Friday, May 02, 2014

THIS JUST IN! HE THINKS HE'S FUNNY! AT LEAST!

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

POLITICO BREAKS THE NEWS THAT NO ONE LAUGHS HARDER AT FADED CELEBRITY BARRY O'S JOKES THAN BARRY O HIMSELF!

IT'S A TOUGH TIME TO BE IN THE COURT THESE DAYS.

EVER SINCE PORTLY COURT JESTER ROBERT GIBBS RETIRED FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, IT'S BEEN HARD TO FIND A FOOL STUPID OR WILLING ENOUGH TO LAUGH AT ALL OF BARRY O'S LAME JOKES.

SO NOW HE'S LEFT TO LAUGH AT THEM HIMSELF.

TOUGH TIMES FOR THE LITTLE SCAMP.

FROM THE TCI WIRE:


Senator Bernie Sanders: Within the veterans' community -- and in fact, the nation both in the public sector and the private sector -- we face a very serious problem as a nation of overmedication. The result of that overmedication is that significant numbers of people treated in the Department of Defense facilities, in VA facilities and in the private sector become dependent upon those medications intended to help them and ease their pain. Pain relief is a huge problem in the country and how we treat that pain in the most effective way is really what we're discussing today. Some people who are treated with a whole lot of medication become addicted -- and I think we all know what happens when people become addicted -- and some in fact will end up taking --  losing their lives through overdoses. And in my state and throughout this country this is a huge problem as well. So this is a major issue which has been discussed in this committee during the last year and we're really glad we have such a distinguished panel to discuss this issue.


We're starting in the US and dropping back to yesterday for a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.  Iraq voted in parliamentary elections yesterday, we focused on that, there wasn't room for the Wednesday hearing.  Senator Bernie Sanders is the Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and Senator Richard Burr is the Ranking Member.

The big news of the hearing?


The big news was about the allegations of deaths.

What allegations of death?

Dropping back to the April 9th snapshot to note this from that day's House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing:


US House Rep Jeff Miller:  I had hoped that during this hearing, we would be discussing the concrete changes VA had made -- changes that would show beyond a doubt that VA had placed the care our veterans receive first and that VA's commitment to holding any employee who did not completely embody a commitment to excellence through actions appropriate to the employee's failure accountable. Instead, today we are faced with even with more questions and ever mounting evidence that despite the myriad of patient safety incidents that have occurred at VA medical facilities in recent memory, the status quo is still firmly entrenched at VA.  On Monday -- shortly before this public hearing --  VA provided evidence that a total of twenty-three veterans have died due to delays in care at VA medical facilities.  Even with this latest disclosure as to where the deaths occurred, our Committee still don't know when they may have happened beyond VA's stated "most likely between 2010 and 2012."  These particular deaths resulted primarily from delays in gastrointestinal care.  Information on other preventable deaths due to consult delays remains unavailable.   Outside of the VA's consult review, this committee has reviewed at least eighteen preventable deaths that occurred because of mismanagement, improper infection control practices and a whole host -- a whole host --  of other maladies plaguing the VA health care system nationwide.  Yet, the department's stonewall has only grown higher and non-responsive. There is no excuse for these incidents to have ever occurred.  Congress has met every resource request that VA has made and I guarantee that if the department would have approached this committee at any time to tell us that help was needed to ensure that veterans received the care they required, every possible action would have been taken to ensure that VA could adequately care for our veterans.  This is the third full committee hearing that I have held on patient safety  and I am going to save our VA witnesses a little bit of time this morning by telling them what I don't want to hear.  I don't want to hear the rote repetition of  -- and I quote --  "the department is committed to providing the highest quality care, which our veterans have earned and that they deserve.  When incidents occur, we identify, mitigate, and prevent additional risks.  Prompt reviews prevent similar events in the future and hold those persons accountable."  Another thing I don’t want to hear is -- and, again, I quote from numerous VA statements, including a recent press statement --  "while any adverse incident for a veteran within our care is one too many," preventable deaths represent a small fraction of the veterans who seek care from VA every year.  What our veterans have truly "earned and deserve" is not more platitudes and, yes, one adverse incident is indeed one too many.  Look, we all recognize that no medical system is infallible no matter how high the quality standards might be.  But I think we all also recognize that the VA health care system is unique because it has a unique, special obligation not only to its patients -- the men and women who honorably serve our nation in uniform -- but also to  the hard-working taxpayers of the United States of America.


Miller is the Chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.  Like Miller, Sanders takes this issue seriously and noted it in his opening remarks.  He noted, "I just spoke to the VA's Inspector General yesterday.  There is a thorough investigation taking place in Phoenix and Richard Griffin who is the VA's Acting Inspector General told me that he has the resources that he needs to thoroughly investigate that situation."

Keep that in mind.


The big disgrace that is the VA's Dr. Robert Petzel told the Committee, "I need to say that to date, we found no evidence of a secret list.  And we have found no patients who have died because they were on a wait list."


