Friday, July 26, 2013

Continued violence with a death toll of over 800 for the month

Today marks 54 years of broadcasting for Pacifica Radio's Los Angeles station KPFK. It was the second Pacifica station, becoming one ten years after KPFA.  Its history includes broadcasting Muhammed Ali's speech denouncing the war on Vietnam August 23, 1968, the June 7, 1974 broadcast of the Patty Hearst tapes delivered by the Symbionese Liberation Army (KPFK's station manager Will Lewis goes to jail to protect sources and KPFK airs the police raid and search of the station live for eight hours), the August 3, 1977 interview with John Trudell (Native American activist) on the efforts of the federal government to destroy the Native American movement and to suppress the rights of indgienous people,  the August 26, 1983 seven-hour broadcast special Violence Against Women and the August 31, 1986 broadcast of Robert Chesley's play The Jerker about a man dying of AIDS.


Bill Briggs (NBC News) reports, "As they watch Iraq’s mounting body count and potential slide into civil war, some Iraq War veterans are more intensely questioning why they went, what it all meant, and whether the deaths of 4,486 U.S. troops on that foreign soil were worth the permanent cost.
Others are concerned about the impact that Iraq’s summer unraveling may have on the morale of active-duty troops who once fought there and who now are trying to finish the equally grinding mission in Afghanistan."  Through yesterday, Iraq Body Count counts 807 violent deaths so far this month.  July 2013 is on track to be the most violent month in Iraq since at least 2007.

RT spoke with Stop the War's John Rees about the increase in violence.  Excerpt.
RT: It's a really alarming death toll we're talking about here. Does this mean Iraq's incapable of maintaining security on its own?
 

John Rees: I think what we are seeing is a long-term effect of the war and occupation. In order to occupy Iraq the Western forces, British and American, adopted a policy of divided rule. They made a sectarian conflict where there wasn’t one before. They created Al Qaeda in Iraq where there was no Al Qaeda before. So I think that the country is suffering under the most enormous strains as the result of that war and occupation. And those strains are being reinforced by the conflict in Syria where actually all sides are now attempting to gain leverage in that conflict through Iraq as well as in Syria.
 

RT:  But does Iraq really have enough resources to contain the violence?
 

JR: We must hope that they do so but truth of the matter is a terrifically weak government. It’s apparently divided in the middle between the people who are sympathetic to Iran’s position in the region and those who feel dependent on Washington. The government only last year made a contract with Russia, as you probably know, to become the second largest arm supplier after US to Iraq. Turkey is constantly impinging on Iraqi air space in order to pursue Kurds in the Iraqi Kurdish region. So it’s the state that’s been left in a catastrophically weak position by  the occupation and which economic positions in the Middle East are weakening still more.

Geoffrey Ingersoll (Business Insider) offers his take on the problems:


 As the American presence dissipated, the Shi'ite majority, led by Maliki, quickly sought to consolidate power and mete out retribution on their former Sunni rulers.
Maliki's aggressive consolidation of power immediately aggravated domestic tensions. Rising to power in mid-2006, by 2007 he had staffed the higher positions of government with Shia loyalists. Then he began distancing his government from Sunni and Kurdish leaders, despite Petraeus' reassurances to Sunni leaders.
In 2009, he accused the Sunni security forces, known as the Sons of Iraq, of being infiltrated by Al Qaeda and Saddam-loyal Ba'athists — and analysts expressed worry that Maliki would actually declare war on the Sons of Iraq the moment the U.S. exited the country. This was rough treatment for the group that was largely responsible for taming Al Qaeda in Iraq and bringing peace to the restive western Anbar province.
Maliki could have reached out an olive branch to his rival, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose Sunni-backed, secular-Shiite coalition — called Iraqiya — represented a marginalized but relevant political body in Iraq. Instead, he turned to Iran, seeking monetary backing from the orthodox Shi'ite government.


The attacks on two prisons and the escape of prisoners earlier this week has prompted a great deal of the commentary on Iraq.  However, to Iraqis another event this week has resonance as well.  Marwan Ibrahim (Middle East Online) observes:
Sunni militants summarily executed at least 14 Shiites on Thursday after setting up a roadblock north of Baghdad, stopping trucks and checking the IDs of drivers, Iraqi officials said.
The nighttime attack was reminiscent of the darkest days of the Sunni-Shiite sectarian bloodshed in Iraq in 2006-2007, when thousands of people were killed because of their religious affiliation or forced to abandon their homes under threat of death.

For political issues, we drop back to yesterday's snapshot:
Shocking news was reported in Iraq today but there was no effort by the US press to pick it up nor was there any effort to ask a single question about Iraq in today's State Dept press briefing. Dar Addustour reported that certain elements of the Iraqi government (these would be Nouri and pro-Nouri elements -- that goes unstated in the article) are considering a six-point plan that these elements state will address the rising violence and curtail it.  The plan will do no such thing.  What it will actually do, if implemented, is inflame tensions even further and cause the slow building civil war to erupt in raging flames.  So what's Nouri's plan?
Dissolve the Parliament, abolish the Constitution, declare martial law, allow only Iraqi military forces (central Iraq -- this would eject the Peshmerga from all non-KRG areas -- and it would overrule provincial forces -- to the outrage of many), continue executions under emergency law (this would bypass the approval currently required from the presidency) and cut off all telecommunications and internet.
This is not a plan for stability.  It is a plan to carry out mass killings and to do so as far away from the world's eye as possible.  And the most shocking thing may be that the western press hasn't even noted this report.
In this already tense climate, Mohammad Sabah (Al Mada) reports that Parliament is contemplating what is being termed a government of salvation which would call for the resignation of Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister in an effort to reduce violence and to address the political crises.  The plan is said to be discussed by members of Iraqiya, Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc and the Turkmen Front. All Iraq News reports that Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi is stating that a salvation government is not possible and that, "The current government will not resign because the remaining time of its term is very short.  We need a national agreement and to nominate the security ministers and to have a transparent revelation of what is going on in the country."

Earlier this week National Iraqi News Agency reported that Nouri had declared that the Constitution was a failure "not fit to build a state."  Nouri's disrespect for the Constitution is also evident in his refusal to appear before the Parliament.  NINA also notes Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi declared yesterday that Nouri continues ro refuse to appear despite ongoing requests.  (The Constitution gives Parliament the power to question Nouri in a public session.)  All Iraq News quotes Iraqiya MP Waleed al-Muhamadi talking about the ongoing political crises in Iraq and noting, "Maliki talked about the situation in Iraq as if it is advanced and progressed and blamed all other sides excluding himself over the deterioration in Iraq.  If we want to overcome crises, we have to admit mistakes and failures."  Iraqiya is the political slate that beat Nouri's State of Law in the 2010 parliamentary elections. 



Let's note:

"The fate of the nation"
"The Zombi Nazis of the Cult of St. Barack"
"Barack's worst speech ever"
"the drone war"
"The embarrassing Matthew Rotschild"
"Sad and disgusting Nancy Pelosi"
"Bradley Manning"
"The Wolverine and movies"
"Fall On Your Swords For Prince Barry"
"The trash that voted to continue illegal spying"


I have no control over when Blogger/Blogpost reads those and adds them to the links on the right, sorry.  I have no idea why they aren't showing up.  It's a Blogger/Blogspot issue.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.






iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq
Posted by at