From Les Blank's 1970 film "The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins":
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5QiISuDlY8&w=560&h=315]
The model for thousands of young Brits struggling to reproduce the man's guitar style alone in their suburban bedrooms back in the Sixties.
More from the same film here – Possibly the Best Blues Performance Ever! And possibly the Best Blues Hairstyle Ever.
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purpose of these arrangements, which was to dump America’s current Middle East allies in favor of Iran.
The patent lunacy of tilting against Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel and toward Iran— that is, weakening your allies in order to partner with your enemy—was reflected by the abject misery the strategy caused in the Middle East. Between 2009 and 2017, I covered the entire spectrum of U.S.-Iran relations, from the Iran lobby to how Obama facilitated the genocide in Syria to satisfy Bashar Assad’s Iranian patrons. I detailed how the Iranians had killed Americans in Iraq and Lebanon and plotted to kill them at home, too, even as Obama praised Iran’s terror master Qassem Soleimani. I reported on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech in front of Congress warning of the dangers of putting mankind’s most destructive weapon in the hands of a regime that embodies anti-Semitism, and the Obama administration’s deployment of anti-Semitic conceits to scare off Jewish Democrats from opposing the deal. I warned that empowering such a regime would bring more violence to the Middle East and license discord and give rise to a politics of paranoia here at home.
Why Iran? Obama was fixated on getting the US out of the Middle East. Alliances with Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, represented the old approach that kept on failing. So why not try a radical new approach: instead of treating Iran as the enemy – one of George W Bush's famous "axis of evil" – go for a rapprochement with Tehran, which could become a powerful new stabilising force in the Middle East. Iran is, after all, a hugely significant player in the region, and if you ignore all the weird religious stuff and the antisemitism, would surely respond rationally and responsibly to friendly overtures.
Well no. The weird religious stuff and the antisemitism aren't just surface phenomena under which beats the solid rational heart of the regime. They are the Iranian regime. It's a theocracy, irrational to the core, and determined to spread its poison through the region. Bush was right – and Trump was right to abandon Obama's policies.
With Trump entering the White House, more evidence that Obama had misread Iran’s strength became apparent. Trump left the JCPOA, just as he had promised, so where was the war that Obama said was inevitable? What happened instead was that the Iranian opposition turned on the regime and filled the streets to protest against a sclerotic ruling class that had squandered money on foreign wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Gaza, as well as Syria. When Trump reimposed sanctions, Iran did not set the region aflame, as Trump’s critics promised, because American sanctions had in fact crippled its ability to make war. After the Iranians used Iraqi proxies to attack the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Trump killed Soleimani—and still the apocalypse that Obama had forecast failed to materialize.
The premises on which the Iran deal was ostensibly based were proven false….
So why would Biden want to return to the deal? Smith argues that the deal, ostensibly about Iran and the Middle East, was and still is in reality a ploy to break the strength of the pro-Israeli faction within the Democrats. Not sure I buy that bit, but it's still an interesting analysis.
;s religion, sect, pan-Arab affiliation, neighbors, or whatever… These loyalties should be our second, or even tenth priority. Our number one loyalty should be to Iraq. I, who am sitting here in front of you – what am I if not the water of the Tigris and Euphrates? If you were to open my arteries and my veins, you would see this water flowing there. My flesh is made of Iraqi soil. My mind has been molded by Iraqis. How could I be loyal to Iran, Turkey, America, Britain, or whoever? Impossible. This is wrong. You should be loyal to your country, defend your country, and only then can you be loyal to other countries. Let me take this opportunity to deliver a message. I thank you for raising this issue. There are Shi'ites living in the Gulf countries since ancient times."
Interviewer: "True."
Al-Sheikh: "Some of these Shi'ites, not all of them… Most of these Shi'ites are patriots who are loyal to their countries and governments. I have no problem with that. This is what I call for. Some of them, however, want to generate change in their Gulf countries. For the sake of whose interest? Iran. I address those people who want to bring about change, eliminate their rulers, and harm their country for the sake of Iran: Damn you! Haven't you seen what is happening to us Iraqis? Where's your brain? Are you brainless? Don't you see that since Saddam was toppled and to this day, one million Iraqis have been killed because of Iran? Bombings, car bombs, explosive belts, and sectarian fighting… The fighting of 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, who was behind the sectarian fighting all those years?
"Don't you see that our families have been shattered? Our honor torn to pieces? Don’t you see that our children are orphans, and our wives are widows? Damn you! Why are you loyal to Iran at the expense of your country and people? You should learn the lesson of Iraq and be loyal to your own country, and your own rulers. Don't be loyal to a ruler from across the border, who comes and enslaves you, colonizes you, and brings you to the point to which we in Iraq have arrived. We Iraqis are heroes. Today we are tired and sick, but we will regain our strength in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years… It doesn't matter.
