Friday, May 27, 2011

Protests, withdrawal

It's Friday, protests are taking place in Baghdad. The Great Iraq Revolution reports, "TAHRIR BAGHDAD - 4 activists were arrested this morning while entering Tahrir - Security forces are using ambulances for arrest wagons!!!" Protests also took place yesterday in Iraq. The Great Iraq Revolution notes:



And protests took place in Ramadi (click here for Al Jazeera Arabic video of the two protests). Instead of covering those real protests, the US media tried to inflate a parade into a protest. Leave it to Alsumaria TV to get what the US media couldn't:

A Leader in State of Law Coalition headed by Premier Nouri Al Maliki said on Thursday that Al Mahdi Army parade is a challenge for democracy and for the presence of the state and said that this is a “military parade”.
Ezza Shabandar told Alsumarianews that Al Mahdi Army parade is a military parade and not a civil one very similar to the parades of Hezbollah in Lebanon. “The parade is a direct and an indirect provocation for the system of the state and for the democratic regime in Iraq”, he added.

Ramadi and Nassiriya were protests. Sadr City? Barbra Streisand singing "Don't Rain On My Parade" onstage at the Winter Garden showed more rebellion and revolution.

While Moqtada al-Sadr got plenty of attention for his staged event, withdrawal-or-not-withdrawal was talked about by Iraq's political blocs. New Sabah reports Iraqiya's Ayad Allawi is calling for the issue of US troops staying in Iraq past 2011 to be discussed openly in an emergency and public meeting of Parliament. Allawi announced his call at a news conference and noted that they didn't know if an agreement had already been made with the US by Nouri. Allawi declared the issue needed to be put under the light. Al Mada reports that there is continued pressure on the political blocs to extend the agreement for US troops to remain in Iraq. They also quote Hussain al-Shahristani, Deputy Prime Minister for Energy, stating that there will be no extension and that Iraqi forces are sufficient to maintain the country's security. Dar Addustour reports that the study on the Iraqi military and its capabilities is due to be released shortly.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.