In the latest sign of worsening tensions among Shiite factions, several hundred people demonstrated Tuesday to force the governor of Basra to step down, a move that could throw that already unsettled southern city into turmoil.
The above is from Alissa J. Rubin's "Demonstration in Basra Signals Growing Tensions Between Iraqi Shiites" in this morning's New York Times. Consider it Alissa Explains It All . . . Sort of & Slowly. Turmoil? Throw the city into turmoil? From the same article:
The protesters on Tuesday complained primarily about the lack services in the city, including electricity, potable water and jobs. Several protesters described Mr. Waeli as a corrupt politician who gave jobs only to people from his own party. "We want to live like human beings, and our city lacks a lot of services," said one of the protesters, Assad Nusaef, who was wearing the black clothes favored by Sadr loyalists. "We don't have pure water, and we have to buy water from official factories."
That would be turmoil -- lack of basic services, all these years later, turmoil. Back to the Teen Queen:
"We are an oil state, but we live in poverty and the governor and his party is behind the joblessness," he added. "The Fadhila loyalists fill the jobs at the Southern Oil Company and they don’t allow any one else to be employed by this company." The Southern Oil Company is the state-owned concern in southern Iraq.
Left out of Alissa Explains It All are the realities of the turmoil that already exist in the city and have existed for some time. For instance, if you were speaking to someone from England, they would probably stress how dangerous the area is and note the number of British fatalities in the region. Not Alissa. Maybe the stringers didn't explain it to her?
In other New York Times' embarrassments, War Pornographer Michael Gordon. Arriving this morning with more Pillow Talk entitled "U.S. Says Iranian Arms Seized in Afghanistan" he's like Doris Day at the end of the opening credits insisting "There must be a war!" (Day's voice over insists, "There must be a boy!"). If you remember Gordo's laughable 'defense' that he offered on his Iraq 'reporting' while appearing on Democracy Now! (click here and here) and his laughable lecture about what reporting is, you realize that Gordo thinks teasing out what he was told qualifies as 'research'. And to him, 'truth' is something to be sorted out years after an illegal war has started. The ugliest one in the stenography pool takes dictation very well, that's all Gordo does, all he can do. Listen closely and you can hear him cry, "There must be a war!" He won't climax until he gets new one.
Today in Iraq, already 10 dead in one Baghdad car bombing, 2 dead in a mini-bus Baghdad bombing, a judge, his spouse and their child wounded in a Kirkuk shooting . . . It's not enough for Gordo, he needs a fresh war with fresh kills to feel alive. That's the thing about war pornography, once Gordo got addicted, nothing would ever be enough.
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alissa j. rubin
