Friday, August 3, 2007

Good news and no news

Hello to everyone and I have not posted for long time.

There is good news and I am happy everyone is writing the comments about the Iraq football team. I think the team is very good or they would not win so many matches. One match maybe can be lucky but not so many. So everyone in the world knows again like years before that this team is very good! The final match was not so difficult and the Saudi players are not as tough as the Iraqi players. Everyone in Iraq is happy to see this victory and loves this team.

I hear so many people say that this team is uniting Iraqis and that is true. But people say that the team can unite Iraqis but politicians fail to unite them. I think this is a stupid thing to say because these are football players and not politicians. All Iraqis will support this great team but of course politic is different so how can you compare one and the other? Just like when Shatha Hassoun was good in Star Academy people say she unite Iraqis but politicians do not, but I think if you make Shatha or some football player a politician then you will see that some people will start to hate them! Still this team is great and makes so many people happy. Also you must remember that this team has many difficult things and not rich like Saudi or even with as much help as other teams, so it is a big victory.

Everywhere Iraqis are celebrating and now the team is in Jordan (before they went to Dubai where these bastards played the Saddam song instead of Mawtini!) and there was Kadhem al-Saher concert last night and party there. I think that the players need a big party and relax and also I think all Iraqis do!

I can write about politicians and I always do but it is all the same. Some people say Iraq will have a new Prime Minister and I do not know but same talk as before. Every time we hear about new cabinet or new government or new anything it is talk for weeks and then no more talk, then later the same talk. Nothing really changes so I can curse the same people or not, no difference. That is why I am saying good news and also no news!

I will write more again but this is how I am thinking now, also it is too hot.

13 comments:

bg said...

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hello Shaqawa.. :)

here is an update re: the military
aspect of what's going on in Iraq..

Iraqi Security Forces Order of Battle


disclaimer: while i get the 'gist' of it..
i do not undertand military speak lol!!

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bg said...

++

hello again.. :)

here is, as always, an interesting & insightful analysis/
opinion re: the political aspect from Talisman Gate..

The Sunnis Miscalculate

excerpts:

In my most recent column for the Prospect Magazine (August issue), I argue that the hard-line Sunni leaders who got elected
as their community's clarions against Shiite hegemony are being replaced with new faces that have acquiesced to the new realities of Iraq and can work with the ascendant Shiites.

This is happening because the most valuable negotiating card that the Sunnis have, that being the murderous insurgency they have waged against the New Iraq, is now burning in their hands.

The writing on the wall, which both the Shiite and Sunni political classes can read, says that the insurgency is tanking and breaking down, something that is also registering with American military and policy planners in Iraq.]

[Not only that, but choosing ministerial replacements will put more stress on an already frayed bloc, and latest accusations of terrorism against the Sunni Minister of Culture, who was Hashemi’s pick, have enveloped these leaders in a poisonous cloud of internal recriminations.

This desperate move of leaving the Maliki government was precipitated on the notion that such an act would embarrass the Bush administration in front of its congressional critics and would compel Bush’s guys on the ground in Baghdad to arm-twist Maliki into making more concessions to the Sunnis, who is a show of futility, demanded a set of impossible requests from Maliki to show good faith to them and gave him a week to fulfill those demands while fully realizing that Maliki wouldn’t be able to deliver.]

[For now, it’s great for me to watch the Islamist parties fumble, with no dominant ‘leader’ emerging. Everyone is being forced to play politics within the rules of the game; no more military coups, no more ‘Great Leaders’. The Sadrists have shown themselves to be as inept and corrupt as all the rest, and the shrill Sunni voices are being supplanted by new political forces that can live with the huge cascade of change begun on April 9, 2003.]

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Anonymous said...

Good to hear from you again Mr. Shaqawa!

I completely agree with your statements regarding the fallacy of comparing these football players/singers with politicians. If things were this easy, then I suppose all Maliki and co. would have to do is have a karaoke competition and Iraq's problems would be solved!

In any case my friend, it's good to hear from you (as always); keep the posts coming!

Shaqawa said...

Hello BG,

It is good to see you here as before.

Hello Justice,

I think that it is only easy if Maliki has a nice voice, so we will see.

Thank you both for your visits.

bg said...

++

thank you Shaqawa, my pleasure.. :)

here's another welcoming bit of good news..

Positive News From Iraq Is Causing Perceptions to Change

excerpt:

[Michael Yon reported yesterday on the positive signs he is witnessing in Iraq:

I, like everyone else, will have to wait for September's report from Gen. Petraeus before making more definitive judgments. But I know for certain that three things are different in Iraq now from any other time I've seen it.

1. Iraqis are uniting across sectarian lines to drive Al Qaeda in all its disguises out of Iraq, and they are empowered by the success they are having, each one creating a ripple effect of active citizenship.

2. The Iraqi Army is much more capable now than it was in 2005. It is not ready to go it alone, but if we keep working, that day will come.

3. Gen. Petraeus is running the show. Petraeus may well prove to be to counterinsurgency warfare what Patton was to tank battles with Rommel, or what Churchill was to the Nazis.

And yes, in case there is any room for question, Al Qaeda still is a serious problem in Iraq, one that can be defeated. Until we do, real and lasting security will elude both the Iraqis and us.]

yes, keep up the momentum Iraqis.. you can win
this war & get around to healing you're country!!

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bg said...

++

and a bit of sad news for Iranians.. :(

Iran has just carried out the largest wave of executions
since 1984.. WSJ.. BY AMIR TAHERI, August 6, 2007..

