Iraqi women drive again

Improved security situation in the capital, Baghdad, encourages Iraqi women drivers to take to the road again after being harassed by extremist insurgents who consider such action as "haram", or forbidden under Islam for women to drive Marwa Sabah reports for the Middle East Online.

Of course there is nothing in Islam that bans women from driving cars and it is only one of heir fantastic interpretations to Islam.

"They insulted me, and shouted at me never to drive a car again because it was 'haram'," Manal Hakim, a 38-year-old teacher recalled an experience she went through two years ago in western Baghdad which once was under control of Sunni extremists. "They said they'd kill me if I did it again. I was totally shocked," Hakim added.

But now, the mother-of-one is behind the wheel again with a smile on her face.

Sabah also makes available to us more interesting figures on how many cars in Baghdad and how many women are getting driving lessons in Baghdad, just read it.

kassakhoon@gmail.com

Bush on the silver screen

America's filmmaker Oliver Stone on Friday joined hundreds of thousands of Americans whose aim is to fix the image of America in others' eyes, a picture which is heavily affected by the outgoing President George W. Bush policies outside the United States borders.

At the Mideast premiere of his movie "W." in Dubai, Stone said the outgoing U.S. president is a man with "a giant ego" and "boneheaded arrogance," Barbara Surk writes for the Associated Press.

"I hope many people in the Middle East and in South East Asia see it and really understand how George Bush came to be and who he is, and understand the United States is not an enemy," Stone said at a press conference before the red-carpet gala showing of "W."

"He is not a nice man," Stone also said. "He's a man with a giant ego and boneheaded arrogance. I empathize with him, but I don't sympathize with him," he added.

I agree with you Stone, the United States is not an enemy, but at the same time you and other Americas have to excuse those who hate America and all Americans for the deep wounds and unbearable sufferings they have endured due to Bush's foolishness and some other U.S. officials.

It is your duty and the people like you to approach the world, especially the Middle East with such ideas to make them able to see and understand the other face of America and its people.

Wish your film all success and hope you can make it available to all Iraqis in Iraq although we don't have a big cinema to play it but I think there will be a solution for that.

kassakhoon@gmail.com

Behind-the-scenes players

An interested and must-read article by the Mother Jones' Anthony Fenton on how Retired Lt. General Jay M. Garner, Iraq's first post-war U.S. administrator and a small group of former U.S. military leaders, officials, and lobbyists are pouring fuel to the fire in disagreements between the central government and the Kurds.

They are using their deep connections in Kurdistan to help Canadian companies to have access to some of the region's richest oil fields by mediating oil deals between these companies and the Kurds to whome Garner was charged after the 1991 Gulf War to secure their region, a position which enabled him to develop good relaions with the Kurds.

Since 1991, Garner was frequently seen on TV flanked by the two Kurdish guerrilla leaders, Jalal Talabani and Masoud Barzani as he was wearing their traditional flowing cloths.

The Kurds' oil deals, at least 20, with western oil companies have been since last year one of handfull sticking issues between the Kurds and central government and the main obstacle in adpoting Iraq's long-awaited oil and gas law which is designed to govern Iraq's oil and gas resources and to regulate the foreign investment in this field.

kassakhoon@gmail.com

Iraq's oil reserves not for sell

A former Iraqi oil official and now an executive director of an energy studies center on Friday defended Iraq's first post-war oil bidding round as critics labeled it as selling of 40 percent of the country's 115-billion-barrel oil reserves to the international oil companies.

"Iraq has not put its oil reserves up for sale," Fadhil Chalabi, the executive director of the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies and Iraq's former Oil Ministry's undersecretary, wrote in the UK's Guardian newspaper.

"Our contracts with oil companies will simply allow us to restore production levels," Chalabi added in response to a news report published by the daily on October 13 when Iraq kicked off his first oil bidding in London.

In his article, Chalabi made it clear that inernational oil companies will not have a share in Iraq's reserves under the proposed service contracts and what duties to be assigned to these oil companies in these contracts.

As I said in a previous post, critics have no right to attack the Oil Ministry step and that they have to fully understand these deals before making any statement.

I hope we will hear more voices from such famous experts from now on.

kassakhoon@gmail.com

Congratulations Ratchet!!!

Is there still anyone in the world who deems U.S. troops in Iraq as occupiers or criminals who kill people with cold blood or at least as bad guys who crossed the oceans to invade a country and mess it up?

I don't think so.

Here is Kime Gamel of the Associated Press in Baghdad tells the world that these troops, who get their job done with the Iraqis after "liberating" them and bringing them a wonderful life, are now turning to Iraqi pets to help them and that they are here for these pets not for any other reasons!!!

Gamel did a story today on how a special relationship has been developed since May between an Iraqi street dog and a U.S. femal trooper after she and another soldier rescued the puppy from a burning pile of trash.

And despite the U.S. military rules that barring troops from caring for pets while in this country, Army Spc. Gwen Beberg, 28, of Minneapolis insisted to keep the dog.Today, he was collected by a "private security firm from the small base, put him into a pet carrier and transported him to the airport on Baghdad's western outskirts," and then he was boarded on a charter, which will also stop in Amsterdam and Washington, D.C., en route to Ratchet's new home.

Lucky you Mr. Ratchet.

You will be another pet unlike your fiends in Iraq; pets and human beings.You will walk on paved streets and greenish parks. You will have electricity 24 hours.You will eat special pets canned food and get safe drinking water.You will not dig in the garbages any more.You will take shower with special shampoos.

And the most important thing is that you will feel the security and will never hear the shit of our politicians.

But I'm afraid that this lavish life will let you yearn to your past days in Iraq like the other dog who decided once to leave Iraq when he fed up the living but returned few months later and when one of his friends asked him why he returned, he answered: "I fed up mate, no one treated me as a dog.Only in Iraq I can realize that I'm a dog."

We all do as well !!!

Congratulations Mr. Ratchet !!!

kassakhoon@gmail.com

No budget surplus in 2009

Iraq is unlikly to witness a budget surplus this year and the next as oil prices are sliding, a lawmaker and a government spokesman told The Associated Press.

Abbas al-Bayati, a senior lawmaker of the United Iraqi Alliance, the largest Shiite bloc in parliament expected Friday the government to cut its budget next year by $15 billion because of falling oil prices.It was planned to stand at US$79 billion.

Al-Bayati's statement came two days after the spokesman of the Iraqi Finance Ministry, Adnan Abdul-Rahman also told The AP that his Ministry will reconsider a new average price per barrel of oil instead of the previously US$80.

But whatever the budget and the surplus will be, I'm confident that Iraqis' sufferings will not be eased and their needs will not met.

This government and its officials especially senior ones have approved that they are incapable to run this country properly by making use of its resources to put it on the track and get it out of its turmoil.

And this was clear when its Electricity Minister last month said that he would hire a British consultancy company to advice his Ministry how to implement projects !!!

And not only this. He also stated in a press conference that Iraqis should count two years from now when they will see improvement the electricity, throwing behind his back his first two years in office during which he was boasting his ambitious plans to get electricity back to normal.

This is only one of the example for the government's failure in spending this money and of course there are more and more....

kassakhoon@gmail.com

Bad luck or mismanagment?

As Iraqi Oil Minister, Hussein al-Shahristani declared last Monday his country's first oil bidding round to develop six oil fields and two gas fields, accusations of selling off more than one third of Iraq's 115-billion-barrel proven reserves to international oil companies were immediately made.

Until now, according to what was released by al-Shahristani and the Ministry's director-general of Licenses and Contracts Directorate_Natik al-Bayati_ there is no evidence that Iraq gives these companies the upper hand or offers them any production-sharing contracts, a model of contracts which is favored by oil giants.

In short, Iraq will pay them flat fee for their service under a proposed service contract.

So in light of what the two officials declared to media, I think no one has the right yet to make such accusations unless he has solid evidences and has to present them.

I don't know whether it was al-Shahristani's bad luck or mismanagement behind such accusations.

The day he kicked off the bidding round when he met with the representatives of the pre-qualified companies in London and then did a press a conference to declare Iraq's conditions was a busy day for mainstream media outlets with the approval of the bailout plan and that this issue didn't take the enough space to be explained and analyzed accurately.

Or it was the Minister's bad management as his Ministry still doesn't have an effective and clear media policy to deal accuratly with the local and international media outlets to make available their plans' details to protect him from such accusations.

For instance; few days ahead of Monday's meeting, the Ministery issued a briefed statement, saying that the Minister was heading to London too meet companies representatives.

And only today, which is Wednesday, another briefed statement was issued about the same meeting, saying that the Minister met with these companies without any details about the conditions and contract form.

Conclusion.

-I advise those who want to criticize and make their points in linking the war with oil, an idea I agree with, to have a look on all the details and then issue their statements. I urge them to read the best two coverage for Monday's meeting: the first one was for Ruba Husari of Internationl Oil Daily and Raphael G. Satter of the Associated Press. Both were in London.

-I advise Iraqi Oil Minister to make available to all media outlets, whether local or international inside or outside Iraq, all the details about these plans and update them from time to time whether by press conferences or round table meetings or detailed statements otherwise he and then the government will face a lot of such accusations as he did few months ago when Iraq was negotiating Technical Service Contracts with majors.

kassakhoon@gmail.com

The U.S. heroes

To anyone who hails the U.S. forces in Iraq as "liberators" for Iraqis or as "defenders" for their country, "the great and civilized United States of America," here is the New York Times' Paul Von Zielbauer in today's edition addresses them:

"In March or April 2007, three noncommissioned United States Army officers, including a first sergeant, a platoon sergeant and a senior medic, killed four Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots to the head as the men stood handcuffed and blindfolded beside a Baghdad canal," Zielbauer starts his article by citing a sworn statements made by two of the involved soldiers.

"After removing the blindfolds and handcuffs, the three soldiers shoved the four bodies into the canal, rejoined other members of their unit waiting in nearby vehicles and drove back to their combat outpost in southwest Baghdad," the article continues.

The bravest among the three was First Sgt. John E. Hatley, who the other soldiers said killed two of the detainees with pistol shots to the back of their heads....wow you are such a brave man Mr. Hatly!!!

Now how many dead bodies like those were found dumped in the streets, garbage and canals in past years and reported by the U.S. forces as victims for the tit-for-tat killings between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite extremists while their stories were different???

Long live America, long live its brave army !!!!

Thanks Zeilbauer!

kassakhoon@gmail.com

Off to America...

The Christian Science Monitor's Stacy Teicher Khadaroo offers today a very nice piece about 15 Iraqi students on their way to the United States to join class of 2012 at colleges and universities that have waived tuition to help them become Iraq's future architects, teachers, psychologists.

With the help of the Iraqi Student Project, which was born of two American peace activists' desire to give something back to Iraqis in the wake of violence triggered by the US invasion in 2003, the students have resurrected their ambitions after shelving their dreams as they have forced to leave to Syria due to violence.

It is really something nice to find such Americans trying to fix what their country's army and policy have done to this country and its people and hope all Americans try to do the same.

One of these students, Ali Abdul Majeed, who is packing up for Fairfield University in Connecticut hopes to eventually to return to Iraq to treat children.

Well Majeed I wish you the best in your study but hope to honor your promise and go back to Iraq to treat its children not like other students who promised such things but they didn't make it to Iraq...but yet no one can blame them...

kassakhoon@gmail.com

Oil negotiations rported stalled

Negotiations between Iraqi Oil Ministry and oil majors over Technical Support Agreements, TSAs, have been stalled and one of these has been terminated, the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswire reported.


Hassan Hafidh of the Dow Jones Newswire reports that negotiations with an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. -led consortium for a short-term oil service contract to develop a major oil field in southern Iraq, have been terminated by the Iraqi Oil Ministry.

While Gina Chon of the Wall Street Journal says negotiations are going through hard path and are not likely to go through.

Haffidh also reported that Iraq has hired the U.K.-based Gaffney, Cline & Associates Ltd. to provide consultancy for the Oil Ministry on the first round of tenders to develop eight oil and gas fields.

"The company provides consultancy on contract models, how to submit tenders, which company should bid for this or that oil or gas field, and other suggestions," a sourace told Dow Jones Newswires.

The sources for these stories are Iraqi oil industry sources close to the Oil Ministry ( a reference which is mainly used to refer to former Iraqi oil officials) and a U.S. diplomat in Baghdad and I don't know why Iraqi Oil Ministry keeps mum on these negotiations as long as it is doing something correct...

kassakhoon@gmail.com

Resettlement Fever

A resettlement fever has spread recently in Iraq among Iraqis with U.S. affiliations as all of them are now eligible to apply directly from Baghdad to be refugees in the U.S. with less restrictions and they need only a recommendation letter from their employer and few other documents.

What a generosity from uncle Sam!!!

Early June, the American Embassy in Baghdad met with bureau managers of the U.S.-based companies who work in Iraq and have Iraqi employees, especially the media outlets, to tell them about the new resettlement program.

Some of these managers didn't tell their employers about this program, fearing their offices will be empty, while others did. And of course, like any city in world news spread quickly to reach those who don't know.

Now the majority of the Iraqi employers are applying for this program whatever they are from drivers to guards to cooks and senior employers while others are still reluctant including me as I fear to end up as a taxi driver or worker at a fuel station or vendor at a store...but still mulling it.

This fever is really frightenning some American companies especially those who depend a lot on Iraqis and that has forced some of these managers to spread rumors in their offices that the one who applies for this program will be eligible to be dismissed when they find an alternative for him because his company will no longer count on him....do you believe that???

I have the names of these companies but didn't publish them...

kassakhoon@gmail.com