Thursday, April 05, 2012

THIS JUST IN! BUT HE'S SO PRETTY!

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

IT'S BEEN A BUSY WEEK FOR PRINCESS BARRY O AS HE WENT AROUND TELLING EVERYONE ELSE HOW TO DO THEIR JOBS. BUT, HEY, WE GUESS THE CLAWS COME OUT PERIODICALLY WHEN PRINCESS BARRY O IS FEELING LOW.

AMERICA'S FAVORITE LITTLE BITCH ATTACKED THE SUPREME COURT AND BECAUSE HIS ALLEY CATS HAVE NO MORALS, THEY APPLAUDED IT.

FROM THE SWALLOW AND SMILE TABLE, LITTLE JONATHAN BERNSTEIN HUFFED THAT PRINCESS BARRY O CAN BE AS BITCHY AS HE WANTS AND NO ONE HAS A RIGHT TO RESPOND. MEANWHILE ANDREW COHEN WILL HAVE TROUBLE WORKING HIS MR. CLEAN, DADDY BEAR ACT AT CBS NOW THAT HE'S COME OUT AS A CLEAR PARTISAN AND NOT AN OBJECTIVE LEGAL ADVISOR.

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

This week's. Black Agenda Radio, hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey (first airs each Monday at 4:00 pm EST on the Progressive Radio Network), features coverage of the United National Anti-War Coalition conference in Stamford, Connecticut where both hosts were among the speakers. Another speaker was International Action Center's Sara Flounders.
Sara Flounders: In fighting today's wars, it's more important step is building a movement that acknowledges the relationship between the war at home and the war abroad. It's a big challenge. How dare any US official lecture any, any other country on prisoners, human rights or on democracy. What hypocrisy. This -- this country has the largest prison population in the world and that's not counting the secret prisons, the secret renditions, the secret kidnappings, the drones, it's not counting immigration detention. We need to consciously step back from ever being an echo of the State Dept and their arrogant charges and target other countries. US wars, they rely on an arrogance of empire. Can they once again get a population to believe that humanitarian war is possible? That they're bringing democracy, advancement for women, an end to sectarian violence. We need an anti-war movement that is really, consciously against all US wars. That's simple. And against all the forms that US wars take today. Bombs and occupations, yes. But sanctions, sabotage, drones, media onslaughts, demonetization of leaders, racist stereotypings of whole peoples. We represent here many different political currents and traditions here in this room. And we can't and won't agree on many issues. So how do we proceed how do we stay united and keep our focus? If we focus on US imperialism, on its crimes, whatever our views on many social issues, we will be together because we need an antiwar movement that opposes US war. Consider the US-NATO war against Libya. Eleven countries simultaneously dropping bombs on a country with no means of defense all claiming they were on a humanitarian mission while they target the electric grid, the water supply, civilian communications. Now let's talk about WikiLeaks' latest Stratfor revelation -- and, by the way, Free Bradley Manning -- the latest WikiLeaks' document in the Stratfor files, they describe in some detail the White House meeting that reviews British and French and US Special Forces, units on the ground in Syria, planting bombs, running guns, training and seeking total destabilization. Now that's the truth. UNAC today stands for self-determination and demands that all US troops, drones and sabotage teams out. Unconditional US withdrawal. That's a big contribution, a big step. We can't be making demands on any country at the very time it's under attack, at the time that the bombs are falling, at the time the sanctions are strangling, Today, in the last weeks, we see the most cynical and arrogant approach. Kony. Kony 2012. Right? Invisible children? And what is it? Young people cheering AFRICOM, US troops in Africa? That's the way they sell US wars today. There's a rapidly expanding US military presence in Africa. It includes troops in Uganda, a military mission in Mali, drone bombings in Somalia, political intervention in Sudan, all under the umbrella of AFRICOM. It's blame the victim. It saturates the media and it saturates the mass movement. We need to stand up to it. And a just on a personal level and to give a comparison, there was a time when if a woman was attacked, sexually assaulted, what was the defense of the attacker, of the courts and of the police? It was to ask, what was she wearing? Doing? Where was she walking? That she invited or deserved this attack. And one gain of the women's movement was to say: It's irrelevant. That is irrelevant. That's the way we have to see US wars. That is the way. Let's talk about Syria and Libya and Iraq and Iran and Venezuela and Bolivia and Sudan. US imperialism wants to destroy each of these countries. Not because they've made any compromises to survive -- and they have. But because they've nationalized the source of wealth, because it's US domination, corporate domination, that they want. This empire has problems they can no longer solve. Capitalism can no longer bail itself out with war. The capitalist crisis is global. It's unsolvable So our unity is more important. The United National Anti-War Coalition, UNAC, was founded on the principle of self-determination for all the oppressed nations and people. What do we want to demand that they abolish NATO, we want to talk about march on the RNC and the DNC. Abolish NATO and end the wars abroad.
Yesterday, we noted Margaret Kimberley's speech to the conference. Of the conference, Glen Ford explains:

