Sunday, December 16, 2012

Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "The Deaths of Children"

children

Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts "The Death of Children."  Barack delivers remarks about the shooting at a Connecticut school, "The deaths of American children is shocking.  Our hearts are broken today.  Now, if you'll excuse me, there are some children in Pakistan I need to kill in a drone strike."  Isaiah notes only one of those three pitches is made up. Isaiah archives his comics at The World Today Just Nuts.





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Hejira

Reuters notes that a Jalawla car bombing claimed the lives of 2 Peshmerga recruits and left twelve more injured including Cerwan Mohammed Ameen who states, "I woke up later to find myself in the hospital and I saw my friends near me."  That was only one of many attacks in Iraq today.  Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reports that and also an armed attack on a Tarmiya military checkpoint which claimed 3 lives and left four people injured and Kirkuk roadside bombings and mortar attack that claimed 5 lives and left eighteen injured.




Alsumaria reports the Kirkuk death toll increased to 8 and that the number injured is fifty-two, that a Kirkuk sticky bombing claimed the life of 1 police officer, a group of school children were kidnapped in Alrfieat, a Riyadh armed attack left one Sahwa injured, assailants stole 400 million Iraqi dinars from a Kirkuk bank, a Baji car bombing injured four police officers, a Qasim al-Khayyat roadside bombing  injured a police officer and the brother of the Governor of Diwaniyah was shot dead.  Through Friday, Iraq Body Count counts 97 dead so far this month from violence -- and that was before the violence of this weekend.


Meanwhile the BRussells Tribunal issues an alert about the targeting of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society:


On 10 December, International Human Rights day, the representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Martin Kobler, said in a speech during a ceremony hosted by the Ministry of Human Rights in Baghdad, that the word of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on human rights fully reflects the agenda of the United Nations.
This opinion however is not shared by the majority of Iraqis and neither by the minorities in Iraq.
The national Chaldean movement issued a statement on 14 December asking the United Nations to change Martin Kobler, accusing him of condoning human rights abuses and diminishing the rights of religious minorities, and described him as the “Minister” of the United Nations in the Iraqi government.
On the same day that Martin Kobler praised Nouri Al-Maliki for his human rights record, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) endured another heavy blow to its already shattered security situation. The BRussells Tribunal received the following communication from a well-informed Iraqi source:
 The above link shows the body of Mohammad Al Qaysee, a member of the Iraqi Red Crescent Organisation. The criminals in the prison’s administration finally released his body. He died under torture 45 days ago but Maliki’s secret prisons staff wouldn’t let his family collect the body because they are expecting a decision from the Iraqi Parliament tot allows them to dump the bodies of such cases because of the financial burden. The deceased has a two-year old daughter, and his mother was threatened to be killed if she released information about his death. While the criminals of the Green Zone Government and Mr Martin Kobler are running a circus show about the Palestinian Prisoners in Israeli Prisons and brag about the so-called “human rights” in Iraq, thousands of Iraqi innocent prisoners are getting tortured and killed because some kind of a sick sectarian Informer accused them of not being as the occupation government would like them to be.
 It’s not the first time the IRCS is under fire. Here is a 2004 sample of Iraqi IRCS security events in 2004 that are far from the majority of events the organisation has sustained. However, they give an indication of the frequency and the types of security incidents concerning IRCS.
- 27 January 2004. IRCS office in Baghdad raided by a gang.
- 18 March 2004. IED explodes in front of IRCS Baghdad Office.
- April 2004. Shooting of IRCS ambulances in Fallujah by the Multi National Forces (MNF)
- 04 April 2004. 2 bodies found dead in the street. They worked together for IRCS. The man was IRCS director in Erbil.
- 10 April 2004. Assassination of IRCS director and his wife in Mosul.
- 30 August 2004. IRCS convoy was targeted by unknown gunmen in Mahmoudiya, 40 km south of Baghdad, with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. The truck and the ambulance were burned out.
 In December 2006 the IRCS, which works alongside its sister organisation the Red Cross (ICRC), was forced to suspend operations in Baghdad after a number of kidnappings
when gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped about 30 people from one of its offices in the central Karrada district in the capital.
“We have suspended our operations in Baghdad until all the hostages are released,” Maazen Abdullah, secretary-general of the Iraqi Red Crescent, told Reuters. Gunmen have released 17 hostages, most of them employees, Abdullah said.
The ICRC had already pulled its own international staff out of Iraq in 2003, when its offices there were bombed.
Officials described how a large convoy of new vehicles similar to those used by the Iraqi police drew up at the Red Crescent office in Baghdad.
Men in uniforms similar to those of the Interior Ministry’s special commando forces got out and entered the building, saying they had been sent to check the premises.
Once inside, they rounded up all the men at gunpoint, including employees and visitors.
Three Iraqi guards from the nearby Netherlands embassy were also seized.
The interior ministry was quick to declare that none of its units had been on duty in the area at the time.
Strangely enough the kidnapping took place 2 days after Dr. Jamal Al-Karbouli, the vice president of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society had told a gathering of reporters, during a United Nations meeting in Geneva, that “the main problem we are facing is the American forces more than the other forces. We are spending a lot of time to explain about the Red Crescent,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
The American military, he said, had been consistently using overly aggressive tactics — what he even referred to as “attacks” — in searching the agency’s headquarters for insurgents. But the insurgents themselves had never given the Red Crescent any trouble.
“The insurgents, they are Iraqis, a lot of them are Iraqis, and they respect the Iraqis,” he told reporters. “And they respect our (the Red Crescent’s) identity, which is neutrality.”
The kidnapping was the latest in a long series of similar operations and the second in less than a week.
A few days earlier, gunmen in military uniforms kidnapped up to 70 people from a commercial area in the Sanak area of the capital.
Many of the kidnappings have been blamed on Shia militias masquerading as police commando units.
But there is also a suspicion that the police are so infiltrated by the militias that they are indistinguishable from each other, says the BBC’s Jim Muir in Baghdad.
Both of these assumptions are higly unlikely. It is nearly impossible that so many mass kidnappings could have been carried out without the knowledge of the American occupation authorities (read also the BRussells Tribunal article about the kidnapping of 150 employees of the Ministry of Higher Education in November 2006:  http://www.globalresearch.ca/crimes-against-humanity-iraqs-mass-gravesvoting-the-stolen-election-of-2004-2/5309313 )
To prove that the US occupation forces were involved, it suffices to consult the DoD website. I will copy in full a very revealing article to prove the involvement of the Occupation Authorities.
Iraqi Police Commandos Get Connected
The operation center will allow police commandos to provide immediate updates to their deployed brigade and battalion headquarters.
By U.S. Army Sgt. Matt Murphy
Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, Iraq, Feb. 11, 2005 — The Iraqi Police Commando Headquarters is now home to a nationwide command, control, communications, computer and intelligence operations center. Satellite phones, communications and Internet satellites, Internet connectivity, and new computers are at the heart of the new center.
“The operations center will allow the commandos to obtain instantaneous reports throughout the country and provide a direct link to the Ministry of Interior,” said the commander of operations for the Commandos.
The operation center will allow the police commandos to provide immediate updates to their deployed brigade and battalion headquarters, call in immediate support, deliver timely reports, assess supplies and soldier conditions, and deliver limited intelligence.
“In Iraq we have a saying – one hand cannot clap. The American and multinational troops give great support to the commandos,” the Iraqi Police Commando liaison officer to the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq said.
“This is the first Iraqi force created in the organization of the Ministry of Interior to fight the insurgency. The Americans have provided the equipment, supplies, munitions, phones, and training,” he added.
In addition to the direct link at the Ministry of Interior National Command Center, the commando operations center will also have direct contact with Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq forward operating bases to coordinate with multinational troops for future missions.
U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeants Rickey Anderson and K. Kapono Bangay worked with local Iraqi contractors to install the satellites, computers and Internet connectivity.
“We’re here to assist the Iraqi contractors with the satellite installations and make sure the computers are installed and fully functional for the operations center,” said Sgt. Anderson.
U.S. military officials overseeing the project said the cost for this operations center was approximately $50,000 dollar in equipment and connectivity.
http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/feb2005/a021105wm2.html
And here is an excerpt of a Department of Defense Briefing that clearly proves that the US forces were fully in control of the Special Police Commandos, the deadly force that they created, armed, trained and deployed against the whole Iraqi population in resistance.
DoD News Briefing with Col. Davis 17 Feb 2006
 “In terms of your latter question and vigilante action, we feel very secure within the Public Order Division, and I’m — certainly my partner, Jeff Buchanan, and the special police commandos would say the same thing about the fact that we don’t have vigilantes running about without our supervision or without our knowing it.  As I said, we’ve got a team with every single battalion.  There are no separate company bases that would be perhaps underneath the or outside of our oversight or supervision.  We do — we accompany them on all their missions.  We also see where those detainees go because we help in the processing and medical screening of every detainee that comes in.
 So it’d be extremely difficult if — I can’t rule out the possible.  It’s nearly impossible to hide that from the Special Police Transition Teams, so I don’t think that that exists within the national police we work with, and we certainly haven’t seen any of it in SPTT.
 Q      Can I follow up?  If that’s true, then that would suggest that it’s not going on at all, and in fact bodies are turning up.  Are people thinking that the perpetrators of this are posing as special police, that they’ve gotten the uniforms and that are going that way?
 COL. DAVIS:  I’m not sure, Pam, if I can really answer that question because my total focus in life is supporting these — the special police, the national police, so I don’t have — I haven’t run into experience with death squads or vigilante teams.  We do know that there are uniforms available from the old regime as well as those purchased by local contractors.  So if — that’s a possibility, certainly, but not something that we’ve experienced.
 Going back to the question of problems, one of the problems we’ve seen in other police units and training units is the infiltration of insurgents within.  Have you had any of those kind of problems, and how are you preventing that from occurring in your group, if you have managed to prevent it?
 COL. DAVIS:  Sure.  Well, first off, we haven’t found anyone within the public order police who is a — who we considered an enemy or an infiltrated insurgent or terrorist.  We have in fact picked out a cadet while he was still down at the training course — because all the names we get for the recruits are vetted through MOI, and so they check their databases, and one was taken out at graduation simply because they identified and cross-checked that name.
In terms of other potential insurgents or terrorists within the group, they have very tight operational security measures that they employ which prevents, I would say, the loss of operational security or information getting out.
But more importantly, there are a heck of a lot of strongly willed patriots amongst that group, and if they believed one of their own may be an insurgent or terrorist, then they would pick them out right away because that puts their own lives on the line, as well as those of their families.  So in some ways they’re policing themselves. And we have had a number that have gone absent, small numbers, and we don’t know if the work was too tough or if they were pressured out. US Defense Department
The only conclusion must be that the kidnappers were not “men in uniforms similar to those of the Interior Ministry’s special commando”. The kidnappers actually were Special Police Commando Forces.
And Maliki has continued the counterinsurgency policy he inherited from his American masters. The assassination is not the only “incident” where the Prime Minister is involved in.
On 18 February 2012 the Common Ills wrote on his weblog:
“Nouri’s a thug. If you ever doubted that, check out the latest actions of Nouri (and his ‘independent’ Supreme Court). Kitabat reports that Iraqi Red Crescent workers are seeing their children arrested. The Red Crescent. (Part of the International Red Cross.) Who will Nouri target next and how long will his sycophantic followers in the media continue to look the other way?”
Despite overwhelming evidence of US involvement in the death squad activities, the mainstream media has indeed misled the people since 2003 into believing that the Iraqis themselves were responsible for the hundreds of thousands senseless killings of fellow countrymen.
It’s time for the truth. It’s our duty to expose ALL the war crimes committed during this illegal imperial war. Our countries were involved. Its our responsibility to demand accountability and justice for Iraq.
Let me conclude with the words David Edwards wrote on 12 December on the Medialens website.
“Reading about crimes of state over many years, it is tempting to try to fathom the mind-set of political leaders. What actually is going on in their heads when they order sanctions that kill hundreds of thousands of children? What is in their hearts when they wage needless wars that shatter literally millions of lives? Are they desperately cruel, mindlessly stupid? Do they imagine they are living in a kind of hell where monstrous acts have to be committed to avoid even worse outcomes? Are they indifferent, focused on what will bring them short-term political and economic gain? Are they morally resigned, perceiving themselves as essentially powerless in the face of invincible political and economic forces (‘If I didn’t do it, someone else would.’)?”



This is what the White House supported in 2010 when Barack Obama refused to honor the votes of the Iraqi people.  In the 2010 parliamentary elections, Iraqiya came in first and Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law came in second.  From John Barry's "'The Engame' Is A Well Researched, Highly Critical Look at U.S. Policy in Iraq" (Daily Beast):

Washington has little political and no military influence over these developments [in Iraq]. As Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor charge in their ambitious new history of the Iraq war, The Endgame, Obama's administration sacrificed political influence by failing in 2010 to insist that the results of Iraq’s first proper election be honored: "When the Obama administration acquiesced in the questionable judicial opinion that prevented Ayad Allawi's bloc, after it had won the most seats in 2010, from the first attempt at forming a new government, it undermined the prospects, however slim, for a compromise that might have led to a genuinely inclusive and cross-sectarian government."



Barack could have back the people of Iraq, honored the Iraqi Constitution and promoted democracy by insisting the results be honored.  Instead, he backed Nouri al-Maliki's decision to bring things to a halt, to creat an eight-month political stalemate and to then force the political leaders to sign off on a second term for Nouri by brokering the Erbil Agreement and, it just gets worse, despite insisting the White House would stand by the contract, refusing to fight for it once Nouri used it to get a second term as prime minister and then trashed the contract.





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] 4488.
New content at Third:


Kat's "Kat's Korner: Stones release a tooth grinder" went up earlier tonight.  Isaiah's latest goes up after this.




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




 




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Kat's Korner: Stones release a tooth grinder

Kat: As 2012 draws to a close, my friend Sumner has finally gotten into downloads.  He'll go to iTunes or Amazon and download digital versions of albums he already has but, if it's something new, he'll call me or another friend and ask, "Is it worth having?"  He's also become, Toni feels, something of a download addict in need of a daily fix.  He called me last week in a panic.

Should he, he really likes the Stones, so should he, he's got all their albums on vinyl or CD, so should he go ahead, since they've got that new album, and it is their 50th anniversary, right?, so he should download that new album and that's a whole other problem because of the various versions but, as a Stones fan, he should download GRRR! right?

Wrong.


grs

More than any other Stones album, GRRR! makes the case that Allan Klein was an indispensable part of the band.

Let's deal with what GRRR! is first?  Another attempt to draw blood from a stone, the Stones latest hits collection comes in a 40-track version, a 50-track version and an 80-track version -- all determined to argue that the band should have retired at the 21-year point.

GRRR! follows such Stones collections as Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass), Flowers, Hot Rocks 1964 - 1971, More Hot Rocks, Made in the Shade, Sucking in the Seventies, Rewind, Singles Collection: The London Years, Jump Back and Forty Licks.  And those are just the ones that sold.

Klein wasn't Brian Jones and I'm not arguing that the manager fired by both the Stones and the Beatles was a huge help in live sessions or could come up with a riff.  What I'm saying is Klein knew how to market a band.  After they ditched Klein, they'd end up with Atlantic Records at a time when Ahmet Ertegun was still actively involved in the label and Ertegun would do his job and then some.  But then the Stones left Atlantic for CBS (now Sony) and gone were the days of anyone telling them anything.  Sony just wants product to sell.  They don't care about anything else.

Mick Jagger is the perfect fit for Sony.  People talk about his supposed business smarts -- supposed because business smarts shouldn't result in either Freejack or The Knights of Prosperity, right?  Wrong.  Because those artistic nightmares were meant to bring in cash and they did.

They're artistic failures, embarrassments to someone's resume but they sold, they brought in money and that's all Mick Jagger or Sony care about.

Allan Klein, seen as ruthless, had more artistry and artistic vision than Mick Jagger did or does.  (The same was true of Ahmet Ertegun.) That's what really stands out on GRRR!


Most listeners will buy the 40-track version.  Not just because it's cheaper, but that's one reason.  Another is CDs continue to sale and the Stones have gotten the CD into Wal-Greens and other stores where impulse buys at the check out stand should help them.

Excuse me, help them steal a little more coin.  Not help them artistically.

The first 33 tracks of the 40-track GRRR! cover the years 1962 to 1983.  The last two songs are new tracks "Doom and Gloom" and "One More Shot." For those not good at math, that leaves five songs to cover the years between 1983 and 2012.  19 years covered in five songs?

Allan Klein would never have allowed it.  Ahmet Ertegun would have grasped the artistic message this would send.

But Sony and Mick Jagger -- who have cash registers where their hearts should be -- only care about stealing your pennies right now.  They don't care about tomorrow.  They're not interested in tending a legacy.  Just grab the cash and run out the door.

In the 'early days' of Stones best-ofs, the first twenty years, it was understood that you included the big hits and you included other songs.  "Jumping Jack Flash," for example, was a big hit with a great riff.  But part of the reason it is known today by listeners under the age of 40 has to do with it being on nearly every compilation the band has put out.

A best-of will sale.  A live album may or may not.  But a best-of will sale and will continue to sale.  And will introduce many newcomers to a variety of songs.

"Out of Tears," "Love Is Strong," "Blinded by Rainbows"?  Any of those tracks would be featured on this collection if someone were trying to build the band's legacy and not just collect pennies.  In fact, if art and not greed were the motivating factor, many of the outstanding tracks from A Bigger Bang would have been included.

People like what they know.  The collections are a chance to pair the candy the listeners want with some treats they didn't taste properly the first time around.  Including tracks from A Bigger Bang and other recent albums means the audience isn't screaming at every concert just for sixties oldies.

GRRR! argues not just that the Rolling Stones are no longer pertinent but also that they've spent nearly 30 years living off the oldies circuit.  I praised A Bigger Bang when it came out but, in the years since, I've repeatedly noted how the album has continued to grow on me.  I really see it today as one of the band's major artistic statements and it's really sad that I'm willing to go out on a limb and make that argument but Mick Jagger's unwilling to fight for the album or even spotlight it on GRRR!

Not one track from the album appears on GRRR! despite the fact that it's the band's last studio album.  No "Sweet Neo Con," no "Rough Justice," no "Rain Fall Down" and no "Biggest Mistake."  The album was heavily praised, made many best-of-the-year lists but not even one track shows up on GRRR! 40-track edition.

GRRR! grabs your pennies but, as it does, it assures that the Stones have nothing to show for the last years and nothing that's mattered since 1983.  That may sell this collection but it really harms the band and waters down their legacy.  A little less concern about making cash and a little more about expanding the legacy is sorely needed because another release like GRRR! and the Stones are going to be just another oldies act with about the same level of pertinence as The Cowsills.













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