Saturday, January 07, 2023

Mafia Wives (Susan Williams' WHITE MALICE)

"This ain't no United Nations.  This is just United White folks."  An opinion offered immediately after the January 17, 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba -- prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Historian Susan Williams quotes the opinion in WHITE MALICE: THE CIA AND THE COVERT RECOLONIZATION OF AFRICA.


The 2021 book covers many topics as it traces the role of the US government in Africa.  Will there ever be reparations for the slavery trade and the wealth generated by the use of slaves?  If there is, the next step would be for the US to make reparations to the countries of Africa that they worked so hard to destabilize.


Why?

That's the one weak area in Susan Williams' book.  She documents many things -- and has an exhaustive and endless supply of sources --  contemporary press accounts, government documents (redacted and unredacted -- one, in fact, she has two copies of and is able to tell what was in the original because one copy released by the US government redacts one section, while the other copy released by the US government, redacts the other part -- putting them together, she has an unredacted copy), a  COUNTERPUNCH article (a 2005 article, noted by me to give the publication a shout out), letters from various participants, and interviews.


You can't claim that the author hasn't covered all the basis.


It's a fascinating book and one I highly recommend (in 2023, we are returning to the goal of one book review a week at community sites).  It's also available on AMAZON KINDLE for $4.99 right now which is the reason I'm noting it.  That's a very good bargain.


President Dwight Eisenhower, a hero to some deluded people, wanted Lumumba murdered.  He was, three days before John F. Kennedy was sworn in as president.  Did JFK know about the plan to take Lumumba out?

Susan's not sure, the record's not clear.  There's a chance he did, there's a chance he didn't.  If he did know, there's a chance that he thought, having been elected, he would be able to call it off (that's me, not Susan Williams).  


We do know Eisenhower wanted him dead.  


Why?


The Congo was rich in diamonds and uranium.  And if you're a freak for Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (twice failed presidential candidate, among other things), the book's not going to make you happy here because Adlai helped a friend (a rich thug, who partied with Jaqueline Kennedy later on in the 80s) who wanted the diamonds in the Congo.  


That's the thing, a lot of hearts will be broken by WHITE MALICE.


Life's not the picture book you were taught it was as a child.  


As shocking as the British government's refusal to help Lumumba when he is being pursued by armed 'rebels' and as shocking as the beating he will endure once he is captured, the ear that will be cut off and 'gifted' to one of his political rivals, the way TIME magazine will mock his widow, etc -- as shocking as all that is -- and as brutal as it is -- the bigger shock is that it was carried out by the US and UK government (with help from Belgium) as well as the United Nations --  and it was done in the names of the people of those countries.

It was The Cold War.  And there were excuses offered like the Congo -- and other countries in Africa -- might go over to the side of the USSR.  


That's not the reason though.  


And it wasn't the diamonds and uranium or, today, the cobalt. 


Yes, those were wanted and desired.

But the reason for that?


To maintain a standard of life.  We are mafia wives in the US.  We expect certain things and most of us aren't about to question how they get provided to us.


And this is how it happens.  The US and the UK trample over the rights of people in poorer countries.  They create enemies -- via the CIA-assets in the western press (and Susan goes into that).  This is all about justifying theft and maintaining a standard of life.


Is that why former CIA agent Gloria Steinem can justify her own crimes?  It's getting harder and harder for Gloria.  Susan Faludi offers an excuse and a white wash for Gloria in BACKLASH.  In the book, Betty Friedan is portrayed as demented and desperate to hang on to power.  The latter was probably true.  And I believed the former for years* because I considered Gloria a friend and she insisted it wasn't true -- she just went to an international conference as a college student and wasn't really aware that it was CIA-linked.  And Katha Sarachild and The Redstockings were portrayed as lunatics.  (Here for Katha Sarachild's 1975 PACIFICA RADIO interview discussing Gloria and the CIA.)


Lies.


Damn lies.


And I was a fool to believe Gloria.


She worked for the CIA for years.  It took Ava and I about ten minutes to find proof online demonstrating how long after college she continued to work for CIA front companies before suddenly becoming a feminist.  


