160 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 21
    Here is the talk about reparations I gave at Harvard Divinity School this past week.Perhaps The Hill and the NYTimes would like to correct their reporting.
    14 replies72 retweets171 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 21
    Medicare 4 All, free 4-yr tuition, $15 hr min, cancellation of most college loan debt shouldn’t be seen as extreme positions in the richest country in the world. We’ve been trained to expect too little, reduced to haggling for things that should be considered everyone’s right.
    76 replies317 retweets1,181 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 21
    My campaign is radical? — No, democracy is radical. Love is radical. The American experiment is radical. Repudiating aristocracy is an ongoing struggle, but we’ve done it before and we will do it again. Of the people. By the people. For the people.
    36 replies137 retweets589 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 21
    New Hampshire NPR:
    7 replies27 retweets115 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 20
    This is from my talk last night at Harvard Divinity School on the role of repentance in national politics. See link in bio.
    4 replies28 retweets112 likes
     
     
  •  Feb 20
    Here is the talk I gave last night at Harvard Divinity School on reparations for slavery and the role of repentance in national politics...
    23 replies119 retweets321 likes
     
     
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