Did you grasp what just happened because the press didn't?

I've heard Jen Psaki, Marie Harf, Victoria Nuland, Jay Carney, Robert Gibbs, Dana Perino and many more explain, when asked, that they couldn't what?

Remember?

Pick any controversial and embarrassing topic and what do they say, "I'm sorry.  I can't comment on an ongoing investigation."

But Petzel didn't say that -- despite it being an ongoing investigation.

So, in fact, we now know that they can comment on an ongoing investigation, they just don't want to.

After denying any guilt, Petzel then declared, "We think it's very important that the Inspector General be allowed to finish their investigation before we rush to judgment as to what has actually happened."  But he rushed to judgment when he denied it.

Today, the Veterans Affairs Dept released the following statement:


  WASHINGTON – Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki made the following statement on the allegations regarding the Phoenix VA Health Care System:
“We take these allegations very seriously. Based on the request of the independent VA Office of Inspector General, in view of the gravity of the allegations and in the interest of the Inspector General’s ability to conduct a thorough and timely review of the Phoenix VA Health Care System (PVAHCS), I have directed that PVAHCS Director Sharon Helman, PVAHCS Associate Director Lance Robinson, and a third PVAHCS employee be placed on administrative leave until further notice. 
“Providing Veterans the quality care and benefits they have earned through their service is our only mission at the Department of Veterans Affairs. We care deeply for every Veteran we are privileged to serve.
“We believe it is important to allow an independent, objective review to proceed. These allegations, if true, are absolutely unacceptable and if the Inspector General’s investigation substantiates these claims, swift and appropriate action will be taken. 
“Veterans deserve to have full faith in their VA health care. I appreciate the continued hard work and dedication of our employees and of the community stakeholders we work with every day in our service to Veterans.”


#   #   #


The issues were covered on Anderson Cooper 360 tonight on CNN (link is video and text).

We'll move back to the hearing to note the issue of alternative and complimentary medicine.

Chair Bernie Sanders:  (A) Dr. Petzel how serious is the problem that you are addressing and (B) and Dr. Martin might want to join in, tell me the role you think complimentary alternative medicine can play in addressing those problems?

Dr. Robert Petzel: [. . . Microphone not on . . .] First of all in terms of the magnitude of the problem, several have mentioned it, we estimate that 50% of the veterans that are coming to us seeking care have some sort of, uh, pain. Uh, much of it is muscular, skeletal, back pains, etc. associated with the, uh, work that a soldier, sailor, air man, marine, uh, maybe doing.  Uh, we are prescribing opiates for somewhere around 650,000 veterans at this particular present time which includes a large number of people and we recognize the fact that this is an issue that has to be addressed very directly.  Uh, I would like to just take a minute before I turn to the, uh, other panel members to describe the opioid safety program that we're involved in to try and get a grip on and reduce the use of opiates which, by the way, has reduced the number of patients receiving opioids in the last eighteen months by 50,000.  Still a lot of people getting it --

Chair Bernie Sanders: 50,000 fewer veterans are now receiving opiates?

Dr. Robert Petzel:  That's correct. The five things that are, uh, the central part of the pain management program are (1) every medical center has to have a pain management clinic, (2) every medical center has a pain consultation service -- VA requires the use of, uh, integrative, uh, cam approaches.  We, uh -- And we make get into the details of this -- we require the use of a step-care model which was developed in the VA and which I think has been adopted by the Dept of Defense now which begins with -- in the primary care clinic -- self-management and management in primary care of pain, if needed, it moves to a secondary pain clinic.  And then finally there are tertiary pain services available.  The centerpiece of this, though, is the opioid dashboard monthly report to the facilities, to the providers of the facilities and to the pain management point of contact about people who are prescribing outside of the standard and patients that are taking medications outside the standard.  That then is followed by education and discussion and consultations with the providers to bring their use of opioids into uh-uh -- into the standard.

Chair Bernie Sanders: If I can interrupt you, we'll take a little bit more time for everybody because we only have four of us here.  But I wonder, if it's okay with you, Dr. Petzel, I wanted to shift over to  Dr. Gaudet, Dr. Marshall, what are you doing with complimentary and alternative medicine and is it, in fact, working?


Dr. Tracy Gaudet:  Uh, thank you, Chairman Sanders.  I think you're, uh, aware that the, uhm, vision for health care -- and Ranking Member Burr referenced personalized proactive patient driven -- central to that- are strategies that are inclusive of complimentary approaches that empower the veteran to take into their own hands -- whether it's pain issues, of course, this extends far beyond pain to the many, many conditions facing veterans and our public that are complex conditions where a simple fix does not exist.  Uhm, so I think that these areas -- particularly pain -- are phenomenal places where the VA is committed to bringing more holistic approaches to veterans.  The veterans are finding them very, very empowering, very much an asset to their compliment of what they can do to address their issues with pain as well as others.  

Chair Bernie Sanders: In --


Dr. Tracy Gaudet:  Yes, sir? 

Chair Bernie Sanders:  In English --

Dr. Tracy Gaudet:  Yes, sorry.

Chair Bernie Sanders:  What am I -- What are you offering a patient?  So somebody walks in, they have chronic pain, they're concerned about over medication.  You are concerned.  What are the therapies that you are offering?  And are they in fact working?  These are fairly radical ideas in a certain sense, right? Or not?

Dr. Tracy Gaudet:  I don't know how radical they are but I think that the conditions -- that the therapies that are most promising and are most often utilized right now in the VA are very parallel to the DoD and the public so they tend to be mind-body approaches such as meditation, acupuncture movement therapy such as yoga, Tai Chi, spinal manipulation.  These are -- These are the general approaches that seem to have the greatest promise that are relatively, you know, non-invasive and low risk.

Chair Bernie Sanders: Now I have been impressed.  I have been to VA facilities all over the country and I've been to a couple of DoD facilities and I am amazed.  You know, twenty or thirty years ago, I think it's fair to say, that if we were talking about this list of therapies, people would have thought that they may have been a few folks in California or certain places that might be utilizing them -- not the Dept of Defense or the VA.  So, in terms of programs like the acupuncture, is it working?  What can you tell us about your success rates or non-success rates? Does the success work?

Dr. Tracy Gudet: I think the most evidence that actually exists for acupuncture as it relates to pain, our research Office of Evidence Synthesis just finished a comprehensive look at all the evidence related to acupuncture and it's a very useful document because it basically says where is their evidence for the use of acupuncture, do we know and is there evidence of benefits, do we know it's not a benefit or is there a category where we just don't know from the research?  The areas where there is the strongest evidence for acupuncture are pain -- chronic pain, headaches, migraines have the best evidence.  So it's a rational place to start.  


Chair Bernie Sanders:  Alright Dr. Marshall, if I walk into your beautiful facility in Minneapolis -- I was just there a few days ago -- and I am in pain, what are my options other than drugs?

Dr. Marshall: I would say at Minneapolis, we view pain management  as a full spectrum opportunity to engage with a patient and move them towards healthier and a more functional life so we have deployed various complimentary, alternative modalities at different levels of our facility.  For instance, nurses -- we trained 900 nurses in January of this year -- a four hour training in complimentary and alternative medicine and integrative nursing.  Modalities that we trained nurses in specifically that included acupuncture, reflexive breathing, meditation and essential oils and aroma therapy so --

Chair Bernie Sanders: Do your -- Do your patients gravitate -- when you tell them that these therapies are available, do they say, 'Nah, I really don't want that'?  Or do they say, 'Hey, I would like to experience that.'?  What do they say?

Dr. Peter Marshall:  There's a lot of variability.  Uh, some patients, uh, express a strong desire for opioid pain medications.  Many patients, though, are very open, once they learn that these are a standard part of our medical treatment at Minneapolis VA, I think many patients are gravitating towards these kind of services.

Chair Bernie Sanders: And can you tell us some success stories?  Are there people have gone and they are in pain and are heavily medicated, got rid of the medication and then because of complimentary medicine -- Dr. Gaudet, do you have stories that -- or Dr. Marshall?

Dr. Peter Marshall: Yes. I-I would like to talk briefly about a program that we have just started.  This is part of the VA's efforts to have, uhm, our, uh, Council for Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities, CARF, rehab VISN at each facility.  So we started in January of this year.  We recruited the director of the Mayo Clinic Pain Rehab Center who is now leading our efforts.  So that program, which is just starting at Minneapolis VA, had seven veterans.  Four of them were on opiaids. Three of them were tapered off and one was tapered down. And the cornerstone of that program that's a three week intensive program, the cornerstone of that program is activating patients' innate healing abilities through the use of primarily complimentary and alternative modalities including cognitive behavioral therapies: meditation, relaxation breathing, Tai Chi, yoga and other active -- 

Committee Chair Bernie Sanders:  So you have some specific indications that these therapies are working

Dr. Peter Marshall: Yes.

Committee Chair Bernie Sanders:  Okay.


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"THIS JUST IN! JUSTY'S TROUSER SNAKE TAPS SOME PRESIDENTIAL WHAT!"


  • Thursday, May 01, 2014

    THIS JUST IN! JUSTY'S TROUSER SNAKE TAPS SOME PRESIDENTIAL WHAT!

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

    FADED CELEBRITY BITCH BARRY TOOK A PHOTO WITH JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE TODAY.

    EXPLAINING HIS PANTIES WERE DAMP AND THAT HE NEEDED TIMBERLAKE TO REACH A "DEEP ITCH," BITCH BARRY HEADED TO THE LINCOLN BEDROOM WITH THE SINGER.

    REACHED FOR COMMENT LATER, BARRY O ASKED, "WHY CAN'T I F**K AROUND LIKE THE MEDIA DOES?"

