You may know Norman's writing from Mike's website:
Mikey Likes It!: Norman Pollack, Noam Chomsky and more
wwwmikeylikesit.blogspot.com/2013/10/norman-pollack-noam-chomsky-and-more.html
Oct 10, 2013 - Norman Pollack
has another great article: In a previous article, I suggested the
three-legged stool –surveillance, assassination, teleprompter ...Mikey Likes It!: Norman Pollack, Grimm, Dracula
wwwmikeylikesit.blogspot.com/2013/10/norman-pollack-grimm-dracula.html
Oct 26, 2013 - Norman Pollack. I have a feeling he's going to go crazy. He's written another great column for CounterPunch which includes: Political ...
Mikey Likes It!: 2 liars keep lying
wwwmikeylikesit.blogspot.com/2016/09/2-liars-keep-lying.html
I called Mike when I saw this online. He had missed it and he gave me the following:
Norman Pollack was important to me because it was a time when no one challenged the authority and the White House got a pass from Amy Goodman and Norman Solomon and hundreds more. Norman was truth teller who could and would call out Barack Obama when he did something wrong. He challenged power. He was a brave voice. I had no idea that during this he was sick with cancer. He was much more brave than I ever thought and I admired his writing tremendously. He made a big impact on me and I'm sure on many others. His life and his work mattered. I will miss his courageous and honest voice.
Click here for Norman Pollack's articles at COUNTERPUNCH.
Joshua Frank's article opens:
This past week we lost one of our most tenacious, prolific voices. Norman Pollack, after a long, arduous battle with cancer, passed away on June 11 at his home in Michigan with his wife Nancy by his side. He was 84.
Norman’s legacy stands tall, from his days in the civil rights movement to his tenure at Yale and Michigan State University, he never stopped fighting for social justice. He was not only an author and well-respected scholar, he was also a loving father, husband and a genuine friend of CounterPunch. I will greatly miss our frequent email exchanges that ranged from theater outings with his wife Nancy to his daily battles through multiple rounds of chemotherapy. I never experienced Norman as a professor, but I imagine he would have been dynamic, yet challenging. He often spoke fondly of his former students, especially those who carried on the torch of an activist life.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Friday, June 16, 2017. The Mosul Slog continues, a bishop misses the point, and much more.
It’s Going Down: ICE Arrest 199 Iraqi Christians During Deportation Sweep! [Video]
"That priest is probably still floating on a fog pillow," wrote Anne Sexton ("The Inventory Of Goodbye"). Bishop Bawai Soro's feet certainly aren't touching the ground.
Reading his column at THE HILL, it's hard to figure out whether he's stupid or dishonest?
ISIS is more in the news than the Iraqi government so he may be using them -- and lies -- to make a case. If so, it may attract more eyeballs for being 'trendy' but it will also attract many eyeballs from the heads of people who get that Soro doesn't know what the hell he's writing about.
ICE and US President Donald Trump must not return Iraqi Christians to Iraq, he argues, because the will face the Islamic State.
The Islamic State?
Forget the corporate spin that the Islamic State is on the run, the problem for Iraqi Christians throughout the Iraq War has not been the Islamic State.
Yes, they've been victimized in the rare areas of Iraq that the Islamic State has grabbed control of in the last few years.
But stop pretending that's it.
The Iraqi government has failed them and has persecuted them.
They have passed laws against them, the forces have raided their bars and establishments to shut them down even when the law wasn't on the Iraqi forces' side.
The Islamic State is a recent thing in the long war. It will likely be replaced by something else.
The same can't be said of the Iraqi government where thug Nouri al-Maliki was replaced by thug-lite Hayder al-Abadi.
The exodus of Iraqi Christians from Iraq begins long before the emergence of the Islamic State (as did the relocating to northern Iraq from Baghdad).
Is the Bishop a liar or just stupid?
And the argument to make, pay attention here, against deporting the group back to Iraq is that the Iraqi government has not only failed to protect them, the Iraqi government has taken part in attacking them.
The Iraqi government's history since the 2003 US-led invasion is one of persecuting religious minorities -- this includes Christians.
So why would you force Christians to return to that country?
That's the argument you make.
You rest it instead on the Islamic State?
The minute The Mosul Slog finally wraps up, people shrug and say, "Well they're over, no reason the Christians can't be sent back now."
The Bishop had a column to make a case and he didn't.
Instead, he's put out the highly damaging notion that, were it not for the Islamic State, Iraq would be a fine place for Iraqi Christians to live.
But the Islamic State did not run them off from Baghdad.
It wasn't the Islamic State, either, that reduced Baghdad's Jewish population to one elderly person.
Day 240 of The Mosul Slog.
End of ISIS: U.S. and Iraqi Forces Prepare for Final Battle After Surrounding Old City
End coming?
Good, because it's already been 240 days.
Though the operation to liberate or 'liberate' Mousl was only launched in October, Mosul was seized
by ISIS in June 2014.
Nouri al-Maliki was prime minister then.
Some have not forgotten that fact.
G.H. Renaud (KURDISTAN 24) reports:
Demonstrators called for Maliki to face justice as they marked the third anniversary of the Speicher massacre where Islamic State (IS) militants killed hundreds of students at the Air Force base near Tikrit.
[. . .]
Banners listed the three “plagues” demonstrators believe Maliki is responsible for: the fall of Mosul, the Speicher Massacre, and the squandering of Iraq’s money.
Nouri and Moqtada al-Sadr are squaring off for upcoming elections -- whenever they might be held.
Provincial elections were actually supposed to take place in April.
They have been delayed until September but there's also a proposal to combine them with next year's national elections.
The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley -- updated:
