Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Killer headache



WSWS has an important story.  I don't know how to excerpt it so read it yourself.








I also found this interesting:


  The mysterious X-37B space plane of the U.S. Air Force will come back to Earth this week, possibly on Tuesday. It is returning after being in orbit for 22 months on a secret mission. It is a robotic plane, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle, and will land at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where Air Force officials are gearing up for its return. It carries a bevy of radars, cameras, and other sensors that might be found on regular spy satellites.


 But mainly, I've been dealing with a bad headache that feels like someone's taking a drill to the back of my skull.

 Usually, when it's this bad, I'll go eat a piece of chocolate and it will wipe it out but nothing has helped me one bit tonight.

It just gets worse.

I took some Tylenol until Elaine asked me, "Do you realize you've probably just take your tenth Tylenol in the last four hours?"

Nope.

But it hurts so bad.

It really does feel like someone's got a drill back there.

Though if there actually was one, it would probably let out some of the pressure that's built up in there.


New content at Third:



And Dallas and the following worked on it


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.


That's all for me.  If you've got a headache cure, drop me an e-mail.




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

 
Monday, October 13, 2014.  Chaos and violence continue, the Iraqi military flees a base in Anbar, criticism continues to mount of US President Barack Obama's so-called 'plan' to confront the Islamic State, the Islamic State assassinates another journalist, Turkey is letting the US use its air bases and -- oh, maybe it's not, the Iraq and Syria crises continue to result in more and more refugees, and much more.

Yesterday, ABC's This Week aired an interview Martha Raddatz did with General Martin Dempsey, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs.
 GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: ISIS is blending in to parts of the disenfranchised Sunni population. So for indirect fire, the answer is yes. Heretofore, we've been successful -- mostly the Iraqis have been successful -- in keeping them out of range. But I have no doubt there will be days when they use indirect fire into Baghdad.

RADDATZ: But perhaps most critical right now, keeping the Baghdad Airport out of the hands of ISIS. The chairman revealing a recent fierce battle near there between ISIS and Iraqi forces, where for the first time the U.S. had to call in Apache attack helicopters to prevent the Iraqi forces from being overrun.
Those helicopters fly low and at a much greater risk than fighter jets.

DEMPSEY: The tool that was immediately available was the Apache. The risk of operating in a hostile environment is there constantly.

RADDATZ: That was righty by the airport.

DEMPSEY: Well, this is a case where you're not going to wait until they're climbing over the wall. They were within, you know, 20 or 25 kilometers whereƉ

RADDATZ: Of Baghdad airport?

DEMPSEY: Sure. And had they overrun the Iraqi unit it was a straight shot to the airport.
So, we're not going to allow that to happen. We need that airport.

[. . .]

RADDATZ: What is it like inside Mosul and Fallujah where ISIS controls those areas?

DEMPSEY: Extraordinarily strict interpretations of Shariah Law, punishments -- you know, crucifixions and beheadings of a nature that the world hasn't seen in hundreds of years.

RADDATZ: That's still going on.

DEMPSEY: Yeah.
But ISIL is also clever to give the enemy its due. They are also providing basic goods and services. They seek to reach out to children to influence the next generation.

RADDATZ: It was, of course, Dempsey who testified some weeks back.

DEMPSEY: If we reach the point where I believe our advisers should accompany Iraq troops on attacks against specific ISIL targets, I'll recommend that to the president.

RADDATZ: This, after the president had said there would be no American combat boots on the ground.
Would we be more effective against ISIS if we had U.S. troops on the ground spotting targets, if we had those ground control?

DEMPSEY: Yeah, there will be circumstances when the answer to that question will likely be yes. But I haven't encountered one right now.

RADDATZ: What kind of point would that be?

DEMPSEY: I've actually used the example of -- you know, Mosul will likely be the decisive battle in the ground campaign at some point in the future.

RADDATZ: When the Iraqi security forces have to go back and try to.

DEMPSEY: Yeah, when they are ready to back on the offensive. My instinct at this point is that that will require a different kind of advising and assisting, because of the complexity of that fight. 


Dempsey's focus on Baghdad was mirrored by the media on Sunday.  CBS News' Elizabeth Palmer reported yesterday morning on the advance towards Baghdad:


 ISIS is now on the attack in a kind of half circle around Baghdad from the north around the west, and down to the south. At the closest point their fighters are in an outer suburb called an Abu Ghraib, which is about eight miles from the perimeter of Baghdad International Airport. There are now twelve teams of American military advisors on the ground with the Iraqi forces whose are charged with protecting the capital and America is also carrying out airstrikes nearby, mainly to the west and to the south. Now, nobody expects a major assault on the city anytime soon, but it's likely ISIS will keep up the pressure with a bombing campaign by slipping through the many army and police checkpoints in the city and even civilian security checks that have been set up in all public places, including in mosques. In fact, yesterday more than thirty people were killed in three separate bomb attacks.


While Palmer noted "nobody expects a major assault on the city anytime soon," the focus remained on Baghdad.  Today, CBS News notes:

Inside Baghdad itself, there are ISIS sleeper cells that carry out almost daily bombings and assassinations, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reported.
An Iraqi officer told CBS News that the U.S.-led airstrikes are helping to clear an ISIS-free buffer zone around the city, where there are Iraqi boots on the ground. In fact, there are 60,000 men assigned to defend the capital, and CBS News correspondent David Martin reports that there are 12 teams of American advisers deployed with the Iraqi brigades. The estimate is that the Iraqi army will fight for the capital and there is no real concern that Baghdad is in imminent danger, Martin says. 


But it wasn't Baghdad where major news was made today.  No, news came out of a neighboring province. This morning, CNN (link is text and video) broke the news that Iraqi forces had abandoned a military base "outside the city of Hit" in Anbar Province.  Aziz Alwan (Bloomberg News) observes, "Islamic State came closer to gaining full control of Iraq’s Anbar province after it seized a military base to the west of Baghdad that had been one of the government’s few remaining outposts there."

Vivian Salama and Sameer N. Yacoub (AP) observe, "In Anbar, the capture of the Iraqi military camp came despite the U.S. airstrikes campaign. The U.S. military, which withdrew its forces from the country in late 2011 after more than eight years of war, first launched the airstrikes in early August to help Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces fight back and retake ground lost to the Islamic State group."

It's October.  US President Barack Obama started bombing Iraq in August and calling it a "plan" to deal with the Islamic State.  There's been no success and it's comical when officials, such as State Dept spokespersons, are put on the spot by a media asking them to point to even one singular success.

As Chuck Todd put it yesterday on Meet The Press (NBC), "But after hundreds of U.S. air strikes, the terror group is still gaining ground. "

Yet 'the plan' continues.

