Painful Truths

Saudi journalist faces death penalty for tweeting about Prophet Muhammad

A Saudi newspaper columnist, Hamza Kashgari, 23, faces the death penalty after being deported from Malaysia to Saudi Arabia. (See "Malaysia deports Saudi journalist accused of insulting prophet".)

His "crime" was to tweet this on the Prophet Muhammad's birthday:

"I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you. I will not pray for you."

I can't say that I have loved much about the dear old Prophet either but there's certainly a lot that I detest about him, not least his nine wives and the backward ideology he has bequeathed us Arabs.

Don't get me wrong: I equally detest Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Buddha, Confucius, Marx, Lenin and many other idols of old and new, including Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Vladimir Putin, Dmitriy Medvedev, Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping, Muammar Gaddafi, Hafez and Bashar Assad, Binyamin Netanyahu, Tzipi Livni and Mark Thompson.

But why should anyone be deported or face the death penalty simply for speaking his own mind?

This sad and potentially tragic story serves only to underline the truth in Kashgari's tweet. The Prophet Muhammad's personal flaws aside, he has bequeathed an ideology of intolerance that is inimical to debate and has guaranteed that the critical-thinking faculties of at least a significant minority of Muslims have atrophied, perhaps even physically.

Goodness only knows what evolution will do to the brain of the average Muslim as a consequence of this.

If you believe that Mr Kashgari should be left free to say what he likes as long as he does no harm to others, then please sign this petition and  circulate this blog post far and wide and speak out as loud as possible before it's too late.

Gaddafi’s pimps still peddling his lies

Libya’s tyrant Muammar Gaddafi is dead and buried but his pimps around the world don’t seem to have got the message yet. Perhaps, like some of Elvis Prestly’s fans, they believe that he’s immortal and is lurking among us, maybe in a disused sewer somewhere.

Be that as it may, it’s worth looking at some of the lies being peddled by these pimps, if only for a laugh – and to have some pity on these individuals. It’s bad enough being a pimp, but a pimp with limited intellect, chronic cognitive dissonance and perhaps also some literacy problems is a creature truly worthy of our pity.

Here’s a selection of the Gaddafi lies still working their way around the internet, with my replies beneath each lie. In contrast to Gaddafi's pimps, I have lived and worked in Libya for over 40 years, so I know what I am talking about .

Lie #1. There is no electricity bill in Libya; electricity is free for all its citizens.

This is a complete fabrication ‑ Libyans have always had to pay for utilities, including electricity.

Lie #2. There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at 0 per cent interest by law.

This is another fiction – Libyans have always paid interest on all loans. This includes students sent to study abroad – their “grants” are deducted from their salaries after they return home. In addition, under Gaddafi many Libyan have had to borrow money from banks, relatives and friends in order to seek medical treatment abroad, typically in Tunisia, Jordan or Egypt. And this in an oil-rich country with a small population of just six million (including at least two million foreign workers).

Lie #3. Home considered a human right in Libya – Gaddafi vowed that his parents would not get a house until everyone in Libya had a home. Gaddafi’s father has died while he , his wife and his mother are still living in a tent.

This is complete nonsense. It’s true that after Gaddafi’s coup in 1969 most of the corrugated iron shacks that dotted suburban areas in Libya disappeared, but that’s hardly a great achievement in a country whose population in 1969 was just 1.5 million and whose oil revenue grew at least tenfold during Gaddafi’s reign. In fact, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that this would have happened anyway, Gaddafi or no Gaddafi, given the phenomenal growth of income from oil. And that's not to mention the palaces Gaddafi built for himself in every city – all paid for with the Libyan people's money.

Lie #4. All newlyweds in Libya receive 60,000 Libyan dinar (50,000 US dollars) from the government to buy their first apartment and help start up a family.

This is a complete fabrication. It never happened either before or during Gaddafi’s reign. In fact, a huge number of people in Libya are unable to marry because they cannot afford to rent, buy or build a home.

