Slipping Barry

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

TO QUOTE GOLDIE HAWN IN "DEATH BECOMES HER," "EXACTLY WHAT PART OF THE PLAN DIDN'T YOU UNDERSTAND?"

AS NOTED YESTERDAY -- "THIS JUST IN! JUST DO NOTHING!" "Even Barry O can handle this task" -- ALL BARRY O HAD TO DO WAS NOTHING.

BUT THAT PROVED TO BE TOO MUCH FOR CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O .


WHO WOULD EVER HAVE SEEN BARRY O AS AN OVER-ACHIER? WHY, ON THIS TOPIC (SPREADING HOMOPHOBIA AND KEEPING DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL), DID BARRY O SUDDENLY DECIDE HE WANTED TO DO SOMETHING?


FROM THE TCI WIRE:

The Iraq War has not ended, not ended. Roger D. Hodge has a new book, The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism. As he explained to Harper's, the Iraq War has not ended:


He [Barack Obama] has declared an end to the war in Iraq by redefining the mission of 50,000 troops who remain there. Yet the war continues, our soldiers fight and die, and Iraq still lacks a functioning government.

We've seen much the same thing with ObamaCare. As with the Iraq War, Obama has merely redefined the mission. Far from being the universal health-care system that the country needs, Obama's health program is best understood as a bailout of the private health industry that seeks to guarantee some 30 million additional customers for insurance companies and continued obscene profits for large drug manufacturers. The paradox here is that in a system aiming at universal coverage, the actuarial role of insurance companies, which is to determine the precise odds of paying unprofitable claims on a given class of customers, has become obsolete.

The Iraq War has not ended. And activists continue to call for an end to it. Wednesday of last week, one group had some success. March Forward reports (at Party for Socialism and Liberation) on their actions shutting down a Hollywood, California military recruitment center:

Tamara Khoury, a member of the ANSWER Coalition at California State University, Fullerton said, "We're uniting with veterans and anti-war activists today to shut down this recruiting center because we keep being told that our classes are cut and tuition hiked because there's not enough money. But over $700 million a day is being used to criminally occupy the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq. Then, recruiters come into our schools and take advantage of how hard it is to get an education in order to convince young people to go die for the profits of banks and oil giants."


March Forward! supporter Ron Kovic, Vietnam veteran and author of "Born on the 4th of July," sent a solidarity statement to the event. "With this courageous act of defiance, veterans are sending a message to countless others across the country that the time has come to bring all the troops home from these senseless and unnecessary wars."

Iraq war veteran and March Forward! member Ryan Endicott said "We know just how much this government cares about us by looking at how GIs are killing themselves in record numbers after being denied adequate treatment; by how many of us end up homeless and unemployed; by the fact that one in three women in the military are sexually assaulted, but are denied PTSD benefits for their trauma."

After shutting down the recruiting station, Prysner said, "To our brothers and sisters in the military: it's time we stopped fighting for the profits of a tiny group of billionaires; instead, we should struggle together for what's in our interests. But we're not going to fight alone -- we're going to fight with students who are getting their tuition raised, with teachers who are getting pink slips, with families who are suffering layoffs and scraping to get by -- because when we unite together, that's when we win."

Sunday Thom Shanker and Steven Lee Myers (New York Times) reported, "The delay has affected much of the American strategy in Iraq, including trade deals and talks over what, if any, military role the United States will have after a deadline to remove the remaining 50,000 American troops by the end of 2011." The Iraq War has not ended.


Meanwhile, for the last two weeks, people have been insisting that the political stalemate in Iraq was slowing the return of external refugees to Iraq.


Prashant Rao (AFP) reported on September 29th that US Brig Gen Ralph Baker stating just that. A lot of people have asserted that and asserted it as fact; however, can that claim be backed up in any way?

No.

The latest statistical update from UNHCR on returnees shows 18,240 returnees this year thus far (January through August 2010). The month-by-month data does not support the claim. March 7th was when elections were completed (early voting started March 4th). For the claim to be correct we would have to see a steady decrease from February. But that's not what the data shows. It shows the second highest number of recorded returns (2,610) was in May. The third highest was in June (2,480). [The highest number of returnees thus far this year was in January: 2,820.] Were the stalemate the issue stopping the trickle of returns, you would see the pattern start in March when the stalemate begins. In other words, January and February -- before the statlemate starts -- would show a higher number of returns and, starting in March, each month would see a steady decrease. PDF format warning, click here for the statistics. The patterns of return -- a small amount, as has been the case for over two years and it wasn't that large to start with -- do not back up the conclusion that the stalemate has prevented returnees.

A careful chart of news stories might indicate an upswing -- MIGHT -- of returnees when the news cycle made it appear Ayad Allawi was going to be prime minister. That could explain the fluctuations. But even a careful chart of the news cycle -- and even if good news cycles for Allawi were followed by an uptick in returns -- it would still be an indication of a causal relationship and could not -- without surveys of the returnees -- be accepted as influencing returns.

Last week, the [PDF format warning] US State Dept noted:


There are almost 229,000 Iraqi refugees currently registered with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in neighboring countries and an undtermined number of unregistered refugees. UNHCR reports that 1.5 million Iraqis remain internally displaced due to sectarian violence following the Samarra Mosque bombing of February 2006.

Since the beginning of 2008, some 464,000 Iraqis have returned to their neighborhoods in Iraq. The majority of the Iraqis returning were internally displaced persons.

In FY09, the U.S. Government contributed $387 million to international and non-governmental organizations to assist Iraqi refugees, internally displaced, and conflict victims.

[. . .]

As of September 2009, a total of 1,143 Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) have been issued for Iraqi translators and interpreters (and their dependents) since FY07 (under the Section 1059 program).

As of September 2009, a total of 1,716 SIVs have been issued for Iraqis employed by the U.S. government (and their dependents) since FY08 (under the Section 1244 program).


Though the State Dept report goes on to mention many of the claims Brig Gen Ralph Baker made September 29th, they don't include his unproven claim that the violence is stopping/slowing returnees from coming back to Iraq.

Today UN High Commission for Refugees Antonio Guterres spoke at Oxford on the topic of refugees and various issues effecting them including, "Humanitarian organizations such as ours are denied access to affected populations." Simon Tisdall (Guardian reports):


Guterres said the number of refugees being resettled abroad was rising but the number of resettlement places on offer was inadequate -- roughly 10% of the 800,000 annual applicants. The total number of applicants has doubled since 2005. "Europe currently provides around 6,000 resettlement places a year or about 7.5% of the total worldwide."
Asylum seekers faced similar obstacles while forced repatriation policies, as applied to Iraqis for example, sent an "unhelpful" signal to Syria and Jordan where the vast majority of Iraqi refugees was located, he said. Advances had been made. And the UNHCR did not dispute the right of countries to control their borders. "Overall, however, there is still no true European asylum system but a patchwork of different national ones, making the situation totally dysfunctional."

Turning to the issue of Iraq's internally displaced, BBC News reports that UNHCR Iraq Support Unit's Andrew Harper has stated "up to 11 governors were restricting access" to the internally displaced "because they lacked resources to look after the refugees."

Andrew Harper: We're seeing an increasing number of governments or states inside of Iraq closing their borders or restricting entries to new arrivals. And so we're having a pressure cooker building up inside Iraq, that there's no immenent end to the displacement; however, the possibility for the Iraqis to find safety and find assistance is becoming increasingly restrictive. And so where they can move, it's becoming increasingly overpopulated and tense.


Caroline Alexander (Bloomberg News) reports, "Former Iraqi premier Ayad Allawi stepped up efforts to lure deputies from Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki’s alliance, in a bid to form the largest group of seats in parliament and secure the right to form the new government, as a political impasse nears its eighth month."

March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted last month, "These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they may add more which could increase the number of seats needed to form the executive government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with other slates, parties and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament seats were awarded, for example, to minority candidates who represent various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad Allawi is the head of Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the biggest seat holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki, the current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show of lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing coalition with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this coalition still does not give them 163 seats. They are claiming they have the right to form the government. In 2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister. It's seven months and seven days and counting.





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