Thursday, November 1, 2018

Lot of fake asses running for office

So a lot of fake asses running wild and running for office.  Naomi Spencer (WSWS) reports on Richard Ojeda:

 



 

 

With a week until the November 6 election, the Democratic Party is promoting its slate of newcomer congressional candidates full-tilt. Among the most highly promoted is Richard Ojeda of West Virginia’s 3rd congressional district. A one-term state senator and former career Army officer, Ojeda has been elevated to national prominence as a fighter for the working class. He is no such thing.

Often appearing in public in fatigues and combat boots, featuring in campaign videos shirtless, covered in military-themed tattoos and lifting weights, Ojeda has centered his fitness for office almost wholly on the basis of his military “toughness.” He is a right-winger who supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election, a fact he uses to bolster his reputation as a supposed maverick not tied to the Democratic Party line.

In the past year, Ojeda has been the subject of fawning interviews with the likes of Michael Moore and Glenn Greenwald, and news outlets including the New York Times, Politico, Rolling Stone, the British Guardian, CNN, and many others.

The senator often speaks in exaggerated colloquialisms, military metaphors, and platitudes; his platform consists of clichés about helping the poor and going after drug companies that flooded the region with opioids. Much like Trump, Ojeda justifies his positions on pragmatic, emotional and personal grounds. And like Trump, Ojeda speaks out of both sides of his mouth, based on what he thinks his audience at any given moment would like to hear.

While tailoring his line for liberal or conservative news outlets, Ojeda has endorsed the Trump administration’s policies on immigration, environmental deregulation, and corporate tax cuts, and applauded the stacking of the executive branch with military advisors. He is hardly an opposition figure.

During an interview with CNN’s Van Jones in July, for example, Ojeda lamented Trump’s softness on Russia. “He’s got two brilliant military minds in generals Kelly and Mattis. He needs to listen to them.”

 

 

 

 

Lot of fakes.  Lot of lover boys at play.  Lot of cold hearted snakes.



This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot"


Thursday, November 1, 2018.  A march this weekend in DC will call out the continuing and never-ending wars.


XINHAU reports two bodyguards of the Salahudin Province governor were injured in a roadside bombing today, "The roadside blast took place near the convoy of Ammar Jabur Khalil, governor of Salahudin, during his visit to al-Seniyah town in the north of the oil refinery town of Baiji, some 200 km north of Iraq's capital Baghdad, said Mohammed Khalil al-Bazi from Salahudin Operations Command."  In addition, ALSUMARIA notes a grenade attack on a Baghdad home shared by lawyers.  IRAQI SPRING MC notes a citizen was attacked in their Basra home by armed militia.  The citizen may have been an activist in the Basra protests that had been on hold during the recent religious pilgrimage.  There have been efforts to target these activists throughout the protests but the targeting is said to have increased while the protests were on hold and media attention was elsewhere (on the pilgrimage, on the new Cabinet, etc).





Since major protests erupted in Basra last July against corruption and a lack of services, demonstrators have claimed that shadowy sub-state elements within the security forces have carried out targeted killings,...





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Iraq: Basra activists are preparing for a new protest







In Iraq, activist says Basra protests will begin after Arba'een visits. Conditions have not improved in terms of water pollution, jobs & corruption. Not concerned about no Basra ministers in new government since last government had 3 w/o any results.





The targeting of protesters is not unique to Iraq.  As the Green Party's 2016 candidate for US vice president, Ajamu Baraka, observed last night in NYC, "The imperialism we see globally is the flip side of the repression we deal with domestically."




BAP’s 👉🏿 “The imperialism we see globally is the flip side of the repression we deal with domestically.” WATCH 📺




He was speaking at the End the Wars At Home and Abroad conference -- speakers also included UNAC's Joe Lombardo, Black is Back Coalition and People's Orgnization for Progress, Bayan USA's Bernadette Ellorin and Friends of the Congo's Maurice Carney.

The conference is part of a series of actions that kicked off with the Women's March on the Pentagon last month and continues this weekend in DC with the March on the White House:



Hundreds of black people from throughout the U.S. and from every  town, city and state, will descend on Washington, D.C.—capital of  imperialist white power—on November 3 and 4.

This is a Call for you to take your place in the rally, march and  conference with the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations under the banner: “There is no Peace: Africa and  Africans are at War!”

For nine years in a row, the Black is Back Coalition has been leading the  charge to unite our people against the growing, desperate white nationalist attacks by the U.S. and other imperialist countries against our people and the colonized peoples and countries of the U.S. and the world.

The Coalition is calling on everyone to join with our brothers and sisters at Malcolm X Park on Saturday, November 3 at 12 noon. Numerous speakers that represent our community’s demand for self-determination and our historical opposition to imperialist white power will expose the relentless war being waged against Africa, African people and the  peoples of the world.

At 2 P.M. there will be a black people’s march on the White House. Then there will be another rally at Lafayette Park across the street from the White House.

On Sunday at 12 noon the people will gather for a conference at the Stuart Center, 821 Varnum Street NE for a full discussion of all these issues and resolutions of how we should move to defend ourselves against the war on our people in a process that will build a new world without black oppression and human exploitation.

Every day the blood-stained list of African people within the U.S. who are shot or killed by U.S. white citizens or police grows grotesquely long. In 47 of the cities with the largest police departments, police shot at least 3,649 African people from 2010 through 2016.

These same domestic military occupation forces are the primary instruments leading to the prisons within the U.S. bursting at the seams with African people who are now organizing within the prison concentration camps for an end to this colonial slavery that is  justified by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. constitution.

Regular white citizens are also assaulting our people with sometimes deadly consequences—in churches, on college campuses, at public transportation stations and in fast food restaurants, to name just a few places.

In St. Louis-Ferguson, Missouri, with one of the highest incidences of police shootings in the U.S., the U.S. government, through the weapon of eminent domain, has confiscated nearly 100 acres of land previously owned by African people, to build a massive, $2 billion super-secret  international spy station known as the National Geo-spatial Intelligence  Station (NGA).

This spy agency, to have its own police force in our community, is also part of an ever-expanding gentrification process in St. Louis that is daily driving our people into deeper poverty and despair.

The Black is Back Coalition is also calling on you to join your brothers and sisters protesting the growing U.S. military secret wars in Africa.

Hundreds of U.S. Special Operation forces are violently destroying villages and supporting thuggish African governments to prevent African workers from coming to power and gaining control of our own resources for Africa’s benefit instead of the benefit of white power.

U.S. Special Operations forces are also in Africa to contend with China for economic influence. In addition, they are there to protect the interests of its junior imperialist partners on the Continent that contains at least a third of the world’s known mineral assets.

The U.S. has created a vast war project called the Africa Command or AFRICOM, a command center solely dedicated to keeping Africa under white power control and our people in a permanent state of violently impoverished exploitation and indirect colonial domination.

The Black is Back Coalition is calling on African people to join in our protest of U.S. initiated or actual armed and economic warfare against and political destabilization of other countries like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, China and Russia—countries that have refused to comply with U.S. imperialist  demands.

The Coalition’s 19-point National Black Political Agenda for Self-determination calls for an end to AFRICOM. It also demands that the U.S. get out of Africa, Asia and Latin America and pay reparations to Africa and Africans everywhere.

We demand the upliftment of African women and the African family as well as black community control of police and the immediate withdrawal of U.S. domestic military forces from the African community.

Come out to join with your brothers and sisters in the demand for the release of all our political prisoners and the end to the mass incarceration of our people and the release of African people from the colonial concentration camps called prison.

The escalated attack by the U.S. on Africa and African people worldwide is evidence of the growing crisis of imperialist white power. The Black is Back Coalition is calling on all African people and friends of peace to join with us in a great celebration of resistance.

We can win!
We will win!
We are winning!


Featured Speakers:

Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Glen Ford, Kamm Howard, Ajamu Baraka and Lisa Davis



Why march in DC this weekend?  To call for an end to the wars, to call for the US out of Africa, to call for an end to the insanity that is normalizing destruction and death.  As Margaret Kimberley (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) points out in her latest column on the recent violence of last week:


If Trump can be connected to all of these incidents it should be with the knowledge that the entire country is suffering from a terrible sickness that few want to confront. Americans prefer to think well of themselves and their nation and treat any information contradicting that belief as an inconvenience to be avoided at all costs. There were hate crimes before Donald Trump ran for president and most of them weren’t carried out by individuals. Most of them are still sanctioned by the state.
The crazed Trump lover may have tried to send bombs to Obama and Clinton but they sent bombs to Libya and destroyed a nation that still suffers from their terrorist acts. They are quite literally guilty of committing hate crimes, along with other NATO leaders and their predecessors in high places. The fact that they know how to express diplomatic niceties is no reason to see them as being on our side as we fight to defeat fascism at home and around the world.
Their enablers cannot be given a pass either. When we fight to make war and peace a political issue we are derided as purists and spoilers who ought to be quiet and allow imperialism to take place without hindrance. The people who join in the chorus of denunciation should not be allowed to wring their hands when dead bodies appear within our borders too.


