Islam liberates Europeans from their lives of stupidity...

...or so says Azzam Tamimi, an Islamic scholar who lives in London, England.


See here the interview he gave to Al Jazeera, broadcast on December 8.

Jewish settlers in the future Palestine

In the English language Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star, columnist Bill Glucroft has written about a possible arrangement regarding Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The article, Settlers: a Jewish minority in Palestine?, touches on the issue of the fate of those settlers after the declaration of the new Palestinian independent state. The idea is a very logical one, as a matter of fact it has been floating around for a while now, and I always believed that the solution will be along those lines. What are we talking about, then?

The simplest and most logical solution is that the settlers will become citizens of the new country, actually having double citizenship by retaining their Israeli citizenship, also, but technically living as a minority in Palestine. As long as the new Palestine will be a democracy, this arrangement would benefit both countries. Of course the settlers would run the risk of being attacked by fanatics, should Hamas-indoctrinated Palestinians manage to gain any power. But this would be a double edged occurrence because in such an event Israel would retaliate, even invade, which no right minded Palestinian would want to chance.

On the other hand, in case of properly normalized relations between the two countries, the conditions of the Israeli Arabs would be linked with the conditions for Palestinian Jews, as proposed by Gershon Baskin, which then would prevent any discrimination in either of the two countries.

Of course, there are a lot of wrinkles in this idea that will need to be ironed out before a working arrangement is reached, but adopting it could be a good basis for the progress of the peace process.

Mass executions in Iran

There has been a sudden increase in the number of executions by hanging in Iran. Today they hung 20 people in the Rajai-Shahr Prison close to Tehran. Although officially the charges were drug trafficking, there are fears that a lot of these were bogus charges, something that apparently happens routinely in Iran whenever they want to silence dissent. A few days earlier, on Wednesday July 1, six people were hanged in Tehran's EvinPrison, all of them charged with murder.

Although Western media has no means to report on further developments in Iran, we know that since Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rallied behind Ahmadinejad demonstrators started to direct their protests against the whole clerical establishment, going as far as calling "death to Khamenei". Khamenei took a risk by supporting Ahmadinejad, loosing face both in and out of Iran. In his support he stands not only against Moussavi but also Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the founding fathers of the revolution.

Where all this will lead, we can't know. What is certain, though, is that there is no turning back. Any surface normalization will be just that. Like a precariously balancing lid on a boiling pot of stew.

PS If you want to have a closer look at the methods the Iranian regime uses to control its citizens, please, visit the website Holy Crime.

Ahmadinejad and Photoshop

I love this:


They needed to beef up the image a bit to make the crowd look bigger. After all they have to compete with the other ongoing rallies in Tehran - if not in real life at least virtually... :)

(The picture is from the Daily Kos website.)

Death penalty for bloggers

I feel we must act before it is too late. The Iranian government is thinking of introducing capital punishment for blogging offenses, a notion open to interpretation. I found this report on YouTube, in it there is a reference to Hossein Derakshan's arrest.



I am doing what I can, but no news yet of Hossein...

Victory for Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Revolution

Ahmadinejad's "landslide victory" created sad flashbacks in my mind of all those inevitable landslide victories of communist leaders in Eastern Europe during my youth. Just as leaders like Fidel Castro or Bashar al-Assad, who still win by landslide in every election. There will also be a de rigeur celebration party tomorrow, where, I am sure, employees of entire institutions will be ordered to appear (under threat of loosing their jobs if they didn't) at Vali Asr Square in support of the newly elected beloved leader.

Media reports showed mathematically near-impossible consistent hourly breakdown in the incoming election results, which is very suspect given the demographic diversity of Iran. During the election text messaging services were jammed, news and social networking websites were blocked. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called the results "divine assessment". The divinity, of course, flows through the divinely inspired religious leadership of the Islamic Republic.

During the elections Ahmadinejad talked about alleged "treasonous elements". We can expect purges now aiming to clear the country of a sizable part of the opposition to the regime. The purges can mean lengthy jail time for dissenters, or even the death penalty. Not good news for people in similar situation as our Hoder...

Update 2 on Hossein

Something is not in order when it comes to Hoder's case. It just doesn't feel right... The more I ponder about it, the more things appear to me as odd, different from other cases.

First of all there is the matter of his sudden change of tone in the recent past, so much so that it turned a lot of us away from him in disgust. Then there is the fact that he did go to Iran, when it was more than obvious that after the Israel trip he will not be welcome there as long as this regime was in power. It also hit me that we know the whereabouts of most, if not all, of the other detainees, their families and lawyers are in touch with them. Hossein is mysteriously invisible. So here are my speculative arguments.

a) For one, he could be in real danger, all being the way it looks from the outside, they just consider his case a special one and for some reason handle it differently,
b) he may have been/may still be in the process of being "debriefed" on his Israeli trip, either voluntarily or under threat, digging up all the minutiae of his trip, making him describe locales, buildings, people to the tiniest details,
c) he may be simply under house arrest somewhere in a secret location, while his absence is used for "jumping the rabbit from the bush", that is, to create a good buzz in the Iranian blogging community, and then have enough ground for arrests, prosecution and the shutting down of the more vociferous supporters.

As a matter of fact, I have second thoughts about the online petition, also. It is known that such petitions do not carry too much weight. They may help raise some marginal awareness in US and Canadian government circles, but that's about it, not much more. Instead, it creates an accessible list of people, a list that can potentially be used by the Iranian government to filter out the names that they could be "interested in".

My suggestion is that it is better if we contact our local government representatives in person and apply the necessary pressure to make them inquire about the case, to see whether our government is or isn't looking into the matter at all and, if necessary, to raise the issue in parliament.

Update on Hossein

I feel at odds with myself about the past month. Although I was among those who rejected Hossein when his tone changed a while back, the news of his arrest really shocked me. During his early blogging career I emotionally "adopted" him. I loved his dare-devil attitude, but not the least, I liked the fact that he shared my concern about the state of Israel, which is slowly strangled politically by a mix of well moneyed propaganda and still prevailing old fashioned anti-semitic attitudes. He, like me, was ready to find things out for himself, in person.

When his writings started to exhibit an oddly different attitude, I also got annoyed and dropped him from my blog roll list. Yet, I soon started to wonder what may have brought the change about. My guesses were that he may have been intimidated by Iran (hard to believe), or that the harassment of a family member may have been used as an "incentive" for a change of tone. The change was too sharp for me to accept as a natural change of heart.

And then came the news of his arrest. To this day I don't know what to think. First of all I do not understand why he dared make that visit to Iran. He knew full well that his Israeli trip put him in a very precarious position. But putting that together with his cloak turning, my humble guess is that he may have been given reassurances from somewhere high up in Iran that if he "repents" in public and becomes more supportive of the present Iranian regime, things would be forgiven. Although this presumption sounds plausible, I still cannot believe Hossein could have been naive enough to fall for it.

So why did he go? Was he that stupidly daring to actually want to be arrested, so as to become a "cause célèbre" as a challenge? There must be something else...

In this past month, since I found out about his arrest, there was hardly a day that he wasn't on my mind. I imagined him being tortured, fearing that he might "confess" to spying for Israel like Ali Ashtari, the innocent electronics salesman, who was then publicly hanged last November. I imagined the anguish of his family! And then I fussed about my own choices, of never "having the time" to further my research on this matter, for accepting my daily life issues as more important than lobbying for a captive fellow Canadian. Hossein, if you ever get the chance to read this, know that I feel embarrassed, and that I apologize for myself and in the name of the many other procrastinators. I promise to do better from now on!

Luckily others have not been so slack. Here is a petition that can be signed.

Of course, Hossein is not the only one in this situation. There is the case of the journalist Roxana Saberi, also half Canadian who, according to the latest news, faces "life in prison". And then there are who knows how many people in Iran facing or already serving similar jail sentences. Students from the Amir Kabir University, or the 19 year old Alireza Firouzi, we even know of one who died recently while serving a 30 month sentence: Omidreza Mirsayafi.

Iran is not the only country repressing blogging, although it holds the title of being the worst. There is a long list of countries that do the same. We do need to raise awareness of these attacks on free speech. Let us start then with freeing Hossein Derakshan!

We must stand up for Hossein!

Hossein Derakhshan has been arrested over three months ago already in Iran, as I just found out. This piece of information was confirmed by a Toronto's Globe and Mail article on November 12. Hossein's blog was at the top of my Blogroll list until his website was taken down by his server due to a libel suit filed against him by Mehdi Khalaji. A few days ago, while doing my regular home page cleanup, it occurred to me to look around and see whether he did start a new blog in the meantime. To my dismay I discovered what happened.

Frankly, I am very concerned, as all of us should be. Surely he was often like a little dagfly, buzzing annoyingly around Iranian politics, more so in the beginning of his blogging career. As of late he toned down a lot, not unlikely because of intimidation, to the point that he even started to seemingly support Ahmadinejad's policies and Iran's military aspirations. It looks like that was not sufficient.

I do not understand it: why did he enter Iran in the first place? He was aware, as he expressed it many times, that he cannot even visit Iran because of his historical trip to Israel in 2006. Yet he did so. Why...?

A lot of his fellow Iranian bloggers right now are angry with him for his about face that he exhibited in the last couple of years. Yet now he stands accused of being a spy for Israel. Is he...? Is that at all possible? You can read a translated "confession" in Brian Whittaker's article in The Guardian, as it apparently appeared on the Tehran news website, Fahan News, on November 18, 2008. Brian is wondering whether this is a signal to Iranian bloggers to "cool it".

My concern is not worth too much, I am just a female senior citizen in Canada and my blog is not visited much. I wish I could be of help, though, because I always admired his spunk, even when he expressed opinions not exactly in line with mine. Therefor, if you happen to chance this way, I urge you to go to the "Free Hossein Derakhshan" site on Facebook. I don't know how successful they are in their endeavour, I will try to follow them from now on and contribute my efforts if and when possible.

Mubarak: Hamas invited Israeli offensive

Finally we can see Arab countries standing up and saying as it is, instead of continuing the knee-jerk anti-Israeli propaganda slogans inherited from the Nasser era. If you are too young to remember that, Gamal Abdel Nasser was someone who embraced the old ideology, that of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, who had aspirations for re-establishing a pan-Arab united empire, encouraging the emergence of "Nasserist" political parties in other countries dedicated to Arab unity. The easiest way to work towards a desirable sense of unity was to rally the Arab world against "a common enemy". What could have been better for that than the newly formed Israel?

As a result the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was born on Egyptian soil in 1964, and in spite of the fact that the PLO eventually came around and was ready to accept the two state solution, the original anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attitudes and propaganda opened a Pandora's box of venom which, mixed with the remnants of Western anti-Semitism, created the present mixed, often violent attitudes against Israel.

Since long I have been trying to do my own little share in trying to dispel some of these deeply embedded memes. I made sure not to form opinions without seeing things for myself. I have been in Israel, I have been in the West Bank, though not in Gaza which was not a problem area at the time. And I find it hard to take when people say it with conviction that "Israel is an apartheid country", when they say with righteous indignation that Israel should do nothing in face of the barrage of rockets to the tune of 10 to 40 a day. What other country could stand it for as long as Israel did (does right now)?

The US economic blockade of Cuba is 46 years old. Yet, there are no rockets flying from there into the US. And if even a single one did, what do you think the reaction would be? The fact that the Gazan rockets do not cause large number of casualties is because Israel is full of bunkers to protect their civilians. With an advanced alarm system they can warn people who then scurry into the nearest shelter, even next to supermarkets and souks. How come there are no similar structures in Gaza when the PLO amassed such an enormous wealth over the decades?

But could you imagine yourself living like this, when you have to run for your life up to 40 times a day? Are you surprised that Israel keeps Gaza under blockade trying to prevent the influx of rockets? Yet, they keep coming, through secret tunnels, via the sea on fishing vessels, sometimes hidden in UN relief shipments. The fact of the matter is that Hamas is a horribly anti-semitic organization, to the core. Its agenda is the eventual total destruction of Israel, openly so. And the neighbouring Arab countries start realizing that this is not good for them, either. Specially so because Hamas is backed by Iran (who have their own agenda of pan-something-or-another) and the Hezbollah (which is literally taking over Lebanon as we speak).

So the eventual change in the attitudes of the Arab countries towards Israel is albeit slow in coming but inevitable. I was happy to see signs of this change in the official recognition by Egypt that Hamas's reckless politics has something to do with Israels blockade and eventual attack. Here is the short article on the topic as it appeared in the Times of Malta:

Monday, 19th January 2009
Mubarak: Hamas invited Israeli offensive

Egypt's President accused Hamas today of inviting Israel's three-week offensive against Gaza by not extending their ceasefire when it expired last month.

"You all know that efforts Egypt had undertaken to extend the ceasefire and our warnings that a refusal by factions to extend it was an open invitation to Israeli aggression," Hosni Mubarak told a summit of Arab leaders in Kuwait.

He said Egypt would continue its efforts to achieve a reconciliation between Palestinians. "Without it (Palestinian unity) no stability will be realised for Gaza and no rebuilding and no end for its embargo," Mubarak said.

Hamas, the Islamist militant group which won 2006 parliamentary elections, has ruled Gaza since ousting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction in 2007. Fatah still holds sway in the occupied West Bank.

The Arab summit in Kuwait, initially meant to focus on the economy, has been overshadowed by Israel's offensive against Gaza, which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and was suspended on Sunday.

"We will make every possible attempt (but) if the factions do not respond to our efforts, then we tell them God helps those who help themselves," Mubarak said.

Mubarak said that resisting occupation, while legitimate, should also take into account both gains and losses.

Why are we so indifferent about countries like Sudan?

I have pondered about this earlier, wondering why the world is so selective about what and whom we care about. Why is it that the UN, a body that is supposed to care about every country, every human being, focuses almost exclusively on Israel? Why are only the Gaza events "unacceptable"?

Do you remember hearing much about Sudan in the last several years now (15 years, to be exact)? Do you know that by now close to 3 million people got slowly "eliminated" there? Do you know that the children of the victims are often "spared" only to be sold into slavery? Yes, you are reading it right! Slavery is alive and well in the Muslim world. From Philippine maids in the rich Arab states whose passports are taken away and then the women made to work without pay, to actual slaves who have been bought and sold as children, and then most of them kept in slavery for the rest of their lives. And then there are the kidnapped children who are expected to be bought back by their families from the slave traders.

I urge you to listen to a former slave, Simon Deng, snatched away as a child and given as a "gift" to someone, then bought back by his family later. He is in America now and does what he can to raise awareness of the plight of the people of Southern Sudan.







In today's day and age it really is unacceptable for us to sit by idly, and accept and parrot whatever meager information the media provides us. They are human, too, they will not go to the really dangerous areas, they prefer the comfier missions, like reporting from Israel, where they can wait in air-conditioned hotels to report on the plight of the "innocent" Gazans.

There are people who try to do something, like the Baroness Caroline Cox, or our Canadian Reverend Cal Bombay who is still fighting the slave trade in Sudan (see bottom of his web page). But such individuals are scarce and their methods are questionable. I, for one, do not agree with the practice of "re-purchasing" of slaves because in my opinion this practice actually creates a supply and demand situation, further encouraging slave trade. But then we all do whatever we think of as a possible solution. One thing is sure: we have to find solutions!

Children of Gaza are given new lease on life in Israel

In spite of the present state of war between Israel and Gaza, the lifesaving work of the Save a Child's Heart foundation goes on. This is a project run in the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, Israel, where children from around the world are operated on for major heart problems entirely free of charge. The little patients come mostly from underdeveloped countries where they would not have any chance for this kind of life saving treatment. There are children from Iraq, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, and quite often from Gaza. The doctors there have a good working relationship with the Israeli doctors, and all it takes is a phone call to have their little patients admitted to the Wolfson Center. And this service is not, cannot be stopped by any military crisis, they get the necessary help no matter what.



The medical team is headed by Dr. Amran Cohen, and the the project is mostly funded by Iraqi born Israeli philanthropist, Sami Shamoon, although its needs for further donations is growing by the day as the number of children in need of help is growing. Hillary Clinton is also a supporter of the project which gets a lot of praise around the world, including Al Jazeera TV. Let us hope that the SACH project will prove to spread the message of its intended goodwill far and wide. To quote one of the doctors, "What I hope is that when a healthy child returns home, the effect of it will be greater than the work of 1000 diplomats."

Gaza or Darfur?

I am confused. For a long time now I have been agonizing over the crises in Sudan. The warfare claimed 2 million lives there in the last 15 years, 300 000 in Darfur in this last conflict alone. And what about the Zimbabwe humanitarian crisis? Did/do we hear much about either of them? Not much.

But here comes the Gaza crisis - do we hear about it? You bet! Around the clock CNN coverage, pro and con demonstrations, fiery pro and con reports and commentaries, "the works".

The only explanation I can come up with for this unbalanced media attention is that in Israel journalists camp out in air conditioned comfy hotels, literally just a few kilometres from the war zone, so it is very easy for them to be at interesting spots within minutes, to put together literally a flood of visually compelling, technically perfect reports. They could not possibly do the same in Sudan. After all, it is "too dangerous" there. Better just ignore it...

But what is the result of this unbalanced reporting? Unbalanced response from the public, of course! Do media people ever think of such things? I wonder. Most people do not consciously seek out all the necessary information that would allow them to have a good overall view of the World at any given time. Most people are satisfied to follow the headlines and adjust their "emotion du jour" accordingly.

Media people keep forgetting the essence of their work in all this rush for making a living by digging up the hottest morsels the easiest way possible. They not only influence the general public, their reports, together with the public opinion, have tremendous influence on politicians, also, and this way they impact and to a certain degree shape history. They are the ones who tell us what is important in the world at any given moment. Unfortunately the impression is that Africans are considered by far less important than Palestinians and/or Israelis.