Mr. Assange is a political prisoner. He is being persecuted. This Tweet really gets at the reality.
WMD - Weapons of Mass Deception Retweeted
"#Assange is now, plainly and without argument, a political prisoner. He is not in jail for bail-jumping. He is not in jail for sexual allegations. He is in jail for publishing official secrets, and for nothing else."
He needs to be free. It is not complicated.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
Tuesday, September 17, 2019.
War? The US government can't get enough of it these days. You might argue they are addicted to it which is why no war appears to end anymore. In the thirst for more killing, the US government is currently angling for war with Iran. Bill Van Auken (WSWS) observes:
Casting itself once again as the world’s judge, jury and executioner, US imperialism is recklessly hurtling toward yet another war in the Middle East, with catastrophic implications. This time, Washington has seized upon Saturday’s attacks on Saudi installations as its pretext for war against Iran.
The reaction of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to these attacks, which have cut the kingdom’s oil production by almost half and slashed global daily output by 6 percent, was as noteworthy for its haste as for its peculiar wording.
“Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply,” Pompeo tweeted late Saturday, adding, “There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.”
The indictment of Iran for attacks that set off a series of fires which devastated two oil facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia came without a shred of supporting evidence, outside of the bald assertion that there was “no evidence” that they were launched from Yemen.
Yemen had to be discounted, according to the secretary of state’s predatory logic, because the Houthi rebels, who control most of the country, had claimed responsibility for the attacks and had a clear motive—given the kingdom’s near-genocidal war against Yemen’s civilian population—for carrying them out. The US mass media has by and large echoed Pompeo’s allegations as absolute truth. On Monday night, television news broadcasts quoted unnamed intelligence sources, citing unspecified evidence, claiming Iranian responsibility for the attacks. No doubt this “evidence” will prove just as compelling as that of the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam and “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. These same media outlets have made virtually no mention of Saudi crimes in Yemen.
Our wonderful corporate media wouldn't do that, would they? They wouldn't again be infested with anonymice. Surely, they've learned their lessons, right? Wrong.
War? The US government can't get enough of it these days. You might argue they are addicted to it which is why no war appears to end anymore. In the thirst for more killing, the US government is currently angling for war with Iran. Bill Van Auken (WSWS) observes:
Casting itself once again as the world’s judge, jury and executioner, US imperialism is recklessly hurtling toward yet another war in the Middle East, with catastrophic implications. This time, Washington has seized upon Saturday’s attacks on Saudi installations as its pretext for war against Iran.
The reaction of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to these attacks, which have cut the kingdom’s oil production by almost half and slashed global daily output by 6 percent, was as noteworthy for its haste as for its peculiar wording.
“Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply,” Pompeo tweeted late Saturday, adding, “There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.”
The indictment of Iran for attacks that set off a series of fires which devastated two oil facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia came without a shred of supporting evidence, outside of the bald assertion that there was “no evidence” that they were launched from Yemen.
Yemen had to be discounted, according to the secretary of state’s predatory logic, because the Houthi rebels, who control most of the country, had claimed responsibility for the attacks and had a clear motive—given the kingdom’s near-genocidal war against Yemen’s civilian population—for carrying them out. The US mass media has by and large echoed Pompeo’s allegations as absolute truth. On Monday night, television news broadcasts quoted unnamed intelligence sources, citing unspecified evidence, claiming Iranian responsibility for the attacks. No doubt this “evidence” will prove just as compelling as that of the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam and “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. These same media outlets have made virtually no mention of Saudi crimes in Yemen.
Our wonderful corporate media wouldn't do that, would they? They wouldn't again be infested with anonymice. Surely, they've learned their lessons, right? Wrong.
New: US and Saudi Arabia believe “very high probability” this weekend’s attack on Saudi oil facilities were low altitude cruise missiles -- assisted by drones -- launched from an Iranian base near the border with Iraq - @NicRobertsonCNN reporting
Nic Robertson is not reporting, Jim, he's echoing. As are you. For all your pious posturing and pretense, Jim, you will always be nothing more than a hack. Don't think anyone's going to remember you when Donald Trump leaves the Oval Office. Only the most deranged cheer you on now.
The government can't sell war without their hate merchants in the media, never forget that. Never forget that the entire media landscaped lied the country into war with Iraq but only Judith Miller was held accountable. Those who lied were not punished, they did not lose jobs. In fact, THE ATLANTIC, MOTHER JONES and many others went out of their way to hire the liars.
The wars never end. Which is how the Pentagon's DIVIDS notes Sgt Maynor Reyes is back in Iraq, 15 years after he first left. He's now stationed at the "Erbil Air Base in northern Iraq in support of the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve." Kyle Rempfer (ARMY TIMES) reports, "Fort Bragg’s XVIII Airborne Corps handed off the reigns of the counter-Islamic State mission to III Armored Corps out of Fort Hood at a ceremony in Baghdad, Iraq, on Saturday."
When does the US hand off that mission to Iraq and bring all the US troops home?
It's a real shame that, after all these years, that question still can't be asked by our 'brave' press in a White House or State Dept press briefing. Let alone in a 60 MINUTES interview with a sitting president.
President? In the United States, the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination continues. War Hawk Joe Biden desperately wants that nomination. Norman Solomon (COMMON DREAMS) notes:
Joe Biden’s recent efforts to deny his record of support for invading Iraq are marvels of evasion, with falsehoods that have been refuted by one well-documented appraisal after another after another. This month, Biden claimed that his vote for war on the Senate floor was somehow not a vote for war. Ironically, while he was spinning anew to deny the undeniable, theaters nationwide began screening a movie that exposes the deceptive approach to the Iraq war that Biden exemplifies.