For those who need to hear it from her mouth, you can find her on YOUTUBE in videos where she's bragging about her work for the CIA.  Such as the one below.




And bragging about the CIA.  Now what she did at the conference -- the only CIA event she wants to own up to -- was to report on dissidents who went home suffered because of her reports.  That's outrageous enough.  But now that we know she worked CIA fronts after college -- and she did --  now that THE NEW YORK TIMES no longer cares to cover up for her.  They will, however, laugh at her letters griping about that report and even print one:


In a titillating lead into an otherwise accurate article about why I love New York, John Leland writes that I started my career as “a C.I.A. operative,” got my “break as a Playboy Bunny” and married the father of a movie star.


She really needs to get honest.


And let's be clear, THE NEW YORK TIMES turned on her.  She's no longer judged as some one worth protecting.  For years, she was.  For years, she could count CIA assets in the press and publishing to protect her and to prevent the larger world from knowing what she did.  Now?  Patrick Iber tells the truth at THE NEW REPUBLIC, Louis Menand at THE NEW YORKER . . . 


I bring up Gloria because she is a liar and she was CIA and her defense of it -- after being outed by RAMPARTS -- was to say that she agreed with them and they were the good guys.


This is when they're murdering Lumumba.


They're good guys?


Well, I guess that explains why she spread her legs for Henry Kissinger long after the world knew what a War Criminal he was.  Gloria raved to WOMEN'S WEAR DAILY in September of 1971, "Henry's the only interesting person in the whole Nixon Administration and he's not afraid of hostile reporters.  I enjoy talking with him.  He's the only person on the Nixon team who can talk."


Of the CIA?  "They were enlightened, liberal, non-partisan," Gloria insists in the video above.


She chose to climb into bed with the CIA at the time that they were trying to overthrow many leaders (such as Fidel Castro) and when they were plotting to murder others (such a Lumumba).  


In 2017,  Ann Garrison (at COUNTERPUNCH) examined Gloria's remarks at the ridiculous celebrity 'fauxtest' in DC:


Gloria Steinem: “I’ve been thinking about the uses of a long life. And one of them is that you remember when things were worse. We remember the death of the future with Martin Luther King, with Jack Kennedy, with Bobby Kennedy, with Malcolm X. Without those deaths, for instance, Nixon would not have been elected and there would not have been many of the wars that we have had.”

Huh?  These assassinations of the 1960s brought on the wars that destroyed Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and very nearly Syria?  The ongoing 15-year Afghanistan War?


Gloria needs to answer for what she's done.


Will she?  Hasn't she got one foot in the grave already and she still can't get honest?


That's the CIA for you.  They traffic in lies. 

They don't believe in fairness and equality or even democracy.  They believe in control.


They should be shattered to the winds.


Yet, some on the left were praising them during the Trump years, hailing them as saviors.


From WHITE MALICE: 

Covert action of any sorts, said Franck Church, the Idaho Democrat who chaired the 1975 Senate select committee investigations into the abuses of the CIA, was nothing more than 'a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail, bribery, the spreading of lies, whatever is deemed useful to bending other countries to our will.'


We drown in a river of denial because we don't want to see the truth.  We don't want to grasp that Gloria worked for the CIA for over ten years.  We don't want to address what our politicians have done or what the CIA has done.


We want to be mafia wives -- we want to model the fur but we don't think about the blood that it took to put that fur on our backs.

Patrice Lumumba inspired many and could have delivered and inspired democracy across the African continent.  But the US government wanted the profits the diamonds and the uranium could bring.  So the Lumumba had to be targeted, his country destabilized.  It was all about the red ink and the black ink in the ledger.  On such economics is US foreign policy really dictated.  In the end, Dwight Eisenhower and Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano aren't all that different.


That's how the US can target foreign leaders and foreign populations.  It's how it can target its own people.  As WHITE MALICE notes, millions were spent by the CIA to determine how to break people -- the National Health Institute cooperated with those experiments as part of MKUltra in the 1950s and 1960s -- experimenting on American citizens without their knowledge.  They also experimented on animals when humans weren't available -- using radar on the brains of monkeys to knock them out, knocking animals out with concussions to see if they could create amnesia that way.


There are no ethics.  These people will resort to anything -- it's like the mob -- and they will insist that they are doing it for a better world, a better country.  But they do it in secrecy because some part of them knows it is wrong -- it's unethical, it's illegal and it's inhumane.


Susan Williams notes that when asked who killed Patrice Lumumba, Daphne Park declared, "The CIA, of course."  She also stated that, as head of the United Kingdom's MI6 in the Congo, she orchestrated the killing.  There's no guilt there.  Park, now dead, thought she did something amazing and wonderful.  And, if you want to be a mafia wife and think that as well, avoid reading Susan Williams' WHITE MALICE.


 The following sites updated:




  • 10 Worst films of 2022 (Ann and Stan)

    At the end of last week, Stan's "2022 in film (Ann and Stan)" and Ann's "2022 in film (Ann and Stan)" went up at their sites.  This week, they looked at the worst, see Ann's "Worst films of 2022" and Stan's "10 Worst films of 2022" below:



    another pew2


    That's  Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "THE PEW loses it."   Ann and Stan here with one more joint-post following up on our "2022 in film (Ann and Stan)" is their annual look at the best in film. and Stan's "2022 in film (Ann and Stan)


     We offered  with out look at the year's finest in film.  However, a few of you e-mailed asking about the worst because we had floated the idea of doing our picks for the top three films and using the rest of our space to go over the train wrecks.  Well here are the ten worst films of 2022.


    10) HALLOWEEN ENDS.  

    Hideous film.  It was supposed to be the end of the series and the ads promised you a confrontation between Jamie Lee Curtis' Lauri and the monster Jason.  Instead, the film was about Jamie Lee's granddaughter falling in love with a bad boy who was more evil than Jason and who torments Jason.  The big confrontation for Laurie comes in the last 20 or so minutes of the film.  Throughout, you are strung along waiting to see what you paid to see but being forced to endure one dull courtship scene after another that played out like a really bad teen soap opera on THE CW.  And insult to Laurie, an insult to Jamie Lee and one of the worst films of 2023.

    9) LIGHTYEAR.

    There is only one Buzz and it's Tim Allen.  DISNEY tried to deny that they weren't punishing Tim but they fired Roseanne Barr for her politics (don't e-mail us 'racism, we're both African-American and we don't see her joke as racist) and they dropped Tim's hit show LAST MAN STANDING.  It didn't take Patricia Heaton calling DISNEY out for everyone to realize that Tim was pushed aside because of his politics.  LIGHTYEAR didn't just flop.  It left a bad taste in the mouth that has seriously effected other DISNEY animated releases.  They need to address that issue and they need to stop hiring people based on political stands.  We are not calling on the corporation to change their guidelines for employees and the workplace.  We actually applaud those stands.  But we are saying that it was a mistake to deny Tim the role he made famous and it is a mistake to hire or not hire based on someone's politics.  If they're right for the role, they need to be cast in the role.

    8) THE FABLEMANS.

    After the bomb that was Steven Spielberg's WEST SIDE STORY, you'd think the great Spielberg would come back with something strong.  Instead, he offers this nonsense.  Michelle Williams gives a lousy performance, looks lousy on the screen and is a case of Jew-face.  We don't approve of Black-face.  Why would we approve of Jew-face?  Look her up, his mother looked nothing like Michelle Williams.  Why did he cast her?  If he saw his mother as beautiful, that's fine.  We're all allowed to see our parents in our way.  But if he saw her as beautiful, he should have cast someone like Nicole Kidman.  By 2016, Michelle's looks were gone.  And so were any surprises she might deliver.  Her performances have become a standard cliche.  She draws attention to herself as if to say, "Look at me, I'm acting."  Well, she's trying to at any rate.  Awful film sunk by an awful actress -- a deserved box office bomb. A big stinking bomb.  

    7) AMSTERDAM.

    AMSTERDAM was another big box office bomb.  And let's make a point here. BROS was the best movie of 2022.  When it wasn't selling tickets, the right-wing was screaming bomb and cackling with glee.  It ended up making back over half its production budget (14.8 million ticket sales).  Seven weeks after it was released, THE FABLEMANS still hasn't made that much in ticket sales nor has AMSTERDAM. And those two films had production budgets much higher than the $20 million for BROS.  They have not made back half of their production budget.  These were true bombs.  And these films deserved to bomb.  A<STERDAM,  from rage-a-holic David O. Russell, was supposed to be about the attempted overthrow of the US government -- a plot Smedley Butler exposed (see his book WAR IS A RACKET) and one that British outlets (including the BBC) will note Prescott Bush was a part of.  But David makes a dull film that rewrites history and turns  As C.I. noted, everything about it was off including the dialogue which in no way reflects the period and goes to what a poor writer David is.  Speaking of bombs, if you're looking for BABLYON, you won't find it on this list.  Why?  Like most of North America, we avoided the film.  We're only detailing films we actually saw. 


    6) THE BANSHEES OF IRISHERIN.

    Sadly, we saw this.  At least we caught it on HBO and didn't waste money on tickets.  It's the tale of ended friendship and, honestly, if we were Brendan Gleeson and had to endure all those cow eye moments from Colin Farrell, we would have ended the friendship as well.  What might have made the film work?  Uh, maybe if you set the film in 1923, the people act like it's 1923.  You don't impose the present upon 100 years ago.  It could have been a modern film.  But artiste Martin McDonagh chose the setting (he wrote the script, he directed the film) and there's no reason for it.  He brings nothing of 1923 to the film.  A huge waste of time.


    5) TOP GUN: MAVERICK.

    For years, Tom was groomed by older men.  Robert Duval in DAYS OF THUNDER, Paul Newman in THE COLOR OF MONEY, Dustin Hoffman in RAIN MAN . . . Paul Rudd once compared these men to Walter Brennan during his hey day.  And now?  Tom has become Walter Brennan.  And grasp that by the time Brennan was making John Ford's MY DARLING CLEMENTINE with Henry Fonda, Brennan was only 52.  That's eight years younger -- younger -- than Tom Cruise is right now.  Letting the US military dictate the script, Tom was able to get the aerial footage that is the film's only selling point.  A woman's in the cast (Jennifer Coolidge) but Tom was more convincing back in 1986 pretending to be attracted to Kelly McGillis.  It's really something to grasp that the only woman Tom ever had chemistry with onscreen was Rebecca De Mornay.  Even sadder, the only person he ever seemed to be in love with onscreen was little Jonathan Lipnicki in 1996's JERRY MAGUIRE.   He's the male Joan Crawford whose hung in by his teeth and nails for five decades of stardom.  A real shame that he has so little to show for it.  Tom's lucky that AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER was released so late in the year.  Otherwise TOP GUN: MAVERICK would not be the biggest moneymaker of 2022.  Released in the US on December 16th and the film now has a global box office of $1,401 million.  $1,488 million is how much Tom's movie grossed -- and it took a month after its US release for it to gross a billion world wide (14 days was how long it took AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER to reach that mark).  (Both films were released earlier outside the North American market.)  


    4) THE WOMAN KING.

    Everything about this film was false -- including the 'heroes' of the film who, in reality, were capturing Africans and selling them off into slavery.  False is also the notion that fatso Viola Davis could be a warrior with that pudgy body.  Angela Bassett, in BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER, looked formidable.  Viola?  She just look fat.  And squat.  And lazy.  And that kind of describes her performance as well.  The film never reached 70 million in ticket sales in North America.  A woman who looked like a warrior might have delivered at the box office.  Oh, well, maybe Viola can find work in one of Tyler Perry's films.


    3) TILL.

    Grandma Whoopi Goldberg just knew she knew what kids today wanted and it was a bad film about Emmett Till.  In her ivory castle, Whoopi doesn't know about any events impacting African-Americans that took place after the 60s.  Corn on the Boomer!  So she took time off from attacking the Jews to promote this bad film she produced and tried to act in.  One critic, you may remember, felt her performance would have been more convincing without that fat suit.  This resulted in our favorite movie moment of 2022 that was not in a movie: Whoopie fuming on THE VIEW that she wasn't wearing a fat suit.  Oh, Whoopi, next time just say "Thank you" and be grateful that most people haven't seen you in over a decade and have no idea just how overweight you've become.  The film's a bomb.  9 million world wide in ticket sales. 