Lie #5. Education and medical treatments are free in Libya. Before Gaddafi only 25 per cent of Libyans were literate. Today the figure is 83 per cent .

Education and medical treatment have always been free, under the monarchy and during Gaddafi’s reign. However, under Gaddafi, and especially from the late 1970s onwards, if you were unlucky enough to go to a state hospital you would have had to (a) bring your own bedding if you wanted to sleep in clean bedding; (b) get your family or friends to bring in food for you; and (c) put up with appalling standards of hygiene, including reused syringes. If you didn’t want any of this, then would have had to find the money to go to a private hospital.

Lie #6. Should Libyans want to take up farming career, they would receive farming land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and livestock to kick ‑ start their farms – all for free.

This is a blatant lie. It never happened at any time in Libya.

Lie #7. If Libyans cannot find the education or medical facilities they need in Libya, the government funds them to go abroad for it – not only free but they get US 2, 300 US dollars per month accommodation and car allowance.

Utter nonsense. See my answer to Lie # 2 above - under Gaddafi many Libyan have had to borrow money from banks, relatives and friends in order to seek medical treatment abroad, typically in Tunisia, Jordan or Egypt. This is in a oil-rich country with a small population of just six million (including at least two million foreign workers).

Lie #8. In Libya, if a Libyan buys a car, the government subsidizes 50 per cent of the price.

Complete nonsense. In fact, you’d be lucky to find a car to buy. Gaddafi seized all car dealerships in the late 1970s and, from then onwards, only the state very occasionally imported motor cars and sold them to the public at exorbitant prices. And that’s not all. To get to buy a car at all, you also had to pay a large bribe to one of the officials in charge of selling the state-imported vehicles. And, if you wanted to import a car privately – whatever its make and whether brand new or used – you had to pay 100-per-cent import duties (plus a bribe to get the port authorities to release the car even after you paid the import duties).

Lie #9. The price of petrol in Libya is 0. 14 US dollars per litre.

As with all oil producing countries, the price of petrol was lower than in Europe or Japan. But it certainly was not 0.14 US dollars per litre. It was equivalent to the price of petrol in the USA.

Lie #10. Libya has no external debt and its reserves amount to 150 billion US dollars – now frozen globally.

That’s true, but why should a country of vast oil revenues, six million people and almost no public expenditure have a foreign debt? In Gaddafi’s 42-year tyranny hardly any new infrastructure was built and existing infrastructure, such as roads, hospitals and schools, hardly received any investment at all. It’s also worth noting that, despite several contracts with Russian, Ukrainian and Chinese railway companies costing approximately 40 billion dollars, Libya has no railway at all. As for the reserves of 150 billion US dollars, that too is hardly surprising given the vast oil wealth and almost zero public investments. Almost all of these reserves were managed by Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, who spent the money in corrupt private dealings. The defunct dictator’s other son, Mutasim, also dipped into the country’s reserves, spending by his own admission  two million dollars per month on gifts and parties for his girlfriends.

Lie #11. If a Libyan is unable to get employment after graduation the state would pay the average salary of the profession as if he or she is employed until employment is found.

This is a complete lie. It is estimated that at least one-third of Libyan graduates are unemployed – none received anything from the state. And Libya has no social security, so these people, like all other unemployed citizens, had to rely on family and friends for support.

Lie #12. A portion of Libyan oil sale is credited directly to the bank accounts of all Libyan citizens.

Rubbish! It’s simply not true.

Lie #13. A mother who gave birth to a child receive 5,000 US dollars.

Another figment of the imagination of Gaddafi’s pimps. It never happened. Ever!

Lie #14. Forty loaves of bread in Libya costs 0.15 dollars.

Bread has always been cheap – even in impoverished countries like Egypt. But the price of one (repeat, one, not 40) loaf of bread in Libya in December 2010 (i.e. before the people’s revolution) was about 0.20 US dollars.

Lie #15. Twenty five per cent of Libyans have a university degree.

More or less true – and 30 per cent of them are unemployed!

Lie #16. Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project, known as the Great Man-Made River project, to make water readily available throughout the desert country.

That’s true. This is a prestige project that cost three times as much as originally estimated. It would have been much cheaper to develop desalinated water plants. And what happened when the “Great Man-Made River” was completed? They connected it to the country’s ageing water pipes which blew up all at the same time because of the huge increase in pressure, leaving millions in Benghazi, Tripoli and elsewhere without freshwater for months. And why weren’t the pipes renewed before connecting them to the “Great Man-Made River”? Well, money had been allocated to do this but the job was never done ‑ not one pipe was renewed! And why was that? Because Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and his brother Mutasim pocketed the money. All of it. Ten billion us dollars, in fact!

Lie #17. According to the United Nations Development Programme, Libya ranked first in Africa (53 globally) on the Human Development Index ‑ ahead of Saudi Arabia at 55, Iran at 70, South Africa at 73, Jordan at 82, Egypt at 101, Indonesia at 108, India at 119, Afghanistan at 155.

Go and tell that to the families of the hundreds buried alive in underground prisons in Libya, or to the loved ones of those locked up and left to die in shipping containers in ambient temperatures of 45 degrees Celsius. Or to the relatives of the 1,200 political murdered in three hours in Abu Salim prison in 1996. As for ranking 53 globally on the UN's Human Development Index, big deal! Only 53, in a country of immense wealth and only  six million people? Why not ranking first globally? This is an indictment of Gaddafi, his thieving family and his murderous regime. And ranking first in Africa – is that a great achievement, considering that the overwhelming majority of African countries are either super poor or ultra-corrupt?

Lie #18. According to the US Energy Information Administration, “Libya has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa”.

It is a measure of the intellectual calibre of Gaddafi’s pimps that they cite Libya’s oil reserves as an achievement of the defunct tyrant. Well, let me surprise them: the size of a country’s oil reserves is determined by natural phenomena spanning billions of years, not by human intervention.

Lie #19. On 21 February 2011, five days after the Arab Spring broke out in Libya, Gaddafi launched a new programme to privatize all Libyan oil to every citizen of Libya, initially providing 21,000 US dollars to every Libyan from a total of 32 billion dollars in the Year 2011, so that the health, education, transport and some other ministries could be abolished and individual Libyans could use the profits of their own investments, including from oil ownership, to obtain the relevant services. This, Gaddafi said, is the best way to eliminate corruption, including the theft of Libyan oil by foreign oil companies, and to decentralize governmental power.

I’ve heard this story from Gaddafi’s own mouth before ‑ in fact, once every three years or so, the last time being in early March this year, shortly after the people’s revolution began. It’s a cheap attempt to tempt people, but never materialized at any time following promises along the same lines from 1979 onwards. Besides, after 42 years of Gaddafi rule Libya is still 97 per cent reliant on oil revenue. So much for development! So, even if Gaddafi were serious, what will Libyans do with all that money. The answer is simple: with zero domestic output, it would mean a several-hundred-per-cent increase in imports. Libya already imports everything. As for the theft of Libyan oil by foreign oil companies, well, who gave these companies control of Libyan oil in the first place, and who pampered them and gave them and their staff preferential treatment over Libyan citizens? Every Libyan knows the answer to that question but let me spell it out for Gaddafi’s intellectually-challenged pimps: the answer is Gaddafi and his corrupt sons.

Lie #20. The Great Man-Made River Project, begun in 1984 by Gaddafi, has been called the Eighth Wonder of the World. It supplies fresh water to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and elsewhere. The US threatened to nuke this “chemical weapons factory”. Foreign companies covet the fresh water.

See my answer to Lie #16 above: This is a prestige project that cost three times as much as originally estimated. It would have been much cheaper to develop desalinated water plants. And what happened when the “Great Man-Made River” was completed? They connected it to the country’s ageing water pipes which blew up all at the same time because of the huge increase in pressure, leaving millions in Benghazi, Tripoli and elsewhere without freshwater for months. And why weren’t the pipes renewed before connecting them to the “Great Man-Made River”? Well, money had been allocated to do this but the job was never done ‑ not one pipe was renewed! And why was that? Because Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and his brother Mutasim pocketed the money. All of it. Ten billion us dollars, in fact! As for foreign companies coveting the “Great Man-Made River’s” freshwater, what exactly would foreign companies do with this water?

Lie #21. Muammar Gaddafi seized power in 1969 in a bloodless coup by overthrowing King Idris of Libya ‑ Idris achieved power with British backing in 1949.

If we're supposed to conclude from this that Gaddafi is a peace-loving man who only does things bloodlessly, then the defunct tyrant's pimps are stupid beyond our wildest imagination. Gaddafi's dismal, murderous human rights record in Libya is a matter of public record and is beyond doubt. Likewise, his murderous actions abroad are almost unparalleled. Just think of his sponsorship of drug-crazed limb amputators in Sierra Leone and Code d'Ivoire, his arming and funding of Charles Taylor's gangsters in Liberia and his decades-long bloody meddling in Chad and Sudan, to mention but a few. Also, staging a bloodless coup in Libya in 1969 can’t have been a very hard job. Gaddafi’s colleagues arrested the crown prince and three army officers and seized the radio and TV station – one building. That was it! And there’s a sting in the tail here too. One of Gaddafi’s coup colleagues – Muhammad al-Mogaryaf, who was murdered by Gaddafi in 1972 ‑ related that at the crucial hour when some of his colleagues went to arrest the army chief, Gaddafi panicked and hid for a full four hours. Mogaryaf paid for this revelation with his life. By the way, Libya’s population at that time of the coup was 1.5 million, in a country six times the size of the UK. It must have been really hard to stage a bloodless coup in such a tiny country with a super weak regime!

BBC smears Egyptians with "anti-Semitism" slur

I have just read one of the worst articles I’ve seen in many years. Entitled “How I became subject of anti-Semitic abuse in Cairo”, you might think it is written by some ignorant blogger in the back of beyond. But no, the writer is a supposedly educated, well travelled journalist working for Britain's state broadcaster, the BBC. It is the online version of a piece broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 and World Service radio programme “From Our Own Correspondent".

According to his Twitter profile, the author, Thomas Dinham, is a 22-year-old “freelance journalist and Middle East enthusiast". However, someone at the BBC appears to have taken a liking to him – he has broadcast at least three pieces on "From Our Own Correspondent", in addition to the piece referred to here.

In the article, Dinham sets out to "prove" that there is "anti-Semitism" in Egypt. To conceal his mission, he frames it in the context of a genuine problem in Middle Eastern societies, including Egypt: the popularity of conspiracy theories.

Thus, he starts by observing:

”Suspicion is a feature of everyday life in Egypt, and a fondness for conspiracy theories is as much a part of the landscape here as the constant traffic jams and their accompanying symphony of blaring car horns.”

He is of course right. Conspiracy theories, and the casual disregard of facts and hard evidence, are curses of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

But we are not alone. Many people in Russia, Eastern Europe and vast swathes of the Anglo-Saxon world, with which I am very familiar, also are guilty of widespread indulgence in conspiracy theories and in passing off as fact rumour, gossip and hearsay.

The difference between us – in this case, Egypt – and the rest of the world is that in the Arab world politics figure prominently in most conversations, whereas in Britain, for example, people are more fond of talking about soap operas, celebrities and their sex lives. And politics naturally lends itself to conspiracy theories, especially in societies with a relatively low level of literacy, where reliable information is sparse and where people feel they have little influence over decisions that affect their lives.

Having set up an ostensibly genuine context for his thesis – the problem of conspiracy theories – Dinham goes on to paint the worst possible picture of Egyptians, which he portrays as "anti-Semites". In so doing, he indulges in the kind of innuendo that he accuses Egyptians of. Here is a passage from his article:

”A group of old men slurping tea mixed with incredible quantities of sugar was studying me.

