BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL AID TABLE
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ INSISTED IN A PUBLIC HEARING THAT THE CAPITOL POLICE HAD SEIZED HER LAPTOP AND DEMANDED THAT IT BE RETURNED.
BUT NOW SHE IS INSISTING THAT THE LAPTOP IS HER I.T. GUY'S LAPTOP.
ASKED ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE IN HER STORIES, DEBBIE SNORTED AS HER EYES DARTED AROUND NERVOUSLY BEFORE ASKING, "IS LYING A SOLID DEFENSE?"
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
ALSUMARIA reports that early this morning the security forces began cutting off the roads to Baghdad's Tahrir Square.
Why?
They always do this when they know of a planned protest. It's to intimidate people with the hopes that they won't participate and to make it hard for those who still want to participate to reach the square.
Haydar Majid (ALSUMARIA) reports many came out to demonstrate today following Shi'ite cleic and movement leader Moqtada's call on Thursday to protest. XINHUA notes:
"I wish the people are aware of what corrupt politicians are engaged with a dirty scheme to restore corruption which will not only control the people's food, but also their necks and blood. So that they would stage demonstration by millions to determine their fate," Sadr said in a statement by his office.
Sadr pointed out that the "sectarian storm," which engulfed the Iraqi people after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, made many Iraqis to close their eyes about what the politicians and the parliament blocs were doing.
He said the politicians, who were seen as corrupts by many Iraqis, are planning to bring a new electoral commission and to approve an election law for the provincial elections that would take into account the interests of the same old large parliamentary blocs, according to the statement.
Provincial elections were due in March but Hayder refused to hold them. It was thought they would be held in September -- thought and publicly stated. Yet again they've been pushed back. It's now said they'll be held in 2018.
Earlier this week, Moqtada met with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
# BREAKING : # Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman receives Muqtada Al-Sadr, leader of the Sadrist Movement in # Iraq on Sunday
Madawi al-Rasheed (MIDDLE EAST EYE) offers:
This is not Sadr’s first visit since the 2003 American occupation. He arrived in Riyadh in 2006 at the height of the Iraqi resistance to the occupation and the Iraqi civil war. But the visit was unsuccessful then. It yielded little benefits to either side. Like other aspiring clerics turned politicians, Sadr entered Iraqi politics with his own Jaysh al-Mahdi militia that later changed its name to the Peace Brigades.
Saudi Arabia grew very frustrated over the Iranian expansion in Iraq after 2003 and found itself constantly backing losing Iraqi horses. From patronising Sunni tribal chiefs in 2005 as part of al-Tawafuq electoral list to backing the Iraqi Sunni-Shia coalitions under Iyad Allawi in 2010, Saudi efforts to find an entry into post-Saddam Iraqi politics led to further frustration amounting to hostility on several occasions.
Saudi relations with Iraq deteriorated so much during Nouri al-Maliki’s premiership with Iraq bluntly accusing Saudi Arabia of sponsoring terrorism and precipitating a sectarian war in Iraq as a result of its Wahhabi ideology and the Saudi jihadis found in Iraq. Only in 2015 did a Saudi ambassador return to Iraq after almost 25 years of absence.
Sadr’s recent visit to Jeddah is a break from past Saudi practices and strategies. Mohammed bin Salman and his Trump administration backers want to limit Iranian expansion in the Arab world without outright military confrontation with Iran or its various militia that operate in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
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