Tuesday, April 29, 2014

THIS JUST IN! BARRY O'S TRIP GOES SOUR!

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

FADED CELEBRITY BARRY O GOT ALL CATTY AND BITCHY IN SOUTH KOREA WHEN A 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL ASKED FOR A CELL PHONE PHOTO.

BARRY O REJECTED THE GIRL.

"JUST TAKE A PICTURE OF ME AS I'M WALKING BY," THE DIVA INSISTED TO 13-YEAR-OLD MIKA TAYLOR.

"I DON'T TAKE SELFIES WITH NOBODIES," INSISTED BARRY O TO THESE REPORTERS TODAY.  "I AM A STARLET!  I ONLY TAKE PHOTOS WITH PEOPLE OF EQUAL FAME OR GREATER. I AM POPULAR! I AM BELOVED! DID YOU SEE HOW MANY PEOPLE TURNED OUT TO GREET ME IN THE PHILIPPINES?"

APPROXIMATELY 800 -- AND THEY WERE PROTESTING HIM, BURNING HIM IN EFEGY AND CHANTING, "NO-BAMA, NO BASES, NO WAR!"





FROM THE TCI WIRE:



While Iraqis vote in the parliamentary elections on Wednesday, Iraqi security forces voted today.  The Latin American Herald Tribune reports, "The turnout Monday was 91.46 percent" and quote Independent High Electoral Commission member Maqad al Sharifi declared that was "the highest registered since the commission was created in 2005."  Al-Shorfa quotes IHEC spokesperson Aziz al-Khaikany stating, "More than one million Iraqi soldiers and policemen this morning went to 534 election centres around the country to choose their representatives as part of the early voting for members of the security forces, who will be busy Wednesday securing citizens' voting."


Press TV has a video report here. Al Arabiya News has an AFP photo essay here. Loveday Morris (Washington Post) adds that "prisoners and hospital patients and staff members" also voted today.


Iraqi refugees are also voting outside the country and many voted yesterday. Today, in Iraq, the security forces are voting.   What's at stake? Osama al-Khafaji and Ghassan Hamid (Alsumaria) have noted that there are over 9000 candidates competing for 328 seats.


Alice Fordham continues her streak of worst reporting this month.  Having falsely declared on NPR most recently that Anbar Province wouldn't be voting, Alice latest report is an online number and didn't make the broadcast.  In it, she writes:

 Maliki's critics say he has authoritarian tendencies, using the security forces and the judiciary to sideline his enemies. In addition, his rivals say he has a harsh sectarian streak that favors the Shiite majority over Sunni Muslims and other minorities. But a lot of Iraqis keep voting for him. 

How many, Alice, how many vote for him?  You're working for a US outlet -- for the moment, anyway.  And you damn well know most Americans don't have a clue about a parliamentary system.  Reality, less than one million will vote for Nouri al-Maliki.  Prime Minister isn't a position on the ballot.  Nouri's name only appears on the ballots in his district.


Nouri al-Maliki wants a third term.  Apparently using his second term to tear apart the country and increase violence wasn't enough for him. But all of the third term talk confuses a number of people in the US.  Nouri is running for the Parliament.  That's what these elections are and that's why they're called parliamentary elections. He has campaigned outside of Baghdad for others in his State of Law.  He campaigned, for example, this month is Basra.  And Moqtada al-Sadr's supporters staged a very prominent protest against him while he was in Basra.  But Nouri's name won't appear on ballots in Basra.

Confusion weighs heavily and there's no effort made to explain.  Explaining might require telling truths and it's much more important to lie to the people and to pimp Nouri as a sure thing.

For example, listen to what the International Crisis Group's Maria Fantappie tells John Beck (The Vice):

“The security situation there will not allow many to reach the polling stations,” she said, “and those who do will be risking their lives.”
A lack of international observers might mean that those do attempt to participate won’t be voting in a free and fair environment. Fantappie believes this underscores a wider issue: a growing lack of trust in the electoral process, especially in Sunni-populated areas.
“The big difference between this election and the elections in 2010 is that since then, a large portion of the Iraqi population, especially in Sunni populated areas, don’t trust the political process and don’t see the elections as something which can really reshape the power balance in the central government institutions,” she said.

Huh.  Do people read that and think that's an explanation?  Or complete in any form?

She ends stating, "The big difference between this election and the elections in 2010 is that since then, a large portion of the Iraqi population, especially in Sunni populated areas, don’t trust the political process and don’t see the elections as something which can really reshape the power balance in the central government institutions."

That's a conclusion?

Hell no.

Why does "a large portion of the Iraqi population" not "trust the political process" and not "see the elections as something which can really reshape the power balance in the central government institutions"?

Those comments beg an answer and none is provided.

What happened was a country new to democracy turned out in March 2010 to vote and they voted for Iraqiya in enough numbers to allow this new coalition headed by Ayad Allawi to beat the incumbent prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law.

If you'd risked your life to vote in 2010, chances are you weren't thrilled to see your vote rejected.

We're going to review but first let's review how they lie because the press lies so damn much.

Here's Mohamad Ali Harissi (AFP) pretending to explain how the loser -- Nouri, always Nouri, his whole damn life he's been a loser -- ended up remaining prime minister:


The landscape for the April 30 election differs markedly from 2010, when Maliki faced off with Shiite ex-premier Iyad Allawi, who at the time headed a secular Sunni-backed coalition.
Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc narrowly edged out Maliki, but the incumbent still managed to maneuver to secure the premiership by winning the backing of powerful neighbor Iran and allying with other Shiite parties after the election.
Iraqiya has since fractured into multiple factions and Maliki’s principal Shiite rival in the 2010 polls has also broken down into several blocs.


 
That's a bit of lie.  First, let's deal with the "multiple factions."  People are lying and saying this is something it's not.  The political parties, this is what it is, feel that smaller parties and blocs were given greater weight in the 2010 voting and had more power in the eight-month plus political stalemate that followed the 2010 elections.  I thought Nouri was losing his hold last week when we highlighted Reidar Visser's analysis arguing that.  We highlighted it, however, because Iraqiya has been slammed by the press, insulted, said to be kaput because they had broken into smaller groups.

But since then, two analysts have explained to me on the phone that this is not a sign of breaking up so much as it it's the various political blocs attempting to game the system for the post-election battle.

Now let's deal with the other thing, the whole lie that Nouri was able "to secure the premiership by winning the backing of powerful neighbor Iran and allying with other Shiite parties after the election."

I don't know why you'd lie about this at AFP unless you felt France was so tiny and insignificant that it couldn't publicly take on the US government.

Is that the issue?

Are AFP and Mohamad Ali Harissi so scared of the US government?  Poor little babies, poor little lying cry babies.




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