Monday, December 20, 2021

The lows adults will sink to

Jonathan Turley notes:


Former Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann has reached another settlement with a major news organization over the widespread false reporting of his encounter with a Native American activist in front of the Lincoln Memorial on January 18, 2019. Sandmann previously settled with the Washington Post and CNN. He has now settled his $275 million defamation lawsuit against NBC. Unfortunately, such damages have become the cost of doing business for many in the media in the age of advocacy journalism where the narrative is more important than the news. Having a MAGA-hatted, racist, pro-life high school student abusing an elderly Native American was a fact too good to check — even when it required as little as watching the unedited videotapes. 

The slogan “Our Pride is Showing” took on a more menacing meaning over years of protracted litigation (and the denial of motions to dismiss). In the end, there was more pride than professionalism displayed by NBC in its airing of the false reports and then the refusal to accept responsibility for the damage caused by its erroneous reporting.

Sandmann tweeted that “the terms are confidential” but confirmed the settlement.

Despite the existence of videotape showing him merely standing in front of the activist, the media reported that Sandmann was the aggressor. It was also reported that the students “performed a ‘Build the wall’ chant,” a claim contradicted by an independent investigation.

His counsel detailed roughly “fifteen defamatory television broadcasts, six defamatory online articles, and many tweets falsely accusing Nicholas and his Covington Catholic High School (‘CovCath’) classmates of racist acts.” According to the complaint, MSNBC continued to repeat the false representations as late as January 27th — after most media organizations corrected its coverage.

 

They were willing to smear a child.  That is what stands out to me.

 

And, yes, Mr. Sandmann would probably object that he was a 'young man' at the time.  And he can make that argument.  But to an elderly woman like me, he was a child.

 

And I do not get how we will even use children in our need to scream and yell at each other -- "we" being grown adults.  We should really be ashamed of ourselves.

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

 

Monday, December 20, 2021.  Lies and more lies get exposed -- if you pay attention and don't let whores like Peter Cole misdirect you.



US President Joe Biden ended combat operations in Iraq, removed all combat troops.  That's the lie, right?


It's certainly not the reality.


THE NEW ARAB reports:


Iraqi security forces thwarted yet another attack against a convoy belonging to the US-led Global Coalition on Sunday, local media reported.

Security services detonated two roadside bombs located near al-Hillah on the highway leading to the Iraqi capital Baghdad, which were targeting a coalition convoy, a source in the security services told the Iraqi Shafaq News Agency.


Attacks on US-led convoys continue.  But that's not combat.  No, according to Joe Biden, that's just a big old, silly tickle fight.


Dler S. Mohammed  (KURDISTAN 24) reports:

The so-called "Fateh Khaybar Brigade" on Sunday issued a statement declaring that it will start targeting US forces in Iraq with "painful" strikes.

“The American enemy, their allies, and agents don’t understand the language of dialogue and peace,” read the brigade’s statement, which was published on the Altahreer News website.

It went on to declare that force is therefore “the only way to deal with them.”


That Joe Biden, he brought peace to Iraq, right?  He brought something.  Lies mainly.  


US government lies.  Over the weekend, THE NEW YORK TIMES exposed some with Azmat Khan's "Hidden Petnagon Records Reveal Patterns Of Failure In Deadly Airstrikes:"



Shortly before 3 a.m. on July 19, 2016, American Special Operations forces bombed what they believed were three ISIS “staging areas” on the outskirts of Tokhar, a riverside hamlet in northern Syria. They reported 85 fighters killed. In fact, they hit houses far from the front line, where farmers, their families and other local people sought nighttime sanctuary from bombing and gunfire. More than 120 villagers were killed.
In early 2017 in Iraq, an American war plane struck a dark-colored vehicle, believed to be a car bomb, stopped at an intersection in the Wadi Hajar neighborhood of West Mosul. Actually, the car had been bearing not a bomb but a man named Majid Mahmoud Ahmed, his wife and their two children, who were fleeing the fighting nearby. They and three other civilians were killed.
In November 2015, after observing a man dragging an “unknown heavy object” into an ISIS “defensive fighting position,” American forces struck a building in Ramadi, Iraq. A military review found that the object was actually “a person of small stature” — a child — who died in the strike.
None of these deadly failures resulted in a finding of wrongdoing.
These cases are drawn from a hidden Pentagon archive of the American air war in the Middle East since 2014.
The trove of documents — the military’s own confidential assessments of more than 1,300 reports of civilian casualties, obtained by The New York Times — lays bare how the air war has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children, a sharp contrast to the American government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs.
The documents show, too, that despite the Pentagon’s highly codified system for examining civilian casualties, pledges of transparency and accountability have given way to opacity and impunity. In only a handful of cases were the assessments made public. Not a single record provided includes a finding of wrongdoing or disciplinary action. Fewer than a dozen condolence payments were made, even though many survivors were left with disabilities requiring expensive medical care. Documented efforts to identify root causes or lessons learned are rare.
The air campaign represents a fundamental transformation of warfare that took shape in the final years of the Obama administration, amid the deepening unpopularity of the forever wars that had claimed more than 6,000 American service members. The United States traded many of its boots on the ground for an arsenal of aircraft directed by controllers sitting at computers, often thousands of miles away. President Barack Obama called it “the most precise air campaign in history.”
This was the promise: America’s “extraordinary technology” would allow the military to kill the right people while taking the greatest possible care not to harm the wrong ones.     


