Saturday, May 15, 2010

Ignoring the Arab world (again)

Meanwhile, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal accused Maliki of trying to hijack the results of the election.
"Adding to the brutal mayhem taking place there, we are watching a deliberate effort on the part of the incumbent prime minister, Mr al-Maliki, to hijack the results of the election and deny the Iraqi people their legitimately elected government," Prince Turki said in Riyadh.
"The consequences of that are more bloodshed and potential civil war," said Prince Turki, who has no official position but is believed to often reflect high-level Saudi thinking.

The above is from Hassan Abdul Zahra's "Iraq's Maliki edges nearer power as rival warns of civil war" (AFP). The gist is that Moqtada al-Sadr -- forever the slave of Iran -- has dropped his objections to Nouri as prime minister (according to Moqtada's spokesperson) and has rolled over on his back and shown his belly in some form of plea for mercy while Ayad Allawi is warning that sectarian violence will increase. The US did a lousy job and Chris Hill can't be air lifted out soon enough. It's appalling and no one seem to want to think -- too scared to? -- what this means in the Arab world but we'll again that's it's not good. That's why we excerpted the above and not any of Moqtada's weakness and b.s. He'll always be a weakling, always be a slave to Iran. Moqtada's a joke and has made himself a bigger one today. In an editorial, the Arab Times calls on Nouri to either assist Allawi in forming a government or to step aside:

A recount of 2.5 million votes in Baghdad has shown there was no fraud as alleged by outgoing Premier Nuri Al-Maliki. The election result therefore remains unaffected. The main challenger, Iyad Allawi, remains two seats ahead of Al-Maliki’s Shiite coalition. Now fully two months after the general election, it is high time Iraq’s political leaders quit their squabbling and formed a new government.
Al-Maliki may have had grounds to question the results in the capital where his coalition won the most seats. However, the Independent High Electoral Commission’s (IHEC) rejection of his fraud allegations ought to be the turning point in this dangerously protracted process. It is hard to dismiss suspicions that Al-Maliki’s recount call was a desperate and cynical maneuver to delay the inevitable. Iraq’s voters gave no single group a clear mandate. It is therefore up to the politicians to cut the inevitable deal and form a new and stable government.
This two-month hiatus has only given heart to the insurgents and provided despair for millions of ordinary citizens who wanted more from their elected leaders. The election was never about power pure and simple but about the allocation of power across a rainbow mix of parties that would have perforce to work together. Yet Al-Maliki and his allies, whatever their intentions, have given a depressing impression of politicians scrambling to hang on to power by any means possible. The tragedy is that still lodged alarmingly within the body politic is the idea that any one community can dominate. Iraq does indeed have a Shiite majority but by no means all the Shiite voted the Al-Maliki coalition. Indeed a significant minority, along with many Sunnis, appears to have backed Iyad Allawi’s secular Iraqiya grouping. Allawi, himself a Shiite, has made no secret of his vision that Iraq will be governed by Iraqis for Iraqis.


In the rush into illegal war, the Arab concerns were ignored. Apparently the same mistake will again be made. Don't be surprised by the fallout that will follow.

In some of today's reported violence, Reuters notes Iranian artillery injured and Iraqi woman in Sulaimaniya, a Mosul grenade attack injured one male, a Mosul roadside bombing injured two Iraqi service members and an al-Hadhar land mine claimed the life of a local shepherd.


At Inside Iraq, a McClatchy Newspaper Iraqi journalist notes the kidnapping and murder of Iraqi journalist Sardasht Osman and asks:

But what killed Osman?

Below are links to what many say led to Osman's death

I am in love with Massud Barzani’s daughter

Days later Osman wrote this article

I Heard the First Ring of My Death


The following community sites have updated since yesterday morning:





"THIS JUST IN! SWANSON'S SPINE COLLAPSES!"
"The tragically pathetic David Swanson"
"C.I. socks it to David Swanson"

And we'll close with this from Kenneth J. Theisen's "Censorship and Kangaroo Courts: Alive and Well in Obama Administration" (World Can't Wait):

As I have reported here before the Obama administration is using kangaroo courts known as military tribunals at the Guantánamo military base.
These “legal” proceedings have proven to be an embarrassment to the administration and in its latest move it is trying to silence the media in its reports from Gitmo.
The Pentagon has banned four reporters from future Guantánamo Military Commissions’ proceedings for reporting the name of a witness in the pre-trial hearings of Guantánamo detainee Omar Khadr. At these hearings even the government’s own witnesses have revealed some of the abuse that Omar has been subjected to in his years of incarceration in U.S. hellholes.

The identity of the witness had already been disclosed in previous news reports and an on-the-record interview he gave in 2008 to the media. The four reporters that are subject to the ban are Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, Paul Koring of the Globe and Mail and Steven Edwards of CanWest.



And if you're feeling a little short changed by Saturday's output, my apologies. Not my denial. We landed over an hour ago and, no sooner do I get home then I learn I have a surprise visitor from England. Within several hours, I have to start working all night with Third Estate Sunday Review so this is it in terms of the time I have, something had to give and it was this. My apologies.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.












thomas friedman is a great man






oh boy it never ends


















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