Three weeks away from the national referendum on the Iraqi constitution and I still have not seen the promised 5 million copies of the draft that were supposed to be printed and distributed. Obviously there are ways you can get hold of a copy if you wanted to but I somehow assumed that it was the duty of the government to inform us what they are asking us to vote for.

We are seeing the same patterns as the ones we’ve seen during the elections emerge. Sistani is slowly announcing his endorsement of the draft signalling to his Shia followers that they should go vote with YES. The Kurds are also going to approve it, although there is a faction that is not happy with the amount of autonomy they get in this constitution. But the fact is their leaders still prefer to stay attached to Iraq for the moment. And the Sunnis are boycotting, what else did you expect? We’ve seen it before and we can tell what will happen. The draft will be ratified.

It is what happens during the next elections that will be decisive for the future of Iraq because many of the issues in the constitutions will need to be set to laws by the next elected government.
Take for example the issue of the Federal Courts. Although the constitution states that there will be Law experts and Sharia experts presiding how they are chosen and their number is left to the legislator. One of the duties of this Court is the interpretation of the text of the constitution. If the next National Assembly looks like the one we have now you can bet your prayer beads that there will more turbans one in the Federal Court.

After a lot of soul searching and nail biting I have made up my mind about the draft.
I don’t like it. I believe we should have done better. And I am especially angry about the US administration for jumping around and cheering about how great this document is, just stop it.

BUT,

I am also scared of the prospect of having to go through the whole process again, of stopping the ball rolling. Like a cartoon character that has just ran off a cliff I am afraid that if I stop my feet from running and look down I will plunge into an abyss.
I don’t have enough faith in us to say let’s scrap this and start with another transitional government. I feel exhausted.

SO,

If the vote were tomorrow I would vote YES and hope that the next elected National Assembly won’t have as much of a religious majority as the current one. I have opted for the ‘optimistic idiot’ option again; I know I will be disappointed.

In the meantime I am putting on my headphones and pretending the world does not exist.

The draft will be ratified.

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I'm Still Your Fag - Broken Social Scene

Jaafari’s government is soon coming to an end. And I wonder what he tells himself at night just before he goes to sleep? I wonder if he looks at the news in the morning and thinks to himself ‘god I’ve done a lousy job’?

Things have reached another record low, whole districts in Baghdad are under the insurgent’s control and the promises the Shia Coalition came to power with, the promise of security and stability are now as tattered as their posters that are still glued to the walls from the last elections. New posters of smiling political clerics are also up but these smiling faces look down at us like they are amused at the joke of a government they have created.

Districts like Ameriyah have become Jihadi Central. After they blew up all the clothes shops there they started blowing up grocery shops and now they have moved on to shops selling watches. Very symbolic isn’t it? Time stops HERE.

A couple of weeks ago I told you about my mother’s cousin who was abducted and held for ransom. He was released around a week ago. His advice for my mother’s family was: change your name. He talks about a highly organized group of Sunni extremists with lists of names, some to kill, some to squeeze for money. He came out a deeply shaken man, he is convinced this is sectarian war. His abductors were a group of young, very devout Sunni Muslims who see this as Jihad. They have people who provide them with information and names and these youngsters do the dirty work. He was lucky that he was deemed as good only for money, that’s what saved his neck. A number of men who were held captive with him were killed he only got beaten up.
When they let him go his abductor told him that he can walk tall now, he has contributed to the Holy Jihad. That he has nothing to fear from them any more, his name is off the list.

He lives in Ameriyah and is Shia. He is thinking of moving to another district because that area has become too Sunni. Are we going to start putting up concrete walls between Baghdadi districts now?

One of my uncles lives that district as well; a week ago when a car bomb exploded near a gas station there they had to call medics to pick up pieces of dead people from their front garden. Since then they have been informed by Coalition Forces that they are never to leave the house alone because if they came for a search and found no one they will break in. And a member of the friendly Iraqi National Guard told a neighbour casually “you just wait you people of Ameriyah, let’s just finish with Tel-Afar and we will teach you a lesson”.

Yes there is stability in some regions in Iraq but that is either in Kurdistan, for all intents and purposes a separate country, and in the Shia regions controlled by SCIRI’s militia. The rest of the country is on fire. And depending on how you define civil war we are either in the middle of it or five minutes away from it.

We are at our most divided. And it is at this point in our history we write a constitution. Well hurray for us. A constitution written by the powerful two groups (Shia and Kurd) catering for their wishes and whims while the rest of the population is left with table scraps and hopes that the we will be able to make it better in the future.
And Khalilzad has the guts to go on TV and say “what this document says about human rights, political rights, is one of the best, if not THE best in the region”.

Our esteemed PM and his government have done their best to beat the sectarian drums and the Sunni and Kurdish leaders were joining in with their clapping obviously.

You, I and the whole world talks these days of Sunnis and Shia and Kurds as if they are homogeneous groups. We have lost all nuance and differentiation. As if no Sunni had a Shia neighbour ever. As if Kurds never lived in central Iraq. As if my Shia mother never got married to my Sunni father. AS IF EVERY SINGLE IRAQI TAKES HIS/HER ORDERS DIRECTLY FROM THEIR IMAMS.

Stop trying to label me and then either punish me or bestow your sympathy on me depending on that label you just stuck to my forehead. I don’t believe in your bloody gods. Where does that put me in Iraq? Nowhere I guess, unless the Kurds start taking refugees.

No Laws contradicting the rules of Islam?
Sharia Law mullahs on the Federal Court?
Regional States with their own militias?
And a refusal to acknowledge International Human Rights conventions? (in case you didn’t know, Article 44 was removed from the final-final-really-final draft, and no one even asked the Constitution writing committee).

And Khalilzad calls it the best in the region. Let me see YOU live here.
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Two highly recommended tracks:
- Tango by Soap Kills. A jazzy trip-hop duo from Beirut, here is a link to an interview.
- Lahillah Express by Gnawa Impulse. North African sounds set to a drum & bass beat. The song is actually a Muslim religious chant calling 'there is no God but Allah'.

Did you check Google Earth recently?
go now and take a look at Baghdad, they seem to have updated their images to post war pictures. You can tell from the pictures of the republica palace, before you used to see the gardens now you see the rows and rows of trailers the coalition has set up there. In other places you can see the hige sand boxes and t-walls set up in various spots in Baghdad.
When I looked at our house it looked as if we had visitors when the picture was taken, there is an extra car parking in our garage.

should be back home to my trusted web connection in a couple of days.


New York Times journalist killed in Basra
this is for the memory of Fakher haider, murdered in Basra on the 19th of September 2005.

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19 September

I know you have smarty-smart journalists who tell you the most amazing stories from foreign lands and explain everything for you, but there are many cases where a journalist has just been parachuted into a country he knows nothing about and where he, as the Arabic saying goes, can’t tell the difference between a stick and a corncob. That’s when the journalist is only as good as his/her fixer. Before all you journos out there get indignant I know what I’m talking about because I was a fixer myself.

And for all those freshly parachuted journalists there can’t be a better gift from the skies than a passionate and knowledgeable fixer. This would be Fakher’s cue to make his entrance. Fakher al-Tamimi, Fixer extraordinaire, with a ready smile and a million stories to tell.

Today I heard of his assassination on the radio. The report said that he was kidnapped last night from his home and was found shot dead today. I met Fakher while I was a fixer for the New York Times, his English wasn’t yet up to speed then and I was sent down to Basra to translate for a new NY Times reporter who was working with Fakher. For me at the time he was like the Rolls Royce of fixers. He had endless reserves of enthusiasm and he made you feel he knew everyone in Basra’s phone directory personally and more importantly he cared about the stories being researched, he genuinely wanted these stories to be told and read by the outside world.

Fakher was special because he had decided that he was not going to waste good stories on journalists he deemed not up to the job. Since we both were of the same fixer rank - you have no idea how the caste system works in the world of the Foreign Correspondents - he told me about how he worries when he has given some information about a story he sees as important to someone who doesn’t seem interested.
The journalist I was translating for the first time I met him was deemed a bit bubbly and not really ready for a death and torture story so he offered a story about a librarian saving books from looters. The second time I met him I was working for another reporter which he deemed as worthy and he helped us find a secret cemetery where the Iraqi government was burying dead POWs from the Iraq-Iran war. On another occasion we were introduced through him to an ex-political prisoner just as colourful as Fakher.

When we weren’t working I would go walk with him around Basra and he would tell me about his insane drive up to Baghdad with an American journalist as the war was raging, his resolve to see Baghdad as it is getting rid of the dark cloud that was Saddam’s regime and his own struggles during the Shia uprising in 1990. It was these talks that made me realize just how sincere he was in his wish to show these foreign journalist as much as he could because he wanted people to know and see.

Seeing him do his thing, his inquisitiveness and curiosity is actually to see material for a great journalist being wasted on a fixing job. I guess if the NY Times didn’t deem it too dangerous to send reporters down to Basra he would never has his by-line. And it wasn’t only the NY Times who benefited from his services.
Fakher’s brutal murder is a loss of a great colleague and friend. Fakher Haider will be always remembered and greatly missed.
I can only hope that this sad event reminds people of the role of Iraqi staff in international news organizations. Remember that your Iraqi staff doesn’t have the luxury of taking the next flight out of the hell they live in, they are your contact people and they are the ones you, the foreign journalists, sometimes send out to areas you deem too dangerous for yourselves. The next time you want an insurgency story from your fixer just remember that you leave in a couple of weeks while your fixer stays.

Don't have the same internet access as I usually have for the next couple of days. Updates come when it is possible to get to an internet cafe. here are two.

12/9
It seems like the streets are better. That draconian decision to only allow odd or even cars to move around seems to have had some good effect on the streets. But I guess what we do learn from it is that there are more cars on the streets than the streets can handle considering that number of main streets blocked off by the Green Zone, various ministries and other “Really Important People” Iraq can’t survive without.
You don’t see the long long lines in front of gas stations but the gasoline black market is still on because we still need to buy gasoline for the electricity generators. There was one funny article in al-Zaman taking the piss out of the government
“There are no national duties and responsibilities left for our esteemed government to do. Since all our dreams have been realized and there is a surplus in electricity production and clean Ozone treated water is over flowing from our water storage tanks and the only thing left for it to worry about is the regulation of traffic”

We got kind of used to that, no one suggests any real solutions to problems just little ideas that don’t really tackle the big problems. Eh. What to do?

The latest joke is that our esteemed PM is now looking into ways to keep all those pesky people off the streets so that he doesn’t have to provide for so many police and security forces. Next on the PM’s plan is a to allow only Sunnis on the street on odd days and Shia only on even days. Oh and incidentally, security forces will only be needed on Sunni days since we all know Sunnis are just inherently evil and they all need some spanking while Shia is good and docile. I love the polarized world I live in these days, everything is so easy and we all fit in our assigned compartments soooo well.
Too snarky? Never mind.

Today I sort of drove around the city to figure out what to film and what not. In Baghdad if you are ever lost as to what the current important political event coming you just need to look at the latest posters and billboards being put up in the city. And if you ever want to know what you’ve missed just peel away the latest layer. No one removes anything from the walls they just plaster on top of what’s there.
So according to the [Baghdad Walls Political Barometer] it is Constitution Time, of course all you lovelies already know that because you read this wonderful blog.

The mysterious [Future Iraq Assembly] is spending money on billboards, posters, newspaper and TV ads. As usual extremely well photographed and produced, and always supporting the current cause célèbre with very poignant images and slogans. I know it is not Iraqi because we never had such good production values, the TV ads always draw tears form this cynics eyes, they are that good. I tried once to email the mysterious Assembly but no answer came back. Any web detectives out there?

The juiciest rumour I heard today had to be that Saddam’s granddaughter is going to getting married in Amman. Her name is Nab’a (Nab3a for those who speak arablish). Now isn’t that something. So we sit here in this hell on earth dying a slow painful death while Saddam’s family lives happily in Jordan and other Arab countries the same frolicsome lives they used to lead in Baghdad. There is so much wrong in this picture.

13/9
Spent the whole day at the Political Prisoners Association listening to this one guy who sounds like a human memory bank. What was most confusing was his obsession with names. He remembers the names of everyone who has even just walked by him when he was in prison. Names of fellow prisoners, names of investigators and interrogators, names of torturers. And he just has to tell you the names, a rat-at-at machine gun attack of names and for some reason he looks at me when he gives this lists of names with a look that assumes I know them all. After 3 hours of this I got really tired, I couldn’t really keep up and was very glad I had my camera with me. It is all just so overwhelming.

I told them I won’t be coming tomorrow, I needed a bit of time to process what he told me and looked thru my footage. The “human memory bank” isn’t very sequential in his story telling and he rambles on a bit. I will need to make sense of the stories and then ask specific questions and just stops him every time he goes off topic.

Random violence story of the day:
A 20 year old girl was going out with her sister to do some shopping, they live in al-E’lam district in Baghdad. Here sister notices that she has forgotten a purse or something so she goes back and leaves the older sister on the main street on her own, when she gets back older sister is nowhere to be found.
Two days later the family gets a phone call from the local police station telling them that there is a girl here they should come pick up. The kidnappers, it seems, after they had what they wanted just threw her off at the police station. She has bruises all over her body, she was returned without her veil and her mother talks with hushed tones of r.a.p.e.
She had just been married one month ago and now the husband won’t even come see her. He is throwing her away. The girl screams whenever someone touches her, when the lights go off or on, when someone talks loudly.
Not only has the girl been brutally violated now her family shunts her and keep her locked in the house. She brings shame open them through her rape, no one thinks of what she has gone through.

If you can read Arabic I strongly suggest you read this article published today on page 9 in al-Sabah Newspaper. (Page 9.pdf – the bottom half of the page). If you can’t read Arabic the following is a sort of quick translation of my favourite bits.

Notes on Article 2 of the Constitution
(This is a pick and mix translation, please excuse)

Ala-Sabah Newspaper published on the 28th of August an article titled [The Role of Islam in the Constitution] in which the author Zuhair Sa’ad-Allah wrote “…..the secular opposition only oppose a broad article without looking into it’s meaning, the mere mention of the word (Islam) fills them with fear…….”.
Majid Jamal-ul-Deen wrote today a response to that piece, he has a wonderful sense of humour and really shows the practical implications of that article, he starts with saying

The opinion piece published on the 28th makes the whole debate sound as if it is a debate on an article in a commercial announcement and not an important legal document and the fundament for all the legislations which will guide the future of our society.

This is Article No.2

Article (2): 1st - Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation:
(a) No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.
(b) No law can be passed that contradicts the principles of democracy.
(c) No law can be passed that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms outlined in this constitution.
2nd - This constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people and the full religious rights for all individuals and the freedom of creed and religious practices.

Jamal-ul-Deen briefly talks about the vagueness of the Article in linguistic and legal terms before he jumps into paragraph (a) and asks what does “No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.” Mean?

From the point of view of Islamic Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) the principles of Democracy “contradict the undisputed rules of Islam”. Does this means paragraph (b) is cancelled out by the article that precedes it?......

The freedoms and rights included in the Constitution, are they to be understood and interpreted through the principles of Democracy or through Islamic Jurisprudence and its principles?.......

What does “contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam” really mean? Let’s look at some issues which have not been mentioned.

He starts with the banking system. Now for those of you who are not Muslim you might not be aware the concept of ‘Riba’. This is loosely translated as interest taken on money you have lent. This practice is forbidden in Islam. Here is a paragraph that might expalin.

“Legal scholarship has determined that much of what comprises Western-style
finance is haram, or forbidden, to the devout Muslim.
This list includes interest bearing accounts and loans which fall under the strict riba rules, most futures and options, which are considered speculative and gharar, and insurance, also gharar, because the outcome of the contract can in no way be determined beforehand (i.e. the health of the individual or business and the actual payment by the insurance company)”.

From (RIBA IN ISLAMIC JURISPRUDENCE: THE ROLE OF ‘INTEREST,’ IN DISCOURSE ON LAW AND STATE, by Miriam Sophia Netzer)

Jalal-ul-Deen reminds us that

These financial institutions which are the building units for all modern economies base their work on lending money and capital for certain periods of time and charging interest i.e. Riba......

Some might want to fool others or get fooled with these institutes calling themselves Islamic Banks which announce that they do not do Riba.
In fact this is as meaningful as changing the name of Baghdad International Airport to Saddam International Airport, the change does not mean the nature of what is being done there has changed.
And neither will it change if we replaced the name tomorrow with Baghdad Islamic Airport and stipulated that no airplane will land or take off unless it calls “Allah is great” while airplanes with no “There is no God but Allah” inscription on their sides won't be allowed to land at all.
All this will not change the nature of the operation and will probably only bring harm.

I also want to remind you that all Iraqi banks today, Commercial, Agricultural, Industrial, Investment, and all the other financial institutions we have are based on the idea of lending for interest. This institutions all practice Riba, even the Central Bank……….

Any law that regulates these operations will in itself be giving the practice of Riba a legality while the undisputed rules of Islam forbid it explicitly……..

So why not admit that this paragraph clearly is in contradiction with the objective reality we live in?

Another important issue Jalal-ul-Deen tackles is taxation of the non-Muslim citizen

In theory this constitution does not allow the legislation of a fair tax law based on citizenship. One of the undisputed rules of Islam is the differentiation between what a Muslim and a non-Muslim pays in tax. Those non-Muslims have to pay Jizya.

Wikipedia defines Jizya as “a per capita tax imposed on non-Muslim adult males.” That is of course a very broad translation and many would dispute its accuracy. I see it as is a "religious tolerance tax", you pay me and I allow you to keep you to practice your religion but that's probably an even more disputed interpretation. If you want to find out more check out these sites.

Jizya in Islam - Dr. Monqiz As-Saqqar, Umm al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia.
Fatwa on Jizyah and non-Muslim Minorities (from Islam-Online).

Back to the article, Jalal-ul-Deen asks;

So do we abandon democracy and equality in our fellow citizen’s rights regardless of faith and ethnicity as the rest of the constitution advices or do we Iraqis go back in time a thousand and four hundred years and start discriminating between those who are Muslims and those who have not yet joined the “true faith”?

He also raises the problem non-Muslims will have in openly calling for their faith (don’t know the correct word here, but you know what I mean) since in Islam it is forbidden for any other religion, or any individual for that matter, to debate openly the “verities of Islam”.
Which brings us to his last point concerning the basic right to choose your faith and religion. Islam unambiguously considers those persons who renounce Islam and choose another Faith as renegades and condemns them to death.

He concludes:

Millions of our people have had to seek refuge abroad and immigrated to other lands because of the terror of Saddam’s regime and its agents. Do I have to flee the country fearing for my life from every Muslim fundamentalist, Shia or Sunni, who sees it as his right and duty to implement Sharia Law? This person might be my younger brother and I won’t be able to take refuge and protection in this country’s laws because it will be against the “undisputed rules of Islam” to legislate laws to protect people like me.

I love this article. He is my new hero. Have to find out now who this guy is.

We have a saying in Arabic that says, “it’s like a camel pissing”, i.e. backwards*. Now read this and think of camels.

Ontario is considering a report which recommends that it allow Sharia religious arbitration for issues such as divorce and child custody.

How bizarre!!

But the proposal has alarmed women's' and human rights groups. They say sharia law does not view women as equal to men.

I have already emailed my friend at the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq telling her that she might need to open an office in Canada soon.



*I have never seen a camel take a whizz so I can’t verify that they do piss backwards, but what a nice proverb, eh?

Random FunFact.
I found out yesterday that [Ben] is the second most occurring first name for an artist in my iTunes library. Rufus taking the No.1 spot (as in Rufus Wainwright, but we’ve already been there).

And to celebrate this pointless random coincidence, which seemed magical and made me irrationally happy, and since it’s the weekend I decided to invite all cousins and cousin-ettes (including respective spouses) to a barbecue. The heat has become just bearable at night.
We ate, drank and talked until the early morning. The Only interruptions were helicopters flying too low and drowning our words in their chop-chop-chop sounds and machinegun shots, which we pretended were fireworks in the distance.

And my second decision was to share some of the Ben flavoured goodness with you. So here, have some Ben.

Jesusland – Ben Folds
Float On – Ben Lee (a Modest Mouse cover)
Pop A Cap In Yo' Ass – Ben Watt feat. Estelle
You Remind Me Of Home – Benjamin Gibbard

Jesusland and Pop A Cap are my recommendation if you really don’t want to listen to all the Bens. Jesusland is just beautiful and Pop A Cap is a really classy, laid back house track with Estelle telling a tale of shoplifting and the rocky road that lies ahead for children of the ghetto.

Yesterday a number of honorable members of the Iraqi National Assembly Called for a ONE-MONTH HOLIDAY for the whole assembly!

Honorable members being so very exhausted from the difficult negotiations 10% of the Assembly had to go through to achieve the wonderful all-inclusive draft of the constitution Iraqis feel so happy with, and following the honorable Prophet’s saying: “The believers are like one person; if his head aches, the whole body aches with fever and sleeplessness.” The rest of 90% of the Assembly, which has been doing dick-all, decided that the body is aching for the pains of the head and wanted to take the whole month of Ramadan off.

One foolish MP, deciding to risk the possibility of being throttled live on TV by the rest of the MPs, stood up and said that he doesn’t think there is anything in the TAL that allows for the assembly to excuse itself for a month just because it doesn’t feel like holding meetings during Ramadan.

Disgruntled murmurs followed. And the issue had to be dropped for the time being.
But I urge the honorable members not to be disheartened by that man’s callous and shocking lack of sympathy for his follow MPs. I remind you, O you honorable public servants, that TAL article (3A) is not only good for extending deadlines but you can use it for any sort of nifty amendment you feel like making.
So go all ye faithful and get the necessary 2/3 for an amendment. Call the month of Ramadan a holiday; hey why not make it a National Holiday. Let’s all stay at home and not work for a whole month. Oh go on, you know you wanna!

The last time the National Assembly added some extra butter on it’s own piece of bread they did it in a closed session without the Iraqia’s cameras. They gave themselves a nice $50,000 bonus, they decided they deserve it and made a legislation to give to themselves. How wonderfully convenient. They seem to have forgotten about the TV cameras this time.

I tell you, the daily Assembly broadcast is still the best show on TV.

So to add to everybody’s problems the minister of oil has come up with a marvelous plan to complicate our lives just a bit more. He decided to amuse us a bit with an Odd/Even game.

Starting tomorrow you will have to check if your car number is odd or even because His Oiliness has decided that since he can’t do ANYTHING at all to solve the fuel problem he will just ban odd cars from going on the streets on days and even numbers on others.

Ah, the memories this brings. The only other time this was done was during the Iraq/Iran war. I mention this just to point out that His Oiliness isn’t even being creative with this decision he just plucked a lesson from the old regime.
What His Blessed Oiliness seems to forget is the fact that a lot of the fuel consumption goes towards the operation of electricity generators because the country doesn’t have enough electricity to go round either.

Habibi, this is a bad decision. Schools are going to start soon so are you going to, magically from under your turban, produce a fleet of school buses which will shuttle the kids back and forth when their parents cars can’t go on the streets because it is the wrong day? What about government employees? Do you have any idea what the public transport system is like? Oh sorry there is no such thing, I forgot your government washed its hands clean of that sticky situation so you don’t care.

By Allah, we have been so blessed by such caring and compassionate government officials who have such clever clever ideas on how to “elevate the people’s suffering” (His Oiliness’s words not mine and he also added in an interview on al-Sharqyia that we need to see more appreciation to the efforts the government makes to elevate the suffering).

Ah the hilarity of it all.
Seriously baby, don’t do it. Our lives are already too, ahem, exciting. No need to add another amusing hurdle.

But who cares? Who listens?
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Mass Riff - Stereolab

Lately I’ve been really missing the days just after the war there was such a feeling of optimism. Anything was possible. Just wait a couple of months. Every development, every change in the political scene, in the movement of troops, in the type of soft drinks available on the market was for some stupid reason exciting. New shops opened and we went shopping in them. New restaurants opened and we went to watch the foreign journalists and contractors go eat in them. Change was good and exciting.
I used to explain away cracks in the fabric of things as structures settling onto new ground. Not to be resisted but taken as things that needed to happen. Ketchup bursts of emotion that will wash away when we sit down and start thinking about our future.

When things were going down the john I would say just wait until the [choose pointless “landmark” event] are over and see how things improved. I really believed that. I believed in the elections’ ability to improve things, I believed in both the national assemblies and I believed until recently that the writing of the constitution will be our salvation.

Now I’m just tired. I do not believe that the ratification of the constitution put up for referendum is going to improve things one little bit. And I am not holding my breath for the elections in December to do much good either.

I’m having a bad day, OK? So excuse the drama.

I’m not too happy about going out on the street with a camera. The novelty and excitement are wearing off after 2 years and all that is left is the worrying, it used to be easy to hide behind the excitement of doing it but now I am only anxious. The amount of bad news is just too overwhelming and there is just no end to it. From kidnappings of relatives to people getting killed by the thousands.

A relative of my mother has been kidnapped yesterday and whoever has him is demanding $50,000 ransom!!!! The guy is a vet for fuck’s sake I would be amazed if he makes $5,000 a year.
The three men who went kidnapped him called his family and told them he is being kidnapped as a punishment for his support of the Badr Militia, other than being Shia he has no link to the Badr Militia. They called a couple of hours later asking for the ransom. Were they a bit embarrassed to ask for the money the first time and where do they get these numbers from?


A son of a minister has been kidnapped almost two weeks ago. The kidnappers were in a police convoy wearing uniforms and after they kidnapped the young man they rushed away using the method used by Iraqi police forces driving down the road in Baghdad these days. Warning shots in the air and sirens. No one is going to stand in their way and they get clear passage from the traffic police on the street!
When the kidnappers called they claimed they were some Islamist group or other demanded $600,000 and a statement from the minister on television BUT she should not mention the $600,000.

I feel like everybody who is not in the kidnapping business is being farmed for those who do the kidnapping.

It just goes on and on.

Deaths and kidnappings. These have become the stories of everyday life. A constant level of stress because nothing is straight forward anymore and every time you see a scrunched face you think ‘god, who is it this time?’

There are some of you, Iraqis and foreigners, who will be tempted to lecture me on how all this is because of the occupier.
Hold your horses.

Yes the presence of the occupying forces is ONE of the reasons why things have been so bad but it does not explain all. By only blaming the US & Co. you are letting of the Iraqis too lightly. We have as much blood on our hands as the occupiers do. We have failed Iraq in so many ways, look at us squabble amongst ourselves, look at us steal and destroy.

So the US forces leave tomorrow, do you truly believe we will all become group-hugging lovelies the next day? The last year, even the last couple of months have revealed rifts so deep we don’t even know where to start how to bridge them.

Yes the US administration has messed things up badly and they have not shown enough respect but you can’t exactly say we were very benevolent to this country or respectful of each other.

Get of your high horses and smell the shit on the ground. The only suggestion you have is that the occupying forces leave but what about the internal issues? How do you respond to the spread of extremism? How do you deal with open sectarianism? How are we to deal with all this anger at each other?

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Fire on Babylon
Oh yes a change has come
Look what she did to her son
Look what she did to her son

Fire On Babylon - Sinead O'Connor

I’ve been a bit distracted with lining up my duckies for Blogger 12,which doesn’t really mean much at the moment other than sending emails and waiting for answers. I’m not so good with mutli-tasking. And I also do a lot of worrying which takes up a considerable amount of time.

Like many around the world I’ve been watching with disbelief what Katrina left in her wake. For the first time I find MBC 4’s choice to broadcast The Early Show and GMA to an Arab audience of any use. Most of the time I don’t get it but the last couple of days it has been really interesting to watch American TV coverage of the catastrophe.

A man interviewed in Houston who said that it was amazing how fast the situation degenerated to third world conditions made the one comment that sticks to my mind. How within 24 hours they were off the information age and back to what a developing country is like.

I guess part of the shock of watching the situation unfold comes from knowing this is happening in the USofA. Big and mighty USA. It feels like something major has shifted in the perceived order of things. Like seeing things that just don’t seem to make sense and you are trying to reshuffle the index cards in the little [How Things Are In The World] box in your brain accordingly.

Naïve? Maybe.

But with all the mess the US administration has created in Iraq I still believed they were not really putting their weight into it. So it fails? Pffffft, one more failed foreign experiment. But when things seem to be out of tune on home ground……

Little cracks showing glimpses into things that make me gasp in disbelief. What has happened and still is happening is just plain terrifying to watch on so many levels.

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What Can I Do? – Antony & the Johnsons (feat. Rufus Wainright).