Friday, August 04, 2017

Who's laptop is it anyway?


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.



: Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman receives Muqtada Al-Sadr, leader of the Sadrist Movement in 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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Thursday, August 03, 2017

Wasserman Schultz's latest scheme

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


MEET DEBBIE!

U.S. HOUSE REP. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ IS STUCK IN A MESS OF HER OWN MAKING AND ALL BUT ROLLING IN IT.

INSTEAD OF AIRING THE ISSUES OUT WITH THE PUBLIC -- HER I.T. ISSUES -- SHE'S DECIDED TO BE "DEBBIE!"

SPEAKING TO THESE REPORTERS, THE CONGRESS WOMAN EXPLAINED, "I'M DEBBIE -- JUST DEBBIE!  THAT WAY I GET A FRESH START.  I GOT THE IDEA THIS MORNING WHILE GETTING DOUGHNUTS AND FINDING THAT DUNKIN' DOUGHNUTS WAS NOW JUST 'DUNKIN'' -- A FRESH START.  I WANT THAT TOO!"


FROM THE TCI WIRE:



Yesterday afternoon, Audie Cornish (NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED) spoke with Human Rights Watch's Belkis Willie:


AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:  There is a revenge campaign happening in Mosul. This started when Iraqi forces were fighting to retake the city from ISIS, and it's gone on since Iraq regained control of it. Soldiers have been rounding up and prosecuting anyone suspected to be a member of ISIS or related to one or a sympathizer of the terrorist group. In many cases, those detained are abused and executed. Human rights observers say the tactics being used by the military are war crimes.



BELKIS WILLE: I mean in terms of executions, we're seeing men being shot. We're seeing even more grotesque cases - for example, men being thrown off cliffs into the Tigris River and then being shot upon as they land. Numerous cases of really severe torture, sometimes leading to death.


Last week, Human Rights Watch noted:


An Iraqi army division trained by the United States government allegedly executed several dozen prisoners in Mosul’s Old City, Human Rights Watch said today. Two international observers detailed the summary killings of four people by the Iraqi army’s 16th Division in mid-July 2017, and saw evidence that the unit had executed many more people, including a boy.
 The US government should suspend all assistance and support to the 16th Division pending Iraq’s full investigation of the allegations and appropriate prosecutions, Human Rights Watch said. Under the “Leahy Law,” the US is prohibited from providing military assistance to any unit of foreign security forces if there is credible evidence that the unit has committed gross violations of human rights and no “effective measures” are being taken to bring those responsible to justice.
“The US government should make sure it is no longer providing assistance to the Iraqi unit responsible for this spate of executions but also suspend any plans for future assistance until these atrocities have been properly investigated,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Given the widespread abuses by Iraqi forces and the government’s abysmal record on accountability, the US should take a hard look at its involvement with Iraqi forces.”[. . .]
 Under the “Leahy Law,” the US government is required to suspend assistance to the 16th Division until the Iraqi government takes three steps, which are often known as “remediation components”: impartial and thorough investigations; impartial and thorough prosecutions or administrative actions, as appropriate; and proportional sentencing or comparable administrative actions.
Despite acknowledging that Iraqi forces committed violations of the laws of war during the Mosul operation and promising to punish those responsible, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has yet to demonstrate that Iraqi authorities have held any soldiers accountable for executing, torturing, and abusing civilians or captured fighters.


ABC NEWS covered the abuses.


The other broadcast outlets haven't really made time.

From NPR's broadcast yesterday:


CORNISH: You've said that the persecution of ISIS suspects now could inadvertently drive more people toward extremism. Why do you think that?

WILLE: I think you really need to look at ISIS and why ISIS for so many years was able to draw in so many recruits - young, Sunni Arab men - throughout Iraq and Syria. And it comes with a history.

Since 2003, with the fall of Saddam's government and an incoming Shia government that put Shia fighters into the military and brought in Shia militia, what we saw was rampant abuse that usually took the form of torture, executions, really targeting Sunni Arab men. These were the very men that ultimately joined ISIS, saying, we're sick of this complete impunity for Iraqi armed forces. And if this battle opens the floodgates to that very abuse that pushed men to join ISIS, we're going to continue to see young men wanting to join.




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"Debbie tries a new tactic
"THIS JUST IN! MEET DUMB DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ!