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bank2

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About bank2

  • Birthday 04/02/1965

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    Spending time with family, soccer, and home projects. I guess work because that's what I spend 70 hoiurs a week doing. Arrrrg.

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  1. BAGHDAD (AP) — Baghdad's embattled residents can finally get their milkshakes, chili-cheese dogs and buckets of crispy fried chicken. Original recipe or extra spicy, of course. A wave of new American-style restaurants is spreading across the Iraqi capital, enticing customers hungry for alternatives to traditional offerings like lamb kebabs and fire-roasted carp. The fad is a sign that Iraqis, saddled with violence for years and still experiencing almost daily bombings and shootings, are prepared to move on and embrace ordinary pleasures — like stuffing their faces with pizza. Iraqi entrepreneurs and investors from nearby countries, not big multinational chains, are driving the food craze. They see Iraq as an untapped market of increasingly adventurous eaters where competition is low and the potential returns are high. "We're fed up with traditional food," said government employee Osama al-Ani as he munched on pizza at one of the packed new restaurants last week. "We want to try something different." Among the latest additions is a sit-down restaurant called Chili House. Its glossy menu touts Caesar salads and hot wing appetizers along with all-American entrees like three-way chili, Philly cheesesteaks and a nearly half-pound "Big Mouth Chizzila" burger. On a recent afternoon, uniformed servers navigated a two-story dining room bustling with extended families and groups of teenagers. Toddlers wandered around an indoor play area. The restaurant, located in the upscale neighborhood of Jadiriyah, is connected to Baghdad's only branch of Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken, a U.S. chain concentrated in a handful of Midwestern and Southern states. Azad al-Hadad, managing director of a company called Kurdistan Bridge that brought the restaurants to Iraq, said he and his fellow investors decided to open them because they couldn't find decent fried chicken and burgers in Iraq. He called the restaurants a safe investment for companies like his that are getting in early. He already has plans to open several more branches in the next six months. "Everybody likes to eat and dress up. This is something that brings people together," he explained. "People tell us: 'We feel like we're out of Baghdad. And that makes us feel satisfied.'" Baghdad's Green Zone and nearby U.S. military bases once sported outposts of big American chains, including Pizza Hut, Burger King and Subway, but they shut down as American troops left last year. Because they were hidden behind checkpoint-controlled fortifications, most ordinary Iraqis never had a chance to get close to them, anyway. Yum Brands Inc., owner of the Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC chains, has no plans to return to Iraq for now, spokesman Christopher Fuller said. Burger King declined to comment on its Iraq plans, and Subway did not respond. Dining out in Iraq is not without risk. Ice cream parlors, restaurants and cafes were among the targets of a brutal string of attacks that tore through Iraq on Aug. 16, leaving more than 90 people dead. Iraqis say the chance to relax in clean surroundings over a meal out is worth the gamble. For them, the restaurants are a symbol of progress. "This gives you a feeling the country's on the right track," said Wameed Fawzi, a chemical engineer enjoying Lee's fried chicken strips with his wife Samara. Baghdad's Mansour district is the heart of the fast-food scene. At the height of sectarian fighting in 2006 and 2007, it was tough to find shops open along the neighborhood's main drag. Militants targeted shop owners in a campaign to undermine government efforts to restore normality. These days, roads are packed with cars. The traditional Arabic restaurants long popular here now find themselves competing against foreign-sounding rivals such as Florida Fried Chicken, Mr. Potato, Pizza Boat and Burger Friends. There is even a blatant KFC knockoff called KFG, which owner Zaid Sadiq insists stands for Kentucky Family Group. He said he picked the name because he wanted something similar to the world-famous fried chicken chain. And he believes his chicken is just as good. "In the future my restaurant will be as famous as KFC. Why not?" he said. One of Mansour's newest additions is Burger Joint, a slick shop serving up respectable burgers and milkshakes to a soundtrack that includes Frank Sinatra. It is the creation of VQ Investment Group, a firm with operations in Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. Its Mansour store is outfitted with stylish stone walls and flat-screen televisions. Another branch just opened across town in the commercial district of Karradah. The group also runs the Iraq franchises of Pizza Pizza, a Turkish chain, and is planning to launch a new hot submarine sandwich brand called Subz. Mohammed Sahib, VQ's executive manager in Iraq, said business has been good so far. Even so, running a restaurant in Iraq is not