Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Melvin Van Peebles

I am sad. Melvin Van Peebles has passed away. DEADLINE notes:



Melvin Van Peebles, an actor, writer, director, producer and icon of Black cinema whose films include Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and Watermelon Man, died Tuesday night at his home. He was 89.
His death was confirmed by his son, Mario Van Peebles, who said in a statement: “Dad knew that Black images matter. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what was a movie worth? We want to be the success we see, thus we need to see ourselves being free. True liberation did not mean imitating the colonizer’s mentality. It meant appreciating the power, beauty and interconnectivity of all people.”
Janus Films and Criterion Collection also announced the news on Twitter and said in a statement: “In an unparalleled career, distinguished by relentless innovation, boundless curiosity and spiritual empathy, Melvin Van Peebles made an indelible mark on the international cultural landscape through his films, novels, plays and music. His work continues to be essential and is being celebrated at the New York Film Festival this weekend with a 50th anniversary screening of his landmark film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.”

SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSS was a great film. And Mr. Van Peebles is a pioneer in many ways. Firstly, I would note him as an auteur in the world of independent film making. Like Tom Laughlin, Mr. Van Peebles created his own market and showed how far talent could go. (Mr. Laughlin was responsible for the BILLY JACK films.) Long before Quentin Tarantino was working outside the studio system, Mr. Van Peebles and Mr. Laughlin and a select few others like Barbara Loden and John Cassavetes really showed what you could do in independent film. He belongs in that group of pioneer filmmakers.

He also belongs in a group of pioneers who were bringing people of color to the screen. We had films with Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, and Diahann Carroll among others prior to the seventies -- in fact, let me include Sammy Davis Jr. on that list since Mr. Davis was a star and often gets shortchanged. But in the 70s, we saw performer of color really move into the spotlight. Diana Ross deserved the Oscar for LADY SINGS THE BLUES. And she and Billy Dee Williams made a great onscreen teaming in two movies, they had real chemistry. Richard Pryor also became a film star in the seventies, as did Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree, Cicely Tyson, Paul Whitfield, and Bill Cosby among others.

He was a legend and had been for many, many years. Hopefully, that legend will continue to grow as it deserves to.


This is THE CONVO COUCH.


 

 

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

 

 

Wednesday, September 22, 2021.  The press exposes itself yet again and it's really ugly.




In his new book, “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power,” Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger says that evidence points to Hunter Biden’s laptop being legit.

While we appreciate the support, the truth is The Post’s reports always have been true, and it’s only because the media wants to protect Joe Biden that they keep referring to the laptop as “unsubstantiated.”

Schreckinger notes that “A person who had independent access to Hunter Biden’s emails” confirms two of the e-mails the Post published, including one about a potential deal with China with the line “10 held by H for the big guy?” — that is, Joe Biden.

But Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski already said those e-mails were authentic — the media just ignored him.

Schreckinger adds that e-mails released by the Swedish government also match e-mails from the laptop (Hunter had gotten into a kerfuffle when he was staying in a Swedish embassy building). That’s also been reported.


For those who have forgotten, Joe Biden was protected by corporate media.  They lied for him, they whored for him.  Tara Reade made credible claims of assault by Joe Biden when he was a US senator and PBS' THE NEWS HOUR, THE NEW YORK TIMES and others let the Biden campaign lead them around by the rings in their noses instead of doing their own work.  They spoke to who the Biden campaign told them to and they ran the smears from the Biden campaign without ever attaching names.  If most of their copy had been sourced, people would have been a lot more outraged than they already were. They got away with killing a real scandal for Joe and then , October 14, 2020,  .THE NEW YORK POST, published a report by Emma-Jo MOrris and Gabrielle Fonrouge:

Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to e-mails obtained by The Post.

The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the e-mail reads.

An earlier e-mail from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.

The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.

The computer was dropped off at a repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware in April 2019, according to the store’s owner.

Other material extracted from the computer includes a raunchy, 12-minute video that appears to show Hunter, who’s admitted struggling with addiction problems, smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images.