It's not a 'plan.'  And there are no other facets to it in terms of the military.  (Barack has insisted Iraq needs a political solution but he's done nothing to work towards that solution.)

He has nothing else to offer.

Former CIA director and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta attempted to spin pretty Sunday on Face The Nation (CBS) as he insisted Barack "has taken the right steps" leading a skeptical Bob Schieffer to attempt a redirect.

 BOB SCHIEFFER: Basically, what you are saying, we have to have some kind of people on the ground here.
LEON PANETTA: You have got to have boots on the ground. Maybe doesn't have to be American boots on the ground, but you have got to have people on the ground who can identify targets and who can help us develop the kind of effective airstrikes that are going to be needed if we are going to be able to undermine, destroy this vicious enemy that we are dealing with.


Quick note, Leon will be the guest for the second hour of The Diane Rehm Show (NPR) on Tuesday where he will discuss his book Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace  with Diane.

As for boots on the ground, they really aren't part of Barack's 'plan' thus far (yes, there are US soldiers on the ground in Iraq, Barack splits hairs and pretends otherwise).  On Meet The Press yesterday, Barack's national security advisor Susan Rice insisted that there would be no change to the plan in that regard, "The president has been very plain that this is not a campaign that requires or even would benefit from American ground troops in combat again. The Iraqi prime minister, the government of Iraq have said very plainly, they don't want American troops in combat. We are there to help build up the Iraqi capacity to sustain their territory and to hold their ground. "

So what is the plan?

To bomb and continue bombing.  Maybe throw in a couple of prayers for success.

There is nothing else at present.

Which is why Barack should never have started bombing Iraq to begin with.

It was never going to solve anything.  But once the bombing started, all talk of a political solution was set aside as war was treated as a game and bombs as toys by the White House.

It's really accomplished nothing.


On Meet The Press, NBC News' Richard Engel offered this evaluation of the 'plan:'


The Iraqi army is in no better shape now than it was when it collapsed. The new Iraqi government is not instilling confidence in the people. It is not instilling confidence in the armed forces. The U.S. spent years and years and billions of dollars to build the Iraqi army, only to watch it collapse and hand over so many of its weapons.
So it is completely unrealistic to think that now, with a little bit of outside help and a lot of American good will, that the army is going to fundamentally change and the Iraqi government, which is really just a reshuffle of the same characters, is going to fundamentally change and suddenly inspire the Iraqi people to be behind it.



Of the Iraqi military, Fareed Zakaria (CNN's Global Public Square) offers, "Billions of dollar poured into it, because it was based on the idea that there was an Iraq, that there was a nation that there would be a national army for. Maybe we need a different strategy, which is to stand up sectarian militias, Shia militias, Sunni militias. They already exist. And the Kurds have their Peshmerga, that model. Send them into fight in their areas, not in other areas where they would be regarded as a foreign army."


Meanwhile, Peter Symonds (WSWS) notes, "Haditha is reportedly the only major town in Anbar still firmly in government hands. Since the beginning of the month, ISIS forces have captured a series of towns including the provincial capital of Ramadi."  The fall of city after city in Iraq has become almost as much a daily staple in the news cycle as the never-ending violence.  In terms of today's abandoned base and takeover, Al Jazeera notes:

Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad, said that ISIL's takeover puts nearby towns including Amiri under threat.
"Amiri is a very key town, that is where the main supply line from Anbar province into Baghdad and the rest of the south of the country goes from," he said.


The fall of the base comes as residents of the area flee to other parts of Anbar.  BBC News reports:


As many as 180,000 people have fled fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic State (IS) militants in and around the city of Hit in western Anbar province, the UN says.
The civilians - many of whom were already displaced - have headed east towards the war-torn city of Ramadi.




On the topic of refugees, UNHCR notes Mohammed Ali of Syria and that "He is one of more than 2,500 Kurdish Syrians from Kobane to have made the crossing since Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government opened the border to refugees last Friday, with the authorities predicting that tens of thousands more could arrive in the coming weeks."

While the military abandoned the base near Hit, they continue to hold the base in Ramadi -- at least so far.  This despite a major loss over the weekend. Jean Marc Mojon (AFP) reports:


The region's police chief was killed on Sunday by a roadside bomb blast as he led forces battling Islamic State (IS) fighters on the outskirts of provincial capital Ramadi.
His death was the latest setback suffered by the government in Anbar, a vast Sunni region, parts of which IS had control over even before it launched its sweeping June offensive in Iraq.


In Peru today, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was asked about events in Anbar Province.

 Q: Mr. Secretary, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about Anbar. The U.N. said today that 180,000 civilians had left. And there was also reports about an airbase near Hit being evacuated by Iraq security forces. I was wondering if you could confirm that, talk a little bit about it.

 SEC. HAGEL: Well, I talked a few hours ago with our CENTCOM commanders on what they know and to give me an update. What they told me was they are not aware of any fighting around the airport or in the area that the press reports are specifically focused on.

As to the Hit town and whether Iraqi security forces left that area, I'm aware of the fact that the Iraqi security forces make strategic decisions on these issues. They deploy their forces where strategically they think they can have the most impact. I don't know any of the specifics beyond that.


National Iraqi News Agency reports that Anbar police earlier transferred 82 people suspected of being Islamic State members "from prisons of Ramadi and Khalidiya to Baghdad."

On the topic of violence, NINA notes 1 corpse was discovered in Husseiniya (gunshot wounds),  13 corpses "were found dumped in a farm south of Tikrit,"  1 person was shot dead in Baghdad, 2 bombs "near Baquba, north of the Edhaym Dam" killed 2 Iraqi soldiers and left four more injured, 2 Baghdad bombings (Aden Square and Sadr City) left 7 people dead and fifty-two injured, and "15 civlians and policemen were killed and injured" in a Kirkuk motorcycle bombing.

It was just days ago that Raad al-Azzawi became the latest journalist to die in the Iraq War.  All Iraq News noted, "The Islamic State (IS) militants executed on Friday a cameraman works for an Iraqi television and three of his relatives in Iraq's central province of Salahudin, a provincial police source said. Raad al-Azzawi, 37, cameraman for local news Sama Salahudin satellite channel, was kidnapped about month ago with his brother and two relatives by the IS militants for alleged collaboration with Iraqi security forces, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity."  The western press frenzy that greeted the recent deaths of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff was not matched when it came to Raad's murder. Instead, western outlets offered silence on Raad's murder or a brief paragraph.  As we noted at Third in "Editorial: The Western Media Makes Its Point:"

 But the western press did something even more valuable than cover the death.
They made it clear (yet again) that Iraqi lives do not matter.
Not to them.
Repeatedly, they've been (rightly) accused of ignoring the deaths of Iraqis while pretending to care about Iraq.
But the same media that sold the war in 2003 and that continues to sell the war today doesn't care about the Iraqi people.
That is the message they sent after their wall-to-wall, non-stop coverage bemoaning the deaths of two American journalists compared to their coverage of the execution of Raad.
They only care about Iraq in terms of selling war.

