Pakistan Flood Appeal

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The floods raging through Pakistan at the moment have affected more people than the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, the 2006 Asian tsunami, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake combined.

An urgent mail from Kanak Mani Dixit of Himal Magazine. Photographs forwarded to me by Salma Hasan Ali:

Hello Shahidul, I think it is important to try heighten sensitivity to the Indus Flood 2010 and the ongoing devastation in Pakistan. People in India in particular may find it difficult to send money across the border, and this Nepal-based facility could be useful. Also, I do not know if anyone is doing specific in Bangladesh, though that is quite likely. If at all possible, please consider spreading work on this facility we have put up, as a means of support. Your breadth of contacts would be vital for this.

Kanak

Kanak Mani Dixit, Editor, Himal Southasia, www.himalmag.com

A man marooned by flood waters, alongside his livestock, waves towards an Army helicopter for relief handouts in the Rajanpur district of Pakistan's Punjab province on August 9, 2010. (REUTERS/Stringer)

A girl floats her brother across flood waters while salvaging valuables from their flood ravaged home on August 7, 2010 in the village of Bux Seelro near Sukkur, Pakistan. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images) #

A Pakistani Army soldier rests between air rescue operations on August 9, 2010 in the Muzaffargarh district in Punjab, Pakistan. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images) #

Pakistani flood survivors climb on army helicopter as it distributes food bags in Lal Pir on August 7, 2010. (Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images) #

A man wades through flood waters towards a naval boat while evacuating his children in Sukkur, located in Pakistan's Sindh province August 8, 2010. (REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro) #

A boy waits for food handouts with other flood victims as they take refuge at a makeshift camp in Sukkur, in Pakistan's Sindh province August 8, 2010. (REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro) #

Pakistani villagers chase after relief supplies dropped from an army helicopter in a heavy flood-hit area of Mithan Kot, in central Pakistan, Monday, Aug. 9, 2010. (AP Photo/Khalid Tanveer) #

Flood victims are rescued by boat in Baseera, a village located in the Muzaffargarh district of Pakistan's Punjab province on August 10, 2010. (REUTERS/Stringer) #

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INDUS FLOOD RELIEF
Himal Southasian fund collection drive
in partnership with Standard Chartered Bank Nepal

Himal Southasian and Standard Chartered Bank Nepal have set up a fund in Kathmandu for people from Southasia and elsewhere seeking to support the ongoing relief efforts in Pakistan. Please avail this facility to send money to the victims of flood along the Indus. No administrative charges will be applied to your support; every paisa will be transferred to trusted organisations in Pakistan for the benefit of the flood victims.

Please send support to:*
Account title: Indus Flood Relief – Himal Southasian/SCB Nepal
Bank: Standard Chartered Bank Nepal Ltd.
Branches Accepting Deposit: Any Branches of SCB Nepal network
SWIFT CODE: SCBLNPKA
(Credit card payments may be made straight to the accounts below at any of the branches of Standard Chartered Bank in Nepal.)

Account number for Rupees (from India and Nepal): 01-1859293-02
Account number for USD (from elsewhere): 01-1859293-51

Please refer to the Indus Flood Relief page on www.himalmag.com for details.

Video by Huma Beg

His Life

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By Gita L. Vygodskaya

Translated from the Russian language by Ilya Gindis

Published in School Psychology International, Vol.16

Nobody in our family studied or took up religion. I only knew from the nanny, who took care of us, that there was a God, whom she, according to her words, feared and respected. On several occasions, unknown to my parents, she even took me to a church. When my father found out, he, to much to nanny’s surprise, did not get angry. Upon finding from me that I liked church, and from the nanny that I did not disturb anyone there, he decided that in the future we could go to church whenever we wanted. I remember well how proud I was when we walked openly to church, wearing our best bonnets.

Later the nanny told me that every girl should know a prayer, and I learned one from her by ear, without understanding a single word. To all my questions she always answered: “I am illiterate, when you get educated you will understand everything”. But I did not want to wait until I grew up and was educated, and so I went to my father to clear things up. He seemed to be surprised when I recited the prayer from memory, and asked where I learned it. He did not express any feelings towards the whole matter, but simply explained that the prayer thanked the Virgin Mary for giving birth to the Lord Jesus Christ. This however did not yet mean anything to me, and I went about my business as before. One day Leonid, my older cousin, who lived with us, did something that was strictly forbidden. The nanny then warned him to never do it again or “God will punish you”. To this the boy quickly replied: “God does not exist”. The nanny was horrified, and began to tell him how you can’t say things like that. Leonid was unimpressed and stubbornly stuck by his comment.

Meanwhile I was completely confused by the whole matter and had no idea where the truth lay. I began to get upset and to get a straight answer I went to my father, as I always did in difficult situations. I remember well how he was sitting at the table working. I could not hold back the worrying question, and so I came up close, so he would notice me, a favorite tactic of mine. He put down the pen, turned and hugged me by the shoulders, asking what happened. “Dad, is there a God?” – I burst out. “Why do you ask me?” – he replied. I told him of the “discussion” between the nanny and Leonid. He suddenly become very serious. “You see,” – he said, “some people, like our nanny, believe that God exists while others reject the idea. Everyone must decide this for themselves, when you grow up you too will decide”.

He never forced his opinions on us, unless of course we were doing something really wrong. In most cases he preferred for us to work things out on our own. Often when we asked a question, he did not give a complete answer but rather drew us into discussions that resulted in a commonly agreed on answer or decision.

