Wednesday, July 06, 2016

Hillary's a crook who needs to drop out of the race

James Comey held a press conference today.

The FBI Director announced that Hillary would not be charged.

She lied, as he made clear, and he ripped apart her lies.

But he claimed he could not prove intent.

That's not his job.

That's the attorneys job in court.



A former US Attorney, Matthew Whitaker, has a column at USA TODAY which notes:

Of the emails either turned over or recovered by the FBI, 110 contained information that was classified at the time it was sent or received, of which eight email chains contained information that was top secret at the time it was sent.
The facts also show it was gross negligence when she removed the information from State Department security. Secretary Clinton made the decision to use a personal email system, one that had inferior security to the State Department’s or even another commercial vendor’s email service.
A reasonable prosecutor may ask, if on numerous occasions, an unknown State Department employee had taken top secret information from a secured system, emailed that information on a Gmail account, and stored the information on a personal server for years, would that individual be prosecuted? I believe they would.


Hillary's a liar and she's a crook.

And she demanded that Chelsea Manning be charged when Chelsea was just a whistle-blower.

Hillary can't be trusted with classified information -- how does that qualify her for the presidency?


She needs to drop out of the race and let Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden be the Democratic Party nominee.


New content at Third:




And it was written by Dallas and the following:






The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.


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


Tuesday, July 5, 2016.  Chaos and violence continue, Iraq's Interior Minister 'resigns,' the UN calls out the targeting of Sunni civilians in Iraq, the death toll from Baghdad's suicide bombing over the weekend has risen to 250, and much more.



Saturday's snapshot noted a Baghdad suicide bombing that had just taken place (it was Saturday night here in the US, already Sunday in Iraq).  The death toll from that bombing has continued to rise.  BBC News notes, "The death toll from Sunday's suicide bombing in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, has risen to 250, the Iraqi government says, making it the deadliest such attack since the 2003 US-led invasion."


250 lives lost. 250 dreams shattered. 250 empty spaces in bed. 250 martyrs. Thousands of broken hearts mourning, awaiting justice.





"They came to buy clothes for Eid, now they are buying coffins"








"They were looking for human remains. But all they found were some shoes and a pile of black ash."






One of the 200+ civilians killed in 💔






Mother of the groom-to-be Akram al-Karradi who was martyred in Karrada, she is holding his wedding suit.




Funeral procession of the brothers Ali and Adnan - College students who were martyred in Karrada.






Even with the death toll now rising to 250, the attack does not appear to register across the globe the way other attacks in other countries have -- a point made on Twitter:






Read the caption 😭😭







Over 200 people just died in Iraq and NOONE seems to care&change their damn profile pics to the iraqi flag or atleast hashtag pray for Iraq




Where are the hashtags? Where are the Iraqi flag avis? Where is the global concern? Nowhere.




Will Facebook respect by giving the users an Iraqi flag to put over their profile pictures like they did for Orlando & Paris?





So will monuments around the world light up with the colors of the Iraqi flag after Baghdad bombings that left hundreds killed, injured?




Where are the hashtags? Where are the Iraqi flag avis? Where is the global concern? Nowhere.







The tragedies in Paris and in Orlando, Florida are real and painful.  So is the tragedy of the suicide bombing in Baghdad.

Maybe in the west, we've grown immune to caring about violence in Iraq or the victims of it?  Maybe we choose to ignore it because there's culpability on our hands?  Whatever the reason, there's no denying that 250 people -- at least -- lost their lives and this is a tragedy and it is an outrage.

On the culpability we in the west share, BBC  NEWS interviews Kadhim Sharif Hassan al-Jabbouri who took part in the 20003 "toppling of the famous statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad"


Kadhim Sharif Hassan al-Jabbouri: Now, when I go past that statue, I feel pain and shame.  I ask myself - why did I topple this statue? I'd like to put it back up, to rebuild it. I'd put it back up but I'm afraid that I'd be killed. 


BBC NEWS: Kadhim Sharif Hassan al-Jabbouri used to repair Saddam Hussein's motorcycles. But then he fell out of favour and was jailed for a year and a half. 


Kadhim Sharif Hassan al-Jabbouri:  More than 14 or 15 people in my own family were executed by Saddam. So I was so happy the day that the Americans came and got rid of Saddam's oppressive regime.  


And we'll stop him there because that's where the distortions and lies start.


Since around 2009, he's been making these statements about wanting Saddam back.  We'll assume that they are true statements since they are consistent.

But he's not accurate after that point.

July 3, 2004, David Zucchino's "Army Stage-Managed Fall of Hussein Statue" was published by THE LOS ANGELES TIMES.  In April of 2008, he discussed the report with Rachel Martin on NPR (link is audio and transcript):


Mr. ZUCCHINO: My impression was that there was a spontaneous rally by Iraqis and they jumped on the statue and basically pulled it down. I knew there was some U.S. soldiers or Marines in the area, but I was not clear on exactly what their role was, whether they were just providing security or were taking part. It was fairly nebulous.


MARTIN: So you dug up more specifics that cast light on those circumstances surrounding the toppling of the statue. Explain what you found out.


Mr. ZUCCHINO: This was part of a five-hundred-and-some page review, or report, by the Army on the entire invasion, what went wrong and what went right. It was sort of an After Action Report, and this was just sort of a one or two page sideline, almost a footnote.
They had interviewed an Army psychological operations' team leader and he described how a Marine colonel - the Marines were in charge of that area and had just come in, and this Marine colonel had been looking for a target of opportunity, and seized on that statue.
And according to this interview with the psy-ops commander, there were Iraqis milling around the statue, and in fact, had been beating it with sledgehammers and apparently thinking about trying to bring it down, but it was a huge statue and they had no way to do that. So the Marines came up with the idea of bringing in a big recovery vehicle, like a wrecker, and trying to bring it down that way.
But the psychological operations commander noticed that the Marines had put an American flag on the statue and he thought that was a terrible idea, because it looked like an occupation and he didn't want - the psychological ops didn't want that, so they replaced it with an Iraqi flag, hooked a cable up to it and started pulling it down.
But somebody had the bright idea of getting a bunch of Iraqis and a lot of kids and pile them on the wrecker to make it look like a spontaneous Iraqi event, rather than, you know, the Marines sort of stage-managing this entire dramatic fall of the statue.


MARTIN: So we can't say that it was the idea of this Marine colonel. He basically was surveying the circumstances, saw that there were Iraqis who were already kind of attacking the statue, and so the U.S. military, according to this report, just facilitated something.



Mr. ZUCCHINO: Correct. They took advantage of an opportunity. As he said, it was a target of opportunity, and they just sort of stage-managed it and made it happen in a way that it would not have happened if the Marines had not intervened. 


Again, we'll grant that Kadhim Sharif Hassan al-Jabbouri's sentiments regarding Saddam Hussein are true since he's repeatedly made them to the press beginning in 2009.  But we're not going to include his fantasy of how the statue came down when that myth was long ago disproven.


Another thing that is true -- though probably just a stunt -- is a resignation.  Saif Hameed and Ahmed Rasheed (REUTERS) report, "Iraq's interior minister resigned on Tuesday and said a deputy would take over his responsibilities, a few days after the deadliest of many car bombings in Baghdad since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion."  Probably just a stunt?  US-installed prime minister of Iraq Haider al-Abadi has yet to accept the resignation.

Mohammed al-Ghabban has long been a source of controversy.  The Shi'ite politician has been accused of misusing the Ministry of the Interior to target Sunni civilians.  He's a member of State of Law, the political slate former prime minister and forever thug Nouri al-Maliki started in 2009.


Haydar Hadi and Sibel Ugurlu (Anadolu Agency) quotes al-Ghabban stating:


"I have tendered my resignation to Prime Minister [Haidar] al-Abadi," he said.
"I can withdraw it again in the event that the security apparatus is adequately reformed," he added.


That's why we're calling it a stunt.

You don't announce you're resigning and then, in the next sentence, that you might withdraw your resignation.  This is a stunt.

Tim Hume, Ben Wedeman and Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) observe:

The government has assured people that ridding Falluja -- about 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad -- and the rest of Anbar province of the terror group would deliver improved security to the capital, but it hasn't been the case.
Instead, Baghdad has suffered the deadliest of a string of terror attacks across the world executed or inspired by ISIS during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Meanwhile the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, issued the following statement today:

GENEVA (5 July 2016) – As the death toll after Sunday’s suicide bomb in Baghdad continued to climb to well above 150, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Tuesday deplored the terrible loss of innocent lives. The High Commissioner warned that in addition to doing more to protect civilians from ISIL attacks, it is essential the Iraqi authorities step in to halt uncontrolled militias from continuing to take revenge on civilians fleeing towns recaptured from ISIL.
“I utterly condemn this latest horrendous ISIL atrocity, targeting innocent civilians who were celebrating Ramadan in the heart of Baghdad,” Zeid said. “Along with other recent abominations associated with ISIL in Dhaka, Istanbul and Orlando, the sheer unrestrained viciousness of these people defies belief.”
The High Commissioner warned, however, that “acts of revenge and hasty, injudicious policy decisions in reaction to such attacks are simply helping ISIL carry out its strategy to divide societies and promote hatred.”
“ISIL needs to be defeated, and defeated soon,” he said. “But in trying to defeat them, we must be extra careful not to react to their provocations in the way they predict we will react and want us to react. We need not just to be stronger than they are, but cleverer than they are. And in this we are failing badly, not just in Iraq but in a variety of responses all over the world, enabling them to tap into resentments about heavy-handed or unlawful responses to recruit more followers, create more fanatics and suicide bombers.”
“After the loss of Ramadi and Fallujah, with Mosul likely to be the next big battleground, I fear we will see more of these atrocities by ISIL, as they seek to make Iraq implode once more. The way we react, in Iraq and elsewhere, will in many ways decide whether ISIL benefits from its indiscriminate acts of mass murder, or is ultimately destroyed by them,” the UN Human rights Chief said.
Zeid urged the Iraqi authorities to take immediate action to locate and free more than 600 men and boys reportedly abducted by a militia group involved in the recapture of Fallujah from ISIL in June.
On 1 June, according to various witnesses interviewed in Iraq, approximately 8,000 civilians, including some 1,500 men and boys over the age of 14, left their village in Saqlawiyah, near Fallujah.  Nearly all belonged to the Albo Akash clan of the al Mahamda Tribe. In the distance they saw what appeared to be a line of Government forces, who hailed them with loudspeakers, saying the villagers had nothing to fear from them. However, once they reached the line, witnesses said that hidden behind the Iraqi flags they saw the flags of a militia called Kataaib Hezbollah.
The militia fighters immediately separated the men and teenage boys from the women and children, who were transferred to Government-run camps for displaced people near Amiryat al Fallujah. The males were initially taken to warehouses and then moved on successive occasions over the next four days to a number of other sites between Saqaliwah and Fallujah.
Mistreatment began almost immediately. Men were crammed into small rooms or halls, sometimes more than 60 to a room. They were denied water and food, and there was little or no ventilation. When they asked for water or food or air, they were abused by militia members, told that their treatment was ‘revenge for Camp Speicher,’* and beaten with shovels, sticks, and pipes.
A number of witnesses attested that some who asked for water or complained about the air were dragged outside and shot, strangled, or severely beaten. In addition, witnesses stated that at least four men were beheaded. Others were handcuffed and beaten to death, and the bodies of at least two men were set on fire.
On 5 June, they were separated into two groups – one consisting of 605 men and boys, and the other of around 900.  The smaller group was taken to join the women and children in the Government clearance centre in Ameriyat al Fallujah.
“The fate of the larger group is unknown, which is intensely worrying, particularly given the references made to revenge for the Camp Speicher massacre,” Zeid said. “There is a list of the names of 643 missing men and boys, as well as of 49 others believed to have been summarily executed or tortured to death while in the initial custody of Kataaib Hezbollah. Tribal leaders believe there are around 200 more unaccounted for, whose names have not yet been collected.
The High Commissioner noted that “this appears to be the worst – but far from the first – such incident involving unofficial militias fighting alongside Government forces against ISIL”, and urged the Government to take serious action to prevent further occurrences, including bringing those responsible to account.
“These crimes are not only abhorrent,” Zeid said. “They are also wholly counterproductive. They give ISIL a propaganda victory, and push people into their arms. They increase the likelihood of a renewed cycle of full-throttle sectarian violence. The Prime Minister of Iraq has set up an investigation committee into the disappearances, which I obviously support. But I believe the authorities have to take strong and immediate action to locate the missing men or ascertain precisely what happened to them.
“With a massive and prolonged battle for Mosul just around the corner, the potential for episodes like this to stiffen ISIL’s resistance should not be underestimated,” the High Commissioner said.  “There must be an understanding that most of the male inhabitants of these cities are not willing members of ISIL, nor do they necessarily have anything to do with them at all beyond doing what is necessary to stay alive. People who escape from ISIL should be treated with sympathy and respect, not tortured and killed simply on the basis of their gender and where they had the misfortune to be living when ISIL arrived.”
ENDS
*A UN report published in July 2015 concluded that as many as 1,700 cadets were brutally slaughtered by ISIL after Camp Speicher was overrun in June 2014. See: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16229&LangID=E
For more information and media requests, please contact please contact Rupert Colville (+41 22 917 9767 / rcolville@ohchr.org) or Cécile Pouilly (+41 22 917 9310 / cpouilly@ohchr.org)



