Tuesday, May 07, 2013

The flooding continues, so does the use of 'magic' wands

In the first six days of the month, Iraq Body Count counts 100 violent deaths in Iraq.  The violence continues today, 2 workers in a Baghdad car repair shop were shot dead (guns had silencers), a Mosul roadside bombing left two police officers injured,  1 police officer was shot dead on the downtown streets of Falluja, the corpse of 1 of Nouri's security forces was discovered near Adhem (gunshots), Nouri's federal police shot dead 2 rebels outside Mosul, a Mosul roadside bombing claimed the life of 1 man and left one woman injured, and a sticky bomb planted on the car of a Sana al-Messaoudi, a Nineveh Provincial Council member, exploded in the garage of the Nineveh Provincial Council killing the driver.

How on edge is the violence leaving people in Iraq?  All Iraq News reported on an explosion in Najaf earlier today.  Later, they reported that the explosion was actually a tire blowing out on "a long vehicle."


Iraq is still reeling from the April 23rd massacre of a sit-in in Hawija when Nouri's federal forces stormed it.  Alsumaria noted Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk)  announced 50 activists have died and 110 were injured in the assault.   AFP has been reporting 53 dead for several days now -- indicating that some of the wounded did not recover. Over the weekend, UNICEF noted that the dead included 8 children (twelve more were injured).  Al Mada reports that Iraqiya leader Ayad Allawi is calling for Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi to formally question Saadun al-Dulaimi who is fronting the Ministry of Defense for Nouri al-Maliki.  Iraqiya bested Nouri's State of Law in the 2010 elections.  Nouri has refused to nominate anyone to head the Ministry of Defense so he retains control while insisting that Saadun al-Dulaimi is the 'acting' official in charge.  Allawi states Saadun slumbered in "deep sleep" while Nouri's SWAT forces carried out the massacre.  Allawi also characterized Saadun's charge remarks on Sunday as "irresponsible."

From yesterday's snapshot:



 Yesterday, AFP reported on the puppet Nouri tries to pretend is in charge of the Ministry of Defense (Nouri is in charge).  That would be  Saadun al-Dulaimi and he was calling the protesters terrorists and foreign agents or in control of foreign agents -- Basically, he was calling them everything but Iraqi citizens exercising their legal right to peacefully protest.  His crazy did not go unnoticed.  Alsumaria reports that the Parliament now wants al-Dulaimi to answer some questions about the Hawija massacre.

Though the commercial broadcast network 'news' can't cover Iraq, it's covered today by CNN's Student News (here for video, here for transcript).

 CARL AZUZ, CNN ANCHOR: I`m Carl Azuz. This is CNN STUDENT NEWS. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. We`re going to start today`s program in a country we haven`t really reported on for a while -- Iraq.

 The U.S. military mission in that Middle Eastern nation ended more than a year ago, but the violence -- not over. Last month more than 700 Iraqis, mostly civilians died from violence. That`s more than any other month since June of 2008. Yesterday at least seven people were killed and 16 others wounded by multiple bombings in Baghdad and Mosul.


And after streaming or reviewing the transcript, you can take the CNN Student News quiz.

And Parliament is in session today, All Iraq News notes that one of the first decisions the legislative body made was to allocated one billion Iraqi dinars to the provinces effected by flooding.  From yesterday's snapshot:

 Over the weekend, it rained in Wasit Province.  Heavy rains.  What does that mean?  All Iraq News explained displace families as a result of the flooding: "Dozens of families were forced to evacuate their residences leaving their livestock behind, heading towards Sheikh Saad district of southern Wasit province since their villages and their mud-hut houses were swept due to rain floods."  As we were noting Friday, "Anytime heavy rains are forecast, various areas of Iraq have to worry about flooding because Nouri's failed in his seven years as prime minister to fix the sewage system." Alsumaria noted that the International Red Crescent Society has helped over 200 families Saturday in Maysan Province who also saw the heavy rains flood their streets and homes. Alsumaria reports that the Iraqi Red Crescent Society was conducting air relief missions in Diyala Province while Nouri's Cabinet allocated 100 million dinars each for flood relief in Wasit, Maysan and Dhi Qar Provinces.  (That's roughly $86,000 for each province in US dollars.)  Al Rafidyan reports that a natural damn has collapsed in Maysan Province and led to 61 villages being flooded while yesterday, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society announced, 4 people (two of which were children) died in Wasit when their homes collapsed due to flooding.  Over 50 other homes have collapsed in Wasit and Maysan due to flooding in the last days.

