Cedric's Big Mix: 2019-02-03

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

FAILED NEW YORK TIMES EXECUTIVE EDITOR JILL ABRAMSON WANTS THE WORLD TO KNOW THAT SHE HAS A GREAT BOOK WITH HER NAME ON IT.

THOUGH SHE'S BEEN DOGGED WITH RUMORS OF PLAGIARISM OVER THE LAST FEW DAYS, JILL ASSURES THESE REPORTERS THAT ''MERCHANTS OF TRUTH" IS, IN HER WORDS, "A REALLY GREAT BOOK, NO MATTER WHO WROTE IT."

ASKED WHAT LESSON SHE HAD LEARNED FROM HER PUBLIC EMBARRASSMENT, JILL RESPONDED, "NONE. I NEVER LEARN ANY LESSON. I JUST GO ON BEING THE SAME USELESS ME THAT I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN."

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

US President Donald Trump's remarks earlier this week about using al-Asad base in Iraq to spy on Iran continues to make the news. ALJAZEERA reports:

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said Iraq aspires to have "good and balanced relations" with all of its neighbours "based on mutual interests and without intervention in internal affairs".

Iraq "rejects being a launching pad for harming any other country", he said during a meeting with UN Iraq envoy Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert at the Muslim leader's base in Najaf.

AP also notes al-Sistani's remarks. It's interesting, isn't it, how the supposed mainstream press is noting Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on this issue when the ignored his repeated remarks about the Iraqi government accepting foreign loans, ignored his opposition to Iraq accepting IMF loans and his warnings about how this would limit Iraq's independence.

But on this, they rush to quote him. Some times, apparently, al-Sistani is a newsmaker worth listening to and, some times, he is not.

ALJAZEERA also notes the supposed leader of Iraq:

Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, at his weekly news conference late Tuesday, reminded Trump there are no US bases in Iraq and said he does not accept the idea of his country becoming an arena for fighting a neighbouring country. He called on Trump to retract his statements.

Despite traveling with press on Sunday and Monday, Mahdi refused to make any statement on the matter until "late Tuesday."

This allowed the press to rally around the president of Iraq and present the world with the misinterpretation that the presidency was the highest office in Iraq. (It's not.)

Donald's Sunday remarks have resulted in days of Iraq coverage -- the kind of coverage not even seen when the Iraq War hit the fifteen year mark. (It hits the sixteen year mark this March.)

If anyone's wondering what's going on, Carlo Munoz (WASHINGTON TIMES) explains:

The U.S. and Iraq opened talks Wednesday on a new agreement to allow U.S. forces to remain in the country, just days after Mr. Trump angered top officials in Baghdad by outlining plans to keep a military footprint in Iraq indefinitely to “watch” neighboring Iran and prevent a resurgence of terror groups such as Islamic State.

The negotiations come amid the meeting this week of the U.S.-organized “Global Coalition to Defeat Islamic State,” the 79-nation consortium spearheading the fight against the Islamic State.

Mahdi has still been unable to find a Minister of Defense or Minister of Interior. Four months (so far) those posts have been empty.

Why are US forces staying in Iraq? If their own government can't fill the post of Minister of Defense at a time when they are 'at war,' why do US forces need to waste their time on the ground in Iraq?

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Video of the week

Will you call out the bombings?

Oh, do shut up

Amnesty calls for honesty on the bombings

This edition's playlist

Highlights

"Talking with the not-so-great Jennifer Beals"
"THIS JUST IN! JENNIFER BEALS BELIEVES IN TORTURE!"

Sunday, February 03, 2019

Talking with the not-so-great Jennifer Beals

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

‏Verified account @jenniferbeals

“Connect the dots” Thank you @EllenPage for speaking the truth with clarity and passion. Enough is enough. 

FOLLOWING THAT TWEET, THESE REPORTERS CAUGHT UP WITH JENNIFER BEALS TO ASK HER A FEW QUESTIONS.

FOR STARTERS, IF YOU'RE ALL ABOUT DOING THE RIGHT THING, WHY DID YOU STAR IN A SHOW LIKE 'TAKEN' WHERE TORTURE WAS PORTRAYED AS AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO OBTAIN CONFESSIONS?

MS. BEAL REPLIED, "I WENT TO YALE NOT HARVARD." JUST LIKE SHE DID ON SO MANY AUTOGRAPHED PHOTOS IN THE 80S.

WE ASKED HER IF HER SUPPORT FOR TORTURE EXPLAINS WHY SHE WAS IN THE FILM 'THE BRIDE' AND MS. BEAL REPLIED, "I FEEL LIKE AN HONORARY LESBIAN AFTER PLAYING ONE ON THE 'L-WORD' FOR SIX SEASONS."

WE ASKED HER IF SHE FELT SHE'D EVER ACHIEVED ANYTHING OF NOTE AND MS. BEAL REPLIED, "I STARRED IN THE DANCE FILM 'FLASHDANCE' AND MARINE JAHAN, CRAZY LEGS AND SHARON SHAPIRO DID ALL MY DANCING. I DID, HOWEVER, TAKE OFF MY BRA ALL BY MYSELF."

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

From yesterday's snapshot:

The Iraqi government remains corrupt, remains unresponsive to the needs of the people, continues to arrest protesters and reporters covering protests (as events in Basra have demonstrated). And every year, they train and retrain and then train again the Iraqi military in an effort to get it up to speed. Of course, the Iraqi military repeatedly fails.

The western press repeatedly works overtime to lie about that. The Iraqi military would not have 'won' Mosul without US war planes blindly bombing Mosul -- a city full of civilians.

Andrew Tillet (Australia's FINANCIAL REVIEW) reported yesterday:

Australian fighter jets were involved in an air strike believed to have killed up to 18 civilians while fighting Islamic State terrorists in Iraq - the highest casualty rate implicating Australian forces - Defence chiefs have revealed.
But the pilots have been cleared of wrongdoing, with the investigation finding they had acted in accordance with their rules of engagement and laws of armed conflict as part of desperate efforts to save the lives of Iraqi soldiers during brutal urban combat to liberate West Mosul.

The deaths have been attributed to a lack of solid intelligence on the ground as Iraqi troops fought, with no time to properly assess whether surrounding buildings were clear of civilians before bombs were dropped.

While I have no problem with the pilots being cleared of wrongdoing, I do have a problem with those over the strikes and the policy of the strikes being cleared of wrongdoing. Mosul is a highly populated city. That was known. That was known before the US or any other government started dropping bombs on Mosul to 'fight' ISIS. There were no 'precision' strikes. That's a lie used to lull the public into stupidity so they won't object to what's really going on -- the equivalent of carpet bombing schools, places of worship, homes, etc.

[. . .]

This morning, Amnesty International issued the following statement:

Responding to the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) admission that its air strikes in Mosul, Iraq may have caused up to 18 civilian deaths in 2017, Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Middle East Research Director, said:

“The Australian Defence Force’s latest admission that its air strikes killed civilians during the battle for Mosul in 2017 is a step in the right direction. Once again, the Australian government has proven more willing to take responsibility for causing loss of civilian life than its coalition partners, including the UK, USA and France.

“The matter must not end here, however. The ADF should continue to lead by example by providing the further details necessary to help an independent assessment of whether this attack and its operations in Mosul complied with international humanitarian law. We know that an Australian plane struck a target in West Mosul and unintentionally killed up to 18 civilians in a nearby house. In order to understand how this happened the ADF needs to disclose more information, including the type of weapon used in the strike, the nature of the target, what measures were taken to ensure that the target was a military objective, whether other means or methods of attack that would have minimized the risk to civilians were considered, and what was done to collect information about the presence of civilians in the vicinity.

The ADF has taken a positive step by acknowledging that their attacks resulted in civilian casualties. What they must do now is provide the victims’ families with the best chance of achieving justice and accountability. The way to do this is to release the further information required.

Lynn Maalouf, Middle East Research Director

“The ADF has taken a positive step by acknowledging that their attacks resulted in civilian casualties. What they must do now is provide the victims’ families with the best chance of achieving justice and accountability. The way to do this is to release the further information required.”

Background

The Coalition’s battle to wrest Mosul from the armed group calling itself Islamic State (IS) began in October 2016 and ended in July 2017. Throughout the campaign, and especially in its later stages in West Mosul, the Coalition relied heavily upon air power, despite the presence of civilians trapped in the city by IS. Amnesty International revealed the effects of this upon the civilian population with its July 2017 report, At Any Cost: The Civilian Catastrophe in West Mosul, Iraq.

On 31 January 2019, the Australian Defence Force’s Air Marshal Mel Hupfeld acknowledged that as many as 18 civilians were killed in an attack on a target in West Mosul in which two Australian Super Hornet F-18 jets were involved on 13 June 2017. This follows a previous ADF admission on 28 March 2018 that it killed two adults and injured two children in a strike on Mosul that came to light following Amnesty International investigations on the ground.

Will other governments come clean? Will the US government specifically? Probably not. The US government is involved in countless wars while currently working for war with Iran and Venezuela. Bombing from war planes has always been less 'offensive' to the American people. It's boots off the ground and, in an operation like Mosul, there's little chance of American fatalities since a group like ISIS (being a terrorist group and not the military of another country) doesn't have a fleet of airplanes.

So they know they can blindly bomb an area for weeks, months, in Mosul's case, years and the American people won't pour into the street or even bat an eye due to being lied to that these are 'precision' strikes and that the government of the United States has done 'everything possible to minimize civilian casualties.'

No, they haven't.

They haven't done anything to minimize civilian casualties. As for doing 'everything' to minimize, doing everything would include not bombing civilian areas. But they did bomb civilian areas -- over and over and over.

The US government will most likely never get honest about civilian casualties. At some point in the near future (say, five years on down the line), they'll offer an under-count of the civilians killed in the Mosul bombings -- but only when they can claim some new technology has come along to make the strikes even more 'precise.' They'll use that to sell more strikes.

It's really outrageous how little the media cares about the bombs being dropped. (And if the media doesn't cover it, the American people have a hard time hearing about it.)

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