National Iraqi News Agency notes that journalist Muhannad Ekaidat was executed by the Islamic State today in Mosul.  All Iraq News reports:

The terrorist gangs of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant executed on Monday the Iraqi journalist Muhanad al-Egaidi in Mosul city.
The Media official within the Kurdistani Democratic Party in Nineveh province, Saeed Memozin, said in a press statement "the terrorists of the ISIL executed on Monday the journalist Muhanad al-Egaidi by shooting him to death."
"The ISIL terrorists kidnapped Egaidi two months ago and today they executed him in Ghizlani camp of southern Mosul city," he added.  
Memozin mentioned "The dead body of the killed journalist was transported to the morgue so that his parents can receive it."

It is worth to mention that Muhanad al-Egaidi was working as a reporter for SADA Press Agency in Mosul as well as program presenter at Mosuliya Satellite channel.


Some Tweets on the murder:

  • 6h6 hours ago
    Would really like to see the same outcry when Iraqi journos are executed by - Muhannad Akidi is the latest one. RIP
    Expand
  • 7h7 hours ago
    Iraqi journalist Muhannad Akidi was executed by ISIS today. Let's spread as much awareness abt him as his foreign peers that were IS victims
    Scotland, Scotland
    Expand






    • Iraq has fallen by the way side repeatedly for the White House as they've rushed to zoom in on Syria and their desire to force out or overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  The inability to focus may explain the conflicting reports on whether or not Turkey was participating in Barack's 'plan' for Iraq and Syria.  In this morning's New York Times, Eric Schmitt and Kirk Semple noted, "Turkey will allow American and coalition troops to use its bases, including a key installation within 100 miles of the Syrian border, for operations against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, Defense Department officials said Sunday."  However, i24 News and AFP report:

    Turkey has denied reports that they had reached an agreement to let the United States use its Incirlik air base for operations against Islamic State militants in Syria.
    Sources at the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's office have said that talks on the subject are continuing.


    The issue/confusion popped up in US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's Peru press conference today:


    REAR ADM. KIRBY: First question will come from Lolita Baldor from the Associated Press.

     Q: Mr. Secretary, Syria, Turkey, have there been any developments in the ongoing negotiations with Turkey over Syria? I'm just wondering, there's a lot of back-and-forth going on. Are you still optimistic about it? And do you have any goals for the chiefs of defense meeting tomorrow? Anything you really hope they try to accomplish?

     SEC. HAGEL: Lita, I am optimistic about progress that we are making with the Turks, as the Turks further define their role in the coalition against ISIL. As you know, we have teams from Central Command and European Command there. As you all know, I spoke with General Allen yesterday to get a readout from his meetings there, as well as I spoke with the Turkish minister of defense.
    I said yesterday that I'll leave public announcements about what the Turks are committed to do to them, but I would say, though, to answer your question, we are making very good progress and I am optimistic.
    As to your question regarding General Dempsey bringing 20 of the chiefs of defense together from 20 nations, that is going to be an important meeting. As I think you know, President Obama is going to stop by at the end of that meeting tomorrow.

      The objective of the meeting that General Dempsey put together was to further coordinate and organize countries' efforts to participate in the coalition. They will be working through those specific areas and defining specific contributions that the nations will make. So I am much encouraged with that meeting, and it's going to be a very important meeting.


    So, in other words, even Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Defense had no idea what the status was with regards to Turkey providing US forces access to their air bases.







































    the new york times
    eric schmitt

    Posted by at

    Sunday, October 12, 2014

    Idiot of the Week


    This week's idiot of the week is someone who seems to think that we're idiots.

    Gary Leupp isn't a bad writer and he's often got a good and strong position I can agree with.

    But I read Friday's piece, specifically this:


    2014 has been much gloomier. We have for one thing been forcibly reminded that there has been no real change in foreign policy between the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. The grotesque figure of Victoria Nuland, a Dick Cheney aide who stayed on to assist Hillary Clinton, heads the East Europe desk. She is one of those neocons (married to another distinguished, academic neocon) who strongly supported the Iraq War based on what she knew was a campaign of lies and has never felt any pangs of guilt about it. Her political ideology requires contempt for truth and morality. It’s all about manipulating public opinion to achieve the objectives of the tiny circle she loves and represents. The fact that she was retained in the State Department into the Obama administration speaks volumes about the president’s own outlook on the world.


    I'm just not in the mood for your revisionary history f**ks who think we're too stupid to catch on.

    Reality, until Nuland's comments on Urkaine -- recorded comments -- were leaked, Leupp didn't give a damn about her.  He mentioned her in a 2006 article, slobbering over Lyndon Larouscher Robert Dreyfuss for 'unmasking' her as the wife of Robert Kagan.


    It was November of 2004 when C.I. wrote "When NPR Fails You, Who You Gonna' Call? Not the ombudsman."  In that piece, she explains why NPR broke their ethical code when they allowed Robert Kagan to provide 'analysis' of John Kerry who was running for the White House against Bush-Cheney (as C.I. explained, Kagan's wife Victoria Nuland worked for Dick Cheney -- the family had a clear economic interest in the outcome of the 2004 election).

    And while C.I. has repeatedly called out Nuland -- a War Hawk -- over the years, Leupp ignored her until the Ukraine.

    Now he wants to talk about how awful she is.

    Why didn't he do so in all the years between 2006 and 2014?

    He must think we're idiots to just nod along as we read his nonsense.



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


     
    Saturday, October 11, 2014.  Chaos and violence continue, 4 Iraqi soldiers are killed by . . . the Iraqi military, women are targeted in northern Iraq, Iraqi journalist Raad al-Azzawi is assassinated by the Islamic State, and much more.


    Despite a BBC media whore spinning (we'll get to it), violence remains common place in Iraq.

    For example, Baghdad was slammed by two bombings today.  Reuters notes the car bombing left 19 people dead and twenty-nine more injured.  AP reports one was a car bombing and the other a suicide car bombing.  Al Jazeera adds, "Also on Saturday, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives belt in a market 28km north of Baghdad, between the towns of Tarmiyah and Mishahda, killing at least seven people and wounding 25 others. The area has been the scene of clashes between Iraqi forces and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters, who have taken control of large sections of northern and western Iraq this year."


    AFP adds "The Islamic State group has executed at least four women, including two doctors and a politician, in their northern Iraq strongholds this month, relatives and rights activists said on Saturday." The politician was MP Iman Mohammed Yunnis, the name of the woman who was a law school graduate has not been released but the two doctors are Maha Sabhan and Lamia Ismail.  Activist Hanaa Edwar, of Al-Amal Association. tells AFP, "After going after the ethnic and religious minorities, they are now hunting down Sunni members of civil society groups and anyone remotely connected with the government.  [. . .] When you abduct and kill women, you are really spreading horror."


    Along with the above, there was certainly much damage in bombs dropped from the sky.  CENTCOM announced today:
    In Iraq, an airstrike north of Tal Afar struck a small ISIL unit and destroyed an ISIL armed vehicle. Two airstrikes northwest of Hit struck two small ISIL units. These strikes, in which the Netherlands also participated, employed attack and fighter aircraft deployed to the Centcom area of operations.
    All aircraft exited the strike areas safely, officials added.
    At the Iraqi government’s request, U.S. aircraft from several air bases in the Centcom area of operations airdropped 36 container delivery system bundles containing 7,328 halal meals, 2,065 gallons of water and 16,000 pounds of ammunition to Iraqi security forces near Bayji, officials said, and left the airdrop zone safely.

      The airdrops were intended to support the Iraqi forces, which continues to control Bayji, Centcom officials said, noting that areas outside the city remain contested, as ISIL continues to conduct operations in the area.


    Oh, those 'precision strikes.'  Another 'precision strike' has left 4 people dead.  The four were Iraqi soldiers.  Wounded Iraqi soldiers, in fact.  Their killers?

    The Iraqi militaty.

    Al Jazeera explains, "The soldiers, who had been wounded by ISIL fighters, were being taken to hospital when Shia volunteer fighters mistook them for ISIL fighters and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at their vehicle, police and medical officials said."

    And actually, that's Reuters explains -- specifically Ahmed Rasheed, Raheem Salman, Ned Parker and Raissa Kasolowsky -- though Al Jazeera forgets to credit the journalists.


    Even when the not-so-precise 'precision strikes' hit their intended targets, there's still the problem with ensuring that the people targeted are indeed 'terrorists.'

    The four Iraqi soldiers are just the latest in a long list of Iraqis who were wrongly killed.


    On Friday, Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) reports that 197 people died in violence with another twenty left injured.


    AP also notes that Iraqi journalist Raad al-Azzawi with Salahuddin Television was killed yesterday in Tikrit according to Salahuddin Province Governor Raed Ibrahim. All Iraq News adds, "The Islamic State (IS) militants executed on Friday a cameraman works for an Iraqi television and three of his relatives in Iraq's central province of Salahudin, a provincial police source said. Raad al-Azzawi, 37, cameraman for local news Sama Salahudin satellite channel, was kidnapped about month ago with his brother and two relatives by the IS militants for alleged collaboration with Iraqi security forces, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity."  Al Jazeera speaks to the family who states Raad and his brother were killed along with two other people who are not identified.  An unnamed relative of Raad's tells Al Jazeera, "They came to his home and took him and his brother.  He did nothing wrong; his only crime was to be a cameraman. He was just doing his job."

    September 11th, Reporters Without Borders noted the kidnapping of Raad in a press release:

    Reporters Without Borders expresses grave concern over the fate of Raad Mohamed Al-Azaoui, an Iraqi journalist taken prisoner by ISIS on 7 September and threatened with beheading. The Islamic State offensive in Iraq that began last June, shows journalists more unprotected than ever in the face of mounting danger.
    “The Islamic State since its emergence has made journalists a terror target,” said Virginie Dangles, assistant research director of Reporters Without Borders. “The terrorist organization, in setting up an apparatus for kidnapping and executing news professionals, is attempting to eliminate all those who refuse to swear allegiance to ISIS.”
    Al-Azaoui, a camerman for Sama Salah Aldeen TV, was captured by members of the Islamic State, accompanied by about 20 Iraqi nationals, in Samara, in Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad. The jihadist organization has announced that it plans to carry out its decapitation threat because the journalist refused to work for the Islamic State.
    Three weeks earlier, on 15 August, members of the jihadist organization had captured Ahmed Khaled Al-Dlimi - known as Bassem Ahmed Al Watani – in Tikrit. His fate remains unknown.
    Metro Center, an Iraqi journalists’ rights NGO based in Suleimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan, has expressed concern following the 13 August capture of journalist and Yazidi activist Tarek Salah Shankali. According to some information from people close to him, Shankali was killed soon after he was taken. But other sources claim he remains a prisoner of the Islamic State.

    Iraq’s Journalistic Freedoms Observatory – RWB’s partner organization in Iraq – confirms that ISIS publicly threatened nine journalists by name in Mosul and Salahuddin provinces. The jihadist organization demanded that they stop their professional activities and join ISIS ranks or face execution. In addition, rumours are circulating to the effect that ISIS has seized digital files with personal data on journalists in the two provinces.


     Much has been made over the recent deaths of two American journalists -- you could make a strong argument that their deaths were used by the US government to sell the latest wave of the Iraq War (especially considering the grave disrespect the White House has shown the families of James Foley and Steven Sotloff.).  The two were executed by the Islamic State.  Two British aid workers were also executed -- Alan Henning and David Haines  -- but they received very little attention because they didn't feed into the deep-seated narcissm at the heart of modern-day journalism.  Will Raad fare better in terms of coverage and recognition from western media because he was also a journalist or will his being Arab result in the western press (and governments) largely ignoring his execution?  Online, Conflict Nred is attempting to ensure that he is not overlooked.


    journalist killed by today was Raad al-Azzawi, let show him the same respect we give to western journos


    1:48 PM - 10 Oct 2014



    In other news, is John Simpson the new Judith Miller?


    Set aside the fact that Simpson, unlike Miller, is shockingly obese and looks a great deal like a more feminine Bea Arthur and the answer comes back:  YES!


    In fact, "YES!" screams throughout his propaganda report for BBC News where John sees success as he's hauled around safe areas outside Baghdad:  "The other day I was driven in a convoy of awkward but heavily armoured Humvees through the scene of a recent battle near the village of al-Yusufiyah, 20 miles (32km) south-west of Baghdad."  Much closer to the Green Zone than al-Yusufiyah is Abu Ghraib and Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) points out, "Though it is still nominally controlled by the Iraqi military, the key Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib continues to have a significant ISIS presence, meaning the fighters are just eight miles away from the runways of Baghdad Airport."