Historically factual, “Official Secrets” is concerned with truth—and the human consequences of evading or telling it. Katharine Gun, portrayed by actress Keira Knightley, was a worker at the British intelligence agency GCHQ. Risking years in prison, she did everything she could to prevent the Iraq war, and took responsibility for doing so.
Biden did everything he could to enable the Iraq war, and—still—takes no responsibility for doing so.
More than 16 years ago, Biden and Gun were at cross purposes as the Iraq invasion neared. Subterfuge vs. candor. Misinformation vs. information. War vs. peace. Today, their public voices contrast just as sharply.
Gun recalls that both President George W. Bush and especially British Prime Minister Tony Blair were “desperate to get U.N. cover” for the impending invasion of Iraq in early 2003. On the last day of January of that year, Gun saw a memo from the U.S. National Security Agency that showed the two governments were working together to wiretap and otherwise surveil diplomats from countries on the U.N. Security Council—for purposes such as blackmail—to win a vote to authorize an invasion.
Gun became a whistleblower by providing the memo to the Observer newspaper in London. As she said in a recent interview with Salon, “My intention was to prevent the war. . . . I felt there was this information that was absolutely crucial, it had the potential to derail the rush to war, and I felt people had the right to know.”
Biden—who played a pivotal role in the rush to war as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—proceeded as though people had no right to know. He excluded critical voices and key information from the committee’s high-profile hearings in mid-summer 2002, deceptively serving as the most important lawmaker ushering the war resolution to the Senate floor, where he voted for it in mid-October. The war began five months later. It has never ended.
And Joe Biden has never taken accountability for his actions. Chief among them? The decision to overturn the 2010 vote of the Iraqi people and give thug Nouri a second term. The people spoke. They showed up to vote despite threats, despite violence, despite roads being closed. They showed up and they went with Iraqiya. When Nouri lost and refused to step down -- just as US Gen Ray Odierno had predicted months before -- the US could have sided with democracy. Instead, they created a work around, The Erbil Agreement, a legal contract that overturned the vote and gave Nouri a second term and Joe showed up in Baghdad to sell it and lecture Iraqi leaders about . . . Ireland. No one knew what crazy Joe was saying. No one cared. Democracy was struck down by the US government and Joe Biden needs to be asked why. That second term resulted in the rise of ISIS in Iraq. Overturning an election is not a minor thing.
Albert Burneko (DEADSPIN) offers:
Or more to the point: Do you want a president who has the full command of their cognitive faculties? One who knows what the f**k is going on during a debate, or a complex legislative effort, or a tricky foreign-policy negotiation? One who can think a coherent thing, and then express that coherent thought in a coherent fashion, without digressing into gibberish about the relative merits of the victrola and the cinematograph? Of course you do. That might even be the very most obvious and reasonable baseline elimination criteria for a president: That this person’s brain works. It’s the smallest thing for a sane voter of conscience to make an absolute requirement for the gig, particularly when there’s still a double-fistful of candidates and as many as nine—but not 10!—of them clear that bar easily.
In this context, “What I demand in a president is whoever happens to be leading in early, elderly-skewing Democratic primary polling, no matter what” is absurd. You are the will those polls are attempting to capture, you and you and you and me, and your meek, passive adoption of their results is the saddest of self-fulfilling prophecies. Up to a point it may make some sense to examine one’s own feces, but one mustn’t also devour it.
Do a majority of left-of-center Americans affirmatively want to vote for Joe Biden and what he is selling—for an out-of-touch 76-year-old centrist with a failing brain, whose public proclamations and debate answers only make sense if you rearrange their letters into generous anagrams, and whose only compelling campaign pitch so far is the cynical idea that nothing on earth can rouse one’s fellow voters to a more ambitious choice? Of course not. Nobody would call that candidate out of the ether if he did not already exist. That is not anyone’s ideal choice.
So, during the primaries at least, the job is to demand a better option. Even if you like Biden; especially if you like Biden. Demand a dynamic candidate, a nimble debater and public speaker, a compelling advocate of ambitious and unlikely and transformative ideas. See if Biden, or your favorite, can prove an ability to be that. And if that candidate can’t, f**king pick somebody else!
The press is excited this news cycle because Ken Salazar has endorsed Joe Biden and not Julian Castro. I'm sure Julian will get over it. Ken's last prominent endorsement was Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General.
At USA TODAY, Ruben Navarrette Jr. has an excellent column. Here's an excerpt:
A lot of people of color are fed up with the old school white liberalism that Biden represents. It’s not just his past opposition to forced busing in the 1970s because, as he said then, he didn’t feel “responsible for the sins” of past generations. It’s also recent gaffes. During last week's debate, Biden answered a question about atoning for slavery with a condescending stemwinder about “problems that come from home” and social workers showing parents how to parent by having “the record player on at night” so kids pick up vocabulary.
Harris and Booker got a pass for going after Biden, yet Castro is being walloped. White pundits know better than to scold African Americans about race, but they’re not afraid of Latinos, whom they often treat like their gardeners.
While discussing competing health care plans, the
former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development mischievously poked at
Biden by asking — repeatedly — whether the 76-year-old was forgetting what he said two minutes earlier.
Critics — including the news media and Biden supporters — are calling it “ageism” and a “cheap shot” by Castro. They say the 45-year-old should have shown more “respect” to his elder.
That’s a thing in politics? Since when?
It's an important column. Meanwhile, shouldn't this be a story the media pursues?
Just a video of Joe Biden in more coherent times explaining the process of how to buy politicians like him...
"If you go out and bundle $250K for me and then you call me after I’m elected ... I’m gonna say come on in."
0:15
Joe being Joe. And that's the problem, isn't it?
The following sites updated:
