Wednesday, August 12, 2020

I was really hoping for Susan Rice

 That way we could have had two huge War Hawks on the Democratic Party's presidential ticket.  If you missed it, Senator Kamala Harris is Joe Biden's running mate.

He selected her over Susan Rice, Elizabeth Warren, Big Boned Stacey, Gretch The Wretch, US House Rep Karen Bass, Macho Tammy Duckworth and others.

The press tried to pimp Susan Rice.  They thought the little War Hawk and noted liar was the way to go.  An elderly stoner tried to tell the world Susan Rice was against the Iraq War.  It was laughable.  She cheered that war on.  But wasn't it funny to wonder how much the guy toked before he wrote that the whole world had misunderstood Susan's position on the Iraq War -- that she was really against it!  

That's right, Stoner Grandpa, the whole world was wrong.  Yeah, that makes sense.

Susan Rice has never held elected office.  

I don't care if you don't like Kamala or if you do.  But she does have charisma.  Karen Bass does as well.  Those two were the only real choices.  I lean more towards Karen.  But Kamala is a good choice in that she brings a passionate following who will have her back.  

I wish her luck.  I'm not voting for Joe, but I wish her luck.

If Karen had been selected?  I would have been torn because I do believe in Karen.

Kamala's not the worst but I don't see myself voting for Joe.  He's done nothing to earn my vote.  

That he even considered Susan Rice shows that he's learned nothing from the days when he voted for and supported the Iraq War.  He's learned nothing.  Over a million Iraqi people are dead and Joe's learned nothing.

Words of wisdom from John Stauber:


Easy! The illegal #Iraq war was bipartisan, promoted by the media, and Obama stopped any investigation. It’s all cool! Always has been! Which is why and how the US is still there. #ItsTheEmpireStupid, it’s fully bipartisan and the corporate media does its propaganda.


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

 Tuesday, August 11, 2020.  Two attacks on military convoys in Iraq (US military says none, Iraqi government admits otherwise), covid continues to terrorize the globe and Joe Biden's got a War Hawk party platform but watch corporate news work overtime to ignore that reality.  



Starting with Iraq where a convoy was attacked.




REUTERS reports:

An explosion near the Jraischan border crossing at the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border on Monday evening targeted a convoy carrying equipment for US forces, three Iraqi security forces told Reuters.

[. . .]

A security source had earlier said that the explosion was caused by an Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim militia targeting a US military base near the crossing by smuggling in an explosive device, and that some staff on the base had been injured, but this was later contradicted by other security sources who said a convoy was attacked, not a base.

REUTERS also notes, "Kuwait and Iraq separately denied an attack took place against a convoy carrying equipment for American forces."  The denials come as the attacks increase to two -- one this morning, one Monday evening.  AL KHALEEJ TODAY notes that, while denying any attack took place, "The US said on Tuesday it will investigate claims of an explosion on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border that was aimed at a convoy carrying equipment for American forces."  While the US military command continues to play dumb, the Iraqi denial has ceased:  "A blast from a planted explosive device hit a convoy of the U.S.-led coalition near the Taji base north of Baghdad on Tuesday, the Iraqi military said in a statement."

In other violence, Lawk Ghafuri (RUDAW) reports:

An Iraqi police officer from a federal police unit was killed and two civilians were wounded in western Kirkuk province on Monday, in what the Security Media Cell labeled a terror attack.

“Security forces repelled an attack by terrorist elements on the village of Al-Majid in Al-Riyadh district in Kirkuk province,” the statement read. “The attack resulted in death of an officer in the Third Infantry Brigade of the Fifth Division of the Federal Police, and the wounding of two civilians.”

The statement also revealed that the attack wounded a member of Hashd al-Ashairy, the Sunni unit of Iraq’s Shiite majority Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), known in Arabic as Hashd al-Shaabi.


