How dare ya, do you think I'll quietly go?
You are much braver than you know
For I can't die
Your staff, your stick, your special cap
They'll protect in hell, what crap
Believe the lie
How dare you be the one to assess
Me, in this God-forsaken mess
You, a man in a purple dress
A man in a purple dress
-- "A Man In A Purple Dress," written by Pete Townshend, from The Who's Endless Wire.
If you missed it, Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq and take part in the illegal war, got a new court-martial date: pre-trial is set for May 20 and 21; court-martial for July 16 through July 20. Another court-martial means the US military doesn't care about the Constitution or its clause against double-jeopardy. Watada's civilian attorney will file motions on that as well as to get Judge Toilet (aka Lt. Col. John Head) off the case. Judge Toilet, the original Man in the Purple Dress. (Illustration is from Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts.)
In other news, the rape of two women from two weeks ago (one confirmed, once apparently confirmed by the page of the medical report Nouri al-Maliki released while calling the woman a liar) fell off the domestic mainstream radar because they prefer their rape trials to involve a male celebrity and a lot of whispered smut about the victim. But it didn't vanish from the Iraqi radar. And on Friday, C.I. noted:
While rape has been a topic in foreign press and on the ground in Iraq, the US press (mainstream) has dropped the issue -- or thought they had. It pops back up today. Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) reports that a claim by a group in Iraq that they had "kidnapped 18 interior Ministry employees in Dyiyala province in response to claims that Shiite-led security forces had raped a Sunni Arab woman" was followed by police discovering the corpses of 14 police officers in Baqubah. AFP quotes Uday al-Khadran ("mayor of Khalis, the slain officers' hometown in Diyala province") stating: "They were found in the streets of Baquba. Their throats had been cut and their hands were bound." Al Jazeera quotes their reporter Hoda Abdel Hamid: "Sabrin al-Janabi did come and say that she was raped by three Iraqi security forces. The government at first reacted by saying that it will conduct an investigation. . . . Hours later, the government came back and said the three men were cleared of that accusation, that Sabrin al-Janabi had come out with false accusations, and that the three men would each be given a medal of honour. That has caused a big uproar among the Sunni groups." AFP observes: "The alleged rape of Janabi -- who appeared in a video broadcast on Arab news networks to complain of being raped by interior ministry officers -- has triggered a bitter row at the highest levels of the Iraqi state."
If that sounds at all familiar, you probably heard Dahr Jamail and Nora Barrows-Friedman discussing that on KPFA's Flashpoints Tuesday.
Though the news may have come out of the blue for many, listeners to KPFA's Flashpoints were informed that the rapes were shaping up into another Abu Ghraib. Ashame the mainstream domestic media, with all its money to toss around, couldn't tell it to their audiences.
(Oh well, Cameron e-mailed us to note that PBS was busy pushing an Ike and Tine Turner concert DVD while fundraising and raving over the "couple" and the "team" and how great they were together! -- an opinion apparently backed by Rolling Stone's own Anthony DeCurtis. Guess spousal abuse, like rape, can't be raised because it might make for some messy moments -- or kill the will to donate!)
In other news you may not have heard about (we didn't see it in big media or little media), the London based Minority Rights Group International issued a report entitled "Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq's minority communities since 2003." It's a disturbing look at Iraq today. Maybe it didn't fit in with the latest wave of Operation Happy Talk that corporate media is attempting to sell us? Or maybe everyone was too worried they might have to backtrack since the only conflict they focus on is Sunni v. Shia. They'll tell you the Kurds are all doing great. The reality is that Kurdish areas are among the many areas where minorities are being persecuted, something going on throughout Iraq.
The PDF format report opens with:
Since 2003, the civilian population of Iraq has been subjected to horrific levels of violence and terror. But for Iraq's minority communities, caught between the warring factions, the crisis is particularly acute. So much so that the very existence of some of these groups in their ancient homelands is now under threat.
Ten per cent of Iraq's population is made up of minority communities. They include Armenian and Chaldo-Assyrian Christians, Baha'is, Faili Kurds, Jews, Mandaeans, Palestinians, Shabaks, Turkomans and Yazidis. Some of these groups have lived in Iraq for two millennia or more. There is now real fear that they will not survive the current conflict and their unique culture and heritage in Iraq may be extinguished forever.
That's the opening, you'd think it would get a little attention but that wasn't the case. The destruction of the country is all in the report (which also focuses on the loss of rights for women and the terror and violence they live under due to their gender). To focus on one group, the Mandean's accounted for 1600 families in Baghdad back in April 2003, by April 2006, the figure would have fallen to 150. The drop is also seen in Baquba, Diwaniya, Kirkuk, Kut, Missan, Nasriya, and Ramadi. As they vanish so does their language which the 2006 UNESCO Atlast of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing noted was already in danger. The report notes that this "religion is one of the oldest surviving Gnostic religions in the world and dates back to the Mesopotamian civilization." The report tells you that the options given the community is "convert, leave or die."
Over 3 million Iraqi refugees currently exist (that's internally displaced and those who have fled) and the report will demonstrate how the minority groups were especially targeted. The report quotes Tony Lagouranis (who was a US interrogator in Iraq) onn his encounter with a Yazidi:
I didn't realize how deeply I had gotten into detainee abuse until about halfway through [my time there]. And then it really hit me. There was an episode with a man we had in a shipping container.
We used dogs on him, strobe lights, loud music, sleep deprivation, it was also freezing cold -- he was getting the whole treatment. The chief warrant officer of interrogation had decided to use those techniques, and I was implementing them. Not only did I believe he was innocent, but it became apparent he was really noble. He was Yazidi; they're not really Christian or Muslim; they're their own things, and they've been persecuted by everybody.
I think the experience that his people have had for 1,000 years in Iraq being persecuted allowed him to view the experience differently than someone like me might, and I began to recognize that I was a very small person.