I was watching a press conference held by the Ministry of Interior Affairs when I remembered that we are less than a month away from general elections. The minister was fierce. He defended all his officers and is very clearly ready to sink with them. He insists that there was nothing wrong happening at the Jaderiyah bunker and this has been just a case of bad shit-stirring by rival political parties.

I guess the bunker scandal was the starting shot for the mud-flinging phase of the election campaigns.

Somehow there doesn’t seem to be the same buzz around elections this time as there was a year ago. Campaigning and electioneering is taking its time. Two of the biggest Iraqi broadcasters (the state owned al-Iraqiya and the privately owned al-Sharqiya) have announced a 3 minute free campaign ad slot for all the registered parties. Al-Iraqiya started showing the first of these today. It is basically a headshot of the party’s spokesman with their logo on the side, I guess they have a unified format for all of them. Too boring to watch

The problem is the huge number of political entities registered with Iraqi Electoral Committee. And even though we have done this just a year ago many of these parties are just a couple of years old and don’t even know what they want, besides a seat at the National Assembly that is.

Parties with money have started putting ads in newspapers while parties with real money already own newspapers so they just turn 16 pages of broadsheet paper into a campaign ad. And even richer parties have TV or radio stations which they are using to make sure everybody knows their numbers. Just as the last elections we are using numbers on the ballots and for the politicians it is probably more important that the voters remember the numbers than know what their political agendas are. So you end up with a TV screen on which the whole lower left quarter is covered with a big logo and number.
One of the parties that have joined Allawi’s new big alliance has a radio station that has a little game show called “Allo 731!” which you can call and win nice sums of money.

But it seems that this years electioneering gimmick are songs, written in the traditional form of a ‘Peste’, it is a sort of a short ditty and I heard someone was trying to make theirs into a ringtone.

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Talking of ringtones. More music.
I am not a huge hip-hop fan but every now and then something does end up getting heavy rotation on my ipod.

Roots Manuva - Seat Yourself (Diplo Remix)
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Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production Of Eggs, great name for an album, isn’t it? I was actually looking for a Iron & Wine/Calexico collaboration which I didn’t find and bought this Andrew Bird album instead. This is my favourite track:

Andrew Bird - Skin Is, My

More on the Ministry of Interior Affairs torture bunker

First there is a really interesting article on Reuters AlertNet which you might want to take a look at if you are following this horrendous scandal:

Guard shows no remorse over Iraq bunker prisoners

A police guard at the former palace said he had often seen Interior Ministry vehicles bring prisoners to the bunker.
"It was usually during the daytime. Then we would not see them after that”.

-------------------
That was the news now for the rumours:

It is said that the investigations will reveal that there are about 10 or 12 such centres in and around Baghdad. One of them in al-Ameryiah district was being used as a sort of a site for graves for those who die in detention.

Al-Sharqiya TV talked about chain saws being found which were used to saw bits of people’s extremities off during torture sessions and the razors used for peeling off skin. The name of the person in charge of the detention centre in al-Jaderyia has not been revealed yet but is said that he was going under the name [al-Muhandis Abu-Ahmad] which means [Abu-Ahmad the Engineer], slightly sinister considering we are talking about someone who was using power tools on people.

On al-Sharqiya’s web site is a report which quotes Hadi al-Amiri the head of the Badr Militia in Iraq (remember that the detention centres are allegedly all being used by the Badr Militia under the supervision of the Ministry of Interior Affairs). He is obviously denies that Badr has anything to do with it and says that since the bunkers were under the control of an Iraqi ministry the American raid on it “is a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty”.

Isn’t this wonderful, we get the latest on Iraq’s sovereignty from the head of a religious Militia!!!!

There is also talk about the minister of National Security, Abdul-Karim al-Anzi, having a small force of about 500 men working for him, these are neither police nor military but some sort of a special task force and obviously on the government’s payroll.

It’s all just really ugly. I mean no matter how unhappy you were with the elections bringing a hard-line religious Shia government in control you would think that since the two big Shia parties, SCIRI and Dawa, saw the worst under Saddam’s regime they would understand how horrible and dangerous it is to use torture methods when in power.

-------------------

This mess Dawa and SCIRI have put themselves into reminded me of something out of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. I looked for it, it really is one of the things that stuck with me after reading that novel:

Any new idea is asked two questions.
The first is asked when its weak: WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU?

Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the 100th time, will change the world.

......

[the second questions is] WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU WIN?

[we only find out what the second question is after Mohammed/Mahound retuns victorious to "jahilia"]

-------------------

I guess SCIRI and Dawa just answered the second question.

I heard this bit of news earlier today but really thought that it can’t be true, but now it is on Reuters and some Iraqi spokesman is commenting on it. Really nasty stuff:

Iraq investigates abuse of prisoners

"There were 161 detainees in all and they were being treated in an inappropriate way ... they were being abused," Hussein Kamal, a deputy interior minister, told Reuters.

Actually saying they were being abused is putting it pretty mildly.

The way I heard it was that the US troops have surrounded the bunker a couple of days earlier after they finally listened to the buzz that was going about this place.

The American Army has raided a bomb shelter in al-Jadriya district in Baghdad after allegations of prisoner torture by members of Iraqi police and intelligence services. It is slightly ironic that Americans are trying to stop a case of prisoner abuse considering Abu Ghraib and all but I guess they already blocked that memory.

The place is very close to the Hamra Hotel where most of the western media stays and it is not officially a military bunker as the reports says, the US spokesman is making the same mistake his government made years ahgo when they bombed the Ameyiah bomb shelter, it is essentially a civilian shelter but that is besides the point today.

The report mentions 161 detainees

"I've never seen such a situation like this during the past two years in Baghdad, this is the worst," Hussein Kamal told CNN.

"I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralyzed and some had their skin peeled off various parts of their bodies."

"This is totally unacceptable treatment and it is denounced by the minister and everyone in Iraq," he told Reuters.

It is said that there were a number of dead bodies as well in the shelter and what the report doesn’t mention is signs of power tools used on the detainees. Apparently the officer in charge of this operation has something for drills; there were holes on feet and legs.
Heading this operation there is an Iraqi officer and is under the direct supervision of the current minister of interior affairs (security) who us a member of SCIRI. And I don’t really by the spokesman’s line that the minister of Interior Affairs had no idea of what was going on, what I heard was that the officer in charge was under direct supervision from the Minister.

There has been a lot of talk about Iraqi police and security forces abducting people from Sunni areas and the same people showing up dead a few days later. This is usually dismissed as very unlikely but many Sunni leaders have been talking about these incidents. The Minister of Interior Affairs’ typical answer to these allegations is that these can’t be happening because there are many Sunnis in his forces.
There has been a lot of finger pointing amongst Shia and Sunnis and shouts of “they did it first”. The Shia where always taking the moral high ground and for obvious reasons it is the Sunnis who are always blamed for crying Wolf! Just to distract from the atrocities they commit.

Adnan al-Dulaimi (big Sunni Kahuna) has apparently been going around with photographs of mutilated bodies for a while and shouting about them but obviously no one was listening because it sounded highly improbable and anyway it is the Sunnis who are the bad guys and not the Shia.

I buy loads of music and I am strong believer that one of the best ways to discover new music is by recommendation. I have a long list of MP3 blogs which I read every now and then and get to sample really interesting music that way. And I buy music because I have “sampled” tracks from these blogs.

Another way I put myself in the path of new music is that I buy CDs for the most stupid reason you could choose music for; I buy covers I like. They don’t have to be marvels of graphic design; they just have to be a bit quirky.

Obviously this is a recipe for getting some really annoying things you would never want to listen to again but I have been lucky many times and I am going to share with you today some of the good things I have bought because I liked the cover.

Click on small to see big and right-click and save as for the music links.
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Iron & Wine / Woman King
Freedom Hangs Like Heaven
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Mr. David Viner / This Boy Don’t Care
This Boy Don’t Care
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Wir Sind Helden / Von Hier an Blind
(this is a German band, the name means We Are Heroes which is, combined with the fact that the cover is very Tin Tin like, enough of a reason to buy the album).
Gekommen um zu bleiben (here to stay)
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Whitey / The Light At The End Of The Tunnel Is A Train
Non Stop
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Sébastien Tellier / Politics
(The single La Ritournelle is great. Someone on the iTunes store review thingy even compares it to Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy, the whole album is really difficult to pin down, it is all over the chart and goes everywhere).

Benny
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PINE*am / Pull The Rabbit Ears
(it turned out to be weird Japanese pop)
Rhyme Mime
------------------------------

Erin McKeown / Distillation
Queen Of Quiet

Iraq restaurant bomb kills dozens

Around 30 people having breakfast there were killed and about 50 injured.

That was Kaduri’s. If you are person who likes BIG Iraqi breakfasts then that’s your place. While G and I were working for the NY Times we used to joke that the best way to put western media in Iraq out of action is to attack Kaduri’s. Every morning drivers, interpreters and fixers for many of the media organizations staying at the Palestine or Sheraton Hotels in Baghdad would be there. It was always like this, very busy. Kaduri’s morning shift ends around 11 because he opens very early.

It’s like a Baghdadi institution. You could get takeaway for some culinary slumming or go wait for a seat. Kaduri had a strict no loitering policy, he didn’t even let people just drink their little glasses of tea inside because there would always be way too many people waiting to get a chair. And tables are obviously communal, grab a seat, say good morning and order. If you don’t like strangers on your breakfast table them you better not come here.

That’s all gone now. And what really gets my goat is that all the news say things like “this was a restaurant frequented by policemen” as if this is an excuse for the bombing, enough of an explanation as to why places get blown into smithereens.


The attack on the Kaduri's was the morning after the attacks on 3 hotels in Amman.


I can’t avoid sounding a bit crass saying what I’m going to say but I guess since our PM’s spokesman said it in a press conference yesterday at least I am not the first. It is really terrible that most people do not understand how terrifying and life disrupting this random attacks on civilian targets are until they happen in their own backyards.

The problem with the majority of the Jordanian street is that it is pretty supportive of the insurgency in Iraq. I used to get really worked up whenever I got into a taxi in Amman and listen to the driver tell me how sorry he feels that Saddam is gone and how brave the Martyrs and Mujahideen are.
No one I talked to acknowledged the fact that most people who are dying in Iraq are Iraqis and not Infidel Invaders and when you push them they tell you something like these dead Iraqis must have done something to deserve it. And you also hear that from Jordanian “political analysts” Arabic news networks bring in to talk about the region.

So according to that logic the list of reason why it would be OK for you to die in Iraq even if you are not an “invading infidel” is quite long:

- Member of new Iraqi Army
- Member of new Iraqi Police
- Working for any media organization even Iraqi ones
- Working at an executive level at any Iraqi ministry
- Doing ANYTHING for the government even if you were the guy who makes tea
- Being part of a political party
- Being there when a bomb explodes near any of the above since you are obviously incriminated by association.

It is really difficult for me to talk about the sympathy towards the insurgents in Jordan and other Arab countries without feeling very angry. The other day I was watching an interview with an Egyptian actress on Iraqi television and the Egyptians having the same blind spots as the Jordanians are fiercely Arab-Nationalists. So she saying how sorry she feels for all the children dying in Iraq and how difficult life must be for everybody living there, but she is sure that “the struggle” will be victorious.

This is the sort of thing you get in Jordan a lot. If it says Islam and is against the US then they raise their voices with calls of “Allahu Akbar” without even for a moment looking at what is really going on.

What also very annoying is that in most cases the people in these countries seem to have a really really large blind spot to their own country’s relationship to the western Satan they tell us Iraqis we should be fighting.
The Jordanian government, for example, is so far up Uncle Sam’s butt it is practically looking at the world through Uncle Sam’s nose.

And if it is the Zionist State the Mujahideen are fighting against, the Jordanian Mujahdeen sympathisers seem to forget that it is Jordan that has an Israeli embassy not Iraq. And so is the case with Egypt. Egypt gets a lot of aid from the US but you would never know that listening to the Egyptian man on the street because he would spout so much venom in that direction you would think it would be impossible he would put in his mouth bread made out of US subsidised wheat.

The world is a very strange place.

When daily bombings become part of your everyday life, when a random pointless death because of a car bomb is part of your daily worries while driving to work (besides the traffic jams and the promotion you really want to have) you become a bit numb to these things. So please excuse me if I’m being rude.

But my point is why was it OK for the typical Jordanian on the street to say that the carnage in Iraq was justified? Why was it OK for them to say “may God give power to the Mujahideen”? Why is it OK if it is Iraqis dying and an atrocity if it is a Jordanian? And remember many Iraqis have not forgotten that there were Jordanian newspapers calling a Jordanian suicide bomber who did his “Jihad” in Iraq a Martyr and a Hero.

It is not only Jordan, it is practically all the Arab countries. What good has being an Arab been to us? And what good has the Arab League been to us? They fuckers wouldn’t even acknowledge the transitory government, an Iraqi elected transitory government! And look at how many diplomatic representatives from "brotherly" Arab countries are there in Iraq and how many Infidel western governments have supported Iraq through our horrendously difficult past two years? The Arabs only started to open their embassies after they have been pressured by western goverenmnts.

Anyway. Enough of the ranting.

From the news and the big demonstration out in Amman today I guess we can see that there has been a change in the way the “Holy Jihad” is being perceived. It really is very sad that it took such a horrible event for many on the street there to understand the hurt and pain terrorist attacks on innocent civilians bring.

I’ve been back in Baghdad for two weeks now. It usually takes this long to get back in tune with things here for me. The first two weeks are usually spent trying to get to terms with the changes, the deaths and the marriages. Update and new music coming very soon.

In the mean time, if you wanna, you could take a look at one of the things I was working on:
http://www.journeyman.tv/?lid=19124