    John makes perfectly clear that Brigadier Jabbar Karam al-Taee (who, John squeals, has "his personal Humvee" -- sounds like love!) can eat crackers in his bed any time and John will gladly sleep in the wet spot.
    Mainly, he makes clear that there needs to be a new classification for these 'embeds' -- reporters who travel with the military -- and, in John's honor, we'd suggest "spreads."

    While he's seeing success as he rides around in Jabbar's Humvee, an unsigned BBC report notes, "Iraqi officials have made an urgent appeal for military help in the western Anbar province, saying the area could fall to Islamic State (IS) militants. The jihadist group has been attacking the provincial capital Ramadi, and has seized army bases in the area."  Jim Sciutto and Greg Botelho (CNN) also report on the Islamic State's continued hold on Anbar (a hold that's continued for months) and offer what appears to be a mini-wave of Operation Happy Talk:

     The first official said the U.S. military is more confident right now about the Iraqi military's ability to protect Baghdad. The Iraqi brigades defending the capital are more capable and include U.S. military advisers, so at least Washington should have a better sense there if there's any imminent danger.



    That splash in the kiddie pool appears to argue that although Barack's plan is a failure in Anbar, the positive is that the heavily armored Green Zone of Baghdad will continue to resist and repel attacks.


    AP quotes the Rand Corporation's Richard Brennan stating, "It's not plausible at this point to envision ISIL taking control of Baghdad, but they can make Baghdad so miserable that it would threaten the legitimacy of the central government."


    On Anbar Province, Erin Cunningham (Washington Post) reported Thursday:


    The Islamic State’s offensive in Anbar has received less attention than its assault on the Syrian border city of Kobane, which has played out in view of news photographers standing on hills in nearby Turkey. But in recent weeks, Islamic State fighters have systematically invaded towns and villages in Anbar, besieged army posts and police stations, and mounted attacks on Iraqi troops in Ramadi, the provincial capital.
    The Islamic State secured a major foothold in Anbar province in January when it seized the city of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi. It pushed farther into the province in June, but Iraq’s government was able to maintain small pockets of authority in the majority-Sunni region.


    That was Thursday.  Today?  Laura Smith-Spark, Ben Wedeman and Kareem Khadder (CNN) report:


    The situation in Anbar, just to the west of Baghdad, is "very bad," the president of Anbar Provincial Council told CNN by phone on Saturday.
    Sabah Al-Karhout said the council has intelligence that ISIS has dispatched as many as 10,000 fighters to Anbar from Syria and Mosul in northern Iraq.
    The council's deputy head, Falleh al-Issawi, told CNN that it had asked the central government to intervene immediately to save the province from imminent collapse -- and to request the deployment of U.S. ground forces there.



    Of the appeal coming from the officials, Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr states, ""They believe that it is just a matter of days, up to 10 days, and ISIL can control the whole province of Anbar." Friday, the State Dept was asked if there was any thought of moving beyond airstrikes to ground forces and spokesperson Marie Harf replied, "Well, our strategy hasn’t changed and it’s not just airstrikes. If you – I mean, we have said there will be no American boots on the ground in combat roles in Iraq or Syria. That has not changed, period."

    That has not changed.

    Period.

    Hmm.

    At the same press briefing on Friday, Anbar came up.


    Of course, Harf didn't raise the issue, the press had to.


    She was too busy attempting to spin the 'success' of Barack's 'plan' which, as we noted Thursday, is taking hits from across the political spectrum.  Excerpt:


    QUESTION: Not that the criticism hasn’t been there almost from the beginning of the airstrikes back on August 8th, but there seems to be a cresting of criticism of the Administration’s strategy on confronting ISIL, primarily focused on the airstrikes from quarters as varied as David Ignatius in The Washington Post, Frederick Kagan writing in The LA Times, Congressman Buck McKeon speaking on one of the cable channels in the past couple of days, a former top advisor to General David Petraeus who was with him in Iraq, all suggesting that the airstrikes really need to be backed up at this point by U.S. ground forces.
    And my question to you is: Are these people coming from different perspectives wrong? Is the criticism misplaced? What are they and the American public not understanding about the Obama Administration’s strategy?
    MS. HARF: Well, a couple of points, Roz. I think, first, it’s easy to sort of try to be an armchair general and look at a very surface level of the strategic picture in Iraq and Syria and offer suggestions. I think that what we are confident in is the strategy as outlined by this President is being implemented by the Department of Defense, by other agencies working on the different five lines of effort, has a very comprehensive and clear path forward here. This is going to be a long fight. No one phase of it will be decisive. That’s how these fights happen. We only – how long ago was it that we started airstrikes? Not that long ago.
    As of this week, the Defense Department and our coalition – the U.S. and our coalition partners have conducted a total of 398 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. We have continued to say that we will make every effort to degrade ISIL’s capabilities, to take out their command and control, to go after their sources of financing with the oil facilities, and to really push them back out of parts of Iraq. This is a long-term fight, and looking at any one day or any one week or any one town by no means gives a comprehensive picture of (a) what the fight looks like or how we’re going to take it on.
    So I appreciate some of the commentary and understand where it comes from, but it’s just not a comprehensive look of what we’re facing, how we’re facing it, and how we’re fighting it. That’s what the Pentagon is doing. We’re obviously playing a role in some of the other lines of effort. And if you look at other conflicts we’ve faced, these are long-term efforts here. They can’t be driven by any one cable news cycle; that’s just not how it works.
    QUESTION: But it’s not just the focus on what’s happening with the status of Kobani. There’s also concern about what is happening in Iraq, which some could argue isn’t getting as much headline attention because of the fighting in Kobani.
    MS. HARF: Mm-hmm.
    QUESTION: But there is concern in particular about the status of Anbar province –
    MS. HARF: Mm-hmm.
    QUESTION: -- where ISIL has been quite aggressive in its –
    MS. HARF: Mm-hmm.
    QUESTION: -- efforts to take large parts of that province.
    MS. HARF: And you’re not wrong, Roz, in that ISIL is going to be aggressive. We didn’t think that as soon as we started airstrikes and taking out their fighters and their positions and their tanks that they would just stop fighting. They’ve shown themselves to be brutal, aggressive. That’s why we’re taking the fight to them. But nobody thought as soon as we would take airstrikes they would stop fighting. We know there will be intense fights as part of this conflict in the days and months ahead. We should all be prepared for that. This is a tough fight.
    But I will say when it comes to the fact that we are taking direct U.S. military action in Iraq and in Syria with our coalition partners, I just named at the top of the briefing all of the countries even since UNGA that have signed up to take strikes. This is a global effort here to do so. We don’t see an imminent threat to Baghdad at this time. I know there’s been speculation in the press about this.
    Iraqi Security Forces in and around Baghdad are strong. They’re under constant assessment. The Embassy remains open and we continue to conduct business. We’ve deployed a significant number of our own military personnel to Iraq and to the region for the protection of American personnel and to advise and assist Iraqi forces.

    When it comes to Anbar, it’s difficult to speculate as it has been under severe threat – you are absolutely right – since the beginning of this year. The situation remains very fluid. I’m probably not going to be providing battlefield updates from the State Department podium. But we continue to support efforts by Iraqi Security Forces, working in conjunction with the tribal fighters, directed against ISIL in Anbar. So this is going to be a tough fight. We are committed to it. Our partners are committed to it. You’ve seen us take almost – what did I say? – 400 strikes now. Those are going to continue.



    The spin never ends.  If you doubt it, RT reports:

    American intelligence officials are trying to blame news reports for failed military attacks against shadowy jihadist groups, arguing that the articles alerted a new terror group to impending air strikes.
    Last month, the United States fired 46 cruise missiles at eight locations in northern Syria to target the Khorasan group’s training camps, a munitions center and other sites. However, the attacks only killed one or two key militants, US officials told the Associated Press.
    The strikes near a compound in Aleppo didn’t cripple the group because members were able to scatter – something they blamed on news reports highlighting US missile plans. This led to the escape of a French-born jihadi with military skills that officials say they were interested in targeting.


    So the problem is the press?

    That's actually not even the first time the US government's blamed the press this week.  Dropping back to Monday's snapshot:


     And the US government's response to this latest setback -- humiliating setback?  To claim that this is an issue inflated by local media.  Holly Yan, Michael Pearson and Ingrid Formanek (CNN) note:


    And the Pentagon, the [unnamed "senior military"] official said, believes there's a media outcry about the situation in Kobani because reporters are there. Many other towns have fallen to ISIS without TV crews present, the official said.


    Oh, it's the fact that "TV crews [were] present," that's the problem -- not that Kobani was taken.  In other words, if an Iraqi city falls in the forest when no one is around, it doesn't make a sound.


    If the US government didn't have the media to blame, they might have to address the fact that the real problem is Barack's 'plan' is an outright failure.

    Note the way the first sentence starts in what Mohamad Bazzi (Mint Press) offers:

    As the new Iraqi government grows more dependent on US air strikes and military aid to defeat Islamic State (IS) jihadists, the country’s most revered Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has emerged as an important voice of moderation.
    Sistani called on the Shia-led government to keep Iraq united and reconcile with Sunnis. But he has also forcefully declared that foreign powers should not interfere in Iraq’s political affairs.


    As the new Iraqi government grows more dependent.

    That's not how you build strong governments.


    But there's no effort to help build a political solution.

    Instead Barack Obama has wasted everyone's time by using not only Defense Dept officials but also State Dept officials to try to round up people to join in the attacks on Iraq.

    The 'plan' is a failure.






















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    Friday, October 10, 2014

    Can you say that with me, adobe?

    There are many films I've seen thousands of times.  Especially if they were childhood favorites.

    Tim Burton's Pee Wee's Big Adventure is one such film.

    In it, Pee Wee's bicycle is stolen and he goes around the country looking for it.

    A psychic tells him that it's in The Alamo, in the basement.

    So he goes to Texas.

    He gets on a tour where he keeps trying to ask Tour Guide Tina about the basement but she repeatedly asks him to hold his questions until the end of the tour.


    One of my favorite parts of the film is the tour.  (I never cared for the part ahead of it with Simone.)  And my favorite part of the tour is when Pee Wee simmers while Tina stops in front of two figures.


     Tina:  This is one of my personal favorite parts of the tour. Please say hello to our residents, Pedro and his wife Inez. Inez is holding a clay pot that she seems very proud of. She has carefully detailed it with lots of paint and glaze. And Pedro is working on an "adobe." Can you say that with me? "Adobe".

    She will go on to lose her chewing gum while declaring how much she loves everyone on the tour.

    If you've seen the movie, you know the scene, it's a classic.

    And Tina was played by comedian Jan Hooks who has passed away.

    For many of us, she's Tour Guide Tina forever.


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


     
    Thursday, October 9, 2014.  Chaos and violence continue, World Can't Wait calls out the continued Iraq War, Barack Obama's 'plan' for Iraq is shot down across the political spectrum, 'trend stories' aren't news, 'trend stories' are frequently insulting to women, there's no such thing as a heroic or good suicide bomber, one country's media whores may have to find real jobs (yes, I wish it were the US but it's not) and much more.




    Let's start with The World Can't Wait this is from their most recent statement where they point out the problems were not caused by the drawdown of US forces at the end of 2011:



    The U.S. withdrawal left what had been a relatively secular country split along sectarian lines, with a weak puppet government, and a huge opening for Islamic fundamentalists to push for religious rule.
    No party in this fight, not Islamic militias, not the new Iraqi government — paid for by the U.S. — and certainly not the war machine of the U.S. itself, has "right" on its side. Tomahawk missiles fired from US carriers in the Persian Gulf, drone strikes and bombs can only bring unimaginable suffering to the Iraqi people.
    We in the U.S. must speak out against any U.S. attacks on Iraq & Syria. By exposing and standing against the lies and crimes of our government, whether by Bush or Obama, we can make a difference in how people see what's going on.
    Months of cable "news" repeating Pentagon press releases, has created a situation where people in the U.S. are  supporting more war on Iraq - and now on Syria - based on lies.   Huge numbers -- enough to elect a Democrat as president in 2008 -- had come to oppose the Bush regime's unjust and immoral war on Iraq.
    But now too many people are drawn back into accepting new wars, on the basis that "something has to be done about ISIS."
    The Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) is both a response to U.S. occupation of the region, and also literally, in some cases, was created by torture in U.S. prisons in Iraq; by billions of dollars in U.S. arms strewn about the region; and funded by close U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, societies where people also have scarcely any rights.  The Islamic State offers a disastrous future for the people, and is no damn good.
    But U.S. occupations, bombs, economic exploitation, and support of every reactionary regime in the region have done more damage, by far, than any Islamic fundamentalist group in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It was the Bush regime that sold the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq — countries which never attacked the U.S. — on the basis of defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda, only to have strengthened the basis on which they operate.
    The U.S. military cannot do anything to stop the violence of ISIS. NOTHING good can come from U.S. bombing, and we need to say so immediately and widely. Join us.

    Download PDF (half-page, double-sided).


     

    Good for World Can't Wait -- and I mean that.