without its challenges. Burger Joint's servers had to give up the iPads they originally used to take orders because the Internet kept cutting out, he said. Finding foreign ingredients such as Heinz ketchup and year-round supplies of lettuce is also tricky, and many customers need help understanding foreign menu items like milkshakes and cookies. Health experts are predictably not thrilled about the new arrivals. "The opening of these American-style restaurants ... will make Iraqis, especially children, fatter," said Dr. Sarmad Hamid, a physician at a Baghdad government hospital. But even he acknowledged that the new eateries aren't all bad. "People might benefit psychologically by sitting down in a quiet, clean and relatively fancy place with their families, away from the usual chaos in Iraqi cities," he said. Purveyors of traditional Iraqi specialties, who might be expected to oppose the foreign-looking imports, don't seem to mind at all. Ali Issa is the owner of fish restaurant al-Mahar, which specializes in masgouf, the famous Iraqi roasted carp dish. He said every country in the world has burger and fried chicken restaurants, so why shouldn't Iraq? Besides, he said, he and his family are fans of "Kentucky," the name Iraqis use for fried chicken, regardless of where it's made. "Sometimes we need Kentucky. Not just fish, fish, fish," he said. http://www.the-signa.../article/74093/
  2. How an American Disaster Paved the Way for Big Oil’s Rise -- and Possible Fall -- in Iraq Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com In 2011, after nearly nine years of war and occupation, U.S. troops finally left Iraq. In their place, Big Oil is now present in force and the country’s oil output, crippled for decades, is growing again. Iraq recently reclaimed the number two position in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), overtaking oil-sanctioned Iran. Now, there’s talk of a new world petroleum glut. So is this finally mission accomplished? Well, not exactly. In fact, any oil company victory in Iraq is likely to prove as temporary as George W. Bush’s triumph in 2003. The main reason is yet another of those stories the mainstream media didn’t quite find room for: the role of Iraqi civil society. But before telling that story, let’s look at what’s happening to Iraqi oil today, and how we got from the “no blood for oil” global protests of 2003 to the present moment. Here, as a start, is a little scorecard of what’s gone on in Iraq since Big Oil arrived two and a half years ago: corruption’s skyrocketed; two Western oil companies are being investigated for either giving or receiving bribes; the Iraqi government is paying oil companies a per-barrel fee according to wildly unrealistic production targets they’ve set, whether or not they deliver that number of barrels; contractors are heavily over-charging for drilling wells, which the companies don’t mind since the Iraqi government picks up the tab. Meanwhile, to protect the oil giants from dissent and protest, trade union offices have been raided, computers seized and equipment smashed, leaders arrested and prosecuted. And that’s just in the oil-rich southern part of the country. In Kurdistan in the north, the regional government awards contracts on land outside its jurisdiction, contracts which permit the government to transfer its stake in the oil projects -- up to 25% -- to private companies of its choice. Fuel is smuggled across the border to the tune of hundreds of tankers a day. In Kurdistan, at least the approach is deliberate: the two ruling families of the region, the Barzanis and Talabanis, know that they can do whatever they like, since their Peshmerga militia control the territory. In contrast, the Iraqi federal government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has little control over anything. As a result, in the rest of the country the oil industry operates, gold-rush-style, in an almost complete absence of oversight or regulation. Oil companies differ as to which of these two Iraqs they prefer to operate in. BP and Shell have opted to rush for black gold in the super-giant oilfields of southern Iraq. Exxon has hedged its bets by investing in both options. This summer, Chevron and the French oil company Total voted for the Kurdish approach, trading smaller oil fields for better terms and a bit more stability. Keep in mind that the incapacity of the Iraqi government is hardly limited to the oil business: stagnation hangs over its every institution. Iraqis still have an average of just five hours of electricity a day, which in 130-degree heat causes tempers to boil over regularly. The country’s two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, which watered the cradle of civilization 5,000 years ago, are drying up. This is largely due to the inability of the government to engage in effective regional diplomacy that would control upstream dam-building by Turkey. After elections in 2010, the country’s leading politicians couldn’t even agree on how to form a government until the Iraqi Supreme Court forced them to. This record of haplessness, along with rampant corruption, significant repression, and a revival of sectarianism can all be traced back to American decisions in the occupation years. Tragically, these persistent ills have manifested themselves in a recent spate of car-bombings and other bloody attacks. Washington’s Yen for Oil In the period before and around the invasion, the Bush administration barely mentioned Iraqi oil, describing it reverently only as that country’s “patrimony.” As for the reasons for war, the administration insisted that it had barely noticed Iraq had one-tenth of the world’s oil reserves. But my new book reveals documents I received, marked SECRET/NOFORN, that laid out for the first time pre-war oil plans hatched in the Pentagon by arch-neoconservative Douglas Feith’s Energy Infrastructure Planning Group (EIPG). In November 2002, four months before the invasion, that planning group came up with a novel idea: it proposed that any American occupation authority not repair war damage to the country’s oil infrastructure, as doing so “could discourage private sector involvement.” In other words, it suggested that the landscape should be cleared of Iraq’s homegrown oil industry to make room for Big Oil. When the administration worried that this might disrupt oil markets, EIPG came up with a new strategy under which initial repairs would be carried out by KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Long-term contracts with multinational companies, awarded by the U.S. occupation authority, would follow. International law notwithstanding, the EIPG documents noted cheerily that such an approach would put “long-term downward pressure on [the oil] price” and force “questions about Iraq’s future relations with OPEC.” At the same time, the Pentagon planning group recommended that Washington state that its policy was “not to prejudice Iraq’s future decisions regarding its oil development policies.” Here, in writing, was the approach adopted in the years to come by the Bush administration and the occupation authorities: lie to the public while secretly planning to hand Iraq over to Big Oil. There turned out, however, to be a small kink in the plan: the oil companies declined the American-awarded contracts, fearing that they would not stand up in international courts and so prove illegitimate. They wanted Iraq first to have an elected permanent government that would arrive at the same results. The question then became how to get the required results with the Iraqis nominally in charge. The answer: install a friendly government and destroy the Iraqi oil industry. In July 2003, the U.S. occupation established the Iraqi Governing Council, a quasi-governmental body led by friendly Iraqi exiles who had been out of the country for the previous few decades. They would be housed in an area of Baghdad isolated from the Iraqi population by concrete blast walls and machine gun towers, and dubbed the Green Zone. There, the politicians would feast, oblivious to and unconcerned with the suffering of the rest of the population. The first post-invasion Oil Minister was Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, a man who held the country’s homegrown oil expertise in open contempt. He quickly set about sacking the technicians and managers who had built the industry following nationalization in the 1970s and had kept it running through wars and sanctions. He replaced them with friends and fellow party members. One typical replacement was a former pizza chef. The resulting damage to the oil industry exceeded anything caused by missiles and tanks. As a result the country found itself -- as Washington had hoped -- dependent on the expertise of foreign companies. Meanwhile, not only did the Coalition Provisional authority (CPA) that oversaw the occupation lose $6.6 billion of Iraqi money, it effectively suggested corruption wasn't something to worry about. A December 2003 CPA policy document recommended that Iraq follow the lead of Azerbaijan, where the government had attracted oil multinationals despite an atmosphere of staggering corruption (“less attractive governance”) simply by offering highly profitable deals. Now, so many years later, the corruption is all-pervasive and the multinationals continue to operate without oversight, since the country’s ministry is run by the equivalent of pizza chefs. The first permanent government was formed under Prime Minister Maliki in May 2006. In the preceding months, the American and British governments made sure the candidates for prime minister knew what their first priority had to be: to pass a law legalizing the return of the foreign multinationals -- tossed out of the country in the 1970s -- to run the oil sector. The law was drafted within weeks, dutifully shown to U.S. officials within days, and to oil multinationals not long after. Members of the Iraqi parliament, however, had to wait seven months to see the text. How Temporary the Victory of Big Oil? The trouble was: getting it through that parliament proved far more difficult than Washington or its officials in Iraq had anticipated. In January 2007, an impatient President Bush announced a “surge” of 30,000 U.S. troops into the country, by then wracked by a bloody civil war. Compliant journalists accepted the story of a gamble by General David Petraeus to bring peace to warring Iraqis. In fact, those troops spearheaded a strategy with rather less altruistic objectives: first, broker a new political deal among U.S. allies, who were the most sectarian and corrupt of Iraq’s politicians (hence, with the irony characteristic of American foreign policy, regularly described as “moderates”); second, pressure them to deliver on political objectives set in Washington and known as “benchmarks” -- of which passing the oil law was the only one ever really talked about: in President Bush’s biweekly video conferences with Maliki, in almost daily meetings of the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, and in frequent visits by senior administration officials. On this issue, the Democrats, by then increasingly against the Iraq War but still pro-Big Oil, lent a helping hand to a Republican administration. Having failed to end the war, the newly Democrat-controlled Congress passed an appropriations bill that would cut off reconstruction funds to Iraq if the oil law weren’t passed. Generals warned that without an oil law Prime Minister Maliki would lose their support, which he knew well would mean losing his job. And to ramp up the pressure further, the U.S. set a deadline of September 2007 to pass the law or face the consequences. It was then that things started going really wrong for Bush and company. In December 2006, I was at a meeting where leaders of Iraq’s trade unions decided to fight the oil law. One of them summed up the general sentiment this way: “We do not need thieves to take us back to the middle ages.” So they began organizing. They printed pamphlets, held public meetings and conferences, staged protests, and watched support for their movement grow. Most Iraqis feel strongly that the country’s oil reserves belong in the public sector, to be developed to benefit them, not foreign energy companies. And so word spread fast -- and with it, popular anger. Iraq’s oil professionals and various civil society groups denounced the law. Preachers railed against it in Friday sermons. Demonstrations were held in Baghdad and elsewhere, and as Washington ratcheted up the pressure, members of the Iraqi parliament started to see political opportunity in aligning themselves with this ever more popular cause. Even some U.S. allies in Parliament confided in diplomats at the American embassy that it would be political suicide to vote for the law. By the September deadline, a majority of the parliament was against the law and -- a remarkable victory for the trade unions -- it was not passed. It’s still not passed today. Given the political capital the Bush administration had invested in the passage of the oil law, its failure offered Iraqis a glimpse of the limits of U.S. power, and from that moment on, Washington’s influence began to wane. Things changed again in 2009 when the Maliki government, eager for oil revenues, began awarding contracts to them even without an oil law in place. As a result, however, the victory of Big Oil is likely to be a temporary one: the present contracts are illegal, and so they will last only as long as there’s a government in Baghdad that supports them. This helps explain why the government's repression of trade unions increased once the contracts were signed. Now, Iraq is showing signs of a more general return to authoritarianism (as well as internecine violence and possibly renewed sectarian conflict). But there is another possibility for Iraq. Years before the Arab Spring, I saw what Iraqi civil society can achieve by organizing: it stopped the world’s superpower from reaching its main objective and steered Iraq onto a more positive course. Many times since 2003 Iraqis have moved their country in a more democratic direction: establishing trade unions in that year, building Shi'a-Sunni connections in 2004, promoting anti-sectarian politicians in 2007 and 2008, and voting for them in 2009. Sadly, each of these times Washington has pushed it back toward sectarianism, the atmosphere in which its allies thrive. While mainstream commentators now regularly blame the recent escalation of violence on the departure of U.S. troops, it would be more accurate to say that the real reason is they didn’t leave far sooner. Now, without its troops and bases, much of Washington’s political heft has vanished. Whether Iraq heads in the direction of dictatorship, sectarianism, or democracy remains to be seen, but if Iraqis again start to build a more democratic future, the U.S. will no longer be there to obstruct it. Meanwhile, if a new politics does emerge, Big Oil may discover that, in the end, it was mission unaccomplished. Greg Muttitt is the author of Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq (New Press), just published, and described by Naomi Klein as “nothing short of a secret history of the war.” Since 2003, he has worked with Iraqi trade unions campaigning against the privatization of Iraq’s oil, most of that time as co-director of the British charity Platform.
  3. Thanks all for your interest, may be sold and I will let you know tomorrow. I know it's a little low, but I have a few things that need to be taken care of and my mom still has 4million.
  4. I am hoping to do this locally if at all possible and will call you soon. Got your PM and number thanks M.S.
  5. Selling all my Dinar. Bought all within a 1 year period from Dinar Trade. Have certs and still in fed ex packages. Have 25K and 10k notes. Located in Los Angeles - Beverly Hills area.