    2) DON'T WORRY DARLING.

    It's a story as old Hollywood, a young ingenue puts out for a director with the hope of a film career.  The only twist?  The director was a woman: Olivia Wilde.  The ingenue?  The hairless like a sphynx Harry Styles.  Harry, next time you fork it over for a role, have a talented director mold you.  Olivia is not a talented director.  She's now demonstrated that with two films -- two films that North America has largely ignored.  Even when she posed -- what director doesn't -- for the cover of VANITY FAIR with her ass exposed and in the air.  The good news is Harry's dumped her.  The bad news is that MY POLICEMAN goes a long way towards arguing that Harry's best filmwork just isn't up to speed.  

    1) MARRY ME.

    We both, wrongly, thought this was the film Armie Hammer got replaced on.  That, we felt, explained how the dud that is Owen Wilson ended up in this romantic comedy.   He offered no chemistry.  He's a bad actor.  And no one wants Jennifer Lopez to end up with someone so milquetoast.  However, this bad film is far worse than we realized.  SHOTGUN WEDDING is the film Armie dropped out of.  That film will debut on AMAZON at the end of the month.  So that means this film got a greenlight by an idiot who wanted to pair Jennifer with Owen.  By the way, grasp that 2022 was the year we found out that Armie's wife was working with the women floating allegations against him and her messages that have now been published show her orchestrating the whole thing to get custody of the kids.  It's past time Hollywood stopped ostracizing Armie.


    This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"



    Another 2022 WTF moment (Cedric, Ann, Wally and Betty)

    Reposting joint post re: 2022:



  • BULLY BOY PRESS CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN & ANN'S MEGA DUB -- THE KOOL AID TABLE   

    AS THE COMMON ILLS NOTED, 2022 WAS THE YEAR OF WTF.  AND IN A LINGERING MOMENT AT THE START OF 2023, WE LOOK AT ONE MORE WTF MOMENT.  DONALD TRUMP WANTS THE WHITE HOUSE IN 2024.  AND HE KNOWS JUST HOW TO GET IT . . . WITH A RUNNING MATE THE PUBLIC LOVES!

    LAUREN BOEBERT?  PLEASE, WE SAID SOMEONE THE COUNTRY LOVED.  THAT LEAVES OUT PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE DONALD HANGS WITH.

    HE HAD TO DIG DEEP FOR THE RIGHT CANDIDATE . . . SO DEEP, HE WENT INTO A GRAVE.

    YES, PREPARE TO SCRATCH YOUR HEAD, THE TRUMPETS ARE ANNOUNCING THAT DONALD WILL WIN BACK THE WHITE HOUSE IN 2024 BY MAKING . . . HIS RUNNING MATE . . . JFK JR!!!!

    WE SPOKE WITH MOTHER TUCKER CARLSON ABOUT THIS CHOICE.  

    AFTER PUTTING AWAY HIS 1ST EDITIONS OF BLUE BOY, MOTHER TUCKER TURNED HIS ATTENTION TO US AND SAID, "YES, J.F.K. JR."

    DOESN'T THE CHOICE SEEM A LITTLE CRAZY?

    "ARE YOU CALLING THE KENNEDY FAMILY CRAZY?  YOU'RE THE LEFTISTS, NOT ME.  I'M JUST A SIMPLE MAN SITTING IN MY STAINED TIGHTY WHITIES, ASKING THE WORLD TO JOIN ME IN HATING LGBTQ PEOPLE.  WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE?"

    WELL, MOTHER TUCKER, WE RESPONDED, JFK JR. HAS BEEN DEAD FOR SOME TIME.  

    "MY DONALD HAS THAT ALL WORKED OUT.  MY DONALD KNOWS THE INS AND OUTS OF POLITICS.  MY DONALD IS COMMITTED TO FIGHTING THE LGBTQS AND TO DRY HUMPING THE RED, WHITE AND BLUES.  MY DONALD KNOWS WHAT HE'S DOING.  AND IF MY DONALD SAYS HE CAN BRING JFK JR. BACK FROM THE DEAD, YOU BETTER BELIEVE HE CAN DO IT."

    WE STUDIED MOTHER TUCKER'S FACE AND HE GRUNTED AND SCRUNCHED UP HIS FACE.

    YES? - WE ASKED THINKING HE WAS TRYING TO RELEASE SOME WISDOM OR SHARED SECRET.

    NO, HE EXPLAINED, "I WAS JUST MAKING STOOL IN MY UNDERWEAR.  IT MOTIVATES ME AND KEEPS ME FOCUSED.  I FIND IF I SQUEEZE ONE OUT RIGHT BEFORE A BUMPER, I'M EVEN MORE FOCUSED WHEN WE COME BACK."



    FROM THE TCI WIRE:







    Worker apathy is not to blame for low turnout caused by voter suppression!

    New Issue of The Black Commentator - Jan 6, 2023

     

    The Black Commentator Issue #937 is now Online
    Jan 6, 2023



    On the Web at https://www.blackcommentator.com

    Our postal address is:

    BlackCommentator.com
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    Iraq snapshot

    Friday, January 6, 2023.  Iraq hosts the Gulf Cup, Moqtada entertains the troops, Donald Trump is not going to be handed over to Iraqi authorities, and much more.


    Let's start with nonsense.

    It doesn't matter.  That's why we've ignored it all week.  Again, they want to arrest Donald.  So what?  The first time we noted it.  They know it's not happening and anyone with a brain knows it's not happening.  The US government will never turn a former president over to another nation.  We won't even turn Henry Kissinger over.  They won't turn Donald over, it would set a precedent.  They also won't do it because it's the US government which thinks it owns and controls the world.  It's not happening.  It's a non-starter.  It's not going to play out.  It's not going to happen.  We went with RedVicking's Tweet on the subject because it's not insane as so many of the Tweets about this are.  

    Why do we have such a screwed up government here in the US?  Because we have stupid adults who think they can weigh without knowing a damn thing.

    Anyone telling you that US President Joe Biden might turn Donald over (or will turn him over) to Iraq is either a liar or the biggest idiot of them all.  Bill Clinton bombed Sudan in 1998.  Bully Boy Bush invaded Iraq illegally, ordered the toture of Iraqis and go down the never-ending list.  Barack Obama droned people to death -- he was judge and jury as well as excutioner.  

    If you're that stupid, let me break the news to you slowly.  The US government.  That represents We the People of the United States.  Is loathed around the world.  For various actions taken. Actions that we see as illegal when other nation-states act in the same manner.  

    Tony Blair will likely never be brought to justice. 

    What world leaders get brought to justice?


    Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno (Panama), Slobodan Milošević (Serbia), those sort of people.  They are leaders but they aren't leaders of western countries.  

    The US government will not allow it to happen and for many reasons including they will not allow their government actions and decisions to evaluated by a legal jury of anyone's peers.

    It's a waste of time to focus on something that's not going to happen.  Take that garbage to the Rachel Maddow message boards and continue to drag the nation down further into stupidity, if you must.  But grasp that endless focusing on these demented fantasies are why we have the government we do.  When you don't even know the basics, maybe just continue to focus on your 'reality' TV shows.  You'll be doing the world a huge favor.


    There are things worthy of coverage and there are things that aren't. 

    This morning, for example, I've gone back and forth over one story -- do we include it, do we not.  We're not going to include the video or the young lady's name.  That's all that's different right now.  Otherwise, it's the attack in the suburb of Sulaimani that we covered on Saturday and in Monday's snapshot.  We've covered it.  In the news cycle right now, the survivor's name.  Is she being quoted?  No.  So I'm not sure she wants her name known.  It's public record and anybody can look it up but a 17-year-old girl who was attacked by a mob of men should be the one who decides if her name is known or not.  What else emerged?

