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Oh, those wacky religious Muslim terrorists are at it again going all murder happy on people who dare to make fun of their religion.
This event is completely ludicrous and, in 2015, should not be happening, some reasons off the top of my head:
1. Mohammad, Jebus, Krishna, Sif – pick your imaginary friend – they all don’t fucking exist.
2. If they did exist wouldn’t there be some godly smiting going on, like all the time? Being immortal and all powerful and all that shite, you would think that they could take care of business without the help of mere mortals.
3. How can you, a mere mortal, even think that you can contemplate what your Godhead wants, never mind what she’s offended by?
4. How does killing Western journalists advance your cause by even one micrometer? Not all journalists are card carrying lackeys of empire yet, but with doing shit-for-brains (shit for brains is my new term for “stupid” because I’ve been informed by certain elements that “stupid” is ablest slur) wankery like mass murder how is the non-wanking western media supposed to put forward the case for Islam not being full of yahoos ready to kill people for shit-for-brains reasons?
If you think this is going to be all about bashing the religious and the Muslims, you’d be wrong. Let’s get a little context on the situation from Ziauddin Sardar:
“I would argue that western imperialism has not so much forged an alliance with radical factions, as created them”, I was told, in London, by my friend, and leading progressive Muslim intellectual, Ziauddin Sardar.
And Mr. Sardar continued:
“We need to realize that colonialism did much more than simply damage Muslim nations and cultures. It played a major part in the suppression and eventual disappearance of knowledge and learning, thought and creativity, from Muslim cultures. Colonial encounter began by appropriating the knowledge and learning of Islam, which became the basis of the ‘European Renaissance’ and ‘the Enlightenment’ and ended by eradicating this knowledge and learning from both Muslim societies and from history itself. It did that both by physical elimination – destroying and closing down institutions of learning, banning certain types of indigenous knowledge, killing off local thinkers and scholars – and by rewriting History as the history of western civilization into which all minor histories of other civilization are subsumed.”
Of course our hands are dirty on this one most of the terrible shit going on in the world can be directly or indirectly attributed to putting our state interests (see colonialism, empire, and name your flavour of exceptionalism et al.) ahead of the needs of other people who happen to be living in their own countries.
Andre Vltchek continues:
“From the hopes of those post-WWII years, to the total gloom of the present days – what a long and terrible journey is has been!
The Muslim world is now injured, humiliated and confused, almost always on the defensive.
It is misunderstood by the outsiders, and often even by its own people who are frequently forced to rely on Western and Christian views of the world.
What used to make the culture of Islam so attractive – tolerance, learning, concern for the wellbeing of the people – has been amputated from the Muslim realm, destroyed from abroad. What was left was only religion.
Now most of the Muslim countries are ruled by despots, by the military or corrupt cliques. All of them closely linked with the West and its global regime and interests.
As they did in several great nations and Empires of South and Central America, as well as Africa, Western invaders and colonizers managed to totally annihilate great Muslim cultures.
What forcefully replaced them were greed, corruption and brutality.
It appears that everything that is based on different, non-Christian foundations is being reduced to dust by the Empire. Only the biggest and toughest cultures are still surviving.
Anytime a Muslim country tries to go back to its essence, to march its own, socialist or socially-oriented way – be it Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, or much more recently Iraq, Libya or Syria – it gets savagely tortured and destroyed.
The will of its people is unceremoniously broken, and democratically expressed choices overthrown.”
[Source]
Picture is unrelated. I need some awesome in this post, because otherwise it is too damn depressing.
You’ll see the word “stability” crop up when you begin to examine the officially accepted version of history we all know and love. Stability used in the geopolitical exceptional context is anti-democratic and anti-nationalist – pretty much the exact opposite of the flowery boilerplate about human rights and democracy promotion that is exuded from ‘top government’ officials.
It is usually about here I get painted as a part of the I hate america/canada crowd – but that shit can frack-off before it starts. I am not about hating my country, I’m about this country looking at our history without the friendly blinders on and owning up and taking responsibility for the horrible shit we have done/continue to do in the name of the ‘national interest’.
So ya, wanna fix the terrorism problem? Lets start at home ,with us, like this:
“If we seriously want to end the plague of terrorism, we know how to do it. First, end our own role as perpetrators. That alone will have a substantial effect. Second, attend to the grievances that are typically in the background, and if they are legitimate, do something about them. Third, if an act of terror occurs, deal with it as a criminal act: identify and apprehend the suspects and carry out an honest judicial process. That actually works. In contrast, the techniques that are employed enhance the threat of terror. The evidence is fairly strong, and falls together which much else. ”
Thank you Mr.Chomsky for that gem of a quote. Thank you dear readers for taking the time to listen to me rant.