“Eventually one of the men struck up a conversation, revolving primarily around what exactly I was doing in Egypt at a time when most foreigners had left.

“My answers met with furrowed brows and clearly dissatisfied shakes of the head, when suddenly, raising his hand in front of his mouth in a conspiratorial gesture one man shot, "I bet he's from Israel" into the ear of his friend so quickly as to be barely discernable.

“I was shocked. In nearly six months of living in Syria, where orchestrated hysteria about Israel is integral to the very identity of the state, I had never heard the accusation surreptitiously levelled against me.

“Neither am I from Israel, nor am I Jewish, but as someone of unmistakably European appearance, I have found myself constantly associated with Israel in Egyptian eyes.”

First, let us deal with the question Dinham says he was asked: "what exactly I was doing in Egypt at a time when most foreigners had left"?

This is a perfectly reasonable question, I would have thought, especially in light of the fact that Egypt is brimming with foreign spies, mostly Israelis and Americans. And we all know that foreign intelligence agencies have a habit of masquerading their spies as journalists.

Second, Dinham says: "My answers met with furrowed brows and clearly dissatisfied shakes of the head, when suddenly, raising his hand in front of his mouth in a conspiratorial gesture, one man shot, 'I bet he's from Israel' into the ear of his friend so quickly as to be barely discernable."

Dinham's response, as he describes it, prompts me to ask myself whether his confused reasoning is due to the 22-year-old's lack of knowledge about Egypt and Egyptians' sense of humour, or to a possible prejudice that impels him to search for scraps of information that might substantiate his stereotype of Egyptians.

Dinham soon answers my question. He says:

”Israel is just one of a panoply of worries that exercise the conspiracy theorists that frequent Egypt's cafes...

“Nevertheless, a strong and sometimes violent dislike of Israel is a fact of Egyptian life, something I was unfortunate enough to discover after a cross-border raid by Israel killed several Egyptian security personnel.

“The Israelis had been chasing a group of gunmen who had attacked an Israeli bus close to the border between the two countries.

“While walking in the street someone pushed me from behind with such force that I nearly fell over.

“Turning around, I found myself surrounded by five men, one of whom tried to punch me in the face. I stopped the attack by pointing out how shameful it was for a Muslim to assault a guest in his country, especially during Ramadan.

“Relieved that a seemingly random assault was over, I was appalled by the apology offered by one of my assailants. ‘Sorry,’ he said contritely, offering his hand, ‘we thought you were a Jew.’

“Shaking his head in disbelief on hearing the news, an Egyptian friend sympathised: ‘That's stupid, you are obviously not a Jew.’

“The chilling implication I was left with was that, had I been Jewish, the assault would have apparently been justified.”

Dinham's answer, and my chilling conclusion, is that he is both ignorant and prejudiced. He has taken the reference to Jews out of all context, for example, the fact that in the Arab world feelings against Israel run high because of its continuing occupation of Arab lands and its ongoing crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories; that in Egypt anti-Israel sentiment is particularly high right now following Israel's murder of five Egyptian policemen on Egyptian soil on 18 August and its refusal to apologise for this (as it refuses to apologise for its murder of nine Turkish humanitarian workers on the aid ship Mavi Marmara).

Dinham also omits to mention the fact that, because Israel claims to be the state of all Jews, irrespective of their nationality, Israelis and Zionists are often referred to in the Arab world simply as Jews. This is not a manifestation of “anti-Semitism”, as Dinham would have us believe, but a corollary of Israel's claim to be the representative of all Jews. (Britons and Americans sometimes refer to Hitler's Nazi Germans simply as Germans. Does that mean they are anti-German racists?)

It is sad that the BBC is once again offering us drivel. The reasons are many and varied: Zionists in key editorial positions in the corporation; pandering to the UK's Israel lobby, which can count on Director-General Mark Thompson as one of its foot soldiers; the desire to ingratiate itself with advertisers in the US market which it craves; and sheer ignorance and lack of a genuine desire to understand the Arab world and explain it to the British public.