  6. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/17/us-obama-iraq-kurds-idUSBRE83G18H20120417 WASHINGTON | Tue Apr 17, 2012 2:13pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, facing a damaging election-year problem if Iraq's political crisis worsens, has launched an urgent behind-the-scenes push to ease tensions between the Baghdad central government and the Kurds. Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurds' semi-autonomous regional government, paid a quiet visit to the White House on April 4 and left with backing for two long-standing requests that could help build the worried Kurds' confidence in U.S. support. Barzani's heated criticism last month of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has fanned concern the country could splinter, potentially setting off a fresh civil war. Reuters has learned that to demonstrate U.S. support, the White House and Congress agreed to lift a designation that treats Kurdistan's two main political parties as if they were terrorist groups, complicating members' travel to the United States. In addition, the U.S. consulate in Arbil will begin issuing U.S. visas before the end of 2012. Since withdrawing the last U.S. troops in December, Obama has, at least publicly, put little focus on Iraq, and critics view the latest gestures as not much more than damage control. But Obama still has a lot at stake in Iraq. If violence explodes, it could tarnish Obama's bragging rights with U.S. voters for concluding the unpopular war. And worsening relations between the Shi'ite-led central government and semi-autonomous Kurdistan could thwart White House efforts to lower gasoline prices. The Kurds halted oil exports to Baghdad on April 1, citing a payment dispute. CIVIL WAR Barzani last month delivered a sharp denunciation of Maliki's government and suggested he could seek a referendum of some kind on the Kurdish region's relations with Baghdad - although he stopped far short of breaking a taboo by making explicit reference to independence. Analysts say the probability of the Kurds declaring independence is low, although not zero. "If Kurds were to declare independence in the near term there is a very high likelihood that that would provoke a war with Baghdad," said Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst. The White House promises to the Kurdish president "constitute useful takeaways for Barzani but they are probably about the absolute minimum that he would have found acceptable," said Pollack, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. The goal of the Washington meetings in early April, both the White House and the Kurds said, was to re-commit to a relationship that both value. Obama dropped in on one of the meetings Vice President Joe Biden hosted for Barzani that day. Biden assured Barzani of U.S. backing for the Kurds, but he also cautioned that Washington could not pick sides between Kurdistan and Baghdad, a senior administration official said. "Neither relationship can come at the expense of the other relationship," the official said. "A red line for us is that all this must be done in a way that is consistent with the (Iraqi) constitution." ENERGY SECURITY Iraq boasts some of the world's largest oil reserves and could provide essential extra production capacity to help stabilize world oil markets, at a moment when gasoline prices are one of the most pressing issues for U.S. voters. And while foreign policy hasn't yet been a major factor in the U.S. presidential campaign, both parties are likely to sharpen their focus on it ahead of the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden's killing by U.S. commandos on May 2. Qubad Talabani, son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and the representative for the Kurdistan Regional Government in Washington, said the Kurdish delegation was happy with Biden's words of support to Barzani. "The reaffirmation of the commitment to Kurdistan and the Kurdish people went down very well," he said. "For us, we're naturally an insecure people, and given the history that we've had, we're expecting at some point or another to be let down again," he said. The Kurds, severely persecuted under late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, have become increasingly nervous since U.S. troops left. Indeed, the troop departure was followed almost immediately by a political crisis sparked by Maliki's demand for the arrest of a Sunni Muslim vice president, who fled to Kurdistan, where Barzani defied the prime minister by granting him shelter. SEE NO EVIL Critics of Obama's Iraq policy complain that the White House is primarily concerned on keeping a lid on events until after the November 6 U.S. election. "I think the administration is of the mind-set of 'see no evil, hear no evil' and it wants Iraq to be invisible for the political debate in the United States," said Ned Parker, a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. To encourage the Kurds to remain within Iraq's political process, the administration is bowing to their long-standing plea to amend the status of the main political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). Under the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, members of the groups are deemed to be engaged in terrorist activity. This is not as severe as being designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. But it means that members of these organizations must get a government exemption to visit or stay in the United States. An aide to Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said Lieberman was working on legislation to remove the designation. In addition, the U.S. decision to begin issuing visas from its consulate in Arbil from the end of 2012 will save Kurds who want to visit the United States the expense and hazard of journeying to Baghdad to get a visa or traveling to a U.S. consulate outside of Iraq. State Department spokesman Michael Lavallee confirmed this move, which had been long sought by the Kurds, but stressed in a statement that it was part of a broader effort to "work with the government of Iraq to continue to normalize our consular services throughout the country." OIL SAFETY VALVE U.S. officials also offered to help the Kurds in talks with Baghdad to resolve the oil payments dispute and get the exports flowing once again, the Kurds said. The amounts involved are modest - around 50,000 barrels per day from Kurdistan compared with Iraq's national output of some 2.6 million barrels, according to published 2011 estimates by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. But the dispute highlights the country's ongoing failure to agree to a national oil law, potentially dampening the willingness of big foreign oil firms to make the investments necessary to exploit these resources. The Kurds currently have no independent export route for their oil outside of the central government. "They have a lot of potential," said Ben Lando of the Iraq Oil Report. "There are substantial oil and gas reserves but there has not been a qualified number put on that and in many places exploration is still ongoing." (Editing By Warren Strobel and Eric Beech)
  7. He sure does to me, one ugly MOFO. Guess he is the King of clubs in the deck of wanted cards.
  8. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/08/fugitive-saddam-hussein-aide-video video posted online purports to show Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the highest-ranking member of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime still at large, lashing out against Iraq's Shia-led government. It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the video or determine when it was made. The man in the video, posted on a website linked to Saddam's now-outlawed Ba'ath party, was introduced as Douri and bore a striking resemblance to the former Saddam deputy. He noted that nine years had passed since the 2003 US-led invasion, suggesting the video was made recently. Wearing an olive military uniform and glasses, he criticised Iraq's Shia-dominated government, led by Nouri al-Maliki, and what he said was meddling by neighbouring Iran "Everyone can hear the sounds of danger echoing daily and threatening this country," he said during the hour-long address, adding that Maliki's Dawa party "has announced Iraq as the Shia capital, and called on all Arab leaders to surrender to this reality". Douri has been reported dead or captured more than once in the past. He has not been seen in public since the US-led invasion, though audio tapes purporting to be from him have been released. His whereabouts is not known. Douri is believed to have played a key role in financing Sunni insurgents seeking to undermine Iraq's post-Saddam government. He was the "king of clubs" in the deck of playing cards issued by the US to help troops identify the most-wanted members of Saddam's regime. Ali al-Moussawi, a media adviser for Maliki, said the tape was meant to "boost the morale of the terrorists". "Douri wants to spread terrorism and sectarian violence under the pretext of resistance," he said. "This will not affect the work of the government or the political process." Moussawi said Douri was still a wanted man, but that he doubted he was still in Iraq because he needed extensive medical care that would make it impossible to hide. Also on Saturday, a bomb hidden in a plastic bag blew up on a minibus, killing two passengers and wounding nine in Baghdad's commercial heart, Karrada, according to police and hospital officials. Deadly attacks have declined in Iraq in recent weeks, but dozens are still killed every month. March saw the lowest monthly toll for violent deaths since the 2003 US invasion.
  9. Funny, rocking to Pandora - Def Leppard radio now.
  10. BAGHDAD (AP) — The eerie quiet enveloping the road from the airport to the Saddam Hussein-era palace where Arab leaders will meet this week cannot conceal Baghdad's grim realities. Behind the freshly planted palm trees and lawns are concrete walls closing off nearby neighborhoods and troops in full combat gear deployed to prevent any attacks. For Arab leaders who seek military intervention in Syria, the Iraqi capital provides a cautionary tale, with violence and sectarian hatreds persisting nearly a decade after the U.S. invasion. Gulf Arab nations, particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have been pushing behind the scenes for more assertive action to end the year-old conflict in Syria. Privately, they see little benefit in the Arab League's efforts to reach a peaceful settlement and prefer instead to see a small core of nations pooling together to act on their own. Among the options they are considering are arming the rebels and creating a safe haven for the opposition alongside the Turkish-Syrian border to serve as a humanitarian sphere or staging ground for anti-regime forces. The summit, gathering the members of the 22-nation Arab League, is likely to take a less dramatic step, issuing a condemnation of civilian deaths in Syria's crackdown on the uprising and a call for President Bashar Assad to stop all violence and allow street protests. But Gulf nations apparently believe Assad won't abide by those demands and that, if he defies the League, they will have diplomatic cover to take stronger action. Their bullish approach has its roots in their hopes that by forcing Assad's fall they can pull Sunni-majority Syria out of its alliance with Iran and break the belt of Tehran's influence that stretches through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean. Like Iraq, Syria has its own dangerous sectarian divide, between the majority Sunnis who largely back the opposition, and the Alawite minority, a Shiite offshoot that dominates power. A Sunni-ruled Syria would give the U.S.-allied Gulf Arabs a significant victory in their long-running power struggle with non-Arab, mainly Shiite Iran. But that prospect worries Iraq, with its sectarian divides between a Shiite majority that now holds power and a Sunni minority that resents its sidelining. "A Sunni regime in Damascus will encourage Iraq's Sunni provinces to push for autonomy and maybe even secession," warned Iraqi political analayst Hassan Kamil. "That will in turn add more problems for Iraqi Shiites and draw more Iranian and Saudi interference in Iraq's affairs." Hosting an Arab summit that demands Assad stop violence places Iraq in a delicate position, because of the Baghdad government's close ties to Iran. The preliminary meetings began Tuesday, and the leaders arrive for their summit Thursday. On the other hand, hosting the summit gives its guests an opportunity to see first hand what foreign military intervention can do to a nation. The 14-mile (20-kilometer) stretch of road linking the airport to the city is about all the Arab leaders will see in Baghdad when they jet in for their one-day summit. It is where Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government spent a big chunk of the $500 million it has splashed on sprucing up the city for the occasion. The six neighborhoods alongside the road — al-Furat, al-Jihad, al-Amel, al-Amriyah, al-Qadissiyah and al-Yarmouk — remain walled off nearly five years after sectarian violence peaked in 2006-2007. They are majority Sunni areas, serving as strongholds for extremists who waged an insurgency against U.S. forces and their Shiite allies after the U.S.-led invasion. The neighborhoods bore the brunt of near continuous crackdowns by Iraqi security forces and attacks blamed on Shiite militiamen. That the walls remain in place to this day is testimony to the persistent security concerns as well as the distrust between the newly empowered Shiites and the once-powerful Sunni minority. The sectarian strife has eased since its near-civil war heights. But there is a constant fear another bout may not be far off, given occasional attacks targeting Shiites, flareups between politicians from the two sides and a growing desire among Sunni provinces to gain autonomy. "War breeds war," said Hassan Raheem al-Saadi, a 43-year-old owner of a cosmetics store in Baghdad's Karradah district. "We still fear going out on the streets and we are worried when we do that we may never return home," said al-Saadi, a Shiite father of two who insists he only offers credit to fellow Shiites and vows never to allow his sisters to marry Sunnis. Sunni militants continue to show muscle. Last week, they staged near simultaneous attacks on eight cities that killed 46 and wounded more than 200. They also feel confident enough to intimidate residents into paying protection money in some Sunni areas, like Mosul, Iraq's third largest city. The owner of an aluminum factory there says he pays up to $300 every month to armed militants. Failure to pay, he claims, can mean forced closure of his business or death. "It seems like we are living in a country run by the mafia," said the businessman, who refused to give his name because he feared reprisals. "We don't know who's running the country. Is it the government or al-Qaida?" In Baghdad, away from the airport and the summit venue on the west bank of the Tigris River, concrete barriers surround government buildings, hospitals and schools. Iraqi security forces continue to conduct door-to-door searches across most of the city. According to the U.N. refugee agency, more than 1.3 million Iraqis remain internally displaced until today, unable or unwilling to return to their areas of origin because of sectarian tensions. Services in this potentially oil-rich nation remain erratic at best, with most of the population relying on private power generators for electricty. Many neighborhoods have sewage running in open canals in the street and seeping into drinking water. Because of fears of violence, al-Maliki's government sets aside heavy resources — nearly $15.5 billion this year, around 15 percent of the entire budget — for security and defense. Iraq has been keen to host the summit in part to show the world it has emerged from its years of turmoil and to ease its way back to an Arab world that has been wary of its close ties with Iran. Still, Baghdad does not want to hurt its relationship with Iran, a major source of economic aid. "Again, al-Maliki is performing a balance act here: keeping economic support to Assad's regime while respecting Arab League resolutions on Syria," said political scientist Kadhum al-Muqdadi. http://news.yahoo.com/baghdads-scars-warning-arab-leaders-182439830.html > ___ Associated Press reporters Sinan Salaheddin and Sameer. N. Yacoub contributed to this report.
  11. I think it was scheduled for two days if it was necessary, but maybe all was addressed in one long day, plus now that Parliament is meeting tomorrow maybe he needs to be home incase anything comes up.
  12. Thank you for your very grounded insight and thoughts. At this point, I just hope they clean up their act and we all prosper in our lifetime.
  13. Thanks all, I think I will just cash in some of my CAD / AUD currency at this time so I can take care of some things at home.
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