Maliki Throws Away Iraq

From Baghdad's Own Tahrir Square to Mosul: the Friday of the Free
Lieven De Cauter of Foreign Policy in Focus presents a letter from his colleague in Iraq: "Ah, the scenes in Tahrir were phenomenal, because Maliki and his henchmen yesterday ordered people to demonstrate in two football grounds, again on a sectarian basis, can you imagine? But he is a stupid man and so are his advisors. The Iraqis are much too intelligent and clever for all of this and proved that they are now at the point of no return in their rebellion and revolt. They assembled in Tahrir and told Maliki and his parliamentarians to go and play football in the stadiums he has assigned."
Read the Article

Libya vs. Iraq

Remember that post I wrote about Libya v. Iraq? Here's an extranormal video that makes many of the same points.

Ahmadinejad and Chavez are Bonding

In case any of you haven't figured out why all of Latin America is turning against us, Caroline Glick puts the continent in order.

Whereas in Turkey, the media failed only to report on the significance of the singular trend of Islamization of Turkish society, the media have consistently ignored the importance for Israel of three trends that made Latin America's embrace of the Palestinians against Israel eminently predictable.

Those trends are the rise of Hugo Chavez, the regional influence of the Venezuela-Iran alliance, and the cravenness of US foreign policy towards Latin America and the Middle East. When viewed as a whole they explain why Latin American states are lining up to support the Palestinians. More importantly, they tell us something about how Israel should be acting.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Barack Obama, Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:29 AM

You might like:

* Melted Chocolate with Fleur de Sel Bruschetta (MarthaStewart.com)
* Chavez: Yes, we've started a nuclear program (this site)
* Newsweek notices Yoram Ettinger (this site)
* Update on Haifa fire (this site)

(Selected for you by our sponsor )

2 Comments:

At 5:55 AM, Blogger MUSHI said...

sorry carl, i will have to desagree here...
being latin-american, and Argentinean specially, i can afirm you, that Argentina as most of latin american countries were always well, not anti israeli but close to that.

you just have to look for history books, and will find that Argentina, as Chile and Brazil gladly gave assylum to nazi criminals after WWII, watch how they voted in the U.N, watch how they acted in the international arena and you will see, that this is not an actual problem.

now, the thing is that with "Crazy" chavez and his contacts with Iran and hizballah, it's getting worse every day...

At 12:21 PM, Blogger mariagmartinc said...

Well, being venezuelan I think governments aren't people. Most venezuelans are quite foreign to the conflict, neither pro- nor anti-Israel, and any extreme position would feel wrong to them. When Chavez has openly called Israel a criminal state and called her government murderers, venezuelans haven't exactly stood up to applaud. Also, they're particularly unhappy about the alliance with Iran and Cuba and Russia and North Korea.

Things might be different in Argentina, or Uruguay, or Brazil, but I'd expect the people from countries who mostly vote right (and some that don't) to at least not support anti-Israel measures. From my experience, governments are anything but representative.

Baghdad Church Attacked 37 Dead

Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP - Getty Images file
Iraqi Chaladean Catholic Christians celebrate Easter mass at the church of Virgin Mary in central Baghdad's Al-Karrada neighborhood on March 23, 2008. The same church was the site of a four-hour seige on Sunday.
By Waleed Ibrahim and Muhanad Mohammed

Iraq: Dozens dead following Muslim standoff at Catholic church

A siege by Iraqi security forces at one of Baghdad's largest Catholic churches ended on the night of October 31, leaving at least 37 people dead and twelve injured.

A group of gunmen wearing suicide vests walked into the Syrian Catholic Church of Our Lady of Salvation during Sunday Mass. They held more than 50 parishioners hostage for several hours and threatened to kill them if al Qaeda prisoners were not released.

The siege was finally broken on that evening when Iraqi security forces stormed the church. Iraqi spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi claimed that five gunmen were killed during the rescue operation as well as one policeman a parishioner and one of the priests celebrating Mass.

The Christian community in Iraq has suffered persecution since the war. Many thousands have fled abroad. In this case it is still not known why the church was targeted. Some reports suggest that the gunmen had first planned to attack the nearby stock exchange.

Christian clergy and lay people have been kidnapped, murdered, and raped by Muslim terrorists and criminal gangs in Iraq, sparking the exodus of Christians from the country.

[...]

