This edition's playlist

1) Dionne Warwick's SHE'S BACK.






2) Harry Style's FINE LINE.



3) Coldplay's EVERYDAY LIFE.



4) The Mamas and the Papas' THE PAPAS & THE MAMAS.


5) The Mamas and the Papas' DELIVER.


6) The Mamas and the Papas' PEOPLE LIKE US.


7) The Mamas and the Papas' IF YOU CAN BELIEVE YOUR EYES AND EARS.


8) The Mamas and the Papas' THE PAPAS AND THE MAMAS.


 9) Cat Powers' WANDERER.


10) Middle Kids' NEW SONGS FOR OLD PROBLEMS.

The United States Condemns the Assassination of Ahmed Abdul Samad

US EMBASSY BAGHDAD
Office of the Spokesperson
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 11, 2020

The United States Condemns the Assassination of Ahmed Abdul Samad

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad strongly denounces the deplorable and cowardly assassination of Jijla TV correspondent Ahmed Abdel Samad  and cameraman Safaa Ghali in Basra last night.  The ongoing assassinations, kidnappings, harassment, and intimidation of members of the press, social media activists, and pro-reform activists in Iraq by armed groups cannot continue to go unpunished.


The Iraqi government is responsible for upholding the right to freedom of expression, protecting journalists, and ensuring that peaceful activists can practice their democratic rights without fear of reprisal. This can only happen if the perpetrators are found and brought to justice.

Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are the cornerstones of a democratic society.  Respecting and upholding these rights is fundamental to the protection and promotion of democracy.

Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Marcia of SICKOFITRADLZ, Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends, Ann of Ann's Mega Dub, Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.


"Iraq snapshot," "Michael Tracey, King of the Fake Asses, couldn't n...," "Margaret Kimberley's 'solidarity' with the Iraq pe…," "Ahmed Abdul Samad murdered in Iraq -- but Max Blum...," "Ahmed Samad killed while covering today's protests...," "Iraq snapshot," "Iraq snapshot," "The Left Circle Jerk Doesn't Like Women," "Iraq snapshot," "Iraq snapshot," "Iraq snapshot," "Iraq's Parliament votes all US troops out of Iraq," "2 journalists assassinated in Iraq," "Idiots of the Week,"  "Rasta Pasta is a moron," "Idiot of the week," "We don't need Joe and we don't want Joe," "Five things," "The Clintons cling to their lies," "Max Blumenthal wants to rub shoulders with pedophi…,"
"Oh my goodness, it's back -- why?," "Pedophile Scott Ritter," "In case you forgot, we still need Medicare For All,"  "2 reporters killed in iraq for the 'crime' of cove...,"  "why doesn't twitter make a convicted pedophile dis...,"  "Joe Biden will destroy Medicare and has said so in the past," "Paul Surovell is no peace activist," "Epstein,"   "Shame on Margaret Kimberley," "The media tries to pretend a change took place,"  "A killer got killed," "Chelsea and Hunter," "Rod Rosenstein ordered illegal spying on journalist," "Ian56 embraces a pedophile," "Hunter and Chelsea," "F**k March On The Pentagon," "Put 'em on blast," "Epstein and the corruption," "She's a disgrace," "Epstein," "You know I love John Stauber but . . .," "No, Jon Sherred, Scott Ritter is an established pedophile," "Oh, Tulsi, you've embarrassed us all again," "Cranky elderly person pretends she's in her 20s," "THIS JUST IN! IS SHE TWETTING UNDER THE INFLUENCE!" and "Interesting" -- political coverage in the community.


"Easy Baked Salmon in the Kitchen,"and "Popcorn" -- food coverage from Trina.


 "The Sit Down" -- Isaiah digs into the archives.

"Joan Armatrading," "Patti LaBelle is a thug," "Popcorn, Carly Simon, books, music," "How do you do a Prince tribute without Sheena?" and "The Who?" -- music coverage from Betty, Marcia and Kat.



"HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER," "Natalie Wood," "DR. STRANGE and gay TV," "ABC, streaming, thirty-something, etc," "A DISNEY+ development no one told me about (only they have all episodes of THE SIMPSONS)," "NETFLIX," "MODERN FAMILY," "will & grace," "what is nbc thinking - or not thinking?," and "golden globes: where women wear ugly dresses" -- entertainment coverage in the community.

Truest statement of the week

The arrival of the New Year marks the beginning of a decade of intensifying class struggle and world socialist revolution.
In the future, when learned historians write about the upheavals of the Twenty-First Century, they will enumerate all the “obvious” signs that existed, as the 2020s began, of the revolutionary storm that was soon to sweep across the globe. The scholars—with a vast array of facts, documents, charts, web site and social media postings, and other forms of valuable digitalized information at their disposal—will describe the 2010s as a period characterized by an intractable economic, social, and political crisis of the world capitalist system.

They will note that by the beginning of the third decade of the century, history had arrived at precisely the situation foreseen theoretically by Karl Marx: “At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.”

-- David North and Joseph Kishore, "The decade of socialist revolution begins" (WSWS).

Truest statement of the week II

Millennials and the children we call Generation Z face the horrifying prospect that they will get stuck with the tab for humanity’s centuries-long rape of planet earth, the mass desecration of which radically accelerated after 1950. There is an intolerably high chance that today’s young people will starve to death, die of thirst, be killed by a superstorm, succumb to a new disease, boil to death, asphyxiate from air pollution, be murdered in a riot or shot or blown up in a war sparked by environmentally-related political instability long before they survive to old age.
Long threatened, never taken seriously, not even now that it’s staring us right in the face, human extinction is coming for the children and grandchildren we claim to love but won’t lift a finger to save.

-- Ted Rall, "A Grim New Definition of Generation X" (COUNTERPUNCH).

A note to our readers

Hey --

Monday morning.

Let's 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

David North and Joseph Kishore kick off the year with a truest.

• Truest statement of the week II

As does Ted Rall.

• Editorial: Good, let's get out of Iraq

If we had more time to work on this edition, we'd have written something but this really does say it all.

• TV: One great mini-series won't save NETFLIX

Ava and C.I. take a look at NETFLIX.

• ATTENTION WHORE season 35, episode four

A parody piece for all who've missed those.

• 50 essential albums of the '10s

As promised last month, we did this past decade.

• The best shows of the '10s

We also took a look at our favorite shows of this past decade.

• Oh, look at the dummies

The Iraq War never ended.  (Maybe it will soon.)

• Baby Cum Pants Was a Dumb F**k

Stupidity runneth over for so many.

• Remembering 2019

Community pieces on the end of the decade.

• Tweet of the week

Don't forget the fires in Australia.

• This edition's playlist

What we listened to while working on this edition.

Peace,


-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.

Editorial: Good, let's get out of Iraq

We're reprinting C.I.:

Iraq's Parliament votes all US troops out of Iraq

Joanna Tan reports "Trump threatens to slap sanctions on Iraq 'like they've never seen before'" (CNBC):


President Donald Trump threatened Sunday to slap sanctions on Iraq after its parliament passed a resolution calling for the government to expel foreign troops from the country.
Tensions in the Middle East spiraled last week after Trump called for a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, the U.S. president said: “If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.”
“We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it,” Trump said.
The president added that “If there’s any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.”


Does that make you sad?

Makes me happy.  I'd love to see Iraq order all US troops out.  And that might, in fact, end the war.  Would it cure Iraq's problems?  Not immediately.  But it would let the Iraqi people take on their corrupt and lethargic government with no interference from outsiders -- including the outsiders (US government) that put it in place.

Let's hope they demand all US troops out.   Per Stephen Sorace (FOX NEWS), this is what the Iraqi Parliament voted in favor of:

The resolution asks the Iraqi government to end the agreement under which Washington sent forces to Iraq more than four years ago to help in the fight against the Islamic State terror group.

"The Iraqi government has an obligation to end the presence of all foreign forces on Iraqi soil and prevent it from using Iraqi lands, waters, and airspace or any other reason," Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halboosi said in an address to lawmakers before the vote.



 Erin Cunningham (WASHINGTON POST via TORONOTE STAR) adds:

In an address to parliament, Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi recommended that the government establish a timetable for the exit of foreign troops, including the members of the U.S.-led coalition to fight the Islamic State, “for the sake of our national sovereignty.”

“What happened was a political assassination,” Abdul Mahdi said of the U.S. strike that targeted Iran’s elite Quds Force commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, as he travelled in a convoy near the Baghdad airport.

He said that foreign troops were in Iraq to train its forces and help target remnants of the Islamic State “under the supervision and approval of the Iraqi government.”

US forces should leave.  And it's likely that in the aftermath of the departure, Adel Abdul Mahdi will finally be pushed out of office -- as he should be.  And as he promised to be, remember?  He resigned.  He's corrupt and ineffective and the only thing that's keep his lazy and corrupt ass in place has been the US government.

Even now, he's a joke.  Qasem Soleimani is not his issue.  The US attack on Iraqi forces last Sunday is the issue.  That attack left at least 25 Iraqi troops dead.  Somehow Mahdi ignores and forgets that but then he's always forgotten the Iraqi people which is why the protesters demanded he stepped down in the first place.

Over at THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, Ben Connable frets, "Without firing a shot, Iran appears to have executed a devastating revenge attack against the United States for the killing of Gen. Qassem Suleimani. Using Iraq’s democratic process, Iranian-influenced members of parliament on Sunday voted to expel American soldiers from Iraq. With that, Iran may have effectively won the battle of influence in Iraq."

