THIS JUST IN! IT WAS ATTRACTION!

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

CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O IS IN THE MIDST OF AN INTERNATIONAL FLAP AGAIN.  NOT SINCE HE INSULTED THE POLES DUE TO THE FACT THAT HE'S AN IDIOT WHO DOESN'T KNOW WWII HISTORY,  HAS BARRY O SO ENRAGED ANOTHER NATION.


BARRY O WAS PHOTOGRAPHED ON THE PHONE WITH THE TURKISH GOVERNMENT WHILE HE HELD A BAT.  HE WAS SPEAKING TO PRIME MINISTER RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN ABOUT EVENTS IN SYRIA.

AND NOW THE TURKS ARE OUTRAGED BY THE INSULT THE PHOTO CONVEYS.


ATTEMPTING TO BACK PEDDLE AND SPIN, WHITE HOUSE PLUS-SIZE SPOKESMODEL JAY CARNEY TOLD THESE REPORTERS THAT THE BAT'S USAGE WASN'T "AGGRESSIVE IN THE LEAST.  NO.  SEE, BARRY O WAS TRYING TO SHOW RESPECT FOR ERDOGAN AND HE WAS IMAGINING THE BAT WAS ERDOGAN'S PENIS.  LATER, IF YOU LOOKED AT ALL THE PHOTOS, YOU WOULD SEE THAT HE ATTEMPTS TO SWALLOW THE BASEBALL BAT.  JUST LIKE MADONNA WITH THE BOTTLE IN TRUTH OR DARE!"




FROM THE TCI WIRE:

In Iraq, Political Stalemate II continues.  Richard Weitz (World Politics Review) offers a strong overview:

 

 

A power-sharing agreement brokered in November 2010 at Erbil among Iraq's key political actors was meant to establish a balanced coalition government, in which key executive branch posts were to be distributed among the main parties in rough proportion to their electoral strength. A newly created National Council for Strategic Policy was also meant to broaden representation in policymaking beyond the cabinet. The resulting checks and balances, it was thought, would prevent the government from adopting extreme positions by requiring compromise policies acceptable to all the major stakeholders. 
Since then, however, Maliki's critics claim he has ignored the Erbil agreement, instead accruing excessive power, bypassing the Iraqi constitution and bringing under his personal control the country's other political institutions, including the judiciary, federal agencies and the nominally independent election and integrity commissions and central bank.
He has also placed many key national security posts in the hands of his supporters, appointing many senior police, military and intelligence officers without parliament's approval, while seeming to exercise undue influence on their activities. The judgments of the supposedly neutral Constitutional Court also consistently favor the government.
Furthermore, Maliki and his allies have blocked the creation of the aforementioned strategic council in parliament and refused to hold referenda in governorates whose provincial councils were seeking to become federal regions to increase their autonomy from Baghdad.

 

Again, it's a very strong overview.  (My own personal favorite observation?  "Finally, to reassure his critics, he has sometimes stated that he may not run for a third term in national elections scheduled for 2014.")  The thing about Nouri is that once he unleashes the crazy, he can't reel it back in, he can't bottle it up.  Which explains the latest development in the Baghdad-based government's attempt to be a 'good neighbor.'  Barry Malone (Reuters) reports, "Iraq made a formal protest to Turkey's envoy in Baghdad on Firday after the Turkish foreign minister made a surprise visit to an oil-rich Iraqi city claimed by both the central government and the country's autonomous Kurdistan region."

 

Huh?  Who knew Iraq had it's own Area 51, off-limits to all.  But, wait, it's Kirkuk. A city in the province of Kirkuk, where an estimated 388,000 people live.  And it's not a gated community.  People travel in and out of Kirkuk freely.  But let a Turkish official touring northern Iraq visit the city and Nouri's uncapping the crazy. 

 

 

The backstory: Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu arrived in Erbil on Wednesday and continued his visit on Thursday by visiting various parts of the KRG and, most 'controversially' for Baghdad, Kirkuk.  Kirkuk is a disputed region with both the KRG and Baghdad claiming it.  (How to solve the issue?  Article 140 of the Constitution explains it.  But that census and referendum was supposed to be instituted by the end of 2007, per the Constitution, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to do so and continues to refuse to do so.) 

 

And since it's been months since Nouri created the May 24th international incident -- where 4 Russian bikers were arrested and tortured by Nouri's forces -- he was apparently fearful that someone might mistake him for rational or even competent.  Nouri need not worry.  Kitabat noted this morning that Nouri's Baghdad government continues to complain and carp about the visit.  Marwan Ibrahim (Middle East Online) reports:

Davutolgu visited leaders of Kirkuk's Turkmen community, with which Ankara has long had close ties, as well as religious and historical sites including the city's Ottoman cemetery.

