this post is written by raed, my brother in jordan.

One of the last international NGOs, CARE, stopped their work in Iraq after their director was kidnapped yesterday. I used to see her all the time in the NGOs meetings in Baghdad.
Poor woman.

I have much to say about international NGOs and their work in Iraq, about their projects and their expenses, and about their international staff inside the country. But I prefer to postpone this some weeks until this kidnapping thing ends, peacefully as I hope.

With the withdrawal of most of the foreign humanitarian organizations from Iraq, and the incapability of the Iraqi “government” of funding itself much less funding local groups or organizations, the humanitarian crisis in Iraq is getting more serious.

Meanwhile, the U.S. army is planning to attack something around 20 cities and towns that are not under the control of the occupation authority.

“The Jarrars” (i.e. me and my family), decided to start a small individual humanitarian campaign for a month (maybe we’ll extend it) for buying basic things like some medical stuff, food, blankets, and other necessities and send them directly to hospitals in the most affected cities and towns. We will try our best to work under the supervision of one of the few functioning NGOs in Iraq (e.g. Occupation Watch, or others) to give more transparency to this small campaign, but over all the working plan is as follows:
*Money will be donated through PAYPAL to my account, (Jarrar_raed@hotmail.com), {its (jarrar_raed) in case you cant see the underscore}, and will be reported on my blog frequently.
*My brother Majid will collect the money from Victoria in Canada and wire it to me in Jordan through my bank account.
*I will buy everything from Jordan if we dont find it in Iraq, and publish the receipts on my blog.
*Then I will send things to my family in Baghdad, where they will send it in turn to hospitals depending on the priority and accessibility of the towns and cities.
*We will get official papers from the hospitals to insure they received the certain amount of supplements; we will publish them on our blogs too.
*We’ll publish a financial break down at the end of the month (end of Nov.)

You can send money from your credit cards too; even small amounts of money can do much in Iraq.

Today I received the first donation from a person in Japan called Tomoko. He sent 10,000 JPY.

Now you can use paypal to donate...
we will use raed's email account: jarrar_raed@hotmail.com (in case you cant see it, its jarrar_raed)
i want to remind you:
every $5 makes a defference..really.
khalid*

This is an apportunity to everyone who doesnt agree with the military operation against civilians in Falluja, families still live now in farms, open fields and mosques to hide from the heavy bombing on their houses and streets, the hospital is in a terrible situation, i asked you all for help, and some of you offered to send medicince, but it takes alot of time to ship it to iraq, and at the same time it costs alot to ship it to here, so i asked raed, my brother to let us use his bank account o receive donations, i will keep receipts for everythign i spend.
i ask you all to help with what you can, we need expensive medical equipment, but t the same time, every $5 buys alot of cottons and antibiotics and suf like that, every $1 makes a defference, if everyone sent just $5 we will have alot of money by the end of the day.

Raed Azzam Kamel Jarrar
the housing bank for trade and finance
account number: 001 578228 0210
swift code: HBHOJOAXXXX
Amman, Jordan

Raed and I will personally supervise the way this money is spent.
khalid jarrar*

Hi!
I hope that you all are fine, and that your day was good this far.
Ramadan started, I love this month, teaches you patience, self control and discipline, and you loose weight, and best of all, its a booster for your faith, a lot of quran, a lot of praying, in Ramadan you can smell religion in air, everything looks so pure and peaceful, all people try to be nicer to each other...Besides the regular 5 prayers a day, we have an extra long prayer, lasts for about an hour everyday, it refreshes your soul, and fills your heart with peace and serenity.
peace and serenity?
GOD knows how much we need them...
few days ago, a bit before 5 am, a land mine exploded few meters away from our house...
the explosion was so strong, 10 windows fall in our house, and dad broke number 11 while he was trying to fix the aluminum frame of the window, which used to be rectangular, but its a dome now.
my bed is right in front of the window, and my head is in the window side, my head is about one foot away from the window, which fell immediately after the explosion, the curtain and the enforcement we made for the window earlier saved me, probably saved my life, thank GOD.
the sound of the explosion lasted for at least two or three seconds after I woke up, each second was, believe me, as long as a whole minute, during the first second I tried to keep my body as flat as possible to avoid the glass shrapnel, and at the same time I was praying just to survive till the next second only, when I made it to the next second I was relieved, I was hoping to make it to the next second and started to think where the rest of the family is, as soon as it was over I jumped off the bed and ran out of the room, me mom and dad met there at the same time, when I found that they are safe I went back to sleep at once, it was obvious that its a close explosion, and that we are all safe, what else is there to discuss? I went back to sleep.
as soon as I reached my bed, dad called us, come come see what happened!!
we ran towards him...
we found that most of the windows were broken, and since the explosion was so close, we didn't only receive the air/sound pressure, but also all the sand in area, inside our house, it was a mess.
three doors are damaged, one of them is a metal door, it was twisted, and I can barely close it now.
my neighbor next door was sleeping on the roof, the poor guy chose the wrong day, he is safe, but he says that a tank passed by the mine when it exploded, and eye witnesses said that at least three soldiers were killed, of course since no media were there, the accident wasn't mentioned by the American side.
I went out next day in the morning, I saw everything, and I found a helmet of an American soldier on the ground, covered with blood, and punched from one of the sides, his name is written on it.
I stood there watching it.
I felt sad for him, and I thought that somewhere 1000 miles away, one wife become a widow, one child became and orphan, a girl friend, a best friend, so many people, lost a beloved one, and they don't even know about it.
next moment I remember that he is one of the occupation army, the army that is still killing my people everyday.
but then I couldn't think of anything but the blood, its the same I have in my body, he is a human just like me.
then I started to blame him, for coming to Iraq, for joining the army, and tried to hold him responsibility for what happened to him...
but then I thought: he probably doesn't want to be here as much as I don't want him to be here, if he found a better job, another way to get a scholarship, another way to get a green card, whatever, he would have not come for sure:(
Bush, grrrrrrrrr..
I was so angry.
I took pictures for everything.
yesterday we sent someone to Falluja, to see how the situation is there.
he is from Falluja originally, and he goes there often, but this Time when he went he came back depressed, although he is in his twenties or early thirties, he had a drop in blood pressure and went to the hospital.
he said that he never saw the city like that, "its a ghosts city" he said, families, women and children left the city and they are hiding in the open fields because they are too afraid to get back to their houses...
there isn't a single shop opened, men are preparing their weapons and ammo to defend their city, everyone in Falluja says the same thing: we invite the goverment, anyone, to come make a full search to see if this Zarqawi exists.
the city is surrounded from all sides, and its being bombed from all sides, beside the air crafts.
13 mosques have been set to the ground in Falluja and Ramadi, the most famous restaurant in Falluja, Hajji Hussein, who makes the best Kabab in the country, was set to the ground too, people make jokes and say that Azzarqawi must have been having lunch there, some laugh for that, but I cry.
its one of the ugliest mass murder cases that happened, in Falluja, and will happen again soon, and you will read about it, and the whole world will read about it, and no one will do anything about it, cause you all believe that Big foot, Santa or Azzarqawi is hiding somewhere isnt hat small city, and you all are ready to sacrifice the lives of women and children, of a whole city, to see if that is right or not.
there will be one day when the American administration will understand that violence only makes more violence, and that people will never stay in their house waiting to be killed, they prefer to die fighting, they are gonna die anyway right?
my friend who I sent to Falluja went to the hospital of Falluja, and found a unspeakable situation, the hospital is run by volunteers, they lack medicine and instruments, dead bodies are crowded to the point they don't know what to do with it, injured people numbers are way over the hospital capacity, and the few ambulance cars they had, most of them were attacked by the occupation forces and destroyed, my friend told me that in the hospital they have to clean the ground every now and then to allow people to walk through the blood.
the following are medical equipments urgently needed, this list is from a doctor in the hospital, they used to have some of these equipment and machines but they were in the ambulance cars, and were distroyed with them.
I urge everyone of you to make all you can to provide us with any medical equipments, and specially these in the list, I cant read them all, I cant understand them all, but I will write what I understand till I ask a doctor to read the rest for me:
they need:

4 D.C shock machines
4 cautery machines
as much as possible of : tracheostomy tubes
air way tubes
endotracheal tubes
I will check with a doctor as soon as possible, and correct the mistakes, and add the items I couldn't read, you know how doctors write inscriptions, no one can read them.
please...Help.
Khalid

Hi!
I used to watch A LOT of movies, that's how I learned English.
in these movies I saw humanitarian stories, social issues, beautiful pictures from nature, and a lot of comedy, which is all nice and cool, but what really annoys me is the that most of movies, show countries and cultures other than USA, as less educated people and less important cultures (less important? i am trying not to use terms like Barbaric, premitive): labels, you can see labels everywhere...
whenever there is a Russian man, he MUST be either a terrorist or an ignorant.
watch "the red corner" and see how it shows China.
watch that movie that I cant remember its name and see how it shows Thailand, these two American girls going in a vacation to Thailand and the police found drugs in their bag (its not for them, some guy they met used them to get it through the borders) and puts them in jail, the rest is another version of the Red Corner.
watch "talented Mr reply" and see how it shows Italians, they sure didn't forget to add remarks like: I will call the states, if I could find a phone working. And small remarks like that.
when there is an Arab, he is either a terrorist or rich man from gulf surrounded with girls...If they want to show Arabs, they show them in the dessert with a camel and a tint!! ( I saw few camels in my life, and I see the desert only when I go to Jordan, the high way goes through the desert)...
I don't know...Just notice next time when you see a movie about other countries, it just puts labels on EVERYONE, its sad.
other than that, I saw this movie few time before, its an old one, which I also don't remember its name O_0 (sorry terrible memory), in that movie, the devil himself, in a body of a women, comes to this clumsy guy and offers him seven wishes, in return of his soul...
well, two things I want to talk about here:
the first is the girl ( the devil ) : awww myyy GGODDD...She is incredibly, unbelievably, enormously, beautiful, I mean...I am sure that none of those who watched the movie understood a word of anything that was said while the camera is on her, OOOHHH MMMYYYY GODDD...I want to make a whole blog just to describe how beautiful she is, and that British accent she has, I mean....I meannn....If I was blind I would marry her the first time I hear her talking, aww myyyy God, I am so in love:))))
wake up khalid wake up, ok ok I am so sorry I cant get rid of my shallow manly roots, excuse me for that:)
lets get back to our subject:
its about tough choices: Seven wishes (which can bring you all what you want in this life, and much more) or your soul? (as she puts it: what is it anyway, you cant smell it or see it!).
its mean isn't it?
wait, let me explain, imagine that this guy is standing on the edge and about to fall from the top of a mountain, just the moment he lost his balance and was about to fall, a wizard appears from nowhere, freezes time and offers the man to give him a hand, if he promised to give him his soul, that would be mean don't you think? taking advantage of the man's volunorabale situation?
please be patient with me for a moment.
what if this wizard helped the guy, without freezing time, and AFTER helping him, and while the guy was about to say "thank you" and walk away, the wizard said: sorry I saved your life, you must give me your soul, its not an option, I saved you and I think I have all the right to take your soul!!
wouldn't that be just the meanest?
this is exactly what happened in Iraq!
The American adminstration invaded Iraq, without freezing the time to ask Iraqis whether they want to be "liberated" or not, they did it anyway, and after they "saved" us and took Saddam off the power, we were about to say "thank you! see you around" when they said" sorry we saved you we have every right to occupy you, so just act like you don't see us, we will build just six military bases, leave 140 000 soldiers, and leave right away! And don't you dare make us troubles you ungrateful terrorist baathists, we liberated you!!!"
aw, did I forget to mention that about 13 000 civilians died in the process?
khalid*

Hi!
doesn't the logic of pre emptive strikes create the perfect justification for Binladin's attack on the WTC?
guys wait wait.
you got me all wrooong!!
what I meant is that, the whole idea of pre emptive strikes is so stupid and un understandable to the point that, if you want to say that it justifies the war on Iraq, a country that is an enemy that was attacked with no evidences on is involvement with ANY attach against the states, if we are going to accept that the war on Iraq is justified, then we will have to accept that Binladin, who I totally don't agree with, totally don't support, actually did the same thing, he attacked an enemy, But at least he was attacking the actual country that was responsible for the things that were pissing him off. what I meant to say is that both of these two assumptions are at the same level of stupidity and ignorance.
Stupidity and ignorance? Well.........no. To quote comedian Dana Carvey (Saturday Nite Live) " I only want to know one thing, what is all our oil doing under their sand?" Arrogance and greed.....yes.

Hi! I missed you all, I have been away for sometime, because the phone lines aren't working, internet doesn't work, mobile network didn't work too for sometime and now its working again but it sucks, so I have to go out to an internet cafe to check my mail every couple of days, today in my way to the cafe, I noticed that the line on the gas station is long to the point that, I swear god, I couldn't see the end of it although I was standing on a point few meters higher than the cars, it was a long line, kilometers of cars. electricity is cutting again, we had only like 10 days where electricity almost wasn't cutting at all, it was like heaven (although now I am having doubts whether they have 24 hours of electricity in heaven or not, I mean I cant picture how is it gona be with 24-7 electricity) but now we are back to it, its not that bad thought, we are spending almost 8 hours without electricity, why only 8 hours? Cause the weather is not that hot, so people use less air condetioning than they used to, which means less power consuming and more electricity hours. let me tell you a story! :) yesterday (or was it the day before?) I went out to the market, just 100 meters away from our place, to bring tomato paste, cause it was lunch our but we are out of tomato paste and mom needs tomato paste to make lunch, now usually I call the market and they deliver it to me, but now, with no phone lines working, I had to move my lazy ass and go get it myself, when I reached the market I found that it was closed:( so I turned back with my tail between my legs, disappointed and hungry, aw I forgot to tell you that I had no money too, cause usually we don't pay the market when we buy immediately, we pay him every ten days or two weeks, anyways, so I was disappointed, hungry and with no money (could it be any worst?), that's when I saw.....a taxi! And I solved the problem at once! I stopped the taxi. lazy, money-less and hungry me: Assalamo alaykom poor taxi driver: alaykom assalam! ( I was like: hohoho you don't know what I am hiding for you) lazy, money-less and hungry me: I need you to take me to any supermarket, give me money to buy something and then take me back home where I will give you your money:D poor taxi driver: sure man! so I jumped in, and we went to the nearest market, he gave me all the money in his pocket, which was hardly enough to buy my tomato paste, and then he waited for me till I bought it and got back to him and took me back home:D :)) isn't that nice? end of story one. story number two: at 12am, power came so I went out to turn off the generator, with my giant torch light in one hand, and my gun in the other one. I was about to get back in when I noticed a car stopping in the middle of the street right in front of the house, like 20 meters away, but even with power on it was very dark out there cause the lights of the street doesn't work, anyways, aw aw I forgot to say that a minute before I heard shooting, an AK47 sound for sometime, so when I saw the car in the middle of the road I thought that someone tried to Car jack this car and trouble happened, maybe they couldn't for some reason, maybe the car owner is injured now or deaed, so I automatically directed my light towards the car, that's when I saw like 10 American soldiers surrounding the poor driver who is kneeling on the ground, and it was one moment only till I realized what was happenings, and thank GOD it was only a moment till I switched the light off, believe me, in these situations, a big guy like myself, with a gun and a light is a good candidate for getting a head shot. so I stepped few steps back, trying to indicate any sign that they saw me, getting ready to throw my gun in the bushes, but after few seconds nothing happened, so I put the light away and the gun, and went back to see what is happening, it turned out that few American vehicles where standing there in the street, its a patrol but in a dark street and with no lights, and normally the tank makes a noise but I thought that it was one of the neighbors generators, so anyways, this guy in the car who turned out to be my neighbor felt like taking a spin in the middle of the night, crazy I know, but the guy is in the neighborhood only, so he came out of the street fast, and didn't see all these guys in the dark, they shoot his car (yes that is the shooting, it wasn't an AK47, it was an M16) and dragged the man and interrogated him, one of the soldiers came in front of my door, I asked him: what's wrong? ( I didn't know the story of the neighbor then) he didn't look at me and didn't answer, I asked again, WHAT'S WRONG? He was only three or four meters away, he said without looking at me: a man was running away. I stood there watching, in a minute another car came, as soon as I noticed him they screamed HEEYYYYY and started to shoot at him!! I swear GOD! He stopped the car and they dragged this one too who wasn't going fast at all, and started to interrogate him too, at this moment I was hiding behind the wall to make sure I don't get any lost bullet by mistake, and mom woke up when they shoot the car and when she discovered that I am out she started screaming COOMEE INNN.. haha mothers! anyways, in a minute another poor victim coming home from GOD knows where, in the same street, alose didn't see the tough guys and their guns and they started to shoot at his car, and he stopped and got off the car and started to crawl on the ground toward a dumpster close to him. thank GOD no now was hurt, but few wholes in the cars. now when I review the scene I laugh, imagine people coming home and a patrol standing isn't he darkness shooting everyone that comes close to it, I don't know, the whole scene was funny. I am sure these tough guys went to their base and reported that they cleaned the area from terrorists, and wrote letters to their mothers telling them that they are doing great and treating everyone the best they can, and that everyone is happy and life is great in Iraq, just like Allawi did in his speech to the congress, I am sure that as soon as he finished a lot of Americans packed their bags and decided to come to Iraq as tourists, its all pink and shiny in Iraq...Really..Allawi said that, our leader, and Bushbush and Rami too, they wouldn't lie to us, would they?!