March 16, the first day that Iraq's fragile new parliament formally met, was met not only with a new US offensive in the Samarra area that the Arab press is already comparing to Fallujah (Khajeel Times, UAE, March 19) but, perhaps more importantly, a social explosion in Kurdistan, which has heretofore been a relative haven from the chaos in the rest of Iraq. Illustrating the depth of disgust with the Kurdish leadership, it came on the anniversary of the Halabja massacre, and left the official monument to the victims destroyed. Most Western press accounts have not noted that the repressive violence from the PUK security forces left at least four Kurdish youth dead. This account from Kurdish Media:

A statement from the Iraqi Freedom Congress:

An open letter to the anti-war and terrorism movement of the world on the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq
Libertarian forces of the world,
Anti-war and occupation movement of the world:

No kidding! From the Washington Post, March 13

The Big News: Shrinking Reportage
An explosion of media outlets means we now have more coverage and carping about every conceivable event than ever before in history.

But we also have less reporting.

Iraqi civil resistance leader Houzan Mahmoud will speak in New York City on Tuesday March 21. Houzan Mahmoud is a co-founder of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, a recent initiative to build a democratic, secular and progressive alternative to both the US occupation and political Islam in Iraq. Mahmoud, who fled Iraq in 1996 and is currently studying at the University of London, is also a cofounder of the Iraqi Women's Rights Coalition and editor-in-chief of Equal Rights Now, paper of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq.

From UPI, March 16:

One of America's most respected elder national security statesmen called for a full pull-out from Iraq Thursday.

Delivering the keynote address at the Center for American Progress' "Iraq; Next Steps for U.S. Policy," Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security advisor for President Jimmy Carter, said that "within a year we should be able to complete a course of disengagement" and withdraw from Iraq.

There's nothing new in this, except that it comes from scholars at Harvard, not cranks at Counterpunch. It's publication shows that the worm may be turning in the US against the supposedly privileged Jews. It greatly emphasizes "the Lobby" (guess which one) in the Iraq debacle, and poo-poos the notion of a war for oil. John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago professor and author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, and Stephen Walt, of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and author of Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy, write for London Review of Books March 10:

Paula Palmer writes for Global Response Action Alerts:

In late January at the World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuelan indigenous leaders asked Global Response to support them in their struggle to stop construction of open-pit coal mines in their territories. I joined them in an all-day march through the streets of Caracas, carrying banners saying "No al Carbon!" (No to Coal).

From the New York Times, March 16:

The U.S. military has sent about 800 troops from Kuwait to Iraq for extra security to coincide with an expected surge of pilgrims to Muslim shrines in coming days, officials said in Baghdad on Wednesday.