'Just World News' with Helena Cobban: Salam/Pax is back!

Salam/Pax is back!

Posted by Helena Cobban
August 27, 2004 10:41 AM EST | Link
Filed in Iraq 2003 thru June 2005

Hey, folks, Salam/Pax has been blogging from Baghdad since August 9! This is great news for all of us who relied on his wry, Baghdad-based view of world in the months leading up to and immediately after the US/UK invasion.

(Big kudos to faithful JWN lurker Marjolein for telling me of S's return.)

Salam says he's just going to be back in Baghdad for 5 weeks this time. He's been down in Najaf and doing some t.v. documentaries for the BBC with the Mahdi Army, on which he has some good observations.

It also seems his father is a minister in the Allawist government. Which gives Salam a unique perspective:

You can watch the government go into shock collectively. There is something wickedly funny when your father, sitting in his PJs and sipping on wine, answers your questions with ?no comment? and gives you the mask of absolutely no emotions.

People, the Iraqi government has no fucking clue as to what al-Sistani is trying to do. Apparently they have been in touch with him for days now but his [March of millions] initiative has been a total surprise to them and they have no idea what to make of it or how to deal with it. And al-Sistani managed to give them another surprise by asking to allow the masses to go into Najaf...

This post seems pretty interesting, too.

Comments

Comment from... Christiane, at August 28, 2004 02:29 AM:

That's great news, thanks for the link !
BTW, Salam's friend Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is a great photographer and his pictures are worth seeing. They show the extent of damage the fights with US troops have caused near the shrine.
http://tinyurl.com/4lgfc

Comment from... Findow c. Heck, at August 28, 2004 07:48 AM:

File: Election 2004 Re: Siege of Najaf (August 28th)

On August24, 2004,, the Ayatollah ali Sistani returned from exile to symbolic Najaf, the burial place of Imam Ali, the husband of Fatima and the father of the grandchildren of the Prophet Mohammad.

Islam means to surrender to Allah. The powerful symbolic synergism of a prophets Return within Islam has done its work. The Judeo-Christian symbolism of a Messiah (coming soon or already here) and Liberation followed by Armageddon and Final Justice, has not been thwarted.

Robin Wright, speaking from behind the curtain of unnamed and questionable experts, weighs in with the judgment that there is No Hudna; peace is temporary. Significantly she ignores the Kurdish and Chalabi provenance and composition of the Iraqi Allawi forces, supported by what Jefferson called �dogs of war�. The 78 of 100 United States Senators, including His Most Electable (HME) Kerry, turned over to Bush and Cheney control of these patriotic and faithful �dogs of war.� In 1848 we had Polk extending slavery through Texas to Mexico. He was stopped, not by Lincoln, buit by the discovery of Gold in California in 1849. Mathew Rothschild misses the point in his editorial in The Progressive (Ever since 1909). Ever since 1948,with the Truman approval to start the New Yishuv, the handlers in the Executive branch are, as was Polk, by their very nature, still poised to unleash them to end any thought of a Hudna that threatens our interests in property, including human peonage for selected ethnics..

There is no end in sight of Bush�s Big War spawning Small Wars in Fallujah, Najaf, Mosul, Kirkuk and Sadr City, according to Robin Wright at the WP:

WP�s Robin Wright: �The Najaf deal may bring short-term peace to the ravaged holy city after three weeks of urban warfare, but the cease-fire terms could pose a long-term danger to U.S. troops and interests in Iraq, U.S. officials and Middle East experts said yesterday. The issues underlying the bloody showdown have not been resolved, they warned �

Comment from... Findow c. Heck, at August 28, 2004 08:19 AM:

N.B. Findow made this posting before he read the NYT editorial which would not change anything in the posting. It does seem to make the occupation forces the judge of what is mete and right to do in the Alavid Shiite holy places of Najaf and Kufa. Obviously, the NYT does not accept the WSJ Op-ED article by a contributor who reports that Ayatollah Sistani is the reformer awaited in Iran, the land of his birth, doing away with the Khomeini heresy of �Allah, Islam and Khomeini � being carved into the hills of Iran.�ACF 8:09 AM

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