THE POST published the story and immediately the media attacks began as Jimmy Dore noted in this video he did on the day the Hunter story broke.




Twitter immediately refused to allow THE POST article to be linked to on Twitter.   That's Twitter, founded in 2006, censoring THE NEW YORK POST, established in 1801, censoring the country's oldest newspaper still in circulation.  RT notes, "Twitter censored the Post’s reporting, citing its hacked-materials policy without any evidence that the laptop had actually been hacked. Not only was the Post’s account blocked for over two weeks, but users of the social media platform were prevented from sharing the article."

It was and remains an outrageous moment.  As Elaine observed last night, "So what does this mean for Twitter -- they blocked coverage of it, they claimed it was false.  So did NPR, NPR was still lying at the start of this year.  They can't stop lying."


The New York Times quietly deleted its assertion that an October article from the New York Post about the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son Hunter was “unsubstantiated.” In the reworked report, the outlet reported on a Federal Election Commission decision that dismissed a Republican complaint arguing Twitter violated election laws by blocking users from sharing the story during the heat of the 2020 election.

When the New York Times posted the report early Monday afternoon, it read: “The Federal Election Commission has dismissed Republican accusations that Twitter violated election laws in October by blocking people from posting links to an unsubstantiated New York Post article about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter Biden.”

A tweet from the outlet's main account, which started trending on Twitter, similarly called the New York Post article an “unsubstantiated article." New York Times national political reporter Shane Goldmacher, who wrote the initial draft, similarly called it “unsubstantiated.”

Neither tweet was deleted as of Monday evening, but the New York Times article was changed without any editor’s note, which happens in the media business. However, this article stands out, as the rewrite was substantial and the original version drew intense scrutiny and backlash with its word choice.

The new version, published hours later with technology reporter Kate Conger added to the byline, removed the “unsubstantiated” claim and other significant details from the story. If not for screenshots taken earlier, the full version of the original report may have been difficult to track down as the original URL now redirects to a new one.


If only that were the worst of NYT on this story.  It's not.

Let's stop a moment to remember hard drug using Kathy Scruggs who slept with government sources because, hey, isn't that what journalism is?  She smeared Richard Jewell and destroyed his life.  She's thankfully dead and can inflict no more harm.  But when JEWELL came out, we were told that it was sexism for the movie to note what a whore she was.  

No, it wasn't.  But damn if some non-feminists want to play that game all the time.  They don't care about women.  

I don't know anyone at THE POST (not since they parted with Liz Smith), and I don't know their bylines.  But looking up that original report, I noticed something.  It was written by two women.  Is that why it was so easy to attack?

Because the article was attacked.

I'm thinking of the garbage that THE NEW YORK TIMES ran where they quoted no one by name but told you that the journalists at THE POST were embarrassed by the story, that they didn't think it should have been published, that . . .

That TIMES' article was an embarrassment in real time.  But it's only more embarrassing now when you grasp that the paper used resources and space to try to discredit a report by two women who were, in fact, right in their reporting.

TIME magazine, like many other outlets, ran their own garbage attacking the article, remember?  They claimed it had been shopped in Ukraine.  

A lot of claims were made and Twitter allowed those claims to be circulated.  They refused to allow THE POST report to be linked to.

The press is yet again exposed as lying, whoring hypocrites.  Maybe now they'll get honest (ha!) about who fed them the 'scoops' on Tara Reade?  Maybe they'll ask Alyssa Milano who in Time's Up was feeding her attacks on Tara Reade because, if you've forgotten, when Alyssa originally came out on Tara Reade, she was against Tara, Tara was not to be trusted and Alyssa knew that because of her friends who were part of Time's Up.  It was a smear campaign against Tara and the press knows who fed them the attacks but refuses to get honest.

They won't get honest about what they did with regards to THE POST report.  It's too embarrassing and too humiliating for them and it goes against everything that journalism is supposed to stand against. 

