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Tuesday,
August 14, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, reconstruction on a
church in Baghdad nears completion, sad realities about the 'reform
commission,' Jalal still hasn't recovered from his self-inflicted
political wounds, and more.
Douglas A. Ollivant is with the New America Foundation and he's written an important paper on Iraq entitled " Renewed Violence in Iraq: Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 15"
and there is so much in it worth pondering, many sections worth
applauding, some I disagree with but can understand the argument he's
making but I also believe in the facts. The section that I think needs
the most attention is this:
Be a proponent of the electoral process. The
United States will continue to work primarily with Maliki not because
he is "the U.S. guy," but because he is the duly elected prime minister
of a parliamentary democracy. If Maliki loses a no-confidence vote and
another government forms, the United States should be equally supportive
of the new prime minster. Above all, the United States should make
clear that it would find any suspension of, or irregularity within, the
next parliamentary elections in 2014 severely problematic. Achieving
another round of elections in 2014 (and provincial elections in 2013)
will likely better establish the political strength of all the factions
and increasingly mature the political system.
I
agree 100% with that. However, that's not what's taken place. The US
has worked overtime to ensure that a no-confidence vote not take place.
I know for a fact that they attempted to pressure KRG President Massoud
Barzani to back away from the proposal and he refused to do so. (Good
for him.) Others were more pliable. In addition, there was the idiotic
poll by the National Democratic Institute. The poll was a joke to the
US Senate. But the New York Times ran with it, didn't they? And wasn't
it great that this poll found Nouri to be immensely popular throughout
the entire country?
When politicians are
evaluating whether or not to go against Nouri and vote him out of
office, just by luck, sheer coincidence, the US has a poll testifying to
Nouri's immense popularity.
The poll was a joke, the results not to be taken seriously. It was propaganda pure and simple and the New York Times has never had a problem with knowingly violating the Smith-Mundt Act.
As
intended, the fake poll shook up a few. And of course there are the
stories in the Iraqi press about Nouri blackmailing political rivals to
get them to stop the no-confidence vote (see August 8th's " Iraq's sex tape rumors").
Whether they're true or false, they exist and they linked Nouri to the
US with reports that the CIA was supplying Nouri with video to blackmail
his rivals with. True or false, this suggests a level of US backing
which can further secure Nouri's standing.
The
US should stop rescuing Nouri. That's probably not going to happen.
Samantha Power has insisted Nouri is the key to stability in Iraq and
others in the administration believe that idiot. Nouri should have
gone. Samantha Power is a bad journalist and that's all she is. Any
study of history would tell you the best thing for Iraq and the US would
be for the US-installed (2006) Nouri to be gone in 2010. Hopefully and
ideally, it would have provided Iraq with a fresh start. Were that not
actually the case, it still would have given the illusion of a fresh
start.
Instead Iraqis were left to publicly
wonder -- and did -- why they went to the trouble of voting when nothing
changed. The only difference in the government was Osama al-Nujaifi
became Speaker of Parliament. A real change could have allowed
democracy to take hold. The illusion of change could have given the
people hope.
Instead the White House ignored
the fact that Iraqiya came in first, ignored the Constitution which gave
the illusion that the Iraqi people had some say in who governed them
and backed Nouri in his tantrum for a second term. The White House then
brokered the Erbil Agreement which gave Nouri his second term.
It
was insanity. No one who knows history would ever advise you to
continue with a leader who was installed during an occupation.
The US interfering to save Nouri most recently has rendered Iraqi President Jalal Talabani largely impotent. From yesterday's snapshot:
Alsumaria reports
that Kurdistan Alliance MP Barham Saleh is in Baghdad today to look at
the National Alliance's proposed reforms. This is what used to be known
as the Reform Commission. It's nothing but the National Alliance and
there's no great effort to spin it any longer as more and more
politician -- in the National Alliance and out of it -- have made clear
it's not what Nouri made it out to be. Raman Brosk (AKnews) adds that Barham Salih was also set to meet with Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi.
