Let’s Remember: Hank Aaron, 1934-2021

Hank Aaron has died age 86 (born February 5, 1934; died January 22, 2021) of natural causes, in his sleep.  He played from the time of “integration” (read: end of segregation) and was a class act, beginning to end.  Even when he broke Babe Ruth’s home run record and was showered with abuse, threats, and racism, he never lost or compromised his dignity.

The most amazing thing about Aaron’s 755 home runs was his consistency.  Between 1955 and 1974 when Aaron broke the record, over twenty consecutive seasons, he hit at least 20 home runs.  His single season career high was 47, and he hit 40 or more only eight times.  He is also the all time RBI leader, passing Babe Ruth in the 1975 season.

Hank Aaron’s MLB career statistics, Baseball Reference

I would like to include obituaries on Aaron from the media, but unfortunately all of them call him the “former home run career leader”.  I refuse to recognize Barroid the Steroid Bonds as the record holder.  (How ridiculous are Bonds’s fans?  I was a called a “racist” on one forum for saying Aaron still holds the record.)

Now maybe the Atlanta MLB team will stop dragging their racist heels and change the team nickname to the Hammers.

Face Off: How many have you collected?

Remember a few years ago when Pokemon was all the rage, everyone walking around streets with app, trying to “catch” rare pokemons and almost getting killed as they crossed the street without looking?

I never played it, I didn’t see the point.

Now I am collecting, except it’s medical masks and not Pokemons. But I still need the snowmen, pandas, pigs, and other colours and designs I’ve seen.  Bonus: entering stores to look isn’t dangerous.

Gotta mask ’em all!

Day One Matters: Two POVs on Biden’s executive orders

Who’s POVs?  Mine, of course.  And Beau of the Fifth Column.

First, BotFC:

He points out that many of Biden’s dictums are sensible, inarguable, and should have been there already: mask mandates, eviction moratorium and student loan payments, the WHO, the Directorate of Health and Biosecurity, cancelling the 1776 KKK propaganda project, etc.  The changes to policy and positions were all expected.  The only surprise is the depths of the damage Cheetolini actually did.

At 2:40, he says, “Biden is looking for recommendations on how to achieve equity in policy making at the federal level and root out systemic racism”.  There are plenty of people (e.g. Black Lives Matter) who know what’s best and what needs to be changed (e.g. consequences for cops and NO “qualified immunity”).  The question is, will they be heard and their ideas implemented?

4:00 – “Changing policy” isn’t enough.  Abolishing ICE and the concentration camps is barely a start.  The gestapo who ran them need to be put on trial.

At 5:10, “The civil rights act is now to be interpreted by federal agencies to include prohibiting workplace discrimination based on orientation and identity.  That’s going to have immediate tangible effects.”  Yes, it will have effects, but ONLY in workplaces.  It won’t prevent evictions, denial of medical care, or denial of assistance (based on religious bigotry) that Transgender and other people still face.

At 6:45, BotFC asks why Biden did this all at once, why not space this out over three weeks?  He argues that this is a concession (read: fear) of the most progressive supporters.  As he asks at 7:45, “Which of these would you do first?  That’s it. By my way of thinking, that’s the reason he did it this way.  Because whichever one you do first, you’re going to have to justify what that one is more important than the one you’re going to do the next day, knowing that all of them are going to be done in the next three weeks.”

This addresses what I call this the “wait your turn” mentality, which has been nothing but poisonous in the past.  White feminists asked Black women for their support, then stabbed them in the back when white women got what they wanted.  Gays and lesbians asked Bisexuals, Transgender people and others for their support, then stabbed them in the back when the cis got what they wanted.

The minority groups of today know that everybody’s rights need protecting and promoting at the same time, and not have unprotected people carved into smaller and smaller minorities which face greater and greater oppression.  If “all lives matter” were a genuine statement, this is what it would mean.  All human rights and all issues need to be addressed at the same time.  Yes, there is enough space, time, money and people to do all of it.

BotFC also says at 8:25 that there are some he expected but didn’t see.  I’m expecting the space farce to be cancelled.  What “threat” is there to justify its existence?  NASA and the ESA are sufficient.  And if there was anything about Planned Parenthood funding or women’s health care and right to abortion, BotFC didn’t mention it.  And I hope BotFC is right, that there will be more to come.

