Author: mara.ahmed

The “Summer Camp Of Destruction:” Israeli High Schoolers Assist The Razing Of A Bedouin Town

deeply disturning!

“Arab Negev News publisher Ata Abu Madyam supplied me with a series of photos he took of the civilians in action. They depicted Israeli high school students who appeared to have volunteered as members of the Israeli police civilian guard (I am working on identifying some participants by name). Prior to the demolitions, the student volunteers were sent into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and belongings. A number of villagers including Madyam told me the volunteers smashed windows and mirrors in their homes and defaced family photographs with crude drawings. Then they lounged around on the furniture of al-Arakib residents in plain site of the owners. Finally, according to Matyam, the volunteers celebrated while bulldozers destroyed the homes.” (max blumenthal) Full article.

Israeli rabbis clamp down on burka

with all the “burka” talk in this article and the associated hysteria, what struck me most was this: Since donning the burka, the woman said she had been taunted by neighbours who called her a “smelly Arab” and that Israeli soldiers had asked to see her identification papers to prove she was not a Muslim. They backed down, she said, when she showed them that her children were clearly Jewish. Full article.

The Great (Double) Game by Thomas Friedman

“The [9/11] terrorist attack was basically planned, executed and funded by radical Pakistanis and Saudis.” – wtf! thomas friedman is tired of being a “sucker” but i think it’s the misguided readers of the nyt who should be tired of his sheer dumbness.

here is his article. the following is my response.

The u.s is being suckered.
the u.s. is an imperial aggressor conducting unwarranted wars and killing civilians, directly or indirectly, on a massive scale in countries that pose no threat to its citizenry.

We are paying Pakistan’s Army and intelligence service to be two-faced. Otherwise, they would be just one-faced and 100 percent against us. The same could probably be said of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai.
the pakistani army has been america’s stooge since 1947 and hamid karzai is a puppet govt installed by the u.s.

China supports Pakistan, seeks out mining contracts in Afghanistan and lets America make Afghanistan safe for Chinese companies.
afghanistan is NOT safe, it was much safer under the taliban. karzai’s govt has hardly any influence outside of kabul. 70% of the country is still under taliban control.

china is not a military occupation force. they’re geographically located right next to afghanistan and pakistan and have had and will continue to have both business and security relationships with their neighbors. america is irrelevant.

Oil consumption, which indirectly helps to fund the very Taliban schools and warriors our soldiers are fighting against.
oil consumption is only part of the problem. the saudis don’t need to invest in taliban training. there’s plenty of hatred to go around w/o any taliban schools. its coming from american bombings, raids, detentions, torture – from our brutal occupation.

That terrorist attack was basically planned, executed and funded by radical Pakistanis and Saudis.
where the fuck did he come up with pakistan? i could stand up and say that the 9/11 attack was planned, executed and funded by the cia and mossad and be on equally firm ground.

The short answer is because Pakistan has nukes that we fear and Saudi Arabia has oil that we crave.
the govts in both pakistan and saudi arabia r owned by the u.s. – we don’t fear shit.

We hoped that building a decent democratizing government in Iraq would influence reform in Saudi Arabia and beyond.
friedman was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the iraq invasion and the neo-con idea of ending a state in order to rebuild it in our own image. one of his fake sense pronouncements: “two countries with mcdonald’s restaurants won’t go to war.” for that alone, friedman should be ex-communicated from serious journalism.

After expelling Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, we stayed on to stabilize the place, largely out of fears that instability in Afghanistan could spill into Pakistan and lead to Islamist radicals taking over Islamabad and its nukes.
al qaeda was never kicked out of afghanistan. al qaeda (or the 100 or so people believed to loosely represent it) is completely portable – they can move around. unlike american forces, they actually live in afghanistan. they have plenty of time to play hide and seek. the spilling over of the militancy/instability into pakistan it on account of american presence, not in spite of it.

The Pakistani Army is obsessed with what it says is the threat from India — and keeping that threat alive is what keeps the Pakistani Army in control of the country.
american sponsorship is what really keeps the army in control in pakistan – like all american-funded latin american military dictatorships.

The absence of either stable democracy in Pakistan or a decent public education system only swells the ranks of the Taliban and other Islamic resistance forces there.
the absense of a stable democracy in pakistan also has something to do with america’s support/preference for military dictators.

If Pakistan built its identity around its own talented people and saw its strategic depth as the quality of its schools, farms and industry, instead of Afghanistan, it might be able to produce a stable democracy — and we wouldn’t care about Pakistan’s nukes any more than India’s.
again, see above. as far as the nukes, the u.s. doesn’t fear them. they’ve known about them forever. they just use that card when needed. read seymour hersh’s article about how americans have an arrangement to deploy a special services unit to pakistan should an internal dispute in the country put the nukes at risk. basically, there is no risk. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/16/091116fa_fact_hersh

The al-Sauds get to rule and the Wahhabis get to impose on their society the most puritanical Islam — and export it to mosques and schools across the Muslim world, including to Pakistan, with money earned by selling oil to the West.
the sauds r best friends with the bushes. it’s like egypt. it’s not about oil, it’s about control over countries to the detriment of their people’s will.

So we pay Pakistan to help us in Afghanistan, even though we know some of that money is killing our own soldiers, because we fear that just leaving could lead to Pakistan’s Islamists controlling its bomb.
bullshit on account of all of the above.

We don’t have the money, manpower or time required to fully transform the most troubled states of this region.
what reprehensible, racist, neo con hubris – to want to “westernize” other countries out of compassion by destroying and then rebuilding them our way. yuck.

I am tired of being the sucker in this game.
and we r tired of ur stupidity and ur malignant political agenda.

“What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan” Locked into Failed Thinking About War

Using women in Afghanistan, or any other oppressed group, as a shield to continue wars is really an odious tactic. This war, the costliest in US history, should be justified on the basis of national security interests. Humanitarian reasons can justify peacekeeping missions, but if we stayed at war for 9 years based on what would happen if we left, we’d have garrisons actively fighting in over 100 countries and basically all of our citizens would be off at war. Surely this makes Bill Kristol go over the moon, but the rest of us should be worried. And, as Nick Kristof reports, the people we presume to “save” would rather be saved differently. Full article.

People’s Lawyer Sentenced to 10 years in Prison

Not enough has been written about US civil rights attorney, Lynne Stewart, who was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegally distributing press releases on behalf of her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. The majority of mainstream output seems to have been generated by right-wing commentators highlighting the fact that the 70–year-old chemotherapy patient will likely die in a prison cell. Often referred to as a people’s lawyer,’ many believe Stewart’s harsh sentence has more to do with a McCarthyesque crackdown on lawyers who represent those targeted by America’s ongoing ‘war on terror’ than upholding the law. Full article.

Slandering the Good Guys: Some Basic Facts About IHH

We must remember that an attack on IHH is an attack on all humanitarian groups around the world. Given that IHH is among the most courageous humanitarian NGOs in the world — risking their lives to work in places like Somalia, cleaning up American messes in Iraq and Afghanistan — our politicians should perhaps be thanking them, rather than trying to tarnish their stellar reputation. Full article here.

1 Soldier or 20 Schools in Afghanistan?

For the cost of just 246 soldiers posted for one year, America could pay for a higher education plan for all Afghanistan. That would help build an Afghan economy, civil society and future — all for one-quarter of 1 percent of our military spending in Afghanistan this year. Full article here.

How Furkan Dogan, a U.S. Citizen, Was Killed by Israeli Soldiers on the Mavi Marmara

Furkan was killed on the top deck just above the bridge of the Mavi Marmara. He was using a video camera and was taking a video of the helicopters flying above the Mavi Marmara when he was shot from above in the foot and leg. His friend, who was standing next to Furkan when he was shot, helped him lay down and tried to help him. A very short time later two Israeli soldiers approached them and dragged Furkan away to the far corner of the deck above the bridge. This is where he was kicked, shot three more times and killed. Full article.

Bagram, Afghanistan, 2002 – poem by Marvin Bell

Bagram, Afghanistan, 2002
by Marvin Bell

The interrogation celebrated spikes and cuffs,
the inky blue that invades a blackened eye,
the eyeball that bulges like a radish,
that incarnadine only blood can create.
They asked the young taxi driver questions
he could not answer, and they beat his legs
until he could no longer kneel on their command.
They chained him by the wrists to the ceiling.
They may have admired the human form then,
stretched out, for the soldiers were also athletes
trained to shout in unison and be buddies.
By the time his legs had stiffened, a blood clot
was already tracing a vein into his heart.
They said he was dead when they cut him down,
but he was dead the day they arrested him.
Are they feeding the prisoners gravel now?
To make them skillful orators as they confess?
Here stands Demosthenes in the military court,
unable to form the words “my country.” What
shall we do, we who are at war but are asked
to pretend we are not? Do we need another
naive apologist to crown us with clichés
that would turn the grass brown above a grave?
They called the carcass Mr. Dilawar. They
believed he was innocent. Their orders were
to step on the necks of the prisoners, to
break their will, to make them say something
in a sleep-deprived delirium of fractures,
rising to the occasion, or, like Mr. Dilawar,
leaving his few possessions and his body.