What
an important meeting. And how surprising that someone so close to
Jalal and someone who is a member of Jalal's political party (PUK) would
be the one chosen to undertake such an important meeting. All Iraq News reports
today that Kurdish MP Mahmoud Othman has declared that Saleh isn't on
an official visit, it's a personal one. For a brief moment, it appeared
Jalal would have an easy road back. He betrayed Moqtada al-Sadr,
Massoud Barzani, Ayad Allawi and others (supposedly including Ammar
al-Hakim according to the journal Moqtada published online) when he
refused to follow the process to call for a no-confidence vote. Jalal
refused to make that call and instead allowed people who admitted they
signed the call to pull their names from the petition. In addition, he
disallowed signatures. And then came the fallout and fat boy Jalal hot
footed it out of the country -- even though the Kurdish political
parties (including his own) were saying that no leaders should leave
Iraq at that time do to the political crisis.
Jalal
had to leave, for West Germany, it was insisted because he had to have
immediate surgery. And what was this life threatening procedure Jalal
had done? Elective knee surgery. And that only turned him into a
bigger joke. That's when he began issuing threats of stepping down as
president. Poor Jalal, he barely had the time to issue those daily
bulletins from his sick bed.
All Iraq News notes
State of Law MP Salman al-Moussawi released a statement declaring that
the relationship between Baghdad and the Presidency of the Kurdistan
Region would calm and tensions would decrease in the coming days. You
have to wonder about Jalal still waiting to make his grand entrance.
Nouri's publicly attacking the KRG which does not play well with
residents of those three provinces. Jalal is from the KRG. He may be
president of Iraq but he's a Kurd and he's becoming a Kurd without a
home, forget homeland. Not since he pissed off Kurds with his March
2009 pronouncement of " The ideal of a united Kurdistan is just a dream written in poetry"
has Jalal been in such a weak position. And the White House put him in
that position by, Barack Obama put him in that position, by pressuring
him to back off from the no-confidence vote. (In fairness to Barack, as
Jalal has demonstrated repeatedly over the years, it does not take a
great deal to make Jalal buckle.)
While
Jalal's weakened, eyes turn to Iraqiya and specifically to Saleh
al-Mutlaq who is either a very cunning Iago to Nouri's Othello or he's
someone who has sold out Iraiqya. The jury is still out on that but
were Ayad Allawi to give up leadership of Iraqiya right now, the
political slate would break into warring factions because Saleh can't
hold it together. (Were Allawi harmed in an assassination attempt or
killed, the members of Iraqiya would rally and actually grow stronger.
Nouri should remember that when plotting revenge on his enemies.) The
other prominent members of Iraqiya are Osama al-Nujaifi whom Nouri
wishes he could get rid of but he can't and Vice President Tareq
al-Hashemi.
Tareq al-Hashemi is
now an exile. The Turkish government has given him residency. Last
December, while he was in the KRG, Nouri al-Maliki swore out a warrant
on him accusing al-Hashemi of terrorism. He never returned to Iraq. He
is being tried in absentia. Alsumaria notes the trial was set to resume today. All Iraq News explains
that they heard from al-Hashemi's bodyguards today. Excuse me, some
of his bodyguards. Some, not all. Can't hear from all because at
least one died in Iraqi custody with the signs of torture. Torture
confessions in Nouri's Iraq are a common occurrence. What Nouri
especially loves to do though is have activists tortured and then, after
the torture, make them sign a statement swearing they were treated
properly while detained. Kitabat notes
that there were five bodyguards 'testifying' today -- five bodyguards
who face charges that can carry the death penalty. As has been the
pattern with this trial, it is now adjourned for several weeks. (It is
set to resume September 9th.)
The trial is in stall mode more than Nouri.
December
21st, as the political stalemate was noticably becoming a political
crisis, Jalal Talabani and Osama al-Nujaifi began calling for a National
Conference to resolve the issues. Nouri of course rejected the call.