At ANTIWAR.COM, William J. Astore explains he wrote to his senator (Elizabeth Warren) and received back acceptance of eternal wars:


In this country in 2018, as in 2017, 2016, and so on, the U.S. military and its leaders dictate what is acceptable for us to say and do when it comes to our prodigal pursuit of weapons and wars.
So, while it’s true that the military establishment failed to win those “hearts and minds” in Vietnam or more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, they sure as hell didn’t fail to win them here. In Homeland, U.S.A., in fact, victory has been achieved and, judging by the latest Pentagon budgets, it couldn’t be more overwhelming.
If you ask – and few Americans do these days – why this country’s losing wars persist, the answer should be, at least in part: because there’s no accountability. The losers in those wars have seized control of our national narrative. They now define how the military is seen (as an investment, a boon, a good and great thing); they now shape how we view our wars abroad (as regrettable perhaps, but necessary and also a sign of national toughness); they now assign all serious criticism of the Pentagon to what they might term the defeatist fringe.

In their hearts, America’s self-professed warriors know they’re right. But the wrongs they’ve committed, and continue to commit, in our name will not be truly righted until Americans begin to reject the madness of rampant militarism, bloated militaries, and endless wars.



That's another reason to march.  If you can't make DC this weekend, at least check out the Black Alliance for Peace website which notes further actions.





Looking back at last month in Iraq, Margaret Griffis (ANTIWAR.COM) notes:

At least 295 people were killed across Iraq, and 342 bodies were found in mass graves during October. Another 254 people were wounded. Were it not for the discovery of more victims in mass graves, the figures would be lower than in September when 401 people were killed or found in graves, and  491 were wounded. A number of mass graves were found in the Mosul area, presenting a higher number than last month. Further north, the Turkish military conducted repeated strikes on Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.) targets. 


Oxfam's Amy Christian spent two years in Iraq.



An interview I did for The Mirror after leaving my post in Iraq




From that interview (which also contains many photos of Iraqi people):


During the offensive, Amy and her Oxfam colleagues followed the operation.
This meant they were never far from the sounds and horrors of warfare.
"I remember a day in a clinic in Hamam Alil where people were being pulled in on stretchers, moaning, covered in bullet holes," Amy recalled.
"As I stood there and watched, the sound of mortars being fired just 30 metres away made the ground shake and rattled me from deep within."
"Those men lying there, having bullets pulled out of them with barely any pain relief. Blood everywhere. The sound of crying and the boom of those bombs landing – those are memories that will remain vivid whenever I think back to my time in Iraq."


That is normal in Iraq.  Not because Iraqis want this to be normal but because they had war declared upon them by the US.  It's a war that continues.  It's a war that occupies their country.  Did you miss Donald Trump's 'approval' of the oil move this week?  Yes, Iraq's 'government' doesn't do much without approval from the US.  It certainly doesn't protect the people of Iraq.


A number of women have been targeted in Iraq in the last weeks.  Lily Fletcher (INDEPENDENT) writes an obituary for Tara Fares:


The significance of the former beauty queen’s brief life can only be seen against the backdrop of a society where high-profile women are punished for daring not to conform to stringent expectations for female behaviour as defined by zealots.
By Iraqi standards, Fares was candid and outspoken, using her social media platform to reflect on personal freedoms. Her aesthetic and fashion sense were daring – many considered her scandalous and lacking in modesty for a public figure.

On a September afternoon, a gunman on a motorcycle leaned inside her white Porsche convertible, in the Kam Sara neighbourhood of Baghdad, shot her three times and then sped away.
Hers was the fourth in a spate of fatal attacks on women which many fear is set to continue.