In other news, INTERNATIONAL QURAN NEWS AGENCY notes that Iraq, on Monday, "records highest daily coronavirus infections."  Again.  That's been a near daily headline for weeks now.  As Feng Yasong and Gao Wencheng (XINHUA) note, the pandemic is worldwide, "Global COVID-19 cases reached 20 million on Monday, with more than 730,000 deaths worldwide, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.  The global case count reached 20,001,019, with a total of 733,897 deaths worldwide as of 2335 GMT, the CSSE data showed. The bleak number of global infections has doubled in less than two months as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage across the world."  XINHUA also notes, "Iraq has so far confirmed 153,599 coronavirus cases in the country amid a surge in new infections.  It also reported 72 fatalities on Monday, raising the death toll to 5,464, while 2,015 patients recovered in the day, bringing the total number of recoveries to 109,790."  At the end of June, Jane Arraf filed a report for NPR:

Jane Arraf: This is a war against the coronavirus, and we've lost the war, a government official tells me. He doesn't want his name used because he's not authorized to speak publicly. It's so difficult getting accurate statistics in Iraq that almost no one believes the official ones. And although on paper there are more than enough intensive care beds in Iraqi hospitals, that's not the reality. Dr. Aizen Marrogi is a former senior medical officer for the U.S. Army and at the U.S. embassy in Iraq.

AIZEN MARROGI: Corruption is No. 1. All the medications get - first, second, third day after they arrive, they disappear. The government pays for a lot of employees that don't exist. They're ghost employees.

ARRAF: He says the health care system lacks proper managers, nursing staff and technical expertise. The crisis is a major test for the country's new prime minister. Mustafa al-Kadhimi took power in May after anti-government protests forced out his predecessor. He's promised to fight corruption and rein in Iran-backed militias. But now he's also grappling with a drop in oil prices and a deepening crisis over the virus.

Iraq can't seem to catch a break.  RUDAW notes:

A large medical warehouse storing medications needed to treat coronavirus in downtown Kirkuk caught fire on Friday. The crucial supplies were destroyed as numbers of new cases rise on a daily basis. 

The fire started place around 6:00 Friday and was extinguished about two hours later. Firefighters had to break through the walls of the building to access the interior. 

The warehouse belonged to Kirkuk’s Great Hospital, one of the main hospitals in the city. It was storing a large amount of medications, but is one of 10 such sites in Kirkuk so the fire may not lead to a major shortage, head of the provincial health directorate Ziyad Khalaf told Rudaw. 


The fire is not thought to have been set on purpose.  Instead, they believe it was an electrical issue.  Iraq's infrastructure continues to crumble as money that could upgrade the infrastructure instead goes into the pockets of various Iraqi politicians.

"The problem is," THE NATIONAL's Mina al-Oraibi observed in a podcast with AL-MONITOR, "the system of corruption that set into the country."  And the possibility of reform as the prime minister insists he wants to carry out?  "The corruption, nepotism, mafia-state that has emerged in the country makes their ability quite limited."  Mina has a clear-eyed view of how things are in Iraq but she also expresses hope and ties that to, among others, the youth of Iraq and their ongoing protests.

The protesters? Since September 30th, they've been protesting.  Nothing has ended the protests -- not covid, not attacks on the protesters, not murder of the protesters.  Iraq's youth -- the bulk of the country is the youth, it's a land of widows and orphans as a result of the never-ending war -- is not backing down in their quest for a better Iraq.  Lawk Ghafuri (RUDAW) reports a new development:


Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi received in Baghdad a group of wounded Iraqi protesters from the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah on Monday, during which the official promised to aid those injured in the mass demonstrations that began in October.

“Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi directs the formation of a committee to coordinate between the Prime Minister's office and the wounded protesters to monitor their health conditions,” the Iraqi PM’s media office tweeted on Monday.

Kadhimi “vowed” to provide medical treatment to wounded protesters in a separate tweet, saying they would “transfer some of them for treatment outside Iraq if necessary.” 

“The government is determined to fulfill the demands of the peaceful demonstrators, which are among the priorities of its program,” the office stated in another tweet.


As for the mafia-style corruption . . . 



The interview is in Arabic but the closed caption is in English.  MEMRI notes:

Iraqi journalist Hussein Al-Sheikh said in a July 27, 2020 interview on Al-Ahd TV (Iraq) that Iraq is run by gangs and that his situation is as if someone broke into his house, raped his mother and his sister, stole his money, and told him to remain silent. He said that in light of the assassinations of journalist Ahmed Abdul Samad and researcher Husham Al-Hashimi were killed anyone could be next.


Meanwhile, the Democratic Party seems about to put together yet another presidential ticket where at least one of the people on the ticket voted for the Iraq War.  They've never put together a ticket with someone in Congress who voted against the Iraq War but, since the start of the 2003 wave of the never-ending war, the Dem's presidential ticket has always had at least one person who supported and sold the Iraq War.  Joe Biden is expected to be this year's presidential nominee.  He is a War Hawk.  Patrick Martin (WSWS) examines the party platform his people just put together:


The Democratic platform backs a continued US military presence in Iraq “to train our Iraqi partners,” and in Syria to keep up “the offensive against ISIS” while restoring the US alliance with Kurdish forces in Syria that Trump reneged on.

The platform declares “Our commitment to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself” to be “ironclad.” Initially, the platform language referred to the Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank, a term that was removed at Biden’s personal insistence. The draft now merely criticizes “settlement expansion” and “annexation.”

Biden pledges to “close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay,” as Obama pledged in 2008. Twelve years later, the prison still stands and not one of the prisoners has been brought to trial.

On China, the Democratic platform attacks Trump from the right, claiming that his trade war policies have not restored jobs in the United States and pledging to “stand up” to China on its trade practices and alleged theft of intellectual property.

There is also this pledge: “We will underscore our global commitment to freedom of navigation and resist the Chinese military’s intimidation in the South China Sea. Democrats are committed to the Taiwan Relations Act and will continue to support a peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues consistent with the wishes and best interests of the people of Taiwan.”

In his interview with the minority journalists referenced in the first part of this article, Biden answered one foreign policy question. He said that Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods had provoked retaliation that had devastated US manufacturing and agriculture. “We’re going after China in the wrong way,” he declared, saying that a Biden administration would review the tariffs and focus on issues such as protecting intellectual property and opposing Beijing’s restrictions on US businesses operating in the Chinese market.


This morning, the 'public affairs' programs are yet again jaw boning about who Joe Biden might pick as his running mate.  They've done that non-stop since June.  It's cheap and easy journalism.  And it doesn't anger anyone.  It also serves no public purpose.  Examining the party's new platform is a public service, it is news and it does have value.  



The following sites updated:






Posted by at

Monday, August 10, 2020

Russia-gate was always a lie

Russia-gate is the media shame of the last four years.  They tarnished their own image and they have no one to blame but themselves.  They also make no real effort to correct their coverage.

Jonathan Turley didn't fall for the nonsense and he continues to call it out:


I recently wrote a column concerning a pattern of willful blindness by the media as new evidence emerges of serious wrongdoing by the FBI in the origin and continuation of the Russian collusion investigation. The latest information comes from the Senate Intelligence Committee which released a declassified briefing report to the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2018 on the Steele dossier’s Primary Sub-source. It is hard to read the document linked below and not conclude that the FBI misled the Congress on the subject.  This occurred after the FBI misled the FISA court, including the submission of falsified documents to continue the surveillance.

The statement that most stands out from the briefing is that the Primary Sub-source “did not cite any significant concerns with the way his reporting was characterized in the dossier to the extent he could identify it.”

Keep in mind that this is a statement made in 2018.  FBI agents had already warned that dossier author Christopher Steele may have been used by Russian intelligence to plant false information to disrupt the election. Indeed, Steele’s allegations were quickly discredited by the FBI. In 2017, key agents were aware that the basis for the FISA applications were dubious and likely false. Yet it continued the investigation, and then someone leaked its existence to the media.  Both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified that they would not have signed off on surveillance if they knew this information at the time.  Yet, the media seems uninterested in how this countervailing information was buried, even in briefings to the intelligence committees.

Another declassified document shows that, after the New York Times ran a leaked story on the investigation, even Strzok had balked at the account as misleading and inaccurate the year before. His early 2017 memo affirmed that there was no evidence of any individuals in collusion with Russians. This information came as the collusion stories were turning into a frenzy that would last years.

The reference to the sub-source in the new document is particularly troubling because that individual told the FBI that he “has no idea” where some of the language attributed to him came from in the Steele report. He expressly denied being the source for some of the information. That would seem a tad more than even a “significant concern.” Yet, the Senate was told he had no significant concerns.  In fact, he said that he “never mentioned” the information and  “did not know the origins” of information.  On some point, he said he had no recollection of ever giving the information to Steele.  He also directly contradicted Steele in how he characterized the information.

The report also states that “[a]t minimum, our discussions with [the Primary Sub-source] confirm that the dossier was not fabricated by Steele.”

However, again, the sub-source said that he had no idea where some of the information attributed to him came from. That would seem to contradict this statement directly.  He said that he has “zero” corroboration for some of the information while other claims were just stuff that he heard over drinks or was meant in “jest.”

The point is not that this source is clearly telling the truth or that this proves a deep-state conspiracy. Rather, the question is why this document has received virtually no media attention — as with earlier declassified documents.  It is at best misleading by omission and at worse intentionally false in its briefing of a congressional intelligence committee. The media spent years exploring every possible claim of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, which were found to be baseless. Yet, these recent documents raise serious questions of false statements to Congress to keep that investigation going. These serious allegations of false statements and false evidence in an investigation that targeted figures associated with the opposing party and its presidential campaign. Indeed, the recent documents show, in direct contradiction of prior statements, the FBI used briefings with Trump as part of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The response from the media? Crickets.  Nada.  Not interested. 



"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

 Monday, August 10, 2020.   Corruption continues in Iraq, the people continue to suffer, Moqtada's 100 day threat is due to expire this week, and much more.



MIDDLE EAST MONITOR ONLINE notes:

Hundreds of Iraqi protesters yesterday stormed Dhi Qar Governorate building in the centre of Nasiriyah province to protest against poor public services and corruption, the Anadolu Agency reported.

The agency quoted eyewitnesses as saying that tribes in the Al-Fahd district organised the protest, accusing officials of corruption and mismanagement.

Thousands of Iraqis and displaced persons suffer from poor public services, especially access to electricity.

Iraq is not a poor country struck with famine.  It's an oil rich country and, certainly, various politicians have used their office to embezzle money.  While the people suffered, various Iraqi leaders have gotten rich.  Former prime minister and forever thug Nouri al-Maliki is only one example of someone who used the office to enrich himself and his family at the expense of the Iraqi people.  And the corruption has led to the current situation.  All of this comes as Baghdad hit a new record for all time highest temperature on Saturday.   Natalie O'Neill (NEW YORK POST) noted, 

Folks in Iraq aren’t hot on this weather trend.

Temperatures soared to a scorching 126 degrees in Baghdad last week — the hottest ever recorded in the city, according to a report.

The sweltering heat, which comes during the country’s hottest summer ever, sparked power outages that forced locals to endure the weather without air conditioning, Bloomberg News reported.

Shakthi Vadakkepat Tweets:

IRAQ'S HEAT WAVE: Temperatures in Baghdad last week reached 52°C (126 °F). Here's how local kids are keeping cool as power blackouts mean no air conditioning during the #coronavirus lockdown
From



How does an oil rich country struggle with something as basic as energy production?  Supposedly, the US war for oil did not beneift the US.  S&P GLOBAL PLATTS maintains:

Iraq's energy ties with the US, which were supposed to yield oil deals following the 2003 invasion, have been whittled down to waivers to OPEC's second biggest producer to import Iranian electricity and gas, and avoid a political meltdown of the fragile Baghdad government, according to analysts.

US energy companies did not benefit much from the rule of the Coalition Provisional Authority -- the US-appointed entity that governed Iraq post the 2003 invasion until 2004 -- and they seem unlikely to gain a foothold in the oil sector of a country fighting a resurgent Islamic State, grappling with protests and facing financial collapse from low oil prices.

"The expectations of US policy-makers in the early years was that US companies would enjoy competitive advantage in a liberalized Iraqi oil and gas sector," said Raad Alkadiri, senior director at the BCG Center for Energy Impact.

"Iraq's sector has remained state-owned and state-guided, and US companies have been forced to compete in open licensing rounds. Various efforts by US Administrations (including the current Trump Administration) to engineer bilateral negotiations and to promote US company interests have come to naught."


The benchmarks imposed by the US -- and agreed to by Iraq -- included privatizing the oil.  And, it should be noted, the US was never supposed to benefit from the war -- multi-national companies were supposed to benefit -- and many have.  

