Saturday, April 30, 2016

Margaret Atwood on "The Shadow over Israel"


 
It may be hardening, but in the United States things are moving in the opposite direction. Campus activity is increasing; many young Jewish Americans don’t want Israel speaking for them. America, snarled in two chaotic wars and facing increasing international anger over Palestine, may well be starting to see Israel not as an asset but as a liability."

- Margaret Atwood
June 8, 2010
The Shadow over Israel
Until Palestine has its own 'legitimized' state within its internationally recognized borders, the Shadow will remain.
By Margaret Atwood
http://www.haaretz.com/haaretz-authors-edition/the-shadow-over-israel-1.293653
Recently I was in Israel. The Israelis I met could not have been more welcoming. I saw many impressive accomplishments and creative projects, and talked with many different people. The sun was shining, the waves waving, the flowers were in bloom. Tourists jogged along the beach at Tel Aviv as if everything was normal.

Margaret Atwood.
Photo by: AFP
But… there was the Shadow. Why was everything trembling a little, like a mirage? Was it like that moment before a tsunami when the birds fly to the treetops and the animals head for the hills because they can feel it coming?
“Every morning I wake up in fear,” someone told me. “That’s just self-pity, to excuse what’s happening,” said someone else. Of course, fear and self-pity can both be real. But by “what’s happening,” they meant the Shadow.
I’d been told ahead of time that Israelis would try to cover up the Shadow, but instead they talked about it non-stop. Two minutes into any conversation, the Shadow would appear. It’s not called the Shadow, it’s called “the situation.” It haunts everything.
The Shadow is not the Palestinians. The Shadow is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, linked with Israeli’s own fears. The worse the Palestinians are treated in the name of those fears, the bigger the Shadow grows, and then the fears grow with them; and the justifications for the treatment multiply.
The attempts to shut down criticism are ominous, as is the language being used. Once you start calling other people by vermin names such as “vipers,” you imply their extermination. To name just one example, such labels were applied wholesale to the Tutsis months before the Rwanda massacre began. Studies have shown that ordinary people can be led to commit horrors if told they’ll be acting in self-defense, for “victory,” or to benefit mankind.
I’d never been to Israel before, except in the airport. Like a lot of people on the sidelines – not Jewish, not Israeli, not Palestinian, not Muslim – I hadn’t followed the “the situation” closely, though, also like most, I’d deplored the violence and wished for a happy ending for all.
Again like most, I’d avoided conversations on this subject because they swiftly became screaming matches. (Why was that? Faced with two undesirable choices, the brain – we’re told -- chooses one as less evil, pronounces it good, and demonizes the other.)
I did have some distant background. As “Egypt” at a Model U.N. in 1956, my high school’s delegation had presented the Palestinian case. Why was it fair that the Palestinians, innocent bystanders during the Holocaust, had lost their homes? To which the Model Israel replied, “You don’t want Israel to exist.” A mere decade after the Camps and the six million obliterated, such a statement was a talk-stopper.
Then I’d been hired to start a Nature program at a liberal Jewish summer camp. The people were smart, funny, inventive, idealistic. We went in a lot for World Peace and the Brotherhood of Man. I couldn’t fit this together with the Model U.N. Palestinian experience. Did these two realities nullify each other? Surely not, and surely the humane Jewish Brotherhood-of-Manners numerous in both the summer camp and in Israel itself would soon sort this conflict out in a fair way.
But they didn’t. And they haven’t. And it’s no longer 1956. The conversation has changed dramatically. I was recently attacked for accepting a cultural prize that such others as Atom Egoyan, Al Gore, Tom Stoppard, Goenawan Mohamad, and Yo-Yo Ma had previously received. This prize was decided upon, not by an instrument of Israeli state power as some would have it, but by a moderate committee within an independent foundation. This group was pitching real democracy, open dialogue, a two-state solution, and reconciliation. Nevertheless, I’ve now heard every possible negative thing about Israel – in effect, I’ve had an abrupt and searing immersion course in present-day politics. The whole experience was like learning about cooking by being thrown into the soup pot.
The most virulent language was truly anti-Semitic (as opposed to the label often used to deflect criticism). There were hot debates among activists about whether boycotting Israel would “work,” or not; about a one-state or else a two-state solution; about whether a boycott should exclude culture, as it is a bridge, or was that hypocritical dreaming? Was the term “apartheid” appropriate, or just a distraction? What about “de-legitimizing” the State of Israel? Over the decades, the debate had acquired a vocabulary and a set of rituals that those who hadn’t hung around universities – as I had not -- would simply not grasp.
Some kindly souls, maddened by frustration and injustice, began by screaming at me; but then, deciding I suppose that I was like a toddler who’d wandered into traffic, became very helpful. Others dismissed my citing of International PEN and its cultural-boycott-precluding efforts to free imprisoned writers as irrelevant twaddle. (An opinion cheered by every repressive government, extremist religion, and hard-line political group on the planet, which is why so many fiction writers are banned, jailed, exiled, and shot.)
None of this changes the core nature of the reality, which is that the concept of Israel as a humane and democratic state is in serious trouble. Once a country starts refusing entry to the likes of Noam Chomsky, shutting down the rights of its citizens to use words like “Nakba,” and labelling as “anti-Israel” anyone who tries to tell them what they need to know, a police-state clampdown looms. Will it be a betrayal of age-old humane Jewish traditions and the rule of just law, or a turn towards reconciliation and a truly open society?
Time is running out. Opinion in Israel may be hardening, but in the United States things are moving in the opposite direction. Campus activity is increasing; many young Jewish Americans don’t want Israel speaking for them. America, snarled in two chaotic wars and facing increasing international anger over Palestine, may well be starting to see Israel not as an asset but as a liability.
Then there are people like me. Having been preoccupied of late with mass extinctions and environmental disasters, and thus having strayed into the Middle-eastern neighbourhood with a mind as open as it could be without being totally vacant, I’ve come out altered. Child-killing in Gaza? Killing aid-bringers on ships in international waters? Civilians malnourished thanks to the blockade? Forbidding writing paper? Forbidding pizza? How petty and vindictive! Is pizza is a tool of terrorists? Would most Canadians agree? And am I a tool of terrorists for saying this? I think not.
There are many groups in which Israelis and Palestinians work together on issues of common interest, and these show what a positive future might hold; but until the structural problem is fixed and Palestine has its own “legitimized” state within its internationally recognized borders, the Shadow will remain.
“We know what we have to do, to fix it,” said many Israelis. “We need to get beyond Us and Them, to We,” said a Palestinian. This is the hopeful path. For Israelis and Palestinians both, the region itself is what’s now being threatened, as the globe heats up and water vanishes. Two traumas create neither erasure nor invalidation: both are real. And a catastrophe for one would also be a catastrophe for the other.
 
