The
latest iteration of the Iraq War is
already starting to escalate. The day
after Christmas, U.S. forces and its
allies hit the Islamic State of Iraq and
the Levant (ISIL) with
31 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.
Three thousand U.S. military advisers
are now authorized to accompany Iraqi
troops into combat, while American
helicopter pilots fly combat missions
over Iraq. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff
Martin Dempsey and Secretary of
State John Kerry want to keep open the
option of
officially dispatching combat
troops.
In
northern Iraq, many Sunni and some Shia
political leaders told me they remain
suspicious about renewed American
involvement. This came as no surprise.
The United States, after all, invaded
Iraq only a little more than a decade
ago on the false pretense of eliminating
weapons of mass destruction. Its new
stated aims seem to many to be almost as
implausible.
In August a U.S.
diplomat rattled off to me the three
original justifications for the new war:
stopping the immediate slaughter of
minorities fleeing attacks by ISIL,
protecting American military personnel
in the northern city of Erbil and
keeping ISIL from overrunning the
Kurdish region.
None of those
rationales hold up under scrutiny.
-- Reese Erlich, "The New Iraq War is Doomed" (Information Clearing House).
Sunday, January 04, 2015
Truest statement of the week II
Peering into 2015, there
are wars into which our interventionists are
eager to plunge that represent no immediate
or grave threat to us.
One is the war the Islamic State group is waging in Syria and Iraq, a menace so great, we are told, it may require U.S. ground troops.
But why? Syria and Iraq are 5,000 miles away. And because of its barbarism and incompetence, the Islamic State is losing support in the Sunni lands it now occupies.
The Kurds have halted the group’s advance toward Irbil, Iraq. Shiite militias, no friends of ours, have halted its advance toward Baghdad. The Islamic State is under steady drone and air attack by the U.S. and Arab allies. Iran is providing men and materiel to Damascus and Baghdad in their battle against the group.
Now the Turks and Gulf Arabs, including the Saudis, appear to have awakened to the threat and are weighing in against the Islamic State.
Why not let them do the fighting?
By staying out of the two world wars of the 20th century until the other great powers were fully engaged and horribly bled, America emerged triumphant with the fewest casualties and least damage.
That used to be called statesmanship.
-- Pat Buchanan, "Is War in the Cards for 2015?" (Information Clearing House).
One is the war the Islamic State group is waging in Syria and Iraq, a menace so great, we are told, it may require U.S. ground troops.
But why? Syria and Iraq are 5,000 miles away. And because of its barbarism and incompetence, the Islamic State is losing support in the Sunni lands it now occupies.
The Kurds have halted the group’s advance toward Irbil, Iraq. Shiite militias, no friends of ours, have halted its advance toward Baghdad. The Islamic State is under steady drone and air attack by the U.S. and Arab allies. Iran is providing men and materiel to Damascus and Baghdad in their battle against the group.
Now the Turks and Gulf Arabs, including the Saudis, appear to have awakened to the threat and are weighing in against the Islamic State.
Why not let them do the fighting?
By staying out of the two world wars of the 20th century until the other great powers were fully engaged and horribly bled, America emerged triumphant with the fewest casualties and least damage.
That used to be called statesmanship.
-- Pat Buchanan, "Is War in the Cards for 2015?" (Information Clearing House).
A note to our readers
Hey --
Sunday.
First, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
And what did we come up with?
That's what we came up with, happy new year!
Peace.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
Sunday.
First, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
And what did we come up with?
- Truest statement of the week
- Truest statement of the week II
- A note to our readers
- Editorial: The unmentionable word
- 50 Shades of Stupid (Ava and C.I.)
- Manorexia?
- It Takes A War Hawk
- Shake that little tush
- This edition's playlist
- Tales of Grimm justice
- Highlights
That's what we came up with, happy new year!
Peace.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
Editorial: The unmentionable word
Somewhere, Lenny Bruce is rolling over in his grave.
The left in the United States is suddenly reticent about using a four-letter word.
The word in question?
Iraq.
Speaking out against the continued war in Iraq might embarrass War Hawk Barack Obama and so much of the left has whored themselves out on behalf of Barack.
So they stay silent.
And things just continue to get worse in Iraq.
Barack's bombings aren't helping the Iraqi people and they're not reducing the violence.
The European Union's Struan Stevenson offers:
They are designed to bolster the fight on the ground by the Iraqi military, which is in a state of virtual collapse. Riven with dishonesty and fraud, the Iraqi army mirrors the rampant corruption of the Iraqi government in post-Saddam Iraq.
These circumstances have provided the perfect conditions for the brutal Shiite militias to thrive and take control of the battlefield. There are perhaps hundreds of these militias. They are trained, financed and often led by the terrorist Iranian Quds Force. They are Iranian proxies. So the US air strikes are aiding and abetting Iran in achieving its ultimate objective, which is total control of Iraq.
The current war raging across Iraq was as avoidable as it was predictable. Nouri al-Maliki’s second term as prime minister was a tragedy for the Iraqi people, for the region and for the world. As a puppet of the Iranian mullahs, he encouraged the Iranian-led Shiite militias and used them to enforce his merciless “iron fist” sectarian policy of indiscriminate bombing, shelling, arbitrary arrests, torture and mass execution of innocent Sunni civilians. Maliki utilised the claim of fighting a war against terror to secure his grip on power and the West fell for it.
Where are the leaders of the US left?
Do they intend to speak up any time soon?
Or just continue to cower in silence?
The left in the United States is suddenly reticent about using a four-letter word.
The word in question?
Iraq.
Speaking out against the continued war in Iraq might embarrass War Hawk Barack Obama and so much of the left has whored themselves out on behalf of Barack.
So they stay silent.
And things just continue to get worse in Iraq.
Barack's bombings aren't helping the Iraqi people and they're not reducing the violence.
The European Union's Struan Stevenson offers:
They are designed to bolster the fight on the ground by the Iraqi military, which is in a state of virtual collapse. Riven with dishonesty and fraud, the Iraqi army mirrors the rampant corruption of the Iraqi government in post-Saddam Iraq.
These circumstances have provided the perfect conditions for the brutal Shiite militias to thrive and take control of the battlefield. There are perhaps hundreds of these militias. They are trained, financed and often led by the terrorist Iranian Quds Force. They are Iranian proxies. So the US air strikes are aiding and abetting Iran in achieving its ultimate objective, which is total control of Iraq.
The current war raging across Iraq was as avoidable as it was predictable. Nouri al-Maliki’s second term as prime minister was a tragedy for the Iraqi people, for the region and for the world. As a puppet of the Iranian mullahs, he encouraged the Iranian-led Shiite militias and used them to enforce his merciless “iron fist” sectarian policy of indiscriminate bombing, shelling, arbitrary arrests, torture and mass execution of innocent Sunni civilians. Maliki utilised the claim of fighting a war against terror to secure his grip on power and the West fell for it.
Where are the leaders of the US left?
Do they intend to speak up any time soon?
Or just continue to cower in silence?
50 Shades of Stupid (Ava and C.I.)
Jamie Dornan's lucky he's almost pretty.
Almost.
You'd think he'd be steered away from greasy hair -- if only for the ringlets.
Is he trying to be the new Mary?
Yes, she got away with being the "girl with the curls," but Mary Pickford's reign was over with silent films.
Or, as Joan Crawford once explained, "I designed my own hair styles for No More Ladies. I experimented with braids for formal wear, curls for a gay sequence, maybe a severe coiffure for the difficult parts -- wouldn't it be silly to play tragedy in a mass of ringlets?"
Indeed.
Silly would also be exposing stupidity.
Jamie won't flash his cock in the upcoming 50 Shades of Grey; however, he will make a point to pull out his stupidity and wag it at the world.
50 Shades of Grey is watered down Anne Rice (writing as Anne Rampling or A.N. Roquelaure).
It made it into grocery stores across the country because it was watered down and, yes, because it was sexist.
Entertainment Weekly quotes Jamie insisting that Fifty Shades of Grey is not sexist, "I can understand why people say tying a woman up and spanking her is misogynistic. But actually, more men are submissives than women. Very powerful men. It's a far bigger scene than I imagined: in pretty much any city in the world that you could name, people want to get spanked with a paddle with studs on it."
Did you follow it?
Because Jamie didn't.
The pretty mouth was moving but as usual no blood was flowing to the head.
Jamie argues that (a) more men are submissives "actually" so (b) it's not sexist to portray, in his film, a woman enjoying being spanked and forced to submit.
He then (c) insists that's not sexism.
When, in fact, that's the actual definition of sexism.
More men are passive but the film doesn't portray that.
Let's move beyond the sexual tease passing itself off as a film -- which will attract sexually frustrated people to multiplexes come/cum Valentine's Day.
Is it sexist to portray spankings or submission?
No.
There are people who are turned on by it.
Porn today traffics in spanking in both gay and lesbian porn.
The fantasies are fantasies and speak to the desires of those who stream or rent them.
So what about straight porn?
The porn industry has changed in the last decades.
But the historical subjugation of women in straight porn would make us hesitant to give a full pass to every straight porn in which a woman is spanked. We'll give a pass to porn created today in which a woman spanks a man.
Moving from porn to 'mainstream' films . . .
It's a story of non-stop sexism.
We don't know that there are more men who want to be spanked than women -- in straight couplings -- but we'll allow that there's probably an equal amount of men and women into being spanked by the opposite gender.
It just doesn't make it to mainstream films.
Exit to Eden, for example, features Dana Delaney spanking Paul Mercurio in one scene. In one scene. Despite the fact that his character has traveled to a sex resort to be spanked and is spending a great deal of money to be spanked, he gets spanked once. And then overpowers 'cold hearted' Lisa who 'surrenders' to him as she explains she's so tired of spending all her time at the office, "After a heard day of smacking people, it's nice to cuddle."
