I'll be away for few days, so there will be no blogging but I just wanted to say happy New Year to the good readers of this blog and to all good people everywhere.

Help!

The pictures and news about Tsunami earthquake are just horrific. The numbers of the victims that keep rising terribly every minute, watching people die in masses on TV just like that, and the children…It's so sad and crushing.I started saying to myself that this shouldn't happen, not this way! I read somewhere on the Internet some one saying that if such a disaster had happened in America, the death toll wouldn't have been more than 5 or 6. Such statement is far from being reasonable but it does bear a lot of truth in that the numbers would've been much less, not only in America but in any advanced country. The rescue procedures, the degree of government's activities to help and contain the damages, the experience in dealing with such tragedies, the health care and lots of other parameters are hugely less in most of those unfortunate areas than in the advanced world.What made me feel worse is that I can't from my place here do anything to help. I can't even donate through the Internet. We keep asking the world to help us in Iraq and our sufferings have indeed made some of us more selfish and demanding, but on the other hands many of us have come to feel for the others around the world and their sufferings more than before. All I can do is urge you, the visitors of this blog to donate to these poor victims with whatever you can spare if you haven't already. You can donate here . It's needless to say that every penny you donate will definitely help in rescuing a human soul.Update: Here's a link to the Thai Red Cross where your donations would go faster to those in need.

Sheep and frozen Chickens were handed out by US soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, in the Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Sadr City, 26 December 2004, in Baghdad. A gift of some 28 sheep and frozen chickens were handed out to the residents of this poor neighborhood.I must add that Saddam never did something like that (people were charged slightly less than the market's prices for very occasional 'gifts' like this one) and he was the Iraqi president, the "freedom fighters" never helped 'their' people in anway like this which makes one wonders why the "occupiers" are doing this!? Hmmm, I know why! It's part of a very subtle conspiracy and the Jooooz must be behind it!

A bridge of love.

I was watching al Arabiya yesterday and they showed a report about the American families that came with supplies they gathered to help civilians of Fallujah. It was very refreshing and heart warming even for guys like me who have firm belief in the American people's good will. To see families who had their son's, daughters and beloved ones killed in 9/11 and even in Iraq cross all this distance and take all this risk to help Iraqis left me speechless.One of my friends came to visit me today and he mentioned this to me too. This guy is what one can call "average Iraqi" he was happy to see Americans here in the beginning but gradually his feelings changed to the opposite. I assume that the main reason to such change is the difficult situation and the way it's conducted through the media, as most Iraqis had the false impression before the war that America was going to rebuild Iraq on her own and that all they need to do is go on with their lives. The former Iraqi resistant groups abroad hold a share of the responsibility for such a belief and the American administration did not do much to correct this misunderstanding in the beginning of the war. Also the return of the Ba'athists and their destructive efforts in their unholy alliance with the Islamic militants played an important role. American troops started to act more cautiously and aggressively as a result of the attacks and the good and promising contact that was established soon after the war between Iraqis and Americans started to shake until it became almost impossible for an Iraqi to talk to an American, and vise versa.There's a lot of distrust and fear among Iraqis and Americans in Iraq (this holds true only in the centre of Iraq, as the situation in the north and south is much better than here) and what these families have done come in a very critical stage and bares a great significance and I just wish it gets more exposure than what it's getting now. I wish you could see the look on my friend's face as he was telling me about how surprised and impressed with the efforts of these great people. These guys have built a strong bridge of compassion and love even though they are the ones who paid the most through this struggle, and I hope there will be more bridges from both sides to help restore the trust and love that means so much for the future of the whole world. God bless you and God bless your beloved ones' souls.

Some answers.

This post is a response to some questions by readers of this blog. I want to thank you for your comments and I hope I can provide you and future readers with answers that help you know more about, not just me but the situation in Iraq as a whole.Tony asked me to say more about myself and bookbug asked me to specify what I meant by "Liberal Iraqi".First, thank you both and thanks for your complement, bookbug about my English. I wouldn't say it's excellent, but I'm trying to improve my English everyday and I'm glad you found it easy to understand.As my profile says, I'm an Iraqi man born in Baghdad and have lived here since that time. I only traveled 3 times in my life; once to Italy and Yugoslavia back in the 80s and once recently to Jordan. Traveling was prohibited especially for government employees since the Iraq-Iran war, and now I can travel again to any country that accepts to give a VISA to Iraqis. Anyway, I lived in Baghdad until I graduated from "Baghdad college" high school for boys, which is considered to be the best in Iraq and that's part of why I have rather an acceptable command of English. I went to college in Basra and finished it in Baghdad, spent 2 years as a government employee, left my job because I didn't want to serve in the military and remained a fugitive for 4 years until I gave hope and joined the mandatory military service just to be able to finish my higher studies. I got married recently and I'm happy with my life.Now back to liberalism in Iraq, I want to say that it's a common knowledge that compared to the west, Iraq is a very conservative society, so being a liberal in Iraq caries a very different meaning than being a liberal anywhere in the west or more advanced countries. This does not mean that I'm against liberals anywhere, as on the contrary I find myself more close to them than conservatives, and I do have many friends on both sides as well as other centrists and independent people. I'm only against their view of OIF and the WoT in general. This is one of the few points where I do agree with the conservatives. I know that some conservatives have their own selfish motives behind their support for democracy in Iraq, but I believe that the majority of them just want Iraq to succeed and also want to have a friendly democratic government in the ME instead of a brutal mad dictatorship that has ties with terrorist organizations allover the world.Back to Iraq and the main topic of this post, I and many freedom-loving Iraqis see traditions whether Islamic or tribal in origin as the main obstacle towards our march for a free democratic Iraq. You can count Arab nationalism as another obstacle in this field. We, those who call ourselves liberal Iraqis, are totally against such traditions and rotten ideologies. We see ourselves as part of humanity and that's all. Some people in Iraq accuse us of being too liberal to the degree where we lack a real identity. This is not true, as we have one and it's called humanity.So there's no sophisticated ideology that I endorse, I just support freedom of press, freedom of expression, women's freedom, separation of "Church from the state", freedom of religion and limited control by the government over economy. I do, however support strongly international aggressive interference in countries' internal policies to save others from oppression and humiliation.In Iraq, we longed for a revolution to save us from what we suffered at Saddam's days. We made feeble attempts, but some Iraqis in the south and the north sacrificed and risked much more for the sake of our freedom, and the end was horrific. After that we almost went into total despair, and then the Americans came and our joy was beyond description. Still we do need a revolution, a revolution on the level of minds which without it, all the help we are getting from others and all the sacrifices that were given for Iraq to be free from tyranny, all these would be in vain. I still enjoy my freedom tremendously despite all the problems and dangers, and I have full trust in my people but I'm not ashamed of saying that we still need your help.

Diplomacy wins!

At last the two French journalists have been released by their kidnapers. See, these terrorists (errr..freedom fighters) are not dangerous at all! They don't kill you if you don't mess up with them and if you support their just cause. They only kidnap you, hold you for few months and "treat you well" and then release you. That's not bad, is it? I dare say it's even a good reason to celebrate.I don't know why this whole thing reminds me of what happened in 1991 when Saddam held entire American and European families as "guests of Iraq" and then after long and hard negotiations, he released them. This is the key; NEGOTIATE you idiots! Even if there was no reason for those fighters to hold any hostage, as in the end and if you behave and prove that you're not American, British, Australian, Dutch or Italian and have not dealt with any American company and never visited America and that you're against the war and you hate Israel and support the resistance and have not, and will not say anything that criticize it or that might give any credit to America...you would most likely (and with the right people addressed by your government on negotiating) get released after few months! The French government must be very proud now, and so are the terrorists.Rejoice France, you've been rewarded by the terrorists for your refusal to oppose (dare I say support?) those who murder our children everyday.

Electricity.

The electricity situation in Baghdad has improved lately although still not back to what it used to be 2 months ago when we had about 18-20 hours of electricity per day. Since that time and as a result of the continuous sabotage the power supply deteriorated day by day till we reached a state where we used to have less than 2 hours of electricity per day, and we never even knew when during the day would that be!

However, for the past few days the power supply has been gradually improving, and now we have 12 hours of electricity per day and it has been regular for the past two days.
Many people here don't understand why this outage keeps happening although the complains are less than before, as compared to the troubles that ensue in summer from the long electricity outage, the current situation does not represent a big problem.

I've heard a lot of people blaming the minister of electricity for this poor performance of his ministry. I personally don't agree with this, as the infrastructure in Iraq is terribly fragile as a result of the wars and Saddam's deliberate neglect for the people's needs. Still, this minister is an a***ole and people have the right to say such things about him, as in an interview on Iraqiya TV he mentioned that the terrorists can win easily in this sector and can destroy our efforts simply by bringing down one or two of the high voltage towers that transmit electrical power from Beji to Baghdad! As even though he's right, but as a leader he should not say such things in public and at such critical times when people need to see some optimism not defeatism. He was like saying to the terrorists, "Hey, we're so easy, so why don't you focus a little bit more and I guarantee you that you will destroy us!"

This is not the only jack a** we have in power as there are many of them and although Allawi has proven more than once his commitment and optimism in a democratic Iraq, his choice of men is certainly far from good. Of course there are so many parties and powers that had an effect in distributing authorities other than Allawi, and that's why I think that most Iraqis won't vote for the existing 'major' political parties in the future. This may not be so evident in the 1st election but I have no doubt that with the ones that will follow these parties will lose a lot of ground for the small more democratic and liberal parties.

First post.

Hi everyone,
This is my first post. My name is Ali and I'm an Iraqi living in Baghdad. And yes I'm a liberal as my blog title says, but I must stress that I'm a liberal Iraqi and not just liberal, a term which has different meanings depending on where you live and compared to your surrounding ideologies.
I intend through this blog to talk about the rising democracy in Iraq and I hope I can provide others around the world with a view of how life is going on in Iraq from where I see it. I do not and will not pretend that I represent the majority of Iraqis, but I'll try to convey as objectively as I can what Iraqis think and how they feel about the changes and the hardships in Iraq. Different perspectives will be wellcomed on this blog, but any offensive language towards other readers (I believe this blog would be read by some sooner or later) and any racist remarks will cause the person who post it to be banned.
I hope those who will read this blog would find it useful and please if anyone has any question, don't hesitate to send them.
I'll be updating the blog soon.
Best regards,
Ali.