Developments on Iraq: “We are all Rizwan Ali”

When the new Islamic Omma Party was announced last Monday an article appeared on their sister site detailing how to achieve a revolution in Iraq similar to Egypt. We brought you the details of that on the day of the announcement; you can find that here

They outlined exactly what was needed in order to secure a strong revolution in Iraq to “sweep the occupation into the dustbin of history” and move towards the new Islamic nation. (i.e. the Caliphate)

1) Youth in the Streets

2) Simple Logos

3) [fast] Media (social networking)

Today they got all three.

Rizwan Ali, a 13 year-old boy, was shot and killed by Kurdish security forces. Just like Egypt Facebook and Twitter exploded. A “We are all Rizwan Ali” Facebook page went up and the youth started to make their logos. The Youth involvement exploded.

Logo for Sulimani (The area of the most violent protests)

Logo for Rizwan Ali

Jared Cohen and Jason Liebman (Founders of the Alliance for Youth Movements) were asked about the concern on the social networking push in Iraq while on their paid State Dept trip in 2009.

They were asked, citing extremists, as well as people just “pissed off because they dont have electricity”, werent they concerned about this being used negatively in poorly developed or still developing democracies. Cohen’s first response is incoherent-so much so that another reporter has to bring it up again. Read Google Iraq: Breaking Baghdad (by the way at the top of the list of the protesters today: Electricity!)

“Even if our protests our peaceful now, they wont be later”-Saad Abdul Razzaq (50, School Teacher). Mind you this was after they burned down the provincial government party headquarters. Remember, they are demanding electricity and water. Google, The Alliance for Youth Movements, and the State Department didn’t think that was a valid concern in the big digital push on Iraq in 2009

Videos and pictures from the Streets

(Caution some images are graphic)

Attacking Party Headquarters before it being set on fire

Rizwan Ali (13 years old-killed)

Outside KDP Headquarters