This is a brief post and it's not an entertainment post. Sorry. If I didn't think what C.I. was covering in the snapshot (reposted in full below) was so important, I'd be taking a pass on posting tonight.
Forgive any typos. I can barely see.
I have diabetes -- as I've noted before. It's Type II -- yea, me, right?
I'm having some problems. I was describing them to C.I. and she was telling me that it sounded like it might be retinopathy -- an eye condition that diabeties can get. I was supposed to go to an eye doctor -- a regular one -- for this to be checked out but I kept putting it off. C.I. found a retina expert in my area and asked me to please consider going.
So I did today. Had the appointment at 4:00. I was told I should have come in ealrier. Monday, for example, it was intense pain after it felt like my eye popped. That's when I called C.I. back -- well, it took me until the following day to have the guts -- about that doctor she's found in my area. She asked how soon I could go and I said not today (Tuesday) but any time after that. So she hung up and then called me back to tell me that I had an appointment on Wednesday at 4:00 pm. '
So I have severe diabetic retinopahty (she was right about that). And I've got some bleeding that's going on. And I had to get a shot. It was actually several shots in my right eye. I've never had that before -- shots in my eye. It didn't really hurt, it was more like quick pokes but my eyes still settling down and it's really sensitive to light so I'm typing this with one eye closed. It's also still a bit ''angry'' -- that's what they call it when it's all red.
I didn't want to go. I didn't want to now. I was hoping I could tough it out through this whole thing.
That's another reason to write. Tough it out, walk it off, most of us are told that over and over growing up. I know I was. It was a mistake tow ait. I should have gone before I was in severe pain. I should have gone when C.I. first started telling me to.
I could've done major damage to my eyes. My doctor thinks it will be fine -- I go back Friday morning at 8 for him to look at it before the weekend and make sure its settled down and isn't still ''angry.''
Anyway, next time I'll try to do an entertainment post.
Going out with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Wednesday, March 2n, 2022. Joe Biden war mongers on TV and the media plays out like an episode of AMERICAN DAD -- only AMERICAN DAD is supposed to be funny.
Fading and senile Joe Biden gave a speech last night. Some have called it a State of the Union address which has led to a bit of confusion: The State of the Union tradicitionally takes place in January but yesterday was the first of March? Since FDR, that's when the State of the Union is delivered.
Old and senile, Joe couldn't even manage to deliver the SOU address on time. He was too old for the job. Age was weaponized to attack Sarah Palin, do we remember that? John McCain was too old, too old!!!! He could die in office! He could die!!!!! That was 2008. He was 71.
In November, Joe Biden will turn 80.
When Ronald Reagan won re-election in 1984, he was 73. And, until Joe won in 2020, Reagan was the oldest person to win the presidency. Joe was too old to run and he's way too old to run for re-election.
He should be encouraged to resign so that Kamala could run as a sitting president in 2024.
He's too old. He has no idea what's going on. His corruption has become as well known as his son's and, as Ruth noted, it is past time a Special Counsil was created to investigate Hunter Biden. He remains the subject of a grand jury inquiry, he remains the target of a criinal investigation by the FBI. Joe has repeatedly lied insisting that Hunter did nothg wrong -- even after the election which was a clear violation of his duties as president. (The proper resonse is always, "I cannot comment on an ongoing ivestigation.") This is Jonathan Turley commenting on the most recent Hunter Biden scandal:
For those of us who have covered the Hunter Biden scandal for years, one of the most prominent figures in his alleged influence peddling efforts is Devon Archer, his close friend and partner. Archer was sentenced yesterday by federal District Judge Ronnie Abrams to a year in jail. Archer is shown (far left) in this 2014 picture with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.
Archer was convicted of defrauding the Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in the handling of a $60 million bond offering. Hunter Biden was not implicated in those dealings.
Abrams was previously reversed after she set aside his 2018 jury conviction. In United States v. Archer, the Second Circuit found that Abrams abused her discretion in tossing out the verdict.
Abrams actually gave a lighter sentence than the 30 months requested by prosecutors, citing the pandemic conditions in prison as “extraordinarily difficult.” The lower sentence may have practically undermined any interest of federal prosecutors to reach a cooperation deal with Abrams in their ongoing investigation of Hunter Biden.
Archer was involved with Hunter as a board member on Burisma Holdings, an Ukraine-based energy company. He was also featured in the controversial picture with now President Joe Biden.
Joe Biden has repeatedly denied knowing anything about his son’s foreign dealings, even though Hunter Biden himself contradicted that account and a key witness Anthony Bobulinski has refuted the denial.
After the photo above was posted on the Burisma website, Demetra Lambros, the VP’s Chief Counsel, later called for the photo to be removed.
One of the most extraordinary exchanges found in Hunter’s text messages reportedly dealt with Archer complaining that he was arrested by Biden “appointees.” According to press accounts, Hunter Biden responded by assuring him that he was covered and “family” [. . .]
Here's Joseph Kishore (WSWS) on Joe's embarrassing SOU speech:
US President Joe Biden delivered his annual “State of the Union” address on Tuesday evening. His speech, as could be expected, was full of lies and self-delusions, punctuated by standing applause from the assembled members of Congress.
Biden’s State of the Union was the first to begin with foreign policy since George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” speech in 2002, twenty years ago. Bush spoke in the aftermath of the US invasion of Afghanistan and in the run-up to the war against Iraq. Biden spoke in the midst of an escalating campaign against Russia over Ukraine.
What emerges from the speech above all else is that the drive for war against Russia, along with the extreme bellicosity coming out of the Biden administration and the media, is motivated more than anything else by the social and political crisis within the United States.
“Last year, COVID-19 kept us apart,” Biden began his remarks. “This year, we are finally together again. Tonight, we meet as Democrats, Republicans and Independents. But most importantly, as Americans.” He concluded his speech with an impromptu statement, not included in the official transcript put out by the White House: “Go get him.”
One cannot help but ask, if it were not for the crisis in Ukraine, how would Biden have begun his speech? Perhaps by asking for a moment of silence to honor the memory of 1 million Americans who have died from COVID-19? The pandemic, which has dominated the lives of the entire world’s population over the past two years, was relegated to a minor issue.
I don't care enough about Joe Biden nad his lies to spend two days on that nonsense speech last night. Meaning? I don't ahe time to nurture and feed you, Green Party. Get your sh**ty act together. Last night they delivered a live response to Biden. Most Americans didn't even know about it. Because people will be talking about Joe's speech this morning, it could get some attention if it was posted.
If it was posted.
There's no excuse for this nonsense. It's still not up. It didn't need editing, it just needed posting. Stop wasting people's tiem. If you're not going to work to be a real political party, just get of the stage.
Why go to the point of making a response video if no one can see it in a timely manner when it might actually matter?
I don't have time for this crap. Don't send me it when it posts. You should have been prepared this morning when people were talking about the speech. You failed. You failed again.
There are lot of people -- Sabby Sabs most recently -- who want to whine tht mean old Howie hawkins stole the nomination from former fake wrestler Jesse Ventura. But Jesse didn't run for the nomination. I don't get the hate for Howie. While the national Green Party can't get its own act together, Howie has continued to post content at his YOUTUBE channel every week and sometimes twice a week since the 2020 election. That's how you bild a party, that's how you make change.
Cindy Sheehan wanted to let a bad candidate whine about how it was 'funair' the way the process worked out and Howie got the nomination. This is the man, remember, who slimed Kevin Zeese's wife.
This is also the man, Darius, who inspired people who heard him speak. But he thought he could run for the Green Party's presidential nomination without . . . running. He refused to Tweet on a regular basis, he refused to post videos. He barely hit the road to speak to groups. That's not campaign.
They have no written statement up, they have failed to post their video from last night.
This is life or death -- for the Green Party, sure, because it's sending a message that it can't keep up with othe others and will drop out of the marathon about thirty seconds after it starts. But for the people living in Russia and Unrkaine? It's life or death. It's a real damn shame that whomever was responsible for recording last night's livesstream couldn't have spared an additional five minutes to get it posted after it aired. Again, no one cares what you had to say about the speech on Thursday. You should have been prepared today. You need to get your act together.
Sarah Abdallah Tweets:
In her weekly coluymn at BLACK AGENDA REPORT, Margaret Kimberley observes:
By now everyone knows that Ukraine’s flag is blue and yellow. It is impossible to miss as the Empire State Building in New York, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris have all been bathed in those colors. Nearly every city and town across the United States has followed suit and politicians ranging from local legislators to members of congress shout “Stand with Ukraine!” at every opportunity.
Yet it must be pointed out that those blue and yellow motifs and pleas for solidarity are all about white supremacy. Ukraine is upheld as a bastion of “civilization” which is supposed to put it off limits for war and suffering. The quiet part is now being spoken out loud. We are told that Ukrainians are more deserving of concern because they are Europeans.
Ukraine’s deputy chief prosecutor said as much in a BBC interview. “It is very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed…" He wasn’t alone in his assessment. An NBC reporter was asked why Poland was willing to admit Ukrainians even as it turned away other refugees. "Just to put it bluntly, these are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees from neighboring Ukraine. That, quite frankly, is part of it. These are Christians, they are white, they're ... um... very similar to the people that live in Poland.”
CBS followed suit, "This isn't a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan who has seen conflict rage for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European - I have to choose those words carefully - city where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it was going to happen."
The narrative that only white people deserve peace and security is all the more shameful because the global south suffers from war and privation as a direct result of US/NATO actions. It is NATO that destroyed the nation of Libya, NATO which attempted to do the same in Syria, NATO that occupied Afghanistan, NATO which wages war across African countries with US, French and British troops deployed across the continent. The white world causes suffering and then says that the people of the global south are “uncivilized” with no rights that need to be respected.
A Watson Institute of Brown University study showed that more than 37 million people in North Africa, Western and Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa have been displaced by the US and its allies since 2001. The humanitarian disasters begun years ago are ongoing, as refugees use the Mediterranean and even the US border with Mexico as points of escape. After experiencing wars of aggression these nations are then subjected to punishment as the United States steals Afghanistan’s assets and keeps Syria under the thumb of Caesar Sanctions. These thefts cause more suffering and even death as nations are robbed of the ability to care for their people. Who is civilized and who is not?
Over the weekend, the media couldn't help sporting its racism and making it clear that the push for this war was about racism. The whole thing played out like Genevieve Vavance on AMERICAN DAD>
This isn't some ugly kid who went missing, no. This is a person who matters.
The biggest news of the past week has been Russia's invasion of Ukraine amid strong condemnation from the rest of the world. As news channels scrambled to provide round-the-clock coverage of the crisis, many people have pointed out "racism" in the way reports are presented.
Some Twitter users have alleged that media coverage for the Middle East, Asian and African conflict zones does not receive as much footage as the European conflict.
A Twitter thread by journalist Alan MacLeod detailed some of the instances of "racist" media coverage of the Ukraine crisis. The thread points out shocking terms used by leading news organizations including BBC, CBS News, Al Jazeera, BFM TV, The Daily Telegraph, and the ITS (UK).
On BBC News, Ukraine’s deputy chief prosecutor David Sakvarelidze said he was very emotional seeing “European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed every day”.
On CBS News, foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata while reporting from Kyiv said, “This is a relatively civilized and European city where you wouldn’t expect or hope that it is going to happen.” He also said this wasn't "Iraq or Afghanistan" – countries that have been suffering endless conflict. D'Agata later apologized in a broadcast.
On NBC, a correspondent was asked what has changed in Poland since the last refugee crisis in Europe in 2015, at which time the country had been hesitant to accept refugees.
She shockingly replied, "Just to put it bluntly, these are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees from neighboring Ukraine. That, quite frankly, is part of it. These are Christians, they’re white, they’re very similar people."
On Al Jazeera, Peter Dobbie, while talking about Ukrainians fleeing the country said, "What’s compelling is just looking at them, the way they are dressed. These are prosperous middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from areas in the middle east that are still in a big state of war. These are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa. They look like any European family that you would live next door to..."
Black Alliance for Peace issued the following:
Black Alliance for Peace Statement on the Situation in the Ukraine
The Black Alliance for Peace emphatically declares that the conflict in the Ukraine emerges from the ceaseless and single-minded drive of the U.S., NATO, and the European Union for global economic and political dominance. The genesis of the current crisis, as BAP has previously asserted, is in the 2014 US-backed coup of Ukraine’s democratically elected government – and in the determination of the U.S./EU/NATO “axis of domination” to convert Ukraine into a heavily-militarized NATO member nation, lurking on the border of the Russian Federation. NATO’s expansion has been a well-known security concern for Russia since 1999, when Bill Clinton inaugurated the official process of growing NATO’s membership to include former nations of the Warsaw Pact. Today, as the conflict escalates, NATO’s expansion has become an existential threat to African people and all oppressed and colonized people around the world. For peace to arrive in the region and in the world, the expansion of this “axis of domination” must be halted and NATO must be dismantled.
But what is peace? For BAP, peace is not merely the absence of conflict. Peace means the achievement, through popular struggle and self-defense, of a world liberated from militarism and nuclear proliferation, imperialism and unjust war, patriarchy, and white supremacy. Indeed, the resurgence and celebration of Nazism in the Ukraine, as well as in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere, represents a global consolidation of white supremacy as part of the project of imperialism. This consolidation also appears through invocations of and appeals to white, “civilized” nations and peoples and the entrenchment of an unabashedly racist pan-European world. Peace also means dismantling a military-industrial complex that is clearly profiting from endless war and intervention and reinvesting bloated “defense” budgets into education, health and child care, housing, and the battle against global warming. We need to dismantle NATO for the same reasons we need to abolish the police: both serve the interests of capital and empire at the expense of the global working classes.
The Black Alliance for Peace is mindful of the loss of life in Ukraine, but also in Somalia, Yemen, and every nation suffering under NATO wars of domination. We offer our unwavering solidarity with the people of these places. As BAP Coordinating Committee member Rafiki Morris argues:
“Our concern for the people of Ukraine must be added to our overarching concern for those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya; coups in Egypt, Honduras, Ukraine, Bolivia, Brazil; subversion in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba; coups across the African continent with soldiers trained by AFRICOM.”
We note, for example, that as the U.S. condemned the military actions of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, its armed drones bombed Somalia. Moreover, as Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean were abandoned and mistreated in the Ukraine, the 200th deportation flight of the Biden administration sent 129 Haitians to Port-au-Prince, adding to the 21,000 already deported in one year.
To secure the interests of the Russian and Ukrainian people, there must be good faith negotiations between the Russian Federation, representatives of the peoples of Donbas, and the Ukraine. The EU and the U.S. must end their continuous shipments of arms and other “lethal aid” to Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia must enter into serious discussions with the peoples of the Donbas in order to determine if the Minsk agreement, which was unanimously approved by the United Nations Security Council in 2015, is still applicable. And NATO must be disbanded.
A cloud of confusion has settled on many people, as the lusty calls for war with Russia grow louder and the propagandistic appeals to patriotism, racial nationalism, and the defense of “white civilization” intensify. For BAP, there is no confusion. The conflict in the Ukraine has only exposed the hypocrisy and contradictions of imperialism, war, and militarism – and the demand for peace means to fight against U.S. imperialism and the U.S./EU/NATO axis of domination.
On this strategic focus, BAP says once again that there will be No Compromise and No Retreat!
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