There are a hundred other topics I'd love to cover but this snapshot is already too long.  We have to cover the big news of the day regarding War Hawk Hillary Clinton: the FBI's announcement regarding her e-mails.  Activist and Academy Award winning actress Susan Sarandon's done a great job on Twitter so we'll grab from her:



  1. If you believe Comey's findings, it means Clinton publicly lied on key points on multiple occasions. But whatever.




Lots of people don't have explicit "criminal intent" when they commit crimes, but are prosecuted anyway, for far less severe wrongdoing.



Exactly: if this had been anyone unimportant, they'd have been (unjustly) charged by now, & Clinton would support it




Comey says the FBI found "extremely careless" handling of highly sensitive information by Hillary and her subordinates. Gross negligence.



Comey: people who did what Clinton has done are "often subjected to security or administrative sanctions" - but not prosecuted.



Comey explicitly debunked a talking point Hillary has repeated ad nauseam -- "marked classified at the time..." -- using HRC's own wording



110 Hillary Clinton emails contained classified information at the time they were sent. 8 were TOP SECRET. Laws were violated. A mess.






Larry Johnson's a political independent and a national security analyst who is also former CIA.  At his blog NO QUARTER, he shares his thoughts which include:


The facts are compelling and the lies of Hillary totally exposed:
  1. She did mail classified information, including Top Secret information that was part of a Special Access Program, multiple times.
  2. The information was classified when she sent and received the messages–it was not subsequently “up” classified.
  3. Some of the information was marked classified (e.g., SECRET, CONFIDENTIAL).
  4. Clinton and her team failed to turn over email messages completely and in a timely manner.
  5. Hillary’s email servers likely were breached by Foreign Intelligence services.


