121Contact

July 31 2011 US Media kills thousands while Afghan Young Lovers gain front page

It's not just the NY Times. It's the American media and their non-conspiratorial avoidance of the harsh truths of war.

July 31 2011 Three Iraqi civilians have been injured in an explosive charge blast in southern Baghdad on Friday night, a security source reported. “An explosive charge blew off on Friday night in southern Baghdad’s Saydiya district, wounding 3 civilians, the security source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. 

 

What if, instead of 'human interest' pieces that portray all Afghanis as social primitives (Afghans Rage at Young Lovers), the NYTimes ran the news of the war's dead and wounded, American and foreign? Would that make  a difference in American attitudes toward continuing our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? What if they ran the pictures that illustrate the carnage? Would that change people's minds?

 NATO is reporting the deaths of two ISAF soldiers from an IED attack in an undisclosed location in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, July 29th.

Americans are willing to ignore the human cost of war. There is a cost in this, too. We all know,  whether we want to admit it or not, that our wars cause pain and death. Most of us keep this knowledge deep within and are loath to let it surface. There is a hidden burden of guilt in this denial that poisons the American soul/psyche/culture.

Libya, Yemen, Somalia...we are part of massive destruction of life and terrible maiming of innocent civilians in our efforts to 'help the people'. 

Why do I pick on the NY Times when almost all American media are part of this denial? Because it is my morning paper, and each day it leaves me wanting more honesty, more truth, and a more of a chance for Americans to take responsibility for the actions of our government. "Pictures [of dead or dying American troops] have rarely been seen in recent years from Iraq and Afghanistan," acknowledged The New York Times in September 2009. [AlJazeera] Acknowledgement of a deficiency is not the same as rectification.

Is it fair to blame the US media for the carnage? You tell me.

Diyala Prv:
#1: Armed men killed one policeman and a government-backed Sunni Sahwa militia member when they opened fire on a joint police-Sahwa foot patrol in Baquba, 65km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, a Diyala police source said.


Taji:
#1: Two Iraqi civilians have been killed and 5 others, among them 2 women and 2 children, have been injured in 3 explosive charges blasts in northern Baghdad’s Taji district, 20 km to the north of the Iraqi Capital, a security source reported on Saturday. “Three explosive charges blew up on Friday night, close to a house in Umm-al-Hadayil village in northern Baghdad’s Taji district, killing 2 civilians and wounding 5 others, including 2 women and 2 children,” the security source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.


Salah al Din Prv:
#1: US troops killed three Iraqi civilians and injured six during a Saturday pre-dawn raid on a village in the province of Salah al-Din, north of Baghdad, a local clan chief said. Sheikh Youssef Ahmed Hassan said the US forces opened fire after a local villager fired into the air. 'The villager thought that the US troops were operatives from al-Qaeda,' he told the German Press Agency dpa. An exchange of fire between the villagers and the US soldiers left three local men dead, and four women and two children injured, according to Hassan.


Irbil Prv:
#1: An Iraqi Kurdish citizen has been killed and large numbers of citizens of northern Arbil’s Choman border township with Iran, were force to leave their villages, due to Iranian bombardment of the area on Friday, a military source in the Border Guards Command reported. “A citizen in a Choman village has been killed due to artillery bombardment by the Iranian side on the village on Friday,” the source stressed, adding that about 40-50 families from the areas that came under bombardment were forced to desert their villages.

A shepherd was killed late on Thursday during clashes between the PJAK rebel group and Iranian Revolutionary Guards along Iraq's border with Iran, an Arbil provincial hospital official said. Arbil is 310 km (190 miles) north of Baghdad


Kirkuk:
#1: Two cops were injured by a bomb blast south of Kirkuk, police sources said here. The source told Aswat al-Iraq that an emergency patrol unit found a bomb near a mosque, south of the city. Anti-bombs squad arrived, but the bomb exploded by itself which resulted in injuring two cops.

#2: Iraqi police found the body of a man in his twenties with gunshot wounds in eastern Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, a source from the Kirkuk police operations centre said.


Mosul:
#1: A civilian was killed today by a sticky bomb north of Mosul, security sources said here.

#2: Gunmen shot dead a civilian in western Mosul late on Thursday, a Nineveh police source said.



Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: An Afghan official says seven Afghan soldiers and a translator were killed alongside two NATO service members in a bombing and ambush in eastern Paktia province. The deputy provincial governor of Paktia, Abdul Rahman Mangal, said Saturday the soldiers and a translator were killed on Friday while on patrol in the Zurmat district of the province. Mangal says the troops were on a joint patrol when a roadside bomb detonated. He added that the patrol was then attacked by insurgents. He did not have any further information on other casualties or wounded.

#2: Ten Shiite Muslims and another man were killed on Saturday when gunmen opened fire in an apparent sectarian attack in southwestern Pakistan, police said. The shooting took place on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of oil and gas-rich Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran. "Gunmen opened fire on a passenger van carrying Shiite Muslims. Ten Shiites and a passer-by were killed and four injured in the attack," senior police officer Jamil Ahmad Kakar told AFP by telephone. Kakar said the unidentified gunmen stood by the roadside spraying bullets at the van before they fled the scene in a waiting car.

#3: An explosive device went off in a NATO supply oil taker in Sadu Khel area of Landikotal here on Friday, however, no casualty was reported. Official sources said that last morning an Afghanistan bound Nato supply tanker (TLT 350) was blown up by non-disclosed militants by installing explosive device to it. When it had been parked on the roadside. The explosive had been fit in the middle portion of tanker, the sources said. The oil in the tanker caught fire and wasted while destroyed the tanker, the sources said. The fire flames melted the electricity lines, which suspended the power supply to Khyber Zakha Khel areas.

#4: Seven people were killed and one wounded when two unknown gunmen opened fire at a transport company's office in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, police said. The dead include two Uzbeks and one Iranian national, said senior police official Hamid Shakeel. The transport company runs buses from Quetta to Taftan, a city that borders Iran, he said.

#5: At least 10 people were wounded in a bomb blast in Mastung district of Baluchistan province.

#6: Three coaches of a passenger train derailed after a blast ripped off a portion of a track in the Jaffarabad district of southwestern Baluchistan province, police said. There were no casualties.

Is it fair to blame the US media for the carnage? You tell me.

 

July 30 2011 Salafist Egypt? A potentially sad ending to a social/political 'revolution'.

 

This from today's Times:
"Various Salafi groups have been taking the law on social issues into their own hands, including severing a teacher’s ear about 10 days ago in upper Egypt after accusing him of renting an apartment to prostitutes. And the army intervened on Monday to calm violence in the oasis of Fayoum that broke out after Salafists destroyed places selling beer and the owners shot a Salafi dead. Critics say the Salafi program is too religious to have broad appeal; while the Muslim Brotherhood frames its arguments in policy terms, the Salafis emphasize spiritual benefits that play well among the poor. "

I've seen estimates of Salafi in Egypt that range from 5 to10 percent of the population. I think of ten percent as a potential tipping point. How sad, and how ominous a note in the Egyptian 'revolution'. I fear the young idealists will be overwhelmed by these older (certainly in social evolutionary terms) zealots.

How can we support the young idealists of the 'true' (to me, at any rate) revolution?
b

[Note: the Times quote, above, draws a distinction between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi that I don't see. Back in May 2011 the UK's Telegraph wrote about the Brotherhood's forming an electoral coalition with a host of Salafi groups in Egypt, under the banner of seeking an Islamic state.]

July 29 2011 Budgets, deficits and war profiteering in the days of Obama

The 2011 US budget stipulates $160 billion for 'overseas contingency operations.' Read that as over $13 billion dollars a month for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Americans aren't stupid. PEW research tells us that the majority of Americans blame the soaring debt on the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. It's not hard to see that if Obama kept his pledges regarding the end of US occupation  of Iraq and and end to US inv0lvement in Afghanistan our economy would look very different.

Why aren't we shutting down these wars more quickly? Why are our men and women still being maimed and killed in these wars? What is the benefit? Who is making the money here?

CorpWatch reports that Aegis, DynCorp,Triple Canopy. Blackwater and Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions aren't doing badly. Protected by Washington lawmakers who fail to vote for subpoena level investigations, these are among the largest war profiteers. Bechtel's amazing record of mismanaged projects ranks up there, too, and their failure to properly dispose of waste (open pit burning is a favored method) has cost the lives and health of too many military personnel, not to speak of the uncounted civilians who die from these same practices.

And these are the small guys. When you get into the Lockheed Martins of the war machine you see some real power in action. So much of our economy is locked up in the war machine that it is going to take a social retooling to alter our path. Attacking Xe services wont do it.[Tom Engelhardt]

We have to start teaching our young ones a different way of moving in the world; a way of peaceful economies and solutions; not profiteering from violent conflict. First, I guess, we have to start acting/voting/talking with peace in mind.  We are evolving in our relationship to environmental and health issues. We can evolve in our thinking about confict, too.

