C.I.: We will, no doubt, be talking about Iraq. But Ty's got an e-mail to start things off with. Ty?
Ty: Angela e-mailed asking what we could expect from the sites -- including this one -- next week? She meant in terms of year-in-reviews.
Ann: Stan and I are doing our third best of DVDs. We've already got our screen snaps and our top ten. We just have to write the piece.
Stan: Right. And I gave a heads up at my site at least 3 times in the last 2 weeks telling people to leave movie suggestions in the comments or to e-mail me. I noted that it expired today. It took Ann and I longer to do the screen snaps this morning than it did to make our top ten list. That list will appear at both of our sites. When? We're not sure. Maybe Tuesday night, maybe Wednesday. We're usually part of the early roll out ahead of the other things.
Ty: Which includes Ruth's look at radio.
Ruth: Yes, I will be doing my year-in-radio again. This will be the sixth or seventh time. C.I. will do her year-in-review which will be the eighth one, she'll be focusing on the year and media and a hundred things. Martha and Shirley will be doing the year in books and their top ten is based on the votes of the community. Since Stan noted the voting was closed on his, I'll note Martha and Shirley's voting is closed as well. Kat?
Kat: I'll be doing my eighth year in music. Can't believe it's been that long. And thank you, Ruth, for saying it was C.I.'s 8th year-in-review or I wouldn't have known how many I had done. So I'll be looking back at the year in music. I'll give a sneak peak here: The toughest thing is that you have three albums all worthy of first place. I haven't written anything but I have made my list.
Ty: We've got a year in piece we may run this week, it's more a consumer product. In addition, a number of us are lobbying Ava and C.I. to do a year-end on TV piece this week.
Ava: Which we hadn't planned on and haven't agreed to at present. We'll need to think about it.
Jess: And we're considering doing something on downloads here but that may or may not come to be.
C.I.: Okay, let's talk Iraq and let's start with Betty picking up from Mike's "Nikita and idiot of the week" on Friday.
Betty: Iraq was major news last week with a massive series of bombings on Thursday and a week long of ongoing political crisis. The coverage from broadcast television has been awful -- see C.I.'s "ABC, CBS and NBC placed on academic probation" and "How do you spell 'lie'? ABC, CBS and NBC" and Rebecca's "smelly scott pelley and the sucky cbs evening news" -- and we were talking on Sunday, during last week's writing edition, about how to draw attention to Iraq. A lot of people -- like Marcia -- decided the thing to do was to focus on Iraq in their own writing. For Kat and myself, we had something different. We'd begun covering Charmed the week before. And had both gotten a ton of e-mails from other Charmed fans. So it made sense, since we all carry the Iraq snapshot in our posts each day, to keep writing about Charmed. Rebecca had long ago pointed out how this could amplify reach.
Rebecca: Right. One day I awoke to all these e-mails about Iraq from people who stated they had no idea whatever was happening then was happening in Iraq -- this was a few years back. I had written about the TV show Dynasty and, of course, copied and pasted the Iraq snapshot below it. Dynasty attracted new eye balls and they read on after my words on the TV show and found news on Iraq. We were all working hard to try to get attention to Iraq. The same is true of Wally and Cedric.
Cedric: We varied our humor stylings a great deal last week. We did that to try to be sure people were coming by that didn't usually. So we did a song parody here or a title variation there. Just tweeks and differences that Wally and I hoped would do well.
Wally: And that included varying our post time. We did some at night, we did some at morning and we made a point to do one Friday evening -- and we never post in the evening. We were just trying to amplify the news of Iraq.
C.I.: Trina and Stan have both written that they doubt Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi can get a fair trial. Stan, explain what he'd be tried on.
Stan: al-Hashemi is one of Iraq's two vice presidents currently. They had three at the start of the year but one resigned a few months back. Taqi al-Hashemi's first term as vice president was in 2006 and he was picked for a second term in the winter of 2010. He is Sunni and a member of the Iraqiya political slate, headed by Ayad Allawi, which came in first in the 2010 elections. Nouri al-Maliki is prime minister and heads State of Law which came in second. Nouri has a long history of targeting Sunnis since he came to power in 2006 and that includes his illegal use of the Justice and Accountability Commission in early 2010 to try to eliminate political rivals. After being chummy in DC with Barack Obama, the week prior, Nouri returned to Iraq and promptly declared that Tareq al-Hashemi was a terroist supporting terrorism and death squads.
Ann: And he's one of three. Tareq al-Hashemi is one three members of Iraqiya that Nouri is currently targeting. There's also Saleh al-Mutlaq who is Deputy Prime Minister and Nouri's trying to strip him of that title and immunity -- for calling Nouri a dictator. Oh, that's proving you're not a dictator and that power's not gone to your head, right? I mean does Nouri realize how stupid he looks with that over-reaction? In addition, there's the Minister of Finance and I'm forgetting his name.
Ava: Rafie al-Issawi.
Ann: Thank you. He's also reportedly going to be charged with terrorism. Again, he's part of Iraqiya.
Kat: Last Sunday, all three were on a plane intending to go to the KRG. Nouri's forces forced them and their bodyguards off the plane. 3 of Tareq al-Hashemi's bodyguards were then arrested. It was when the international media suddenly snapped awake to the fact that what had been taking place since the Friday before was very serious. al-Hashemi is currently in the KRG and, thus far, they've refused to hand him over to Baghdad despite Nouri's threats.
Betty: C.I., can the KRG continue to protect al-Hashemi and what's the status on al-Mutlaq?
C.I.: The Parliament has stated that Nouri is incorrect in his assertion that the law is on his side, they've stated the law is unclear. That's only a temporary time saver. If the law is unclear, it's left to the judiciary to resolve the issue and the Iraqi judiciary has long been seen as a rubber stamp for Nouri. So right now, Tareq al-Hashemi can remain in the KRG but what happens if the judiciary rules? I have no idea. Now the Iraqi judiciary could rule and, this could be a turmp card, the KRG could respond, "Okay, well that's what it says about Baghdad, but we're the KRG and we have our own courts so we'll take the issue to our courts." That could further delay it. The KRG courts might determine the law -- they'll have to go by intent if they're using Iraqi law but I don't know why the KRG would not use their own law, I think they would and give it greater emphasis -- said Tareq al-Hashemi had to be handed over. In which case, the KRG officials might hand Tareq al-Hashmi over. But what if the KRG courts, citing KRG law, stated the KRG cannot hand him over? Then you'd have a conflict and how that gets resolved would be something the whole world would watch. Saleh al-Mutlaq is a much shorter answer. Nouri wants him stripped of his title and immunity. This goes to Nouri wanting al-Mutlaq arrested. When similar remarks were made by an MP last fall, Nouri tried to have him arrested but MPs have immunity. Nouri was forced to back down. What will happen next will be determined by the Parliament. Nouri asked them to strip him of his title and immunity two Saturdays ago. Last week, Parliament told him they were doing nothing at present and would review the matter in the new year.
Ruth: I really appreciated, in the snapshot, when you provided the walk through on that earlier MP issue because I did not see that in the press coverage of Nouri al-Maliki's attacks on Saleh al-Mutlaq.
C.I.: Last September, Nouri was going after Sabah al-Saadi for similar statements. Later, Ayad Allawi would make similar statements but Nouri was smart enough just to whine there. He knew there would be no international support for his targeting Allawi.
Ruth: And it is really amazing to read a lot of bad coverage that is unaware of what took place. That seems to be a lot of what we are getting. But at the same time . . .
Rebecca: But at the same time there are so few covering Iraq that do you really pick on outlets, right?
Ruth: Right.
Isaiah: It just appalls me that people could turn on the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, ABC World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams every day last week, they could even watch all three programs every day last week, and they'd never hear about the political crisis we're talking about right now. Talk about censorship.
Kat: And don't look for your 'independent' media to do any better. Democracy Now! ignored it except for a sentence in a headline that didn't even note Iraqiya.
Wally: What it boils down to is that when a Republican's in the White House, so-called 'independent' media works overtime to discredit the White House. When a Democrat's in the White House, they work overtime to look the other way. Corporate media? They follow whatever the White House says regardless of which party controls it.
Betty: What could have changed it, the whole dynamic, would have been outlets like FAIR agreeing to maintain consistent standards but they weren't interested in that. They wanted to whore like so many others. They threw their standards out the window to whore for Barack during the primaries and they had nothing left to hold on to. They destroyed themselves.
Cedric: And that goes to why Iraq had to be buried. Covering the Iraq War the last three years meant dealing with reality and they weren't going to do that. Even now, there is the lie that the US is gone. Really? Are we renting out our Baghdad embassy for dances? What are those 17000 Americans doing in Iraq? And the CIA? And Special Ops? But a lot of whores pleased a lot of ninnies who didn't want any bad news about Barack Obama. Barack is a War Criminal and anyone who can't cop to that is a disgusting whore. I loved, loved, Elaine's "F Ani DiFranco." I have no use for these faux peace types who want to glorify the War Criminal Barack and that includes Ani DiFranco.
Jess: She's a supreme disappointment. When she had a real following, she was independent. When she had a real following, she wasn't a little whore for the Democratic Party. That's all she is today and it's part of the reason that her music sucks so much. It's a shame she self-distributes because if she had to depend upon corporate labels her career would be over as it probably should be. Instead, she'll keep whoring, keep writing one song and 14 doodles to pad out another bad album. Somebody should tell her that her day passed.
Ava: I would agree with that. She has nothing left to say and she's ridiculous trying to pass herself off as a protest singer of new protests songs as she hops on board the corporate bandwagon to re-elect Barack Obama. She's a joke, a pathetic and sad little joke. A woman who passed herself off as a lesbian when the media was fascinated with so-called "lipstick lesbians" -- so chic! -- and who married a man and had a baby. She's always been a fake. Madonna's a fake too but Madonna's always let you know she's in on the con and, wink-wink, you are too. Ani DiFranco's just a fraud.
Ann: It's really sad to hear that and agree with it. Like Ani, I supported Ralph Nader in 2000. Unlike Ani, I didn't whore myself out for Barack in 2008 and won't in 2012. You are your beliefs or you're nothing. Ani DiFranco is nothing to me.
Betty: It's people like her that allow wars. She'll be out, when a Republican's in the White House, protesting a war but forget her role in the roll out for the war under a Democratic president -- forget and ignore it. I'm so sick of people like that, I'm so sick of their desire to 'fit in' and their desire to whore.
C.I.: And on that note, we'll wrap up this roundtable. This is a rush transcript you're reading. Any links were inserted via Dallas and, as always, we thank him for his help. Again, our e-mail address is thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com.