Wow.
She started and runs a sex resort built around bondage and discipline but, when she meets the right fellow, turns out she really wasn't into it.
More often than not, the person being spanked is a woman. Whether it's Sean Connery smacking a woman's ass in Goldfinger or Spencer Tracey spanking Katharine Hepburn in Adam's Rib or . . .
With women, what sometimes happens -- 1% of the time, maybe -- is that they have power over a man in sex.
The man is restrained in some manner.
The woman is a bitch if not a criminal.
And as the film progresses, the man will 'reassert' himself by violent taking the woman.
Think Basic Instinct where Sharon Stone enjoys tying up men but goes into a sexual frenzy when Michael Douglas gives it to her rough -- something that also turns on the character of Dr. Beth Garner (played by Jeanne Tripplehorn). Or think about the hideous copycat attempt Body of Evidence starring the charisma free Madonna and Willem Dafoe. On the hood of a car, Madonna takes control so you know that shortly after Willem's going to have to resort to violence and rough sex to 'prove' he's really a man.
And that's what it's really about, Jamie.
Sexist notions of what men and women are.
The most famous scene of a woman spanking a man in a film is probably Cloris Leachman spanking Harvey Korman in Mel Brooks' High Anxiety.
Is it unfair to point out that Cloris' character sports a mustache?
Which is supposed to indicate that there's something unnatural and masculine about her character?
So, yeah, Jamie, yet another man subjugating a woman onscreen?
It's sexism.
It's especially sexism when you're insisting that, in real life, it's men who are more often asking to be spanked by women than the other way around.
For Jamie not to grasp that is not just embarrassing; it also feeds into the pretty but stupid stereotype that so many barely there actors have projected over the years.
----------
We have avoided Myra Breckenridge for this piece. Raquel Welch plays an actress who started out as a man (Rex Reed, in the film). We have neither the space nor time to discuss the phobia on display towards transwomen. We also don't have time to go fully into our thoughts on the "T" in LGBTQ. But briefly, we would sum it up by saying if you feel you are a woman trapped in a man's body, then you're a woman. If you feel you're a man trapped in a woman's body, then you are a man. We're wondering ourselves if the best help for the T community would be to drop the T which acts more as an explanation to others. Why explain? Most people should be able to grasp it and we don't think anyone should have to jump through hoops or prove or explain their gender to anyone.
Manorexia?
Eating disorders effect men and women.
Do we have to call it "man-orexia" to get some attention on this?
That's not ET's arm reaching out to Barack.
That's the arm of a grown man, a 53-year-old.
Is everyone waiting for him to leave the White House to address the eating disorder?
Do we have to call it "man-orexia" to get some attention on this?
That's not ET's arm reaching out to Barack.
That's the arm of a grown man, a 53-year-old.
Is everyone waiting for him to leave the White House to address the eating disorder?
It Takes A War Hawk
How do you sell war?
You grab an unfortunate incident or tragedy and repackage it into a cry for war.
Vian Dakhil's been all over the US and England and elsewhere and she even got taken under War Hawk Samantha Power's saggy hot wing.
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If Vian Dakhil was attempting to help the Yazidis, she'd have her ass in Iraq because Parliament was in session.
As War Hawk Power gushed, she's the "only Yezidi in Iraq's Parliament." So her ass should been there defending the Yezidis.
Instead, she was spearheading the neoconservative funded effort to expand and continue the Iraq War. They're paying for her trips, they've hired a public relations firm.
From that moment forward, all claims about the Yezidis were no longer to be met with skepticism (as all claims should be) but to be dismissed.
That's not fair to the Yazidis.
We're sorry about that.
Maybe they can take it with the 'friend' who sold them out?
Here she is again, sitting with Samantha Power.
You grab an unfortunate incident or tragedy and repackage it into a cry for war.
Vian Dakhil's been all over the US and England and elsewhere and she even got taken under War Hawk Samantha Power's saggy hot wing.
Met with the brave Vian Dakhil—only Yezidi in Iraq's Parliament—still injured from helo crash from Mt. Sinjar rescue.
If Vian Dakhil was attempting to help the Yazidis, she'd have her ass in Iraq because Parliament was in session.
As War Hawk Power gushed, she's the "only Yezidi in Iraq's Parliament." So her ass should been there defending the Yezidis.
Instead, she was spearheading the neoconservative funded effort to expand and continue the Iraq War. They're paying for her trips, they've hired a public relations firm.
From that moment forward, all claims about the Yezidis were no longer to be met with skepticism (as all claims should be) but to be dismissed.
That's not fair to the Yazidis.
We're sorry about that.
Maybe they can take it with the 'friend' who sold them out?
Here she is again, sitting with Samantha Power.
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