I was privileged to present the coordinating committee's draft of the Action Plan to UNAC's national conference in Stamford, Connecticut, this past weekend. "This action plan does not just target some U.S. wars," said the committee's statement. "It does not target the currently unpopular wars. It does not shy away from condemning wars that remain acceptable to half the population because the real reasons for them are obscured in the rhetoric of humanitarian intervention. It does not advocate that we avoid putting U.S. boots on the ground by mounting embargoes that bring economic devastation on the peoples of Iran. It does not condone war by other, more sanitized, means. It does not cheer on wars that minimize U.S. combat deaths by the use of robotic unmanned planes or the highly trained murder squads of the Joint Special Operations Command. It does not see war by mercenary as somehow less threatening to the peoples of the world and the U.S. than war by economic draft. It does not give credit to Washington for removing brigades from one country in order to deploy them in the next."

The document demands an end to "all wars, interventions, targeted assassinations and occupations" and U.S. withdrawal from "NATO and all other interventionist military alliances."

UNAC's reasoning is rooted in the principle that all the world's peoples have the inherent right to self-determination, to pursue their own destinies -- the foundation of relations among peoples, enshrined in international law but daily violated by the United States.

Moving from wars to one, Iraq. We're going to do a little exercise first. It's 2016. I decide to throw a party and send out invites to Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor and Al Jazeera), Sam Dagher and Gina Chon (Wall St. Journal), Liz Sly, Alice Fordham, Ernesto Londono and Ed O'Keefe (Washington Post), Jack Healy, Tim Arango. Alissa J. Rubin, Damien Cave, Sabrina Tavernise and Stephen Farrell (New York Times), Nancy A. Youssef, Sahar Issa and Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers), Deborah Haynes and James Hider (Times of London), Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, Quil Lawrence and Kelly McEvers (NPR), Borzou Daragahi, Ned Parker, Alexandra Zavis, Tina Susman (Los Angeles Times), Lara Jakes, Rebecca Santana, Hamza Hendawi and Brett Barrouquere (Associated Press), Jomana Karadsheh, Mohammed Tawfeeq and Arwa Damon (CNN), Trudy Rubin (Philadelphia Inquirer) and Anna Badkhen (San Francisco Chronicle, among others).
That's 34 people. I need a head count so I'm asking everyone to RSVP. It's a week away and only 10 have. That's not a really good sign. 12 show up (11 invited, one not invited). Tim Arango insists he Tweeted his RSVP and since I'm not on Twitter, I missed it. 5 show up just to be kind (Damien Cave, Liz Sly, Borzou Daragahi, Ed O'Keefe and Alissa J. Rubin). 5 show up to tell off the crazy bitch that's slammed everyone online for so many years (Jane Arraf, Arwa Damon, Stephen Farrell, Sam Dagher, Jomana Karadsheh and party crasher David E. Sanger). As we sit down to eat, there is silence that only momentarily vanished during dinner, most people talk to one another, I make some idiotic toast that further alienates everyone present.
The next morning, not even I am stupid enough to delude myself into thinking my dinner party was a success. If someone says to me, "Well people showed up," even I'm not stupid enough to assume they showed up due to some love for me. They showed up for various reasons including manners and to tell me off. I am not idiotic enough to assume that my decision to host a party means my hosting a party makes it a success. Good or bad (and mine was bad), my just hosting a party I invited people too does not make it a success.
The Arab League Summit was not a success for Iraq. Less than half of the heads of countries who are members of the Arab League attended. With the exception of Kuwait, no leader attended because of Nouri. Those other heads of state that attended did so for a variety of reasons but Iraq and Nouri weren't among them.
Today, Liz Sly (Washington Post) offers that "the goodwill generated between Iraq and its Arab neighbors by an extravagant summit in Baghdad last week began unraveling at speed." No goodwill was generated. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was lavishly praised in public remarks by those attending. And some of that praise was probably for him (he was a gregarious host from all account) but some of the heavy praise was just to make a point -- via contrast -- about Nouri al-Maliki (prime minister and thug of Iraq) who got far less public praise from those attending. When you grasp that most were not there for Nouri and not impressed by Nouri, you can grasp that he's shot himself in the foot every day since as he's verbally attacked Qatar and Saudi Arabia. He has no real ties to the Arab neighbors. If Kuwait didn't want the borders redrawn, they probably wouldn't be as chummy with him as they are.
Sameer N. Yacoub (AP) broke the news this morning that the national conference had been called off according to Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi. Yamei Wang (Xinhua) adds that the the Speaker "attributed the postponement to the mounting differences among political blocs during a meeting by the prepatory committee held on Tuesday." The national conference is something that Jalal Talabani and Osama al-Nujaifi have been calling for since December 21st in order to address the ongoing political crisis.
Political Stalemate I (when Nouri wouldn't honor the results of the March 7, 2010 elections) only ended in November 2010 because all parties -- including Nouri -- agreed to the US-brokered Erbil Agreement. Once he was made prime minister -- the main gift to Nouri in the Erbil Agreement -- he tossed it aside, that's December 2010 and the start of Political Stalemate II which has been ongoing ever since. Over the summer, the Kurds began calling for a return to the Erbil Agreement. They were then joined by Iraqiya (who came in first in the March 7, 2010 elections) and Moqtada al-Sadr, among others. The Erbil Agreement found Nouri making various concessions if the others would allow him to remain prime minister. But he got to be prime minister and trashed the agreement, refusing to honor what he agreed to, the very things that made the other political blocs sign off on the agreement.
Maliki had agreed to hold the reconciliation conference as a last-minute concession to the Sunnis and Kurds ahead of the Baghdad summit, which the government hoped would showcase Iraq as stable, safe and assuming its rightful place in the firmament of Arab nations after the withdrawal of U.S. troops late last year.
But relations with Arab states have since been deteriorating fast, along with any hopes that Iraq will soon be able to resolve its own internal problems. On Sunday, Maliki issued a forceful defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying his ouster would destabilize the region. On the same day, at a U.S.-backed gathering of "Friends of Syria" in Istanbul, Saudi Arabia endorsed a plan to fund and equip Syrian rebels.
Did Nouri want the meet up to take place? Rami Ruhayem (BBC News) argues that today "his opponents said they would not attend, and his allies said there was no point."
This morning, before the meet-up got the axe, Dar Addustour reported on Nouri's paranoia and how he was girding himself for a possible takeover attempt. He doesn't name Barzani but, as Dar Addustour points out, that is who he's referring to when he frets that he may be replaced. Nouri fears his puppet masters in the US may be about to dump him and that's why Barzani is in DC. (Why would the White House dump him? Nouri thinks they might move towards someone more willing to favor an attack on Syria.) He also fears Tareq al-Hashemi's current diplomatic tour of other countries might have something to do with Arab leaders of other countries gearing up for a coup. Unnamed confidants of Nouri state that he is preparing himself for those possibilities and also for a military coup staged by Iraqi security forces loyal to DC. (Last month, State of Law repeatedly floated that there were several Iraqi military officers -- high ranking -- who were spying for the United States.)
Does that really sound like he wanted the meet-up?
Yamei Wang (Xinhua) reports, "Nujaifi attributed the postponement to the mounting differences among political blocs during a meeting by the prepatory committee held on Tuesday." Wang's reporting that the agenda was agreed to but some other issues came up on Tuesday.
Nouri al-Maliki is not a genius, he's barely literate. But when throwing out possibilities, it's worth remembering that Nouri stalls and stalls and stalls again. He stalled on the national conference to begin with. As Liz Sly noted he postponed it until after the Arab League Summit. Most of the other players -- not just Iraqiya -- were saying that it needed to be held in February, then that it needed to take place before the summit.
The reason for the national conference is what? The Erbil Agreement. He's stalled on implementing that for over a year. When the major protests hit Iraq on February 25, 2011 and the people were demanding basic services, jobs and end to corruption and to the 'disappearing' of people in Iraq's legal system, what did Nouri do?
He said, "Give me 100 days and I'll address it." He took 100 days, he never addressed it. Even now, approximately 400 days after he asked for 100 days, he's never addressed the issues that Iraqis raised. He stalls and stalls. He hopes people forget or that he can exhaust them. That's what he did in his first term as prime minister.
Others may have called off the meet-up (they may not). But if something happened on Tuesday night to bring about this decision, don't put it past Nouri to have instigated that. It his pattern.



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