Oil & Utility Union Leaders on the Struggle Against Privatization

from Building Bridges, WBAI Radio

by Bill Weinberg, New America Media

Amid daily media body counts and analyses of whether the "surge" is "working," there is an even more horrific reality in Iraq, almost universally overlooked.

The latest annual report by the London-based Minority Rights Group International, released earlier this year, places Iraq second as the country where minorities are most under threat—after Somalia. Sudan is third. More people may be dying in Darfur than Iraq, but Iraq's multiple micro-ethnicities—Turcomans, Assyrians, Mandeans, Yazidis—place it at the top of the list.

Sudan, Iraq and Somalia top an independent ranking of the world's leading failed states by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace. The annual "Failed States Index" ranks 177 countries according to 12 social, economic, political and military indicators. Leading benchmarks for failed state status are loss of physical control of territory or monopoly on the use of force, erosion of legitimate authority, and inability to provide reasonable public services.

"Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majid has been convicted of genocide and sentenced to death by hanging for his role in the 1988 "Anfal" counter-insurgency campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan, in which up to 180,000 Kurds were killed—some in poisonous gas attacks, some gunned down en masse at detainment camps. Majid is to be the seventh associate of Saddam Hussein to face the gallows. The location of the trial and identity of the prosecutors were secret.

A number of Sunni tribal leaders from the Anbar Salvation Council are among 12 people killed in a suicide bombing at the Mansour Hotel in central Baghdad June 25. Although the hotel is also home of the Chinese embassy and several political parties, the meeting of the Anbar sheikhs is believed to have been the target of the attack. The hotel bombing was one of five such attacks in Iraq today that killed more than 40 and injured scores. In the deadliest incident, suicide car bombers detonated outside the Baiji police station, killing 22, some 12 of them police officers. Eight people were killed in a blast in the southern city of Hilla. None of the bombings appeared to cause any US deaths. But the US military reported that one of its soldiers was killed in a small-arms attack. (BBC, WP, June 25)

A suicide bomber in a truck filled with cooking gas and explosives detonated his payload in Baghdad's Khalani Square June 19 just as worshippers were finishing midday prayers at the square's large Shi'ite mosque, killing 87, injuring more than 200 and partially destroying the mosque. That night, three Sunni mosques were attacked in Babil province—the Osama bin Zaid and Abdulla al-Jabouri mosques in Iskandariya, and the Asfouk Mosque at Ajbala outside Mahawil, near the so-called "Triangle of Death." Gunmen stormed the mosques, then set off bombs. No casualties were reported, but the mosques were all damaged. (NYT, CNN, June 20)

Via PRWeb, the Press Release Newswire, June 15:

Noam Chomsky Voices Support for the "Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees Act of 2007"
House Resolution 2265 would allow more Iraqis into the United States, including religious minorities suffering from persecution.
Mandaean Crisis International, an organization dedicated to ending persecution of the Mandaean community, today announced that Professor Noam Chomsky has publicly lent his support to the passage of House Resolution 2265. Called the Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees Act of 2007, the bill would confer immigration status to the U.S. for many religious minorities, including the Mandaean community in Iraq. The Mandaeans, also known as Sabian Mandaeans, are an ethnic and religious group of great but uncertain antiquity who revere John the Baptist as their last great teacher, but are not Christian.

From Reporters Without Borders, June 18, via International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX):

Reporters Without Borders has voiced deep outrage at the murder of Filaih Wadi Mijthab, editor of the daily "al-Sabah", whom kidnappers snatched from his car on 13 June 2007 as he was driving to work.