Sunday, April 07, 2013

Hejira

Violence plagues Iraq today.  National Iraqi News Agency reports Falljua police headquarters was hit today by two mortars, an Anbar Province bombing left one person injured, a bombing to the south of Tikrit left one person injured, a roadside bombing inside the University of Mosul left two students injured,  Baquba council member Khalaf al-Dawood was injured in Baquba when his car was fired on, a Baquba roadside bombing left three people injured, 1 police officer was shot dead in Mosul, a former army captain was injured in a Kut shooting, a retired engineer was shot dead in Baghdad,  Abdul Hussain Waheed (Office of Financial Supervision) was shot dead in Baghdad, and a Hilla bombing injured a shepherd and his son. The Belfast Telegraph adds, "The violence began with a car bomb that killed two soldiers and wounded another five. A second bomb which was placed under a vehicle then exploded, wounding two people. Later, a roadside bomb killed a police officer and a soldier."  All Iraq News notes a Tikrit bombing injured a police officer and his child,


Violence isn't the only thing plaguing Iraq today, there's also ignorance.

 Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) is noting the possibility that there may be a change in the de-Ba'athification law.  Longterm Iraq watchers will remember such a change was supposed to take place in 2007 under the White House benchmarks but never did.  It hasn't taken place yet despite Ditz getting giddy that one proposal would say if you're not on the Justice and Accountability Commission's list by end of year, you can't be placed on it.  He points out that the Justice and Accountability Commission "was a huge problem during the 2010 elections."

And could it be during the 2013 parliamentary elections?

No, I didn't mistype.  Not the April 20th provincial election in 12 of Iraq's 18 provinces.  The parliamentary elections.

Currently scheduled for 2014, Nouri declared Friday he wants them held within two months.  Nothing in Ditz's writing suggests he's aware of that.  (In addition, All Iraq News reports the Sadr bloc is denying they voted for the de-de-Ba'athification measure.)

It's not Ditz's fault for not knowing that Nouri's pushing for early elections or for a majority government (or that Brett McGurk declared the US supports a majority government).  Ditz is working from a Prashant Rao report for AFP and though Nouri gave a heavily covered speech on Friday, it was only heavily covered in the Iraqi press.  It wasn't covered by Prashant Rao.  It wasn't covered by Reuters.  It wasn't covered by AP.

What do the little freaks do instead of covering these important developments?

Hmm . . .


    1. 10h
      Nice anniversary story by ‏ at Firdos Square, those still standing a decade after Saddam statue fell
      Expand
    1h
    thanks Jane!
    Hide conversation
    9:35 PM - 7 Apr 13 · Details

 They stroke each other for writing unneeded crap.  10 years after a statue was pulled down -- as a Psyops operation which neither Prashant nor Jane Arraf can admit to -- doesn't mean s**t when they won't report on what happened the last few days.


They waste their time and everyone else's all the while pretending they did a damn thing today.

Jason Ditz doesn't read Arabic so let's make it real simple for him to catch up.  National Iraqi News Agency publishes in English. Let's use them to recap what we've already covered Friday and Saturday.  Friday, they reported:

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said, "We are in route to form a political majority government to manage the state's affairs, and will set aside sectarian quota; we will put our hands with whoever builds the country."

It was in that speech that he made the call for early parliamentary elections.  Again, Friday from NINA:
The MP, of the Iraqiya coalition, Wissal Salim criticized the call of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to "hold early parliamentary elections," asserting that "this call contradicts the decision to postpone the elections in the provinces of Anbar and Nineveh."

She said in a statement to the National Iraqi News Agency / NINA /: "We surprised in two contradictory positions, days ago there was postponing elections in provinces of Anbar and Nineveh and today we are surprised in the call of early elections, and that means what we confirmed it earlier, that the reasons of the delay are not realistic nor acceptable, because the security situation in all provinces is deteriorated. "

 In response, Ayad Allawi gave a speech calling for a return to The Erbil Agreement (which established a power-sharing government).


 Hopefully, even Jason Ditz can grasp the above.  Because it's more important than '10 years after in the square' or what the Justice and Accountability Commission might do or might become.

This is actual news and I realize it's hard to grasp without a whore from some English language news agency delivering it, but it's news.  Try to catch up.  Try to pay attention.  Try not to be such a useless whore because, goodness knows, we have more than enough of those already.







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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 Isaiah will do a comic in the next few days.  Third went way long and I said I just wanted to do the entry here and go to bed.  Which is what I'm doing now.    The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.








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