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POPSIraq: From One Dictator to Another? "Over a thousand Iraqis got killed and more than that number wounded just for a game of chess between warlords," Mohammad Alwan, a lawyer in Baghdad, told IPS. "All of them call for dissolving militias while they keep militias of their own. Most of those in power in the government are militia leaders."
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POPSMy Five Year Old Kid vs. Their Five Year Old War "I do not want to tell my kid when she's ten: this war has been going all of your life. I don't want to tell her that next year! I want to tell her, yes, there was a war for the first five years of your life, but then people had had enough! They knew voting for a fake anti-war candidate wasn't going to end the war, they knew watching TV and bitching about it wasn't going to end the war, and they finally voted with their feet. I want to tell my kid that on the fifth anniversary of the war, people said, ENOUGH! And hit the streets in San Francisco and in over forty other cities around the country, and reinvigorated an anti-war movement that brought the war to an end."
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POPS Iraq fears clash between Turkish troops and Peshmerga Present "rumours" in Turkish press: A new "secret pledge" was made between the U.S. and Turkey. According to this, U.S. forces support Turkey's military operations against PKK, while Turkey "secretly" accepts the task that was assigned to Turkey by the U.S. administration: Being the "new security force" in Iraq after the U.S. withdrawal. Truth or just rumours? Only time will tell.
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POPSTurkey threats lift rebel Kurds' profile The PKK started as a Marxist-Leninist group demanding an independent homeland, but shed socialist ideology with the end of the Cold War and says it seeks some degree of self rule, similar to that of Spain's semiautonomous Catalonia region. Arrested in 1999, PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan still enjoys a personality cult among sympathizers and is believed to send directives through lawyers from prison. But the tight control that characterized the PKK eroded. In 2004, it dropped a unilateral cease-fire. Last year, a splinter operation called the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons bombed Turkish tourist resorts. An Iranian Kurd group affiliated with the PKK is fighting Iran.
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POPSConflict on a Second Kurdish Front Like the P.K.K., the Iranian Kurds control much of the craggy, boulder-strewn frontier and routinely ambush patrols on the other side. But while the Americans call the P.K.K. terrorists, guerrilla commanders say P.J.A.K. has had “direct or indirect discussions” with American officials. They would not divulge any details of the discussions or the level of the officials involved, but they noted that the group’s leader, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, visited Washington last summer. Biryar Gabar, one of 11 members of the group’s leadership, said there had been “normal dialogue” with American officials, declining specifics. One of his bodyguards said officials of the group met with Americans in Kirkuk last year.
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POPSBetween Imperialism and Islamism An interesting analysis on the rise of radical Islamism around the world. The original article is recommended. First, as demanded by both Muslims and non- Muslims across the globe, the US needs an attitudinal change. It must repudiate grand imperial designs as well as its claim to being an exception among nations. The notion of total planetary control had guided the Republican administration even before the attacks of 11 September 2001. The Democrats, meanwhile, many of whom have now publicly turned against the Iraq war, limit their criticisms to the strategy and conduct of the war, the lies and disinformation dispensed by the White House, suspicious deals with defence contractors, and the like. But they share with Republicans the belief that the US possesses the right – and adequate might – to mould the world according to its wishes.
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POPS“Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy" Amy Goodman interviews the writers of a stunning report about the "unseen aspects" of the Iraq war: Theocracy and gender-based violence against women. Houzan Mahmoud , International Representative, Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq. She is speaking about gender-based violence in Iraq before the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN today. Yifat Susskind , communications director of MADRE. She is speaking about gender-based violence in Iraq before the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN today. See the introduction below and read the entire transcript of the interview at Democracy Now! website. Don't miss it.
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POPSIs Bush Iraq-ing Iran? Pham Binh from MRZine writes in his latest article: The Bush administration's goal is to roll back and contain Iran's influence in the Middle East. Military encirclement, saber-rattling, veiled threats, diplomatic isolation, provocations, and economic pressure are all means to this end. So if regime change is not the aim, is war with Iran on the agenda? Yes. The very success of the Bush administration's aggressive rollback and contain policy is what might lead to war. This requires some explanation.
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POPS'Virtual Iraq' Helps Shocked Soldiers Iraq War veterans who returned home and showed the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, are being treated with a "virtual war sim". Looks like they finally find a use of those psychopatologic bloody video games. I wonder if there is also a therapy for the dickheads who talk like a warmonger, play that idiotic war simulations in their homes (without having an idea of what war really is), defending Neocon strategies, championing Iraq War, so showing "pre-traumatic behaviour disorder". Rob Woolard from AFP reports:
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POPSCost of Iraq War Consider, for example, that the value of one EPA, the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, is about $7.5 billion. The cost of the Iraq War is thus more than a century's worth of EPA spending (in today's dollars), almost 130 EPAs, only a small handful of which would probably have been sufficient to clean up Superfund sites around the country.
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POPSScrambling to Frame Iran Indeed, the Bush administration's sudden focus on Iran's role in Iraq may simply be an effort to provoke an Iranian reaction that could then become an excuse for war. Whatever the reason, the motivation for blaming Iran must be pretty strong, given how much effort the U.S. government is putting into promoting such weak evidence.
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POPSWar Costs are Hitting Historic Proportions If U.S. involvement continues on the current scale, the funding for the Iraq war — combined with the conflict in Afghanistan and other foreign fronts in the war on terrorism — is projected to surpass this country's Vietnam spending next year.
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