Oh Boy It Never Ends: January 2022

Monday, January 31, 2022

Weekend box office

Courtesy of THENUMBERS.COM, here is this past weekend's top ten at the box office:

1	(1)	Spider-Man: No Way Home	Sony Pict…	$11,003,528	-21%	3,675	-30	$2,994	$735,889,808	7
2	(2)	Scream	Paramount…	$7,225,634	-41%	3,518	-148	$2,054	$62,014,414	3
3	(3)	Sing 2	Universal	$4,665,410	-19%	3,450	+16	$1,352	$134,374,270	6
4	(4)	Redeeming Love	Universal	$1,769,710	-50%	1,963	+60	$902	$6,451,475	2
5	(5)	The King’s Man	20th Cent…	$1,658,524	-7%	2,440	+125	$680	$33,948,960	6
6	(6)	The 355	Universal	$1,330,225	-17%	2,513	-96	$529	$13,019,850	4
7	(7)	American Underdog: Th…	Lionsgate	$1,161,401	-1%	2,113	-51	$550	$24,718,829	6
8	(11)	Ghostbusters: Afterlife	Sony Pict…	$776,451	+19%	1,170	+109	$664	$128,065,348	11
9	(10)	Licorice Pizza	United Ar…	$630,117	-5%	772	n/c	$816	$11,755,669	10
10	(9)	West Side Story	20th Cent…	$573,469	-20%	1,335	+45	$430	$35,994,478	8

SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME may end up the biggest film of 2022 -- especially if the pandemic continues through the end of 2022. Even now, seven weeks later, it's still number one and it was the only film pulling in double digits.'

No offense to SCREAM. Give SCREAM CREDIT FOR making $62 million at the box office and it could reach $75 million before it leaves theaters.

I'll also note that THE 355 is now available for rentals online (I saw it AMAZON). We'll probably grab it this weekend.

But if we're going to be honest about the box office, we have to be honest that garbage like WEST SIDE STORY are harmful. That garbage flick was so promoted and it's worthless.

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

Monday, Janaury 31, 2022. The stalemate continues in Iraq as does the silence on NPR.

The stupidity never ends in the world of the press. Case in point, NPR's MORNING EDITION. They've found Iraq. They haven't. They speak to AP's Sarah El Deeb. Before they do, they want you to know that they're concerned about a "resurgence" of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Resurgence? It never went away. We were addressing that on Friday, you may remember. This morning, ABNA reports, "A security source said two policemen were killed in the attack of the members of the ISIS terrorist group on the Iraqi province of Kirkuk on Sunday evening. The Iraqi security source told Shafaq News Agency that members of the ISIS terrorist group have attacked Kirkuk province on Sunday." NPR's ignoring that attack and they've ingored all the similar attacks. They add up and the death toll adds up. Is there a "resurgence" of ISIS in Iraq and Syria? Seems to me the only "resurgence" is in the US press bothering to note Iraq. And ten and fifteen can die a day in ISIS attacks and it doesn't matter. It only matters if the attack qualifies as "spectacular."

I'm appaled by the report for anothe reason. NPR wants you to know that, in Syria, the presion seige was carried out in part by holding children. No one takes a moment to decry children prisoners. No one takes a moment to call out children being in the same prison as adults. It's just move on and skirt every damn issue in the world but pretend that somehow, for a few seconds this week, you covered Iraq and Syria and did a segment that didn't find the hosts chuckling at the end. ("We haven't heard what happened to the children . . . We don't know how many died," Sarah declares. Alright then. Thanks for the information -- or whatever you want to call that.

What's further appalling is that the report is about Syria. The headline for the segment is "Attacks by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq stoke concerns of a resurgence." Sarah El Deeb does not cover Iraq. She covers Syria. She can't speak to Iraq in any meaningful manner.

"We'll have to leave it there," Leila Fadel says cutting Sarah off during the too brief segment that never addresses Iraq. Not a good way to kick off your first day hosting MORNING EDITION. (Leila's hosted many NPR programs as a substitute before. She's now a regular host on MORNING EDITION.) It was also cute to watch them look back at Leila's work in the past. Egypt . . The US -- Fort Worth? (isn't that where her family lives) . . . Verything but Iraq. So 2005 through 2009 she covers Iraq but, hey, no need to offer that during the segment becuase NPR doesn't give two s**ts about Iraq. They make it clear every day in every way.

