When I first heard this song, I loved it. Now that I've watched the video, I love it even more. I wish I knew Spanish fluently. Thank you Sousan for introducing me to this wonderful band! Clandestino by Manu Chao
The lyrics (shukren Sousan):
Alone I go with my sorrow
Alone goes my sentence
To run is my destiny
To escape the law
Lost in the heart of the great Babylon
They call me
clandestine
For not having any papers
To a city of the north
I went to work
I left my life
Between Ceuta and
Gibraltar
I'm a line in the sea
A ghost in the city
My life is forbidden
So says the authority
Alone I go with my sorrow
Alone goes my sentence
To run is my destiny
For having no papers
Lost
in the heart
Of the great Babylon
They call me clandestine
I'm the lawbreaker
Mano negra clandestine
Peruan clandestine
African clandestine
Marihuana illegal
Alone I go with my sorrow
Alone
goes my sentence
To run is my destiny
To escape the law
Lost in the heart of the great Babylon
They call me
clandestine
For not having any papers
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Iraqi Sunnis Caught Between Shia Militias and Al Qa'ida
The Great Wall of Baghdad may be going up, but there's still carnage on the streets
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Published: 06 May 2007
The first thing Said, a small contractor, did on visiting a military prison in west Baghdad was to pay a $2,000 bribe. The money went to an officer in return for a promise not to torture Said's brother and business partner, Ali. The main payment comes later. For Ali's release, Said will pay a further $100,000.
The brothers are Sunni, and the police commandos who arrested Ali are Shia. What happened to him explains why the US military "surge", the dispatch of 20,000 extra troops to Iraq announced by President Bush in January, is failing to end the Sunni-Shia sectarian civil war in the capital.
The US and the Iraqi government are having some success in cultivating divisions between the fanatical partisans of al-Qa'ida in Iraq and the rest of the Sunni community. But overall, the five million Sunni community supports armed resistance to both the US and the Shia-Kurdish government.
Ali, a 40-year-old with three children, was a successful businessman before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. A member of the al-Hamdani tribe, he lived in the predominantly Sunni middle-class neighbourhood of al-Khudat in west Baghdad. After the invasion, he worked as a driver for a Western company for two years, but a bomb blast destroyed his car and seriously injured him. In 2005, one of his sons was kidnapped, and he had to pay $20,000 to get him back.
It is a grim measure of the insecurity of life in Baghdad that Ali, despite his injuries and the kidnapping, was considered by his neighbours to be doing well. He had gone back into contracting, and was making money. But 10 days ago, he was driving from his home to Karada, a Shia district in east Baghdad, when he was stopped by Interior Ministry commandos. One of them said to him: "We haven't seen you for a long time. Where have you been?"
Ali made the mistake of telling the truth, saying that, like one million Iraqi refugees, he had been in Syria. This was enough to make him a suspected insurgent. He managed one desperate phone call on his mobile to his brother before he disappeared into the Defence Ministry prison in the Shia area of al-Khadamiyah, the jail where Saddam Hussein was executed.
Ali was luckier than most. The number of tortured bodies, often still in handcuffs, found on the streets of Baghdad is creeping up again. Shia death squads are taking revenge on the Sunni for the gigantic truck bombs that have devastated Shia markets, killing hundreds. Al-Qa'ida in Iraq has made itself unpopular in Sunni areas, less because of their anti-Shia onslaught than for killing Sunnis who are lowly government workers, such as rubbish collectors. Civilian pilots from Iraqi Airways have also been assassinated. Given that more than half the population is unemployed, most of the few available jobs are with the government.
The sealing off of whole districts with walls has had a mixed response in Sunni neighbourhoods. "It is a little safer in my district," said Omar, a driver from al-Khadra, a Sunni district in west Baghdad. "There are fewer bodies in the streets." His problem is rather that he does not know if the soldiers at the single entrance and exit to al-Khadra are doubling up as death squads. If he is detained, he may then be passed on to a prison where Sunnis are routinely tortured.
Even before the walls started to surround Sunni districts of the capital, few people were leaving their own neighbourhoods. Only one of the great markets that once fed and clothed Baghdad is still open after they were repeatedly targeted by bombers. Instead, small shops are springing up in side streets and gardens, where there is a greater degree of security.
President Bush's decision to escalate the war by sending reinforcements is really more a change in tactics than a new strategy.
The Sunni rebellion that started in the summer of 2003 is too well established to be crushed. When insurgents are squeezed in one part of Baghdad, they move to another, or to a neighbouring province. The Kurds were able to destabilise Iraq for half a century despite suffering persecution and genocide, and Sunnis are well positioned to do the same.
One casualty of the new plan is the authority of the Iraqi government. The Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, announced in Egypt that the construction of a wall around the Sunni district of al-Adhamiyah would stop, but without effect. An Iraqi army spokesman simply said that the Prime Minister had been misled. The Iraqi Defence Ministry is largely under American control - one senior Iraqi army official who obeyed a direct order from Mr al-Maliki late last year found himself jailed by US forces.
The American relationship with the Iraqi government is a mixture of genuine support and contemptuous neglect. President Bush phones Mr al-Maliki once a fortnight, though government members complain the Prime Minister never passes on the contents of these conversations.
A dilemma that the US military has never resolved is that its military actions in support of Iraqi government troops against Sunni insurgents and Shia militiamen affect the sectarian balance of power in Baghdad. Driving out the Mehdi Army from south Baghdad, for example, may be seen by Shias living there as opening them up to attack.
Last Monday, Iraqi government troops stormed Naaman hospital in walled-off Adhamiyah, the last hospital in east Baghdad that Sunnis still thought safe to attend. Snipers were on the roof, and all doctors and patients were ordered out or arrested, except for three in intensive care.
The troops were said to have an order from the Shia-controlled Health Ministry to close the hospital, but the Americans insisted Naaman would be reopened. Although pro-resistance Sunni websites have claimed that 82 patients had been murdered, this has been impossible to confirm.
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Published: 06 May 2007
The first thing Said, a small contractor, did on visiting a military prison in west Baghdad was to pay a $2,000 bribe. The money went to an officer in return for a promise not to torture Said's brother and business partner, Ali. The main payment comes later. For Ali's release, Said will pay a further $100,000.
The brothers are Sunni, and the police commandos who arrested Ali are Shia. What happened to him explains why the US military "surge", the dispatch of 20,000 extra troops to Iraq announced by President Bush in January, is failing to end the Sunni-Shia sectarian civil war in the capital.
The US and the Iraqi government are having some success in cultivating divisions between the fanatical partisans of al-Qa'ida in Iraq and the rest of the Sunni community. But overall, the five million Sunni community supports armed resistance to both the US and the Shia-Kurdish government.
Ali, a 40-year-old with three children, was a successful businessman before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. A member of the al-Hamdani tribe, he lived in the predominantly Sunni middle-class neighbourhood of al-Khudat in west Baghdad. After the invasion, he worked as a driver for a Western company for two years, but a bomb blast destroyed his car and seriously injured him. In 2005, one of his sons was kidnapped, and he had to pay $20,000 to get him back.
It is a grim measure of the insecurity of life in Baghdad that Ali, despite his injuries and the kidnapping, was considered by his neighbours to be doing well. He had gone back into contracting, and was making money. But 10 days ago, he was driving from his home to Karada, a Shia district in east Baghdad, when he was stopped by Interior Ministry commandos. One of them said to him: "We haven't seen you for a long time. Where have you been?"
Ali made the mistake of telling the truth, saying that, like one million Iraqi refugees, he had been in Syria. This was enough to make him a suspected insurgent. He managed one desperate phone call on his mobile to his brother before he disappeared into the Defence Ministry prison in the Shia area of al-Khadamiyah, the jail where Saddam Hussein was executed.
Ali was luckier than most. The number of tortured bodies, often still in handcuffs, found on the streets of Baghdad is creeping up again. Shia death squads are taking revenge on the Sunni for the gigantic truck bombs that have devastated Shia markets, killing hundreds. Al-Qa'ida in Iraq has made itself unpopular in Sunni areas, less because of their anti-Shia onslaught than for killing Sunnis who are lowly government workers, such as rubbish collectors. Civilian pilots from Iraqi Airways have also been assassinated. Given that more than half the population is unemployed, most of the few available jobs are with the government.
The sealing off of whole districts with walls has had a mixed response in Sunni neighbourhoods. "It is a little safer in my district," said Omar, a driver from al-Khadra, a Sunni district in west Baghdad. "There are fewer bodies in the streets." His problem is rather that he does not know if the soldiers at the single entrance and exit to al-Khadra are doubling up as death squads. If he is detained, he may then be passed on to a prison where Sunnis are routinely tortured.
Even before the walls started to surround Sunni districts of the capital, few people were leaving their own neighbourhoods. Only one of the great markets that once fed and clothed Baghdad is still open after they were repeatedly targeted by bombers. Instead, small shops are springing up in side streets and gardens, where there is a greater degree of security.
President Bush's decision to escalate the war by sending reinforcements is really more a change in tactics than a new strategy.
The Sunni rebellion that started in the summer of 2003 is too well established to be crushed. When insurgents are squeezed in one part of Baghdad, they move to another, or to a neighbouring province. The Kurds were able to destabilise Iraq for half a century despite suffering persecution and genocide, and Sunnis are well positioned to do the same.
One casualty of the new plan is the authority of the Iraqi government. The Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, announced in Egypt that the construction of a wall around the Sunni district of al-Adhamiyah would stop, but without effect. An Iraqi army spokesman simply said that the Prime Minister had been misled. The Iraqi Defence Ministry is largely under American control - one senior Iraqi army official who obeyed a direct order from Mr al-Maliki late last year found himself jailed by US forces.
The American relationship with the Iraqi government is a mixture of genuine support and contemptuous neglect. President Bush phones Mr al-Maliki once a fortnight, though government members complain the Prime Minister never passes on the contents of these conversations.
A dilemma that the US military has never resolved is that its military actions in support of Iraqi government troops against Sunni insurgents and Shia militiamen affect the sectarian balance of power in Baghdad. Driving out the Mehdi Army from south Baghdad, for example, may be seen by Shias living there as opening them up to attack.
Last Monday, Iraqi government troops stormed Naaman hospital in walled-off Adhamiyah, the last hospital in east Baghdad that Sunnis still thought safe to attend. Snipers were on the roof, and all doctors and patients were ordered out or arrested, except for three in intensive care.
The troops were said to have an order from the Shia-controlled Health Ministry to close the hospital, but the Americans insisted Naaman would be reopened. Although pro-resistance Sunni websites have claimed that 82 patients had been murdered, this has been impossible to confirm.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Zarqawi Fan: Kill the Shi'a First, Then the Americans
In Jihadist Haven, a Goal: To Kill and Die in Iraq
ZARQA, Jordan — Abu Ibrahim considers his dead friends the lucky ones.
Four died in Iraq in 2005. Three more died this year, one with an explosives vest and another at the wheel of a bomb-laden truck, according to relatives and community leaders.
Abu Ibrahim, a lanky 24-year-old, was on the same mission when he left this bleak city north of Amman for Iraq last October. But he made it only as far as the border before he was arrested, and is now back home in a world he thought he had left for good — biding his time, he said, for another chance to hurl himself into martyrdom.
“I am happy for them but I cry for myself because I couldn’t do it yet,” said Abu Ibrahim, who uses this name as a nom de guerre. “I want to spread the roots of God on this earth and free the land of occupiers. I don’t love anything in this world. What I care about is fighting.”
Zarqa has been known as a cradle of Islamic militancy since the beginning of the war in Iraq. It was the home of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who was killed last summer. Today it is a breeding ground for would-be jihadists like Abu Ibrahim and five of his friends who left about the same time last fall, bound for Iraq.
Interviews with Abu Ibrahim and relatives of the other men show that rather than having been individually recruited by an organization like Mr. Zarqawi’s, they gradually radicalized one another, the more strident leading the way. Local imams led them further toward Iraq, citing verses from the Koran to justify killing civilians. The men watched videos depicting tortured and slain Muslims that are copied from Internet sites.
“The sheik, he was a hero,” Abu Ibrahim said of Mr. Zarqawi. But, he added, “I decided to go when my friends went.” For the final step, getting the phone number of a smuggler and address of a safe house in Iraq, the men used facilitators who act more like travel agents than militant leaders.
“Most of the young people here in Zarqa are very religious,” an Islamist community leader said. “And when they see the news and what is going on in the Islamic countries, they themselves feel that they have to go to fight jihad. Today, you don’t need anyone to tell the young men that they should go to jihad. They themselves want to be martyrs.”
The anger is palpable on the streets of Zarqa. “He’s American? Let’s kidnap and kill him,” one Islamist activist said during an interview with a reporter before the host of the meeting dissuaded him.
The stories of the men from Zarqa help explain the seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers in Iraq, most of whom are believed to be foreigners.
Suicide bombings in Iraq are averaging roughly 42 a month, American military officials said.
[In April, a pair of truck bombers killed nine American soldiers, another bomber blew himself up in the Green Zone killing one member of Parliament, and others killed more than 290 civilians.]
Rising Anger at Shiites
The anger among militants in Zarqa, a mostly Sunni city, is now directed at Shiites as much as Americans, reflecting the escalation in hostility between the two branches of Islam since Shiites gained dominance in the new Iraqi government. “They have traditions that are un-Islamic and they hate the Sunnis,” said Ahmad Khalil Abdelaziz Salah, an imam whose mosque in Zarqa was attended by some of Zarqa’s bombers.
Asked to name his targets, Abu Ibrahim said: “First, the Shiites. Second, the Americans. Third, anywhere in the world where Islam is threatened.”
Among a small circle of young Islamists and relatives here, the fates of the six young men are well known. Three of the men are said to have died: two as suicide bombers and one apparently by gunfire. One has been held in Iraq and the other two, including Abu Ibrahim, were turned back.
Abu Ibrahim, who spoke on the condition that his name and some personal details be withheld, told his story in interviews over five hours. To back up his account, he agreed to show reporters his passport, which confirmed he entered Syria last fall. Relatives of another one of the young men quoted from a letter he had written saying goodbye and indicating he was going to Iraq. The family of a third man, who was captured and is being detained by American troops, provided a copy of his detention records from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The six men left Zarqa last fall, all apparently with the same goal, but driven by their own individual circumstances.
The youngest, 19-year-old Amer Jaradad, left without telling his family where he was going. But they were not surprised.
One of his six brothers, Jihad — named for the Islamic obligation to defend the religion — had already died fighting in Falluja in 2005, said his father, Kasem Mufla Jaradad.
“Amer was very close to Jihad, and when Jihad became a martyr Amer was in the last year of school. He began spending his time reading Islamic books,” Mr. Jaradad said.
That same year, 2005, Amer called to say he, too, had gone to Iraq, Mr. Jaradad said. Mr. Jaradad sent two of his older sons to Baghdad and they brought Amer home. “As a father I was thinking and hoping that we lost one son and that was enough,” Mr. Jaradad said. “But I could tell Amer was thinking, ‘This life doesn’t count anymore and I will follow the way of my brother.’ ”
“One time I tried to get him away from these things,” his father said. “I said, ‘Shall we get you a wife,’ and he said, ‘No, this is not important to me. Jihad is.’ ”
Amer left again for Iraq on Oct. 19 last year, near the end of Ramadan, when security at the borders is more relaxed. And once again, he phoned home three weeks later to say he had made it. That was the last they heard of Amer until one of his brothers got a call on Jan. 19 on his cellphone — the number of which Amer had taken with him — saying Amer was blown up in the truck he was driving with a bomb in it.
News reports cite a truck bombing in Kirkuk on the day he was said to have died, but his father and brothers say they cannot be sure that Amer was the bomber.
Praise for Suicide Bombers
At his crowded funeral in Zarqa, one of his brothers praised Amer and other suicide bombers. “They are the best youths and good persons,” he said. “He was successful in life, but decided to fight the Americans in Iraq.”
The mother of another of the young men, a 20-year-old engineering student, still believes that her son went to Iraq looking for a job. At the family’s home recently, she sank to her knees, weeping and clutching his physics book.
He walked out the door of his family’s two-room apartment, telling his mother he was meeting friends for breakfast. The next his family heard was notification from the Red Cross that he had been detained by American troops in Iraq, according to one of his sisters, who asked that her brother not be identified for fear of jeopardizing his education should he be released.
His family was large and poor, with 17 children. Going to college gave him a glimpse of opportunities, but he failed to win a scholarship to study medicine in England, the sister said.
“Rich people go to his university,” she said. “He wanted to be somebody and he couldn’t.”
At the same time, he adopted a strict adherence to Islam. “I noticed the change two years ago,” his sister said. “He stopped listening to music. He isolated himself from us. At family gatherings, he sat by himself, thinking.”
Unlike his mother, the man’s sister concedes that he probably went to Iraq to fight. In March 2007, when another of the six friends, a 19-year-old laundry worker named Abdullah Fasfous, died in Iraq, the sister showed her mother his picture.
“Oh, this poor guy,” she said her mother told her. “They also told him they would get him a job.”
Mr. Salah, the imam, said the young man prayed at his mosque and tutored youngsters in the Koran. Mr. Salah said if he had known his plans, he would have tried to dissuade him from going to Iraq.
“It’s very difficult at the moment,” Mr. Salah said. “If you do a suicide operation, the Muslims are mixed up with non-Muslims and maybe you kill Muslims.”
But he is hardly a voice of restraint. Mr. Salah counts Shiites among the non-Muslims. He joined the recent call for retribution against them, which gained fervor well beyond Zarqa after Shiite executioners were videotaped jeering as Saddam Hussein was hanged in December.
In his home he showed visitors a newly released video titled “The True History and Aims of the Shiites.” It portrays Shiites deriding the first three caliphs, or leaders of the ancient Islamic world, and saying that the youngest wife of the Prophet Muhammad, Aisha, had been a prostitute.
“You see, they hate our caliphs and they hate the Sunnis,” Mr. Salah said.
When the video showed scenes of Sunnis tortured and killed by a Shiite militia in Iraq, he added, “We didn’t see the Shiites like that before, but now in Iraq they showed their real face.”
Continued
ZARQA, Jordan — Abu Ibrahim considers his dead friends the lucky ones.
Four died in Iraq in 2005. Three more died this year, one with an explosives vest and another at the wheel of a bomb-laden truck, according to relatives and community leaders.
Abu Ibrahim, a lanky 24-year-old, was on the same mission when he left this bleak city north of Amman for Iraq last October. But he made it only as far as the border before he was arrested, and is now back home in a world he thought he had left for good — biding his time, he said, for another chance to hurl himself into martyrdom.
“I am happy for them but I cry for myself because I couldn’t do it yet,” said Abu Ibrahim, who uses this name as a nom de guerre. “I want to spread the roots of God on this earth and free the land of occupiers. I don’t love anything in this world. What I care about is fighting.”
Zarqa has been known as a cradle of Islamic militancy since the beginning of the war in Iraq. It was the home of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who was killed last summer. Today it is a breeding ground for would-be jihadists like Abu Ibrahim and five of his friends who left about the same time last fall, bound for Iraq.
Interviews with Abu Ibrahim and relatives of the other men show that rather than having been individually recruited by an organization like Mr. Zarqawi’s, they gradually radicalized one another, the more strident leading the way. Local imams led them further toward Iraq, citing verses from the Koran to justify killing civilians. The men watched videos depicting tortured and slain Muslims that are copied from Internet sites.
“The sheik, he was a hero,” Abu Ibrahim said of Mr. Zarqawi. But, he added, “I decided to go when my friends went.” For the final step, getting the phone number of a smuggler and address of a safe house in Iraq, the men used facilitators who act more like travel agents than militant leaders.
“Most of the young people here in Zarqa are very religious,” an Islamist community leader said. “And when they see the news and what is going on in the Islamic countries, they themselves feel that they have to go to fight jihad. Today, you don’t need anyone to tell the young men that they should go to jihad. They themselves want to be martyrs.”
The anger is palpable on the streets of Zarqa. “He’s American? Let’s kidnap and kill him,” one Islamist activist said during an interview with a reporter before the host of the meeting dissuaded him.
The stories of the men from Zarqa help explain the seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers in Iraq, most of whom are believed to be foreigners.
Suicide bombings in Iraq are averaging roughly 42 a month, American military officials said.
[In April, a pair of truck bombers killed nine American soldiers, another bomber blew himself up in the Green Zone killing one member of Parliament, and others killed more than 290 civilians.]
Rising Anger at Shiites
The anger among militants in Zarqa, a mostly Sunni city, is now directed at Shiites as much as Americans, reflecting the escalation in hostility between the two branches of Islam since Shiites gained dominance in the new Iraqi government. “They have traditions that are un-Islamic and they hate the Sunnis,” said Ahmad Khalil Abdelaziz Salah, an imam whose mosque in Zarqa was attended by some of Zarqa’s bombers.
Asked to name his targets, Abu Ibrahim said: “First, the Shiites. Second, the Americans. Third, anywhere in the world where Islam is threatened.”
Among a small circle of young Islamists and relatives here, the fates of the six young men are well known. Three of the men are said to have died: two as suicide bombers and one apparently by gunfire. One has been held in Iraq and the other two, including Abu Ibrahim, were turned back.
Abu Ibrahim, who spoke on the condition that his name and some personal details be withheld, told his story in interviews over five hours. To back up his account, he agreed to show reporters his passport, which confirmed he entered Syria last fall. Relatives of another one of the young men quoted from a letter he had written saying goodbye and indicating he was going to Iraq. The family of a third man, who was captured and is being detained by American troops, provided a copy of his detention records from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The six men left Zarqa last fall, all apparently with the same goal, but driven by their own individual circumstances.
The youngest, 19-year-old Amer Jaradad, left without telling his family where he was going. But they were not surprised.
One of his six brothers, Jihad — named for the Islamic obligation to defend the religion — had already died fighting in Falluja in 2005, said his father, Kasem Mufla Jaradad.
“Amer was very close to Jihad, and when Jihad became a martyr Amer was in the last year of school. He began spending his time reading Islamic books,” Mr. Jaradad said.
That same year, 2005, Amer called to say he, too, had gone to Iraq, Mr. Jaradad said. Mr. Jaradad sent two of his older sons to Baghdad and they brought Amer home. “As a father I was thinking and hoping that we lost one son and that was enough,” Mr. Jaradad said. “But I could tell Amer was thinking, ‘This life doesn’t count anymore and I will follow the way of my brother.’ ”
“One time I tried to get him away from these things,” his father said. “I said, ‘Shall we get you a wife,’ and he said, ‘No, this is not important to me. Jihad is.’ ”
Amer left again for Iraq on Oct. 19 last year, near the end of Ramadan, when security at the borders is more relaxed. And once again, he phoned home three weeks later to say he had made it. That was the last they heard of Amer until one of his brothers got a call on Jan. 19 on his cellphone — the number of which Amer had taken with him — saying Amer was blown up in the truck he was driving with a bomb in it.
News reports cite a truck bombing in Kirkuk on the day he was said to have died, but his father and brothers say they cannot be sure that Amer was the bomber.
Praise for Suicide Bombers
At his crowded funeral in Zarqa, one of his brothers praised Amer and other suicide bombers. “They are the best youths and good persons,” he said. “He was successful in life, but decided to fight the Americans in Iraq.”
The mother of another of the young men, a 20-year-old engineering student, still believes that her son went to Iraq looking for a job. At the family’s home recently, she sank to her knees, weeping and clutching his physics book.
He walked out the door of his family’s two-room apartment, telling his mother he was meeting friends for breakfast. The next his family heard was notification from the Red Cross that he had been detained by American troops in Iraq, according to one of his sisters, who asked that her brother not be identified for fear of jeopardizing his education should he be released.
His family was large and poor, with 17 children. Going to college gave him a glimpse of opportunities, but he failed to win a scholarship to study medicine in England, the sister said.
“Rich people go to his university,” she said. “He wanted to be somebody and he couldn’t.”
At the same time, he adopted a strict adherence to Islam. “I noticed the change two years ago,” his sister said. “He stopped listening to music. He isolated himself from us. At family gatherings, he sat by himself, thinking.”
Unlike his mother, the man’s sister concedes that he probably went to Iraq to fight. In March 2007, when another of the six friends, a 19-year-old laundry worker named Abdullah Fasfous, died in Iraq, the sister showed her mother his picture.
“Oh, this poor guy,” she said her mother told her. “They also told him they would get him a job.”
Mr. Salah, the imam, said the young man prayed at his mosque and tutored youngsters in the Koran. Mr. Salah said if he had known his plans, he would have tried to dissuade him from going to Iraq.
“It’s very difficult at the moment,” Mr. Salah said. “If you do a suicide operation, the Muslims are mixed up with non-Muslims and maybe you kill Muslims.”
But he is hardly a voice of restraint. Mr. Salah counts Shiites among the non-Muslims. He joined the recent call for retribution against them, which gained fervor well beyond Zarqa after Shiite executioners were videotaped jeering as Saddam Hussein was hanged in December.
In his home he showed visitors a newly released video titled “The True History and Aims of the Shiites.” It portrays Shiites deriding the first three caliphs, or leaders of the ancient Islamic world, and saying that the youngest wife of the Prophet Muhammad, Aisha, had been a prostitute.
“You see, they hate our caliphs and they hate the Sunnis,” Mr. Salah said.
When the video showed scenes of Sunnis tortured and killed by a Shiite militia in Iraq, he added, “We didn’t see the Shiites like that before, but now in Iraq they showed their real face.”
Continued
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Axis of Evil Comedy - Maz Jobrani
This guy is hilarious too. Who is funnier - Maz Jobrani or Aron Kader?
Maz Jobrani - Persians and Arabs
Maz Jobrani - Persians and Arabs
Israel is a Democracy???
Kudos to the LA Times for publishing this excellent letter by Azmi Bishara. Sometimes I wonder if Americans truly understand Israel's history and how Palestinians continue to be treated in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.
Why Israel is after me
By Azmi Bishara
AZMI BISHARA was a member of the Knesset until his resignation in April.
May 3, 2007
Amman, Jordan — I AM A PALESTINIAN from Nazareth, a citizen of Israel and was, until last month, a member of the Israeli parliament.
But now, in an ironic twist reminiscent of France's Dreyfus affair — in which a French Jew was accused of disloyalty to the state — the government of Israel is accusing me of aiding the enemy during Israel's failed war against Lebanon in July.
