Another big day for the NASA land rover Curiosity who is on Mars. NASA explains, "NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has relayed new images that confirm it has successfully obtained the first sample ever collected from the interior of a rock on another planet. No rover has ever drilled into a rock beyond Earth and collected a sample from its interior." If it helps you, think of Curiosity as an avatar of sorts. And she's up on Mars finding out all this information that we would otherwise never know.
Curiosity is an extension of ourselves, our limbs and our dreams. I really think it was the story of 2012 and is shaping up to be the story of 2013. NASA notes you can follow Curiosity:
An image of the drill's rock powder held in the scoop is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16729.html.
For more about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl .
You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosityhttp://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity . and
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Scott McCloskey declares of today's big news, "Many of us have been working toward this day for years. Getting final confirmation of successful drilling is incredibly gratifying. For the sampling team, this is the equivalent of the landing team going crazy after the successful touchdown."
Of all of Curiosity's recent Tweets, I believe this one is my favorite.
MarsCuriosity @everydaypanos
The ancient streambed I found shows water once flowed on Mars. I've
found no direct evidence of liquid water there now 6 days ago · · retweet · favorite
I find Curiosity so exciting. I don't see travel to Mars as possible for humans during my lifetime (love to be wrong on that) so we're so lucky to have Curiosity.
William Harwood (CBS News -- link is video and text) reports on the land sample and more, noting:
So far, Curiosity is chalking up a near flawless record with no technical problems of any significance.
But engineers have decided to change the way they operate the rover's sample acquisition system in the wake of problems with welds on a test unit sieve at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The problem showed up only after extensive operation and troubleshooters concluded the unit could successfully operate for a full year longer than Curiosity's planned two-year mission. A second test unit showed no signs of trouble and the sieve aboard Curiosity is working normally.
But engineers opted to take a conservative approach, deciding to operate Curiosity's sieve hardware only when absolutely necessary.
Curiosity and Team Curiosity have won 3 prestigious awards:
The National Space Club will honor NASA's Curiosity/Mars Science Laboratory team with three awards, including the prestigious Dr. Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy.
The Goddard Trophy recognizes the team for significant contributions to developing the most capable deep space mission ever and initiating the most ambitious science mission ever conducted on the surface of another planet.
The team will also receive the organization's Nelson P. Jackson Aerospace Award for its significant role in successfully landing on and exploring the Martian surface.
In addition, Richard Cook, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will receive the Astronautics Engineer Award for his personal engineering leadership as both the Mars Science Laboratory's flight systems manager and project manager.
The awards, offered to recognize significant achievements in space science and enterprise, will be presented at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. on March 22. The award recipients are selected by panels of experts from across the aerospace and defense industry.
Mars Science Laboratory successfully deposited the car-size Curiosity rover onto the Martian surface in August 2012. Since then, Curiosity has been beaming back images and data, as part of its quest to investigate whether an area within Mars' Gale Crater has ever offered an environment favorable for life.
The National Space Club is a non-profit organization devoted to fostering excellence in space activity through interaction between industry and government, and through a continuing program of educational support. A full list of 2013 award winners is online at: http://www.spaceclub.org/awards.html .
More information about the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity mission is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity to investigate whether the study area within Gale Crater has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
Follow the mission on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .
So good for Curiosity and Team Curiosity. Those awards are well deserved.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Yesterday we talked about basic history. Someone's ignorance of basic history -- especially basic history broadcast over the public airwaves and entered into the Congressional Record -- really is on them.
Yes, we're talking about Lawrence Wilkerson again, Colin Powell's chief of staff. So Brad Blog whimpered to David Swanson that it wasn't fair to write about Wilkerson without getting a comment from him. I suppose it's not fair to write about Watergate without a rebuttal from G. Gordon Liddy? Wilkerson's comments/lies are all over the place already. But Wilkerson apparently stopped humping his body pillow with Colin Powell's face on it long enough to write and here's some of his latest nonsense:
Several
misleading and even spurious bullets and headlines that make strong claims that
are not supported in the surrounding narrative. For example, no one ever DID
warn Powell about Curveball, in fact quite the opposite. This particular
source--billed as an Iraqi engineer who had defected--was George Tenet's--the
DCI's--strongest weapon. And incidentally, the title "Curveball" was never
heard until well after the 5 Feb presentation.
Your use
of INR's assessment of "weak" repeatedly, is weak itself. INR was at the time
one of 15 intelligence entities in the US intelligence architecture at the
federal level. (Add Israel France, the UK, Jordan, Germany, et al, and of
course you get even more). INR's assessments were often viewed--indeed still
are--as maverick within that group (and were particularly so viewed by George
Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin. Indeed, INR's insistence on putting a
footnote in the October 2002 NIE with regard to its doubts about Saddam's having
an active nuclear weapons program was only grudgingly acknowledged and allowed
by Tenet. And in truth, INR itself concurred in the overall NIE's finding that
chems and bios existed (and the NIE was the root document of Powell's 5 Feb
presentation).
He can't even lie well. The strongest 'weapon' -- oh, how little boys who can't keep their hands out of their pants in public love to 'weaponize' everything -- the State Dept and Colin Powell had was the INR? What group is the idiot speaking of? He's not speaking of the State Dept. The INR is the report that State produces so if you're the Secretary of State, that's your report. As Greg Thielmann explained it to Harry Shearer (Le Show) last month:
One agency, Colin Powell’s own agency, the intelligence bureau of the State Department, said that the evidence did not support that conclusion. That is, that the evidence showed that Iraq had not reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. And of all the various assessments about chemical weapons, about biological weapons, about missiles, that was the most critical assessment. And the State Department not only dissented, as the State Department would sometimes do, with an asterisk and a one-liner, it was basically a dissent with the entire judgment requiring a lot of words and was on the front page of the executive summary of the estimate. It was on the one-pager that went to the president of the United States. And that should raise alarm bells, not because the State Department intelligence bureau is always right, although I would argue that INR, which is its acronym, INR was more often right than not when we dissented from the majority, but that Colin Powell in particular, who knew or should have known from our memoranda and from his conversations with the head of our bureau the reasons, the detailed reasons why the evidence was not sound behind that conclusion.
Wilkerson wants to talk Curveball? Reality, a defector is rarely an objective source because, pay attention Wilkerson, "defecting" generally requires a reason. Here's The American Prospect on Colin and Curveball:
To review: In February 2003, noted motivational speaker Colin Powell went before the United Nations and delivered a terrifying presentation demonstrating that Iraq was brimming with horrific weapons of mass destruction, all poised to launch at the United States and who knows who else, obviously some time within the next 10 minutes or so, and therefore we just had no choice but to invade. Much of Powell's case was built on the allegations of "Curveball," a person who had left Iraq five years before and whom U.S. intelligence officials had never interrogated. He was interviewed by German intelligence officials, who passed them to the Americans while insisting that they were probably bogus, as indeed they turned out to be. But everything he said was assumed by the administration to be 100 percent true -- Powell even showed computer animations of mobile chemical weapons labs, based on Curveball's invented stories. Powell's show included lots of other falsehoods and intentionally misleading claims, from those "nuclear" aluminum tubes to phantom VX nerve gas to nonexistent long-range missiles (there's a good run-down here).
Let's go to the 60 Minutes II report, originally aired October 15, 2003, entitled "The Man Who Knew: Former Powell Chief of Intelligence and Others Disagree With Evidence Presented to UN for War In Iraq." We'll start with an excerpt to establish who Greg Thielmann is.
SCOTT PELLEY (co-host): In the run-up to the war in Iraq, one moment seemed to be a turning point: the day Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations to make the case for the invasion. Millions of us watched as he laid out the evidence and reached a damning conclusion: that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. But the man you will hear from tonight says that key evidence in that speech war misrepresented and the public was deceived. Greg Thielmann should know. He had been Powell's own chief on intelligence when it came to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. When you saw Secretary of State Powell make his presentation to the United Nations, what did you think?
Mr. GREG THIELMANN: I had a couple of initial reactions. Then I had a -- a more mature reaction. I -- I think my conclusion now is that it's probably one of the low points in his long and distinguished service to the nation.
PELLEY: At the end of the speech, the United Nations and the American people had been misinformed, in your opinion?
Mr. THIELMANN: I think so.
PELLEY: Greg Thielmann was a foreign service officer for 25 years. His last job at the State Department was acting director of Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs, responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Secretary Powell. You and your staff had the highest security clearances.
Mr. THIELMANN: That's right.
PELLEY: And you saw virtually everything.
Mr. THIELMANN: That's right.
PELLEY: Whether it came in to the CIA or the Defense Department, it all came through your office sooner or later.
Mr. THIELMANN: That's right, yes.
A note on the above, it's actually "PELLEY. Whether . . ." but I've used the colon we use normally. In the next section I'll add the opening of a set of parenthesis (when Bush is quoted) but other than that and the colon for the period, we're reproducing as is (or we've got a typo). As is on the CBS News website?
CBS News doesn't have a transcript or a video. All they have is a write up. We're pulling this from the Congressional Record. Then-Senator Jon Corzine introduced the segment into the Congressional Record the day after it aired.
PELLEY: Theilmann says that's what the intelligence really showed. [That Iraq "didn't even constitute an imminent threat to its neighbors".] For example, he points to the evidence behind Powell's charge that Iraq was importing these aluminum tubes to use in a program to build nuclear weapons.
Sec. POWELL: (From UN speech) Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that eh's made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries, even after inspection resumed.
Mr. THEIMANN: This is one of the most disturbing parts of Secretary Powell's speech for us.
PELLEY: The tubes were intercepted by intelligence agents in 2001. The CIA said that they were parts for a centrifuge to enrich uranium, fuel for an atomic bomb. But Thiemann wasn't so sure. Experts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the scientists who enrich uranium for American bombs, advised that the tubes were all wrong for a bomb program. At about the same time, Thielmann's office was working on another explanation. It turned out the tubes' dimensions perfectly matched an Iraqi conventional rocket.
Mr. THIELMANN: The aluminum was e--exactly, I think, what the Iraqis wanted for artillery.
PELLEY: And you sent that word up to the secretary of State --
Mr. THIELMANN: That's right.
PELLEY: Many months before.
Mr. THIELMANN: That's right.
Mr. HOUSTON WOOD: You'll see where it intersects. This is the velocity.
PELLEY: Houston Wood was a consultant who worked on the Oak Ridge analysis of the tubes. He watched Powell's speech, too. When you saw the presentation in full wi-with regard to the aluminum tubes, what were you thinking?
Mr. WOOD: I guess I was angry. I think that's probably the best emotion that I -- best way to describe my emotions. I was angry at that.
PELLEY: Wood is among the world's authorities on uranium enrichment by centrifuge. He found that the tubes couldn't be what the CIA thought they were. They were too heavy, three times too thick and certain to leak.
Mr. WOOD: It wasn't going to work. No, they would -- they would have failed.
PELLEY: Wood reached that conclusion back in 2001. Thielmann reported to Secretary Powell's office that he was confident the tubes were not for a nuclear program. Then about a year later, when the administration was building a case for war, the tubes were resurrected on the front page of The New York Times.
Mr. WOOD: I thought when I read that, "There must be some other tubes that people were talking about." I--I just wa--was flabbergasted that people were still pushing that those might be centrifuges.
PELLEY: Flabbergasted?
Mr. WOOD: Yeah. Yeah. So it just didn't -- it didn't make any sense to me.
PELLEY: The New York times reported that senior administration officials insisted the tubes were for an atom bomb program. Was it clear to you that science wasn't pushing this forward?
Mr. WOOD: Yes. That's a very good way to put it. Science was not pushing this forward. Scientists had made their evaluation and made their determination and now we didn't know what was happening.
PELLEY: In his UN speech, Secretary Powell acknowledged there was disagreement about the tubes, but he said most experts agreed with the nuclear theory.
Sec. POWELL (From UN speech) There is controversy about what those tubes are for. Most US experts think that they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
Mr. WOOD: Most experts are located in Oak Ridge, and that was not the position there.
PELLEY: Do you know one in academia, in government, in a foreign country who disagrees with your appraisal, who says, "Yes, these are for nuclear weapons?"
Mr. WOOD: I don't know a single one anywhere.
PELLEY: Greg Thielmann says the nuclear case was filled with half-truths. If the secretary took the information that his own intelligence bureau had developed and turned it on its head, which is what you're saying, to what end?
Mr. THIELMANN: I can only assume that he was doing it to loyally support the president of the United States and build the strongest possible case for arguing that there was no alternative to the use of military force.
PELLEY: That was a case that the president himself was making only eight days before Secretary Powell's speech, but the argument in the State of the Union address turned out to be too strong.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: (From State of the Union) The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.
PELLEY: After the war, the White House said the African uranium claim was false and shouldn't have been in the president's address, but at the time, it was part of a campaign that painted the intelligence as irrefutable.
Vice President DICK CHENEY: There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.
PELLEY: But if there was no doubt in public, Greg Thielmann says there was plenty of doubt in the intelligence community. He says the administration took murky information out of the gray areas and made it black and white.
Sec. POWELL (From UN speech) My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources -- solid sources. What we're giving you are facts and conclusion based on solid intelligence.
PELLEY: Solid intelligence, Powell said, that proved Saddam had amassed chemical and biological weapons.
Sec. POWELL (From UN speech) Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.
PELLY: And part of that stockpile, he said, was clearly in these bunkers.
Sec. POWELL: (From UN speech) The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers. How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer look.
PELLEY: Up close, Powell said, you could see a truck used for cleaning up chemical spills, a signature he called it, for a chemical bunker.
Sec. POWELL (From UN speech) It's a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong.
Mr. THIELMANN: My understanding is that these vehicles were simply fire trucks that you cannot really describe as being a unique signature.
Colin Powell lied. Instead of repeatedly embarrassing himself in public, Wilkerson should just grab his body pillow with Colin Powell's face on it and hump away in private. The people who keep pimping liar Wilkerson need to start taking accountability. There was never reason to. Those working in the intelligence aspect of State went public in 2003. Wilkerson's lies do not match the public record and, when he talks about Colin, he sounds like a little ten-year-old with a serious crush on Zayn Malik.
While Colin Powell was lying, millions around the world were protesting against the impending illegal war. The Iraq Times notes that Spain has just seen a number of meetings and seminars in Barcelona on the tenth anniversary of the global protest (February 15, 2003) that millions participated in. Aturem la Guerra (Stop The War) spokesperson Pilar Massana is quoted decrying the crime against Iraq and the Iraqi people which has led to the deaths of many innocents and a country in ruin. As Giles Tremlett and Sophie Arie (Guardian) reported in March of 2003, "The Spanish prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, the third man on the international stage beside George Bush and Tony Blair in the run-up to war, was staring at political disaster yesterday as anti-war demonstrations spread and opinion polls revealed 91% of Spaniards against the war." And after the illegal war started, protesters in Spain didn't vanish. Reuters noted that 4 years after the start of the Iraq War, Spanish protesters still turned out and this after they'd effected real change in their country, "Aznar was voted out of power days after the attacks, along with his conservative Popular Party. Spain's incoming socialist government, led by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq. Zapatero has refused to send additional Spanish troops to Afghanistan, despite demands from NATO members."
Spain wasn't the only country that saw protests. For England, February 15th resulted in the largest protest London has ever seen. Tony Dawson (Liberal Democratic Voice) remembers:
Just over ten years ago, I was one dot in a crowd of one million people in London calling for the Labour government of Tony Blair to stop the Iraq war. We all knew that Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator who was much-hated in his own country but we knew equally well that the case for invasion of Iraq (it was never a ‘war’) was a gigantic deceit, cooked up by the Blair and Bush governments for their own purposes. We knew that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. We knew that far from being a friend of Al Qaeda and the Islamicists, Saddam was their sworn enemy and near the top of their death list. But these were ‘inconvenient truths’.
As I walked alongside Charles and Sarah Kennedy, Donnachadh McCarthy and Simon Hughes at the front of the Liberal Democrat contingent in the march, I thought to myself: “Wow! This is the biggest gathering of humanity in the UK since the Isle of Wight Pop Festival in 1969:and we haven’t even got Jimmy Hendrix or Joni Mitchell as a ‘draw’ . How can they ignore something as huge as THIS?”