    LOOKING AT THE PEOPLE TREATING THIS AS SERIOUS NEWS, HE MAY HAVE A POINT:




    Justin Timberlake 'May' meme goes presidential

    CNN (blog) - ‎19 minutes ago‎
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    Obama Gets In on 'It's Gonna Be May' Meme

    WPRO - ‎19 minutes ago‎
    (WASHINGTON) -- It's May 1, and that means your social feeds are probably stuffed with seemingly endless iterations of the "It's Gonna Be May" meme. Inspired by the way Justin Timberlake pronounced the word "me" in the 'N SYNC hit "It's Gonna Be Me," the ...

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    PerezHilton.com - ‎1 hour ago‎
    [Image via Barack Obama/Facebook.] Tags: annoying, barack, barack obama, facebook, floods, highlarious, image, internet, joke, jt, justin, justin timberlake, love, love it, pic, president, president obama, pretty. Email this ». « Previous story · Hey, Justin Bieber!

    Barack Obama's Facebook Page Joins 'It's Gonna Be May' Meme

    TIME - ‎1 hour ago‎
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    Obama & Justin Timberlake (*N)Sync Their May Love

    Refinery29 - ‎3 hours ago‎
    ... his people) shared a snap of the prez and JT giggling at something on Timberlake's phone. Never mind Queen Latifah lookin' fly with the first lady in the background, it's Obama's caption — "It's gonna be May" — that wins the day. Post by Barack Obama.

    Even Obama gets in on the Justin Timberlake 'It's Gonna Be May' meme

    Entertainment Weekly (blog) - ‎3 hours ago‎
    But I suppose it has to survive at least through 2014 – because even Barack Obama got in on the action April 30, when he posted the above photo to Facebook. The caption? You guessed it: “It's gonna be May.” So now, it's May. Which means we have 364 ...

    Great Thing of the Day: Barack Obama Has Out-Memed Us All

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    FROM THE TCI WIRE:

    A lot is at stake in these elections.  For one thing, Iraq will need to find a new president.

    That's not open to debate.


    December 2012,  Iraqi President Jalal Talabani suffered a stroke.   The incident took place late on December 17, 2012 (see the December 18, 2012 snapshot) and resulted in Jalal being admitted to Baghdad's Medical Center Hospital.    Thursday, December 20, 2012, he was moved to Germany.  He remains in Germany currently.

    Obviously, health issues prevent him from continuing as prime minister.  So does the Iraqi Constitution -- Jalal has termed out of office.

    So one thing the new Parliament will have to do is pick a president -- a new president.

    They may or may not get to select a prime minister.  In 2006, the White House selected (imposed) Nouri al-Maliki for them.  In 2010, the White House demanded Nouri get a second term.

    Will this happen again?


    It very well could.  Whether it does or not, the White House would be smart not to support Nouri anymore. Tim Arango and Michael R. Gordon (New York Times) report:


    American intelligence assessments have found that Mr. Maliki’s re-election could increase sectarian tensions and even raise the odds of a civil war, citing his accumulation of power, his failure to compromise with other Iraqi factions -- Sunni or Kurd -- and his military failures against Islamic extremists. On his watch, Iraq’s American-trained military has been accused by rights groups of serious abuses as it cracks down on militants and opponents of Mr. Maliki’s government, including torture, indiscriminate roundups of Sunnis and demands of bribes to release detainees.

    And a new leader could lower tensions.  Not necessarily permanently.  But Nouri is the common bond that has created resistance in Iraq.  A new leader could mean a reset.  We covered this in April 12's "I Hate The War,"


    It's also true that a third term for Nouri could result in real recruitment for the armed resistance.  Not within Iraq.  Iraqis who would be part of the armed resistance are pretty much already there.  Four years of Nouri targeting Sunnis, persecuting them and terrorizing them have done the trick and the only new segment from Iraq will be young boys and girls who come to maturity and join the ranks.


    But a third term of Nouri in Iraq?  Sunni fighters from outside Iraq might decide Syria's less important and begin targeting Iraq -- in which case Nouri's paranoid rantings might come true.  There's already talk in Arabic social media about the huge number of Iraqi Shi'ites going into Syria to fight.  At some point, a third term of Nouri would mean Sunni fighters from outside Iraq take the battle into Iraq (a) to defend the persecuted Sunni Iraqis and (b) to force Iraqi Shi'ite fighters out of Syria and back into Iraq.  A third term for Nouri likely means the babble of expanding the fight in Syria -- that so many have warned about and quite a few have pretended has already happened -- becomes more than that.

    If you're not getting it, even the Tehran Times carries an article today which notes, "But the violence returned, stoked in part by al-Maliki's moves last year to crush protests by Sunnis complaining of discrimination under his government. Militants took over the city of Fallujah in the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar and parts of the provincial capital of Ramadi."  The persecuted Sunnis in Iraq are becoming well known in the region.

    Ranj Alaaldin (Guardian) observes, "Fearing that Bashar al-Assad's downfall would allow Syria's Islamist-dominated opposition to intensify its support for Iraq's militants, Iraq's Shia-dominated government has in turn allowed Syria-bound Iranian cargo flights to use Iraqi airspace. It has also turned a blind eye to Iraqi Shia militias entering Syria to support the Syrian regime. These militias have ensured the survival of the Assad regime alongside other Shia actors such as Hezbollah."

    If you're a non-Iraqi an armed Sunni group that wants to help Syria, Nouri's actions mean you're going to have to take the battle into Iraq at some point and confront the government which is backing Bashar al-Assad.

    Voting had barely ended before Nouri's State of Law began whispering to the press that Nouri had won.  Nouri himself wasn't whispering.  AFP quotes him stating he was "certain" of his own victory. NINA has him insisting that 'he is assured we will win."   These remarks were made and reported despite Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc cautioning against people running with their own non-official totals.  The IHEC itself denounced claims of leaked results and stated those making the claims of how many votes they'd received were wrong.  As for the official results, All Iraq News notes the IHEC has declared, "The results of the elections will be announced within 20 to 30 days from today."  Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) offers this prediction, "The post-vote coalition negotiations are going to be difficult, with no one likely to willingly deal with Maliki after the last time, and no group likely to successfully take power without his permission."  Martin Chulov (Guardian) reminds, "The 2010 election, in which Maliki's state of law list came second to the cross-sectarian grouping of the former prime minister, Iyad Allawi, involved a nine-month period of horse trading, during which decision making was paralysed across Iraq."  Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) reports:

    Already, one of Maliki’s main rivals, Ayad Allawi, is indicating he will leave politics before dealing with Maliki – even if the prime minister wins a majority of seats.
    Mr. Allawi, Iraq’s first interim prime minister after the war and head of the biggest Sunni bloc, says the prime minister needs to comply with a two-term limit for prime ministers that was approved in parliament but struck down in court. 
    “What is happening now is lots of atrocities, lots of violations. The constitution is swept under the carpet. Now he controls part of the judiciary, he controls everything, and not only that, he is embarking on a policy of divide and rule… We can’t accept this after eight years of bloodshed in Iraq and total loss of security,” says Allawi.



    On Baghdad's corrupt government, Nadezhda Kevorkova (RT) speaks with the "Head of the Prime Minister office" Muhavad Husam al Dine Al Bayati.  Excerpt.

    MB: As you know the corruption in this country is very huge. And there is a lot of money in the hands of some politicians not necessary only from the block of prime minister. There are so many other blocks that stole so much money from the country. They can buy votes and support from IHEC [the Independent High Electoral Commission which approved the voting system and the counting method for 2014 parliamentary elections]. The results will not be very clear.
    We do not have foreign observers or people who are watching the elections. 

    RT: People say that 65 American observers came to Iraq especially for the elections, is it so?


    MB: What can these 65 do? Can they work on the street? Can they go to the governorates? Can they go to the election boxes and see how people vote and how their votes are counted? No, they cannot. 


    In addition to US observers, IHEC notes that there were 26 observers from the Arab leagues who were monitoring Baghdad, Basra, Najaf, Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaymaniyah provinces.  NINA notes Nikolai Mladenov, the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy to Iraq, praised the international observers for their work today.  The IHEC noted by mid-day that 34% of the electronic voting cards they distributed had been used.  Later, Xinhua reports, "the country's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) said that a preliminary estimate showed that Iraqi voters made about 60 percent turnout when more than 12 million eligible voters out of over 20 million fanned out to polling centers across the country on Wednesday."



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    "THIS JUST IN! TWERK THAT THANG!"

    Wednesday, April 30, 2014

    THIS JUST IN! TWERK THAT THANG!

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

    IT'S NOT JUST THAT FADED CELEBRITY BARRY O'S APPROVAL RATING SITS AT A NEW LOW WITH ONLY 41% APPROVING OF HIM AND HIS CONTINUED FAILURES, IT'S ALSO THAT DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS SEE THE LITTLE PRISS AS A CAVER AND ARE SEMI-OPENLY WONDERING WHAT COMES NEXT AFTER THE MID-TERM ELECTIONS.

    REACHED FOR COMMENT, BARRY O SNAPPED, "THEY'RE JUST JEALOUS! JEALOUS HEFFERS! RICHARD BLUMENTHAL AND MARK BEGICH JUST WISH THEY HAD ALL THIS.  SEE WHAT I'M WORKING WITH?"

    AT THIS POINT, BARRY O TURNED HIS BACK TO US, STUCK OUT HIS REAR AND BEGAN TO TWERK.

    SLAPPING HISS OWN ASS, BARRY O MOANED, "OH, YEAH! OH, YEAH! WATCH ME BACK THIS THING UP!  BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!"


    FROM THE TCI WIRE:

    The most important report today is by Ned Parker, Ahmed Rasheed and Raheem Salman (Reuters).  They explore the attacks on civilians, explain Nouri's use of Shi'ite militias (which Nouri is calling the "Sons Of Iraq" -- the name previously used for Sahwa).  The reporters note that Nouri's operation hasn't had success, not even in the military:

    Military personnel and Iraqi officials say several thousand soldiers have deserted; and well over 1,000, if not more, have been killed. The government has yet to release formal numbers.
    Soldiers in Anbar speak with desperation. “We are dumped by our military leadership in these deserted houses in the middle of the orchards, without enough ammunition, without night binoculars,” said one soldier from Ramadi.
    His battalion has 120 of its original 750 soldiers; most have deserted and he vows to do the same.

    One army officer said Iraq’s Special Forces, who have led the fight against the insurgency, are now taking defensive positions to avoid more casualties.

    In an executive summary of their report released yesterday, the International Crisis Group notes:

    It is too late for steps that might have been taken to reduce tensions before the elections. Any lasting solution requires addressing the deeper roots of Sunni alienation in a country increasingly gripped by sectarian tension. ISIL’s rise is a symptom, not the main cause, of the poor governance that is the principal reason for Iraq’s instability. The government, UN and U.S. should treat ISIL differently from the military council and Falluja as a whole, rather than bundling them together in an indiscriminate “war on terror”.
    When in December 2013 Iraq’s central authorities cleared a year-long sit-in in the city that was demanding better treatment from Baghdad, Falluja’s residents took to the streets. ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) took advantage of the ensuing chaos, moved forces into the city and asserted it had seized control. The claim was greatly exaggerated: while it raised its black flag above some administration buildings in the city centre, locals blocked most of their forays and forced them to retreat to the outskirts.
    But Baghdad had a casus belli: it besieged the city, ignored local attempts to mediate an ISIL withdrawal and threatened to attack. Falluja residents held no brief for ISIL, but their hatred of the Iraqi army – seen as the instrument of a Shiite, sectarian regime, directed from Tehran, that discriminates against Sunnis in general and Anbar in particular – ran even deeper. The city’s rebels struck a Faustian bargain, forming an alliance of convenience with ISIL. The jihadis’ military might kept the army at bay, but their presence justified the government’s claim that the entire city was under jihadi control. A self-reinforcing cycle has taken root: jihadi activity encourages government truculence that in turn requires greater jihadi protection.

    Falluja’s fighters and Baghdad’s central authorities both are posing as the country’s true patriots, deriding their adversary as a foreign enemy. ISIL has benefited by renewing its base of support in Iraq, which had been shrinking ever since the sahwa (awakening) turned against al-Qaeda in 2006. With a high profile from the fighting in Syria and superior weaponry, they once again have become a magnet for the country’s disaffected. 



    Look, some grown ups have joined the discussion.  It's a far cry from the garbage Marie Harf and Jen Psaki swill at the State Dept press briefings.

    Nouri has gotten away one War Crime against humanity after another and the same US President who demanded Nouri get a second term as prime minister (despite his State of Law losing the 2010 parliamentary elections) has demanded he be provided with more weapons and with intel to kill Iraqis.

    The current assault on Anbar began with War Crimes, the slaughter of peaceful protesters in Ramadi.  It has continued the War Crimes.  In the name of combating so-called terrorism, Nouri bombs the homes of Falluja, he bombs residential areas.  Every day in the last months, civilians have died and been wounded from these bombings.  Where is the international outcry?

    Doctors Without Borders issue an alert about the Anbar crisis today but can only muster the courage to mention the refugees created by the crisis, they can't say one word about the killing of civilians by the Iraqi military.  Also cowardly is Amnesty International with their little alert today which lacks the guts and spine to note the daily killing of civilians in Falluja by Nouri's military. Though they can't note the killing of civilians in Falluja, the editorial board of England's Independent can at least call the possible re-election of Nouri "a pity" and write, "Mr Maliki may win the election or stay in office, but more and more of Iraq will be outside his control as the country disintegrates." Even the editorial board of The National Newspaper can point out that "Iraqi security forces have begun employing Shiite militias as shock troops." Hassan Karim ("a university graduate from Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City district") tells AP,  "Al-Maliki has had enough chance to prove himself, but he failed. Iraqis lack security, services and housing. The only two things available in the country right now are corruption and checkpoints."



    A few citizens of the world can rightly call out Barack's Drone War and call out the killing of people whose 'crime' it was to attend a wedding.  What about calling the slaughter of people whose only 'crime' it was to be in their homes?


    Today, Nouri's continued War Crimes in Iraq left 2 civilians dead today and four more injured as a result of his use of collective punishment in the continued bombing of Falluja's residential neighborhoods.   "Collective punishment" is so basic that even Wikipedia can explain it:


    The Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, commonly referred to as the Fourth Geneva Convention and abbreviated as GCIV, is one of the four treaties of the Geneva Conventions. It was adopted in August 1949, and defines humanitarian protections for civilians in a war zone. There are currently 196 countries party to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, including this and the other three treaties.[1]
    In 1993, the United Nations Security Council adopted a report from the Secretary-General and a Commission of Experts which concluded that the Geneva Conventions had passed into the body of customary international law, thus making them binding on non-signatories to the Conventions whenever they engage in armed conflicts.[2]
    [. . .]
    Article 33. No persons may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
    Pillage is prohibited.
    Reprisals against persons and their property are prohibited.

    Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, collective punishment is a war crime. By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings of World War I and World War II. In the First World War, during the Rape of Belgium, the Germans executed Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance activity. In World War II, the Germans carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that occurred in them.[3] The conventions, to counter this, reiterated the principle of individual responsibility. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Commentary to the conventions states that parties to a conflict often would resort to "intimidatory measures to terrorize the population" in hopes of preventing hostile acts, but such practices "strike at guilty and innocent alike. They are opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice."

    Additional Protocol II of 1977 explicitly forbids collective punishment. But as fewer states have ratified this protocol than GCIV, GCIV Article 33 is the one more commonly quoted.

    Claiming terrorists have taken over sections of Falluja and that this justifies bombing residential neighborhoods is collective punishment, is a War Crime and is, in fact, terrorism against a people.

    The White House has elected to embrace, arm and fund terrorism in Iraq.

    And, no, it hasn't made things better.  It has only worsened the situation.  A typical incident for Sunnis? Camille Bouissou and Tom Little (AFP) report:

    Since soldiers arrested and beat Abu Noor, his son and nephew at their modest house in Baghdad's Adhamiyah neighbourhood, he and his wife have been too scared to leave home.
    "I feel sick when I talk about this... I only go to work and I come back," said the 54-year-old, who was too scared to give his real name, remembering the night six months ago when the soldiers arrived.
    Like Abu Noor and his wife, many Sunni Arabs complain they are discriminated against by the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is running for a third term in a parliamentary election on Wednesday.
    Umm Noor, a smiling woman in her forties wearing a headscarf, grew angry as she recounted the incident six months ago, when she heard a noise late one night.
    Her husband went downstairs to check what was happening, and troops grabbed him, his son and nephew and beat them. 




    And when the issue isn't direct abuse, the issue is intimidation.  Jamie Tarabay (Al Jazeera) reports on Falluja:


    In that storied city, once again controlled by Al-Qaeda allies, there will be polling centers only in surrounding areas controlled by Iraqi security forces. That means residents like Mustafa Mohammed won’t get the chance to cast ballots.
    “I’m not going to vote,” he told Al Jazeera over the phone from Fallujah. “The Iraqi army has closed the roads. There are no negotiations happening [for a truce]. The government wants a military solution, not a political one. We want a political one.”
    The United Nations estimates that 400,000 people have fled the violence in Anbar and moved to other parts of the country. Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission says they will still be able to vote for their province, using absentee votes.
    That won’t help Mohammed cast a ballot. The Fallujah resident, who said he preferred life under Saddam Hussein, found himself admitting that he longs for the Americans to return.

    “If [Prime Minister] Nouri al-Maliki wins again, it’ll be the end for Sunnis in Anbar, Kirkuk, Samarra and Tikrit,” Mohammed said, ticking off other parts of Iraq that are predominantly home to Sunnis and have also experienced much violence. “The Americans were more merciful than the government. They weren’t sectarian.”


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    Tuesday, April 29, 2014

    THIS JUST IN! BARRY O'S TRIP GOES SOUR!

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

    FADED CELEBRITY BARRY O GOT ALL CATTY AND BITCHY IN SOUTH KOREA WHEN A 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL ASKED FOR A CELL PHONE PHOTO.

    BARRY O REJECTED THE GIRL.

    "JUST TAKE A PICTURE OF ME AS I'M WALKING BY," THE DIVA INSISTED TO 13-YEAR-OLD MIKA TAYLOR.

    "I DON'T TAKE SELFIES WITH NOBODIES," INSISTED BARRY O TO THESE REPORTERS TODAY.  "I AM A STARLET!  I ONLY TAKE PHOTOS WITH PEOPLE OF EQUAL FAME OR GREATER. I AM POPULAR! I AM BELOVED! DID YOU SEE HOW MANY PEOPLE TURNED OUT TO GREET ME IN THE PHILIPPINES?"

    APPROXIMATELY 800 -- AND THEY WERE PROTESTING HIM, BURNING HIM IN EFEGY AND CHANTING, "NO-BAMA, NO BASES, NO WAR!"





    FROM THE TCI WIRE:



    While Iraqis vote in the parliamentary elections on Wednesday, Iraqi security forces voted today.  The Latin American Herald Tribune reports, "The turnout Monday was 91.46 percent" and quote Independent High Electoral Commission member Maqad al Sharifi declared that was "the highest registered since the commission was created in 2005."  Al-Shorfa quotes IHEC spokesperson Aziz al-Khaikany stating, "More than one million Iraqi soldiers and policemen this morning went to 534 election centres around the country to choose their representatives as part of the early voting for members of the security forces, who will be busy Wednesday securing citizens' voting."


    Press TV has a video report here. Al Arabiya News has an AFP photo essay here. Loveday Morris (Washington Post) adds that "prisoners and hospital patients and staff members" also voted today.


