Sunday, November 29, 2015

Hunger Games’ finale is a bittersweet tale of defiance

This is a repost of Great Britain's Socialist Worker:



Hunger Games’ finale is a bittersweet tale of defiance



scenes of war-torn cities are reminiscent of images from the Syrian civil war
scenes of war-torn cities are reminiscent of images from the Syrian civil war (Pic: LGUKPublicity)

The fourth and final film in the Hunger Games saga opens with its young hero Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in hospital, voiceless and badly bruised.


She’d been strangled by the tortured and brainwashed lover she spent the whole of the previous film trying to rescue.


Now the people nursing her voice back to health are also putting words in her mouth. And the torment is only just beginning.


It’s no spoiler that Mockingjay part 2 ends in a revolution.


Visually it takes its cue from the real life civil war in Syria. Katniss and her comrades walk through a ­cityscape of rubble.


The slaughter unleashed by ruthless President Snow (Donald Sutherland) has forced the uprising a long way from the demonstrations and riots seen earlier in the series.


It has pushed all opposition into the camp of heavily armed faction District 13 and its equally ruthless leader Alma Coin (Julianne Moore).


Though an expert archer, Katniss is kept from the front lines. Instead she is used as a propaganda symbol to inspire the rebellion.


It’s all carefully choreographed by Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the defected state media guru who used to run Snow’s Hunger Games.


These deadly contests were ­televised to intimidate the regime’s enemies.


As one survivor points out, that sense of spectacle remains central to the conflict. Another struggles to tell what’s real from what isn’t.


Katniss speaks most powerfully when she throws the scripts away. She calls for those Snow has kept divided to unite against their real enemy.

Revolt 


If anything her story is missing the genuine joy and participation that revolt can bring. But the towering success of such a bleak series says a lot about our time.


Hunger Games has inspired a genre of imitations and is progressively breaking records set by Harry Potter a decade earlier.


Its most obvious influence, Japanese cult classic Battle Royale, dates back to just 2000.


Their shared theme of adolescents forced to kill each other speaks to a generation driven to stress by constant competition.


It’s a far cry from the 2005 adaptation of V for Vendetta which inspired the masked protests earlier this month.


That film ends in jubilation as the regime melts away.


Katniss’s victory is hard fought and bittersweet. But it too can inspire.


Protesters in Thailand were even arrested last year for copying her three fingered salute.


Despite its epic sweep, the Hunger Games is at heart a personal story all about Katniss.


Life under Snow’s regime has taught her to be pessimistic and distrustful, hoping for nothing beyond the survival of those she cares about.


But it also makes even that aim impossible.


As she says of Snow, “Nothing good is safe as long as he’s alive.”


And perhaps her defiance in the face of never-ending nightmares offers a bit more solace in a cruel society. In the end, it makes her aim truer than anyone’s.



Tories try to turn Paris tragedy into a new war—Don't bomb Syria

This is a repost from Great Britain's Socialist Worker:

Tories try to turn Paris tragedy into a new war—Don't bomb Syria




David Cameron eyeing up some military hardware earlier this week
David Cameron eyeing up some military hardware earlier this week (Pic: Number 10 Downing Street)



Prime minister David Cameron has stepped up the war drive in the wake of the Paris attacks.
He has announced that he plans to push for a House of Commons vote on bombing Syria as soon as next week.


He wants to take advantage of the mood of panic that has shifted the political landscape to the right since the attacks.


The warmongers have been helped by a United Nations (UN) vote on Friday of last week supporting attacks on Isis. The resolution said that Isis “constitutes a global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security.”


It went on to call on UN member states “that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures ... on the territory under the control of” Isis.


Russia was being denounced for its airstrikes only weeks ago. Now it is working in coordination with the West. Demands that the dictator Bashar al-Assad must go have been dropped.


Crispin Blunt is the Tory chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which had come out against bombing. Now he says its conditions have been met.


The Paris attacks and UN vote have emboldened Labour MPs who support bombing and further isolated Jeremy Corbyn.


Corbyn’s anti-war stance was a significant part of his leadership victory but it is increasingly beleaguered.


He allowed shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn to brief that Labour would back action if it had UN support.


Resignations


Corbyn had still not announced if Labour MPs will be whipped to vote against war as Socialist Worker went to press. There is a fear of the crisis any mass rebellion and subsequent resignations could provoke.

Even Corbyn’s close allies John McDonnell and Diane Abbott are talking about the possibility of a “free vote”.


Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon said she is “prepared to listen” to Cameron’s case for bombing Syria.