I have a feeling we're going to have to focus more on NPR in 2022 as it continues its progpaganda and ignores reality.

Three minutes on Syria -- supposedly Iraq and Syria -- and that's it. Over six minutes on an astronaut who may become something -- the first African-American woman to spend six months in space -- but thus far hasn't gong into space. Greg Myre delivers over four minutes of progaganda about how (he insists) Ukraine is trying to "break free from Moscow." Ukraine is split on what they want but, hey, if you're going to sell war, whore, baby, whore. Whore big or go home. And Greg Myre is one of the biggest whores that there has evern been. Got a sloppy floppy, Greg.

Has NPR filed a single report on the stalemate in Iraq? October 10th, elections were held. Still waiting on a government to be formed.

Dilan Sirwan (RUDAW) reports:

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) Vice-President Nechirvan Barzani met with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and parliamentary speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi in Najaf on Monday, following an initiative from KDP leader Masoud Barzani to resolve political tensions in Iraq’s ongoing government formation process.

The meeting at Sadr’s house came following a statement from Masoud Barzani on Monday where he suggested that Nechirvan Barzani and Halbousi visit Sadr in order to discuss the political process in Iraq, and to eliminate the obstacles and issues.

The Sadrist bloc has already formed an alliance with the KDP and Halbousi’s Sunni party, Taqadum. Their initial act of alliance was during the first parliamentary session earlier this month where all three parties voted for each other’s candidates for the parliamentary speaker position and his deputies.

The sudden meeting between the three leaders comes after Iran’s Quds Force commander Ismael Qaani accompanied by Iran’s top official in Iraq, Hassan Danaeifar, met with Masoud Barzani in Erbil on Sunday, as confirmed to Rudaw by the KDP’s spokesperson.

Meanwhile, Parliament has announced 25 names for the post of President of Iraq. INA reports the candidates are:

1-Khalid Siddiq Aziz Mohammed

2-Faisal Mohsen Aboud Al-Kilabi

3-Shehab Ahmed Abdullah Al Nuaimi

4-Hussein Ahmed Hashim Al- Safi

5-Ahmed Moah U mran Al - Rubaie

6-Ahmed Yahya Jassim Jawd Al Saadi

7-Sabah Saleh Saeed

8-Kazim Khudair Abbas Dwaghneh

9-Razkar Mohammed Amin Hama Saeed

10-Klawes Ali Amin Birah

11-Louay Abdel Sahib Abdul Wahab Mohsen

12-Ribwar Orhmen Arif

13-Hamza Brissam Thijeel Al-Maamouri

14-Hushiar Mahmoud Mohamed Mustafa Zebari

15-Hussein Mohsen Alwan Al - Hassani

16-Abdul Latif Mohammed Jamal Rashid Sheikh Mohammed

17-Omar Sadiq Mustafa Majid Al-Abdali

18-Barham Ahmed Haj Saleh Ahmed

19-Thaer Ghanim Mohammed Ali Baktish Al - Othman

20-Iqbal Abdullah Amin al-Fatlawi

21-Khadija Khuda Yakhish Assad Qlaws

22-Jabbar Hassan Jassim

23-Hadi Abdel Hussein Saddam Al - Freijy

24-Raad Khudair Dafag Sail

25-Omid Abdel Salam Qadir Taha Palan

Number 18 should be forgotten. He has served as president and should step aside. Was there any real point to wasting time, money and security on elections if Barham Saleh is going to remain president? The Speaker of Parliament remained the same. Now the presidency?

In addition, there's the fact that Saleh's political party, PUK, was destroyed in the elections. Why should he remain president? Corruption? That's why?

The Iraqi people became disenchanted with elections in 2010 when Joe Biden overturned the results that year with The Erbil Agreement. Nothing since has taken place to make them believe that elecitons change anything. Keeping Saleh as president will only further undermine any belief in elections. Grasp that every election since 2010 has seen a steady decline in turnout.

February 8th. Per Iraq's Constitution, that's the date that they have to have named a president. That's days away.

Nothing is being accomplished. The plan was that the new government would usher out foreign forces. You may remember all the claims, for example, that US troops would be out of Iraq at the end of 2021. Didn't happen. The election didn't deliver that or anything else. And for those who just don't seem to get it, ABNA reports:

The German parliament has approved a plan to extend the German army’s mission in Iraq until October 2022.

On Friday (January 28th), the German parliament, known as the Bundestag, approved by 553 votes to 110 against the proposal of the federal government to extend the mission of the German army in Iraq until October 2022. Accordingly, the German army will continue to participate in anti-ISIS missions in Iraq for nine months.

The German parliament said in a statement that Germany’s cooperation and presence is only to strengthen and rebuild the Iraqi army and provide related support services as part of NATO’s missions and the International Coalition against ISIS in Iraq.

The German government believes that the efforts of various parties to implement structural reforms in the Iraqi military institutions as well as the integration of the forces of the Hashad al-Shaabi organization in the Iraqi security structures with the aim of effective and direct control of its forces by the Iraqi government should be supported!

These words of the German government show that the Westerners are seeking the dissolution of the Hashad al-Shaabi organization and will certainly implement plans to strike at the organization in the near future.

On Julian Assange, we'll note this discussion.

And we'll wind down with this:

MORE THAN A MAGAZINE, A MOVEMENT

Dear Common Ills,

This year marks the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. But it may very well be its last. In a few short months we face the likelihood the Supreme Court will overturn Roe, endangering abortion access nationwide.

In our 1972 premiere issue, Ms. magazine ran a bold petition in which 53 well-known U.S. women declared that they had undergone abortions—despite laws in most states rendering the procedure illegal.

It is time to speak out again—in even larger numbers. We are launching a new petition with the encouragement and support of some of the original 1972 signers. We invite all women to sign in order to “help eliminate the stigma” of abortion and to demand the repeal of all laws restricting women’s reproductive freedoms.

We know that women who have had abortions have spoken out many times during the last 49 years, and millions of women and men have marched in countless rallies and demonstrations for abortion rights. By a margin of 2 to 1, Americans oppose the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

We cannot, we must not, lose the right to safe and accessible abortion or access to birth control. Just as in 1972, we will send the signed petition to members of Congress, to the White House, and to the Supreme Court. And we will publish the names in an upcoming Special Issue of Ms. and on Msmagazine.com.

And we ask that you help us by promoting the petition to your friends, family and others across the country to join our fight to save abortion rights.

For equality and a strong feminist future,

Eleanor Smeal
Publisher, Ms.

Kathy Spillar
Executive Editor, Ms.

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Thursday, January 27, 2022

HBO MAX

HBO? Last time ("PEACEMAKER"), I noted I was hating HBO MAX's app. Some of you wondered why? Lucas didn't. He e-mailed that it was constantly having to log in.

Yes. I hate that. I have to log in -- id an password -- almost every other time.

And when that's not happening, I'm getting told that I don't subscribe, that my subscription expired. I was on with an HBO 'helper' in a chat Saturday night. I was told that my subscription expired because I haven't paid it. Really? I pay monthly and I'm paid up until February 4th currently. Oh, then it was this. Or it was that.

No help at all.

So I did what I have to do every time HBO MAX's app is convinced that my subscription ended: Uninstall the app on my smart TV and the reinstall it.

After I do that, I then log in and, magic, it works.

It is the worst app in the world.

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

Thursday, January 27, 2022. US troops remain in Iraq but Joe's itching for war with Russia.

As US President Joe Biden pushes for more war (and as Nancy Pelosi plans to gift Ukraine with $500 million US tax dollars), Margaret Kimberley (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) observes:

The corporate media always carry water for the state, and they are never more dangerous than when the nation is on a war footing. Right now the United States government is sending weapons to Ukraine. One wouldn’t know that because of constant references to “lethal aid.” The euphemisms and subterfuge are necessary for a very simple reason. Everyone except the Washington war party knows that provoking war with Russia is extremely dangerous.

Joe Biden is picking up where he left off, as Barack Obama’s Ukraine viceroy. He and his incompetent foreign policy team have spun a tale about a pending Russian attack on Ukraine. In reality, it is the U.S. that is ginning up war by provoking the Ukrainians to start a fight that they can’t win. In 2014 a U.S. backed coup put a far-right clique in power. The people of the Donbass region in the east, largely ethnic Russians, wanted no part of the new anti-Russian government and sought autonomy. The resulting war has killed some 30,000 people.

Now the Biden team who publicly insulted the Chinese government and withdrew from Afghanistan without even being able to secure a major airport, have moved on to opening the proverbial can of whoopass with the world’s other major nuclear power. They are using Ukraine in an ill-advised effort to instigate what could lead to disaster.

The 2014 coup against an elected Ukrainian president took place in part because the Russians underestimated the extent of U.S. and NATO determination. They roused themselves quickly however and Crimeans, who are mostly of Russian origin, voted to rejoin the nation they had been a part of until 1954. The U.S./NATO regime change effort came at a steep price for Ukraine. Thanks to Atlanticist meddling it is now the poorest country in Europe that won’t get the NATO and EU membership it was promised. It remains a pawn between two powerful countries.

The U.S. is pulling all the hybrid warfare schemes out of the tool box. For months they claimed that Russian troops were massed on the border, ready to invade. They have engaged in diplomacy but only to try and get their way. Russia has held firm on a guarantee of no further NATO encroachment and the removal of missiles from their border. The French and Germans are feckless and do what Washington wants. They should be pressuring Ukraine to live up to the Minsk II Agreement which requires talks with the breakaway Donbass region.

None of this information is conveyed to the American people who live in ignorance orchestrated by republicans, democrats, and their friends in corporate media. Republican senators who want to run for president outdo one another with nonsense about stopping the Nord Stream II gas pipeline that Germany, a U.S. ally, asked the Russians to build. Winter is coming, quite literally, and Europe needs Russia’s gas. But unless they stop following Uncle Sam’s bullying they will end up with nothing.

War on Russia? The economy's tanking -- inflation surges and the stock market struggles, etc -- and Joe can't deliver on anything -- not even one of his extremely modest campaign promises -- so it's time to start a war to distract everyone yet again. Alex Lantier and Johannes Stern (WSWS) report:

Yesterday, as crisis talks between German, French, Ukrainian and Russian officials began in Paris, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a statement rejecting Russian demands for security guarantees from NATO in Ukraine.

The NATO alliance is stoking a war crisis, deploying thousands of troops to Eastern Europe and demanding that the far-right regime in Ukraine be armed to fight an invasion it alleges Russia is preparing. It has sent large quantities of missiles and other arms to Ukraine, and it is preparing up missile bases in Ukraine only a few minutes’ flight time from Moscow. Moscow therefore issued a written request for guarantees that Ukraine would not be allowed to join the NATO alliance and serve as a jumping-off point for attacks on Russia.

Blinken dismissed this out of hand. “There is no change. There will be no change,” he said of US-NATO plans to allow Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, such as Georgia, to join NATO. “We make clear that there are core principles that we are committed to uphold and defend, including Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the right of states to choose their own security arrangements and alliances,” he continued.

Blinken added that this policy had been decided directly by President Joe Biden who, he said, was “intimately involved” in drafting the US response to Moscow’s request. “We reviewed it with him repeatedly over the last weeks, just as we were getting, as you know, comments, input, ideas from allies and partners.”

Only days after US officials revealed plans to send up to 50,000 troops to the borders of Russia and Ukraine, Blinken all but admitted that Washington is not negotiating but sending an ultimatum backed with threats of war.

War and more war. And let's not pretend that the mid-terms aren't on the minds of those screaming for war. The pathetic and faux 'resistance' spent the last four years whitewashing War Criminals and crooks. The same ones that pushed for the Iraq War and saw it as a campaigns trategy for the 2002 mid-term elections are now 'helping' the Democratic Party -- the David Frums. Trash. Get in bed with trash, don't whine to me that you got a social disease. You brought it on yourself. You knew a David Frum was filth before you ever bedded down.