He offers his take on the FBI announcement today and he also links to an important fact check by the AP.









iraq



Sunday, July 03, 2016

Lynch needs to resign


So because Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch say nothing happened and we are supposed to believe that?



., have u ever had a "social visit" with spouse of others under investigation?



Exactly.


There should have been no meeting.

And now that they've been caught both Bill and Loretta insist they'd never do it again.


Both knew better before the meeting.

But Loretta Lynch is the only one on the taxpayer dime.

She really should resign.


That meeting was unethical and never should have taken place.

That she didn't reject it goes to her being unfit to be Attorney General.

She's supposed to represent the American people.

She's supposed to be above reproach and ethical.


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




Saturday, July 2, 2016.  Chaos and violence continue, a bomb goes off in Baghdad, the United Nations releases the data for June's dead and wounded, calls go out for changes in Iraq's election law, and much more.



Baghdad's slammed with a bombing today.


Suicide bombing in 's Karrada district targeting a restaurant.

 
 
 



ALSUMARIA reports it was a suicide car bomber.



Explosion was near a popular restaurant in 's Karrada area. 20 people were wounded and many shops were burnt/damaged.
 
 
 
Images of the suicide bombing in 's Karrada district earlier.
 
 
 
 




AP counts 18 dead and forty-five injured in the bombing.  The bombing is already 'yesterday' (time change) in Iraq:


Some of the victims of yesterday's suicide bombing in , majority of them worked in the complex.
 
 
 



Among other violence today, ALSUMARIA reports 1 commander of an Iraqi brigade was shot dead by an Islamic State sniper, and a bombing east of Baquba left 1 Shi'ite militia member dead.  And the US government continued dropping bombs on Iraq:


Strikes in Iraq
Attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 15 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

-- Near Baghdadi, five strikes struck two ISIL bomb-making factories, an ISIL weapons cache, an ISIL staging facility and an ISIL bed down location.

-- Near Beiji, a strike destroyed an ISIL tunnel entrance and an ISIL cave entrance and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Habbaniyah, two strikes destroyed two ISIL front-end loaders and two ISIL vehicles.

-- Near Qayyarah, four strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL-used road, two ISIL assembly areas, and an ISIL checkpoint and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Ramadi, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed four ISIL vehicles and an ISIL boat.

-- Near Sinjar, a strike suppressed an ISIL mortar system.


Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.



And yesterday was the start of the month which means the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq issued the death and wounded tolls for June:


Baghdad, Iraq, 01 July 2016 – A total of 662 Iraqis were killed and another 1,457 were injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in Iraq in June 2016*, according to casualty figures recorded by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).



The number of civilians killed in June was 382 (including 28 federal police, Sahwa civil defence, Personal Security Details, facilities protection police, fire department), and the number of civilians injured was 1,145 (including 23 federal police, Sahwa civil defence, Personal Security Details, facilities protection police, fire department).

A total of 280 members of the Iraqi Security Forces (including Peshmerga, SWAT and militias fighting alongside the Iraqi Army but excluding Anbar Operations) were killed and 312 were injured.

According to the casualties recorded for June, Baghdad was the worst affected Governorate with 978 civilian casualties (236 killed and 742 injured). Ninewa 56 killed, Salahadin 24 killed and 21 injured, Kirkuk 20 killed and 11 injured, while Diyala had 21 killed and 8 injured, and Karbala 8 killed and 18 injured.

According to information obtained by UNAMI from the Health Directorate in Anbar, the Governorate suffered a total of 357 Civilian casualties (15 killed and 342 injured).

The overall casualty figures have dropped over the previous month of May, where a total of 867 were killed and 1,459 were injured. But the casualty figures for June are likely to increase due to the combat to liberate Fallujah in Anbar Governorate.

The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) for Iraq, Mr. Ján Kubiš, regretted that the violence and the casualties among civilians continued during the holy month of Ramadan.

