Cedric's Big Mix

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Kerry busts a move

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

"THE FIGHT ABOUT BARACK'S DEADLY GAS IS NOT A GAME!" THUNDERED U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY BEFORE QUICKLY ALSO TWEETING IT.

KERRY AGAIN REFERRED TO THE SEPTEMBER 13TH INCIDENT INVOLVING BARRY O AND THE AMIR OF KUWAIT (HIS HIGHNESS SHAYKH SABAH AL-AHMAD AL-JABER AL SABAH) IN WHICH GAS WAS PASSED,

KERRY DECLARED TODAY, "THE AMIR IS STILL SHAKEN. THE SMELL HAUNTS HIM AND HE NOW TREMBLES IN ANY ROOM WHICH DOES NOT HAVE AN OPEN WINDOW! IS THIS WHAT WE WANT FOR OUR CHILDREN! FOR THE WORLD!"

JOHN KERRY THEN RIPPED OFF HIS TIE, JACKET, SHIRT AND PANTS AND, STANDING ONLY IN A DIRTY PAIR OF GRANDPA DRAWERS, CLAPPED HIS HANDS WHILE REPEATEDLY SHOUTING "BACK IT UP! BACK IT UP!" AND ATTEMPTING TO GRIND ON THE PRESS CORPS.

SENSING SOMETHING WAS WRONG, KERRY STOPPED AND ASKED, "IS TWERKING NOT COOL ANYMORE? I CAN ALSO POP AND LOCK. OR DO THE RUNNING MAN."

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Of course, the US State Dept and White House have said nothing on the violence but they still haven't made time to even issue a statement congratulating the KRG on Saturday's elections. Prashant Rao went to the KRG to cover the elections for AFP. His latest Tweet on the election:

While the State Dept and White House remain silent, UNAMI issued their statement on Saturday:

Erbil, 21 September 2013 - The Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq (DSRSG), Mr. Gyorgy Busztin, welcomes the smooth conduct of the Parliamentary Elections in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. كوردى

“I want to congratulate the people of the Kurdistan region for their participation and their contribution to the democratic process,” DSRSG said, adding that he was particularly pleased with the high turnout and the peaceful and non-violent nature of the polling.

Mr. Busztin commended the professionalism of IHEC in carrying out the elections after visiting a number of polling centres in Erbil and welcomed the work of the High Electoral Security Committee (HESC) in assuring safe conditions for voting.

“Today’s orderly polling is an encouraging sign for the long overdue upcoming Governorate Council Elections on 21 November,” he concluded.

Saturday, 1,129 candidates competed for 111 seats and over a million people voted in Erbil, Sulaimaniya and Dahuk. The voting took place without serious incident.

KRG Prime Minister Nechervan Barzani and his wife Nabila Barzani (pictured below) were among the first to vote in Erbil Saturday morning. Saturday, Jamal Hashim and Liang Youchang (Xinhua) quoted Nechirvan Barzani stating, "Today is a historic day for the Kurdish people and we have taken another step in the region to promote democracy. The people of Kurdistan are the only winners in these elections." Sunday, KRG President Massoud Barzani issued a statement congratulating the KRG citizens on their participation in Saturday's vote and the peaceful process which he hailed as a victory for the region and for the people. He called for peace and harmony as well as respect for the official results which the Independent High Electoral Commission is supposed to announce shortly.

Let's note some other voices. Here's a collection of Tweets on the election from the last 3 hours:

In "The KRG elections" Sunday, Jim and I discussed the elections:

Jim: Right. But to me the more interesting thing was the KDP's success.

C.I.: Why is that?

Jim: The press has said repeatedly that Massoud Barzani has overstepped his bounds, that he's unpopular, etc. And you've argued differently for two years now. If you were wrong, KDP wouldn't be in the lead.

C.I.: I don't know where the nonsense on Barzani got started. He's very popular. The press has always insisted that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is popular. He's also a Kurd -- like Barzani -- and he heads what had been the other dominant party, the Patriotic Union Kurdistan.

Jim: That's right. Going into this election, it was a two party race. The PUK and the KDP were the dominant political parties in the KRG -- like the Democrats and the Republicans in the US. With the results of Saturday's elections, that has now changed.

C.I.: Right. Gorran is now one of the two dominant parties.

Jim: But back to Barzani. The press, Joel Wing and so many others kept insisting that Barzani was passe, over, loathed, etc. But his party got the most votes.

C.I.: Well, first of all, he's the head of the party. Voters voted for the party. I don't know that you can extrapolate that he's very popular just from the results of this election. But I do think that if he was as unpopular as many in the press have tried to pretend. If he were, I would argue, he would have dragged the KDP down and they would not have won the most votes.

This is Rudaw's count/projection for the votes:

KDP 38.7 % | 726,876
Gorran 23.26 % | 436,825
PUK 16.84 % | 316,248
Yekgrtu 10.1 % | 189,638
Komall 6.52 % | 122,500
Other 4.59 % | 86,199

Ma'ad Fayad (Asharq Al-Awsat) reports today:

The Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) announced that approximately 73.9 percent of the autonomous region’s population turned out to vote, with Duhok recording the highest turnout at 76 percent. Approximately 2.88 million people were eligible to vote.
The UN secretary-general’s special representative for Iraq, George Boston, praised Kurdistan’s high voter turnout.
Meanwhile, exit polls showed that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by KRG president Massoud Barzani, will likely secure the most votes. They are followed by Nawshirwan Mustafa’s Gorran Party (Movement for Change), and then the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.

World Bulletin notes the consensus that exit polling is accurate:

According to the report, political observers agreed with the exit polls, expecting the KRG to win between 42 and 45 seats in the parliament. They also expected the KRG to secure the Erbil and Duhok constituencies.
Nawshirwan Mustafa, the leader of the opposition Gorran (Movement for Change), expressed hope that the elections would be a good start to a new political phase in Kurdistan. He expressed his hope of building a new and fair democratic system in Kurdistan, adding, “I hope the elections pass quietly and that their results come to fulfil all people’s expectations.”

Rudaw adds:

With final results from Saturday’s parliamentary elections in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region still to come, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has accepted defeat.
“Though we still have to wait to see the final results of the election, we are made anxious by the initial results,” read a statement that followed a meeting Sunday of the PUK’s political bureau.
“The early results conflict with the PUK’s history of struggle, yet we accept the results,” the party said after the meeting, which was headed by deputy secretary general Kosrat Rasul.
The results so far show that the PUK is behind Gorran by around a quarter million votes in Sulaimani.

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"THIS JUST IN! BARRY O GOES TO THE UN!"
"He's going to the United Nations"

Saturday, September 21, 2013

He's going to the United Nations

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

AS SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY CONTINUES TO DEMAND THAT CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O BOMB HIMSELF (SEE "Kerry insists Obama must be bombed!" AND "THIS JUST IN! KERRY GOES BALLISTIC ON OBAMA!"), BARRY O CONTINUES TO STALL.

TODAY IN HIS WEEKLY ADDRESS, BARRY O ANNOUNCED THAT HE IS GOING TO GO TO THE UNITED NATIONS FIRST TO SEEK PERMISSION FOR A SELF-BOMBING.

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Iraq received some attention from the world's press today. For violence. That's what the western media caught. What they missed was how important today was.

Violence isn't the only story in Iraq. Today was the nine month anniversary of the start of the ongoing protests. Dropping back to the December 21st snapshot:

AFP says the new crisis "threatens to reignite a long-running feud between the secular, Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc" and Nouri and his State of Law political slate. What the heck are we talking about? Look at this Reuters photo (individual photographer is not credited by the news agency or we'd note him or her by name) of the thousands who turned out to protest in Falluja today demanding Nouri al-Maliki resign as prime minister.

After morning prayers, Kitabat reports, protesters gathered in Falluja to protest the arrests and Nouri al-Maliki. They chanted down with Nouri's brutality and, in a move that won't change their minds, found themselves descended upon by Nouri's forces who violently ended the protest. Before that, Al Mada reports, they were chanting that terrorism and Nouri are two sides of the same coin. Kitabat also reports that demonstrations also took place in Tikrit, Samarra, Ramdia and just outside Falluja with persons from various tribes choosing to block the road connecting Anbar Province (Falluja is the capitol of Anbar) with Baghdad. Across Iraq, there were calls for Nouri to release the bodyguards of Minister of Finance Rafie al-Issawi. Alsumaria notes demonstrators in Samarra accused Nouri of attempting to start a sectarian war.

Aymenn J Al-Tamimi Tweets of today's protests:

Aymenn J Al-Tamimi ‏@ajaltamimi 20m

#Iraq: Friday protest placard from #Fallujah: "We won't forget the targeting of mosques of the Ahl as-Sunnah': pic.twitter.com/Fwu7gCIMsI

View photo

Iraqi Spring MC notes Baghdad protested and called for the detainees to be respected, in Ramadi they noted the right of the citizens to defend themselves and the right to call for an unresponsive government to be dissolved, they gathered in Mosul (despite 5 bridges being closed to try to stop the protest), they gathered in Tikrit, they gathered in Samarra, and they gathered in Jawala,

National Iraqi News Agency quotes an Anbar sit-in organizer, Sheikh Mohammed Fayyad, stating: "The citizens participated in the prayers that held in the courtyard northern Ramadi and eastern Fallujah cities , stressing that the goal of this trickle is to send one again a message to the governing in Baghdad that our demonstrations are peaceful and backed by citizens deep conviction."

It's not easy to protest in Iraq. As Shajwan Tweeted last month:

Shajwan ‏@Shajwaan

A protest is the citizens best way in speaking their needs, not in #iraq though! No freedom of speech! pic.twitter.com/kzEsjuBfhE

They have the Constitutional right to protest but, as the picture indicates, when they try to exercise that right, Nouri's thugs descend. Nouri's worst attack on the protesters was the April 23rd massacre of a sit-in in Hawija which resulted from Nouri's federal forces storming in. Alsumaria noted Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk) announced 50 activists have died and 110 were injured in the assault. AFP reported 53 dead for several days now -- indicating that some of the wounded did not recover. UNICEF noted that the dead included 8 children (twelve more were injured).

The theme of today's protests was solidarity with Basra. Basra? Sunnis are being killed there in targeted executions. BRussells Tribunal explains:

Sunni Endowment Diwan announced last Monday the closure of Sunni mosques in Barah following a number of assassinations and killings during the past weeks in the second largest city of Iraq. The office of the Diwan in Basrah stated that Sunni mosques in Basrah will only call for prayers (Adan) from the speakers of mosques and advised Sunni sect members to hold prayers at homes for the sake of saving their lives.
Saad Qusay, a very active journalist and correspondent in Basrah raised concerns some days ago about the escalated violence, stating that not even one single day goes by without witnessing an assassination or killing by militants using silencer guns.
Targeted assassinations and killings
On 17 September an Imam of the Sunni mosque Balad Salama in the district of Abi Al-Kaseeb was assassinated, Elaph, a London-based and widely read electronic newspaper, reports. The Imam was shot dead, close to his mosque, by militants who were in a passing car in the district of Abi Al-Kaseeb, a widely Sunni populated district. Two other people from Basrah were assassinated by militias last Monday, Elaph said today. In the same district, militants kidnapped Talal Abdul-Hafed Faroq, a clerk of the Sunni Endowment Diwan, who owns a grocery shop, and killed him a while after the kidnapping, Basrah News Agency reported.
Sheikh Nateq Yasseen, an Imam and speaker of Al-Sibelyat mosque, was assassinated by militant groups. Sheikh Yasseen was a former member of the municipal council of Abo Al-Kaseeb district.
Two worshippers were targeted and got killed thereafter at the district of Al-Ma’kal in Basrah. Meanwhile, a cleric at the Sunni Endowment Diwan in Basrah was injured due to an explosion of a bombed car inside the yard of the Diwan. Abdul-Kareem Al-Kazragi, director of the Sunni Endowment Diwan of south Iraq said that a bomb was placed in a bus taking the Diwan’s employees. Luckily none of the employees was injured as they had to do overtime for auditing work and the bus exploded causing no human casualties. Mr. Al-Kazragi called for strengthening security measures for the protection of the Sunni Endowment Diwan offices.
In the Al-Zubair district west of Basrah, militants using guns with silencers killed a worshipper close to Al-Kudairi mosque. Two brothers were kidnapped in Al-Jomhoreya quarter in Basrah by unknown militants who killed them and thrown their bodies before their house. One of the two brothers owns a shopping center, according to a security sources speaking to the Basrah News agency. Three civilians killed and eleven others injured last Sunday when a bombed car exploded at an industrial street in Basrah.

Today was the nine month anniversary of continuous protests in Iraq. You might think the world media could make time to cover the brave people who turn out despite being targeted, despite being followed, despite being called "terrorists" by Nouri al-Maliki. They have shown so much strength and so much courage and could inspire the whole world if only the world knew what was taking place in Iraq.

Meanwhile Dar Addustour reports a man in Karbala today launched his own protest. To register his objection to the lack of jobs in Iraq, 30-year-old Ali Mohammed attempted to set himself on fire in front of a Karbala government building. He and his wife have four children and no income. So he threw gasoline on himself and attempted to burn himself to death but security officials were able to stop him before he set himself ablaze.

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Friday, September 20, 2013

Kerry insists Obama must be bombed!

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

AS CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O CONTINUES TO DELAY ON BOMBING HIMSELF (SEE "Barry O delays bombing self, cites public opinion" AND "THIS JUST IN! BARRY O DELAYS BOMBING OF SELF!"), U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY MAKES CLEAR THAT HE HAS HAD ENOUGH OF BARRY O'S DILLY-DALLY-ING.

REFERRING TO A SEPTEMBER 13TH INCIDENT INVOLVING BARRY O AND THE AMIR OF KUWAIT (HIS HIGHNESS SHAYKH SABAH AL-AHMAD AL-JABER AL SABAH) IN WHICH GAS WAS PASSED, KERRY DECLARED TODAY, "SO THERE YOU HAVE IT. GAS WAS PASSED. GAS WAS USED."

THE SEPTEMBER 13TH INCIDENT ATTRACTED MINIMAL ATTENTION IN REAL TIME BECAUSE IT WAS SAID THEN THAT FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA HAD ACTUALLY BEEN THE ONE WHO FARTED. NOT WANTING TO EMBARRASS HER, THE PRESS HAD LOOKED THE OTHER WAY UNTIL THE AMIR OF KUWAIT BEGAN SPEAKING.

"IT SMELLED LIKE BOILED EGGS, I TELL YOU," SAID THE AMIR. "I WAS GASPING FOR AIR AND I NOTED IN HORROR THAT OBAMA WAS LAUGHING. I ALSO NOTED THAT HIS WIFE WAS ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE ROOM. SO IT STRUCK ME AS UNLIKELY THAT SHE HAD FARTED EVEN THOUGH OBAMA KEPT INSISTING IT WAS HER. WHEN I PRESSED HIM ON IT, HE TRIED TO BLAME BO BUT NO WHITE HOUSE DOG WAS AROUND."

ONCE THE AMIR WENT PUBLIC WITH HIS ACCUSATION, SECRETARY KERRY AND U.S. SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN BEGAN DEMANDING ACTION -- THAT BARRY O CONDUCT AN ATTACK ON HIMSELF.

SPEAKING AT THE UNITED NATIONS TODAY, KERRY TRIED TO CONVEY THE GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION, "IMAGINE BEING DOWNWIND OF THAT. AND WHAT IF IT IS IN WINTER, WHICH IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER? IT MIGHT BE SO COLD THAT OPENING A WINDOW IS NOT FEASABLE. THE U.S. MUST ACT. I HAVE SEEN BARRY O EAT BEANS WITH EVERY MEAL!"

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

All of these words whispered in my ear
Tell a story that I cannot bear to hear
Just cause I said it, it don't mean that I meant it
People say crazy things
Just cause I said it, don't mean that I meant it
Just cause you heard it
Rumor has it
-- "Rumor Has It," written by Adele and Ryan Tedder, first appears on Adele's 21

Rumor has it on Arabic Facebook sites (and other social media) today that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has passed away. Last December, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani suffered a stroke. The incident took place late on December 17th (see the December 18th snapshot) and resulted in Jalal being admitted to Baghdad's Medical Center Hospital. Thursday, December 20th, he was moved to Germany. He remains in Germany currently. All Iraq News reports his political party, the Kurdistan Patriotic Union, has issued a denial: "The reports that were posted via some Facebook pages regarding the death of Talabani are totally groundless."