Second, mine:

In the “state of the union”, Biden blathered about “unity”, but I suspect he knows that unanimity is more important.  And the only way to get that from the general public is to make their lives better immediately and over the next year.  When those who backed Cheetolini realize just how bad his decisions were, how much damage could have been prevented, they may just change their tune.  The stimulus cheques, the mask mandate, vaccine rollout and other decisions will have an effect within six months.   And when they do, it will be very hard for the republicans to take credit or MAGAmaniacs to criticize.

I also suspect Biden knows he’s a one term president – not because he couldn’t be re-elected, but because at 78 he knows he likely won’t survive four years.  As VP for eight, he knows first hand the stress of the job and that he will probably die in office.  He wants to build and cement a legacy quickly, one that will be remembered (he does have an ego, after all).   This will include a massive senate majority in 2022 almost a certainty and making Harris easily re-electable in 2024 (he is a political animal, after all).

Clinton has been  referred to as the “rock and roll” president, Bush the “C student” president, and Obama the Black president.  I suspect Biden knows he needs to be the Intersectional president.  As BotFC noted, many of the executive orders are related to human rights.  I suspect that Black Lives Matter, First Nations people (re: the cancelled oil pipeline), LGBTQIA people (especially Transgender people and our allies) and others won’t be satisfied with Biden winning.  They all now expect things to be done, and will be working together to push Biden to do it.

Cheetolini should go down in history as the “bottomless pit” president for his never ending depths of depravity and inhumanity.  He wasn’t the first racist, rapist, fascist or thief, but he was all things and more to all the bottom feeders.

Command And Control: Only the rank and vile, but never the leaders

I’m sure you’ve heard that twelve national guard members were removed from the inauguration event.  Those whose backgrounds suggested any involvement in white supremacy or other extreme right wing movements were removed without any evaluation.  With thousands of NG available, they didn’t waste time deciding each individual’s likelihood of being a threat, they simply removed them because they were easily replaced.  And doing so likely wouldn’t harm the white trashes’ “careers”.

But that only applies to the low level grunts who carry guns and follow orders with swastikas tattooed on their arms.  When it’s “senior leaders” with a swastika engraved on their brass, it’s apparent that different rules apply.

The Washington Post reports that Charles Flynn – brother of fascist conspirator Michael Flynn – was in the room at the pentagon when the decision was made not to send the national guard to the capitol.  And the pentagon lied about it, claiming he wasn’t there.

There’s no word yet if it was his decision alone, he influenced it by speaking, or others were involved, but there is a clear conflict of interest.  It should have never been allowed to happen.

Army falsely denied Flynn’s brother was involved in key part of military response to Capitol riot

Lt. Gen. Charles A. Flynn is the Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and training.

By Dan Lamothe, Paul Sonne, Carol D. Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis

Jan. 21, 2021 at 11:42 a.m. GMT+8

The Army falsely denied for days that Lt. Gen. Charles A. Flynn, the brother of disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, was involved in a key meeting during its heavily scrutinized response to the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Charles Flynn confirmed in a statement issued to The Washington Post on Wednesday that he was in the room for a tense Jan. 6 phone call during which the Capitol Police and D.C. officials pleaded with the Pentagon to dispatch the National Guard urgently, but top Army officials expressed concern about having the Guard at the Capitol.

Translation: Michael Flynn knew he had inside help to overthrow the government.  And nothing was done to prevent this.

When Michael Flynn was directly involved in Cheetolini’s crimes, every warning light should have flashed red around Charles Flynn.  He should have been put on leave until after the inauguration.  Rampant nepotism and cronyism has been the norm amongst the US government for decades – Bush, McCain, Trump, many others.  It is farcical for anyone to give Charles Flynn a pass when he had direct power to influence or participate in the insurrection and coup d’etat, something the twelve national guard members were barely capable of.

Refusing to mobilized the national guard was participation in the coup d’etat.

Those who allowed Charles Flynn to keep his post during December and January should be held accountable.  But of course they won’t, because corrupt power protects corrupt power.

 

From CNN:

Army now acknowledges the brother of Michael Flynn was a part of Army response to Capitol riot

The Army is now acknowledging that Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn, the brother of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, was in the room for one of the key January 6 phone calls in which DC government and US Capitol Police were asking for National Guard troops to quell the unfolding violence at the US Capitol.

The decision-making has come under scrutiny as city and Capitol Police officials have alleged that the Pentagon was slow to respond, while the Pentagon and Army maintain they never denied or delayed requests for the National Guard.

In official timelines released by the Department of Defense in the wake of the riot, Charles Flynn, the deputy chief of staff of the Army, was not listed as participating in any of the calls that day about mobilizing the National Guard to respond to the riot.

The Washington Post was the first to report Flynn’s participation in the call.

“I entered the room after the call began and departed prior to the call ending, as I believed a decision was imminent from (then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy) and I needed to be in my office to assist in executing the decision,” Flynn said in a statement released to CNN. There was no clear answer about how long Flynn was on the call or whether he contributed to the conversation.

The Washington Post reports that the Army “falsely denied for days that Lt. Gen. Charles A. Flynn” was involved in the key meetings. One of the officials who was on the call told CNN in the days following the insurrection at the Capitol that Flynn was not on the calls, but the military did not confirm his participation until Wednesday.

There is no indication that Charles Flynn agrees with his brother, who was a vocal adherent of disputing President Joe Biden’s victory on behalf of the former president.

IDGAF whether he does or doesn’t share the same fascist POV (read: he almost certainly does), he should never have been in the position to have influence.

There is no such thing as “an appearance of impropriety” because it always is impropriety. Those involved know how it looks. If they didn’t have ill intent, they would have removed themselves from the situation.

Timing Is Everything: Will Taiwan see a partial lockdown at Chinese New Year?

A month ago, several pilots and crew of Eva Airlines violated quarantine and potentially spread COVID-19, as some of them had tested positive.  One of them knowingly travelled while positive.  Since then, there has been an outbreak at Taoyuan General Hospital, with several doctors and nurses affected.  It is the largest and main hospital in the city of Taoyuan, about thirty minutes from Taipei by car or rail.

Then today the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) announced two employees at a fast food restaurant in Taoyuan had tested positive.  While they were the only two employees in the place, it is located in station for trains and subways, with hundreds passing though and dozens of customers.  The government has done an excellent job of track and trace via cellphones (*), it only requires casual contact for transmission to occur.  (* Obtaining a cellphone SIM card in Taiwan requires photo and name ID, so all active cell phones and people carrying them are easily identified.)  The number of cases has begun to climb again, nearly all the new ones from local transmissions in the last four weeks.

CECC reports four more Taoyuan cases

VIGILANCE: While two of the cases are family members of a nurse, there is no sign of community spread and the source of infection is identifiable, the CECC said

The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported four new domestic COVID-19 cases associated with a cluster infection at a Taoyuan hospital.

Since the first case was identified on Tuesday last week, five healthcare workers — two doctors and three nurses — at the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Taoyuan General Hospital have tested positive for the virus.

Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that two of the four new cases are the husband and daughter of a nurse (case No. 863) who had earlier been confirmed to have COVID-19.

The doctor and nurse who unknowingly spread COVID-19 visited the fast food restaurant in question.

COVID-19 cases went to traditional market, burger shop: CECC

The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said Tuesday that of the new COVID-19 cases, one had visited a traditional market in Taoyuan, while another works at a Mos Burger outlet in the same city.

The two cases were both confirmed to have COVID-19 on Tuesday and are the husband and daughter of a nurse who works at Taoyuan General Hospital who tested positive for the disease a day earlier.

The husband and his wife went to Nanmen market in Taoyuan on Jan. 13 from 11:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m., and again on Jan. 16 from 11:40 a.m.-12:35 p.m, said Health and Welfare Minister Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC.

[. . .]

All of the locations listed have been disinfected, according to the CECC.

The Chinese New Year holiday runs from February 10th to February 16th (Wednesday to Tuesday).  This is personal speculation only, but if the spread gets out of hand by the end of the month, the timing would be perfect for the island to have a two week lockdown, from February 6th to 21st.  The month long winter vacation for schools begins next monday, so children would be at home anyway.  I’m not assuming that it will happen, but I won’t be shocked if it does.

 

Horror Shows: “The Sadness” is a zombie movie with a point

“The Sadness” is a new zombie movie being released this Friday in Taiwan.  I can’t watch movies so I won’t see it until it’s available for download, but it has such an interesting and topical message that I want to see it.

It’s similar to “28 Days Later” and “28 Weeks Later” in that those infected with a virus are still human and not actually dead.  But it goes one further: They retain their intelligence.

It’s also similar to the description of Grunts in iD software’s 1995 game, “Quake”:

Grunt: Goons with probes inserted into their pleasure centers; wired up so when they kill someone, they get paroxysms of ecstasy. In essence, customized serial killers.

Quoting the tag line from the trailer below: “What is the most terrible thing you can think of?  Why not do it?”  

The infected no longer care about others, only about themselves and their most base desires.  It sounds very much like anti-maskers blathering about “freedumb!” and they don’t care if they infect and kill other people.  That’s unnervingly comparable to today’s social and political world.

Taiwan-made zombie movie creeps into theaters Friday

A Taiwanese horror film featuring a new type of sentient “infected person” hits theaters in the country on Friday (Jan. 22).

The film, titled “The Sadness” (哭悲), is produced by Machi Xcelsior Studios (麻吉砥加電影有限公司) and features plentiful gory makeup by IF SFX Art Maker (覺藝工作室). The story is about an outbreak of a new virus that causes humans to transform into horrifying, bloodthirsty mutants that can think and speak.

Here’s a link to the second trailer.

Zucced Again: Fascistbook’s hypocrisy is getting worse

It’s clear that the only reason fascistbook dumped Cheetolini was because the coup d’etat failed, not because Cheetolini’s words and actions were inappropriate.

It’s common knowledge that innocuous phrases such as white trash and fake goth are quickly censored (*), but many users reports phrases like white men, white males, and even yt or men are now being deleted and users receiving suspensions.  Meanwhile rape threats continue without punishment, as do hate speech and slurs against Black people, People of Colour and LGBTQIA people.  Tag groups are being silenced while cops and other undesirables have groups that spread racism, hate and incite violence without punishment.  The racism and hypocrisy aren’t even hidden anymore.

(* Yes, only governments can censor.  But when corporations are doing it at the behest of, to please, and under pressure from governments, it’s still censorship.)

A humour group I’m in regularly used the British and Australian term seppo (rhyming slang for americans: yank ~ septic tank), until censorship recently began, posts getting “zucced”.  I’m starting to wonder if my own preferred term of derision for unpleasant americans – yanqui – will start being censored.  Some people speculate there’s a crackdown in advance of the inauguration, but I suspect it will continue afterwards.

Facebook Groups Say They Were Censored Just for Using the Word ‘Men’

Tag group admins claim that anything even remotely negative about men gets automatically flagged or taken down. The same doesn’t seem to apply to posts disparaging or even threatening women.

If you spend a decent amount of time on the Internet, it’s hard not to come across Facebook tag groups. Tag groups are Facebook groups with seemingly bizarre names, such as “This post is so relatable I’m going to show it to my therapist”, or “sounds stoned and wholesome but okay”. These group names sound like comments so they can be tagged in the comment sections of relevant posts.

But while they may seem to be all fun and games, over the years, tag groups have emerged as a space for people to have open and safe dialogue about the issues we face as a society. Many tag groups are dedicated to discussing everyday injustices in the patriarchal world that we live in, including mansplaining, emotional abuse, and manipulation of the other genders by men. And with its unevenly enforced hate speech policies, Facebook seems to be cracking down on that. 

[. . .]

It was in 2019 that Facebook groups first started going private or even secret (where one could only join by invitation), for fear of being reported, or “zucced” for their content. “Zuccing” is when a Facebook group is invaded by bad actors who post porn or other content banned by Facebook, report that content, and, in turn, get the group deleted.

“I would get notifications from Facebook itself saying a post or member comment has been deleted,” says Ashley Brooks*, admin of another group that calls out cisgender men’s practice of taking up space in discourse around issues that aren’t about them. “We can’t always see what it is, only sometimes. It gets very frustrating, especially when the post is not problematic at all and members get upset thinking we are the ones censoring them.”

While the censored comments and posts reported on groups like the ones Davis and Brooks run were vastly different in their content and context, one thing was in common: They all made references to men.

There seems to be a high level of emotional insecurity by white males at fascistbook – so high that they seem intent on harassing and forcing out all employees who aren’t white.  Except the dollar-per-day people in developing countries paid to sift through porn and snuff films, of course.

 

Miscellaneous Stuff: Humour me

Just a mish-mash of recent things….

People don’t like my bad puns?  Okay, here’s one more, my response to a screen capture posted in a feminist group:

He read it in the Book of Fallopians.

 

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The quoted text below actually appears in a published scientific paper (page 3 of the PDF), from McGill University’s medical school.