He rebuffed it, he postponed it, when it was finally supposed to take
place it was called off that day. And then, two months later, doing
everything he could to derail a no-confidence vote, Nouri began
proposing a Reconciliation Committee. Many grumbled about it once it
started but Ayad Allawi was the first to publicly note it was nonsense.
And it is.
A handful of Nouri supporters from
the National Alliance were handpicked. It's not even a commission or a
committee so much as it's a body that will produce a paper, a list of
recommendations. How far astray this has gone from a body that would be
able to address issues. Ali Hussein (Al Mada) observes
that Iraqis weren't calling for a paper, that they didn't wake up each
morning and, for example, cram themselves into cars and take part in the
traffic jams on the main streets of Baghdad because they wanted a list
of reform steps the government might take. Hussein notes the 100 days.
Largely forgotten, the 100 days were Nouri's scramble for time when he
feared the 'Arab Spring' was coming to Iraq. (Sunday he denounced the
Arab Spring in Egypt and elsewhere as a foreign plot.) Iraqis were
taking to the streets in larger and large numbers. They demanded
jobs. They demanded basic utilities (dependable electricity, potable
water, etc). They demanded an end to corruption. They demanded the
release of the hidden and disappeared. What did Nouri say?
'I hear you! Give me 100 days and you'll see that I've addressed it.' June 7, 2011, Nouri's 100 days ended. Remember? From that day's snapshot:
The 100 Days is over. Al Rafidayn reports
Nouri's press conference yesterday in Baghdad found Nouri expressing
his hope that "the citizens will treat us kindly in the measuring our
accomplishments and that they will be objective." He announced that
meetings would take place today on evaluations. New Sabah quotes
State Of Law's Khaled al-Asadi stating that Nouri will make assessments
through tonight and that the 100 Days was in order to evaluate the
performances and that "no sane person would assume a government only
four years old could accomplish improvement in one hundred days." Oh,how
they try to lower the expectations now. The 100 Days? Al Jazeera gets it right,
"Maliki gave his cabinet a 100-day deadline to improve basic services
after a string of anti-government protests across Iraq in February. He
promised to assess their progress at the end of that period, and warned
that 'changes will be made' at failing ministries. That deadline
expired on Tuesday -- and Maliki largely retreated from his threat,
instead asking for patience and more time to solve problems."
And that's what the 'Reform Commission' now feels like, an empty promise just like the 100 days. Aswat al-Iraq noted
Sunday that there was a call to publish the list of reforms so that
Iraqis could see it and they also noted, "A number of meetings were held
in Arbil, Najaf and Sulaimaniya over the last few weeks among the blocs
that demanded Maliki's demotion to determine their final stand on the
political crisis."
Martin Kobler is the UN Secretary-General's special envoy to Iraq. AFP reports
he spoke with them yesterday and told them that "a top priority" for
the UN is "the oil and gas law." Though it wouldn't seem possible in
oil rich Iraq, energy and fuel are issues in the country. All Iraq News reports
that, although it's expected to be cloudy the next four days, the
temperature is expected to hover around 44 degrees Celsius (111.2
degrees Fahrenheit).
This as Alsumaria reports
Iraqis are complaining about the fact that most of their money is being
spent on generators and fuel to provide electricity to their homes. And
despite the government having agreed to funding assistance, less than
45% of the allocated assistance has been distributed. Part of the
reason or the failure to distribute funds is that a number of officials
argue the money is being wasted and that the government should not be
providing assistance. Some don't believe in assistance (unless it's
getting the US government to foot the bill for your overthrow of Saddam
Hussein) while others who see it as a waste insist that the money
should instead be going to the construction of a power plant instead.
An economist tells Alsumaria that Iraqis are spending billions each year
on electricity and that part of the reason for that huge expense is
that the government refuses to regulate and control the prices of
generators and gas. The generators are necessary because the government
is unable to supply electricity for 70% of each day.