A few years before his death, my father began to smoke. No one was really bothered by this as he did not smoke often, and it seemed to make him happy. I liked to watch him as he smoked, he had a special sort of smile at these times. One day Leonid told me how unfair he thought it was that we weren’t allowed to smoke. He said he tried it himself but only succeeded in burning his eyebrow, therefore we should do it together. He even found a perfect place: between bookshelves, and suggested we go and try it immediately. But I was not used to doing things secretly, and I was always sure of my father’s understanding and support in this. I asked Leonid to wait until the night, when he came home. Leonid agreed, but only until the night. I impatiently waited my father came home and, barely letting him take his coat off, came up to him under pretense of injustice: “You smoke, but don’t let us!” He paused for a moment and asked: “Have you tried already?” I said no, but that Leonid had. Father said: “You are right, we’ll smoke together tonight, just wait until I finish dinner”. He went to eat in my grandmother’s room, where by now the whole family gathered, and I ran with the shocking news to Leonid. When the two of us burst into the room, my father was drinking tea, while everyone else was sitting by the table or stove, discussing, as usual, the days events. Me and Leonid sat down on either side of Lev Semenovich, and began to wait. He soon finished his tea, and took out the cigarettes giving one to me and one to Leonid. Suddenly everyone in the room went quiet and began to watch us intensely.

He was in no hurry, packing the cigarettes, all the while showing how its done and why its necessary. He then demonstrated how to hold the cigarette in the hand and in the mouth. Finally he lit his, took a drag and brought the lighter to ours. Everyone around us was watching his actions, but not interfere with what was going on. “And now, take a deep breath” – said father. I don’t remember much of what happened then, as I almost passed out and got sick. I think Leonid experienced the same reaction. I guess I should add that I never tried smoking again, and Leonid did not try again until he was over 18.

There is one more thing that happened that I will recount. It’s still unpleasant to talk about it, but it happened and it taught me a lesson for life. By now I was in school. I remember it was late May. In class we had an important final coming up. I had a very serious attitude toward it, and was rather anxious. It so happened that I did well on the exam and got a high mark. I returned home in high spirit and was doubly over joyed: my father was home! When he asked me what was new in school, I proudly told him of my success, and added with ill-concealed pleasure that the girl sitting next to me could not copy from me as I had turned the page of the notebook, and because of this got a poorer grade than me. I was beaming and expecting praise, looked at father. I was surprised at the expression on his face: he looked very disappointed. I could not understand what was wrong. May be he did not realize I passed? After a short silence he began to speak, slowly and deliberately so I would remember everything he said. He told me that it was not nice to be happy of others misfortunes, that only selfish people enjoyed it. He went on saying that I should always try to help those who need it, and its only for those who help others that the life is rewarding and brings true joy. I remember I was very upset from his words and asked what I should do now. As always in these situations he offered me a solution: he did not want me to feel like once I did something wrong I was now incapable of doing good. He suggested to me that I go and ask my classmate about what she didn’t understand, and try to patiently explain it to her, and if I couldn’t do it so she would understand perfectly, then he would be glad to help me. “But here is the most important thing”, he added, “you must do all this so your friend be sure you really want to help her, and really mean her well, and so it would not be unpleasant for her to accept your help”. More than 60 years have passed since this incident and I still remember all of his words and try to follow them as best I can in life.

* * *

I don’t believe that “after death there is nothing else”. After his death, the person continues his life in memories of those who loved him and in his works. And so Lev S. Vygotsky lives in the memories of those few, still alive, who know him, and most of all, in his writings that, thanks God, are finally available to everyone. As far as his students go…, well, many of them became famous scientists. Luckily, many were granted a long life. But despite their graying heads and elevated scientific status each has reached, they all still consider the 37 year old researcher their teacher. This was something they never got tired of talking about, and always with great love. Now many are gone, but their students, and now even their students’ students go on. And so science develops. Even though so many years have passed, Vygotsky’s thoughts, ideas, and works not only belong to history, but they still interest people. In one of his articles, A. Leontiev wrote of Vygotsky as a man decades ahead of his time. Probably that is why that he is for us not a historic figure but a living contemporary.

Full Article

A Blessing For My Children

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By Tabish Khair

(Excerpt from a talk given in 2005 at the Florence Poetry Festival, later also published in The Hindu, Chennai, on 1st January 2006.)

To be born into a minority is a blessing and a curse. I was born into a Muslim family in Bihar: Muslims are the biggest religious minority of India. But within the community of Indian Muslims, my family again belonged to a large minority: that of middle class, professional Muslims. My father was a doctor. His father had been a doctor, and his father’s father had been a doctor too. Before that my father’s ancestors had been impoverished but independent and proudly literate farmers. My mother had a college degree in political science and, for some time, ran her own business. Her father had been a police officer and his father had owned a small tea plantation in Assam.

When you are born into a minority that is a minority within a minority, you learn to belong in different ways. I grew up as Indian and as Muslim. I grew up speaking three languages and writing two scripts. I was told or I read stories and poems from the West (especially Russian and British) as well as the East (especially Hindi/Urdu and from the Sanskrit and Persian-Arabic traditions). I was brought up on a concept of civilization and modernity that was not spelled E-U-R-O-P-E or W-E-S-T, for while my family members spoke English, they also spoke other languages; while they had imbibed Western education, they often also had a sense of other sources of rational thinking and possible modernities.

It is this that often makes me frustrated even with much of acclaimed post-colonial literature, for very often this literature is only concerned about the bridge of West-and-the-Rest. In my family, over centuries, we had crossed many other bridges. It is also this that made me feel – when I grew older – that the India I had grown up in was a fragile entity: it was threatened by various kinds of fundamentalisms (Muslim, Hindu and Western); it was always in the minority. There were other kinds of threat too. There were Hindu-Muslim riots, which were more threatening to secular Muslims like me and my family members than to religious Muslims living in ghetto-like colonies. There were constant attempts to bracket our identity. Are you Muslim or Indian, we were asked – as if one could be only the one or the other. So, when the time came, it was not too hard for me to leave the geographical space of India – for the India that mattered to me was there in my mind and my memories.

Not that the questions got better. I was, after all, again part of a minority: the minority of coloured people in Denmark, the minority of immigrants, the minority of Indians, of Muslims. I was complimented on being taller than ‘most Indians’; I was praised for more liberal habits than ‘most Muslims’. And again and again I had to – I have to – read largely ignorant articles in newspapers denigrating Asians or coloured immigrants or Muslims. That is the curse of being part of a minority.

The blessing is that one belongs in different ways, one learns to see different perspectives, one speaks many languages, one is aware of many histories, one is both this and that. If you only stop to listen, you are blessed with so many stories. If you only shut out the screaming of those who will not listen, you recognise the blessing of a coherent identity: for the identity of a person from a minority does not depend on a piece of cloth or a ritual; it is part of his own lived being. It is not external; it is internal. And with it comes the blessing of having cause to write.

And so, in spite of the curses and the threats, in spite of the screaming and the swearing, this is what I wish for my son and daughter: may you always belong to a multiple minority, to the minority of minorities. For then you may learn to see – and feel.

Witness

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6th July 2005

‘This man lying here, brought me to this world. He educated me, clothed and fed me, stood by my own bed in hospitals, stood in the gap for me at school, prayed for me unceasingly, blessed me, guided me and counseled me and gave me strength to take the next step. Yet, I watch him lying here, and there is nothing I can do to stop him from dying’ These were my thoughts on a chilly morning in the last room on the left wing of Lakeside Medical Centre in Kandy five years ago. I felt helpless and useless.

Here I was seated and watching his life ebb away and I could do nothing. What use was I? Or anything else in this world, if it can’t save the life of a man such as him – my father. ‘God, are you really there?’ I asked a blank wall. It was also Terryll’s birthday, so I had plans to go back to Colombo that day and return the next day, to uselessly stand by him. Yet I wanted to be there, in my desperation to share whatever he was going through. To let him know I was there, because I believed that even in his comatose state, he heard our voices.

For only a week before, I had spent the whole day with him near his bedside and sang all the old Tamil songs we used to sing as children. And I saw a smile and a tear run down his cheek. So he heard me. And that tiny factor was comforting. What was I trying to do? Ease my conscience? For all the time I did not spend with him? For the trouble I put him through as a teenager? For the anxiety I gave him as an adult? I didn’t know. Perhaps he knew. We bonded that day like never before. Even in his state, we connected. Like we always did. My father and I.

I stood up to leave, my eyes never leaving the respirator and his one hand on his belly moving up and down which was the only sign of life. And suddenly the movement stopped. Just like that. I knew the end was here. I handed my baby (Zoe was then nearly 2 years) to the nurse and although we were asked to leave the room, I wanted to stay by his side. To make sure they did everything right.

Suddenly everything was clear to me. This was the end. It was time to let go. This man lying here will no longer be my strength. I had to be his. I cradled his head in my hands, I whispered ‘Dada I love you. We all love you. Go in peace.’ The medics turned him face up. He grimaced with his eyes closed. I put his hands together, straightened his legs and once again held his head up so the blood would flow out and not block his throat. I didn’t cry. I wanted him released.

His pulse had already stopped. The doctor asked if they could use the electric shocks on him as a routine procedure. I told them to leave him alone. His face relaxed, he looked so peaceful. I put my head down on his chest. There was nothing. My everything was suddenly nothing. I still didn’t cry. I helped the nurses take out the tubes and clean him up.

He looked so peaceful, in a long time. Yet through the 7 months since diagnosis, he never once complained. Not even when they stuck needles in his stomach to release the fluids. He would smile and thank the nurses and compliment on a good job done. I turned around and held the doctor’s hands and thanked for the efforts, I held the nurses hands one by one and thanked them too. That is what he would have done. Blessed them and thanked them profusely. The pathologist covered his face with his arm and sobbed against the wall. Dada had coaxed him several years ago to pursue his studies and make a man of himself. There were nurses in the room he had recommended for jobs.

I filled out the death certificate calmly. Everything was so clear and programmed. Name of deceased: Walter Jonathan Sinniah. Time of death: 1.45pm. Cause of death: General System Failure due to multifocal carcinoma of the liver. Parent’s name: Peter Murugesu Sinniah and Mary Sinniah. Place of Birth: Deniyaya. Place of burial: General Cemetery, Mahiyawa. Witness of death: Jeevani Fernando. Relationship to deceased: Daughter. I couldn’t write anymore. I wanted to remain a witness to his life rather than his death. I had witnessed 35 years of it that day. And even now, it is his extraordinary life that challenges me on a daily basis. Not his death.

Jeevani Fernando

Window to the soul

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A portrait they say, is not so much a likeness of the person being photographed, but a depiction of one’s character. More grand definitions talk of them being a ‘window to the soul’. I looked at my portrait of this ‘enemy of the country’ as a labour minister had declared, and wondered whether I had indeed found a window to her soul. She had just been arrested in Gazipur, and I had no further information.

Moshrefa Mishu secretary general of Ganatantrik Biplabi Party. © Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

With numerous cases strategically lodged all over the country on trumped up charges, her arrest was always on the cards. In today’s countrywide strike for workers’ pay, facing violent repression, their resistance was a defiant stand for the rights of the oppressed. She and the workers she represented, all knew the risks. She had to lead from the front, come what may.

One is generally kind to bread winners. They are the ones who sit at the head of the table, get the choice piece of meat, make after dinner speeches. Their comfort and their happiness is of prime importance to those who survive on that bread. Bangladesh earns 12 billion dollars from garment exports and gets three quarters of its export earnings from this single sector. One would imagine that the bread winners of Bangladesh, the two million garment workers, mostly women who had migrated from villages in search of work, would be offered a bit more than the Taka 1650 (less than USD 24) per month minimum wage.

But then these enemies of the country, didn’t stop at demanding more than a dollar a day for their work. They wanted weekends off, to be paid overtime, to be paid on time and enjoy statutory holidays. They even objected to their systematized sexual harassment.

