Path in the Ile Saint-Martin,Vetheuil. Monet.
"After Fallujah, Son Is Gone but Fervor Remains: Father Who Left Reluctantly Waits to Fight Another Day."
The Jordanian royal propagandist, Asma Khadir, said yesterday that any analysis or even speculation about the dismissal of the Crown Prince constitutes "interference in internal household matters." What? Well, that house happens to impose its will on the country, and rule over it by force. In other news, the son of King `Abdullah (who is expected to become Crown Prince) continues to grow in leaps of years. He started last week aged 8, yesterday, he celebrated his 10th birthday. It is expected that he will hit adulthood early next week.
From an organization that was created to preserve peace, to an organziation that will now promote war: "UN to back pre-emptive strikes in first major overhaul."
Sistani: His country is burning, and Grand Ayatollah Chess Banner is busy playing sectarian politics. Silent about Saddam; silent about US occupation.
"The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo. The team of humanitarian workers, which included experienced medical personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at Guantánamo were participating in planning for interrogations, in what the report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics." Doctors and medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners' mental health and vulnerabilities to interrogators, the report said, sometimes directly, but usually through a group called the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, or B.S.C.T. The team, known informally as Biscuit, is composed of psychologists and psychological workers who advise the interrogators, the report said."
Finally, the New York Times (and unnamed US officials) admit the obvious, that "Iraq's Forces Founder Under Rebel Assaults." It is much worse. To the American people: If you only know how much you are lied to by the US government on Iraq (not to mention other issues). (To Angry Arab: some do not know, and would not care anyway. Some do not know, and would care. Others know and care, but others know and do not care as long as the cities, villages, and towns of Iraq are being bombed to the ground by heroic US forces in the name of fighting terrorism. I say this because while US officials talk about the "participation" of Iraqi puppet forces in the "battle" of Fallujah, the very puppet commander of the Iraqi puppet National Guard said in an interview in the Khalij newspaper in UAE that the role of his forces in Fallujah was "purely humanitarian" and that its members did not participate in "military operations." This will not be found in US newspapers.
Full text: US Defense Department's report by the Defense Science Board: 'They hate our policies, not our freedom'.
An Islamic Feminist Seeks Balance. (I happen to believe that feminism clashes with Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, among other religions).
On Bush's favorite Palestinian: "...as Mahmoud Abbas mounts his bid to become Arafat's successor. He makes an appearance in "Cain's Field." Mr. Rees describes his showy mansion in Gaza, "surrounded incongruously by rubble-strewn sandlots" where his bodyguards lounge in the shade. "I spit on the day they came from Tunis,"' a Palestinian tells Mr. Rees as he stands in line at the U.N. Food Distribution Center. "'I'd like to see them all shot in the street."'"
I should have a special feature. I will call it "In Passing in the New York Times." What you are supposed to not focus on as a reader. Here is the first example: "If the elections were delayed, Dr. Allawi, one of the closest allies of the United States, would be able to stay in office for at least everal more months."
Violence Stalks Nation's Women: Guatemalan officials are baffled as slayings more than double in two years.
"Alabama clings to segregationist past: US state with racist history votes to keep 'separate schools for white and coloured children' as part of constitution."
The dismissal of the Crown Prince in Jordan is quite significant. The rule of the King `Abdullah is striking as quite clumsy. His father was a shrewd tyrant; this one is a foolish tyrant. Husayn knew when to swing away from US (67 or 90 or whenever the interest of throne required it), this one is way too eager to please US and Israel and that will bring his downfall, I predict. Not that the Crown Prince was an Arab nationalist. But this early fight within the royal family at a time of mounting dissent in Jordan, will increase instability. An 8 year old will take his place, no doubt (I mean `Abdullah's son will become Crown Prince). Dont be surprised. This very king `Abdullah was an able Crown Prince at the age of...THREE, before Husayn later appointed his brother Hasan, only to dismiss him before his death. The three-year old Crown Prince `Abdullah was noted for his wisdom and political skills. But he was mostly famous (as a Baby Crown Prince) for his royal vomit. THe masses in Jordan really enjoyed that. The decision by the king will bring tears to the eyes of the Crown Prince's mother, Queen Nur. She may cry on Larry King Live. I am willing to go through the pain of Larry King Live for that one.
Bhopal 20 years on: polluted water, chronic illness and little compensation. (Read Larry Everest's definitive book on Bhopal).
"Israel shocked by image of soldiers forcing violinist to play at roadblock." Angry Arab, having read extensively about Zionism, is not shocked at all.
Between the cannons of Bush and the knives of Zarqawi: That is how the able LBC-TV journalist Shadha `Amr introduced the discussion segment following the airing of Part II the (pro)Zarqawi "documentary" on LBC-TV. (The presenter on LBC (not `Amr of course) who typically has a lousy command of Arabic could not pronounce Rafadayn and said "Rafidin" whic has a different meaning). Fu'ad Husayn will be going to jail in a few days in Jordan. He, it turned out, was the Jordanian journalist who wrote, directed, and prepared the "documentary" that I discussed yesterday. He is undoubtedly a fan of Zarqawi, and did not hide that. He met him in jail, and was able to meet many of his followers. At least LBC-TV organized a discussion segment following the airing of Part II. The "documentary" was a Zarqawi campaign commercial. Not a single critic was interviewed. Husayn said that people were willing to risk their lives to praise Zarqawi but that no critic of Zarqawi dared to appear on camera. I do not buy that. He, for example, mentioned the interviews with former director of a Jordanian prison, as an example of "the other point of view." But the only sound bite used from that interview was words to the effect that Zarqawi was athletic and in shape while in jail. At one point, a member of an alleged Zarqawi cell in Jordan was interviewed in prison, and I was surprised that under his name there was "terrorist X...". I was surprised because throughout the documentary--if that was a documentary--followers of Zarqawi were identified as "Activist X..." Another prisoner was also identified as "Activist X" but you could see behind that the another identification of "terrorist X." So obviously, the Jordanian intelligence apparatus did the interviews with the two prisoners and supplied the identification, that were covered once but not twice. Signs of torture were evident on them. But in fairness, Jordanian government contributions to the methods and techniques of torture took years and decades to perfect. People in the US think that the Islamic religious school are the ones that have produced the violent Islamic fanatics. I argue otherwise. The schools that are the most dangerous producers of violent fanatics in the Middle East are the torture chambers run by the pro-US (and some anti-US) regimes in Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, and Syria. That is where those fundamentalists turn to the agenda and misdeeds of the likes of Zarqawi. They get transformed from fundamentalism to kooky fundamentalism. The US supports those torturing regimes, and subsequently helps produce its own enemies. Hegel would see the dialectical ironies in this, of course. The second part of the documentary was clear in its admiration and glorification of Zarqawi. I really worry that this airing on LBC-TV will help make Zarqawi a cult figure among some youths in the region. I expect the commercially minded LBC-TV to start selling it (with subtitles) on DVD (some of you will be even buying it out of curiosity). The documentary confirms that Zarqawi has not lost a leg: but that he was hurt by US bombing in Afghanistan, but his ribs were broken. He then fled to Tora Bora, and from there slipped into Iran, reaching all the way to Tehran (although the Iranian government arrested one of his cells, but Zarqawi fled). Zarqawi then fled to northern Iraq (away from Saddam's rule at the time) and shared basis with Ansar Al-Islam. That journey made me wonder about the whereabouts of Bin Laden, and my theory that he is neither in Afghanistan nor in Pakistan. I also was thinking today about the network of support available to the likes of Bin Laden and Zarqawi. I really believe (but have no evidence for) that a segment or a branch of the Saudi royal family may be behind financing and helping