The media goes along with the pushf or war. "The corporate media." Uh, no.

THE PROGRESSIVE bills itself as "A voice for peace and social justice since 1909." Guess it's taking a long break. (And, no, they have not been around since 1909. That's like MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS trying to claim credit for the work of KNIGHT RIDDER because they bought KNIGHT RIDDER.) No wars appear to exist in the eyes of today's PROGRESSIVE. Ukraine? Never heard of it apparently. Iraq? They believe it fell off the planet. Go down the list. Adult topics are so very hard for them so they stick to lifestyle crap and the 'sports' work of Dave Zirin.

So, no, it's not just the corporate media. Outside that echo chamber, however, David Broder speaks with Richard Sakwa (JACOBIN) about some basic myths:

In Western media, Ukraine is often near-totally defined by its antagonism with Russia; a Times headline cited a general saying “Ukrainians are ready to tear apart Russians with their bare hands.” Especially after the 2008 NATO summit, it’s also assumed that Ukrainians want to join NATO, but Russia is stopping it. What evidence is there for that?

This goes much further back even than NATO’s 2008 Bucharest summit, which invited both Georgia and Ukraine to ultimately join. It’s the way that Ukrainian policy was defined for a long time in terms of the so-called European choice — which itself was highly contested, with poll after poll showing that the Ukrainian public is divided. It’s wobbled a bit over the years, but basically the western part, what we would call the Galician element, really wants to not just join the West, but to tear up all ties with Russia.

Postcolonialism, if that model can be used in this case, assumes a hybridity after you’ve been colonized, like at the linguistic and cultural levels, whereas the cultural separatists believe that it’s post-colonial with a hyphen, that you have to expunge all former links. But the southern and eastern parts of the country are more inclined to maintain close links with Russia. In a way, there is a basis to Vladimir Putin saying that Russians and Ukrainians are one people in terms of culture, history, intermarriage and so on. He never said that they should be one state — and that’s a fundamental difference.

I traveled through the Donbass in 2008, and you’d see painted on buildings everywhere, “No to NATO.” Whereas now we’ve seen the WikiLeaks State Department documents, published in 2010–11, showing endless messages from the US ambassador in Kiev saying ultimately people wanted NATO. This was a fanciful and artificial idea from the beginning, assuming that the choice was simple and unequivocally toward the West. Russia was then framed as holding Ukraine back geopolitically, developmentally, and above all in terms of democracy.

It’s a much more complex situation, as opinion polls even today show. Gerard Toal and his colleagues have shown that an astonishingly high proportion — 30 or 40 percent of the population, even with Crimea and Donbass not included — want close relations with Russia. Some even want to join the Eurasian Economic Union. So, this is what Zbigniew Brzezinski, and earlier and above all, Samuel Huntington, described as a cleft country, a divided country. So, it’s wrong to assume that they have opted unequivocally for NATO. But this choice has been imposed since the emergence of the neonationalist government in February 2014 after the Maidan events.

[. . .]

British media coverage often centers on our responsibility not to “appease” Putin. We also have this World War II analogy in German politics, with its Green Party foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, saying Berlin has a duty to protect these states for “historical reasons.” The idea that small countries like the Baltic states should be able to choose for themselves, and not be left defenseless, which Putin is effectively arguing for, sounds appealing at a certain level. But clearly there’s also a problem with this analogy insofar as it reimports into Western politics a trope that demonizes all critics, or those who aren’t hard-line supporters of the arms buildup, as latter-day “appeasers.”RS

The tendency you mention is even worse than it was in the first Cold War, because back then there was at least some diversity and debate. I’ve mentioned De Gaulle’s France, and within West Germany, there was the Ostpolitik line of change through engagement, beginning even in the early 1960s. What’s so shocking today is that there are so few voices in opposition. Instead, we have this endless trumpeting of the unity of the Atlantic powers. Unity is only a good thing if it’s united around a sensible policy, not if it’s an echo chamber of false analysis talking about plucky little Ukraine facing up to Russia as a revisionist power. Germany is to be commended to its approach to history, but there’s nothing more dangerous than misapplying that to a different historical moment. Any idea of talking about engagement — classic German policy — and even the pushing forward of Nord Stream 2 is considered “appeasement” of Russia.

This is a complete misunderstanding of where we are today. Putin does not wish to recreate a Soviet empire. Our defense minister in Britain, Ben Wallace, said this week that Putin is an ethnonationalist. This couldn’t be more mistaken: Russia today has at least 150 major nationalities. Putin has been condemning ethnonationalism endlessly: it would tear the country apart. So, if Western politicians get the basic things wrong, they’ll also get the big geopolitical things wrong.

So, my view is that this present situation is far more dangerous because there’s just a few brave souls out there who are condemning it. I’m delighted to see the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft has developed; there’s a few people in the United States, shockingly few in the United Kingdom — and I think the tide has turned in Germany too, especially with the Greens, who are just Clintonian liberal interventionists of the worst order — Cold War hawks.

Foreign policy should always be a balance between interests and values. If Russia was just willy-nilly wanting to invade and suppress Ukrainian democracy, then I’d be the first to support Ukraine. But that’s not what we’re talking about. Putin’s so-called revisionism is not of an Adolf Hitler sort. This endless, even implicit, reductio ad Hitlerum is just nonsense in this case. When Putin came to power, he even said Russia would join NATO. The elite and the leaders in Russia are rational. They’re not trying to recreate an empire. They’re simply saying, “Look, our back is to the wall. Listen to us.”

The solution is very simple: neutrality for Ukraine. No one is taking it over. Putin has supported the Minsk II agreement, which is a framework for the return of the Donbass to Ukrainian sovereignty. So, where is the empire in that? Today, there are 2.5 million people in the Donbass with their own views. Putin initially mobilized because Ukraine has 100,000 troops also on the border, with the Turkish drone missiles that showed their efficacy in the second Nagorno-Karabakh war last year between Armenia and Azerbaijan. So, there was genuine alarm in Moscow that they could do what Croatia did in Operation Storm, in attacking the Serbian enclaves way back in the mid-1990s. It’s a complicated situation, but the basic lines are fairly simple and clear.

Kyle Anzalone and Connor Freeman also address the lust for war in the latest episode of CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.

Turning to Iraq . . .

Sardar Sattar Tweets:

Muqtada al-Sadr is in Baghdad today to hold "the last round of negotiations" with the pro-Iran Cooperation Framework concerning the formation of a new government. 

An official said Sadr will show no flexibility on the "national majority government" plan.

1:11 AM · Jan 27, 2022

While flexibility does lessen for the morbidly obese, ten to fifteen minutes of morning streches and Moqtada wouldn't be so inflexible. Also, maybe get a sports bra for those moobs, Moqtada.

Still no government. And we're also supposed to pretend that's not emboldening ISIS.

As Moqtada disthers, Nouri al-Maliki remains in the news. ARAB NEWS notes:

Lawmakers have until Feb. 8 to elect a president — a post historically allocated to a Kurd.

But negotiations between parties and coalitions seeking to form a parliamentary majority have been marked by tensions, particularly between key Shiite currents seeking to exert their influence.

Both the Coordination Framework and another bloc formed by firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr claim to have the majority needed to elect a president.

We'll wind down with this;

MORE THAN A MAGAZINE, A MOVEMENT

Dear Common Ills,

January 22 marked the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. But it may very well be its last. In a few short months we face the likelihood the Supreme Court will overturn Roe, endangering abortion access nationwide.

In the Winter issue of Ms., we delve deep into the current state of abortion access and rights in America. We also examine how to ensure that our rights are protected — reminding you that without the Equal Rights Amendment, women still do not have full constitutional equality!

Join the Ms. community today and you'll get the Winter issue delivered straight to your mailbox!

Support independent, feminist media—and become part of a global community of feminists who care about the issues that matter to you. Join today to get our newest issue delivered straight to your mailbox—and fuel our reporting, rebelling and truth-telling.

For equality,