Friday, January 19, 2018

Barack Goes To Saudi Arabia


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From January 27, 2015, that's "Barack Goes To Saudi Arabia."  C.I. noted:

A Saudi dignatry speaks to First Lady Michelle declaring, "A drone at the White House!"  To which Michelle replies, "Oh.  So you did catch my husband's 90 minute speech last week."  Leading Valerie Jarrett to exclaim, "Zing!" Isaiah archives his comics at The World Today Just Nuts.


I miss Valerie Jarrett.  She was so much fun to draw.

I like that comic.  

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Friday, January 19, 2018.  Chaos and violence continue and it's getting harder and harder for Hayder al-Abadi to spin present day Iraq as 'success.'




 Jan 17
I'm under 25 & I know who Ashleigh Banfield is. She was the reporter on NYC streets during 9/11. She interviewed Taliban prisoners during the Iraq War. & She's the woman who made sure Brock Turner's mugshot was on CNN. IDK who TF Katie Way is, but she's no journalist.
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Actually, Jailain, I'm not sure you know who Ashleigh Banfield is.

Her most courageous moment was regarding the Iraq War -- and that was calling out the coverage of it.

You do mention the Iraq War but I'm not sure you understand that either.  Taliban?

Did you study with Dick Cheney?  Was Bully Boy Bush your tutor?

The Taliban is in Afghanistan.

As for Katie Way, I detest the article she produced (the bad date = abuse nonsense).  But she is a journalist.  And the fact that you're Tweeting about her underscores that.

And I doubt Katie Way would confuse Afghanistan with Iraq.


Iraq where the greed keeps the foreign fighters on the ground . . .


 24 minutes ago
BP strikes deal with Iraq to exploit giant Kirkuk field. Agreement cements Baghdad control over Iraqi Kurdistan after its failed independence bid.
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The greedy swoop in.  Iraq's a country with double-digit unemployment (16% is the official number).  An oil rich country that can't take care of its citizens.  Where does the money go?  Don't ask Hayder al-Abadi -- he's spent three years now insisting he was going to fight corruption.  They can do show trials of Sunnis they wrongly call members of ISIS and carry those trials out in 15 minutes but somehow it's different for the corrupt.  Probably the difference results from the fact that the ones stealing from Iraq are the political class.


A country of widows and orphans.  That's what the Iraq War has created and continues to create.


Hayder's taking to crowing a lot lately.


 Jan 18
The number of Iraqis returning to their home has now surpassed the number of IDPs in Iraq. With the support of its local and international partners, the will continue working to ensure the safe and dignified return of all displaced Iraqis to their homes and communities
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He forgets that many of the displaced have been forced to return and forced to return to unsafe areas.

He also forgets the issue of the ages of the displaced.


REUTERS reports:

About half the 2.6 million people displaced in Iraq after a three-year war with Islamic State militants are children and persisting violence hampers efforts to ease their suffering, the United Nations said on Friday.
While the Baghdad government last month declared victory over Islamic State after wresting back almost all the territory IS seized in 2014, persistent bombing and shooting attacks make it difficult to rebuild the lives of displaced people, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency.
"We believe that as a result of the conflict, a lack of investment over the years, and the poverty ... that there are 4 million children now in need across Iraq," said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF chief representative in the country.


Not really a success for Hayder, no matter how he spins it.

B-b-b-ut at least he vanquished ISIS, right?

Uh . . . no.

From the US Defense Dept this morning:




Strikes in Iraq
There were no reported strikes conducted in Iraq on Jan. 18, 17 and 14.
On Jan. 16 near Rutbah in Iraq, coalition military forces conducted a strike consisting of three engagements against ISIS targets, destroying three ISIS underground facilities and a generator.
On Jan. 15 near Rutbah in Iraq, coalition military forces conducted a strike consisting of one engagement against ISIS targets, destroying two ISIS weapons caches.
On Jan. 13 near Mosul in Iraq, coalition military forces conducted a strike consisting of one engagement against ISIS targets, destroying an ISIS tunnel.
On Jan. 12 near Tuz in Iraq, coalition military forces conducted a strike consisting of three engagements against an ISIS tactical unit.

Yes, the US continues to bomb Iraq.


It says it's targeting ISIS.

That sort of contradicts Hayder's boasts of triumph.

As does the continued violence.  WORLD BULLETIN reports, "At least three civilians were killed Friday in two separate bombings in Iraq’s Baghdad and Diyala provinces, according to local security sources."  And the death toll has now climbed to four with at least two people left injured.


'Success'?  Does that also include the continued targeting of civilians by Hayder's militias?



 17 hours ago
and have seen widespread violations against Kurds since the military takeover of the disputed areas by the Iraqi army and Iranian-backed Hashd al-Shaabi militias in mid-October.
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The more time passes, the less impressive he comes off.

Which is why he wants the elections to be held in May and not postponed.

On the elections, MIDDLE EAST MONITOR reports:
The Iraqi parliament has failed to set a new date for the upcoming legislative elections, Iraqi media sources reported yesterday.
Media sources quoted Members of the Parliament (MPs) as saying that yesterday’s session was devoted to a secret ballot on holding the elections on either 12 May, the date that was announced by the Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, or in early December 2018.
During the session, Kurds and Shiites MPs both stressed the importance of holding elections on time, while Sunnis argued that it should be delayed.
Of the 260 MPs in attendance, 149 suggested a secret vote on the matter, but Shiite MPs objected, arguing it was illegal.
Parliament speaker Salim Al-Jabouri, a Sunni, decided at the end of yesterday’s session to postpone the voting session to next Saturday, after the “secret voting to delay the elections failed.”


If elections are going to take place in May, this vote needs to happen soon.  In the past, three months has been used as the minimum required to prepare for elections.  Electronic voting -- if paper ballots are indeed out the window in Iraq as some insist -- will not mean less time required since there will need to be training and planning to utilize those.

The US Embassy in Baghdad issued the following yesterday:


 The U.S. government strongly supports holding the Iraqi national elections in May 2018, in line with the Iraqi constitution.  Postponing the elections would set a dangerous precedent, undermining the constitution and damaging Iraq’s long-term democratic development.
To that end, the United States is providing assistance that will help ensure that all Iraqi voices are heard and counted, including the approximately 2.6 million Iraqis who remain displaced from their homes in the liberated areas.  USAID is assisting in the training of local civil society groups in election monitoring and providing Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) with six elections advisors who will help IHEC strengthen its electoral systems, personnel, and processes in the following ways:
  • Enfranchise internally displaced Iraqis by focusing on voter registration and ensuring electronic voting systems are effective.
  • Improve provincial electoral administrative capacity to support voting in recently liberated areas.
  • Help the new IHEC Board of Commissioners finalize a sound operational plan for the May 2018 elections.


Support for Iraq’s democratic institutions is a key part of the United States’ ongoing commitment to a federal, democratic, prosperous, and unified Iraq.  By exercising their constitutional right to vote, Iraqis will signal their commitment to governance through peaceful processes rather than through violence.


The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley, PACIFICA EVENING NEWS and LATINO USA --  updated:



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Saturday, December 16, 2017

The Conversation





Sunday, January 18, 2015

Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "The Conversation"





That's "The Conversation" from January 18, 2015.  C.I. noted:


  
A conversation takes place with one person asking, "Did you hear?  The Supreme Court is considering same-sex marriage?"  The other replies, "I had no idea Chief Justice John Roberts was even out!  I hope Scalia says 'yes'!"   Isaiah archives his comics at The World Today Just Nuts.




Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Friday, December 15, 2017.  The UN responds to Iraq's mass executions, a selfie sparks outrage, the claims that the Islamic State was defeated in Iraq look increasingly hollow, and much more.


Yesterday, the Iraqi government carried out 38 executions.

 28 minutes ago
Important. Iraq also holding German-born Linda Wenzel.
One of the 38 ISIS members executed yesterday in Iraq was a Swedish national, sets a notable precedent.
Show this thread
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This morning, Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, declared:

We are deeply shocked and appalled at the mass execution on Thursday of 38 men at a prison in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya, Iraq, which once again raises huge concerns about the use of the death penalty in the country. These 38 prisoners had been convicted for terrorism-related crimes.

Given the flaws of the Iraqi justice system, it appears extremely doubtful that strict due process and fair trial guarantees were followed in these 38 cases. This raises the prospect of irreversible miscarriages of justice and violations of the right to life.

So far this year, we have learned of 106 executions in Iraq, including the mass hanging of 42 prisoners in a single day in September.

We once again urge the Iraqi authorities to halt all executions, establish an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty and carry out an urgent and comprehensive review of the criminal justice system.



Throssell notes 106 executions in Iraq this year.  In 2016, Amnesty International recorded 88 executions in Iraq.

The 106 will not include the extra-judicial executions carried out by Iraqi forces.

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad (GUARDIAN) reported on some of these executions in "After the liberation of Mousl, an orgy of killing."  One example:
Then, on the radio, between batches of numbers, came the words: “We caught a D**sh.”
 Taha grabbed a radio and said: “Bring him to me.”
A wave of excitement ran through the room. Taha made a pistol gesture and shot in the air. “We will have a party today.”
Half an hour later, a soldier brought an old man into the room and pushed him to the floor. The man looked emaciated, but underneath his threadbare T-shirt, his muscles were tense and lean. His silky grey hair and wavy, shaggy beard, and the thick circles around his large, dark eyes, gave him the look of a 19th-century Russian revolutionary. The soldier said he was spotted crossing over from Isis lines with the civilians, but when he saw the soldiers he tried flee back to Isis territory.
“Who are you?” asked Taha in a firm voice.
“I am a hospital medic, please check my card.”
“Where is your national ID card?” asked Taha.
“It was taken by Isis fighters to prevent us from leaving,” replied the man.
“Taken by Isis, or you destroyed it to hide your name? How do we know you are not an Isis commander?” asked Taha.
“I am a medic sir, I told you. D**sh forced me to go to the old city and work in their field hospital. I was there treating injured civilians and yes, I will be straight with you, I did treat some of their fighters, too, because they forced me to. But I am not D**sh, sir, I actually hate them.”
“You are a liar,” said Taha.
“I swear by Imam Abbas … ” the man began, but before he had finished his oath upon the name of one of Shia Islam’s most revered figures, Taha smacked him hard in the face, sending him tumbling back into the lap of a soldier who sat behind him.
“Don’t utter these names, you filthy animal.”
The medic picked himself up, with an insulted look on his face. “But I am an old man,” he said softly, gradually bringing back the smile to his face. If there had been a moment in which he could have saved himself, it had now passed.
Taha and the soldiers dragged the old man out of the basement and into the street. They found a deserted house attached to a large ancient church, and pushed the captive through a courtyard, up a few steps, and into a small, dark room with three tall arched windows that overlooked a cemetery. They sat him on the floor and he leaned against the base of one of the windows, his head backlit by shafts of the afternoon sunlight. They stood encircling him. “Yalla old man, why don’t you confess so we can send you away from here?” said one young officer.

The old man, still smiling, said: “But how can I confess something I haven’t done? How can I prejudice myself?”
A heavy-set soldier picked up a short, thick metal pipe and started prodding the old man’s knees with it. “Look, from the window, that rotten body over there,” he said. “That was one of your people. We captured him few days ago and he, too, refused to confess.”
The man craned his neck and looked out of the window behind him. Below the house, a bloated, decomposed body had turned black under the scorching summer sun. He turned and smiled, but there was now a hint of fear, a loss of control. “I am just a medic,” he mumbled. Taha swung his leg back and kicked the man’s face so hard that he collapsed motionless on his back. For a second, everyone in the room thought he was dead.
“Pour water on him, he is faking,” Taha said angrily.
 One soldier pulled the man up and sat him down again. Slowly, he opened his eyes, which at first looked stunned, and then darkened with anger. He opened his mouth, and a dark lump of flesh, blood and a set of large, gleaming false teeth tumbled on to his chest and the floor.
“Ha, will you confess?” said the soldier with the metal pipe.
“I have nothing to say,” hissed the man with blood pouring from his mouth. Taha nodded to the heavyset soldier, who pulled the old man to his feet, his legs wobbling. He leaned the man against the arched window and then, in one quick move, the soldier flipped him out of the window, but held his feet. The old man hung, swinging, from the window.
“Are you going to confess now?” asked the soldier. “What else is left for you?”
“How can I prejudice myself?” came the faint voice of the old man from below.
In that dark room, the soldiers and officers looked at the old man’s feet, dirty and cracked, for a few seconds before they vanished from the window. He fell into the yard below with a thud. The soldier who had dropped him leaned out of the window with his machine gun and fired five bullets into the body in the rubble below. A cloud of gunpowder filled the room, dancing in the shafts of light. The soldier looked out of the window and then fired two more bullets. “These two at his legs, just in case he wants to walk home,” said the soldier, laughing.
Taha and the two officers walked back. A young officer said, with a sheepish smile: “I wonder if God one day will punish us for all these killings. Will we go mad or something worse?”

“He is my fifth since the start of [the battle of] Mosul,” said Taha. “Al-Qaida have one good principle: if they suspect someone, or have the tiniest evidence against him, they execute him. They say that if he was guilty, he deserved it, and if he was innocent, his blood will be purged and later he will go to heaven. I follow the same principle.”