Not only was the laptop real, Hunter, as his father ran for president, was being sued in court for being a dead beat dad who wouldn't pay child support.  But the press was portraying him as a happily married man and ignoring the reality of what his ex-wife asserted in court documents and what the young woman who gave birth to his child was doing in court.  And, as his father ran for president, Hunter was an active crack user.  I believe that's called a "security risk."  When you have to lie about your actions -- because you're embarrassed and/or the actions are illegal, that's a security risk.

There were so many reasons for the press to pursue the truth about Hunter Biden.  But they elected to fluff and pretend to see nothing.  Not unlike, by the way, when Dan Quayle's alleged pot dealer was quickly hustled away from the press.  


Glenn Greenwald Tweets:

We're working on a definitive video report of how the corporate media, CIA and Big Tech united to lie about the Biden documents before the election and *censor* them from the internet - it will be up tonight - and it's beyond infuriating how purposely and relentlessly they lied.
Image
3:11 PM · Sep 21, 2021
 

Hunter's scandals and inappropriate and unethical behavior continues.  Casey Michel (THE ATLANTIC) reports:


t some point in the coming weeks, hundreds of thousands of dollars will be funneled to the son of the sitting American president—and none of us will know anything about who sent the money, or where it originally came from, or why anyone chose to send it in the first place.

The transactions will nominally center on artwork created by Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. After spending years working alongside post-Soviet oligarchs—work that complicated his father’s anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine—Hunter has tossed on a new hat as an emerging “artist.” CNN has reported that his debut shows—one in Los Angeles, another in New York—will be held in late September, though the dates haven’t been announced (which may be because of the scrutiny the sales have received). Whenever they happen, Hunter will make the transition from unqualified oil-and-gas adviser to budding Basquiat—and will offer his artwork to the highest bidders his gallery can attract. The sales have raised concerns that buyers will purchase the art to curry favor with the president, creating an ethics minefield for the White House.

Hunter’s artwork isn’t bad, per se. A certain base-level skill is evident in the paintings. Sebastian Smee, the Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic for The Washington Post, told CNN that Biden was comparable to “a cafe painter. By which I mean, you see a certain kind of art in coffee shops, and some of it is OK and a lot of it is bad, and sometimes it’s surprisingly good. But you wouldn’t, unless you were related to the artist, spend more than $1,000 on it.”

Unfortunately for the White House, the people about to profit from Hunter’s foray into the art world are anticipating far higher returns—and suddenly presenting the Biden administration with a new Hunter-related headache. Hunter’s gallerist, Georges Bergès, has said he’s expecting as much as $500,000 for some of the paintings. That’s a pricing echelon that would put Hunter, a person with no formal artistic training, “in the very top tier of emerging artists,” according to Artnet. (“The whole thing is very, very weird,” added Artnet’s Ben Davis, not least because the Bergès Gallery’s previous best-known client was Sylvester Stallone.) For his part, Hunter has been clear about what he’d say to those questioning the propriety of his shows: “Other than f**k ’em?”
  


Turning to Iraq, Chloe Cornish (FINANCIAL TIMES OF LONDON) notes, "For a brief window this summer, Moqtada al-Sadr, the former US foe who is now one of Iraq’s most influential political figures, withdrew his party from next month’s parliamentary elections."  That's the closet you're going to get to confirmation that the US government paid Moqtada off to reverse his boycott stance -- "the former US foe."  That's what happened and we told you.  We told you about Nouri al-Maliki's paranoia -- based on the CIA's assessment that they circulated through the State Dept in 2006 -- and how, to the US government, that made him the ideal choice for prime minister because they could use that extreme paranoia to manipulate him.  It's interesting, also, how the people in Sadr City continue to live in a slum but Moqtada gets richer and richer each year.  What the Paddy Cockburns refuse to report, the Iraqi people notice -- especially those in Sadr City.  

It's this corruption that fueled The October Revolution  which kicked off protests in the fall of 2019 and forced the prime minister to step down and early elections to be announced.  As ARAB WEEKLY notes, "Tens of thousands of Iraqi youths took to the streets to decry rampant corruption, poor services and unemployment. Hundreds died as security forces used live ammunition and tear gas to disperse crowds."  This is what forced the resignation of one prime minister and has led to national elections which are supposed to take place October 10th.  (Members of the Iraqi military will vote October 8th.  Two election simulations have been carried out by the IEC and the third and final one will take place September 22nd.)    that the candidates for Parliament include 951 women ("close to 30% of the total number of candidates") who are running for the 329 seats.  Halgurd Sherwani (KURDISTAN 24) has reported Jeanine Hannis-Plasschaert, the Special Representiative in Iraq to the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, declared that Iraq's "Female candidates face increasing levels of hate speech, violence, and blackmail intended to force them to withdraw their candidacy." 



Sinan Mahmoud (THE NATIONAL) counts 3,249 people in all seeking seats in Parliament  BROOKINGS notes this is a huge drop from 2018 when 7,178 candidates ran for office.   RUDAW is among those noting perceived voter apathy, "Turnout for Iraq’s October 10 parliamentary election is expected to be a record low, with a recent poll predicting just 29 percent of eligible voters will cast ballots." Human Rights Watch has identified another factor which may impact voter turnout, "People with disabilities in Iraq are facing significant obstacles to participating in upcoming parliamentary elections on October 10, 2021, due to discriminatory legislation and inaccessible polling places, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Without urgent changes, hundreds of thousands of people may not be able to vote.  The 36-page report, “‘No One Represents Us’: Lack of Access to Political Participation for People with Disabilities in Iraq,” documents that Iraqi authorities have failed to secure electoral rights for Iraqis with disabilities. People with disabilities are often effectively denied their right to vote due to discriminatory legislation and inaccessible polling places and significant legislative and political obstacles to running for office."  Another obstacle is getting the word out on a campaign.  Political posters are being torn down throughout Iraq.  Halgurd Sherwani  (KURDiSTAN 24) observes, "Under Article 35 of the election law, anyone caught ripping apart or vandalizing an electoral candidate's billboard could be punished with imprisonment for at least a month but no longer than a year, Joumana Ghalad, the spokesperson for the Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), told a press conference on Wednesday."  And there's also the battles in getting out word of your campaign online.  THE NEW ARAB reported weeks ago, "Facebook is restricting advertisements for Iraqi political parties and candidates in the run-up to the country's parliamentary elections, an official has told The New Arab's Arabic-language sister site."

THE WASHINGTON POST's Louisa Loveluck Tweeted: of how "chromic mistrust in [the] country's political class" might also lower voter turnout.  Mina Aldroubi (THE NATIONAL) also notes, "Experts are predicting low turnout in October due to distrust of the country’s electoral system and believe that it will not deliver the much needed changes they were promised since 2003."  Mistrust would describe the feelings of some members of The October Revolution.  Mustafa Saadoun (AL-MONITOR) notes some of their leaders, at the recent  Opposition Forces Gathering conference announced their intent to boycott the elections because they "lack integrity, fairness and equal opportunities."  Distrust is all around.  Halkawt Aziz  (RUDAW) reported on how, " In Sadr City, people are disheartened after nearly two decades of empty promises from politicians." 


After the election, there will be a scramble for who has dibs on the post of prime minister.  Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has 90 candidates in his bloc running for seats in the Parliament and one of those, Hassan Faleh, has insisted to RUDAW, "The position of the next prime minister is the least that the Sadrist movement deserves, and we are certain that we will be the largest and strongest coalition in the next stage."  Others are also claiming the post should go to their bloc such as the al-Fatah Alliance -- the political wing of the Badr Organization (sometimes considered a militia, sometimes considered a terrorist group).  ARAB WEEKLY reported, "Al-Fateh Alliance parliament member Naim Al-Aboudi said that Hadi al-Amiri is a frontrunner to head the next government, a position that can only be held by a Shia, according to Iraq’s power-sharing agreement."  Some also insist the prime minister should be the head of the State of Law bloc, two-time prime minister and forever thug Nouri al-Maliki.  Moqtada al-Sadr's supporters do not agree and have the feeling/consensus that,  "Nouri al-Maliki has reached the age of political menopause and we do not consider him to be our rival because he has lost the luster that he once had so it is time for him to retire."






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