Moving on to other topics. Alsumaria reports
that reconstruction on Our Lady of Salvation Church in Bagdhad is
almost complete and that the cost was two billion dinars ($171,674.99 in
US dollars). Sunday, October 31, 2010, the Church was assaulted. From
the November 1, 2010 snapshot:
Yesterday in Baghdad, Iraqi forces swarmed Our Lady of Salvation Church where people were being held hostage by assailants. Ernesto Londono and Aziz Alwan (Washington Post) report,
"The bulk of the bloodletting happened shortly after 9 p.m. when Iraqi
Special Operations troops stormed Our Lady of Salvation church in the
upscale Karradah neighborhood to try and free worshipers who had been
taken hostage. Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy's Miami Herald) reports,
"Insurgents seized control of a church in central Baghdad on Sunday,
taking hostages during evening mass after attacking a checkpoint at the
Baghdad Stock Exchange." Graham Fitzgerald (Sky News) observes, "Apparently no attempt was made to negotiate with them and bring the siege to a peaceful conclusion." John Leland (New York Times) quotes
police officer Hussain Nahidh stating, "It's a horrible scene. More
than 50 people were killed. The suicide vests were filled with ball
bearings to kill as many people as possible. You can see human flesh
everywhere. Flesh was stuck to the top roof of the hall. Many people
went to hospitals without legs and hands." Lara Jakes (AP) reports there were 120 hostages in the church. Ned Parker and Jaber Zeki (Los Angeles Times via Sacremento Bee) add,
"The Iraqi police immediately sealed off the surrounding area in the
busy Karada commercial district. The American military was called in to
help. As U.S. Army helicopters buzzed overheads, American officers
accompanied Iraqi commanders and shared satellite imagery, according to
Iraqi police and the U.S. military. A caller to the Baghdad satellite
channel Baghdadiya, who insisted he was one of the attackers, said the
group was demanding the release of al-Qaida prisoners in Egypt and
threatened to execute the hostages if the authorities failed to meet
their demands."
ran inside and took shelter in a locked room as we waited for the security forces to arrive." The Telegraph of London quotes
a young male hostage (unnamed) stating of the hostage takers, "They
entered the church with their weapons, wearing military uniforms. They
came into the prayer hall, and immediately killed the priest." Martin Chulov (Guardian) adds,
"The priest they call Father Rafael is believed to have survived, but
his colleague, Father Wissam, is believed to have been killed." Jim Muir (BBC News) offers a video
report
and an Iraqi female hostage states, "Gunmen entered the church and
started to beat people. Some of the people were released but others were
wounded and some died and one of the priests was killed." Muir points
out that churches in Iraq have been attacked before "but there's never
been anything like this."
Jonathan Adams (Christian Science Monitor) observes,
"The incident, which began Sunday afternoon, highlights the continued
threat to Christians in Iraq, whose number has shrunk from 800,000 to
550,000 since 2003 as members have fled abroad or been killed. Radical
groups continue to launch attacks on religious and non-religious sites
as political leaders struggle to form a new government some eight months
after controversial elections." Alsumaria TV quotes
France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner stating, "France firmly
condemns this terrorist action, the latest in a deadly campaign of
targeted violence which has already led to more than 40 deaths among the
Christians of Iraq. France repeats its attachment to the respect of
fundamental liberties such as religious freedom and supports the Iraqi
authorities in their struggle against terrorism." Vatican Radio quotes
Pope Benedict XVI stating, "Last night, in a very serious attack on the
Syrian Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad, dozens of people were killed and
wounded, including two priests and a group of faithful gathered for
Sunday Mass. I pray for the victims of this senseless violence, all the
more ferocious as it affected defenceless civilians." Vatican Radio also reports: "No-where
is safe anymore, not even the House of God", says auxiliary Bishop of
Baghdad of the Chaldeans, Shlemon Warduni, the day after an
unprecedented attack on the Christian community of the Iraqi capital.
Together with Patriarch Delly he visited survivors and wounded of the
Sunday massacre, in which over 50 hostages and police officers were
killed when security forces raided a Baghdad church to free more than
100 Iraqi Catholics held hostage by al Qaeda-linked gunmen. Between 70
and 80 people were seriously wounded, many of them women and children.
