Ava: Voting starts March 5th, early voting.
Jim: Thank you. Free and fair elections are no longer a goal. That has to do with one-time CIA asset Ahmed Chalabi who is also a convicted felon in Jordan. Mike, how about you give us the backstory on how free and fair was buried by Chalabi.
Mike: Sure. Ahmed Chalabi is one of the refugees who helped sell the illegal war and provided the press with many 'witnesses' that were fake -- as fake as his claims to various government leaders. He has always had a very close relationship with Iran and that's probably one of the unexamined threads in the Iraq War. Iraq and Iran were not 'friendly neighbors.' They border one another. At some point in the distant future, it may be examined if Chalabi and others -- who helped the leaders in the US and the UK and Australia lie into an illegal war -- helped lie on behalf of Iran. The death of Saddam Hussein was not a sad moment for Iran. So Ahmed and his little friend Ali al-Lahmi have used the Justice and Accountability Commission to disqualify various candidates. They're charged as being "Ba'athists." And while Ba'athist is a political party with roots in various Arab countries today, what the charge means in Iraq is: "Saddamists."
Jim: Yesterday, Ernesto Londono and Leila Fadel (Washington Post) reported on Chalabi. Let's stay with the Justice and Accountability Commission for a moment. Who wants to explain what it is?
Cedric: I'll grab because I had to check something on that out with Wally. It's an extra legal body. What does that mean? I honestly didn't know. C.I. uses that term to describe it and when it first popped up a few weeks back, I asked Wally what that meant? It means that it is not a legal body. It's doing things it doesn't have the power to do. And, in fact, the Justice and Accountability Committee doesn't really exist today. The members are supposed to be appointed by Parliament but Parliament never appointed any. Throughout 2009, you never heard a peep from that Committee because it didn't exist. It had no business to do and no appointees. Then in August, al-Lami gets out of prison and as the year draws to a close, he's suddenly screaming, "This is a Ba'athist! That is a Ba'athist! Ba'athist!" They are banning candidates, this committee, who are popular. Do they have this power? No, they don't. And that's what a ruling body found and then Nouri threatened to take the issue to the courts, to the Parliament, to the presidential council and he and others staged rallies in Baghdad and elsewhere to make it appear that a mob was about to get really ugly. At which point the committee backed off from their decision which had re-instated the over 500 banned candidates.
Jim: One thing the article in The Post noted was that some believe Chalabi is angling for prime minister. C.I., you noted a week ago, two Friday's ago, that French intelligence had picked up on a deal Chalabi had made with leaders in Tehran that would allow him to be named prime minister after the elections. Want to talk about that?
C.I.: Only, as I've noted since, that there is also a belief on the part of some that Chalabi may have put that rumor out himself.
Jim: That was the first I'd heard of Chalabi possibly have designs on the post and it's now something that the media mentions. I have no idea if it's true or not, it does make more sense in terms of why would Chalabi be eliminating Nouri's foes? Why work so hard to please Nouri? When Chalabi's someone who has always worked so hard to fill in his own pockets. Nouri's the current prime minister, he'd like to be re-elected to the Parliament and declared the prime minister. I'm not sure if people always get that because the press sometimes skips it. But the members of Parliament are what the voters will be voting on. Then those elected to Parliament will select one of their own to be prime minister. Nouri's in trouble. Why is he in trouble now?
Trina: His party, his political party, is State of Law. He's a Dawha but he's now running as State of Law. This is an attempt to portray himself as less sectarian. In the 2009 elections, rightly or wrongly, one of the press take aways was that the Iraqi people were tired of religious parties. Was it that they felt the government was too tied to religion? Possibly. But it was more a rejection of the sitting members of government whom people didn't feel were actually serving the people's interests. So sectarian parties were not seen as the way to go. Nouri's State of Law party did well in 2009 -- not as great as the press made out. For example, they had to form coalitions, sharing power agreements, to rule in various provinces because they did not win the necessary numbers. But it appeared that State of Law would be the party to beat in 2010. What happened to alter that? The never ending bombings. Especially the spectacular bombings -- starting in August and repeating basically every other month -- that targeted government buildings in Baghdad. This just underscored how had not brought security which underscored how he had not delivered on anything.
Elaine: Trina's exactly right about the exposure of Nouri's weaknesses. But I'd like to follow up with a few things. In the US, we hear "Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki" and the press tries to portray him as a national leader and really sucks up to him, but that aside, the press never really goes into the process that Jim just did. Nouri was elected by the Parliament, not by the people. More importantly, he was the US choice and a compromise choice at that. The Parliament elected someone else. I forget who --
C.I.: Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Elaine: Thank you. That was the choice and the US would not abide by it so it became al-Maliki. So the point here is that not only was Nouri not elected by the poeple but he was a compromise candidate and not the first choice in 2006. We're talking about him losing power -- as the press does -- but it's never been established that he had power. C.I., barricade walls? Up or down? That they wouldn't listen to him on?