"History tells us that whenever Iraq was unwell, Iran invaded, and whenever Iraq got stronger, Iran would flee. With God's help, we will pass in the next stage. But if Iran invades your country [in the Gulf], what will drive it out? Your country is this small. [The Gulf countries] are not big like Iraq. If Iran invades, where would you go?"
Killed because of Iran? This man is seriously off-message. Doesn't he appreciate that those dead Iraqis were entirely and solely the fault of the misjudged allied overthrow of Saddam? The Iranians have always had the well-being of Iraq and Iraqis as their main concern.
t’s worse is the fact that many of our senior figures profess to hold the high moral ground on many issues, but in fact, they are as bad, if not worse, than our political foes.
I feel that the party's elite are not willing (or able) to stand up to the bullying, and in this they are complicit. The damage this is doing to the trans community (especially the children) is heartbreaking. And the lack of concern for girls and women is damning. The effects of these doctrines are already being felt; in Brighton, a women’s refuge has been denied further council funding because they insisted on female-only safe spaces.
And even in the last 2 days, the party has begun its purge. Senior (mostly, again, female) party members are being harassed, and even suspended, for having the audacity to disagree with the party’s dogma.
I cannot stay in a party that puts ideology before women and children's safety. I can't continue to serve as a councillor without the motivation to do so 100%, and in good conscience, take the money that the council pay me when I know I'll no longer do the role justice.
A party that appeals mostly to middle class voters who like to think of themselves as progressive was always likely to succumb to trans ideology. And so it's proved.
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Vietnam
Vietnam
[Photos © RK]
On Instagram.
nited with her family.
Farah is free, but have the men who abducted and raped her been prosecuted?
Of course they haven't.
rapid advances that trans-rights campaigns have made in many political arenas in recent years.
It could also be a template for the rule-breaking ‘political strategy’ employed by Crispin Blunt and the APPG for Global LGBT+ Rights. In a further striking coincidence, the APPG’s Kaleidoscope-employed coordinator is Anna Robinson, who was from 2017 to 2019 the co-chair of IGYLO.
What does this story tell us? It’s more evidence that some people who campaign for trans rights policies make a deliberate choice to do so in private settings, where the wider public cannot know or assess their arguments….
An agenda that needs secrecy to advance will never command lasting public confidence. A competent, coordinated and well-funded operation based on private lobbying and ‘quiet’ influence may well score some short-term victories, but it won’t deliver real political success. Lobbyists working in the shadows should know that if you can’t defend your proposals in the sight of the public, they will never stand.
"To tie trans-rights objectives to the more popular issue of gay equality and, above all, to ‘avoid excessive press coverage and exposure’" That's exactly what's happened. The T was tacked on to LGB, and everyone was led to assume this was the next big progressive campaign – without any real debate.
The success of trans activists has indeed been extraordinary, though the signs are now that the tide's turning as people become aware of the issues, and realise that women's rights are suffering as a direct result. As we see here, lobbying secretly appears to have been a conscious decision. Open lobbying – and open argument – would never have achieved so much.
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July 1964. New York. "Man walking in front of construction worker driving asphalt paver."
June 1951. "Times Square street scene."
[Photos: Shorpy/Angelo Rizzuto]
He does seem to have a problem keeping his camera level.
based in the US, found China had committed all five under a campaign orchestrated by President Xi. “The intent to destroy the Uighurs as a group is derived from objective proof, consisting of comprehensive state policy and practice, which Xi Jinping, the highest authority in China, set in motion,” the report said.
The five acts of genocide are killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Up to two million Uighurs are believed to be held in a vast network of 1,400 internment camps across Xinjiang. China claims the “re-education camps” are part of a counter-extremism campaign after a series of attacks across Xinjiang and other parts of China, attributed to Uighur separatists. On Sunday, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said genocide claims “could not be more preposterous”.
The review cites as evidence repeated reports of targeted imprisonment, systematic torture and sexual abuse, and an unknown number of deaths, with camps, cultural brainwashing, forced sterilisation, family separation, enforced labour and the removal of Uighur children from their families to state boarding schools. Suicides had become “pervasive” in the camps, it said.
“The persons and entities perpetrating the above-indicated acts of genocide are all state agents or organs — acting under the effective control of the state — manifesting an intent to destroy the Uighurs as a group within the meaning of article II of the Genocide convention,” the report said.