Monday, April 11, 2016

The continued failures in Iraq

As Iraq yet again hits record highs in oil production, another bit of news drives home just how meaningless that news is.  GULF DIGITAL NEWS reports, "Kuwait: Health authorities have decided to put a ban on people bringing items from Iraq this summer."

If they can't carry food from Iraq into Kuwait what does that say about Iraq's agriculture industry?  About the date industry?

The failure to diversify the economy continues.

And the failure to address the annual cholera epidemic is at fault.

Kuwait fears cholera spreading.

Iraq's failure to address that seriously -- with something more than "boil water" -- is now keeping its food products from other countries.

The government long ago should have addressed this with public works programs for water and sanitation.

The failure to repair the public infrastructure is why the cholera outbreaks keep coming.

In other news . . .

Icon & star of western media sectarian |i Shiite criminal Abu Azrael is now on a war crimes mission in



2:26 PM - 10 Apr 2016



The War Criminals Barack's put the US in bed with are not a minor thing.

The region is watching and there's no pretense of higher ground to follow in the years to come.

Short sighted goals have let the White House look the other way and make one hideous decision after another.

To the point that the top US commander in Iraq is now 'honoring' the dead from the Shi'ite militias who terrorized British citizens and killed US soldiers.



Everyone appears to have a Twitter account these days, even  Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei who Tweets:







    • It would appear Barack's been caught out.







    The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

















     





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    Sunday, April 10, 2016

    Hejira

    The administration keeps talking of the 'gains' being made in Iraq.  Those 'gains'?

    Arwa Damon and Hamdi Alkhshali (CNN) report:

    But that momentum doesn't necessarily mean success.
    The Iraqis managed to capture most of al-Nasr the day we watched their operations -- but a moment of battlefield confusion resulted in their inadvertent withdrawal just as they were attempting to regroup.
    ISIS took advantage and moved back in.
    Now the Iraqis are holding on to the little terrain that they did grab -- keeping defensive positions in the northern part of the village and throughout Nineveh province as they wait for reinforcements to arrive.

    And are we not supposed to notice the Mosul effort is struggling and on hold?

    Mosul, for those not paying attention, was seized by the Islamic State in June of 2014.


    Nearly two years later, they continue to hold Mosul.


    What if Mosul is liberated?

    Then what?

    It's an outcome Joshua Rovner and Caitlin Talmdge (LAWFARE BLOG) explore:

     Obviously, U.S. leaders would welcome such an outcome, but maintaining peace and order would still be tricky. Mosul is a Sunni Arab city. Many, perhaps most, of its residents are deeply skeptical about the government in Baghdad, which they believe is trying to institutionalize Shi’a dominance. Recall the wave of anti-government protests in Mosul and elsewhere that occurred before the ISIS invasion in 2014: there is deep and abiding distrust of the post-Saddam state and what it represents. The Sunni may despise life under ISIS rule, but they are not enthusiastic about life under what they fear is a repressive, sectarian government either. And while they might welcome Iraqi army units for a while, their distrust of the institutions of the state may soon translate into hostility toward what look like occupying forces, especially if those forces are largely Shi’a and possibly proxies for Iran.
    As discussed above, if the Kurds end up doing some of the most dangerous fighting, they, too, are likely to want a reward for their efforts. Giving the Kurds a lasting role in Mosul may sit poorly with the local Sunni Arab and newly arrived Shi’a forces, however. Similar tensions already have arisen across the border, where Syrian Kurdish forces have taken territory from ISIS but refused to return it to Arabs afterwards and even razed Arab villages.

    Finally, U.S. forces likely have been trying to get intelligence from Sunni Arab tribes in and around Mosul. Such “intelligence preparation of the battlespace” is normal, and the U.S. experience in the Iraq surge (2007-2008) may be seen as a precedent for similar joint actions against a common radical foe. If this is true, then the United States may have promised them a stake in post-battle reconstruction and governance. Failing to make good on such a promise would undermine the peace, given Sunni fears of another status reversal. But following through might alienate the Kurds and Shi’a and prove unacceptable to Baghdad.  




    Barack's had almost two years now to work on the issues above.  He's had more than two years to demand Sunni inclusion in Iraqi politics.

    And he's done nothing.

    He's managed to bomb for nearly two years.

    That's about all he's done.

    And those bombings continued today with the US Defense Dept announcing:




    Strikes in Syria
    Attack aircraft conducted one strike in Syria:

     -- Near Raqqah, a strike destroyed two ISIL oil pump jacks.
    Strikes in Iraq
    Fighter, ground attack and remotely piloted aircraft and rocket artillery conducted 24 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

     -- Near Huwayjah, a strike destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun.

     -- Near Albu Hayat, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL tactical vehicle and three ISIL fighting positions.

     -- Near Fallujah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

     -- Near Haditha, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position.

     -- Near Hit, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed nine ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL heavy machine gun and an ISIL mortar system and denied ISIL access to terrain.

     -- Near Kirkuk, four strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two ISIL heavy machine guns, an ISIL fighting position, five ISIL assembly areas and an ISIL supply cache.

     -- Near Mosul, eight strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and five ISIL communication facilities and destroyed two ISIL vehicles and an ISIL boat.

     -- Near Qayyarah, three strikes destroyed two ISIL boats and an ISIL vehicle and denied ISIL access to terrain.

     -- Near Sinjar, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL assembly area.