C.I.: Up.
Elaine: Thank you. After he's prime minister, he's out of the country, this is late 2006, and due to the bombings going on and the 'answer' is to put up barrier walls, Bremer walls, all over Baghdad. He's out of the country and he says that he didn't approve it and it's been stopped. As he's saying that, reporters are seeing the walls continue to go up and they speak to the head of the Iraqi military whose reply is that the walls will continue to go up. Which they did. And he was the prime minister. The head of the Iraqi military blew him off. Publicly. So this alleged power that he has or had, it's never been established.
Jim: Okay and relate that to today? I get what you're saying but I'm not following on the present, sorry.
Elaine: I'm saying there's this mantra repeated by the press that he's lost prestige or popularity or power and I'm saying that it's never been established that he had any of those things. The election? Nouri wants to continue as prime minister. The people don't appear to want that and that's not really a new development.
Jim: Wasn't there a poll in Baghdad?
C.I.: That's the ORB polling that you're referring to and the only one I saw cover it was Michael Hastings (The Hasting Report, True/Slant). Baghdad respondents? 22% wanted him to remain or continue as the prime minister while 65% wanted someone, anyone, else.
Jim: The poll also asked about peace and security. Ava's nodding. Ava?
Ava: Baghdad respondents said that things had gotten worse, in terms of violence, 57% of respondents said it was worse. And nationwide the polling on whether the violence was better or worse found 54% of respondents stating it had worsened.
Jim: Which is so different from what the media tells us, they tell us or sell us "New and Improved Iraq, Gets Your Teeth Sparkling White."
Ava: Right but the media's not there. At the start of 2009, we were noting the closing of Baghdad desks in Iraq by the TV networks. ABC farmed their work out to the BBC, for example. There's hardly any Iraq reporting that makes the commercial networks now. They have no correspondents for the most part. CBS News has a guy there. The NewsHour does a better job not because they have people there -- their reports are ITV News out of England -- but because they book a Jane Arraf or someone else who is in Iraq working for another outlet.
Jim: And Jane Arraf works for The Christian Science Monitor. And one of her most recent articles found her teamed with McClatchy's Hannah Allam, Warren P. Strobel, Laith Hammoudi and Jonathan S. Landay to report about Abu Mahdi al-Mohandas who is campaigning with claims that the US government hates him and that they will either "kidnap or assassinate me." After that article, Wednesday, I started noticing AP reporting similar things the following day and, by Friday, radio programs -- NPR, not Pacifica -- stating that anti-American was a popular stand in Iraq. Anyone want to touch on that?
Betty: Sure, I will. You invade my home and you occupy it. I'm not wanting to vote for any politician that's cozy with you. Anti-American stance? When has an Iraqi politician, go back to 2005, run on the stance that "I'm popular with the US"? That's crazy. The Iraqi people have always wanted the US to go home. Over 70% by 2004 polls. The idea that running as anti-American would be novel, new or any way surprising is, actually, surprising. I'm not referring to Arraf and the other reporters who were covering specific candidates. But I'm referring to what followed which struck me as "Oh my, this is shocking, Anti-Americanism." Of couse it's there. The US bombed their country. The US killed people. That's reality. And these idiots who say -- these Thomas E. Ricks who say -- the US needs to stay in Iraq? No, the US doesn't need to stay, it needs to leave. It's not helped Iraq and it's not helped the Iraqis. And I'm honestly worried about US troops on the ground in terms of their own safety because the anti-Americanism sentiment is so publicly stated now. And, to be clear, that sentiment is not new or just emerging. But it's a lot more public and voiced more publicly -- or maybe reporters just don't feel as much need to lie as they did, for example, in 2005 when it would be "Iraqis love America." I don't know. I get the feeling, Ruth, back me up, that most of the press lying right now is on Afghanistan.
Ruth: Agreed. They are working so hard to sell that war. The reporting that comes out of Afghanistan on NPR, for example, is an embarrassment. Whereas Lourdes Garcia-Navarro provides some of the strongest reporting on Iraq. Jim told us he wanted to talk about the Iraq elections for this roundtable so I brought some notes on a report Ms. Garcia-Navarro did last week and Elaine was just talking a second ago about how Nouri al-Maliki was a compromise candidate? Ms. Garcia-Navarro noted that in her report and she also addressed fears being expressed that, if he continued as prime minister, he would be a dictator.
Jim: And that appears to be a more common fear. Earlier this month, for example, The New York Times offered the editorial "Mr. Maliki's Dangerous Ambition" in which they noted, "This is just the most recent example of thuggery by Mr. Maliki, who is determined to do anything he can to win re-election next month." "Thuggery." And that loud sigh was from C.I.
Rebeeca: I figured as much, let me jump in. Nouri's hostile to the press, in fact "hostile" is too weak a word. He has targeted the press from the start. In the summer of 2006, he proposed a series of measures and you could go to the BBC's website and find out that one of those measures was about the press, about curtailing their freedoms. But these measures were pimped and praised by the US press which 'forgot' to note that one plank. This has happened repeatedly. Nouri has launched one assualt on the press after another and where has the press been these nearly four years -- Nouri became prime minister in April -- because they've largely avoided calling him out? And that's not even counting Nouri's frivolous law suits against the press. And-and The Guardian. I mean goodness gracious, The New York Times couldn't even offer an editorial in support of the paper when Nouri was trashing it and the paper's investigative reporting? The press, the powerful press, has repeatedly taken a pass and allowed Nouri to set the terms. I think, in doing so, they took part in creating the modern monster that is Nouri al-Maliki.
Jim: Okay. Interesting. Anyone think that's too harsh?
Jess: I don't. They didn't stand up for The Guardian, they didn't stand up -- The Times -- didn't stand up for their own reporter who had a gun aimed at him. I mean, at what point do you start calling out the attacks on the press? It's as though the paper doesn't care about those attacks in the least. Now the editorial board has offered some good editorials recently, in the last six weeks and, in fairness to them, a lot of the stuff Rebecca was listing was when Gail Collins was penning those ridiculous editorials and occasional notes of "My 499th best friend in the world just passed away." That was pure fluff in that time period. Gail's writing about her friend and ignoring the passing of Coretta Scott King, let's remember that. But with that tossed out there, I agree completely with Rebecca. The press egged him on. I'd go further and say the press egged him on. And now he may stand a good chance of remaining the prime minister in which case Iraqis will get another four years of no improvement in their lives and continued violence.
Jim: Alright. Someone comes up to you and asks you what the one thing being left out of the coverage of the elections is right now, what do you say?
Ann: Let me grab that. The first thing I say is, "What coverage?" There's so very little coverage. The second thing I say is that it's not being made clear that "Iraq holds elections March 7th!" does not translate as "We know the results March 8th!" Or March 12th, for that matter. And that's just Parliament. We don't know the prime minister until after the members of Parliament are known because they are the ones who will pick who the prime minister is. I would recommend C.I.'s Friday morning piece on the elections and the Friday snapshot. These are only the second Parliamentary elections, post-invasion, and the only thing we have to go by is the process from the 2005 one. December 2005, elections are held, April 2006 Nouri becomes prime minister. That's a pretty long wait. Even if they cut some of the process down, I still would not expect quick and fast results. One difference I'll note is that in 2005, they were electing 275 seats but now they'll be electing people to 325 seats.
Jim: How many seats are set aside for women this go round, Ann?
Ann: If you thought you were going to stump me, you're wrong. 25% which is the same as last time and, again, this was covered by C.I. Friday morning.
Jim: Very good. Okay, what about the coverage? There's been very little mainstream coverage of the election and the snapshots have noted this and how Nouri's requiring that journalists register to cover the elections and how this is hurting Iraqi reporters because registering and being known as a reporter can be a death sentence in Iraq. Ernesto Londono wrote about that topic on Friday. But let's leave US real media and turn to Panhandle Media, what about it?
Marcia: Well Naomi Klein's not had time to grandstand on Iraq this go round. Last time, she was all purple fingers, purple fingers. These days she doesn't even give a damn about Iraq. She made her name off it, she made some bucks off it, now she's elsewhere and that's true of all of them. My online buddy -- whom I won't know out of respect for C.I. -- used his fat ass to do nothing, of course. Every now and then, about once a week, he'll include a paragraph from a mainstream article and he can't even find the strength to write about it. Though he did find time to call out Sarah Palin for her child, only it wasn't her child, it's Bristol's child, unless fat ass is trying to start another rumor. But they made their films, they wrote their books, they made money off Iraqi blood and now they're all busy with other things. And forget Pacifica if you want news of Iraq, you're not going to get it from them. They have nothing to offer. That includes Free Speech Radio News. They offer nothing. Except Haiti, Haiti, Haiti! The world's biggest distraction.
Kat: I would agree with Marcia on that and note that the students we're talking to are very anti-Pacifica these days. They're wondering why Pacifica didn't lead against, for example, the Patriot Act renewal that just took place last week in the House. They're wondering why all these important things are being missed so Pacifica can cover Haiti one more damn time. The attitude is that this over a month long story has sucked up all the oxygen in the room and bored the hell out of the listeners.
Jim: Do you agree with that call?
Kat: Yeah, I do. I'm on the road but my friends -- Maggie, Toni and Dak-Ho especially -- still turn on KPFA here and they quickly turn it back off because it's still Haiti. I don't think anyone will ever forget that KPFA started a collection for Haiti. Do you know how that plays in the Bay Area? Do you know how many times we have suffered in the Bay Area? And KPFA never started a collection for the residents of the Bay Area, not even after an earthquake. So it's become a sore spot in the Bay Area for that reason as well. But mainly, we're just all aware of how Haiti's been used by Pacifica to distract from the failures and crimes of the Obama administration. It's a year now, where's the Guantanamo closing? And where's the calling out of that? No where to be found on Pacifica. You might get a sentence or two grousing on it but Guantanamo Bay used to be big news when a Republican was in the White House. Haiti's little more than a distraction, a we're-so-wonderful-because-we-care piece of bulls**t. It's so divorced from reality and I've honestly had it with the Marxist critique -- usually not identified as such -- mainly because I seriously doubt Karl Marx himself would have attacked Hillary Clinton in order to avoid attacking Barack Obama. But that's all our modern day Closeted Communists of Pacifica can offer and it gets real damn old.
Stan: I think Kat just summed it up. I think it is a distraction and they use it to continue their Clinton hatred while avoiding holding the man they pimped into the Oval Office responsible. Their little Princess Barack's apparently never responsible for anything and that gets real damn old. Haiti's the distraction that allows them to avoid addressing reality and that's whether it's reality about the Patriot Act or Guantanamo or the continued Iraq War or whatever. Haiti's been the drug they've mainlined to avoid dealing with the economic collapse in the United States and the serious problems we are facing. And I think that's really clear by the fact that the so-called 'combat' troops pull out of Iraq resulted in nothing from Panhandle Media. No fiery editorials, no Progressive minute, not a damn thing, certainly not a roundtable discussion on Democracy Now! They just ignored it. Am I forgetting anyone?
C.I.: If we're referring to the news that General Ray Odierno, top US commander in Iraq, had a request in for combat forces to remain in Iraq longer and the draw down slowed, I think Dahr Jamail (via CounterCurrents) covered it -- I say I think because he wrote as it was being floated but before it was confirmed. I think. But he was smart enough to grasp it was being floated on behalf of the administration. Other than him, Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) and Michael Hastings (The Hastings Report, True/Slant) are the only ones I'm aware of.
Stan: But Peace Resister Katrina vanden Heuvel makes time to write that dumb blog post on Van Jones. I'm sick of these losers. Losers and liars, that's all Panhandle Media's become. They're more embarrassing than the White House they pimp for because they were supposed to stand for something.
Jim: Dona's handed me a note explaining Ty and Isaiah needed to speak. Ty's actually selected some e-mails and may speak to those. So I'll toss to Isaiah.
Isaiah: I'd use my time to note the March 20th marches A.N.S.W.E.R. and others are sponsoring March 20th marches in DC, San Francisco and LA. And to include this from Students for a Democratic Society about the march:
While the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan is growing ever larger, the occupation of Iraq is still raging, nearing its seventh anniversary. With over 4,300 US soldiers and over 1.3 million Iraqi civilians estimated dead, something has to be done to stop this senseless slaughter.
This year Students for a Democratic Society will hold a national week of action March 15th to 20th where students will organize protests and direct actions at campuses across the country in opposition to the ongoing, brutal occupations.
The need for a vibrant anti-war movement has rarely been felt more than this very moment, while the United States drops trillions of dollars into unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, during the worst economic crisis in 80 years. Students are struggling to pay for school while tuition skyrockets, and states lose billions of dollars to two continuing occupations.
On Saturday, March 20th, SDS will participate in a massive National March & Rally in D.C. hosted by A.N.S.W.E.R. to finish the week of action with tens of thousands of people in the street!
We're calling on students and youth from across the country to join us the week of March 15-20th in demanding: Fund Education, Not Occupation!
For more information visit: http://sdsantiwar.wordpress.com/
Jim: Okay. Thank you for including that. For those wondering, the Iraq elections are receiving very little attention. They conclude next Sunday. To make sure that we didn't ignore them, we made it a topic for a roundtable. Ty, you had some e-mails you wanted to introduce?
Ty: Yeah. I'll go with Iraq-related for the first one. The attacks on Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker last week. Thoughts? Ava and C.I.?
Ava: Well, first off, tonight on CBS' 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl interviews Bigelow. Second? A lot of people think they know something about movies and they don't. Never is that more clear than with Paul Can'tGetHisROCKSoff. Poor Paul, still wearing Mommy's Panthyhose on his bald head. It's apparently the soft, fat, Anglo White guy's modern day toupee. Does anyone really care what Paul Can'tGetHisROCKSoff thinks?
C.I.: Paul does. That's why when reporters call his useless organization needing to talk about sexual assaults in the military, he doesn't put them in touch with a woman in his organization, instead he decides to speak for women in the military. So The Boston Globe ends with a useless article allegedly on what women in the military suffer within the ranks. Paul doesn't know a damn thing, he never does. This is the man who trashed Ehren Watada on CNN -- and let me remind everyone, he did that with Amy Goodman on that same segment and she didn't rush forward to counter Paul. Now Paul's decided he's an expert on Iraq and all things Iraq related and all things to do with Iraq and to do with America and to do with the sun and the sea and the sand. And so he writes his dumb ass column for Newsweek where he whines that The Hurt Locker, the film Kathyrn directed, robs him of his dignity. Paul, when did you ever have dignity? Seriously, when? I'm getting really sick of those who can't grasp what a feature film is. Paul? He just needed some headlines. Back in 2004, Rachel Maddow pimped her buddy Paul like crazy. These days he's just another, as Tanya Tucker once sang, faded rose from days gone by. There's an orchestrated attack on the film. For some taking part, it's because a woman directed it. As we saw in 2008, when a woman stands a chance at making history, huge segments in the country go nuts because they can't stand it. Some are taking part to promote Quentin Tarantino who may very well end up winning. But those who fight dirty have no right to complain if, in coming months, they learn that certain banks are calling in loans because it's been learned just what a house of financial cards their company actually is.
Jim: If I can ask, are you going to be hugely unhappy if Kathryn Bigelow loses? Offline, as C.I. has disclosed since July, C.I. has worked on getting this film a nomination for Best Director.
C.I.: She got the nomination and became the fourth woman -- only the fourth woman -- in the long, long history of the Academy Awards to be nominated. She's only the second American woman -- the great Sofia Coppola being the other. It's great that she was nominated. I do want to see her win, I am advocating for her. I think her film is amazing. We don't always get what we want. If James Cameron, who is a good friend, wins, I'll be happy. James directed an amazing film with a powerful message and it's a huge, huge hit. A real one. Not a book-keeping one. For example, no one's lying that his budet was $70 million when, in fact, the budget was $95 million. And no one's having to point to the foreign box office to pretend his film is a hit. In the US, please try to grasp this, every dollar at the box office does not go to the studio. The theaters are not in business to give every penny to the studios. That is only more true overseas where you have different distributors and different deals struck. So when you need to pad your film with foreign box office to make it appear to be a hit, you've got a real problem. And it would probably be a good idea if the business press started reporting on foreign rentals and not the box office take. The rental fee is what the studio gets for the film from the theater. They do not get every dollar forked over at the box office. I say all of that because a film with a budget of $95 million that spent $60 million to promote itself -- including the awards campaigns -- has spent $155. And if they're marketing themselves as a 'hit' and saying that's why their director deserves the Academy Award, then people should be paying attention to whether or not the film made anywhere close to $155 million in the US and Canada in film rentals. If it didn't, it can't make that up overseas. Again, film rentals, what the studio actually receives, is smaller than the box office and that is especially true for the US in foreign markets. Overseas, for example, deals were made before the film ever debuted that split half the rentals with another distributor. So if, for example, you're claiming your film has made over $300,000 worldwide, I'd hate to be in possession of internal documents that prove that the film you spent $155 million on in the US alone didn't really turn a profit. I'd so hate to be in possession of those documents, I'd probably messenger them over to your chief creditor. A film that cost $95 million to make and required $60 million to promote in the US should have done better -- a lot better -- at the domestic box office than $120,000 million -- of which you received less than $60 million. It's a Waterworld, in fact, and though it doesn't call into question the director, it does call into question the 'business' men who backed him. Again, we can all play scorched earth but I was under the impression that this was going to be a fair fight. If I was mistaken, believe me, necessary adjustments can be made.
Jim: And on that note, which has us all laughing, we'll close the roundtable.