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Remember The Gulf Of Tonkin?

I sincerely hope that all my American visitors had a great Memorial Day……

Back to work, Professor!

I’ll bet that if you are not an old fart then you have no idea what I mean by the title…..for you ‘younguns’…..

This was an attack by North Vietnam on two naval vessels cruising off their shores….and this incident lead to the mash up that cost 50,000+ American lives……

More information on the incident…..

That is enough history for you….I bring this up because I said that the attacks on the tankers in the Persian Gulf smelled like a new “Tonkin Incident”…..

But to refresh your memory…..

With the US having signed off on another 1,500 ground troops being sent to the Middle East, some justification is needed. A top Pentagon official is relying on previous speculation to make this all look very official.

Vice Admiral Michael Gilday told reporters that the US has “very high confidence” that recent sabotage of oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates was done by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He also claimed rockets recent fired ib Baghdad were fired by “Iranian proxies.

(antiwar.com)

Then the president order more troops to the region….and now he, Trump, is using an unclear threat to help sell weapons, that the Congress has said no to, to the Saudis and their lackeys…..

In a move predicted earlier this week by members of Congress, President Trump has declared a “national emergency” for the sole reason of circumventing Congressional restrictions on arms sales, and using it to rush shipments of arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Under the Arms Export Control Act, Congress is supposed to get a 30 day notice ahead of any sales, and can then block shipments. Concerns about war crimes in Yemen mean Saudi arms would be likely to face some effort to block them.

But the law has a loophole in it, which allows the president to declare an “emergency” of any sort he wants, with no oversight on that declaration, and then send the arms over without Congressional notification.

This is a notoriously cheap way to circumvent Congress on arms exports, but several Senators said they expected Trump to make such a move as soon as next week. It appears he decided to get out in front of that move with a declaration on Friday going into the holiday weekend.

Officially, the “national emergency” is tensions with Iran, though several in Congress have pointed out that the US has had nonstop tensions with Iran for decades, and that’s not a reason to suddenly declare a new emergency.

(antiwar.com)

We have an emergency according to Trump…..The Trump administration on Friday invoked a rarely used provision in federal law to bypass congressional review of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, citing threats the kingdom faces from Iran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo notified Congress of the decision to use an emergency loophole in the Arms Export Control Act to move ahead with sales of $7 billion in precision guided munitions, other bombs and ammunition and aircraft maintenance support to Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, without lawmakers’ approval. Pompeo said, the AP reports, “that an emergency exists which requires the immediate sale” of the weapons “to deter further the malign influence of the government of Iran throughout the Middle East region.” He said the transfers “must occur as quickly as possible in order to deter further Iranian adventurism.”  (If anybody can recognize “adventurism” it is the American war machine….we have been committing it for over 5 decades)…….

So the weapons could be sold….the State Department withheld info from Congress……

The US State Department missed a deadline today to explain to the heads of multiple Congressional committees why the Iran section of their arms control report contradicted all available information from US intelligence agencies.

The report came out in mid-April, and was immediately contested by a number of officials. Intelligence officials said the report was “skewed” in such a way as to justify military action against Iran. They also said that the text indicated that the State Department had totally ignored all intelligence assessments on Iran, and just wrote the report in a way that would fit the narrative.

At the time, the State Department refused to address the allegations from other officials, and claimed the report included “all relevant information,” suggesting they didn’t consider intelligence reports that didn’t agree with the conclusion they were supposed to come up with relevant enough to mention.

Ignoring Congressional calls for clarification is a growing problem throughout the administration. Repeatedly, the administration has been given direct questions by Congress, or members thereof, with specific deadlines, and just let those deadlines go with neither a response, nor an explanation as to why they didn’t respond.

(antiwar.com)

Could it be missed because the intel will not confirm that lie being sold?

A piece of evidence in the Trump administration’s case against Iran may be less than it seems.

The Trump administration announced Friday that it is sending 1,500 new troops to the Persian Gulf and authorizing new arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in order to counter a rising Iranian threat in the region. But satellite images provided exclusively to The Daily Beast by the company Planet Labs show that a component of the administration’s description of Iran’s aggressive behavior—an apparent positioning of Iranian missiles onto boats—may not be as clear in commercial imagery as anonymous administration officials claimed it to be in statements to other publications.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/satellite-images-raise-questions-about-iran-threat-experts-say

Sorry, but I have heard all this before….and it did not end well for 50,000+ Americans…..we cannot let it happen yet again!

The Mueller Report Released as a Free Well-Formatted eBook

Boing Boing writes: “Back in April, Andrew Albanese from Publishers Weekly wrote a column deploring the abysmal formatting in the DoJ’s release of the Mueller Report, and publicly requesting that the Digital Public Library of America produce well-formatted ebook editions, which they have now done!”

The Digital Public Library of America adds:

The Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, or the Mueller Report, is now freely available in ebook format to read on your phone or tablet from DPLA’s website and the Open Bookshelf collection. The Mueller report was released to the public by the Department of Justice as a PDF last month, initially in a format that was not text-searchable. By making the report available as an ebook in our Open Bookshelf collection, anyone can download and read it for free, all in the SimplyE app – no library card or sign in required.

One of the primary objectives of DPLA’s ebooks work is to make the best openly-licensed e-content available to libraries and their patrons. For libraries offering New York Public Library’s SimplyE app, the Mueller Report can be easily integrated into the ebook offerings made available to their patrons. SimplyE and Open Bookshelf are freely available to anyone with an iOS or Android device.

Read the Mueller Report today

Download on the web: Visit https://muellerreport.dp.la, download it in one click, and read it with your computer’s e-reader like iBooks.

Read in SimplyE on your phone or tablet:

  1. Download the SimplyE app to your iOS or Android device.

  2. Use the library selector icon in the upper left corner, select Manage Accounts, then Add Library, and select Digital Public Library of America.

  3. Find the Mueller Report in the top row.

To learn more about Open Bookshelf and other DPLA ebooks offerings, visit https://ebooks.dp.la. DPLA’s Ebook work and the production of the Mueller Report ebook is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

You can also download The Mueller Report in an epub version here.

Would you like to support the mission of Open Culture? Please consider making a donation to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us continue providing the best free cultural and educational materials to learners everywhere.

Also consider following Open Culture on Facebook and Twitter and sharing intelligent media with your friends. Or sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox. 

via Boing Boing

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quakerjoe: What It’s Like at an Alabama Clinic Still…

quakerjoe:

What It’s Like at an Alabama Clinic Still Performing Abortions (HBO)

The day after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, signed a bill that put her state on the path to banning almost all abortions, a 20-year-old woman from Tennessee walked into an abortion clinic with an ex-boyfriend and underwent the procedure.

“I’m a single mom of three kids,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, after having an abortion. “I have nothing to offer this child. You know, like, I’m already spread thin. I have my other three to take care of.”

She was one of about 20 women who had the procedure that day at the Alabama Women’s Center. Because there, it was business as usual. The ban — which is certain to be challenged in court — won’t go into effect for several months. Meanwhile, abortion is still legal in the state.

Dalton Johnson co-founded the Alabama Women’s Center in 2001, and since then, the center has had to adapt and sue over multiple new laws and ordinances designed to shut its doors.

“It’s been one thing after another. You know, I kind of feel almost at home in the federal courthouse,” Johnson said. “It’s been admitting privileges. It’s been the zoning.“

“The anti-choice group sued the City of Huntsville for issuing my business license, and so that was a whole battle that we had to fight and pay for out of pocket. And, of course, we prevailed in that one. The building codes,” she added. “And probably some more I just can’t even think of.”

So for Johnson, the latest law isn’t much of a surprise. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t emotionally affecting the staff at the clinic, as they answered phones and cared for patients.

“As I was leaving the house this morning, I started to feel like these butterflies in my stomach. The fear was coming over me,” said Makeda Harris, the center’s receptionist. Most days, she’s the first face a patient would see at the clinic.

Outside the clinic, protesters line up every day holding signs and imploring the women who walk inside to choose life. Many of them are regulars, and the staff knows them by name. A mother and daughter prayed outside Thursday after one woman, shielded by the bright umbrellas of the escorts who volunteer in the parking lot, walked in.

Karl Rove and a Pitch for a Nationwide 5G Network Tailored to Trump’s 2020 Campaign

likely to give Russia a back door to every connection

Halpern-Rivada5G.jpg

Sue Halpern writes on an insurgent telecommunications company Rivada, chaired by Declan Ganley, with funding from Peter Thiel and Karl Rove, and its play to monetize the Defense Department’s unused radio spectrum, to bring 5G cellular services to rural America.

Mama

One day soon…..
when I am ready to talk about the gloves….and the dolls…..
and the handkerchiefs…
maybe the bits and pieces of herself 
that she left behind
Mama%2527s%2Bgloves%2BMimi%2BLenox.JPG

will become a whole story

and I can understand
the lace
and the spaces between



My MamaApril 1938 – April 2019


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