Tag Archives: Nouri al-Maliki

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mashup Monday &some News …


Today, President Obama and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki held a joint press conference at the White House . In other news, Occupy Wall Street has decided to block or interfere with Ports along the West Coast while The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of: the Affordable Health Care Act, the  Arizona immigration law though Justice Kagan has recused herself from the case due to her involvement as a solicitor general with the Obama Admin. The high court’s ruling will have implications for 44 states considering their own immigration policies.

just another rant …

 If Congress does not act in 18 days Middle Class Americans will have an increase of approximately $1000 in taxes

The official date of winter is 12/20 but the weather outside is getting frightful …well, depending upon what part of the country you live in. The Politics is getting uglier and people on the Hill are downright rude; Republican rude that is. Speaking of Republicans… who do you want as the Teapublican Presidential challenger – Newt the Grinch, Willard the flip flopper or Rick Perry the Secessionist. I know someone has to challenge Barack Obama though like he said last night; it really does not matter whom because Teapublicans all seem to have the same core values and it is a stark difference from the guy who is getting my vote, Barack Obama in 2012. The notion that the difference between Obama and Teapublican Ideology is a close as the nose on your face is obvious to me yet if you listen and I suggest listening – just don’t believe everything you hear main stream media, TV hosts, or those so-called reporters say. It is as if listening to a drumbeat of misinformation misguided misunderstood hitting the airwaves daily. The meme and the person delivering the crap should be held accountable -listen the 2010 elections had help from TV pundits, hosts etc. that put not only unqualified into both Chambers of Congress they are extreme and represent only a small percentage of their own constituents.  I hope everyone gets informed with the facts use YouTube and watch the many town halls the interviews of my fellow Americans suffering from not just their status in life. Teapublicans have put their States   at risk, rising unemployment numbers; situations that these new Teapublican Governors and Mayors promised. Now, a big dose of buyer’s remorse has led Americans in various States to become pro-active with progress made by the Middle Class to gain back control that will turn around that downward spiral being offered up by Teapublicans. The latest news is an effort to recall Teapublicans who do not believe in regulations, comprehensive immigration, the right to choose, Medicare, Medicaid, social security or that there is even an worker emergency that needs to be addressed, unemployment given and a real sincere effort to get America back on track instead of using their fellow Americans as pawns. If you listen to folks discuss the so-called “Polls” with strange survey question you have to wonder just how much are they being paid. I also wonder if anyone else wonders, where our economy would be if Teapublicans had not gotten into office in 2010 or got there but did what we all pay them for … To do the Peoples Business but they are not. The People’s Business is far from done and what are coming out of the Republican led House of Representatives are on most days an embarrassment and a big waste of taxpayer money. If you have not seen what goes on in Congress; the bills, the nasty attached amendments, the votes and the comments from Teapublican leaders yet you must take the time. The behavior of grown men and women working to gain whatever they can for their individual States is the job but these lawmakers seem to have forgotten the country.  I have to say watching Congress some days the rhetoric is silly, the lack of action upsetting.  It brings to mind what some members of the Democratic Party have referenced and I wonder why it took so long for them to get it. It is that football scene on snoopy; an animated cartoon that can be watched and laughed at by millions then forgotten but a look closer at the actions by Teapublican Leadership lately and it is a look at Lucy (Teapublicans) pulling that football(AmericanJobsACT) away from Charlie Brown(Dems) though in our case the scene(story) affects millions watching the crap go down.

I still have the audacity for hope and change …the possibilities to make America better with reforms to counter the corruption that almost brought us to our knees are as far as you can see, yet Teapublicans continue to do us all dirty with those filibusters hurting our entire social and economic system. I have to say if this is, what they think qualifies them to be trusted or to govern the beautiful United States of American then We the People have to make sure Teapublicans do not gain more power in 2012 because the changes they will make will disrupt and dismantle our Democracy as we  know it.

Other News …

British Prime Minister on Refusal to Join EU Treaty

President Meets With Iraqi Prime Minister

House Prepares to Debate Payroll Tax Cut

Ben and Jerry Support Occupy Movement

Gingrich & Huntsman Debate Nat’l Security Issues

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Talks About Military Cuts

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Google …official blog


Trip report: Google and YouTube in Iraq

Posted: 26 Oct 2010 08:06 AM PDT

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

Earlier this month, a small team from Google and YouTube spent a week in Iraq on a trip arranged by the Department of Defense’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO). Our goals were to explore opportunities for Google in Iraq, to understand the landscape of Internet access and connectivity in the country during this critical transition period and to bring top-voted questions from YouTube to Iraqi leaders in a series of interviews. We met with students, private sector companies, NGOs and Iraqi leadership in the Kurdish city of Erbil in the north, and in Baghdad.

Pictures taken by the Google/YouTube team in Iraq: Harry Wingo (Policy), Carrie Farrell (Google.org), Debu Purkayastha (Corp Dev), Olivia Ma (YouTube), Mary Himinkool (Business Development) and Steve Grove (YouTube).

Regardless of your feelings about the Iraq War, it’s immediately evident upon arrival just how completely the country missed the Internet boom during Saddam Hussein’s regime. Internet penetration rates in Iraq are among the lowest in the Middle East—somewhere between one and eight percent. Only 15 percent of Iraqis say they use the web, and the largest percentage of them live in Baghdad. There are no commercial data centers in Iraq and much more fiber connectivity is needed to meet consumer needs. Most connections are via satellite, and those who do have connections pay dearly for it—we heard estimates of up to $150 U.S. dollars per month for a 512kb connection. To incentivize and enable private companies to lay more fiber in Iraq, a complex set of roadblocks must be addressed—from security concerns to regulatory frameworks to licensing structures. As the country is still struggling to form a government more than seven months after its last election, much of this progress has been stalled.

There are signs of progress, however. Mobile penetration has skyrocketed in Iraq in the past seven years, from effectively zero percent in 2003 to over 70% today. And the Iraqi people are highly educated. We met with dozens of computer science students at Salahaddin University in Erbil and at Baghdad University, and though they lack equipment and resources, they’re highly motivated to innovate and believe the web is a critical component of their economy’s future.

Many young people in Iraq and around the world submitted questions in Arabic and English for three interviews we conducted in partnership with Middle Eastern news agency Al Arabiya. Google Translate enabled anyone to vote on their favorite questions regardless of language, and we brought the top five questions to current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil, Dr. Barham Salih and Iraqi politician and once the interim Prime Minister of Iraq, Ayad Allawi. Here is the television special that Al Arabiya produced showcasing their answers:

The Iraqis we met consistently expressed their desire for increased access to the web and for more access to content and tools in both Kurdish and Arabic. We believe access to information and high-speed connectivity to the cloud will be key to the future of the country. The power of the web to change people’s lives grows the further one gets from Silicon Valley, and we look forward to continuing our work with companies, governments and citizens in Iraq and other countries in transition.

Posted by Mary Himinkool, New Business Development, and Olivia Ma, YouTube News & Politics

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IRAQ: WikiLeaks’ Releases Iraq War Logs


On Friday, the international organization WikiLeaks release

d The Iraq War Logs, a “huge trove of secret field reports” — 391,832 documents in all — from the U.S. military in Iraq. The archive is the second such cache obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to news organizations. The first, released in July, was a trove of 77,000 reports covering six years of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. National Security Network’s Heather Hurlburt described the reports as “add[ing] a numbing amount of new, awful detail to what we already knew about the Iraq war.” The documents suggest that violence was reduced from 2007 “not only because the American military committed to more troops and a new strategy, but because Iraqis themselves, exhausted by years of bloody war, were ready for it.” According to the New York Times, the deaths of Iraqi civilians also “appear to be greater than the numbers made public by the United States during the Bush administration.”

ABUSE OF IRAQIS BY IRAQIS: While the newly released documents “offer few glimpses of what was happening inside American detention facilities, they do contain indelible details of abuse carried out by Iraq’s army and police.” The Guardian reports that the documents reveal that “U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.” Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg “said the allegations of killings, torture and abuse were ‘extremely serious’ and ‘needed to be looked at.'” Joel Wing noted that “Iraq’s political parties were quick to put [the Iraqi police] to work in their internal struggle to form a new Iraqi government,” with Iyad Allawi’s Iraqi National Movement saying “that the documents gave proof that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki should not stay in office.”

IRAN IN IRAQ: The reports “underscore the seriousness with which Iran’s role [in Iraq] has been seen by the American military.” According to the documents, Iran’s military “intervened aggressively in support of Shiite combatants, offering weapons, training and sanctuary and in a few instances directly engaging American troops.” Robert Farley, an Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Kentucky, wrote that it is “utterly unsurprising” that Iran intervened in Iraq. “Attempting to manage the political situation in a neighboring country, while simultaneously weakening a potential enemy, is something that countries do.” Iran’s involvement in Iraq has not primarily been military, but rather political and economic. As Center for American Progress analysts Brian Katulis and Matthew Duss wrote in April 2008, depictions of Iran’s role in Iraq as purely military “ignore an inconvenient truth: The leaders in Iraq’s current government are closely aligned with Tehran and represent some of Iran’s closest allies in Iraq.” Iran has been similarly politically involved in neighboring Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai “said Monday that his government receives as much as $1 million at least once or twice a year from Iran,” just as he said Washington doles out “bags of money” to his office.

COSTS AND CONSEQUENCES: While the documents reveal that coalition forces found traces of past Iraqi weapons programs, Wired Magazine reported that, the “war logs don’t reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime,” as the Bush administration had claimed existed, but that “remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained.” There are no earth-shattering revelations in the new cache, but they do deepen our understanding of the war’s disastrous consequences, both for the U.S. and for the region, particularly in regard to the wide-scale inter-community violence and sectarian cleansing that gripped the country in 2006-7. The violence led to the displacement of over 4.5 million Iraqis, both within and without the country, the vast majority of whom have been unable to return home, remaining displaced either inside Iraq or in neighboring countries. A February 2010 Center for American Progress report, The Iraq War Ledger, examined the costs and benefits of the Iraq intervention, and concluded “there is simply no conceivable calculus by which Operation Iraqi Freedom can be judged to have been a successful or worthwhile policy. The war was intended to show the extent of America’s power. It succeeded only in showing its limits.”