Painful Truths

Slip-sliding away

Britain is slip-sliding towards arbitrariness and injustice. Four years ago, a British couple, Mark and Nicky Webster, were suspected of child abuse. They were forcibly separated from their three children by order of the court, which subsequently put up the children for adoption. However, last week an appeal court judge decided that the couple may have suffered a miscarriage of justice. 

In a just society, the court would have reunited them with their children and would have offered them compensation for the suffering they have had to endure for no reason whatsoever. But not in this case. The eminent judge decided that adoptions were "irreversible" and refused to make an exception for the Websters. The reason? The finality of adoption was far more important than natural justice! So, the Websters will never be reunited with their children.

If this had happened in another country, say Russia or Burkina Faso, the media in Britain would have had a field day, with patronizing cries of "barbarousness", "callousness", "kangaroo courts", "banana republics", and so on. But it has happened here, in "Great" Britain, and I hear no cries from anybody other than those of the distressed parents.

In fact, Britain is not just sliding into arbitrariness – it is leading the world towards lawlessness. Today, the International Commission of Jurists, a non-governmental organization which promotes the observance of the rule of law and the legal protection of human rights, accused Britain and the United States of "actively undermining" international law by using the public's fear of terrorism to introduce measures which are illegal, such as torture, detention without trial and enforced disappearance.

Little by little, everything the British say they treasure is being frittered away: trial by jury, the presumption of innocence, policing by consent, parliamentary democracy, and now the rule of law, soon they will all be history.  The sad thing is, nobody is taking these away from British: they are dumping their rights and civil liberties all by themselves.

Only a truly great nation is capable of such truly fantastic feats!

Rats out of the sewer

It's a common assumption that one finds out who one's true friends are only in times of trouble. Likewise when there is trouble in the world.

For years, one can be surrounded by people who, on the surface, may seem humane, reasonable, logical and rational but, under certain circumstances, show their true colour. I wish I could give some context to my observations in this regard but to do so may identify me and others who may not wish to be identified, so I am afraid I can't.

The Zionist slaughter in Gaza that started on 27 December 2008 and continues to this day has brought all kinds of worms out of the woodwork. 

I work in a liberal, plural environment where there are people of different beliefs, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. Most are highly educated and outwardly reasonable. As one might expect, whenever time permits we have discussions, debates and some arguments, mostly good natured.

However, the Zionist slaughter in Gaza has changed all that. First, and to my regret, some Jewish colleagues who had hitherto pretended (I am not using that word lightly) that they were liberal and enlightened have suddenly come out in the open in their true tribalistic colours, literally, explicitly and with huge venom defending the murder of women and children in Gaza and, of course, defending the fascist, racist state of Israel. Other Jewish colleagues have chosen to remain silent but silence under these murderous circumstances is tantamount to consent. Not one Jew at my work (unless they are keeping their Jewishness secret) has had the moral fibre and the courage to come out and openly criticize Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza.

Second, some non-Jewish colleagues whom I have held in neutral regard have come out like rats from the sewer to show themselves as creatures devoid of any ethics – contemptible, fascist scumbags for whom might is right. Under cover of fairness and neutrality, they defend the murder of innocent civilians as if they were defending the swatting of flies.

Why, you might ask, have these Jews and amoral gentiles chosen this time of all times to defend the indefensible, when the rest of the world, including British public opinion, are turning against Israel in revulsion at its mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza?

The answer, I think, lies in this very fact. They are coming out of the sewer to defend the  murder in Gaza precisely because they feel that the tide of world opinion is turning against Israel. Like rattled serpents, they are being forced out in the open by the weight of public opinion. 

This must be a good thing. As the rats come out of the sewer, the friends and apologists of Israel become exposed, thus hammering another nail in the coffin of the Zionist entity.

The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act

I don't wish to make a habit of copying whole articles on my blog but the article below by Robert Fisk, published in the Independent, is well worth making an exception for. I think Mr Fisk speaks for every Arab with a conscience and a modicum of courage.

The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act

By Robert Fisk

The Independent 

1 January 2009 

There was a day when we worried about the "Arab masses" – the millions of "ordinary" Arabs on the streets of Cairo, Kuwait, Amman, Beirut – and their reaction to the constant bloodbaths in the Middle East. Could Anwar Sadat restrain the anger of his people? And now – after three decades of Hosni Mubarak – can Mubarak (or "La Vache Qui Rit", as he is still called in Cairo) restrain the anger of his people? The answer, of course, is that Egyptians and Kuwaitis and Jordanians will be allowed to shout in the streets of their capitals – but then they will be shut down, with the help of the tens of thousands of secret policemen and government militiamen who serve the princes and kings and elderly rulers of the Arab world.

Egyptians demand that Mubarak open the Rafah crossing-point into Gaza, break off diplomatic relations with Israel, even send weapons to Hamas. And there is a kind of perverse beauty in listening to the response of the Egyptian government: why not complain about the three gates which the Israelis refuse to open? And anyway, the Rafah crossing-point is politically controlled by the four powers that produced the "road map" for peace, including Britain and the US. Why blame Mubarak?

To admit that Egypt can't even open its sovereign border without permission from Washington tells you all you need to know about the powerlessness of the satraps that run the Middle East for us.

Open the Rafah gate – or break off relations with Israel – and Egypt's economic foundations crumble. Any Arab leader who took that kind of step will find that the West's economic and military support is withdrawn. Without subventions, Egypt is bankrupt. Of course, it works both ways. Individual Arab leaders are no longer going to make emotional gestures for anyone. When Sadat flew to Jerusalem – "I am tired of the dwarves," he said of his fellow Arab leaders – he paid the price with his own blood at the Cairo reviewing-stand where one of his own soldiers called him a "Pharaoh" before shooting him dead.

The true disgrace of Egypt, however, is not in its response to the slaughter in Gaza. It is the corruption that has become embedded in an Egyptian society where the idea of service – health, education, genuine security for ordinary people – has simply ceased to exist. It's a land where the first duty of the police is to protect the regime, where protesters are beaten up by the security police, where young women objecting to Mubarak's endless regime – likely to be passed on caliph-like to his son Gamal, whatever we may be told – are sexually molested by plain-clothes agents, where prisoners in the Tora-Tora complex are forced to rape each other by their guards.

There has developed in Egypt a kind of religious facade in which the meaning of Islam has become effaced by its physical representation. Egyptian civil "servants" and government officials are often scrupulous in their religious observances – yet they tolerate and connive in rigged elections, violations of the law and prison torture. A young American doctor described to me recently how in a Cairo hospital busy doctors merely blocked doors with plastic chairs to prevent access to patients. In November, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm reported how doctors abandoned their patients to attend prayers during Ramadan.

And amid all this, Egyptians have to live amid daily slaughter by their own shabby infrastructure. Alaa al-Aswani wrote eloquently in the Cairo paper Al-Dastour that the regime's "martyrs" outnumber all the dead of Egypt's wars against Israel – victims of railway accidents, ferry sinkings, the collapse of city buildings, sickness, cancers and pesticide poisonings – all victims, as Aswani says, "of the corruption and abuse of power". Opening the Rafah border-crossing for wounded Palestinians – the Palestinian medical staff being pushed back into their Gaza prison once the bloodied survivors of air raids have been dumped on Egyptian territory – is not going to change the midden in which Egyptians themselves live.

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah secretary general in Lebanon, felt able to call on Egyptians to "rise in their millions" to open the border with Gaza, but they will not do so. Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the feeble Egyptian Foreign Minister, could only taunt the Hizbollah leaders by accusing them of trying to provoke "an anarchy similar to the one they created in their own country."

But he is well-protected. So is President Mubarak.

Egypt's malaise is in many ways as dark as that of the Palestinians. Its impotence in the face of Gaza's suffering is a symbol of its own political sickness.

We are all Hamas!

Today the racist Zionist entity known as "Israel" launched a ferocious attack against the people of the Gaza Strip, the worst, we are told, since the 1967 war. At least 200 people have been murdered and 700 wounded as a result.

This is the latest in series of war crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people in general and the people of Gaza in particular. 

The raids on Gaza are the latest in a long series of war crimes committed by Israel against Gaza, in collusion with Britain, the European Union, the United States and some Arab countries such as Egypt. These crimes have included a deadly siege that has led to severe shortages of food, fuel and medical supplies, and widespread malnutrition and disease, especially among children.

The Israeli criminals and their foreign and Arab co-conspirators have made no secret of the motive for their crimes: to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government and replace it with a traitorous, quisling regime.

For Israel and its co-conspirators, Hamas represents a mortal danger that cannot be tolerated. It is squeaky clean, its cadres actually believe in what they say and do, and, most importantly, are willing to stand up and put their lives on the line for the sake of their beliefs. In a region whose rulers and ruling elites are made up of corrupt, amoral invertebrates, this is an intolerable breath of fresh air.

Hamas, in case you did not know, is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, who are the principal opposition in Egypt and Jordan, at least. For traitors like Husni Mubarak, this is enough to put his lot with the Israelis in order to oust Hamas, even if this meant exterminating those who voted for Hamas in   internationally-verified democratic elections in January 2006.

Personally, I am as far as one can be from the social and political beliefs of the Muslim Brotherhood. I am fiercely secular and I consider myself a progressive, non-doctrinaire socialist, pan-Arab nationalist. However, I cannot deny, and would not hide, my admiration for Hamas.

In this respect, today's Israeli massacre of my brothers and sisters in Gaza has brought me that much closer to Hamas. To Israel, Britain, the European Union and the United States I say this: we are all Hamas! And one day, one day you will have to account for your crimes.

Christmas with Ahmadinejad

It's Christmas Day, a day that I used to dread because of its deadly boredom, excessive commecialism and fake jolity but with which I have now come to terms, if only because it gives me some respite from work.

This Christmas is no different from any other. The sky is overcast and thoroughly grey, and it is cold and dark. We have no "family" visitors as my wife's relatives live several hundred miles away and my own are back home in an Arab country and, of course, do not celebrate Christmas anyway. As always, we have decided to give the traditional Christmas dinner a miss because neither of us likes eating turkey. Instead, we had a normal dinner at the usual time, in the evening.

This left us with the television, with its usual mix of children's programmes and repeats. This year, however, there was something slightly different on TV. 

Channel 4, which has a public service remit, normally broadcasts an alternative Christmas message to that of the Queen. This year it was given by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadijenad. In contrast to the ramblings of his detractors, his message was simple and dignified.

I know that some Sunni Muslims among my compatriots will immediately suspect that I am a Shi'i Muslim for praising President Ahmadinejad – or at least for not attacking him. Well, I am not. I was, in fact, born of Sunni Muslim parents, not that I give a damn about the difference between Sunnis and Shi'is. 

I will, however, say this. The Arab countries and Arab peoples, who are mostly Sunni, ought to look on Iran and its principal ally in the Arab world, Lebanese Hizballah, with admiration. Unlike the hirelings of the Arab world, Iran has withstood one conspiracy after another by the West and its Israeli masters. As for Lebanese Hizballah, they – and Hamas – are the only Arabs left with any courage. 

As we say in the Arab world, they are the only remaining real Arab men.

Ashamed to be an Arab

It is hard – almost impossible – not to despise the Arab governments and ruling elites, and it is even harder not to feel utter contempt for their listless citizens whose cowardice and acquiescence in their rulers' corruption, treason and arbitrariness must rank as the world’s worse case study of how low humanity can stoop. 

Today I read in the Washington Post that Arab Gulf states – and an Israeli tycoon – are among the biggest donor to Bill Clinton’s foundation. Yes, we are talking about the former US president and best friend of the supremacist Ehud Barak. The article is worth quoting at length. It said:

Former president Bill Clinton's disclosure yesterday that foreign governments and state-sponsored agencies have donated between $75 million and $165 million to his foundation highlighted a series of potential conflicts that  Hillary Rodham Clinton could face should she become secretary of state. 

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia made one of the largest contributions, between $10 million and $25 million... The William J. Clinton Foundation also raised more than $1 million each from the governments of Brunei, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.... 

The list – containing more than 200,000 donor names – shows the extent to which Bill Clinton relied on foreign governments, especially those of Middle Eastern oil states, to establish his foundation over the past decade... 

Other contributors include Friends of Saudi Arabia and the Dubai Foundation, as well as Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid, each giving more than $1 million. Haim Saban, the Egyptian-born media tycoon who funds many Israeli initiatives, gave more than $5 million...