So what if the garment sector was the most profitable, and the garment workers amongst the most poorly paid. Some workers getting paid as little as $ 12 a month maybe a bit on the low side, and maternity leave should really be given, but have some sympathy for the owners. Should the BGMEA bigwig owner who bought his wife the expensive Mercedes have to sell his car? It’s not only workers who find Bangladesh a difficult country to live in. The Merc, as I’ve been told, had been expensive to start with. With 850% tax being applied on luxury goods, the poor man had to pay nearly a million dollars for his wife’s set of wheels. OK, so it could have paid for a few $24/month salaries, but then his wife had other costs. They did have standards to maintain.

And these strikes were so annoying. Even in May, the death of the 25 year old worker Rana, led to unrest. The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) had to give up its normal task of extrajudicial killings to deal with workers demanding decent wages.

I just heard that the campaign worked. Mishu’s been released. I should get on with my portraits. Perhaps I should photograph the garment owners to complement the picture of Mishu. Given my earlier failure with portraits, I would need to find the right metaphors for the window to their soul. A chunk of granite, glued to cold steel, wrapped in dollars could perhaps do the trick.

Rachel’s war

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This weekend 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the Israeli army destroying homes in the Gaza Strip. In a remarkable series of emails to her family, she explained why she was risking her life

The Guardian, Tuesday 18 March 2003

Article history
February 7 2003
Hi friends and family, and others,

I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what’s going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States. Something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don’t know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I’m not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me – Ali – or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me, “Kaif Sharon?” “Kaif Bush?” and they laugh when I say, “Bush Majnoon”, “Sharon Majnoon” back in my limited arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn’t quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: “Bush mish Majnoon” … Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say, “Bush is a tool”, but I don’t think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago.

Nevertheless, no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can’t imagine it unless you see it – and even then you are always well aware that your experience of it is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and the fact, of course, that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting halfway between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I’m done. As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah: a city of about 140,000 people, approximately 60% of whom are refugees – many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Today, as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, “Go! Go!” because a tank was coming. And then waving and “What’s your name?”. Something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids. Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see what’s going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously – occasionally shouting and also occasionally waving – many forced to be here, many just agressive – shooting into the houses as we wander away.

I’ve been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great deal of concern here about the “reoccupation of Gaza”. Gaza is reoccupied every day to various extents but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren’t already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope you will start.

My love to everyone. My love to my mom. My love to smooch. My love to fg and barnhair and sesamees and Lincoln School. My love to Olympia.

Rachel

February 20 2003
Mama,

Now the Israeli army has actually dug up the road to Gaza, and both of the major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at university can’t. People can’t get to their jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can’t get home; and internationals, who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank, won’t make it. We could probably make it through if we made serious use of our international white person privilege, but that would also mean some risk of arrest and deportation, even though none of us has done anything illegal.

The Gaza Strip is divided in thirds now. There is some talk about the “reoccupation of Gaza”, but I seriously doubt this will happen, because I think it would be a geopolitically stupid move for Israel right now. I think the more likely thing is an increase in smaller below-the-international-outcry-radar incursions and possibly the oft-hinted “population transfer”.

I am staying put in Rafah for now, no plans to head north. I still feel like I’m relatively safe and think that my most likely risk in case of a larger-scale incursion is arrest. A move to reoccupy Gaza would generate a much larger outcry than Sharon’s assassination-during-peace-negotiations/land grab strategy, which is working very well now to create settlements all over, slowly but surely eliminating any meaningful possibility for Palestinian self-determination. Know that I have a lot of very nice Palestinians looking after me. I have a small flu bug, and got some very nice lemony drinks to cure me. Also, the woman who keeps the key for the well where we still sleep keeps asking me about you. She doesn’t speak a bit of English, but she asks about my mom pretty frequently – wants to make sure I’m calling you.

Love to you and Dad and Sarah and Chris and everybody.

Rachel

February 27 2003
(To her mother)

Love you. Really miss you. I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house and you and me inside. Sometimes the adrenaline acts as an anesthetic for weeks and then in the evening or at night it just hits me again – a little bit of the reality of the situation. I am really scared for the people here. Yesterday, I watched a father lead his two tiny children, holding his hands, out into the sight of tanks and a sniper tower and bulldozers and Jeeps because he thought his house was going to be exploded. Jenny and I stayed in the house with several women and two small babies. It was our mistake in translation that caused him to think it was his house that was being exploded. In fact, the Israeli army was in the process of detonating an explosive in the ground nearby – one that appears to have been planted by Palestinian resistance.

This is in the area where Sunday about 150 men were rounded up and contained outside the settlement with gunfire over their heads and around them, while tanks and bulldozers destroyed 25 greenhouses – the livelihoods for 300 people. The explosive was right in front of the greenhouses – right in the point of entry for tanks that might come back again. I was terrified to think that this man felt it was less of a risk to walk out in view of the tanks with his kids than to stay in his house. I was really scared that they were all going to be shot and I tried to stand between them and the tank. This happens every day, but just this father walking out with his two little kids just looking very sad, just happened to get my attention more at this particular moment, probably because I felt it was our translation problems that made him leave.

I thought a lot about what you said on the phone about Palestinian violence not helping the situation. Sixty thousand workers from Rafah worked in Israel two years ago. Now only 600 can go to Israel for jobs. Of these 600, many have moved, because the three checkpoints between here and Ashkelon (the closest city in Israel) make what used to be a 40-minute drive, now a 12-hour or impassible journey. In addition, what Rafah identified in 1999 as sources of economic growth are all completely destroyed – the Gaza international airport (runways demolished, totally closed); the border for trade with Egypt (now with a giant Israeli sniper tower in the middle of the crossing); access to the ocean (completely cut off in the last two years by a checkpoint and the Gush Katif settlement). The count of homes destroyed in Rafah since the beginning of this intifada is up around 600, by and large people with no connection to the resistance but who happen to live along the border. I think it is maybe official now that Rafah is the poorest place in the world. There used to be a middle class here – recently. We also get reports that in the past, Gazan flower shipments to Europe were delayed for two weeks at the Erez crossing for security inspections. You can imagine the value of two-week-old cut flowers in the European market, so that market dried up. And then the bulldozers come and take out people’s vegetable farms and gardens. What is left for people? Tell me if you can think of anything. I can’t.

