Syria - my children would be ashamed

'Do you love your creator? Love your fellow-beings first.'

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)

Being fairly ignorant about history, it took the film Hotel Rwanda for me to pay any attention to the Rwandan genocide. This was about five years ago and I could scarcely believe that not only were up to 1 million people murdered in the space of three months but that this actually happened in 1993. How could something so horrific on that scale happen in my lifetime? What the hell was the world doing??

I would have been six or seven, I felt ashamed that my parents' generation could let children and innocent people get slaughtered in this way. The slaughter wasn't even perpetrated by armies with tanks and planes and drones, only knives and machetes. Just like I was ashamed at the generation that preceded me, I fear that my children will feel the same way about Syria. People in their suits with fancy titles sit behind their desks and often appear for a few minutes on the news 'denouncing' Syria and 'imposing sanctions', doing so until the cows come home and yet these kinds of words are meaningless. Israel some years ago bombed one of Syria's alleged nuclear plants and they did not retaliate, it hardly made a peep on the news. Are you really telling me that almost all the countries in the world cannot stop the massacre of mothers, fathers, grandfathers, and children in this relatively small country?

OK so Russia and China are blocking resolutions, they have their own interests and I suspect that they also have the good sense to see the danger of yet another military intervention in a Muslim country. In Libya, Britain, US, France and Nato exceeded their UN mandate, which was for the protection of civilians, and specifically sided with the opposition and targeted Gaddafi's strongholds in order to overthrow him. And then had the nerve to (pretend to) baulk when a Libyan assassinated Gaddafi! It is obvious to the world that Libya was 'easy', it is rich, has a lot of the black stuff, is mostly desert and a relatively small population. No-one believes for a second that the countries that presided over the campaign give two shits about Arab civilians, they're the last people they care about! Clearly there are so many governments that cannot be trusted, worse than bodies such as the UN who comprise of so many and talk a lot, yet are unable to protect children being maimed. You wouldn't have kids if you couldn't protect them, so what is the point of having a 'United Nations' if they can't protect its people?

2011: We Care More About Kim Kardashian than the Arab Revolutions!

2011 is drawing to a close and what sums it up? According to Time Magazine it is the protester. Yet the REAL indication of anything in life apparently is Google. And the most Googled people are... Kim Kardashian and Rebecca Black. One a socialite turned sex tape star turned reality TV star, and the other a 13-year-old girl who put her music video on youtube and ended up receiving death threats due to the questionable quality of the song. I have nothing against these two people, they've done well in spite of their not so great beginnings of stardom. But the fact that in the UK the Arab Spring (or the economic crisis) did not feature is shocking but not surprising. 


The Middle East, 'what does that have to do with us?' A generation will claim. Well apparently a lot actually. We decided to fight alongside our ally, America after 9/11, by going to war in Afghanistan when Bin Laden had clearly already fled the country. We continued fighting there, but in order to justify this we then changed our tune and then were there because we were fighting the Taliban. Colonialisation apparently ended an age ago but there we were, in 2001 imposing regime change. What has the Afghan war achieved? They are the 2nd most corrupt country on earth, just after Somalia, a country which doesn't even have a government in most parts of the country. They remain one of the poorest countries on the face of this earth, despite billions having been invested/disappeared there. Thousands of Afghan civilians dead and livelihoods destroyed, did any of them hijack planes and fly them into anything?


Moron watch --->> To add insult to injury they have idiots like Ross Kemp (in Ross Kemp in Afghanistan) saying to them  that they should be grateful that we went in and rescued them from the villainous Taliban (when we didn't care before 9/11) and imposed democracy.


Then we have Iraq, one of the most disastrous wars of our era, obliterating the most ancient city in the world and creating sectarian strife which reverberated all over the Arab world. Putting aside the folly that was WMDs, Britain had everything to lose and nothing to gain from again, imposing regime change in a country that has nothing to do with us. Our foreign policies have many faults but it is my utmost belief that 7/7 would never have occurred had we not gone into yet another catastrophic war in Muslim lands. When Wikileaks exposed the devastating abuses of war that have happened, on top of what was already public knowledge e.g. Haditha, Abu Ghraib, the rape of a 14 year-old girl and then assassination of her, her 5-year-old sister and parents by US soldiers to name but a few, the things that made the news were the embarrassing diplomatic conversations, not the war crimes. Did any government even suffer for the war crimes committed under their watch? Did any of their children die? No. The only people apparently suffering judicially from exposing the people that are meant to be serving US are Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.


Moron watch --->> To add insult to injury, there was one American politician allowed to guest on Question Time claiming that the Arab revolutionaries would not have been inspired to revolt had Iraq not had the blessing of democracy imposed on them.


Next on George W. Bush's hitlist/axis of evil - Iran; the country ahead of its time in rejecting Western imperialism and corruption of their country. Do people not realise this is why America hates Iran? When I went to open a business account recently, what were the countries we were banned from trading with? North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Syria. Cuba - a harmless Caribbean country who had a revolution over 50 years ago, ejecting Batista and his American supported corruption. Syria, another non-Western puppet, funny that there are so many countries on the same level or worse as these countries yet conveniently, it is the countries that reject Western political influence that have sanctions imposed on them. A billboard I saw in New York ->>

We were quick to bomb Libya even though 2 minutes ago we were shaking hands with Gaddafi, all because Gaddafi was 'suddenly' going after civilians, so we bombed the civilians ourselves, going above and beyond the UN mandate of a no-fly zone and taking sides thus ensuring the political gains of the 'National Transitional Council'. Is that another regime change I sniff? Still it was the best PR war, we even had the privilege/puke-fest of a hall of Libyans apparently fawning over Cameron and Sarkozy. The media coverage of that war has a nice rosy tint despite there being protests at the new government already.

In my sister's access to business class in college, the class was assigned an essay on the Arab Spring and the role of women, most of her classmates lamented this subject, it dared to stretch their horizons beyond their X-Boxes and X-Factors*. Due to this essay alone, many dropped out and/or failed the course, they did not even WANT to research what was going on in the world, one even remarked that he could not care less if all these Arabs all blew themselves up. 

Even though the average British person may not give a tiny piece of bird shit about Arabs/the Middle East/North Africa/Muslims, you only have to look at our foreign minister's twitter @WilliamJHague to see that our politicians are absolutely obsessed with all things Middle East! But of course it's not just a one-way street, when a corruption investigation was launched into Saudi weapons dealing they blackmailed us not to go any further, lest they pull out of their anti-terrorism initiatives. Remember the reason we went into Afghanistan? Yet all but one of the 9/11 hijackers were actually Saudi.

I say in 2012 our foreign policy should reflect the will of the British people, just as Cameron defied all logic to pander to the anti-EU brigade of Britain, which is the majority of the country to be fair, perhaps we should keep our beak and money out of the Middle East. At least that's one thing I can agree with the right-wingers on.   

*see http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/2011/12/brain-dead-people.html

Topless Fighters versus The Arab League

 ... They could not be a bigger juxtaposition but yet I don't know who is the bigger joke. This group of Ukranian women, protest topless to fight against prostitution and sex tourism. There is only a few of them but they have unsurprisingly gained a lot of media coverage. OK fair enough if you want to protest but protesting against female sexual exploitation by becoming the epitome of exploitation? They proclaim to be 'neo-feminists; their explanation has been that,

 "We're different from classic feminists. In order to gain a voice, they had to become like men. But we want a real women's revolution. Our naked protests are part of the fight for women's liberation. We have the right to use our bodies as weapons. It was men who made breasts into a secret."


I do not wish to give them any more publicity actually, but they have said something which has just pissed me right off. They want to take their 'message' to other countries, they have already done so in Italy in front of the pope. Not content with appearing half naked in front of the Catholic Church, they also hope to spread their 'message' i.e. protesting topless, to Muslim countries, including Iran, fully knowing the possible consequences of their actions. I was not bothered by them until they spouted this kind of patronising  superiority, making my eyes roll, nonsense. Speaking of the Muslim world that they speak of, there is so much wrong with what's happening at the moment the last thing that would be needed, if ever, is European topless women running the streets.