“We had hoped for a period of calm during holy Ramadan, a month of peace and compassion, but unfortunately the violence continued to take its toll on civilians. The terrorists did not spare an occasion to strike at markets, mosques and areas where people gathered in order to exact maximum casualties among civilians, despite the religious occasion and in total disregard of the values of Islam. In addition, tens of thousands of civilians also were forced to flee their homes in Fallujah as a result of the fighting there,” Mr. KubiÅ¡ said.

The SRSG reiterated his call on the parties to undertake every effort to protect the lives of civilians.

* CAVEATS: In general, UNAMI has been hindered in effectively verifying casualties in conflict areas. Figures for casualties from Anbar Governorate are provided by the Health Directorate and are noted. Casualty figures obtained from the Anbar Health Directorate might not fully reflect the real number of casualties in those areas due to the increased volatility of the situation on the ground and the disruption of services. In some cases, UNAMI could only partially verify certain incidents. UNAMI has also received, without being able to verify, reports of large numbers of casualties along with unknown numbers of persons who have died from secondary effects of violence after having fled their homes due to exposure to the elements, lack of water, food, medicines and health care. For these reasons, the figures reported have to be considered as the absolute minimum.




In light of all this violence, some try to impose sense or order upon it.


Azeem Ibrahim (AL-ARABIYA) is only the latest to do so and only one of many to insist that the 2003 invasion gave Iraqis an opportunity that they blew:




But they have failed to take that chance in a spectacular fashion, as even Iraqi insiders who initially supported the Invasion have admitted: "Iraqi mistakes are orders of magnitude more important to what has gone wrong in Iraq than American mistakes." Iraqis did not build political parties to take part in the democratic process based on shared visions for the future of Iraq, say based on left, right, or centrist political ideologies. Rather, they have created parties based on sectarian lines and narrow localised interests. And those parties have always looked to exclude competitors and assert their dominion over the institutions of state. Thus, the political system in Iraq was not an inclusive democracy: instead it was a sectarian exclusivist zero-sum competition for power and resources within the semblance of a parliamentary democratic system.
Fast forward ten years, and that has resulted in the de facto fragmentation of the country in the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish areas, the bitter war against the Sunni ISIS in the north-west, the atrocities on all sides of the conflict, the massive dislocation of people and the ongoing humanitarian crisis both in Iraq and in neighbouring Syria. Yet the problems of Iraq are not new ones, wrought by the American-led invasion. They are the old ones of a bitterly sectarian politics. The Invasion made a cold civil war into an overtly hot one. But the atrocities, the mass killings, the sectarian struggles had been going on long before, even when the country was nominally at peace. The problems, in other words, are not so much with what the Invasion changed -- rather, they are with what has remained the same.


There may be truth in some of that.

But there's a larger truth that such arguments ignore.


The Iraq War did officially kick off with the invasion, but those being invaded were put in charge of nothing.

Instead, the foreigners invading put Iraqis who long ago fled the country in charge.

A bunch of exiles out of the country for decades were put in charge.

They meant nothing in Iraq.


They had long ago fled.

They didn't understand Iraq at that point but were put in charge.

They spoke for no one but themselves.

So don't whine that Iraq blew its chance when Iraqis were never given any chance.

You might be able to make an argument that had Iraqis in their own country been allowed to take leadership, Iraq might be better off than it is now.


But you can't argue that they blew it because they were never given the chance.



The political experience in Iraq has many critics.


ALSUMARIA reports that Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr is calling for a change in the election law and for the electoral commission to be abolished.  Moqtada was also asked about former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's praise for the militias and Moqtada declared he was not impressed.



Dawa is the political party of Nouri as well as the current prime minister Haider al-Abadi.  AZZAMAN reports that they are also calling for a change in the election law, specifically they're calling for provincial elections (provinces) to take place at the same time as national elections and want April of 2017 to see both take place (while provincial elections are supposed to be held next year, national elections aren't due until 2018).  Dawa is also calling for the number of Members of Parliament to be reduced by half.


