PRAISE
“Poignant, gorgeous—a picaresque voyage through Patti Smith’s dreams and life, blending fiction and reality, conjured characters and actual ones. She writes of seeing her image reflected on the surface of the toaster: ‘I noticed I looked young and old simultaneously.’ That describes her spirit perfectly.” —Maureen Dowd, The New York Times
“Moving—an account of physical and intellectual wanderings . . . Smith does not rage against her approaching 70th birthday, nor does she turn away from it. She finds art everywhere, and remains a pioneer, the same rules-shattering poet and National Book Award-winning writer . . . She is, as she writes in Year of the Monkey, ‘still going about my business, that of being alive, the best I can.’” —Jack Cline, The Washington Post
“Smith began writing Year of the Monkey on New Year’s Day 2016, a transformative year for the artist that brought aging, the loss of friends, and overall disillusionment. Juxtaposed with this personal narrative are Smith’s descriptions of western landscapes she visited . . . Fact and fiction increasingly blur, a combination made surreal by Smith’s obsession with details that keep popping up in various locations . . . A gripping tale of the search for meaning in times of turbulence—expressed with Smith’s signature poetic flair.” —Christian Allaire, Vogue
“Since 1975, Patti Smith has been blurring the lines between music, poetry, and prose, howling with grief and roaring with delight, whether onstage or via the written word. Year of the Monkey [is] her preternatural latest memoir . . . In this slim, hallucinatory volume, Smith roves the country in real time, visiting favorite haunts, hitching rides with strangers, contemplating the fuzzy border between waking and dreaming, and mourning the results of the 2016 presidential election. But just as a sense of gloom begins to settle, the sun peeks through the clouds. For while ‘there is nothing in heaven like the suffering of real life…,’ she writes, ‘I still keep thinking something wonderful is about to happen.’” —Leigh Haber, O, The Oprah Magazine
“Smith’s grace and erudite philosophy is a welcome balm in these times . . . Her latest memoir is an introspective look at her year of solo wandering—she documents that year’s massive political and social change her own lyrical way. The American canon is littered with ‘road trip memoirs,’ but if there’s a voice we’d want to add to that genre, it would be Smith.” —Town & Country
“Lovely, dreamlike . . . a slim volume [with a] minor-key melancholy. The punk poet’s latest memoir unfold like the stack of old Polaroids in her New York apartment: ‘One after another, each a talisman on a necklace of continuous travels.’” —Entertainment Weekly
“A lyrical retelling of one nomadic year . . . Smith writes, ‘I could feel the gravitational pull of home, which when I’m home becomes the gravitational pull of somewhere else.’” —Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair
“In her poetic prose and [with] snaps of her trusty Polaroid camera, Smith captures truth and beauty, challenges and victories. Year of the Monkey traces her year of wandering across California’s Santa Cruz coast and the West, searching for answers for questions she never knew she had . . . Smith’s writing is impressionistic; fact and fiction intermix and she captures authentic moments that never fade away.” —Drew Tewksbury, Los Angeles Times
“Whether it’s guttural, poetic lyricism or compassionate nonfiction, Patti Smith’s writing style and ability are truly unrivaled. In Year of the Monkey, her words are paired with Polaroids as she explores aging, grief and the dire global embrace of right-wing nationalism.”
—Lizzie Manno, Paste
“In the time since her exquisite memoir Just Kids won the National Book Award in 2010, godmother of punk Patti Smith has been documenting her travels with her pen and trusty Polaroid. In Year of the Monkey, her wanderlust drives her from San Francisco to Santa Cruz to Arizona to Kentucky to New York . . . Along the way, she meets fellow nomads, mourns for loved ones both in the process of dying and those long gone, and she drinks a whole lot of coffee. A keen observer of the world around her, Smith is equally adept at documenting her inner terrain. Wherever she wanders, it’s always worth the trip.” —Emily Rems, Bust
“This is the modern-day Patti Smith: older, wiser, seeing the world, and reporting it all back to us in only the way she can. You can’t read this and not feel inspired after you put it down.” —Inside Hook
“Over the course of a year leading up to her 70th birthday, rock legend Patti Smith stood witness to the fragility of life. There’s an explicit dreamlike quality and focus to The Year of the Monkey, which offers a very specific glimpse into the life of an artist facing her mortality without coasting. Through her trips, cups of coffee, and dreams, Smith radiates compassionate and concern as she meditates upon the practice of sitting with loss and change during ever-turbulent times.” —Lauren LeBlanc, Observer
“From meditations on poetry, politics, art, and dreams, to her own lyrical way of interacting with the world, Year of the Monkey confirms Patti Smith cannot be boxed in by either genre or medium. The book also includes Smith’s Polaroids from her travels—yes, she is somehow a talented photographer on top of everything else.”
—Jeva Lange, The Week
“A melancholy mood and poetic language distinguish Smith’s third memoir, set during the Chinese year of the monkey, the year when she moves from age 69 to 70. She begins on New Year’s Day, 2016, the morning after finishing a three-night run at the Fillmore in San Francisco and sitting at the deathbed of a long-time friendwho introduced her to City Lights, Caffe Trieste and the Grateful Dead. She chronicles cafés, hitchhiking trips, strange motels in Santa Cruz and vivid dreams. With great tenderness, she describes visiting Sam Shepard in the final months of his life and helping him get his last book completed.”
—Jane Ciabattari, BBC
“It was a year of disruption, wandering, dreams and surreal visions: this year of the monkey on the Chinese zodiac was also the year Smith turned 70, and a trickster election hurled the country into a dark looking-glass realm. Smith writes with fresh lucidity, wit, bittersweet wonder, and stoic sorrow, shifting in tone from lyrical to hallucinatory to hard-boiled as she describes her meditative and investigative meanderings along the Pacific coast and in the desert. Keenly sensitive to atmosphere, she finds herself ‘in the middle of the unexplained’ as she travels with cosmic spontaneity and ‘an almost religious simplicity’ . . . She remembers her life-saving childhood library and a cherished, then dying friend. Smith also chronicles with exquisite poignancy her last visits with her soul mate Sam Shepherd . . . Elegiac, vital, and magical.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist [starred review]
“Luminous . . . Smith wanders between waking and dreaming in a year filled with the death of a close friend and the political turmoil of the 2016 election . . . In light of her 70th birthday, she writes lyrically on various subjects: she describes Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, which she carries along her travels, as an ‘expansive hydrogen bomb;’ caught up in Belinda Carlisle’s infectious beat, she imagines a ‘nonviolent hubris spreading across the land.’ She discovers that her most meaningful insights come from her vivid dreams, and she feels a palpable melancholia over having to wake up from them. Smith casts a mesmerizing spell with exquisite prose.”
—Publishers Weekly [starred review]
“Intriguing—a memoir that evolves around the transformations both in Smith’s life and the American political landscape. Disturbing yet humorous, with the boundary between fiction and nonfiction blurred, Smith’s work is unlikely to disappoint.”
—Jianan Qian, The Millions
“Captivating . . . a chronicle of a year filled with deep losses and rich epiphanies. The titular year, 2016, set Smith, [who] refers to herself as the ‘poet detective,’ on a quixotic quest, with a mysterious companion unexpectedly reappearing amid a backdrop of rock touring, vagabond traveling, and a poisonous political landscape. Throughout, Smith ponders time and mortality—no surprise considering her milestone birthday, and the experience of losing friends who have meant so much to her. She stresses the importance of memory, and the timeless nature of a person’s spirit . . . Redemptive.”
—Kirkus [starred review]
“Moving—an account of physical and intellectual wanderings . . . Smith does not rage against her approaching 70th birthday, nor does she turn away from it. She finds art everywhere, and remains a pioneer, the same rules-shattering poet and National Book Award-winning writer . . . She is, as she writes in Year of the Monkey, ‘still going about my business, that of being alive, the best I can.’” —Jack Cline, The Washington Post
“Smith began writing Year of the Monkey on New Year’s Day 2016, a transformative year for the artist that brought aging, the loss of friends, and overall disillusionment. Juxtaposed with this personal narrative are Smith’s descriptions of western landscapes she visited . . . Fact and fiction increasingly blur, a combination made surreal by Smith’s obsession with details that keep popping up in various locations . . . A gripping tale of the search for meaning in times of turbulence—expressed with Smith’s signature poetic flair.” —Christian Allaire, Vogue
“Since 1975, Patti Smith has been blurring the lines between music, poetry, and prose, howling with grief and roaring with delight, whether onstage or via the written word. Year of the Monkey [is] her preternatural latest memoir . . . In this slim, hallucinatory volume, Smith roves the country in real time, visiting favorite haunts, hitching rides with strangers, contemplating the fuzzy border between waking and dreaming, and mourning the results of the 2016 presidential election. But just as a sense of gloom begins to settle, the sun peeks through the clouds. For while ‘there is nothing in heaven like the suffering of real life…,’ she writes, ‘I still keep thinking something wonderful is about to happen.’” —Leigh Haber, O, The Oprah Magazine
“Smith’s grace and erudite philosophy is a welcome balm in these times . . . Her latest memoir is an introspective look at her year of solo wandering—she documents that year’s massive political and social change her own lyrical way. The American canon is littered with ‘road trip memoirs,’ but if there’s a voice we’d want to add to that genre, it would be Smith.” —Town & Country
“Lovely, dreamlike . . . a slim volume [with a] minor-key melancholy. The punk poet’s latest memoir unfold like the stack of old Polaroids in her New York apartment: ‘One after another, each a talisman on a necklace of continuous travels.’” —Entertainment Weekly
“A lyrical retelling of one nomadic year . . . Smith writes, ‘I could feel the gravitational pull of home, which when I’m home becomes the gravitational pull of somewhere else.’” —Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair
“In her poetic prose and [with] snaps of her trusty Polaroid camera, Smith captures truth and beauty, challenges and victories. Year of the Monkey traces her year of wandering across California’s Santa Cruz coast and the West, searching for answers for questions she never knew she had . . . Smith’s writing is impressionistic; fact and fiction intermix and she captures authentic moments that never fade away.” —Drew Tewksbury, Los Angeles Times
“Whether it’s guttural, poetic lyricism or compassionate nonfiction, Patti Smith’s writing style and ability are truly unrivaled. In Year of the Monkey, her words are paired with Polaroids as she explores aging, grief and the dire global embrace of right-wing nationalism.”
—Lizzie Manno, Paste
“In the time since her exquisite memoir Just Kids won the National Book Award in 2010, godmother of punk Patti Smith has been documenting her travels with her pen and trusty Polaroid. In Year of the Monkey, her wanderlust drives her from San Francisco to Santa Cruz to Arizona to Kentucky to New York . . . Along the way, she meets fellow nomads, mourns for loved ones both in the process of dying and those long gone, and she drinks a whole lot of coffee. A keen observer of the world around her, Smith is equally adept at documenting her inner terrain. Wherever she wanders, it’s always worth the trip.” —Emily Rems, Bust
“This is the modern-day Patti Smith: older, wiser, seeing the world, and reporting it all back to us in only the way she can. You can’t read this and not feel inspired after you put it down.” —Inside Hook
“Over the course of a year leading up to her 70th birthday, rock legend Patti Smith stood witness to the fragility of life. There’s an explicit dreamlike quality and focus to The Year of the Monkey, which offers a very specific glimpse into the life of an artist facing her mortality without coasting. Through her trips, cups of coffee, and dreams, Smith radiates compassionate and concern as she meditates upon the practice of sitting with loss and change during ever-turbulent times.” —Lauren LeBlanc, Observer
“From meditations on poetry, politics, art, and dreams, to her own lyrical way of interacting with the world, Year of the Monkey confirms Patti Smith cannot be boxed in by either genre or medium. The book also includes Smith’s Polaroids from her travels—yes, she is somehow a talented photographer on top of everything else.”
—Jeva Lange, The Week
“A melancholy mood and poetic language distinguish Smith’s third memoir, set during the Chinese year of the monkey, the year when she moves from age 69 to 70. She begins on New Year’s Day, 2016, the morning after finishing a three-night run at the Fillmore in San Francisco and sitting at the deathbed of a long-time friendwho introduced her to City Lights, Caffe Trieste and the Grateful Dead. She chronicles cafés, hitchhiking trips, strange motels in Santa Cruz and vivid dreams. With great tenderness, she describes visiting Sam Shepard in the final months of his life and helping him get his last book completed.”
—Jane Ciabattari, BBC
“It was a year of disruption, wandering, dreams and surreal visions: this year of the monkey on the Chinese zodiac was also the year Smith turned 70, and a trickster election hurled the country into a dark looking-glass realm. Smith writes with fresh lucidity, wit, bittersweet wonder, and stoic sorrow, shifting in tone from lyrical to hallucinatory to hard-boiled as she describes her meditative and investigative meanderings along the Pacific coast and in the desert. Keenly sensitive to atmosphere, she finds herself ‘in the middle of the unexplained’ as she travels with cosmic spontaneity and ‘an almost religious simplicity’ . . . She remembers her life-saving childhood library and a cherished, then dying friend. Smith also chronicles with exquisite poignancy her last visits with her soul mate Sam Shepherd . . . Elegiac, vital, and magical.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist [starred review]
“Luminous . . . Smith wanders between waking and dreaming in a year filled with the death of a close friend and the political turmoil of the 2016 election . . . In light of her 70th birthday, she writes lyrically on various subjects: she describes Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, which she carries along her travels, as an ‘expansive hydrogen bomb;’ caught up in Belinda Carlisle’s infectious beat, she imagines a ‘nonviolent hubris spreading across the land.’ She discovers that her most meaningful insights come from her vivid dreams, and she feels a palpable melancholia over having to wake up from them. Smith casts a mesmerizing spell with exquisite prose.”
—Publishers Weekly [starred review]
“Intriguing—a memoir that evolves around the transformations both in Smith’s life and the American political landscape. Disturbing yet humorous, with the boundary between fiction and nonfiction blurred, Smith’s work is unlikely to disappoint.”
—Jianan Qian, The Millions
“Captivating . . . a chronicle of a year filled with deep losses and rich epiphanies. The titular year, 2016, set Smith, [who] refers to herself as the ‘poet detective,’ on a quixotic quest, with a mysterious companion unexpectedly reappearing amid a backdrop of rock touring, vagabond traveling, and a poisonous political landscape. Throughout, Smith ponders time and mortality—no surprise considering her milestone birthday, and the experience of losing friends who have meant so much to her. She stresses the importance of memory, and the timeless nature of a person’s spirit . . . Redemptive.”
—Kirkus [starred review]
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq
snapshot:"
Make a point to give it a look. Also check out Elaine's "5 great tracks from Patti Smith" from Friday.
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, September 23, 2019. Droopy Joe Biden loses support, the press
refuses to get serious about asking Joe about that million dollar plus
deal in Iraq his brother got when Joe was vice president, more bombings
of Iraq (again from Israel?), and much more.
Starting with the race in the United States for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
Starting with the race in the United States for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
A surging Sen. Elizabeth Warren is challenging Joe Biden's lead in the race for the Democratic nomination, according to a new CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers. @ForecasterEnten looks at the latest numbers.
cnn.it/2ktkc1w
Yes, Joe's support is flaccid. Over the weekend, Stephen Gruber-Miller (DES MOINES REGISTER) reported:
Joe Biden’s support in Iowa has eroded
as the former vice president has reintroduced himself to Iowans as a
presidential candidate — and faced criticism from campaign rivals.
U.S.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, at 22%, leads him by 2 points
in the new Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll, after Biden had
topped three earlier polls this caucus cycle. The only other contender
in double digits is Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, at 11%.
The
poll of 602 likely Democratic caucusgoers was conducted Sept. 14-18 by
Selzer & Co. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage
points.
Biden’s standing has fallen in each of the Iowa Polls conducted since last year.
Joe Biden's in trouble and his insane supporters aren't helping him. To be clear, not all of his supporters are crazy. But the ones crying "treason!" over President Donald Trump discussing Joe with Ukrainian leaders? That's not treason. And your stupidity is both amazing and appalling. Your knee jerk moves betray just how uneducated you are and how willing to lie you are. The president of the United States, if she or he thinks a crime has been committed or may have been committed, can speak to that privately to any world leader. There's nothing in the Constitution that prevents that. And if they are the president, they can argue they have a duty to raise the issue.
Thus far, no action rises to the level of treason, let alone high crimes and misdemeanors. The rhetoric is outrageous and it is damaging to the national dialogue.
There are questions Joe Biden needs to answer. He was Vice President and his trashy brother -- who leaves one lawsuit after another in his wake -- got a reconstruction contract in Iraq. Despite the fact that, as Joe never tires of saying, Barack Obama tasked Joe with overseeing Iraq.
“During the Obama years, several months after James [Biden] joined a construction firm as an executive, the firm received a contract worth more than a billion dollars to build houses in Iraq while Joe oversaw the U.S.-led occupation of that country.”
That is unethical. Joe needs to answer for it. Crony capitalism -- remember how we all hissed that (rightly) at Dick Cheney once upon a time?
Reality -- support for Joe was always iffy and it's only getting worse. Ukraine is not an issue in this, Joe's own actions on the campaign trail cause him more problems with voters. What kind of idiot goes off on a woman for asking him questions and then calls her "sweetheart" on his way out? And, by the way, she's a lesbian.
Biden called the moderator of an LGBTQ forum "a lovely person" while onstage, and she says he called her "a real sweetheart" backstage.
She called the comments "a little condescending," and said, "It’s 2019, you shouldn’t be calling women sweethearts."
He is a pompous jerk -- and that's the nicest thing you can say about him.
Calling women "sweetheart" in professional settings only serves to diminish them. #sexism
As a candidate, he's so entitled that even being asked about his own public record on LGBTQ rights leads him to lose it. Can you imagine that as a president? It would be a nightmare.
We should note that Joe's not against all women. He likes a certain kind of woman.
Cokie Roberts was a pioneer. Relentless in her pursuit of the truth and steadfast in her commitment to breaking down barriers for women in journalism—our country is better because of it. @DrBiden and I send our prayers to her loved ones at this time.
War whore Cokie is his type of gal. War whore Cokie never earned any position she held. As the daughter of a member of Congress, she was given jobs at ABC and NPR and she did nothing of value with those jobs. Instead, she used them to whore for war.
None that mattered?
Has everyone forgotten that?
From Jonathan Lawson, Susan Gleason and Daniel Hannah (INDYMEDIA NOTES):
The mainstream press, more often than not, takes administration rhetoric at face value, relying on official sources to describe current events, and allowing its claims to go unchallenged. As recently reported by the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (www.fair.org), mainstream networks CNN and FOX instituted official wartime policies requiring journalists to downplay reports of Afghan civilian casualties. Reporting on domestic approval of the US bombing, NPR's Cokie Roberts was asked by the host whether there were dissenting views among the public. Her reply: "None that matter."
In the wake of the Gulf War, Cokie was calling for the draft to be re-instated.
She was a war whore. That's why she existed. She was not a feminist. She was not a breakthrough. She was a war whore who sold war repeatedly.
It's appalling how weak we are on the left that everyone wants to pretend otherwise.
She cheerleaded and called for the Iraq War. I'm sorry but the Iraqi people have suffered. I don't give a damn about some whorish woman born into wealth who used her connections to get jobs and created no body of work worthy of praise. She was a whore and now she's a dead whore. I'll save my tears for the innocents in Iraq not the people who pimped the war.
@NegarMortazavi Here is how you fight US and other imperial powers whom have been destroying our children and environment.
New research reveals footprint of depleted uranium in Iraqi children, with birth defect, who live near a U.S. military base in Iraq.
David Swanson (DAVIDSWANSON.ORG) notes:
In the years following 2003, the
U.S. military dotted Iraq with over 500 military bases, many of them
close to Iraqi cities. These cities suffered the impacts of bombs,
bullets, chemical and other weapons, but also the environmental damage
of open burn pits on U.S. bases, abandoned tanks and trucks, and the
storage of weapons on U.S. bases, including depleted uranium weapons.
Here’s a map of some of the U.S. bases:
This map and the other illustrations
below have been provided by Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, one of the authors
of a forthcoming article in the journal Environmental Pollution.
The article documents the results of a study undertaken in Nasiriyah
near Tallil Air Base. Nasiriyah was bombed by the U.S. military in 2003
and in the early 1990s. Open-air burn pits were used at Tallil Air Base beginning in 2003. See a second map:
Now take a look (do not turn away)
at these images of infants who were born between August and September of
2016 to parents who had continuously lived in Nasiriyah. The visible
birth defects include: anencephaly (A1 and A2 , B), lower limb anomalies
(C), hydrocephalus (D), spina bifida (E), and multiple anomalies (F, G,
H). Imagine if these tragic birth defects had been caused by a natural
disaster or the misdeeds of the next government targeted by the United
States for “regime change” — would not the outrage be widespread and
thunderous? But these horrors have a different cause.
Here’s another illustration, of hand
and foot abnormalities in children in Nasiriyah, and in the ancient
city of Ur, near the U.S. base:
The study now being published found
an inverse relationship between the distance one lived from Tallil Air
Base and the risk of birth defects as well as of levels of thorium and
uranium in one’s hair. It found a positive relationship between the
presence of thorium and uranium and the presence of birth defect(s).
Thorium is a decay-product of depleted uranium, and a radioactive
compound.
These results were found near this
particular base rather than dozens of others, not because it is
necessarily unique; no similar studies have yet been conducted near each
of the other bases. The results found by this study are likely to be
identical to results that could be found by a similar study next year,
or next decade, or next century, or next millennium, at least in the
absence of major efforts to mitigate the damage.
Depleted uranium (DU) weapons were not just stored in Iraq, but also fired in Iraq. Between 1,000 and 2,000 metric tons of DU was
fired in Iraq according to a 2007 report by the U.N. Environment
Program. While not at the same level, the U.S. military has also
poisoned the Washington, D.C., area, among other parts of the United States and the globe with DU. The Pentagon to this day claims the right to
use DU. Depleted uranium is permanently hazardous waste from the
production of nuclear energy, a source of energy marketed by its
lobbyists as environmentally beneficial. Here’s a description of DU
from Iraq Veterans Against the War,
a group (later renamed “About Face: Veterans Against the War!”) many of
whose members are familiar with the damage that DU does to people
directly, not just to their offspring:
I'll worry about the children of Iraq, not a war whore responsible for death and destruction.
In other news, Israel continues to bomb Iraq.
Israel has bombed Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq repeatedly in the past month.
Israel continues stealing land carrying out ethnic cleansing across Palestine.
Israel has hundreds of nukes and refuses to sign the NPT.
Israel is the region’s aggressor and terrorizer... Not #Iran.
Yesterday, XINHUA reported, "An unknown aircraft Sunday carried out an airstrike on a paramilitary Hashd Shaabi base in Iraq's western province of Anbar, a local official said. The incident took place in the early hours of the day when an unidentified aircraft bombarded al-Murassanat Camp, where the Hashd Shaabi forces were stationed in a desert area near the border with neighboring Syria, the official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity." Elijah J. Magnier offers:
In the last month, Israel has violated Iraqi airspace and its sovereignty, targeting its security forces, warehouses and even its military commander.
The reason why Israel feels free to attack is simply because it can
count on many friends and has common enemies and joint political
opponents among Iraqi politicians and in the Arab world: Hashd is the
common enemy.
Indeed, Bahrein’s Foreign Minister hailed the
Israeli “ attack on Hashd, brandishing the identical narrative adopted
by Israel when attacking a an enemy country or a potential threat, i.e.
“self-defence”. It is, after all, an essential strategic component of
Israel’s deterrence policy adopted by Moshe Dayan since 1955.
Israel Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu confirmed the attack in Iraq, and his Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz proclaims that Israel is “the only one working against Iran in Iraq”.
Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi has no political power behind him and
therefore is considered “under the armpit” of Hashd. Although the
Marjaiya in Najaf and other key Shia leaders stand against Israel, they
and many Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds in Erbil would like to see Hashd free
from Iran’s influence, melting within the other security forces and even
disappearing once and for all. Moreover, Israel’s presence in Iraq-Kurdistan is not new and Israeli-Kurdish military collaboration is often discussed. Also, to hit Iran’s allies Israel can rely on its sworn US ally in the White House and the logistical facilities US forcesoffer in Iraq, and the US military facilities in the north-eastern occupied area of Syria.
Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi
ordered the formation of three security committees to investigate the
attacks on the Iraqi security forces warehouses and commander. Members
of these committees confirmed to me that strong evidence leading to an
Israeli involvement have been collected and the results are in the hands
of Abdel Mahdi who must decide if he will announce these conclusions
publicly.
But Hashd has decided to form its
own “air force unit” whose function is to down drones – whether Israeli
or American – and to stand against Israel and its ally the US when the
opportunity comes. There is little doubt among Iraqi officials that US
officials in Iraq were informed in Baghdad about the Israeli movements
in Iraqi airspace. There is also little the Iraqi government can do to
protect US forces if further attacks against Hashd are sustained. In
fact, the US may end up paying the price for Netanyahu’s adventure in
Iraq.
Israel is expanding its military
activity, violating several states’ sovereignty by attacking selected
targets and executing target-killings beyond its borders- with the
objective of “cutting off the
head of the snake (Iran).” The Iraqi government of Prime Minister Adel
Abdel Mahdi – as a decision maker in his office told me “is convinced
Israel was behind the attack, with the US support, but is trying to
avoid a direct accusation and therefore further embarrassment from
refraining to respond”. Abdel Mahdi himself said in a private meeting
that “the US Embassy personnel is terrorised by the idea of becoming
Hashd’s target, saying it is not the US’s responsibility but Israel’s,
and promising to put an end to it”. These are the Prime Minister’s exact
words. The questions are: why does Israel believe it can hit Iraq and
remain unpunished, and what are Iran’s objectives in Iraq?
Friday, on KPFA's FLASHPOINTS, As'ad AbuKhalil observed,
"And the entire corrupt political system that was set up by the
occupiers in Iraq is now largely embarrassed about their inability to
even protest at this flagrant violation of their sovereignty. The
United States has 5,000 troops in Iraq. And, trust me, they have more
influence on the so-called prime minister of that country."
