Painful Truths

The criminal British Establishment strikes again

Americans and Britons often ask in apparent bewilderment why they are disliked – in fact, hated – in most parts of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

I won't dwell on the core cause of this hatred – the decades of intrigue and collaboration between Britain and the Zionist snakeheads which in 1948 led to the establishment of the state of Israel and the dispossession of an entire people, the Palestinians, who today remain the world's largest group of refugees. I won't dwell on it because it is an established, undisputed fact, a blot, an irredeemable shame on the history and reputation of Britain and the British. 

But I will say this. After all these years – 61 years of crimes, pain, suffering, death and destruction wreaked by Britain's bastard offspring, Israel – Britain, or at least the criminal British "Establishment", is not in the slightest bit remorseful.

Last week, I received an urgent action call from the human rights organization Amnesty International which in part said:

"… we understand that the UK Government … is not planning to support key recommendations [of the UN's Goldstone report on war crimes in Gaza], which Amnesty believe offer the best chance of ensuring justice and accountability, as a well as a deterrent to future conflicts. Instead, they appear to be taking a lead from the US Government in dismissing the findings."

And today we learn that the US has in fact dubbed the report "deeply flawed".

Should there be any wonder, therefore, why the UK and its master, the US, are hated in vast swathes of the universe?

Anyone who has lived in Britain will testify that there are numerous good Britons who acknowledge the injustice inflicted by the criminal British Establishment on the Palestinian people and who tirelessly campaign for justice for the Palestinians. (I cannot comment on the Americans.) They should never be lumped together with their criminal leaders but, sadly, often do.

It is our duty as Arabs to differentiate between these good people and the Zionist-sponsored scoundrels who lead them, and it is their obligation as British citizens to bring their criminal leaders to account for their past and ongoing crimes.

A bloody nose in Afghanistan

The British cannot believe that they are getting a bloody nose in Afghanistan. Day and night, British politicians and the media prattle on about how under-equipped their troops in Afghanistan are and how, if only they had more helicopters and more heavily armoured vehicles, they would not have lost 15 soldiers in a week.

Years of arrogance and cowardice have led the British to believe that they are invincible and that they can commit aggression and occupy other countries without losing a soul. Like their friends the  Americans and the Israelis, they have got used to shooting from high in the sky or from miles away with long-range artillery, cruise missiles and the like. But now they are coming to terms with the fact that sometimes you have to get out of your airborne, seaborne and armoured citadels and fight other men, face to face, like men. They are having to confront the truth of real warfare, and they don't like it.

I do not believe that any number of helicopters or armoured vehicles will help the British in Afghanistan. They have only to look at the fate of other invaders of that country to draw the right conclusion.

I have no sympathy for the Taleban. However, I truly believe that a country's internal problems can be solved only internally, by its own people, not by foreign invaders or quislings riding on the backs of  invaders' tanks. What exactly are the British fighting for, thousands of miles away from their homeland? Hamed Karzai and his corrupt gang of half-wits?

Sooner or later, the British and their American masters will leave Afghanistan and return home, defeated and humiliated. And the Afghan people will go back to square one and start to clear up the mess.

The British and the Americans, in the meantime, will have learnt - as their friends the Israelis will learn after them - that wars cannot be won by bombing wedding parties, schools, hospitals and ambulances with F-16 fighters and drones remotely operated from thousands of miles away.

Six reasons why Iran cannot be explained in a Twitter feed

"The world’s attention is on Iran. But the rhetoric of reformists vs conservatives and students vs mullahs cannot capture the complexity of what is happening on the streets of Tehran," says Jalal Ghazi. 

This is perhaps the most intelligent and impartial analysis of the post-election crisis in Iran that I have seen so far.

The author gives six reasons "why the situation in Iran cannot be reduced to simplistic headlines or Twitter feeds".

Highly recommended reading. To read the full article, click here. 

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?"

Why I cannot support the protesters in Iran

What is happening in Iran and what do I think about it?

There is much talk about the presidential election having been rigged in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's favour, but where is the evidence? 

Opponents of Ahmadinejad find it incredible that, according to the official election results, the other candidates did not do well in their home provinces. Others say that the results were too quick to come out, and others still claim that the results of the ballot were too similar across the country to be true. 

All this may constitute reasonable grounds for some suspicion but it does not amount to evidence, neither circumstantial nor hard evidence.

So what is going on in Iran? I think a number of factors are at play there.

First, clearly, the ruling theocratic establishment is deeply divided, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i and President Ahmadinejad on one side, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mir Hussein Mousavi on the other. But there are also others occupying various positions in between, posturing, manoeuvring, politicking and hoping to ease themselves into power, one way or another

Second, there is a lot of pent-up frustration in Iranian society. About half the country's population of 71 million people are under 25, and nearly two-thirds are under 30. Many of these youths yearn for what they don't have or don’t have in abundance: a Western life style, the freedom to wear what they like, to drink alcohol freely, to  go to discotheques, etc. Also, as with many other peoples in the Third World, they believe in what they see in Western, especially Hollywood movies, and they want to be part of it – the big houses, the flash cars, the huge incomes, the cloud cuckoo land.

Third, and related to this, is the fact that, although Iran has one of the strongest-performing economies of the major oil-producing countries in the Middle East, the general economic indicators are not good: unemployment stands at 9.6 per cent, rising to 20.3 per cent among people under 24, and annual inflation is 25.3 per cent.

