Hi. I wanted to send Riverbend as soon as I got it, but the election took precedence, though this weighs. A couple of small notes on the ballot pref's. I sent you. The judges list was also the creation of Jackie Goldberg and Lila Garrett. And in Appellate Court, District 5, Richard MosK is the preferred candidate. With a K. I'm pretty sure he's the son of Stanley Mosk, famed attorney and jurist. Easy to remember. Finally, you are voting for more than one judge on the panels, and you have to vote yes or no for each office/candidate.
Girl Blogger from Iraq... let's talk war, politics and occupation. http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ ... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend... Sunday, November 05, 2006 When All Else Fails... . Execute the dictator. It's that simple. When American troops are being killed by the dozen, when the country you are occupying is threatening to break up into smaller countries, when you have militias and death squads roaming the streets and you've put a group of Mullahs in power- execute the dictator. Everyone expected this verdict from the very first day of the trial. There was a brief interlude when, with the first judge, it was thought that it might actually be a coherent trial where Iraqis could hear explanations and see what happened. That was soon over with the prosecution's first false witness. Events that followed were so ridiculous; it's difficult to believe them even now. The sound would suddenly disappear when the defense or one of the defendants got up to speak. We would hear the witnesses but no one could see them- hidden behind a curtain, their voices were changed. People who were supposed to have been dead in the Dujail incident were found to be very alive. Judge after judge was brought in because the ones in court were seen as too fair. They didn't instantly condemn the defendants (even if only for the sake of the media). The piece de resistance was the final judge they brought in. His reputation vies only that of Chalabi- a well-known thief and murderer who ran away to Iran to escape not political condemnation, but his father's wrath after he stole from the restaurant his father ran. So we all knew the outcome upfront (Maliki was on television 24 hours before the verdict telling people not to 'rejoice too much'). I think what surprises me right now is the utter stupidity of the current Iraqi government. The timing is ridiculous- immediately before the congressional elections? How very convenient for Bush. Iraq, today, is at its very worst since the invasion and the beginning occupation. April 2003 is looking like a honeymoon month today. Is it really the time to execute Saddam? I'm more than a little worried. This is Bush's final card. The elections came and went and a group of extremists and thieves were put into power (no, no- I meant in Baghdad, not Washington). The constitution which seems to have drowned in the river of Iraqi blood since its elections has been forgotten. It is only dug up when one of the Puppets wants to break apart the country. Reconstruction is an aspiration from another lifetime: I swear we no longer want buildings and bridges, security and an undivided Iraq are more than enough. Things must be deteriorating beyond imagination if Bush needs to use the 'Execute the Dictator' card. Iraq has not been this bad in decades. The occupation is a failure. The various pro-American, pro-Iranian Iraqi governments are failures. The new Iraqi army is a deadly joke. Is it really time to turn Saddam into a martyr? Things are so bad that even pro-occupation Iraqis are going back on their initial 'WE LOVE AMERICA' frenzy. Laith Kubba (a.k.a. Mr. Catfish for his big mouth and constant look of stupidity) was recently on the BBC saying that this was just the beginning of justice, that people responsible for the taking of lives today should also be brought to justice. He seems to have forgotten he was one of the supporters of the war and occupation, and an important member of one of the murderous pro-American governments. But history shall not forget Mr. Kubba. Iraq saw demonstrations against and for the verdict. The pro-Saddam demonstrators were attacked by the Iraqi army. This is how free our media is today: the channels that were showing the pro-Saddam demonstrations have been shut down. Iraqi security forces promptly raided them.Welcome to the new Iraq. Zawra satellite channel has stopped broadcasting by order of the government. Salahiddin and Zawra, shut down. Security forces raided the offices of the channels It's not about the man- presidents come and go, governments come and go. It's the frustration of feeling like the whole country and every single Iraqi inside and outside of Iraq is at the mercy of American politics. It is the rage of feeling like a mere chess piece to be moved back and forth at will. It is the aggravation of having a government so blind and uncaring about their peoples needs that they don't even feel like it's necessary to go through the motions or put up an act. And it's the deaths. The thousands of dead and dying, with Bush sitting there smirking and lying about progress and winning in a country where every single Iraqi outside of the Green Zone is losing. Once again. The timing of all of this is impeccable- two days before congressional elections. And if you don't see it, then I'm sorry, you're stupid. Let's see how many times Bush milks this as a 'success' in his coming speeches. A final note. I just read somewhere that some of the families of dead American soldiers are visiting the Iraqi north to see 'what their sons and daughters died for'. If that's the goal of the visit, then, "Ladies and gentlemen- to your right is the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, to your left is the Dawry refinery. Each of you get this, a gift bag containing a 3 by 3 color poster of Al Sayid Muqtada Al Sadr (Long May He Live And Prosper), an Ayatollah Sistani t-shirt and a map of Iran, to scale, redrawn with the Islamic Republic of South Iraq. Also. Hey you! You- the female in the back- is that a lock of hair I see? Cover it up or stay home." And that is what they died for. *** http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061120/falk Questionable Verdict by RICHARD FALK The timing of the death sentence imposed on Saddam Hussein, so suspiciously convenient for Republican aspirations in the mid-term elections, will only deepen the sectarian tensions in Iraq, fanning further the flames of civil war. While President Bush predictably greeted the news as yet another "milestone" in the effort of the Iraqi people "to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law," a less partisan reaction would lament the timing as intensifying sectarian strife in Iraq that has by now become a civil war intertwined with a war of resistance. The American stage-managing of this judicial process in Baghdad has been evident to close observers all along. It always seemed legally dubious to initiate a criminal trial against Saddam Hussein, while the American occupation was encountering such strong resistance by Saddam loyalists, especially as the US-led invasion was widely regarded throughout the world as itself embodying the crime of aggressive war, a crime for which surviving Nazi leaders were charged and punished at Nuremberg after World War II. This reality constitutes a fundamental flaw in this whole judicial process. In effect, why Saddam Hussein? Or differently, why not George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld? The cost of this political opportunism by the United States goes beyond the narrow circumstances of this trial. No one doubts that Saddam Hussein and the other defendants were substantively guilty of crimes against humanity when they killed 148 civilians in the town of Dujail back in 1982 after a failed assassination attempt; collective punishment is an international crime whatever the provocation. But the potential contribution to building a legal tradition of accountability applicable to political leaders has been undermined in this instance by the circumstances and auspices of the this tribunal--and by the way the prosecution proceeded. Defense lawyers were not adequately protected, and three were killed; evidence presented to the tribunal was not made available to the defense in advance; the judge was switched midway through because he was alleged to be too permissive toward those accused; there were no international judges on the tribunal; and some of the evidence appeared to be fabricated. Justice is not done if the appearance of justice is not present. This is particularly true if there is deep political cleavage about whether those accused should be prosecuted in the first place. Finally, the impact of this death sentence is morally and politically questionable. At this point, internationally, a death sentence is not considered to be an acceptable punishment; the International Criminal Court, and other international criminal tribunals, reject capital punishment as an option. Almost all political democracies in the world have done away with the death penalty, and so to impose it here, especially by way of hanging, can only be regarded as an expression of primitive vindictiveness, an act of vengeance far more than an expression of justice that brings discredit to the whole process. Politically, as the sectarian demonstrations throughout Iraq have already demonstrated, the verdict at this point by an Iraqi tribunal acting under the authority of the American occupier, intensifies the problematic situation in the country. It fans the flames of Sunni/Shi'ia strife, which possesses most of the characteristics of a civil war, and it reinforces the impression of an aggressive occupier imposing its historical narrative on a still deeply divided society. It also poses a dilemma. If the death sentence is carried out, it will ensure Saddam Hussein's status as a Sunni martyr, and make even more unlikely an accommodation among Iraqis as an alternative to civil war. On the other hand if the sentence is not carried out, it will give further evidence that this is a political, not a legal, process, and sadly, encourage the most cynical views of these efforts to hold political leaders responsible for crimes of state. As well, it will sustain Saddam Hussein's claim to be still the leader of the Iraqi people, a hero in captivity. All in all, the outcome of this first trial against the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein, should have been internationalized, or at the very least, waited until normalcy had been restored in Iraq. To convert this criminal process into a tool to vindicate the narrative of the Bush administration as to what was achieved in Iraq by the invasion and occupation was itself misguided even if the only audience was here in the United States. By now, even naive America no longer listens when Washington claims that another milestone establishes progress in the war. As the milestones pile up, so do the bodies. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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