Nearly two years later and the repairs are almost completed. Also in Baghdad construction news, al-Shorfa reports that Baghdad plans to build 15 bridges. Turning to violence . . .
I
have been at rallies and protests in Latin America and am always so
envious of the spirit and laughter at them. Oftentimes our marches here
in the US are funereal as we slog along frowning and singing a very
dispirited version of "We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall
overcome," (we shall sing this song, we shall sing this song, we shall
sing this song till we die-i-i."). In Latin America there is dancing,
tambourines, SPIRITED singing and a very liberal amount of "Vivas!" No
one in Latin America thinks you are not serious if you are out
confronting the establishment: they call you, "Compañera," not "Clown."
I
have been known, myself, to treat very serious topics with humor and
some say, "warmth." However, here in the US I have to give most of my
audiences permission to laugh, then a lot of audience members come up to
me after my speech and say, "I didn't know you were so funny!" That's
me, that's the way I have always been. Should I allow my tragedy and
the obscenity of the US Empire to change me any more than it already
has?
Shall we discard being human from our work
and become Automatons for Change? Serious, we must be serious; don't
smile, don't have fun or the suits in DC won't take you seriously. Oh by
the way, speaking of "suits"---don't forget to wear your lavender
polyester pant-suit decorated with a tasteful string of baubles around
your neck--how will 1950's America know you are serious if you don't do
that, for crying in the sandbox?
My being human and acting human
allows me to connect in a very real way with other humans on this
planet. "Peace" is not an intellectual exercise for me and "Freedom's
just another word for nothing left to lose," and freedom to not have to
struggle so hard just to survive. Thriving is better than surviving and
laughing is usually better than crying.
I just
thought of something else funny! Maybe if Roseanne and I acted all
serious and junk and played the repressive Reindeer Games of the 1%, we
might actually have a chance and get on corporate media more like the
other very serious 3rd party candidates. Oh, but wait, they ignore them,
too, don't they?
Maybe, just maybe, 3rd party politics can't
take better root in America because we (not me, we; they, we) think we
have to imitate the very cyst-ems (misspelling on purpose) we are trying
to overthrow? Our campaign in SF against Pelosi was probably one of the
most successful 3rd party/independent runs in a long time and it was
against one of the most powerful people in government. Guess what, we
worked hard, but we had lots of the F-Word, "FUN!"
Last
Sunday's terrorist attack at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin is
a "clear wake-up call that the nation is not adequately addressing the
terrorism threat from white supremacist groups," warned Green Party
presidential candidate Jill Stein following an address to a major
veterans group, Veterans for Peace, at their national convention in
Miami this weekend.
Stein said that, "It is long past time that
the FBI show it understands that white supremacists, not pacifists or
environmentalists, are the real threat to American security."
"While
the individuals who commit these terrible crimes often exhibit signs of
mental instability, their acts do not arise solely from personal
psychological disorders. Their savagery has often been cultivated,
encouraged, and enabled by rightwing groups that foster hate, condone
racism and xenophobia, glorify violence, and train their members in the
use of assault weapons and military tactics. An individual may decide to
act alone, but this does not absolve the hate groups from
responsibility for their role in laying the groundwork for the tragedy."
Stein
charged that the FBI and Homeland Security have given inadequate
attention to the threat of white supremacist groups, choosing instead to
focus resources in attempts to entrap anti-war and environmental
activists who have never used violence against any person. "The FBI has a
long history of politically motivated targeting that goes after
minority groups and leftwing protesters. They expend great resources
in entrapping citizens who are basically nonviolent. This is not just a
waste of resources, it is an infringement upon our civil liberties.
"As
president, I will order a thorough review of FBI targeting practices
and ensure that the Agency is properly dealing with the threat of white
supremacist groups. I will also issue an executive order forbidding the
FBI or Homeland Security from infringing upon the legitimate rights of
the American people to exercise their free speech or to peacefully
assemble to present their grievances to their government. Nonviolent
groups, whether of right or left part of the spectrum, deserve to have
their right to free speech protected. Political targeting must end."
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