Turkmen Front head Arshad al-Salehi said: "Turkmen should work to enhance relations with Turkey, and Shiites with Iran, and Sunnis with Gulf countries."

The front's deputy leader, Ali Hashem Mukhtar Oglu, said Davutoglu was the highest-ranking Turkish official to visit the city in decades.

Ties between Iraq and Turkey have been marred by a flurry of disputes this year.

In July, Iraq warned Ankara against "any violations" of its territory and airspace, and instructed the foreign ministry to register a complaint at the UN Security Council, after Turkish jets bombed Kurdish rebels in Kurdistan.

A few days earlier, Iraq called on Turkey to stop accepting "illegal" transfers of crude oil from Kurdistan, which an official from the region said had begun earlier in the month.

 

Sapa-AFP note that in the meeting between the Turkish ambassador to Iraq and the Iraqi government, it was conveyed to Iraq that "Turkey has no secret agenda."  Nouri's paranoia being what it is, that reassurance most likely meant very little. 

 

Nouri unleashed the dogs.  Al Mada reports that today the Ministry of Health announced that there have been seven suicides -- all under 16-years-old -- as a result of a Turkish soap opera.   Also today State of Law's Abdul Salam al-Maliki is stomping his feet.  All Iraq News reports that he is demanding that the Arab League condemn the visit by the Turkish Foreign Minister and that the Arab League call the visit a breach of Iraq's sovereignty.  The KRG should actually pay Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law political slate a monthly fee.  These little tantrums by State of Law are like a mini-advertisement: "Come to the Kurdistan where adults are in charge."  You have to wonder if Nouri gets how stupid his slate makes Iraq look?  On the world stage, State of Law is a joke.  al-Monitor notes, "According to Rudaw News Agency, parliamentarian Abdulhadi el Hassan from Maliki's party said: 'Turkey is blatantly interfering in Iraq's internal affairs. The Turkish embassy should be closed down. We have the right to detain Davutoglu'."

 

KUNA reports, "Turkey's foreign ministry Friday summoned Iraqi Ambassador in Ankara to protest against Iraqi criticism over Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu's visit to Kirkuk."   Alsumaria notes that Iraqiya (the political slate that came in first in the March 2010 elections) has called on Nouri's government to lower the rhetoric and stop escalating the situation.  Hurriyet Daily News reports Davutoglu met today with Ayad Allawi (head of Iraqiya).

 

 

Is it any wonder that the KRG is so much more attractive to the international business community?  After all, they don't have to deal with Crazy Nouri in the KRG.  Daniel Graeber (Oil Price) reviews recent deals with the KRG that irk Baghdad:

 

Iraq, more than seven years after the first post-Saddam government was voted in, still lacks effective legislation to govern the oil sector. The central government in Baghdad considers unilateral oil contracts with the Kurdistan Regional Government illegal. U.S. supermajors Chevron [CVX  111.12    1.87  (+1.71%)   ] and Exxon Mobil [XOM  87.55    1.67  (+1.94%)   ] were blacklisted by Baghdad for making deals with Kurdish authorities. In April, the Kurdish government retaliated by blocking oil exports but has since sent some shipments over the border to Turkey. Despite the political infighting, French majors Total and Marathon Oil locked step in the Kurdish north. Total, in a statement, said it was looking for "new opportunities" in Iraq. (More: Investing Lessons in One of the World's Most Volatile Sectors)

That move brought additional fire from Baghdad. A spokesman for the energy ministry said the central government would "punish" companies that made deals without Baghdad's consent, warning Total it could face "severe consequences" for its actions.

 

 

Maybe it was the Kurds announcing a few days ago that they had no problem with the US making efforts to assist Iraq with its ongoing political crisis but Nouri's government lately has made clear that they're not pleased with either the US or the KRG.  Al Mada reports that insiders in Nouri's Cabinet are stating that the rebuffing by the Interior Ministry on police training by the US is only the first step and that they are/will be making it clear that the government has little desire to work with or have a relationship with the US government.  A quote from the article: "Iraq is capable of moving forward without the United States and is no longer needs its assistance in either construction or development."  Apparently, yesterday's phone call with US Vice President Joe Biden did not go as well as Nouri would have liked.

 

 

Violence continues today in Iraq. AFP reports that a Dhuluiyah roadside bombing has claimed the lives of 4 Iraqi soldiers and left four more injured while a Baquba checkpoint was attacked resulting in the deaths of 4 police officers with two more left injured.  In addition to those two incidents today, KUNA reports that late last night there was an attack in al-Rutba in which 2 police officers were killed and two more injured by assailants (three of which were injured in the battle).  Sinan Salaheddin (AP) reports that "three drive-by shootings in Baghdad" today resulted in the deaths of 3 Iraqi soldiers and 2 police officers with five soldiers and six police officers left injured.   Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) observes, "The unrest coincides with an emerging political crisis, with Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political blocs increasingly at odds in the fractious legislature. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is Shiite, has struggled to forge a power-sharing agreement and has yet to fill key Cabinet positions, including the ministers of defense, interior and national security."

 

Violence includes what has been done to the country.  On Shihab Rattansi's Inside Story Americas (Al Jazeera), ex-US Marine Ross Caputi, weapons researcher Dai Williams and Raed Jarrar joined Rattansi for a roundtable on whether the United States caused the vast increase in birth defects in Falluja after the November 2004 assault on that city.

 

Raed Jarrar: The second attack on Falluja happened in 2004 and this was the years where the US actuallly used very heavy military weapons to attack the entire country.  I was in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 and went around the country before the attack on Falluja and after documenting the US use of depleted uranium.  I think Iraqis were not very familiar with the dangers of depleted uranium.  I documented many cases of kids playing inside tanks that were by DU bullets.

 

Shihab Rattansi: Now, of course, the US has denied using DU in the Iraq War -- in the second Iraq War at least.

 

Raed Jarrar: I mean, in many cases, it is very much documented. They denied it in the first war and then after that it was documented.  And in the second war, I think there are so much documentation --

 

Shihab Rattansi: Is the documentation of DU or simply elevated radiation?

 

Raed Jarrar:  Both. So I've found -- I've personally found documented many DU bullets and DU bullet entry points into tanks and [. . .] of course, elevated radiation.  The DU radiation is very limited so it's usually around a foot from where the DU bullet punctured the tank.  And the radiation there was between 2,000 and 10,000 percent

 

Shihab Rattansi:  We'll get back to that discussion in a moment because I think there might be a discussion about what's -- if there is uranium being used, if it is indeed depleted uranium.  And we'll get back to that later on.  But as far as that second assault on Falluja occurred, I mean just remind us what happened.  There was basically an evacuation order given.

Raed Jarrar: So there was another first attack on Falluja that failed [April 2004].  And there was another attempt to go in.  And they gave evacuation orders to many Iraqi civilians, many people, hundreds of thousands, left the city and everyone knew that the entire town would be destroyed.  Now, of course, the promise was at that time that the US will go get rid of all of the bad guys and rebuild the city.  Now, of course, that did not happen.  We saw a total destruction of Falluja and the use of so many unconventional weapons.  But then after that no reconstruction was --

 

Shihab Rattansi: How many people were behind during that assualt?

 

Raed Jarrar: No one knows the exact numbers because it wasn't documented.  But there were at least tens of thousands of left behind.

 

And there was some 'documentation.'  The New York Times' Dexter Filkins won a little prize for his 'documentation.'  I wasn't aware there was a See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil prize for journalism but then again the profession's in shambles these days.  So Dexy's prize winning feature took many, many days to appear in print.  Apparently the US military vetting Dexy's copy didn't feel any pressing deadline.  You know what might be worst than a Go-Go Boy in the Green Zone (whose antics ended there ended his marriage)?  The idiots like Tom Hayden and Terry Gross who fawn over the Look The Other Way When War Crimes Go Down Boy.  Click here to check out the photo of Falluja by Jahi Chikwendiu (Washington Post).  It kicks off a Falluja photo essay.

 

 

 

 

Recommended: "Iraq snapshot" "Nouri continues attack on Turkey and rebuffs DC" "A break in the summer heat?" "Easy Pita Pizza in the Kitchen" "Boycott Hyatt and other labor issues" "The post office" "Song Travels with Michael Feinstein" "7 men, 1 woman" "4 men, 2 women" "mars and total recall" "when 2 whores meet" "Iraq and Cheyenne" "Science and a great NPR show" "Rickie Lee Jones & Tori Amos" "Syria" "Idiots of the Week: Lambykins and Mutten" "And the Fed, like the White House, does nothing" "Midnight in Paris" "All the lies" "Making Dennis the Menace" "Are these real campaigns?" "Idiot of the week or century?" "Andy Stern and other disappointments" "THIS JUST IN! HARRY THE FISH WIFE!" "Harry needs a dish and some meow-meow mix"