If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled, lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew, because of previous experience, that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment and destroy all the greenhouses that we had been cultivating for however long, and did this while some of us were beaten and held captive with 149 other people for several hours – do you think we might try to use somewhat violent means to protect whatever fragments remained? I think about this especially when I see orchards and greenhouses and fruit trees destroyed – just years of care and cultivation. I think about you and how long it takes to make things grow and what a labour of love it is. I really think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could. I think Uncle Craig would. I think probably Grandma would. I think I would.

You asked me about non-violent resistance.

When that explosive detonated yesterday it broke all the windows in the family’s house. I was in the process of being served tea and playing with the two small babies. I’m having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom. I know that from the United States, it all sounds like hyperbole. Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the wilful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me. I really can’t believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry about it. It really hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be. I felt after talking to you that maybe you didn’t completely believe me. I think it’s actually good if you don’t, because I do believe pretty much above all else in the importance of independent critical thinking. And I also realise that with you I’m much less careful than usual about trying to source every assertion that I make. A lot of the reason for that is I know that you actually do go and do your own research. But it makes me worry about the job I’m doing. All of the situation that I tried to enumerate above – and a lot of other things – constitutes a somewhat gradual – often hidden, but nevertheless massive – removal and destruction of the ability of a particular group of people to survive. This is what I am seeing here. The assassinations, rocket attacks and shooting of children are atrocities – but in focusing on them I’m terrified of missing their context. The vast majority of people here – even if they had the economic means to escape, even if they actually wanted to give up resisting on their land and just leave (which appears to be maybe the less nefarious of Sharon’s possible goals), can’t leave. Because they can’t even get into Israel to apply for visas, and because their destination countries won’t let them in (both our country and Arab countries). So I think when all means of survival is cut off in a pen (Gaza) which people can’t get out of, I think that qualifies as genocide. Even if they could get out, I think it would still qualify as genocide. Maybe you could look up the definition of genocide according to international law. I don’t remember it right now. I’m going to get better at illustrating this, hopefully. I don’t like to use those charged words. I think you know this about me. I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.

Anyway, I’m rambling. Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capital Lake and said: “This is the wide world and I’m coming to it.” I did not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in complete unawareness of my participation in genocide. More big explosions somewhere in the distance outside.

When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming here is one of the better things I’ve ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.

I love you and Dad. Sorry for the diatribe. OK, some strange men next to me just gave me some peas, so I need to eat and thank them.

Rachel

February 28 2003
(To her mother)

Thanks, Mom, for your response to my email. It really helps me to get word from you, and from other people who care about me.

After I wrote to you I went incommunicado from the affinity group for about 10 hours which I spent with a family on the front line in Hi Salam – who fixed me dinner – and have cable TV. The two front rooms of their house are unusable because gunshots have been fired through the walls, so the whole family – three kids and two parents – sleep in the parent’s bedroom. I sleep on the floor next to the youngest daughter, Iman, and we all shared blankets. I helped the son with his English homework a little, and we all watched Pet Semetery, which is a horrifying movie. I think they all thought it was pretty funny how much trouble I had watching it. Friday is the holiday, and when I woke up they were watching Gummy Bears dubbed into Arabic. So I ate breakfast with them and sat there for a while and just enjoyed being in this big puddle of blankets with this family watching what for me seemed like Saturday morning cartoons. Then I walked some way to B’razil, which is where Nidal and Mansur and Grandmother and Rafat and all the rest of the big family that has really wholeheartedly adopted me live. (The other day, by the way, Grandmother gave me a pantomimed lecture in Arabic that involved a lot of blowing and pointing to her black shawl. I got Nidal to tell her that my mother would appreciate knowing that someone here was giving me a lecture about smoking turning my lungs black.) I met their sister-in-law, who is visiting from Nusserat camp, and played with her small baby.

Nidal’s English gets better every day. He’s the one who calls me, “My sister”. He started teaching Grandmother how to say, “Hello. How are you?” In English. You can always hear the tanks and bulldozers passing by, but all of these people are genuinely cheerful with each other, and with me. When I am with Palestinian friends I tend to be somewhat less horrified than when I am trying to act in a role of human rights observer, documenter, or direct-action resister. They are a good example of how to be in it for the long haul. I know that the situation gets to them – and may ultimately get them – on all kinds of levels, but I am nevertheless amazed at their strength in being able to defend such a large degree of their humanity – laughter, generosity, family-time – against the incredible horror occurring in their lives and against the constant presence of death. I felt much better after this morning. I spent a lot of time writing about the disappointment of discovering, somewhat first-hand, the degree of evil of which we are still capable. I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances – which I also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.

Israeli troops kill flotilla activists

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At least 16 dead as Israeli troops storm Gaza aid flotilla

Israeli commandoes have stormed a flotilla of ships carrying activists and aid supplies to the blockaded Palestinian enclave of Gaza, killing as many as as 16 of those on board.

By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent and Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem
Published: 7:21AM BST 31 May 2010

Fighting broke out between the activists and the masked Israeli troops, who rappelled on to deck from helicopters before dawn.

A spokesman for the flotilla, Greta Berlin, said she had been told that ten people had been killed and dozens wounded, accusing Israeli troops of indiscriminately shooting at “unarmed civilians”. But an Israeli radio station said that between 14 and 16 were dead in a continuing operation.

The Israeli army said its troops were assaulted with axes and knives.

The television footage did not show firing but shots could be heard in the background. One man was shown lying unconscious on the deck, while another man was helped away.

A woman wearing hijab, the Muslim headscarf, was seen carrying a stretcher covered in blood.

The al-Jazeera broadcast stopped with a voice shouting in Hebrew: “Everyone shut up”.

Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza after the strip was taken over by the militant group Hamas in 2007. It has allowed some food and medical supplies through, but has prevented large-scale rebuilding following the bombardment and invasion of 2008-9.

