Monday, November 07, 2022

Iraq snapshot

Monday, November 7, 2022.  THE INTERCEPT attacks veterans, a fire in Baghdad, the Iraqi parliament moves towards registration for a military draft, and much more.


Midterms are tomorrow and, if you forgot, there's always the money grubbing INTERCEPT to remind you.  Now THE INTERCEPT doesn't want to report on anything that would influence a US election . . . if it has to do with Democrats.  That's why Glenn Greenwald is no longer there, remember?

He wanted to write about Hunter Biden's laptop ahead of the 2020 election and despite his contract and the legal promises made within it Bitsy Reed said "No."  It must have felt so good for Bitsy, the untrained journalist, to finally say no after 16 years of fetching coffee and conducting other personal errands for Katrina vanden Heuvel.  She must have finally felt like she was important.  Did she take that mistaken belief with her when she joined THE GUARDIAN months ago?  Let's hope she manages to work out there -- she hasn't at any other publication and goodness knows her personal life is a nightmare.  

THE INTERCEPT wouldn't report on the laptop and money whores like Naomi Klein rushed to attack Glenn.  Did Glenn burp in public?  No, he offended them by shining a spotlight on Democrats and doing so ahead of an election.

It's election time so it's time for THE INTERCEPT to whore as they are so eager to do.  So they run Peter Maas' alarmist attacks on veterans.

On veterans?

Oh, excuse me.  On right-wing veterans.

That's what they've done.

It's an election so the trash at THE INTERCEPT wants to resurrect the crazed veteran lie and paint any veteran to the right of AOC as crazed, psychotic and a threat to freedom and democracy.

THE INTERCEPT is disgusting. 

We have made clear at this site that if a veteran or active duty rapes or kills, we hold them accountable.  We hold that person accountable  We don't use that crime or any other to indict all veterans or all veterans of a political class.  

THE INTERCEPT does.  

It needs to be called out for its garbage that's intended to frighten American voters.  That's all the propaganda that Peter Maas produced is about.  

It's disgusting.  

And who's spitting on veterans?  THE INTERCEPT is.  

I wish I were better able to cover this.  I'm not.  I'm limited in my word choice because we have to be work safe.  I'm also so angry that my hands are shaking.  "Shame on THE INTERCEPT for publishing garbage" went up last night and just stops, I know.  I had hoped I'd be calmer in the morning.  I'm not.  That they could use people who have already suffered by being sent into war and use them for propaganda to turn out a vote?  It's disgusting.  They are disgusting.  

The mid-terms will be over Tuesday.  And once upon a time in this country, that meant relief.  That meant that real activists could return to work and that real issues could get spotlighted.  But in part due to garbage like THE NATION magazine, this cycle never ends, not even when the election is over.  THE NATION spent the '00s trying to scare people into voting.  And now it's been taken up by the larger media and we never get to accomplish anything.  


Any electoral success for the Republicans is due entirely to the reactionary and bankrupt policies of the Democratic Party and the impasse for the working class created by the two-party monopoly.

What have been the main “achievements” of the Democratic Party during the past two years, when it controlled the White House and both houses of Congress?

The central preoccupation of the Biden administration has been the prosecution of the war against Russia in Ukraine, which has the full support of the entire Democratic Party. This was reinforced two weeks ago when 30 liberal Democrats sent a letter to the White House pleading for a negotiated settlement with Russia rather than continuing to escalate the risk of nuclear war.

Within 24 hours, after a massive backlash within the political establishment, the letter was withdrawn and the leader of the “Progressive Caucus” issued a humiliating apology, reaffirming the group’s support for prosecuting the war until “victory.”

Inflation is skyrocketing and working class living standards are being slashed. The Federal Reserve is pursuing a deliberate policy of increasing unemployment through the raising of interest rates in an effort to use social misery as a bludgeon against demands for wage increases.

In two years in office, the Democrats have done nothing to improve the conditions of the vast majority of the population. The White House dropped any push for voting rights legislation. It did nothing to protect the rights of immigrants, instead stepping up the deportation and exclusion of asylum seekers to record levels, beyond even the level of the Trump administration. It regards women’s right to abortion as a means of motivating people to vote, while refusing to defend it in practice.

And, confronted with a party that sought to overturn the 2020 election and block Biden’s own inauguration through the methods of coup and political assassination, the Democrats have shielded the Republican Party.

Nearly two years after the coup attempt, neither Trump nor any of his top co-conspirators has been prosecuted. There has been no serious investigation into the January 6 conspiracy or the social and political forces behind it.

Since Biden’s speech last Wednesday, warning that Trump and his allies represent a dire threat to democracy, he and other leading Democrats have turned the declaration that “democracy is on the ballot” into a hollow sound bite.

The differences between the Democrats and the Republicans, however bitter and intense, are entirely tactical.

In domestic policy, the Democrats seek to use the trade union apparatus to suppress the working class, while employing the demagogues of identity politics to split the working class along race and gender lines. The Republicans wish to dispense with the unions, which are rapidly losing their ability to hold back the class struggle, and proceed directly to the deployment of the police and military violence.

On the fundamental question of which class they serve, the Democrats and Republicans are united. They are different components of a two-party system of capitalist-imperialist reaction.


An entire generation has come of age thinking that Barack Obama was a great president because he . . . ? Failed to get impeached?

He broke every promise he made to get votes and he accomplished nothing.  ObamaCare was Mitt Romney Care.  All he did was take the pathetic proposal --- everyone must purchase health care -- and pretend that was universal health care.  Now we're a long way from Boston in the Bay Area.  But KPFA couldn't stop covering RomneyCare and what a fraud it was . . . until Barack passed it off as ObamaCare and then they got on board like whores eager to leave town before their pimp beat them up.

Standing in place or falling behind are not political objectives.  They do not help the people.  

Both sides of the duopoly have failed the American people and the liars who cover for them should be ashamed.  But whores don't have shame so we all suffer.

The people of Iraq continue to suffer thanks to the whoring on the part of certain Americans.  The big story in Iraq today?  A fire in Baghdad.






At least 20 people were injured, including seven firefighters, after a three-story commercial building in Baghdad went up in flames and subsequently collapsed on Sunday.

Among the wounded is Major General Kadhim Bohan, head of the Iraqi civil defense directorate, while twelve other people who were trapped inside the building remain unaccounted for. Search parties continue in their search for the missing, according to Brigadier General Qusai Younis, head of Baghdad's al-Rusafa Civil Defense

The cause of the fire is still unknown. 

The building houses large stores of perfumes and household items.

The huge blaze required the deployment of sixty civil defense teams and more than 50 firefighting vehicles, in an operation that took up to 10 hours according to Younis.


Iraq has a new government.  At THE HILL, Patricia Karam maintains:

After a year-long crisis in Iraq triggered by contested elections, Iraq finally has a government headed by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani. While this ends the political impasse, it’s unclear whether his new cabinet will bring about change or usher in more of the same. 

Al-Sudani is backed by the Coordination Framework, an alliance of powerful pro-Iran Shi’a factions that holds 138 out of 329 seats in parliament. The Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Sadrist movement that won a plurality of parliamentary seats in the October 2021 elections played no part in picking either the prime minister or the new president — a first since Iraq’s democratic transition, which does not bode well for a government that now effectively lacks legitimacy. 

Given the longtime political wrangling and endemic political instability that has plagued their country, the Iraqi people are justifiably skeptical about this government’s ability to tackle the many problems facing Iraq. Many are also suspicious of al-Sudani’s close affiliation with former prime minister Nouri-Al Maliki, given the latter’s deeply sectarian and pro-Iran stance.

[. . .]

The new government will also need to fend off the sporadic but persistent protests that have swayed the country since October 2019 and are likely to regain momentum. These demonstrations, which forced the resignation of the government of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi in 2019 and prompted an early election, reflect public frustration with long-unaddressed demands. Over the past three years, a coalition of protestors, activists and youth-led entities has since formed to push the government to address the country’s dysfunction through changes in the political system. 

Outrage over corruption continues to be the major driver for the demand for reform of a power-sharing system that divides government posts among Iraq’s communities and fuels patronage-based abuse. It has not gone unnoticed that the new government has formed using the same methods and tactics and the same parties that have dominated Iraqi politics since 2005. Citizens may well ask, why should corruption change if the system that produces it has not? The latest corruption scandal at the Ministry of Finance involving the theft of $2.5 billion from the tax authority could implicate many who enjoy the support of powerful political parties in Iraq, including those backing the prime minister.


While she tries to predict the future, reality looks a little different.  Chenar Chalak (RUDAW) notes:

The Iraqi parliament is set to conduct the first reading for a draft proposing the restoration of compulsory military service during Sunday’s parliamentary session, amidst mixed reactions from the Iraqi people on social media.

The new bill, titled Serving the Flag, has been drafted by the Iraqi parliament’s security and defense committee and proposes assigning all Iraqi men between the ages of 18 to 35, with limited exceptions, to mandatory military duty, according to the deputy-chairman of the parliamentary committee Sagvan Sindi.

The length of the service differs based on the academic level of the recruited, Sindi added. The draft compels secondary school graduates to 18 months of military service, preparatory school graduates to 12 months, university and institute graduates to 9 months, master’s graduates to 6 months, and doctorate graduates to 3 months.


That is what the Parliament is electing to pursue.  Clearly, the needs of the Iraqi people are not a concern of the Parliament.

BROS.  It's a comedy classic.  A number of e-mails are asking when it comes out on DVD and BLURAY?  I'm not the spokesperson for the movie but my understanding is that the US release will be on December 31st.  I wouldn't be surprised if that got pushed up.  























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