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Lets go back to the question. There were a lot of obstacles surrounding the government's response to the people's request. One obstacle is political ignorance in all the political parties; we were advising all the political parties involved, as well as the government, to negotiate. There were just too many political obstacles in this process. Sunni parties speculated on the requests of the people in order to gain political leverage, as well as put Premier al-Maliki in an embarrassing political situation.
2. Open fighting began in Anbar long before the insurgents' summer offensive and the fall of Mosul. The Iraqi Security Forces and the tribes have held constant operations in the same areas over and over, such as Saqlawiya, southern Ramadi, areas outside of Fallujah, etc.
Why have there been so many operations in the same areas over and over again? Why can't the ISF and tribes hold these areas?
With the exception of the SWAT and anti-terrorism squads, the Iraqi Army is facing a huge problem.
They basically have little practice or training in facing this kind of warfare; they have been sitting around for several years watching checkpoints. As a result, they lost their readiness.
Adding to this, the corruption amongst high-ranking officers and commanders has reduced the Army to a hollow cylinder: solid outside and empty inside.
This is said with all due respect for the sacrifices that honest officers and soldiers have offered to Anbar. We will always be indebted to them. The Iraqi Army's weak status with regards to their equipment and mobilization is another one of the reasons they broke in front of the ISIS wave in Mosul. The tribes are defending their land, simply like a farmer defending his land from an invader. They have no strategy or vision on how to hold the ground, etc.
3. After the fall of Mosul in June 2014 the ISF suddenly withdrew from the Syrian border area in Anbar calling it a strategic retreat allowing the insurgents to take over. What happened there?
The shock of losing Mosul is a great psychological jolt to the Iraqi Army among all brigades and divisions. Adding to this, you have the retreat of the Army from the Syrian borders, as well as logistical hurdles such as the resupply of munitions, food, etc.
On the other hand, many would argue that the brigades retreated from the borders to defend Haditha, and they will continue to defend Haditha until they have a chance to return to the border.
4. Several sheikhs and tribes have been fighting the insurgency in Anbar, such as Abu Risha, the Hayes brothers, the Albu Nimr. Recently there was a meeting of several of these tribes calling for government support.
The Interior and Defense Ministry said that it would provide support for several thousand local fighters. Are you and the sheikhs happy with a new Baghdad-backed Sahwa (awakening) or do you want jobs directly within the ISF? And what would be the difference?
I think that the "Sahwa" and the "Sons of Iraq" programs were a big fiasco; mainly this was due to government corruption. We do not have any intention to repeat the mistakes we made in the past.
What we desire is to let the "Sons of Anbar" be a part of the security apparatus by enlisting them directly in the Iraqi Security Forces. This would be under the umbrella of the law, in order to build a modern, safe, and secure province.
5. For several weeks the Islamic State has laid siege to Haditha, which has successfully held out against their attacks. Can you provide some details about what the situation is like there?
In Haditha, the men are hard at work resisting and defending ISIS's advances, and we have the most courageous soldiers defending the city. A major change is on the horizon.
HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. (AP) Jaalam Hill had his first career double-double to help last-place Cleveland State beat Northern Kentucky 83-77 Saturday night to knock the Norse out of first in the Horizon League and snap their 20-game home win streak.
Drew McDonald had 22 points for the Norse, moving into second on the program's career scoring list with 1,998 - nine shy of the mark set by Craig Sanders (1998-2002). Jalen Tate scored 19 points and Dantez Walton added 12 points and nine rebounds.
The Canadian subsidiary of General Motors is trying to stop an auto workers union from airing a critical TV commercial during the Super Bowl.
The 30-second ad calling the automaker greedy and “un-Canadian” is scheduled to broadcast on Canadian TV stations during Sunday’s game.
GM announced plans in November to close its car factory in Oshawa, Ont., costing the jobs of about 2,600 blue-collar workers.
The commercial accuses GM of continuing to expand in Mexico while leaving Canadians “out in the cold” and makes claims about the costs of a 2009 auto bailout.
GM sent a cease-and-desist letter to Unifor giving it a Saturday deadline to stop using the ad.
GM says in a statement that the ad is misleading and inaccurate.
Hansel and Gretel meet Bay Ridge.
Everyone loves the “Gingerbread House” on 83rd Street and Narrows Avenue in Bay Ridge.