SPUTNIK notes:


The newspaper has studied 1,311 documents from a hidden Pentagon archive, concluding that the civilian death toll was a lot higher than the 1,417 civilian deaths reported by the US military in Iraq and Syria and the 188 deaths reported in Afghanistan.
Reports of civilian casualties were often dismissed because surveillance footage was too brief, The New York Times said on Saturday. Interviews with surviving residents and current and former US officials revealed that the US military made little effort to identify patterns of failure and there have been no public assessments that included a finding of wrongdoing.
The newspaper said that civilian deaths were often the result of "confirmation bias" on the part of the US military, which confused civilians with terrorist fighters or failed to make sure that the targeted buildings had no ordinary people inside.


Dog Eat Dog

On prime time crime the victim begs
Money is the road to justice
and power walks it on crooked legs
Prime Time Crime
Holy hope in the hands of
Snakebite evangelists and racketeers
and big wig financiers

Where the wealth's displayed
Thieves and sycophants parade
And where it's made
the slaves will be taken
Some are treated well
In these games of buy and sell
And some like poor beasts
Are burdened down to breaking

Dog Eat Dog
It's dog eat dog ain't it Flim Flam man
Dog eat dog you can lie cheat skim scam
Beat' em any way you can
Dog eat Dog
You'll do well in this land of
Snakebite evangelists and racketeers
You could get to be
a big wig financier

Land of snap decisions
Land of short attention spans
Nothing is savored
Long enough to really understand
In every culture in decline
The watchful ones among the slaves
Know all that is genuine will be
Scorned and conned and cast away

-- "Dog Eat Dog," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name


I'm reminded of the whores and the liars by whore and liar Peter Cole who just discovered NYT's report and feels the need to Tweet:

The horrors of #GeorgeWBush #DickCheney #Rumsfield #CondoleezaRice etc all of whom LIED about #WMDs in #Iraq, ran wild in #Afghanistan, helped create #ISIS on top of massive #Human Toll of #USA Air Wars, unleashed #drones in #endlesswars


Peter Cole is a lying whore.


When we first covered NYT's report on Saturday, we noted:


Yeah, they covered it up.  It was only new and surprising to you if you ever believed that these were precision strikes to begin with.  And if you want to get honest with yourself, maybe you might ask if you believed that because you wanted to?  Because it made it easier for you?


The government lied, no question.  But a lot of us knew it real time.  If you're just now catching up, maybe you need to take a look at yourself and wonder how that happened?


Civilians were murdered.  That's what it was.  It was 'quick' and it was 'cheap.'  And that's all mattered to some.  


Human life -- and respect for it -- never entered the picture.


Grasp that.  And expand that enough to grasp that the Mosul Operation was never about saving the people of Mosul.  It was about the US putting an end to a very visible and obvious failure that went to how bad the govenment that they installed in Iraq was.


ISIS taking over Mosul was an indictment of the ongoing US government actions in Iraq.  And a lot of lies were told to cover that up or to kick the can backwards so that the problems were all in the past and caused solely by Bully Boy Bush.  Bully Boy Bush is a War Criminal, no question.  But the press sure was found of pretending everything after 2009 in Iraq was Bully Boy Bush's fault.  They loved to whore for Barack.  That's how ISIS gets pinned on Bully Boy by some.  ISIS is the direct result of Barack and Joe Biden overruling the Iraqi voters -- who voted Nouri al-Maliki out in 2010 -- with The Erbil Agreement that gave thug Nouri a second term.  


Peter Cole's a damn lying whore.  Bully Boy Bush?  We've long called him out.  The NYT report has nothing to do with Bully Boy Bush.  It's about what took place under Barack Obama.  But Peter Cole wants to whore and distract because that's what whores do.


He can't run with and amplify information.  No, he's got to raise the ghots of Bully Boy Bush because he can't admit the precious (Barack) was also a War Criminal and responsible for many, many deaths.  He's a whore who whores for politicians. 


Is there anything in the world lower than that?  A whore for politicians?  How sad. 

The little whore, please note, is pimping war on Syria and is silent on Julian Assange.  That's a whore, that's a big time whore.  


Winding down, Rasha al-Aqeedi Tweets:


Ok, Twitter. We need your help. This beautiful young woman from Iraq Maryam Al Rukabi refused a marriage proposal. The suitor invaded her home at night and attacked her with acid. He is still free. With enough pressure and international attention, some justice could be brought.
Image

7:58 AM · Dec 16, 2021 


Rasha has started a GO FUND ME campaign for Maryam:

My name is Rasha Al Ogaidi and I'm starting this fundraising campaign to help Maryam Al Rikabi, a 16 year old Iraqi teenager who lives in Baghdad, Iraq. Maryam was sleeping in her home in Baghdad peacefully  when a man intruded her bedroom and threw nitric acid all over her face and body. Maryam had refused to marry the man and he acted out of revenge. She survived the attack but her face and body are severely deformed. Maryam's family have asked for help for her treatment in Turkey or any country advanced in cosmetic surgery.
This young woman's life just shattered before her eyes in seconds. She did nothing wrong. She was a Fine Arts student in love with life and colors. Let's do what we can to help her. All secured funds will be wired to her family directly. 


GULF TODAY reports:

The Iraqi girl, Maryam Al Rukabi, did not expect that her story would be the talk of the media, after her life turned into a tragedy just because she refused a marriage proposal by man, so her beautiful face was burned with acid, to live with permanent suffering, while the perpetrator remained unpunished, according to Iraqi media.

The student of the College of Fine Arts in Iraq, Maryam, who is famous among her friends as the “Princess”, won the sympathy of millions, after she and her family appeared on a media station recounting her tragedy that occurred 6 months ago.

A young man asked the girl to marry him, but she refused due to his moral character, so he decided to take revenge on her in a horrific way.

At night, he crept into her house in the Mansour district of Baghdad. 

He poured acid on her face, and fled the scene.

The media quoted Maryam’s father, as saying: “My mother and I were at work, and Maryam, her brother and his wife were at home, when the criminal entered the house and stole her phone, and poured the acid substance on her while she was sleeping.”

He pointed out that the perpetrator came at night, masked, despite passing in front of security points, and passers-by on the street leading to their house, but no one stopped him.



Mustafa Goran (RUDAW) notes:


Rukabi’s attacker had proposed marriage multiple times, but she had continued to refuse. Her mother said the teenager wanted to complete her education before getting married, and just saw the man as a friend.

“The guy was calling us all the time, giving us his address, but we continuously turned down his request to marry our daughter. He sent us messages for months,” said Suham, Maryam’s mother. “Maryam's response to him was, 'I do not want to marry'. She would always tell the guy ‘we are just friends, I cannot accept you as a husband.’” 

The perpetrator, said to be 19, reportedly attacked Maryam after learning she was home alone. 

Around 80 percent of her face is burned beyond recognition, and she was hospitalized for months, fighting for her life.



Just walking along, shopping for food
Stepping out of the line of fire when people are rude
Cheap stuff made in China, someone calls it a sale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter
Somebody's jail

Beat down in the market, stoned to death in the plaza
Raped on the hillside under the gun from LA to Gaza
A house made of cardboard living close to the rail
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter
Somebody's jail


And I feel the witch in my veins
I feel the mother in my shoe
I feel the scream in my soul
The blood as I sing the ancient blue
They burned in the millions
I still smell the fire in my grandma's hair
The war against women rages on
Beware of the fairytale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter
Somebody's jail

The noise of elections, the promise of change
A grabbing of power at the top, a day at the rifle range
Somebody's in danger, somebody's for sale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter
Somebody's jail

-- "Somebody's Jail," written by Holly Near, first appears on her album SHOW UP.


The following sites updated: