Actually, the explosion in front of the Presidential palace two days ago happened in the 13th anniversary of the 1991 war, the war that destroyed everything, but left the rest of Iraq and his neighbors to be milked slowly.

There was a boring 80s American movie about rodeo and bulls on mbc/channel 2 (my favorite movie channel). That clown who saves the hero every time reminded me of the UN in Iraq, every time Americans either need someone to justify some plan they attend to do, or someone to hand over a catastrophe they cannot handle, everyone will see the clown rushing to offer his services.

Today’s demonstrations in Baghdad were a bit huge, and people were shouting “Yes for elections, Yes for democracy”, “No for those who came from outside to rule us”

When the situation was building up slowly in the south, no one even noticed them. All the focus was on some attacks happening in the middle region of Iraq.

Me: Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the most irresponsible of them all?
Me: I mean .. why didn’t anyone notice what was happening in the south?
Myself: Because of the extremely pragmatic method of solving problems, the no-vision-plan is based on solving the everyday troubles and forgetting anything else happening without noise.

Me: Will the Americans give Shiaa their democratic elections in the south?
Myself: NO.

Me: What do u expect to happen now?
Myself, bush and bremer: WE DO NOT KNOW

Welcome back to Iraq, Mr. cloUN.

did u see the explosion of the day
god damn it!!

Today, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq reached to 500.
But no one even mentioned that, it was the “Bremer Dinar” scandals day
The Iraqi Dinar lost 50% of its value over a night (from 950 – 1400), after discovering that our CG is selling Billions of Dinars to the world under the brand new operation called “screw up your self, your neighbors, and your national currency”.
:”)

I would like to take this chance to thank our great GC for their great policies in giving more trust in the Iraqi Dinar and the Iraqi economy.

Salam will tell you more about the Dinar thing..

Topic of the day, [It’s-my-right-to-cover-my-head] demonstrations

Secular Muslim is my favorite way in describing me. When me and myself sit to discuss the issues of religion and culture, we never fight.
Islam is that huge heritage of architecture – my grandfather’s court yard house, music – um kalthum and fayrooz, food – doolma and yabsah, colors – green palm trees and brown bricks, language – my love letters and quraan, poems – Sayyab and motanabbi, books Jaaberi and kanafani, smell and taste– bakhoor and hareesa, chai – abo el heel and noomi al basra, quraan – mosques and harmony, and .. me :”)
Maybe that’s why we can’t drop that heritage or hand it over easily to other people with long beards just because they are religious and me and my self are anti-religious. I mean,, where is the point? I don’t believe in the Islamic religion, but I am a part of the Islamic culture and society. My ex-girlfriend told me once “rayyyd .. you try to treat me in a modern way, but from deep inside I can feel the Islamic system in you”
I’m sure Kilroy will feel happy to call her as a witness in his trial.
But anyway ... the point that I am a secular person, I belong to the big seculars family, and all this crap about religions doesn’t move a hair on my body (it’s an Arabic expression).
But unexpectedly, the thing that made most of the hair on my head stand .. like some one being shocked by the so-called electricity, was when I heard the news about France and Belgium taking these ultra-stupid-shallow-decisions of veil / hijab !!! what the hell!!
I mean .. I find myself forced to criticize my secular tribe!! What the hell are you doing there??? This is not supposed to be OUR part of the game
I lived in Saudi Arabia for four years, in a small city in the south called Abha. And there .. the medieval-stupid-shallow-corrupted-government used to send religious men called “mtawwe” to insure all women will cover their bodies and look like black tents, I remember my mother – the sophisticated feminist engineer – putting that black thing on her, covering her head and face, to the point that no one can tell in which direction was she standing, these are the people whom WE (me and my secular cousins) must teach how to live and understand life

Did french people decide to hate freedom after McDonald’s changed the name of French fries to freedom fries?
Is it envy then? Haa?

I mean .. how the *falafel* did you decided to go and run after women to take off the stupid piece of cloth on their heads!! Where is the point??
Isn’t a punk allowed to come to school with his/her red head? Isn’t a Goth allowed to come with his black eyes? I mean!! Why do you start another fake battle between cultures out of nothing??
Doesn’t the UN crap speak about freedom of beliefs?? Isn’t that what WE are trying to convince the rest of the world of?
Don’t words like discrimination pull any triggers here? Ding ding?

Shame on you ..
SHAME ON YOU..

It is saturday and you might have some time to spend reading blogs?

Why not go check out Faiza's latest post she turns all maternal and wise on us:

Today I want to explore a new topic for discussion. As a result of many questions I got by email and in order to alleviate the boredom that I feel and to alleviate the general feeling of depression in Iraq, I decided to talk about something personal, about our daily life.

Or you can read what Riverbend thinks of the desicion No. 137 concerning family law in Iraq:

During the sanctions and all the instability, we used to hear fantastic stories about certain Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar, to name a few. We heard about their luxurious lifestyles- the high monthly wages, the elegant cars, sprawling homes and malls… and while I always wanted to visit, I never once remember yearning to live there or even feeling envy. When I analyzed my feelings, it always led back to the fact that I cherished the rights I had as an Iraqi Muslim woman. During the hard times, it was always a comfort that I could drive, learn, work for equal pay, dress the way I wanted and practice Islam according to my values and beliefs, without worrying whether I was too devout or not devout enough.

Healing Iraq also blogs about the same issue:

I'm so happy about this, now I can marry and divorce in any way I like. Yay! I'm at the moment gathering family members to go to the local cleric so I can divorce my fourth wife which I don't really like anymore, and get myself an 11 year-old virgin. All the other small details will be settled within the family and with the blessings of the Sayid.

and if you are just too sick of politics coming from this strange place called airak, may I suggest some fine, utterly surreal humor served by one of the people I stalk secretly:The Ugly Fat Kid ?

Late Thursday the governor of the Iraqi National Bank went on Iraqi TV to announce that the National Bank will be buying the dollar for 1350 dinars (250 dinars more than the market price) in an attempt to level the dinar and slow down its rise. All exchange shops adjusted their prices accordingly and on friday the exchange rate was between 1350 and 1380.
A reader sent me an email telling me that I shouldn't be too glad about a strong dinar since this has a negative effect on exports. The thing is that we are at the moment at a point where we import much more than we export and this trend should increase once the reconstruction phase starts and the monies from the donor conference in madrid are released. The only thing we export is Oil and, I am guessing here, that market has its own rules it won't be affected by the changes we are going thru now.
What is important is that the poeple feel that is worth something and believe me for somone who gets his paycheck in dinar this is improvement. What we need now is for the dinar to stay put at a price and stop moving, and I guess this is what the governer intended to do with his announcement on thursday. Today is the first working after the announcement and we'll see how the market reacts to his Bank's dollar price.

Did you see me on Nightline? a handsome devil, eh?

It seems the haircut Raed got did more than just clear the mess on his head, it also cleared the mess *in* his head and he was able to write an almost coherent blog. So in celebration of this glorious event today's pictures will have Raed's haircut as a theme.

It doesn't have a sign and the old man inside couldn't cut in a straight line if his life depended on it and he will mess up the goatee for sure, but raed still wouldn't go to any other.

The guy is ancient he still doesn't believe in normal tape recorders or color TVs.

and has the scariest looking chair I have seen.

but I go thru all this for two very good reasons, first Raed gets to look as bald as I am

and second the lunch Faiza promised to pay for if I get Raed to cut his hair. a huge meal of fried chicken at al-Sa'a in Mansour.This used to cost $10 but with the new exchange rate it is $15.
When was the last time you read Faiza's blog by the way?

now we have to start working on Raed's table manners i guess. -------------------------------------------------
And this is what Raed is talking about in the previous post: [Sistani upholds election demand] from [Iraq Today]:

"Sistani wants the transitional assembly to be directly elected, and is not backing down from his stance. If he does not back the U.S. roadmap, many of Iraq's majority Shi'ites may well refuse to accept the process."

Bremer is at washington discussing the authorities hand over to Iraqis.

TRICKY-QUESTIONS-AWARD of the year..

… And the winner is:

DO YOU WANT AMERICANS TO LEAVE?

Yes = hmmm.. you baathist pro saddamist bastard .. arrest him
No = OK! Here we have another evidence how much the Iraqi people want us to stay

I remember the days before the war when people from the national-but-corrupted-and-arrogant-government were using the same smart propaganda to justify their loyalty to saddam, “a civil war will start, no one can control this country, even if he isn’t the best person in the world at least he is keeping the situation stable”
The same excuse was given today, by Iraqis demonstrating at Basra.
Americans were supposed to hand over [some] authorities for Iraqis next June, and discussions were about how and where and other details, this was announced after months of playing the [try & screw-up] game. The political hand-over was supposed to happen in the middle of this year, but the thing/government was not going to be elected, it was supposed to be [s-elected], preparing for the general elections in two years.

