IraqiGeek's Blog

Osteomoronosis

The other evening, out of my frustration with most of the people who would go through heaps to reach a forum or chatroom only to ask some really stupid question, I wanted to come up with something that described their cases. After a few minutes, and a few Google queries, I found a new disease that fit the illness those people suffered from.

So, without further ado, I give the world:

Osteomoronosis: a chronic disease in which stupidity has deeply infiltrated the patient’s body down to the bone.

OR

Osteomoronosis: a chronic disease where the bone marrow of the patient degenerates into idiotic matter.

Patients suffering from this disease are susceptible to a high mortality rate due to the stupid actions they usually commit.

End of an era

Watching TV this morning, I saw both the footage broad casted on Al-Iraqeya TV of the final preparations before Saddam’s execution, and later, the footage shot with a camera phone showing Saddam dead after his execution. As an Iraqi, it really felt like an end of era in the history of Iraq, and in human history in general. I don’t think history has seen as many men as Saddam was. Even Hitler, with all his atrocities, had a dream, a vision, for his country. All Saddam had was a hallucination that he could build an empire where the people praised and worshiped him like a god.

Despite all the things he had done, I still didn’t want him to be executed. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for capital punishment, but in this case, I don’t think this was the proper course of action. I think he should have been imprisoned for the reminder of his life. For someone like Saddam who has a greatness complex, living imprisoned where everyone has the power to control his activities would have been much worse. He was so full of himself, and so used to being on the top and having everyone obey whatever he said that keeping him imprisoned would have been like torture. By executing him, I think the Iraqi government did him a huge favor.

Anyway, his execution marks the last chapter in the history of a regime that will be forever known for destroying what once was one of the most civilized and most developed countries in the region.

Discovery is back!

Discovery has just landed on Kennedy Space Center (KSC) after a successful 13-days mission to the International Space Station (ISS). This was the first mission I followed closely thanks to the availability of NASA TV online. Following the mission on NASA TV, I saw some awsome scenery of the earth, and some breath taking sunrises, sunsets, and even a storm system.

Like many fans of the space programme, I was a bit worried about Discovery not being able to land in time due to their limited Oxygen supplies. But thankfully, they made it on the first day, and at KSC, the home base of the space shuttle programme.

Finally, some commonsense

I was just watching on CNN the US senate arms committee confirmation hearings for Robert Gates. For the first time in a long while, there was someone who actually sounded like a person who lived on this planet! He actually acknowledged that what his government has been doing in Iraq has not been working. As a bold guy from Texas likes to say, “you can’t fix what you don’t acknowledge!”

I guess only time will tell, supposing Bob Gates is confirmed as secretary of defense, if he will finally be able to do something to resolve the situation in Iraq. But from what I’ve seen and heard from the man today, I am hopeful. He seemed to be a realistic person. He actually looked and sounded like an official who knew what he was talking about when talking about Iraq!

It was quite a relieve to hear someone who didn’t sound like an alien who lived on a planet in another galaxy when spoke about the situation in Iraq.

I honestly hope, if confirmed, that Mr. Gates leads a successful career in his position as secretary of defense for hos own sake, and for the sake of my own country.

My babies are back

Ever since leaving Iraq, there aren’t that many joys left in my life, and one of the main joys I have left here is listening to music.

Don’t get me wrong, I thank God every day for not being in all that mess going on in Iraq now. Still, a heaven without people is no heaven at all (which is a translation of the Iraqi saying “Janna bala awadem matinrad”).

Being a geek, and to some extent an audiophile, good enough audio quality doesn’t cut it for me. Listening to quality audio means I MUST have a sophisticated setup that tries to push the physical limits of reproducing a digital audio signal, but I also have to do that without breaking the bank.

So, a little over two years ago I set myself a budget of $200 (about 150 euros), and spent a couple of months researching and evaluationg my options, and settled on a setup that mainlycomprised of:
• a Creative Sound Blaster Extigy USB sound card to do the actual signal decoding and provide a wide array of digital and analogue signal inputs and outputs,

• and a set of TEAC PowerMax 2000 active 5.1 acoustic speaker system.