It is officially called the Howard E. and Jessie Jones House, after the original owners had architect J. Sarsfield Kennedy build it in 1916.
And its fame stretches across oceans.
It’s not just beautiful from the outside. This candy-coated dreamhouse is sweet on the inside, too.
He estimated the value of the property at “well over $5 million,” though in reality, it’s probably priceless.
The current owners may just want to keep it that way, never answering the door no matter how many times we knocked.
I use to live about 1/2 mile from this home. My mother would walk us kids in our strollers to the Gingerbread House all the time. As I child I was in awe of this mysterious place,I wondered where was Hanzel and Gretel? Did a mean witch live there? Was it safe to go pass the bushes that lined the property? Could I go to the front door, knock and ask to come in and see this wonderful, magical place? Or would someone open the door and eat me up!
One never knew, and we still don't! I am now 54 years old and still yearn to see the inside. I was back in B'klyn 2 years ago and I could not leave until I went to the Gingerbread House, and when I did I got the feeling of being that little girl standing at the gate wondering what lurked behind that front door.( and I still wonder.) Maybe before I die I will get my life long wish.....to walk inside the Gingerbread House!
5 mil for a house in Brooklyn.It seems that's about the same price as the rest of the houses in Brooklyn.
‘Poet’, ‘prophet’, ‘hillbilly revolutionary’, ‘progressive redneck with a conscience’ – these are some of the epithets that have been conferred on Joe Bageant who died on March 26. The ABC’s Steve Austin called him 'The Woody Guthrie of the typewriter' for he championed the cause of the ‘white redneck’, a social group he saw as being one of the most marginalised and disenfranchised in America.
Joe was a man of wisdom, intelligence and penetrating insight, but what made him really special was his warm, wry – sometimes acerbic – sense of humour and his direct no-frills honesty. He was also, in my view, a kind of a genuine working class liberation theologian – at least he would have been had he believed in God!
Today liberation theology appears dead (it is certainly in cold storage), and while there are strong voices advocating on behalf of the poor and disempowered, there is little conversation about the transformation of unjust social and economic structures and virtually no conversation at all about class. Bageant bypassed our denial mechanism and laid bare the despair, the sense of indignant outrage, the oppression of 60 million white Americans whose spirit has been burned dry ‘like raisins in the sun’ by American corporate power.
A nice opening gambit to capture the hearts of his cultured, liberal, middle class audience! He was a mischievous ‘stirrer’; he liked to feed and subvert the stereotypes, preconceptions and misconceptions of his readers and listeners.
Bageant saw class as being the basis of all politics – which is, in his view, the primary reason we don’t wish to talk about it. The silencing of such conversation is an essential strategy of the few who benefit from the present structures – the one percent of the population that owns 45 percent of America’s wealth.
With one well-formed sentence he could burst the illusory bubble of America as ‘the land of opportunity’: ‘If yer mamma was waitress and yer pappa worked in the mill, if there ain’t a book in the house, well, you’re not goin’ to be in the Whitehouse kid …' – a bull’s eye summary of innumerable sociological tomes.
Bageant believed that the American psyche is now programmed to a setting that is antithetical to the very idea of equality and the common good. It has become a ‘corpocracy’ where corporations, not the Government run the country. The hyper-individualism that flows from the profit-at-all costs mindset comes at the cost of the social fabric of the nation.
He reserved his most caustic scorn for the American media and their abject failure to inform the populace. Instead of informed analysis they stage ‘fake media revolutions’ and turn all of American life into ‘cheap propagandistic theatre’; it is a nation ‘immersed in spectacle’– two headed babies, Martians in Los Vagas, Obama practising Voodoo in the Whitehouse. The people are permanently ‘distracted from distraction by distraction’ (T.S. Eliot).
The irony is that (as a consequence of the drip-feed of propaganda), the poor ‘rednecks’ are the most likely to support that very policies that will impoverish them even more. How could they be aware they are being tricked if they are deprived of the very capacities that would empower them to perceive the trickery? Their only option is to ‘house’ the mindset of the elites (Paulo Freire).
Bageant reminds all ‘us Christian folk’ that religion is not primarily about what we believe but about how we behave.
Bageant brought us beyond the caricature and stereotype and took us right into the mind of the fundamentalist redneck and in so doing invited us to understand the historical, social and psychological reasons why they see the world as they do. The recent film Winter’s Bone powerfully supports Bageant’s claims for the resilience, integrity, loyalty and self-sacrifice of this white underclass, despite the humiliation of poverty wages, inadequate healthcare and poor education.
I’m not sure if there anyone out there who can quite fill Joe Bageant’s shoes. There are some excellent journalists and scholars writing about the American underclass (such as Barbara Ehrenreich, Jonathan Kozol, Noam Chomsky, Henry Giroux and bell hooks). But none has the charisma, charm, laser light wit and poetic turn of phrase that Joe Bageant possessed.
He will be missed by large numbers of people around the world. But we still have his books. Books with those marvellous tongue-in-cheek titles that were typical of the person that he was: Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War and Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir.
May Joe Bageant, literary high priest of rednecks and hillbillies everywhere, rest in peace.
Michael Loughnane is Director of Religious Education at Guilford Young College in Hobart and holds a Ph.D. in Practical Theology from the Melbourne College of Divinity.
Recent articles by Michael Loughnane.
Perhaps someone should give Pauline Hanson a copy of "Rainbow Pie"?
Great tribute! Thank you. AND, thanks to the people of Austrailia for recognizing the treasure that was Joe Bageant!
I remember liberation theology as a promising fresh breeze through the academy in the seventies and eighties. Whatever happened to it? Was it suffocated or is that too conspiratorial a thought? Perhaps Joe's insight into how 'poor white trash' were marginalised and forgotten tells us something about the way the world of influence works.
I really appreciatd this engaging article and I'm very thankful to Michael Loughnane for introducing me to this wonderful man, Joe Bageant.
Liberation theology offers real hope to the poor. I'd like to ask Michael to perhaps write some more about how he thinks the great insights of this theology could be reintroduced to middle class Christians.
I look forward to seeing the documentary, "The kingdom of survival." Does anyone know when it might be available in Australia?
Thanks again for this inspiring insight into an obviously compassionate, just and caring man.
The symbols may be different, but I find myself wondering how close a parallel there is in Australia to the "white trash" Joe B describes - and whether some of the systems we have in place will ensure it remains so.
I was wondering whether I would find something like the praise of ignorance that I too often encounter, this ultimate anti-elitism. But no, in this wonderful article, the real enemy was rightly identified as being ignorance. Class is still the most effective conspiracy to control the people - especially the largest numbers who are always the poor. To tell someone to 'Get an education' is the only right way to nag.
Nawal, disgraced and exiled from her Christian village for an affair with a Muslim man, conceals her crucifix and hitches a ride on a bus laden with Muslims. Shortly, the bus is halted by a squadron of bloodthirsty Christian militants.
The conventional homily on the miracle of the lame man focuses on his faith and hope. But Irish poet Seamus Heaney draws attention to the faith, hope and charity of the man's friends, who will go to any trouble to help their mate in his hour of need.
MONTREAL—A top member of the Hells Angels biker gang has reportedly killed himself in a confrontation with police early Thursday, 10 days after fleeing from a minimum-security prison where he was approaching the final years of a murder sentence.
Sûreté du Québec investigators were drawn to a remote island near Sorel, about 100 kilometres north east of Montreal, armed with an arrest warrant for an individual who had escaped custody, according to a spokesperson for the Montreal police, which is investigating the suspicious death.
The spokesperson, Sgt. Laurent Gingras, would not confirm reports that the provincial squad had honed in on René Charlebois, a close associate of Hells Angels boss Maurice “Mom” Boucher.
It was shortly after 1 a.m. and the police target was a small cottage that Charlebois, 48, was believed to have been hiding in after walking away from a Laval institution on Sept. 14. He had been in custody since 2003, after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the killing of a police informant. He was, however, approaching the end of his sentence with just three years to go and his case “was going in the right direction,” according to Montreal’s La Presse.
His lust for his liberty was apparently strong inside prison and he confided to fellow inmates that “the day that I get out of here, I’m never coming back,” noted TVA crime chronicler Claude Poirier reported Thursday.
It’s unclear how long Charlebois may have been holed up in the chalet, which is available for rent. But it is a certainty that police have been eagerly tracking him since from the moment they discovered his escape.
“I head three gunshots. I noticed it because I don’t sleep and I found it strange that the gunshots were so close,” said Lise Salvas, who lives in Sainte-Anne-de-Sorel, just across from the small, sparsely populated island where the incident occurred.
“I thought that maybe there was something happening in the area, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t see anything. I knew it wasn’t hunters because it wasn’t a normal time for duck hunters go out,” Salvas said.
Quebec’s Public Security Minister has tasked Montreal Police with investigating the deadly incident, in a role similar to Ontario’s Special Investigation’s Unit, which conducts a probe each time an encounter with police results in the death or serious injury of a civilian.
Police have said that they do not believe any of the approaching SQ officers fired their weapons.
Charlebois worked at a job delivering pizzas before rising up the ranks of Quebec’s outlaw biker world. He eventually reached the elite Nomad chapter of the Hells Angels during the peak of the Quebec biker wars of the 1990s.
In August 2000, legendary Quebec crooners Jean-Pierre Ferland and Ginette Reno were hired to sing at Charlebois’ wedding ceremony — Ferland at the church; Reno at the reception, which was hosted inside Boucher’s home. It was after the ceremony that Charlebois reportedly professed his love for his fellow bikers and the outlaw organization with a worldwide reach.
Arizona State coach Todd Graham, left, argues with an official during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Washington on Saturday, Oct. 14, 2017, in Tempe.
Originally Published: October 20, 2017 11:07 p.m.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah coach Kyle Whittingham has practically been begging his running backs to run more aggressively this season. He finally got it last week.
The Utes’ new pass-first offense immediately improved the aerial attack but the running game didn’t have the same kind of pop as in the past. Quarterback Tyler Huntley was the team’s leading rusher through three games as the new scheme included a lot more called QB runs.
The bottom line results were acceptable until Huntley went down with an injury in the second quarter against Arizona on Sept. 22. Backup quarterback Troy Williams doesn’t have the same running ability so the Utes needed the backs to get going. That happened last week when sophomore Zack Moss had a career day with 141 yards on 20 carries.
Utah’s quarterback situation is unclear as it prepares for Arizona State (3-3, 2-1 Pac-12) on Saturday. Williams has started the last two weeks in losses to No. 22 Stanford and No. 11 USC. Huntley returned to practice this week, but hadn’t been cleared to play. Whittingham has called him day-to-day.
Regardless, Utah (4-2, 1-2) needs Moss. He can take some of the running responsibility away from Huntley when he returns and help balance an offense that hasn’t scored 30 points since Huntley went down. The opportunity should be there against a Sun Devils defense that ranks No. 8 in the Pac-12 by allowing 174.0 rushing yards per game.
Moss acknowledged he approached things differently last week.
The Utes are trying to stay in the Pac-12 South race. Two weeks ago, they were at the top looking down before consecutive losses to Stanford and USC. Utah is now looking up at the Trojans, Arizona and Arizona State. The South has only been won by a team with three Pac-12 losses twice since the conference created divisions in 2011. A team with three Pac-12 losses has never won the conference championship game. The Sun Devils are still alive in the division and they’re riding high from a 13-7 upset of Washington last week.
ASU receiver N’Keal Harry is tied for No. 16 in the country with 43 receptions for 555 yards and three touchdowns. The 6-foot-4, 216-pound sophomore has started all 18 games in his career and has a reception in each.
Arizona State’s pass offense vs. Utah’s pass defense. QB Manny Wilkins ranks No. 4 in the Pac-12 at 282.8 passing yards per game with eight touchdowns and just two interceptions. The Utes’ defensive backfield is loaded, highlighted by S Chase Hansen, but it did give up 358 passing yards to Sam Darnold and USC.
Arizona State hasn’t defeated a Pac-12 team on the road since beating No. 7 UCLA on Oct. 3, 2015. ... The Sun Devils haven’t started 3-1 in Pac-12 play since 2014.
On Sunday May 7, a divided France will be called to choose between two candidates who embody radically different socio-economics, cultures and territories. This dichotomy surfaced last night when we witnessed an historical debate between the two self-proclaimed outsiders of French politics jousting for the country’s top post. Despite their diametrically opposite visions, they accepted to engage in a fractious, compelling yet ultimately frustrating exchange. Unlike the U.S. presidential debate, the format followed in France nudges the two final candidates into a real dialectic mediated by journalists. In this case, the latter turned out to be two uncharismatic anchors with no leadership qualities, acting as agenda-setters and time-keepers, and both were brushed aside by the two candidates.
The antagonists then initiated a wide-ranging, tense, two-hour-plus confrontation covered live by dozens of national and international media outlets. Fifteen million people — a quarter of the population — watched the broadcast while countless more followed it on social media, radio and websites. The debate ranged from the reform of the job market, to the state of the economy, via France’s social security system and the future of the European Union. And, beneath the surface simmered a struggle for who could legitimately claim to be the candidate challenging France’s entire political system. Was it the woman who inherited a party with a long record of political extremism or the man who was former adviser and minister of economy for the outgoing President?
What in fact emerged was a classic opposition between the two rival models of leadership currently dominating our times: Le Pen embodied the populist, Macron incarnated the technocrat. Populist leadership assumes there is only one authentic ‘general will’, which populists obviously claim to represent. While technocratic leadership assumes there is only one correct policy solution.
No surprise, then, that against this backdrop the policy debate never fully took off. Tellingly, this was a missed, unfulfilled opportunity for Macron. Indisputably, he had been prepared for a no-holds-barred onslaught from the Front National leader. Le Pen’s effrontery, barrage of personal attacks and provocations made it impossible for Macron to elevate the debate. This shocked observers: such jousts have been a time-honored French tradition seen in previous debates involving the likes of François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac and Valérie Giscard D’Estaing. By setting the tone, Le Pen eluded the policy contest on issues she was less competent about such as the state of the national economy or the euro.
But how much impact has the full-frontal attack by Le Pen made? How will voters respond to Macron’s defense, built on patient, Cartesian logic? We should not lose sight of the fact that nearly half of the French electorate voted for anti-establishment and EU-skeptic candidates in the first round.
While Macron compellingly highlighted the weakness of his opponent’s scattered policy ideas on mass unemployment or terrorism, he was less successful in mapping out his own economic vision. He did not reassure those voters concerned about losing out with the economic model he defends and promotes today. Voters who, like Le Pen, believe Macron defends “uncontrolled globalization” and will sell off state assets to the highest bidder. When he finally detailed his program, Macron’s message and language were more technical and therefore less accessible to many potential backers.
Only when Le Pen’s pervasive sloganeering fired up the debate did Macron’s fact-checking win over viewers.
If the independent centrist won the debate on merit, he did not necessarily do so on form (at least in the eyes of a significant part of the electorate). By branding the FN leader a “hate-filled liar” who feeds off France’s “misery”, Macron suddenly came across as condescending, not only vis-à-vis his opponent but also her electorate.
The debate on the European Union confirmed the antithetical views of the two candidates, underlining their irreconcilable understanding of the European project. Le Pen’s vision of Europe appears particularly untenable: it denies fundamental principles, such as free movement, the postulate of non-discrimination on the basis of nationality, or the primacy of EU law over national law. As for Macron, he was too busy unmasking his opponent’s inaccuracies to lay out his European project. This included Le Pen’s unsubstantiated proposal to embrace a dual-currency system within the Eurozone. Unfortunately, Macron’s longstanding pro-EU stance and emotional defense of Europe did not emerge during the debate.
Ultimately, I came out of this prime-time slugfest with one prevailing feeling: if Marine Le Pen was speaking to her electorate, Emmanuel Macron was speaking to the whole country. Despite the polls showing the opposite, it is too difficult to know which one holds the greatest numbers.
One thing is for sure: on May 7, France will decide not just its own destiny, but that of the European Union too. As a European I long to celebrate Macron’s successful resistance to Le Pen’s frontal attack to our liberal, pluralistic model of society. Yet, whatever the outcome of these elections, this should not distract each one of us from going back to work to not only defend Europe but also to transform it into a shared, citizen-driven project capable of addressing pan-European problems and being better comprehended by its citizens.
A case of alleged road rage has landed a teenager and his mother behind bars.
Police say 18-year-old Eric Mutrie was arrested after he severely beat up a 70-year-old man. They also say Mutrie had some help. The teen's 53-year-old mother, Rhonda Mutrie, was also arrested.
Police say it happened last Wednesday.
Witnesses say the victim was hit so hard that his teeth were knocked out and he had to get about 40 stitches in his upper lip.

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