I have no doubts that Americans want to stay as long as they can in the current status, and I don’t have any doubts “they” will try to use any excuse that can be found.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis demonstrated at Basra - the new shiaa capital – today. But why?
It was because of the new speech/fatwa of Ayat-Allah Sistani about the form of the next government..
Sistani is one from the key personalities in the “new” Iraq, (in fact he’s one of the few leaders that used to live in Iraq before the war), he really controls millions of shiaa in the south and they really believe in him. Americans treat him as a local god, giving him enormous self confidence and image.
Sistani refuses to accept the “elected government” phase,, he wants to jump to the “general elections” stage without the intermediate one.
Why? Because he doesn’t feel safe! Because he believes Americans are giving him what he wants.
Sistani doesn’t feel very safe having an ethnic-mixture-[american-free] government for the next two years, (not very safe to go through all the discussions and crap of convincing dozens of representatives of different ethnic and religious groups that may domain the political scene in the time that he can control everything by himself and have more respectful position during the presence of Americans or after the general elections will take place).

But why would a person like him give Americans a fashionable excuse for staying for another two years?
Because they built up the scene this way, give him over-doze attention and care, and thretin to go and leave him over a night, he will start begging for them to stay and this is the way Americans want to draw the right image for their existence in Iraq.

People are repeating the same “we don’t want a civil war” advertisement to justify the Sistani new position.
But why?
-Does a person like him have an M.O.U with the Americans? I don’t think so, it’s more sophisticated than that.
-Are Americans happy because of his position? YES, at least till now.
-Are Americans considering this as a favor? NO, I doubt it. They don’t have favors and permanent friends, they have permanent interests :”)
-Do Americans realize they are playing with fire or not? I don’t think they do
-When is the time Sistani gets impatient? Soon .. when he believes the VIP tale

Joke of the day – extremely related to the VIP story
There is this Iraqi guy that went to a coffee shop and found it full, so he decided to come up with a smart idea to find an empty chair. He stood in front of every one and yelled “they are distributing free gasoline outside”! so everyone rushed outside, and he found a place and sat down. Five minutes later .. he thinks “maybe its true” and hurries out running after them.

From an American-practical point of view, Iraq is not ready neither technically nor politically to start a general election battle, we are talking about a country that could not re-build the services billing system until now.

Fun fact: Iraqis didn’t pay a Dinar for (the so-called) electricity, water, telecommunication stuff and other public services for the last 10 months .. not because Americans are trying to build a new communist era, its because of the lack of capabilities of issuing bills!!

I mean .. we are speaking about basics here .. stupid small problems like traffic jams seem to be huge enough to be considered as a challenge for the GC, so what do u expect to get when issues like general elections are discussed?
Otherwise.. and from a political position, let’s suppose this technical problem isn’t that big, americans will not give the chance for the situation to go outside control and repeat the Algerian catastrophe, when the so-called [democratic general elections] will end up creating a new religious monster that might not be western-friendly.
The same way that I was sure americans will not give saddam hussein a free passion_inflaming_channel by starting a public trial show, I can say I’m positive Americans will not give Iraq neither as a shiaa present to Iran or a sunni present to Saudi Arabia, general elections cannot even be discussed before Iraqis finish their cultural and political lessons. Teach them the neo-Islamic theory: Secular Islam(?).
Would it end up causing a mess?
Would the impact cause extremely right winged groups?
Would these “outsiders” putting more and more pressure to change the socio-cultural-religious common beliefs be accepted?

Ok .. I’m trying to be pragmatic and rational without forgetting the national context and sense, I can understand that when Americans come to occupy a country, they will rebuild it in their way, so issues like privatization, capitalism, federalism, open market policy, open telecommunication system come in one package that I don’t see a point even in discussing their presence or not, it’s stupid to feel surprised every time a topic of these pops-up, but its not stupid at all to discuss the methods and ways of reaching to those main goals, sometimes methodologies are more harmful than the goals themselves.

Confusion is the keyword here..

I know the American army is not leaving Iraq in years, and I know American decision makers will not leave in decades, I mean .. just let them announce that!
Do u know that the American embassy in Baghdad will have more than 3000 “diplomats” working?? They ARE the next government .. no doubt ..
Just announce it for god’s sake.. announce that and let’s play a clean game.
Why must we go through all of this Iraq-tearing-up-process? Federalism, Shiaa, Sunnis, Turkmen, Kurds, Assyrians, blab la blaa, picking a weak dependant governing council, with no roots, and threatening to leave after a year .. of course they’ll start whining and begging for the devil to stay.

Why didn’t anyone ask us whether we wanted the war or not? Whether we felt comfortable with the GC or not? Why no one asks if the game of jumping from a plan to another with no vision is amusing or not?
But everyone comes now and ask .. do u want “them” to leave or stay?

There is an Arabic proverb saying: “one hundred wise men are not enough to find the stone that the freak threw in the well”

You threw the stone .. you find it.

More on the Family Laws issue.
Al-Sabah has today on its front page a statement by Jalal Talabani, Kurdish Governing Council member, saying that Decision No. 173 by the Iraqi Governing Council cannot be passed because illegitimate. Yesterday Al-Sabah said that the decision was signed by all IGC members except one. Could be Talabni who has not signed the decision while the women on the IGC thought it was OK?

Inside, in its legal section, Judge Zakia Ismaeel Haqi has a column titled [Remarks on GC’s decision No. 137], here are the highlights of what she has written, it is a bit long if you are not interested in reading all of this go down to the bold bit:

There is no doubt that the Islamic Sharia was and still is one of the main sources of law in Iraq……………..the patience of the Iraqi family was rewarded with the announcement of the Personal Affairs Law number 159 in 1959 and its 12 amendments. This law took a lot from Sharia laws and the fiqh of various Islamic factions, for example the husband was not able anymore to divorce his wife by simply announcing the divorce to her three times [that’s a bit complicated to explain, the wife in sharia is considered divorced if her husband tells her “you are divorced” three times] causing the family to collapse.

……

The Iraqi family and specially the Iraqi woman was hoping that our brothers in the Governing Council, many of them who have struggled for 3 decades against the fallen regime, we hoped that they understand our need for more amendments to the above mentioned law and the deletion of some of the hurtful amendments added by the previous regime. We needed corrections to that law which will ensure more protection to the family but we were shocked by the announcement of decision no. 137 in what was an almost unanimous vote with only one voice opposing it.
A decision like that affects the Iraqi family profoundly and will have dangerous consequences I will not be able to list of them here in detail but maybe the main effect it will have is the following: this decision will abolish the current Personal Affairs Law [family law] which is followed by Muslim or non Muslim families, Social Protection Law, Minors Protection Law, Inheritance Law and all amendments to the 1959 law concerning non Muslim citizens Christians, Jews and Mandeans. Now that this law has been abolished who protects the rights of non Muslims?

I have a lot of respect to my brothers in the IGC specially some of them are colleagues in studying the law and I have joined others of them in the revolution of the Kurdish people in 1974. I am very disappointed that many of them have put their signature down on a decision which has not been properly legally formulated and has too many linguistic mistakes and I wonder how such a draft could pass thru the legal committee in the GC.
[she counts a couple of the more important legal and linguistic flaws]

……………….
……………….

Finally I am very saddened to see the fate of the Iraqi family and specifically the Iraqi woman amidst this storm. Some do not allow her to leave the house, others do not allow her to travel without a chaperone and another crushes her humanity by beating her thinking that he is practicing his lawful right according to the sharia. The Iraqi family refuses to go back to the dark ages and the 4th Hijra century now that we are in the 15th Hijra century. The Iraqi woman needs your understanding and support so that she can explore her full potential in causing positive changes in the economical, social and political structure in her country. And I hope you will not forget that women today are 65% of the Iraqi population.
I am fully convinced that a decision like this does not represent the Iraqi public opinion and our people look forward for more participation of women in the society.

You would have thought a news item like this would get a bit more attention since one of the protesters was one of our newly appointed ministers:

Iraqi women protest proposed changes to family laws

Azzaman has it on the top right side of the front page, Asharq Al-Awsar on the top left.

About 100 Iraqi women led by a minister protested in central Baghdad against a Governing Council proposal to scrap the secular family affairs code and place it under Muslim religious jurisdiction.

"I am outraged how the decision was taken," public works minister Nesrine al-Barwari told AFP.

So first they slip in the bit about turning Iraq into a federal state without asking the Iraqis and now this. Me thinks the GC is taking on more than what it is supposed to do.

In Azzama Dr. Azhar Abdul-Karim, a constitutional law expert says that she thinks it is very unusual that the family law, as it is, gets abolished in the current situation since it is partly based on Sharia law anyway and abolishing this law without the presence of a an elected government will only create more Chaos. Here is the article from Azzaman in Arabic, the thing they had in the paper is a bit more than just a translation of the AFP which they have put on the web.

Look what we have in our sky, what do you call it? Balloon .. airship .. blimp ..
It was flying over Abo-Ghraib the other day,

Abo-Ghraib is the small district to the west of Baghdad, where the main prison is located.
I’m sure its full of bad-anti-freedom people
:”)
Whatever..

Baghdad is going through a critical economical transmission period,,
today is the last day of the three-month-changing-period of the old Iraqi Dinar, and dealing with old notes (the one with saddam’s smile) is not legal anymore.

(I will tell you the story of Newsweek later.. that’s another fairy-tale)
The good news: The value of the Iraqi Dinar increased more than 40%. And its getting better..
The funny-side-effect of the operation is not missing the smile of uncle saddam, it’s the unexpected inflation!!
The usual exchange rate of the Iraqi Dinar used to be around 2000 for one us dollar, today it is 1200. But at the same time this 40% rising in the value of the Iraqi Dinar was not accompanied with any change in the prices of food, transportation and other basic supplies and products.

The small problem of price increases is that no one used to keep or use Iraqi money in a practical way, people kept their money in US dollars, so from this point of view everything is 40% more expensive than before!!

E.g.1:
Q: I used to pay 1000 Iraqi Dinar for the taxi driver and it used to equal 50 cents
Today I paid 1250 Iraqi Dinar for the same trip, how much is that in dollars?
A: one dollar
Conclusion: its time to use your car..

E.g.2:
Q: I invite Salam on lunch and dinner everyday, and I pay, everyday, every time. Mmm .. ok .. I used to pay 10,000 Iraqi Dinar which used to equal five dollars, how much is that in dollars now?
A: Don’t invite him anymore.

For the first time since 1991 shops are refusing to deal with US dollars! Everyone is proud of our national currency now
:”)

Yeah .. I mean .. whatever was this price rising problem, its temporal and small, the economical conditions reminds me of the days before the embargo, in the late eighties when the Iraqi Dinar used to have his credibility, power and enormous potentialities.

Ok .. going back to that Newsweek thing, no one can really describe the difference between the Arabic edition and the English one, but let me try..
Difference 1:
They have a strange version of Arabic language there.
Difference 2:
I feel it’s more an educational curriculum than anything else, trying to teach us some interesting politically correct facts about life.
Difference 3:
There is even a different version of images; the Arabic ones are less artistic and more educational, expressing certain ideas.

I think Faiza – mamma mia – can describe more what I’m trying to say.. you can read what’s she writing on A Family In Baghdad.

Has anybody been following what is happening to the Iraqi dinar the last couple of weeks?

It seems someone stuck the dinar on a Helium filled balloon and let it loose, the dinar keeps getting stronger and stronger; the foreign exchange market in Harthiya is in total shock. If things keep going the way they are the dinar will be worth twice as much as it was a month ago.
At new year’s the exchange rate was around 1750 dinars for a dollar, today it is 1150 for a dollar. No other subject is being discussed at the barber’s (yes Raed and I finally got a haircut). Last night during the late night news it said the dollar was selling for 1300, and today at 1150, tsk tsk tsk. The rise and rise of the Iraqi dinar. [Insert phallic or silly Viagra joke here].

Government employees being paid in dinar feel now that their money is worth much more. My Barber while snip-snapping at the little hair I have on my head; decided to stop the grumblers in his shop by announcing that there is nothing better than having a strong currency you are proud of “by Allah all those Iraqis working abroad should come back, now that working so hard abroad doesn’t pay off as much as it used to let them come work here in their country”….yep, I have a wise barber.

One thing is still bothering most people, traders who have imported their merchandise a month ago feel they have been given the [Khazooq*] and are refusing to re-price their goods according to the new price of the dinar, and more and more people ask to be paid in Iraqi dinar, more trust in the local currency. Very well done Iraqi National Bank.

The strange side effects this has had is the smuggling of huge amounts of Iraqi currency and heavier trading with the new dinar in the Arab world. Al-Sabah reported of two Kuwaitis trying to leave Iraq with a couple of hundred million new Iraqi dinars. Asharq Al-Awsat [the link is to the international edition, not the baghdad edition] published a picture of a car loaded with another couple of hundred million being taken out by a Pakistani. The Egyptian currency market has problems because of the volume of trade in the new Iraqi dinar.

Demand for the dinar has been boosted by a surge in currency smuggling which has seen hundreds of millions of dinars taken to Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt and the other Arab states, traders said.
"There is strong demand from neighbouring countries. They think the dinar is undervalued compared to the dollar and they expect the dinar to rise in the medium and long term," said Mohammad Hassan al-Jashmae, who runs a currency exchange firm.

my grandmother would have one thing to say; “wallah ishna u shufna” – by Allah we lived to see that happen.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*That's a pole stuck up the bum.

I have proof that there are people in Illinois, USA have a great sense of humor. I got the following email from Mr. M G, Subject: America

Dear Mr. Pax
The United States of America needs your assistance in restoring democracy here.

............
............

Turnout in primary elections is traditionally low, about 15%. Since Bush is unopposed, turnout in the Republican primary will be very low, possibly less than 0.1%

Lifelong Republicans such as myself are ashamed to participate in the Democratic primary because we are partly responsible for the current mess.

[here it comes]
You can help by offering yourself as a write-in candidate for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States. It is very possible that your admirers in Illinois outnumber Bush voters in the primary. It would be a beautiful embarrassment to Mr. Bush for him to lose an unopposed election. This could add to the psychological momentum needed to defeat him in the general election on 2 November.

So please consider promoting your candidacy in your blog. Duty calls you.

Dear Sir
I would have loved to be a write-in candidate at your president's elections, but as you know we here in Iraq are getting closer and closer to having to vote for our own president and I really must concentrate on *my own campaign* here.
:)
and remember, vote Pax for Prez.

As seen on the streets of Baghdad, start queuing up for those $60 per month jobs.

The picture I mentioned in the blog below.....readers have sent me links to it. Go take a look, it is the third picture down. I still think it smells fishy.

After quite a long time without the picture of Saddam in newspapers he is back in all of them.
The number of newspapers is increasing day after day, when I went to buy newspapers a couple of days ago (most of the papers are weeklies or come out twice a week, cost concerns) I found two new ones. A paper called al-qasim al mushtarak (the common ground) and a cultural weekly called al-Adeeb (the literary). Almost all the papers, the ones which are purely local, have Saddam either on the cover or have supplements about Saddam. What triggered this Saddam coverage was the announcement that Saddam is to be considered POW.
Al-Itijah al-khar has this strange picture of saddam being tied down by an American soldier, and splashes on its front “Picture proves with pictures what we have said earlier: Saddam was drugged when arrested”, the picture is so obviously doctored I have no idea why someone like Mr. Mishaan al-Juburi puts something like that on the front of his paper. The paper says that the picture was leaked by the US government and this is a violation of the international laws and conventions concerning POWs. The paper says the its “source” says that because Saddam has been so reluctant to say anything in the US investigations the US investigators have been using “very modern and rare equipment which make him compliant to the demands of the investigators only during the hours he is being cross examined” – [oh dear, we are getting in twilight zone here] – and the paper says that Saddam did not want any visits by his daughters or wife because he feared that the US might put them in custody as well. [as if they have not been seen in Amman in shopping malls escorted by bodyguards and loaded with shopping bags]

On the same issue have you read this post on Juan Cole's blog:

The experts in international law quoted in most news sources on Saturday said that it would be illegal now for the US to simply turn Saddam over to the Iraqi Interim Governing Council!

The IGC is alarmed at this turn of events.

aren't we all.

The helicopter was so low it made the car rumble.

The number of people who have changed their names from Saddam to other names have reached 820. Almost daily you see in the official Iraqi newspaper announcements of people changing their names.

The city of Karbala is facing a real problem with the Iranian tourist, all land owners are kicking out their tenants in favor of Iranians renting rooms for much more than a doctor, pharmacist or a barber could pay. The governorate (maybe in the future, the independent state of Karbala) is trying to enforce a rule to stop those landlords form evicting trades.

More and more off-license shops are closing down. In the Ameriyah district where you used to find 7 shops in [Amal Shaabi] and [Munathama] streets now there are non. One shop has been attacked twice and the most recent attack was two weeks ago. A friend of ours who had a shop there has written in big letters on the shop “will never open again” just so that his shop doesn’t get RPG-ed *again*

Tried to get a better internet connection than the one I have, went to DijlaNet. Up six floors on foot only to be told that I have to pay a $2000 setup fee and $400 a month for a 46k/46k connection. right.
I think the dial up thing I have now is just super fine, don't you think so?
The only good thing about getting up that high is having a chance to get a picture of the baghdad skyline from Mansour. Yes I know the picture quality is bad, will start using a better camera.
click small to see big

That monster of a mosque on the right is the unfinished Rahman mosque, one of two gigantic mosques saddam intended to build, I kind of think it will stay in this state for quite a long time because it will need huge amounts of money to finish it. I would have had other ideas about that piece of land in that area, but let's not discuss that since it is a mosque now. it looks like a gigantic space ship. The needle like thing in the middle is the "saddam" tower beside the Mamoun telephone exchange, now a wreck. The dome on the left is the Salam Presidential Palace, also a wreck.

I fought with her again, let’s hope I did leave too much mess and destruction to go back again this time..
pmpm ..
Our problems re-identify the meaning of deja vu

Jumping from one city to another, and from one country to another is not solving my problems anymore.
Anyway..

Word of the day: Privatizing
:”)
I remember myself giving a boring lecture about the socio-cultural changes in post-war Iraq, and since I’m such a bossy_ ego_ centric_ freak it didn’t bother me much to see most of the poor sleepy Italian kids moaning and begging for a break.
That was a couple of months ago. Or was it in October?
Whatever..
“I believe war had two main goals” Raed_in_Action “Destroying the political regime, and changing the economical system” go go go “Crushing the political structure is done, and changing the economical one is still in process” everybody say woooow
woooooooooooooooow
Everybody knew how stupid was the idea of inviting me to Italy, they sent me back to Baghdad on the next plain.

The first step in changing the socialist economical system was bombing some of the [public/governmental]-sector companies, and leaving the rest to be looted and burned in the weeks after. The second step of privatizing is happing at the time, started some weeks ago
but who can tell what’s happening?
No one.
Small companies and parts of the public sector are being sold, some governmental companies belonging to the ministry of industry, some furnaces, some warehouses and stores and some other small places that you can read advertisements about in our new daily newspapers.
but what else is being sold?
No one can tell.

Don’t I sound like a member of the conspiracy-theory-club?
NO I DON’T
I mean .. If you don’t give a heck about private and public crap, I’m sure many people here will care; Iraqis lived their life depending on the governmental sector, maybe they didn’t feel that .. mmm .. yet..

QUIZ OF THE DAY? (With multiple choice facilities)
How much money did an Iraqi spend to get each of the following:
1) (Free?) medical treatment, hospitals and pharmacies and drugs..
2) (Free?) food rations, food food food and food
3) (Free?) education, schools, universities including post-graduate studies..
4) (Free?) electricity, water, petrol, gasoline, loly-pops..

(PICK ONE ANSWER)
(A) nothing
(B) nothing
(C) nothing
(D) all mentioned above

(CONCLUSION)
Wow .. public sector rocks

ANOTHER QUIZ IN THE SAME DAY (its more a fun fact than a quiz, don’t panic)
How much money do Americanos spend every week when they change the security color code from yellow to orange?

(PICK ONE ANSWER)
(!) one BILLION USD / week

(CONCLUSION)
I don’t want to know how much they’ll spend on pink
Feel good .. real good

I met Jo yesterday, she was extremely hyper active and happy!
Unlike me
She was surrounded by a bunch of clowns whom were extremely happy too.
The strange thing that these clowns where real! I mean .. real real clowns as seen on TV, they are coming to Baghdad under the name “Circus to Iraq”. I think Iraqi children will freak out when they meet a clown with green nose and big red mouth.
:”)

How does it feel like when you know, admit and be happy of being a clown?
It seems I’ll have many questions to ask in the next press conference of the GC**.
(mmm .. am I “inflaming passions” against anyone?)
(If yes .. just put me in prison and let another Americana soldier kick me on sensitive places, or let Kilroy tell me more about life)
(bad taste as usual..)
(hohohe)

** mmm .. to de-code numbers of the CG picture.. plz go there
(not recommended)

You should all go read Zeyad's latest post NOW!
Go, what are you waiting for.

sometime between christmas and new year's I went for a walk in karrada and played a game with a tiny digital camera; a picture every 20 steps. some turned out bad and some ok.
click on small to see big.
---------------------------------------------

sat-dishes in Karrada, you can get them in any color you want, bright fiery orange (as in my blogs) seems to be a hit. You have to assemble the thing yourself, manual not included

tiny plasic christmas trees

and a christmas market

Mr. Shoe Shine

not very exciting hotdogs

the attack of persian plastics

The Hearts and Minds article by Hassan Fattah, link provided by Gila, thanks a million.
if that link didn't work try this
Now go read that it is the best thing you can do in the next 15 minutes.

He also has a blog. He is in Jerusalem now.

Back in Baghdad. The boredom of the 12 hour drive from Amman to Baghdad was alleviated by a black BMW which kept following us for almost 40 minutes. Raed and I were on the verge of freaking but kept trying to act as if it wasn’t as nasty as it looked. Getting picked as a target for a carjacking from all the masses of cars going thru the Iraqi-Jordanian border should make you feel special I guess. It is like getting a winning lottery card from Hell.
Anyway; between driving as fast as we can away from our probable carjacker and trying to keep clear of all the military convoys we arrived safely in Baghdad.
My brother and cousin decided to take me out for dinner but since they were worried about going to a restaurant in Arasat (where Nabil’s was bombed) we went to a newly opened place in Mansur. If you are in Baghdad it is worth checking out, it is called al-Samad and really is nice. We sat there for 10 minutes when we heard shooting outside, very close, followed by a police car which stopped to close to the restaurant and a lot of people running in all directions. It was time to ask if we could have our meals to go.

The day we left to Amman was pretty strange; raed said that it felt like one of these special effects in movies when the actors are running just ahead of a huge explosion. He was supposed to pick me up at eight; he was at the other end of Baghdad. While he was driving thru Karrada a bomb explodes in front of the Rahibat Hospital and he gets stuck there for an hour. As we are driving out of my neighborhood we see an Iraqi car run over by and American humvee, the 4 humvee-convoy has blocked the road and the owner of the car stands beside his wrecked car and has his hands on top of his head. Not exactly a great start for a trip. The 30th of December didn’t look good and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to hang around for the 31st. As we were driving out of Baghdad there was another halted convoy, a military car lay on the road flipped on its back, soldiers stood around pointing their guns at passing cars. Do you see what raed was talking about, we just kept going faster.

-------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow the sixth is [the day of the army] a national holiday celebrating the formation of the Iraqi Army, funnily enough this holiday was abolished just a couple of months ago at the first press conference the Iraqi Governing Council gave.
But just as so many things that were done in haste and in the non-existence of a Plan they have brought it back. The ministry of defense was closed down, and everybody thrown out only to be brought back a couple of months later when they [ie CPA] realized that this wasn’t exactly a very clever move. The Mukhabarat was quickly put apart as one of worst instruments the Saddam regime had, and rightly so, only to be put back together first secretly and now not so secretly. The one thing I am still waiting to come back after being thrown out is the “road map” for and Iraqi constitution, but it seems that is ignored.

-------------------------------------------------
There is a great article in this month’s Prospect by Hassan Fattah [editor of Iraq Today]. It is called Hearts and Minds and in it he gives a ten point “bluffer’s guide for the reconstruction of the reconstruction of Iraq”. Absolutely brilliant. You should buy, steal or borrow a copy today.

-------------------------------------------------
Have you been noticing all the talk about Iraq as a federal country lately? Something made me itch every time I heard and Iraqi or CPA official talk about it, first I couldn’t figure out was bothering me, but during the long long drive to Amman I was finally able to put my finger on it. No one asked us what we thought of the idea.
I remember almost a month ago when Zibari (our minister for foreign affairs) talked about federalism and I thought “that’s nice we are starting the discussion finally”. I was wrong it was not a discussion; it was a done and made deal. It got so silly that Kurds and Arabs are having real trouble about the issue, the Kirkuk incident was . I can’t remember anyone asking me what I thought about the whole issue, neither was it put to debate openly. Someone high and mighty suddenly decided that is what’s good for you, and we are going thru the process of trying to fit into that prêt-a-porter federalism. “The Officials” are not discussing whether that system is good for us or not they are way beyond that point, they are discussing into how many pieces Iraq is going to be cut up. Along “ethnic” lines or by governorates.
Have I mentioned already that we were not asked?
Our new temporary head of state, Mr. Pachachi, promises the Kurds that they will get what they want. Which means that they will cut up Iraq into three parts and making sure that instead making sure we all here live together peacefully our ethnic and religious differences get even more accentuated. Yes I know identity is important but you see my father is Sunni, my mother Shia and our neighbors for years Kurds. There are no lines and none should exist, the situation in Kirkuk does create lines and make people choose sides. Although I find the idea of an independent state of Baghdad or Samaweh or Basra a bit funny; it is all one Iraq for me, but I think if we were force fed this federalism without being asked I hope they won’t go for a federal state consisting of Kurdistan in the north, Sunni-stan in the middle and Shia-stan in the south.

Hope you all had a great new year with as few bangs as possible, as you all know ours was quite loud. I am not in Baghdad again, and my mom tells me that new year's eve was like war because of all the explosions.

OK announcement number one: THE MIRROR SITE TO THIS ONE, THE ONE CALLED [dearraed.blogspot.com ie the one without the underscore between dear and raed] HAS BEEN HACKED. THE MIRROR WAS CREATED BY GOOGLE/BLOGGER AND I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO CONTROL IT, NEITHER HAVE I FOUND A CONTACT US LINK TO WRITE TO BLOGGER, THE BLOGGER FORUM IS TRYING TO HELP.

announcement number two: concerning Faiza's blogs, would you guys please give me a break. she writes too much and too fast and I am supposed to translate all, she has 4 untranslated blogs and she called me today saying there are 8 more waiting to be posted and translated. please have mercy. and some patience

It is going to be a great year, no question. Go get drunk and promise you will not watch the news for the next three days, it's all bad anyway.
Peace, out!

More from Faiza. here and here (look for the bits where it says "translation").
You really should go read what she writes. try to imagining a nasal whine and words thrown at you at machine gun speed, it will help visualize how Faiza would talk to you. There was a time when I spent more time in Raed's house than at my parents and Faiza is almost like one of my mom's sisters to me. She has a very evolved sense of rightousness, you better have a good explantion for your actions, you would get a lecture otherwise.

and please tip the translator, ahem ahem.

Tonight the daily thuds started a bit earlier. It was around 10 and MBC2 was showing [Sleepless in Seattle], I am a bit embarrassed to say this, but I am a sucker for a Meg Ryan movie. The only problem was the sound of the explosions was a bit too close, it wasn’t just the thud we got used to the last two days but a very deep rumble as well, My mother couldn’t stand it any longer after a while and decided to go hide under her bed pillow instead of exchanging glances after each round of explosions and trying hard to guess where that is. It is the third night now, can anyone please tell me what is going on?

There is a lot that is not being reported and I am not talking about International media, they take what they like and leave. I am talking about the local Iraqia TV, I would have thought that the attacks and explosions are worth a report in the local news, but it seems al Iraqia is just not interested.
The day before yesterday a mine exploded in the Jamia underpass, three Iraqis died and the road was blocked for a number of hours. Does al-Iraqia report? Of course it doesn’t. Today me an my cousins went to get sandwiches from Harthiya street, all the talk in the fast food place was about an explosion just an hour earlier, as we drive away we see a Humvee in the middle of the road, we have to turn back the street is blocked because of the mentioned explosion, The ministry of oil was attacked, SOMO (the sales department in the Ministry of Oil) had a car bomb put in front of it. Does al-Iraqia report? No it doesn’t. The editors there don’t seem to get it, for the foreign media it might be easy to hide part of the picture because their viewers don’t live here. But for Iraqia, turning itself into the good news channel only makes it lose any hope of credibility. Think of it, they don’t have it to lose it.

The other day my uncle, after taking a bottle of nice Lebanese wine I bought for myself, gave me a summary of the policies of various arab media organizations from his point of view.
Want the good news only? Read al-sabah, the lovey-dovey-oh-no-problem-in-this-world paper sponsored by the coalition.
Want the horrible, disturbing version of the news? Read azzaman, news of deaths and assassinations galore.
Want to get your blood pressure up? Watch the arab news networks.
He, and so do we, read all of them. Somewhere in that mess is what is really happening but you need to read the whole lot.

Oh and here is the link to our THIRD film for newsnight.

OK!!
I mean .. Don't freak out!
anyone can translate whatever he wants
anyone can say whatever he wants
I mean .. unless its pro-saddam or anti-bush or pro-terrorism or ..
whatever..
:")

Explosions didn't stop yesterday, nothing new, but .. mmm.. did anyone else hear the sirens? or was it just another nightmare?
usually my nightmares have either Italian girls dumping me, or American soldiers stopping me on check points. But this one was really genuine.

After investigating Abu-Hasan (the night guard), unfortunately it appeared NOT to be a nightmare
(ouch! .. I just started to trust my imagination again)

OK!!
FREAK OUT NOW
sirens explosions sirens explosions sirens explosions
weeo booom bom bom weeo wouou bmbm

Fairy tale of the day?
I met a Santa Claus with plastic face and dirty-soldier-shoes at the convention center, I went there with Hamsa and Jo to register(?) Emaar and the red-plastic-face decided to attack us and say "Muarreeeeeeeeeee Christmaaaaaasssss"
"mmmm .. What?" is all that i could say.

sirens explosions sirens explosions sirens Xmas

oh dear, now this was not meant to happen.
A certain site Raed has linked to, a site we do not aprove of neither support ideologically, has translated the last blog I and Raed wrote and decided to use it as proof of certain weapons used in a recent incident. Neither I nor Raed are weapons experts and we have not been asked for permission by the person who translated to arabic or the persons who operate that site. We have nothing to do with them. I would even say it is regretable that we are quoted on that site.
We went thru this talk yesterday, me and raed, and were not sure whether to link to it or not, and this is what came out of it.
I repeat, we don't know them and I don't think they would like us if they met us. Now please don't plant a bomb at our door, let's keep this civil.

The same thing exactly happened last night, at around eleven the battle starts. You hear distant thuds, it sounds like someone jumping on the floor above you. When i go out i can't see any flashes but the thuds are very numerous like a proper battle, and you can also hear the sound of distant helicopters. it went on until 1am last night. Tonight it has just started 10 minutes ago. I am more than glad I am no where near where that is happening.
You kind of listen carefully for a while wondering whether it will come closer or not. Thankfully it is only the sound of helicopters going by that gets closer.

I spent last night in my family's house.
Everyone looked very moody and grumpy, Khaled was having problems with uni_girls, Majed was studying for his religion examination, mom was typing more and more diaries on her PC, and my father was reading something.
The boom boom boom thing happened at midnight, and no one had enough energy even to wonder what was happening, but the breaking news at Al-Jazeera tv said American fighters were bombing AdDora, where one of my uncles lives.
My father decided to call them and see what happened, but they were sleeping! my cousin said: "they are using cluster bombs, and we can hear the sound of a 57 (an Iraqi anti-craft gun) shooting back, but everyone here is sleeping"
lol
lol
lol!!
:")
What?? where did the 57 come back from!!

Today some street fighting happened at AdDora too. Naseem - the guy working in the internet cafe` - was telling me about Fedayeen attacking American troops, "there were dozens of them", and he added with a smile "I'm sure it was a 57 yesterday"

I was surprised to discover some sites putting pictures and speeches about the resistance!
neither me nor Salam expected to see such organized "resistance" signs.

Sometimes I feel completely lost, I can't see the whole picture.
No one can say what is going on.

Reema, the young sister of Hamsa, was telling me about the demonstrations happening in her college. "Some of them were pro-Saddam, others were anti-Saddam. But an hour later it started being more complicated, stupid people were shouting strange things about Shi'aa and Sunna"

What Shi'aa?? What Sunna!!
That doesn't sound very funny!
brrrrrrrrr

Tara emailed me form Canada, she's coming back to Baghdad in a couple of weeks. I'm not sure if my offer of exchanging-worlds would really work.
I can't see myself having a "normal" life.
How boring..
Blah..

Iraq Blog Count. an excellent idea.
More Iraqis online than you would have thought eh?

S/He calls the family in baghdad blog a [Blog Sitcom]. I have just translated Faiza's (the mom) post and sent it to raed but until it is posted on the site I know Faiza will not mind having the translation here.

Take it away Faiza

it is five in the evening.
Electricity just came back, it has been off since five in the morning. I wonder always how families who do not own an electricity generator or have a subscription with a neighborhood one manage washing their clothes or heating their houses since the alternatives are also scarce in the markets. Kerosene and cooking gas are almost totally unavailable on the market and if you find them they are expansive. And when it comes to gasoline, the lines in front of gas stations are so long they go on for kilometers and are amazing and funny.
Life feels harsh and gloomy. Before the war we were for years under sanctions and we got used slowly to the situation. How to survive and manage in our reality. And although we were cut off from the rest of the world (no sat TV, no communication and no internet) everything was banned, prohibited or very regulated, but we were happier than we are now.
I do not know exactly why, but we were like a family living its troubles and secrets, the good ones and the bad ones, in a house that had closed doors and windows. The people abroad would wonder about us, some like us some hate us but we didn’t care much because like many other people each one of us was living his life with its infinite details and sorrows, and having ambitions for a better tomorrow.
And Today, the doors have been pulled out, noise and chaos rule the big house and the people who live in are killing each other, they are stealing from each other and hurting each other. I ask myself where did all this hate hide for so long?
And then a lot of strangers came, looking at us, a few want to help but many more want harm for their own announced or hidden reasons. It doesn’t matter, the result stays the same.

and there is more

How do I start my day? I driver comes to drive me to my work place since I was denied the driving of my own car, it stands there covered in the garage since almost 6 months because of all the incidents.
On my way I go thru the airport highway where all the trees have been cut down for fear of people hiding amongst them attacking the American forces the road looks sad and deserted now, then suddenly speeding convoys of Humvees go by the end of the convoy is an open car with American soldiers standing pointing their rifles at our civilian cars, afraid of a terrorist act!
I tell the driver to slow down and to try to stay away from them as good as he can, just so that we do not become the victims of a stray bullet coming out of the gun of a soldier who came to liberate Iraq

FlyingChair.net is doing an Asia Blog Award thingy and has a Best Iraqi Blog Category. Go on vote for MeMeMeMe.

As Mr. Raed (who I am not sure whether I am speaking with or not, it depends on the state of my cold) as he clearly demonstrated in the previous blog, Mullah Bremer's Fatwa prohibiting the buying and selling of Gasoline on the black market has become just another excuse for the gas sharks to get even more money out of us.

The renamed Iraqi TV Channel [al-iraqia] is trying to do an awarness capaign thing about the evils of selling gasoline on the black market, I guess the only evil being floating it's price properly and getting the true value for it, since it is so scarce. They have an actor doing a gas station ward refusing to sell even one single litre of gas if it wasn't your day (we have now the odd/even rule, certain days for cars with odd numbers and others for cars with even numbers). The truth in the gas station is that the guy who is holding the gas-hose-thingy will ask you just as he gets close to your prescribed 30 litres (yes you get 30 only and you are supposed to be happy with that for two days) he will ask whether you are prepared to pay an extra 10,000 to get another 30. I suspect Mullah Bremer has close gas station owner friends and he just wanted to make them richer with his new rule. The black market has gone insane with prices and you buy it like you are buying hard drugs, in a hurry and in constant fear of being caught.
The all-new Iraqi Police in their ham fisted ways have already managed to kill a guy selling gasoline. Idiots you are supposed to stop them selling gasoline not stop them breathing, they shot him dead, bang bang, just like that and all he did was sell gasoline on the side of the street. Oh god how criminal, he should have ran to a Fundi sheikh and get paid for throwing hangrenades in the streets. New Iraqi Police indeed.
We are off the subject; I CAN NOT see any sense in the new gasoline rules, none at all. It is so ironic that after filling our heads with " you are a rich nation, lotsa oil and shit" talk we have to import gasoline, there is even gasoline coming in from fucking Jordan. Jordan, for fuck's sake, is D.R.Y. we used to give them oil for free and now we have to buy it back. The lord does surely move in mysterious ways, specially when he has the american administration next to him.

hmmm, I am rambling....maybe should check my temperature.

Since I am confined to my mom's I sit watching the News on the Iraqi TV channel. [al-Iraqia] lives in La La Land, the reporters and anchors smile at each other idiotically like they are on some super-nice drug, the footage they show has nothing to do with the news they are reading. The one bit of news which did get my attention was that the Iraqi Police caught three poeple trying to sell forged Iraqi currency, new 25,000 dinar bills. The ones we were told were impossible to forge. I am glad that not too many Iraqis watch that channel because we would have had the same panic we had after the war when al-Jazeera reported that there are tons of forged 10,000 dinar bills circulating.
Highlight of al-Iraqia's broadcast this morning was the Haj Lottery, the pilgrimage to Mecca is soon and in baghdad alone 40,000 have applied to go but only 7,000 are going to be given permits by the Saudis (it will be a total of 30,000 pilgrims from all of Iraq). even al-Jaafari, a GC member whom I respect a lot, was there overseeing this all important lottery.

Today's weather report: Rain, Cold, Wet, Gray, Mud puddles, cars spraying dirty water on you when you walk, people looking grumpy because they can't find kerosene to work the heaters nor is there enough electricity to keep houses warm. Mmmmmmm, much better than sunny yesterday.

Yeah .. that "thing from the opposite sex"'s name is Hamsa (i.e. whisper) and she will eat you alive after reading your post :") (She's more a storm than a whisper..)
We went to an expensive restaurant, food was ok but their wine was very bad, it tasted like vinegar. So I did a small "drama queen" thing and they opened a new bottle of vino rosso for us.

In fact the interesting thing happened before we went to lunch, I went to pick Hamsa from her place and told her that we need to get some petrol for the car first.
She called her father, and the old man came with us to his relative's house, just near by. We knocked the door,
Abu-Hamsa said: we want some petrol
and immediately everyone started acting in a very professional way, the son came outside and led us to the back door, the daughter went to watch the street, and the father came with 30 liters of petrol, looked as her son and daughter and gave them instructions: keep your eyes opened.
I mean! it looked so funny! just if I was buying drugs or something.
"don't give me the money now .. later .. later".
later .. I gave him 15,000 ID and disappeared.
Fun fact: I would have paid 600 ID to get the same "stuff" before the war.
But the man at least gave us "clean stuff", last time I had a problem for a couple of days because of the petrol mixed with I_don't_know_what..

whatever..
:")

umm.. did u receive that email telling us "your blog is #1 this week in Blogger Forum's weekly Top Ten list". Jo says I'm the biggest "ego freak" she has ever met.

Listen, I must find a new house before the end of the month. Maybe Jo will keep on being my house-mate. (poor girl)
Do u want to start our "raed vs pax" pub or not? we can start having a pub in the same house I'm living in.
wooo!! :")

call me if u didn't die today

I am not only sick I am slowly dying. I think I had 40 degree fever two days ago and I still can't stand straight and I am very bitchy.

Raed calls me once and never does again as if he is going to catch a bug thru the phone, G. calls me just to tell me he might be going on a trip to Syria and say "go go" the moment he hears my cough, my brother doesn't let me use his internet account and the whole world is out to get me. I crawled out of bed wearing a hundred layers of clothing to get to an internet place because I got sick of reading in bed ("all tommorow's parties" and a book called "1000 classic italian recepies"........... don't say a word!). and what does the world look like outside? nice and sunny with wispy clouds in the sky, I told you everything sucks.

The reason I am in such bad health is because of a third Newsnight thing which did not get shown in the end. and although Raed knew I had a very high fever and could barely stand straight his hormones decided that he had to go have lunch with someone form the opposite sex instead of helping with the edit and never came back. I really hope they show it before they go off air for the holidays. and I sure hope Raed didn't enjoy his lunch with her.
grrrrrrrrrrrr.
too concerned with my own miseries to care about the miseries in the world around me, sorry.

The little cartoon on the left of this page made me laugh, it's the Guardian Unlimited Blogging software review thingy. The reviwer isn't exactly a Blogger fan.

It was hilarious listening to the son of Gaddafi yesterday, his name is "Sayf el Eslam" (i.e. the sword of Islam), and he looks like the Libyan version of Uday Saddam Husein.
maybe not that bad ..
whatever ..

He was giving us a classic piece of Arabic speech making, but it sounded more rhythmic than usual.

"Arabs" he said "proved they cannot be trusted"
cool man! go on!
"If we take a look at what happened in Iraq, who was responsible for the entire game? who destroyed Iraq? HIS NEIGHBORS .. they were the spear head"
Didn't everyone enjoy the "spear head" part?
"Why do you think we started these weapons programmes in the first place? do u believe they were for us? for Libya? Naaaah.. they were for the Arabs.. we wanted to defend them" ..
umm?? so?? what happened now dude?
"but now .. you know .. we prefer to think about our country, and about our AFRICAN neighbors"
So Africa is the new trend.

And .. it seems that all other missiles were there to defend Arabs, that's the only reason why Gaddafi and his son decided to destroy them all.

The wisdom of the day?
Cut your nails before we cut off your hands

:")

One day .. TWO MASKS ..

THE FIRST MASK:
The Iraqi translator, coming to a secondary school at AlAmryya to help "them" arrest students. Students don't have the right to go on demonstrations.
Americans came with pictures of pupils, a list of their names, and arrested them FROM THEIR CLASSES. The headmaster couldn't speak a word.

THE SECOND MASK:
The Iraqi Fedayi (one of the fedyeen) running after journalists on one of the demonstrations that happened at Adamyya in Baghdad, preventing anyone from taking pictures of people marching there ...
He shot one of my friends .. Wasif .. in his foot.

Too many things happening the last couple of days, it looks that the capture of Saddam started something.

hey hey hey! Who is playing the big brother's role here?

Fun Fact 1: Salam decided to delete my last entry about Saddam because it was "politically incorrect", with bad taste too

Fun Fact 2: I will change the site's title to :

RAED vs SALAM

:") whatever ..

THREE to TEN years behind bars, is what I'll get if "they" got me buying petrol from the "black market"!!!!
I was reading this arabic leaflet (full of grammar mistakes) printed and distributed last week with my eyes opened .. opened very much .. this much >>> OO
YEARS? not DAYS?
Ladies and gentlemen , you either wait for 6 hours in the gas station queue, wondering how to keep theifs and bullets away from your cars, or you'll enjoy our prisons of freedom for the rest of your life.
HOW DARE YOU BUY PETROL FROM THE MASS DISTRACTION MARKET ??
Other unemployed free people, you either stop drinking and selling petrol or you'll be considered as "criminals", and the new Iraqi courts will put you in freedom cells; comfortable beds with free breakfast.