Fourth, there is the Iranians who have never come to terms with the demise of the shah and have never accepted the Islamic Republic. They see the large crowds in the streets, the fiery speeches of the erstwhile stalwarts of the Islamic Republic talking about reform – or is it revolution disguised as reform? – their expectations are raised and, in turn, they do their bit to raise the expectations of other dissatisfied citizens.

Put these together and you'll get the convulsions Iran has been experiencing for the past week.

How events will unfold from here is difficult to say. But the signs are not good. It would seem that defeated presidential candidate Mousavi and his backers are getting carried away by the huge numbers of “supporters” on the streets, to the point where they appear to be losing touch with reality and edging towards irresponsibility, the irresponsibility of leading thousands of civilians into the abyss.

As a progressive Arab nationalist, my instinct is to side with the people on the street, to stand alongside those opposed to theocracy and for democracy, equality and social justice. 

However, I am also a realist and, as such, my realism overrides my instinct. First, I do not know precisely what the people on the street in Tehran and other Iranian cities want. I do not even know if they really believe that the presidential election was rigged or whether they are using this as a pretext to destabilize the system. They have failed to come up with any convincing evidence of rigging. And it is not enough to be against the system; they must also be in favour of a coherent, attractive alternative. 

Second, is it realistic – or even desirable – to demand a rerun of the election just because it did not yield a particular result? What if the election was rerun and Mousavi lost again? Would they keep on demanding reruns until he won? 

Third, from a geopolitical point of view, I do not believe it is in the interest of the downtrodden peoples of the Middle East to destabilize the Islamic Republic. A strong Iran, with a potential nuclear capability and a courageous, “hard-line” leadership is a vital potential counterweight to US-Israeli hegemony in the region and a challenge to America’s Arab lickspittles.

Finally, as a realist and as an Arab I have a deep aversion to something the Iranians seem to have in common with us Arabs: the inability to accept defeat in a free and fair election. Could it be that, as with Fatah in the Palestinian legislative elections of 2006, Mousavi and his supporters simply cannot accept defeat?

For all these reasons, I cannot side with the demonstrators in Iran. I hope their leaders – if that’s what Mousavi and Rafsanjani are – see sense and act with responsibility, for the sake of Iran and the rest of the Middle East.

Iraq's message to the British army: good riddance!

The British occupation forces (BOF) today formally left Iraq, six years after they joined the Israeli-inspired and US-led invasion of the country. (UK seeks deals amid Iraq pullout)

In those six years, the BOF lost 179 soldiers. They had invaded a country that posed no threat to Britain. They went to Iraq to kill Iraqis and to ensure that Israel remains militarily predominant in the Middle East. They died thousands of miles away from their country, defending no British interest worthy of mention.

At the same time, over one million Iraqis have been killed. (More than 1,000,000 Iraqis murdered) 

However, judging by BBC radio and television coverage of the withdrawal, and the repeated mention of the 179 dead, one would think that the British army had saved Britain from an existential threat, that it had fought a mighty enemy and emerged victorious. Nothing is said, of course, about the fact that it had invaded a sovereign country with a demoralized army that was equipped with dilapidated, Soviet-built 1970s- and 1980s-vintage weapons.

There is nothing heroic about what the British armed forces have done in Iraq. They invaded on the basis of a lie, achieved nothing and left the place  in a mess. History will judge them, and those who set them off on the invasion, harshly.

I say to the British armed forces: good riddance! I look forward to their American masters leaving, also in ignominy.

Britain's Gurkhas

The British government has suffered a shock defeat in the House of Commons, parliament's lower chamber, on its policy of restricting the right of many former Gurkhas to settle in the UK, the BBC reported today. (Brown defeated over Gurkha rules)

Personally, I don't understand what's all the fuss about.

According to the BBC, Gurkhas have been part of the British Army for almost 200 years (Who are the Gurkhas?). 

"Following the partition of India in 1947, an agreement between Nepal, India and Britain meant four Gurkha regiments from the Indian army were transferred to the British Army, eventually becoming the Gurkha Brigade.

"Since then, the Gurkhas have loyally fought for the British all over the world, receiving 13 Victoria Crosses between them.

"More than 200,000 fought in the two world wars and in the past 50 years, they have served in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Borneo, Cyprus, the Falklands, Kosovo and now in Iraq and Afghanistan."

In other words, the Gurkhas are mercenaries. They fight for money. Why else would they risk death and injury fighting for a foreign country?

There is nothing romantic or honourable about someone who fights for money. The fact that the Gurkhas come from a poor country and may see service in the British armed forces as a means of attaining a relatively decent standard of living does not change the fact that they are soldiers of fortune.

In the course of the campaign to make Gurkhas' pay and pension rights comparable to those of regular British soldiers, and to give them the right of residence in Britain, Gurkhas and their supporters often cite the Gurkhas' love of, and devotion to, Britain. 

Rather than endear them to me, I am sorry to say that this makes me contemptuous of them. Why would a Nepalese mercenary love and be devoted to the country that has hired him to kill? 

In a nutshell, unless enhanced pay, pension and residence rights are part of their mercenary contracts, why should the Gurkhas be put on par with the Britons who volunteer to join their country's armed forces. And why should they have residence rights?

At one with the enemy

Who would have thought it!

 As I was writing my post "Slip-sliding away", in which I argued that Britain was slip-sliding towards arbitrariness and injustice and leading the world towards lawlessness, Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, Britain's internal security organization, was telling the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia something similar.

In her interview with La Vanguardia, reported in the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph ("Spy chief: We risk a police state"), Mrs Rimington warned that the British government was exploiting the fear of terrorism to erode civil liberties and thereby risking creating a police state.

I rest my case! 

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.