Monday, May 06, 2013

The Hawija massacre isn't going away

Violence continued today in Iraq with a rocket attack on a Falluja military base, 2 different roadside bombings left 1 Iraqi soldier and National Alliance Office guard dead and seven other people injured,
and 1 person was shot dead in Kirkuk.  For the first four days of the month, Iraq Body Count counts 64 deaths.  The editorial board of the Washington Post weighs in on the various crises in Iraq:

 Much of the trouble in Iraq stems from the enduring failure of the country’s elite to overcome political and economic disputes grounded in sectarianism. The Sunni and Kurdish communities believe that Mr. Maliki and Shiite politicians have failed to deliver on promises to decentralize power and distribute resources fairly. Mr. Maliki has mostly moved in the opposite direction, consolidating his authority and targeting Sunni leaders for arrest and prosecution on often-dubious charges. Though Iraq held local elections last month, the vote in two majority-Sunni provinces was put off until July.
Yet Mr. Maliki’s behavior has been driven in large part by Syria.
Yet Mr. Maliki's behavior has been driven in large part by Syria?  In what world?


The Erbil Agreement -- as any columnist for the paper (print columnist -- not the deranged online children) knows -- ended the political stalemate in November 2010.  It was supposed to be implemented.  It wasn't.  Nouri used to grab the second term the 2010 election results didn't give him.  He took that from the contract but refused to honor the legal concessions he offered in order to get that second term.  So January 2011, Syria's influencing Nouri?

No.


Blaming Syria for Iraq's problems is a nice way to deflect from reality (and to sell war on Syria) but it's not reality.  It's like when Nouri and His Lovely Lads blame foreigners for the ongoing protests.  It allows them to pretend there's no problem in Iraq, it allows them to ignore the protesters.  It doesn't address the problems.  It doesn't deal with anything.

In the real world, All Iraq News reports, "The delegation of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, headed by the Iraqi President's wife Hero  Ibrahim Ahmed Talabani, met with the Secretary General of the Iranian National Security, Saeed Jalili,  [to discuss] the latest political developments in Iraq."  Iraqi President Jalal Talabani suffered a stroke.  The incident took place late on December 17th (see the December 18th snapshot) and resulted in Jalal being admitted to Baghdad's Medical Center Hospital.    Thursday, December 20th, he was moved to Germany.  He remains in Germany currently.


Meanwhile, maybe Saadun al-Dulaimi needs to learn how to shut his mouth?  Nouri is the Minister of Defense because he's refused to nominate anyone to head the Ministry.  Saadun al-Dulaimi is his Nouri's face for the Ministry.  Yesterday, Saadun al-Dulaimi denounced the protesters as controlled by foreigners and terrorists. Today?  Alsumaria reports that the Parliament wants al-Dulaimi to answer some questions about the Tuesday, 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. Saturday, UNICEF informed the world that 8 of the dead were children and twelve more children were left injured.  Again, maybe he the next time the urge to demonize the protesters grips al-Dulaimi he should find something else to do with his mouth.


The Iraq War destroyed women's rights. IRIN notes:


In the 1980s, the UN says, Iraqi women enjoyed more basic rights than other women in the region. But years of dictatorship, sanctions and conflict, including the US-led invasion one decade ago, led to deterioration in women’s status.
“Across the board, women are suffering more [than they used to],” said Sudipto Mukerjee, deputy head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Iraq.
Despite steps taken towards gender equality since 1990, Iraqi women today do not have equal educational or employment opportunities, and too many are subjected to gender-based violence
Due to years of war and political instability, 10 percent of households are headed by women, most of them widowed, but many of them divorced, separated or caring for sick spouses.
“They represent one of the most vulnerable segments of the population and are generally more exposed to poverty and food insecurity as a result of lower overall income levels,” the UN said in a March 2013 fact-sheet.











Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Pigs Guarding The Pen" went up last night.   On this week's Law and Disorder Radio,  an hour long program that airs Monday mornings at 9:00 a.m. EST on WBAI and around the country throughout the week, hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Michael S. Smith and Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights) topics addressed include the IRS allowing private prison corporations to skip out on federal taxes (guest is New School professor Max Wolff) and the Bully Boy Bush Library and other topics (including Lynne Stewart) with guest Laurie Arbieter. Finally, David Bacon's latest book is Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press) which won the CLR James Award. We'll close with this from Bacon's "OAXACAN TEACHERS CHALLENGE THE TEST" (California Federation of Teachers):


 Recently an American Federation of Teachers resolution declared that U.S. public schools are held hostage to a "testing fixation rooted in the No Child Left Behind Act," and condemned its "extreme misuse as a result of ideologically and politically driven education policy."  AFT President Randi Weingarten proposed instead that "public education should be obsessed with high-quality teaching and learning, not high-stakes testing."   In Seattle teachers at Garfield High have refused to give them.

Many Mexican teachers would find these sentiments familiar.  The testing regime in Mexico is as entrenched as it is in the United States, and its political use is very similar - undermining the rights of teachers, and attacking unions that oppose it.   In Michoacan, in central Mexico, sixteen teachers went to jail because they also refused to administer standardized tests.  But the teachers' union in the southern state of Oaxaca, Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE)., has not only refused to implement standardized tests - it has proposed its own reform of the education system, one designed by teachers themselves.

Tranquilino Lavarriega Cruz, coordinator of the union's Center for the Study of Educational Development, has taught for 11 years in primary schools in poor communities.  Today he works full time coordinating the Program for the Transformation of Education in Oaxaca (PTEO).  "The PTEO is a product of the vision of all the teachers in Oaxaca," he explains.  "It covers the infrastructure of schools, conditions of the students, evaluation, teachers' training, and compensation.  The program is more than a written document.  It seeks to transform people's lives."

Nationalist governments after the Revolution of 1910-20 started Mexico's public education system.  Today children start preschool at three, and move to a six-year primary school at 6.  At twelve, they start secondary school, which ends when they're fifteen.  These twelve years are mandatory.  The Department of Public Education administers the national school system, while each state also has its own department.  All Mexican teachers belong to the SNTE, the largest union in Latin America, and each state has its own section.

The national union's leaders were loyal supporters of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for over 70 years, but teachers' movements in many states fought to change what many viewed as a repressive bureaucracy.  Today "this internal movement fights for the democratization of the union and for educational reform," according to Manuel Perez Rocha, former president of the Autonomous University of Mexico City and one of the country's most respected educators.


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