    Video.  You've got delighted men running after her to attack her.  It is offensive.  If it had been out -- the video -- on Saturday or Monday, we would have included it as part of the story.  But it's days later and I don't see the point today in including video of an assault we've already noted.  The video turns my stomach but it would have been included in Monday's snapshot if it had been released them.  Gruesome and disgusting?  Yes.  And also a crime.  So my argument then would have been that we shouldn't turn away from it.  The difference now is the crime has been discussed and addressed so, at this point, it's kind of like the footgage in THE ACCUSED -- where Jodie's character's being gang raped and some audiences are getting off on that (see Susan Faludi's BACKLASH).  We know what happened, we've covered it.  Days after that, the video footage is of no use to illuminating anything, my opinion, so we're not including it here.

    Another issue in the e-mails, why aren't we covering George Santos.  Uh, what does he have to do with Iraq?  I especially enjoy the other e-mails to the public account (common_ills@yahoo.com), the drive-bys that tell me I'm attacking George Santos and don't realize that Joe Biden lies too!

    George Santos name is appearing in something I've written here for the first time.  I've never written about him before.  So I don't know what you think you're reading but it hasn't been anything I've written.  

    Those of you sending the drive-by e-mails need to grasp an important point.

    Joe Biden has a history of lying.  It got him kicked out of one Democratic Party primary.  He lies, he mistates, he mixes things up.

    Here's the difference, when he ran for the presidency, that was known.  The American people knew (or should have) what they were getting.  So you're going back to 1988 or some other nonsense?  It doesn't matter.

    If he lied regarding business dealings with his son Hunter, that would be different.  And he may have and he may not have lied on that.

    But exposed lies that were known before election day in 2020 are not the same as discovering that a newly elected member of Congress (he's not been sworn in yet) lied throughout the election and decieved people (and the press was asleep on the job) -- it's completely different.  

    I'm not going to think about it, I'm not going to play it out as to what should or shouldn't happen.  But I will note that there is a world of difference between people choosing to vote for a known liar with years and years of public examples of deception and voting for a fresh face who apparently lied about everything.

    Oh, I'll note one more thing.  I'm not going to name her.  But there was a Democrat who got caught, as she ran for re-election, in a lie.  She'd lied about being a college graduate.  And this became a big deal.  This is how the Democratic Party dealt with that.  She was already running for re-election when this came out.  They humiliated her.  Every day, they found a way to humiliate her.  One day, they were thrilled that when she visited _____ they had her picked up at the airport . . . in a Pinto -- a badly banged up Pinto that reeked of cigarettes.  The Pinto was decades old and the paint was off in spots.  It wasn't even the car of the person who was driving her.  They looked for the worst car they could borrow in each city she visited and in that city it was a Pinto.  And they took pictures and they faxed all over.  They lived to humiliate her.  That's how the Democrats played it.  I have no idea how the Republicans will handle their problem.



    + A week after Bush launched the War on Terror Bob Woodward asked Cheney how long it would last. Cheney replied: “It may never end. At least, not in our lifetime.” The wet-dream of weapons contractors had materialized. The Pentagon Budget in 2001 was $287B. Now it’s $857B & rising.

    + Contracts with Raytheon and Lockheed to blow s**t up followed by contracts with BlackRock to “rebuild.” What are the Minsk Accords compared to this kind of deal?

    + According to an analysis by the intrepid Stephen Semler military contractors are set to pocket around $20 billion out of the $47 billion in the last Ukraine aid package.

    In the room the arms lobbyists come and go
    talking of how they just added another zero…

    + Apparently the Russian military is blaming cell-phone usage by its troops on the frontlines for the recent spate of Ukrainian missile attacks on Russian outposts, attacks which may have killed more than 1000 Russian soldiers. If so, those soldiers in rural Donetsk Oblast get better cell service than I do here in the sprawl of Greater Portland, where I barely get a single bar here in the house. If Russia really wanted to protect their troops they’d force them all onto an AT&T plan…

    + According to an analysis by Max Berger, more than 75% of the $40 million crypto-conman Samuel Bankman-Fried contributed to Democrats in 2022 went to groups that dumped nearly all their money on competitive primaries, largely to neoliberals facing off against more progressive candidates. Not that it would have mattered much in the end, since nearly all of the progressives end up voting with the neoliberals when the chips are down…and even when they aren’t.

