Christopher Hitchens debates George Galloway

This is the fourth in a weekly series of documentaries and presentations designed to offer insights into today’s events, making it easy to understand them by linking them to the larger historical context. The ideas in these documentaries and presentations are not designed to advance one version of the events or act as propaganda for one party or the other, they are designed to provide the reader with enough facts to help them better understand the larger historical context to which today’s events belong. This week brings you the complete debate on the war in Iraq between Christopher Hitchens and George Galloway. The debate was hosted by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, and took place last year at Baruch College in New York. George Galloway is the British MP from East London, and Christopher Hitchens is a well-known British liberal writer who lives in the United States. In this debate, Christopher Hitchens argues that the war in Iraq was not only justified, but that it was necessary, while Mr. Galloway argues that it was illegal. (Courtesy of Google Video, redistributed with permission)

collection of speeches by current and former British politicians on Lebanon

This is a collection of speeches by current and former British politicians at the cease fire demonstration for Lebanon in the UK which took place the first week end of August.

• Current Labor Party MP Diane Abbott


• Britain's Ex-Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray


• Retired Labor Party MP Tony Benn


• Respect Party MP George Galloway

Aljazeera.Net - Sunni, Shia and US Middle East politics

Aljazeera.Net - Sunni, Shia and US Middle East politics

Donald Rumsfeld sexing up the Soviet threat in 1976

Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence / Defense, speaking in 1976 about the Soviet threat.  As with Iraq nearly 30 years later, it all turned out to be lies.  Check out the stunning similarities.  Will we ever learn?  Can so many people be fooled more than once? I thought someone said "fool me once and shame on you, and fool me twice and I'll kick your ass" (or was that George Bush).  I think the proper proverb is "fool me once and shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me".     This clip is from the Power of Nightmares.

Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported. Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied terrorities appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one. The documentary also explores the ways that U.S. journalists, for reasons ranging from intimidation to a lack of thorough investigation, have become complicit in carrying out Israel's PR campaign. At its core, the documentary raises questions about the ethics and role of journalism, and the relationship between media and politics.

The way Americans like their war

The following article appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which is pretty significant, since American newspapers rarely offer anything by Robert Fisk, the UK Independent’s correspondent to the Middle East for over 30 years.  Mr. Fisk was witness to the Lebanese civil war, was one of the few to visit and meet with Osama Bin Ladin, and has never wavered under pressure of any type.

Whether you agree with his line or not, Fisk offers a school of thought full of factual arguments and, not withstanding the cynicism sometimes, sobering reminders of the cruelty of war, no matter who the perpitrators are.  Unlike others, however, he is not afraid to go into the reasons of why things happen, and does not withhold information simply because it may not be politically incorrect or lacks expediency.

You can read more about Robert Fisk through his web site, where you’ll have an opportunity to read his articles, listen to some interviews with him and watch some of his speeches.

On to the article, entitled: The way Americans like their war    

"The house still stands", a short story I wrote

The story below was inspired by my visit to the memorial of Al-amerieh shelter in Baghdad in late 2000.  This is one of a precious few attempts of mine at fiction writing, and it uses the short story format, a genre I’ve always been fond of.

In 1991, the US air force bombed the Al-amerieh shelter, which was housing scores of civilians, under the disguise that it housed military targets, probably the same ones they went looking for and never found in 2003.  I watched the carnage on TV in 1991, and was vividly reminded of it almost ten years later.

I wrote the story in 2002 but never published it.  This is the first time I’ve ever shared it with the world.  The story is entitled “THE HOUSE STILL STANDS”.


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THE HOUSE STILL STANDS:

It was a dark and gloomy night, a night I will never forget.  Never in my life have I seen so many contradictions come together to put me where I am today.  The weather was very beautiful, a cold and gentle breeze blowing through the city, trying to clear with it the waves and waves of smoke which covered it, hoping desperately to expose the beautiful blue sky above.  The silence which loomed over the city was ear piercing, only to be interrupted by the sounds of explosions so far away.  The darkness was blinding, so much so that flickers of what resembled lightening could be seen from parts of the city so distant I never knew even existed.  There was no electricity, since all generators in the city were destroyed by the war which has been going on for well over two weeks now.

I lay on my bed, restless as I have been every night, with my parents and siblings scattered around me on their half broken beds and little matrices, so peaceful in their sleep, so wrapped up in their innocence.  My youngest brother, Ahmed, is so happy that school is closed, so he does not have to wake up early, put up with his teachers, and most importantly, not have to worry about my mother nagging him to do his homework.  My older sister, who was about to be married to the man whom my father chose for her, was very happy that the wedding was called off because of the war; she did not want that man anyway.  She hated him, she could not stand to see him, but my father would not hear of it.  “He is the right man for you Salma”, he always used to say, “He has money, he has connections, he will get you out of this misery you live in” he used to tell her.  Well, this is nothing to worry about anymore.  The war is here, and strangely enough, she is more comfortable with the war than she would have been with that man.  My parents, now old and frail, do nothing all day, as there is nothing to do anyway.  My mother spends her day praying for us and for our welfare, and my father sits in the corner smoking his cigarettes, cursing his luck every now and then, angry because he can no longer provide us with the good living we grew up with.  I swear that I have sometimes seen him cry, but I know he would not admit it.  “Men do not cry, son”, he always used to tell me.  “If you see a man crying, know that it would be easier for him to die than to do that.  Always have compassion for him in your heart son, and feel sorry for him”.  Now that he is old and crippled, he can do nothing but sit in the corner all day, remembering what once was, hoping that one day it will return, knowing full well that it will never happen.

Growing up, I always hated my father.  He was always tough with us, and was especially tough with my mother.  I was especially baffled by the contradictions in that man’s personality.  Whenever we wanted something, he would do his best to bring it to us.  I remember full well how we all used to get new clothes during the Eed, and how he would be the only one without new clothes because we did not have enough money.  When my mom would urge him to get something for himself, he would always say “my Eed is to see my kids happy”.  He was, on the other hand, very difficult to get close to.  He never really played with us.  We always looked at him from a distance, even when we were sitting next to him.  None of us would dare to anger him, lest his wrath fall upon us, and he really had no mercy.  That all changed when I took his place.  When my father became ill and lost his legs a few years ago, I had to leave school to work and provide for the family.  Having no degree and very little experience, I was never paid much, just enough to buy bread and butter for my parents and siblings to eat at the end of the day.  I knew then, and I know now what he used to go through.  I love this man now more than I love anyone else.  With his compassion, he taught me what giving meant.  Through his toughness, he taught me how to deal with the monstrous and merciless world out there.

I continued to shift in my bed, with my mind flitting from thought to thought, tossing and turning, watching the innocence on Ahmed’s little face on one corner, and the apprehension on my mother’s face, a feature which has become part of her appearance, on the other.  I can safely say that if it was not for her faith, my mother would have killed herself a long time ago.  She instead gave prays to her creator constantly, trusted in him, and asked him to keep an eye on her children everyday.

Ever since the war started, I have been worried about my family and about their safety.  The Americans tell us that they have smart weapons, weapons which hit their targets with pin point accuracy.  They tell us that they are after our leaders and not after us.  They tell us that they have no qualms or quarrels with us, that it is only our leaders that they have the quarrel with.  They are liars, yes they are liars.  Our neighbors, Dar Abu Sally, had nothing to do with the leadership.  They hated Saddam Husein and his regime.  Their father and their oldest son were both killed by Saddam and his cronies, and they are as desperate as ever, and what do the Americans do to them?  They destroy their house and kill the rest of them.  I remember how I used to play with their little daughter Sally when we were little kids.  We used to play mom and dad, and we even talked about how we were going to get married when we grow older.  Sally is now no more, she is dead; and the house which used to stand wall to wall next to our house is gone, yes it is gone.  It went away with Sally, and with our hopes and dreams, the hopes and dreams witch never went beyond our little innocence.  And then there is the house of Dar Abu Saleh next door to us on the other side.  Saleh, the oldest kid, left the country to study abroad, but the party agents shot him in his residence in London, only because someone told them that he said something bad about the president.  Dar Abu Saleh hated Saddam Husein, but the Americans bombed their house and killed them all.  Yes, they killed them all with their smart bombs and pin point accurate missiles.  I am worried to death that they will kill us all, I know they are going to do it, I know they are, and therefore we must go to Al-amerieh, where all the rest of our neighbors went.  Al-amerieh is the safest shelter in Baghdad.  It is built underground, very heavily fortified, and there is only one small entrance which leads into it.  This shelter can withstand anything, literally anything.  We must go, we have to go, but my mother would not hear of it.  “I don’t want to leave this house, son.  This is where I had you, this is where I raised you and your siblings, and this is where I will die”.  But the thought of my mother and father and the rest of my family dying was one I did not want to entertain.  I cannot just let them stay here, the Americans will bomb us, I have no doubt.  I talked to my father, and I got nowhere.  Since he became ill, he made no effort to make any decisions in our house, it all rested on my shoulders.  My sister could care less, all she can think about is that she is not going to marry that man and that is it.  I don’t know what to do.

The following morning, my mother woke me up to ask me to go out and buy some tea so that she can pour it on the bread to soften it and make a breakfast for us.  We have been eating this bread for two days now, and that is all that we had.  It has become dry, and my mom started cutting it into pieces and putting into a plate, pouring some tea over it so that we can eat it with a spoon.  “I don’t want to”, I said.  “What”, she asked?  “Yes mom, I am not going to.  That is it.  We are out of food, we have no money left, we must go to Al-amerieh”, I said passionately.  “I don’t want you to get killed, and I am going to do all I can to save you, and because of that, you must go to Al-amerieh today.  They have food there, and we will all be safe”.  I was not telling the truth; after all, I did have some dinars in my pocket, probably enough to buy us some tea, but I had to pressure my mother into going to Al-amerieh, and this seemed like a good way to do it.

My mother turned her face away from me, and raised her hands up and prayed, as she always did.  “alright son”, she said.  “If that is what we have to do, that is what we have to do”.  She sat in the corner next to my father and started crying.  My father did not look.  He continued to face the wall in front of him, clutching tightly with his lips on the last cigarette he had.  I could not stand to see this.  I wanted to back off and go out and buy the tea for my mother and keep her here for just another day and make her happy, but making her safe was more important to me.  I held my tears and looked the other way and waited.

Ten minutes later, my mother awoke my brother and sister, and asked them to help her pack.  “We are going to Al-amerieh today” she said to them.  “it will be safer there, after all, you have seen what happened to Dar Abu Sally and Dar Abu Saleh.  We must go to the shelter so that we may stay alive if this house gets bombed”.

My brother Ahmed seemed very excited at the prospect of leaving the house.  He is a hyper kid, and staying in the house without going outside for days was not something he was particularly happy about, even if it saved him from going to school.  Salma could care less, she just followed where everyone else went.

We talked for a while about what to take and what to leave, and I told them that, beyond the basics, everyone was allowed to bring with them only one item of sentimental value.  My sister protested, but I had to make it clear to her that if she wanted to bring any extra items with her, that she would have to carry them herself.  After thinking about it for a while, she reluctantly agreed to bring only one item, and took out her dress which my Mom made her after she graduated from high school.  Ahmed brought with him his fake gun, and my father elected to take his pipe with him.  When we were about to leave, I noticed my mother’s tears again.  “Mom, you know it is for hour safety that we are doing this, don’t you?” I said with a firm and somewhat angry voice.  “Yes son” she said, “I know.  I just hate to leave this house behind, and this rug which my grand mother made me a long time ago.  This rug means so much to me, but I realize that we cannot take it with us, it is just simply too heavy”.  I cringed inside and I felt like my heart has just missed a beat.  I know how valuable this rug is, and I know how much it means to my mother.  I know, however, that we will not be able to take it with us, because the truck taking us to Al-amerieh will refuse to take it.  My mother is very sentimental, and losing this rug will make her sad – I have no doubt.  While wondering what to do, a thought suddenly came into my mind.  After I drop my family at the shelter, I will go back and pick the rug and surprise my mother.  The shelter is only five miles away from our house, so I can probably ride the truck back to the house, pick up the rug, and walk back with it to the shelter and surprise her with it.  She would be so happy!