those networks. Remember that the Sep. 11 Commission Report mentioned a member of the House of Saud had helped Bin Laden slip out of the kingdom. Did that member help him slip in again? I wonder. When Zarqawi slipped into Iran, for example, some Sunnis from Iran were waiting for them at the border, according to one witness. At least the discussion segment was supposed to bring some "balance" to the topic, but it quickly degenerated into a Sunni-Shi`ite conflict on live TV. There was a Shi`ite writer from Iraq (of the Sistani school of accommodating foreign occupation) and a Sunni fan of Zarqawi, plus the writer of the documentary Fu'ad Husayn, who also is an unabashed fan of Zarqawi. A Saudi journalist was also a critic of Zarqawi: but he was put on the defensive throughout: he had to preface everything he said, by indicating how much he is opposed to US wars and violence in the region. For the academic point of view, there was the French scholar Gilles Kepel. I recommend his writings to you (and they are all translated into English) although I may not always agree with him, and his book Jihad is badly edited and I wish that he does not use words like Allah and Jihad and potato in his titles. When I heard him talk in Arabic, I wondered: why do you never see American scholars who are Middle East specialists talk in Arabic (or Persian, or Turkish, etc) in the Middle East media. All European scholars of the Middle East REALLY study the language of the country that they study. Not here. Here we believe that knowledge of the foreign language is not necessary in the presence of CNN and Fox News. I can name only a handful of American scholars (colleagues of mine) who can talk in Arabic on TV (Michael Hudson of Georgetown, Laurie Brand of USC, Lisa Wedeen of U Chicago, and Gregory Gause of U Vermont). I wish we can go back to Orientalist training (without adhering to classical Orientalist dogmas and methods of course). Kepel appeared more amused than anything, especially as a fitna ("grand discord" as Hichem Djait defined it in French in the title of his great book (La grande discorde : religion et politique dans l'islam) on the subject not yet translated into English) was taking place before his eyes. Obviously, the purpose behind its airing was commercial. I am sure that LBC-TV had high ratings. Lastly, on Zarqawi: I came across a horrific website titled Sawatir of Zarqawi (or the Large Knives of Zarqawi) in which actual behadings and killings from 21 different occasions are collected and saved. No, I will not give you the site address, and do not understand why anybody wants to see such gruesome scenes. Confirming my view that the "documentary" was a lousy pro-Zarqawi piece, a pro-Zarqawi website praised the Part I of the documentary and said that it was "real journalism" unlike AlJazeera journalism. I should have watched Pleasantville. It was airing tonight. A great movie indeed.
Chronology of "liberation": "Najaf was bombed in August. Samarra was bombed in September. Sadr City was bombed in October. Fallujah was bombed in November. Mosul may be bombed in December. And Kirkuk may be bombed in January. This is the calendar in the runup to the Iraqi elections set for January 30 next year."
"The Israel Aircraft Industry and the Defense establishment will purchase an Indian-made helicopter as part of a bilateral purchase agreement between the two countries."
"The shooting of the schoolgirl added to a growing number of incidents that have spurred Israeli soldiers to speak out about abuses of Palestinians, despite pressure from superiors in the field and statements by senior military officials playing down such cases."
This from a NATO member: "The head of Turkey's parliamentary human rights group has accused Washington of genocide in Iraq and behaving worse than Adolf Hitler, in remarks that underscore the depth of Turkish opposition to U.S. policy in the region."
"By a twist of fate, Anushka Asthana's grandparents survived the gas cloud that devastated the Indian city of Bhopal. But, she finds, the city's tragedy is still unfolding."
The Zarqawi Personality Cult on LBC-TV: LBC TV started as a TV station for the right-wing Christian-oriented Lebanese Forces militia in Lebanon (the death squads of the Lebanese Civil War and the Sabra and Shatila massacres) in the 1980s. For commercial and political reasons, it later evolved politically. It had to change its tune in order to appeal to the commercially lucrative Arab market. All the right-wing reporters and editors are still there, but they try to feign a certain Arab orientation. The station (the satellite LBC as opposed to the Lebanese broadcasting LBC) is owned by a variety of Lebanese politicians and Arab interests that include AlWalid bin Talal. Pierre Dahir (the founder of LBC and the right-wing fellow) still owns the non-satellite LBC. Their news on Lebanon is very slanted toward the right-wing and Maronite Patriarch side, and they rarely employ non-Christians. In their Arab news, they are very close to US (US officials now favor it along with AlArabiyya), Saudi Arabia, and Allawi puppet government in Iraq. So I did not know what to expect when I was subjected for an entire week to promos about an LBC "exclusive documentary" on Abu Mus`ab Az-Zarqawi, of all people. I was curious about the timing, especially that LBC, which is better known for their silly, fluff, and sleazy materials (which makes it popular among the sleazy and polygamous royals of the region) is not in the habit of airing "documentaries" of any kind. So I have just watched the Zarqawi documentary, and was shocked to watch a piece that will undoubtedly contribute to a Zarqawi personality cult. What was the reason for this documentary except to present an image of a Zarqaqi "mystique." Every one who was interviewed was a former prison comrade or cellmate or comrade-in-arms of Zarqawi. Even the director of the prison where Zarqawi spent 5 years in, did not have negative things to say about the man who we have seen cutting off people's heads, and who takes pride in setting off car bombs against mosques. Even the music and the editing appeared as if it was almost part of a Zarqawi propaganda apparatus. I waited to see the names of he writers and editors, and at that particular moment, the broadcast mysteriously ended without the usual running of credit. Several things we learn from the documentary, especially if you have only been reading about Zarqawi in the official US press (NYT and WP). First, we should put to rest the allegation that Al-Qa`idah and Zarqawi's group are the same. They never were. Zarqawi served time in Jordan as a leader of his own group known as Bay`at Al-Imam. To be sure, Zarqaqi later moved to Afghanistan, but he started a new group, which was also separate from Al-Qa`idah (it was known as Jund Ash-Sham). His training camps and basis in Hirat were entirely separate from Al-Qa`idah. But Bush's propaganda interests (and deep ignorance) require that we confuse all those names and blur all those distinctions so that Saddam is linked to Al-Qa`idah and Al-Qa`idah is linked to Zarqawi and Zarqawi is linked to Chavez and Chavez is linked to Hitler, etc. In Afghanistan he met Bin Laden and Sayf Al-`Adl (the latter is chief-of-security of Al-Qa`idah and Bush will never tell you that he is still at large), but had ideological disagreements with Bin Laden. Apparently, Zarqawi believed in the takfir (declaring the infidelity of) of Arab governments while Bin Laden and Zawahiri focused on US in their February 1998 declaration. Zarqawi considered the overthrow of Arab governments to be a priority. Secondly, Zarqawi has to be the leader of whatever organization he is a member of, which may explain his split from the widely read fanatic Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi who inspired many of the fanatics in Saudi Arabia, including those who were behind the bombing in Khubar. I did not understand why the "documentary" told us about how much Zarqawi loved and respected his mother, although in one letter he requested that his mother never meets or shakes hands with other men. He signed his letters as "gharib" (the stranger). He met a guy in Afghanistan and he liked him, so he offered him his own sister for marriage (his sister back in Jordan was not even consulted of course). His father-in-law (of his first wife) may have been involved with the car bombing that killed Muhammad Baqir Al-Hakim among scores of innocent people. I do not understand why the
"documentary" did not interview any of the relatives of the victims of Zarqawi or even an analyst who can talk critically or at least objectively and non-fawningly about his misdeeds. The picture that was drawn was favorable and may cultivate a cult around this man; a cult that US official propaganda unwittingly has helped create. The documentary also aired the only known video footage of Zarqawi (from his Afghanistan days) and there was no evidence of the wooden leg. And no piece on Zarqawi is complete without covering his deep anti-Shi`ite bigotry, but that is where the "documentary" so abruptly ended.
"documentary" did not interview any of the relatives of the victims of Zarqawi or even an analyst who can talk critically or at least objectively and non-fawningly about his misdeeds. The picture that was drawn was favorable and may cultivate a cult around this man; a cult that US official propaganda unwittingly has helped create. The documentary also aired the only known video footage of Zarqawi (from his Afghanistan days) and there was no evidence of the wooden leg. And no piece on Zarqawi is complete without covering his deep anti-Shi`ite bigotry, but that is where the "documentary" so abruptly ended.
"Smoking while Iraq burns: Its idolisation of 'the face of Falluja' shows how numb the US is to everyone's pain but its own."
"The number of foreign students attending colleges in the Washington area has fallen by about 10 percent since September 2001."
"...officials said the death toll from the this month's massive operation in Fallujah was more than 2,000." Now the New York Times has quoted US military sources as claiming that they have killed "1000 insurgents." You do the math.
" “Violence against women is global in reach, and takes place in all societies and cultures,” he said in a statement marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. “It affects women no matter what their race, ethnicity, social origin, birth or other status may be.” "
"President Bush's re-election insures that more federal money will flow to abstinence education that precludes discussion of birth control, even as the administration awaits evidence that the approach gets kids to refrain from sex. Congress last weekend included more than $131 million for abstinence programs."
I saw an article on the same Bin Ladenite website from which MEMRI (the unprofessional and highly unreliable service founded by "former" Israel intelligence officials) selectively picked an article days before the US election to claim that Al-Qa`idah was supporting Kerry. The article confirms what I had written here before: that Al-Q`aidah had endorsed Bush. Today, a Bin Ladenite writer took credit for the defeat of Kerry, saying that it saved Saudi Arabia from an invasion that Kerry was planning. That article will NOT be translated by MEMRI: which only specializes in translating pro-Bin Laden and pro-Bush kooks in the Arab world, both of whom represent a tiny miniscule of the Arab population.
This is an outrage: what goes in in the classrooms at Columbia University is now the business of Israel.
For me, worse than those who supported the Iraq war, are those like Thomas Friedman of NYTimes and Noah Feldman of NYU who supported the war, and yet now want to identify themselves with the critics of the war. They should say (in the Bill Clington's demagogic fashion who said that he likes both Kerry and Bush) that: they are the only ones who like the Iraq war and its critics.
A sample of Pentagon's propagandist (Jackie Spinner of the Washington Post)'s prose: " "Capt. John Fernas, 29, poured sparkling juice into brown coffee cups and raised his glass in a toast. "We don't have family here, but we are with good friends," Fernas said."
"The U.S. government knew of a plot to oust Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in the weeks before a 2002 military coup that briefly unseated him."
This fascist Zionist once called Palestinians "drugged cockroaches in a bottle." In his obituary, the New York Times calls him "a blunt talker."
"An Israel Defense Forces officer and soldiers at the Beit Iba checkpoint near Nablus forced a young Palestinian on November 9 to open a violin case he was carrying and play the instrument, while local residents waited behind him in a long line."
People in the US always complain about Muslim clerics: they think that they (Muslim clerics) are all fans of Bin Ladin. Not true. (Now I will never stand up for clerics of any religion: and agree with Robespierre that "clerics are to virtue what charlatons are to medicine" but facts are stubborn things, as somebody once said. I listened today to the latest audio-tape by Abu Mus`ab Az-Zarqawi: and he viciously railed against Muslim clerics for not supporting his cause. Zarqawi is so disgustingly sexist and misogynist (in addition to his other violent prejudices) that he calls men "women" as an insult. He was mocking Muslim clerics as "women." This audio-tape was odd: it had background chanting in the beginning. I do not know what that means. I notice that Al-Qa`idah and Zarqawi propaganda now refer to the enemy as Zion-Crusaders.
From a Pentagon's advisory report: " "Today we reflexively compare Muslim 'masses' to those oppressed under Soviet rule," the report adds. "This is a strategic mistake. There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies - except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends." The report says that "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather they hate our policies," adding that "when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy." In the eyes of the Muslim world, the report adds, "American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering." "
Anybody who shook Saddam Husayn's hand is guilty in my book, especially if that person was reaching a military-political deal with Saddam's dictatorship. I know this woman (Rima) who was part of an Arab delegation in Iraq in the 1980s, and they were suddenly invited to meet with Saddam, and she managed to avoid shaking his hands.
This is Zionism: Israelis fired on [Palestinian] girl 'having identified her as a 10-year-old', military tape shows.
Monday, November 22, 2004
American troops opened fire on a bus carrying Iraqis in Ramadi (killing 3). (The Los Angeles Times report failed to tell you that they were unarmed civilians.)
This is Zionism: "Channel Two's documentary show Fact broadcast last night the army communications network tape recording of the real-time events, including videotape, in which R. is heard explicitly stating he "verified the kill." The tape showed that the [Israeli] soldiers at the outpost kept firing at the girl even after she had been identified by soldiers as "about 10 years old."
No one is taken in by the US lies [outside of the US, she means]: The graves of Falluja show the reality of Iraq's occupation.
"Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, faces elections at the end of January without a reliable and effective police presence, the senior US military commander there has said, after three-quarters of the 4,000-strong force either deserted or joined insurgents during a two-day uprising in the city this month."
As I expected: Saudi princes (and wealthy Arabs with ties to the Saudi royal family, like Lebanese billionaire Rafiq Hariri and Depurty Prime Minister Isam Faris (who also funds Republican candidates in the US) helped fund the useless Clinton Library. (I hate this source, but it was the only one that carried the story. This lousy rag has been behind the campaign against my dear friend Joseph Massad).
"Five months after embarrassed State Department officials acknowledged widespread mistakes in the government's influential annual report on global terrorism, internal investigators have found new and unrelated errors — as well as broader underlying problems that they say essentially have destroyed the credibility of the statistics the report is based on."
The most dangerous place in Iraq is Fallujah. No, it is in Mahumdiyyah. No, it is in Yusufiyyah for sure. I mean Latifiyyah.
This is your "war of liberation": "Residents of a village neighbouring Falluja have told Aljazeera that they helped bury the bodies of 73 women and children who were burnt to death by a US bombing attack."
This is Zionism: "soldiers in a strictly Orthodox unit reassembled the body parts of a Palestinian suicide bomber, sticking a cigarette in his mouth and then posing for photographs."
Trove of information: ""Initial indications are that it is a fairly significant treasure trove of information," General Smith told reporters at the Pentagon." That claim, as you my remember, was made about the briefcase that was found on Saddam, and which supposedly had information that would crack the secrets of the insurgency. One this is for sure: I do not find the New York Times to be a "trove of information." Propaganda maybe but not information.
On Meet the Press today, Sen. John McWayne admonished AlJazeera TV. He claimed (falsely of course) that AlJazeera keeps airing the tape of the shooting of the unarmed Iraqi, and they failed to even mention that Margaret Hassan was murdered. He is wrong on both counts. AlJazeera only aired the tape on the first day as far as I can tell, and then abruptly stopped airing it (I am sure after one phone call was made from DC). AlJazeera has of course mentioned the murder of Hassan and has refused to air a propaganda video by her captors in which she tragically pleaded for her life. Pro-Saudi media (which really include all major and minor Arab news media--linked directly or indirectly to House of Saud's money--except AlJazeera, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, and New TV (which are linked to Qatari money) have been running a pro-Allawi and anti-AlJazeera campaign. In AshSharq AlAwsat newspaper last week, they made the fantastic claim that the brother of AlJazeera bureau chief in Baghdad is a key aide to Zarqawi. The man in question appeared on TV: was much younger than was alleged, and would have been 14 years old when AshSharq AlAlAwsat claimed he was fighting in Afghanistan. Arabic media do not run corrections, by the way. They happen to be like the Pope: infallible.
"Major John Glubb, the British officer who organized the Arab Legion, complained bitterly in a letter to Whitehall. ''We . . . imagined that we had bestowed on the Iraqis all these blessings of democracy. ... Nothing could be more undemocratic than the result. A handful of politicians obtained possession of the machinery of government, and all the elections were rigged. . . . In this process they all became very rich.''"
Pro-American, pro-Saudi, pro-Allawi Al-Hayat newspaper reports today that Middle East experts at the Department of State have threatened to resign if Bush appoints right-wing fanatic Danielle Pletka as Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East. I appeared with Pletka on the Newshour last year.