To keep my signal clean, and not have half a dozen cables running between my sound card and speakers set, I decided to linkthe two by a fiber optic cable

The sound card was bought refurbished from ebay, and the speakers set was bought on sale brand new from an electronics shop here in Portugal. This setup ended costing me about $180 (~140 euros), which was less than the maximum I set for myself. And if you think about it, it’s not a substantial amount of money if you consider the quality of the audio I am getting, as well as the comprehensible array of inputs I get from this setup. I have available optical and coaxial 5.1 digital surround inputs and outputs, MIDI input and output, mono and stereo mic inputs, stereo headphone output, analogue 5.1 line output, and three selectable sources of 5.1 surround sound input, most of those inputs and outputs have gold plated connectors.

This setup has been serving me very well for about two years, until a little over two months ago, when all of a sudden, my speakers set decided to stop accepting signal from both the optical and coaxial digital inputs it has.

Understandably, I was quite upset by this unfortunate event. My first impulse was to act as a responsible EU resident and comply with the EU regulations which state that every consumer product purchased in the euro zone is covered by at least two years of warranty even if the warranty card included with the product states a shorter warranty term. So, I took my precious babies to the electronics shop where I had purchased them from. Initially, it took the technicians they have at the shop three weeks to reach my same conclusion, that the speakers didn’t accept any sound signal through their digital inputs. However, me and the shop manager disagreed about how to proceed next. They thought that my babies were out of warranty. I, naturally, disagreed, and thought they are still covered by warranty in compliance with the EU regulations. It took another week for them to reach my same conclusion, then three weeks to repair the speakers, then another week to find the speakers remote control which was “lost” the speakers were being repaired.

Today, almost two months after I took the speakers back to the shop where I bought them from, today finally I got my babies back, and now I can go back to enjoying listening to music.

Abd Al-Haleem Hafiz vs. Um Kalthoom

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Arab clulture, Abd Al-Haleem and Um Kalthoom are without any argument the two greatest male and female, respectively, arab singers the world has ever seen.

Personally, I listen to Abd Al-Haleem much more than Um Kalthoom. Its not that I like him more than I like her. Its that each of them is a different experience to listen to, conveying a different array of emotions.

Listening to Um Kalthoom is a very serious matter, like sitting in an opera house listening to Mozart’s 40th symphony being played by an orchestra of more than 100 instrument players. Every part of your body goes numb except your ears, which are trying to keep up with all the instrument sounds, and your brain, which is trying to soak in all that range of emotions. Its a very enjoyable experience, yet one you don’t want to go through often, and when you do, it will be with a very serious expression on your face.

Abd Al-Haleem, on the other hand, is a whole different affair. To me, listening to Abd Al-Haleem is like cruising through a valley in a convertible roadster with the top down, surrounded by grapevines on a sunny spring afternoon. It stimulates all your senses. Excites every cell in your body. Its something you go through with an ear to ear smile on your face. Grin like you have found the reason behind life itself.

I think this is why you hear the audience in Um Kalthoom’s concerts suddenly shout “3athama 3ala 3athama” (which translates literally to “greatness upon greatness”), while in Abd Al-Haleem’s concerts you hear them say “mnil 2awal tani” (which is a request to start again from the beginning). The first is great, but the second you can’t get enough of.

Then and Now

I was just watching on CNN a rerun of CNN Presents: Combat Hospital. This documentary is about an ER in the green zone in what used to be Ibin Al-Nafees hospital in Baghdad. The documentary shows a glimpse on how many people are injured or killed each day in Iraq due to roadside bombs and assassinations.

Watching this show reminded me of when my own uncle was injured and lost sight in both eyes as a result of those injuries back in 2004 in a skirmish between a US patrol near his house and some terrorists. It also reminded me of a close friend of mine who lost both his father and uncle this summer, in a car bomb that detonated in front of the small shop they both owned.

Just writing the last paragraph reminds me of over a dozen people I knew who died in some sort of explosion or shot dead by some terrorists.

———-

All this made me think, which is worse, the days under Saddam’s regime, or these days where hundreds of people are dying every day at random.

On the one side, Saddam and his regime were responsible for killing some two million Iraqis over the years (and that is excluding the close to one million who died in the 8 years long war with Iran). It’s almost impossible to actually grasp of how many people died under his regime until you visit those areas of the country that were affected the most. I had the chance to work with the media for a while back in 2004. In one occasion, we went to cover the arrival of the Japanese forces in the southern Iraqi city of Simawa. It was there that I really got to feel how horrible days must have been for those people. It was very hard to find a home or shop where people didn’t have one or more pictures hanged on the wall with a black ribbon on its upper right corner. Those are pictures of members of their families who were killed by the regime.

Three places there really stuck in my mind. One is a mechanic shop where the owner lost two of his brothers, both students in high school. I asked him what happened, and he told me they went out with a few hindered other high school students in a protest against the regime back in 1979. They were arrested by the security forces during the protest, and that was it. The family never heard of them again until 1982 when they were informed that their sons were dead, and prohibited from arranging any funeral ceremonies for them. The father died soon after from a heart attack. The second place was a small grocery shop up the street from the house we lived in while in the small city. Again, the brother of the owner of this small shop lost a brother, who was an engineering student in the University of Diwaneyah. This time, the fellow was “suspected of having ties with malicious parties”. Again, their brother never returned, nor did the family hear anything about what happened to him. The third place was the house we lived in while in the city. The house was rented to us almost empty, but there were some family pictures here and there in a couple of the rooms. When we rented the house, the family whom we dealt with always referred to the house as their cousins. Naturally, after we found the pictures, we asked the cousins about what happened to the owner and his family. We knew from a previous conversation that he was a civil engineer and that his wife worked at the city municipality, so I thought they must have left the country. It turns out that the entire family (including their two kids that looked to be 5 years old at most in those pics we found) was arrested again on “suspicion of having ties with malicious parties” and no one heard anything of them until the fall of the regime in 2003, where their relatives were able to find some papers that stated they died sometime in the mid-80s.

———-

While millions of people died under Saddam’s regime, in terms of security, the country was quite safe. Sure, robberies weren’t that uncommon, especially car robberies. But one could go out well after midnight in his/her car almost anywhere in the country without fearing for their lives. Especially during summer, the streets of Baghdad were never empty, and many cafes and restaurants would be open until sunrise. Back then, the only thing that would stop people from going to work and students from attending classes during week days apart from a holiday would be heavy rain during winter which would cause small floods in some areas of Baghdad.

———-

After the fall of Saddam’s regime in 2003 I, like millions of other Iraqis, felt this was the dawn of a new day. Before the war, the future was very dim, at best, for most of the country’s youth. I was a still studying to get my masters at the time, but before the war, there was really very little I could do to earn a living out of my degree. Leaving the country was not an option at the time because everyone who held a science, engineering, medical, or any post graduate degree was banned from travel. In fact, we couldn’t have passports issued in our names, heck we even couldn’t get graduation papers without a decree from the minister of higher education.

So, naturally we felt that finally things were going to improve for the hundreds of thousands who graduate from university every year. Financially, things did improve. The difference between then and now is like night and day, but at what cost?

———-

Today, from the over a dozen of professors and assistant professors who taught me when I was in university, only two are still in the country. All the others have left. Baghdad University, the largest university in Iraq, and where about 50,000 students attend their classes every day has only 15% of its faculty left. The average class at Baghdad University was about 45 students. Divide that by the number of students who attend the university there has to be at least 1100 professors, assistant professors, and lecturers in order to cover all those classes at any given day. This means that there are over 900 academics that left the country from Baghdad University alone.

I hear a lot of US officials stating in the media that the Iraqi government needs to step up. I ask, how can a government step up in anything when almost all the brains in the country have either fled to elsewhere, or died on the hand of a terrorist or some road side bomb while on their way to work???

A wise guy once said “peace is constructed, not fought for.”

———-

Not to brag, but I had ALOT of friends in high school, and then in university, and I can think of only a small bunch of those who are still in the country. Almost everyone else I know, and almost everyone each of my friends knows has left the country.

No amount of money can rebuild a country if there are none of its sons there to do the rebuilding.

Then again, can anyone blame them for leaving?

When you see so many people dying around you every day, there aren’t that many options to choose from. Keep in mind that there are over 150,000 (that is 50 Iraqis killed for every American killed in Iraq) people who died due to violence since the war according to the most recent estimate by the Iraqi government, and I tend to believe that estimate from what I have seen and heard so far.

———-

And don’t even get me started about the kidnappings…

———-

I am always asked about whether the situation in Iraq was better before the war, or whether things are better now?

I don’t know, you tell me…

On board the USS Enterprise

Today, I had the chance to visit the legendary nuclear aircraft carrier the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). As if that wasn’t enough, we had the luck to go to the Enterprise on board the carrier’s captain boat!!!

Needless to say, it was a blast. A once in a lifetime experience.

Once on the flight deck, we had the freedom to go around and take pictures of anything and everything on the deck. I took plenty of pictures of my favorite aircraft, the Lokheed S-3 Viking. I also got to take plenty of pics for F/A-18 Super Hornets, the smaller F/A-18 Hornets, upgraded Grumman E-2C Hawkeyes (all of which are of the Group III/NP2000 variant, identified by its scimitar 8-blade props), the beautiful Grumman EA-6B Prowler, and the Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk (the Navy version of the Blackhawk). In total, there are 66 aircrafts onboard the Enterprise (as noted by its captain and several officers onboard the ship).

The entire album of the pics I took on board the USS Enterprise can be viewed at http://iraqigeek.com/images/ and click on the USS Enterprise album on the left panel.

UPDATE: The captain told us there were 66 aircrafts in total on board the ship. However, I was able to count 62 aircraft only. I was able to count 43 (8 in the hanger deck and 35 in the flight deck) F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets (mostly Hornets), six (6) S-3B Vikings, 4 E-2C Hawkeyes (all are Group-III upgraded planes), four (4) EA-6B Prowlers, and five (5) SH-60 Seahawks.

EDIT: Due to the actions of a retarded, sick person who is so full of his own crap, I had to remove a picture of myself, my sister and Captin Lawrence Rice, the captain of the USS Enterprise. A picture I was quite proud of.

Qana Massacre

NOTE: I wrote this post on July 30, a few days after the second Qana Massacre in Lebanon, but didn’t publish it on the site.

In the past, I have made it a point not to post about political issues on the main page of my blog. This was the main reason why I created the forums section. Well, its my blog, so I might as well change and/or break the rules whenever I feel ike it.

So, I have been trying to keep my mouth shut for the past 19 days in regards to the Israeli-Lebanon/Hizbullah, but things have reached a point where I cant just keep quiet anymore.

Yesterday, the Israeli “self defence” forces “mistakenly” bombed the village of Qana in southern lebanon killing 54 civilians, including 37 children and there are still dozens of bodies still burried under the rubble. This morning, we had Israeli officials appearing all over the place calling this “an unfortunate accident” which really makes you wonder, how many “unfortunate accidents” have to happen before anyone with a semifunctional brain starts to call them by their real names, “war crimes”???