    Iraqi refugees are also voting outside the country and many voted yesterday. Today, in Iraq, the security forces are voting.   What's at stake? Osama al-Khafaji and Ghassan Hamid (Alsumaria) have noted that there are over 9000 candidates competing for 328 seats.


    Alice Fordham continues her streak of worst reporting this month.  Having falsely declared on NPR most recently that Anbar Province wouldn't be voting, Alice latest report is an online number and didn't make the broadcast.  In it, she writes:

    Maliki's critics say he has authoritarian tendencies, using the security forces and the judiciary to sideline his enemies. In addition, his rivals say he has a harsh sectarian streak that favors the Shiite majority over Sunni Muslims and other minorities. But a lot of Iraqis keep voting for him. 

    How many, Alice, how many vote for him?  You're working for a US outlet -- for the moment, anyway.  And you damn well know most Americans don't have a clue about a parliamentary system.  Reality, less than one million will vote for Nouri al-Maliki.  Prime Minister isn't a position on the ballot.  Nouri's name only appears on the ballots in his district.


    Nouri al-Maliki wants a third term.  Apparently using his second term to tear apart the country and increase violence wasn't enough for him. But all of the third term talk confuses a number of people in the US.  Nouri is running for the Parliament.  That's what these elections are and that's why they're called parliamentary elections. He has campaigned outside of Baghdad for others in his State of Law.  He campaigned, for example, this month is Basra.  And Moqtada al-Sadr's supporters staged a very prominent protest against him while he was in Basra.  But Nouri's name won't appear on ballots in Basra.

    Confusion weighs heavily and there's no effort made to explain.  Explaining might require telling truths and it's much more important to lie to the people and to pimp Nouri as a sure thing.

    For example, listen to what the International Crisis Group's Maria Fantappie tells John Beck (The Vice):

    “The security situation there will not allow many to reach the polling stations,” she said, “and those who do will be risking their lives.”
    A lack of international observers might mean that those do attempt to participate won’t be voting in a free and fair environment. Fantappie believes this underscores a wider issue: a growing lack of trust in the electoral process, especially in Sunni-populated areas.
    “The big difference between this election and the elections in 2010 is that since then, a large portion of the Iraqi population, especially in Sunni populated areas, don’t trust the political process and don’t see the elections as something which can really reshape the power balance in the central government institutions,” she said.

    Huh.  Do people read that and think that's an explanation?  Or complete in any form?

    She ends stating, "The big difference between this election and the elections in 2010 is that since then, a large portion of the Iraqi population, especially in Sunni populated areas, don’t trust the political process and don’t see the elections as something which can really reshape the power balance in the central government institutions."

    That's a conclusion?

    Hell no.

    Why does "a large portion of the Iraqi population" not "trust the political process" and not "see the elections as something which can really reshape the power balance in the central government institutions"?

    Those comments beg an answer and none is provided.

    What happened was a country new to democracy turned out in March 2010 to vote and they voted for Iraqiya in enough numbers to allow this new coalition headed by Ayad Allawi to beat the incumbent prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law.

    If you'd risked your life to vote in 2010, chances are you weren't thrilled to see your vote rejected.

    We're going to review but first let's review how they lie because the press lies so damn much.

    Here's Mohamad Ali Harissi (AFP) pretending to explain how the loser -- Nouri, always Nouri, his whole damn life he's been a loser -- ended up remaining prime minister:


    The landscape for the April 30 election differs markedly from 2010, when Maliki faced off with Shiite ex-premier Iyad Allawi, who at the time headed a secular Sunni-backed coalition.
    Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc narrowly edged out Maliki, but the incumbent still managed to maneuver to secure the premiership by winning the backing of powerful neighbor Iran and allying with other Shiite parties after the election.
    Iraqiya has since fractured into multiple factions and Maliki’s principal Shiite rival in the 2010 polls has also broken down into several blocs.


     
    That's a bit of lie.  First, let's deal with the "multiple factions."  People are lying and saying this is something it's not.  The political parties, this is what it is, feel that smaller parties and blocs were given greater weight in the 2010 voting and had more power in the eight-month plus political stalemate that followed the 2010 elections.  I thought Nouri was losing his hold last week when we highlighted Reidar Visser's analysis arguing that.  We highlighted it, however, because Iraqiya has been slammed by the press, insulted, said to be kaput because they had broken into smaller groups.

    But since then, two analysts have explained to me on the phone that this is not a sign of breaking up so much as it it's the various political blocs attempting to game the system for the post-election battle.

    Now let's deal with the other thing, the whole lie that Nouri was able "to secure the premiership by winning the backing of powerful neighbor Iran and allying with other Shiite parties after the election."

    I don't know why you'd lie about this at AFP unless you felt France was so tiny and insignificant that it couldn't publicly take on the US government.

    Is that the issue?

    Are AFP and Mohamad Ali Harissi so scared of the US government?  Poor little babies, poor little lying cry babies.




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