Meanwhile, Iraq's Prime Minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, is scheduled to meet with US President Donald Trump shortly. Friday afternoon, the White House issued the following announcement:


President Donald J. Trump will welcome Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi of the Republic of Iraq to the White House on August 20, 2020.  The visit comes at a critical time for both the United States and Iraq as we continue our collaboration to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS and address the challenges from the coronavirus pandemic.  As close partners, the United States and Iraq will look to expand our relations across a range of issues, including security, energy, health care, and economic cooperation.


Saturday,   Omar Sattar (AL-MONITOR) observed:

The heat wave in Iraq has raised the ire of citizens in the central and southern areas, pushing many to take to the streets once again. The popular protests in the squares had settled down due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the searing hot weather and declining hours of electricity supply have forced the new government to once again face the protesters.

Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s government was only formed less than three months ago and is now in the middle of the process of activating electricity interconnection agreements with Gulf countries and speeding up the cooperation agreement with Germany's Siemens AG.

Although he inherited a mess, and is taking action to fix it, there is no quick fix and the political blocs opposed to Kadhimi have tried to harness the protests to undermine his government and drag it into a bloody confrontation with the protesters, especially in Baghdad, Dhi Qar and Basra.

Clashes between protesters and security forces have resulted in three deaths and 21 injuries, according to the Iraqi Human Rights Commission.


The same prime minister who can't protect the protesters is now demanding that Christians return to Iraq.  


Iraqi Prime Minister urges Christians to return to #Iraq
Iraqi Prime Minister urges Christians to return to Iraq
BEIRUT, LEBANON (11:20 A.M.) - On Sunday, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kazemi, called for the return of Iraqi Christian immigrants to


AMN reports:

On Sunday, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kazemi, called for the return of Iraqi Christian immigrants to their country, especially after the defeat of the Islamic State [. . .].

Al-Kazemi received on Sunday, Patriarch Saint Louis Raphael I Sako, the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch, and a number of bishops in Baghdad.


While Mustafa insists that the Christians should return to Iraq, it was just last week that Emma Reeves (PERSECUTION) noted:

The defeat of ISIS in Iraq came at the cost of strengthening militias. The pandemic has given many regional governments an opportunity to centralize authority. But Iraq’s militias have resisted similar attempts by Baghdad. For those observing this dynamic, it brings memories of a past filled with hardship and history of increased persecution.

During the early 2000s, these militias were at the forefront of Christian persecution, prompting the first immigration wave. “Christian immigration passed through three main stages,” explained a former resident of Baghdad to ICC. “The first was from 2005-2007, [the] second was in 2010 when some extremists attacked [a] church during Sunday mass and the third stage was in 2014 when ISIS attacked [the] Nineveh Plain.”

Will there be a fourth stage? Many hope not, but recent militia tension brings memories of the early 2000s.

Recently, Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Services conducted an unprecedented raid on a militia in Baghdad. The next day, the militia threatened retaliation. One militia member threatened Prime Minister al-Khadami, who ordered the raid, reportedly saying “you are smaller than attacking an office of our militia.”

The prime minister remains new to his office, after militia interference in the political system delayed the process for months. Untangling the web of militia control is a struggle and dangerous endeavor, but the prime minister’s early policies seem to indicate this is a priority. This has left Christians unsettled and skeptical of the prime minister’s ability to actually break down militia control.

“I can’t believe what al-Khadami is pretending to do. If you look back at previous prime ministers, al-Abadi or Abdul Mahdi, you will find similarity on the decisions, but none turn to actions,” said Ehab, a Christian from Baghdad.

He continued, “both Abadi and Abdul Mahdi took strict decision about militias having weapons, but again [nothing] came to reality. Having that history tells me not to believe al-Khadami and that all he is doing [will] not exceed a show.”

It is well-known across Iraq that the federal government has no power, and that the militias actually control the country with the support of neighboring Iran, a Shia country.


When assaults and massacres targeted Christians in Baghdad, many began moving to what city?  Mosul.  The first seriously targeted by ISIS.  When ISIS was routed out of Mosul, the persecuted were now the victims of the militias.  Last February, Xavier Bisits (AMERICA: THE JESUIT REVIEW) noted:


In the Nineveh Plains, near Mosul, Iraq, some 32,000 Christians live in areas controlled by Iran-backed militias. As tensions between the United States and Iran continue, Nineveh Christians hope for an end to the influence of Iran in their day-to-day lives.

With the liberation of parts of Iraq from ISIS in 2017, Iraq’s Syriac and Chaldean Christians returned home to two unwelcome developments. First, unsurprisingly, their homes had been burned, looted or destroyed by ISIS. Second, Iran-backed groups who helped defeat ISIS—known as Popular Mobilization Forces—now controlled the towns their ancestors had inhabited for more than a millennia.

Today, the largest Christian town, Baghdeda as it is called by Christians—it is also known as Qaraqosh—is surrounded by an Iran-funded militia. The second-largest town, Bartella, is controlled by such a militia. Both are around 20 minutes from Mosul, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had declared the doomed ISIS caliphate in 2014.

This picture is complicated by a demographic shift also taking place in these communities—once largely Syriac Christian and now Shabak Muslim. The Shabak are primarily a Shiite minority who, like Christians and Yazidis, were persecuted by ISIS.

This demographic shift is most pronounced in Bartella, which sits on the crucial artery road between Erbil and Mosul. As recently as 2003, Bartella was 95 percent Christian. In the space of a decade, it has become majority Shabak, and members of this religious and ethnic community now control the town’s government and checkpoints into the city through their wing of the P.M.F., the Shabak Militia. Today, this militia receives arms, vehicles and money from Iran.

Amjad, 33, a Syriac worker in an electricity shop, complained of treatment as a second-class citizen by this militia. “Frankly speaking, if they had the chance, they’d take everything from us,” he said of the Shabak Militia. “If they have the chance to attack, they’d do more damage than ISIS did.”


Having done nothing to secure the safety of Iraqi Christians, Mustafa now insists that they return.  On the topic of the militias, there's more shameful behavior but this time from a news outlet.  Friday,   THE INDEPENDENT published a major article written by Ghufran Younes.  But?  They only published it on their Arabic website.  They refuse to publish this major report in English.  Younes reports that the area near Falluja is infamous for its number of missing people -- missing as a result of the militias liquidation operations in Anbar Province.  In June of 2016, Faiz al-Rikan explains, approximately 735 residents were abducted.  A man whose three sons, ages 16 to 26, were abducted speaks of his sadness over his missing children.  They are among The Disappeared.  Since 2017, the High Commission for Human Rights has received complaints of at least 8,615 Iraqis being disappeared. Professor Anas Akram Muhammed sits on that commission and states that  a national database is needed to track the disappeared and their numbers.  The Commission works with the United Nations Development Program.  The Iraqi Center for Documenting War Crimes' Omar al-Farhan states that Iraq is the top ranked in the world when it comes to the number of people who have been disappeared by government forces (including the militias).

In other news, ASHARQ AL-AWSAT reports on the escalating tensions between the protesters and one time movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr:

Tensions were high in Iraq’s Nasiriyah city between anti-government protesters and supporters of the Sadrist movement, led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.


According to activists, tensions broke out between protesters, who have been present at Al Habobi square for months, and Sadrists who arrived at the scene.


Activist Raad Mohsen said quarrels erupted between the two sides after Sadrists raised a poster of the movement’s leader during a demonstration demanding to bring the killers of protesters to justice, starting with Gen. Jamil Al Shammari.


Mohsen, speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, confirmed that the protesters are used to holding at least one demonstration a week to reaffirm their demands, which include holding the killers of demonstrators accountable.


The raising of Sadr’s poster at the square prompted tensions, with activists explaining that images of party and religious leaders are prohibited at the square.


RUDAW's Lawk Ghafrui Tweeted:


Huge crowd of Iraqi protesters in Habubi Square in Nasiriyah city tonight are demanding justice for the killed protesters. Tonight protesters in Nasiriyah city are chanting “Hey Muqtada [Muqtada al-Sadr] you trash, you are the leader of the Pickpockets”. #IraqProtests #العراق
Full screen
731 views
0:26 / 0:26



Though not noted by the press, or taken very seriously, this week will mark the end of the 100 days Motada al-Sadr gave Mustafa to fix everything.   May 11th, Moqtada gave Mustafa 100 days to implement his promises.  That 100 days ends this week.




Posted by at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)