He used to be so popular

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




SATURDAY CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O TRIED HIS HAND AT STAND UP AND THE REVIEWS HAVE BEEN DEVASTATING WITH HIS COMEDY DUBBED "BITCHY," UNCARING AND OUTRAGEOUS. BUT, AS THE PHOTO ABOVE DOCUMENTS, AT LEAST HE WORE A PRETTY FROCK.

AS PAINFUL AS THE REVIEWS MAY BE FOR HIM, BARRY O'S MOST IMPORTANT REVIEW IS FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND THEY GIVE HIM "AN ALL-TIME LOW OF 44%" APPROVAL -- "A DROP OF 24 POINTS SINCE HIS ALL-TIME HIGH IN APRIL LAST YEAR." CONGRATULATIONS, YOU AIR HEAD STARLET, YOU EARNED IT.


FROM THE TCI WIRE:


In the United States tomorrow, students on campuses can participate in actions against the war.

Spontaneous anti-war resistance on campuses nationwide. Spread. Word. In remembrance of the students who came before ushttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywKe8ezL8vI May 4, 2010 is the 40th anniversary of the Kent State massacre. This effort is being supported by: Alan Canfora, Alliance of the Libertarian Left, Angela Keaton, Antiwar.com, Campus Antiwar Network, Cindy Sheehan, Copblock.org, Cop Watch Los Angeles, Diversity of Thought UCSB, James Cox, Mariana Evica, May4.org, SB Anti-War, Students for Justice in Palestine, Students for Liberty, Students for a Voluntary Society, The Love Police, The Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity Movement, Tom Ⓐ Ender, UC Strike, We Are Change, World Can't Wait Please send a note if your organization is helping to get the word out and we'll add you to the list. FAQ 1. Where is the student resistance happening? Everywhere 2. Who is organizing it? Each of us. 3. Who is the leader? See answer to 2.

Those actions are tomorrow (Tuesday) and World Can't Wait issues the following press release on the actions:

This Tuesday, May 4, 2010 students on high school and college campuses nationwide will take a decisive stand against the war machine.

Estimates are that over 100 campuses will be participating. Autonomous campus clubs and individual activists have been mobilizing with no central organizing committee, in what has been described as a leaderless and spontaneous anti-war resistance.

With so many older anti-war liberals still hypnotized by Obama, students feel it is up to them push the movement full speed ahead.

"Things are really starting to spike," says Nicholas Di Masi, a third year World History major, who earlier this year was struck by Karl Rove's get-away car as students chased the former Bush advisor from UC Santa Barbara's campus. "Today I went to a rally about SB 1070, and for the first time in a while I found myself amongst students who were also passionate about resisting Obama's wars and fighting the police state." When asked what she thought about students' May 4th resistance, Emma Kaplan of World Can't Wait remarked, "I think the May 4th resistance should be the beginning of putting the government on notice, to send it the message that With or Without You, We Will Stop These Wars. Students need to be part of a sustained movement of protest that doesn't back down, give up, or go away until the powers that be are forced to respond." As a national student coordinator Kaplan observes that "there are some students who are unsatisfied with the world as it is, recognizing that the things they would like to change could never be changed with Obama as president. At the same time, many students have also started to accept crimes under Obama that they would have opposed under Bush." Some students are beginning to take action into their own hands rather than depending on presidents and politicians. We Are Change, a decentralized peace movement with many student members, has recently come to something of a forefront in this new breed of student activism. "It's up to this generation to carry the anti-establishment spirit of the 60's and 70's to new heights," said one member. "This is the same establishment that dropped atomic bombs and agent orange on unsuspecting women and children, it is the same establishment that now murders innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Voting in a new front man for the establishment is clearly not going to change anything." Another member added, "I've found that many students are on the lookout for fearmongering or manufactured crises that could be used by the state to lure us into a war with Iran. Today's students also have the advantage of open communication online, where one person's activism could reach thousands without being spun by mainstream media outlets."Noor Aljawad, a first year Sociology and Middle East Studies major who plans to join students on the 4th, believes that one of the changes Obama made was to expand Bush's wars. "There is little difference in the foreign policy of democrats and republicans. Like Bush, Obama is a corporatist acting in the interests of oligarchical financiers. May 4th should be a message to Obama that our dissent is going to continue until these imperialistic wars are ended."Whether it's escalating the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, continuing the criminal occupation of Iraq, or working toward an attack on Iran -- many students have had enough with George W. Obama's warmongering. May 4th, 2010 marks the 40th anniversary of the Kent State massacre, when 13 unarmed students were gunned down by the national guard for protesting the Vietnam war. In remembrance of them, we fight on. This effort is being supported by:
Alan Canfora, Alliance of the Libertarian Left, Angela Keaton, Antiwar.com, Campus Antiwar Network, Cindy Sheehan, Copblock.org, Cop Watch Los Angeles, Diversity of Thought UCSB, James Cox, Mariana Evica, May4.org, SB Anti-War, Students for Justice in Palestine, Students for Liberty, Students for a Voluntary Society, The Love Police, The Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity Movement, Tom Ender, UC Strike, We Are Change, World Can't Wait.


On the most recent Inside Iraq (Al Jazeera, began airing Friday), Jasim al-Azawi explored the increase in violence with his guests State of Law MP Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani and Professor Sami Ramadani.



Jasim al-Azawi: Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani, for a long time, almost two years, the prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki kept saying, "I am the man of security, I was able to achieve security for Iraq." And yet, over the past few months, and as recent as the last two months, we have seen spectacular operations, bombings, explosions, people in the hundreds are dying. How do you explain the failure of the Iraqi government despite the huge army and the police to stem the tide of violence?

Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani: Thank you. Actually, I believe that Iraq had passed through more difficult time of terrorism and atrocity and it would be easier even to now to overcome this hurdle simply because the security now more equipped, better trained and more ready to deal with the more violence of the terrorists and the al Qaeda and the al Qaeda from the Sunni gangs -- they have all gathered their own power and they are trying their own best to destroy the political process by own means and methods; however, they failed badly though they have succeeded here and there. But the exagerration of some media about the violence --

Jasim al-Azawi: Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani, we saw horrific images, people in the hundreds, buildings are destroyed and operations left and right all over Baghdad and other provinces in Iraq so how can you just diminish, how can you just dismiss this as these are just operations here and there? People in the hundreds, I am telling you, they are dead.

Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani: Well we know I am in Iraq, yesterday I was in Baghdad. There was [. . .] only one person unfortunately murdered and ten injured and the media had -- had really exaggerated badly about the number of people dead. Only in Baghdad now. Maybe some small and terrorist attack in Ramadi or Mosul. The rest of Iraq? The south is very peaceful. We know very clear that it is the media and the politicians and agenda -- hidden agenda behind bigger propaganda to really topple the political process --

Jasim al-Azaqi: So you keep saying. You are repeating yourself again. Let me go to Sami Ramadani

Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani: -- I am there and anyone --

Jasim al-Azaqi: Fine, I see you are in Basra

Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani: -- exactly in Iraq.

Jasim al-Azaqi: Sami Ramadani, listening --

Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani: I --

Jasim al-Azaqi: Hold on just a second please. Listening to Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani, there is nothing go on in Iraq. No deaths. No destruction. No spectacular operations. This is just a propaganda by the media. Every thing is calm and cool and collected in Iraq.

Sami Ramadani: Well the answer to that is simple. Ask ordinary Iraqis in the streets -- whether in Baghdad or whever -- and one of the first things they mention apart from the collapse of the services to their homes and to their streets, they mention the question of security. So it's really the Iraqi people who are raising that to the top of their agenda as one of the things they have been lacking, lack of security for their families, for their children. And I think one has to also realize that these problems are probably even bigger than Maliki and the government. And I can cite three very important reasons as to why the question of violence is not going away from Iraq. One is the squabbles within the political groupings of the so-called political process. Second is the fragmentation of the Iraqi state since the occupation of Iraq. And third, and the most important reason perhaps, is the occupation itself which is rather absent now in the dialogue and squabbles and quarrels between the various political forces within the -- within the political process or the official process. And I think these underlying reasons are the ones that the Iraqi government and the political opposition to it from within the political process are forgetting or are trying to avoid talking about because they themselves are involved in this defragmentation process accepting the occupation as a normality and so on and so forth.

Jasim al-Azaqi: Before we discuss one or two or three of these items that you brought to the table, Sami Ramadani, let me go back to Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani and tell him on a personal level, to be honest with you, I am surprised and shocked with your cavalier attitude towards this violence. You are dismissing it as nothing more than a propaganda and nothing more than a media. On a personal level, it's not a good reflection on you, on your party, on your prime minister. Actually, they took you to task when it came to the elections, simply because of the failure to stem the tide of violence.

Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani: When a terrorist waging a war against Iraq, we know what they are up to. They use all -- they use all the resources except especially the propaganda of the media. I didn't say there was no violence. I said we overcome many difficult period more worse violence. And we believe, as compared to two years ago, was the sectarian killing in the street, was everybody, every day, there was more than 100 people get killed. Now we have every three, four weeks, there's some terrorist attack. They're not insurgents, by the way, they're terrorists. And we know there are terrorists who are helping them, who are assisting them, who cradle them and we will wishing and hoping now that the media could see the truth as it is not as they want to see it. And that is what I'm saying and here is my petition --

Jasim al-Azaqi: We are --

Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani: I drove -- I drove -- I drove yesterday from Baghdad. Really afternoon. And I arrive at midnight to Basra and it was calm and nice and it is really the situation not as the image in the media. And we need to reflect the real truth, the real media reflecting the real truth. And we try to be honest politicians, not politicians who is up to politician or propaganda.

Jasim al-Azaqi: We are a member of the media and we try to shed light on the truth and one of those truths is the discovery of torture chamber in the old Iraqi airport of al Muthana and more than 437 people were found there. Some of them they were tortured severely They range in age to just some kids to very old men. And yet al-Maliki's first reaction, his first perfunctory reaction to say, "I did not know about it." How do you explain such a horrific torture chamber -- which is fooling the hatred and the violence and al-Maliki, prime minister, his very force is responsible for that torture chamber he says "I did not know about."?

Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani: No, he didn't say he didn't know about that prison, he said he didn't know there was any secretive prison. Nor did he know that there was any torturing in the prison. Because this is a prison in the Muthana everybody knows about it, even the Minister of Human Rights, the lady, she has herself been there and she has said there are seven judges, investigative judges and how come judges there as secret. It is open and we don't know if there is any torturing and we already arrested the people who tortured the prisoners and also this prison had already been closed and the disclosure and propaganda of Los Angeles newspaper had then --

He has no idea what he's saying so we'll stop there. There was no torturing but the tortures were arrested? The more upset/animated he becomes, the less he seems aware of what he's saying and I don't think he's confessing to anything so much as he's not grasping the language. He's also lying and Jasim al-Azawi calls him on that repeatedly throughout the program. That's the best State Of Law can serve up? And what the hell? Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani was in a dentist chair? Or he really thinks leaning all the way back in the chair like that is good for a televised interview. Viewers don't want to examine his nostrils. Someone tell him to sit up straight next time. And, FYI, Ned Parker's "Secret prison for Sunnis revealed in Baghdad" (Los Angeles Times) is the article being attacked. While we're mentioning Al Jazeera, please note that Annie Lennox was Riz Khan's guest on the latest Riz Khan's One on One which began airing Friday. She wears the HIV Positive t-shirt in the interview and CBS News explains the story behind that. With one minor detail everyone's missed. Trivia question to be answered in tomorrow's snapshot: What music peer of Annie's (in the eighties when she was with Eurythmics) declared publicly that he was going to do something similar to raise awareness but then let it slide? Answer in tomorrow's snapshot.

Friday, Nouri's cohort was insisting that violence in Iraq was just a press cretated myth. Sunday, the big news was an attack on college students -- predominantly Christian ones, just outside of Mosul. Sam Dagher (New York Times) reported that at least 1 person died in the bombings and at least seventy were injured and Dagher quotes Jamil Slahuddin Jamil stating, "We were going for our education and they presented us with bombs. I still do not know what they want from Christians." Jamal al-Badrani and Matthew Jones (Reuters) noted 10 wounded (citing police sources) and quote Hamdaniya mayor Nissan Karoumi stating, "All of them were Christian students. They go in buses like that to Mosul's university after the troubled times when Christians were targeted in the past." Carol Glatz (Catholic News Service) quotes Redemptorist Father Bashar Wardu of Erbil stating, "It was a brutal, unprecedented attack. We are shocked since the victims were not soldiers or militants, but just students who were carrying books, pens and their dreams of growing up and serving their own nation. Christians are still being targeted."

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