Oh Boy It Never Ends: The faded and fading (Idris Elba and Rosario Dawson)

Idris Elba has been in dozens of hit films, but the role he gets asked about most is one he never played.

“I’m not gonna lie,” he said in the most recent episode of The Shop podcast, which is exec produced by LeBron James and Maverick Carter, “every corner of the world I go — and I’m talking about different cultures — they always go: ‘Bond!'” Elba said pointing his finger in imitation of a fan.

And Elba, despite years of queries, is still willing to address speculation about the role.

“It is not a goal for my career,” the actor said bluntly. “I don’t think that, you know, playing Bond will satisfy some of my personal goals.”

I used to like Idris. He's a failure now and that's sad. I've covered this in "Weekend box office" and other posts. He had two films come out in the last weeks. He was the lead in both. They flopped.

He's never carried a hit film. He's usually fourth billed or lower. See Betty's "Shut up, Idris Elba, racism has driven your career in the US."

Sorry, loser, you're too damn old. You're too old to become a movie star and you're damn well too old to play James Bond. Fifty. You'll be fifty before the year ends.

Daniel Craig was 51 when he filmed what was already known to be his last Bond film -- NO TIME TO DIE.

Daniel was seen as getting too old for the role at 51.

You'd have to be stupid to reboot the franchise with some 50 years old. Let alone someone who is a nobody.

Idris b.s. that Betty called out? It's why I'm done with him.

As an African-American man, I'm damn sick of the limited film roles for African-American men being grabbed by Blacks for Britain. I'm sick of it. The only thing that makes me sicker is when they refuse to be honest that they're getting these roles because of racism. From Ava and C.I.'s "TV: First Ladies and Martha Mitchell:"

Samuel L. Jackson made comments a few years back that we not only agreed with but that we had said ourselves. When he got flack for them, we told him he should have hung it around our necks. Because we would continue to make this criticism and we're about to make it again.

Barack Obama. He is an American historical figure. We are getting damn tired of seeing these roles -- such as with MLK -- being played over and over by Brits. The British Black experience is not the same as the American experience. In an entertainment industry that has so few opportunities for men of color, we don't get the need to go overseas to cast roles. And it's beginning to suggest that certain studios are not casting American people of color because they don't think they're capable and that they don't believe they can play dignified.

Don't believe they can play dignified.

Soak that in.

And then grasp that, outside of Sidney Poitier and Denzel Washington, name an actor of color who's made it in Hollywood without playing the grinning character. Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and many others have carved out careers -- and given great performances -- in a racist industry. But it's equally true that the types that they have played are the only types of roles that the industry regularly casts men of color in.

This is not a minor issue. We're not being Joan Crawford dismissing Greer Garson with "just another refugee from Hitler."

We're making a point about a racist system that repeatedly backs projects if they cast British males as MLK or Barack Obama or any other male of color who has some air of dignity around them.

In THE FIRST LADY, Barack is a secondary role, yes, but it is still a meaty role.

O-T Fagbenle is not up to the role. He gives a superficial performance and has no chemistry with Viola. He doesn't look at all like Barack (Barack should be described as anorexic, he's very thin and always has been, Fagbenle is not even thin). More to the point, he doesn't look well with Viola.

She's got on too much make up to be Michelle but this is a TV series so that's fine. What's not is that the heavy make up emphasizes the lines on her face. Not a problem for a 56-year-old woman, or shouldn't be. Viola looks great. But Michelle is 58 right now and Viola's playing her in 2007, 15 years ago. Viola looks good, a good 56. She's too old for the role. And this is a bigger problem because she looks like Fagbenle's mother. He's 41. He's playing Barack at 47. He's 41. And he looks younger.

Again, Viola looks like Fagbenle's mother.

He's not American. He's not old enough for the role. He doesn't look like Barack. He's giving a bad performance. And he's way too young to be playing Viola's husband. (For the record, Barack is three years older than Michelle. He's not younger than her and he's never looked younger than her.)

I'm sick of it. Samuel L. Jackson is right to object. Ava and C.I. have outlined it perfectly, the Hollywood is racist and it will cast Black Americans as gangsters and drug addicts and idiots and crooks. But when the character is a Black man of stature, they insist upon a Black man from England. I'm sick of it.

Idris is a failure in US films. Maybe he can go back to England?

I have no interest in ever seeing a film of his again. He has hurt Black American men and he wants to pretend otherwise.

Henry Cavill? That's who should be the next James Bond.

Now for Rosario Dawson.

WTF?

She looks awful. She looks like she wants to play a Cosby kid from the 80s with that ridiculous realtor woman hair do she's got these days.

She's also awful.

We championed her as a person because she spoke out for this or that. Then in 2019, our leftier than thou is dating Cory Booker?

I can only hope Cory is gay like the rumors say and that she was bearding for him.

If she was honestly in love with him? That's outrageous. He's DLC, a centrist and she's pretending to be radical -- because it would have to be a pretense for her to hook up with a politician like Booker.

There was a time when I admired Idris and Rosario. They ended that admiration.

Going out with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Wednesday, September 7, 2022. Robert Pether's life remains at risk in Iraq, Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange and there's no end to the stalemate in Iraq.

Robert Pether is a 47-year-old Australian citizen who has been arrested on questionable charges in Iraq and held in a prison where it is said he has been tortured. Matthew Doran (Austalia's ABC) noted last month, "United Nations investigators have raised concerns Pether, and his Egyptian colleague, Khalid Zaghloul, have been exposed to torture techniques while imprisoned." Christopher Knaus (GUARDIAN) reports:

The Australian government says it holds “serious concerns” for the welfare of Australian engineer Robert Pether as his health deteriorates in a Baghdad jail cell, a process his wife has likened to “watching his murder in slow motion”.

The Guardian has obtained the first photos of Pether since he was arrested and arbitrarily imprisoned in Baghdad in April last year over a business dispute between the Iraqi government and his architecture firm, which was engaged to build a new headquarters for the central bank.

They show a gaunt-looking Pether, with discoloured skin and new moles covering his body, particularly on his back, which his doctors and family fear are cancerous.

Pether had already survived skin cancer prior to his imprisonment, and his doctors say local health services are failing to conduct proper tests and have botched the excision of two moles, putting him at severe risk of infection.

“Robert Pether is imprisoned in a 14ft cell with no windows and only one door with [up to] 21 other men,” his doctor wrote in a letter to Australian embassy staff two weeks ago. “To perform surgery on any patient and send them back into that environment is unconscionable.”

[. . .]

Pether’s family say he is innocent and a United Nations working group has previously criticised his trial – and that of his colleague, Egyptian national Khalid Radwan – as compromised.

In a report in March, the UN working group on arbitrary detention released a report on Pether’s detention in March, finding it to be arbitrary and a breach of international law.

From THE GUARDIAN's Twitter feed:

First photos of Australian Robert Pether in Iraqi jail raise ‘serious concerns’ about his health

theguardian.com

First photos of Australian Robert Pether in Iraqi jail raise ‘serious concerns’ about his health

Jailed engineer appears gaunt with moles doctors fear are cancerous, as wife decries ‘watching his murder in slow motion’

5:03 PM · Sep 6, 2022

Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he raised the issue in a meeting with Iraq's caretaker prime minister Mustafa al-Kahdimi back in June; however, the transcript the Iraqi government released includes no such exchange.

The Australian government is the weakest in the world. It does nothing to protect its citizens. Their failure with regards to Robert are echoed in their failure to defend Julian Assange. Michael West shines a light on the corrupt government in Australia:

Australia needs healing, we need transparency in government. But the government continues to prosecute whistleblowers for doing the right thing. Afghan war crimes whistleblower David McBride and tax office whistleblower Richard Boyle face years in prison. Julian Assange faces a secret prosecution in the US. Yet the government has failed miserably to be accountable for its reckless and clandestine use of public money.

As McBride noted this week on Twitter: “the guy [Hurley] ran the ADF when at least 39 Afghans were murdered by our most decorated soldiers”. Where is the official inquiry into Australia’s involvement in war crimes in Afghanistan?

Instead of government action, the public has been treated to a private “show-trial”, a $30m defamation extravaganza playing out in the civil courts over Ben Roberts-Smith’s alleged involvement in the murders of Afghan civilians. Like so many government services, it seems accountability has also been outsourced, privatised.

As the role of holding power to account has devolved to independent politicians, the Greens and independent and social media, the mainstream media seems destined again to fulfil its role of “bayoneting the dead”, rather than holding the torch of transparency, piling in once there is no option but to cover the story.