Hormone replacement therapy has many nicknames among transfeminine people, including titty pills, titty skittles, smartitties, chicklets, anticistamines, mammary mints, life savers, tit tacs, breast mints, femme&m’s, antiboyotics, trans-mission fluid, and the Notorious H.R.T.

More below the fold.

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Face Off: Has anti-masker nonsense infected Taiwan, too?

Normally I would never repost anything from Taiwan News because it’s fourth rate journalism.  But the video speaks for itself, so this one passes as verified.

On the weekend, a foreigner boarded a regular passenger train from New Taipei City (the metro area, not Taipei itself) to Taichung, Taiwan’s second largest city.  Taipei (north city), Taichung (middle city) and Tainan (south city) are three of the four largest cities in Taiwan.  She claimed the mask “made her cough” and pretended not to understand Mandarin when confronted by the train’s staff – after arguing with other passengers in the language.  That’s never a good look.

What’s really astounding about the video is the calmness of the other passengers, the Train Master and other people involved.  This has been the case elsewhere, even as passengers became violent towards the staff and security on various public transports.

Masks have been mandatory on all public and commercial transit in Taiwan (taxis, buses, trains, subway, etc.) since the beginning of April 2020, with a fine of NT$15000 (US$536) and refusal of service for noncompliance.  Most people entering Taiwan in the past year have been returning citizens.  Very few foreigners have been allowed in since March, all either Asian contract labourers, business people with short term visas, or diplomatic staff.  No tourists visas have been issued since immigration was closed on March 17, 2020.  She almost certainly has been here since at least March and knows that masks are required.  And since she speaks the language, she’s obviously been here some length of time or studied it.

Video shows foreign woman lash out when asked to wear mask on Taiwan train

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Video surfaced on Sunday (Jan. 17) showing a foreign national shout at passengers, conductors, and police when asked to wear a face mask and apply it properly, because she claimed masks make her cough.

On Sunday, a foreign woman was seen riding a Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) train bound for Taichung without a mask. When she was asked to wear a mask, she allegedly cursed fellow passengers, made obscene hand gestures, and refused to cooperate with conductors and police officers.

A member of the Facebook group Breaking News Commune (爆料公社), Rex Huang, on Sunday wrote an account of the incident and included photos and videos demonstrating the woman’s behavior while on the train. Huang said that while riding a TRA train on Sunday from New Taipei City’s Banqiao District to Taoyuan’s Zhongli District, he overheard a foreign woman sitting behind him suddenly starting to yell and shout the expletive “f***!”

When he turned around to see what the commotion was about, he saw that a Taiwanese woman was asking a foreign woman to wear her mask, but she refused and cursed at her. When Huang tried to reason with the woman, he alleges that she flipped him off.

When a conductor came to try to deal with the situation, the woman pretended not to be able to speak Mandarin and claimed in English that wearing the mask causes her to cough and refused to wear it. In the first video of the confrontation, she can be seen placing the mask on her face but leaving it hanging beneath her nose, prompting passengers to request her to wear it properly.

I won’t speculate on her mental state nor make commentary about her situation.  But there are no “freedumb” exceptions to wearing masks as some in the US and other countries have argued for.  If you refuse to wear a mask in Taiwan, you can be removed from the vehicle and refused service.  It’s not negotiable.  There’s no information on what happened next, but either she would have to obey to use the train or bus again, or pay through the nose for a taxi willing to take her city to city.

My biggest annoyance with masks on transit is my glasses fogging up.  Oh, it’s such a hardship to put my glasses in my pocket while I’m riding the bus to work. 9_9

True story, personal experience:

A few years ago, I went to do my annual health check which is required for foreigners with work visas.  While there a 20-something male asked me about the form people must fill in:

“It says we have to be vaccinated or get booster shots.  That’s not mandatory, is it?”

After rolling my eyes, I said, “No, it’s not mandatory.  You can always go back to the airport and leave Taiwan.”

He didn’t like my answer, but since it was inside a hospital, he didn’t say much.  I don’t know whether he caved and got a “vaccine injury” or left Taiwan, but I do know he didn’t have the third option he wanted.

 

Pride Goeth In The Fall: Part 1, from Taipei

I never got around to posting my pictures from Taipei’s pride parade on October 28th.  The estimated attendance was around 130,000.  That’s down from nearly 200,000 last year, but a lot of that is due to COVID-19 preventing international travel.  Some people from across Asia travel here because they can’t have parades in their own countries (e.g. Indonesia, Malaysia), others simply because it’s larger than their own at home (e.g. Thailand, South Korea, Japan, etc.).

This isn’t the lot, just what I thought were the best.  Parts 2 and 3 from Taichung and Kaohsiung will come soon.  Also included are some of my Hallowe’en pics from work, where I still have to work “male”.  In past years it was Saturday night only, but this year it was two days of it, Thursday and Friday afternoons, leaving Saturday free for parties and the pride parade.

First, a pic with a friend.  I went dressed as a purple fox this year, complete with a tail attached to my clothes.  No, I’m not going to show that to you.

There’s more of me at the bottom from work, not the parade.  I don’t know how many pics are too many and will overload FtB’s bandwidth.  If there’s a limit, let me know.

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I Have Been Down, Lately….

Important matters matter, but world headlines of the last three months (hell, year) have worn me out.  I keep watching, can’t change what’s happening, and can’t look away.

Also, the survivor’s guilt is getting to me.  Back in March, April, May, I was laughing about how normal things are here.  Now it’s not funny at all as the number of friends directly affected keep piling up.  I doubt anyone checked the time zones and time of posts or comments, but I’m not sleeping well.  It’s 6AM here now, and I still haven’t been to bed.  It’s like that most nights for months.

For the immediate future, I’m sticking to frivolous and fun stuff just so I don’t implode.

And The Body Count Continues: Two million dead

The first person died of COVID-19 on January 11, 2020.  The one millionth victim by October 1, 2020.

The death toll from COVID-19 surpassed two million as of 23:30 UTC on January 14, 2021.

That’s 263 days from 1 to 1,000,000.  And 105 days from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000.

Tuesday’s death toll (January 12) was a record: 15,999.  Over 16,000 died both Wednesday and Thursday.

The US will pass 400,000 dead sometime on Friday, and the UK pass 100,000 by the end of the month.

The total reported cases worldwide will reach one hundred million within four weeks, assuming no change in the daily increase.

China “reports the first COVID-19 fatality in months” just as a WHO medical team enters the country?

Admits is more like it.  Infections and deaths have been an open secret for six months.  Now that feet are on the ground in China, the regime can’t get away with lying.

China reports first Covid death in more than six months as WHO investigators arrive

Mainland China on Thursday reported the first new Covid-19 death since May as authorities try to control a spike in cases just outside of Beijing.

A woman in Hebei province died Wednesday afternoon, state media reported, noting her illness was a severe case and she had pre-existing health conditions.

The province surrounds Beijing and began to report a rapid increase in coronavirus cases earlier this month. In less than two weeks, authorities have locked down Shijiazhuang and other parts of Hebei province in an effort to keep the disease from spreading.

Last Minute Attempt: Will Cheetolini set the world on fire as he leaves?

I get the bad, bad feeling that’s the intent.

Cheetolini and Mike Pompeo, one of his remaining stooges, are beating war drums with fictions they hope the ignorant will swallow:

Al-Qaeda: Pompeo says Iran is jihadist network’s ‘new home base’

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has publicly accused Iran’s government of allowing the jihadist network al-Qaeda to establish a “new home base” there.
“Unlike in Afghanistan, when al-Qaeda was hiding in the mountains, al-Qaeda today is operating under the hard shell of the Iranian regime’s protection,” he told the National Press Club.

Mr Pompeo provided no concrete evidence to support his allegations.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called them “warmongering lies”.

That’s exactly what they are, warmongering lies, like the idiotic “conspiracy theory” claiming Osama bin Laden is still alive and Iran supplied a body double.  The US and Israel are manufacturing fictions about Al Qaeda leaders operating in Iran.

Iran is almost entirely shia muslims, and Al Qaeda are sunni muslims.  Iran and Al Qaeda hate each other.  WHY would they collaborate?  OBL believed in his own conspiracy theory, that Iran was putting microchips into his sons and using them to track him.  Maybe that’s where the US’s rightwingnuts got their idea from.

You’re probably asking, “How can Cheeto get away with it?”  By invoking a poorly written “law” written in 2001 as part of the “patriot act”.  It was the US that violated and broke the nuclear agreement with Iran, not Tehran, but Cheetolini would be perfectly willing to use that as an excuse to bomb civilians, and the corporate media would likely go along with it, repeating the fiction, “the US doesn’t commit war crimes”.

The Law That Makes It Easy to Go to War with Iran

It is difficult to fathom why the United States nearly went to war with Iran last week, beyond that hard-liners in both countries see political advantage in it. For decades, Iran has been expanding its regional influence by funding, training, and arming proxy forces in unstable countries, and then helping them develop into political movements that are opposed to U.S. interests. For just as long, U.S. officials have called this strategy “sponsoring terrorism.” But, in the past year, the Trump Administration and the mullahs in Tehran have goaded each other into a series of pointless escalations, treating war as a game of chicken that is now hurtling out of control.

Thirteen months ago, the United States pulled out of its own nuclear deal with Iran, not because the Iranians had violated it—there is no evidence to suggest that they had—but seemingly because it had been negotiated by President Trump’s predecessor. In April, the U.S. designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a powerful military and intelligence faction that has roughly a hundred and twenty-five thousand troops, a “terrorist organization”; in response, Iran passed a law that designates every American soldier in the Middle East as a “terrorist.” On June 7th, Trump’s special envoy to Iran mocked the Iranian Air Force, saying that it has “Photoshopped antiquated aircraft and tried to pass them off as new stealth fighter jets.” Days later, the Revolutionary Guard shot down a hundred-and-thirty-million-dollar U.S. surveillance drone, “in large part to prove they could do it,” the Times reported. Both governments practically celebrated the incident as a reason to ratchet up tensions.

On June 20th, Trump ordered a military strike, only to withdraw the order with ten minutes to spare, partly owing to a crisis of conscience—apparently the bombardment would have killed around a hundred and fifty people—and partly, according to the Times, because the Fox News host Tucker Carlson had told Trump that another casualty of the strike would be his hope of being reëlected.

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Eighteen years later, it’s hard to conceive of a metric by which the United States’ response to 9/11 has been a success. The military has become much better at killing insurgents, but only because the war on terror, with all of its excesses and mistakes, has created so many of them. The Taliban currently controls more of Afghanistan than it has since the earliest months of the invasion. Al Qaeda has expanded from a group that had a few hundred adherents, mostly based in southern Afghanistan, into a global terror franchise, with branches in West Africa, East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia, the Sinai Peninsula, South Asia, and the Levant. The A.U.M.F. is also the basis for the U.S.’s prolonged campaign against the Islamic State, a group that didn’t exist when bin Laden attacked the United States, and which has been battling Al Qaeda for more than five years. Now American soldiers whose parents deployed after 9/11 are being sent to countries thousands of miles from Afghanistan, to kill jihadis unaffiliated with Al Qaeda and who were born after the attacks. “The biggest casualty in the struggle against the Islamic State so far has been the American Constitution,” Bruce Ackerman, a professor at Yale Law School, wrote, in 2015.

This is why the joint chiefs and EVERYONE in the military operating weapons needs to ignore Cheetolini’s commands and immediately take away his access to things like nuclear codes. I have a suspicion that Cheetolini is perfectly capable of ordering an unprovoked and purposeless strike against Iran, including a nuclear weapon.    Imagine if he did, and Biden has to waste two years or more dealing with the consequences and political (or nuclear) fallout instead of addressing problems.

When Was The Change Made?: I’m just curious

If you didn’t read me say it elsewhere, I don’t and haven’t watched TV for about ten years, and that includes news.  Nearly all the news I get is text, either in print or online.  It’s only over the six months that I’ve watched a lot more corporate media news from the US, and there’s one very noticeable difference between NBC and any other media (including MSNBC).

For years (decades, really) I can recall Black people saying, “The only time you see Black commentators and Black opinion on TV is when they’re discussing Black issues.”  That was true regardless of whether it was health care, wealth and poverty, crime rates and prisons, music and culture, or anything else.  If it wasn’t about Black people, you only saw white faces – and even when it was about Black people, you still sometimes only saw white faces.

Noticeably, however, NBC (via the youtube channel videos I’m watching) has a large number of Black commentators about all topics – the economy, government, politics, war, COVID-19, etc.  They’re not segretated to only talking about “Black issues”, but about pretty well everything, and not just where it affects Black people.  When did this happen?  No, I’m not fawning over or praising NBC and it’s corporate “liberalism”.  That network is still a toady to TPTB.

However, this only seems to apply to Black people on NBC, nowhere else.  You might see an occasional big name Person of Colour doing news like Christiane Amanpour, but they are few and far between.  Asian people (of various ethnicities) generally only get to cover stories about Asia.

The Modern Newsroom Is Stuck Behind The Gender And Color Line

May 1, 2017

In many of today’s newsrooms, women and journalists of color remain a sliver of those producing and reporting stories. According to studies from the American Society of News Editors, the Women’s Media Center and the advocacy group VIDA, gender and ethnic diversity in newsrooms have hardly improved in the last decade despite increasing demand for more inclusive journalism in the current round-the-clock news cycle.

Nationally, Hispanic, black and Asian women make up less than 5 percent of newsroom personnel at traditional print and online news publications, according to 2016 data from the American Society of News Editors. The organization stopped requiring that news outlets reveal their identities in an attempt to increase participation in the yearly census. Numbers from 433 news organizations that participated in 2015 and 2016 show a 5.6 percent increase in the minority workforce, now at 17 percent at print and online news sites. But the numbers lag far behind demographic shifts in a country where nearly 40 percent of Americans are part of a minority group. Around the country, local newsrooms remain largely white by most measures. [**] (In the spirit of full disclosure, NPR’s latest diversity figures can be found here.)

In March, the Women’s Media Center released its annual report on gender representation in the media (print bylines, internet, broadcast and other outlets). The latest numbers show a tiny change — 37.7 percent of the news was credited to female journalists, according to an analysis of over 24,000 pieces of news content. Major national outlets continue to be dominated by men, and women actually lost representation in broadcast news television.

From the second link in the quoted article above [**]:

How newsrooms can stop being so white

December 19, 2016

On Sunday, the New York Times public editor Liz Spayd wrote a column that cut deep to the bone about the lack of racial and ethnic diversity and the “newsroom’s blinding whiteness.”
She described the team that covered the 2016 presidential election as having “less diversity than you’ll find in Donald Trump’s cabinet thus far,” and noted that, of the 20 reporters who covered the presidential campaign, just two were black. None were Asian or Latino. The six reporters assigned to cover the White House are also white.

At a time when so many people are questioning the validity of their media coverage, having people with a range of perspectives and backgrounds reporting the news is critical. The election of Donald Trump as president revealed just how deeply divided our country is when it comes to race and yet in the next few decades, people of color will become the majority of Americans. Still, very few feel adequately represented by the media.

Of course, workplace diversity isn’t just an issue in newsrooms. It’s something most every major industry — from Silicon Valley to Wall Street — struggles with.

It Won’t Happen Again: I managed to make two accurate predictions

I made a hypothetical/prediction a few weeks ago before the Coup Klux Klan attacked (*): White cops might be willing participants in a coup, but the US military brass would not.  It’s a rare case of me getting it right, never to be repeated.  (* A term coined by The Root, not myself.) 

Video from the insurrection, reports coming out and legal action being taken make it clear that some cops were involved and will face consequences, and not just those who took selfies.  After their return home, two Seattle cops are in serious trouble for their involvement in the insurrection.  Several legislators may have been involved in abetting the mob and feeding them information (Lauren Boebert? Josh Hawley? others?), which should also have consequences.  Mikie Sherill of New Jersey openly names Mike Kozar (AZ), Mo Brooks (AL) and Andy Biggs (AZ) as having led “reconnaisance tours” of the capitol the day before the attack.  The intentional delay to send out the national guard on January 6th should also lead to charges.

The US’s joint chiefs of staff, the military elite, have had a very different response.  They issued a rare and unusual public statement, the eight heads of the military branches stated:

On January 20, 2021, in accordance with the constitution, confirmed by the states and the courts, and certified by congress, president-elect Biden will be inaugurated and will become out 46th commander in chief.

They  are clearly stating again that their loyalty is to the constitution, not a specific person or position.

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Beau of the Fifth Column explains in the video below why the generals’ wording is so important, especially the word will.  In another video, he talks about the. . .travel inconveniences some of the rioters encountered on the way home.  He optimistically predicts any “50 state terrorist strategy” won’t work (i.e. they can’t organize and coordinate a simultaneous attack), but I would err on the side of caution and assume they can and will try it.  Underestimation of white supremacy and violence is why January 6th happened.  If they had been smart enough to take guns, this might already be over.

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With over 6,000 armed national guard troops already at the capitol and more to come, the US military is making its presence an obvious deterrant.  Noticeably (and importantly) many of those national guard troops are Black and People of Colour, more likely to support the rightful transfer of power.  It would take a massive, coordinated effort for the fascists to repel this, but that doesn’t mean it’s time for complacency.

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