[Rictor]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1292228.htm

...wait just one ****ing minute. The votes are being counted at a military base?!



-----------------------------------

At the Al-Khazrajiya school in the city's old quarter, Najat Ridha, 48, was ushered into a classroom and handed two ballots, one for the national assembly and another for the local provincial council.

An election worker suggested she vote for list 285 headed by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and a local list headed by governor Duraid Kashmula.

She ticked the boxes obligingly and walked out - just as Zahra Ibrahim, 60, did before her.

"I really just did what they asked me to do," she said as the Iraqi national anthem crackled on a loudspeaker in the background.

I remember the same thing happening in the Afghan elections, more or less.

[Gank]

At a polling station in the New Mosul neighbourhood, Mahasin Ahmed, 37, a school teacher, wanted to vote for Yawar, a tribal leader, but did not know that his list number was 255 and neither did the election worker helping her.

He suggested she vote for list 188 because it had "tribes" in the title.

oooh democracy in action

Originally posted by Bobboau
he might not have been talking about Sadr,
didn't he select not to take part in the elections? (i.e. we didn't ban him he just gave the whole election thing the finger)

Sadrs pretty much the only one whos actually came out in public against the coalition, rest of the insurgency's been fought by nameless people. And yeah, but I think some of his people are running on the big united shi'ite list.

[.::Tin Can::.]

Originally posted by Rictor
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1292228.htm

...wait just one ****ing minute. The votes are being counted at a military base?!



I remember the same thing happening in the Afghan elections, more or less.

Wait...

...you got this from ABC?

[Rictor]

They're a mainstream American news source, can't get much more credible (at least in the eyes of Americans) than that. Or are we talking about the scary liberal bias again?

In any case, that's not even what the article is about. The military base thing is a peripheral comment made. Thats like doing a story about the election and lying about the colour of the ballot box...it makes no sense.

...you're doing this on purpose, aren't you?

[01010]

Originally posted by .::Tin Can::.


Wait...

...you got this from ABC?

Oh no. He get it from a reasonably unbiased source as opposed to the Bush administration spewhole that is Fox news. Fox may as well be based in a sewage works for the amount of pure **** it reports.

I wish that all the journalists in the US that actually had a ****ing spine and reported the TRUTH as opposed to towing the party line form their own media company. Imagine that, a true free press that can actually criticise your government rather than pander to the sexually repressed, morally bankrupt, cash grabbing hypocrites that are ****ing everyone earning under $330,000 a year royally in the ass, then turning you round to stick their ****ty cock in your mouths for the cumshot.

[Rictor]

the prodigal son returns

(might want to throw an "as" in that first sentence, unless you actually meant that ABC is opposed to Bush)

...alright, I'll stop being an asshole now.

[01010]

Originally posted by Rictor
the prodigal son returns

(might want to throw an "as" in that first sentence, unless you actually meant that ABC is opposed to Bush)

...alright, I'll stop being an asshole now.

Good call. My liberal "society must die" anger obviously made me miss that one.  

I've been away, playing Halo 2 for some 120 hours easily since I bought it, which is nice. I've also been trying to get my hands on as much information as I can about how the world got to be as ****ed up as it is. Which is also nice.

Also turned 22 yesterday, which is the reason I'm not at work today. Ha ha.

[.::Tin Can::.]

Happy birthday 01010

[redmenace]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6906895/

[vyper]

hmm...

[Flipside]

All I'll say is, I'd actually be glad if America proves me wrong to be honest It'll be a step in the right direction for everyone.

It would certainly be one time where I could say that I'd be glad to be wrong

[Gank]

SCIRI's list winning? What a surprise.

On Dec. 22, 2004, Iraqi Finance Minister Abdel Mahdi told a handful of reporters and industry insiders at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that Iraq wants to issue a new oil law that would open Iraq's national oil company to private foreign investment. As Mahdi explained: "So I think this is very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies." In other words, Mahdi is proposing to privatize Iraq's oil and put it into American corporate hands. According to the finance minister, foreigners would gain access both to "downstream" and "maybe even upstream" oil investment. This means foreigners can sell Iraqi oil and own it under the ground - the very thing for which many argue the U.S. went to war in the first place. As Vice President Dick Cheney's Defense Policy Guidance report explained back in 1992, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the [Middle East] region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil." While few in the American media other than Emad Mckay of Inter Press Service reported on - or even attended - Mahdi's press conference, the announcement was made with U.S. Undersecretary of State Alan Larson at Mahdi's side. It was intended to send a message - but to whom? It turns out that Abdel Mahdi is running in the Jan. 30 elections on the ticket of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIR), the leading Shiite political party. While announcing the selling-off of the resource which provides 95 percent of all Iraqi revenue may not garner Mahdi many Iraqi votes, but it will unquestionably win him tremendous support from the U.S. government and U.S. corporations. Mahdi's SCIR is far and away the front-runner in the upcoming elections, particularly as it becomes increasingly less possible for Sunnis to vote because the regions where they live are spiraling into deadly chaos. If Bush were to suggest to Iraq's Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi that elections should be called off, Mahdi and the SCIR's ultimate chances of victory will likely decline./

I'll add that the list of political parties Mahdi's SCIR belongs to, The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), includes the Iraqi National Council, which is led by an old friend of the Bush Administration who provided the faulty information they needed to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq, none other than Ahmed Chalabi.

It should also be noted that interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi also fed the Bush Administration cooked information used to justify the invasion, but he heads a different Shia list which will most likely be getting nearly as many votes as the UIA list.

And The UIA has the blessing of Iranian born revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Sistani issued a fatwa which instructed his huge number of followers to vote in the election, or they would risk going to hell.

Thus, one might argue that the Bush administration has made a deal with the SCIR: Iraq's oil for guaranteed political power. The Americans are able to put forward such a bargain because Bush still holds the strings in Iraq. Regardless of what happens in the elections, for at least the next year during which the newly elected National Assembly writes a constitution and Iraqis vote for a new government, the Bush administration is going to control the largest pot of money available in Iraq (the $24 billion in U.S. taxpayer money allocated for the reconstruction), the largest military and the rules governing Iraq's economy. Both the money and the rules will, in turn, be overseen by U.S.-appointed auditors and inspector generals who sit in every Iraqi ministry with five-year terms and sweeping authority over contracts and regulations. However, the one thing which the administration has not been unable to confer upon itself is guaranteed access to Iraqi oil - that is, until now.