Al Mada reports that the flooding has cut off roads, including one in to Baghdad, that families have been left standing out in the open, unprotected from the rain, some of the luckier ones are in tents set up by the Iraqi Red Crescent Society or seeking shelter in public government buildings.  The effected areas are inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people.

Nouri's failures are so many.  Including the 'magic' wands that detect bombs . . . but don't.  And are still being used in Iraq under Nouri's orders.  Dar Addustour reports that the Ministry of the Interior (over the police) is insisting that politicians should not be talking about this and that talk is politicizing the issue.  The issues are that a fortune was spent on 'magic' wands that don't work, that in 2009 the wands were exposed as fake, that the man who made and sold them got convicted last month in a British court and yet Nouri still orders these wands that do nothing to be used.  The National Alliance is a Shi'ite political body.  Alsumaria reports that their MP Shirwan Waeli is describing the use of the wands as "genocide."

Which is what it is -- that or "assisted murder."  If you're ordering the police to use these wands that don't work, you're not just having them use a device that does nothing.  You're also grabbing the time that they could be using to prevent violence and wasting it, throwing it away.  Nouri needs to face answers in Parliament about this -- as Moqtada al-Sadr said on Saturday.


David Swanson has an article entitled "Asking Amnesty to Oppose War" (War Is A Crime):

"Our team of researchers on the ground found evidence that government forces bombed entire neighborhoods and targeted residential areas with long-range surface-to-surface missiles," said an AI fundraising email on April 29th that made no mention of abuses committed by Syrian rebels supported by the U.S. and its allies.
This one-sided treatment by a group supposedly dedicated to all humans fuels the fires of a wider war from which the people of Syria can only suffer.
The email continued: "Amnesty has a strong track record of using our on-the-ground findings to pressure governments and the United Nations Security Council to hold those responsible for the slaughter of civilians accountable."
Does it?  When the United States kills civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya, AI's silence has often been deafening.  Shouldn't a human rights group press for an end to the killing of all humans by all parties?
While many good individuals who work for human rights groups like AI oppose wars, these organizations officially ignore President Eisenhower's warning and a half-century of evidence regarding the power of the military industrial complex -- and they ignore the criminality of war under the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter, the Kellogg-Briand Pact and other laws.


First, David, call out Women's Media Center.  (See "Ann calls out Women's Media Center and Lauren War Wolfe" about Ann's doing just that.)  Amnesty?  Most of its members are smarter than leadership.  Amnesty's nonsense on Syria influences the media.  But if you want to hold Amnesty responsible for the lies that led to the first Gulf War (no problem there, nail them to the wall), grasp that WMC is doing that now with their 'reporting' (by I'm-not-in-Syria-but-I've-got-friends-who-are-rebels! Lauren Wolfe).  They're offering charged hysteria that targets a very dumb group -- women stupid enough not to see that if it was really Women's Media Center, it wouldn't take it's marching orders from the Democratic Party or any other political party (and if it were really honest, Gloria and Robin would have come out as Socialist long ago).  Amnesty's not reaching a group of very dumb women.  Women's Media Center is.  And Wolfe's lies -- paid for by WMC -- go on to appear at The Atlantic and in the Guardian.  Her propaganda is much more effective than anything Amnesty could do currently.

Second, the Eisenhower speech?

The big news in DC yesterday was  about the speech Ash Carter, Deputy Defense Secretary, gave to the National Defense Industrial Association.  DoD even issued this release on it yesterday.  He 'reinterprets' the Eisenhower farewell speech.

That's disgusting enough (and something I would have thought David Swanson would include) but even more disgusting is he was receiving an award from these corporations.  I don't think you do that.  I don't think you're a member of the government's Dept of Defense and you take an award from any corporation -- especially not one that your department forks over billions of taxpayer dollars too.  And the award the weapons industry gave him?  The Eisenhower Award.



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