Iraq's Jews, who had lived in the region since the time of Abraham and during their Babylonian Captivity, were expelled in the 1940s and 1950s following the infamous pogrom known as The Farhud. Sparked by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, one of the lead Muslim religious men of the region, Muslims went on a killing spree in Baghdad and elsewhere during the Second World War having allied themselves with the genocidal Nazi war machine in the Mideast's version of the Holocaust.
Atlas Shrugs

In Iraq, Dictatorship was more Merciful

BAGHDAD — Ikbal Ali, a bureaucrat in a beaded head scarf, accompanied by a phalanx of police officers, quickly found what she was out looking for in the summer swelter: electricity thieves. Six black cables stretched from a power pole to a row of auto-repair shops, siphoning what few hours of power Iraq’s straining system provides.
What Is Left Behind

Electricity in Demand

The first of three articles examining America’s legacy in Iraq. The subsequent articles will examine the price paid by both Iraqis and Americans, in lost and altered lives.
Multimedia
Slide Show
Electricity Shortage
Graphic
Energy Gap
At War

Notes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era. Go to the Blog »
Related

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News Analysis: American and Iraqi Versions Differ in Latest Chapters of War’s Story (August 2, 2010)

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“Take them all down,” Ms. Ali ordered, sending a worker up in a crane’s bucket to disentangle the connections. A shop owner, Haitham Farhan, responded mockingly, using the words now uttered across Iraq as a curse, “Maku kahraba” — “There is no electricity.”

From the beginning of the war more than seven years ago, the state of electricity has been one of the most closely watched benchmarks of Iraq’s progress, and of the American effort to transform a dictatorship into a democracy.

And yet, as the American combat mission — Operation Iraqi Freedom, in the Pentagon’s argot — officially ends this month, Iraq’s government still struggles to provide one of the most basic services.

Ms. Ali’s campaign against electricity theft — a belated bandage on a broken body — makes starkly clear the mixed legacy that America leaves behind as Iraq begins to truly govern itself, for better and worse.

Iraq now has elections, a functioning, if imperfect, army and an oil industry on the cusp of a potential boom. Yet Baghdad, the capital, had five hours of electricity a day in July.

The chronic power shortages are the result of myriad factors, including war, drought and corruption, but ultimately they reflect a dysfunctional government that remains deadlocked and unresponsive to popular will. That has generated disillusionment and dissent, including protests this summer that, while violent in two cases, were a different measure of Iraq’s new freedoms.

“Democracy didn’t bring us anything,” Mr. Farhan said in his newly darkened shop. Then he corrected himself. “Democracy brought us a can of Coke and a beer.”

The overall legacy of the American invasion today, like that of the war itself, remains a matter of dispute, colored by ideology, politics and faith in democracy’s ultimate ability to take root in the heart of the Arab world.

Even Iraqis suspicious of American motives hoped that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would bring modern, competent governance. Still, the streets are littered with trash, drinking water is polluted, hospitals are bleak and often unsafe, and buildings bombed by the Americans in 2003 or by insurgents since remain ruined shells.

What is clear is that Iraqis’ expectations of a reliable supply of electricity and other services, like their expectations of democracy itself, have exceeded what either Americans or the country’s quarrelling politicians have so far been able to meet.

“Iraqi politicians are killing our optimism,” Hassan Shihab said, complaining about blackouts after Friday Prayer at a mosque in Baquba, northwest of Baghdad. Dictatorship, he added, “was more merciful.”

Iraq’s electricity problem is, of course, older than its still-uncertain embrace of a new form of government. Before Mr. Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait 20 years ago this month, Iraq had the capacity to produce 9,295 megawatts of power. By 2003, after American bombings and years of international sanctions, it was half that.

The shortages since have hobbled economic development and disrupted almost every aspect of daily life. They have transformed cities. Rumbling generators outside homes and other buildings — previously nonexistent — and thickets of wires as dense as a jungle canopy have become as much a part of Iraq’s cityscapes as blast walls and checkpoints.

Most of the generators are privately operated, and the cost — roughly $7 per ampere — has for ordinary Iraqis become too exorbitant to power anything more than a light and a television.

“I’ve never seen good electricity from the day I was born,” said Abbas Riyadh, 22, a barber in Sadr City, the impoverished Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad. As he spoke, as if on cue, the lights went out.

Billions of Dollars Later

The United States has spent $5 billion on electrical projects alone, nearly 10 percent of the $53 billion it has devoted to rebuilding Iraq, second only to what it has spent on rebuilding Iraq’s security forces. It has had some effect, but there have also been inefficiency and corruption, as there have been in projects to rebuild schools, water and sewerage systems, roads and ports.

The special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., said that one quarter of 54 reconstruction projects his office had investigated — including those providing electricity and other basic services — had not been completed or carried on by the Iraqis they were built for.

The United States is now winding such projects down, leaving some unfinished and others, already in disrepair, in the hands of national and provincial governments that so far seem unwilling or unable to maintain and operate them adequately.

“We brought the framework of electoral democracy,” Mr. Bowen said, “but its future efficacy is very much in doubt.”

Iraq does generate more electricity than it did in 2003, but nowhere near enough to match rising demand, driven higher by the proliferation of consumer goods, especially air-conditioners. Democracy, the easing of the country’s isolation and improving security have, paradoxically, created new conditions and demands that the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has been unable to address.
NYTimes

Jihadist Congressman and US Ambassador Plead Guilty

More proof of the stealth jihadists who have infiltrated Congress and senior levels of the departments of Defense and Justice and the Pentagon .............

acting as foreign agent related to his work for an Islamic charity with ties to international terrorism, ..........

......falsely denying that he was hired to advocate for IARA, and by falsely claiming that the payments from IARA were charitable donations intended to assist him in writing a book about bridging the gap between Islam and Christianity.

There's that "interfaith" taqiya that Imam Rauf is always beating us about the head with ......

Obama, keep using our taxpayer dollars to promote, advance and fund sharia (Islamic) finance.

Former Congressman Pleads Guilty to Obstructing Justice, Acting as Unregistered Foreign Agent IARA Fundraiser Also Pleads Guilty to Conspiring with Former Congressman, Others FBI hat tip Davida

KANSAS CITY, MO—A former congressman and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations pleaded guilty in federal court today to obstruction of justice and to acting as an unregistered foreign agent related to his work for an Islamic charity with ties to international terrorism, announced Beth Phillips, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

Mark Deli Siljander, 59, of Great Falls, Va., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Nanette K. Laughrey to one charge contained in an Oct. 21, 2008, federal indictment, and an additional charge filed today, involving his work for the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA) of Columbia, Mo. Siljander was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan and was a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations General Assembly.

Co-defendant Abdel Azim El-Siddig, of Chicago, Ill., a former IARA fundraiser, also pleaded guilty today to conspiring with Siljander and others to hire Siljander to lobby for IARA’s removal from a Senate Finance Committee list of charities suspected of having terrorist ties, while concealing this advocacy and not registering with the proper authorities.

“A former congressman engaged in illegal lobbying for a charity suspected of funding international terrorism. He then used his own charities to hide the payments for his criminal activities,” U.S. Attorney Phillips said. “Siljander repeatedly lied to FBI agents and prosecutors investigating serious crimes related to national security. With today’s guilty pleas, all of the defendants in this case have admitted their guilt and will be held accountable for their actions.”

Siljander operated a Washington, D.C., consulting business called Global Strategies, Inc. IARA was an Islamic charity in Columbia, Mo., that served as the U.S. office of an international organization headquartered in Khartoum, Sudan. IARA was closed in October 2004, after being identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as a specially designated global terrorist organization, for the support its international offices provided to Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the Taliban. The executive director of IARA, co-defendant Mubarak Hamed, 53, of Columbia, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Sudan, has pleaded guilty in connection with this case.

According to today’s plea agreements, between March and May 2004, Hamed and El-Siddig hired Siljander to lobby for IARA’s removal from a U.S. Senate Finance Committee list of charities suspected of funding international terrorism, and its reinstatement as an approved government contractor. IARA lost its status as an approved government contractor in 1999, when the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) terminated grants for two relief projects in Mali, Africa. USAID informed the organization that the grants were not in the national security interest of the United States.

Siljander, El-Siddig, and Hamed each knew that IARA was part of a large international organization controlled by its headquarters in Khartoum, Sudan, and agreed with each other to conceal Siljander’s efforts on IARA’s behalf. In order to do so, Siljander instructed El-Siddig and Hamed to transfer $75,000 of IARA’s funds to him by funnelling them through non-profit entities. El-Siddig carried at least three checks issued to Siljander’s charities from Chicago to Washington, D.C., and gave them to Siljander.

In exchange for the payments, during the Summer of 2004, Siljander acted as an agent for IARA by contacting persons at the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, USAID, the Department of Justice and the Department of the Army, in an effort to have IARA removed from the USAID list of debarred entities, and to remove IARA from the Senate Finance Committee’s list of charities suspected of funding terrorism. Federal law requires anyone who serves as an agent of a foreign entity, including an organization, to register with the U.S. Attorney General.

In pleading guilty, Siljander admitted that in two separate interviews he repeatedly lied to FBI agents and prosecutors acting on behalf of a federal grand jury. Siljander obstructed justice by falsely denying that he was hired to advocate for IARA, and by falsely claiming that the payments from IARA were charitable donations intended to assist him in writing a book about bridging the gap between Islam and Christianity.

Under federal statutes, Siljander is subject to a sentence of up to 15 years in federal prison without parole, plus a fine of up to $500,000. El-Siddig is subject to a sentence of up to five years in federal prison without parole, plus a fine of up to $250,000. Sentencing hearings will be scheduled after the completion of presentence investigations by the U.S. Probation Office.

Siljander and El-Siddig were the final defendants facing trial next week in Kansas City, Mo.

Hamed pleaded guilty on June 25, 2010, to conspiring to illegally transfer more than $1 million to Iraq in violation of federal sanctions, and to obstructing the administration of the laws governing tax-exempt charities. Hamed used IARA to solicit charitable contributions throughout the United States, taking in between $1 million and $3 million in contributions annually from 1991 to 2003, and then illegally transferred funds to Iraq, with the assistance of a Jordanian identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as a specially designated global terrorist. Hamed also impaired and impeded the administration of the Internal Revenue laws by misusing IARA’s tax-exempt status, providing false information to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and lying to federal agents.

Co-defendant Ali Mohamed Bagegni, 56, a native of Libya who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and former resident of Columbia, pleaded guilty on April 6, 2010, to his role in the conspiracy. Bagegni was a member of the board of directors of IARA.

Co-defendant Ahmad Mustafa, 57, of Columbia, a citizen of Iraq and a lawful permanent resident alien, pleaded guilty on Dec. 17, 2009, to illegally transferring funds to Iraq in violation of federal sanctions. Mustafa worked as a fund-raiser for IARA and traveled throughout the United States soliciting charitable contributions. Further, in 1999, 2000, and 2001, at Hamed’s behest, Mustafa traveled to Iraq on IARA business. In 2001, he visited Iraq for several weeks and met with numerous officials to discuss the process of opening an IARA office in Iraq. Among the officials with whom Mustafa met was Hushyar Zibari, who was at the time a leader in the Patriotic Democratic Party of Kurdistan and is currently the foreign minister of Iraq. Mustafa also looked to find a building suitable for an IARA office in the Kurdish provinces of Iraq.

Blackwater is for Sale

Are you in the market for a large, private army? Blackwater is for sale after the classic public relations quick fix—a name change—failed to wipe clean the public's perception of the scandal-plagued private contractor. Blackwater brought in new management last year to overhaul its image, but that effort largely failed, especially in the eyes of its No. 1 customer, the federal government. Founder Erik Prince said he's selling the company (renamed Xe) because he's tired of the criticism, lamenting that, "Performance doesn't matter in Washington, just politics." Five former Blackwater executives were indicted in April, and the Justice Department is investigating whether the contractor bribed Iraqi officials after a disastrous Baghdad shoot-out in 2007 that left 17 civilians dead.

Read it at The New York Times

Iran's Sex Slave Markets Move to Iraq

http://farsiposts.blogspot.com/2010/04/blog-post.html

Although the FIRST video narration is in Persian, the visuals of this palatial restaurant is worth the look.

It cost millions and several years to build and the likelihood of ownership by one of the top Mullahs, who have invested so heavily in property and luxury hotels on the other side of the Persian that they are the main land owners. Perhaps in partnerships with the ruling Sheikhs.

While on this subject, the human slave/sex trade auctions that used to take place nightly in the Mullah owned Dubai luxury hotel basements seem to have moved to Iraq into brothels!

Orphans, abandoned women forced into the streets without any means of earning a living or girls sent by their indigent families into the care of deceiving Mullah clerics promising to care for them, who used to be kidnapped and sold in the Dubai hotels are now being simply shipped to Iraq into bordellos or for enslaved prostitution by the Iranian Mullahs in partnership with Shia Iraqis (mostly under Moqtada al-Sadr's initial control) and shipped throughout the country. Including Sunni Kurdish areas, where Turkey has a strong presence.

The level of misleading superstition of Iran's totaly totally uneducated Shia mullahs (except in reciting the Koran and preaching death to everyone but themselves) has recently appeared with a formal edict by one of the SENIOR Mullahs in Iran saying that earthquakes are caused "women failing to wear their hejabs/scarves to cover their hair appropriately". Seriously, not a joke.

This was too much even for the most hardline Ayatollah Janati, who mocked the religious edict as an emotional reaction!

Meanwhile, President AhmadiNutjob is floating his idea of moving FIVE MILLION people (out of Tehran's 12 or so million population) out of the city BECAUSE of earthquake danger.

Which five million would he select? Is he worried about saving his pals from an earthquake or an attack by Israel and/or the West on nuclear facilities built under population centers, many under government office buildings?

And here comes a clue. To prevent a sudden elimination of governance should a major attack take place on Tehran, he has already moved one government ministry (US Department equivalence) some 40 miles west to Karadj and built a small town with residential sections for employees.

The five million would firstly, probably be a removal of central government to distant suburbs. While Karadj is a separate city, population expansion has almost joiuned it to Tehran.

Then, speculating (intel take note), moving the population located above underground nuclear sites. (Sorry if I have just condemned them to now reconceal this possible original motivation).

In closing, Oba-Hussein's almost frantic efforts to please his Moslem backers all over the world with PRO-ISLAM edicts and actions and official high level administration appointments including - or specially - in Homeland Security policy levels, are inviting the Islamic fanatical aspects into our daily lives. Based on equally superstitious, violent - not peaceful - aspects of Mohammadanism.

Imagine havng to follow Sharia edicts like in Somalia, where musin has been banned from the airwaves and as of a few days ago, rfadioj stations are forbidden to have ANY music - nor can music be played anywhere in the country without the risk of death. As is the case with en tertainment movies

Note: music CD's have been banned in Islamic Iran for decades but the freedom seeking populace has resisted the laws.

Meanwhile in Moslem Pakistan, a Pakistani Christian couple has been condemned to 25-years in prison for touching a Koran with unwashed hands!!! And have been sent to prison and have started serving their sentences.

This is what Oba-Hussein is promoting and encouraging in the USA with his import of tens of thousands of Palestians with your tax money and unlinking, ever more unrealisticaly and defiantly, Islam and terrorism - despite every piece of evidence to the contrary .

AND in a "reverse profiling" policy where it is forbidden to accuse Islam of ANYTHING - ignoring live video evidence - or any evidence that does not suit Islam's promoters.

Fine examples of Islamic Sharia law infiltrating our society and justice system under Oba-Hussein, the usurper of the White House and in my opinion increasingly clearly a Moslem himself with Marxist-Islamist mindsets, which are being intentionally used (not just moronic ignorance) to destroy America.

You may not be there yet but will be when the effect of the loony-tunes Bills and policies being passed without being read or really knowing what is in them come into force and ouch! They will hurt. Perhaps fatally to your well being and ability to survive in his vefsion of Communist America. Nor were you in Iran and totally in the loop around the time of the Khomeini/Soviet take over of power to see what is happening to us here today, with Marxist-Islamist Oba-Hussein-Khomeini is a replay of Ayatollah Khomeini's tactics and strategy.

You are all watching Oba-Hussein's powergrab of civilian and soon enough military America (with his million person Civilian Security Force reporting DIRECTLY to him) but apparently unable to recognize what you are seeing - for the first time ever in your lifetime of in the USA ever.

Talk about sedition! It's not Glenn Beck who deserves that accusation.

Perhaps as a larger segment of America wakes up and takes an interest in their own future, evaluates and analyzes just what is being done to them and the consequences, cases like Blagoyevich's will be allowed to go forward and elicit sworn testimoney nobody has been permitted to even approach.

Let's also see what convicted felon Reznik has testified to the FBI on Obama matters. And will it count as he is a convicted felon and can be ruled to be unreliable legally.

By the way: did anyone see an Illinois Congressman today ask for the National guard to be called up in Chicago to help police fight crime in a city suburb?

This is the breeding ground for the whole senior Oba-Hussein administration and their mayor Daley thuggery is part and parcel of their mindsets and tactics. With additional radical, weird philosophies added-on.

As an ironic commentary, Voice of America (VOA), despite being labeled Mullah Voice by Iranians, has been jammed by the regime inside Islamic Iran, so not even pro-Mullah messages are getting through and Hotbird satellite, used by Persian radio and TV broadcasts, initially lost picture capability and as of late April 23rd night audio also disappeared.

Wake Up America and listen to Rick's suggestion:
Anti-Mullah

Arab League Forces in Iraq?

Arab League Forces in Iraq
I am having serious problems understanding the rationale behind the recent suggestion by the Arab League to have Arab forces enter Iraq to provide security. Even more confusing is Iraq’s participation in yesterday’s meeting and apparent lack of response. Maybe no one in the Arab League has been watching the news for the past 7 years. Maybe they do this purposely to insult Iraq and spit in our faces or maybe they are suffering from a severe and dangerous form of schizophrenia. What ever it is they need to start addressing their issues and get help. The summit is being held in Libya, whose leader just recently welcomed members of the Ba'ath Party which is still dreaming of returning to Baghdad and still working tirelessly to destabilise the country.

Iraq does not need Arab Forces to provide security; we just need Arab terrorists to stop blowing themselves up and to stop slaughtering our people. Instead of sending us soldiers why can’t they just stop exporting death? That will work out just fine for us and they can save a lot of money that can be redirected to benefit their own citizens. Instead of spending money on logistically complicated military operations or money to train and arm terrorists they can put that money in a bank and enjoy the wonderful benefits of interest.

What next? Qassem Suleimani offering the Revolutionary Guards to conduct patrols in Baghdad to secure the city? Raghad Hussein offering the services of the Fedayeen and 'muqawama' to secure volatile regions in Iraq?
Solurce: Eye Raki, blogspot

Prison Rape is an Intolerable Offense

Prison Rape is an Intolerable Offense
The News Tribune

Rape and sexual abuse remain too much a fact of life behind bars.
That’s intolerable. In the United States, our criminal justice system sends convicts to prison as punishment, not for punishment.
The recommendations of the federal Prison Rape Elimination Commission could be a step toward changing the prison culture that permits sexual abuse to continue.
The commission found that more than 60,000 prisoners are the victims of rape and sexual abuse each year. Many inmates are afraid to report such crimes and even those who do are often ignored or dismissed.
Not only hardcore criminals are being victimized. The commission heard from former inmates who made relatively minor mistakes – a political protest gone wrong, a drunken driving arrest or a probation violation – and ended up being brutally raped.
No matter what they did to land in jail, captives are a vulnerable population. They depend on prison authorities to protect them, and it’s in the best interests of those officials to do so.
Prisoners will seek protection where they can find it. When the only safe harbor is a gang, the repercussions affect not only prison safety but also public safety when prisoners carry their gangster ways to the streets after their release.
The commission is recommending that Attorney General Eric Holder issue standards that require prisons to have zero-tolerance policies on rape, better staff training and improved screening to identify prisoners vulnerable to abuse, among other measures. States could lose federal prison money if they fail to comply.
The cost to staff and equip jails and prisons accordingly will be high. But so too is the cost of the status quo.
Washington officials just agreed to pay $1 million to settle part of a class action lawsuit by current and former female inmates who claimed they were sexually assaulted by corrections officers at the state’s Purdy prison. Still pending is a dispute over what the state will do to prevent other inmates from being abused and to keep abuse allegations from languishing in files.
The rape commission’s report is significant not just for its recommendations but also for its attempts to quantify the problem. As much as sexual abuse has been assumed an inevitable consequence of confinement, its actual scope hasn’t been well documented.
In 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a prison system’s failure to prevent sexual abuse of inmates can be a violation of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The caveat was that corrections officials must have known or should have known about the abuse.
Credible deniability, if there ever was such a thing, is in short supply today.


On September 10, 2004, Vili and Mary announced that they have been together constantly since her release. They plan to marry and Mary is willing to have more children for him. After her release from prison Vili petitioned the courts to lift the court imposed restraining order so they could see each other. The judge lifted the order barring contact between Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau..

A suburban Seattle school district elementary school teacher, Mary Kay Letourneau, was 34, and the married mother of four children in 1996, when she and Vili Fualaau, her sixth grade student entered into a sexual relationship. She was arrested in 1997 when she was pregnant with their child and sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to have no contact with Vili. A month later she was caught her car with him and she was pregnant with their second child. She served seven and a half years in prison for having sex with a minor. She was released from prison on August 4, 2004. Mary will be staying with a former coworker in a home close to where her girls live with their father's family. It is rumored that Mary and Vili plan to write another book together. Their first book was published and popular in France.

Mary wrote a book about her affair with Vili. Mary's former cellmate, Christina Dress, a close friend and co-author of her book said when Mary arrived at Purdy women's prison in 1998, she was harassed by inmates and guards.
"Inmates were preparing and sending her food with chemicals in it, spit in it, things like that. Tama Lisa and I put a stop to that...already been at prison, we knew how to handle it." Christina Dress - King 5 TV News

Wickedness Is a Big Expense

Wickedness Carries a Big Price Tag
The Americans would kill everybody in Asia so long as we didn't pay for it. Borrowing from the Chinese and printing 'Monopoly' currency we thought was painless.
Sadly, the wars have had trickle down effects such as moral and financial bankruptcy. This decay shows the results of preemptive land wars in Asia. Not many Americans are willing to surrender their homes and jobs to continue a bogus war on terror.
So, we haven't learned anything except that wickedness has a big price tag.

Pravda Tells the Truth for a Change

Pravda Tells Truth Bush and Rice Lie

The sheer hypocrisy of Bush and Rice

Pravda
Friday, Aug 15, 2008

Were it not for the unadulterated arrogance of George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice, their sheer hypocrisy would be laughable, yet due to their brazen instrusiveness and insolence, their very presence rankles, their words grate in the ears. Their messages cannot go unanswered.

Here we have a George W. Bush and a Conzoleeza Rice, with expressions of total preoccupation on their faces (are they worried about the implication of US military advisors in the act of butchery perpetrated by Georgian forces against ethnic Russians and Ossetians, when in one night 2.000 civilians were slaughtered?), speaking about the need to adhere to international law at the beginning of the 21st century.

Here we have a President and his Secretary of State condemning Russia and supporting Georgia without one single word of mention of the Georgian war crimes which started this whole sorry affair. Not one single word of mention about the obligation Georgia had to hold a referendum in Abkhazia and South Ossetia under the terms of the Soviet Constitution, namely as regards its provisions for the voluntary dissolution of the Union or secession of Member States.

Here we have two senior members of a regime which entered Iraq based upon a tissue of lies, which then declared that the goal was regime change and which proceeded to mastermind a kangaroo court which changed the judges numerous times until who they purport as being His Excellency President Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti was hanged by the neck. Then they complain about Russia wanting to remove that criminal murderer, Saakashvili?

They have the audacity to complain about Russia violating Georgia’s frontiers, when the US armed forces invaded Iraq and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians? They have the cheek to complain about Russian military operations when cluster bombs were dropped into civilian areas in Iraq, when prisoners were tortured in Abu Ghraib, when innocent people were rounded up and sent to the illegal concentration camp at Guantanamo, where they did not even have access to a due legal process?

They have the sheer, pig-headed arrogance to speak about the territorial integrity of Georgia, when Iraq was invaded outside any norm of international law, its civilian structures were targeted with military hardware and reconstruction contracts were doled out without tender to White House cronies?

Suppose Russia claimed that it wanted regime change in Georgia, invaded the country, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of its citizens, deployed WMD in civilian areas, raped and tortured prisoners, caught Saakashvili and hanged him? Morally, Bush, Rice and their entire odious and satanic regime would not be able to say a single word without the label “hypocrisy” choking them in their throats.

America Resumes Cold War

America's foolish misadventures in Asia have invited the Russians to restore the USSR. The Georgians started it. The Ambassador is lying.

If the massive US Navy force makes a preemptive strike against Iran, we'll see if Putin is bluffing with his assertion to defend that country.

If China has any common sense, she will collect the $4.6 trillions owed her before the US becomes a radioactive cinder.

Forget the Surge

Obama Realism in Iraq
HuffPost
In response, Scowcroft [McCain advisor] said: "I wouldn't use that as a benchmark. ... Iran would be crazy if it weren't trying to influence the situation in Iraq. That's one of the things eventually we need to talk about. ... I don't think we can stay long enough so that there's no Iranian influence. Because of their religion, for one thing. The Shia holy sites are in Iraq. Many of the Iraqi clergy spent decades in Iran during the Saddam period. So it's more complicated than that."
Given a previous instance of rhetorical overlap between Scowcroft and Obama, it's worth noting that the Illinois Democrat advanced a similarly "realist" analysis regarding Iran's influence in Iraq earlier this year, when he said: "We are not going to kill every Al Qaeda sympathizer, eliminate every trace of Iranian influence, or stand up a flawless democracy before we leave."

Controlling the Oil Supply

Years ago the auto companies bought streetcar outfits and
tore up the tracks.In a similar fashion the oil firms have secured alternative
energy patents and have accumulated great numbers of oil leases.They are not
increasing refinery capacity or oil exploration.

The President has suggested offshore leasing and opening the
Alaskan Wildlife reserves. He doesn't mention that fruition of these projects
is eight to ten years away. Also, he fails to say the oil companies do not
intend to start drilling in these areas.

The oil company's tactic is to administer gas prices by
having a lock on the supply side. There is no legal way to accomplish this.
They need the complicity of corrupt officials and mis-informed consumers.

The US Iraq war effort aimed to extort 71% of existing oil
well revenues. The oil companies wanted a 49% hunk of new oil finds.

After Iraq
resisted this effort for several years, the President threw a candy to the
companies: leases offshore and in Alaska.

Through NAFTA the US has first option to buy Canadian
tar oil extractions.

For years now most OPEC nations have nationalized oil
production. Thanks to this the Norwegians have the highest per capita income.

The Arrogance of Losers

The Arrogance of Losers

How many times do we bankrupt ourselves for a WWII defense only to lose to Third World nations? Our military has floundered in three Asian land wars without a clear vision of the mission.

Our leaders are hard put to find the enemy on a road map. They showered Vietnam with Agent Orange that returned home with our troops. We gave toxic agents to Saddam only to have the prevailing winds blow them back to our bases. We handed out 500,000 small arms to Iraqis without any record.

We put Osama on the map as an Afghan resistance leader fighting the Russians.

To finance our wars, we borrowed from the Chinese. Now, they can buy a number of US States, proclaim them as colonies to employ slave labor and sell trinkets to the white people.

In the coming election the Republicans could lose every office up for grabs.

Street corner bums could do better.

US/Iraq Long Term Security Deal Collapses

US Iraq Long Term Security Deal Collapses
HuffPost
The Washington Post reports that the U.S. and Iraq have abandoned attempts to forge a long-term security agreement. The focus is now on a "bridge document" that would provide for basic military operations after the UN mandate expires at the end of this year, and it would fall to the next administration to deal with any extended security agreement:
U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.
In place of the formal status-of-forces agreement negotiators had hoped to complete by July 31, the two governments are now working on a "bridge" document, more limited in both time and scope, that would allow basic U.S. military operations to continue beyond the expiration of a U.N. mandate at the end of the year.
The failure of months of negotiations over the more detailed accord -- blamed on both the Iraqi refusal to accept U.S. terms and the complexity of the task -- deals a blow to the Bush administration's plans to leave in place a formal military architecture in Iraq that could last for years.
Although President Bush has repeatedly rejected calls for a troop withdrawal timeline, "we are talking about dates," acknowledged one U.S. official close to the negotiations. Iraqi political leaders "are all telling us the same thing. They need something like this in there. . . . Iraqis want to know that foreign troops are not going to be here forever."
The increasing need for more troops in Afghanistan to combat a resurgent Taliban may force the Bush Administration to accelerate the rate of troop withdrawal from Iraq:
The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.

Such a withdrawal would be a striking reversal from the nadir of the war in 2006 and 2007.
One factor in the consideration is the pressing need for additional American troops in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and other fighters have intensified their insurgency and inflicted a growing number of casualties on Afghans and American-led forces there.
More American and allied troops died in Afghanistan than in Iraq in May and June, a trend that has continued this month...
...The desire to move more quickly reflects the view of many in the Pentagon who want to ease the strain on the military but also to free more troops for Afghanistan and potentially other missions.

Bush in Iraq

Bush in Iraq

The Bush regime has had little success in Iraq, because they understood nothing about that country. The Bush supporters replaced reality with US wishful thinking. Remember, the Iraqis were supposed to greet our troops as liberators. They realized we had no plan to manage the post-war period. They soured on us after they saw the Bush regime ruin the place as they had ruined America. [Crumbling infrastructure, misuse of water resources, criminals running the government torturing many of those who disagree with them] Maliki has forbidden our human rights inspectors from reviewing his actions. He and his pals in government remain ‘loyal’ to us only through bribery.

The Muqtaba al Sadr faction is the only one that provides a modicum of social services and thus commands the respect of the people. They know the only reason the Americans stayed so long was to seize oil resources.

A few people accuse me of being left wing. I support peaceful negotiations, as a step to prevent war. I oppose torture, racism and murder.

I see little difference on these issues between Republicans and Democrats beyond the usual rhetoric. Both parties back torture, war and murder. Members of both parties have done little to promote our traditional values and have crippled our economy.

A few years ago the FBI gave Mr Bush 432,000 pages of evidence which would put most of our so-called leaders into prison. Mr Bush has blackmailed most of the leadership to follow his dictates. Since his nomination, Mr McCain also has this evidence.

Iraqis Protest Proposed Security Pact

Thousands Protest Proposed US-Iraq Security Agreement

Robert H Reid, HuffPost

BAGHDAD — Tens of thousands rallied in several cities Friday against a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security agreement, raising doubts that negotiators can meet a July target to finalize a pact to keep U.S. troops in Iraq after the current U.N. mandate expires.

Although U.S. officials insist they are not seeking permanent bases, suspicion runs deep among many Iraqis that the Americans want to keep at least some troops in the country for many years.

"We denounce the government's intentions to sign a long-term agreement with the occupying forces," Asaad al-Nassiri, a sheik loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said during a sermon in Kufa. "Our army will be under their control in this agreement, and this will lead to them having permanent bases in Iraq."

Bush Making His Mess Wherever He Goes

TERRY J. ALLEN
By The Sewers of Babylon inthesetimes.com — The United States is a signatory to treaties which obligate our government — as Iraq's occupation force — "to ensure sufficient hygiene and public health standards, as well as the provision of food and medical care to the population under occupation." But occupation, and the civil war it sparked, have flushed Iraq's fragile but functioning public health sector down the toilet.