Ghaith Abdul-Ahad's entire report is available in audio format here read by Alice Arnold.


As Iraq breaks all human rights laws, prime minister Hayder al-Abadi frolics in France.

AP reports:

 Three days after declaring victory over the Islamic State group, Iraq's prime minister warns that the group's extremists might "erupt again somewhere else" without international cooperation in combatting the militants.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told reporters Tuesday that "we have managed to break them" in Iraq, but added that it's a worry for everyone that IS has "this unfortunate ability to recruit young people very quickly."

Meanwhile . . .


 9 minutes ago
IS still being hit in Iraq and Syria despite claims by some that it’s mission accomplished.
Between Dec 11-14, Coalition forces conducted 42 strikes consisting of 53 engagements to in &
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And XINHUA reports:

A total of ten Islamic State (IS) militants were killed Friday in airstrikes on two IS safe houses at a rural area in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, an army commander said.
Iraqi helicopter gunships pounded two safe houses based on intelligence reports in Maytah area, some 120 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, leaving ten IS militants killed, Lt. Gen. Mezhir al-Azzawi, commander of the security forces responsible for military operations in Diyala province, told Xinhua.



Doesn't appear ISIS is defeated or broken in Iraq.


And reports of the Iraqi government attacking civilians in Tuz Khurmatu have reached the United Nations.  Spokesperson Liz Throssell declared this morning:



We are seriously concerned about the situation in the city of Tuz Khurmatu, in Salah al-Din Governorate in Iraq, where on 9 and 12 December residential areas were reportedly shelled, causing casualties among civilians.  It is not clear who is carrying out the shelling which is reported to be coming from the mountains overlooking the area. Iraqi forces are still working to discover the exact locations from which the shelling has come and the identity of those responsible.

Tensions have been increasing in Tuz Khurmatu following September’s independence referendum in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and in disputed areas, which include Tuz Khurmatu. In recent weeks, clashes have broken out between Kurdish Security Forces – also known as the Peshmerga - and Turkmen Popular Mobilization Units or PMUs. This fighting has to date resulted in an unconfirmed number of deaths in each group.

UN human rights officers visited the area on 7 December and again on 14 December to investigate reports of the burning of homes and looting of businesses. They spoke to residents of Tuz Khurmatu in Kirkuk and Erbil who had fled the violence and also saw for themselves in Tuz Khurmatu some 150 premises that had been burned or otherwise damaged. This follows reports that, on 16 and 17 October, a similar number of houses were looted and burned by Turkmen PMUs and civilians, and that up to 11 houses reportedly belonging to Kurdish families and officials were destroyed by explosives in the city. Thousands of residents, mainly of Kurdish origin left for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, apparently fearing repercussions, and to date many have not returned.

Iraqi Government forces are in control of Tuz Khurmatu, supported by Popular Mobilization units. The city’s population is a mix of Turkoman, Kurd and Arab communities and there is a serious risk that given the ethnic and religious fault lines in the area, that violence could escalate and spread.

We urge the end of all acts that threaten the fundamental rights of the Tuz Khurmatu population. We also call on the Iraqi authorities to ensure that civilians there are protected and those responsible for human rights abuses brought to justice.




  1.  32 minutes ago
  1. : We urge the end of all acts that threaten the fundamental rights of people living in Tuz Khurmatu. Given the ethnic & religious fault lines in the area, there's a



Vengeance is not a governing principal -- a detail the US government forgot to pass on to all the Shi'ite runaways they put in charge of Iraq.  (The runaways fled Iraq and only returned after the US-led invasion in 2003.  Possibly due to their cowardice that led to fleeing, they returned feeling they had something to prove.)


Lastly, what can a selfie do?



  1.  13 hours ago
Wow => Miss Iraq Posted a Photo With Miss Israel. Now She Has to Flee the Country.
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 5 hours ago
Miss Iraq's family are forced to flee the country after the beauty queen posed for a selfie with Miss Israel
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 25 minutes ago
Miss Iraq's family has now been forced to flee their country after death threats. Miss Iraq simply posted a selfie with Miss Israel, saying she wanted to promote "peace and love"
0:07 / 0:37266 views
0:30
266 views
Miss Iraq's family forced to flee their country after death threats
i24NEWS | DAILY DOSE
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 23 hours ago
A country is truly broken if a selfie leads to death threats and the forced relocation of a family. No wonder the Kurds want out of the monstrosity that is Iraq.
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