Why do all the interesting things happen when I am not in baghdad?
at first I couldn't believe it when I heard it, I got too excited when they reported that the vice president Izat Ibrahim was arrested and then it turned out to be nothing, so my reaction was "yeah right". but the images on TV left no chance to doubt. He looked like a tramp getting a physical and for some reason you expected him to bite that soldier's finger a la Hanibal Lecter. But he just sat there. There was another moment when the GC members were describing their meeting with Saddam and told the journalists about the deriding remarks he made when they asked him about the Sadir's assasination and the mass graves, he sounded like he has totally lost it.
I want a fully functioning Saddam who will sit on a chair in front of a TV camera for 10 hours everyday and tells us what exactly happened the last 30 years. I do not care about the fair trial thing Amnesty Int. is worried about and I don'r really care much about the fact that the Iraqi judges might not be fullt qualified, we all know he should rot in hell. but what I do care about is that he gets a public trial because I want to hear all the untold stories

.

This is what happens when you sell your soul to the devil, he is allowed to sit on the blogs you write until he wants to put them in his paper.
The scary DVD blog finally is on the G2 pages, here it is:
In the looters' market, a DVD singing the praises of the so-called resistance is selling like the hot bread of Bab al-Agha

Iraqi Census
More dirt on the issue. I didn’t exactly dig that out it just fell into my lap.
The Census thing was being discussed since August at the Census Bureau, talk about budgets and possible donations from Japan were on the table for a very long time. The Census Bureau got to a point where it was organizing meetings with neighborhood councils to discuss the details of the whole thing. and someone from the Census Bureau says that the papers have been on the GC’s desks from October. I kind of wonder what important issues was the GC pondering so that they have not seen the stack of paper labeled [Census Bureau]? Boys this is a bit embarrassing, it is ot just a nice place to have lunch in. You are supposed to do some governing beside securing CPA deals for your relatives.
I was only complaining about the tragedy that is this government where no one knows what is going on when a friendly gentleman informed me that they must have known because it has been submitted to the GC two months ago and there have been many discussions about the budgeting. So what happened I wonder? And why did anyone allow the situation to get to a point where the NY Times puts up a headline saying *US* REJECTS IRAQI PLAN, not a very nice combination of words you will have to agree, it has [US] and [rejects] and [Iraqi] one after the other, it kind of rubs in the point that it is not really our decision even if we would like it to be.
What is even funnier is that the same gentleman told me that just today the Census Bureau is still having meetings concerning the polling, business as usual, who cares if the GC acts surprised. Maybe, oh god dare I say it, who cares what the GC decides it is the US who will accept or reject.
Dear GC members just for once, just one single time, surprise me and act as if you are on top of things. My father *did* tell me that it is not the GC whom I should be looking at but rather the ministers; they are a very experienced group of people who have done very little wrong until now, something you can not really say about the GC because they have not done much.

Oh, it will be the right ball please; I am too fond of the left one!

I spent most of the day at home reading [Persepolis] -have a look, this is one of the stories it is called The Trip, - a comic book written by Marjane Satrapi. It is too scary how much we have in common, Iraqis and Iranians I mean. The hate campaigns which were directed towards each other seem to have had the same effect on Iranians as on us, and the same methods were used. Religion, the promise of Jenna [Heaven] and the glorification of death after sugar coating it with the word Martyr. It is sub-titled (a story of childhood in Iran) about a young girl going thru the Islamic revolution in Iran and up to the war with Iraq. Some of the things about the start of the Islamic revolution make me think about what is happening now in Iraq.
It was my third attempt to go thru that “comic book”, I tried once right after I bought it but it made me wince, this time I went thru it in one single go. It is a beautiful book.
I had the urge to start translating it and throwing copies of it on the streets of Baghdad. Why can’t we learn from other people’s mistakes?

Riverbend, how can I get a copy to you?

As usual I am living in my headphones most of the time, at the moment I am at [Never, Never, Land], I can’t get Reign out of my head.

Rain rain rain, the whole city looks like a puddle of mud and everything is too slippery because the rain is not strong enough to wash things away, it is just stupid drizzle and everything is wet.
I found G. he sent me an email saying that he is living with the Guardian people (???) in baghdad and that I should give him a "fucken" call.
G. what are you doing with the Guardian when you are supposed to be working with the NYT ?

Diana linked to this article, I don't always read Friedmann but she linked = I read.
God and Man in Baghdad
My favorite line is this

"If things go reasonably well, the result will be an initial Iraqi government that is more religious than Turkey but more democratic than Iran. Not bad."

He makes it sound as if we are going for consolation prizes now: "You didn't get the Democratic Iraq Package, but hey... very soon you will be getting visas to Iran with no trouble at all".

U.S. Rejects Iraqi Plan to Hold Census by Summer
I just read yesterday in the "official Iraqi Newspaper" i.e. the coalition funded Iraqi Media Network thing that they have abudget allocated for the census, funny that they say the americans have rejected it now. I am sure they have someone reading the Iraqi papers so how could they allow this to get to press. A few months ago an american press officer at the Governing Council's office was telling a reporter that they do excercise some "information control" so what happened, their control got leaky or what?
besides what is wrong with a census, we do need to now a rough estimate of how many poeple would vote and what sort of ethnic and religious precentages we have. The Governing Council says that it never saw the porposal by the census bureau

"The Census Bureau said it had delivered the plan to the Governing Council on Nov. 1, but apparently it was lost in the bureaucracy."

hmm very promising, now we find out the government doesn't know what its offices are doing.

This could have changed things," ......... some council members would have argued last month that the vote on self-government should be delayed until September when the voter roll became available.

Come on boys give it try we know it is not going to be very correct but at least an indication.

Nasty surprise today in the morning. The guy who owns the electricity generator came by to tell us that he has just raised the price of electricity from 2000 dinars to 3500 dinars per amp and if you don't like it go spend your days in darkness, oh and he is not turning on the generator after 2am. tough luck insomniacs.
These neighbourhood generators are our main source of electricity since the baghdad grid is really not reliable and has been getting worse, so generator owners are twisting our arms now. and it is not like you can switch from one provider to another, you are lucky if you have someone in your neighborhood who has a really big one and decides to sell electricity. In some areas poeple saw ythais as a business oppertunity, get a huge generator and make lots of money because on average you get more electricity from them than from the national grid.
The reason behind the raise in prices is the price and availabity of fuel, and you can't really argue with him. Everyone who owns a car has to either spend the night in his car queuing up in front of a gas station or buy very expensive gas, which is probably cut with anything from water to diesel, on the black market. The other thing is that kerosene which is the fuel most iraqi homes use for heating is also getting more expensive and harder to get. so these days whenver we hear the dingdingding of the kerosene guy (it is a a barrel tank pulled by a horse thing) we start running out to make sure he stops, and you have to be nice to Mr. Kerosene delivery otherwise he will not come next time.
The extra containers we bought for fuel srorage during the war have been very usefull.

Just looked at Unqualified Offerings he has linked to lots of charts and numbers about the electricity situation in Iraq.

Yes I know it is a bit confusing now that we have two poeple writing in the same blog, and I *do not* want to be associated with Raed's ramblings. His mind functions in strange ways. So to make things easier I am trying to color code, Firey Orange is me and boring white is Raed.

This is test blog. Test test tesssst.
I bought the scary CD

*this is a [Where is Raed] special announcement*
We are temporarily changing the title of the blog because we have lost G.
If you have seen him please tell Raed or Salam Pax where you saw him and the exact color of his beard on the day of the sighting, thank you.

end of test

Today.. ummm.. I saw a camel in Baghdad :")
Camels look really ugly .. they have big lips .. huge lips .. so when they try to smile (just to say hi to you) they look like someone with the "duhhh" expression on his face

One of the restless questions in my head is about camels, why are camels related to Arabs in the western media? (besides the question of why my italiana girlfriend dumped me, this camel thing is really annoying me)
I mean .. it's just like me having an image in my mind about canadians and penguin .. Hey! are you really Canadian? Cool! Do you have a penguin in your bedroom? Do you eat them?

:")

Media .. media .. it can easily put images and ideas in anyone's head. Its like the endless crisis of searching for the "truth". Isn't everything just relative? you have two people coming back from Samerra, one telling you about the blood shed that happened .. "dozens of civilians were killed there! for god's sake! blah blah" and the other with his version of the story "naah .. nothing happened, it was a usual ambush and soldiers freaked out and shot eight people, two were Iranian tourists" .. go to BBC and CNN and you find the first story, go to AlJazeera and you'll read the second one .. with details! they sound like two parallel universes!
at the time of AlKindi it was a bit easier to speak about truth .. "We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign peoples. For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than truth itself." Maybe life was better before everyone started listening to NEWS .. brrrr

Can't he at least say hello? HELLO Salaam? where have you been hiding for the last two weeks?
I mean .. how can he just come back like this?
whatever

Electricity is still on strike, we didn't have neither electricity nor matches for yesterday's night, and we kept on calling Abo Husien the guard to lend us his lighter every couple of hours .. poor man.
This problem with services is really strange; even other basic stuff here, like petrol and other oil derivatives, are not easy to find. Cars either wait in a long - long queue for hours to get some liters of petrol, or just buy some from the "black" market. The only difference between Baghdad's black market and other cities markets that you don't really have the option of going to the "white" market here :") or whatever it's called. I mean .. besides the socializing opportunity that everyone standing in the queue gets, it's not worth it to spend hours of your life pushing your car (because no one leaves his car's engine on for all of that time) and waiting for a thief to rob you or something. Or maybe it's just our new government's plan for building bridges between the different ethnic groups of the Iraqi people, yes yes! maybe they'll change the name of all gas stations to "social blenders" .. whatever ..

Ummm .. one last thing ..
What the hell does "Support Democracy in Iraq" mean? you know what I'm talking about .. the small logo on your left hand <<<<<
Who is exactly the one supposed to support the Iraqo-demo-cracy thing?? Surprise me! I mean .. Shoot me!

I think it was 4 months ago when I spent three nights in Sammara because it is the closest place to Tikrit which didn't make your skin crawl and it actually had hotels. It was an empty hotel and me and the manager enede up chatting because we both had nothing better to do, I told him that I thought the city there was very quiet and it seemed very peacful, just a bunch of Iranian tourists visitng the shrine of Imam Sadiq al-Mahdi. he told me that I shouldn't be fooled, lots of the Tikritis and Saddam supporters came down to Sammara to hide.
and last night this happened

46 Iraqis Die in Fierce Fight Between Rebels and G.I.'s

Someone talking on arabic BBC said that probably a couple of Iranian tourists were injured but that was not confirmed. Killing 64 means there was a serious battle going on or they just scorched a street after freaking out.

UPDATE: AP just put up a different number

U.S. Says 54 Iraqis Killed in Samarra

and this one is more interesting to read than the NY Times one.

From Riverbend's blog on the 29th

The most amusing thing about his visit was watching Chalabi and Talabani jumping up and down at the airport, cheering and clapping as Bush made the rounds. Muwafaq Al-Rubai'i, also a member of the Governing Council, was just embarrassing- he was standing on tiptoe and clapping like a 5-year-old watching a circus clown.

That was such an embaressing sight, I couldn't believe it, and the way Bush gave them a sideway glance........ I mean they are supposed to be heads of state. Maybe next time we give them cheerleaders uniforms and make them do a little dance.
It is good to know that I wasn't alone cringing as I watched that

I feel like a scary taxi driver magnet. Why do I always get the weirdest ones.
Today's taxi driver had a tape with songs praising the work of "the brothers" in Falluja. I sat there stiff wondering if I should just open the door and jump, in the end I did get myself together to ask him what that was and he was happy to tell me who it was and where to get a copy of anti-american pop songs.
Well, they are not really pop songs they were sung like Thikir, which is supposed to be this sung poetry parising Allah and stuff, but listening to stuff praising the people in Falluja for their bravery in defending the faith and praying for each dead Fallujan to be replaced by 2000 is a bit too much.
The dilemma now ofcourse is should I go buy a copy of that tape or not? anyway if I made the decision to buy one the "highlights" of that tasteless thing will be translated and posted here.

How do you like that for a new developemnet? look at the Iraqi top ten music chart to get a feel for the sentiments in Iraq. Is it going to be Justin Timberlake? or Scary Sabbah with his greatest anti-coalition hits?
I know. It is not funny.

If you have a better internet connection than my lousy dial-up you might want be interested in taking a look at this.

Fun Fact: Hillary Clinton was here too! why dont anyone tell us before these people come! .. however ..

Finally I found Salam, he came back two days ago. The good news that he's going to start writing "seriously" again :)
welcome back Salooma

I discovered that Jo was writing some stuff about our visit to the south and the work of Emaar;the Iraqi organization I founded some months ago .. and she discribed the car accident we had with the american truck too.

whatever .. today was such a boring day, I spent the morning and the after noon with Salam and Hamsa going in circles trying to find any road to take us to the other side of Baghdad, no one can even imagine the traffic jam in Baghdad's streets.
Yalla Salam write anything .. let's start the ping pong game :")

I FEEL BLESSED!! BUSH WAS HERE!! He just stayed for three hours, what a shame. Or was it thirteen? .... Whatever .... :) I just came back from the south. This time Tara and Jo came with me, we went to Nasryya through Hilla, Najaf, Diwanyya and Samawa, and an American truck was that near >

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr .. I am angry now .. I AM angry .. and "THEY" come and ask you "why don't you like us?" ... I will tell you why .. >>>> I was just stopped by an American check point .. they let me stand under the rain .. in the mud .. for more than 15 minutes .. a soldier pushed me in a very strong way that I nearly fell down, and the other was investigating me: Why do you have a camera in your car? haaa? !!!!!! What the hell !!! I mean !! duh ?? I have a camera? why not? then came the other americano with a smile asking me: do you film porn? !!! I heard that but I asked him: what sir? and he replied: PORN pee ooo are enn ,, ha ha ha .. (is that funny?) .. Soldiers stopping people in the EID (these are the Muslims' festival days) asking them whether they film porn and pushing them in mud .. I DON'T LIKE "THEM" .. Soldiers are not the best representatives of any culture .. Grrrh ///////////// (new paragraph) SALAAAAM?! where the peep are you? I'll change the title to WHERE IS SALAM.. call me for god's sake .. stronso

G. came yesterday to my place, with two red wine bottles, Jo was there too. We were discussing the same issue "why don't me and G. have a direct relation?" .. when you are not here we never see each other! ,, we are ""friends in law"" :) where are you now? when are you coming back? yalla .. come to enjoy having electricity for three hours a day. Yes >> THREE<< warm nice hours. 6ayyeb in the summer time "THEY" said we'll have electricity 24 hours a day after the "peak time of summer" ! Zeen what the hell is the new excuse? I'm sure it's because of the peak time of winter .. blah ,,

i hate english.. i hate writing in english.. whatever.. salam you cannot imagine the scene at AnNasryya, i mean .. It's not just about the italians' building .. It's about the entire neighborhood! Houses in the circle of 1000 meter are living without windows, without doors, and with cracks in their walls. The explosion was so huge that it blow off the doors and fences and trees of all the neighbours .. do u like more details? ok :) two people crossed the bridge with that very old water tanker (made in 1950s), and the man "with beard" sitting on the left went out from the window and started shooting on the italian guards and killed them, and the car went directly into the main door of the building killing everyone in the street and most of the italians, italian soldiers heads were found hundreds of meters away from he explosion! brrrrooohhh .. and some iraqi's were burned in their cars in the middle of the street. The "funny" thing that looting started five minutes later, all the machine guns and pistols disappeared in minutes and you can get a cool italiano pistol for $250 now in the gun markets of Nasryya. Abbas (u know him, the restaurant owner..) saw some people steeling a ring from the finger of a dead italian body with no head! brrrrroooohhh .. and looting contenued the next days for the rest of the furnature and air conditioning units ,, the strange thing that everyone at Nasryya was expecting the attack two days before it happens! EVERYONE! policemen and people from the political parties (controlling the city) were going aroung the steets searching for THE bommbed car, thats why when the explosion happened people started demonstrating against the police and parties accusing them of not doing the right job "you just spend our money on stupid meetings and check pionts" .. mmm .. that's it i believe. (how can i start a new paragraph here?) .. (ok .. conceder this as new paragraph) .. I want shoes (like the black ones with hole in the bottom u used to have) and another couple of horny shirts .. mmm .. I broke up with Simona .. mmm .. I bought a new Mercedes car (ML 430) .. Mmmm .. call me .. bye

G in Baghdad wouldn't write on his blog but he just sent me a wickedly funny email, sorry G this is what happens when you have blogger friends. Here is what he wrote:

tell your friends in London that G in Baghdad would have appreciated them much more if they had demonstrated against the atrocities of saddam.
And if you could ask them when will be the next demonstration to support the people of north Korea, the democratic republic of Congo and Iran?

yup, that's him alright. G so full of surprises.
back to baghdad on monday, G you better have beer in your fridge.

so raed still remembers his password to this blog

Raed would you please write in english, they don't have any arabic OS 'puters here in london. I can't read what you are saying.
you would not believe what happened to me, my wallet got stolen. I am so happy i don't have any credit cards, don't ask where and how, let us just say allah was trying to tell me something and I wasn't listening.

Bush will be in London on tuesday and there will be a huge demo. the anti-war gang changed their signs from stop war to stop bush which i find funny. really need suggestions for my banner, at the moment i am considering dressing up as one of the spice girls and singing "who do you think you are?" while waving a pink feather boa, that would attract some attention i guess.
do you have G's new number, please text it to me and keep your fucking phone on.
so do you want another "horny devil" t-shirt? and tell me about nassiriyah, did any of the guys talk to you about what happened.

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Hi, this is the Baghdad Blogger.
Glad to be talking to you.

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