 

 

 

July 27 2011 Baghdad: a drop of cool water as Hillary Clinton becomes Commander in Chief

A roadside bomb rocked the city center of Iraq's capital Baghdad late on Monday, wounding three civilians, a police source said. The source, on condition of anonymity, told Xinhua that the explosion took place on Abu-Nuwas street and no further details could be obtained so far.

This was not high on Ala's list of problems. They had heard the explosion, but it was far from their house and once noted, forgotten in the sweltering heat. Another 120 degree day dawned at The generator for the neighborhood broke. Too much heat; too many houses; too much heat.

"The heat is no more bearable, a drop of cold water becomes a wish, we sigh for a drop of cold water!!", said Ala a father of 4 children in Baghdad. He keeps watching them sleeping on the bare floor seeking cold tiles instead of the bed-heat that burns their soft skin. "Every morning my children wake up wet from sweating, it breaks my heart that I can't offer them some cold air!"

No generator, no air conitioner, no cold air-a simple equation.

Not so simple the calculus of American troop withdrawal. In a rather startling development on the path to privatization of just about everything the State Department is building a private army the size of a combat brigage. The Irish Sun reports (what? you on't rea the Irash Sun?)

Hillary Clinton will now be commander in chief of some 5,500 mercenaries hired to protect the diplomats that remain after U.S. troops (not mercenaries, mind you) are withdrawn.

Withdraw troops; insert mercenaries. What math is this?

Sergeants in combat earn as much as $190 per day while private firms charge a staggering $1200 per day. [Popular Mechanics] Let's see: 1200 - 190 times 5,500...that's about US$5 MILLION A DAY MORE THAN USING TROOPS. And it's all to support the lie that we are withdrawing our forces.

Five million dollars a day could buy a lot of cold air for Ali, his family, his neighborhood, and even his city.

 

 

July 22 2011 Iraq: Foreign private profit in rebuilding what foreign governments destroyed. Iraq War Contractors: unbid, unwatched, unbound

What a sweet deal. Let the U.S. government destroy so that U.S. firms can profit from rebuilding what was destroyed. And it's not only the U.S. private sector that is reaping these rewards.

The contractors seem little affected by the reduction of military involvement in Iraq. In fact many military force contractors are receiving larger contracts as they take the place of the military. Civilian contractors are gaining momentum as the violence lessens and foreign entities take on 'reconstruction' roles.

The situation in Iraq is providing government cash to private companies sucking the spoils of the warOccupation of Iraq.

In the swirl of changing defense contractor names ITT has decided to spin off its DoD work into a separate entity.

Triple Canopy and Global Strategy are now signed up by the State Department for some US$10 billion in contracts for guarding the US Embassy in Iraq and its personnel. [wired.com]

 Millions are going to Najlaa under the Army’s Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) III contract. This even after documents reveal details of alleged labor trafficking by this KBR Subcontractor. [Originally published by the Project On Government Oversight, By David Isenberg and Nick Schwellenbach | Jun 14, 2011] "Labor Trafficking" here refers to Najlaa's bringing South Asian workers, two thousand miles or more from their homes. hundreds of them staged a protest on the outskirts of Baghdad. The reason: Up to 1,000 of them had been confined in a windowless warehouse and other dismal living quarters without money or work for as long as three months.

This after KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton was found by the US government to have charged "over 1.1 million hours (including overtime) ..., yet only 116,000 hours of documented repair work had been conducted." [Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the director of the Defence Contract Audit Agency] 

This after KPR's unbid electrical contract cost the lives of US troops. They received a bonus for that work! No kidding! [debatePolitics.com]

IraqLogistic reports that France's Alstom Grid has been awarded a €80m, (US$115m) contract from Calik Energy, a leading Turkish energy company, for the supply of electrical transmission equipment to be installed in two power plants being built in Iraq by Calik Energy. This contract is considered the largest for Alstom Grid in Iraq.

And then, wondering what the point of all this ranting was, we came across this nugget of madness in TruthOut: The DoD allows contractors to grade themselves on thier own work!

"The Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General’s (IG) office recently found that the Marine Corp allowed their contractors for a vital troop protection system to act as government employees, including directing and evaluating government employees’ work, grading their own work and writing up requirements for the follow-on contract. The contractors then bid on those requirements and won multimillion-dollar contracts."

Too funny. Too sad.

July 22, 2011, by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

 

 

July 21 2011 Donald Trump got it right? As if Iraq didn't have enough troubles: Iran invades Iraq, again.

It's not like Iraqis don't have enough to do. Water, electricity, food, manufacturing...it's all the same sad story. But these last 4 days have brought another cloud to their too hot skies.

The Examiner, Fox News and Syrian SupportTheKurds are  reporting a fourth day of Iranian invasion of Iraq ground space. In an effort to weaken the militant wing of the PJAK Iranian forces are shelling villages and outposts within Iraq.

The 'eyewitness' reports are sparse, and the PJAK version states, "180 Iranian sipah pastaran soldiers were killed, including 2 high ranking commanders, and many more were wounded; also during the clashes 7 PJAK guerrillas lost their lifes and 4 others wounded."

Of course Iran has the story spinning differently. “Three bases in Iraqi territory were providing assistance to the terrorists. All the bases have fallen into the hands of our forces" AP reports Revolutionary Guard Colonel Delavar Ranjbarzadeh as saying. He went on to say that the Kurds had suffered, "a heavy and historic defeat."

And let there be this version, Jabbar Yawar, the top official in the Iraqi Kurdish ministry responsible for the region's peshmerga security forces: " the Iranian claim to have seized camps inside Iraq was 'incorrect'."

In June people were laughing at Donald Trump's ridiculous assertion that Iran would invade Iraq if the US pulled out. Well, Donald may be laughable, but he might just have this one right. The northern oil fields are quite a prize, and the Kurds are quite an excuse for an Iranian invasion.

There were few reports of civilian casualties even though several villages and outposts were targeted in the violence. This comes as no surprise since folks rarely report on civilians caught in conflict.

 

 

July 19 2011 - Our sincere $20 Billion worth of apologies to the sweltering Iraqis.

In yesterday's post we referred to the 'days finding Baghdad sweltering at over 100 degrees F.'

We were chastised roundly by some sweaty Iraqis who know better.

The average summer temperature in Baghdad is over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. 132F is not unheard of and many days are above 120F. Those ten or so degrees make a big difference, especially when there is little electricity to run your air conditioner. It's been 10 years since reliable electricity could be counted on by most Iraqis.

 Oh, you can run the AC from your generator, if you've the money to buy the ever-more-expensive fuel, and if there's any available. In May the Iraqi Parliament ruled that it would provide free fuel for generators over the summer. Nice one! except nothing ever came of this promise since the study needed to estimate the amount of fuel needed was never conducted.

Or, like the U.S. government you can just spend and spend on cool air and not have a worry about the price.

Steven Anderson,   retired brigadier general who served as Gen. David Patreaus' chief logistician in Iraq stated  that the annual cost of air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan is over $20 billion: "War critics in Congress would be foolish not to seize on the assertion [this article has some interesting rebuttal arguments in the comments section] from Gen. David Petraeus' former chief logistician that the annual cost of air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan is over $20 billion." [Salon.com]

That's US$20B, each year, that didn't go into you local school system, or anywhere else of value to our nation. It's US20B that just helped create more enemies, more danger, and more wasted effort.

You get to vote. You get to influence where your tax dollars go. Take a stand. Write a letter. Make a call.

and while we're ranting: The cost per soldier for one year in Iraq or Afghanistan: US$1,000,000.00. A million bucks! And we've got over a hundred thousand in the field. And there are probably that many mercenaries alongside our troops, and that cost is even higher than one million per head per year. What a sorry waste of resources. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

 

 

 

 

July 17 2011 Arab Spring, Iraq Winter

[begin Depressed mode]

In the midst of the Arab Spring, on days finding Baghdad sweltering at over 100 degreesF, the Iraqis are feeling the icy cold of winter.

This is the chill of Democracy on hold; the freezing of any motion toward progress; the death, in many, of hope.

From our correspondents comes no news of progress, and a few of the activists with whom we have regular contact are leaving. Leaving! After years of working for peace and reconciliation; after diligent attendence at Western-sponsored workshops and seminars of peace building, reconciliation, and local activism they find their education worthless in the face of increasing violence, intimidation, assassinations, and persistent corruption.

Hey, it's not that way for all Iraqi peace workers . There are still those who struggle on against what sometimes seems like impossible barriers. And there are "the people." Those doctors, shopkeepers, attorneys, and students who continue to live their lives with either hope or blind faith that things will turn out better. Some of them have no choice since they can't afford to leave, or cannot get visas to anywhere they deem safer than home.

And the future? Who the hell knows. It certainly doesn't look very bright at the moment as the government moves further from the people and closer to the profit makers...

And the future? Who the hell knows. Do we sound pessimistic today? Well, that is because we just heard from someone we always held to be a paragon of Iraqi stubbornness and hope. He lives in the South, in an area was relatively quiet for many years, but now faces an usnettling level of violence directed at police,  officials of government, and religious leaders. Only a year ago he refused our offer of help in getting him out. We thought his peace activities put him in danger. Now he asks, "What can you do to help me leave?" He has come, perhaps temporarily, to the end of hope.

Although he has worked with the U.S. as an interpreter, and worked with 121Contact as a reporter and a recruiter for students to join the 121Contact writing bridge between Iraqi and American students, he cannot find any help in leaving. He has no official papers from the military documenting his work with them, and his reporting does not qualify for consideration by the State Department for a special case visa.

And he is not the only one.

bummed,

b

July 17, 2011 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

 

[from IraqToday]

Reported Security Incidents

Baghdad

Roaside bomb in Amariyah, near the airport, kills one police officer and a bystander, injures three people.

Sherquat village, Salahudin Province

Brigadier General Ahmed Bdeiwi, head of the provincial major crimes department, survives and attack on his convoy with injuries. Three of his bodyguards are also injured.

Mahmoudiyah

Roadside bomb injures two people.

Banjaween district, Sulaimaniyah

Several fighters of the Iranian-Kurdish irredentist group PJAK (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan) are injured, amid conflicting reports of whether the casualties result only from Iranian shelling, or whether there have been direct confrontations between Iranian and PJAK forces. A PJAK spokesman claims Iranian soldiers have been killed and injured.

Kirkuk

A pediatrician is released from 3-weeks captivity after payment of a $500,000 ransom. "A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there have been at least 45 kidnappings in Kirkuk since the start of the year, with the majority of the victims belonging to wealthy families. Since June 15, the official said, a total of $1.1 million has been paid in ransoms to secure the release of hostages." Note: Most of these go unreported in English-language sources. If we had the information, we would certainly provide it. -- C

[end Depressed mode]

July 16 2011 We're back. We're leaving. We're back. 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11

OK, so we've been away from the blog a long, long time, it seems, having come to a wall of frustration without a verbal outlet that we could find.

OK, so now that we're back we are leaving for several weeks of vacation, and so will be away again.

OK, so we're back on speaking tour, interview rounds, and documentary schedules.

OK. OK. OK.

Here comes the tenth anniversary and the flood of recollections, evaluations, concatenations of meaningless/meaningful ruminations that will increasingly fill the media's maw and spill into our consciousness the mostly vile output of fearmongering that feeds the NEWS bottom line.

Here comes the Gary Cass, David Barton, Rick Joyner, Kent Ekeroth (Hey, Americans don't have a monopoly on Islamophobia), David Yerushalmi, Brigitte Gabriel, ...have we left your favorite phobic?...onslaught of lies, exaggerations, and obfuscations of the truth about Islam. Here come the political posturings of those who line their pockets, and the pockets of their friends, with an endless stream of lucrative ways to appear as if they are making the U.S. safer when, in fact, they are creating scores of enemies with each civilian they kill in their blind 'war against terror.'

For what is Islam? Is it the book? Is Judaism the old testament? Is Catholicism the New? Is the Koran Islam? Religions are the people who follow them, not the books that purport to guide, nor the leaders who strive to corral the multitudes into long, obedient lines of non-thinkers. 

The religion is the father who wishes most of all that his children grow to be successful; the mother who wants little more than health and happiness for her child. The religion is the great mass of peace loving people who are abhored by fundamentalism, terrorism, and my-religion-is-better-than-yoursism.

DON'T WRAP MY NEPHEW, SUPREME COURT OFFICER MITCH WALLACE, IN YOUR SHROUD OF HATRED. Yes, he died by the hands of terrorists, but they did not represent a religion any more than Timothy McVeigh represents Christianity; any more than Levi Aron represents Judaism; any more than any other deranged terrorist with twisted, brain-washed values represents Islam.

 

Mitch died in an act of kindness, going again and again into the South Tower to bring Innocent, wounded civilians out to medical help. Mitch was a young man of stellar compassion and none who knew him were surprised at his selfless choice to help others at the risk of his own life.

As we approach the tenth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. take a moment (each day? Is that too much to ask?) to HONOR HIM WITH ACTS OF KINDNESS AND HELP STEER THIS WORLD TO MORE PEACEFUL TOMORROWS.