BAGHDAD, Iraq - Bombs exploded Sunday in Baghdad and the northern oil center of Kirkuk, killing more than 60 people and dramatically escalating tension as the prime minister left for Washington for talks on reversing the country’s slide toward civil war.
The blasts occurred as Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led coalition mounted a major crackdown on the country’s most feared Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, blamed by Sunnis for many of the sectarian kidnappings and killings that threaten to tear the country apart.
[…]
Before dawn Sunday, Iraqi troops and U.S. advisers raided Sadr City and the mostly Shiite district of Shula, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. The sounds of explosions and bursts of automatic fire echoed through the heart of the capital.
Two hostages were freed in the Sadr City operation. Two people were arrested in Shula, officials said.
Last weekend, British troops arrested the commander of Mahdi forces in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city.
On Saturday, U.S. and Iraqi troops battled Mahdi fighters in Musayyib. 40 miles south of Baghdad in a three-hour gunbattle that killed 15 extremists and one Iraqi soldier.
So the Mahdi army is finally being cracked? Is the Coalition using the current war in Gaza and Lebanon as cover for this? That would be excellent counter-action to Iran’s meddling.
Last September the [United Kingdom] Home Office launched a consultation paper on creating a specific criminal offence of forcing someone into wedlock. Although the proposal was welcomed by many victims’ groups, some organisations complained that it would increase racial segregation. The Muslim Council of Britain gave a warning that such a law might become “another way to stigmatise our communities�.
When Baroness Scotland, the Home Office Minister, announced the Government’s reversal, she said that most of those consulted “felt that the disadvantages of creating new legislation would outweigh the advantages�.
So, forced marriage was and is legal in the UK. So much for the nation that lead the fight against slavery. And perhaps the law wouldn’t stigmatize the Muslim community if the Muslim community didn’t engage in forced marriage.
You could sense that, in the evacuation from Lebanon, much of Canada’s media thought it had another Walkerton or Katrina on its hands. The Globe and Mail, CBC, CTV and others were positively salivating over what they saw as an opportunity to sting yet another conservative government for not caring enough about a public crisis. […]
The trouble (for the get-Harper outlets, at least) is that the vast majority of Canadians failed to swallow these reports in the spirit in which they were filed. Most Canadians watched and read these accounts and couldn’t believe the ingratitude and sense of entitlement of those who had been saved from the war in Lebanon.
So we have Old Media in Canada smearing fellow Canadians in order to slam the government because it’s being run by the wrong sort of people. I suspect it was partially because Old Media types likely can’t comprehend thinking anything said by a non-white “oppressed” minority as being wrong, but even if Old Media was aware of the possiblity, I can’t see them overcoming their own narcissism to worry about the collateral damage of their efforts.