Put on your boogie shoes

Let's dance . . . under the moonlight, the serious mooonlight . . . David Bowie song and I'm old enough to remember when that song was new. Seriously. It's used in the video below.




Let's dance, says Iraq War veteran Adam Kokesh who was among those arrested and attacked by the police last weekend when he attempted to commit 3rd degree dancing inside the Jefferson Memorial.

Adam's called for a Dance Off. This Saturday, noon, same place.

And he's told the police not to forget to bring their dancing shoes.

John Edwards might want to pack pajamas in an overnight bag because Reid J. Epstein (POLITICO) reports, "Criminal charges are expected to be filed Friday against two-time Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, the result of an investigation into campaign cash allegedly funneled to the woman he had an out-of-wedlock child with."


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

Thursday, June 2, 2011. Chaos and violence continue, Adam Kokesh prepares for the Dance Party this Saturday at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, the Iraqi government releases false totals for May (and the press doesn't say a word), the continued effects of Nancy Pelosi's decision to sell out the peace movement, and more. We'll open with this from Feminist Majority: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 2, 2011 Contact: Francesca Tarant Ph. 703.522.2214 or Email: media@feminist.org Statement by Eleanor Smeal, Publisher of Ms. and President of the Feminist Majority: Jill Abramson Reaches the Pinnacle of the New York Times The selection of Jill Abramson, an accomplished feminist, as executive editor of The New York Times, which is not only the most influential newspaper in the United States, but also the premier online news platform, smashes a barrier to women's achievement in print and digital media. This is all the more important because it comes at a time when women's rights are under attack in Congress and state legislatures. Additionally, women are still only one-third of executive editors and one-fifth of presidents, publishers and CEOs of major U.S. newspapers. Globally, women hold only 27 percent of top news management positions. Hopefully the elevation of Jill Abramson to the pinnacle of The New York times will spur the advancement of women in management throughout the industry. No matter what happens, Iraq War veteran Adam Kokesh's DC event opens tomorrow's snapshot. The host of RT's Adam vs. the Man was among those assaulted by DC Parks Police over the weekend discusses his Dance Party this Saturday at Thomas Jefferson's Memorial starting at noon on yesterday's broadcast (airs Mondays through Fridays at 7:00 pm EST). You can refer to Adam's program and to this Facebook page for more on the event. And while Adam's hosting the DC Dance Party, soldiarty Dance Parties are springing up around the country to be held at the same time for those who are unable to attend the event in DC. Excuse me, all over the country and at places around the world. Ontario has announced their Solidarity Dance Party and so has Paris. There's also a video contest taking place here (winner to be determined by noon tomorrow based upon which video has the most views). Adam noted on yesterday's broadcast, "We just decided that Friday night, at 8:00 pm, for those of you in DC or who are coming to DC for this event, we are going to be meeting for a pre-party at 8:00 pm at Dupont Circle and it will be a chance for you to meet, maybe some fellow dancers, hang out, get to know them, in a slightly more relaxed environment than what we might see at the Jefferson Memorial on Saturday." "I think we all can agree that this is one of the most important hearings that we'll have in this Congress," noted House Veterans Affairs Committee Chair Jeff Miller yesterday morning. Noting that the unemployment rate for today's veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (young veterans) is "as high as 13.1%," and went on to make remarks that left me confused. What does Miller mean when he proclaims "there are legal protections for Guardsmen and Reservists who left work to fight for our country. By law, they are entitled to have or back to their jobs when they come home. We need to be aggressive in enforcement of this law"? Yes, it is illegal to fire someone because they're serving in the Guard. But what is this "we need to be aggressive in enforcement of this law"? Congress makes laws, it doesn't enforce them. And on the enforcement side here, it doesn't exist. Disclosure, I'm covering legal expenses for a friend in my state who is suing to get his job back (it was 'filled' while he was overseas). There's no, "Quick, call San Francisco PD and get an officer out here to arrest someone!" There will be no prison time at the end for the employers. My friend will get his job back and he'll get some sort of cash settlement. But there's no enforcement of this law. That's a joke and it's insulting to pretend that there is. The branch addressing this is the judicial branch. If Chair Miller would like to legislate some new and more strict laws, that would be great. But as they exist currently, let's stop pretending that these laws are "enforced." They're not. That's why so many Guard members and Reservists are having to turn to the courts. This is not a minor point and it enraged me yesterday so I held off on this hearing thinking I'd be more laid back on the issue today. I'm not. If Chair Miller was just trying to offer some meaningless but pleasing words, he needs to be aware that people aren't stupid enough to applaud those words. But if he comes up with an actual plan -- he says he's hoping to "introduce a new jobs bill for veterans," great. We'll note it, we'll review it here. But if the bill has nothing on protecting the jobs of those called up (or it has toothless and meaingless words), we'll note that as well. This is becoming one of the biggest employment issues for Reservists and Guard members. And prior to recently, I would note, scanning the papers across the country, at least one regional story each month on a veteran going through this. But until a friend of mine faced this problem recently, I didn't realize how widespread it was. I think many people are as ignorant of that as I was. It's not getting the attention it deserves. Ranking Member Bob Filner noted in his opening remarks (oral, not the prepared, written remarks), "I would associate myself with your [Chair Miller] comments except for one statement. You -- you start off with the mantra that we have to reduce taxes on small business which I would agree with and cut spending. And then you go on to say how we need more training and this and that. Seems to me we have to increase spending in these areas and I'm not afraid to come out and say it. We've got to increase our spending in these areas. If we're going to put people back to work, it's going to take some investment." The Committee heard from three panels of witnesses. The first panel was composed of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies' Richard Hobbie, DirectEmployers Association's Jolene Jefferies, the Chamber of Commerce's Kevin Schmiegel and the Society for Human Resource Management's Hank Jackson. Schmiegel was the only witness on any panel to note that unemployment might be about to increase with a number of service members due to return from Afghanistan and Iraq. We'll note this from the hearing. Committee Chair Jeff Miller: Thanks to each of you for your testimony. I think we've heard a common thread among a lot of what you had to say. There are a lot of programs out there and a lot of information out there, a lot of ways that people can get to it but nobody knows it's there. How do we do it? I mean that's -- we've already got the programs in place, the websites are out there, VA's got it, SHRM's got it. Who wants to start? And I'd be glad to hear from anyone of you on a simple way to fix our problem. Hank Jackson: I'll -- I'll take that simply because SHRM, as a human resource association, sort of takes its on as one of our responsibilities. I truly believe that education is what's sorely lacking. When we go to our members -- we surveyed our members last year -- 53% of our members indicated that they were actually attempting to hire veterans but were not sure about how to go about it, how to target veterans. We believe that through the programs with the Dept of Labor Vets, that we are developing a tool kit for veterans and employers that we hope to roll out sometimes before the end of the year in conjunction with the Dept of Labor. We believe that our members are truly committed to this cause. It's a matter of giving them a succinct place to go to address this issue. Richard Hobbie: Mr. Chairman, I agree with Mr. Jackson that partnerships with employers and federal, state and local agencies is extremely important and, of course, we've made great progress on that in the last four years with our partnership with DirectEmployers Association and we continue to make progress. Jolene Jefferies: And I can just say, I kicked off -- we did a, DirectEmployers Association hiring and retaining veterans web in our education series and that has been keeping me incredibly busy. There's definitely a strong interest in this. And to Mr. Jackson's point, there's a lot of turnover in these human resource departments and it does require continuous communication and education. And we just can't stop that effort. It's got to be an ongoing initiative. So in that spirit, we're providing this education series, recording it, and it's open to the public, does not cost anything and we've had state work force agencies, LVERs [Local Veterans Employment Representatives], DVOP [Disabled Veterans Outreach Program], the VA, the OFCCP [Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs] employers all demanding this training so there is a huge need for that. Committee Chair Jeff Miller: Finally, Mr. Schmiegel. Kevin Schmiegel: Thank you, sir. I'd like to make two points. The first point which is one of the principles we talked about is that the effort has to be focused on the local community. In my last assignment as a Marine, I was the head of Assignment Monitors. I managed 60 human resource specialist in the Marine Corps that assigned 170,000 Marines worldwide. One of our other primary responsibilities was to retain Marines. We only retain about 1 out of every four Marines so when we were doing our interviews to talk to those Marines about their decision to leave, we often asked them what they were going to do next. They never talked about what they were going to do next, they always talked about where they were going. The fact is, veterans and their families are returning to local communities every day. So the second point, which talks to the local community, is efforts have to be better coordinated between the public and private sector in those local communities. Our approach is simple, we're going to do a hundred events, a hundred hiring fairs in those local communities using the local Chambers of Commerce and the relationships that we have formed nationally with the Dept of Labor Vets and with the employer support of the Guard and Reserve and Ray Jefferson's state directors [Jefferson is the Assistant Secretary for the Department of Labor Veterans Emplyment and Training] and Ron Young's -- Ron Young's team of state directors [Young is the Executive Direcot of the National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve] in the Guard and Reserve are going to get together in those local communities and execute events. If we focus on local communities and we better coordinate private and public sector efforts, we will be more successful. Committee Chair Jeff Miller: I salute the Chamber on the 100 jobs fairs you're talking about holding but I think you just hit on part of your problem. If they're all returning to their own home communities, you have tens of thousands of communities which we need to be penetrating and be able to communicate with. So how do we solve that problem? They all want to go home -- and I certainly understand that -- so I mean we've got small cities of several thousand to large cities of millions. Sir? Kevin Schmiegel: I think there has to be several different models, several different approaches to this. So we've conducted what Ray and I refer to as mega-hiring fairs in cities like Chicago, in cities like New York, in cities like Los Angeles, that model may have over a hundred, a hundred-and-fifty employers and a couple of thousand veterans and their spouses attend. We generally have high level speakers, we have transitional workshops to offer in conjunction with that. When we go to smaller areas -- We'll be in, we'll be in Great Falls, Montana on August 13th, the model is different. You have to focus on fewer number of employees and you have to also take into account that neighboring states from Montana may have significantly lower rates of unemployment than Great Falls. So you may ask a big employer like Haliburton, who has a significant number of jobs in the eastern portion of the state and in the neighboring state, to offer jobs to veterans and their families to relocate either in Montana or in a neighboring state. So I think the answer to the question is the model is different. You have to start somewhere. A hundred is a very aggressive number. The US Chamber of Commerce has over 17,000 local Chambers of Commerce affiliated with us. Next year, if this campaign is successful, we hope that the 100 becomes 500. And the year after that, we hope the 500 becomes 1,000. Thank you. Commitee Chair Jeff Miller: Thank you. Mr. Filner? Ranking Member Bob Filner: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank you all for your testimony and your efforts. This is obviously a Congressional hearing and we have oversight of the VA. I haven't heard any suggestions on what we ought to be doing or what the VA ought to be doing. Looks like the only guy who's doing anything in government is Mr. Jefferson over here -- I mean, from the testimony -- I know you're false modest. But what are we all doing here? I mean this ought to be a top priority for everybody. And I can imagine -- you guys are the experts -- but if I just thought about it for a few seconds I could think of what the VA could be doing. I mean, why isn't every regional office, for example, putting out a list of veterans and their specialties and what they're seeking jobs as? You guys all said we have trouble linking up with who the veterans are. Well the VA knows every veteran. Let's just put out a list of everybody who's looking for a job. I mean, it just doesn't seem difficult. We hear about the transition of skills in the military being hard to translate. We could deem anybody who's in electronics or a medic or a truck driver -- I mean, we can give them a certificate that says "For the purposes of hiring, this serves as" you know "what ever entry level." And people can be trained further. But they have incredible skills. We've been working on this civilian certification for, I don't know, decades. Nobody can seem to solve it. We've got guys truck driving all over Iraq or Afghanistan, they come home and they find out they have to take a six month course to get a commercial driving license. They say, "Hey, what do I need that for?" And they get discouraged. They're truck drivers. They know how to do it and they do it under the most difficult conditions you can imagine. Let them have a certificate that starts with a job. Or electronics people or medics. I mean, I've watched these medics. They have incredible -- they do things that no civilian would ever think of doing and yet they've got to go through some other certification, masters and go to this college and that college. Come on. They have the training. And we could just do it. I'd like you to give us some suggestions in either law, regulation, just executive order that we can help you do the kind of things you're doing every day. You are out there. We ought to be helping you in every way we can and the VA's job is to do that. Give us one thing we could do, if each of you could do that. Jolene Jefferies: I think for starters, what would really help employers and we don't need a list of names necessarily but even just a simple heat map, for instance, that shows what the talent pools of veterans are, what their skills are, and where, in terms of geography, where can we find certain veterans with specific skills. And that way, we can at least hone down our recruiting strategy -- Ranking Member Bob Filner: Done. Let's do it. Anybody from the VA here? Where's Ms. Fanning? [VA's Ruth Fanning] Afraid to raise her hand? Whatever -- she say heat map? [Pointing to VA staff] Whatever a heat map is, let's do it. I can imagine what it is, but I'm sure it's easy. This continued with Filner handing out assignements but only Jefferies had an answer ready on what she needed. She had to be asked, she did not require prompting (not true of others). There's another hearing, one we attended today, that I'll try to note tomorrow. There's no room in the snapshot for it today. Among the many things we need to cover today is violence. It's June 2nd, the month of May is over, so let's look back. May 1st, 4 were reported dead and 17 injured. May 2nd, 4 dead and 21 injured. May 3rd, 15 dead and 40 injured. May 4th, 8 dead and 7 injured. May 5th, 30 dead and 90 injured. May 6th, 3 dead and 7 injured. May 7th, 9 dead and 18 injured. May 8th, 17 dead and 11 injured. May 9th, 4 dead and 19 injured. May 10th, 2 dead and 8 injured. May 11th, 2 dead and 16 injured. May 12th, 7 dead. May 13th, 3 injured. May 15th, 8 dead and 19 injured. May 16th, 14 dead and 16 injured. May 17th, 25 dead and 7 injured. May 18th, 6 dead and 2 injured. May 19th, 37 dead and 102 injured. May 20th, 7 dead and 14 injured. May 22nd, 23 dead and 47 injured. May 23rd, 13 and 10. May 25th, 5 dead and 30 injured. May 26th, 26 dead and 12 injured. May 27th, 2 dead (we're not counting the young boy killed by his cousin when they were playing with guns -- though that death was certainly at the very least 'inspired by the Iraq War'). May 28th, 5 dead. May 29th, 2 dead and 10 injured. May 30th, 4 dead and 6 injured. May 31st, 2 dead and 3 injured. Check my math, that should add up to 284 deaths and 535 wounded. Iraqi Body Count -- which does a far better job of tracking than I do -- notes 353 reported deaths. Xinhua announces that "May's death toll was the lowest since December 2010, when the authorities announced the death of 151 Iraqis." That might be true . . . if the figures Xinhua uses were accurate. They announce, using figures by the Ministry of Interior, Defense and Health, only 171 deaths in Iraq (excluding US soldiers -- we didn't count them yet either). That would be a lie. LIE. Reuters runs with the same FALSE figures because, despite reporting daily deaths and injuries, it's just too hard for the little guys and gals to keep track of what they report -- or, more honestly, they're as sick of their reporting as so many others are. Did violence decrease in May? No. Drop back to the May 2nd snapshot and you'll see we counted 262 deaths and 598 injured for the month of April. 284 deaths for the month of May would be an increase. And Iraqi Body Count (refer to the snapshot) found 283 were killed in April and they find 353 for the month of May. Increase. It's a two syllable word and that may be more than many US reporters can manage but it is, indeed, an "increase" from the month of April. And just because three government ministries tell you otherwise doesn't make a lie true. In fact, it's past time for the press that refuses to keep their own count to stop repeating what they know each month is a lie. Each month they run with the lies. It's not a mistake, it's not an error. It's deliberate and it should have stopped long ago. John Drake is a consultent with AKE and we'll note his Tweets on weekly violence for the month of May. John Drake's Twitter feed May 9th: johnfdrake John Drake At least 78 people were killed and 233 injured in violence in #Iraq last week. 12 hours ago and John Drake's Twitter feed May 16th: johnfdrake John Drake At least 26 people were killed and 128 injured in attacks in #Iraq last week. 15 hours ago johnfdrake John Drake At least 90 people were killed and 244 injured in violence in #Iraq last week. It was a bad one. 23 May johnfdrake John Drake At least 34 people were killed and 117 injured in violence in #Iraq last week. 30 May That was not a complete count (and he didn't pretend it was) but his totals? 228 dead and 722 injured. Supposedly reputable news outlets are really going to pretend that the Iraqi government figure of 171 deaths for the month of May is accurate? Really? Or we're going to pretend the numbers Prashant Rao put into a computer graph program mean a damn thing? Seriously? All they mean is Prashant wasted his time and now wants to waste ours. You're better than that, all of you, and your readers deserve better. Since March 2010, a wave of assassinations and assassination attempts have swept Iraq and the last three months have only seen an increase. May 26th saw the assassination of Ahmed Chalabi's boy pal Ali al-Lami. Responding like a grieving lover, Nouri al-Maliki went on a rampage to find someone to blame for the death of his beloved. But many others died and they got no interest from Nouri. Ayad Ali Akbar of the Ministry of Defense was assassinated in Baghdad May 23rd. And the most high profile assassination attempt was probably the May 30th one that Nineweh Province Governor Atheel al-Nujaifi survived -- he is the brother of Osama al-Nujaifi, Speaker of Parliament. But there was no agonizing cry from Nouri and State of Law over any deaths except for Thug Boi Pin Up Ali al-Lami. And the wave continues today as Aswat al-Iraq reports that Sheikh Hameed Ahmed was assassinated in Falluja. Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports, "At least five people were killed and 27 others wounded, including 17 policemen, in a series of coordinated explosions late Thursday that struck the city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, police said." Reuters notes a Mosul roadside bombing injured four, a Baghdad sticky bombing injured two people, a Baghdad roadside bombing injured five people, a second one injured four people and a third one left two people injured. The Great Iraqi Revolution notes that this Friday's protests will be entitled "Tahrir's Detainee Friday." Jacques Clement (AFP) observes, " Iraq risks a return to massive street protests when a 100-day deadline for progress expires next week, experts say, with no core issues having been addressed and a summer heatwave coming." The 100 Days was devised by Nouri al-Maliki (and popularized by Moqtada al-Sadr) in an attempt to defuse the protests. While activists are gearing up for next week (two Friday's from now), protests will be taking place tomorrow. And the title for this coming's Friday's protest, Great Iraqi Revolution explains, was chosen to stand loyal with those who have been wrongly arrested and held in secret prisons. There has been a steady crackdown on protesters but Friday and Saturday Nouri al-Maliki's goons took it up another level. Today the pattern of attacking protest is called out by not one but two major human rights organizations. Human Rights Watch issues the following: (Tunis) - Iraqi authorities have detained, interrogated, and beaten several protest organizers in Baghdad in recent days, Human Rights Watch said today. Iraqi authorities should stop the attacks and charge or release those being held, Human Rights Watch said. In Iraqi Kurdistan, a protest organizer, Isma'il Abdullah, was abducted, stabbed, and beaten on May 27, 2011. The Kurdistan government should make sure its promised investigation of the episode is thorough, fair, and transparent, and leads to the prosecution of those responsible, Human Rights Watch said. "Authorities in Baghdad and in Iraqi-Kurdistan are keeping their citizens from demonstrating peacefully," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Iraq needs to make sure that security forces and pro-government gangs stop targeting protest organizers, activists, and journalists." Several activists in the capital told Human Rights Watch that they believed that the increased security at Baghdad's Tahrir Square and the recent arrests were an attempt to head off reinvigoration of public protests, amid efforts by various small protest groups to work together. They said that neighborhood officials had warned them that security forces had made increased inquiries into the activists' whereabouts and activities over the past two weeks. Baghdad Arrests On May 28, soldiers in four Humvees and two other unmarked vehicles approached the offices of the human rights group Where Are My Rights in Baghdad's Bab al Mu'adham neighborhood, as members met with fellow protest organizers from the February 25 Group. Members of both groups told Human Rights Watch that soldiers raided the building with guns drawn, took away 13 activists in handcuffs and blindfolds, and confiscated mobile phones, computers and documents. One detained activist who was released on May 29 told Human Rights Watch that during the raid a commanding officer introduced himself as "from Brigade 43"of the army's 11th Division and said another officer was "from Baghdad Operation Command." "They did not show any arrest warrants and did not tell us why we were being arrested," this activist said: A female activist complained and asked to see warrants, and they told her to "shut up and get in the car." They blindfolded and handcuffed us, and while they were doing this, they asked, "Why are you having these meetings? Do you really think you can bring down the government?" And they asked who was supporting us. The activist said that the army took the people it arrested to a detention facility at Division 11 headquarters, where they were interrogated both as a group and individually. "Once we were there, they hit us with their hands in the face, neck, chest, and arms while we were still blindfolded," the activist said. "They kicked us everywhere they could reach. They did not use batons on me, and they talked to each other about not leaving marks or bruises on us." The released activist and several members of both organizations said security forces are still holding nine of the activists and have released four without any charges. "I asked what crimes we had committed, and asked again about arrest warrants," said the released activist. "They never answered either question." On May 27, men in civilian clothing detained four student protesters - Jihad Jalil, Ali al-Jaf, Mouyed Faisal, and Ahmed Al-Baghdadi - near a peaceful protest at Baghdad's Tahrir Square, witnesses said. "When [the protesters] started to struggle, uniformed security forces joined in to help the abductors," one witness told Human Rights Watch. "I saw Jihad [one of the protesters] dragged across the ground. A soldier pointed an AK-47 against Jihad's head and cocked it, threatening to shoot him if he moved. People started panicking and running." In the confusion that followed, some witnesses said they saw security forces push the four protesters into an ambulance that sped away, though others were not sure what happened to them. Members of two of the students' families told Human Rights Watch that authorities would not tell them where they had been taken, despite multiple inquiries. The brother of one said, "We talked to officials from the Interior Ministry, the 11th Division, the Baghdad Brigade, and other prisons. They all say they do not have him and don't know anything about him." Human Rights Watch received no response from a government spokesman to requests for information about the four protesters' whereabouts. On May 31, state-run Iraqiya TV broadcast a Baghdad Operation Command statement saying security forces had arrested the students for carrying forged IDs and not for participating in protests. One of the detained students, a frequent protest organizer, had been chased by unknown assailants 10 days earlier and had been afraid to sleep at home since, a family member told Human Rights Watch, "He called us a few times, but would not tell us where he was staying, because he was convinced that security forces were after him and would come arrest him if they were tapping the phone line." According to witnesses and media reports, there was a significantly larger presence of government security forces on May 27 than at other weekly Friday demonstrations that have taken place since February 25 over the chronic lack of basic services and perceived widespread corruption. Kurdistan Abduction In the Kurdistan attack, in Sulaimaniya, a group of eight armed masked men, some in military clothes, grabbed Abdullah, 28, an organizer and frequent speaker at Sulaimaniya protests, as he was buying a phone card at about 12:05 a.m. on May 27, and whisked him away in an unmarked Nissan patrol car. Abdullah told Human Rights Watch that after they drove for a half-hour, the men pulled him out of the vehicle into a field, where they covered his head, stabbed his arm, and pounded him with their fists and butts of their pistols and rifles. During the beating, he said, when one of the assailants suggested they kill him, others said they "needed an order from above." One assailant left to make a phone call and when he returned, he told the others "not to kill me but to do something very bad to my face." They removed the cover from his head and one of the gang "beat my face with the Kalashnikov many times until my nose was broken." At about 2 a.m., he said, they dumped him on the outskirt of the city. Before they left, he said, "they threatened me to never participate in any protests and I should be thrilled that they didn't kill me this time." Abdullah said that after he filed a police complaint the following day, government and security officials called him and promised to investigate. On May 29, Hakim Qadir Hamajan, director of Sulaimaniya's security forces, told Human Rights Watch, "We condemn all such acts of violence. The investigation is ongoing, and no information can be released yet, but we are working to find whoever is responsible and bring them before the courts to be prosecuted." Abdullah had gone into hiding in mid-April after receiving threatening phone calls and text messages because of his protest involvement. He said he had re-emerged six weeks later because he believed he was no longer at risk after hearing that officials and opposition parties would be discussing Kurdistan's political crisis. Background Iraqi authorities have taken several steps to eliminate protests in the capital from public view. On April 13, officials issued new regulations barring street protests and allowing them only at three soccer stadiums. In late February, Iraqi police allowed dozens of assailants to beat and stab peaceful protesters in Baghdad. In the early hours of February 21, dozens of men, some wielding knives and clubs, attacked about 50 protesters who had set up two tents in Tahrir Square. During nationwide February 25 protests, security forces killed at least 12 protesters across the country and injured more than 100. On that day, Human Rights Watch observed Baghdad security forces beating unarmed journalists and protesters, smashing cameras, and confiscating memory cards. Security forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and its ruling parties have used repressive measures against journalists and demonstrators since the start of the daily protests in Sulaimaniya on February 17 seeking an end to widespread corruption and greater civil and political rights. On March 6, masked men attacked demonstrators and set their tents on fire in Sulaimaniya. On April 18, security forces seized control of Sara Square, the center of Sulaimaniya's protests, and have prevented further demonstrations. On April 27, the KRG issued a 19-page report of its investigation into the violence during the previous 60 days of demonstrations. It concluded that violence was committed by both security forces and protesters, and that "the police and security forces were poorly trained in handling it appropriately." Iraq's constitution guarantees "freedom of assembly and peaceful demonstration." As a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iraq is obligated to protect the right to life and security of the person, and the right to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly. And Amnesty International issues the following: Amnesty International has called on the Iraqi authorities to end their clampdown on peaceful protests following the arrest of 15 pro-reform activists in Baghdad in recent days. Four protesters were arrested by plain-clothed security forces last Friday morning during a peaceful demonstration in Baghdad's Tahrir Square. They are still being held and are reported to be facing trial on charges of possessing fake ID cards. Eleven other activists were arrested when security forces raided the Baghdad headquarters of 'Ayna Haqqi' (Where is my right), a local NGO, on Saturday. Four were later released but the others, including the NGO's secretary-general, Ahmed Mohammad Ahmed, are still being held, apparently because they are suspected of involvement in organizing demonstrations in Tahrir Square. "These arrests provide further evidence of the Iraqi authorities' intolerance of peaceful dissent and are very worrying," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's director for the Middle East and North Africa. "If they are being held solely for their peaceful exercise of the rights to freedom of expression or assembly they must be released immediately and unconditionally." "Rather than clamping down on protests, the Iraqi authorities should be upholding and protecting the right of Iraqis to engage in peaceful protests in support of calls for political and economic reform. Iraqis should be free to express their opinions without fear of arrest or harassment by the security forces." All 11 detainees are currently held at al-Muthanna Prison in Baghdad. They have been denied access to their families and lawyers, raising fears that they could be subject to torture or other ill-treatment. "The Iraqi authorities must ensure that these detainees are protected against such abuse, including by being allowed immediate access to their lawyers and families," said Malcolm Smart. Protests first erupted in Iraq in mid-2010 over the federal government's failure to provide basic services such as water and electricity. They then gathered momentum, inspired by the popular protests in Tunisia and Egypt, and culminated in a "Day of Rage" on 25 February, when tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in cities across Iraq. The Iraqi and Kurdistan Regional governments responded by issuing regulations giving the authorities virtually unlimited discretion to determine who can demonstrate, but many Iraqis have continued to protest in defiance of official restrictions. Published last month, Amnesty International's report Days of Rage: Protests and Repression in Iraq describes how Iraqi and Kurdish forces have shot and killed protesters, including three teenage boys, and threatened, detained and tortured political activists, and targeted journalists covering the protests. Read More Iraqi authorities must halt attacks on protesters (Report, 12 April 2011) If you're wondering what the US State Dept added and thinking you must have missed their 2:00 AM press release earlier this morning, take a breath, relax, you didn't miss it. The State Dept has no statement on it. And the White House? Barack will give mealy mouthed speeches about 'supporting' protests and protesters in the 'Arab Spring' while repeatedly and intentionally ignoring the human rights abuses in Iraq carried out by the US installed puppet government. John Glaser (Antiwar.com) observes, "The consequences protestors have faced elsewhere could be vastly more calamitous in Iraq. Hence the very reason Iraq should be constantly in the headlines. The media are having a tough enough time keeping U.S. support for Arab dictatorships on the down low. With[out] the suppression of Iraqi democracy on the front pages, it'd be too difficult to avoid making U.S. imperialism a primary inquiry in the news on the Arab Spring. But suppressing Iraqi democracy is precisely what Operation Iraqi Freedom has brought." At The National Interest, Teg Glaen Carpenter sketches out realities of Iraq: Aside from periodic elections with competing parties, the new Iraq is beginning to resemble the old Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Maliki's bureaucrats routinely harass both foreign and domestic media outlets that dare to expose his administration's abuses. Disturbing evidence of such repression has been building for at least the past two years, but matters escalated dramatically in February with the regime's shocking brutality. As with many other countries in the Middle East, demonstrations broke out in Iraq demanding, among other things, an end to the Maliki government's rampant corruption. Those demonstrations culminated with a "Day of Rage." Although the demonstrations even on that day were mostly peaceful, security forces killed at least twenty-nine participants. They also rounded up dozens of journalists, writers, photographers, and intellectuals who had been involved in organizing the rallies. The Aldiyar Television station, which had telecast footage of the demonstrations, reported that security forces arrested seven employees, including a director and an anchorman, and closed the studio. One of the many other journalists arrested in Baghdad was Hadi al-Mahdi, who told Washington Post reporter Stephanie McCrummen what happened after soldiers detained him and several colleagues while they were sitting at an outdoor cafe. The soldiers loaded al-Mahdi and the others into Humvees and drove them to a side street, where they beat them severely. Then they took them to a former defense ministry building that now houses a unit of the army's increasingly feared intelligence unit. Mahdi was taken to a room alone, where he was beaten again with clubs, boots and fists. Not satisfied with such garden-variety brutality, they took his shoes off, wet his feet, and administered electric shocks. This is the new Iraqi democracy for which the United States has spent more than $800 billion and sacrificed some 4,500 American lives. It is an Iraq in which regime opponents are arrested and tortured, in which more than a third of the terrorized Christian community has fled, and in which religious zealots are forcing more and more women back under the veil. Meanwhile Bloomberg News and the San Francisco Chronicle report, "The U.S. is failing to meet "key milestones" leading up to the planned handover of responsibilities in Iraq from the U.S. military to the State Department on Oct. 1, according to a report being issued tomorrow by State Department's Inspector General." They're not meeting the needed deadlines (US government isn't). It's not as if the White House isn't pushing to extend the SOFA. The real surprise is the Iraq benchmarks. Remember those? Barack should have no say in extending or not extending the US presence in Iraq -- via DoD or state Dept. Why? Because continued monies given to Iraq by the US tax payer were dependent upon the benchmarks. The (Bush) White House wrote the benchmarks. But it was the (Democratically-controlled) Congressthat insisted on them. Back then, you may remember, Democrats in Congress pretended to want the Iraq War over and want it over immediately. So they gave a lot of "Mr. President . . ." speeches including noting that there was no progress. The White House would insist there was. The benchmarks were supposed to provide the Congress and the American people with a means to measure what was taking place in Iraq. The GAO hasn't bothered to examine the benchmarks since 2008. However, it should also be noted that the GAO is an arm of Congress and only researches and studies what it's instructed to by Congress. How interesting that Congress lost interest in measuring 'progress' in Iraq as soon as they believed a Democrat would win the 2008 elections. The benchmarks were not only signed off on by the White House and the US Congress, they were also signed off on by Nouri al-Maliki. As Barack attempts to extend the US military presence in Iraq, as Democratic House Rep Adam Smith insists he's okay (and he says other Dems are as well) with 10 to 20,000 US troops remaining in Iraq, the American tax payer should be pointing out that the benchmarks were supposed to be met and that the Congress said if they weren't met the funding for the Iraq War stopped. What were the Iraq benchmarks? Not what was the list and how much partial success did they meet, what were they really? They were Nancy Pelosi's sell out of the peace movement. Nancy Pelosi flipping the middle finger at all Americans and thinking everyone was too stupid to ever catch on. In 2006, the Democrats had control of which house of Congress? None. Republicans had control of both houses. Give us a house, Nancy said in the lead up to the 2006 mid-term elections, and we'll end the Iraq War. With control of just one house, we'll have the power to end the war. And Americans believed the lie. They turned out, they showed up to vote and they gave the Democrats control of both houses of Congress. When Democrats got control of the House, Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House -- the most powerful position in the House. Instead of using her position to end the Iraq War, she used it to continue it. That's not an assertion that can be questioned at this point. It is fact. Her actions, her sellout of the peace movement, allowed the Iraq War to continue. May 22, 2007, CNN reported, "Speaker Nancy Pelosi will present a plan to House Democrats for a war funding bill that won't include a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq but will feature benchmarks with consequences, according to Democratic leadership aides. [. . .] They said Democrats won't give up on a deadline for pulling troops out of Iraq, hoping to write language into defense appropriations and defense authorization bills over the summer. Some prominent antiwar Democrats denounced the compromise, and even Pelosi said she was unsure of her vote." The two-faced Pelosi had been quoted shortly before (May 11, 2007) by Jonathan Weisman (Washington Post) insisting, "He has grown accustomed to the free hand on Iraq he had before January 4. Those days are over." No, what was over was the peace movement. Nancy Pelois either lied flat out or she's too damn ignorant to know what she was being sold. She failed Americans. She failed Iraqis. She failed Iraqis not only by continuing the illegal war, Nancy Pelosi failed them by refusing to uphold the benchmarks she insisted on (as Speaker she could have killed them). We see the results of Nancy Pelosi's 'leadership' in Iraq today. Al Rafidayn reports on a bill that Nouri pushed through his Cabinet (and which he wants the Parliament to turn into a law). The bill calls for prison sentences for those who were Ba'athists prior to the start of the Iraq War. Prior to the start of the Iraq War, many Iraqis were Ba'athists. Whether they were Sunni, Shi'ite or what have you. It was a political party in Iraq and part of a political movement in the Arab world. Dar Addustour reports that Nouri's Cabinet claims this proposal is just to prevent Ba'athist from taking control of the country again. Dar Addustour notes it's a five-year prison sentence for those who were 'just' members but ten years for those promoted the party as well. "Wait! What does that have to do with Nancy?" The 18 benchmarks? One of the benchmarks was de-de-Ba'athification. One conclusion the Iraq Inquiry will offer is that Paul Bremer's decision to institute de-Ba'athification -- purging the government and military of Ba'athists -- after the US invaded Iraq did more than anything else to increase the conflict. Government officials and military officials were all in agreement on that in their testimonies to the London-based Inquiry led by John Chilcot. And one of the benchmarks was to do away with this policy and to find reconciliation. It never took place. It never took place. And the law Nancy pushed through said if the benchmarks weren't met, the funding was cut. Nancy didn't her job and Iraqis suffer to this day. Yesterday, Iraqiya pulled out of the government/went on strike/however you want to word it. Reading this morning's US papers, it's amazing to find no coverage of this. Especially from outlets such as the New York Times which has obsessed in print repeatedly over Moqtada al-Sadr's threat to pull his small bloc out of the government. Moqtada has 39 seats in Parliament (40 if you're genereous). Iraqiya has how many? Well it won the most seats of any competing slate and that number is 91. Iraqiya has seen a splintering with a small number of members spinning off into White Iraqiya. Whether they would followthe decision or not is an actual news story. (My guess is they would not.) But even without them, Iraqiya still controls far more seats than Moqtada. Should Iraqiya and it's splinter stick together on this issue, they could force Nouri to give into other major blocs (such as al-Hakim's) and could force him to court MPs representing the religious minorities because he would need every vote possible to pass legislation. That's a news story. And Ayad Allawi, leader of Iraqiya, did not just suddenly wake up yesterday and decide, "I feel like departing the government today." This threat has been floated for months now. It was made implicit early in May with Allawi speaking of it freely. Last week, the Arab media was filled with various columns and reports attempting to assess how serious Allawi was and what the chances were that Iraqiya would walk? So there's no excuse for the New York Times of "We were taken by surprise!" There silence on the issue also demonstrates that they're really not interested in whether people leave Nouri's government, they're just interested in All Things Moqtada. Repeating, Iraqiya has far more seats in Parliament than does Moqtada's bloc. The bloc the Times can't shut up about. Why did Iraqiya walk? The Erbil Agreement not being implemented and, yes, that's a hard news story as well. Dar Addustour obviously agrees. Alsumaria TV notes, "State of Law Coalition senior official Kamal Al Saidi accused Al Iraqiya List of trying to sap the political regime and complicate the situation in Iraq. Some of Al Iraqiya's demands are alarming and unconstitutional mainly regarding the demand to cancel the Justice and Accountability Commission, Al Saidi argued." So what today really reveals about the US press is that we have a lot of people fascinated with Moqtada, a lot of fans, just not a whole lot of reporters. iraq eleanor smeal adam kokesh the great iraqi revolution afp iraq human rights watch amnesty international jacques clement

Dumb Ass Tracy Baim

In the snapshot, C.I. takes on the idiot Tracy Baim being interviewed for The Progressive Radio with Matt Rothschild. I listened. Ugh.

C.I. was actually being kind. It's awful, as she pointed out, but she could have done paragraph after paragraph on just how awful it is.

As an African-American lesbian in good standing in my local LGBT community, I'd like to propose that we consider adoption a new rule: Gay 'activists' who put any one person ahead of the LGBT community are neither gay activists nor friends to the LGBT community.

If my proposal is adopted, Tracy Baim would be expelled from the LGBT community (one can hope).

Did anyone watch Good Times? I did. If you did as well, do you remember that really fat White girl who liked JJ on the show? I think she sang "Send In The Clowns" on one episode. She was just embarrassing. She had nothing to offer and really just wanted to hang around JJ because he was Black and she thought it made her look better and more sophisticated to hang around a Black person.

That's Tracy Baim.

And, Trace, Barack's not Black. He's bi-racial. You can't have a White mother and be Black. You can be mixed. But you can't be Black.

What an idiot.

At another point she went on about how in X number of states, Barack Obama Sr.'s 'marriage' to Ann Dunham wouldn't have been recognized.

NEWSFLASH, White girl, that 'marriage' was recognized in NO states because the United States wasn't recognizing bigamy.

That there was a divorce doesn't even mean there was a marriage. Check the law, check the record. Women who were 'married' (in the US) to men who were already married were not (a) considered legally married to that man and (b) were encouraged to file for divorce to avoid any kind of complications. But they were never legally married. In the US, you could not have two wives at the same time.

So, dumb ass Tracy Baim, Barack and Ann's 'marriage' wasn't recognized in ANY US state. You stupid ass.

And this dumb ass is out promoting a book she wrote about Barack?

Barack wants to learn, she says at one point, he really wants to learn.

No, he wants to ask questions. He wants to use that to quell dissent. That's what she's describing.

Then the little whore starts talking about how -- and she finds this cute -- Barack looks at LGBT issues 'academically.' She does note that it's not academic to the LGBt community, its our damn lives. But she forgets to grasp just how much homophobia is involved in Barack's approach.

Pretend for a moment that Barack is a 100% White male and he's telling Blacks to accept what they can get and not try for more (as he told her gays should) and pretend that he's wanting to 'learn' about Black people. From an 'academic' stand point.

You'd see him (rightly) as racist.

Barack's a homophobe. Tracy Baim's a piece of trash.

If the Chicago LGBT community had any guts, they'd give her her walking papers.




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

Wednesday, June 1, 2011. Chaos and violence continue, Iraq tops a list yet again but it's not the one you want to be on unless you enjoy being a haven for journalist killers, Iraqiya says no movement until the Erbil Agreement is honored, talks on extending the US military presence in Iraq continue, Iraq War veteran Adam Kokesh plans a meet-up for this Saturday at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, and more. Kate Wiltrout (Virginia Pilot) reports on today's send-off ceremony for members of Task Force 183, "The group is also part of the Viriginia National Guard's largest single-unit deployment since World War II. Its 825 soldiers come from seven unites across the state, including four in Hampton Roads." Erin Barnett (WSLS) adds, "The soldiers will spend 45 to 60 days at Camp Atterbury in Indiana, before leaving for Iraq. They are expected to be in Iraq for more than a year." Hugh Lessing (Daily Press) reports on those departing including Capt Brian Gallavan who states, "We have some of our soldiers where this is their third or fourth deployment. I have two on their fifth deployment." And it's a year long deployment. But they're being told to be 'flexible.' Why? Because the US government's really not sure what's happening with the US military and Iraq just yet. On Antiwar Radio. Scott Horton spoke with Jason Ditz about what may or may not happen with US troops in Iraq. Excerpt. Scott Horton: We've been talking quite a bit about this. The empire has made no secret that they're determined to stay, they want so badly to stay, but there is no UN resolution authorizing the occupation. There's only the Status Of Forces Agreement that Bush signed with Maliki in 2008 and now that says that every last one of our army troops have got to be out of the country -- and that goes for Air Force, Navy and Marines too -- at the end of this year, December 31, 2011. Our guys are trying to get Nouri al-Maliki to "invite us" to stay -- the way they've been able to successfully coherce the South Koreans and the Japanese into inviting us to stay in their countries. And this Sadr guy doesn't seem to be going for it -- but then "seems" are iffy things. And I read a couple of things that said that the Pentagon is betting that Sadr is bluffing and that the only way Sadr can make the United States leave is basically by what he's doing right now which is saying, 'Listen, you're going to have to start the war all over again and you don't want that.' They stood by when the Americans rolled in from Kuwait to take out Saddam Hussein, they've been fighting for the Shi'ite factions -- the Iraqi National Alliance -- this whole time. They're saying, 'You're going to have to start the war all over again against us.' And the Pentagon is betting, trying at least, they're hoping that he's just bluffing. And I wonder, from all the indications, what you're reading about the situation over there, whether you think Moqtada al-Sadr is really willing to turn the south of Iraq upside down in order to force the Americans out? Jason Ditz: It looks like he might well be but Prime Minister Maliki, of course, came up with ruling out the occupation beyond the end of the year several times in public speeches and then recently he's backed off that entirely saying that 'Well, it's going to be up to the Iraqi Parliament to decide whether or not to extend the Status Of Forces Agreement -- Scott Horton: You know I wonder -- Jason Ditz: -- so -- Scott Horton: You know I wonder exactly how to spin that one or which spin on that is most likely, I guess. Whether that's him beginning to give in to the Americans and really work for them and trying to invite us to stay or whether that's him just setting the stage for trying to say, 'Look, I tried to reason with them and they just won't go along' -- you know, as his excuse to us for not inviting us to stay? Jason Ditz: Well either one is possible but the several times that he came out publicly and said absolutely not, the US pretty much pretended like they didn't hear. It's like they put their fingers in their ears and said, 'La-la-la we can't hear you.' And then they would ask again, a couple of days later. And they even went so far in one of their public speeches -- I believe it was Secretary Gates -- expressing concern that the Iraqi government hadn't responded one way or another after several times of Maliki saying 'absolutely not.' Scott Horton: Right. Yep, well, boy oh boy, I mean, it's not hard to imagine that over at the Pentagon, they figure that they stole Iraq fair and square, they get to keep but somebody should have told them who they were fighting for and how it wasn't working out so well. I got to refer again to that book The Good Soldiers by [David] Finkel, the Washington Post reporter where he covers the surge in east Baghdad against the Sadrists in 2007 and 2008 and these guys had no idea that they were fighting for Moqtada al-Sadr against the rest of the country, that in the Sunni provinces that are guys are basically the reserve forces for Sadr's death squads, going in there and ethnically cleansing or religiously cleansing, whatever, the vast majority of Baghdad and consolidating all that power for the Iraqi National Alliance and their Iranian allies. All they thought they were doing was going out on patrol, fighting those terrible Sadrists. They had no idea the war they were even in. Jason Ditz: Oh and I think a lot of people still don't realize the type of war that we're in and a lot more people seem to figure that this war is over and has been over for awhile now. Scott Horton: That's what Rachel Maddow says and apparently that's what makes things true. That broadcast may need to be revisted January 1, 2012. (Listen in full and you'll understand that remark.) Jack A. Smith (Foreign Policy Journal) observes: The Obama Administration is anxious to retain military bases and thousands of troops in Iraq, which it is supposed to leave entirely at the end of this year, and in Afghanistan as well, when the U.S. is scheduled to depart at the end of 2014. President Obama is applying heavy pressure to Baghdad and Kabul to "request" the long-term presence of U.S. troops and "contractors" after the bulk of the occupation force withdraws. Why keep troops in Iraq? The neoconservative Bush White House invaded Iraq, which was considered a pushover after 12 years of U.S.-British-UN killer sanctions, not only to control its oil, but as a prelude to bringing about regime change in neighboring Iran, thus providing Washington with total control of the immense resources of the Persian Gulf. The Iraqi guerrilla resistance destroyed the plan, for now. Thus, the upshot of the war -- in addition to costing American taxpayers several trillion dollars over the next few decades in principal and interest -- is that Shi'ite Iran's main enemy, which was the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad until 2003, has been replaced by the Shi'ite government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a politician who usually bends the knee to Washington but is quite friendly to Tehran, as are many Iraqi politicians. (The Shia are nearly 65% of the population; the Sunnis, nearly 35%.) On May 16 Maliki declared that "Security, military and political cooperation between Iran and Iraq is essential, and we will certainly see the expansion of relations in these areas in the future." Washington's big fear is that Maliki may eventually thumb his nose at Uncle Sam, and that in time, Iraq and Iran will draw much closer together -- a prospect deeply opposed by the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia. According to Stratfor, the private intelligence resource, on April 26: "[T]he U.S. has reportedly offered to leave as many as 20,000 troops in the country" after its "pullout" at the end of this year. In addition, a large but undetermined number of "contractors" -- often paramilitary hirelings -- are to remain. Further, according to an Inter Press Service report May 9, the State Department "intends to double its staff in Iraq to nearly 16,000 and rely entirely on private contractors for security." So large a staff is almost unbelievable, but so is the immense size of the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad's Green Zone -- the largest such facility in the world. Lara Jakes (AP) informs, "The Obama administration is ready to play ball on keeping thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq beyond this year. But for Iraq's government, in the words of one lawmaker, the issue is like playing with fire." In iraq, New Sabah calls it US Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey's "first public reaction" on the issue of US forces staying in Iraq beyond 2011 (and possibly it is for the Iraqi press). It? He's dimissed the review of the Mahdi militia from last week. He also called out Moqtada al-Sadr and his militia's claim that they can attack US forces insisting that the presence of US forces on Iraqi soil was a result of the "legitimate will of the Parliament." (He's referring to the 2008 Thanksgiving Day vote on the SOFA. And while he may have a point, a stronger point would be that the Iraqi people were promised a voice in the process -- without that promise, some believe Parliament wouldn't have passed the SOFA -- I disagree, but a number of people believe that -- and the promised referendum that they'd vote in never came to be.) And a new group joins the chorus of 'extend' that Kurdish officials have been chanting. Dar Addustour reports that the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Association has come out in favor of US forces remaining on the ground in Iraq beyond 2011 stating that their presence is necessary to provide safety for Iraq's religious and ethnic minorities. The organization also maintains that the continued presence of US forces would allow Iraqi forces the opportunities to refine their own performance. Nouri al-Maliki is expected to call a meeting shortly to discuss keeping US forces on the ground in Iraq beyond 2011. Saturday Al Mada noted that as the end of the 100 days approaches (June 7th, "100 days" refers to the promise Nouri made that he would clean up government corruption and provide services within 100 days) Iraqi security forces seem to be taking a harder line with protesters. They cite as an example what took place Friday in Baghdad when youth activists protested in Tahrir Square and four were arrested. The paper notes that the forces used "special security measures" that were new to this arrest. Iraqi forces also used some actions that were the same as previous ones: closing the bridges and cutting off roads, etc. The Iraqi Democratic Youth Federation and the Union of Students in the Republic of Iraq issued a statement condemning the arrests, calling for the immediate release of the four protesters and denouncing the "return to repressive authoritarian" measures. Friday was "False Promises Friday." The Great Iraqi Revolution noted the four arrested: "THE 4 YOUNG ACTIVISTS WHO WERE ARRESTED TODAY BY QASSIM ATTA AND TAKEN TO A PLACE UNKNOWN - 27.5.2011 - THEIR NAMES ARE: JIHAD JALEEL, ALI ABDUL KHALIQ, MOUAYED AL TAYEB AND AHMED AL BAGHDADI. We pray God to have them released very soon." They also noted of Friday's Baghdad protest -- or in response to it, a smear campaign is being launched on TV, "In the serial of attempting to bad mouth and blacken the Tahrir Square protestors and demonstrators, Qassim Atta and the Iraqiya air photos of one of the detained activists in the Protests and accuse him of several crimes, they then proceed to air a film of a crime whose perpetrators are known to all and sundry, and in the same film some hooded men are heard to accuse that the activist is the person who committed the crime!" And the assault on protesters continued Saturday. Aswat al-Iraq reported: An eye witness said that a military force raided an NGO, known as Where is My Right, and arrested 11 persons, including its secretary general, in suspicion for their relationship with the organizers of Tahreer Square demonstrations. "Four Hummer military vehicles and two 4-wheel drive cars surrounded the organization premises in Maidan Square, in the center of Baghdad, where they searched it and destroyed its computers," the source told Aswat al-Iraq. On the other hand, an activist said on the Facebook page for the Tahreer Square demonstrations, that the organization is an NGO that participated in organizing the demonstrations. The arrested persons were meeting to discuss how to release the four activists who were arrested last Friday. All for calling for an end to corruption, calling for basic services, calling for the detainees to be freed, calling for the occupation of Iraq to end. Ned Parker and Salar Jaff (Los Angeles Times) cover these events and speak with activist Hanna Edwar: The government's actions raise the specter of a security apparatus that tolerates little dissent by people not affiliated with religious parties or any of the major groups in government. It also speaks to the limits of American influence in a country where the U.S. still has nearly 50,000 troops and has served as the main architect of the country's new democracy and sponsor of those in power. The government has been far from clear about the status of the four activists. First it said they were being held by military intelligence. Then it denied that, adding that there was no record of any protesters being arrested. Baghdad's military command issued a statement late Tuesday saying that the four had been picked up with fake IDs in the same neighborhood as the demonstrations — a charge the men's supporters called ludicrous. The men's families were told they would be taken to see them Wednesday at a military intelligence prison. Edwar said the nine others detained Saturday were probably being held in the same place. The detained activists' friends, mostly young people who met through Facebook, spent Sunday and Monday stealthily putting up posters about the four around university campuses. Dar Addoustour reports that youth activists are gearing up for demonstrations on June 10th, three days after the end of the 100 days. David Ali (Al Mada) adds that the government continues to assert the protesters were not arrested for their political activities. Al Mada's Fakhri Karim surveys the scene to see what has taken place in the 100 days thus far and finds that the security situation has worsened (and notes the increase in assassinations), the political blocs in the government continue to be at loggerheads, protesters had noted that the security ministries had no heads (Ministry of Interior, Ministry of National Security and Ministry of Defense) and that remains the case, and calls any claims of tensions being eased to be a mirage and illusion. In addition, Nahrain is reporting Iraqiya's Tareq al-Hashemi (the country's Sunni vice president) has declared that Iraqiya has suspended all discussions with State of Law and will not resume them until the Erbil Agreement is followed. Aswat al-Iraq quotes from the statement Iraqiya issued, "Due to the delay of the negotiations that took place on Monday, May 30, 2011, the leaders of al-Iraqiya have studied the political situation and decided to suspend the attendance of its delegation in the said talks in the future, unless the State of Law Alliance responds to its legitimate demands, within the agreements concluded in response to Kurdistan President, Massoud Barzani's initiative," Reuters notes today's violence includes a Mussayab bombing which claimed 6 lives and left eleven people injured, a Baghdad sticky bombing that may or may not have been intended as an assassination attempt on a deputy minister for Abdul-Karim Abdullah who is the Ministry of Human Rights (two by-standers were injured in the bombing), another Baghdad bombing left seven people injured and a Jurf al-Sakhar attack on Sahwa which killed 1 Sahwa leader and left his bodyguard injured. Aswat al-Iraq reports that a US military convoy was attacked with a grenade in Qurna (no one was reported injured or dead), the Basra Operations Command (Iraqi outpost) was attacked with mortars today, and yesterday there was an attack outside Tikrit by "four armed men" who killed 3 brothers. Still on violence, last week mini-thug Ali al-Lami was murdered. In 2010, Ahmed Chalibi's little fellow used the Justice and Accountability Commission to settle old scores. Al Sabaah reports that a raid was conducted in Taji and a suspect (an officer in the intelligence service during the Saddam Hussein era) was arrested. Xinhua adds that Baghdad Operations Command released a statement which included: "Iraqi security forces have arrested a terrorist who carried out the assassination of Ali al-Lami. The terrorist was affiliated with the intelligence service of the former Saddam Hussein's regime." Hundreds of Iraq Christians, Iraqi Jews and other religious minorities have been killed while Nouri al-Maliki has been prime minister -- as have many journalists. Those deaths? Never solved to this day. Apparently there just wasnt a 'desire' on the part of Nouri to find those killers (many of whom were in his party and/or working for him). But Ali al-Lami dies and all stops are pulled out to arrest a suspect. Today the Committee to Protect Journalists released their Impunity Index: "CPJ's annual Impunity Index, first published in 2008, identifies countries where journalists are murdered regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes. For this latest index, CPJ examined journalist murders that occurred between January 1, 2001 through December 31, 2010, and that remain unsolved. Only the 13 nations with five or more unsolved cases are included on the index. Cases are considered unsolved when no convictions have been obtained." And guess who comes in first? That's right: The scourge of impunity worsened in Iraq, a country with a rating far worse than anywhere else in the world. None of the 92 journalist murders recorded in Iraq in the past decade has been solved, and, after a brief decline in targeted killings, journalist murders spiked in 2010. Among the four murder victims in 2010 was Sardasht Osman, a contributor to several news outlets who had received numerous threats for coverage that accused Kurdistan Regional Government officials of corruption. The investigation of his murder is emblematic of the deeply entrenched culture of impunity in Iraq. Authorities took no discernible action in the case until they faced intense international pressure. Then, investigators produced a cursory, 430-word report that vaguely accused Osman of having links to an extremist group that led to his killing. The report, which cited no supporting evidence for its claims, was widely denounced for lacking credibility and transparency. Impunity Index Rating: 2.921 unsolved journalist murders per 1 million inhabitants. Last year: Ranked 1st with a rating of 2.794. AFP notes, "Iraq remained worst in the world when it comes to punishing murders of reporters, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Wednesday. The war-wracked country topped the list, published by the New York-based press watchdog to spotlight countries where media killings often go unpunished, for the fourth year running with an unsolved murder rate more than three times that of Somalia, which was next worst." Iraq has 'topped the charts' every year of the Impunity Index. Wladimir van Wilgenburg (Rudaw) notes: In a report released on June 1, Iraq is ranked first on the 2011 impunity index of the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ). CPJ criticizes the Kurdish government for its unsatisfactory handling of the murder case of Kurdish writer Sardasht Osman in 2010. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has come in for fierce criticism by human rights and press organizations such as Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), CPJ and Human Rights Watch in the last few months for the way it dealt with demonstrations and the media. On May 30, the KRG responded to the allegations and didn't deny violations by Kurdish security forces and ill-treatment of protestors. So the message is that when the deaths matter to him, Nouri is interested in finding at the very least a suspect and the deaths of journalists and Iraq's religious minorities really don't matter to Nouri. Meanwhile Iran's Fars News Agency insists, "The United States and Saudi Arabia have sent their death squads to Iraq to assassinate the country's Shiite officers and scholars, Iraqi security sources revealed on Wednesday." While the idea of Special Ops being sent on such a mission wouldn't be shocking to me, it's a bit hard to take seriously a report that promises "security sources" -- plural -- in its opening sentence but spends the entire report citing one and only one source. In addition, the actual article -- in Arabic -- is from Nahrain and it mentions one source and only one source for the allegations. (It's an unnamed source.) On the topic of rumors, Nahrainnet reports that an unnamed "official source in the police of Najaf" is denying previous reports that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is the target of a planned assassination. Now about the Human Rights Watch issue brought up a second ago. Last week Human Rights Watch issued an alert on the KRG which included the following: Kurdistan regional government officials and security forces are carrying out a growing assault on the freedom of journalists to work in Iraqi Kurdistan, Human Rights Watch said today. Regional officials should stop repressing journalists through libel suits, beatings, detentions, and death threats, Human Rights Watch said. Kurdistan authorities have repeatedly tried to silence Livin Magazine, one of Iraqi Kurdistan's leading independent publications, and other media. The international community should end its silence and condemn these widening attacks, Human Rights Watch said. "The Kurdistan Regional Government promised a new era of freedom for Iraqi Kurds, but it seems no more respectful of Kurdish rights to free speech than the government that preceded it," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "In a time when the Middle East is erupting in demands to end repression, the Kurdish authorities are trying to stifle and intimidate critical journalism." On May 17, 2011, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of regional president Massud Barzani brought a defamation lawsuit against the Livin editor-in-chief, Ahmed Mira, for publishing an article about an alleged plot by the KDP and its ruling alliance partner, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), to assassinate opposition leaders. According to court documents obtained by Human Rights Watch, the KDP is seeking total damages of one billion dinars (US$864,000) and an order to shut down the magazine by revoking its license. The court documents say the party is suing Mira because the Livin article "not only has no basis in truth but is a threat to national security [and] a violation to the dignity and glory and the great achievements" of Iraqi Kurdistan. Earlier in May, the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, the PUK leader, filed his own lawsuit over the same article. Mira told Human Rights Watch that, as a result, police detained him and a Livin reporter, Zhyar Mohammed, for five hours on May 5. "Such libel suits by Kurdistan government officials are nothing more than a thinly-veiled effort to punish critics and create an atmosphere of fear and self-censorship," Whitson said. "The attacks by Barzani and his colleagues on independent journalists do more to undermine Kurdish 'dignity' and 'glory' than anything in the media reports." A Livin reporter told Human Rights Watch that when he called Sheikh Jaffar Mustafa, Minister of Peshmerga (Kurdistan security forces), on April 24, Mustafa threatened Livin's editor, Mira, with death. The reporter had called Mustafa and taped the conversation because he wanted to get an official comment on an unrelated matter. The reporter said that Mustafa was upset over an unflattering article in the magazine that compared Mustafa to the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak. Mira said he decided to report the threat to the regional government's prime minister rather than make it public or go to the police, which he believed would be ineffectual and put him at further risk. AFP and NOW Lebanon note that the KRG's response to Human Rights Watch was a statement which included: "We will not deny that a few individuals from KRG security forces may have committed violations and might have subjected some protesters to ill treatment." The response was in the form of a letter from Falah Mustafa Bakir who heads the Foreign Relations Dept: I have been directed by the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Dr. Barham Salih, to write to you in response to Human Rights Watch's statement on April 21, 2011 in relation to the protests in Suleimaniyah between February and April of this year. First and foremost, we reaffirm our gratitude and appreciation for the work conducted by HRW throughout the years in defense of Kurdish rights. While we take issue with some of the assertions in your statement, we consider your intervention consistent with your concern with the human rights of Kurds and others. This has been a testing period in so many ways for our government and the Kurdistan Region's political process. We will not deny that a few individuals from KRG security forces may have committed violations and might have subjected some protesters to ill treatment. We can assure you, however, that these incidents have occurred despite KRG's clear directives for strict adherence to the law and the rights of the protesters. These violations can be attributed, at least in part, to lack of training and equipment needed for crowd control, which has also led to the death and injury of many police and security personnel. It is also important to recognize that the protests in the governorate of Suleimaniyah were not entirely peaceful. Many of the protest leaders incited violence, some even called for Jihad. Many of the demonstrators took part in violent actions that caused extensive damage to public and private property as well as hundreds of injuries and even the deaths of two security personnel. The protests and opposition politics The KRG, since its inception in 1991, has achieved much progress—despite many setbacks that have been manifested through internal strife. Nonetheless, after twenty years, there is still need for change and reforms. Our constituents legitimately aspire to better governance, combating corruption, and preventing the abuse of power. The initial wave of protests was undoubtedly a reflection of this desire for reform. However, the facts show that much of the protests' organization and motivation, as well as the degeneration of the security situation, is a result of political opportunism whereby opposition political parties and leaders have attempted to achieve in the streets what they were unable to achieve at the ballot box. The violence accompanying some of the protests is not an expression of democracy—it is a direct challenge to democracy. Here are some key facts to take into account when considering what is happening in the Kurdistan Region: The current administration of the Kurdistan Regional Government came into office in July 2009 as the result of a competitive election in which the winning coalition received 59% of the vote. More than 320 international observers from 35 countries and organizations, including the UN and EU, monitored the elections. They praised the high turnout of the elections and its competitive environment. Opposition parties made significant gains in these elections, and for the first time in history, the Kurdistan Region's Parliament has a large opposition group in attendance. The Gorran Party, the main opposition, first called for the KRG to resign more than three weeks before the first protest, and they promised to bring their people to the streets if the government was not dissolved. The outbreak of violence on February 17th resulted when a group of protesters left the licensed protest area and attacked the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Suleimaniyah. A regrettable shooting incident took place. Of the 64 total wounded (reported by the Suleimaniyah Emergency Hospital), 11 were security personnel. Some protesters have repeatedly insulted, taunted, and used violence in attempts to provoke security officers in order to gain sympathy for their cause. In Halabja, two police officers were killed and many others were wounded during violent protests in which not a single protester was injured, illustrating the restraint shown by the police. In addition to the two officers who were killed, almost 500 security personnel have been wounded by protestors throwing sticks, rocks, glass, and using knives, guns, and other weapons. Of the 99 persons reported injured during the events of April 17th and 18th, 66 were security personnel, and two of these were blinded by broken glass fired from slingshots. Of those arrested, over 95% were released almost immediately. Due process is a fundamental right, and the government does not hold any persons for political reasons. Those who have been held are being detained with charges ranging from carrying a weapon without a license to assault with the intent to kill. Almost 90% of the demonstrators were male, and 60% of them were under the age of 18. Of the nearly one million residents of Suleimaniyah, the usual turnout of less than 1,500 protesters had a devastating impact on the economy in the Suleimaniyah area and on the Region as a whole. Local merchants, shops and service centers have suffered terrible financial losses, and the government has received countless calls for action to be taken to protect their welfare. The KRG and reform The government has recognized the need for reform since long before these protests began, and many significant reforms have already been passed. Among these are: Before protests began in the region, the government was already taking steps to initiate many reforms. The current cabinet, which took office in October 2010, embarked on a series of reform initiatives aimed at limiting political party interference in governmental work and promoting new levels of transparency in public finances. On November 23rd, 2010 President Barzani held a meeting with Prime Minister Salih and the Council of Ministers urging a wide ranging reform agenda to improve government services, the unification of Peshmerga forces, and measures to eliminate corruption. President Barzani called parliament together on February 10th. In addition to the measures listed above, he asked each party to draw up a plan for introducing reforms on: improving government efficiency, creating more jobs, and making public access to services easier and more convenient. In a public meeting on February 14th, the President reiterated his firm resolve to fight corruption and stressed that no one is above the law. Establishing an independent Judicial Council to separate the judicial system from the influence of the Ministry of Justice. Promoting the protection, rights, and participation of women in government through establishing the Higher Council of Women and a directorate to follow up on the government's actions to prevent violence against women, passing a law to prosecute perpetrators of honor killings as murderers, and passing a law requiring 30% of MPs to be women. Passing a Press Law ensuring imprisonment is no longer possible as punishment for press-related matters. Enacting a Code of Ethics and Conduct for greater accountability of government officials to ensure separation of public and private interests. Establishing a continuing program of training and mentoring for KRG civil servants with the UK's National School of Government. Starting a program with the UK's Westminster Foundation for Democracy to enhance the Kurdistan Parliament's training and capacity-building for MPs and parliamentary staff. Bringing in the independent firm Price Waterhouse Coopers to advise the KRG on strategies for good governance and transparency. Response to criticism Since the protests began, the government has listened closely to the people's demands and has taken many steps to address the protesters' concerns in a responsible and democratic way. Parliament has passed an extensive program to institute 17 points of reform (see attached translation – app 1). A committee was formed by the Council of Ministers on February 23rd to investigate the events that took place in Suleimaniyah and elsewhere. This report, based on video footage, health reports, and interviews with civilian and government witnesses, has now been presented to the public. The substantial criticisms of government actions in this report are a testament to its credibility, and you can rest assured that we will do everything that we can to address the issues brought to light in this report (see attached translation of the report's findings summary – app 2). The Prime Minister issued a statement to the protestors responding to their demands and establishing a committee to work on a mechanism for coordination (see the translation of the letter – app 3). On February 27th, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) officially returned a list of party properties to government control (see attachment – app 4). The Prime Minister and Ministers of Peshmerga Affairs and the Interior have all attended sessions of parliament to be questioned about events related to the protests. The Ministry of Interior has sought training and equipment for non-lethal crowd management, and a directive was sent to all the security forces of the Kurdistan Region regarding appropriate procedures for detaining and processing prisoners (see attached directive – app 5). On March 20th, President Barzani laid out a list of 20 reforms that he called on parliament and the other appropriate entities to enact in response to many of the legitimate demands of the protesters (see attached translation – app 6). The government has scheduled provincial elections for September 10, 2011, and President Barzani has indicated a willingness to consider holding Parliamentary elections before their currently scheduled date in 2013. The government has repeatedly asked for the assistance of the people to put an end to the violence and to address their concerns through constructive and peaceful dialogue, and in recent days the local security forces in Suleimaniyah have successfully cleared the protest area so that business and commerce may resume - their restraint during this action is evidenced by the fact that more than two thirds of the reported injured were security personnel. Concluding thoughts While this government acknowledges significant shortcoming and deficiencies in its performance, we ask that it be viewed with appreciation for the challenges that it faces and with honest consideration for the progress it has made. Since obtaining limited autonomy from Saddam Hussein's oppressive regime in 1991, this Region has quadrupled its number of schools, doubled the number of hospitals, completed more than 4,000 drinking-water projects, built more than 900 km of paved roads, made significant improvements in sewage and waste management, multiplied its average electricity output by more than 9 times, and has increased oil exports from zero to 150,000 bpd since 2007. The number of newspapers, magazines and broadcast media outlets has risen dramatically, and all of these improvements have been made in order to enhance the education, healthcare and the provision of services and infrastructure to the people of the Kurdistan Region. The KRG is proud to be a government that puts the security and the needs of its people above all else. In addition to the reforms mentioned above, Amnesty International recognized the region for discontinuing the incarceration of political prisoners, for passing legislation to compensate detainees that have been held without charges, and for its improvements in human rights overall in its 2009 report. This region has also become a refuge for tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), particularly those fleeing religious persecution, and the KRG provides them with food, housing, and financial assistance. Progress and reform are not new to this government. A culture of positive change has been fostered since well before the protests began. The KRG welcomes the new opposition as a means of improving the efficiency of the democratic system, and it is open to constructive criticisms and cooperative efforts toward further progress. However, we call on the opposition to take its responsibility seriously. They should participate in the coalition government to help implement the many reforms that are still needed or win the right to lead the country through the ballot box. Their calls to dissolve a democratically elected coalition government are irresponsible, and ceding to this demand would set a dangerous precedent for the Kurdistan Region's emerging democracy. We would like to thank you for taking the time to consider these thoughts. I hope that we have been successful in communicating a more complete picture of our region. For, as the Prime Minister has recently stated, "the lives and the safety of the people, as well as the stability of the region, are above all of the political positions that we hold." That's the letter in full there's also this: "See also the appendices to the letter. Click here for PDF files of the original signed letter to HRW and letter to Amnesty International." May 28, Iraq War veteran Adam Kokesh and others were assaulted by the DC Parks Police for the 'crime' of dancing. Adam discussed the assault last night on Adam vs The Man (RT Television). Adam Kokesh: As most of you are now aware I was body slammed, choked and arrested at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial this past weekend for silently making some vaguely rhythmical body movements well within my First Amendment rights. But rest assured, citizen, my silent movements were put to a stop before they were able to terrorize the nation. That said dissent and free expression is the very highest form of respect for the lifelong champion and Founding Father Thomas Jefferson. Not to take the W line of being 'with us or with the terrorist' but wasn't it the Taliban who was all hardline about illegal dancing? So about the whole body slamming and choking me thing? You know what? We'll let it go. You guys aren't very good dancers. I get it. You're forgiven. Okay. Nice badge. Sorry about your penis. Compensating for something obviously. But you know there's a lot of pent up anger there for a good reason. Seriously, no hard feelings. I want to look at the bright side of this. You know I thought it was a really fitting tribute to the late Macho Man Randy Savage for me to be body slammed into the granite there but no more freebies. You guys want to try to take me again? We'll throw down. Mano y mano. In fact, I'll take all of you at once and it still won't be a fair fight for you. But you better remember your dancing shoes because I'm fighting dance off style. In one corner, we've got the First Amendment, you know that whole mess about no laws being made abridging free expression or press. In the other corner, laws that abridge free expression and press. You want to help make sure that I win this contest? Be there. TJ's Memorial this upcoming Saturday. That's right, Dance Party at TJ's June 4th, noon sharp. Anniversary of Tineman Square by the way. Now we don't all need to go getting cuffed or thrown in cages or maced or beaten with cubs or punched, so if you want to play it safe, party on the stairs. If you're feeling really footloose, harness your Constitutional right and shimmy your way into the Memorial. Just, like me, be ready for the consequences. He also briefly discussed it on air with Stewart Rhodes. Adam Kokesh: How are we going to get accountability for this because, you know, Oath Keepers would not have done this. Am I right? Stewart Rhodes: No. Of course not. It's absurd. Because, first of all, where's the law that says you can only move your feet in a certain manner as you cross the tile, cross the marble. I mean what is dancing away? How do they define that? So it's just ridiculous. And where is the law is what I want to know? And then, how does that trump the First Amendment? There's a student paper that just published an editorial on the Iraq War that's awful. Kelly McEvers (NPR) does not do "columns" for NPR, for example. A report that you link to, a report that aired on Weekend Edition Sunday, is not a "column." That's (a). Next, this Washington Post webpage ("Faces of the Fallen") does not say 6,013 US service members died in the Iraq War. Your editorial says it does, but the page says 4,442 died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and 1,571 died in Operation Enduring Freedom for a total of 6,013. "Operation Enduring Freedom" is the Afghanistan War. (C) Moqtada al-Sadr has not "led a march in Iraq of tens of thousands . . ." Moqtada al-Sadr was not in Iraq last week. He could not physically lead the march from Iran. It's a student paper and we're going to be kind and not name it or toss in a link. We'll just note those are really serious mistakes for a college newpaper to have in its editorial. But they are students. So they're not responsible for the most ridiculous nonsense the country may see this month. No that would be Tracy Baim promoting her bad book or 'book' on The Progressive Radio with Matt Rothschild. Time and again, she shows ignorance (at best) and flat out lies at worst. I'm really tired of the little brats who don't know the history of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Tracy's decided to write a book including but feels she can be ignorant or lie about it. But promoting the book appears to mean trashing Bill Clinton and Hillary as well. Hillary doesn't have "a veneer" of support for LGBT rights. That's not poor word choice, it's a bitchy remark and it's a lie. And seconds later, liar Tracy has to back away from that claim (because it's a damn lie). It's cute to watch how Tracy addresses Barack putting homophobes on stage at campaign events (for more on that you can see Kevin Alexander Grey's "Obama's Big Gay and Black Problem.") To Matthew's credit, in their print publication, The Progressive ran Kevin Alexander Grey's article -- this while The Nation, in print and online, actively ignored what was taking place on the campaign trail. Asked about this issue by Matthew, Baim wants to laugh about the homophobe who claims he's an ex-gay (and ignores the other homephobes on stage at that event) before immediately adding "and several other missteps during the campaign, now the thing is Clinton wasn't pure on . . ." That's how she deals with. By never dealing with it and by immediately defocusing on Hillary. (Who, for the record, did not stage a campaign event featuring known homophobes paraiding on stage.) Is her book about Hillary or is it about Barack? If it's about Barack, the alleged reporter (who seems to feel she was both a reporter and Barack emissary to the LGBT community during the 2008 campaign) needs to stop whoring and start addressing what the man she wrote a book about did, what he actually did. She's a stupid moron, a petty con artist and dirty liar. I have no use for these fools who will sit there and ignore reality or attempt to explain it away. Stupid, stupid moron.. It only gets worse. And please note, she needs to learn how to speak. She makes a remark about Barack's former church that I can follow because I'm very familiar with that church. But I doubt many others can since she's using "denomination" repeatedly including when she's speaking of the church and how it differs, yes, from the "denomination." (And on how it differs, she actually manages to use the term "denomination" correctly. It's a damn shame she wasn't able to do so consistently.) iraq antiwar.com jason ditz antiwar radio scott horton reuters new sabah dar addustour al mada the great iraqi revolution aswat al-iraq the los angeles times ned parker salar jaff david ali fakhri karim al sabaah xinhua the committee to protect journalists afp rudaw wladimir van wilgenburg