Sunday, July 16, 2023

Iraq attacks social media, Junior goes bonkers, album that didn't get the attention it deserved

Alyssa J. Rubin (NEW YORK TIMES) reports:


In one social media clip, a young Iraqi woman dances at a national soccer tournament. In another, she dances at her son’s birthday party.

A different post shows a Baghdad fashionista modeling clothes, including an outfit based on the Iraqi Army uniform.

A fourth features a young man in a black sweatshirt and pants interviewing a young woman, also clad in black, about her private life. It is one of several clips he has made of young people dressed in close-fitting clothes that strike conservative Iraqis as provocative.

A few months ago, the people featured in these clips were stars of Iraq’s booming social media scene. No longer.

They have been largely silenced by being tried, convicted and sentenced to time in Iraq’s overcrowded prison system because of new Interior Ministry rules against “indecent” or “immoral” content on social media.

This crackdown on social media is relatively new, but is of a piece with a broader campaign to silence, sideline or co-opt those who publicly question or criticize the government.

That wider effort traces its roots to the months of demonstrations in 2019 and 2020, when young Iraqis poured into the streets demanding an end to corruption, a reduction in Iranian influence in Iraq and a new era of openness. ​Those demonstrations eventually forced the resignation of the prime minister, who was supported by Iranian-linked parties in the government.


The targeting has been going on for some time.  Good for Alyssa for reporting on it.  It's certainly a big improvement over the garbage column by Rachel Sharansky-Danizger who wants the world to turn their attention to her friend -- either an idiot too stupid for words or a some sort of spy.  She wants you to know that and she and so many others are rooting for . . . an international incident.  She can't appeal to the country her friend and her share because a lot of people in Israel are expressing the belief that the kidnapped person is on her own due to various positions the person has taken over the years.  The Israeli press is even publishing letters and columns making that argument.  At any rate, she's not an American citizen.  She's a citizen of Russia and Israel.  She elected to go Iraq, for whatever stupid reason, and if she needs help one of her two countries should help her.


Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination was ended by a bullet.  Junior's campaign will likely end as a result of his own big mouth. 

            



We'll cover that topic in tomorrow's snapshot. Hopefully, by then, some more nuts and crazed idiots will reveal themselves and it won't just be Maxi-Pads of THE LIE ZONE.


Some e-mails came in regarding "Iraq -- climate change, pollution" last night.  I haven't read them all -- there are too many.  But I did spend an hour in the community e-mail and thirty minutes in the public e-mail (common_ills@yahoo.com).

Severa; wanted a list of my favorite female singers.  I'll do Joel's suggestion of fifty.  I don't want to do a hundred or more -- as some suggest -- and I'll hurt someone's feelings by accident by leaving them off.  Doing fifty, that's my excuse for cutting off where I did.  In no particular order, here are 50 off the top of my head.


1) Diana Ross

2) Nina Simone

3) Laura Nyro

4) Joni Mitchell

5) Carly Simon

6) Aretha Franklin

7) Sarah Vaughan 

8) Janet Jackson

9) Peggy Lee

10) Chaka Khan 

11) Mary J Blige

12) Etta James

13) Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane)

14 and 15) Michelle Phillips and Cass Elliot (the Mamas and the Papas)

16) Janis Joplin

17)  Tina Turner 

18) Ann Wilson (Heart)

19) Stevie Nicks

20) Millie Jackson

21)Mavis Staples

22) Roberta Flack

23) Dionne Warwick 

24) Angie Stone

25) Anita Baker 

26) Joss Stone

27) Adele 

28) Sade 

29) Cher

30) Alicia Keys 

31) Debbie Harry

32) Rihanna

33) Dusty Springfield

34) Buffy Sainte-Marie

35) Norah Jones

36) Pink

37) Janelle Monae

38)  Miley Cyrus

39) Melanie

40) Vanessa Williams

41) Jody Watley 

42) Tracy Chapman 

43) Tori Amos

44) Jess Glynne

45) Fiona Apple

46) PJ Harvey

47) Natalie Cole 

48) Odetta 

49)  Valerie Simpson

50) Sandie Shaw 

That's off the top of my head, it's not in any order and the only thing I 'rigged' was not including kd lang because that goes to a question by Cheryl who wrote asking what I "think is the best album of the last 20 years that did not get any real attention, sort of the DUSTY IN MEMPHIS of today?"


That's a tough one.  I'm in the US, so I'm going by that.  By what album didn't get the recognition it deserved.  Diana Ross got a Grammy nomination for THANK YOU -- which is doing very well on streaming.  So I'm not going to go with that. 


In 2004, kd lang released HYMNS OF THE 49TH PARALLEL.  There was no Grammy nomination and it wasn't one of her best sellers in the US.  But it really is one of the great albums of the 00s.


 

She's covering Leonard Cohen there.  She also covers Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Jane Sieberry, Bruce Cockburn and Ron Sexsmith.  They're all Canadian songwriters.  She covers "Simple" as well, which she wrote with David Piltch and which she previously recorded.


Here's a Neil Young.


Here's a Jane Sieberry.




It's just an amazing album, one you can listen to all the way through because it's cohesive and works as a whole and because the only word for is "gorgeous" -- it's a gorgeous album -- a true work of art.


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