Just as they piled on in droves to the News Corp Mean Girls scoop – essentially political gossip and speculation that Labor figures Penny Wong, Kristina Keneally and Katy Gallagher were responsible for the manslaughter of former senator Kimberley Kitching, they ignored the story of sexual antics in the Parliament prayer room and police persecution of the #PrayerRoom whistleblower, a story backed by documents arising from a Morrison government inquiry.

That too was left to independent media, FriendlyJordies and this journal, and many thousands of posters on social media.

Legendary photographer Tim Page died last month. His work in covering the Vietnam War remains a benchmark. Richard Phillips notes his passing at WSWS and includes this:

Never one to pull his punches, Page was hostile to “embedded” journalism, the mainstream media, and the persecution of Julian Assange and others attempting to expose corporate corruption and the bloody reality of imperialist war.

In a powerful interview with the WSWS in November 2019, Page bluntly declared: “Without a free and open media, we are doomed culturally and politically. In this despotic time, it’s necessary that we have whistleblowers, and folk who can open up the Pandora’s Box of corruption and deceit.

“The fashion in which the Australian government has abandoned its own citizen and whistleblower, Julian Assange, is revealing of its own demise and dysfunction as a democratic system of government.

“The greed mongers and the people that run this country appear to me to be a bunch of corrupt businessmen. They don’t want to defend Assange because it will upset their arrangements with the US.”

The government in Australia has become a dirty joke. But it's not as awful as the government in the US where US President Joe Biden conducts his ongoing persecution of Julian Assange. Julian's 'crime' was revealing the realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the information to Julian. WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs. And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own. For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War Logs. Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:

A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.

To make sure no one's confused, Joe Biden is not going after Julian Assange because Julian committed War Crimes in Iraq. Joe is going after Julian because Julian exposed War Crimes. In Joe's mind, War Crimes are like his son's laptop in that both should be hidden from the public.

Help Julian Assange, journalism is not a crime. #FreetheTruth #FreeAssange #FreeJulianAssangeNOW

4:54 AM · Sep 7, 2022

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In Iraq, the political stalemate continues. October 10th, Iraq held elections and still no president, still no prime minister.

The editorial board of THE HINDU pretends to care in their feature asking why but their selective use of the facts make it clear that they don't care. That's pretty much true of all the western media outlets and of foreign governments who've just stood passively by and pretending this political stalemate is natural and nothing to be concerned about.

Meanwhile, THE NEW ARAB notes:

An explosion rocked an Iraqi militia group's base near Baghdad on Monday, according to security sources.

While the nature of the incident is unknown, it is the fourth explosion of its kind in under a month, The New Arab's Arabic-language sister service, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, reported.

"An explosion occurred and a fire broke out in a warehouse of equipment and missiles belonging to the Asaib Ahl Al-Haq militia in the Al-Suwaira area in Wasit province," Iraqi media quoted security sources as saying.

"The explosion's nature and causes have not yet been determined. It caused flames and columns of smoke which covered the sky above."

Shelly Kittleson (AL-MONITOR) reports:

The Iraqi government held its second session of a national dialogue among Iraqi political parties on Sept. 6, called for by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and attended by all political parties except Sadrists.

The dialogue did not produce a clear outcome. Attendees only agreed to form a technical committee to seek political solutions, but no timeline has been set for forming the committee.

New videos were released over the last few days from last week’s violence showing young men fleeing gunfire amid the leafy green streets and palatial gates of the Green Zone, amid shouts blaming “the parties” and bloodied limbs. The videos continue to circulate amid festering concerns for Iraq’s stability.

Efforts are being made by the government to calm the two sides involved to avoid further bloodshed as well as mitigate repercussions from the violence on relations with countries both near and far, to avoid a halt in investment and any worsening of the country’s already dire economic situation.

Amid signs that incidents between rival Shiite militias may be underreported, multiple meetings have been held with US and other officials, while some note that the country simply cannot afford the economic impact of continued unrest.

Defense Industries Commission chief Mohammed Sahib Al-Daraji told Al-Monitor, “Of course, if the situation continues,” then “no new investment will be attracted to the country because of the lack of stability — the lack of law.”

Some of the worst violence in many years in the country started on Aug. 29 and continued into the following day until an order arrived from powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to all of his followers to withdraw from the heavily fortified area of central Baghdad containing many government buildings and embassies.

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