Festival of death of April 28

I sent a post about (Festival of death of April 28) in my blog ,I just wanted to save much space on this blog for other contributors ,
you can read it on this link.

Roles

In recent discussion had a commenter "railing" against me for not publishing content that involved "other countries" role's in Iraq (other then Iraq and on variant occasions the US) I think the guy was American and must have been tired of hearing about himself.

Anyway, bearing that in mind, here's a link to an article by Marian Wilkinson looking at the role Australian officers and lawyers are "faced with" in carrying out "procedures" in Iraq.

One officer, whose name has been withheld by the Defence Department, learnt that his US military colleagues were hiding high-level Iraqi prisoners of interest to US intelligence. The practice, known as keeping "ghost detainees", violated international law and has been condemned by US military lawyers and the Red Cross.

Yet the officer, when told of the "ghost detainees", did not inform his Australian superiors, Australian military sources said. He came forward only after the Abu Ghraib scandal blew up in the Australian Parliament. His evidence was handed over to the US embassy in Canberra but was never revealed to the Parliament or the public. read more.

In case you're not registered with the smh, which you'll need to be to view most of their articles including the one linked above, I've posted a copy of the whole article here.

(It's free to register to the smh and they do keep a very up-to-date website).

To build a bridges among honest bloggers

All bloggers would be invited to share their reporting on each post, and good credible stories that are broken on the Internet find their way into coverage in the mainstream media.
Try to stop annoying trolls and spam comments from here !!!

Read the post in my blog : A Free Writer

Message from the imaginary tourism panel

Art update; There are no virtual galleries in Iraq on the web. Sorry. You will have to go to London for Iraq art. There is a war on in Iraq. A brutal regime has come to an end. The galleries are closed. There is no Opera. Only blogs. Please send more hospital supplies to Yarmouk.

Thankyou.

More pic's

Forecast ~ Art Iraq renaissance (over) due. Artists anywhere are a hardy lot (sensitivity aside) and can survive most things but do thrive best as any other, when fed clothed and ensconced in meditative landscapes with minimal overhead noise.

Now what artist anywhere would not turn up their nose at a recently vacated warehouse or upper level garret studio with bay window (and what artist would crave anything less then peace). More pictures... and more in fact, 4000 more pictures...

Art break

Maybe you've visited M.J. Alhabeeb's gallery ~ so maybe you'll like...

The Kufa Gallery ~ A converted warehouse in London directed by Baghdad born Dr Makiya. The Kufa's website lists exhibitions and events up until 25 May 2005 (monthly program includes exhibitions, film shows, music, lectures, literary evenings etc).

Carnival of the relatives

Dad posted about the release of more innocent prisoners in his new post.. He also posted about Islam, two part (Part one, part two).

Hassan posted photos of the gratuation celebrations in his college, they had a day off war, but that apparently offended some of his SENSITIVE readers..

I posted about a rumor that has been moving around on the Internet..

Raghda posted two more photos of cats..

Nothing more, I'll post soon, either today or tomorrow, since it's been too BUSY on our neighbourhood today.

Pic's...

Another journal, someone who just happens/ed to be in Kirkuk-Sulimaniya-Arbil with a camera...

(Update - link fixed, woOp, thanks ihath and Fayrouz).

Donath on trolls

I still think this is the best trolling definition I've come across. Donath on trolls:

"Trolling is a game about identity deception, albeit one that is played without the consent of most of the players. The troll attempts to pass as a legitimate participant, sharing the group's common interests and concerns; the... members, if they are cognizant of trolls and other identity deceptions, attempt to both distinguish real from trolling postings and, upon judging a poster a troll, make the offending poster leave the group. Their success at the former depends on how well they—and the troll—understand identity cues; their success at the latter depends on whether the troll's enjoyment is sufficiently diminished or outweighed by the costs imposed by the group.

"Trolls can be costly in several ways. A troll can disrupt the discussion on a newsgroup, disseminate bad advice, and damage the feeling of trust in the newsgroup community."

How might a troll troll a site that counts blogs? And should they be asked to leave.

(I never considered Iraq Blog Count a cocktail party, but hey, if praktike, richsanter et all think they are getting free canapes here - what the heck).

Yet another Iraqi blog

Welcome Narsay, the latest addition to the ever expanding Iraqi blogosphere.

Narsay is Nancy's brother by the way. He blogs from the US and has a very interesting viewpoint. Check it for yourself.

Iraqi in the West

New today: 1

Blog suicide

This is how fed up I am with all the silly games bloggers play. I am " " this close to pulling the plug. Seriously. Only trouble is, if I go, so does everything else. Do you want this site or not? If anyone wants it, write me or whatever, I'll leave it up for you, then I'm pissing off.

Should I count to ten before posting this? Or just post and be damned.

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

Emend; The blog stays then, thanks for writing. Apologies if anyone sincere was offended. Patience has a limit.

Announcement

I (Aunt Najma) would like to draw your attention to the vulgar comments that are being posted in my name, and my friend (Emigre)'s name..

If you see anything abnormal about a comment written by one of us (or other bloggers), check the profile of the writer, which is done by clicking on the name of the commenter.. We (Both, Najma and Emigre) have profiles with informations about us, while the false comment's writer has a profile with nothing but a link to an empty blog called HEY..

That's just so you know.. I'm deleting those comments, and so is Emigre, but we might not notice one in the future.. So, please confirm the comment before believing it.

Thanks,
Najma

Carnival of the relatives

I can finally say this here.. My uncle, Ahmed, and his wife arrived to Dubai few days ago.. BUT, that's not what I wanted to talk to you about, check this out..

Have you read it? Are you sure you read it all? Up to the part with my name in? SURPRISE!

Now, I have a new relative in my relatives' list of bloggers.. It's so hard to keep secrets, but it's much easier to let them out.

Now, to the carnival of the relatives..

Dad wrote a post with photos from Falloja, and another one replying to comments, and he's now enjoying reading the comments while I've cut the connection of his computer and connected mine to the Internet :)
He also wrote a short one regarding the new government..

Mom wrote a post about dad and her parents.. Imagine, I still haven't read it!

Aunt Rose :) wrote about the adventures she and the family had on their way to the airport..

Hassan wrote a post about what's happening with him.

I posted about our last journey to the north, and the accident that followed.. I also wrote about what's happening.

HNK posted twice, she posted the poem that she's written during this war. And another about an accident with her geography teacher..

That's it, bye

Count update

Diversity, ain't it great. From Allahkareem to Baghdad's Mistress (hilarious and hairless ~ just a guess) all in one week.

New; 2
Total; 124

Mistress tipper ~ neurotic_wife.

Two years!

I feel like writting in Arabic, sorry Emigre and others, so i started a blog in arabic, only the letters are english, so don't spend your time trying to decode the text;)
the blog started today, i still have soem improvements to do with the help of Mohammed who is going to give me some technical support, in addition to all his support and actually pushing, for me to start an Arabic blog, so you might wana try to vist also tomorrow to see the new changes, inshalla.
the blog name is " Allah Kareem! " and the URL is Allahkareem.blogspot.com, and i explained the meaning of the title, and wrote the introduction, and my first "official" post too.
the truth is that the arab blogs sphere grew dramatically in the last few months, even faster than the way iraqi blogs number increased, and this is a great and positive change, i have a list of daily visits to arabic blogs beside the daily visit to the english ones.
its left to say that i enabled the comments on this blog.

Baghdad...madeenato assalami o al 7ob, madeenato il 3ilm o il 2adab, ma 3adat kathalik.

thank you very much.
me*

Streamtime back on

Streamtime is back after having been "cracked". Streamtime was interrupted April 02 by "technical difficulties" ~ gawd knows why. Is poetry, chat and webcast interview a threat? Anyway, streamtime still managed to broadcast through temporary "channels" while their main site was down. Yay. And has returned with more. Recently streamtime has webcast "shiploads of new audio material";

• Lots of interviews and poetry recorded in Basrah (Merbed Poetry Carnival).
  
• An interview with students from the Art Institute in Basrah (see initial report: Healing Iraq).
  
• And lots of other things.

Streamtime is all independence, tenacity and breadth of coverage. A tributary emptying into vaster currents.

Who could want to crack streamtime we might ask, and then we shrug and say does it matter ~ streamtime has been cracked! Streamtime is influential! Streamtime has kudos!

Back and beautiful

In case anyone else wondered what happened to Ishtarria ~ she is back and better then ever with a nice new template.

Was Ishtarria's SOS answered? Or did Ishtarria save herself, perhaps realising...

Eventually, relying upon my own self was the sole option I had in hand. I had to think, and dig deep, and come up with something, or anything to bridle similar future reckless acts which could at worst contribute to the termination of his contract, causing along the way momentous social complications that would have jeopardized my safety, and put me firmly under the microscopic scrutiny of those abominable minders.... read more.

Carnival of the relatives

It's too nice to write from the laptop, listening to music, and waiting for a friend to go online.. I can forget that I am in Iraq!

Here it is, this week's carnival of the relatives:

Dad posted his thoughts on the new government in the family blog..

Hassan posted about the big holiday we had last week-end because of the Shiites celebration..

I posted 3 times!! One was after a problem that happened in my blog and made me change the template.. Not important, just my blog dressed in white!
Another about my week-end and how Aya started clapping.. It is kind of a "What's happening?" post.
Another about the new school, new laptop and other stuff.

HNK posted photos of our new school..

Dalia posted some really wonderful photos that she's drown.. Amazing.

Raghda posted some pictures of cats..

That's it.. Bye

Zan, the Man with Five

What is up Zan? So...first a big thank you to Fay for pointing us in his direction. I really like all of the blogs he's authoring. Well done. Now I list them for your viewing pleasure.

Just Humor - a picture blog with, well, humorous pictures.
Articles You MUST Read - again, self-explanatory
Religion...or Chief of all Maladies
Our list of human waste
Theomania...or S & M

New today: 5
Total: 122

Alfilfilm !

The Alfil Cinema Club ~ a blog about film (yep, there's a few out there...)

Enjoy the read.

New today; 1
Total; 117

Order 81 ~ needle in the haystack

So Hajim al-Hassani is the Iraq National Assembly's speaker. Hajim al-Hassani is also the industry minister. I wonder how he will work with Sawsan Ali Magid al-Sharifi, the minister of agriculture. And I wonder when they're going to set about reversing Paul Bremer's 100 legislative parting gifts, particularly Order 81. Noting al-Hassani and al-Sharifi's respective industrial and agricultural responsibilities.

More Order 81 background.

Under the new US Order, the saving and planting of seeds will be illegal and market will only offer plant material produced by transactional agribusiness corporations. The US Order introduces a system of private monopoly rights over seeds and will force Iraqi farmers to relay on big US corporations to buy its yearly crop seeds for planting. The term of the monopoly is 20 years for crop varieties and 25 for trees and vines. During this time the protected variety de facto becomes the property of the breeder, and nobody can plant or otherwise use this variety without compensating the breeder. ~ Ghali Hassan.

Oil? Read about the wheat deal.

Basically decades of war have taken a toll on Iraq's landscape while sanctions have taken a toll on the tradescape. As a result foreign agricultural corporations have been cashing in with overpriced wheat deals for years. Bearing in mind (how could one not) recent "de-stability". Order 81 it would seem, is an order protecting foreign agricultural interests rather then Iraq local industry.

Oh and Hah! Noting Order 64. The CPA website describes Order 64 as an order which revises Iraq's 1997 Company Law. The CPA website does not specify exactly what these revisions are. It says;

The order modernizes the legal environment for business in Iraq, making it a more attractive place to do business.

For who? Al seed mafia?

UPDATE 06/04; Jalal Talabani, patriotic Kurdish freedom ex-fighter, has been chosen for presidency. Hussain al-Shahristani, United Iraqi Alliance, says;

''We agreed on Talabani because of his qualities and patriotic history''

Talabani says;

"Iraqis who are carrying weapons out of patriotic and anti-occupation motives, those people are our brothers and it is possible to talk with them and to reach a solution"

Wonder what he thinks about the seeds.

Blog count 116 ~ Postcolonial Iraq !

Four more blogs in Arabic, French, Swedish and Anglais from Jelloul.

New today: 4
Total: 116

.iq Domain ~ reassigned?

Has Iraq's ".iq" internet domain been reassigned to Iraq?

Cecile from streamtime has seen ~ "Iraq iq 1 12 82.78 KB" in streamtime's webstats (presumably before streamtime went down). What could this mean? How could such an event pass with so little fanfare? (And who hacked streamtime?) .

I looked around a bit and found no recent "reassignment" mention. As far as I can make out, the domain name ".iq" is already registered - but it is registered by a Texan controlled company named InfoCom Corporation, which operated between 1992 - 2001 and was owned by a guy called Bayan Elashi. It gets murkier. The FBI raided InfoCom on Wednesday September 5, 2001. Not sure Mr Elashi still has much to do with Infocom, Mr Elashi, his wife and four brothers were indicted on charges of "trafficking with Libya and Syria" (reading between lines - for sending IT goods to people stuck inside totalitarian regimes) on December 18, 2002. Clark Boyd reported in a bbc article last June that Mr Elashi was on trial in the US for allegedly funding Hamas. Shortly afterwards Mr Elashi and his four brothers were sentenced to 10 years each and from there the story appears to have fallen of the edge of the web, the Elashi brothers having been "dissappeared".

Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, provides as good an account as any in July 2004, at which point Mr Elashi was in jail and still owned dot iq. With various opportunists sniffing around for it. Excerpting Brian Whitaker July 5, 2004;

ICANN is considering what to do about Iraq's ".iq" country code. It could be taken away from Bayan Elashi on the grounds that he has failed to manage it properly, and assigned to someone else, but that would be controversial in view of the political background to his arrest and trial.

If Mr Elashi does lose ".iq", there are several interested parties waiting to take it on. Last year a group called the Committee for Information Technology Reconstruction in Iraq claimed they could raise $10m (£5.5m) by auctioning off ".iq" domains worldwide and using the money to develop Iraqi internet facilities. One example they gave was www.high.iq which they thought might interest Mensa, the organisation for brainy people. Others, though, think the novelty value of ".iq" is limited and unlikely to raise much money from customers outside Iraq.

According to ICANN's rules, any transfer of the country code must have broad support from the local internet community. What this means in the case of Iraq is anybody's guess: who exactly are the Iraqi "internet community" and how can they be consulted? It is quite possible they will be ignored altogether.

Last month, the new Iraqi government made its own application to control ".iq". Past experience suggests ICANN will favour that idea though, again, it would be controversial. Taking the country code from a man who has been mugged by the Bush administration in Texas and handing it to a Bush-installed regime in Baghdad might be viewed as rather fishy.

So, who's been using ".iq" lately then?

Update; Streamtime is back up. Yay.

One more blog !

One more blog before I go ~ Tara Talk. Tara blogs in Arabic from Baghdad. She's a doctor, busy women, but still sets aside some time to blog.

New today; 1
Total; 112

Tipped by; ihath.