Israeli police apparently suspect me of passing information to a foreign agent and of receiving money in return. Under Israeli law, anyone — a journalist or a personal friend — can be defined as a "foreign agent" by the Israeli security apparatus. Such charges can lead to life imprisonment or even the death penalty.
The allegations are ridiculous. Needless to say, Hezbollah — Israel's enemy in Lebanon — has independently gathered more security information about Israel than any Arab Knesset member could possibly provide. What's more, unlike those in Israel's parliament who have been involved in acts of violence, I have never used violence or participated in wars. My instruments of persuasion, in contrast, are simply words in books, articles and speeches.
These trumped-up charges, which I firmly reject and deny, are only the latest in a series of attempts to silence me and others involved in the struggle of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel to live in a state of all its citizens, not one that grants rights and privileges to Jews that it denies to non-Jews.
When Israel was established in 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled in fear. My family was among the minority that escaped that fate, remaining instead on the land where we had long lived. The Israeli state, established exclusively for Jews, embarked immediately on transforming us into foreigners in our own country.
For the first 18 years of Israeli statehood, we, as Israeli citizens, lived under military rule with pass laws that controlled our every movement. We watched Jewish Israeli towns spring up over destroyed Palestinian villages.
Today we make up 20% of Israel's population. We do not drink at separate water fountains or sit at the back of the bus. We vote and can serve in the parliament. But we face legal, institutional and informal discrimination in all spheres of life.
More than 20 Israeli laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews. The Law of Return, for example, grants automatic citizenship to Jews from anywhere in the world. Yet Palestinian refugees are denied the right to return to the country they were forced to leave in 1948. The Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty — Israel's "Bill of Rights" — defines the state as "Jewish" rather than a state for all its citizens. Thus Israel is more for Jews living in Los Angeles or Paris than it is for native Palestinians.
Israel acknowledges itself to be a state of one particular religious group. Anyone committed to democracy will readily admit that equal citizenship cannot exist under such conditions.
Most of our children attend schools that are separate but unequal. According to recent polls, two-thirds of Israeli Jews would refuse to live next to an Arab and nearly half would not allow a Palestinian into their home.
I have certainly ruffled feathers in Israel. In addition to speaking out on the subjects above, I have also asserted the right of the Lebanese people, and of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to resist Israel's illegal military occupation. I do not see those who fight for freedom as my enemies.
This may discomfort Jewish Israelis, but they cannot deny us our history and identity any more than we can negate the ties that bind them to world Jewry. After all, it is not we, but Israeli Jews who immigrated to this land. Immigrants might be asked to give up their former identity in exchange for equal citizenship, but we are not immigrants.
During my years in the Knesset, the attorney general indicted me for voicing my political opinions (the charges were dropped), lobbied to have my parliamentary immunity revoked and sought unsuccessfully to disqualify my political party from participating in elections — all because I believe Israel should be a state for all its citizens and because I have spoken out against Israeli military occupation. Last year, Cabinet member Avigdor Lieberman — an immigrant from Moldova — declared that Palestinian citizens of Israel "have no place here," that we should "take our bundles and get lost." After I met with a leader of the Palestinian Authority from Hamas, Lieberman called for my execution.
The Israeli authorities are trying to intimidate not just me but all Palestinian citizens of Israel. But we will not be intimidated. We will not bow to permanent servitude in the land of our ancestors or to being severed from our natural connections to the Arab world. Our community leaders joined together recently to issue a blueprint for a state free of ethnic and religious discrimination in all spheres. If we turn back from our path to freedom now, we will consign future generations to the discrimination we have faced for six decades.
Americans know from their own history of institutional discrimination the tactics that have been used against civil rights leaders. These include telephone bugging, police surveillance, political delegitimization and criminalization of dissent through false accusations. Israel is continuing to use these tactics at a time when the world no longer tolerates such practices as compatible with democracy.
Why then does the U.S. government continue to fully support a country whose very identity and institutions are based on ethnic and religious discrimination that victimize its own citizens?
Why Israel is after me
By Azmi Bishara
AZMI BISHARA was a member of the Knesset until his resignation in April.
May 3, 2007
Amman, Jordan — I AM A PALESTINIAN from Nazareth, a citizen of Israel and was, until last month, a member of the Israeli parliament.
But now, in an ironic twist reminiscent of France's Dreyfus affair — in which a French Jew was accused of disloyalty to the state — the government of Israel is accusing me of aiding the enemy during Israel's failed war against Lebanon in July.
Israeli police apparently suspect me of passing information to a foreign agent and of receiving money in return. Under Israeli law, anyone — a journalist or a personal friend — can be defined as a "foreign agent" by the Israeli security apparatus. Such charges can lead to life imprisonment or even the death penalty.
The allegations are ridiculous. Needless to say, Hezbollah — Israel's enemy in Lebanon — has independently gathered more security information about Israel than any Arab Knesset member could possibly provide. What's more, unlike those in Israel's parliament who have been involved in acts of violence, I have never used violence or participated in wars. My instruments of persuasion, in contrast, are simply words in books, articles and speeches.
These trumped-up charges, which I firmly reject and deny, are only the latest in a series of attempts to silence me and others involved in the struggle of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel to live in a state of all its citizens, not one that grants rights and privileges to Jews that it denies to non-Jews.
When Israel was established in 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled in fear. My family was among the minority that escaped that fate, remaining instead on the land where we had long lived. The Israeli state, established exclusively for Jews, embarked immediately on transforming us into foreigners in our own country.
For the first 18 years of Israeli statehood, we, as Israeli citizens, lived under military rule with pass laws that controlled our every movement. We watched Jewish Israeli towns spring up over destroyed Palestinian villages.
Today we make up 20% of Israel's population. We do not drink at separate water fountains or sit at the back of the bus. We vote and can serve in the parliament. But we face legal, institutional and informal discrimination in all spheres of life.
More than 20 Israeli laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews. The Law of Return, for example, grants automatic citizenship to Jews from anywhere in the world. Yet Palestinian refugees are denied the right to return to the country they were forced to leave in 1948. The Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty — Israel's "Bill of Rights" — defines the state as "Jewish" rather than a state for all its citizens. Thus Israel is more for Jews living in Los Angeles or Paris than it is for native Palestinians.
Israel acknowledges itself to be a state of one particular religious group. Anyone committed to democracy will readily admit that equal citizenship cannot exist under such conditions.
Most of our children attend schools that are separate but unequal. According to recent polls, two-thirds of Israeli Jews would refuse to live next to an Arab and nearly half would not allow a Palestinian into their home.
I have certainly ruffled feathers in Israel. In addition to speaking out on the subjects above, I have also asserted the right of the Lebanese people, and of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to resist Israel's illegal military occupation. I do not see those who fight for freedom as my enemies.
This may discomfort Jewish Israelis, but they cannot deny us our history and identity any more than we can negate the ties that bind them to world Jewry. After all, it is not we, but Israeli Jews who immigrated to this land. Immigrants might be asked to give up their former identity in exchange for equal citizenship, but we are not immigrants.
During my years in the Knesset, the attorney general indicted me for voicing my political opinions (the charges were dropped), lobbied to have my parliamentary immunity revoked and sought unsuccessfully to disqualify my political party from participating in elections — all because I believe Israel should be a state for all its citizens and because I have spoken out against Israeli military occupation. Last year, Cabinet member Avigdor Lieberman — an immigrant from Moldova — declared that Palestinian citizens of Israel "have no place here," that we should "take our bundles and get lost." After I met with a leader of the Palestinian Authority from Hamas, Lieberman called for my execution.
The Israeli authorities are trying to intimidate not just me but all Palestinian citizens of Israel. But we will not be intimidated. We will not bow to permanent servitude in the land of our ancestors or to being severed from our natural connections to the Arab world. Our community leaders joined together recently to issue a blueprint for a state free of ethnic and religious discrimination in all spheres. If we turn back from our path to freedom now, we will consign future generations to the discrimination we have faced for six decades.
Americans know from their own history of institutional discrimination the tactics that have been used against civil rights leaders. These include telephone bugging, police surveillance, political delegitimization and criminalization of dissent through false accusations. Israel is continuing to use these tactics at a time when the world no longer tolerates such practices as compatible with democracy.
Why then does the U.S. government continue to fully support a country whose very identity and institutions are based on ethnic and religious discrimination that victimize its own citizens?
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Seized - for showing their hair
This is the kind of stuff I hear about happening in Baghdad and Basra, and it makes me angry. Iraqi women always understood that they must wear ibayas (black robes) in Nejef and Kerbala, but Baghdad has always been secular, until recently. Baghdad has been looking more and more like Tehran, and that makes secular Iraqis like me very sad. It is sad that Iraqis must choose between secular tyranny and fundamentalism. I had always hoped that Iraqi law would not be based on Sharia law.
Seized - for showing their hair
The Iranian government's latest act of oppression against the nation's women has taken the form of a high-profile police drive to enforce "correct" Islamic dress codes. In its first few days, last week, the "bad hijab" crackdown netted several thousand young women on the streets of Tehran, with many receiving a warning and several hundred being arrested. Policewomen dressed in black chadors bundled detainees into buses that had been stationed on street corners in advance, before carting them off to police stations. The women were accused of presenting an immodest appearance - allowing their hair to show beneath the obligatory headscarves, wearing manteaus too short to conceal their hips, or wearing tight, revealing jeans and heels.
Those arrested face possible trials and jail sentences. There have even been suggestions that women may be exiled from the city if they reoffend. And it is not only in Tehran that this is happening - the crackdown is being pursued nationwide.
At issue are alleged offences against Islam and sharia law. But the reality is somewhat more complicated. In Iran, the comfort of women is a source of male discomfort.
Sae'ed Mortazavi, Tehran's public prosecutor, made this clear when he told the Etemad newspaper: "These women who appear in public like decadent models, endanger the security and dignity of young men". Mohammad Taqi Rahbar, a fundamentalist MP, agreed, saying, "Men see models in the streets and ignore their own wives at home. This weakens the pillars of family."
A spokesman for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has tried to distance his boss from this politically embarrassing controversy. And the fashion purge has not gone entirely unchallenged. Some academics have been arguing that hijab standards should be maintained by persuasion rather than force. But, as usual in Iran, the police, like other arms of the pervasive security apparatus, do not appear to have taken any notice.
The "bad hijab" crackdown has happened in a country where the historical tendency to treat women as the property of their fathers and husbands has never really gone away. Iranian women's lack of equality is written into law, and, in a thousand customary ways too, they face daily, crushing discrimination.
Bring up the inequalities that Iranian women face, and many Iranians will point out that in some Arab Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia, treatment of women is comparatively worse. In Iran women can vote, stand for most public offices, drive, even smoke in public. It is also argued that social boundaries, (relaxed during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005), have not assumed their former rigour despite fears that they would do so following the fundamentalist victory of two years ago, when Ahmadinejad was elected president.
In pre-Khatami times, and especially during the latter years of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founding father of the Islamic republic and Supreme Leader of Iran between 1979 and 1989, modern western dress was not tolerated at all, fewer women's sports were allowed, and sentences of stoning to death for adultery were more common.
Life is better for women in Iran now, but inequalities persist. For example, their inheritance and divorce rights are inferior to those of men, so, when a family legacy is divided, the women get less than the men. Women need written authorisation from their father or husband to get a passport; their court testimony is considered half as weighty as a man's; and they may be forced to submit to male polygamous relationships, which are allowable (although increasingly rare) under sharia law.
Women are encouraged to go to university and stay on to do higher degrees, but not, it is widely believed, to actually join the workforce (where, it is claimed, they are often omitted from official unemployment figures). While professional jobs are scarce for men and women alike, there is cultural and social pressure on girls to stay at home or get married once they finish full-time education. A fully qualified female civil engineer, for example, said she had a choice of teaching or getting married when she graduated. The idea of her actually being allowed to go out and build a dam or a bridge was laughable. In the event, she emigrated to the US and got divorced.
And, just in case a woman should forget her place, if she travels on public transport, she must go to the back of the bus. Even on the hottest, busiest days in Tehran, women of all ages can be seen crammed into the back, many wearing full black chadors, mostly standing shoulder to shoulder, burdened with shopping bags, while the less crowded front of the vehicle is occupied by men, apparently oblivious to the situation behind them.
Continued...
Seized - for showing their hair
The Iranian government's latest act of oppression against the nation's women has taken the form of a high-profile police drive to enforce "correct" Islamic dress codes. In its first few days, last week, the "bad hijab" crackdown netted several thousand young women on the streets of Tehran, with many receiving a warning and several hundred being arrested. Policewomen dressed in black chadors bundled detainees into buses that had been stationed on street corners in advance, before carting them off to police stations. The women were accused of presenting an immodest appearance - allowing their hair to show beneath the obligatory headscarves, wearing manteaus too short to conceal their hips, or wearing tight, revealing jeans and heels.
Those arrested face possible trials and jail sentences. There have even been suggestions that women may be exiled from the city if they reoffend. And it is not only in Tehran that this is happening - the crackdown is being pursued nationwide.
At issue are alleged offences against Islam and sharia law. But the reality is somewhat more complicated. In Iran, the comfort of women is a source of male discomfort.
Sae'ed Mortazavi, Tehran's public prosecutor, made this clear when he told the Etemad newspaper: "These women who appear in public like decadent models, endanger the security and dignity of young men". Mohammad Taqi Rahbar, a fundamentalist MP, agreed, saying, "Men see models in the streets and ignore their own wives at home. This weakens the pillars of family."
A spokesman for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has tried to distance his boss from this politically embarrassing controversy. And the fashion purge has not gone entirely unchallenged. Some academics have been arguing that hijab standards should be maintained by persuasion rather than force. But, as usual in Iran, the police, like other arms of the pervasive security apparatus, do not appear to have taken any notice.
The "bad hijab" crackdown has happened in a country where the historical tendency to treat women as the property of their fathers and husbands has never really gone away. Iranian women's lack of equality is written into law, and, in a thousand customary ways too, they face daily, crushing discrimination.
Bring up the inequalities that Iranian women face, and many Iranians will point out that in some Arab Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia, treatment of women is comparatively worse. In Iran women can vote, stand for most public offices, drive, even smoke in public. It is also argued that social boundaries, (relaxed during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005), have not assumed their former rigour despite fears that they would do so following the fundamentalist victory of two years ago, when Ahmadinejad was elected president.
In pre-Khatami times, and especially during the latter years of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founding father of the Islamic republic and Supreme Leader of Iran between 1979 and 1989, modern western dress was not tolerated at all, fewer women's sports were allowed, and sentences of stoning to death for adultery were more common.
Life is better for women in Iran now, but inequalities persist. For example, their inheritance and divorce rights are inferior to those of men, so, when a family legacy is divided, the women get less than the men. Women need written authorisation from their father or husband to get a passport; their court testimony is considered half as weighty as a man's; and they may be forced to submit to male polygamous relationships, which are allowable (although increasingly rare) under sharia law.
Women are encouraged to go to university and stay on to do higher degrees, but not, it is widely believed, to actually join the workforce (where, it is claimed, they are often omitted from official unemployment figures). While professional jobs are scarce for men and women alike, there is cultural and social pressure on girls to stay at home or get married once they finish full-time education. A fully qualified female civil engineer, for example, said she had a choice of teaching or getting married when she graduated. The idea of her actually being allowed to go out and build a dam or a bridge was laughable. In the event, she emigrated to the US and got divorced.
And, just in case a woman should forget her place, if she travels on public transport, she must go to the back of the bus. Even on the hottest, busiest days in Tehran, women of all ages can be seen crammed into the back, many wearing full black chadors, mostly standing shoulder to shoulder, burdened with shopping bags, while the less crowded front of the vehicle is occupied by men, apparently oblivious to the situation behind them.
Continued...
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
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