The victims of all this, apart from us Arabs who have to put up with this kind of slur, are the British public. It is the British licence-fee payer, not American Zionist advertisers or the Israel lobby, who pays for the BBC's shabby, Judaeo-centric journalism.

This is a raw deal indeed for the ordinary British people – the cleaners, bus drivers, bricklayers, nurses, teachers and the numerous others whose living standards are fast sinking as I write – who are paying for the fat pigs in senior BBC management and the hacks who are endlessly force-feeding us their ignorance and prejudice.

And it's a far cry from the BBC's mission – "To enrich people's lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain".

9-11 anniversary highlights poverty of BBC – and other British broadcasters

Today and yesterday, it has been wall-to-wall TV coverage of the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. For  Britain's state broadcaster, the BBC, and its normally lighter-footed and better focused rivals, Independent Television News (ITN) and Sky News, it would seem that the world has stopped and there is nothing to report or talk about except the 9-11 anniversary.

And what about 9-11? Do these super money wasters have anything new to say? New insight or new angles, perhaps?

None whatseoever. All very predictable stuff hashed and rehashed, debated and redebated over, and over, and over again. It is a complete and utter poverty of the imagination and intelligence.

And why is this, you might ask?

One reason is the traditional British sycophancy towards the Americans. Any primarily American story has to be mangified many times over and treated as if it were a supremely important global story.

Another reason is commercial. The BBC, for example, is trying to make inroads into the American market with its commercial BBC World News channel and BBC.com website. It wants American audiences and American advertisers, whatever the cost to its credibility and to the quality of its programmes. It is aping American channels and will do whatever it takes to dumb down to a level where it will register with American audiences as one of their own and with American advertisers as a channel that is low enough to reach the deepest, darkest corners of the average American six-pack Joe's bowels.

This is what happens when you allow bean counters to take over a public broadcaster. In all of this, the BBC has forgotten that it would not exist had it not been for public funding – the TV licence fee. The poor people who are compelled to fund it and who are force-fed its 9-11 extravaganza nonsense deserve better than this. I hope that yestarday's and today's self-indulgences produce a public backlash that will teach BBC managers and editors a lesson they will never forget.

Finally, a word about 9-11 itself. Of all the hundreds of broadcast hours and the thousands of coloumn inches that have been devoted to the tenth anniversary, I have seen just three articles that are worth reading. Two of the articles are on Scott Lucas's Enduring America World View website – the titles speak for themselves:

"Reflecting on 9-11: why it was not a turning point for the world" and

"Reflecting on 9-11: what the War on Terror has cost the US – and us".

And the third is on Al-Jazeera's English-language website:

Let's forget 9-11

Gaddafi's fake supporters and fake casualties of Western air strikes

Telephone and internet communications with Libya have been cut off by Libyan dictator Mu'ammar Gaddafi.

However, I have been able to contact a very important person in the Libyan state apparatus using a satellite phone to ascertain the truths regarding Libyan state TV's reports of civilian casualties resulting from Western air and missle strikes. 

He says that these reports of civilian casualties are a complete lie.

My contact says that the Gaddafi regime has brought together a combination of victims of road traffic accidents (of which there are about 10,000 in Libya annually) and victims of his own forces' brutal suppression of protests in the Tajoura suburb of Tripoli (more than 300) for display to the cameras, claiming that they are victims of the NATO air and missile strikes.

My contact further says the people outside Gaddafi's compound and in Tripoli's Green Square consist 100 per cent of the following:

(1) Revolutionary Committee members (thugs and hoodlums) who have been instructed to bring their families with them;

(2) Members of Al-Amn al-Dakhili (the internal security organization) and their families – there are 25,000 of these. They include such nasty creatures as the Special Rape Squad (yes, it's a job title written on their Security Services ID cards) whose job is to rape political prisoners, men and women.

My contact also says  that, as you would imagine, (1) and (2) above are not happy to bring family members with them but are doing so under duress.

Also, Gaddafi since 17 March has locked up all but two of his ministers in with him in Bab al-Aziziya compound to prevent them from defecting.

Finally, many of (1) and (2) above have blood on their hands and are implicated in a host of ghastly crimes. Many of their  identities are known to their victims' families: they know that when Gaddafi goes down they will go down with him, so they have nothing to lose.

For once, the BBC said the truth

A once-in-a-lifetime moment of truth on BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme this morning. At 07:59 GMT, just before the news bulletin, one of the programme's two presenters, James Naughtie, said what most right-thinking, fine upstanding people have thought all along.

Flagging up what was to come after the bulletin, he said: "First up after the news, we're going to be talking to Jeremy Cunt."

James Naughtie  

Jeremy Cunt, or should I use his assumed surname Hunt, is the British secretary of state for media, culture and sports.

James Naughtie quickly corrected himself by saying James Hunt, but it was too late. The truth had come out and there was no way of hiding it. For a few moments, the BBC shot up in my estimation.

I will have to say, though, that I felt really sorry for James Naughtie. His voice shook so much that he struggled to read the main points of the news.

Let's hope his so-called "managers" will have mercy on him.

Shame on Britons and Arabs alike

This has been a month of shame for Arabs and Britons alike.

For the Arabs, a sign of how low they and their governments have sunk has been the violence between Algerians and Egyptians over their FIFA World Cup qualifying matches in Cairo and the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. (See "Egypt and Algeria: much more than a football match".)

Weeks of mutual recriminations between the two countries' football supporters prior to the matches descended into mindless acts of hoologanism, of the type that Britons are only too familiar, and then, most sickening of all, into a political row between two bankrupt regimes yearning for "legitimacy" by capitalizing on the sentiments of the low-life among their peoples. (See, for example, "Egypt-Algeria World Cup violence used to rally support for Mubarak regime" and "The political fallout of Egypt's soccer war".) Although there have been some voices of sanity ("Open letter from Egyptians and Algerians on football row"), there is still no sign that either regime is ready to forego milking this shameful and pathetic episode in the history of Egypt and Algeria for whatever cheap "popularity" they might get.

Meanwhile, Britain has also had its fair – and well-deserved – share of national shame. On 16 November Channel 4 TV's Dispatches programme ventured into where no other British mainstream media had ever dared with an expose of Britain's Israel lobby. The Dispatches episode, "Inside Britain's Israel lobby", revealed to Britons and the world at large what campaigners for justice for the Palestinians have known all along: that British politicians – left, right and centre – are not only stooges of the racist state of Israel, but are actually in the pay of Israel lobbyists! (For the details of what was revealed, click here.) In fact, the programme showed that almost anyone who is anyone in the Conservative and Labour parties is in Israel's pockets. Surely, by any standard, in any lexicon, this is high treason pure and simple.

One would expect that in a democratic society such shocking revelations would generate widespread public debate and lead to questions as to why the elected politicians of "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" have been bought – literally bought – by what a French ambassador to London once rightly described as "a shitty little country".  But, alas, no. Having been exposed, Britain's Israel lobby has opted for a strategy of silence, in the hope that everyone will forget all about it and the issue would just go away.

Reading through some of the comments on the Dispatches website left by members of the public, I was struck by this remark: "It [the Dispatches programme] won’t change anything. Most of the British public are too stupid to realize how important this programme is."

Indeed.

Racist Nick Griffin on BBC "Question Time" with two hypocrites

So much hullabaloo and so much hypocrisy. 

The BBC has invited Nick Griffin, the leader of the racist British National Party (BNP), to its "Question Time" programme, where members of the audience question a panel of politicians and other public figures on topical issues.

Ever since Mr Griffin's invitation became public, a variety of voices have been getting themselves in a muddle over the wisdom of the invitation. Some feared that the appearance of the leader of this racist party would give him respectability and his vile party publicity, while others argued in favour of the sanctity of free speech.