Domestic Terror in Iran

excerpts:

[It is early dawn as seven young men are led to the gallows amid shouts of "Allah Akbar" (Allah is the greatest) from a crowd of bearded men as a handful of women, all in hijab, ululate to a high pitch. A few minutes later, the seven are hanged as a mullah shouts: "Alhamd li-Allah" (Praise be to Allah).]

[The Mashad hangings, broadcast live on local television, are among a series of public executions ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month as part of a campaign to terrorize an increasingly restive population. Over the past six weeks, at least 118 people have been executed, including four who were stoned to death. According to Saeed Mortazavi, the chief Islamic prosecutor, at least 150 more people, including five women, are scheduled to be hanged or stoned to death in the coming weeks.]

[The campaign of terror also includes targeted "disappearances" designed to neutralize trade union leaders, student activists, journalists and even mullahs opposed to the regime. According to the latest tally, more than 30 people have "disappeared" since the start of the new Iranian year on March 21. To intimidate the population, the authorities also have carried out mass arrests on spurious grounds.]

[There are, however, an unknown number of unofficial prisons as well, often controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or militias working for various powerful mullahs. Last week, human rights activists in Iran published details of a new prison in Souleh, northwest of Tehran, staffed by militants from the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah. According to the revelations, the Souleh prison is under the control of the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi, and used for holding the regime's most "dangerous" political foes.]

[According to Rajab-Ali Shahsavari, leader of the Union of Contractual Workers, 25,795 unionists have been fired since April. He estimates that now over 1,000 workers are losing their jobs each day, as the regime intensifies its crackdown.

Worse still, the number of suspicious deaths among workers has risen to an all-time high.]

[The nationwide crackdown is accompanied with efforts to cut Iranians off from sources of information outside the Islamic Republic. More than 4,000 Internet sites have been blocked, and more are added each day. The Ministry of Islamic Orientation has established a new blacklist of authors and book titles twice longer than what it was a year ago. Since April, some 30 newspapers and magazines have been shut and their offices raided. At least 17 journalists are in prison, two already sentenced to death by hanging.]

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Unknown said...

A) Democracy tends to be slow in its change that is what separates us from a tyranny, ofcourse the tyrant can effect change very quickly, but it is much better to have the power of the state divided amongst many individuals rather than to have that power concentrated in the hands of the tyrant who can do what he wants when he wants.

B) The problem I see with the Republic of Iraq is that it is quickly becoming a tyranny of the majority in which the will of the masses are followed but the rights of the minority can be dismissed. This system of governance allthough a tyranny of the majority rather than the minority will be a tyranny none the less and no better than that of the baathist regime It is going to take leaders of strong moral character if a free Republic is to survive, they must represent the whole of the Iraqi people not just the majority or the minority, they will have to love the principle of universal liberty better than they love their own power. Remember that a Democracy can suffer its fools and its disloyal but what it can't suffer is its ambitious.

Shaqawa said...

Hello Trajan Octavian Titus,

Well there are many group working against the Iraqi majority (Shi'a) but you are right if the sectarianism is all there is then you can have a majority Shi'ite government which will persecute the minorities, but this is also wrong. Still will a government be as bad as the Ba'th? I do not think so.

Unknown said...

Perhaps I overstated it, because let's face facts there's no way it could be as bad as the Baathists, however, if we're looking at three variables a) a tyranny of the minority where the will of the tyrant rules supreme, b) a tyranny of the majority where the will of the masses is followed, but the rights of the minority are fucked over and out, and c) a pluralist Constitutional republic in which the will of the majority is followed yet the rights of the minority are guaranteed, then the differences between A and B don't look like big differences at all and infact B looks much more akin to A than it does to C.

Unknown said...

Perhaps I overstated it, because let's face facts there's no way it could be as bad as the Baathists, however, if we're looking at three variables a) a tyranny of the minority where the will of the tyrant rules supreme, b) a tyranny of the majority where the will of the masses is followed, but the rights of the minority are fucked over and out, and c) a pluralist Constitutional republic in which the will of the majority is followed yet the rights of the minority are guaranteed, then the differences between A and B don't look like big differences at all and infact B looks much more akin to A than it does to C.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps I overstated it, because let's face facts there's no way it could be as bad as the Baathists, however, if we're looking at three variables a) a tyranny of the minority where the will of the tyrant rules supreme, b) a tyranny of the majority where the will of the masses is followed, but the rights of the minority are fucked over and out, and c) a pluralist Constitutional republic in which the will of the majority is followed yet the rights of the minority are guaranteed, then the differences between A and B don't look like big differences at all and infact B looks much more akin to A than it does to C.

Anonymous said...

Sorry about the over post I didn't realize it took as long as it did to load on the screen.

Anonymous said...

Addendum: under a system of governance; such as, that outlined in example B there will not be peace but rather continual strife, though the tyranny of the majority may be able to get it under control through brutal violence and oppression as the tyranny of the minority did before it that conflict will still be there bubbeling under the surface waiting to erupt which is why example B is not a viable solution for sustainability. Example C, however, could bring about a lasting peace and long-term sustainability and would be a model for the Islamic world where the Sunni/Shia split is epidemic due to the promotion of Wahhabism which was the Sunni reaction to the Iranian revolution and promotion of pan-Islamism which threatened Sunni dominance throughout the region.

Alot of people say that the Sunni-Shia split is to far gone and that there is no real solution to the underlying problem but I am less pessimistic and I believe that with a Lebanese tyepe power sharing system adobted by Iraq (if successful) could be a model and usher in a new era for the region.