Arbourist out.
Fascinating reading about some of the circular nature of events that are playing out in the Middle East as of late. This excerpt from the Counterpunch article titled Once More, Into the Quagmire.
The Middle East Needs Our Military Might
One can hear, in the reverberating noise of mainstream justifications, a series of claims. Among them is the idea that the Middle East is united in opposition to ISIS. Indeed it is, if you confine your poll to the rotten monarchies of the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Adding Jordan to the mix, this fulsome collection of anti-democratic and largely puritanical theocrats is by some stretch of the imagination supposed to provide Arab and Muslim legitimacy to America’s war.
Fancy that, legitimacy conferred by five of the most authoritarian governments in the Middle East. Thus we are ostensibly defending the cause of freedom by assembling a coalition of five treacherous freedom deniers. One human rights violator is leading a coalition of human rights violators against a new human rights violator whose actions deeply offend it. We are appalled at the sight of beheadings and intend to destroy those who practice it, supported by the leading beheader on the Arabian Peninsula. We bomb ISIS oil depots, claiming they have been criminally seized. This barely a decade after we criminally seized major Iraqi oil contracts, while our troops “guarded” the oil ministry (from ‘insurgents’).
Then there’s the dutifully ignored footnote, a poll conducted by the Arab America Institute, which found that:
“Strong majorities in every country favor U.S. policies that support a negotiated solution to the conflict, coupled with more support for Syrian refugees. Majorities in all countries oppose any form of U.S. military engagement (i.e., “no-fly zone,” air strikes, or supplying advanced weapons to the opposition).”
And most Arabs found President Obama most effective in ending the U.S. presence in Iraq. Perhaps the true patriot could efface all of this were it not for the additional fact that our partners in extermination are the leading financial backers of extremists across the Arab world. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are nothing if not open-air markets for arms merchants, money launderers, and angry mullah mosque builders. You could be forgiven for wondering if half our coalition is helping attack ISIS and then immediately re-arming it when it emerges from the rubble, as it invariably will. This is what’s known in arch capitalist circles as “creative destruction.”
I know of a few parents who having a decidedly unmerry christmas this year, and every year after because their children were murdered by U.S drone aircraft.
After Jon Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, claimed in June that no civilians had been killed in US drone attacks in nearly a year, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that at least 45 civilians were killed in 10 US attacks during that period.
Overall, drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 780 civilians, including 175 children. The bureau documents 309 CIA drone strikes carried out since 2004 that have killed as many as 2,997 people. Over 85 percent were launched by the Obama administration, an average of one strike every four days. Yet the casualties of the US drone war rarely receive mention in the corporate media, except when described as “Islamic militants” or “suspected terrorists.” This is challenged not only by the bureau’s data, but also by gruesome photographs of drone victims taken by local journalists.
The Guardian described the images captured by Noor Behram, a journalist from the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, whose work appeared in an exhibition at London’s Beaconsfield gallery in August:
The photographs make for difficult viewing and leave no doubt about the destructive power of the Hellfire missiles unleashed: a boy with the top of his head missing, a severed hand, flattened houses, the parents of children killed in a strike. The chassis is all that remains of a car in one photo, another shows the funeral of a seven-year-old child. There are pictures, too, of the cheap rubber flip-flops worn by children and adults, which often survive: signs that life once existed there. A 10-year-old boy’s body, prepared for burial, shows lipstick on him and flowers in his hair – a mother’s last loving touch.
Here is my wish for the holiday season – I wish the American people will find a way to look outside the prison of their mainstream media and see what is being committed in their name, become righteously angry and put a stop to killing of innocent people.
The West has a long history of supporting autocratic regimes that are ‘stabilizing influences’ in various regions across the world. The autocrats keep the inspirations of the local population in check by whatever means necessary (read violence and repression) to keep the doors open for (western) business. This particular model crumbles eventually as people do eventually come together and throw out their oppressors. Witness Tunisia, they are fighting for their country now and they may just win their freedom.
“The Tunisian uprising, which succeeded in toppling Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian president, has brought down the walls of fear, erected by repression and marginalisation, thus restoring the Arab peoples’ faith in their ability to demand social justice and end tyranny.
It is a warning to all leaders, whether supported by international or regional powers, that they are no longer immune to popular outcries of fury.
It is true that Ben Ali’s flight from the country is just the beginning of an arduous path towards freedom. It is equally true that the achievements of the Tunisian people could still be contained or confiscated by the country’s ruling elite, which is desperately clinging to power.
But the Tunisian intifada has placed the Arab world at a crossroads. If it fully succeeds in bringing real change to Tunis it will push the door wide open to freedom in Arab word. If it suffers a setback we shall witness unprecedented repression by rulers struggling to maintain their absolute grip on power.
Either way, a system that combined a starkly unequal distribution of wealth with the denial of freedoms has collapsed. (italics mine)
The maldistribution of wealth is a one of the prime motivating factors for revolution. It is a feature of many popular revolts and will continue to be so until the elites realize that insulating themselves from the rest of people ultimately leads to their ruinous downfall. It is the actions of the elite that determine whether societies prosper and fail. I suggest reading Ronald Wright’s short book – A Short History of Progress to see how this story plays out repeatedly through history.
The people of Tunisia are revolting against a regime that restricted, repressed and tortured them, it is a lesson being played out in the Arab world about what can be done about their own situations, it would be wise of the people of the west also watched what has been wrought in their names, and how it is being rejected.
“Tunis may have been an extreme example, but all Arab regimes are variations on the same model, which obediently follows Western-instructed economic ‘liberalisation’ while strangling human rights and civil liberties.
The West has long admired the Tunisian system, praising its “secularism” and “liberal economic policies”, and, in its quest to open world markets and maximise profit, has turned a blind eye to human rights violations and the gagging of the media – two functions at which the Ben Ali regime excelled.
But Tunis, under Ben Ali, was not a model of secularism but a shameless model of tyranny. It turned “secularism” into an ideology of terror – not merely in the name of countering Islamic extremism but in an attempt to crush the spirit of opposition – Islamic, secular, liberal and socialist alike.
As with previous examples of countries it deemed to have embraced ‘successful economic models’, like Chile under the late dictator Augusto Pinochet, the West, particularly the US and France, backed the Ben Ali regime – prioritising forced stability over democracy.
But even when such governments remain in power for decades, thanks to Western support and a security apparatus that suppresses the people with immunity, it is only a matter of time before they come to a humiliating end.
The West, and the US in particular, has always abandoned its allies – a memorable example is the way in which Washington dropped Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the late shah of Iran, when popular anger threatened the country’s stability.
Seems like the West is about to, once again, wash its hands of another abysmal failure successful economic model country. The infection is spreading, that contagion the freedom of people to choose the destiny for their own country.
“The people of Tunisia have spoken and, most significantly, the Arab people are listening.
The Tunisian protests have already triggered peaceful demonstrations in Jordan, where people have protested over inflation and government efforts to undermine political liberties and press freedoms and have demanded the departure of Samir al-Rifai, the prime minister.”
I imagine the planners in the West are fretting as they once did during the 1950’s where the stemming the “Red Tide” was so vitally important to Western Interests. Blocking the dreaded domino effect some 2 million Vietnamese were slaughtered. Thankfully, military resources are not available right now that would be allocated normally to crush revolutions the like of what is happening in Tunisia.
“Arabs of all generations are also expressing their sentiments online – not only congratulating Tunisians but also calling for similar movements in their own countries. And on Facebook, many have replaced their profile pictures with images of the Tunisian flag, as though draping themselves in the colours of an Arab revolution.
The failure of one of the Arab world’s most repressive security forces to quell people power has been met with jubilation. Bloggers have compared the event to the fall of the Berlin wall, suggesting that it will usher in a new era in which the Arab people will have a greater say in determining their future. Mohamed Bouazizi, the young Tunisian who set himself on fire in protest against unemployment and poverty, has become a symbol of Tunisian sacrifices for freedom. Activists across the region have called for the “Tunisation” of the Arab street – taking Tunis as a model for the assertion of people power and aspirations for social justice, the eradication of corruption and democratisation.
But the celebratory atmosphere dominating the blogosphere and wide sectors of Arab society is tainted by a prevailing sense of caution and fear: Caution because the situation in Tunis remains unclear and fear that there may be a coup d’état, which would impose security but stifle popular aspirations.”
Jubilation and caution all mixed together. The people in the region have seen what happened in Iran and Iraq, how meddling Western Powers can quickly destroy a nation. Is Tunisia flying high enough above the radar to warrant Imperial attention. Many rightfully feel trepidation because of the threat of foreign intervention.
The article ends with a quote from a Tunisian poet:
“History has shown that security forces can silence people but can never crush the simmering revolt that lies beneath the ashes. Or in the words of the beloved Tunisian poet Abul-Qasim al-Shabi in his poem To the Tyrants of the World:
Wait, don’t let the spring, the clearness of the sky and the shine of the morning light fool you …
Because the darkness, the thunder’s rumble and the blowing of the wind are coming toward you
from the horizon
Beware because there is a fire underneath the ash
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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