The truck, which made a habit of picking up people who wanted to go to the shelter everyday, started its round.  The driver was surprised to see us packed and ready to board since he actually approached us several times before offering to take us to the shelter.  “So, you finally decided to go?” he said with a cheerful voice.  “Yes, it will be safer for us there, don’t you think?” I said.  “Yes, absolutely.  I was hoping you would come to that conclusion soon”.

We loaded our belongings and wrote along with some other strangers we did not know.  The drive to the shelter lasted only seven minutes, and we quickly unloaded and brought our stuff inside.  My father pointed out a corner for me and asked me to put him there; I reluctantly obliged.

The shelter was a very big place packed with people.  Built for maximum protection, it was fully underground, and thus had no natural light in it.  There were people from every age and place, children, men and women, young and old, sick and healthy, far and near.  Sanitation left a lot to be desired, since taking a bath was a luxury in that place.  As I helped my family settle there, I felt a wave of comfort and ease come over me.  “now they are safe.” I thought to myself.  “I don’t have to worry about them any more”.

My mother looked for and had no trouble finding some of our neighbors, who were quite surprised to see her there.  “We thought we’d never see you here,” said Umm Ali, the neighbor from across the street, “what changed your mind”?  “My kids you know,” my mother sighed.  “It is safer for them here”.  “Well, we told you so,” said Umm Alaa, “but you would not hear of it”.  “Well, one must come to one’s senses eventually,” my mom said with tears in her eyes.

Ahmed had no trouble finding company either.  He blended in with kids his age, and ran around doing what little kids do best, play like nothing is happening.

I had to find a good excuse to get out of the shelter.  I figured if I could finish my mission before dark, I will be safe from the bombing.  The Americans used to like to drop their fire after dark, and it usually went on well into the early morning hours.  Not only did I have to come up with an excuse to satisfy my mother, I also had to get the guards to let me out.  The best thing to do was to volunteer to bring food from outside.  Although they pay for the food, someone has to go out and get it, and they always asked young men to go out and volunteer to bring in the food.  They will allow me to go out, as long as I go out with an authorized group, and as long as we all come back before dark.  I figured I’d go with them, get off at the closest place to our house, get the rug, and, if necessary, walk back to the shelter.  They were not very strict about people coming in, they just did not want us to go out.

The truck was just about to pull out when I caught it.  I jumped in and sat in the front seat, as it was the only one available.  “Well, we’re going to the super market on Felisteen street.  You will have only ten minutes to pick up what you are supposed to pick up, and then you must be back.  If you are not back, we will leave without you.” The driver yelled in a firm voice.  “Ten minutes?” I thought to myself.  “I guess I won’t be going back with them”.  Felisteen street was about a mile away from our house, and there was no way I could walk there and back in ten minutes.  “Well, it will have to be walking back all the way,” I thought.

It was early afternoon when I got to the house.  The rug was laying there near the corner, wrapped as if it was ready to go, just waiting for me.  As I picked up the rug and started out, I heard the sound of planes, and a very large explosion.  “Well, it looks like the Americans are starting early.” I thought to myself.  “I have nothing to worry about, since my family is now safe.  I’ll just stay here if necessary, and will start out as soon as possible”.

The bombing continued well into the evening , and I became uncertain whether it would be wise for me to walk back to the shelter.  I knew that my mother would be a little bit worried, but since they were safe, I did not think too much about it, and she may very well be talking to the neighbors and not notice my absence anyway.  There were so many people crammed in that shelter that it was not unusual for people to be lost there.

I lay on my bed waiting for things to calm down.  The sound of aero planes and bombs was so close that I was beginning to worry that it may hit our house.  I was very happy that my family was not here.  “As long as they are safe,” I thought, “I’ll be OK”.

A couple of hours passed and the bombing ceased.  I decided to turn on the radio which my father elected to leave behind, and listen to the news.  “The American aggressors have committed a crime of the greatest magnitude,” the announcer said with a loud and monotone voice.  “Tonight, and around midnight, the aggressors threw a laser guided missiles straight into the entrance of the Al-amerieh shelter, killing everyone inside”.

I felt the world around me stop.  I looked around in shock and disbelief, hoping that I was dreaming.  I looked for my mother, for my father, for Salma and for Ahmed, but they were not there.  They were at Al-amerieh.  They are gone, all gone, but our house, the house which had all our memories in it, still stands.

Bush and Blair's Prayer for Fallujah

This is posted in the spirit of cynicism.

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O Lord our God,

Help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;

Help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their dead;

Help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded,

writhing in pain;

 

O Lord our God,

Help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire;

Help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief;

Help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes

of their desolate land in rags and hunger and thirst.

 

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives

We ask it in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the source of all Love.

 

A touching experience

I wrote this a couple of months ago, but given my experiences this last week end, I wonder if it’s worth posting here.  It’s amazing how quick we are to come to judgment about others.  Sometimes if we care to take the time, we’ll gain a whole new dimension to the experience we’re going through.

 

 

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6/6/2005

I mostly forward things that I come across, but this is one I experienced myself, and feel compelled to commit it to writing because of how much it moved me.

 

Yesterday when I was taking a flight from Frankfort To Amman to see my family, and while waiting to board the aircraft, two men came and sat across from me and introduced themselves.  One of them was an Iraqi man, who was carrying his two year old son, whom he took to Germany for treatment.  The son was wounded in one of the American bombing raids, and some charitable organization helped him bring the little boy to Germany to see if there is anything they could do for him over there.  Unfortunately, the doctors told him that there was nothing they could do for his son, and that he will remain sightless for the rest of his life.  I guess that’s why the man came and sat across from me – he has just woken up to the fact that he too now has a blind son, and there is nothing anyone can do about that.

 

The man spoke no German, no English, in fact, he did not speak any foreign language.  The only language he spoke, so far as I could tell, was Arabic.  I tried to console him by telling him that blind persons these days can do so much because of the technology and awareness that exist.  I showed him my talking mobile phone and my talking computer, in order to prove to him that, even though I am a blind person, just as his son is, I am traveling the world, earning a decent living and living my life to the fullest.  He listened intently to what I had to say and uttered nothing except “well, that’s over there, over where they are, they have all these things, but what about us!”.  I must admit those words took me by surprise, and for a brief moment, I didn’t know what to say.  I regained my composure and tried to reassure him by telling him that all he can do is raise his son well, treat him just like everyone else, encourage him and make sure never to close any doors in his face, and that his maker will take good care of him.  I further told him that I was “there”, and through determination and perseverance, I managed to do what I wanted.  We left it there, as boarding began and chaos ensued.  The gentleman and his son were seated towards the middle of the aircraft, and I was seated all the way in the back, where a number of French, Swedish, German and other European passengers sat.

 

While the plane was landing, and right before we touched down, I heard one of the flight attendants say in a low, direct and angry voice, to someone who couldn’t hear her “sit down”.  A couple of seconds thereafter, the purser came on the speaker and said “sir, will you please sit down!”.  Landing continued, and by then we were taxiing on the ground in Amman, when, once again, the same flight attendant in the back was saying “can’t you listen, don’t you have ears”, in the same tone of voice as before.  No sooner has she finished uttering these words, the purser came on again with the same announcement “sit, down, sir!”.  An announcement was made a third time, and I can safely say that myself and others on the flight were getting concerned.  I guess the others were a step ahead of me as they could see what was going on, but it took me a while to sort it out, and I wish I never did!

 

Whilst still taxiing, the voice of a crying baby was coming closer to me.  I was sitting in the back, and the voice was edging ever so closely.  The baby would cry for a bit, gasp, go quiet and cry again.  Without uttering even a breath, the person carrying the baby was headed towards the back, and the flight attendants were getting quite nervous.  By the time he got to my row, the baby was crying uncontrollably.  The person carrying him, which, I came to realize, was a man, took him further to the back, trying to calm him down.  The man entered the galley in the back, and the flight attendants were quite worried by then.  “I don’t know what you’re doing” said one of the attendants, “but you are endangering the safety of yourself, your child and other passengers.  Stay! Away! From! The! Emergency! Exit!”, the attendant said in both anger and fear.  The baby continued to cry, and the man started calming his baby down by saying “shshshsh, yalla yalla yallla”, loosely translated as, hush, please, hush.  The man then turned around and left the galley, and stood directly to my left and started talking to his son.  I instantly recognized him – he is that Iraqi man.  My heart sank.  There he was, standing there, with everyone, people who looked strange to him, as strange as the people who took away his son’s eye sight, angrily staring at him, yelling at him, screaming at him in a language he does not understand.  His  silence, I’m sure, made a lot of people feel uncomfortable.  I’m sure there were people who thought he was a terrorist of some sort.  I’m sure there were people who thought he was an uncivilized dark skinned man, chaotic and uncontrollable as the rest of his people seemed to be.  What I am not sure of is whether people knew what was really going on inside that man’s head.  There he was, all alone, trying to calm down his son, his blind son, who cannot stop crying.  He was oblivious to everything around him, including the cries of the crew and the gazes of the passengers, partly because he couldn’t understand what they were saying, partly because he was attending to his son, but mostly because this seemed to be the man’s first or second time on an airplane.  Despite all of this, he remained absolutely calm, with nothing coming out of his mouth except “shshshsh, yalla, yalla, yalla”, and an occasional muttering of reassurance to his son in his own colloquial Iraqi accent.  I knew then exactly where this man was while everyone was doing this to him – he was staring into the eyes of the unknown, into his son’s future, a future which I’m sure he perceived to be full of nothing but pain for that poor little child.  He was, I am sure, trying to wake up to the reality of his son’s permanent disability, which, in a split second, replaced the happiness that comes with every new born.  He was standing there, naked of all feelings of pride, dignity, happiness, seeing nothing but darkness ahead.  I know this feeling quite well because this is how my mother told me she felt when she found out that I, her first and oldest son was blind.  She cried for years, until she started to have hope that I may one day live a normal life, but this man, this poor man, has just begun this painful journey, and what a way to begin!

 

As people started disembarking, I noticed the man making his way back towards the front.  I was following each footstep of his through the ceaseless crying of his son.  As the voice of his baby disappeared in the distance, I wondered in the back of my mind whether the flight attendants would have reacted differently had they known the man’s story.  I have no doubt in my mind that these beautiful young women would have been glad to take his son from him and hold him to their chests and see to it that he is OK.  I’m sure that, had they done that, this man would have been relieved, even momentarily, of his pane to see the caring and love in other people’s hearts instead of the angry cries and hostile gazes of the passengers.  It would have been a smile for everyone in the midst of a lot of tears for someone.  From what I could tell, no one but myself and the other person who introduced me to this man, who was sitting towards the front of the plane, knew about this man’s predicament, since we were helping him at the gate in Frankfort while boarding.  A word from me would have changed the night for many passengers, flight attendants, but most importantly for that man.  Alas, I just sat there bewildered, dazed and confused.  It was as if something has come over me, sealed my mouth, and froze my mind.  I wondered if it was too late for me to do anything.  I wondered if I could look for and find that man, even if I had to change my plans and cross the boarders into Iraq the following day.  Would I ever find him and his son I asked?  A voice inside me told me however that I probably wouldn’t, but that I would find many others in his homeland with his predicament, and many more who are probably even worse off!  Why did he come to the back though – I still wonder!  Did he come to see me?  Did he come to talk to me?  Have I failed him?  Should I have said something?  I don’t know, and I guess I’ll never know.

Reflections on the horrible events in London

I’m not sure what I’m doing here at the keyboard – it’s nearly midnight and tired as I feel, I can’t seem to get my eyes shut (well, they’re shut all the time, but you know what I mean).  I feel like there is a big rock sitting on my chest and I’m hoping that by writing these few pages this rock may leave me alone for a while.

 

This article contains graphic description of events which some may find disturbing!

 

Once again, the world turned itself up side down today because of explosions which took place in London – savage acts whose main purpose is to terrorize innocent civilians.  Savage acts, irrespective of the perpetrators and irrespective of the victims.  It’s funny how the standard changes from time to time and from place to place.  What’s not so funny however is thinking about how long it will take people, those who often find themselves victims of such acts to realize this and start to do something about it!

 

The enemy, as we’re told, is Islamic extremism.  As a practicing Muslim, I can safely say that indeed there is a great deal of extremism in how people understand Islam these days, and thanks to the circumstances which gave impetus to those who stood to gain from propagating such wild and sometimes irrational interpretations of Islamic texts.  What everyone seems to forget is that extremism is not limited to Islam and Muslims.  Extremism, whether it is fueled by a religion, an ideology, a nationalistic outlook, a bias, anything, extremism is and will always lead to the same end – ultimate disaster for those who preach and practice it, and naturally for many people who will, in one form or another, become their victims.

 

In the 1930’s, the Germans had enough of the humiliation imposed on them by the Versailles treaty, the treaty which, incidentally, was haled by president Wilson as the way to the end of all wars, much like Bush’s assertion that his war on terrorism is going to end terrorism.

 

Adolph Hitler said aloud what most Germans always knew and wanted – we’re mad as hell, and we won’t take it any more!  It’s time for the German people to rise up and break the shackles imposed upon them by arrogant nations whose main beef with Germany in the first place was that the Germans threatened their hegemony over most of the planet, hegemony they gained by conquest, deception and war.

 

Out of the pain and suffering of the German people was born a movement that sought to liberate and unite them, a movement which would bring them the dignity they always had and for which they longed since the end of world war I.  Anything, as long as it was perceived to get them to that end was not only acceptable, it was desirable.  Germany, they were told, was over everything and everyone.  The whole world didn’t measure up to the Germans in their ingenuity, their intelligence and their craft.  Germany is above all, and all will submit to Germany.

 

Out of that philosophy, endless armies were born throughout the land, their recruits were mostly perfectly decent citizens who wanted to push away the insult and misery imposed on them by their adversaries in the name of peace and justice!  I can tell you that no dictator, clever, brutal or cunning as they may be can ever build such an army as Hitler did.  He built it by offering himself and his ideology as the savior for a proud people whose dignity meant a lot to them.

 

I believe that there is a line which when a human being crosses, he ceases to be human, and turns into a monster, ready to devour anything that stands in his way.  That is what Germany turned into, and that’s what the world had to suffer from.  But the nagging question is, how long do you have to oppress a people while expecting them to remain subservient?  Didn’t they teach us in school that too much pressure eventually leads to an explosion?  Isn’t Germany’s fate a living fresh example of that?

 

Since world war too, our technology and weapons have gotten infinitely more sophisticated, but I wonder if we did.

 

After a century of oppression and darkness brought about by the Ottoman empire, the Arabs in the Middle East were ready to fight to gain their God given right of self determination.  At the same time the colonial powers, mainly France and Britain, were humiliating the Germans, they were committing an even bigger insult against the Arabs.  They promised them an independent Arab state in which they can live freely, and enjoy what their land had to offer.  They even had them send their children to fight and die against the Ottomans under the French and the British flags,

only to discover that the French and the British were using them to defeat Germany’s ally – the Ottoman empire.  No sooner did the war end, the British and the French divided the region amongst themselves, removing and sending into exile the very man, Hussain Bin Ali, the sharif (prince) of Mekka, the very man to whom they made their promises, installing instead his power hungry and ignorant children over the little cantons they established.  Hussain Bin Ali is the great grand father of the late king Hussein, who made sure that his subjects knew about that regardless of their age or status.

 

This story was repeated to Jordanians in elementary, preparatory and secondary education, and was put into various documentaries, series, films and plays which made their way into every house in Jordan.

 

As if the above wasn’t enough, the French and British secretly conspired to take Palestine, the home of the dome of the rock, the Aqsa mosque, the birth place of Jesus Christ, may God’s blessings be upon him, and give it to the rich folks in Europe whom they hated and wanted to get rid of, while at the same time keeping their money supply close at hand.  In fact, much of the early capture of Palestine took place under the noses of the Arabs who had no idea what the future had in store for them.

 

In a book about the Palestinian question written by Mark Tesler, clips of newspapers from that time were reprinted in which the intellectuals of the time were talking about all the wonderful things they could do together with the Jews to develop the area.  They were very hopeful that the expertise and capital brought by the Jews will serve to improve the lot of everyone – little did they know that it will lead to the death and exile of their suns and daughters.

 

Once again, the late king Hussein, as well as many of his counterparts, made sure their subjects knew about all that.  It was in the school books, on the radio, on TV, at the theater, on the news, everywhere!  The strange thing is that many of the Middle East leaders at the time did this not to insure the continuity of the cause in the mind of their subjects, it was done to cover up their complicity and failure to fulfill their duty towards those whom they ruled.  Whatever the motive may have been, the end result was the same – people, young and old, prince or common, rich or poor, Muslim or Christian, clearly saw what happened to them, and knew that their dignity, their pride, the pride for which the Arabs are and have always been known, has been stolen from them.  Everyone felt helpless, and hatred and bitterness began to take root, as is always the case with human nature.

 

In the sixties and seventies, the Arabs began to realize a source of strength they thought would save them and give them back some of their dignity, and allow them to be respected on the international seen – oil, and location.  The Gulf, as we all know, contains a great deal of the world’s oil reserves, and the Arab World, in North Africa and Asia controlled many of the key transport routes between east and west.  So, when Gamal Naser of Egypt decided to take control of the Suez Canal, a small man made see route which connects the Red See and the Mediterranean together, from the western companies that were running it and keeping most of the proceeds for themselves, his country was attacked by France, Britain and Israel.  He was attacked because he decided to exercise his right of asserting control and sovereignty over a part of his own land.  Once again, every Arab learned that.  Worse yet, many of those who brought up today’s generation lived it, and the anger and bitterness was fresh in their hearts, in their minds and on their faces.

 

After the defeat of Naser in 1967, in a war started by Israel and for which the Arabs are still blamed, Arab dignity was once again dealt another blow.  The 1973 war, which many thought would regain some of that dignity, turned out to be sold by the Egyptian rulers in order to squeeze out any remaining life in the fatally wounded dignity of Arabs.

 

The eighties witnessed the birth of a new phenomena, one whose seeds were planted in the fifties and the sixties, by people who, just like the Germans, were looking for ways to rid their people of the humiliation and the defeat they were under.  The myth of the magic formula, the formula of Islam as a power that will magically transform the Arab World from a door mat on which everyone stepped into a nation which will once again shine with its pride and glory, a nation, we were told, which will be the guiding light for everyone else, leading them from the darkness in which they lived, to the light of freedom, advancement, progress, giving them back their dignity, and allowing them to sweep the world with their light.  Muslims, we were told, were the best nation on earth, and it is time for them to rise up to meet their destiny.  No work was required – no research, no education, no organization, no politics, for it is all contained in Islam as practiced 1400 years ago.  If we read what these people did back then, we were told, and do the exact same thing, we will ultimately liberate ourselves and be the best nation on this planet.

 

While such ideas found little more than sympathy back then, the blatant double standard with which the so called international community dealt with when it came to Arab issues made itself blindingly obvious in 1990, after the occupation of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein.

 

While many did not initially support Saddam, everyone recognized the legitimacy of his claim to Kuwait.  In fact, Saddam was not the first Iraqi leader to bring out that claim – Abdul Kareem Qasim tried to do the same thing in 1961, only to be confronted with British troupes in Kuwait, and condemnation from his contemporary so called Arab leaders.  At a minimum, Saddam’s claim to Kuwait was far stronger than the Zionist’s claim to Palestine – after all, it was only in 1921 that Kuwait was chopped off from its root, when the British appointed Faisal as the king of Iraq, after finalizing the split of the Middle East with the French in the Italian city of San Remo in 1920.  Once again, everyone knew that, and everyone, all over the Arab world, understood its context.

 

When the west brought its armies to save the poor Kuwaities who took refuge in the five star hotels of Egypt, Jordan, England and the US, while the same powers continued to veto useless security council resolutions which in effect carried little value beyond their symbolism in favor of a nation whose existence and practices lead to the migration of millions of Palestinians from their homes to live in small tents, people couldn’t take it any more.  The nagging question is, who do they turn to?  Who will save them?  How can they get out of the deadly trap that they’ve been put in for decades?

 

Those of us who suffered abuse in their past know what that’s like.  You become a hostage to your own misery so much that reality doesn’t matter any more – all you want is to save your soul.  You start looking for that magic pill which will cure you, which will transform you to the human being you’ve always wanted to be, which will give you everything you ever wanted.  For Arabs, that pill was Islam, or more accurately, the interpretation of Islam designed to serve that very purpose.

 

As the German example (and as many other examples before it) showed, people rally behind such extreme ideologies, using them as a catalyst to fuel their desire for freedom and liberation, and as a narcotic to numb their feeling of pain, humiliation and helplessness.  Since all efforts to lead an organized battle against evil have failed, it’s time, they said, to start fighting them with terror.  In doing so, Muslims can prove to God that they are doing what they’re supposed to, and then, the story goes, he will be obligated to do his part and save them, just like that!

 

If you talk to any of these people, you will find that they will quote you all kinds of verses from the Koran and other Islamic texts to prove the validity of their argument.  They will do that in the same way the Pope allowed king Baldwin in 1098 to enter Jerusalem and murder hundreds of thousands of people causing their blood to flow down the streets of the city, many of whom were seeking shelter in the holy places,, hoping that those Christian liberators who were coming in the name of God will respect the places of worship, which people in that part of the world refer to as the houses of God.  Alas, Islam now is used to justify the very same acts perpetrated against its own faithful by people who hijacked and used another religion, Christianity, to perpetrate those crimes.

 

I have read and carefully studied many of the texts of Islam and Christianity.  When read in context and properly understood, both religions stress to their followers the value of peace, love and giving.  Those books were revealed to us by our maker, the one who created us, the one who knows us best, in order to guide us and help us overcome our evil and often destructive desires.

 

We find ourselves now at a point in which fear is taking hold.  The oppressed and the spat upon are finally waking up, blinded by their own hatred, oblivious to logic, rationalism and common sense, hoping and longing for their basic right to live in peace and dignity, a right out of which they have been long bullied.

 

The sad fact though is the bullies are ever more entrenched in what they do, and are themselves blinded by their own arrogance and power, choosing to bring more shame and oppression to those uncontrollable monsters which they themselves created.  They are using fear and intimidation to bring their people behind them, people who, for the most part neither know nor approve of what their arrogant leaders are doing.  They see the fire in front of their eyes, but yet they continue to poor fuel on top of it, as if only to make it grow bigger, rise higher, and burn everyone with its deadly flame.

 

When the attacks of September eleventh took place, the waves of joy reverberated through out the oppressed world.  Anyone who says anything else is either completely disconnected from reality, or is an outright liar.  For many people who, while the rest of the world lives in high-rise apartments and huge houses with Internet access and air conditioning, still live in small tents in refugee camps, that was a moment of pure joy, the joy of an oppressed soul, a soul which had every human value yanked out of it, leaving it with the pure animal instinct to survive.

 

Now, did those who call themselves historians and intellectuals take note of that?  Did anyone ever speak of taking another look at how we are carrying out our politics on this planet?  Very few did, and those who were courageous enough to were either arrested, deported, silenced, had their reputation smeared, or simply made to apologize.  Everyone was after revenge – everyone wanted to see blood, and there was a lot of blood to spare.  Those poor people of Afghanistan were no lawyers or engineers, they had no one to defend their rights and bring legal action on their behalf, they were simply monsters who needed to be killed, and whose blood needed to flow.

 

The end of the war in Afghanistan did not shed as much blood as some would have hoped, and did not eliminate the monsters that are out to get us.  We had to chase them and get them everywhere, the myth went on to say, and so we did.  We killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq, only to quench our own thirst for revenge, only to see blood, the blood of those worthless monsters flow, so that they may never harm us anymore.

 

While over 3000 innocent civilians were killed in the evil acts of September eleventh, while over fifty innocent civilians died in the savage attacks on London, while over 400 innocent ordinary persons were killed in Madrid in April of last year, over 120,000 Iraqis died in the first Gulf war, over a million died during the sanctions, and tens of thousands died and continue to die in the current mayhem.  Note that I did not mention anything about Afghanistan, Palestine, I didn’t even bring up the kids who died under the British flag in world war II in hopes of creating an independent homeland for their children and the many more who died ever since, I only talked about the last fifteen years!

 

As I see it, the world is going down a slippery slope right now.  Everyone is digging in their heals and asserting what they believe in.  The time for logic, common sense, dialog, negotiation is over, and I fear that I hear the deafening sound of the bells of war ringing loud and clear.

 

I have seen so much hatred during my last visit to the Middle East.  I was sick to my stomached when I heard how people spoke of their adversaries as if they were metal objects that ought to be crushed.  I was devastated to see perfectly innocent and kind people proudly display the pictures and play the sickening video of the beheaded American contractor on their mobile phones, anxious to give it away to their enthusiastic audience.  I nearly swooned when I heard the screams of that man while a knife was going through his veins, separating his head from the rest of his body, marring the perfect shape that his maker created him in.  All of that was happening against a background of verses of the Koran being beautifully read by one of my favorite reciters.  I saw the pure, uncultured, uncensored, unconditioned venom from otherwise perfectly decent people, whose only fault was that they were bullied, insulted, robbed, imprisoned in their own poverty with hardly a way out.

 

After the recent attacks in London, I started to hear voices in the west that sounded very much like what I heard from those doormats which everyone seemed to have been walking over for the last century without giving a second thought to them.  The only difference is that those voices I hear in the west are caused by fear, an equally powerful catalyst of hatred and venom.

 

As I see it now, we are heading towards an inescapable end if we continue to maintain the status quo.  Out of the poverty and oppression there will come more people perfectly happy to get out of their misery and take as many as they can with them.  Out of fear there will come plenty of fighters who will stand ready to defend their security and peace and their little heaven on earth.  It’s a raging fire which everyone seems to want to poor fuel over.  Trying to spill water on that fire, both here and there, is just not cool anymore.

 

There are many of us that live in this land, many of us who have made it their home.  They are a convenient scapegoat and a readily available source of blood, blood which will be required to quench so many people’s thirst.  Going home for us is not an option, for we have no home but the one we built for ourselves in a small spot on God’s great earth – the spot just happens to be here!  I believe that the days ahead for us, and for so many other innocent persons on this planet, are going to be difficult, and I see no way out.

 

Despite that, I remind myself and all people of conscience, people who still have respect for their humanity, that we ought never cease being who we are.  We must reach out, share our values, and empower those around us to do the same.  Daunting as it may be, the work for peace must continue.  Let us use all that we learned to advance our cause and try to bring sense back to this crazy world.  We can do that through hope.  Without hope, souls will die.  Without hope, hands will not build.  Without hope, life will have no meaning, and we’ll feel trapped in our own bodies, in a prison so big that no matter what we do we will never be able to escape out of it.  Hope, and only hope, is what will continue to bring meaning to our lives.  Let not fear be our master, let us be masters of our own destiny through hope.  Let not our safety be our focus, instead, let our focus be how to save others.  I know of no one that lived forever, and I know I myself won’t live forever either.  I have no doubt that I will die one day – whether it will be tomorrow or a hundred years from now.  I have no idea whether I’ll die in bed, on the street, at my desk, or by the linching of a mob or the bullit of a venomous person.  I’ll find out when the time comes, and until then, I will promise to carry on as if I was immortal, protected and as if I’ll be living forever – I see no other way!

 

Iraq, what's going on

I’ll write a lot more about the Iraqi situation later on, but wanted to share an interesting commercial that’s been playing on the Iraqi satellite channel which I get here in the US.  It starts with a little kid complaining that he as an exam tomorrow, after it all went dark around him.  Then a female voice comes and announces that “we are sorry for this technical problem.  As you know the electric network is very old and worn out, and it has been suffering a lot from attacks on it.  We are working to increase capacity and our target is to have a 33% increase within a year”.  I’m thinking, you say that after two years?  Where did the billions go!  Certainly not where they were supposed to!

 

As an Iraqi singer from forty years ago said, “we’ve lived and we’ve seen, and we’ll live and see still”.  Listen to him sing and enjoyJ.  Hopefully I’ll post a translation when time is less scarce.

 

Peace.

Galloway's commons speech and BBC follow up interview

Listen to the eloquent Scotsman tell it as it is! The audio podcast in this post is the BBC channel 4 interview with Mr. Galloway, the content of which was triggered by his speech below (if you are not getting the podcast, you can click here to listen to the interview).

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From Hansard – House of Commons, 7th July , 4.29pm,
Mr. George Galloway (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Respect):
I condemn the act that was committed this morning. I have no need to speculate about its authorship. It is absolutely clear that Islamist extremists, inspired by the al-Qaeda world outlook, are responsible. I condemn it utterly as a despicable act, committed against working people on their way to work, without warning, on tubes and buses. Let there be no equivocation: the primary responsibility for this morning's bloodshed lies with the perpetrators of those acts.
However, it would be crass to do other than what the Secretary of State for Defence in a way invited us to do. We cannot separate the acts from the political backdrop. They did not come out of a clear blue sky, any more than those monstrous mosquitoes that struck the twin towers and other buildings in the United States on 9/11 2001. The Defence Secretary said that we must look at the causal circumstances behind the problems of security and defence in the world. I insist that we do so.
If Members examine our debate tomorrow in the cold light of day they will discover a self-evident truth: many Members of Parliament find it easy to feel empathy with people killed in explosions by razor-sharp red-hot steel and splintering flying glass when they are in London, but they can blank out of their mind entirely the fact that a person killed in exactly the same way in Falluja died exactly the same death. When the US armed forces, their backs guarded, as a result of a decision by our politicians, by our armed forces, systematically reduced Falluja, a city the size of Coventry, brick by brick and killed an unknown number of people—probably the number runs to thousands, if not tens of thousands—not a whisper found its way into the Chamber. I have grown used to that. I know that for many people in the House and in power in this country the blood of some people is worth more than the blood of others.
Does the House not believe that hatred and bitterness have been engendered by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, by the daily destruction of Palestinian homes, by the construction of the great apartheid wall in Palestine and by the occupation of Afghanistan? Does it understand that the bitterness and enmity generated by those great events feed the terrorism of bin Laden and the other Islamists? Is that such a controversial point? Is it not obvious? When I was on the Labour Benches and spoke in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I said that I despise Osama bin Laden. The difference is that I have always despised him. I did so when the Government, in this very House, gave him guns, money and encouragement, and set him to war in Afghanistan. I said that if they handled that event in the wrong way, they would create 10,000 bin Ladens. Does anyone doubt that 10,000 bin Ladens at least have been created by the events of the past two and a half years? If they do, they have their head in the sand.
There are more people in the world today who hate us more intently than they did before as a result of the actions that we have taken. Does this House understand that the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison have inflamed and deepened that sense of hatred around the world and made our position more dangerous? Do Members of this House not understand that Guantanamo Bay has contributed to the sense of bitterness and hatred against us around the world? Does nobody in this House understand that when Palestinians' houses are knocked down, their olive trees cut down and their children shot by Israeli marksmen, an army of people who want to harm us is created? To say that is not to hope that they succeed—I started by making clear, I hope, my utter rejection and condemnation of the events in London this morning.
It does not matter whether Britain replaces the Trident submarine system with another. The threat now, as the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith) made clear, is not the intercontinental ballistic missiles of other countries but the asymmetrical threat of angry people who hate us and who are ready to exchange their lives for several of ours, or hundreds of ours, or thousands of ours, if they can do so. Is that really so hard to grasp?

Given that one cannot defend oneself against every angry man among the enragés of the earth, it follows that the only thing we can do is address what the Secretary of State called the causal circumstances that lie behind these events. That means trying to reduce the hatred in the world and trying to deal with the political crises out of which these events have flowed. If, instead of doing that, we remain in this consensual bubble in which we have placed ourselves, we will go on making the same mistakes over and over again. We will go on with Guantanamo Bay. We will go on as we are doing, making Abu Ghraib not smaller as we were told would happen after the photographs were published, but bigger. We will go on with occupation and war as the principal instruments of our foreign and defence policy. If we do that, some people will get through and hurt us as they have hurt us here today, and if we still do not learn the lesson, that dismal, melancholic cycle will continue.
It ought to be common sense that people start from the standpoint that the only thing that matters is whether what we plan to do will make things better or worse. I listened to the Secretary of State lay out the success story of Afghanistan and Iraq, and his account bore no relationship to the truth or reality. He talked about Afghanistan as a success story and about the President of Afghanistan, when everyone knows that Karzai is the president of the congestion charge area of downtown Kabul and no more. He talked about an Afghan army—it is a fantasy. Afghanistan is a patchwork quilt of warlordism, where the warlords' armies dwarf the so-called Afghan national army. He talked about drugs and narcotics: before we invaded the country those lunatics of the Taliban were reducing heroin production in Afghanistan, but the people whom we have put into power there have increased production by 800 per cent. Our armed forces are in Afghanistan and our taxes are being used to support a political structure that is producing 90 per cent. of the junk that ends up in the veins of our young people in Glasgow, east London and many other places in the world.
The Secretary of State talked about Iraq—as if Iraq were any kind of success story. I could not believe my ears as he described, in that complacent, orotund manner, progress over 12 months, 18 months or two years. Iraq is going backwards, not forwards. It is impossible for the Secretary of State to say we shall withdraw in any given time frame, because Iraq is getting worse, not better. There are more people being killed in Iraq now than there were before. More military operations are being conducted by the Iraqi resistance than before. Last Saturday alone, 175 military operations were mounted by the Iraqi resistance on one day.
American soldiers are dying in such numbers that there is now more appreciation of the mistake of the war in Iraq over the pond in the United States than there appears to be here in the British House of Commons. The kind of debate that we have had today would not happen in the US Congress, because US politicians understand the scale of this disaster far better than the politicians in this Chamber appear even to have begun to do.
One thousand, eight hundred American boys, conscripted by poverty, unemployment and poor opportunities, have lost their lives as a result of the pack of lies that was the case for the invasion of Iraq, and 17,000 American boys have been wounded. Ten per cent. of them are amputees, who will have to go around with no legs for the rest of their lives as a result of the pack of lies on which we went to war in Iraq.
Eighty-nine of our own boys, including the son of Rose Gentle from Glasgow, 19-year-old Gordon, were sent to die in Iraq on a pack of lies. The Prime Minister will not even meet Gordon's mother. He will not meet the mother of a 19-year-old boy who was sent to die in Iraq. Last Monday, I was on a television programme and a call came through from the mother of a 17-year-old soldier who was leaving for Iraq the following Monday. He is 17 years old, and he is being sent to Iraq, into that quagmire. The 19-year-old Gordon Gentle is dead. Eighty-eight other young men from this country are dead as a result of this, yet our Ministers roll out their jokes and their cod philosophy here today. They have absolutely no grasp of the gravity of the situation, or of how unpopular their stand has become outside these walls. They have learned nothing from the fact that they lost a million votes as a result of what they did in Iraq, or from the fact that millions in Britain marched against them and begged them not to do this.
The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), in an otherwise fine speech, described today's events as "unpredictable". They were not remotely unpredictable. Our own security services predicted them and warned the Government that if we did this we would be at greater risk from terrorist attacks such as the one that we have suffered this morning