While the morons of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Dubai give away millions of dollars to one of Israel’s most notorious admirers, Gaza starves, Lebanon simmers, Somalia burns and Iraq bleeds. 

How long will the Arab people sit in silence while their rulers prostitute them to the world’s unworthiest? 

I feel ashamed to be an Arab.

Self-indulgence and pre-menstrual tension

At the risk of being labelled a misogynist, I shall say what I think, no matter how painful or objectionable to some that may be.

However, I'd like to state very clearly at the outset that I am not a misogynist by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, if I am to be labelled "anti" anything in this connection, then I opt for misandrist  rather than misogynist.

I have a big problem in trying to come to terms with the self-indulgence of native British women when it comes to the temporary insanity they undergo each month during pre-menstrual tension (PMT). 

According to a British medical organization, more than 100 symptoms have been associated with PMT. These include:

• anxiety
• mood swings
• irritability and 
• aggression.

Of course, one cannot blame others for what is beyond their control. However, my cross-cultural experience impels me to question whether the above-mentioned symptoms necessarily have to manifest themselves behaviourally. The logic behind this assertion is very simple: if a woman knows approximately when her period is due and, therefore, when she is likely to experience the symptoms of PMT, then she can suppress the outward manifestations of this syndrome, such as irritability and aggression.  

It may surprise some to learn that the first time I had come across the concept of PMT was in Britain. Throughout my entire life in my own country, I had never heard of PMT, nor had I ever witnessed women outwardly exhibiting the symptoms of this syndrome. 

There is only one conclusion that I can draw from this. Women who become irritable and aggressive during PMT are quite simply self-indulgent. They use PMT as a licence for otherwise unacceptable and inexcusable behaviour. 

Women who misbehave during PMT expect others to put up with their appalling behaviour just because they are on PMT. Unfortunately, British society has come to terms with this and, by and large, men are expected to put up with this monthly feminine psychopathic disorder.

Consequently, millions of people – husbands, boyfriends, brothers, fathers, children – suffer horribly each month because a mother or an adult sister or daughter has given herself licence to behave obnoxiously on the grounds that she has PMT.

I don't accept this and I am perplexed that anyone else does. Would, for instance, the state make an excuse for a woman verbally or physically assaulting a police officer just because she has PMT?

Despair for Africa

I don't hold much hope for Africa or Africans. 

 

I am not just saying this because of the "Zimbabwe effect", where Robert Mugabe has brought the country to its knees, starving and disease-ridden, while its neighbours look on. Nor am I saying it because of the economic regression of the continent, its primitive superstition, where voodoo-like practices, including child sacrifices, continue to flourish, or the total inhumanity with which many Africans treat one another. 

 I despair of any hope for Africa because many Africans appear to have become corrupted right to the bone. From chronic corruption among African officials to the fraud rackets run by Africans abroad, of which Nigerians have become most notorious, the comprehensive rejection by Africans of honesty as a norm and dishonesty as an aberration appears to lie right at the heart of the continent's problems.

 This isn't about race. I am not a racist and I believe that all humans are intrinsically equal and should treat one another as equals, irrespective of race, colour or faith. In fact, I am lamenting the current reality of Africa and Africans first and foremost as an African Arab. This is about a set of social and political circumstances, some a hangover from the colonialist past but most homegrown by Africans in Africa, that today link the typical African, from South Africa to Nigeria to Kenya and beyond, with fraud and corruption in the eyes of many non-African observers.

 Coincidentally, while I was writing this post, a friend telephoned me to share a frustrating experience he's been having over the past couple of days. He's been trying to sell an unwanted item on the online auction site Ebay. Three times he received attractive bids for his item only to be told by Ebay to ignore them because they were scams. In two cases the fraudsters were Nigerian and in the third they were South African.

 I rest my case, and I pray for Africa.

Dance with the devil and you will get burnt

At long last, the Mumbai horror show that we have been witnessing on our television screens for the past two days is over. So far, the death toll is 195 people, most of them innocent civilians.

We are still no wiser about the identity or motives of the gunmen responsible for this outrage. Predictably, the Indian government has seized the opportunity to blame Pakistan without having a shred of evidence to back its claim.