The flotilla is the latest in a series of attempts by activists to break through the blockade. The boats were carrying food and building supplies.

Activists said at least two of the other boats, one Greek and one Turkish, had been boarded from Israeli naval vessels. Activists said two of the other boats in the flotilla were American-flagged.

The confrontation took place in international waters 80 miles off the Gaza coast.

It was attacked by the head of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh.

“We call on the Secretary-General of the U.N., Ban Ki-moon, to shoulder his responsibilities to protect the safety of the solidarity groups who were on board these ships and to secure their way to Gaza,” he said.

Turkish television meanwhile showed hundreds of protesters trying to storm the Israeli consulate in Istanbul. The incident will be particularly damaging for Israel’s relations with what had been seen as its closest ally in the Muslim world.

A Class Above

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Jeevani Fernando

We sat nervously huddled on the wooden bench of the Haputale Railway Station at 8pm last night, clutching our precious collections from the trip – kithul jaggery from Badulla and jars of orange marmalade, guava jelly and Nelli syrup from Adhisham for the two grandmothers.  Partly shivering in the cold, partly wondering how we were ever going to make the 10-12 hour journey back home by getting in to a train from a midway station with no previous booking.  We had taken a break on the way back to Colombo to visit the beautiful monastry Adhisham and didn’t realise the train will be full by the time it comes to Haputale.

“I love all kinds of people mummy, but I just can’t travel 3rd class on the train” said Mishka. We had just that morning taken 3rd class tickets from Badulla to Haputale and it was quite an experience when, after having paid for 4 seats, we were down to one, when Samaritan love overtook us and we gave seats to mothers with babies and grandmothers, also with babies in the hope of getting a sympathetic seat in an already overcrowded train. Mishka was miffed that people could assume we would feel sorry. Little realising we were going to need that same sympathy soon.

I said let’s pray. Zoe said let’s throw some people out. Kyle said ‘don’t worry mummy, something will work out’. 15 more minutes to go for the train to arrive. I looked at my 3 fellows and thought I must do something. They had been such good troopers, climbing up and down mountains, trekking nearly 2kms in Indian sandals (bad preparation by the mother) to see and touch the Dunhinda falls, that majestically fell 190ft down creating a mystical cloud of spray and awe. They had eaten noodles for breakfast and fried rice with no meat as it was the Buddhist festival where no meat was cooked.  They had slept in a mud cabin in the woods and no neighbouring lights, with absolutely no fear at all. They had been thrilled at every little thing, the train rides through tunnels and around the mountains, the fiery short-eats and even the ghastly toilet in the train where they could see the tracks while doing their ‘little jobs’.

So I plucked my courage and told my three, ‘let mummy go talk to the station master’. The man at the counter had refused to even issue 3rd class tickets to us as he wasn’t sure if there would be room even to stand ‘all other seats FULL madam’ he had said a while ago.  So I by-passed him and walked into the station master’s office.  I made polite introductions in English and he asked what I was doing in Haputale and what had I seen, etc, etc. Then he asked me the wrong question ‘Are you Tamil or Sinhala?’ ‘Oh no!’ says Mishka, because she knows the tirade her mother goes into when that question is asked.  So I let him have it – about how this country got into this state because of questions like that. And I thought, there goes any chances of getting seats.  Yet, he didn’t seem peeved. He was in fact making very good conversation.  It ended with his promise ‘I will somehow get you seats but first get yourself on the train with 3rd class tickets’. I saw Mishka’s face fall.

The train came. It was a mad rush. We managed to scramble into 3rd class. It was packed. It smelled of alcohol and it had no room even on the floor.  I was dismayed but was determined to take it. I had just managed to put the bags up on the rack when the station master, uniform, cap and all, came running to our compartment and hurried us to take our bags and get off the train. The children groaned. We got off.  He signaled to a man in uniform where the reserved seats were and held up 4 fingers.  We were like refugees now running to the front of the train with bags and jackets and Ivndian slippers flapping under our feet. Passengers poked their heads out to see what was going on with the station master who was also running along with us. The engine driver was getting impatient.  A quick exchange between the two men and we were bundled into 2nd class reserved compartments.  Reclining chairs and all. All I could do was jump back down and shake hands with the station master and thank him profusely.  And as the train pulled away, he shouted ‘I don’t know why I did this but certainly not because you are a Tamil!’

I fell back on my seat laughing. Apparently some others had to be re-arranged to another compartment to fit us in there.  The children were giving hi-five’s to each other. Mishka had found a new hero – a tall, smart station master in Haputale. She was all starry-eyed. I was speechless.  The kindness people show others, in any dimension, makes such a difference to an individual, a family.  Never should one shy from going that extra mile, lending a hand or seeing to the comfort of another, to a strange mother with three children who believed in miracles.  The children will never forget this experience and also the belief that people in their country are helpful, kind and generous no matter what ethnicity they belong to.

And as the knight in shining armour blew the whistle, and Zoe cuddled up to me on the seat, happy she didn’t have to throw anyone out the window, I looked forward to the future of my children.

Anti-semitism, and the 9/11, Israel-Mossad Connection Part II

By Rahnuma Ahmed

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,”
an unnamed Bush official told reporter Ron Suskind,
quoted by Eric Alterman, Bush’s War on the Press, The Nation (2005)

Even when the US hadn’t been the only empire around, powerful members of the American administration had collectively attempted to create their “own reality.” One such plan, Operation Northwoods, consisted of staging terror attacks. To justify the launching of a war against Cuba. To (of course) defend America.

The secret plan was drafted by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962, signed by its Chairman, and sent to Robert McNamara, secretary of defense. Declassified in 1997 by a federal agency overseeing records relating to president John F Kennedy’s assassination, the plan proposed real or simulated actions against various US military and civilian targets: landing `friendly’ Cubans to attack US base (Guantanamo). Sinking a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida. Building a Soviet MIG aircraft to be flown by an American pilot, which would attack and destroy a US military drone aircraft. Launching a wave of violent terrorism (bombings, hijackings) in Washington D.C. In Miami. Elsewhere, too. The desired result? To convince Americans and the larger western public that the Cuban government was not only “rash and irresponsible” but a threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere. That America had no option but to `retaliate.’

Operation Northwoods was not implemented because, as the story goes, Kennedy had rejected it. But other false flag operations designed to create America’s own reality—to deceive the public, to manufacture support—have been successfully conducted. Of course, America is not the only culprit, as history attests. The Japanese blew up a section of the railway to annex Manchuria in 1931; kidnapped one of their own soldiers to invade China proper, 1937. The Soviets shelled their own village near the Finnish border, 1939. The Israelis secretly sponsored bombings of US/British interests in Cairo to sour relations between Egypt and the West, 1954.

Central to America’s “our own reality” story are two myths: it is America’s enemies who are `sneaky.’ The government goes to war only to `save the lives’ of US soldiers. Historical research proves otherwise: president Roosevelt let the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor (1941). Nearly three thousand American service men including civilians were killed which by fuelling public outrage at Japan’s so-called sneak attack, enabled FDR to overcome massive opposition to war.

According to America’s ideologues, if Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been bombed—still described in official history as the “least abhorrent choice”—the lives of 500,000 American soldiers would have been at risk. But in reality, as people connected to history know, Japan was ready to surrender.

Dissenting opinion did exist, and in powerful circles, too: Japan was already defeated, dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary (Dwight Eisenhower). The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare are frightening (Admiral Leahy, chief of staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman). The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul. (Herbert Hoover, 31st US president). There was no military justification. I was not consulted (General Douglas MacArthur).

More than 103,000 people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were unrecorded deaths. There were slower deaths, caused by radiation.

But surely, just because previous US administrations have committed false flag operations, it doesn’t mean that 9/11 too, is an inside job? Granted. True. Except that when one looks at the mass of evidence, including oral testimonies, diligently gathered by physicists, pilots, architects, structural engineers and a host of other professionals (firefighters, whistle-blowers) over these last couple of years, also by grassroots people, under the rubric of what has come to be known as the 9/11 truth movement, even the blind are bound to be convinced.

What persuaded me most was the strange response of the Bush administration. Why was the government reluctant, why should family members of 9/11 victims have to insist that a commission be established to investigate the failures that made 9/11 possible? Why did Bush want someone as disreputable as Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state (who should be tried for war crimes in Bangladesh and Cambodia for starters), to head the Commission? Why should Bush and vice-president Cheney agree to testify before the Commission on the condition that they should not have to take the oath, that their testimony should not be electronically recorded nor transcribed, nor made public? Why did the Commission co-chairmen allege later that the CIA had not cooperated with the Commission? Why did NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) and FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) officials provide inaccurate information in their testimony to the Commission, and in media appearances? Why should the Commission have to use subpoenas and force NORAD and FAA to release evidence? Why did the Commission chairmen say that the Commission was “set up” to fail? Why did the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) not hold enquiries into any of the 4 plane crashes, which is required by law?

Another thing that I find odd, like many others, were the words blurted out by Bob Kerrey, a 9/11 Commission member. Several months ago he was pressed by a member of We Are Change who said, according to the constitution, a cover-up of an act of war is treasonous, the Pentagon continually changed its story, the country needs to get to the bottom of 9/11 etc., etc.,

Bob Kerrey: It’s a.. the problem is that it’s a 30 year old conspiracy.
Jeremy Rothe-Kushel: No, I’m talking about 9/11.
Bob Kerrey: That’s what I’m talking about too. Well anyway, I gotta go.

Listening to Kerrey reminded me of what the Bush official, who I quote at the head of the column, had gone on to tell Suskind, “And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

General Leonid Ivashov, former joint chief of staff of the Russian Armed Forces did just that. Having found the free-fall collapse of the towers disturbing, he instructed his staff to search for answers. Three days later he came to the conclusion that the 9/11 attack was the result of “a clash of interests among US leaders.”

While more recently, a Vietnam war veteran, former director of studies of the US Army War College, Dr Alan Sabrosky, has come out with the bold statement that 9/11 was not only `an inside job,’ but more specifically, a CIA-Mossad job. Nine-eleven would have been impossible to stage without the full resources of the CIA and the Mossad. Its Building 7, he says. It was not hit by a plane but still went down. “If one of the buildings was wired for demolition, all of them were wired for demolition.”

And it was my column on Sabrosky that yielded me accusations of being anti-Semitic. I wonder whether part of the problem lies in the strong western belief, an indissoluble one, that `the government loves them.’ Despite the history of false flag operations.

May be the Bush official, utterly contemptuous and disdainful as he was, knew what he was talking about. We create our own reality. And our people fall for it.

First published in New Age

9/11, Mossad, and a super 9-11 in the offing

By Rahnuma Ahmed

Anti-Semite, Jew hater, Holocaust denier are the epithets one is bound to gather if one voices criticism of Israel. Of Zionism.

Historian Tony Judt, of Jewish background himself, had written on Israel’s 58th birthday, Israel is like an adolescent. It is convinced that it can do as it wishes. That it is immortal. That no one understands it. Everyone is against it. It is unique (`The country that wouldn’t grow up,’ Haaretz, May 2, 2006).

And after all, as God’s “chosen people” how can they be blamed? Self-deluded into thinking that they are distinct—especially from their Arab neighbours who are barbaric, fanatics, dirty, smelly—imagine their shock when a research aimed at studying genetic variations in immune system genes among Middle Eastern people discovered otherwise, that Jewish people are genetically not distinct from their neighbors. What was to happen now to the Jewish claim that they are special? That Judaism can only be inherited? (`Mideast Jews, Palestinians Virtually Genetically Identical,’ The Observer, November 25, 2001).