    + Life expectancy in the US continues to plummet. The response of Congress and the Biden administration in the omnibus spending bill is to end emergency Covid funding and raise the age of mandatory retirement account withdrawals by three years. Someone’s making out, but it sure ain’t us…

    + Biden campaigned to expand Medicaid. Now he’s signed a bill to sharply curtail it, ending coverage for millions of people in the middle of a pandemic he pretends is over…

    + The Social Security administration continues to deny thousands of disability claims a year, in part because it continues to rely on a 45-year-old list of outdated job titles. We live in a System that is eager to help the people who least need it and quick to ignore, chastise and punish the weakest, sickest and poorest among us.

    + 54% of Mississippi’s hospitals are running out of operating funds and at risk of closing. This “looming disaster” is largely a consequence of Gov. Tate Reeve’s stubborn refusal to accept expanded Medicare funding offered to state under ObamaCare.

    + Our book, An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism & Its Discontents, which the great historian Peter Linebaugh says is written “in acid prose cutting through the machine’s wicked fabrications,” is now available on Kindle



    Excitement in Iraq today with the Gulf Cup.





                Today, Friday, the Gulf Arab Cup kicks off its 25th session (Gulf 25) which will be hosted by Iraq in Basra until January 19 with 8 teams from the Gulf, and the eight teams have been divided into two groups where in the first includes Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, Yemen, and the second – the teams of Kuwait, Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain. The opening ceremony of the tournament will be held, after which the opening match between Iraq (the host) and Oman will take place, after which the match of our team with the Yemeni counterpart took place.

    Competition in the group is expected to be fierce. In order to qualify for the semi-finals first and then the title, in light of host Iraq’s ambition to win the missing title for 34 years while Al-Akhdar hopes for a fourth title while Oman wanted to win a third title, and finally, Yemen is looking for its first title in the tournament.




    In a series of tweets, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani expressed his happiness for the opening of the Gulf Club 25 tournament in Basra, Iraq. 

    He congratulated the people of Basra and all Iraqis for hosting this significant event, especially since it’s been over 40 years since Iraq has hosted these games. 

    “I’m overwhelmed with great happiness and a wonderful feeling on the occasion of the launch of the Gulf Cup Football Championship,” he wrote in one of his tweets.

    He welcomed all the attendees to the event and the “guests” from Arab countries.



    In other news, cult leader Moqtada al-Sadr emerged from his public retreat long enough to entertain the fellas.




    And check out this Tweet.


    You know what's not 'adorbs'?  This is plundered.  It belongs in Iraq not in a British musem.

    Where does Hillary Clinton belong?  As REUTERS journalist Kanishka Raj Singh notes, she thinks she belongs on a campus.


    The only thing supporting the Iraq War ever cost Hillary was the 2008 Democratic Party's presidential nomination.  Barack used her support for that war as a club to beat her with throughout the primary season.

    Let's wind down with LGBTQ+ issues.  Kevin Bolling has an important column at NEWSWEEK.  I don't know how to excerpt it.  So here's the link.  It's about how homophobes are trying to use schools to carry out attacks on LGBTQ+ students.

    Attacks on students?


    A man from Central Florida is accused of threatening to kill 100 LGBTQ people in a mass shooting at Florida State University, federal investigators said. Sean Michael Albert, a 19-year-old from Winter Park, a suburb of Orlando, is accused of posting the threat to a Discord channel Dec. 13, according to the federal criminal complaint. Discord is a social media instant messaging platform popular with gamers. The post included a photo of an AR-15 style rifle, along with a caption that included Florida State University’s main address and referred to his intended targets with an anti-LGBTQ slur, the complaint said.
    [. . .]
    At a hearing Wednesday, Jan. 4, U.S. Magistrate Judge Embry Kidd ordered he be detained until trial, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.

     

    John Russell (LGBTQ NATION) adds, "Albert, who is being held in federal detention in Orlando, allegedly posted that “a genocide … NEEDS to happen not even a question,” along with an anti-LGBTQ+ slur, as well as another threat to “tear gas a synagogue” and what is believed to be a coded threat to kill all Black people."


    The following sites updated: