In
a glaring act of political censorship, media corporations in the
English-speaking world have maintained a complete silence on a powerful
open letter by journalists and media workers issued last weekend
demanding the unconditional freedom of Julian Assange.
The
blackout occurs under conditions where doctors have warned that
Assange’s health has deteriorated to the point that he may die in
Britain’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison.
It
comes in the lead-up to hearings next February for the WikiLeaks
founder’s extradition to the United States, where he faces Espionage Act
charges and life imprisonment, for having published the truth.
As
the journalists’ note, the case “stands at the heart of the principle
of free speech. If the US government can prosecute Mr. Assange for
publishing classified documents, it may clear the way for governments to
prosecute journalists anywhere, an alarming precedent for freedom of
the press worldwide.” The corporate media outlets, however, which
frequently proclaim their commitment to press freedom, are unmoved.
The censorship is all the more striking, given the rapid support that the initiative has gained.
On
Saturday, there were fewer than 200 signatories. In the space of a few
days, hundreds more journalists from around the world have put their
name to the document, which insists on an immediate “end to the legal
campaign being waged against” Assange “for the crime of revealing war
crimes.” There are currently 610 signatories and the list is growing by
scores every day.
So why isn't this news? It should be covered on every evening news broadcast.
I
know why, the press doesn't care. They're eager to whine about them
being wronged but they aren't eager to actually help defend freedom of
the press.
Let's
talk Emergence. Aisha e-mailed me asking if I was ignoring EMERGENCE?
No. I did not realize it had aired a new episode last night.
I
watch it on Hulu and usually two hours after it airs. It's my late
night addiction. So I thought the one I covered (two weeks ago?) was
the winter finale. I thought that in part because of the fact that my
episode did not end properly. I ended with them in the hall -- Jo and
then she bumps into Emily. That's where my episode stopped.
I read Aisha's e-mail and get on Hulu and, sure enough, there's a new episode.
I
start watching and everyone knows that Piper is artificial intelligence
-- including Piper. Huh? Talk about a leap forward from episode to
episode. My girlfriend says there's no way that leap took place. So we
stop the episode and go look. We can see that the episode I watched
ended before the episode actually ended. I'll try to catch up on that
but probably won't. So everyone knows that Piper is AI. Remember how
Jo's father found out his cancer has returned. Strange lady doctor
calls him. He meets with her about alternatives. She says they can do a
gene therapy of sorts and cure him and stresses this would be a cure.
Ed
goes home and tells Jo and Alex (Jo's ex-husband) what just happened.
Which was? They can cure him. In exchange? He's expected to turn
Piper over to them after putting a bracelet on her that will take her
powers away. Of course, he said no. And then Strange Lady gave him a
phone number to call if he changed his mind.
Jo tries to get a trace on the number but nothing.
Piper worries about if she feels anything. She believes she loves Jo but maybe that's artificial like everything else?
Alex
calls the number and agrees to turn over Piper. After he has
everything set up, we see him with Jo, Ed and Benny (Australian
journalist) and that was their plan. They're going to try to trap
Strange Lady.
Jo
gets taken in by the FBI agent who flirts with her. Agent Brooks tries
to intimidate her and she doesn't fall for it. He notes some things
she has told him and how they were false and it's a crime to lie to an
FBI agent blah blah blah. She tells him about Strange Lady who he has
been pursuing for years. He wants in so he stops whining and griping.
While
Benny and Ed stay with Piper and with Jo's daughter Mia, the others get
ready to meet Strange Lady and arrest her. They have a com on Alex so
they can speak with him. He's in a car. He's waiting to be met.
Instead, he gets a phone call. She's calling from a distance, by the
water. She tells him to drive closer to her. Jo is screaming "NO" in
his ear and telling him to get out of there but he doesn't listen to
Jo. Once he's where he was told to be, he turns off the engine and
leaves the lights on -- as directed -- he's told to step out of the car
as well.
Once
out of the car Strange Lady starts telling him to hand over Piper and
he says she's in the car but not coming out until they do what was
agreed to.
Strange
Lady realizes Piper's not there and Jo comes peeling in. Jo raises her
gun on the bridge and Strange Lady jumps off into the water. They've
lost her.
Agent Brooks tells Jo to call her family ASAP and for them to go to the police station. She calls and tells Benny.
They get to the police station and Jo's thrilled to see her daughter Mia and her dad Ed. But where's Piper?
Benny took her to meet Jo. That's what he told them.
Cut
to Benny with Piper. Piper is nervous and wants Jo. Benny says
they're meeting her. A car pulls up. He tells her that's Jo. Then he
puts the bracelet on her that takes away Piper's powers. Piper runs out
of the car trying to get away but can't. Strange Lady has her.
Jo, at the police station, vows that they will get Piper back. End of winter finale.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Wednesday, December 11, 2019. No Christmas tree in Baghdad Plaza this year and much more.
Starting in the United States where the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination continues and War Hawk Joe Biden continues to stumble. Ella Nilsen (VOX) reports:
They are must win and we've talked about this (for weeks now). If Joe loses Iowa, it's a hit and his support dips. That's only more true if he were to lose Iowa and New Hampshire. And when we talk about that, we're talking about the support from voters.
However, money, money, money . . .
Money, money, money...
Money makes the trees come down
It makes mountains into molehills
Big money kicks the wide wide world around.
-- "This Place," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album SHINE
Money, money, money. Joe's making an effort in Iowa and it's cost him -- financially. If he loses Iowa watch some of his funding dry up. If he loses Iowa and New Hampshire, even more dries up. Can Joe's campaign stay afloat if he loses both?
"Joe Biden needs to grow up." So argues John Krull (GOSHEN NEWS) about the 77-year-old temper tantrum throwing Joe:
The former vice president and current candidate for president indulged in a temper tantrum with an Iowa voter the other day. The voter said Biden and his son Hunter had been “selling access” to the White House when the younger Biden served on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company.
Joe Biden flared.
“You’re a damn liar, man,” he said to the 83-year-old Iowa farmer.
Worse, the former vice president continued to defend his snappish response to the man long after his anger should have cooled. He kept telling interviewers the man was lying and that he was entitled to unload on an ordinary citizen who had the temerity to question him.
In the first place, the farmer may not have had every fact straight, but it’s unlikely that he was lying. He is a Democrat, one who said afterward that he was going to vote for whoever the party’s nominee is — even if it’s Biden.
But that is beside the point.
Biden’s little fit of pique demonstrated that he doesn’t grasp that a lot of people — many of them Democrats and independents — have a problem with his son’s work with Burisma. The fact that he was paid $50,000 per month to do not much work raises questions. That the younger Biden had scant qualifications other than his last name to fill such a position only makes things worse.
Joe's got a lot of negatives. One of them? He's reminding people of other candidates who didn't end up president. Tyler MacDonald (THE INQUISITR) reports:
Democratic presidential candidate and frontrunner Joe Biden recently released a campaign ad that attacks Donald Trump as “erratic” and “unstable,” painting the former vice president as someone offering the “strong,” “steady,” and “stable” leadership the United States needs. The ad was quickly derided by progressive commentator Kyle Kulinski, who suggested that it was following in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential bid against Trump.
“It’s like the Biden campaign studied Hillary’s failed campaign and
said: ‘ok, lets try that again!’, it calls Trump ‘unstable’ and
‘erratic’, and Biden ‘experienced,'” he tweeted. “Hillary was
experienced and Trump was erratic & unstable in 2016 and he won.
‘Trump bad’ is a losing strategy!”
Kulinski continued to blast the ad’s focus on attacking Trump, suggesting that it isn’t “creative, interesting or inspiring.”
Ava and I noted this with Tom Steyer's ads -- you need to tell the people what you will do. Your obsession with Donald Trump just makes him stronger. What are you going to do to make the lives of Americans better? Instead, you make your ads all about Donald Trump, suggesting you're good at envy but not good at planning for the future.
Joe's being endorsed by Kate Miller. Not the actress. So who? A little speck from the center-world. Born in 1952, she is a bit young to be a Joe Biden supporter. But her lifetime of nonsense makes her the perfect foil. VOTE SMART notes of Kate, "Kate Miller refused to tell citizens where she stands on any of the issues addressed in the 2012 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart, national media, and prominent political leaders."
Meanwhile the Joe Clone, his mini-me, Tiny Pete continues to underwhelm despite the avalanche of easy press he's been receiving for two months now. Rebecca Morin (USA TODAY) notes:
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg hasn't seen his recent surge in early-state polls translate to national polls. He is at 9% in Tuesday's Quinnipiac Poll, but was in second place at 16% in last month's poll.
Tiny Pete and War Hawk Joe are two birds of a feather. Thankfully, there are alternatives. Sarah Lazare (IN THESE TIMES) reports:
Update:
Following publication of this piece, a Senate spokesperson for Elizabeth Warren contacted In These Times with the following comment: “I just saw your piece on the NDAA. She does not support this level of defense funding and does not plan to vote in favor of the NDAA.”
Warren then tweeted the following remarks: “The Pentagon’s budget has been too large for too long. I cannot support a defense bill that’s a $738 billion Christmas present to giant defense contractors & undermines our values and security.”
Earlier:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the only 2020 presidential hopeful who has pledged to vote against—and loudly denounced—the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2020, a $738 billion military spending bill that would mark a $22 billion increase over last year. The other frontrunner in the Senate, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is tasked with negotiating the contents of the bill, but has so far remained silent on how she will vote. None of the other Democratic presidential candidates in Congress—Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.) and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii)—have indicated their voting intention, either.
The initial House version of the NDAA included certain restrictions on how military spending could be used, including measures prohibiting the allocation of funds to an unauthorized war with Iran and stopping U.S. military support for the war on Yemen. But a new compromise bill, released Monday, strips these out. While the compromise offers some concessions, such as paid parental leave for some federal workers, peace campaigners characterize it as a win for the Right. The House and Senate are expected to vote as soon as this week on the bill, which includes authorization for Trump’s proposed “space force” as part of the compromise.
On Bernie Sanders, Beatrice Adler-Bolton (JACOBIN) offers:
To live in the United States as a person with disabilities is to encounter daily acts of abuse and oppression. Working disabled people can legally be paid less than $1 an hour under federal law, an appalling exemption to already inadequate minimum-wage standards. Disabled people on Social Security Income (SSI) must report any income, including gifts, every month to maintain meager amounts of coverage, and can lose their benefits by marrying. We are more likely to be poor, and more likely to become homeless — more than 40 percent of homeless people are disabled.
For the first time in awhile, several of the candidates in the Democratic presidential primary have outlined proposals to address this. Last month, Julián Castro made a big splash by releasing a platform that, among other things, would scrap discriminatory wage laws and allow disabled SSI recipients to wed without penalty. Even Pete Buttigieg, in a long document brimming with 1990s-style Clintonite rhetoric, has laid out an agenda to take the disabled community on a glide path to equality.
But there’s only one candidate with a comprehensive set of policies that would directly enhance the lives of disabled people in the United States: Senator Bernie Sanders.
Disability rights issues are woven directly into the proposals of almost every single policy document the campaign has released to date. The Sanders campaign clearly understands that disability is not simply a set of special interests to be siloed off, but a common aspect of everyday life affecting a key group of people that US policy routinely degrades, diminishes, and often oppresses.
Housing is a disability issue. Labor is a disability issue. Health care is a disability issue. Disabled people are on the front lines of climate change. And the agenda that Sanders is advancing not only recognizes that all of these issues greatly affect disabled people; it recognizes that no program or policy is good enough if it does not work for the most marginalized among us — the disabled very much included.
Read on for specifics (and note these are the same issues that Hilda was raising in last week and this week's HILDA'S MIX).
Turning to Iraq, Samya Kulab (AP) reports:
War Hawk Joe has still not been asked about the months of turmoil in Iraq by the press covering his campaign. Bonnie Kristian (REASON) points out:
After months of deadly, large-scale grassroots protests demanding reform in Baghdad, Iraqi, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi announced his intent to resign and the country's parliament approved his resignation. In the protests, about 400 demonstrators, mostly young and unarmed, have been killed by Iraqi security forces; another 8,000 have been injured; and about a dozen security forces have also died in clashes with a violent minority of protesters. Today, it is unsettled who will become the new head of government.
It is unlikely to be a question easily resolved. The demonstrators' complaints are extensive, including state corruption and incompetence, unemployment and economic stagnation, and a perception of foreign influence over domestic politics, notably from Iran. More important than these specific issues, however, is the protesters' overarching critique of the governance structure in Baghdad—a structure shaped by Washington's nation-building efforts after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. That dissatisfaction makes this political unrest a fresh and urgent impetus to end American military intervention in Iraq once and for all.
U.S. exit could signal a move toward meaningful reforms the Iraqi people want. It would also be a boon for the American people, bringing closure to a misguided military intervention that has proven costly and counterproductive to U.S. security.
It is commonplace in U.S. politics to hear of the "end" of the Iraq War under former President Obama, but it is an odd end to a war which leaves thousands of occupying troops in place. The Trump administration began this year with more than 5,000 boots on the ground in Iraq, and, since then, added to their number after reshuffling U.S. forces in Syria. It has been nearly three years since Baghdad declared victory over the Islamic State—whose rise occasioned a growing U.S. footprint in Iraq beginning in 2014. In those years, Washington has ignored repeated Iraqi calls for withdrawal of all foreign militaries, as well as recent insistence from Baghdad that American forces relocated from Syria cannot stay.
Meanwhile Reporters Without Borders notes:
Muhanna was the third journalist to be murdered since a major wave of anti-government protests began in Iraq on 1 October. His death triggered an outcry on social networks.
The first journalist to be killed was Hisham Fares Al-Aadhami, a freelance photographer who was fatally shot in the chest by an irregular militia member while covering the protests in Al-Khilani Square on 4 October
The other fatal victim was Amjed Al-Dahamat, a writer and citizen-journalist who, according to the information obtained by RSF, was shot by unidentified gunmen near his home in the southeastern province of Maysan on 7 November.
“Rarely have Iraqi journalists been so exposed to danger and so vulnerable,” said Sabrina Bennoui, the head of RSF’s Middle East desk. “It is unacceptable that reporters in the field should be killed simply for having a camera or video camera. The Iraqi authorities must thoroughly investigate these clearly deliberate murders in order to identify those responsible.”
On the same day that Muhanna was murdered, another freelance photographer, Zaid Al-Khafaji, was kidnapped from his home on his return from covering the protests in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. CCTV camera footage show men entering his home prior to his disappearance.
He was the second journalist to be abducted in recent weeks. The first was Muhammad Al-Shamari, a member of the Iraqi Observatory for Press Freedoms, who was kidnapped on 17 November and was released the next day.
Iraq is ranked 156th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index.
The following sites updated:
Starting in the United States where the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination continues and War Hawk Joe Biden continues to stumble. Ella Nilsen (VOX) reports:
Joe Biden’s
2020 campaign is confident it can do the improbable: win the Democratic
nomination for president without winning Iowa and New Hampshire.
“We’ve long felt that one of our unique advantages is
that we have multiple paths to the nomination, and I’m not sure anybody
else can say that right now,” Biden’s deputy campaign manager Pete
Kavanaugh told Vox.
The path rests on winning the Obama coalition of nonwhite
voters; many older black voters in particular have so far signaled
their loyalty to Biden. Though they’ve been campaigning and organizing
in Iowa and New Hampshire, the former vice president’s
campaign says faltering there wouldn’t be a death knell. Their paths
hinge on strong showings in the more diverse early states of Nevada and
South Carolina, and riding that energy into delegate-rich Super Tuesday
on March 3. Pointing to the southern states of North Carolina, Florida,
Georgia, and Virginia, Kavanaugh said, “Places like that we think we
could have a really profound advantage.”
“We strongly believe — and have consistently said — that no single state is a must-win,” he added.
Political experts in the early states disagree, saying that taken together, Iowa and New Hampshire are indeed must-wins.
They are must win and we've talked about this (for weeks now). If Joe loses Iowa, it's a hit and his support dips. That's only more true if he were to lose Iowa and New Hampshire. And when we talk about that, we're talking about the support from voters.
However, money, money, money . . .
Money, money, money...
Money makes the trees come down
It makes mountains into molehills
Big money kicks the wide wide world around.
-- "This Place," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album SHINE
Money, money, money. Joe's making an effort in Iowa and it's cost him -- financially. If he loses Iowa watch some of his funding dry up. If he loses Iowa and New Hampshire, even more dries up. Can Joe's campaign stay afloat if he loses both?
"Joe Biden needs to grow up." So argues John Krull (GOSHEN NEWS) about the 77-year-old temper tantrum throwing Joe:
The former vice president and current candidate for president indulged in a temper tantrum with an Iowa voter the other day. The voter said Biden and his son Hunter had been “selling access” to the White House when the younger Biden served on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company.
Joe Biden flared.
“You’re a damn liar, man,” he said to the 83-year-old Iowa farmer.
Worse, the former vice president continued to defend his snappish response to the man long after his anger should have cooled. He kept telling interviewers the man was lying and that he was entitled to unload on an ordinary citizen who had the temerity to question him.
In the first place, the farmer may not have had every fact straight, but it’s unlikely that he was lying. He is a Democrat, one who said afterward that he was going to vote for whoever the party’s nominee is — even if it’s Biden.
But that is beside the point.
Biden’s little fit of pique demonstrated that he doesn’t grasp that a lot of people — many of them Democrats and independents — have a problem with his son’s work with Burisma. The fact that he was paid $50,000 per month to do not much work raises questions. That the younger Biden had scant qualifications other than his last name to fill such a position only makes things worse.
Joe's got a lot of negatives. One of them? He's reminding people of other candidates who didn't end up president. Tyler MacDonald (THE INQUISITR) reports:
Democratic presidential candidate and frontrunner Joe Biden recently released a campaign ad that attacks Donald Trump as “erratic” and “unstable,” painting the former vice president as someone offering the “strong,” “steady,” and “stable” leadership the United States needs. The ad was quickly derided by progressive commentator Kyle Kulinski, who suggested that it was following in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential bid against Trump.
Kulinski continued to blast the ad’s focus on attacking Trump, suggesting that it isn’t “creative, interesting or inspiring.”
Ava and I noted this with Tom Steyer's ads -- you need to tell the people what you will do. Your obsession with Donald Trump just makes him stronger. What are you going to do to make the lives of Americans better? Instead, you make your ads all about Donald Trump, suggesting you're good at envy but not good at planning for the future.
Joe's being endorsed by Kate Miller. Not the actress. So who? A little speck from the center-world. Born in 1952, she is a bit young to be a Joe Biden supporter. But her lifetime of nonsense makes her the perfect foil. VOTE SMART notes of Kate, "Kate Miller refused to tell citizens where she stands on any of the issues addressed in the 2012 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart, national media, and prominent political leaders."
Meanwhile the Joe Clone, his mini-me, Tiny Pete continues to underwhelm despite the avalanche of easy press he's been receiving for two months now. Rebecca Morin (USA TODAY) notes:
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg hasn't seen his recent surge in early-state polls translate to national polls. He is at 9% in Tuesday's Quinnipiac Poll, but was in second place at 16% in last month's poll.
Tiny Pete and War Hawk Joe are two birds of a feather. Thankfully, there are alternatives. Sarah Lazare (IN THESE TIMES) reports:
Update:
Following publication of this piece, a Senate spokesperson for Elizabeth Warren contacted In These Times with the following comment: “I just saw your piece on the NDAA. She does not support this level of defense funding and does not plan to vote in favor of the NDAA.”
Warren then tweeted the following remarks: “The Pentagon’s budget has been too large for too long. I cannot support a defense bill that’s a $738 billion Christmas present to giant defense contractors & undermines our values and security.”
Earlier:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the only 2020 presidential hopeful who has pledged to vote against—and loudly denounced—the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2020, a $738 billion military spending bill that would mark a $22 billion increase over last year. The other frontrunner in the Senate, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is tasked with negotiating the contents of the bill, but has so far remained silent on how she will vote. None of the other Democratic presidential candidates in Congress—Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.) and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii)—have indicated their voting intention, either.
The initial House version of the NDAA included certain restrictions on how military spending could be used, including measures prohibiting the allocation of funds to an unauthorized war with Iran and stopping U.S. military support for the war on Yemen. But a new compromise bill, released Monday, strips these out. While the compromise offers some concessions, such as paid parental leave for some federal workers, peace campaigners characterize it as a win for the Right. The House and Senate are expected to vote as soon as this week on the bill, which includes authorization for Trump’s proposed “space force” as part of the compromise.
On Bernie Sanders, Beatrice Adler-Bolton (JACOBIN) offers:
To live in the United States as a person with disabilities is to encounter daily acts of abuse and oppression. Working disabled people can legally be paid less than $1 an hour under federal law, an appalling exemption to already inadequate minimum-wage standards. Disabled people on Social Security Income (SSI) must report any income, including gifts, every month to maintain meager amounts of coverage, and can lose their benefits by marrying. We are more likely to be poor, and more likely to become homeless — more than 40 percent of homeless people are disabled.
For the first time in awhile, several of the candidates in the Democratic presidential primary have outlined proposals to address this. Last month, Julián Castro made a big splash by releasing a platform that, among other things, would scrap discriminatory wage laws and allow disabled SSI recipients to wed without penalty. Even Pete Buttigieg, in a long document brimming with 1990s-style Clintonite rhetoric, has laid out an agenda to take the disabled community on a glide path to equality.
But there’s only one candidate with a comprehensive set of policies that would directly enhance the lives of disabled people in the United States: Senator Bernie Sanders.
Disability rights issues are woven directly into the proposals of almost every single policy document the campaign has released to date. The Sanders campaign clearly understands that disability is not simply a set of special interests to be siloed off, but a common aspect of everyday life affecting a key group of people that US policy routinely degrades, diminishes, and often oppresses.
Housing is a disability issue. Labor is a disability issue. Health care is a disability issue. Disabled people are on the front lines of climate change. And the agenda that Sanders is advancing not only recognizes that all of these issues greatly affect disabled people; it recognizes that no program or policy is good enough if it does not work for the most marginalized among us — the disabled very much included.
Read on for specifics (and note these are the same issues that Hilda was raising in last week and this week's HILDA'S MIX).
Turning to Iraq, Samya Kulab (AP) reports:
The Christmas tree
in the middle of a central Baghdad plaza occupied by anti-government
protesters is bare, save for portraits of those killed under fire from
security forces. A tribute, the demonstrators explained, to a recent
decision by Iraq’s Christians to call off seasonal festivities to honor
the losses.