How many times during the past 19 days the so called “defense forces” have bomabrded facilities that had no relation what so ever to Hizbullah? We had a Red Cross humanitarian convoy, carrying Red Cross markings, that carried medical supplies hit by an air strike on its way to Beirut. We had dozens of civilan cars and mini-busses full of innocent people fleeing the south of Lebanon hit by Israeli missiles fired from Israeli jet fighters, all while the IDF was calling on civilians to flee the south of Lebanon. We had the two Red Cross ambulance cars, again carrying Red Cross markings, hit by a missile from an Israeli fighter. Just a few days ago, we had the UN watch post in southern lebanon that was there in the same location for two decades, if not more, and had clear UN markings, which recieved 10 hours of artillery shells before being grounded and its UN peace keepers killed, all while the “defense forces” were assuring the UN secretary general that the shells would stop falling instantly, and that those shells already fired were fired at the post by mistake. And yesterday, we had another massacre in Qana, the same village where Israel killed over 100 civilians who were taking refuge in a UN shelter back in 1996.

It was amusing, in a very sad way, to watch the Israeli spokeswoman on CNN this morning talking about how the IDF was “surgically pinpointing hizbullah’s positions” in southern Lebanon using high precision guided bombs and then calling the Qana massacre an “unfortunate incident”. The spokeswoman went as far as saying that Hizbullah was responsible for this “incident” because it used the Qana region to lunch missiles on Israel. This really makes me wonder whether it was just another “unfortunate incident” or whether its a deliberate policy to flattern the entire area where IDF suspects Hizbullah activity?

Just last week, the Israeli government was bragging about how accurate their attaacks where, and how they had 3D models of the entire southern Lebanon including virtually every building that existed there. The IDF was bragging in the media on a daily basis by distributing videos taken by Israeli spy drones and fighters showing the accuracy of those attacks, and how they only targetted Hizbullah’s bases and missile launchers. Almost 24 hours after the Qana attack, the entire world is still waiting for a video that shows any rocket launchers near the residential building in Qana that was bombed yesterday, despite the insistance by the Israeli ambassador to the UN today that hizbullah was firing rocekts into Israel from an area nearby that building.

Another statement that the Israeli UN ambassador kept repeating today was that hizbullah was hiding rockets in the homes of civilian Lebanese people despite the fact that no one was able to find any evidence that would support such a claim, not the hundereds Red Cross members in Lebanon, nor the hundereds of members of the press and media who are currently in Lebanon and touring each and every site bombed by the Israeli military.

Its also very iteresting for me to watch how the US is blindly standing behind Israel in this conflict and turning a blind eye to the hundereds of civilians that are dying in Lebanon. I was just watching the CBS evening news, and there was one comment about the current conflict between Israel and hizbullah that really caught my eye. The CBS commentator (I didn’t pay attention to who was reading the news broadcast as I was checking my email) said that the number of people killed today in the Qana shelter bombing exceeds the number of both Israeli civilians and military killed since the starting of the current conflict.

I wonder how many people in the US who were watching tis broadcast took any note of this comment? And how many people will have to die until this nonsense stops???

EDIT: The conflict has stopped since I wrote this post. While the Israeli government was bragging in the first days after the cease fire about their triumph in this conflict, the few following days revealed the total opposite on the ground. On the last day of this latest conflict, over 300 rockets were fired by hizbullah on Israel, the largest number of rockets ever fired by Hizbullah in a single day. And if this isn’t enough to convince you that hizbullah gained a hell lot on the ground after this latest conflict, just take a look at what are they doing now in Lebanon, while the entire “international community” is sitting doing almost nothing, or drawning whatever is that they want to do in tons of bureaucratic work. Its true that the US has pledged $250M to aid in reconstruucting Lebanon, but it will be weeks, if not months until this money reaches the average Lebanese whose house was brought to the ground by an American made, fired by an Israeli F16 which was again made in the US-of-A, Laser guided precision bomb. All this while hizbullah is literally giving away tens of thousands of US dollars to those same victims so they could repair their homes (if there was any repairable thing left) or buying the rubbles of their homes for whatever is they were worth back when those homes were new.

Yeah, this was a huge success for Israel, because now everyone in Lebanon hates hizbullah for paying them back for whatever they lost due to the “precision strikes” carried the Israeli “Defense Forces”.

Am-freakin-azing….