     -- Near Sultan Abdallah, two strikes destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun.


    Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.



    Two years of bombings and no years of diplomacy?

    Looks like Barack was caught unaware yet again.


     I'm traveling in some vehicle
    I'm sitting in some cafe
    A defector from the petty wars
    That shell shock love away
    -- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name




    The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4498 (plus 10 in Operation Inherent Resolve which includes at least 1 Iraq War fatality).

    Kat's "Kat's Korner: Graham Nash Breaks Your Heart Again" went up earlier and the following community sites updated:



    The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
















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    Kat's Korner: Graham Nash Breaks Your Heart Again

    Kat: When you're young you're fearless.  Life seems as though it will last forever.  That's why young deaths tend to shock.

    Around thirty or so, many of us begin to acknowledge some concept that life is not limitless.  Or, for those who believe in reincarnation and/or the afterlife, that this life is not limitless.

    "The question haunting me: Is my future just my past?"

    That's something you ask as you get closer to the end.

    Graham Nash is asking that on his new album THIS PATH TONIGHT.


    nash


    The 74-year-old singer-songwriter was a member of The Hollies and of Crosby, Stills and Nash and a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

    To offer some context, I'll quote the great photographer Henry Diltz from Matthew Greenwald's GO WHERE YOU WANNA GO: THE ORAL HISTORY OF THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS:


     Earlier, in '67, I was staying in Greenwich Village staying with The Lovin' Spoonful, and taking pictures of the group, because their producer was my old roomate, Eric Jacobson.  During that summer, Cass [Elliot] came over with The Hollies, about three or four of 'em, and came over to Zal Yanovosky's apartmeant.  She said, "Hey, I want to bring some friends over." And that's the way she was, and she arrived with all these English guys that didn't know anybody, and we had a great little impromptu party in the afternoon, hanging out and telling sotries and laughin,' you know.  A lot of 'instant friends' and Cass, once again, was the catalyst to that.  I met Graham that next day, and I shot an album cover for The Hollies.  And then Cass introduced Graham to David later in L.A., and that was the beginning of the whole CSN thing.  Cass was very instrumental in making those things happen.  Cass was an exceptional person, and a great lady.

    Graham was all over the sixties.


    Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship's classic album BLOWS AGAINST THE EMPIRE?

    From Patricia Kennealy Morrison's 1971 interview with the late Kantner (this interview and other of her rock and roll reporting and reviews are gathered in ROCK CHICK: A GIRL AND HER MUSIC The Jazz &  Pop Writings 1968 - 1971):

     Paul Kantner: I even got Graham Nash to mix it down for me.  I had spent two and a half weeks trying to get it all together, had two-track tapes going up to the ceiling, and Graham came in and did it all in two days.  He did it all with headphones on.  I hated him for it.  But that made the mixed album fantastic for headphone listening, all these little weird things you can't pick up otherwise.  What we want to do next is to have Grace [Slick] and me and Crosby and Jerry [Garcia] and Phil Lesh and Graham and Neil Young and some more people all get in the studio and make a sequel album.


    With Crosby, Stills & Nash and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, he wrote songs like "Marrakesh Express," "Teach Your Children" and "Wasted on the Way."

    And, most especially, the classic "Our House" ("is a very, very, very fine house. . .").

    That was about the home he shared with Joni Mitchell.

    From "Our House" to, on the new album, "Back Home."

    It's got a cryptic yet knowing feel to it, aided by an echo dropped on the music track and some great backing vocals.  The song, like others on the album, was co-written by Shane Fontayne.  It's one of ten tracks proper that make up the album (you can also get an edition with three bonus tracks -- the album's released Friday, April 15th, I'm reviewing via C.I.'s advanced copy which just has ten tracks).

    And it's a strong song cycle, his strongest, in fact, since SONGS FOR BEGINNERS, his 1971 solo debut which remains a favorite of many.  In 2010, Elaine wrote about the album, noting:


     Graham Nash was always my favorite of the three in Crosby, Stills and Nash. I like David Crosby and Stephen Stills (and love Neil Young) but Graham Nash's vocals and lyrics always spoke to me in a way that few ever manage to. I consider it one of the great losses of this period that Graham released so few solo albums. I think he easily outpaced other solo male singer-songwriters (including Jackson Browne and James Taylor) and that he could have been among the finest.



    And he certainly proves that on THIS PATH TONIGHT.



    Light is slowly fading
    And the night comes on so fast
    I'm drowning in my dreams
    It's so hard to fight the past
    When all is said and done
    It's so hard to count the cost
    And I'm going down
    This lonesome road
    To lose myself at last


    "Myself At Last" is a standout track.  It's far from the only one.

    "Beneath The Waves" is probably filled with deep lyrics and thoughts but I get lost in the music every time.  It's gorgeous.

    "Another Broken Heart" is both moving and confident.

    He's in top form here.

    If this is to be Graham Nash's final album -- it may or may not be -- it would certainly be a strong bookend to his classic debut.

    "Encore" closes the album asking what it means to face the end.  It's a song every rocker in his peer group probably wishes they could have written but it's pure Graham.  He's reminded us yet again that he is so much more than just a member of a 70s super group.


    He's a true artist.



    "My dreams are only memories but they've all gone by so fast."


    And when a true artist explores what it all actually means, sometimes they can really get at something so real and so pure, it can break your heart.














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