And how did the scientific community react? Did members scratch their heads and say, Oh good, now the Israelis will realise that it was all a big mistake. They’ve been slaughtering and grabbing land from people who’re actually their brothers… All this horror can stop. We can have peace. Finally!

No. The paper was pulled from Human Immunology, the American journal in which it’d just been published. It was removed from the journal’s website. Academics who had already received journal copies were urged to rip out the offending pages. Libraries and universities throughout the world were asked to either ignore it or “preferably to physically remove the pages.” The author, Spanish geneticist professor Antonio Arnaiz-Villena was sacked from the journal’s editorial board.

If Arnaiz-Villena had found evidence that instead of being “ordinary,” Jewish people were genetically “very special,” wrote a fellow scientist, “you can be sure no one would have objected.”

Israel, as we can all see, has refused to grow up. If it had, it would have, at the very least, done what Judt had advised 4 years earlier: dismantle the major settlements. Open unconditional negotiation with Palestinians. Offer Hamas leaders something serious in return for recognition of Israel and a cease-fire.

It would have realised that it cannot count indefinitely upon the unquestioning support of the United States. That the worldwide scrutiny of its everyday behaviour towards the Palestinians, only a TV button or a mouse click away—curfews, checkpoints, bulldozers, home destructions, land grabbings and settlements, slaughter in Gaza dubbed the world’s largest open-air prison, apartheid wall, targeted assassinations, theft of western passports—would eventually lead to a situation where, as Judt puts it, “the fact that the great-grandmother of an Israeli soldier died in Treblinka,” or Auschwitz, is no excuse for his own abusive treatment of a Palestinian woman waiting to cross a checkpoint. That it would lead to a situation where Israel would no longer be able to cash in on the Holocaust.

It will be most unfortunate. Zionism will provide the excuse for the rise of genuine anti-Semitism, for exacting the price—from both Zionist, and non-Zionist Jews—for not having learnt lessons from history.

Judt had issued a warning: “something is changing in the United States.” Ten years ago, he said, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s The Israel Lobby would possibly not have been published. Not even from London. A sea-change is taking place. It is leading prominent thinkers, including erstwhile neo-conservative interventionists like Francis Fukuyama to hard-nosed realists like Mearsheimer and Walt (“prominent senior academics of impeccable conservative credentials”) to voice the concern that Israel is “a liability.” If America is to regain her “foreign image and influence” the umbilical cord which ties US foreign policy to the needs and interests of Israel must be severed.

Mossad logo: `By way of deception, thou shalt do war'

US military circles apparently are not far removed from these changing concerns. As Dr Alan Sabrosky, former director of studies of the American War College said in a recent interview, his article, in which he alleges that 9/11 was a Mossad-CIA operation, is being read by people in the Headquarters Marine Corps, the Army War College. At first it is met with disbelief. But once people get convinced, they get angry. Very angry, he said. That’s because the military, unlike the Congress, the White House, and the media, has not been bought (see last week’s column, The `Mad Dog’ in the Middle East).

It is a conviction that seems to be shared by Gordon Duff, a Marine Vietnam veteran, and a widely published expert on military and defense issues. Israel’s powerful group around Bush —the PNAC-ers, the neo-cons—is not present in the current administration, but the idea, as Duff explains, had been that regardless of who was voted to power, whether it was John McCain or Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel would be there, “to pull his strings”  (Emanuel is the White House chief of staff at present). And they still have the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, the State department, and “AIPAC’s ability to put 75% of the members of congress around anything from a resolution that the moon is made of green cheese to `National Have Sex With Your Child Day.’ Equally importantly, the media giants controlled by Israeli assets and Christian Zionist allies are in position in Germany, the UK and the US, and along with Canada, Australia and New Zealand, these assets are quick in “suppressing news, running any story and manipulating the masses.”

Things started to go wrong for Israel, writes Duff, when top military leaders increasingly became suspicious of 9/11 (April 24, 2010). Of the possibility that Israel was involved in 9/11. It is a suspicion which has festered like an open wound. General Petraeus, the senior operational commander, the person really in charge of the US military, has told Admiral Mullen that Israel is not subjected to any foreign threat. That it has become “a massive liability.” Obama, writes Duff, was confronted with a choice. He was told that neither the military nor the intelligence services are prepared to participate in attacks on Iran “under any imaginable circumstances.” That, if the US wanted to attack Iran, “he and Emanuel Rahm would have to invade Iran personally” (and I cannot help think who’d blame them with 18 attempted suicides per day among American war vets?).

As Israel lined up its collaborators in the US, Obama went after “Israel’s biggest prize in America, Goldman Sachs,” its prime asset for controlling America. For looting America. According to Duff, the alliance between the US and Israel has totally broken down. The most liberal and the most conservative members of congress have signed up in support of Goldman Sachs, and lined up against the President and Pentagon, who are are aligned together. In support of his argument, he asks: why [else would] extreme liberals and conservatives all attacking President Obama and, less visibly, our military leaders, all at the same time? Who is orchestrating this oddest turn of political events in recent history?

And in this oddest of situation backroom chatter has increased: a terror attack is imminent. Iran will be blamed for it. The primary suspect is Israel since “only a new 9/11 can bail Israel out,” writes Duff. According to rumors, the weapons are in place in Europe and the US. Arabs, Iranians, Pakistanis, some kind of Islamic terrorist group, have already been recruited. Or invented. News stories have already been drafted (I’d like to remind skeptics of 9/11, when BBC news correspondent Jane Standley had reported the collapse of Building 7, a good 23 minutes before the actual collapse time). Film crews are on alert. Witnesses will be briefed, they will say, Yes, it was an Arab dirty bomb. We saw them. Middle Eastern-looking. They must have bought the bomb from North Korea. After the story has hit the news, these stunned survivors will suddenly disappear. We all know where.

A super 9-11. But will this one, now that suspicions have been raised, now that Israel’s cover has been blown, will it generate `super’ sympathy for Middle East’s `mad dog’?

May be not. Once bitten, twice shy.

Published in New Age