Sunday, October 07, 2012

Heijira


AFP reports 11 more people were executed in Iraq today.  This brings the total to 113.  Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) notes, "The execution of large groups of prisoners has drawn attention from human rights advocates, who have raised concerns about the fairness of trials and transparency of court proceedings."  BBC adds that the death penalty was re-instated in Iraq in 2004.

This is another 'gift' the US-invasion gave.  Record numbers of executions.  You put thugs in charge, you get thuggish ways.

Friday's snapshot noted:

 On executions, KUNA reports "France on Friday condemned Iraq for carrying out six executions on Thursday and reiterated concern over the growing use of capital punishment in that country." Foreign Ministry spokesperson Philippe Lalliot is quoted stating, "This brings to 102 the number of prisoners executed in Iraq since the beginning of the year." As we noted in yesterday's snapshot, "In 2011, there were 670 known executions. Of those, the Iraqi government was responsible for 68 of them. The country with the most known executions in 2011 was Iran which had 360."

There may be another entry later tonight or I may add to this one.  Right now, I'm ten minutes away from a film a friend's showing (film in progress) and I need to give it my full attention because he wants editing suggestions.  But you may have noticed, Thursday's snapshot has disappeared.  I've reposted it.  When I'm done viewing the film and offering any input I can, I will get back online and try to figure out what's going on.  I hope to either add to this or do another entry.  In the meantime, Ava and I did 3 pieces at Third.

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From here to the Joni Mitchell lyrics for "Hejira" is added four hours after this first posted.

E-mails are asking about the Thursday snapshot.  As I said earlier, I have no idea.  I copied and posted from Ruth's Thursday post to get the reposted Thursday Iraq snapshot.  This happened in the very old days of Blogger/Blogspot with several things that were e-mailed to the site.  Most likely that's what happened. It was there Sunday morning but Sunday evening it had vanished (Lucy was the first e-mail that I saw on that earlier tonight).  I told Isaiah I would change the password on the account (and I already change it once a week) and for him to take the night off, so no comic.  He does have one in mind.  I would expect it to go up Tuesday or Wednesday morning.

 I'll go ahead and address a few other things in the e-mails and then we'll close the update out with Sunday's violence in Iraq.  Derek thought Kat was planning a review (based on an off-hand remark in the roundtable for the gina & krista roundrobin Thursday).  Yes, she was.  There wasn't time today.  Third went on forever and ever.

The Third editorial "Editorial: Sending US troops back into Iraq?" is the same two sentences over and over.  Micah wondered how effective that will be?  I have no idea, but I'm willing to try anything at this point to increase the reach of that news.  Wednesday morning, for example, before I knew about Isaiah's comic, I was planning on writing about drug use.  And including those same two sentences in it.  That would have been my own use from wild old days.  A friend suggested I do blind items about various closeted actors and actresses in an entry including those two sentences.  I also considered that.  I've considered a variety of things.  I dont know.  But we've made the point that we've done everything we could at this point. 

Now to Iraq's violence.  Alsumaria notes a Baghdad bombing claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier with three more injured, a bombing outside of Ramadi injured a police captain and his three sons, 2 corpses (boy and man) were discovered in the sewage of Nineveh Province and an armed attack in Kirkuk Province left two people injured (also there were 40 mass arrests today -- 21 in Baghdad alone).








I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
-- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name

 The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4488.



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