    Too many people are silent, a fact Elaine noted in her last post:

     For two years now, I've called out Medea [Benjamin]'s 'protest' literature on The Drone War for slamming this or that person but never Barack Obama.  There are articles she's written condemning The Drone War that don't even mention Barack.
    She's a dirty whore.  She was just in Latin America a few months back saying we in the US had to worry because the next president might be worse than Barack.
    Worse?
    How?
    We're spied on, he kills people with drones, he's apparently after Julian Assange and Ed Snowden, he's started one war after another.
    If there's not a movement in the US -- and there really isn't -- that's on the heads and asses of whores like Medea who've spent the last six years applauding Barack and refusing to call him out.


    And Elaine's right.

    And when others refuse to speak it pushes the work off onto those of us who will and we're already doing all we can.

    I'm tired and I'm tired of being online.

    But good news, I don't have to be.

    No, a man e-mailed today to inform me that, "since you claim to be a feminist," I have to write about Nicholas Vinocur and Pauline Mevel (Reuters) report which opens:


     Foad, a French truck driver of Moroccan origin, traveled alone through Syria to rescue his 15-year-old sister from an Islamist group she said was holding her captive. But when they finally stood face to face, in tears, she would not leave.
    Foad is convinced that his sister Nora, whom he described as an impressionable teen who loved Disney movies before leaving for Syria one afternoon in January, stayed on because she was threatened with execution by the French-speaking commander, or emir, of the group she joined.

    The former high school student is among dozens of European girls, many of them her age, living with such groups in Syria. It is an aspect of the conflict that is beginning to worry European governments previously more focused on the flow of young men to join the ranks of Islamic State and others.



    Do I have to write about that?


    Well it's good to know I can step down and hand off the baton, or at least the curling wand, to a man so capable and knowing that he knows what I must do as a feminist.


    Except I don't see the feminist value in that story.


    I guess you can argue that it proves women can be into destruction and killing but is that really a newly emerging detail?  Did we miss all of human history as well as Hillary Clinton's 'diplomatic' efforts in and out of office?


    There's nothing a woman can't do -- whether it's doing good or doing bad.


    The Reuters story?


    It's the sort of 'trend' story Susan Faludi's documented so well in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.


    It's heavy on anecdotes and it's short on facts.


    More to the point though, it's one of those It Sings stories.

    They don't celebrate women, they don't note women.  The hook of these stories, the very narrative, is, "Look at what it can do" (or has done).  Women are "it."  Or maybe it's our vaginas are "it."

    We've ignored two similar stories.

    A female peshmerga went into an Islamic State area in Iraq and blew herself up.

    She completed a suicide mission.

    I don't get where I applaud that.

    There were many people -- men and women -- e-mailing that this 'heroic' act had to be celebrated.

    My own feelings about suicide would be if that's what someone wants to do, it's what they want to do and some of us carry more pain or handle it worse or whatever.  I'm not going to condemn anyone who's taken their own life.

    But I'm also not going to celebrate suicide bombing as heroic.

    If it's heroic for one side to do it, it's heroic for another side to do it.

    I don't want to live in a world where suicide bombing is applauded or considered heroic.

    Had the woman fought to the death, it wouldn't have surprised me.  Many women throughout history have.  However, I would have agreed that could be heroic.

    But I don't want suicide bombers all over the world because some nut jobs in the peshmerga think this is a cool way to kill.  There's nothing cool about it and if we applaud it in Iraq, we'll need to applaud it in the United States and elsewhere.

    There was nothing heroic about what the woman did.  I wouldn't even call her a "human bomb" -- she was divorced from humanity when she took part in that effort.

    And that has nothing to do with her gender, I'd feel the same way if it was a man.

    I'm very bothered that the press tried to present her actions as glamorous or brave because if a suicide bomber goes off in Denver, it won't be glamorous or brave.

    The other one we ignored was women fighters and how they may terrify the Islamic State.

    We've covered women fighters before.  We may be the only who regularly noted the Daughters of Iraq. And we noted them and treated the development as something serious.  But then, repeatedly, the Daughters of Iraq popped up and disappeared based on whether or not they could be packaged as a 'trend story.'

    We use "police officer" or "police member" here.  We realize the power of words and we know in spite of all the women in Iraq who had been part of the police force prior to the start of the illegal war in 2003, there was an effort to make it a job only men could do as Iraq was controlled by fundamentalists like Nouri al-Maliki.

    And make no mistake, when you can't appoint women to your Cabinet, when even your Minister of Women's Affairs is a man, you're a fundamentalist.  You're actually much worse than that but we'll keep it clean.

    My plan was to avoid these awful recent stories because at least women were getting recognized and the real story of Iraq reporting in the last eleven years is how western reporters have repeatedly ignored women and presented the story of Iraq as taking place in men's prison.  But this repeated nonsense in the e-mails where some drive-by insists this or that 'trend story' is about feminism or women's advancement is grating.

    I don't know how to explain it with any more clarity but, no, feminism is not turning yourself into a walking bomb.

    Now I am a feminist voice, not the feminist voice, but I'd be more than happy to have an exchange with any feminist that thought becoming a walking bomb was feminism -- mainly due to hearing just how they could shore up such a weak argument.


    Speaking of weak arguments, Barack Obama's 'plan' for Iraq.

    It's being called out across the political spectrum.

    RIA Novosti quotes former Russian Ambassador to Libya Veniamin Popov stating, "Airstrikes alone are not enough to win against the Islamic State organization.  This is the US that lifted the lid, because they actively tried to overthrow [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, and thought that all means are good. So that, they directly or indirectly supported the terrorist organizations [in Syria]. And they got what they created."


    In the US, Bill Van Auken (World Socialist Web Site ) notes yesterday's meeting Barack had with US military officials and explains, "As the meetings took place, there was further evidence that American policy in the region is in a state of disarray, beset by the immense contradictions in US policy, which had backed Islamist militias in the war for regime change in Syria, and is now attempting to curb the largest of these sectarian-based armed groups, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), after its overrunning of roughly a third of Iraq’s territory. American policy is further roiled by the conflicting agendas of the so-called “international coalition” that Obama has assembled to support the US-led war."

    The Washington Examiner's editorial board weighs in noting, "Even where the casual deployment of air power can tip the balance of a war, it cannot establish a just or stable peace afterward. The best possible outcome of this strategy in Iraq and Syria might well be prolonged war among most of the same parties, but with a different balance in terms of their relative strength and odds of victory."

     

    The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal offers:


    A senior Obama Administration official headlined a leading story in Wednesday’s New York Times about American frustration with Turkish “inaction” in Syria. “There’s growing angst about Turkey dragging its feet to act to prevent a massacre less than a mile from its border,” this anonymous official said. “This isn’t how a NATO ally acts while hell is unfolding a stone’s throw from their border.” The charge was repeated in other media outlets.
    It’d be nice to know why the White House thinks a public spat with a crucial NATO and Middle Eastern partner helps the war against ISIS. The U.S. “angst” over “dragging its feet” applies far better to what the French and British, the Arab Gulf allies, Jordan and above all Turkey have thought about American inaction on Syria while hundreds of thousands died and an Islamist ISIS army emerged to take huge chunks of territory.


