The Third Estate Sunday Review will not be work-safe tomorrow. I said I'd note it on Saturday if that were the case. It is.
We'll be running questionable screensnaps. We're not covering butts, but we have taken the screensnaps to Windows Paint and erased vaginas, breasts and cocks (using the eraser feature -- so you have white blocks). The article's about censorship (we've actually got a second draft already), about one outlet censoring an editorial cartoon claiming it didn't meet their guidelines but their guidelines aren't even enforced as we demonstrate with various screensnaps.
So you have been warned.
I'm going to quickly answer a few e-mails in this entry.
A visitor is furious with me because I didn't cover the KRG this past week. I have no problem with that criticism. It is more than accurate. The KRG was barely noted. Where we disagree is the visitor is having a fit about "the power grab" of Massoud Barzani. Barzani is the President of the KRG. This is his second time being it. That meets the term limits.
The visitor notes "all the press on Barzani and how he's going to break that." Yeah, I saw a lot of that in the press too.
But there's news and there's gossip. And Barzani hadn't made a statement.
So what you were reading was speculation and gossip. That I deliberately ignored. Had it been a slow week on Iraq, we probably would have pulled it in and I probably would have noted it was speculation and also pointed out that, considering Barzani's position, I would be surprised if he sought a third term.
The visitor shouldn't have worried. National Iraqi News Agency reports Barzani anounced today he has no intention of seeking a third term.
But it is true that the KRG gets slighted -- not just this week but most weeks. That's because we're covering what's going wrong and the KRG is so stable and peaceful when compared with the rest of Iraq.
In Friday's snapshot, we noted the 'magic' wands:
Nouri's got a lot of blood on his hands. Ammar Karim (AFP) reported this morning
that the 'magic' wands to 'detect' bombs (and
drugs and, no doubt, spirits from the other world) are still being used
in Iraq. He speaks with a police officer in Baghdad who admits that
everyone knows that they don't work but that the police are under orders
to use the wands.
[. . .]
After the wands have been ruled a fraud and the maker and seller of them
has been sentenced, Nouri's still making police officers use these
devices that do nothing?
This is grounds for removal from office. This is incompetence at the highest level.
It also means the Iraqi government just lost the ability to sue for
James McCormick or his company for any damages. By using them today,
this is no longer, "We were defrauded! We didn't know!" Now you're
into the "buyer beware" category. (The Parliament might have standing
and groups representing Iraqis who lost loved ones should have standing
but Nouri, the Council of Ministers -- which he heads -- and the
Ministry of Interior and the Ministry Defense -- ibid -- should have
just lost standing to sue.)
In the public account, there's an e-mail insisting that "no one would think this was Nouri's fault" and that a court wouldn't say Nouri couldn't sue. It wouldn't?
That's your opinion. I offered mine. I could be wrong. My opinion is that when you know that the wands don't work, when you know that the seller has been found guilty in a court of law of fraud and you continue to use them, a court's going to examine that and wonder why? Now a court can decide anything for any reason. So the visitor may be right that a court would grant Nouri standing to sue. We'll see.
On the issue of no one thinking this was Nouri's fault?
Today NINA reports, "Leader of the Sadrist Trend, Muqtada al-Sadr, demanded Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to apologize and stand before Parliament to answer about the deal of the explosives detection instruments." Last time I checked, Moqtada al-Sadr was a cleric and a movement leader. I would say he was some one. Moqtada also wants the British government to hand the man who made and sold the wands over to Iraq where he can be executed since he "caused the death of thousands of Iraqis." Moqtada suspects some Iraqis were bribed in this deal and wants names he also demands that the 'magic' wands stop being used immediately stating that they are "an insult to the Iraqis' intelligence."
Another e-mail notes the US Congressional Research Service report by Kenneth Katzman "Iraq: Politics, Governance, and Human Rights" that we've covered in two snapshots so far. The e-mailer used the link and read the report and writes that she is "just really shocked by how much has gone in Iraq that the American media really hasn't gotten across to the people." I agree that it is shocking. I hope as many people as possible will read the report. From time to time, The NewsHour (PBS) has Katzman on as a guest to discuss findings and reports. In a perfect world, they'd bring him on ask him basic things like, "What are the biggest misconceptions about Iraq?" Sort of a TV version of Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Five myths about Iraq" (Washington Post).
And that's going to be it. I'm tired. Ava and I watched five episodes of a TV show for our review this week and have already done our phone calls (two actors who left the show, one who was on the show and a former producer of the show). So all we have to do is write it. We're also going to be doing a piece on sexism that we've got a rough outline on (Ava and I are doing). And as I noted, we all worked on the censorship story and put it through two drafts already.
I'm going to do the other entry and then I'm going to try to take a nap before we get started working on the edition.
It's over, I'm done writing songs about love
There's a war going on
So I'm holding my gun with a strap and a glove
And I'm writing a song about war
And it goes
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Oh oh oh oh
-- "I Hate The War" (written by Greg Goldberg, on The Ballet's Mattachine!)
The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4488.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq
i hate the war
the ballet
