Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Tikrit bombing claims at least 60 lives

Following a three-day weekend which saw the deaths of 4 US soldiers (and a fifth left injured), Tikrit is slammed with a bombing in the latest news from the ongoing Iraq War. AFP calls it the worst bombing in Iraq since October 31st. Xiong Tong (Xinhau) reports police recruits were queued up when a suicide bomber in their midst detonated. Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) counts 50 dead and one hundred and fifty injured and notes, "Local television reports have urged people to donate blood for victims." Tang Danlu (Xinhua) notes the death toll has now climbed to 60 and reports:

A doctor named Mustafa in Tikrit hospital told Xinhua that dozens of patients were taken to the hospital and there were very dangerous situations.
"We tried best to save lives of those wounded people," he said.



Moving from one Mustafa to another, Meanwhile Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Yahya Barzanji (AP) report on Abdul-Rahman Mustafa, Governor of Tamim Province, and his decision to stop supplying Baghdad with electricity while his capital (Kirkuk) makes do with less than four hours of electricity each day.

This Friday, former prime minister, forever poodle and eternal War Hawk Tony Blair is set to reappear before the Iraq Inquiry to offer additional testimony after his testimony last year just didn't appear to add up. AP notes that Peter Goldsmith, Blair's then Attorney General, rejects the claims Blair made to the Inquiry about his legal advice. Blair groupie Glen Oglaza (Sky News) words it this way: "Lord Goldsmith, former Attorney General, has made an astonishing claim in written evidence to the Inquiry: That on January 14th 2003, he advised the Prime Minister that invading Iraq would be illegal without a second UN resolution, but the very next day, January 15th, Mr. Blair stood up in the House of Commons and told MPs that such an invasion would be LEGAL under the existing UN Resolution 1441. Asked if that was compatible with his advice, Lord Goldsmith wrote: 'No', and went on to say he felt 'uncomfortable' watching the Prime Minister's performance."

Blair

Stop the War UK is organizing protests against War Criminal Tony Blair.

Reasons to protest when Tony Blair is recalled to give evidence to the Iraq Inquiry on 21 January:

JOIN THE PROTEST 21 JANUARY
QEII Conference Centre 8am-2pm
London SW1P 3EE

(Tube Westminster or St James's

Please publicise as widely as you can


We'll close with this from Jeff Kaye's "Psychologist Organization Protests to Secretary Gates on Bradley Manning’s Solitary Confinement" (World Can't Wait):

Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR), a non-profit organization of psychologists committed to social change and social justice, has written a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, protesting “the needless brutality of the conditions to which 23-year-old PFC Bradley Manning is being subjected” at the Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Virginia. He has been accused of unauthorized access to classified material, some of which he allegedly downloaded to his computer, as well as other computer and security-related charges.

It is widely speculated that these charges relate to materials turned over to the Wikileaks website, including a video of an Apache helicopter attack civilians in Baghdad, the Iraq War logs, and thousands of State Department diplomatic cables. The military charge sheet accuses Manning of “wrongfully introducing more than 50 classified United States Department of State cables onto his personal computer, a non-secure information system.” It also alleges he downloaded a Powerpoint presentation, and “a classified video of a military operation filmed at or near Baghdad, Iraq, on or about 12 July 2007.”

Manning was held for approximately three weeks at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait before being transferred to Quantico, where he has remained in solitary confinement since late last July. In an article last month, I reported on PFC Manning’s current psychological state, as best as I could determine from speaking to David House, who had just visited him, and on the deleterious effects of solitary confinement in general. PsySR’s letter speaks at length also about the harsh conditions of solitary, and notes “no such putative risk can justify keeping someone not convicted of a crime in conditions likely to cause serious harm to his mental health.”




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The fallen

Saturday three US soldiers were killed, a fourth died on Monday. DoD issued the following yesterday: "The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of two soldiers who were supporting Operation New Dawn. They died Jan. 15 in Mosul, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an Iraqi soldier from the unit with which they were training shot them with small arms fire. They were assigned to the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. Killed were: Sgt. Michael P. Bartley, 23, of Barnhill, Ill.
[and] Spc. Martin J. Lamar, 43, of Sacramento, Calif. For more information on this release, media may contact the Fort Hood public affairs office at 254-287-9993." And they issued this yesterday as well: "The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation New Dawn. Spc. Jose A. Torre, Jr., 21, of Garden Grove, Calif., died Jan.15 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with a rocket-propelled grenade. He was assigned to the Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Advise and Assist Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan. For more information related to this release, the media may contact the Ft. Riley Public Affairs office at 785-239-2022." When DoD updates the count -- today around ten a.m. EST -- the number will rise from at 4435 to 4438. They haven't yet announced Monday's death so they won't include it in their count (unless they make an announcement before they issue the count).

In other news, Gregg Zoroya (USA Today) reports on an army study which appears to indicate that when service members are asked "and counsel[ed]" about about mental health issues, their chances of developing them decreases. The fact that it's one study is reason to wait for further results, the fact that it was done by the army itself is even more reason.

Journalist John Ross has passed away, In their write up, AP notes he was "the first American journalist to report on Mexico's Zapatista revolution." Fox News actually runs a longer version of AP's obituary. Frank Bardacke remembers him at CounterPunch:

The bare bones, as he would say, are remarkable enough. Born to show business Communists in New York City in 1938, he had minded Billie Holliday’s dog, sold dope to Dizzy Gillespie, and vigiled at the hour of the Rosenberg execution, all before he was sixteen years old. An aspiring beat poet, driven by D.H. Lawrence’s images of Mexico, he arrived at the Tarascan highlands of Michoacan at the age of twenty, returning to the U.S. six years later in 1964, there to be thrown in the Federal Penitentiary at San Pedro, for refusing induction into the army.
Back on the streets of San Francisco eighteen months later, he joined the Progressive Labor Movement, then a combination of old ex-CPers fleeing the debased party and young poets and artists looking for revolutionary action. For a few years he called the hip, crazy, Latino 24th and Mission his “bio-region,” as he ran from the San Francisco police and threw dead rats at slumlords during street rallies of the once powerful Mission Coalition.

Radio listeners will know John Ross from his reports on KPFA's Flashpoints Radio. A number of people have passed away in the last two years. With many, there's been a need to air brush out realities including their support for and devotion to Barack Obama. If you are, for example, the people's historians, you don't hitch your Socialist ass to a Corporatist War Hawk. That's reality. And your chroniclers can try to photo shop reality out of the picture all they want, the reality remains. John Ross never entered the temple of the Cult of St. Barack. While many on the left who pretend to give a damn about Latin America ignored Barack's remarks on the region, John Ross didn't. From his "Return of the Gunboat" (CounterPunch, July 29, 2008):

What does presumptive President Barack Obama think about all this updated gunboat diplomacy? The only clue voters have as to Obama's Latin policies was a speech he delivered months ago to win the hearts and minds of the gusano-laced Cuban American National Foundation in Miami in which platitudes were a dime a dozen - no end to the Cuban embargo, Hugo Chavez was "dangerous", Colombia's Uribe a "democratic hero." Given this repertoire it doesn't sound like much is going to change when Obama takes the helm of state. All the pieces are in place - Plan Mexico, Plan Colombia, ASPAN, SOUTHCOM, NORCOM, and NAFTA - to keep the Consensus of Washington thriving during an Obama presidency.

Unlike many pretenders, posers and cowards, John Ross was an actual truth teller. We'll close with this from his "Obama in Bedlam" (CounterPunch):

I don't buy Barack Obama as the Messiah. I didn't vote for him (I voted for another Afro-American) and I haven't filed an application to join his regime. He ran a duplicitous, multi-million dollar campaign that masqueraded as a social movement and because it was a gimmick and a shuck, will thwart and demoralize the re-creation of real social movement for years to come.The suckers packed shoulder to shoulder in Grant Park on Election Night were not a movement. 40 years ago, the Left stood in that park and were burning American flags, not waving them -- although the reasons were equally specious. Back then, it was the denial of another false Messiah's rightful place on the Democratic Party ticket. We ran a pig for president to underscore our disdain for the electoral process and when Mayor Dailey's cops kidnapped and barbecued our candidate, we turned to yet another Afro-American who was also not the Messiah. In August 1968, the Mayor of Chicago, whose son is now Barack Obama's most trusted political advisor, sent in the real pigs to beat us into the Grant Park grass like so many baby harp seals.

Now that was a social movement…




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Monday, January 17, 2011

The Disgusting Thomas E. Ricks

Once upon a time, Thomas E. Ricks was a reporter. And he was actually competent at his job. But somewhere along the line -- probably when he decided that reporting on wars meant he was the same as the enlisted -- the lines blurred, the mind went to mush and the hate and crazy went on full display. He's no longer a reporter and it's really not accurate to call him a journalist unless you also call, for example, Cindy Adams one. He works for the War Industry now, using his formerly good name to sell counterinsurgency (war on a native people -- that's going to be the nightmare next to his name in 100 years when the last of the denial junkies has died out).

His writing now is a non-stop infomercial for war and for CNAS. And of course for sexism and other hatred. Examples? Michael Hastings is a reporter and Fat Boy Tommy didn't agree with Hastings reporting. Instead of confining it to the reporting or Hastings, Tommy had to allow his site to be used for a non-stop trashing of I Lost My Love In Baghdad -- a book about Iraq and his relationship with Andi Parhamovich -- who dies. It took loudly being called out for Thomas E. Ricks to drop that crap. Of course, for future reference, it should be noted that Thomas E. Ricks -- through his own actions -- has declared his own family is not off limits if anyone chooses to go there. Then there's his non-stop sexism.

Kelley B. Vlahos is one of the few women writers who have been mentioned at his site -- but, of course, he only mentions the Antiwar.com columnist to trash her repeatedly. Otherwise women appear because . . . well they posted a dog picture.

To read Thomas E. Ricks these days is to read the mind of a sexist narcissist who is threatened by any woman who won't play Judy (Natalie Wood) in Rebel Without A Cause, standing on the sidelines, waving her scarf for the big race. Which is how the pig whose blog was supposed to be about Iraq -- hard to tell that from all of January -- is forever sending 'shout outs' to his cock-knocking buddies and online love slaves while ignoring every accomplishment by women.

Kimberly Dozier -- who, as people with the Post love to point out, actually went after stories in Iraq unlike Ricks -- has moved from CBS to AP and continued her streak of news breaking. Not that Ricks ever noticed. And, of course, there was the day last year when Ricks was his usual blowhard self but, uh-oh, Ellen Knickmeyer wasn't playing along with Ricks' war lies. Uh-oh, Ricksie. Ellen did real work in Iraq. So did Sabrina Tavernise, Alicia Rubin, Nancy A. Youssef, Tina Susman, Alexandra Zavis, Jane Arraf (who continues to do so), Liz Sly (ibid) and many more. But Thomas E. Ricks is always too busy nuzzling some man's crotch online to give women any credit. Which is how he does his bad list of great books last year and completely ignores Deborah Amos' Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East -- not just in a best-of list (though he does do that) but he never manages to mention the book once.

Thomas E. Ricks' sexism is disgusting and, were he at any other outlet, he'd probably get taken to the woodshed but check out the bloggers at Foreign Policy. No one's supposed to notice that you have to have a tiny, little y after the X to blog at Foreign Policy.

So today the corpulent pig decides it's probably time to remember Iraq again and he gets his pendulous man boobs heaving in what he hopes passes for wit. He's offensive beyond words. He opens with, "For the first time in my life, I find myself wishing that the United States could be more like Iraq. We have too many people in prison."

Oh, that's funny! If you're an idiot. Amnesty International, in the past year, has called out the secret prisons in Iraq, over 30,000 prisoners are held without trial and what appears to be no hope of trial, then there are things like imprisoning police officers without charges . . .

No, it's not funny. What that 'joke' does do is question Thomas E. Ricks' reading comprehension level.

His second point is noting a December bombing -- because he's only had 16 other days in January to note it but those posts about dog pictures won't dictate themselves!

His third point is confusing -- and in conflict with Reuters -- but it is especially offensive to write of a bombing victim: "But, like Monty Python's famous knight, he is down an arm and a leg." How the hell do you type that? How the hell do you pretend to give a damn about the wounded and then type something as ignorant as that? A member of the military might or might not get away with it but Ricks needs to be called out for it -- it's grossly offensive and how dare he make fun of someone losing an arm and leg. It's not cute. This man is disgusting and needs mental help.

Then he wants you to know the Iraq War has lasted longer than the war on Vietnam (no, Thomas E. Ricks didn't serve in it -- sadly, the pose he strikes in his writing these days may lead many to assume otherwise) and he wonders how he could have missed blogging on that. How? Tying bad US TV shows (no longer in production) to Lebanon for a post? Blathering over Tuscon (truly, Thomas E. Ricks, the world was just fine without ever having your 'wisdom')? You missed it because you miss most things.

Then we get the fifth point, his undying love for bad blogger Joel Wing. Apparently, when he thinks of Joel, all the blood rushes out of his big head because he closes with this sixth point:

  • No one seems to notice it when American troops die there. Over the weekend two more U.S. soldiers died -- at the hands of Iraqi soldiers in Mosul.
If I was going to lecture the world -- and who is the target of that because "no one" appears to be more than just the press -- I think I'd try to shore up my facts before writing.

If you missed it, drop back to Saturday's "3 US soldiers killed in Iraq, a fourth wounded" and grasp that, two days later, Thomas E. Ricks hoist his heavy frame onto his high horse and wants to whine that the deaths of US soldiers are not noticed while telling his readers that two US soldiers died over the weekend. It was three, not two. And apparently "Saturday" would require even more research so just pin it on the "weekend." Also, of course, another US soldier died today. But those are pesky facts and Thomas E. Ricks is busy surfing to find more online male crotches to sniff.

Fair Play For Old Men

That's Isaiah's May 31, 2009 comic and, if you're confused, it was Isaiah's response to visiting Thomas E. Ricks' blog at Foreign Policy to discover Thomas was posting nude photos of women to his blog because that's what a 'journalist' does, right? Right? Well a sexist one who doesn't seem to understand that porn filters will prevent anyone posting at Foreign Policy from being read at high schools, etc. across the United States. Way to go, Pork Face.


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