Skip to main content

Kurds predominate in UK Iraq Elections

The Results of the Iraq Elections from people living outside Iraq are now available.

Margaret Thatcher introduced a system whereby people who have left the UK could vote in UK elections so that is not unique.

In the UK 28,673 people voted. 62% of those voted for list 130. I have a real struggle reading the arabic script, but I think the name of the party is something about not occupying and Kurdistan (I think the last word is Kurdistan or something like that).

19% voted for list 169 which is the main Shi'a list. In the US 32% voted for the main Shi'a list, but only 4% for Allawi's list (5% voted for Allawi in the UK).

This may shock the US State Department. The US State Department totally misunderstand the situation. The evidence of the election result is that in a secret ballot 32% of Iraqis living and working in the US have voted for a list that wants the withdrawal of occupying forces.

I cannot find an easy source of information as to which list is what and it takes me too long to translate the Arabic and work out the situation, but the message from this is quite clear.

Any student of the history of Iraq will see this as a repetition of the situation in the 1920s and 1930s.



Comments

Russell said…
List 130 is the 'Kurdish Alliance', who are expected to get over 20% of the total vote as most of the Kurds will have voted for them. I'm not sure about the occupying forces (the Kurds are are actually quite pro-U.S./U.K. because their area was removed from Saddam's control in 1992.) but I expect they do want the Kurdish region to actually be a seperate country.

It should be noted, however, that one of the 'manifesto pledges' of the Shia House, list 169, is a speedy withdraw of the foreign forces. It's been unequivocally the case since last summer that most of the Iraqis want the foreign troops to leave (I can provide polls.)

Popular posts from this blog

Its the long genes that stop working

People who read my blog will be aware that I have for some time argued that most (if not all) diseases of aging are caused by cells not being able to produce enough of the right proteins. What happens is that certain genes stop functioning because of a metabolic imbalance. I was, however, mystified as to why it was always particular genes that stopped working. Recently, however, there have been three papers produced: Aging is associated with a systemic length-associated transcriptome imbalance Age- or lifestyle-induced accumulation of genotoxicity is associated with a generalized shutdown of long gene transcription and Gene Size Matters: An Analysis of Gene Length in the Human Genome From these it is obvious to see that the genes that stop working are the longer ones. To me it is therefore obvious that if there is a shortage of nuclear Acetyl-CoA then it would mean that the probability of longer Genes being transcribed would be reduced to a greater extent than shorter ones.