Here, you will find a letter to an American GI, written by an Iraqi blogger named Layla Anwar. I am incapable of prefacing it with any comment or adjective. The letter itself and its 72 comments/responses speak well to each other; they offer a composite portrait.

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When I watch pictures of your dead buddies on albasrah.net and I read some of your naive childlike poems, I feel sorry for you. I honestly do.
I feel sorry for you yet at the same time I feel anger.
It is a very confusing mix of ambivalent, contradictory emotions.
On the one hand,I would love to strike you and on the other hand I say to myself, it is not really your fault.
You chose it yet you did not choose it.
From your perspective you are only "executing orders" . Yet hard facts on the battle ground tell me that you also enjoy the humiliation you inflict on these "alien" "evil" people-the Iraqis.

Despite your own neediness and your being in "it" because "it" will give you a grant, a green card and maybe the famous passport with an embossed striped eagle , you still believe you are superior, a better race, a more advanced one, a purer one.

I see the pictures of your dead buddies and I think of their mothers and fathers and the bitterness and grief they may feel. You all look so young and in many ways so innocent.

Yet when I see you kicking young Iraqis around and beating them to death, when I see you raping little girls and burning them, when I see you making Iraqi children run miles after a plastic bottle of water or when you teach those poor little souls to say "Fuck you Iraq", just for the fun of it - I can't but have hate for you .
(I will not even mention the torture, nor the pillaging - you know all of that already)

When I see you urinating in and on sacred places and when I see you writing your degenerate graffitis on 7'000 years old archeological sites, with absolutely no respect or regard for other people's Faith, Culture and History- I can't but have contempt for you.

Read the rest here.

 

I was just reading Discover magazine, and came across an advertisement by a pro-Israeli organization FLAME regarding Netanyahu's proposal for a Palestinian state. Reading the advertisement, the length of a one-page article, I began to think how it was making his proposal sound utterly generous and how it was blasting the 'Muslims' for rejecting the proposal. One quick search revealed immediately a view that went into the details of Netanyahu's speech far more lucidly than did the propagandist ad. Here is the link to the article that criticizes Netanyahu's supposedly generous proposal, exposing the hostile yet diplomatic language it is framed in and explaining the implications of his proposal. How can he propose a Palestinian state as a sovereign entity without mentioning the word Palestine even once? Yet he does so. How can he propose a sovereign state when he demands that it be thoroughly demilitarized? Read the article for further elucidation.

 

Also, here is Al-Jazeera's take on the proposal.

 

Peruse this. 

 

 

Roger Bacon is credited with drawing a flying apparatus as is Leonardo da Vinci. Actually Ibn Firnas of Islamic Spain invented, constructed, and tested a flying machine in the 800's A.D. Roger Bacon learned of flying machines from Arabic references to Ibn Firnas' machine. The latter's invention antedates Bacon by 500 years and Da Vinci by some 700 years.

It is taught that glass mirrors were first produced in Venice, the year 1291. Glass mirrors were actually in use in Islamic Spain as early as the 11th century. The Venetians learned the art of fine glass production from Syrian artisans during the 9th and 10th centuries.

It is taught that before the 14th century, the only type of clock available was the water clock. In 1335, a large mechanical clock was erected in Milan, Italy and it was claimed as the first mechanical clock. However, Spanish Muslim engineers produced both large and small mechanical clocks that were weight-driven. This knowledge was transmitted to Europe via Latin translations of Islamic books on mechanics, which contained designs and illustrations of epi-cyclic and segmental gears. One such clock included a mercury escapement. Europeans directly copied the latter type during the 15th century. In addition, during the 9th century, Ibn Firnas of Islamic Spain, according to Will Durant, invented a watch-like device which kept accurate time. The Muslims also constructed a variety of highly accurate astronomical clocks for use in their observatories.

Read the rest here.

 

There is so much to feel.

So much to intake

To peel and partake.

So much to discern

In a cacophony of concerns

So much cred

In the blood of the bled

In the voices of the oppressed,

never staged, ever caged

In the screams of the murdered, the bombed,

the plundered,

never caught, never taped, never shaped

Fraught with fate

packed and delivered with bulleted hate

from the lands of the supposedly free.

 

So much. So much. It confounds my nerves,

my words, my pen.

 

 

Some overt usages of medications have to be anti-medicated. The overt media today needs to be anti-mediated.

 

 The Arrivals.

 

 

 

... at the very least. She is not yesterday's news. I hope her case becomes a crack in this facade of top-order injustice and chicancery. I hope this crack only deepens.

 

 

I insist.

 

"Broadly speaking religious life may be divided into three periods. These may be described as the periods of ‘Faith’, ‘Thought’, and ‘Discovery.’ In the first period religious life appears as a form of discipline which the individual or a whole people must accept as an unconditional command without any rational understanding of the ultimate meaning and purpose of that command. This attitude may be of great consequence in the social and political history of a people, but is not of much consequence in so far as the individual’s inner growth and expansion are concerned. Perfect submission to discipline is followed by a rational understanding of the discipline and the ultimate source of its authority. In this period religious life seeks its foundation in a kind of metaphysics - a logically consistent view of the world with God as a part of that view. In the third period metaphysics is displaced by psychology, and religious life develops the ambition to come into direct contact with the Ultimate Reality. It is here that religion becomes a matter of personal assimilation of life and power; and the individual achieves a free personality, not by releasing himself from the fetters of the law, but by discovering the ultimate source of the law within the depths of his own consciousness. As in the words of a Muslim Sufi - ‘no understanding of the Holy Book is possible until it is actually revealed to the believer just as it was revealed to the Prophet.’¹ It is, then, in the sense of this last phase in the development of religious life that I use the word religion in the question that I now propose to raise. Religion in this sense is known by the unfortunate name of Mysticism, which is supposed to be a life-denying, fact-avoiding attitude of mind directly opposed to the radically empirical outlook of our times. Yet higher religion, which is only a search for a larger life, is essentially experience and recognized the necessity of experience as its foundation long before science learnt to do so. It is a genuine effort to clarify human consciousness, and is, as such, as critical of its level of experience as Naturalism is of its own level."

--- Allama Iqbal, "Is Religion Possible?", The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

 

As basic take-off points for myself : An Islamic Money Supply as a Means of Integration.

 

And Islamicfinance.com

 

 

John Kenneth Galbraith once famously said, “The process by which money is created is so simple that the mind is repelled.” We’re about to discuss that very thing. Money creation is a bizarre thing to ponder. It is actually a very simple process, but it’s really difficult to accept.

Money is loaned into existence. Conversely, when loans are paid back, money ‘disappears.’

--- Crash Course CH.7 at Chrismartenson.com

 

 

... often does not come in an evil form. It comes... with the best of intentions? Believing in its own goodness? In human form, perhaps it has to come so. A human, after all, is not a devil.

 

 

This video takes me back to my virtual nineties. Was a raving-fave.

 

 

 

At http://www.chrismartenson.com/ .

 

 

 

At least sample the 1.5 hr powerpoint-style lecture/presentation for the Zeitgeist Movement at Zeitgeist, the Movie.

 

If you have the time, watch Zeitgiest: Addendum at the same website. I must say... very orienting indeed, no matter what government I think of, US or Pak. After hearing forever that the Pakistani government is a US 'stooge', here is finally a layman-level model/understanding of WHY it may be a 'stooge'... of why it doesn't matter who is head of the government, for unless he drastically cuts us off from foreign aid and help and the attendant restrictions on our sovereignty, he will be same as the one before him... of why the people did not bring him or anyone ever to power, so let us stop blaming each other and unite, unite, unite against him. Let us radiate our resistence outward first and foremost by fortifying our neighborhood... no matter whether the family next door is Sunni, Shia, Barelvi, Ahmadi (yes! Ahmadi!), religionless, or WHATEVER: let us bond. Let us bond and help each other. Get to know each other. Share our blessings with those jhugi-wallay around the corner, or the people living in some old run-down apartment building nearby. Even send some ordinary home-made sweet to the elitisit 4 doors down, and build connections. Let us give a genuine smile and a salam to the weirdo-sour-mouthed uncle who deafeningly pumps the car horn at 5 pm daily so that someone will open his house gates. Let us give a genuine smile and a salam to the aunty too who thinks we are the scum of the earth and satan's own minions. Let us be patient and smile when someone preaches to us about our uncovered head or sporadic prayers, but smile also when someone puts us down as unworthy because we veil our face and pray fastidiously. Let us be compassionate to the critic. It doesn't matter that our neighbor says his salah differently, or dresses liberally or conservatively, or is from some unknown village, or is Balochi, Pathan, Sindhi, Muhajir, Punjabi, or an idiot in our opinion... a neighbor is worth at least knowing and helping if not befriending. Knowing is enough to build connections. To know and help our immediate neighbor is more worth our time than to support some distant politician or ideology. Link. There lies in our connecting and hence uniting so hope of a true revolution, a true fortress of love, compassion and community that can shield us from the corrupt in power. If it will not sheild us, it may shield those after us. Our children. Let us stop competing, and start sharing! Let us discover that not the khush-hali of the government or our employer or our school or our college, but the khush-hali of our neighbor is our khush-hali.

 

The antidote to the alienating, dividing, conquering web of institutions we haplessy service in our daily lives from the age of 5 yrs is the organism of community we can create by bringing to life common, simple cells of family and neighborhoods. Build lateral connections by reaching out with open arms and hearts. Do not build heirarchical connections by bowing down your head and mind and spirit to the institutions that you think provide you your bread and butter. They don't. If you believe they do, perhaps you should say your namaz and prayers to them. See if they answer. See how long they answer. See if they even hear you.

 

No. See if they even see you.

 

 

 

 

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free"  --- Wolfgang van Goethe

 

 

 

 

 

 Who's Afraid of Aafia Siddiqui? An article from a Boston mag.

 

I ferment in agony when I read about her. I want to stand at Capaha square in a no-land like Cape Girardeau with posters informing anyone interested in what their government's retaliation for 9-11 has meant to so many individuals like her. Her gender may, just may, be an exception but her story is not.

For less than 3000 victims in NYC on 9-11, they have killed at least 723, 206 local people in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least.

Is the American blood-thirst not yet over? Or do they need to keep up this bullying because if they back down now, some non-state actor is bound to avenge their vicitms?

Closing Guantanamo is not enough. Close Bagram, Kandahar and any other prison site not known to us.

Retreating from Iraq is not enough. Dismantle the US air force bases currently planned to be left behind. That will be the somewhat proper, decent, honest-faced end of the Iraq war. Somewhat. Retreat from Afghanistan as well.

If this is not possible for the government to undertake, then AT LEAST tell Americans the real story behind these wars. What are the uninformed and patriotically uniformed soldiers of America really fighting for? Is certainly isn't for the freedom of anyone. It certainly isn't for the security of anyone. It certainly isn't for any decent principle listed anywhere.

When will the public clamor for answers?

 

 

 

 

A short report conveniently filed under the benign sub-section of 'Science and Environment'.

It is from 2003, but is it irrelevant?!

 

 

 

 

Changing the dynamics of 'civil disobedience'.