You are looking at posts that were written in the month of November in the year 2006.
Two important articles you should read which highlight the despicable way HRW is reporting on the tragic events in Gaza and in Palestine.
Seriously, this makes you think twice about the credibility of such organizations…
http://www.counterpunch.com/cook11302006.html
Would HRW Have Attacked Martin Luther King, Too?
Palestinians Are Being Denied the Right of Non-Violent Resistance?
By JONATHAN COOK
in Nazareth
If one thing offers a terrifying glimpse of where the experiment in human despair that is Gaza under Israeli siege is leading, it is the news that a Palestinian woman in her sixties — a grandmother — chose last week to strap on a suicide belt and explode herself next to a group of Israeli soldiers invading her refugee camp.
Despite the “Man bites dog” news value of the story, most of the Israeli media played down the incident. Not surprisingly: it is difficult to portray Fatma al-Najar as a crazed fanatic bent only the destruction of Israel.
It is equally difficult not to pause and wonder at the reasons for her suicide mission: according to her family, one of her grandsons was killed by the Israeli army, another is in a wheelchair after his leg had to be amputated, and her house had been demolished.
Or not to think of the years of trauma she and her family have suffered living in a open-air prison under brutal occupation, and now, since the “disengagement”, the agonising months of grinding poverty, slow starvation, repeated aerial bombardments, and the loss of essentials like water and electricity.
Or not to ponder at what it must have been like for her to spend every day under a cloud of fear, to be powerless against a largely unseen and malign force, and to never know when death and mutilation might strike her or her loved ones.
Or not to imagine that she had been longing for the moment when the soldiers who have been destroying her family’s lives might show themselves briefly, coming close enough that she could see and touch them, and wreak her revenge.
Yet Western observers, and the organisations that should represent the very best of their Enlightenment values, seem incapable of understanding what might drive a grandmother to become a suicide bomber. Their empathy fails them, and so does their humanity.
A video that I really liked……….
“Za7ma ya donia Za7ma” is an Egyptian folk song, I don’t know who is the singer and I am not really interested to know. Whoever he was, he was absolutely right when he sang this song. The song crossed my mind today, when I was in the car….thank God I was not driving, I would have committed a crime. For those who have never been to Egypt, it is really crowded everywhere especially in the rush hour and in the morning where most people go to their work and students to their schools or universities.
Actually, what is really ironic if you found the way to downtown not crowded, you wonder what is going on …there must be something wrong !!.Since I live in Cairo from a long time I am used to traffic jam, however sometimes you just can’t stand it anymore and you feel you want to go home and relax. Cars are everywhere you go, there is no place to walk …people who want to walk can go to the track in clubs or walk on a treadmill in gym.
The average middle class or high class family has more than one to two cars. And sometimes more, which after like 10 years or maybe less it will be a disaster especially in small cities like “Aleppo” in Syria which become too crowded with cars and very narrow roads. Though one cannot compare between Egypt and Syria because of the number of population, however in Syria it is much better. What I like about Syrian traffic is the electric traffic light, where you count the numbers from downwards to upwards then you move with your car, I know it sounds weird, but I like it!!!
Cars are no longer a luxury thing to obtain, it is a necessity in life, and espically if you live in a big city, and public transportations in Egypt are awful, you can’t take a bus or train ….it is too crowded, and not very good. What I really like about Europe, is people there can live without a car because they have good means of transportations like undergrounds which I like or good buses, and people are civilized in a way that no one can bother you…Etc.
While I was in the car I remembered the movie “back to the future” 1985.Where there was this scene for the car that Doc brown invented, it can go back in time and to the future ….the scene was for cars moving in the sky. Well maybe in the future it will be possible to invent such a car that can move in space, and thus we avoid traffic jam …well maybe I am imagining, but everything is possible these days with all the sophisticated and new technology.
A question often and repeatedly asked by Americans, who just don’t know, or can’t grasp how despicable and loathsome their country’s foreign policies really are.
As far as Americans are concerned, the rest of the world is either a big nuisance, or just plain hostile. That maybe true as far as they’re concerned but what are the reasons behind it?
Your average American actually believes the bull that his media and politicians spew out, and thinks the answer to the above question is simply “because they hate our freedom and values, or they’re jealous of our prosperity”. That, aside from being childish and naive, highlights the serious disparity between the American people, and their political system, and that my friends is the core of the issue.
Most American people, are just like any other people in any other country in the world, they abhor and detest the bad things in life….cruelty, injustice, torture, oppression, violence, intimidation, war, poverty…..you name it, they hate it….just like us, just like everyone else….It’s a crying shame therefore, that their country is responsible for a lot of the “bad things in life” on a global scale, and throughout modern history. But of course, any “patriotic” American will deny that won’t he? All the above is just a baseless and misinformed attack against his country which is just looking out for it’s own, and doing what’s in it’s best interest…..all the countless invasions, wars, sanction, coups, vetoes and arm twisting are just legitimate acts of statehood and sovereignty. Given the Machiavellian self serving nature of modern politics, can you really blame the average American for believing all that crap? I dunno, can you blame someone for not stopping a crime that’s taking place in front of them? can you blame someone for not speaking out about a crime? The term “murder accessory ” springs to mind, and that’s just how the American people are being used by their government, as accessories to murder. Murder taking place everyday in their name…..the murder of Afghanis, Iraqis and Palestinians, and the odd Lebanese every now and again. Murder taking place in the name of the American nation, founded on the basic human instinct to resist oppression and tyranny, and champion of the cause of freedom and human rights……well, maybe it was once, but no longer. That dreamy romantic image of the great American nation has long since vanished and is now confined to the pages of history books which speak of a glorious past and of founding fathers and constitution writing and independence.
Arabs of course, have born the brunt of this Jekyll-Hyde transformation. We’ve always been on the wrong end of the stick. True, it wasn’t always the Americans holding it, but they did a nice job taking it over from the imperial English and French. They also did a nice job adopting Europe’s illegitimate child, born of centuries of guilt and given birth to by a bloody labor on the doorsteps of Palestine. Never again will the mistresses’ child want for anything, the stick is to be used solely for the whipping of the “old” children.
This whip has been brandished so often, that it’s really lost its sting. The Arabs are no longer fearful of the pain it inflicts, no longer intimidated by all the shouting and threats. They are resisting, they are rising up and speaking out…..hence 9/11 hence all the bombings hence all the “terrorism”…..Oh, of course not sorry I forgot, “terrorists” are just mad people who like to kill themselves for the joy of it and in order to go to heaven and get all the women there, they hate freedom and democracy and our way of life, and they want to destroy us because they hate us….they have absolutely no cause, and no legitimate struggle or concerns…..the fact that we are occupying their countries and killing their families has nothing to do with all those bombings, they’re just plain crazy irrational people……
And that my friends is the answer to the question “why do they hate us”……..they don’t really hate us, they just hate the way we’ve been whipping em around every now and again…..
Finally, and after tons of hard work collecting and organizing, I’ve completed another installment of pictures of Syria in the picture gallery HERE
I’ve also re-categorized the albums, we now have historical, religious, misc, Aleppo and Damascus. I’m hoping that this collection will one day grow to be the definitive picture guide for Syria, so any contributions you may have, please feel free to sign up at the gallery and upload!
You can also tell me if you have any suggestions for improving or adding to the existing gallery.
You’ve probably heard of Borat, the fictional kazakhistani reporter created by Sacha Baron Cohen, better known as Ali G. What you probably didn’t know though, is that his latest movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” is a box office hit grossing in over 26 million dollars in the opening weekend!!!
Now, apparently a guy called Mahir Cagri wants to cash in on the action, claiming that Cohen stole the character by imitating him!!!
Similarities include the quotes “I like sex” and “You can stay my home” , and the infamous tight red shorts .
Actually, this Cagri guy was quite a phenomenon on the net back in 1999 due to his hilarious (unintentionally) homepage and broken English. Infact, he’s become so famous that he’s got articles about him all over the net, look here for example:
“In the year 2000, the now-defunct etour.com paid Mahir a rumored-sum of $1m to tour the United States, appearing at promotional events. At the San Francisco appearance, Mahir was led through a meta-web of scenes from his webpage, posing for photos with an accordion, playing a very brief game of ping-pong, and so on.”
His website http://www.ikissyou.org is always closed due to high demand, check out the cache for it at Google.
I guess all of this proves that you can be a complete git and still make it big….
spot the similarity?
