Happy New Year

Happy New Year, a statement every body around the world wish to say to his friends, relatives, and neighbors. They welcome the New Year and say goodbye to the old year. They exchange this statement of greeting with joy, happiness and may kiss each other. It is a universal tradition, almost every where except in my country.
This year, the day 31 December 2005 is a tragedy (as any other day). We say good by to 2005 and welcome to 2006 with the sound of bullets and fire exchange (not the type of fire people used to use here to express their happiness in some occasions as marriage). But it is toward each other.
You have the right to say, “oh ... look ... how ignorant and uncivilized people are there in Iraq”
But the reality is that the ignorant and the uncivilized people, which make up a considerable portion of the population, do not share this conflict.
Those who shared it are the people most concerned with the future of the country (from both sides). Each according to his own viewpoint is fighting to protect the sovereignty of Iraq, as he understands it.

The pro occupation forces (The Iraqi army, the policemen, the ING, the peshmerga and the armed militias of the ruling parties) together with the US troops from one side, and the anti occupation fighters (the insurgents and the resistance) from the other side.

On the other hand there are other groups which take advantages from the unstable situation and take a great share in the chaos and those are ; the thugs and the gangsters who kidnapped people for ransom, their sole goal is to collect money, they found the chaos as a good medium for their crimes, and as far as there is no power of law, they will continue to grow and increas in number as the poverty and the rises of prices and the jobless people are increasing.
Another group which may have the greatest inflict on the situation, is the Terrorists.
The terrorists are working for political reasons, which is most of the times not in the benefit of our country. Those are usually non-Iraqis, they come here because they know that a strong and free Iraq is dangerous to them. Those are who killed innocent people, exploded mosques, schools and market places, their real target is to plant fear and terror in the country to protect their own benefit.

We are looking forward to peaceful Iraq, where we can share others their happiness and live the life we want without supervision from other in a free and sovereign Iraq.

Happy New Year. To all of you.

Fraud ... Fraud ... and Fraud

At the days following the election, many people and I are very optimistic that there will be deviation to the political processes instead of armed confrontations. This was because of the easiness and peaceful ballot. But it lasted for no more than two days, then the explosions and the clashes started again. You know why? ... I will tell you … I know.

Seven days since the election, every new day we hear news of frauds in the process of voting. There are more than 1250 claims of illegal and cheating acts during the process of voting. All the cheating are done by the militias of the puppet government, (the Badr militia in the middle and the south and the Peshmerga in the north), both are supported by the current government. Many of the complaint are really serious

At Tuesday 20, they announced primary results of the vote; the results are disappointing to all that shared in the election except the United Iraqi Alliance, and the Kurdish alliance. And since then, the tension come back to Iraq, there are demonstrations daily in many of the Iraqi provinces refusing those results and demanding of rerun the ballot

More than 35 fronts and parties reject the results announced by the Electoral commission, including the list of former premier Iyad Allawi

The government from its side, and to camouflage the chaos, announced an increase in the prices of oil products, The Gasoline, the Kerosene and the Diesel fuels. The increase is varying from 5 to 11 folds.

There are two kind of angry demonstrations one against the election's results and the other against the increase in the prices of the oil products

Another quiet day

Today is Saturday, at 6:00 am this morning the curfew for the vehicles ended, this is only in Mosul, there were no curfew for vehicles in other city except for the election day, but in Mosul it was for five days, from Tuesday at 10:00 pm till Saturday at 6:00 am Fr. Friday and Saturday are the week end holiday. At the previous time we have only one day (Friday), week end, now we have two days.
As Saturday is a holiday we used to see the road semi empty at the morning and the movement gradually increased as the day proceed. But today there were a heavy traffic movement from the early morning (The people get bored from staying in house for five days), but the most important cause is here in Mosul, ,most of the people except the Government employees earn their income day by day, when the can't go for work, that day there is no income, and five days break are too long with out work.

I went to my clinic early this afternoon, because I have no morning work. The street are overcrowded with cars, people are busy shopping. One thing looked different is there are no kids in the streets, no bicycles, and no more football. I returned home late, about 5:30 pm, it is still scary to drive at night, you cant differentiate the American car from faraway, you may unintentionally get closer than 100 m. from them and expose your self to fire, but thanks God the only American cars I met were in the opposite direction, and I can recognized them early.
Tomorrow the schools will open their doors to receive the students, men and women will go to their work as they used to do. We hope the peacefulness will continue. It remind us with the old days when we go to work with no fear from roadside bombs, or bombed cars in our way.

The election and the people

Another day of freedom from danger, no explosions and no exchange of fire. The only thing disturbs the peacefulness is the sound of the police cars and the American convoys passing at high speed every now and then.

After the end of the voting, we stayed anxious for the results. The people responsible said that the result will be announced after 2 weeks.
Un official news leaked out, and every body claim that his list are winning. I count more than four groups each claim a great result. There seem to be no loser in this election.
I feel comfortable because the group I voted for, claims he get excellent result in several provinces including Nineveh.
The supervisor authorities said all the result announced till now are not official, and probably not correct.

On the other hand, the kids in the neighborhood was very happy, the curfew make all the kid to get out of their houses and to play in the main street by their bicycles, or to make the street a football (soccer) yard.
The teenagers make two teams and play Flying ball in a secondary road.
The men are gathered in front of one of the houses and exchange thought about the election and related subjects, the most attractive subject is the claims of almost all the candidate about the fraud which they claim happened in the election process.

As a truth we don't know for sure if this is just a rumors, or there are really a frauds. But as every body said that, we think there should be some truth in it.

I found one report looked to be written by an unbiased side enumerate several events of frauds in many center in different province, the report is in Arabic and I can't translate it so you can read it at this site

The election day

Today is a holiday, it is the third day of the five days break we have for the sake of the election. It was not just a holiday, it is a curfew from 10:00 pm till 6:00 am of the next day, in addition it is a curfew for all form of vehicles starting from 10:00 pm at Tuesday till 6:00 am of next Sunday (all the days of the holiday).

Early in the morning, all the election centers open their doors to receive the people who come to vote. It was a calm day except for very few sounds of explosion and shooting fire. No report for casualties up to my knowledge.

At about 10:00 am I went to the nearby center for voting. After they searched me, they allow me in, where I saw the supervisor of the center who told me that I have no right to vote here (although the center is only 300 meter from my house), because I registered in another center about 10 km away from my house, from where I received my food ration (according to Oil for Food program). There aren't any means of transportation.
I returned home, thinking with my self is it safe to go there walking, despite my heart problem and the hypertension I had.? When a friend call me, he have the same problem, he heard in the TV that it is possible to vote in the nearby center if our center is far away.

I go to the nearby center again, they told me they heard the news but they can't depend on it, they want a written order.
"Just wait for an hour or two, then come again" they told me. So I did that.
I went again at 3:00 pm, this time with my wife, they accept us and let us vote.

The result will appear at the end of this month as expected, but we all know for sure who will win and why.
If you ask me why I vote, while I know the result in advance ?
It is because of an e-mail I received from an American friend telling me his feeling when he face a similar situation, he said:

" Now it seems certain that my vote will be for the losing side. I find that incredibly frustrating.
Even so, I will vote. I will lose, but I will vote."

I feel just as he felt, and I decided to do what he did, so I voted. Thank you my friend.

Another unbelievable story !!

Dar Babel for Studies and Information December 13, 2005

And then there are the American 'Liberators':

"A reliable source has confirmed that at 12 o’clock noon on Thursday December 8, 2005, occupants of a black BMW sedan commenced to shoot at random on civilians and passers by in the area of Imam Qasim in Kirkuk. Two policemen and three civilians were injured by the shootings.
Upon receiving retaliatory fire from the police and passing pedestrians, the car sped off in the direction of Sulaimania.
An Azadi police patrol sped after it in pursuit and managed to kill two of the attackers in the car near the Rabi’ district, about 20 kilometers from Kirkuk on the Sulaimania road.
Upon further firearms exchange, a fire erupted in the BMW. At that moment, an American helicopter landed near the burning car and dragged the two dead bodies and the other two survivors and flew them away.
This was carried out in full view of the Iraqi police who watched in disbelief as these Americans were shooting innocent civilians (not insurgents) in Kirkuk.
After this incident, some of the Azadi police officers and rank submitted their resignation from the force and decided to fight the Americans."

This is the translation of the real story, as published in Free Iraq blog.

Below is the original story in Arabic. From Dar Babel for studies and information.

خبر : 13/12/2005 خاص دار بابل

أكد مصدر موثوق أنه في يوم الخميس المصادف 8/12/2005 الساعة الثانية عشر ظهرا قامت سيارة نوع (BMW) سوداء اللون حجم 735 بإطلاق النار العشوائي على المواطنين في منطقة (امام قاسم) في كركوك وجرحت عدد 2 من الشرطة و3 مواطنين مما أدى ذلك إلى إطلاق النار عليها من قبل المواطنين في المنطقة ولاذت بالفرار إلى طريق السليمانية فأعقبتها مفرزة من شرطة ازادي و قتل اثنان ممن كانوا في السيارة (BMW) في منطقة ناحية الربيع التي تبعد حوالي 20كم عن كركوك على طريق السليمانية. واثر إطلاق النار الكثيف اندلعت النار في السيارة .وفي هذه الأثناء هبطت (مروحية أمريكية) وأخذت الجثث التي كانت في السيارة واثنان آخرين لم تصبهم نيران الاطلاقات النارية .كان ذلك بمرأى الشرطة العراقية التي أصابها الذهول لان هؤلاء كانوا أمريكان وينفذون عمليات إرهابية ضد المواطنين الأبرياء في كركوك على أنهم (مقاومة).بعد الحادث قدم عدد من الضباط والشرطة استقالاتهم وقرروا مقاتلة الأمريكان.

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World: "Speaking at a November 24 rally in Damascus, white supremacist and former US State Representative from Louisiana David Duke called the US a land 'occupied' by Zionists.

'The Zionists occupy most of the American media and now control much of American government. It is not just the West Bank of Palestine, it is not just the Golan Heights that are occupied by the Zionists, but Washington DC, and New York, and London, and many other capitals in the world,' the former KKK member said."

Susanne Osthoff

Ireceived the following e-mail few days ago, but because of the current situation, I can't take any step forward to help.

Hello,

I appreciate your blog - politically and from a human point of view. Living as a swiss citizen in germany, interdisciplinary holistic medical therapist and consultant, I am busy also with peace issues much as I can (I wish t do more) Today I phoned the sister of kidnapped german archeologist Susanne Osthoff. Both of us are feeling things are going not in a good direction. Both of us are opposing the US war on Iraq, we are friends of chancellor Schröders no towards this war and we are very much concerned chancellor Merkel will change this no into more yes. And in some ways this issue seems to be connected to the fate of Susanne Osthof - a great lover and humanitarian worker for Iraq. Her sister told not one bitter or hateful word about Iraq - she tries to understand, full of compassion. She, and myself too, so we - are thinking: this means to rethink our stand here regarding Iraq and USA - and to forecome, to avoid a terrible shift towards Bush's global policy, which is damaging human and international rights by any means!
I am sorry to disturb you with this problems, but perhaps you can help us or link us to useful sources or informations. We will appreciate this very much indeed. I will not finish without expressing my deepest feelings and best wishes for your work as an MD in Iraq - I wish this terrible situation in your country could change soon as possible. (I heard from an Ingenieur recently, located in Baghdad - Iraqi MD's are cut of from new medical magazines since a long time and this problem is not changed after US forces brought "freedom" (I don't think this is true) to your country. Please let me know too, if this issue regarding medical magazines is changed.
Best regards
and may be peace between us in future-
therefore we have to take steps now-

Please if any one could help in any way, let me know.

Iraqi officials find more abused prisoners | csmonitor.com

Iraqi officials find more abused prisoners | csmonitor.com: "For the second time in two months, an Iraqi government search of a prison near Baghdad has found prisoners who appeared to have been tortured. The Washington Post reports 600 prisoners were cramped into a small space and that 13 prisoners were found in a condition that required immediate medical attention"

Five days to election

The election of the new parliament will hold next Thursday.
The situation in the city of Mosul is very stressful. The US convoys wandering through out the city day and night. The police cars full of policemen holding gun aiming at the pedestrians and firing their guns at any car which fail to stop or approaching the convoy.

From the other side there were explosions every where, masked gunmen attacking the US soldiers and the Iraqi police. The roads are blocked by either a concrete blocks or barbed wires making the moving in the city streets very difficult and dangerous.

In Mosul there are five bridges across the river Tigris joining the two sides of the city together, during the last few days, all the bridges are either blocked completely or there were a check points at the beginning of the bridges to search all the cars which attempt to cross the bridge. This make the movement across the bridge very very difficult.

Me for example, my house and the hospital in which I work are in different side of the city, that means I have to cross the bridge twice. Most of the time I reached the hospital about an hour or more late. This is true for all the staff.
At the end of the day I have to go home for lunch and then to the clinic, I have to cross the bridge again, and I shall consider that I must leave the clinic before the Sunset for security reasons (all the Doctors and Pharmacists closed their clinics and Pharmacies before Sunsetmy), I stayed in the clinic for very short period of time.

The patients and sick people will suffer more if they have to go to the hospital at night. The curfew started at 10:00 PM after that, if they go out of their houses they may get killed before they reached the hospital, even the ambulance can't get out after the curfew. The City roads look empty just after the Sunset, it is too dangerous to wander in your car after the Sunset. Many people had been killed or seriously injured, just because they can't recognise an American car at dark or fail to stop at an appropriate distance from a check point.

Early this month two persons, one of them is a Surgeon kidnapped by a gangs which asked for ransom to free them. The Surgeon pay the ransom, but the other guy managed to escape from the kidnappers and go to the police, They did nothing except the declare in Nineveh TV that the police rescued a victim from his kidnappers.

We wait the result of the election, although we know it in advance, but just to see what will happen to the security after the new government take over the control.

U.S. Helps Some Iran-Backed Terror

Inter Press Service (IPS)
Dahr Jamail and Harb al-Mukhtar

*BAGHDAD, Dec 8 (IPS) - After the U.S. forces and the bombings, Iraqis are coming to fear those bands of men in masks who seem to operate with the Iraqi police.*

Omar Ahmed's family learnt what it can mean to run into the police, their supposed protectors.

Omar was driving with two friends in the Adhamiya district of Baghdad at night Sep. 1 when they were stopped at a police checkpoint.

"The three of them were arrested by the police even though there was nothing in the car," an eyewitness told IPS, speaking on condition of anonymity.

They did not return home for days, and the family began to search the morgues, common practice now when someone is arrested by the Iraqi police and does not return.

"Five days after they were arrested we found Omar's body in the freezer in a morgue, with holes in the side of his head and shoulders," a friend of the family told IPS.

"We don't know if the other two men are dead or alive," he said. "But we know these men were guilty of nothing other than driving their car at night. We have no security and the problem is that police are killing and disappearing the Iraqi people every day now."

The 'death squads' as they have come to be called are getting more active with just a week to go before the Dec. 15 election.

On Tuesday this week Iraqi police said they found 20 bodies dumped at two different locations in western Iraq, according to the al-Sharqiyah television network.

Eleven bodies of men wearing civilian clothes were found dumped on the main road between Baghdad and the Jordanian border. The bodies were found near al-Rutbah city, with their hands tied behind their backs.

Police said that nine bodies, also of civilians, and riddled with bullets, were found on the side of a road near Fallujah on Monday.

Signs are emerging that such killing is the work of death squads backed by Iran-backed Shia forces that dominate the government, and therefore the police.

Abdullah Omar, a 39-year-old unemployed engineer who now sells petrol and cigarettes on the black market says he survived one such Shia squad.

"I was sleeping on the roof of my house one night because it was so hot and we had no electricity as usual," Omar told IPS. "I was awakened by a loud explosion nearby, and immediately surrounded by strange men wearing night-vision goggles."

Omar says he was thrown to the ground by the men, handcuffed and blindfolded. "They started to beat me using the end of their guns," he said. "Then they searched my house, took my gun which I told them I had, then they took me away."

His 32-year-old wife Sumia, a teacher, was also handcuffed and taken away.

Omar says he saw about ten pick-up trucks carrying at least 100 men wearing black masks before a bag was placed over his head. He was taken to the back of a truck, and beaten up until he fainted.

Sumia was beaten up too. "I received so many kicks to my stomach," she told IPS. "I heard Abdullah screaming in pain, so I fought until they handcuffed me and beat me until I couldn't do anything else."

The two were taken to the Iraqi police station in Suleakh, Baghdad, where they were interrogated and accused of owning a mortar.

"I explained to them that I don't know anything about mortars," said Omar. "And that I have never had anything to do with the resistance, but they said so many insulting words to me, and beat me further."

Sumia, who was also interrogated, pleaded with the policemen to let them return home to care for their young children. "They would not give me a headscarf to cover my head," she told IPS. "They kept asking me about mortars and wouldn't let me go to look after my children. We know nothing about any mortars.."

Omar said the next morning he was moved into another room where he saw men lying handcuffed, with their heads covered with sacks. "They were lying on the ground without a blanket or pillow."

In a while, he said he saw 14 men wearing black masks enter the room carrying whips. "I watched them beat the prisoners. They told them this was their breakfast."

Abdullah and Sumia were later taken home, and warned that if security forces were attacked in their neighbourhood, they would be detained again.

Omar said the men who detained him and his wife were members of the Shia Badr Army, a militia affiliated with Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Tensions in Baghdad run high, as people who live in areas not controlled by the Badr Army face daily threats of being kidnapped or killed by members of the militia.

"The Badr Army is conducting a campaign to destroy other political parties and their electoral advertisements," said Saleh Hassir, a doctor at a Baghdad medical centre. "We see black paint and tears on ex-prime minister Allawi's posters and those of the Sunni groups, but pictures of al-Hakim remain unaffected."

The doctor says the Americans have helped bring in new Iran-backed terror.

"So many of us are against Iraq being controlled by these fundamental Islamic Iranian loyalists like al-Hakim," the doctor told IPS. "Now we are seeing the suffering and ultimate dictatorship they have brought us here with the help of the Americans."

(Isam Rashid contributed to this article)

An Update

Today I heard more detail about the incident of yesterday (The killing of the traffic policeman by the US soldier).

Another eyewitness said

"The convoy was coming toward the intersection with very laud warning horn, they usually come too fast expecting the police to open the street for them by blocking the movement in the other directions and keeping the way free for them. This poor policeman was either un aware of the convoy or he intentionally don't care,when they come to the intersection it wasn't completely free. And he deserve to be executed for his unforgivable sin."

Freedom and democracy in the American way.

Unbelievably strange

This a very strange news, I heard from an eyewitness, but it happened at the middle of the day in front of crowd of people, many policemen among them.

He is my neighbor, A previous army officer, he was near an intersection where the insidence happened. He said

"A convoy of 3 strykers was approaching an intersection at crowded hour of the day, I was in my car when we noticed the convoy coming, all the car stopped in caution afraid from the un predictable behavior of the US soldiers. I heard a single shot fired from one of the US strykers, after they pass the intersection, the policemen run to the intersection where a traffic policeman lying dead in a lake of blood. No body know why they shoot him, they never stop to help him."

A new wave of lies and intimidation

Bush’s counteroffensive on Iraqi WMD:

"A series of three extraordinary opinion polls released within the last week have all shown the same thing: at least 6 out of every 10 Americans believe Bush is a liar—and better than 7 out of 10 think that Cheney is one—and that the overriding reason for this belief is the war in Iraq.

One of the polls, conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News, found that 57 percent of Americans—nearly 6 in 10—believe that the Bush administration lied to the American public about the reasons for war."

"The administration appears to have a default position: when previous lies unravel, prop them up with more lies. Neither the Senate investigation into Iraqi WMD intelligence nor the commission appointed by Bush and headed by Judge Laurence Silberman dealt with how the administration “manipulated intelligence and misled the American people,” but only the nature of the intelligence itself.

On this score, the Silberman panel concluded that the intelligence was “dead wrong” and constituted one of the “most damaging intelligence failures in American history.” A failure, it should be added, for which no one was ever held accountable, precisely because false intelligence is what the administration wanted"

Peter Phillips: Death By Torture

Peter Phillips: Death By Torture

Military autopsy reports provide indisputable proof that detainees are being tortured to death while in US military custody. Yet the US corporate media are covering it with the seriousness of a garage sale for the local Baptist Church.

A recent American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) posting of one of forty-four US military autopsy reports reads as follows:

Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq

"For months, stories from the Shiite south and Sunni center have reported the same phenomenon: people being summarily seized by large groups of armed men wearing police commando uniforms, packing high-priced Glocks, using sophisticated radios and driving Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The captives are taken off and never seen again – unless they turn up with a load of other corpses days or weeks later, bearing marks of the gruesome tortures they suffered before the ritual shot in the head. Needless to say, these mass murders under police aegis are rarely investigated by the police.
Earlier this year, one enterprising Knight-Ridder reporter, Yasser Salihee, actually found several eyewitnesses willing to testify to the involvement of the U.S.-backed commandos in 12 such murders. The offer was shrugged off by the Interior Ministry's spokesman – an American "adviser" and veteran bones-maker from the Colombian ops. In the end, it didn't matter; Salihee was shot dead by a U.S. sniper at a checkpoint a few days afterwards.

Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq