269 YMCA
Still strapped with work, and worse, with spotty access to the Web. In the meantime, enjoy this, via e-mail from Issandr (who I guess is too concerned about his credibility to post this kind of thing).
268 ‘Why Bahrain Censored Google Earth’
This is circulating around the Gulf over e-mail. A correspondent in the Gulf who follows these things closely says this is why Bahrain blocked Google Earth.
Worth looking at, despite the big file.
267 Nancy Agram on Lebanon
Cheery pop and images of destruction. Just what we all need to feel better.
Via Abu Aardvark…
[tags]Lebanon, Nancy[/tags]
266 Zimbabwe: Internet Shuts Down After Gov’ Fails to Pay Bill
Something to cheer you up the next time Link.net seems inept, inefficient, or doesn’t deliver the promised bandwidth:
Government failure to pay a US$700,000 bill to a satellite company has brought Zimbabwe’s internet services to a virtual standstill, further isolating a country grappling with food shortages, chronic unemployment and the world’s highest inflation rate.
Internet users in Zimbabwe have complained of long delays in sending and receiving emails, painfully slow browsing speeds and problems connecting to many websites since Intelsat severed a satellite link that provided about three-quarters of the bandwidth used by the state-owned communications firm, TelOne.
[tags]Zimbabwe, Internet[/tags]
265 Rust and Paint
Another good email from our talented friend in Baghdad, Paul Schemm:
It was a graveyard. That was the only way to describe it. The place where old war machines came to die. Row upon row of massive sand-colored metal tanks, their huge guns each raised to a different height, like a frozen image of a clumsy chorus line.
There weren’t just tanks either, massive artillery pieces, trucks, strange amphibious vehicles that looked half boat – an automotive mating ritual gone horribly wrong, and all covered in the grafitti of their conquerors.
Beneath the layers of black spray paint could be seen the original unit designations of these shattered old Iraqi tanks left to rust in a field at the edge of Taji base, somewhere north of Baghdad.
“God, Nation, the Leader”, read words arranged around a stenciled profile of Saddam Hussein in his once trademark military beret. Years later, even amidst the wreckage of his ambitions, the word “leader” still has chilling “fuehrer” like echoes.
It was a interesting to compare to hillsides in Morocco where “God, Nation and King” would be picked out in white stones. Somehow it sounds better with a king.
On other tanks though, the font for the Arabic seemed wrong, different, till I realized it was Farsi, and could only puzzle out the words “Iran” and “Azad”, free Iran, I think. So this is what the Americans did with the tanks belonging to the People’s Mojahedin, an extremely creepy cult-like group of Iranians opposed to the Islamic Republic, once supported by Saddam.
I hear they are out there still (minus the tanks) on a camp near the Iranian border, guarded by American soldiers who don’t really know what to do with them – they were friends with Saddam, but they don’t like the Iranian mullahs, our enemy as well. What do we do with them?
The ground around the tanks at first was the typical hard packed sand of the rest of the base, baked dry by the merciless summer sun. As I moved deeper into the rows of wrecked vehicles, though, it became strange, with a crust, almost like old snow.
Then my foot broke through the crust into a greasy, muddy ooze that shouldn’t exist in a such a hot dry place. God knows what’s leaked out of these machines into the ground but I hurriedly squelched out of there before it dissolved by army-issue boots.
It was actually a pretty depressing place. All this metal, all this wasted money on military machinery, now moldering away useless in a poisoned field on the edge of some remote base, while outside the whole place is rending itself to pieces so badly that not even the occupying army can do anything about it.
In that sense, the graffiti scribbled across these tanks, some of it dating back to 2004, (“John’s tank”, “Size does matter”, “I love you Sarah” or more worrisome “I love Sarah and Maggie”) was oddly joyful. You could almost imagine the soldiers going out to this field with a can of spray paint and a digital camera to create something to send a far distant wife or girlfriend.
I never realized how many soldiers seem to be married, but as moved around with various US army units in Baghdad and talked to men, it seemed everyone had a wife, far away, that they missed terribly.
Near the tank grave yard, I was living with the 172nd Stryker brigade – a unit known, ironically enough, for its massive armored vehicles. I wondered if their sleek, state of the art machines flinched just a bit, every day, as they drove by those rusting hulks.
After year of running around Mosul, doing their thing, this brigade had been extended four more months and sent down to Baghdad a week before they were to return to their home in Alaska (!) to help pacify the still turbulent capital city.
I tagged along on their missions through the city. Searching houses, confiscating weapons, talking to people – I could see why they had been kept here, instead of bringing in a brand new unit. They were relaxed with the Iraqis, took the odd thrown stone in their stride, no one was shouted at, put into flex cuffs or otherwise humiliated.
We were in a Shiite neighborhood, so people weren’t quite as over-the-moon to see them as in the Sunni neighborhoods. A number people said they though the police and army were doing a fine job – why were you still here?
One guy asked the American company commander if the US was holding back the Iraqi police and army so that they wouldn’t have to leave Iraq. Shiites especially these days are grumbling that the Americans will never go home.
The captain just looked at him, and then pulled a picture of a woman with an infant. “This is my 13th month here in Iraq, this is a picture of my wife and son, I haven’t seen them in a year. I get little video clips of my son and I don’t even recognize him anymore. Trust me when I say most of us just want to go.”
Listening to soldiers, you hear some say how they hate Iraq or Iraqis, but not all. Some really do believe in their ability to make a difference here, somehow make it better – otherwise how can they justify the last year of their lives spent here?
Bit na?ve, really.
The Americans are going through the capital block by block, searching the for weapons, promising protection, and the militias and the death squads just stay out of their way and wait for them to leave.
As I’m writing this back home in my room Baghdad, I’m turning up the volume of my music to drown out the gunfire coming from across the river in Fadel neighborhood, where last night at 3am explosions tore me from sleep.
Only weeks earlier, the Strykers had supposedly been through the neighborhood to make it safe. Yet people tell us that the mostly Sunni neighborhood is now subjected to nightly assaults from Shiite militia men in nearby Sadr City – a place the Strykers haven’t been to.
We contacted the US military after listening to several days of fighting. “Our initial reports don’t show anything out of the ordinary in the Fadel neighborhood,” they said.
But then one neighborhood massacring another has become rather ordinary in Baghad.
[tags]Iraq[/tags]
264 Bloody Hilarious
Completely overwhelmed with work these days, pissing my employers off by procrastinating and redesigning this blog twice in about as many weeks while deadlines sail by. No more. While I’m buried under work, have a look at this. I laughed. Lots.
262 Ten-Minute Review
- Always, Egypt first: The Sept. 12 Al-Misri al-Youm reports on Muslim Brotherhood MPs’ proposals for amending the Constitution. They suggest that presidents should only be allowed to serve for two five-year terms, that Parliament should have more oversight of ministerial appointments and the budget, and that the legislative branch should have other checks on the executive. Alas, Nahdat Misr reports that they also continue to complain about the film adaptation of The Yacoubian Building and to complain that the government’s decision to raise the age at which girls may marry from 16 to 18 runs contrary to Sharia law.
- Al-Ahram reports that Interior Minister Habib al-Adli told Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan that the Emergency Law would be lifted when the Anti-Terrorism Law was approved. No news there.
- Khan also visited the Arab League and told delegates that Arabs need to do more on Darfur.
- Elsewhere, at a summit in Cuba, members of the Non-Aligned Movement condemned terrorism and Israel’s actions in Lebanon. Participants also defended the movement’s relevance.
- British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for an end to sanctions against the Palestinian government. One of his Cabinet ministers told Parliament that the settlements are a barrier to peace. As-Safir reported that the World Bank has certified that Palestinian incomes are at their lowest levels in 25 years. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas promised to pay his employees in the beginning of Ramadan, that is, in a little more than 10 days. Hamas said it was open to talks with Israel and that it expected to form a unity government within days.
- Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, who led Israel’s northern command during the 34-day offensive, resigned. An IDF commander who fired cluster munitions said these attacks had been “crazy and monstrous.” A leftover cluster bomblet exploded and injured two people in Bazouriya, a small town near Tyre.
- The Lebanese army deployed to the eastern part of southern Lebanon. For the moment, Israel will maintain its control of Ghajar, a town that previously straddled the Lebanese-Israeli border.
- Human Rights Watch issued a report documenting abuse of migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees in Libya.
- Tunisia held a conference to discuss means of combatting illegal immigration (presumably to Europe, since you rarely see people scaling prison walls from the outside).
- Moroccan judicial officials postponed the trial of 56 people detained as terrorists to an unspecified date after the investigating judge failed to turn up to their hearing. His assistant said the judge was too tied-up with meetings to attend.
[tags]Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, cluster-bombs, Hamas[/tags]
261 The President’s New Clothes
The president looks very handsome and distinguished in this hat. Too bad he’s too proud and statesmanlike to out-Qaddafi Qaddafi and start wearing one of these around in public. I would be the first to applaud.
260 IDF Commander: Israeli Attacks ‘Crazy and Monstrous’
Meron Rapoport has an interesting article in Haaretz on the use of cluster munitions and phosphorous in the last days of the Lebanon war:
“In Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombs, what we did there was crazy and monstrous,” testifies a commander in the Israel Defense Forces’ MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) unit. Quoting his battalion commander, he said the IDF fired some 1,800 cluster rockets on Lebanon during the war and they contained over 1.2 million cluster bombs. The IDF also used cluster shells fired by 155 mm artillery cannons, so the number of cluster bombs fired on Lebanon is even higher. At the same time, soldiers in the artillery corps testified that the IDF used phosphorous shells, which many experts say is prohibited by international law. According to the claims, the overwhelming majority of the weapons mentioned were fired during the last ten days of the war.
More:
According to the commander, in order to compensate for the rockets’ imprecision, the order was to “flood” the area with them. “We have no option of striking an isolated target, and the commanders know this very well,” he said.
[tags]Israel, Cluster munitions, cluster bombs, Lebanon[/tags]
259 Al-Hayat Journalist Detained in Iraq
Easy to miss this amid the 60 new mutilated corpses in Baghdad and Saddam Hussein’s messy trial, but on Sept. 10, Iraqi security forces detained Khalshan al-Bayati, Al-Hayat‘s Iraq correspondent, from her house. Authorities also confiscated her car, which they said had been used in an insurgent attack.
RSF’s statement is here.
[tags]Iraq, Khalshan al-Bayati[/tags]
34 queries. 0.089 seconds. CMS: WordPress. Design: modified Hiperminimalist Theme.
RSS for posts and comments.
Valid XHTML and CSS.