Shlonkom Bakazay?

North-African Soldiers cooking their meal in a village in Oise, France, 1917
(Autochrome color picture by Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud)

This is one of the few real color photographs of the First World War: a group of Spahis, Algerian soldiers, who fought with the French on the European battlefields.

This is a fascinating look into this war in color. Click the pic for plenty more.

This is a re-post from earlier with some new additions to come The one that I am very happy about now is the Kathim link at the bottom.


I'm going to try to collate some articles about Iraqi artists. Come back to this post for more.

'Iraqi Drama in Crisis'
Art Imitates Iraqi Life in All Its Chaos and Misery
Leading Iraqi artist dies
Looted Iraqi Art Displayed Online
Kathem Al Sahar
Punk Rock in Iraq
Iraqi Elvis
AfroPop Worldwide Interview of Kazem
Iraqi Theatre Struggles for Normality
on Iraqi Cinema, 'baghdad blues'



some websites:

IraqiArt.com
Rahim Al Haj, Iraqi oud player's website
oriental tunes.com
belly dance museum Check out my favorite, Taheya Carioca!!!
songs of assyria
ilham al madfa3y's streaming music
on Old Iraqi music

LA MUSICA:

Kathim Al-Saher

A lot of music, by the beloved Kathim...both streaming and
download'able

Fairuz, while you drink your tea in the morning: She was something else (wink, wink) , Maah'shallah!

Some streaming Iraqi music...tons of artists! Sometimes the quality is sketchy, but well worth your time.

The interview is both entertaining, informative, short, and sweet.

Also, this is a humorous prelude to the research I'll be doing about Abu Ghraib and other situations that have to do with abuse and torture in Iraq. It will include other things, too, that I find pertinent when it comes to the collective amnesia settling amongst the American population. I don't expect millions of people to absorb whatever I end up coming up with, but at least it will be in the public domain.

From time to time, I'll scatter some comic relief amidst the depressing and missing details yet to be adumbrated to a degree that's sufficient for the unacceptable nature of these matters. I don't promise anything new, though I'm sure new things will be unearthed as time passes. I just promise to create a catalog or space on the web of items in a format that is more accessible to the average reader and web-surfer.

More on this later...I have a lot of catching up to do with real-world stuff and I'll be in touch with everybody I've emailed and heard from about this and other things soon. So, please, pardon the delay and thank you for the support and kindness. I look forward to any collaboration that might spring forth. :)

Liminal

Update: Other daily show interviews and clips of note...Ambassador Joe Wilson, Senator Joe Biden, Bush debating Bush, ...more later?

While I realize it's a personal thing (or not at all) to put an image, color, or pattern on one's desktop...every once and a while I'll put up what I've got on mine. I have no idea why I've decided to do this, but here's what's on mine at the moment. Any guesses where this is? More often than not, they'll be of picures (altered or not) that I have taken...like this one. Of course, I gave it a photshop halftone pattern with some wicked colors, but I'll supply you with the original if you're so interested.

Oh, I guess I've done it before with the abstract photos with the Kant excerpts. But I'll try to make it a habit now. :)

here, you decide who looked more like a parroting fool.

Let me be completely clear. Iraq will not be a better place with either Bush or Kerry. As far as foreign policy goes, they are almost carbon copies of one another. The matter is whether we're going to keep following the failed neo-conservative vision for the Middle/Near East or if we're going to try to take a bit more multilateral approach to the region and world.

Besides, getting that cold and calculating group of Neo-Cons out of Washington shall be to the benefit of all. And change is never negative when matters continue to be exacerbated by assymetrical policies in place that plunder the liberties and values that should be trademark of a free society.

In otherwords, lets nix the Orwellian coma.

Update: Ed Helms and John Corddry of The Daily Show give their analysis of the debate.

Update II: Juan Cole has some important remarks about the debate and Chalabi.

I plan on doing some serious digging about Abu Ghraib and the NO, no wmd situation...yes, history is upon us. And I'm going to grasp it now before it is erased.

All these wedge issues / distractions of bush's service in vietnam must be obliterated.

The first debate is today. And I want to hear something real come out of one of their mouths. So I'll hold myself to the same standard of focusing on what the hell has happened to this country and Iraq in the process of the past couple years. Abu Khaleel just mentions that it needs to be described before we ahve the solutions.

And I'm in full agreement of his methodology and logic. You must describe a problem before solving it.

But in the back of my mind, I'm afraid without any reconciliation for what tragic events that have unfolded, that we'll be running in place with any solution we could possibly come up with. (But more power to you AK)

I'm going to go on describing to Americans especially what has taken place. Because there seems to be an amazing attention deficit disorder or collective amnesia setting in here.

So...I'm going to do my part with the blog and with other ways to get people's memories jogged.

Pace,
lim.

Here TIS.

slashdot rocks the body

I expected a bit more of this from him, but finally he says something again. (via La Times, via Juan Cole)

Drawing a parallel between U.S. tactics in Iraq and Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, President Ghazi Ajil Yawer said the U.S. strikes were viewed by the Iraqi people as "collective punishment" against towns and neighborhoods.

Footage of injured and dead women and children being pulled from bombed buildings "brings to mind Gaza," Yawer said in an interview on CNN.

And is justice being delayed by the Bush admin.? Guess who explains it.

Wordsworth along with MF Doom are two of my favorite rappers. These two pack the illest rhymes on the planet. Now, Check out SlamBush.Net...a project that Wordsworth hailin' outta Brooklyn is taking part in. Here's his debate with bush. (low bw) There's a national rhyme contest and other cool things you should check out. Enjoy.

Get the vote out. It's the end of September and all my friends and colleagues doing the pre-election freak-out.

LOVE OER FEAR

The article first appeared on lewrockwell.com and is called "Why We Cannot Win"

Don't you love freedom of speech?

Here's a follow up article on lewrockwell.com written by Karen Kwiatkowski, a former USAF lieutenant colonel.

Al Lorentz is former state chairman of the Constitution Party of Texas and is a reservist currently serving with the US Army in Iraq.

Send him an email to support him! alorentz[at]truevine.net

Bush talking about "practicing love".

Ah, heck, he's just suring up the female vote. And you wonder how he really got ahead with women.

Last night, I was all a bluster and so very angry. Naomi Klein articulated at length with eloquence about many of the fears that have been both bottled and leaking (from I the bottle via blog and heated discussion) during the last several years. She writes in Harpers Magazine, Baghdad Year Zero

Iraq was to the neocons what Afghanistan was to the Taliban: the one place on Earth where they could force everyone to live by the most literal, unyielding interpretation of their sacred texts.

I needn't say more. Read the article. Read it especially if you want to know a few of the things that make me angry.

Extremism and religious zealotry of all kinds usually fit in the same tea cup.

...for the people of Italia
...for the people of Iraq
...for the people of Un Ponte Per Baghdad
...for all sentient beings of the world

What a news! The FOUR are FREE

Thank you to Un Ponte for the relentless care and updates you've offered on your website. This has made my month. Now lets hope for the safe release of all other hostages, too.


Forza Azzuri!
Update: clearer pictures, smiling faces upon their arrival back in Italy

Rumsfeld should be fired. I hear Cheney has made the calls to tell everybody to tough it out through the election and have nobody take any accountability. Unfortunately, this makes things on the ground much more difficult for American troops and the Iraqi people. The fact that there has been absolutely no accountability (i.e. bad appples does not count when the it is obviously a system problem.), leads to having more moderate and previously unwilling Iraqis to fight for HONOR. Yes, honor is a big deal to Iraqis in case you have not figured that out. I know it doesn't even have a currency in D.C. these days, but in Iraq...honor is arguably the most important meta-currency that exists. Death before dishonor, is the rule in much of Iraq. And right now the occupation has spilled copious amounts of dishonor, humiliation, and death upon the populace. No wonder, then, matters have gotten much worse lately. Oh but, that's just one of many many reasons. More reasons to hate the American presence are being created every day.

Check out this MoveON ad made a while ago...they hold my sentiments exactly. If there were some accountability, Iraqis would feel less dehumanized by the occupation. The days of no accountability, you see, reminds Iraqis of the days of Saddam. And that's no way to move Iraq toward a democracy or anything resembling a democracy.

In other words, practice what you preach.


See the .mov here. And the mp3, too.

The Democratic National Committee just grew up.

Ben Aris and Duncan Campbell report from the Guardian, How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

Imagine giving "aid and comfort" to Nazis.

