"Do you know that Grand Mufti of Syria Sheikh Ahmad Hassoun has recently directed for the renovation of the Damascus Synagogue? Do you know that the Mufti has accompanied himself a Jewish Rabbi to one of the mosques and told worshippers we should always seek interfaith dialogue?" asked university professor Sami Moubayed.
.'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
The Ball no Question makes of Ayes and Noes,
But Right or Left as strikes the Player goes;
And He that toss'd Thee down into the Field,
He knows about it all -He knows - HE knows!
(From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam)
A phenomenal poem by the exceptional Abbas Jeejan, the Iraqi poet. Jeejan faced immense problems from the Iraqi government and media outlets following the release of this poem. It gives me goosebumps everytime I hear it.
Again, the causes or means that bring about any form of excellence are the same as those that destroy it, and similarly with art; for it is as a result of playing the harp that people become good and bad harpists. The same principle applies to builders and all other craftsmen. Men will become good builders as a result of building well, and bad ones as a result of building badly. Otherwise there would be no need of anyone to teach them: they would all be born either good or bad. Now this holds good also of the virtues. It is the way that we behave in our dealings with other people which makes us just or unjust, and the way that we behave in the face of danger, accustoming ourselves to be timid or confident, that makes us brave or cowardly. Similarly in situations involving desires and angry feelings: some people are temperate and patient from one kind of conduct in such situations, others licentious and choleric from another. In a word, then, like activities produce like dispositions. Hence we must give our activities a certain quality, because it is their characteristics that determine the resulting dispositions. So it is a matter of no little importance what sort of habits we form from the earliest age - it makes a vast difference, or rather all the difference in the world.
(From the Ethics of Aristotle)
There is nothing more tragic than when people who do not know anything about politics feel that they are somehow qualified to have an opinion on the subject. The clamour surrounding the recent release of Michel Kilo, portrayed amongst some as a hero of freedom, is symptomatic of the kind of intellectual bankruptcy that Syria's self-styled intellectual elite suffer from. I say this and I know I will be viciously condemned, in the same way that I would be condemned for laughing at Ukraine or Georgia's technicolour revolutions, or for laughing at the Dalai Lama or at whatever the name of that woman in Burma is called. An apologist for dictatorships? No, I'm not, but I know who I am and I know how to formulate a political opinion independently and consistently with my principles - which is more than what I can say for many of my critics, and for their principles or lack therof.
The American/Israeli backed attempt at placing Lebanon firmly in the West's camp, which took place following the timely death of Rafik al Hariri in 2005; the attempt at destroying Hezbullah in 2006; the attempt to isolate and marginalise Syria following the illegal and murderous invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003; the illegal murder of the president of Iraq and the murder of 1 million Iraqi's; the attempt to destroy Hamas in 2008; these are all linked. All of these events and countless others I have not mentioned are, to put it delicately, an "imperialist" plot for the region. Propaganda often attempts to eliminate a concept from public consciousness not by suppressing it and trying to erase it, but by constantly having it in the public eye. In doing so, people no longer care, they carry out their own self-censorship and the word becomes either derided, ignored or, the worst, laughed at. But however you decide to package and market manure in tinfoil, it will always be manure in tinfoil, and the millions of people who think otherwise are irrelevant compared to that one person who wrinkles their nose up and refuses to wear it on their head. People like Michel Kilo were quite happy to make things easier for the United States at almost every step of the way, though we must not contrast willingness with ability, for the Syrian opposition, apart from being misguided, is just as equally ineffectual. It is thanks to this ineffectuality and naivity that they were locked up at most and not worse. Sadly, Kilo and those who have supported him are what Lenin would call "useful idiots" - ideologues who think that they are being supported by the West, or at least by progressive intellectuals in the West, but who are actually held in contempt by them.
It can't be good when you have Jeffrey Feltman, King Abdullah, Mahmoud Abbas and now Abdullah Gul the President of Turkey all visiting Damascus in such a short period of time. Of course we've also had the Pope come to Jordan and then Israel, and Obama visiting Cairo next month.
.I cannot believe it has been a year since I posted about the anniversary of the Nakba. In the space of one short year many things change, our hopes are raised and then dashed countless times. Hours merge into days, months, years. Whether it has been 3 months or 61 years since your world was shattered, what difference can it make when you cannot escape the all pervasive sorrow of the now? Angrily chasing a lost life in a maze of lies?
I'm too tired to analyse, to berate, to discuss. The dark difficult road to Palestine is lit by beautiful and vicious looking orange flowers, spurting brightly from the muzzle of a Kalashnikov...that is the only way. All other roads lead to death.
Strange flag isn't it? The writing on the top states: Victory is from Allah and imminent conquest, announce this to the believers (نصرٌ من الله و فتحٌ قريبٌ و بشر المؤمنين) in each of the four crescents are the names of Islam's righteous caliphs: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali. But what is that on the bottom? The Star of David? No, it is the Seal of Solomon and a popular symbol in Islamic art throughout medieval times. This flag is the flag of Hayreddin Barbarossa, an amazing man who lived in the period which followed the fall of the last Muslim kingdom in Spain. He was an Ottoman admiral charged with raiding the shipping of the European kingdoms and protecting the shipping routes of the Ottoman empire. Thanks to his efforts the entire Mediterranean sea was an Ottoman pond. His elder brother was named Oruc and his heroic efforts at rescuing almost 70,000 Mudejar's from Spain gained him the affectionate name of Baba Aruj (Baba Oruc), this name was inherited by Hayreddin following Oruc's death whilst fighting the Spanish in Algiers. What struck me is that these men lived at a time when the Muslim world shared a very different power dynamic with the European countries than it does today. The contrast could not be more startling, with Hayreddin's men once threatening Rome with the sack, and today, almost 460 years later, where we have the Roman Pope now in Jerusalem, itself now occupied by Zionists since 1948, having the nerve to lecture the Palestinian people about how to accept occupation. We are not talking about a very long time here. The Ottoman state was decapitated by Mustafa Kemal in 1922, a mere 376 years after the death of Barbarossa in Istanbul. This is a reminder if any that it is men with belief who make nations what they are and not intellectually subservient puppets. Were it not for the Barbarossa brothers, tens of thousands of Mudejar's would have been slaughtered in Christian Spain and the entire Maghreb would be Spanish or Italian (rather than just speaking the language of the French).
How we need more men like Hayreddin today...Read more about this remarkable man here.
"Many people scoff at the notion that the American media propagandizes the American citizenry, but here one sees the vivid essence of that process. Our establishment media loves to point to and loudly condemn the behavior of other governments as proof of how tyrannical and evil they are -- look at those Iranian mullah-fanatics imprisoning journalists/look at those primitive, corrupt, lawless Iraqis and their "culture of impunity"/look at the UAE and their tolerance of torture -- while completely ignoring, when they aren't justifying, identical behavior by our own government."
And another interesting part of this article:
"A Nexis search for "Roxana Saberi" reveals 2,201 mentions in press reports, virtually all of them in the last two months regarding her arrest by Iran. By stark contrast, a search for "Ibrahim Jassam" -- the Iraqi journalist still held without charges by the U.S. even in the face of an Iraqi court finding that there's no evidence of his guilt -- produces a grand total of 71 mentions. A search of "Sami al-Haj" for the first five years of his detention in Guantanamo (2001-2006) reveals a grand total of 101 mentions. For the entire period of his lawless detention, Bilal Hussein's name was mentioned 556 times. "
(Thanks Sasa)
Recently there has been a bigger than usual focus on Muslims. "Reports" and "studies" about how British Muslims are so patriotic, about how they are more homophobic than their continental cousins and so on ad nauseum. Now we have the Pope visiting the Middle East and starting with that paragon of Muslim moderation and Arab nationalism, the puppet King Abdullah. Apparently he wants to contribute to the Middle East 'peace process'. This is probably like asking Pol Pot to mediate between the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian people. Thank you your holiness, but no thanks. Next month Obama will also be visiting Cairo to address the "Muslim world", whatever the hell that means, and as if every single Muslim will be tuning-in to their super special batman style "Islamic" transmitter hidden inside their watches and jilbabs, to hear the leader of the self-titled 'free' world address them. This will take care of everything: the occupation of Iraq, killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan, destabilising Pakistan, supporting Israel. The Obama magic is coming to the Middle East, I can smell the sulphur already...
.
My friends son is going to have his sixth birthday next week and when I had asked him what he wanted he had told me he wanted a toy gun. Naturally, me being me, I had a plan to get him the baddest, meanest and bestest toy gun there is. I'm talking Tony Montana's "Little Friend", I'm talking Rambo here. Little did I know that legislation recently passed in the United Kingdom bans the import, sale and even a sniff of anything that looks like a toy gun. Fair enough, but I thought this was all a bit ironic from a country which is responsible for the rape, pillage and occupation of almost two thirds of the worlds land mass and complicity in the deaths of over 1 million Iraqis. Funny isn't it? So Happy Birthday Yousef! Hope you like the spiderman pencil case I'm going to get you.
Nicholas Noe writes for the Guardian on what he thinks is the silver lining for what is currently a very dark cloud. He is right in thinking that Hezbullah and the Christian Free Patriotic movement are most likely to win the elections, but to think that this would pressure Hezbullah to disarm are naive. When he talks about a "strong" Lebanese army being an incentive for the Party of God to drop their weapons, he misses the point that the majority of the army would be Lebanese Shia. He will also be sorely disappointed to know that the very concept of this "strong" army, in the eyes of Hezbullah and all its supporters, is identical with the capability, position and effectiveness of the movement as it stands at the moment, and the government will also be this way - especially with regards to the Zionist state. Washington and Tel Aviv also know this so I doubt very much that anyone will be taking much attention of Mr Noe's opinion. What a waste of five minutes.
.
If there is one singer who will always remind me of happier days, it is the famous Siham Rifqi (aka Fatima Qassab) in the classic song - Omm al Abaya. She comes from a different time, when artists were artists and not the cardboard cutouts from our Rotana generation. Unlike the present day fakes, she really was rebellious and proud of it, click here to read about this remarkable woman.