From the Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood's latest novel
God must have caused the Animals to assemble by speaking to them directly, but what language did He use? It was not Hebrew, my Friends. It was not Latin or Greek, or English, or French, or Spanish, or Arabic, or Chinese. No: He called the Animals in their own languages. To the Reindeer He spoke Reindeer, to the Spider, Spider; to the Elephant He spoke Elephant, to the Flea He spoke Flea, to the Centipede He spoke Centipede, and to the Ant, Ant. So must it have been.
And for Adam himself, the Names of the Animals were the first words he spoke—the first moment of Human language. In this cosmic instant, Adam claims his Human soul. To Name is – we hope -- to greet; to draw another towards one’s self. Let us imagine Adam calling out the Names of the Animals in fondness and joy, as if to say – There you are, my dearest! Welcome! Adam’s first act towards the Animals was thus one of loving-kindness and kinship, for Man in his unfallen state was not yet a carnivore. The Animals knew this, and did not run away. So it must have been on that unrepeatable Day – a peaceful gathering at which every living entity on the Earth was embraced by Man. 
How much have we lost, dear fellow Mammals and fellow Mortals! How much have we wilfully destroyed! How much do we need to restore, within ourselves! 
The time of the Naming is not over, my Friends. In His sight, we may still be living in the sixth day. As your Meditation, imagine yourself rocked in that sheltering moment. Stretch out your hand towards those gentle eyes that regard you with such trust -- a trust that has not yet been violated by bloodshed and gluttony and pride and disdain. 
Time is running out. Opinion in Israel may be hardening, but in the United States things are moving in the opposite direction. Campus activity is increasing; many young Jewish Americans don’t want Israel speaking for them. America, snarled in two chaotic wars and facing increasing international anger over Palestine, may well be starting to see Israel not as an asset but as a liability."
- Margaret Atwood
June 8, 2010
The Shadow over Israel
Until Palestine has its own 'legitimized' state within its internationally recognized borders, the Shadow will remain.
By Margaret Atwoodhttp://www.haaretz.com/haaretz-authors-edition/the-shadow-over-israel-1.293653
Recently I was in Israel. The Israelis I met could not have been more welcoming. I saw many impressive accomplishments and creative projects, and talked with many different people. The sun was shining, the waves waving, the flowers were in bloom. Tourists jogged along the beach at Tel Aviv as if everything was normal.
Margaret Atwood.
Photo by: AFP
But… there was the Shadow. Why was everything trembling a little, like a mirage? Was it like that moment before a tsunami when the birds fly to the treetops and the animals head for the hills because they can feel it coming?
“Every morning I wake up in fear,” someone told me. “That’s just self-pity, to excuse what’s happening,” said someone else. Of course, fear and self-pity can both be real. But by “what’s happening,” they meant the Shadow.
I’d been told ahead of time that Israelis would try to cover up the Shadow, but instead they talked about it non-stop. Two minutes into any conversation, the Shadow would appear. It’s not called the Shadow, it’s called “the situation.” It haunts everything.
The Shadow is not the Palestinians. The Shadow is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, linked with Israeli’s own fears. The worse the Palestinians are treated in the name of those fears, the bigger the Shadow grows, and then the fears grow with them; and the justifications for the treatment multiply.
The attempts to shut down criticism are ominous, as is the language being used. Once you start calling other people by vermin names such as “vipers,” you imply their extermination. To name just one example, such labels were applied wholesale to the Tutsis months before the Rwanda massacre began. Studies have shown that ordinary people can be led to commit horrors if told they’ll be acting in self-defense, for “victory,” or to benefit mankind.
I’d never been to Israel before, except in the airport. Like a lot of people on the sidelines – not Jewish, not Israeli, not Palestinian, not Muslim – I hadn’t followed the “the situation” closely, though, also like most, I’d deplored the violence and wished for a happy ending for all.
Again like most, I’d avoided conversations on this subject because they swiftly became screaming matches. (Why was that? Faced with two undesirable choices, the brain – we’re told -- chooses one as less evil, pronounces it good, and demonizes the other.)
I did have some distant background. As “Egypt” at a Model U.N. in 1956, my high school’s delegation had presented the Palestinian case. Why was it fair that the Palestinians, innocent bystanders during the Holocaust, had lost their homes? To which the Model Israel replied, “You don’t want Israel to exist.” A mere decade after the Camps and the six million obliterated, such a statement was a talk-stopper.
Then I’d been hired to start a Nature program at a liberal Jewish summer camp. The people were smart, funny, inventive, idealistic. We went in a lot for World Peace and the Brotherhood of Man. I couldn’t fit this together with the Model U.N. Palestinian experience. Did these two realities nullify each other? Surely not, and surely the humane Jewish Brotherhood-of-Manners numerous in both the summer camp and in Israel itself would soon sort this conflict out in a fair way.
But they didn’t. And they haven’t. And it’s no longer 1956. The conversation has changed dramatically. I was recently attacked for accepting a cultural prize that such others as Atom Egoyan, Al Gore, Tom Stoppard, Goenawan Mohamad, and Yo-Yo Ma had previously received. This prize was decided upon, not by an instrument of Israeli state power as some would have it, but by a moderate committee within an independent foundation. This group was pitching real democracy, open dialogue, a two-state solution, and reconciliation. Nevertheless, I’ve now heard every possible negative thing about Israel – in effect, I’ve had an abrupt and searing immersion course in present-day politics. The whole experience was like learning about cooking by being thrown into the soup pot.
The most virulent language was truly anti-Semitic (as opposed to the label often used to deflect criticism). There were hot debates among activists about whether boycotting Israel would “work,” or not; about a one-state or else a two-state solution; about whether a boycott should exclude culture, as it is a bridge, or was that hypocritical dreaming? Was the term “apartheid” appropriate, or just a distraction? What about “de-legitimizing” the State of Israel? Over the decades, the debate had acquired a vocabulary and a set of rituals that those who hadn’t hung around universities – as I had not -- would simply not grasp.
Some kindly souls, maddened by frustration and injustice, began by screaming at me; but then, deciding I suppose that I was like a toddler who’d wandered into traffic, became very helpful. Others dismissed my citing of International PEN and its cultural-boycott-precluding efforts to free imprisoned writers as irrelevant twaddle. (An opinion cheered by every repressive government, extremist religion, and hard-line political group on the planet, which is why so many fiction writers are banned, jailed, exiled, and shot.)
None of this changes the core nature of the reality, which is that the concept of Israel as a humane and democratic state is in serious trouble. Once a country starts refusing entry to the likes of Noam Chomsky, shutting down the rights of its citizens to use words like “Nakba,” and labelling as “anti-Israel” anyone who tries to tell them what they need to know, a police-state clampdown looms. Will it be a betrayal of age-old humane Jewish traditions and the rule of just law, or a turn towards reconciliation and a truly open society?
Time is running out. Opinion in Israel may be hardening, but in the United States things are moving in the opposite direction. Campus activity is increasing; many young Jewish Americans don’t want Israel speaking for them. America, snarled in two chaotic wars and facing increasing international anger over Palestine, may well be starting to see Israel not as an asset but as a liability.
Then there are people like me. Having been preoccupied of late with mass extinctions and environmental disasters, and thus having strayed into the Middle-eastern neighbourhood with a mind as open as it could be without being totally vacant, I’ve come out altered. Child-killing in Gaza? Killing aid-bringers on ships in international waters? Civilians malnourished thanks to the blockade? Forbidding writing paper? Forbidding pizza? How petty and vindictive! Is pizza is a tool of terrorists? Would most Canadians agree? And am I a tool of terrorists for saying this? I think not.
There are many groups in which Israelis and Palestinians work together on issues of common interest, and these show what a positive future might hold; but until the structural problem is fixed and Palestine has its own “legitimized” state within its internationally recognized borders, the Shadow will remain.
“We know what we have to do, to fix it,” said many Israelis. “We need to get beyond Us and Them, to We,” said a Palestinian. This is the hopeful path. For Israelis and Palestinians both, the region itself is what’s now being threatened, as the globe heats up and water vanishes. Two traumas create neither erasure nor invalidation: both are real. And a catastrophe for one would also be a catastrophe for the other.
 
From the Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood's latest novel
God must have caused the Animals to assemble by speaking to them directly, but what language did He use? It was not Hebrew, my Friends. It was not Latin or Greek, or English, or French, or Spanish, or Arabic, or Chinese. No: He called the Animals in their own languages. To the Reindeer He spoke Reindeer, to the Spider, Spider; to the Elephant He spoke Elephant, to the Flea He spoke Flea, to the Centipede He spoke Centipede, and to the Ant, Ant. So must it have been.
And for Adam himself, the Names of the Animals were the first words he spoke—the first moment of Human language. In this cosmic instant, Adam claims his Human soul. To Name is – we hope -- to greet; to draw another towards one’s self. Let us imagine Adam calling out the Names of the Animals in fondness and joy, as if to say – There you are, my dearest! Welcome! Adam’s first act towards the Animals was thus one of loving-kindness and kinship, for Man in his unfallen state was not yet a carnivore. The Animals knew this, and did not run away. So it must have been on that unrepeatable Day – a peaceful gathering at which every living entity on the Earth was embraced by Man. 
How much have we lost, dear fellow Mammals and fellow Mortals! How much have we wilfully destroyed! How much do we need to restore, within ourselves! 
The time of the Naming is not over, my Friends. In His sight, we may still be living in the sixth day. As your Meditation, imagine yourself rocked in that sheltering moment. Stretch out your hand towards those gentle eyes that regard you with such trust -- a trust that has not yet been violated by bloodshed and gluttony and pride and disdain. 
 



Wests action may nudge more towards so called ISIS .


 
Wests action may nudge more towards ISIS.
It is quite right to say that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) will succeed in recruiting people from all over the world, especially the young, some of whom may consider the West as evil ("Trumpeting Islamophobia helps ISIS"; Dec 12).
Many of the people who join ISIS come from poor backgrounds and feel that they have nothing to lose as their lives are not important.
Some young people may sign up for the excitement and adventure, without realising what they are actually getting themselves into.
The world's powers should stop drone attacks, which have seen many innocent lives lost.
They should stop interfering in other countries' internal affairs. Their record in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and now, Syria, is far from exemplary. These countries are no better off than before.
Instead, their actions create a major refugee problem that impacts the rest of the world, including Western countries.
Shamim Moledina (Ms)

One day before 9/11

https://youtu.be/H_p92dECEpQ

Unusual activities at the world trade center before 911" on YouTube

Must read.








     
In the name of God, the Beneficent the Merciful
To the Youth in Europe and North America,
The recent events in France and similar ones in some other Western countries have convinced me to directly talk to you about them. I am addressing you, [the youth], not because I overlook your parents, rather it is because the future of your nations and countries will be in your hands; and also I find that the sense of quest for truth is more vigorous and attentive in your hearts.
I don’t address your politicians and statesmen either in this writing because I believe that they have consciously separated the route of politics from the path of righteousness and truth.
I would like to talk to you about Islam, particularly the image that is presented to you as Islam. Many attempts have been made over the past two decades, almost since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, to place this great religion in the seat of a horrifying enemy. The provocation of a feeling of horror and hatred and its utilization has unfortunately a long record in the political history of the West.
Here, I don’t want to deal with the different phobias with which the Western nations have thus far been indoctrinated. A cursory review of recent critical studies of history would bring home to you the fact that the Western governments’ insincere and hypocritical treatment of other nations and cultures has been censured in new historiographies.
The histories of the United States and Europe are ashamed of slavery, embarrassed by the colonial period and chagrined at the oppression of people of color and non-Christians. Your researchers and historians are deeply ashamed of the bloodsheds wrought in the name of religion between the Catholics and Protestants or in the name of nationality and ethnicity during the First and Second World Wars. This approach is admirable.
By mentioning a fraction of this long list, I don’t want to reproach history; rather I would like you to ask your intellectuals as to why the public conscience in the West awakens and comes to its senses after a delay of several decades or centuries. Why should the revision of collective conscience apply to the distant past and not to the current problems? Why is it that attempts are made to prevent public awareness regarding an important issue such as the treatment of Islamic culture and thought?
You know well that humiliation and spreading hatred and illusionary fear of the “other” have been the common base of all those oppressive profiteers. Now, I would like you to ask yourself why the old policy of spreading “phobia” and hatred has targeted Islam and Muslims with an unprecedented intensity. Why does the power structure in the world want Islamic thought to be marginalized and remain latent? What concepts and values in Islam disturb the programs of the super powers and what interests are safeguarded in the shadow of distorting the image of Islam? Hence, my first request is: Study and research the incentives behind this widespread tarnishing of the image of Islam.
My second request is that in reaction to the flood of prejudgments and disinformation campaigns, try to gain a direct and firsthand knowledge of this religion. The right logic requires that you understand the nature and essence of what they are frightening you about and want you to keep away from.
I don’t insist that you accept my reading or any other reading of Islam. What I want to say is: Don’t allow this dynamic and effective reality in today’s world to be introduced to you through resentments and prejudices. Don’t allow them to hypocritically introduce their own recruited terrorists as representatives of Islam.
Receive knowledge of Islam from its primary and original sources. Gain information about Islam through the Qur’an and the life of its great Prophet. I would like to ask you whether you have directly read the Qur’an of the Muslims. Have you studied the teachings of the Prophet of Islam and his humane, ethical doctrines? Have you ever received the message of Islam from any sources other than the media?
Have you ever asked yourself how and on the basis of which values has Islam established the greatest scientific and intellectual civilization of the world and raised the most distinguished scientists and intellectuals throughout several centuries?
I would like you not to allow the derogatory and offensive image-buildings to create an emotional gulf between you and the reality, taking away the possibility of an impartial judgment from you. Today, the communication media have removed the geographical borders. Hence, don’t allow them to besiege you within fabricated and mental borders.
Although no one can individually fill the created gaps, each one of you can construct a bridge of thought and fairness over the gaps to illuminate yourself and your surrounding environment. While this preplanned challenge between Islam and you, the youth, is undesirable, it can raise new questions in your curious and inquiring minds. Attempts to find answers to these questions will provide you with an appropriate opportunity to discover new truths.
Therefore, don’t miss the opportunity to gain proper, correct and unbiased understanding of Islam so that hopefully, due to your sense of responsibility toward the truth, future generations would write the history of this current interaction between Islam and the West with a clearer conscience and lesser resentment.
Seyyed Ali Khamenei

The British PM.

In August 2013, British Prime Minister David Cameron urged the House of Commons to consider military action in Syria in order to "alleviate human suffering" in the wake of a horrific chemical weapons attack
> "The principle of humanitarian intervention," he noted, "provides a sound legal basis for taking action"
 He was rebuffed by the MPs.
 More than two years later, and prompted by the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Cameron again wants parliament to authorise air strikes inside Syria. Once again, we are being asked to believe that the motive is purely humanitarian: to protect innocent Syrians from murder, rape and torture.

Don't get me wrong. There are strong and very legitimate arguments for intervening in Syria - and equally strong and very legitimate arguments against it. Bashar al-Assad is a violent and brutal dictator and ISIL is perhaps the world's worst militant group. If you believe, however, that the UK government, under David Cameron, is interested in human rights or driven by humanitarian motives then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
>
>  
>
> Consider the mountain of evidence which shows the British government has little interest in the human rights of oppressed Arabs across the region.
>
>  
>
> Exhibit A: Egypt
>
>  
>
> The Cameron who claims to want to save Syrian lives doesn't seem interested in innocent Egyptian lives. How else to explain his decision to host General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, elected president of Egypt with 97 percent of the vote in May 2014, after coming to office in a military coup the previous year, in London this week?
>
>  
>
> Sisi, lest we forget, was responsible for what Human Rights Watch has called the "most serious incident of mass unlawful killings in modern Egyptian history" and "one of the world's largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history". More than 800 unarmed protesters were killed when Sisi's security forces "cleared" the sit-in at Rabaa al-Adawiya square in Cairo on August 14, 2013.
>
>  
>
> In total, according to the government-appointed National Council for Human Rights, at least 2,500 Egyptians were killed in the 18 months after Sisi's July 2013 coup - including 1,250 Muslim Brotherhood members.
>
>  
>
> An astonishing 41,000 people have been arrested or detained in Egypt since the coup and human rights groups such as the Cairo Center for Human Rights, the Carter Center and Human Rights Watch have been forced to relocate their offices and staffs abroad.
>
>  
>
> Meanwhile, journalists - including, of course, Al Jazeera journalists - have been locked up after sham trials and "it may soon be illegal to publish news the Egyptian government doesn't like". Sisi, concluded the normally sober and restrained headline writers at The Economist, is "worse than Mubarak".
>
>  
>
> The question is: Whatever happened to the British prime minister's stated support for "the aspirations of people in Egypt for a more genuine, open democracy" in the wake of the Arab Spring?
>
>  
>
> Exhibit B: Bahrain
>
>  
>
> The Cameron who claims to want to save Syrian lives doesn't seem interested in innocent Bahraini lives. He sent his Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond to Bahrain this week to mark the construction of Britain's "first new permanent military base in the Middle East since 1971".
>
>  
>
> When the Arab Spring came to Bahrain in 2011, however, the country's unelected government, as Cameron and Hammond are well aware, violently cracked down on pro-democracy activists. Peaceful protesters in Manama's Pearl Square were shot, tear-gassed, tortured and imprisoned on the flimsiest of charges
>
>  
>
> And, four years on, the situation in Bahrain isn't showing signs of improvement. In July, three UN human rights experts condemned the Bahraini authorities for "criminalising, prosecuting and imprisoning human rights defenders" inside the country.
>
>  
>
> The verdict of Amnesty International's report on Bahrain in April was pretty stark: "Human rights abuses in Bahrain continue unabated". Unabated. Among the abuses listed in the report were "torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, unfair trials, the imprisonment of prisoners of conscience and unlawful killings", with Amnesty pointing out how "those responsible all too frequently [escape] accountability".
>
>  
>
> And the British foreign secretary's response? "Bahrain is not perfect by any means."
>
>  
>
> Exhibit C: Saudi Arabia
>
>  
>
> The Cameron who claims to want to save Syrian lives doesn't seem interested in innocent Saudi lives.
>
>  
>
> On average, according to Amnesty International, one person is executed every 48 hours in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The majority of executions are carried out by beheading and cover "crimes" as absurd and medieval as witchcraft.
>
>  
>
> Blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1,000 lashes for "insulting Islam" - 50 of those lashes have already been administered. Activist Ali al-Nimr faces beheading and a public crucifixion - yes, crucifixion! - for alleged "crimes" committed when he was 17.
>
> Cameron, of course, feigns outrage and shock over such awful behaviour by one of the UK's closest allies in the region yet, as the Guardian and other papers reported in September, "Britain conducted secret vote-trading deals with Saudi Arabia to ensure both states were elected to the UN Human Rights Council [UNHRC], according to leaked diplomatic cables".
>
>  
>
> One Saudi ministry cable, translated by the NGO UN Watch and the Australian newspaper, noted the "opportunity to exchange support with the United Kingdom, where the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would support the candidacy of the United Kingdom to the membership of the council for the period 2014-2015 in exchange for the support of the United Kingdom to the candidacy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia".
>
>  
>
> Look, let's be clear: The British prime minister has a point when he says - as he did during the Libya conflict of 2011 - that "the fact that you cannot do the right thing everywhere does not mean that you should not do the right thing somewhere".
>
>  
>
> But who or what is stopping Cameron from doing the "right thing" in these particular, aforementioned cases? No one is asking Cameron to bomb, drone or invade Egypt, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. But if he truly cared about human rights, he could start by taking a series of small, simple, violence-free steps to prove it.
>
>  
>
> He could rescind his invitation to Sisi, close down the base in Bahrain, and stop doing behind-the-scenes deals with Saudi Arabia which undermine the UNHRC. He could also, incidentally, stop selling arms to these countries.
>
>  
>
> That he chooses to do none of these things, that he chooses instead to cosy up to these governments while turning a blind eye to their well-documented abuses, speaks volumes. >  
>
> The British prime minister cares about human rights? Please.
> >
> Mehdi Hasan is an award-winning journalist, author, political commentator and the presenter of Head to Head and UpFront.
>
>  


Libya.Ten things About Gaddafi they dont want you to know.

Libya: Ten Things About Gaddafi They Don’t Want You to Know | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

Drone Attacks

Four former U.S. Air Force drone operators issued a public letter on Wednesday warning that the United States' ongoing targeted killing program "is one of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world."
The letter addressed to U.S. President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and CIA Chief John Brennan accuses the administration of fueling "tragedies such as the attacks in Paris" while "lying publicly about the effectiveness of the drone program."
"We came to the realization that the innocent civilians we were killing only fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS," the whistleblowers wrote, "while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantanamo Bay."
According to Guardian reporters Ed Pilkington and Ewan MacAskill, who broke the story, the servicemen have "more than 20 years of experience between them operating military drones." In the letter, the men say they all "succumbed to PTSD" and were subsequently "cut loose by the same government we gave so much to—sent out in the world without adequate medical care, reliable public health services, or necessary benefits."
Facing possible persecution for speaking out, the men are being represented by attorney Jesselyn Radack, director of national security and human rights at the nonprofit ExposeFacts. Radack says this letter marks the "first time we’ve had so many people speaking out together about the drone program."
The full text of the letter is below:
Dear President Obama, Secretary Carter and Director Brennan: 
We are former Air Force service members. We joined the Air Force to protect American lives  and to protect our Constitution. We came to the realization that the innocent civilians we were killing  only fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS, while also serving as a  fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantanamo Bay. This administration and its predecessors  have built a drone program that is one of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and  destabilization around the world. 
When the guilt of our roles in facilitating this systematic loss of innocent life became too much, all of us succumbed to PTSD. We were cut loose by the same government we gave so much to ­­ sent  out in the world without adequate medical care, reliable public health services, or necessary benefits.  Some of us are now homeless. Others of us barely make it. 
We witnessed gross waste, mismanagement, abuses of power, and our country’s leaders lying  publicly about the effectiveness of the drone program. We cannot sit silently by and witness tragedies  like the attacks in Paris, knowing the devastating effects the drone program has overseas and at home.  Such silence would violate the very oaths we took to support and defend the Constitution. 
We request that you consider our perspective, though perhaps that request is in vain given the  unprecedented prosecution of truth­tellers who came before us like Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange,  and Edward Snowden. For the sake of this country, we hope it is otherwise.
Sincerely,
Brandon Bryant
Staff Sergeant
MQ­1B Predator Sensor Operator
SERE Instructor Trainee
USAF Joint Special Operations Command
3rd Special Operations Squadron
Disabled Iraq and Afghanistan