Scottish National Party foreign affairs spokesperson Alex Salmond said he had not heard “anything yet that would convince us that being the 13th country to start bombing in Syria is going to make any material difference whatsoever to anything”.


But he said it would back action if the bombing was part of a UN “strategy for peace”.


Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood, who had opposed the Iraq war, has also said Cameron’s case for war will be “listened to”.


But there is no case for Britain joining the war.


Blunt admitted that so many countries are already bombing Syria that “it’s a shortage of targets rather than of aircraft that is the coalition’s principal military constraint.”


He said the war drive was more about ministers’ “embarrassment” internationally at having their position “restrained by parliament”.


We have to organise to stop the warmongers. Any bombing is not about protecting civilians in Britain or Syria from violence.


It is about imposing the West’s interest on the region—and the people who will pay the heaviest price are the Syrians themselves.

Don't bomb Syria - protest at Downing Street
Saturday 28 November, 12 noon-2pm
Called by the Stop the War Coalition.
Go to stopwar.org




Saturday, November 28, 2015

Iraq snapshot

Saturday, November 11, 28, 2015.  Chaos and violence continue, the Anbar Provincial Council objects to the war planes bombing Falluja, Haider al-Abadi appears to be slipping, and much more.


Today, the US government announced:


Strikes in Iraq
Bomber, fighter, attack, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 17 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

-- Near Baghdadi, two strikes destroyed two ISIL rocket rails and damaged a third ISIL rocket rail and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Albu Hayat, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Mosul, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL mortar position and four ISIL fighting positions.

-- Near Ramadi, seven strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL home-made explosives cache, an ISIL vehicle, an ISIL boat, an ISIL vehicle-borne bomb, two ISIL buildings, an ISIL heavy machine gun, an ISIL ammo cache, two ISIL weapons caches, and an ISIL fighting position.


-- Near Sinjar, four strikes struck three separate tactical units and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions and three ISIL vehicles.



The bombings have no positive effect.



They do, however, terrorize the Iraqi people.


For example, ALSUMARIA reports the Anbar Provincial Council issued a statement today decrying the bombing by warplanes flying over Falluja and notes that these bombs are effecting the lives of civilians and contributing to the deaths of "women and children and the elderly."  Civilians in Falluja are calling for an end to the bombings and safe passage out of Falluja.

Anbar is largely Sunni and what's taking place there in the so-called name of 'liberation' is not seen as such by everyone.










  • It's funny, isn't it, how when Iraqis object to actions by Bully Boy Bush, we on the left rush to insist that they be heard.  But when they're not pleased with Barack, we turn our backs on them and act like they weren't speaking.

    Or we whine about the US government interfering in an election but when Barack Obama overturned the results of Iraq's 2010 election, we fall silent.


    It's because so many of us lack ethics and integrity.


    Did someone say whore?


    Why facts matter/How Big Media Failed Us in Iraq via @BillMoyersHQcounturl= via




    Oh, can you tell us again about Bully Boy Bush?


    Please, ugly Grandma, can you tell us one more time about that?


    Bully Boy Bush is a War Criminal.

    He's also out of office.

    Even the cheapest whore or coward can now call out Bully Boy Bush.

    But remember Katrina's grand standing because it's why THE NATION is sinking.

    And things will only get worse.

    The digital age means Barack's two terms won't be like Bill Clinton's for THE NATION.

    They can pretend -- and do -- that they held Bill's feet to the fire and led the fight for the left.

    But they didn't.

    Their whoring then is protected as it existed at the early stages of the internet.

    Their whoring under Barack?

    It's all over the internet.  Not just us, but WSWS and many others have called them out.

    They have failed to fight against Barack's continued war but Katrina sticks her ugly, big nose into Iraq anytime she thinks she can score points against Bully Boy Bush which, let's all be honest, is her attempt to turn the 2016 election to the Democrats.

    She doesn't care about Iraq.

    She never has.

    That's why she repeatedly ignored Americans who refused to fight -- or continue to fight -- in Iraq.

    War resisters found no support from Katrina.

    And we documented that in real time.

    So the ugly, old whore -- with a racist grandfather who got the family rich by ripping off African-American entertainers (including Lena Horne) --  needs to grasp that she's not fooling anyone.

    And her father's connections to the intelligence community -- which, when noted on her Wikipedia page, she has her interns scrub -- are part of the control of the left and she needs to be rejected completely by the left.


    She lies so well from her Harlem mansion.


    In the real world, Loveday Morris (WASHINGTON POST) reports:



    In a mansion tiled with salmon-pink marble, Sunni politician Osama al-Nujaifi greets visitors in an expansive meeting room. From a chair flanked by the national flag, he insists he is still vice president of Iraq — even though Iraq’s prime minister says he is not.