Iraq has three security ministries. One person should head each one. But Nouri never nominated people to head the ministries. Back in July 2012, Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) observed, "Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has struggled to forge a lasting power-sharing agreement and has yet to fill key Cabinet positions, including the ministers of defense, interior and national security, while his backers have also shown signs of wobbling support."

The Iraqi Constitution explains how someone becomes prime minister. First, the Iraqi president names a prime minister-designate. That person then has 30 days to put together a cabinet. Putting together a cabinet includes nominating the people, getting Parliament to agree on the people (vote their consent). The only way someone moves from prime minister-designate to prime minister is via the Cabinet. This does not mean a partial Cabinet. The reason for this clause is that this is supposed to demonstrate that the person can work with the Parliament, provide leadership and, where needed, make the needed compromise. An Iraqi who was part of drafting the 2005 Constitution e-mailed that "the entire purpose [of this process] was to prevent a Maliki type from becoming prime minister. His failures in his second term can be traced to his failure [as prime minister designate] to work with the parliament."

How did Nouri move from prime minister-designate to prime minister when he failed the only task for the position? Failure to name a Cabinet (in full) in 30 days means the Iraqi president is supposed to name another person to be prime minister-designate.

Nouri was able to ignore the Constitution in 2010 because his being named prime minister-designate ignored the Constitution as well. The prime minister-designate is supposed to come from the political party or political slate that won the most votes. Nouri's State of Law came in second to Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya. Allawi should have been named prime minister-designate.

Nouri at first screamed for a recount. When that didn't change the outcome signficantly, he dug in his heels and refused to relinquish his position. For eight months, he refused to step down. Having the backing of the United States allowed him to do that. They should have eased him out.

They actually should have listened to Gen Ray Odierno who was the top US commander in Iraq at the time. Before the March 2010 elections, Odierno was saying Nouri might not come in first (a prospect the press refused to entertain) and Odierno was saying that Nouri might refuse to step down. But the idiot Chris Hill, apparently half-baked on who knows what, insisted that wasn't going to happen and went around Odierno to the White House which chose to believe Hill and not Odierno. History has demonstrated the lousy US Ambassador to Iraq to be an idiot and Odierno to be someone with keen observational skills.

The White House didn't just cover for Nouri to keep him in power for eight months after the elections, they also pushed and prodded the leaders of the various political blocs to sign off on a contract known as The Erbil Agreement. This contract circumvented the Iraqi Constitution to give Nouri a second term (illegally give him a second term). Since The Erbil Agreement gave him a second term, Nouri was not required to meet the 30-day rule for naming a Cabinet.

And the effects of that illegal maneuver by the US government can be immediately seen in the increased violence today.

"We are new to democracy, as a country, we are new to that." We'll come back to that quote. Right now, let's look at some of today's violence.

National Iraqi News Agency reports 1 Mosul shop owner was shot dead in his store, a roadside bombing near Tikrit claimed 1 life and left another person injured. and an Iraqi army officer was shot dead outside Rashad. EFE reports, "Nine people were killed and 30 others injured Thursday in a bombing at a market west of Baghdad, Iraqi police told Efe. The attack took place in Abu Ghraib, home of the notorious prison." Fu Peng (Xinhua) focuses on another bombing, "Also, at least two civilians were killed and 30 wounded when a truck bomb detonated near a house of a police officer in Imam Ahmed district in the city of Tuz-Khurmato, some 180 km north of Baghdad, a local police source anonymously told Xinhua. The huge blast left some 15 nearby houses and several private cars damaged, the source said." All Iraq News notes that the corpses of 10 young adults (ages "17 to 25") were discovered in Baghdad (all were shot dead). EFE adds the ten were all men. AFP provides this context, "Summary executions were commonplace at the height of the Sunni-Shiite conflict when many thousands of people were killed in cold blood. But this was the first time in several years that such a large number of bodies had been found in one place." Found? Reuters reports "unusual vehicle traffic" to and from an abandoned building caught the attention of children who entered them empty building and found the corpses "inside one of its rooms" according to a police source. Fang Yang (Xinhua) also notes a police source for the information that the corpses "were blindfolded and handcuffed with bullet holes in the heads." That's 24 reported dead and 61 reported injured.

But that wasn't all the violence. NINA reports:

Police source told NINA that gunmen opened fire, using guns with silencers, at a shop owner in Ishaqi district, south of Tikrit, killing him instantly, for cooperating with security forces.
He added that 3 improvised explosive devices went off near the body of the deceased, when people and security forces gathered, killing 5 persons and wounding 18 others.

Killed for cooperating with security forces? And on the same day the Ministry of the Interior was attempting to spin cooperation. Today Deputy Interior Minister Adnan al-Assadi told Al-Shorfa that Iraq's tips line was a huge success. He insisted that there "terrorism-related notifications has increased by 40% in comparison to the figure from August." Wow. Nearly double. Can al-Assadi do math? Some people -- and at one point a talking Barbie doll -- found math to be hard. I certainly don't consider myself to be a math expert. But if I'm reading an article about how helpful these phone call-ins are and how their number has basically doubled and then you tell me that these tips have helped you "arrest 28 suspects," even I can see something wrong with that picture. And that's before you factor in that 28 suspects arrested is not even a large daily number -- mass arrests account for twice that on a slow day in Iraq of late. And let's not forget that Nouri used yesterday's weekly address to sell the Iraqi equivalent of NYC's "If you see something, say something." If you've had a 40% increase, you use your weekly address to thank people for that, not to beg them to call your hotline.

"We are new to democracy, as a country, we are new to that." That was Iraq's Ambassador to the US Lukman Faily speaking at the Brookings Institution yesterday. He was actually replying to a question from Brooking's Kenneth Pollack and speaking of the fact that Iraqi prisons contain people falsely arrested. That's a large number of the Iraqi prison population, though Faily tried to play down the number and also tried to excuse false arrest and imprisonment with "new to democracy." Is Iraq also supposed to be new to literacy? One of the world's all time classic books is Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo whose main character Edmond Dantes sets off on a course of revenge after he's falsely arrested and imprisoned. The novel was the inspiration for ABC's Revenge, as Stan noted last night. Revenge returns with new episodes Sunday, September 29th and, as she's done with the first two seasons, Rebecca will be blogging about each new episode at her site. In the TV show, as in the book, false imprisonment destroy lives and makes a person (the falsely imprisoned in the book, the adult-daughter of the falsely imprisoned in the TV series) lash out against those responsible.

And in that classic story, you find what continues to fuel the violence in Iraq. Nouri's answer has repeatedly been mass arrests which have imprisoned many innocents. This only further destabilizes the country. And, as this takes place, the idiot Nouri doesn't even have, all these years later, ministers to head the security ministries.

Through yesterday, Iraq Body Count puts the number of violent deaths in the country so far this month at 651. And UNAMI issued the following yesterday:

Baghdad, 18 September 2013 - The Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (DSRSG) for Iraq, Mr. Gyorgy Busztin, expressed extreme concern about sectarian based displacement after recent worrying reports about forcible expulsion of Al Saadoun tribal communities from Dhi-Qar and Shabak communities from Ninewa, along with killings of members of Sunni community in Basra. كوردی
"The use of violence and intimidation against communities by illegal armed groups forcing them to flee their homes is unacceptable and a clear violation of basic human rights," DSRSG Busztin said, stressing that this worrying trend may pose grave risks for Iraq's social cohesion and may be disruptive to the ongoing efforts for national reconciliation.

The UN Envoy called on the Iraqi authorities to protect communities from attack, ensuring their safety, security, and right to a peaceful life free of intimidation.

The Kurdish Globe reminds the UN's death toll for last month was 800 Iraqis killed and that 5,000 have been killed so far this year. And yet what Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reported back in July 2012 is still true today, "Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has struggled to forge a lasting power-sharing agreement and has yet to fill key Cabinet positions, including the ministers of defense, interior and national security, while his backers have also shown signs of wobbling support."

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Cedric's Big Mix

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Kerry busts a move

Saturday, September 21, 2013

He's going to the United Nations

Friday, September 20, 2013

Kerry insists Obama must be bombed!

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