"Begun as an ideological crusade, the war has now settled into something bloody, murderous and crude, with no "exit strategy" in sight. The war's beginning, built on the threat of weapons that did not exist, and its ending, which flickered to life so temptingly on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Lincoln 18 months ago, have disappeared, leaving American troops fighting and dying in a kind of lost, existential desert of the present."
"Democrats were furious to learn last week that Mr. Kerry had squirreled away $15 million in primary donations that he could have spent turning out the vote in Florida and Ohio."
Descending from Karmil by Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish (my translation):
(Part II)
I imagined that you are my leaner
I grew tired of the relationship
between the nail and the wood
And when I disembarked from
top of the spear and wound
I held something
And it was the shoe
of the guard
Completing me
going down, going down..
From that early morning
I am searching for
a foothold
Following a river,
but not following waves.
Can I reclaim
my exhalations!.
A soldier is sharing my wound
Guarding it to earn a medal
Preventing me from continuing
in death,
taking half of my wound
And leaving a half for
the security of nations.
Shaking the fingers
of my palm
and it falls a memory,
old bullets,
a pine tree,
rotten fruits,
an accusation,
questions
He searches my palm again,
confiscating Haifa which
smuggled a spike
Oh, ye Karmil,
Now the bells of all churches
toll
declaring that my temporary
death does not always end,
and ends once.
Oh, Karmil, now paper
birds flock to you
You were no difference
between pebbles and birds,
And the resurrection of Christ
has been postponed again
Oh, Karmil, now the school
holidays begin
and Fayruz will sing for me
And now we take a tube
of tear gas pills,
and we cry over a flying mountain
Oh, Karmil, now another
officer makes me a subject
of immortality!
We have gone far from the trees,
The sea separates us
And here we are between
purity and sin, two things
linking and separating
as if lovers are a circle
of chalk that are capable
of dissolution or life...
I love the countries that I love
I love the women that I love
but a bush of cypress in
flaming Karmil is equal
to the waists of women
and all the capitals
I love the seas that I love
I love the fields that I love
but a drop of water on the
feather of a skylark
on the stones of Haifa
equals all the seas
and washes off the sins
that I will commit
Allow me into the lost
paradise
I will yell out the cry
of Nadhim Hikmat:
Oh, my homeland!...
(Part II)
I imagined that you are my leaner
I grew tired of the relationship
between the nail and the wood
And when I disembarked from
top of the spear and wound
I held something
And it was the shoe
of the guard
Completing me
going down, going down..
From that early morning
I am searching for
a foothold
Following a river,
but not following waves.
Can I reclaim
my exhalations!.
A soldier is sharing my wound
Guarding it to earn a medal
Preventing me from continuing
in death,
taking half of my wound
And leaving a half for
the security of nations.
Shaking the fingers
of my palm
and it falls a memory,
old bullets,
a pine tree,
rotten fruits,
an accusation,
questions
He searches my palm again,
confiscating Haifa which
smuggled a spike
Oh, ye Karmil,
Now the bells of all churches
toll
declaring that my temporary
death does not always end,
and ends once.
Oh, Karmil, now paper
birds flock to you
You were no difference
between pebbles and birds,
And the resurrection of Christ
has been postponed again
Oh, Karmil, now the school
holidays begin
and Fayruz will sing for me
And now we take a tube
of tear gas pills,
and we cry over a flying mountain
Oh, Karmil, now another
officer makes me a subject
of immortality!
We have gone far from the trees,
The sea separates us
And here we are between
purity and sin, two things
linking and separating
as if lovers are a circle
of chalk that are capable
of dissolution or life...
I love the countries that I love
I love the women that I love
but a bush of cypress in
flaming Karmil is equal
to the waists of women
and all the capitals
I love the seas that I love
I love the fields that I love
but a drop of water on the
feather of a skylark
on the stones of Haifa
equals all the seas
and washes off the sins
that I will commit
Allow me into the lost
paradise
I will yell out the cry
of Nadhim Hikmat:
Oh, my homeland!...