Calls for changes come during a week that saw Iraq's highest court overrule Haider al-Abadi's attept at unilateral changes which included replacing ministers on his Cabinet.  Wael Grace (AL MADA) notes that Haider has stated he will respect the decision of the court.




There are no changes for the Ashraf community, they continue to be persecuted in Iraq.



  1. forcing hardship on depriving fuel/food 6 days
 
 
 
6 days no fuel food 4 Camp Liberty @USEmbBaghdad
 
 
 





Background:  As of September 2013, Camp Ashraf in Iraq is empty.  All remaining members of the community have been moved to Camp Hurriya (also known as Camp Liberty).  Camp Ashraf housed a group of Iranian dissidents who were  welcomed to Iraq by Saddam Hussein in 1986 and he gave them Camp Ashraf and six other parcels that they could utilize. In 2003, the US invaded Iraq.The US government had the US military lead negotiations with the residents of Camp Ashraf. The US government wanted the residents to disarm and the US promised protections to the point that US actions turned the residents of Camp Ashraf into protected person under the Geneva Conventions. This is key and demands the US defend the Ashraf community in Iraq from attacks.  The Bully Boy Bush administration grasped that -- they were ignorant of every other law on the books but they grasped that one.  As 2008 drew to a close, the Bush administration was given assurances from the Iraqi government that they would protect the residents. Yet Nouri al-Maliki ordered the camp repeatedly attacked after Barack Obama was sworn in as US President. July 28, 2009 Nouri launched an attack (while then-US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was on the ground in Iraq). In a report released this summer entitled "Iraqi government must respect and protect rights of Camp Ashraf residents," Amnesty International described this assault, "Barely a month later, on 28-29 July 2009, Iraqi security forces stormed into the camp; at least nine residents were killed and many more were injured. Thirty-six residents who were detained were allegedly tortured and beaten. They were eventually released on 7 October 2009; by then they were in poor health after going on hunger strike." April 8, 2011, Nouri again ordered an assault on Camp Ashraf (then-US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was again on the ground in Iraq when the assault took place). Amnesty International described the assault this way, "Earlier this year, on 8 April, Iraqi troops took up positions within the camp using excessive, including lethal, force against residents who tried to resist them. Troops used live ammunition and by the end of the operation some 36 residents, including eight women, were dead and more than 300 others had been wounded. Following international and other protests, the Iraqi government announced that it had appointed a committee to investigate the attack and the killings; however, as on other occasions when the government has announced investigations into allegations of serious human rights violations by its forces, the authorities have yet to disclose the outcome, prompting questions whether any investigation was, in fact, carried out."  Those weren't the last attacks.  They were the last attacks while the residents were labeled as terrorists by the US State Dept.  (September 28, 2012, the designation was changed.)   In spite of this labeling, Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) observed that "since 2004, the United States has considered the residents of Camp Ashraf 'noncombatants' and 'protected persons' under the Geneva Conventions."  So the US has an obligation to protect the residents.  3,300 are no longer at Camp Ashraf.  They have moved to Camp Hurriyah for the most part.  A tiny number has received asylum in other countries. Approximately 100 were still at Camp Ashraf when it was attacked Sunday.   That was the second attack this year alone.   February 9th of 2013, the Ashraf residents were again attacked, this time the ones who had been relocated to Camp Hurriyah.  Trend News Agency counted 10 dead and over one hundred injured.  Prensa Latina reported, " A rain of self-propelled Katyusha missiles hit a provisional camp of Iraqi opposition Mujahedin-e Khalk, an organization Tehran calls terrorists, causing seven fatalities plus 50 wounded, according to an Iraqi official release."  They were attacked again September 1, 2013 -- two years ago.   Adam Schreck (AP) reported back then that the United Nations was able to confirm the deaths of 52 Ashraf residents.