Lies.  Lies they tell you to prolong war.

Iraq doesn't want to be controlled by Iran.  It's had a war over that.  Since the 2003 US-led invasion, they've regularly fault over their shared border with both claiming the other was attempting to steal territory, they've regularly fought over who has water rights, it's been one fight after another.  Iran is not going to overrun Iraq.  The government of Iran might like to, but it's not going to happen.

Each year, there are more lies told to continue the US occupation of Iraq.

Will there be violence if US troops leave Iraq?  Probably so.  Very likely.  But the alternative is US troops never leave Iraq.  Let the Iraqi people determine their own future and path.

TV: One great mini-series won't save NETFLIX

Source material can only do so much.  It takes a visionary to look at, for example, the short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy," and see a full blown movie -- a musical at that.  But an artist like Barbra Streisand was able to do that.  By contrast, Greta Gerwig looked at LITTLE WOMAN and saw a project already made into a film seven times and one that needed no real overhaul, just another generic adaptation.



If any source material can withstand generic adaptations, it's probably horror novels.  As long as they scare us, we're satisfied.  For example, CARNIVAL FILMS and NBC teamed up for 2013's DRACULA and it delivered.  Seven years later, BBC delivers a new DRACULA -- streaming in the US on NETFLIX -- and it's a radical reworking of the source material.

Dracula, for example, turns Jonathan Harker into one of his brides and then prepares to leave on a boat trip to London.  This journey takes much longer than anyone could have expected.  Claes Bang menaces as Dracula.  Van Helsing is now Sister Agatha Van Helsing (Dolly Wells) and she's a formidable foe for Dracula.  Tension builds and builds between the two actors.

Mark Gattis and Steven Moffat have reworked the source material in various ways.  One of the most interesting things they've done is explored the origin issues -- the issue of a cross holding back Dracula or him being unable to enter an area without being invited in or the issue of sunshine harming him.

It would work as a philosophical exercise all by itself but the thrills and spills they keep and add are more than enough to carry the viewer through the three episode mini-series.

DRACULA is a stunning mini-series, one that NETFLIX can be proud of.  They can also be proud of ASTRONOMY CLUB: THE SKETCH SHOW.  Kenya Barris got a big money NETFLIX deal and this is the first program from that deal.  If BLACK EXCELLENCE (the upcoming series he's doing where he'll be acting opposite Rashida Jones and Iman Benson) is half as funny, it will be a show worth watching.  It delivers laughs, it makes you think.  The only problem?  A six episode season?  NETFLIX also did that with their other outstanding sketch show I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE WITH TIM ROBINSON.   Tim's show has been renewed and, hopefully, ASTRONOMY CLUB will be as well but both of them need orders larger than six episodes.  They are too funny to be limited to so few episodes.

And NETFLIX needs to find something.  Talk shows aren't working out (rumor is David Letterman's about to be cancelled).  Most of their over-the-top shows haven't worked.  Their children's programming has become a nightmare and, with very little attention from the press, they've axed both Julie Andrews'  JULIE'S GREENROOM and Carol Burnett's A LITTLE HELP WITH CAROL BURNETT.   What have they renewed?

That's a very good question since NETFLIX spent the spring announcing they were pouring a ton of money -- at one point they were claiming it would be one billion dollars -- into children's programming last year.  Where did that programming go?  The only animated shows for children that they have renewed so far are WORLD PARTY, HILDA, THE HOLLOW, THE LAST KIDS ON EARTH and GREEN EGGS AND HAM and the only live action programs for children that they've renewed so far are GREENHOUSE ACADEMY and MALIBU RESCUE: THE SERIES.

COMMON SENSE MEDIA has a list of children's programs on NETFLIX worth applauding -- you have to get to number 20 find one (GREEN EGGS AND HAM) that NETFLIX has renewed.  We stopped looking at the list at number one hundred -- the only show renewed in the top 100 was GREEN EGGS AND HAM.  Might not matter to you but let's remember that NETFLIX's own publicized estimates have over 50% of their accounts streaming children's programming.

Let's also remember that in the '10s, NETFLIX was a streaming giant with much talked about programming like ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, HOUSE OF CARDS, SENSE8, BLOODLINE, GRACE AND FRANKIE, STRANGER THINGS and more.  And now?  GRACE AND FRANKIE's final season debuts later this month.  STRANGER THINGS is about all they'll have left.  In terms of shows that are popular but not critical successes, they're about to lose both THE RANCH and FULLER HOUSE.

A mini-series like DRACULA is hugely needed for NETFLIX but they need a lot more and they're starting to underwhelm.  A new change that's taking place: The Water Cooler Set is saying that NETFLIX needs to stop dumping a series all in one day.  Hmm?  That sounds familiar.  Oh, that's because we've been making that point for years.

If it wants a future as something other than a footnote, NETFLIX needs to start making some very bold moves.