Fares was born in the United Arab Emirates to an Iraqi Christian father and Lebanese Shiite mother. She was born a Christian, however in a television interview earlier this year she said that in 2002 her family had converted to Islam.
She rose to prominence in 2013 when she was voted Baghdad’s beauty queen and first runner-up as Miss Iraq. She later became a social media sensation with frequent selfies attracting nearly 3 million Instagram followers, as well as popular vlogs sharing make-up tips to a YouTube channel with more than 120,000 subscribers. She also has various active fan clubs reposting her photos on Instagram.
Fares was briefly married at the age of 16 to a man with whom she had a son, but they then divorced.

She broadcast to her large online following about the violence of her abusive ex-husband, who had posted intimate images of her on social media. He also took away their now three-year-old son – an impossible trauma, but Fares was forced to put a brave face on it, saying it helped make her stronger.



The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley and BLACK AGENDA REPORT -- updated:





  •  
  • Wednesday, October 31, 2018

    Time to pull the plug on The Conners

    So many outlets are trying to spin success for The Conners but that show is dead and dying.  Showbiz 411 notes:


    “The Conners” dropped in everything last night–total viewers, key demo. In the nightly ratings battle. the “Roseanne” spin off continues to trend downward.
    Last night, “The Conners” was beaten by everything- “NCIS,” “The Voice,” etc. This was their first really objective run, no World Series, nothing to distract potential viewers.
    But the key demo sank, which isn’t a good sign. And the total viewers were down by 180K, which is a lot, frankly. People are leaving and they’re not coming back.
    ABC has ordered 1 extra episode to the original order of 10. Sounds to me like a finale. Someone wakes up and says they dreamt Roseanne died. There’s a cackle from the next room. Fade to black.


    They're going to have to do something.  It's an expensive show and, without Roseanne Barr to pull in the ratings, the show isn't worth it financially.

    I've said it before and I'll say it again, they shouldn't have fired her.

    White 'social justice' 'warriors' may have thought it was the thing to do but I wasn't offended by the Valerie Jarrett Tweet and I'm African-American.  I only know one African-American who was offended.  As a general rule, it was not an issue despite Roseanne-haters trying to make it one.  You could not grow up on that show, as so many of us did, or watch the reboot and think Roseanne was a racist.  Roseanne was always with the working class and that includes African-Americans.

    Sara Gilbert?  A spoiled little White bitch who didn't have the loyalty to stand by someone (Roseanne) who stood by her because, throughout the run of ROSEANNE originally, it was Roseanne Barr protecting Sara Gilbert's job.  From the moment she was on TV, ABC execs felt Sara gave off a lesbian vibe and wanted to fire her over and over again.  And Roseanne said no and stood by Sara.  But there's no such thing as loyalty so Sara was the first to turn on Roseanne.

    This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

     
    Wednesday, October 31, 2018.  The Iraq War continues and, in the US, the fight to end these never-ending wars continues.


    Black Alliance for Peace notes the following actions:



    The one that's today is in NYC and here's a Tweet about it:





    The upcoming actions follow the Women's March on the Pentagon from two weekends ago.  Last night, Elaine noted YOUTUBE video coverage in "Women's March on the Pentagon (videos)."  Coverage matters now as much as it did in real time.  The following Tweets from this morning note Nick Brana's speech at the Women's March on the Pentagon.


    1/11 So I wanna thank Emma, Cindy, Bonnie and the whole Women's March on the Pentagon team for putting on this fabulous event. And I wanna say that I'm here because 6 yrs ago I stood on the other side of those walls, and what I saw haunts me to this day.
     
     
  • 2/11 I was working for John Kerry in the Senate and the Pentagon put on what it called a "Wounded Warrior Welcome." I attended with my colleagues and we lined the walls of a long corridor as the Iraq war Vets began to go by. Some were limping. Many were in wheelchairs, row after
     
     
  • 3/11row of them. Missing arms, missing legs, sometimes missing both. They tried to hide their pain. But it was often betrayed by a grimace. Watching these poor young men struggling down this hallway condemned to a life of disability I was struck with a sorrow so consuming that...
     
     
    4/11..it was difficult to stay there. As person after person passed me by my mind turned to one question - FOR WHAT!? For what were those men maimed? For what did Casey Sheehan die? For what were 100s of 1000s in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen killed? Since the 2nd...
     