Then there is the Arab league, I had not even heard of these clowns until Britain, France and the US wanted to bomb Libya. They were the go to guys for the government to reference on Question Time et al in order to back up the decision to intervene/bomb the shit out of Libya. 'Well if the Arabs want us to bomb Libya it must be the right decision' Err the most disastrous decisions in the Middle East have been caused by despots condoning the bombing of their fellow Middle Easterns, have we already forgotten Iraq v Kuwait and Iraq v Iran. Both Western proxy wars backed by donkeys such as Mubarak and the Saudi regime.

The Arab League - let's review their decision making over the past year - Let's go into Libya. The Libyans themselves apparently asked for it, but they wanted a NO FLY ZONE, and instead got Britain, France, the US and NATO to specifically destroy Gaddafi targets thus ensuring a successful coup, plus a few civilians here and there. But what's a little civilian blood to secure some business interests and get rid of a loopy guy who you never really liked anyway.

Letting the Gulf states go into Bahrain with mercenaries in tow, to quash the Bahraini uprisings, where the authorities here killed at least 40 entirely peaceful protesters, threatened to rape school girls who participated in protests, destroyed Shia mosques, injured many people, imprisoned and tortured the doctors, dentists and nurses who were tending to the injured. Even when a report came out from Bahrain itself exposing some of their activities and absolving Iran of any involvement, the royal regime still claimed Iran was behind the protests.

Cringeingly pandering to Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh, giving him four different tailor-made agreements to step down whilst ensuring he receives immunity from prosecution, despite months of unrest and many being mercilessly killed by his unapologetic forces.

Now the Western puppets are going to impose economic sanctions on Syria for not complying with their demands to stop killing protesters. It's as if they are eating Starburst, and are not eating the orange ones cos they're the ones that taste a bit crap.

Yet silence when it comes to Palestine, (cue barrel of hay rolling past) remember them? They have been tirelessly resisting their overt degradation, the theft of their land and the murder of their children for decades. Even with all their oil, money, protests good and bad, a sudden interest in protecting civilians of other countries, nothing has changed at the top.

See http://raraproductions.blogspot.com/ & http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/

Governments should be scared of us, NOT the other way round!

Even though the governments are meant to be FOR the people, WORKING FOR the people, they don't want to listen to anything we want. Even when they promise that if a motion gets 100,000 signatures they will debate it in Parliament, no-one is surprised by the resulting absence of response/debate. If you're going to lie at least do it properly! Granted some of the views of the majority are astoundingly misguided e.g. calls for the restoration of the death penalty or leaving the EU, some are sound, yet are still ignored. Of course it goes deeper than that, it even goes deeper than the so far released Wiki cables. The governments of the world were up in arms over diplomatic conversations going public. Excuse me but the last time I checked governments were working FOR US, so why do we not have the right to know what's really going on?? or at the very least know what you really think about one another (see Saudi on bombing Iran). Is anyone put on trial for the murders of the Reuters journalists, the civilians and the children killed in that infamous Wikileaks video? What exactly are the results of exposing their conversations and war crimes?

The solitary confinement and mental torture of Bradley Manning, the absurd extradition of Julian Assange and the shutdown of Wikileaks through forcing the massive companies in the world (Visa, Paypal, Apple etc) to withdraw any Wikileaks finance or material. Wikileaks was meant to make the governments face the reality but instead its the exposer who suffers.

Western powers and even the Arab League, pause for a minute, the ARAB LEAGUE, a host of dictators, people oppressors and human rights abusers, seemingly support other nation's fight for freedom. JUST NOT THEIR OWN nations. This selective support is unbelievably hypocritical, and no-one is fooled that this posturing has more to do with ease, security concerns, allies, business interests and so forth.

Are the blood and dignity of the citizens of Libya and Syria more worthy of governmental support than those of Yemen and Bahrain? And there are other countries, especially in the Gulf, that also MUST be fighting for freedom, but we do not hear about it or it quickly disappears from the news.

Although the Eurozone crisis and mass unemployment is taking over the headlines, we must remember that economic justice and social justice go hand in hand. While protests are being suppressed all over the world, please do not be deterred even in the land of lie-down Britain (see Sleepwalking blog). We must do whatever we can because this is OUR lives that are in the hands of the few, our governments, and by proxy the rich. The fight for justice must continue, whether it's with your heart, mouth or hand* (or twitter) and we cannot be the ones left behind.

follow @raraproduction   see http://raraproductions.blogspot.com/ & http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/

*Prophet Muhammad