This is macabre opportunism at its worse by a government that is more concerned with enriching the super rich than with feeding its people, some of whom resort to eating rats in order to survive.

We do, however, have an idea regarding the possible motives of the Mumbai attackers. As I mentioned in a previous post, the gunmen have given us a clue that links their attacks with the craven Anglo-American policies in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan, and with the racist, Zionist entity known as "Israel". According to eyewitness reports from the hotels that were attacked in Mumbai, the gunmen singled out British and American passport holders. Not German, French, Italian or Spanish passport holders, but British and American ones.  In addition, as we know, the attackers also singled out the Jewish Centre in Mumbai. One doesn't have to be a genius to deduce at least part of their motives.

But why India? The answer, in my view, is very simple. Since the early 1990s relations between India and Israel have been getting increasingly closer, with defence and intelligence cooperation being at the top of the bilateral agenda. Simultaneously, over the same period India has refocused its foreign policy away from Russia and the Third World and towards the USA and its British lackey.

So, for discontented Indian Muslims – or Kashmiris or Pakistanis, if there is indeed a Pakistani connection – India is the South Asian symbol of the critical mass of evil accumulated by the US and Britain in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.

This really saddens me. For one thing, the targets in Mumbai – innocent civilians – cannot be held responsible for the shortsightedness and stupidity of the Indian government or, in the case of the foreign tourists, for the policies of Israel's puppets in Washington and London.

It also saddens me because, when I think of India, I would like to think of Gandhi, Nehru and the non-aligned movement of the 1960s and 1970s, not racism, Zionism, imperialism and sheer greed.

Unfortunately, it would seem that one outcome of the Mumbai outrage is that India will be driven further into the arms of the devil. However, as the saying goes, "If you dance with the devil, you will get burnt". 

Sadly, as we have seen in Mumbai, those who pay the price for recklessness are the innocents.

UK civil liberties teetering on the brink

Something rather funny and ominous happened yesterday.

The right-wing British opposition Conservative Party's immigration spokesman, Damian Green, was arrested and questioned by Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism officers on suspicion of "conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office" and "aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office" – an obscure and little-used offence under common law.

According to a BBC report, Mr Green's detention is believed to be connected to the arrest of a 26-year-old man suspected of being a Home Office whistleblower.

Whistleblowers are protected under British law if they reveal to those in positions of authority suspected malpractice at work.

My initial reaction upon hearing of Mr Green's arrest on the radio this morning was to laugh loudly. The British Conservative Party is a nasty den of reactionary bigots. The party is also a fanatical supporter of the racist, Zionist entity known as "Israel". Conservative Friends of Israel, for example, claims 80 per cent of Conservative MPs and provides a programme of weekly briefings, events with speakers and delegations to Israel. It also operates a “fast track” for parliamentary candidates fighting target marginal seats. So, the news that one of the leaders of this den had been arrested could only give me joy.

However, I also felt sorry for the British people, for the arrest of Mr Green marks the crossing of a dangerous new threshold on the road to a police state.

Ever since the Labour Party was elected in 1997, the British people have been steadily losing their civil liberties under various false pretexts. The extension of detention without trial first to 28 and then to 42 days, plans to extend this period further to 90 days and other plans to introduce identity cards and abolish the right to a trial with a jury are just some cases in point. And now comes the arrest of a serving Member of Parliament for receiving information from a whistleblower, highly amusing and joyous though this is.

There is also another aspect to Mr Green's arrest which casts suspicion on the intentions and integrity of the British government. According to Downing Street, Prime Minister Gordon Brown "had no prior knowledge of the arrest of Mr Green and was only informed after the event". This is either a lie or the British government is more disjointed and dysfunctional than I suspect. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who also belongs to the Conservative Party, has said he was informed in advance of the police's plan to arrest Mr Green. It is inconceivable, or incredible, that the police would give advance warning to the mayor but not to the government.

Some months ago I warned in one of my posts that if the British people did not take care to protect their civil and human rights, they may soon find these rights lost, as we Arabs have lost ours in our own countries. I said that the native Britons were especially at risk of losing their rights because of their unhealthy fondness of their police, security services and armed forces, and their tolerance of incessant attempts by the police and security establishment to erode their rights.

It would seem that this may happen sooner rather than later.