    Nujaifi’s position and Iraq’s two other vice presidencies were eliminated by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in purported cost-cutting measures announced this summer. But there is little change at Nujaifi’s office. His staff is still paid, he said, and he is working as normal.
    Nujaifi’s defiance highlights Abadi’s weak hand as he fails to execute anything but superficial changes after pledging wide-ranging reforms in response to street protests. Smelling blood as he flounders, his political rivals have turned on him, while ­Iranian-backed militias leverage what they can from him.



    Barack backed Nouri (after Bully Boy Bush installed him).  He gave Nouri the second term that the Iraqi voters had denied him.

    Then when Nouri's strident hatred of Sunnis became even more intolerable even Barack had to walk away.

    Not too far, he can't tire himself out, after all.

    He stayed in Nouri's political party (Dawa) when picking the new prime minister of Iraq in August 2014.

    He didn't pick well.

    That's become obvious with each passing month.

    Haider al-Abadi's a failure.

    In a speech today, ALL IRAQ NEWS notes, Haider declared that he has accomplished reforms and cited opening up (a tiny) part of the Green Zone and Baghdad's night life as successful reforms.  He also spoke of the necessity to prosecute corruption . . . but offered no examples of success with that goal.


    Opening a small spot of the Green Zone -- and not even open to all Iraqis -- was treated as a major move by the press -- those who actually reported on the opening, however, tended to note how nothing had really changed.

    And Baghdad's night life was already doing well before Haider became prime minister.

    In fact, the biggest problem for Baghdad's night life was -- and remains -- Shi'ite police that regularly try to shut down clubs for 'morality' reasons.


    As Barack continues to back Haider, it's interesting to note that the  only real support he receives in Iraq comes from the man the US government has branded a threat to the US.

    ALL IRAQ NEWS reports Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr has called for Haider al-Abadi to continue his push for reforms even in the face of the appeal that a coalition led by Osama al-Nujaifi has filed with the Federal Court of Iraq to overrule Abadi's move to cancel the posts of vice president.  ALSUMARIA notes this follows an October 24th decision upholding Haider's move.  However, Wael Grace (AL MADA) reports Parliament's stating that despite voting to pass the bill they have never received the official legislation on this move.



    Nothing gets sorted out.


    On the political front, US Senator John McCain is in Iraq and has Tweeted the following on his meet-ups.











  • Starting imp't trip to w/ visiting PM & discussing fight vs
    Embedded image permalink







    1. Will be live from tomorrow w/ , discussing latest on fight vs terror



    Media Matters has their Soros-bought panties in a wad as usual.



  • yes, has invited two GOP senators to discuss Iraq tm. No panel scheduled re: PP terror attack



  • It's all binary and political games to Bitch-boi Boehlert and the other Soros whores at Media Matters.

    Real critics would point out that the two senators support more war on Iraq.

    They'd note that this means to war hawks will be on and that there will be no voices of peace.


    But for Boehlert isn't about actions or opinions, it's just about team jerseys.


    They don't do media critiques at Media Matters, they just spread the text equivalents of venereal diseases.


    Turning to some of today's violence,   IRAQI SPRING MC reports government forces shelled Salman Village today resulting in the deaths of several civilians.  ALSUMARIA notes a suicide car bomber in Tuz took his own life and the lives of 5 other people with fifteen more left injured,, a Tarmiya roadside bombing killed 1 person, and former MP Mishan al-Jubouri's cousin was kidnapped in Hillah and then found dead hours later.  al-Juburi is also a Sheikh in the al-Jiburi tribe and he is part of the Sunni community in Iraq.  In addition, AFP reports, "A bomb-rigged mass grave believed to hold the remains of more than 120 people killed by the Islamic State group has been found in north Iraq, an official said today."



    Meanwhile, David Pugliese (OTTAWA CITIZEN) reports newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will reportedly keep Aurora surveillance jets and at least one military refuelling aircraft in Iraq:

    The move would placate coalition allies, particularly the United States, who view the refuelling plane and the surveillance aircraft as valuable contributions to the ongoing air campaign.
    The move would also allow Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to continue to say he is keeping his election promise of withdrawing Canada’s six CF-18 fighter jets. Trudeau promised to end Canada’s combat mission in Iraq and Syria by bringing the CF-18s home before March. Sources have said that there is a good chance the Polaris and the Auroras will stay…..it is unclear at this point how many Canadian Forces personnel will remain in Kuwait to support the planes.






    npr