The bottom line was, the Blair/Bush agenda was so-fixed-in-stone that they would have ignored something twice or three times as big. They were totally prepared for both the massive slaughter of the innocents which took place in the immediate invasion period, and also the perpetual drip drip drip of casualties caused by suicide bombers and insurgents – and the Coalition ‘policing actions’ in the ten subsequent years. They were equally prepared for the homicide of ‘truth’. In fact, they were busy mixing the poisoned pills.
Andrew Murray (Gulf News) adds:
But British democracy took a body blow too. The shadow of the largest demonstration in British history - an estimated attendance of two million was supported by two independent opinion polls taken the following week - still hangs over democratic politics.
If politicians wonder why they are held in such low esteem, it is not
just their fiddling of expenses, nor their prolonged bipartisan
infatuation with bankers and Rupert Murdoch. The rot began with the
dodgy dossier, the “45-minute” Iraqi missile threat, the duplicitous
diplomacy, and the decision to ignore the wishes of their own voters in
preference to those of George Bush. Mainstream politics bought public
contempt with the blood of millions.
Rome was thought to have had the largest February 15, 2003 protest -- and the largest anti-war protest in history -- with three million people taking part. Protests took place throughout the US. Dick Bernard (Daily Planet) offers a photo essay of the February 15, 2003 protest in Minneapolis. There was nothing in the US on the tenth anniversary of the protests. There was no effort to create anything, there was no effort to even note it really. How come? Because the peace organizations of 2003 weren't peace organizations. MoveOn, United for Peace and Justice, Win Without War, etc. They were anti-Bush organizations, they were elect Democrats organizations, but they weren't concerned with ending the war. Earlier this month, Cindy Sheehan was under the weather and her radio program Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox dug into the archives for a 2011 interview done by RT's Abby Martin. If you have no idea how the peace movement was used by various organizations, listen to Cindy explain it. While still at the first Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, Win Without War lost all interest in her because she wouldn't support their proposal of a Congressional measure that called for Out of Iraq . . . Someday . . . Hopefully Soon . . . But If Not, Okay. United for Peace and Justice didn't want anymore protests after the November 2006 elections gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress. They didn't want to embarrass the Democrats? Embarrass?
First off a peace organization is supposed to call for an end to war. As for it embarrassing Democrats, grasp what UPFJ (Leslie Cagan and a bunch of other frauds) was saying: Calling for an end to war would embarrass Democratic politicians. Because? Clearly UPFJ knew, before Dems got control of both houses, that the Democratic Party they backed was not interested in ending the war. Leslie Cagan and others need to be held accountable. First step, don't ever trust them again. Don't listen to them. They whored and they lied. They pretended to give a damn about the Iraqi people. If their behavior was embarrassing after the November 2006 elections, it was especially embarrassing after the 2008 election when they all packed up their tents and went home.
Protests are not new to Iraq. And unlike Leslie Cagan, Iraqis actually risk a great deal to protest. You might think this is from the days of Saddam Hussein:
We, feminist activists from 12 countries, stand in support of our sisters and brothers peacefully demonstrating for basic rights in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square.
This morning, June 10, demonstrators were brutally targeted with sexual violence and beatings by men who were reportedly bussed in by the thousands to disrupt the weekly protest. Protesters suffered broken bones, knife wounds and beatings. Several women were severely beaten and violently groped; armed attackers attempted to forcibly strip off the women’s clothing. The activists, who work with the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, report that their attackers were organized and paid by government security forces who used the un-uniformed men to avoid accountability for the violence.
As feminists, we strongly condemn assaults against peaceful protesters and the specifically gender-based violence against women. As in so many of our countries, the use of sexual violence against Iraqi women is designed to terrorize, shame and silence those women who dare to exercise their fundamental rights as citizens and raise political demands in the public sphere. We stand with our sisters who exercise their rights to political participation and dissent.
Today’s attacks represent a noted escalation of violence against protesters in Iraq as well as a crime and a fundamental violation of human rights. We call on the government to uphold its obligations to guarantee freedom of peaceful assembly and to respond to the demands of demonstrators.
It's not from that time period. It's from June 2011. (And the organization issuing the statement supporting Iraqi protesters is Defending Women, Defending Our Rights.) That's what Iraqi women had to face to take part in the protests. They were assaulted. Iraqi women and men were kidnapped and beaten by the security forces. One of those beaten and kidnapped by the security forces (the security forces that Nouri al-Maliki -- prime minister and chief thug -- commands) was journalist Haidi al-Mahdi.
Kelly McEvers: Mahdi was shown lists of names and asked to reveal people's addresses. He was forced to sign documents while blindfolded. Eventually he was released. Mahdi says the experience was worse than the times he was detained under Saddam Hussein. He says the regime that's taken Sadam's place is no improvement on the past. This, he says, should serve as a cautionary tale for other Arab countries trying to oust dictators.
Hadi al-Mahdi: They toppled the regime, but they brought the worst -- they brought a bunch of thieves, thugs, killers and corrupt people, stealers.
Hadi was only one person tortured. He was a journalist, he was an activist. Was. From the September 8, 2011 snapshot:
Four journalists who had been released described being rounded up well after they had left a protest at Baghdad's Tahrir Square. They said they were handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten and threatened with execution by soldiers from an army intelligence unit.
"It was like they were dealing with a bunch of al-Qaeda operatives, not a group of journalists," said Hussam al-Ssairi, a journalist and poet, who was among a group and described seeing hundreds of protesters in black hoods at the detention facility. "Yesterday was like a test, like a picture of the new democracy in Iraq."
You'll never convince me Nouri al-Maliki wasn't behind the assassination of Hadi. It's been over two years now and Hadi's killer's never been found. Yet earlier this week, you saw an intelligence officer killed and today's news cycle was the government bragging that they had caught the murderer. In Nouri's Iraq, the police 'catch' who they want to.
Despite the above and so much more, Iraqis continue to protest. This despite numerous attempts by Nouri and his forces to stop them. January 25th, Nouri's forces began shooting at Falluja protesters -- the death toll would reach eleven. That didn't stop the protests. They call it the Iraqi Spring and they protest despite the fact that so much risk is involved in protesting in Iraq. Al Mada notes that yesterday was day sixty of the protests and that Anbar Province demonstrators are calling for the tribal leaders to stand with them. In recent days, Nouri's Tigris Operation Command has attempted to intimidate the tribal leaders. Baquba protesters say they are prepared to continue protesting but that they are fearful of what Nouri's Tigris Operation Command forces will do them.
Anadolu Agency reports today, "UN Special Representative Martin Kobler headed to Falluja in order to discuss the demands of Iraqi protestors." He's met with protesters elsewhere in Iraq already. Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) offers this take on the protests:
The Maliki government has repeatedly claimed it is “considering” the protesters demands, but its only visible actions have been military moves to stall protests and public threats against the protesters.
Leaders say if there is not action soon they will hold a full scale march on Baghdad, aimed at grinding government operations to a halt and forcing parliament to follow through on calls for early elections.
Among the demands protesters have made is calling for, the release of innocents who have been disappeared into the 'justice' system. Article IX of the Constitution is a problem as well because it adds to innocents arrested by allowing you to be arrested merely for being related to a suspect -- you can be the mother of someone suspected of a crime and be arrested because you're the mother (or father, brother, sister, child, grandparent, etc). Dar Addustour reports that the Ministry of the Interior is bragging that they have released 1077 people accused of 'terrorism.' If you're thinking, "1077? That seems smaller than the numbers a gullible western press was pimping a few weeks back," you're not wrong.
3,000 was the claim in early February. But thing was, the provinces were asking, "Where are these people?" Because they weren't seeing a huge influx returning. And then the provinces began demanding that the Ministry provide a list of names of the released which the Ministry refused to do earlier. Dar Addustour publishes the list (PDF format) here and here. Once a list was provided, the numbers dropped, didn't they?
Because when no proof is required Nouri can -- and will -- say anything. Al Mada notes that the 1077 are released. There are others that are 'transferred' and being considered for release. Nouri's laughable committee -- headed by the joke that is Hussain al-Shahristani -- is claiming higher numbers but refusing to release a list of names saying that will come later.
Is it a promise? Like when Nouri promised to honor The Erbil Agreement? Or like when Nouri promised in Feb. 2011 that if protesters stopped protesting and gave him 100 days, he would meet their demands? Nouri never honored The Erbil Agreement and he never met the protesters demands. So promises from his flunky al-Shahristani aren't worth anything.
But Iraqis continue to rally. Iraqi Spring Media Center posts this video of the protest tonight in Samarra. And here's an Iraqi Spring Media Center of the protest today in Mosul.
With all they've faced -- including the illegal US war -- Iraqis still take to the street to make their voices heard. Al Mada reports that activists in Anbar Province and Diyala Province are being watched and followed by Nouri's security forces. Generally, this is to intimidate. But this can also be where -- as happened during the 2011 protests -- Iraqis start disappearing. Members of Nouri's own Cabinet, it's worth remembering, have stated Nouri has the technology to listen in on cell phones and that he often does.
Still on Anbar Province, Al Rafidayn reports that the provincial council has sent out a distress call for international medical and humanitarian agencies asking for help in handling the issue of the increased birth defects in Falluja which have only increased and become even more alarming in the last six months. Deputy Chair of the Provincial Council Saadoun Obeid al-Shalan states that they have appealed to the Council of Ministers and to the Ministry of Health and Human Rights for years now but nothing is being done so now they are calling on the European Union countries and the United Nations and other children, medical and humanitarian organizations to come to Falluja and help address the problem. You'll note the US is left out. There's a reason for that. As he explains, the white phosphorus and other weapons the US forces used on Falluja in 2004 and 2005 are said to be responsible for the birth defects. The article states Falluja couples are becoming afraid to have children due to the huge number of birth defects the region is experiencing.
Meanwhile in Baghdad, Alsumaria reports, children are working on the streets and in the factories and child labor is on the rise in the capital. The estimate is at least 1500 children are working in Baghdad. This is a result of the lack of subsidies and sufficient subsidies for widows and orphans and families in general. Iraq is a land of orphans and widows as a result of the Iraq War.
Supposedly the political scene's about to get more complicated. From Tuesday:
As messy as the ongoing violence is the political situation. Last week, the President of the Federal Court, Medhat al-Mahmoud, was judged a Ba'athist and removed from office and Nouri named a successor. Today Alsumaria is reporting that the decree of Ba'athist has been revoked by a panel according to the Justice and Accountability's Deputy Chair Bakhtiar Omar al-Qadhi. Kitabat reports that Nouri pressured the committee to overturn the decision. The Iraq Times notes that al-Mahmoud was given 25,000 squre meters of land by Nouri who cited the judge's efforts of government service when making the gift (on behalf of the Iraqi people -- it was their land, not Nouri's). The article also notes that al-Mahmoud was originally selected for his postion by Paul Bremer who was the Bwana or viceroy over Iraq in the initial stages of the war. All Iraq News quotes a statement that Nouri issued declaring that the Justice and Accountability Commission has no documents backing up the accusation that al-Mahmoud is Ba'athist.
If you can follow the back-and-forth of 'He's a Ba'athist/No, he's not' decrees, let's move into the issue of the body itself. The head of the Justice and Accountability Commission was Falah Shanshal. Then Nouri fired him at the start of the week. As Wael Grace (Al Mada) reports, Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi has made him the head of the commission again and stated that Nouri didn't have the power to fire him (and replace him with a member of Dawa -- Nouri's political party). All Iraq News reports that other members of the commission are blocking Shanshal from assuming his position as head of the Committee. Can you follow the various developments regarding the Justice and Accountability Commission? All Iraq News offers this back and forth of various people making claims and counter-claims. On the issue of 'justice,' Alsumaria reports Iraqiya MP Haider Mulla is decrying the fact that arrest warrants are being issued by State of Law MPs and not by judges -- he states this backs up claims that the judiciary has been politicized.
Al Monitor's covering the above today but Ali Abel Sadah sees this as bad news for al-Nujaifi:
Following an attempt by Iraqi parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi to restore the dismissed head of the Justice and Accountability Committee to his post, in a clear challenge to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Maliki’s supporters are seeking to oust Nujaifi.
In the only potentially good news of politicians this week, Al Mada reported earlier that the President's Office has issued a statement proclaiming President Jalal Talabani is responding to treatments and exercises from the German medical team that has been treating him since his stroke in December. Alsumaria covers the announcement here. Late on December 17th (see the December 18th snapshot), Jalal Talabani had a stroke and was admitted to Baghdad's Medical Center Hospital. Thursday, December 20th, he was moved to Germany. He remains in Germany currently. [Saad Abedine (CNN) reported talk that it was a stroke the day the news broke (December 18th) and January 9th, the Office of President Talabani confirmed it had been a stroke.] Talabani was seen by some as a calm voice and one of the few able to restrain Nouri in any way.
Rome was thought to have had the largest February 15, 2003 protest -- and the largest anti-war protest in history -- with three million people taking part. Protests took place throughout the US. Dick Bernard (Daily Planet) offers a photo essay of the February 15, 2003 protest in Minneapolis. There was nothing in the US on the tenth anniversary of the protests. There was no effort to create anything, there was no effort to even note it really. How come? Because the peace organizations of 2003 weren't peace organizations. MoveOn, United for Peace and Justice, Win Without War, etc. They were anti-Bush organizations, they were elect Democrats organizations, but they weren't concerned with ending the war. Earlier this month, Cindy Sheehan was under the weather and her radio program Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox dug into the archives for a 2011 interview done by RT's Abby Martin. If you have no idea how the peace movement was used by various organizations, listen to Cindy explain it. While still at the first Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, Win Without War lost all interest in her because she wouldn't support their proposal of a Congressional measure that called for Out of Iraq . . . Someday . . . Hopefully Soon . . . But If Not, Okay. United for Peace and Justice didn't want anymore protests after the November 2006 elections gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress. They didn't want to embarrass the Democrats? Embarrass?
First off a peace organization is supposed to call for an end to war. As for it embarrassing Democrats, grasp what UPFJ (Leslie Cagan and a bunch of other frauds) was saying: Calling for an end to war would embarrass Democratic politicians. Because? Clearly UPFJ knew, before Dems got control of both houses, that the Democratic Party they backed was not interested in ending the war. Leslie Cagan and others need to be held accountable. First step, don't ever trust them again. Don't listen to them. They whored and they lied. They pretended to give a damn about the Iraqi people. If their behavior was embarrassing after the November 2006 elections, it was especially embarrassing after the 2008 election when they all packed up their tents and went home.
Protests are not new to Iraq. And unlike Leslie Cagan, Iraqis actually risk a great deal to protest. You might think this is from the days of Saddam Hussein:
We, feminist activists from 12 countries, stand in support of our sisters and brothers peacefully demonstrating for basic rights in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square.
This morning, June 10, demonstrators were brutally targeted with sexual violence and beatings by men who were reportedly bussed in by the thousands to disrupt the weekly protest. Protesters suffered broken bones, knife wounds and beatings. Several women were severely beaten and violently groped; armed attackers attempted to forcibly strip off the women’s clothing. The activists, who work with the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, report that their attackers were organized and paid by government security forces who used the un-uniformed men to avoid accountability for the violence.
As feminists, we strongly condemn assaults against peaceful protesters and the specifically gender-based violence against women. As in so many of our countries, the use of sexual violence against Iraqi women is designed to terrorize, shame and silence those women who dare to exercise their fundamental rights as citizens and raise political demands in the public sphere. We stand with our sisters who exercise their rights to political participation and dissent.
Today’s attacks represent a noted escalation of violence against protesters in Iraq as well as a crime and a fundamental violation of human rights. We call on the government to uphold its obligations to guarantee freedom of peaceful assembly and to respond to the demands of demonstrators.
It's not from that time period. It's from June 2011. (And the organization issuing the statement supporting Iraqi protesters is Defending Women, Defending Our Rights.) That's what Iraqi women had to face to take part in the protests. They were assaulted. Iraqi women and men were kidnapped and beaten by the security forces. One of those beaten and kidnapped by the security forces (the security forces that Nouri al-Maliki -- prime minister and chief thug -- commands) was journalist Haidi al-Mahdi.
NPR's Kelly McEvers interviewed him for Morning Edition
after he had been released and she noted he had been "beaten in the
leg, eyes, and head." He explained that he was accused of attempting to
"topple" Nouri al-Maliki's government -- accused by the soldiers under
Nouri al-Maliki, the soldiers who beat him. Excerpt:
Hadi
al-Mahdi: I replied, I told the guy who was investigating me, I'm
pretty sure that your brother is unemployed and the street in your area
is unpaved and you know that this political regime is a very corrupt
one.
Kelly
McEvers: Mahdi was later put in a room with what he says were about 200
detainees, some of them journalists and intellectuals, many of them
young protesters.
Hadi
al-Mahdi: I started hearing voices of other people. So, for instance,
one guy was crying, another was saying, "Where's my brother?" And a
third one was saying, "For the sake of God, help me."
Kelly McEvers: Mahdi was shown lists of names and asked to reveal people's addresses. He was forced to sign documents while blindfolded. Eventually he was released. Mahdi says the experience was worse than the times he was detained under Saddam Hussein. He says the regime that's taken Sadam's place is no improvement on the past. This, he says, should serve as a cautionary tale for other Arab countries trying to oust dictators.
Hadi al-Mahdi: They toppled the regime, but they brought the worst -- they brought a bunch of thieves, thugs, killers and corrupt people, stealers.
Hadi was only one person tortured. He was a journalist, he was an activist. Was. From the September 8, 2011 snapshot:
In Iraq, a journalist has been murdered. In addition
to being a journalist, he was also a leader of change and part of the
movement to create an Iraq that was responsive to Iraqis.
Al Mada reports
Iraqi journalist Hadi al-Mahdi is dead according to an Interior
Ministry source who says police discovered him murdered in his Baghdad
home. Along with being a journalist, Al Mada notes he was one of the
chief organizers of the demonstrations demanding change and service
reform that began on February 25th -- the day he was arrested by Iraqi
security forces and beaten in broad daylight as he and others, after the
February 25th protest, were eating in a restaurant. The New York Times didn't want to tell you about, the Washington Post
did. And now the man is dead. Gee, which paper has the archives that
matter to any real degree. Maybe it's time to act like a newspaper and
not a "news magazine" with pithy little human interest stories? (That
is not a dig at Tim Arango but at the paper's diva male 'reporter' who
went on NPR to talk of an Iraqi college this week.) So while the Times
missed the story (actaully, they misled on the story -- cowtowing to
Nouri as usual), Stephanie McCrummen (Washington Post) reported:Four journalists who had been released described being rounded up well after they had left a protest at Baghdad's Tahrir Square. They said they were handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten and threatened with execution by soldiers from an army intelligence unit.
"It was like they were dealing with a bunch of al-Qaeda operatives, not a group of journalists," said Hussam al-Ssairi, a journalist and poet, who was among a group and described seeing hundreds of protesters in black hoods at the detention facility. "Yesterday was like a test, like a picture of the new democracy in Iraq."
You'll never convince me Nouri al-Maliki wasn't behind the assassination of Hadi. It's been over two years now and Hadi's killer's never been found. Yet earlier this week, you saw an intelligence officer killed and today's news cycle was the government bragging that they had caught the murderer. In Nouri's Iraq, the police 'catch' who they want to.
Despite the above and so much more, Iraqis continue to protest. This despite numerous attempts by Nouri and his forces to stop them. January 25th, Nouri's forces began shooting at Falluja protesters -- the death toll would reach eleven. That didn't stop the protests. They call it the Iraqi Spring and they protest despite the fact that so much risk is involved in protesting in Iraq. Al Mada notes that yesterday was day sixty of the protests and that Anbar Province demonstrators are calling for the tribal leaders to stand with them. In recent days, Nouri's Tigris Operation Command has attempted to intimidate the tribal leaders. Baquba protesters say they are prepared to continue protesting but that they are fearful of what Nouri's Tigris Operation Command forces will do them.
Anadolu Agency reports today, "UN Special Representative Martin Kobler headed to Falluja in order to discuss the demands of Iraqi protestors." He's met with protesters elsewhere in Iraq already. Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) offers this take on the protests:
The Maliki government has repeatedly claimed it is “considering” the protesters demands, but its only visible actions have been military moves to stall protests and public threats against the protesters.
Leaders say if there is not action soon they will hold a full scale march on Baghdad, aimed at grinding government operations to a halt and forcing parliament to follow through on calls for early elections.
Among the demands protesters have made is calling for, the release of innocents who have been disappeared into the 'justice' system. Article IX of the Constitution is a problem as well because it adds to innocents arrested by allowing you to be arrested merely for being related to a suspect -- you can be the mother of someone suspected of a crime and be arrested because you're the mother (or father, brother, sister, child, grandparent, etc). Dar Addustour reports that the Ministry of the Interior is bragging that they have released 1077 people accused of 'terrorism.' If you're thinking, "1077? That seems smaller than the numbers a gullible western press was pimping a few weeks back," you're not wrong.
3,000 was the claim in early February. But thing was, the provinces were asking, "Where are these people?" Because they weren't seeing a huge influx returning. And then the provinces began demanding that the Ministry provide a list of names of the released which the Ministry refused to do earlier. Dar Addustour publishes the list (PDF format) here and here. Once a list was provided, the numbers dropped, didn't they?
Because when no proof is required Nouri can -- and will -- say anything. Al Mada notes that the 1077 are released. There are others that are 'transferred' and being considered for release. Nouri's laughable committee -- headed by the joke that is Hussain al-Shahristani -- is claiming higher numbers but refusing to release a list of names saying that will come later.
Is it a promise? Like when Nouri promised to honor The Erbil Agreement? Or like when Nouri promised in Feb. 2011 that if protesters stopped protesting and gave him 100 days, he would meet their demands? Nouri never honored The Erbil Agreement and he never met the protesters demands. So promises from his flunky al-Shahristani aren't worth anything.
But Iraqis continue to rally. Iraqi Spring Media Center posts this video of the protest tonight in Samarra. And here's an Iraqi Spring Media Center of the protest today in Mosul.
With all they've faced -- including the illegal US war -- Iraqis still take to the street to make their voices heard. Al Mada reports that activists in Anbar Province and Diyala Province are being watched and followed by Nouri's security forces. Generally, this is to intimidate. But this can also be where -- as happened during the 2011 protests -- Iraqis start disappearing. Members of Nouri's own Cabinet, it's worth remembering, have stated Nouri has the technology to listen in on cell phones and that he often does.
Still on Anbar Province, Al Rafidayn reports that the provincial council has sent out a distress call for international medical and humanitarian agencies asking for help in handling the issue of the increased birth defects in Falluja which have only increased and become even more alarming in the last six months. Deputy Chair of the Provincial Council Saadoun Obeid al-Shalan states that they have appealed to the Council of Ministers and to the Ministry of Health and Human Rights for years now but nothing is being done so now they are calling on the European Union countries and the United Nations and other children, medical and humanitarian organizations to come to Falluja and help address the problem. You'll note the US is left out. There's a reason for that. As he explains, the white phosphorus and other weapons the US forces used on Falluja in 2004 and 2005 are said to be responsible for the birth defects. The article states Falluja couples are becoming afraid to have children due to the huge number of birth defects the region is experiencing.
Meanwhile in Baghdad, Alsumaria reports, children are working on the streets and in the factories and child labor is on the rise in the capital. The estimate is at least 1500 children are working in Baghdad. This is a result of the lack of subsidies and sufficient subsidies for widows and orphans and families in general. Iraq is a land of orphans and widows as a result of the Iraq War.
Supposedly the political scene's about to get more complicated. From Tuesday:
As messy as the ongoing violence is the political situation. Last week, the President of the Federal Court, Medhat al-Mahmoud, was judged a Ba'athist and removed from office and Nouri named a successor. Today Alsumaria is reporting that the decree of Ba'athist has been revoked by a panel according to the Justice and Accountability's Deputy Chair Bakhtiar Omar al-Qadhi. Kitabat reports that Nouri pressured the committee to overturn the decision. The Iraq Times notes that al-Mahmoud was given 25,000 squre meters of land by Nouri who cited the judge's efforts of government service when making the gift (on behalf of the Iraqi people -- it was their land, not Nouri's). The article also notes that al-Mahmoud was originally selected for his postion by Paul Bremer who was the Bwana or viceroy over Iraq in the initial stages of the war. All Iraq News quotes a statement that Nouri issued declaring that the Justice and Accountability Commission has no documents backing up the accusation that al-Mahmoud is Ba'athist.
If you can follow the back-and-forth of 'He's a Ba'athist/No, he's not' decrees, let's move into the issue of the body itself. The head of the Justice and Accountability Commission was Falah Shanshal. Then Nouri fired him at the start of the week. As Wael Grace (Al Mada) reports, Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi has made him the head of the commission again and stated that Nouri didn't have the power to fire him (and replace him with a member of Dawa -- Nouri's political party). All Iraq News reports that other members of the commission are blocking Shanshal from assuming his position as head of the Committee. Can you follow the various developments regarding the Justice and Accountability Commission? All Iraq News offers this back and forth of various people making claims and counter-claims. On the issue of 'justice,' Alsumaria reports Iraqiya MP Haider Mulla is decrying the fact that arrest warrants are being issued by State of Law MPs and not by judges -- he states this backs up claims that the judiciary has been politicized.
Al Monitor's covering the above today but Ali Abel Sadah sees this as bad news for al-Nujaifi:
Following an attempt by Iraqi parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi to restore the dismissed head of the Justice and Accountability Committee to his post, in a clear challenge to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Maliki’s supporters are seeking to oust Nujaifi.
In the only potentially good news of politicians this week, Al Mada reported earlier that the President's Office has issued a statement proclaiming President Jalal Talabani is responding to treatments and exercises from the German medical team that has been treating him since his stroke in December. Alsumaria covers the announcement here. Late on December 17th (see the December 18th snapshot), Jalal Talabani had a stroke and was admitted to Baghdad's Medical Center Hospital. Thursday, December 20th, he was moved to Germany. He remains in Germany currently. [Saad Abedine (CNN) reported talk that it was a stroke the day the news broke (December 18th) and January 9th, the Office of President Talabani confirmed it had been a stroke.] Talabani was seen by some as a calm voice and one of the few able to restrain Nouri in any way.
jason ditz
cindy sheehan
bahrain news agency
all iraq news
iraq body count
reuters
al rafidayn
alsumaria