    Outside of the ever shrinking Cult of St. Barack, questions are being asked about the 'plan' and how it even qualifies as a plan.  On the issue of Turkey, Karen DeYoung and Liz Sly (Washington Post) report:


     In a sign of their reluctance to directly antagonize Turkey on the eve of a key diplomatic meeting, U.S. officials sent mixed signals on Ankara’s demand that the United States establish a protected buffer zone along Turkey’s border with Syria.
    “It is not now on the table as a military option that we’re considering,” said Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary.

    Separately, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the idea of a buffer zone was “worth looking at very, very closely” and that it would be discussed when retired Gen. John Allen, coordinator of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria, holds high-level meetings in Turkey on Thursday.



    The paper's Liz Sly Tweets:
    7h7 hours ago

    ISIS is on the verge of capturing Iraq's Anbar province. Important story by



    Back to DeYoung and Sly's report, if the administration isn't sending mixed signals, they're antagonizing allies or would be allies.

    They're also antagonizing the Iraqi people.  All the propaganda in the world can't hide that.  Yes, CENTCOM notes:


    In Iraq, an airstrike south of Sinjar destroyed an ISIL bunker and ammunition cache and a small ISIL unit. Another airstrike, south of Sinjar Mountain, destroyed an ISIL armed vehicle and a small ISIL unit. To conduct these strikes, the U.S. employed attack aircraft deployed to the Centcom area of operations. All aircraft exited the strike areas safely.

     The strikes were conducted as part of President Barack Obama's comprehensive strategy to degrade and destroy ISIL.


    Mu Xuequan (Xinhua) reports:

    In Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, more than 20 people were killed and some 30 others wounded in the morning air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition against buildings believed to be IS headquarters in the eastern part of the provincial capital city of Mosul, some 400 km of Baghdad, an official from the security committee of Nineveh's provincial council told Xinhua.

    Which is a polite way of saying the US just bombed civilians (again).  Still on violence, NINA notes a Baquba car bombing left 9 people dead and ten more injured and an Abu Dshir roadside bombing left 2 people dead and eight more injured.

    Of course, today's Iraq news wasn't all bad.  Ibrahim Saleh (Niqash) reports:

    Media organizations that fostered close links with and, some say, published or broadcast propaganda, for Iraq’s former Prime Minister are finding that their funding has dried up. Analysts and other suitably qualified individuals who used to defend al-Maliki in the media are having the same problems.


    While his bosses searched for a new investor, young Iraqi journalist Hussein Aslawi was forced to resign. As the search for extra funding went on, the satellite TV channel Aslawi worked for had decided to cut down on its number of staff.

    “And I tendered my resignation because things just are not the same anymore,” explains Aslawi, who worked as a news editor. “All of this is happening because the channel’s administrators have strong links to [former Iraqi Prime Minister] Nouri al-Maliki. So this is the result of his election loss,” Aslawi notes.


    The media organisation’s administrators had pinned all their hopes – and the future of their operating budget - on al-Maliki winning a third term. “And despite our warnings, they didn’t do anything to protect themselves in case al-Maliki lost,” Aslawi says. “That’s why things have gotten so bad.”

    Shortly before the last general elections in Iraq, held at the end of April this year, Aslawi says the satellite channel, whose name he did not want to reveal for fear of repercussions, received a lot of money from al-Maliki and his allies from out of a special campaign budget. “The money was paid on the condition that the channel changed its policies and supported al-Maliki,” says the young journalist, who adds that he and his colleagues were all shocked when they heard about the deal.  


    “The channel became like al-Maliki’s spokesperson,” Aslawi says. “And it stayed that way up until Haider al-Abadi [the new Iraqi prime Minister] was assigned to form a government.”


    At that stage, the channel was forced to stop broadcasting for almost two weeks. “And today its fate lies in finding somebody to finance it,” Aslawi notes. “But that seems very unlikely to happen.”


    Whores forced out of their jobs?  Forced to work real ones or starve?

    It could happen here!

    Pacifica Radio could be taken down -- largely because of the waste and theft at WBAI throughout the '00s  and because All Media Whore Amy Goodman scammed Pacifica and walked away with millions.  The Nation has the coffers filled enough to continue online but print is iffy by the financial projections they hope no one leaks to the media.  (Will I or won't I? -- that is the question.) Others are even more worse off.

    And should be.

    Your loyalty should be to your listeners and readers.  You shouldn't whore yourself out for the powerful.  When someone's in the Oval Office, they have not just the Secret Service but also a team of rabid attack dogs to defend them.  They don't need the so-called press whoring to protect them.

    But democracy does need a real press.

    And Panhandle Media has failed the country and if dried up and disappeared what would we really miss?

    Not much at all.

    They don't report, they don't do much of anything except explain how awful Republicans are (or anyone who criticizes Barack) and look the other way.

    They don't deserve to be on the air and they certainly don't deserve your money.

    In Iraq, whores are being sent packing.

    Too bad we can't say the same for the United States.


    Lastly, David Bacon's latest book is The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration. We'll close with this from Bacon's "Tribunal Takes Up Mexico's Migrant 'Hell'" (The Progressive):



     MEXICO CITY (10/8/14) -- Just before judges heard testimony on migration at the Permanent People's Tribunal in Mexico City last week, the Mexican government announced a new measure that might have been deliberately intended to show why activists brought the Tribunal to Mexico to begin with, three years ago.  Interior (Gobernacion) Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told the press that the speed of trains known by migrants as "La Bestia" (The Beast) would be doubled.

    Photos of "La Bestia" have become famous around the world, showing young migrants crowded on top of boxcars, riding the rails from the Guatemala border to near the U.S. It's a slow train, but many boys and girls have lost arms and legs trying to get on or off, and wind up living in limbo in the Casas de Migrantes -- the hostels run by the Catholic Church and other migrant rights activists throughout Mexico.  Osorio Chong said Mexico would require the companies operating the trains - a partnership between mining giant Grupo Mexico and the U.S. corporation Kansas City Southern - to hike their speed to make it harder for the migrants.

    In the Tribunal, young people, giving only their first names out of fear, said they'd see many more severed limbs and deaths as a result, but that it wouldn't stop people from coming.  Armed gangs regularly rob the migrants, they charged, and young people get beaten and raped.  If they're willing to face this, they'll try to get on the trains no matter how fast they go.  "Mexico is a hell for migrants already," fumed Father Pedro Pantoja, who organized the Casa de Migrantes in Saltillo.









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