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Monday, January 23, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, we explore the
silence on the political crisis and the connection to the silence on Iraqi
women, and more.
Actions do have consequences and the decision by the White House to back
Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister in 2010 has had very serious consequences for
Iraq and that becomes more obvious each day. Along with the ongoing political
crisis, now there's a new report with observations on Iraq was issued. The Associated Press quoted Human
Rights Watch's Sarah Leah Whitson stating, 'Iraq is quickly slipping
back into authoritarianism. Despite U.S. government assurances that it helped
create a stable democracy (in Iraq), the reality is that it left behind a
budding police state'." She was referring to what Human Rights Watch found and
documented in their [PDF format warning] World Report: 2012. We'll
emphasize the focus on Baghdad protests:
On February 21, Iraqi police stood by as dozens of assailants, some
wielding knives and clubs, stabbed and beat at least 20 protesters intending to
camp in Tahrir Square in Baghdad, the capital. During nationwide demonstrations
on February 25, security forces killed at least 12 protesters across the country
and injured more than 100. Baghdad security forces beat unarmed journalists and
protesters that day, smashing cameras and confiscating memory
cards.
[. . .]
On June 10 in Baghdad government-backed thugs armed with wooden
planks, knives, iron pipes, and other weapons beat and stabbed peaceful
protesters and sexually molested female demonstrators as security forces stood
by and watched, sometimes laughing at the victims.
Authorities also used legal means to curtail protests. On April
13, Iraqi officials issued a new regulations barring street protests and
allowing them only at three soccer (football) stadiums, although they have not
enforced the regulations. In May the Council of Ministers approved a "Law on the
Freedom of Expression of Opinion, Assembly, and Peaceful Demonstrations" that
authorizes officials to restrict freedom of assembly to protect "the public
interest" and in the interest of "general order or public morals." At this
writing the law still awaited parliamentary approval.
[. . .]
On September 8 an unknown assailant shot to death Hadi al-Mahdi, a
popular radio journalist often critical of government corruption and social
inequality, at his Baghdad home. The Ministry of Interior said it would
investigate his death, but at this writing no one has been charged. Immediately
prior to his death al-Mahdi received several phone and text message threats not
to return to Tahrir Square. Earlier, after attending the February 25 "Day of
Anger" mass demonstration in Baghdad, security forces arrested, blindfolded, and
severely beat him along with three other journalists during their subsequent
interrogation.
In January 2012, Human Rights Watch observed that Iraqi authorities
had successfully curtailed the Tahrir Square anti-government demonstrations by
flooding the weekly protests with pro-government supporters and undercover
security agents. Dissenting activists and independent journalists for the most
part said that they no longer felt safe attending the demonstrations.
"After
more than six years of democratic rule, Iraqis who publicly express their views
still do so at great peril," Whitson said. "Al-Mahdi's killing highlights what a
deadly profession journalism remains in Iraq."Dan Morse (Washington Post) reports on
the report and also carries a response from Nouri al-Maliki's spokesperson
including this statement, "Their number [Baghdad protesters] is gradually
decreasing and they do not reflect strong opposition to the government." The
denial might be more convincing were there not so many reports which already
demonstrate Nouri's thugs are shutting down protest and attempting to
intimidate free speech. Yesterday Jane Arraf (Al Jazeera -- link is video)
reported on the ever-closing society in Iraq. Jane Arraf: These days at Baghdad's Liberation Square,
there are more soldiers and police than protesters. Not just these but dozens of
riot police waiting just under the grid. But they won't have any trouble from
these demonstrators. With the killings and arrests of anti-government
protesters, these young men chanting support for Nouri al-Maliki have taken over
the square. A few won't give up. Iraqi female protester: I can talk freely, right? This
is Tahrir Square. And it's about freedom.Jane Arraf: But it's not. These men drown her out when
she starts criticizing Maliki. They won't give their names. Here at Radio al
Mahaba, an independent women's radio station, the staff used to see all their
friends at the Friday protests. That's until Hadi al-Mahdi, a controversial radio host, was arrested and badly
beaten and then killed at home. And before the first set in the station's
cafeteria last fall.Kamal Jabar
(showing the remains of the bombing): This was an in door.Jane Arraf: One of the founders of the station who was
beaten up after a protest last year says they've had enough.Kamal Jabar: And we got the message. We are moving out
of here. I don't feel secure. I don't want to be responsible for any death or
injury or harm to any of the staff.Jane Arraf: There were high hopes for the democracy
meant to take root in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled. But in between the
fall of Saddam and an increasingly authoritarian government, the freedom to say
what you want has been shrinking. Hundreds of activists have either left the
country or gone underground. While some of the radio staff have quit, Ahlam
al-Daraji wants to continue her show at a new, safer
location.Ahlam al-Daraji: Life is
meaningless if you remain afraid and worried all the time. And if I say, "I
can't say this because someone might object"? If that's the case, why are we
living? Maybe I should leave Iraq?Jane Arraf: They're staying for now. With fewer voices
left, they believe they need to speak up for the rest. Jane Arraf, Al Jazeera,
Baghdad.January 10th, Jomana Karadsheh (CNN -- link is
video) reported:
Jomana Karadsheh: Last month, Oday al-Zaidy and a small group of
people gathered in a Baghdad square to celebrate the US media withdrawal
planning to burn the US flag. But more than 200 security forces swarmed around
them, banned us from filming and stopped the protests because they said the
group had not obtained a permit. But they still managed to burn the flag. Oday
and others were beaten up and detained for a day. Security officials say, they
assaulted policemen, something the group denies. "Democracy in Iraq is an
illusion," Oday says. "An American illusion and an American lie. Whoever wants
to see that for themselves, should come and see what's been happening in Iraq
since February 25th." That's when thousands of Iraqis -- partly influenced by
the Arab Spring -- took to the streets of cities across the country protesting
against corruption and a lack of basic services. [Gun shots are heard and
security forces move in.] But from the start, they were met by a fierce
crackdown. The government denies an orchestrated effort to put down protests,
saying there were just minor violations committed by to put down protests by
individual security officers. Activists groups disagree. Human Rights Watch says
the violations have been systematic and ongoing documenting dozens of cases
where protesters were beaten up, detained and, in some cases, even tortured.
Human Rights Watch's Samer
Muscati: People are afraid to go to demonstrations, are afraid of being rounded
up, of being assaulted, of being beat up, of being followed to their own
homes.
And we can drop back to December 30th when Jomana Karadsheh captured a
Friday Baghdad protest in a series of Tweets:
We can go back further and further. What Nouri's spokesperson wants to deny
is in the public record, has been in the public record for some time. Iraqi's
suffer and they suffer because of an illegal war and occupation and because of
decisions imposed upon the Iraqi people by the US government. In March 2010,
Iraqis voted. At great risk to themselves. Candidates ran for office -- at great
risk if they were Iraqiya because Iraqiya candidates were banned, they were
arrested, they were assassinated in the lead up to the March elections. Nouri
and his thugs insisted that Iraqiya was "Ba'athist" and "terrorist" and would
destroy Iraq. State of Law, his political slate, was supposedly going to destroy
all the other choices. But that didn't happen, Iraqiya came in first.
These were serious issues and some people treated them as such in real
time. But most outlets either looked the other way or resorted to cretins as
'trusted voices.' It was a cabal of men, men who didn't like women, promoted by
other men and by women who backstab other women because that's what Queen Bees
do (Amy Goodman is but one good example).
Recently, video surfaced of US service members urinating on corpses. While
disrespectful, it's not the end of the world for the corpses. The end of the
world for them was how they were killed. Yet Diane Rehm, to name other example
of a Queen Bee, will waste forever on the urination and then take calls on the
urination and the shock and the dismay. Maybe the shock should be that Afghans
in their own country were killed by foreigners?
Now if you're confused -- and much of the American media is -- urination
and killing? Most people if givien the choice would say, "Piss on me." But if
it's too much to grasp, let's bring up a War Crime that resulted in actual
convictions as well as some US soldiers agreeing to admit guilt. Felicity Arbuthnot (Global Research) noted the
incident earlier this month:
Nuri Al Maliki made his groveling subservience to Washington clear,
when on the 12th December he requested to go to the city's Arlington Military
Cemetery and jointly lay a wreath with President Obama, at the Memorial to the
Unknown Soldier, to pay his respects to US service personnel who lost their
lives, decimating the country of which he is -- for now -- Prime Minister.
Thanking the murderous, marauding, illegal, infanticide-addicted,
raping and pillaging invader, must be a historic first.
An extensive search has found no record of Maliki visiting Iraq's
lost and bereaved -- from Falluja to Basra, Mosul to Mahmudiyah -- the latter,
where fourteen year old Abeer al Janabi was multiply raped by US troops, then
murdered and set fire to, with all her family. Presumably, they were also
Obama's "unbroken line of heroes", to which he referred, in another defeat
ceremony at Fort Bragg.
Diane Rehm devoted how many shows to Abeer al-Janabi? Zero. Democracy
Now! devoted how many shows to Abeer? Zero.
The 14-year-old caught the eye of Steven D. Green. He and other soldiers
decided to invade her home and gang-rape her. They'd also decided that everyone
residing in the home would die, so that there would be no witnesses and the
crimes could be blamed on Iraqi insurgents.
So they left base, forced their way into the home, started the gang-rape of
Abeer with Green leading Abeer's parents and her five-year-old sister into
another room where he shot them dead. And Abeer heard it as she was gang
raped. She heard her parents murdered, she heard her little sister murdered.
And the guys in the room took turns until Green joined them and he went last.
At which point, he then shot Abeer dead.
To destroy evidence, they attempted to set her body on fire.
These were disgusting War Crimes. And the media remained silent. Even
when soldiers were standing up in open court and admitting what they did, the
media really wasn't interested. I slag on Arianna Huffington for a number of
things but, to her credit, when Green went on trial, she made sure her site (The
Huffington Post) covered it. Arianna took the trial more seriously than did any
US outlet with the exception of the Associated Press.
Diane Rehm wanted to grand stand on the horror of dead people being pissed
on but chose to ignore the gang-rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl by US
soldiers.
Again, what took place with the urination was disrespectful. It does not,
however, rise to the level of War Crimes. (Though the continued US occupation
of Afghanistan may rise to the level of War Crimes.)
CBS News' Lara Logan was sexually assaulted while reporting from Egypt.
For those who've forgotten, trashy Nir Rosen elected to mock her, to say she
deserved it, to turn around and wish it on Anderson Cooper and much worse. (See
Ava and my " The Damned Don't Apologize" if you've forgotten
what he did or if you're new to the topic.) People who don't respect women
don't usually respect people. That's why Nir could attack Lara and then, when
called on it, think he could expand it beyond women by attacking Anderson.
People like Nir Rosen don't respect women and don't respect the people.
Nir was 'brave' we were told, Nir was 'wonderful.' And when he finally got
called out for his garbage, Amy Goodman and his other little friends avoided the
issue. Amy Goodman, who please remember, is one of the few female broadcasting
personalities who has ever elected to appear in Hustler magazine. They
didn't call out their little buddy for the same reason that they didn't cover
Abeer, they just don't care about women. And people like Nir never cared about
the Iraqi people.
While some people were sounding alarms about Nouri's attempt to remain
prime minister, others were excusing Nouri. In 2010, ahead of the elections, Nir was declaring that it really didn't matter
and the Iraqi people didn't really care. Let's check those keen
observations:
The government is in Shiite hands and now it's a question of
whether it will remain in the relatively good Shiite hands of Maliki, who
provides security and doesn't bring down an iron fist on you unless you provoke
him (sort of like Saddam), or the dirty corrupt and dangerous Shiite hands of
Maliki's rivals -- Jaafari, Hakim, etc. I think these elections mean a lot more
to Americans (as usual) and maybe to Iraqi elites than they do to
Iraqis.
[. . .]
I hate to admit that I hope Maliki wins. He's the best of all the
realistic alternatives. It's not like a more secular candidate is likely to win,
so if it's not Maliki it will be Jaafari or Chalabi. Frankly this is a rare case
where I hope Maliki violates the constitution, acts in some kind of
authoritarian way to make sure he wins the elections, because the alternative is
fragmentation, or a criminal, sectarian kleptocratic Shiite elite taking over,
and then Iraq might unravel.
You may notice that the winner isn't even mentioned in Nir Rosen's crazy.
Ayad Allawi makes no appearance. So much for the wisdom of Nir. He was also
wrong about the turnout. But his beloved Nouri did stay on. And has violated
the Constitution.
You know it takes a real asshole to publicly declare that they hope someone
violates a constitution. But it takes a bigger asshole to provide Nir Rosen an
outlet.
Who provided the outlet? Thomas E. Ricks. The same Thomas who could never
even recognize Deborah Amos's book on Iraqis ( Eclipse of the Sunnis) or the work of any
women. Excuse me, one woman got recognized. She took off her top and posed for
a picture and Thomas E. Ricks was more than happy to run that photo at Foreign
Policy -- in violation of Foreign Policy's own guidelines. And Thomas E. Ricks
has written how many times about Iraq and avoided the plight of Iraqi women how
many times in the process.
If you pay attention, not only do the creeps reveal themselves, but you
also begin to see a pattern emerge, a profile in fact, of those who are never
about We The People.
As Hillary Clinton rightly observed at the close of the 90s, women's rights
are human rights. She and that speech were mocked by Laura Flanders in 2008.
Laura Flanders never managed to call out Nir Rosen for his Lara Logan remarks.
Lara Logan never managed to address the War Crimes against Abeer. Are you
seeing the pattern? If they dispresect women, if they ridicule or ignore women,
then they really aren't about the people. You can't be willing to attack and/or
ignore half the population and be about We The People.
When women are ignored, half the population is ignored. When you're
willing to do that, you're really not about "the people." And the gas bags that
Iraq's had to depend upon in the US have repeatedly ignored Iraqi women. It's
no surprise that when Nouri made his power-grab in 2010, when he demanded to
remain prime minister in spite of the results, in spite of the will of the
people, in spite of the Constitution, that these gas bags didn't sound the
alarms. They didn't care. They identify with the ruler and dismiss the people,
the same way (and for the same reasons) that they dismiss women.
While they remained silent, a message was sent by the White House when it
elected to back Nouri -- after warnings from human rights group and, reportedly,
warnings from the CIA. If everything that was going on in Iraq right now was
going on under Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the US could say, "Well, that's who
the Iraqis picked when they went to the polls." But everything's going on right
now -- the political crisis, the increase in violence -- with Nouri al-Maliki as
prime minister and he's only prime minister because he was the White House's
choice, the Iraqi people chose someone else. Nouri got the political
crisis really going in December when, among other things, he declared Tareq
al-Hashemi a terrorist and ordered his arrest. al-Hashemi was already in the
KRG and has remained there as a guest of President Jalal Talabani's. Yesterday
was to have been a meet-up in Iraq among political blocs to plan a national
conference to address the political crisis Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
started. Last month, President Jalal Talabani and Speaker of Parliament Osama
al-Nujaifi began calling for a national conference. Two Sundays ago, some
political blocs met up to work on preliminary details of such a conference. The
plan was to meet up again yesterday; however, Talabani had to leave the country
instead. Aswat al-Iraq notes that the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's Adel Murad states, "President Jalal Talabani
shall return to Iraq within one week after his successful spinal surgery in
Germany; he is feeling well now."
Dar Addustour reports Tareq al-Hashemi
filed a formal request with Baghdad's Supreme Judicial Council to transfer the
case to Kirkuk. Saturday there were rumors that the KRG was sending a
delegation to Baghdad to discuss the case. Al Mada reported Sunday that the spokesperson for the Supreme
Judicial Council of the KRG stated that no delegation was sent. Hossam Acommok (Al Mada) adds that there are rumors that
al-Hashemi will be tried in absentia and that the Parliament has formed a
seven-member committee to review the charges and the investigation.
Reuters notes 1 soldier was shot dead in Mosul, 1
Sahwa was shot dead in Rashad (three other Sahwas were injured -- "Sahwa,"
"Awakening" and "Sons of Iraq" are all the same term for resistance fighters the
US government put on the payroll to get them to stop attacking the US military;
Nouri was supposed to have brought them into the system via government jobs but
has not done so) and a Falluja roadside bombing which left two people
injured.
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