 What would you describe as the main reasons for the uprising in... It's not the first uprising. I mean, we've had multiple uprisings in the past. It's just they've gone unnoticed. This is the first one where the uprising has taken quite a huge effect, especially in the capital in Baghdad, because the protestors had taken over two and now, today, I heard three of the most important bridges in Baghdad. So I moved from this ranking. But basically, the situation has always been... Since the invasion of the US forces onto Iraq in 2003, we've always had problems with corruption, uranium interference in the government, in the politics, and then became more aggressive. So, militias were formed. These militias were... They were called, I don't know if you remember the stories of the death squad. I remember Channel 4 in the UK ran stories, documentaries about the death squads and the sectarian death squads. They were going out. They were killing all sorts of Sunnis at the time because they were backed by Iranian Shiites and so on. So, the Iranians have been playing a huge role in disrupting Iraq and not giving it any chance or any hope of ever advancing. So, unfortunately, this was under the eyes of the United States. So, the United States knew, for example, that the Iranians were present, that the Iranians were conducting even attacks against the American forces. I can't remember the general that was... became CIA head and then was kicked out because he had a relationship or something. What was his name? He was the head of camera group. Sorry, you're on mute. I said, gosh, I'm forgetting the name as well, but I can call it later. Yeah, but you know who I'm referring to. But even then there were reports and I think he, I think it was a congressional hearing or Senate hearing or something like that, he was giving evidence against how Iran was running the show basically in Iraq with their militias bombing all sorts of targets for the U.S. forces as well as locals, displacements of Sunnis and Shiites in different areas, just wrecking havoc across the country. And this was back in 2004-2005 and then we had the eruption of the sectarian war in 2006 which laid waste to most of the country. So that went to 2006-2007 all the way up to I think 2010 were constant car bombs and was just all over the place. But nothing was done then and I've spoken about this before. I mean one of the reasons for example that I was disappointed as to what the U.S. did was they basically invaded based on the false WMD nonsense at the time it was. But they broke Iraq and they they just left it. They left it and on the contrary they gave it to Iran on a golden plate and they completely disregarded all the consequences afterwards. And of course the consequences afterwards were al-Qaeda came in. We never had al-Qaeda. I'm not a fan of Saddam or the previous regime either. But give credit where credit is due. He wasn't sectarian, he was secular. He was very high on security and all that. So we never had al-Qaeda, we never had ISIS, we never had anyone go off in terms of radicalism and so on and so forth. But that was sort of his police state and how he sort of did things. Now a lot of people disagreed with that but again it kept the country at least in that sense safe internally. When Bremer came in and the U.S. forces of course and so on and so forth all that just went out the window. And so we were left with basically none. And then the United States decided just to leave and that was one of the people that was calling on the U.S. forces to leave. And that we would pick up the situation afterwards. We the Iraqi people should be able to fix it ourselves. But I never thought that they would give it away to the Iranians just like that. They had already known that Iranian people who were in... I mean there were instances for example there was one person who was involved, he was a terrorist. He was on the U.S. watchlist because he was involved in the terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy in Kuwait in 1985 or 86. I can't remember the name of the name is but I can probably google it. That person was sitting as an Iraqi parliamentarian and he was Iranian. Wanted as a terrorist under the noses of the Iraqi government and the U.S. forces and the U.S. government then. So he's then start to think okay so who's working with who and what's going on actually. It's not this doesn't make any sense anymore. And then when Bush left and Obama came we were hopeful that Obama would see the light and you know he'd bring some sort of stability and his ineptness was just absolute. So he immediately took out all the forces left Iraq as is and Iran just came in and took everything all over. And I agree with Trump even though I can't stand the man. When he comes and says you know who created ISIS Obama well yeah because Obama just left. So there's nothing left and you knew your the CIA is the you know one of the biggest embassies in the in the region is the Iraq is the U.S. embassy in Baghdad with a huge CIA presence there. You didn't know what was going on how how could you not know what was going on how did you how did you not foresee that the consequences. And so ISIS then came into play they took over the entire north they went through you know the people went through all hell so we went through war after after that we had al-Qaeda after that we had ISIS and it's continuous and then there's there's no there's and I think I think there's just fatigue Iraqi fatigue from the west that nobody wants to bother anymore with this story because it's just a you know it's a death story that you can there's no end to it because the reason why there's no end to it is because no put any resolution to end the situation there. There were all sorts of cures as to what should be done but no one took the the effort to do anything and so it's now left to the people and the protesters to the protesters I mean even the United Nations nothing has come out of the United Nations and on social media the the person who's in charge the I think she's Swedish the person that's in charge of the UN mission there has been hammered with the Iraqi social media as what you know she's she's a culprit of of what's going on she's she's part of the part of the broken system no rights double standards and yes double standards when I look at the news for example I see constant coverage of Hong Kong rightly so but I see zero coverage of Iraq so at the moment Hong Kong has lost one life Iraqis have lost at least 500 in the last month with about 15,000 wounded pictures of which are live pictures of people being killed while protesting live but nothing has been shown on the the the the media and that's shocking well I would have to say the same for the Iran protests right now which you would think the Trump administration would actually be lifting up right now and we turn on CNN nothing nothing nothing whatsoever so that makes absolutely no sense I would have thought and I sent a tweet the other day to onto Trump's account saying out of all the people I would have thought you'd be the one to sit there and say aha this is a golden opportunity because Obama because he does everything against Obama so whatever Obama did or didn't do he tries to do the opposite so Obama failed to support the green revolution in Iran and I think it was 2010 or 11 when was it I can't remember what it was I would have thought this would be a golden opportunity to support the Iranians to get rid of this regime without going through war but at least to support them and to say look you think we'd get these smug like look my sanctions are working the people are rising up and you think the same with with Iraq that he would say look at the mess that Obama created you know those smug Trump tweets and yeah exactly it's my turn now to show you how Trump is going to make this into a golden era for for the entire region where is that but no it's it's it's it's just it's mind boggling the the like I said it's the double standards the media and and the weakness it's like a sacred cow that they don't want to touch anymore why wouldn't why don't you want to touch the the why are you concentrating on Hong Kong is it because there's an agenda against China and the trade wars and so on so forth and say you want to pressure China that's the reason why you're looking at Hong Kong right these so it's fine I don't I don't mind that but you have to be fair with everyone else well they're not looking at the the the situation in in South America I know you ladies are are involved in South America nobody's looking at Chile nobody's it doesn't make sense well what really doesn't make sense is not looking at Iran because like with China there's an agenda and I have no understanding or comprehension of what is behind that why Trump isn't you know saying what a terrible repressive regime look I told you and anyway the quick solution for for everyone in the region because if you look at the if you look at the the situation in the entire region Iraq is firstly effective because it's a neighboring country then you have Syria after that and then you have Lebanon with Hezbollah and all that and then you have Yemen all these four countries are directly linked with Iran and the Iranian regime not the Iranian people the Iranian regime so the the best solution would be a regime change for Iran which frees up Iran itself and these all other four countries I it's it's it's a I mean when they when they want to change things it seems they'll go to the ends to do so but I don't know when it doesn't suit their needs and again like you said I would have thought Trump because he tore up the agreement and isn't happy and wants to continue sanctions and so on and so forth the continuation of sanctions has had not much of an effect until recently but the continuation of sanctions because Iran has been relying on Iraq for all the the funding it needed for the from 2003 onwards so 1.5 trillion dollars have been either siphoned off to Iran or abruptly stolen away from the Iraqis so when people ask and say well why are the the the people cheering and most of the people there of course are Shiites they're not Sunnis so the Sunnis have sort of stood aside so that they're not labeled as Baathist or old Baathist or Saddamis or whatever it may be so they don't want to ruin the situation and the Shiites understand the Shiite Arabs understand them they're like they're happy to go ahead with that but the support is is overwhelming it's nationwide even from the Kurdish areas they're supporting the the the uprising and the protests but that the thing they haven't been able to to label anything on it because it's it's mostly Shiite so you can't say anything about it and the the government itself has used Iranians I mean there was a report today I think on Reuters to say the snipers that have been killing the protesters have turned out to be Iranians we've been saying that all along the Iraqis have come out Iraqi soldiers have come out saying we're not shooting at you we're just holding the lines we're not shooting at you the SWAT teams have come back and said the same thing we're not shooting at you if they stood with the the protesters saying we understand we're part of the the society we know and we want to change as well they're not shooting at you so the questions from the start from the first few days when the killing started everyone started pointing the fingers to Iran and then they caught a number of Iranians ID cards and Iranians and they basically killed them off but they that was proof and they videotaped them and it was there and then they attacked the Iranian consulate and some of the the pro-uranian parties that we have in the government they've attacked those and they burned those down so there's a direct link of the oppression that's having and the silence from the government the Iraqi government to the protesters and their demands because of the Iranian influence and nothing's going to change unless that chokehold is released there's there's nothing and the that the people are going to continue to do what they do and they've been managing to do a brilliant job you know it's it's fantastic how they've been managing them there there's been all overwhelming support people have been sending all sorts of money down to support them from the simplest things i mean even doctors and nurses they've they've camped out i don't know if you've seen the pictures on social media they've camped out near the protestor areas so that when they're injured they immediately rush there and they're there they're supported there and and even with that it seems that we've had now a number of cases where on social media if they find doctors or people that are helping them unmasked those people have been kidnapped and some have ended up dead and some have been unfortunately tortured and all so we know that there's a lot of that so people are trying to you know to stay as protected as possible but then this is the situation that they're they're living in could you talk a little bit about what exactly the protesters are protesting i mean we hear it as you know the broad issues mismanagement corruption inflation but some of the more specifics about economic life and yeah what they're protesting for the situation for the iraqi population at the moment is there there's no employment non-existent the infrastructure is completely dismantled there's still there's no electricity there's no clean water communications is a mess education is is completely non-existence in a sense i mean people have to do makeshift classrooms and things like that to be able to to hold classes proper classes and things and it's all around north and south no matter where you are nationwide it's the same hospitals are in dire straits medicines are extremely expensive so there are all sorts of basic necessities that people just not finding and then you've got about 95 million sorry 95 billion of oil revenues coming into the country on a yearly basis you know in comparison for example if if you look at a country that's next door which is for example jordan iraq has a population of 30 some million jordan has a population of about eight or so million so about a third let's say a bit more jordan lives on a budget of eight billion and iraq is getting 95 billion of which jordan is at a very high standard whereas the poverty in iraq the unemployment in iraq the social services everything is non-existent so you see the money you see all that money is just it's just coming and going and no one sees where it's at so the protesters have been demanding that it's not a change in government anymore the whole structure needs to be taken out there's just no room for it anymore any change in parties will not do so parties are not especially the the the religious parties deemed as corrupt as anything so none of them are needed and wanted anymore under the circumstance under the current circumstances that we have the the because of the iranian influence in the country you can't hold proper elections the elections have been rigged a number of times for a number of years and one of the recent ones if i go back say in 2010 if i if i bring this as an example in 2010 i remember iad alawi and his party won the majority but because he was opposed to iran he wasn't allowed to create a government and because iran wanted nurul maliki to continue he did and so iad alawi conceded even though he had the majority seats he conceded the the uh uh for our ministership to nurul maliki to continue with his party his dawa party and things continued as is and then after that we had had al-habadi and we had this uh the the new one that came in so all the changes are reflected so nothing and you speak to the people of the streets and they'll say if you tell if you tell them if you come back and you say well iraq is democracy now because america brought in the democracy no some democracy it's it's being rigged and everyone knows it there are all sorts of videos on social media the last election with all sorts of infringements they were bringing in they they caught containers worth of uh ballots already filled in ballots coming in from iran already printed and coming in from iran and that was caught government didn't do anything about no investigation they said they're gonna investigate nothing that's always the case we're gonna investigate in the future and we'll see what's gonna happen and nothing goes it dies out after x number of months but the people never forgot so when you come back and you say well iraq is democracy they can they can choose their leaders they have the note that's not correct that this this isn't applicable in our situation the only way that iraq is going to be able to move forward is to have that iranian chokehold and its puppets removed once that's done then you're able to do proper elections and i would even i wouldn't even trust the system then i would ask for the united nations to come in they need to do the the the elections it needs to be well monitored and verified and then we can come up with a proper representation at that time so if i understand you correctly the aims of the protesters are to have the iranian influencer leave the country um so my question is how well articulated is that by the protesters and what are the what's the degree of hope that that's achievable so if if i listen to the the the chance in the protests during the protests in the last month uh they're consistent so get rid of iran that's immediate we will not accept any of the leaders at the moment nor their parties and that's consistent across the country and to put down uh to put a foot down on corruption and regain all the money back that has been lost and that those are the three so those three would then enable the country to come out of this this cycle it would start it would kick in the infrastructure rebuilding of the entire country which then kicks in employment and employment opportunities which then kicks in uh entrepreneurship which then kicks in so the cycle then starts to to roll you saw what i mean well that's um of the articulate right it's a lot and the thing is because of all the promises since 2003 up to now nothing has changed they're not letting go and it's constant they will not move until things change now it's a stalemate at the moment because they've taken over now three out of the i think five or six uh main bridges of Baghdad separating the the sort of the the east and the west parts of Baghdad um and they're just across the bridge so the main bridge that they're holding on is right next to where the the the green zone is um and that's where the government is and that's of course where the where the us embassy is as well so they're standing still there and they want to move but they know that the the the the extra steps that they may take across the bridge could result in more casualties much more casualties i think if they attend i think they know that they're they're at a stalemate at the moment and they're holding the fronts but if they move closer um then the government or Iran itself would then take drastic measures to quell it and that would be hundreds if not thousands of lives lost and these are kids these are like teens and and kids they're they're really i mean the pictures that i that i'm getting the videos that i'm getting are just teenagers with their heads blown off it's just it's it's a massacre you know and you come back to to the double standard so Saddam Hussein for example was executed because of the massacre that he did of 148 uh shiites in a city called the jade because they tried an assassination attempt against them so he he went back and and that was his revenge and so he was executed on that so the court of proceedings and all that was based on that particular so far we've had 500 if not more deaths that's not including the kidnappings that we don't know about the tortures and things like that and about 15 000 injured so far yet nothing has been said about it anywhere and this is in a capital in the heart of the city and nothing has been said about it anywhere so this double standards again on that well this is that was it for my questions and this has been extremely helpful for our work and i would say interesting for me personally i'm wondering through email if you could send some of the links to some of these pictures however graphic i can tag you i can tag you to multiple pictures on on on facebook if you want if you want to add me on facebook yes i'll add you personally and then i'll see that code pink is following you fully as well and i don't know if you're on twitter i am but not as frequent not tweeting as frequent as i should but i will look for you there and then lift up what you do and both code pink and my own and media jody's accounts yeah i think ariel one of the questions that jody asked was what can the u.s help with so if my message my message would be then to don trump or the government or whoever if the elections in 2020 change you know whoever comes in if i if i sum this up in a few points i think the iraqis need to have the legitimacy of the current government taken away stripped away and this this can be done by the u.s government and its allies and of course the u.s is always the the four you know in the forefront of any of these so whether it's going to war or looking at other alternatives europe for example and great britain would follow suit when that comes in so this taking away the the legitimacy of the the current iraqi government based on the atrocities that have happened based on the corruption that's non-stop that hasn't changed since 2003 that should be something it should be a piece of cake and then that then starts the the let's say the the crumbling of of the entire structure that iran holds so dear in iraq and then i'm hearing from you as well that media coverage is media very needed and that's something that we as code pink can start to work on we can do some petitioning to some of the media outlets and say why aren't you covering this especially i know i know you guys don't want war in iran but at the same time i'm sure you guys don't want the same regime because you can see i mean five days ago the protest started we don't know how many because it's such a closed system we don't know how many deaths have already started we don't know what the what the the iranian regime is doing now to the people and how we assume it's not good and what we've heard is that it's not good and human right sorry amnesty released yesterday that by their calculations around 200 dead at least yeah no we don't want war with iran and we also want accountability for the u.s war with iraq and what's happening right now is following that the intercept just revealed you know all of this information about the us's role and so it should be then we should be highlighting yes these are the after effects these are the effects and this is what it looks like and this is what's happening on the ground because of what the us did because of the blunder in 2003 so like one thing we can do as code pink is we can petition media outlets to be covering both this story and of course the protests in iran of course they should be covered um and they're you know we also see what's happening in iran right now and uh within the iranian government that because of us sanctions because of us threats of war the hardliners there are actually are being emboldened and so you know we're the us is causing the worst aspects of the iranian regime to increase in power so you know we have we have a nuanced um position yeah um the other thing that i want to touch on as well is there needs to be a referendum a referendum of the constitution the constitution at the moment or rewriting of the constitution iraq is at the moment are not happy with bremer's constitution and this is an important point that needs to be addressed because a constitution um has all sorts of flaws and uh has created all sorts of problems and part of which is has given the the legitimacy of this this government to take hold and to do what it wants to do and has been doing all this time so the constitution is a very important part of this um i the the from my point of view there needs to be uh uan inspections sorry uans inspectors coming in to look at the atrocities that have been committed by the government so it will be an independent investigation that goes through what has happened who was involved and pointing the fingers and then bringing in the i mean putting in accountability into it so bringing in the perpetrators and making sure that they pay the price for the the atrocities that have been committed so either by signing off from the government certain people have signed off okay is on snipers to kill or was it was a you know uh done directly with from the iranians to make sure whoever's been responsible whoever's been captured whoever's been held there needs to be done uh and i can't i can't trust the iraqis to do so uh it'll be infiltrated it'll it'll go haywire and we'll never get to the bottom of it and the all the iraqis will review that so a uan investigation needs to be done it needs to be done in a thorough manner there also needs to be some sort of view and peacekeeping forces because we still have um militias running around abducting killing assassinating controlling all sorts of parts of the of the country militias at the moment control a large part of some of the areas some of the Sunni areas so for example Mosul Ramadi and all those and they're they're not allowing displaced persons who have left five six years ago now even maybe more uh have not been able to return back to their homes uh because of it and it's a displacement process that that the iranians have been pursuing ever since so you displace them you try to get them uh to just give up and move on and maybe hopefully they move to a different country and so on and then you demographically change what iraq used to be to what it would and you a completely new iraq at the moment so that's that's a very important thing as well and the us can also help and this is something that i know iraqis will will look very favorably in in terms of how the us is helping by giving extradition to all corrupt iraqis who are living in the states who have dual nationalities for example or in europe and so on so forth now when america wants to do something and wants to get people it does that and it does that very well it has to then support the people the iraqis regaining the 1.5 trillion now 1.5 trillion dollars that have been uh taken out uh because we need this money to to rebuild the country and to give a future and it does make it makes no sense because i i see this all the time and it's on social media our our previous minister of electricity who stole 18 million dollars is sitting because he's got dual nationality american and iraq nationality is sitting in america uh enjoying his his money there this makes no sense so many politicians iraq politicians are millionaires now when they had when they were living on welfare in england now they're millionaires with all sorts of properties and how do they get all of this and who's going to put those you know account rates and we need those those people extradited back to iraq to go through the proper legal procedures and get the money back from the banks and you know the the institutions that are holding iraq's actual money iraq's stolen money so this these are these are very very important things so the u.s is able to help in supporting the iraq's and bringing about change in these matters we certainly can't guarantee that the u.s government will help we have a lot of accountability that the u.s government should be giving to its own citizens as well right now but we can tell you that as code pink we will work on accountability from the u.s people and pressuring our government yeah well i want to thank you for speaking with me this has been fascinating thank you ariel thank you very much for the time to be honest and we'll be in touch and we'll be i'll be following you on social media myself and code pink we'll be watching closely and yeah please keep us updated as well anything and any ways we can assist that'll be great any help is is really really appreciated i really we really need to do something their lives being lost all over all over the world but a lot of it a lot of the problems are in this particular area in the middle east and now and now there's some openings so yeah we'll get to work on it very good thank you so much for your time appreciate it so much