In the end, Mr Griffin appeared on the programme, despite noisy and mildly violent protests outside TV Centre, BBC Television's headquarters. It was an anti-climax, big time. And this is not just because of Mr Griffin's uncharismatic, lacklustre and somewhat unintelligent performance.

First, Mr Griffin, his repulsive political views aside, was never given a chance explain what he believed in and did not believe in. The audience was handpicked and hostile, and the other members of the panel were markedly reluctant to debunk his "arguments" in a logical and rational manner, opting instead to hound him.

But for me what was far worse was the sheer hypocrisy of the other politicians on the panel. One, the Conservative Dame Sayeeda Warsi, hailed from a party 80 per cent of whose MPs are affiliated to Conservative Friends of Israel, yes, Israel, the country whose racism is far more profound and deadlier than anything to do with the BNP. The other, Jack Straw, is not only a Judaeo-centric Labour apologist of the racist state of Israel, but is also an accessory to war crimes, having been Britain's foreign secretary at the time of the aggression against Iraq.

So, two friends of the world's most racist state ranged against the leader of a non-entity. And they dare talk about the respectability that Mr Griffin might acquire by sitting on the same panel as these two scoundrels.

An online orchestrated campaign against Ahmadinejad?

"The power of social networks in organizing protests is good stuff to highlight, but who exactly is organizing the protests? People in Iran or people elsewhere who think President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should have been defeated?" See "Twitter in Iran: genuine or orchestrated?"

Illusions of an English civil servant

An English civil servant asked a friend of mine recently how an Arab satellite TV channel portrays life in Britain for Arabs. My friend promised to keep an eye open for relevant programmes and to let him know the next time they meet.

Surely enough, after spotting a programme or two on life for Arabs in Britain, my friend took note and, in due course, relayed the gist of their content to his civil servant acquaintance.

According to my friend, the message of the programmes was not very flattering. In fact, the picture it painted was eerily similar to the one that I have tried to paint in this blog.

However, my friend said, the Englishman was not amused and expressed disappointment that the programmes were generally negative and paid little or no attention to “the positive aspects of life in Britain”.

I am somewhat surprised. Although the story described above took place a few weeks ago, ever since I have been wracking my brain, wondering what could the Englishmen have meant. Despite my own unflattering view of life in the British wilderness, a view that is born out of long, bitter experience, I have always tried to place myself in the native Britons' shoes, to understand how Britain looks and feels to its native inhabitants, in case I stumble upon something endearing that had hitherto escaped my attention.

In fact, I am surprised every time a native Briton says something endearing about, or indicative of an emotional tie to, Britain. For example, one thing that has always bewildered me is when Britons whom I meet while on holiday abroad say, towards the end of their holiday, "I am ready for home know." Other Britons whom I have met either on holiday or in my own country have said some truly perplexing things like "I miss home." Miss what, exactly, I ask myself?

Indeed, on a couple of occasions I plucked up the courage to ask my British interlocutors this very question. The replies did not surprise me. One couple were unable to answer the question, with one of them saying, to the best of my recollection: "I don't really know, that's a good question. I suppose I don't." On another occasion my British interlocutor hesitated while he thought of an answer and, after several minutes, said: "I miss going to the pub for a pint."

That just about sums it up. There is in fact very little to say about the British wilderness that can be described as positive. This is not a comment about the British people at an individual level but about the habitat, the country or physical entity known as Britain. However, as we all know, the physical habitat and its climate play a fundamental part in moulding attitudes, temperaments, behaviours and interactions of people at a societal level. Thus, while it would be fair to say that, on the whole, the native Britons are polite, reserved and respectful of privacy, the other side of this is their asocialness, coldness and perfidy.

So, all things considered, it's hard to know what the English civil servant had in mind when he regretted that an Arab satellite TV channel had omitted to mention anything positive about what Britain had to offer to Arabs. Perhaps if he comes across this blog he might care to enlighten me.