Leaders
of Iraq’s Christians unanimously cancelled Christmas-related
celebrations in solidarity with the protest movement — but the aims of
their stance go deeper than tinsel and fairy lights. Slogans of a united
Iraq free of sectarianism resonate deeply within the community, which
since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein has fearfully observed its
diminishing influence amid growing Shiite-dominated politics shaping
state affairs. The Christians have also left Iraq in huge numbers over
the years, after being targeted by militant Sunni groups such as
al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.War Hawk Joe has still not been asked about the months of turmoil in Iraq by the press covering his campaign. Bonnie Kristian (REASON) points out:
After months of deadly, large-scale grassroots protests demanding reform in Baghdad, Iraqi, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi announced his intent to resign and the country's parliament approved his resignation. In the protests, about 400 demonstrators, mostly young and unarmed, have been killed by Iraqi security forces; another 8,000 have been injured; and about a dozen security forces have also died in clashes with a violent minority of protesters. Today, it is unsettled who will become the new head of government.
It is unlikely to be a question easily resolved. The demonstrators' complaints are extensive, including state corruption and incompetence, unemployment and economic stagnation, and a perception of foreign influence over domestic politics, notably from Iran. More important than these specific issues, however, is the protesters' overarching critique of the governance structure in Baghdad—a structure shaped by Washington's nation-building efforts after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. That dissatisfaction makes this political unrest a fresh and urgent impetus to end American military intervention in Iraq once and for all.
U.S. exit could signal a move toward meaningful reforms the Iraqi people want. It would also be a boon for the American people, bringing closure to a misguided military intervention that has proven costly and counterproductive to U.S. security.
It is commonplace in U.S. politics to hear of the "end" of the Iraq War under former President Obama, but it is an odd end to a war which leaves thousands of occupying troops in place. The Trump administration began this year with more than 5,000 boots on the ground in Iraq, and, since then, added to their number after reshuffling U.S. forces in Syria. It has been nearly three years since Baghdad declared victory over the Islamic State—whose rise occasioned a growing U.S. footprint in Iraq beginning in 2014. In those years, Washington has ignored repeated Iraqi calls for withdrawal of all foreign militaries, as well as recent insistence from Baghdad that American forces relocated from Syria cannot stay.
Meanwhile Reporters Without Borders notes:
Reporters
Without Borders (RSF) is alarmed by the growing dangers for journalists
in Iraq, where the latest fatal victim was Ahmad Muhanna, a
photographer who was shot in the back by unidentified gunmen while
covering protests in Baghdad’s Al-Khilani Square on 6 December.
Muhanna was the third journalist to be murdered since a major wave of anti-government protests began in Iraq on 1 October. His death triggered an outcry on social networks.
The first journalist to be killed was Hisham Fares Al-Aadhami, a freelance photographer who was fatally shot in the chest by an irregular militia member while covering the protests in Al-Khilani Square on 4 October
The other fatal victim was Amjed Al-Dahamat, a writer and citizen-journalist who, according to the information obtained by RSF, was shot by unidentified gunmen near his home in the southeastern province of Maysan on 7 November.
“Rarely have Iraqi journalists been so exposed to danger and so vulnerable,” said Sabrina Bennoui, the head of RSF’s Middle East desk. “It is unacceptable that reporters in the field should be killed simply for having a camera or video camera. The Iraqi authorities must thoroughly investigate these clearly deliberate murders in order to identify those responsible.”
On the same day that Muhanna was murdered, another freelance photographer, Zaid Al-Khafaji, was kidnapped from his home on his return from covering the protests in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. CCTV camera footage show men entering his home prior to his disappearance.
He was the second journalist to be abducted in recent weeks. The first was Muhammad Al-Shamari, a member of the Iraqi Observatory for Press Freedoms, who was kidnapped on 17 November and was released the next day.
Iraq is ranked 156th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index.
The following sites updated:
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