And sure, it's not Dubya's fault. But is this sort of behavior genetic?
_

Check out Electoral Vote Predictor 2004. Dubya's sitting pretty. Amazing.

Kerry 241   Bush 273 30 Sep.

Update: For you election-watch junkies here's the ElectionStudio

Update II: Kerry 270   Bush 248 10 Oct.

House Hearing on Reconstruction and Security in Iraq (, the Appropriations Cmt.)


Dep. Sec. of State Richard Armitage
Testimony on Iraq Funding (09/24/2004)



Dick Armitage is in the 2nd position at the State Department.

For the record from wikipedia: "He is considered to be a conservative "neo con" (neo-conservative). He currently serves as Deputy Secretary of State. Armitage is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[1] He is one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, Project for the New American Century (PNAC) letter to President William Jefferson Clinton.[2] He is also a former board member for CACI, the private military contractor, which "is being investigated by no less than 5 US agencies for possible contract violations" and "employed four interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison" in Iraq, one of whom was singled out by General Taguba in his report on abuses of Iraqi detainees at the prison.[3]"


He was asked (52nd min),

How can you give us confidence... that this shifting of funds will really improve the situation in the short term?

He responds,

I think that the best I can say, the most accurate thing i can say is this: unlike the previous agreement with the CPA...is that [this] is work with a government, although not democratically elected, is pretty representative, pretty moderate...and if opinion polls in Iraq as I suggested in the closed hearing the other day, are to be believed, [they] are a pretty popular government...

Update:

If I'm not mistaken, I believe the opinion poll both Bush and Armitage are parroting to the press about is the June/July one. I'll try to double-check that, but I'm 95% sure that it is the same one.



Juan Cole says,

President George W. Bush cited a poll done in June and July to argue that Iraqis are more optimistic about their future than Americans are about theirs. First of all, even if this were true, it is not good news for Bush.

Second of all, that poll was done before the US assault on Najaf, and the significant deterioration of the security situation in August and September. Many Iraqis had at that time been willing to give Allawi a chance, hoping security would improve. I am sure those numbers would be much lower now.

Moreover, the same poll found that more than 80 percent of Iraqis want an Islamic Republic with Islamic canon law or shariah as the law of the land. So if they are optimistic, it is because they think they can achieve such a goal over US objections. Again, this is not actually good news for Bush.

I was even willing to give Allawi a chance in the beginning. I had to force myself to be a little optimistic, even though I always thought this sovereignty was a joke. He had little time to prove to the people he was doing something well. And that time ran out.

I'm seeing more and more interviews of Allawi on US tv. Namely, Jim Lehrer's of The News Hour.(<---txt) [& real audio] All of them seem like they have been scripted by Karl Rove. Seems like he got some talking-points at the very least. It's such an election stunt by Rove. Some people aren't buying it, though.

Old opinion polls don't justify what is happening now. It's amazing how this administration uses old data when it suits them, and invents new data from thin air when it suits them (WMD, Al Qaeda connection), and everybody continues to believe it. I don't get it. Are the masses in America really that vacuous?

You think I'd spare Kerry. No no...



Lessig notes that Lehman, according to the National Journal Tech Daily (23.9.04), is playing a "relatively minor role" on Kerry's Tech team and that he's not a part of his "core group" of advisors.

Then Lessig pontificates...

But whether core or fringe, why is he part of “tech” advisers at all? Lehman’s policies did more to encourage the war on technology that these past 8 years have seen than anyone else in DC. Let him serve on the “last century protectionists” committee. Indeed, make him the chair.


Lehman says he finds it “really sad — pretty sad” that I had criticized him on this blog. (No confirmation which.) And just to show how effective I’ve been in getting my point across, Lehman is quoted as saying: “[Lessig] seems to believe you can have a post-industrial economy without any copyrights.” Oh yes. That’s exactly what I believe. I’m also a Marxist, and commune regularly with Chairman Mao. With insight such as this, I can see why he’d be such a valuable member of the Kerry team.

I don't like Kerry more than I did yesterday.

But Boooosh is still worse. I hate being put in the position where I have to choose the 'lesser of two'...what a mentally idle situation. Being pushed into political complacency by a rotten system is cancerous on the soul.

Oh well...Pinch your nose, eat the shit, and deal with it on the way down. Who ever said it would taste good?

Ayad Allawi escapes from Iraq.

Watch this clip. You will not be disappointed.