     
    5/11..World War American politics has been marked by a familiar pattern. Both major parties moving further to the right in unison. This shift accelerated dramatically in the 1970s when wages broke from productivity, and profits began accumulating at the top. Over the past 40 yrs
     
     
  • 6/11..an immense transfer of wealth has created a 2nd Guilded Age of political corruption trusts & a new economic royalty. Struggling with tightening budgets an exasperated working class has turned to the for decades to level the playing field. Each time the party has
     
     
  • 7/11..reversed its mandate and carried the nation further into the pockets of Wall St & the military industrial complex. The has long since traded its New Deal alliance w/labor for a partnership with big business. After reaching for change within the party....
     
     
  • 8/11 throughout so many elections & receiving nothing but broken promises a desperate electorate cast itself into the arms of a racist & sexist Authoritarian! The resounding rejection of a political establishment in 2016 proved that an establishment party CANNOT LEAD A POLITICAL
     
     
  • 9/11 REVOLUTION! We cannot defeat Authoritarian Populism from the platform that gave rise to it! America is a 1 party state with 2 right wings! They only give them different names to create the illusion of choice. Working people need a party that will end the wars, slash the...
     
     
  • 10/11 defense budget, and re-deploy our resources to defend Americans against the most lethal enemies to ever invade our shores - poverty, hunger, and ill-health! The only thing that is going to stop our nation's march to is the creation of a genuinely Populist anti-
     
     
  • 11/11 ...establishment Progressive alternative. A major new Progressive party. A large majority & record number of Americans are now calling for it and WE MUST ANSWER THAT CALL! Thank you. ▶️◀️ sign up to help.
     
     




    At ANTIWAR.COM, Danny Sjursen observes:

    We aren’t miracle workers. We’re just soldiers after all – kids barely out of their teens and officers in their mid-20s do most of the fighting. Still, policymakers in Washington, and citizens on Main Street both seem convinced that the mere presence of a few hundred or thousand American troops can alter societies, vanquish the wicked, and remake the world.
    A colleague of mine refers to this as the myth of the magic soldier: sprinkle US troops in some horrific mess of a country and voilà – problem solved!
    It sounds great, but this sort of delusional thinking has led the United States into one failed quagmire after another, killing some 7,000 US troops and close to one million locals. After 17 years of fruitless, indecisive war, its quite incredible that a bipartisan coalition of mainstream Republicans (neocons, mostly) and Democrats (neo-liberal relics) still cling to the idea that American soldiers wield magic powers. It’s long past time to review the record of our over-adulated troopers and reframe the actual – limited – capabilities of military force.
    The standard Washington-media-military narrative goes something like this: take any unstable Muslim country that has any presence of Islamists at all; drop in a few thousand US Army advisors, trainers, or combat troops; stay indefinitely – and loudly proclaim that if ever those soldiers should leave said Muslim country it will undoubtedly collapse and the US of A will be directly threatened.

    Some version of that exact formula has been tried in, sequentially, Afghanistan (2001-present), Iraq (2003-present), and Syria (2011-present), along with numerous smaller regional locales: Libya, Niger, Somalia, Yemen, etc. Sometimes the troop levels topped out at nearly 150,000 (Iraq), other times the ground forces and special operator teams are smaller (Yemen, Somalia), but the basic blueprint is the same – US airpower, plus commando raids, plus trainers and advisers can somehow stabilize the unstable, secure the insecure, and – ultimately – we hope, craft a "Little America" in the Muslim world. There’re just a couple problems with this veritable religion of US militarism: 1) we rarely consult with the locals before beginning each "crusade"; and 2) It. Has. Yet. To. Work.

    Yet still the wars drag on.


    Here's Mosul, Iraq, in 2018
     
     



    Progress?  Is that what the above is supposed to demonstrate?  Because it doesn't.  And the violence never ends, not even during the observance of Arbaeen.







    Never ending war has not liberated Iraq.  It has turned it into a land of orphans and widows.  IRIN notes Nadia Murad (who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year):


    Murad was abducted from the Yazidi’s historic homeland in Sinjar, northeast Iraq, in 2014. After escaping IS and Iraq in 2015, she began to tell her story and became an advocate for Yazidis and other Iraqi minorities: we highlighted her advocacy in this 2016 piece on what, if anything, humanitarians can do to stop human trafficking and sex slavery.
    Those Yazidis who managed to survive the 2014 massacre and mass enslavement fled, first to the top of Sinjar mountain, then later to camps elsewhere in Iraq or to Europe. But around 10,000 people never left the safety of the heights, and in April of this year IRIN found them barely eking out an existence with little outside help.
    This photo essay took readers inside the Sinjar hospital that caters to some 25,000 Yazidis who have returned home with no X-ray machine, no ventilation equipment, no lab, and only six beds.
    On the topic of Iraqi women, we'll note this essay by Tana Gilly Khailany published by UN Women:


    Tanya Gilly Khailany, from Iraqi-Kurdistan, is a former member of the Iraqi Parliament (2006 – 2010) and a co-founder of the SEED Foundation, an organization that works with survivors of violence and trafficking in Iraq. An outspoken women’s rights activist, Ms. Gilly Khailany was one of the key parliamentarians who legislated the 25 per cent quota for women in Iraqi provincial councils. As an expert on political participation and peacebuilding, she recently spoke at a side event on the margins of the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly on 26 September in New York. In this interview, Ms. Gilly-Khailany talks about what motivates her, and what women’s meaningful participation in peace processes means in practical terms.
    Quote
    I am an activist; I came from activism and became a legislator. There were several incidents and moments that led me to this path.
    I remember one with my son when he was in the fifth grade and had to write a paper on a topic of his choice. I was helping him. He said to me, ‘I could have written my paper on women’s rights, but I didn’t want my friends to make fun of me.’
    I was a parliamentarian at the time. I thought, all the work I had done… and here was my son, not feeling comfortable to talk about women’s rights. That incident stayed with me and motivated me to push forward.
    It took my son years to openly talk about women’s issues. Today he’s doing his senior paper on gender-based violence in the tech industry. That’s just one person; we have to make sure thousands and millions of boys feel comfortable talking about women’s rights.
    My fight is for the chance of equal opportunity. A woman should not be held back from pursuing her dreams and aspirations because she is a woman. One of the measures that I worked on as a parliamentarian that I am most proud of, is the quota system for women in the Iraqi Constitution. We asked for 40 per cent but got 25 per cent quota for women in the Iraqi Parliament. I worked with women activists to establish the same quota for women in provincial councils. Having the quota at the provincial level was really important because women could use the provincial councils as a stepping stone to get back into politics, to learn and to grow. Now in the Iraqi Parliament, there are many women who came from the Provincial councils.
     My fight is also about peace. Peace is not just about security. It’s about equality and social justice. No one is above the law, and no one should be discriminated by the law.
    Peace needs women’s meaningful participation. For that to happen, first, women must get a seat at the table. In my country, there have been many women in political parties, they’ve headed women’s caucuses in the parliament, but when it comes to core issues, women are still not at the table. It’s also about bringing issues that matter to women to the table.
    When we talk about sustainable peace, reconciliation is part of that. But people talk about political reconciliations between political parties. There are women who have been impacted deeply by the conflict; how can we not talk about their reconciliation? Simply put, women’s voices must be heard, when it comes to running the country.
    Sustaining peace is not only about protecting women during times of war, but also protecting women in times of peace. The UN has the tools for holding countries accountable to resolutions and treaties. Any country not in compliance, should be called on it.
    When it comes to women’s rights, there’s no room for diplomacy.”



    Here is the newly formed cabinet of Iraq. Whatever happened to women? (The gender ratio in Iraq is almost 50:50)!
     
     

    Iraq Has New Cabinet But Without Women
     
     



    It is amazing how many reports have been done by so-called news operations about the new Cabinet and not one of the US outlets have led with the lack of women.  When it is noted, it's included as an aside, a single sentence, maybe two.

    Priorities send messages and an Iraq for all is not a priority for the new prime minister.  14 people confirmed and all were men.  More to the point, this isn't new.  Nor is Abid Adel al-Mahdi.  He's seen Nouri al-Maliki criticized for the lack of women in his Cabinet in his second term as prime minister.


    He saw the same criticism for Hayder al-Abadi after al-Abadi took over a month to find a woman to nominate . . . to head the Ministry of Women.

    So al-Mahdi knew this problem going in and could have made a real effort to differentiate himself from those who came before.  Instead, he appears to be bound and determined to fumble and stumble like all that came before, never learning a lesson, never avoiding a pitfall.


    Iraq is inviting a return to war. 500 or more foreign women await speedy trials (aka collective punishment) in Baghdad on grounds of joining the . By and
     
     




    The following community sites updated: