US Betrays Syrian People

According to an article from the UK based The Guardian. It would seem that the US has been poking its head where it does not belong again, back dealing with the Syrian regime at the expense of the Syrian people. The US, the article claims, is promoting a roadmap for Syrian reforms, which is a good idea in itself, but not when it involves keeping Bashar al-Assad in power. The proposal does not even mention any Syrian official by name. How can the US propose such an unacceptable notion after the atrocities perpetrated by the Syrian Bathist regime of Bashar al-Assad and his butcher of a brother, Maher al-Assad? How can the US make such a preposterous proposition when the blood of more than 1,300 civilians is still freshly spilt on the streets of Syria? How can the US even suggest the idea of keeping Assad in power when he and his regime stand accused of torturing the Syrian people for voicing their grievances? How can such a proposal even leave the table when children are being tortured, mutilated, castrated, and cold bloodedly murdered like the case of Hamza al Khateeb, Thamer al-Sahri, and countless of others. How can the US even propose such an appalling proposal when the fate of Tal al-Mallouhi is yet unknown and feared dead at the hands of her Syrian jailers, put away in prison for nothing more than voicing her opinion on a her blog. 

The Syrian people will not accept this. It may be forced upon them but eventually it will falter. Not to mention that Bashar al-Assad is not going to just sit there and be a figure head. He will become the hand that rocks the cradle, publicly powerless but a back stage fiend. 

I hope the US will reconsider their "proposal" for the sake of humanity and the rights of the Syrian people. For just like Mubarak, ben Ali, Saleh, and Kaddafi, deserve to be tired for crimes against humanity so should Bashar, his brothers, and their minions. 

It would seem that the US has not learned from their past mistakes of supporting seditious tyrants like Sadam Husain, the Taliban, Bin laden, and scores of other dictators, all in the name of American interests... whatever happened to the interests of the people and their right to live as do all Americans, free, peaceful and democratic. Who ever came up with this proposal should wake up and smell the coffee... the world has changed and these old support the tyrant methods never worked and will work less so now with the Arab Spring almost at full swing. 

Palestinians are beginning to learn an important lesson; non-violent protests will get them where they need to be

The Palestinians have begun to learn a very important lesson. One that Gandhi preached and practiced following in the footsteps of one Jesus of Nazareth. While the Palestinians have every right to be angry and an unquestionable right to fight for their right to exists without the oppression of a merciless occupation force, the methods Palestinian freedom fighters have employed have proven to be fruitless over the last few decades. Resorting to violence and terrorism never got anyone anything, nor does a nation stand firmly when its foundations are socked with blood. Violent methods also delegitimize an otherwise just cause, especially when the casualties are innocent civilians, women, children, elderly and peace loving individuals, not just because its bad for public relations, but because the murder of innocents is out right wrong (haram), and unacceptable.

The way to peace is through peaceful means. The majority of Palestinians are Muslims, but Islam is a religion that reveres Jesus, Isa as he is known in the Arabic language, thus the teaching of Jesus are integral to Islam. One of the most important teachings of Jesus is the way of peace and love. Both powerful ideas, more powerful than any weapon that exists, and never destructive or a merciless destroyer of life. Peace is the right path that the Palestinians should embrace in order to achieve statehood and force an appropriate peace deal with the Israeli government that is bent has so far succeeded by painting the Palestinians as a violent and terroristic people and used readily available proof of indiscriminate suicide bombings to de-legitimize the Palestinian claim for a land that the Israeli government has no intention to give up. 

Deny the Israeli propaganda machine these facts which they use as ammunition to de-legitimize the Palestinians with, by rising up to the challenge of a peaceful revolution. The best way to deal with a bully is not to hit him back but to confront him as peacefully as possible with his wrong doing.

Now, if only Hamas can learn this lesson too and realize that their militant ways have achieved nothing more than the death, destruction, and devastation of the Palestinians people.

The road to peace can only be achieved through peace. A lesson that the Israeli decision makers should take measure of and learn for themselves also.

Relativity from a dyslexic dragon's perspective.

Relativity from a dyslexic dragon's perspective.

Or at least from this specific dyslexic’s perspective. While most dyslexics have far too much in common, each dyslexic is unique. Dyslexics have a gift that allows them to understand things in multiple perspectives. It is a little bit like multidimensional thinking only we dyslexics see and understand things from a relative multi perspective.

For instance. The word love has multiple meanings and more often than not when we use that word it can mean multiple all those multiple meanings. Loving a friend can mean many things like physical love, maternal love, puppy love, brotherly love, sisterly love, romantic love, painful love, ecstatic love, and so many more. When we use the word love we mean it in all its forms even when it means just one or is directed at a person with one kind of love.

The reason every dyslexic is unique is because each one of us understands how things like’s events, concepts, ideas, culture, customs, mannerism, are relative. The truth is relative to that of the observer. Much like time is relative, the concept we have of time is that it flows at a constant. But that is only true from our perspective, a species that has built an empire dependent on the constancy of this temporal measurement we take for granted as absolute because that is how we experience time on a human scale. So time is relative to how we experience it. Time is multi dimensional; it can be warped with space. What we call time can run faster or slower depending on how we experience it.

Time can be slowed down by the intensity of a black hole’s gravitational pull; anything that has mass generates the kind of pull that distorts time-space.

We think of time as constant but the reality is that time is relative to how we experience it. Time is relative just like love........ and Einstein was dyslexic.

Hariri speaks on STL indictment results

What a load of crock. 

Let me be clear on one thing before I start ranting; I do not doubt the findings of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) or that Hezbollah members were involved in the assassination of Rafic Hariri.

But to hear the slain ex-prime minister’s son, Saad Hariri, who also is an ex-prime minister, spewing hypocrisies out of his orifice I feel compelled to say a few words.

"Today, I find myself closer than any time before to my family and the people of my country. I am with them in all cities, towns and homes. I am with the families and crowds who rushed to the Freedom Square and the grave of Martyr Premier, filling the squares all over Lebanon, defying desperation, intimidation and threats, and vowing not to surrender to the will of the killers and criminals. Today, I find myself closer than any time before to my family and the people of my country. I am with them in all cities, towns and homes. I am with the families and crowds who rushed to the Freedom Square and the grave of Martyr Premier, filling the squares all over Lebanon, defying desperation, intimidation and threats, and vowing not to surrender to the will of the killers and criminals." Saad Hariri 

This man, who is a billionaire and who hides behind fortified mansions, who travels in armored convoys, who fled Lebanon to France after he ceased to be prime minister, has the audacity to claim that he finds himself "closer" to the people. What a load of crock. 

Not only that, he also, as a Lebanese leader, applauds the flock of sheep that filled "squares all over Lebanon" as if that was a good thing. I call them sheep because they follow our corrupt leaders so blindly that they will not listen to reason or facts. Hariri Jr. applauds the fact that he has followers who are willing to spark sectarian strife just because their leader, a Sunni, is at odds, politically, with the leader of the Shiaas. This man is guilty of propagating sectarian strife just as much as Samir Gaagaa, leader of an extermist branch of christins known as the Lebanese Forces - those there is nothing Lebanese about it and it certainly is no force-, and just as much as Hassan Nasralah, secretary general of Hezbollah -though I am certain if god was around would sue them for trademark infringement-

"Defying desperation, intimidation and threats" Really? He says it as if Hezbollah is the only political entity that intimidates and threats, not that they do not, but let Hariri not throw stones in a house of glass for he, and the rest of his alleys of the March 14 farce, are equally guilty of intimidation and threats. Hezbollah may be the only overtly armed group in Lebanon, which should without a doubt be disarmed, but the rest of Lebanon's political parties are also armed though not openly. Also, the lackeys of the March 14 group, much like the March 8 group, engage in subterfuge, coercion, and mafia like threats against anyone who defies their will. How many great Lebanese men,, women, and companies have suffered at the whims of the likes of Hariri, Gmeyel, Gaagaa, Mur, Aoun, Jumblat, Biri, Narsalah et all? How many families have been torn apart because the leaders willed it so? How many businesses went under because these so called leaders where more interested in illuminating the competition by abusing their strong position of power? How many good people's reputations where smeared because the leaders needed a scapegoat for their illegal activities? How much have the leaders of March 14 and March 8 stolen what should belong to the Lebanese people? How many times have these so called leaders placed themselves above the law and gave themselves and their family members, close and extended, more rights than the average Lebanese? And he has the audacity to call himself "close" to the people and to speak of "justice"?

If there was any justice in Lebanon then all the politicians and their lackeys would be in jail by now. These are the political leaders who have robed Lebanon blind, who run organized crime syndicates that enjoy state protection, these are the "leaders" or the sons of the "leaders" who forced us over the brink and brought us nothing but death, destruction, and destitute throughout the civil war and its aftermath. 

This is the same Hariri, whose slain father, "legally" stole Lebanese land from Lebanese people, evicted people out of homes their homes which they, the people owned, sold our land, our pride, our dignity to the highest bidder, and left the Lebanese people with almost nothing. Much like Hezbollah sold Lebanon to the Syrian and Iranian regimes.

How dare this despicable man who calls himself a leader speak of justice, truth, and being close to the people?

What a load of crock, and the sadder part is that people believe him and still follow him blindly.

This ex-prime minister has done nothing for Lebanon. He has done much for himself, his allies, and the lackeys but little or nothing for the Lebanese. How dare he speak as if he represents the voice true voice of Lebanon.

Lebanese politicians are corrupt; it is a prerequisite to become a Lebanese politician.

Although I think that Hariri is a hypocrite, this should not de-emphasize the obligation that is now upon Hezbollah, the only openly armed Lebanese group, to respect the processes of law, politicized or not, western plot or not, and turn over the Hezbollah members who stand accused of murdering 22 Lebanese citizens, not just Rafic Hariri because he was an important person, but all those who were killed as a result of conspiracy and criminal activity of some people or groups.

Hezbollah claims that it is an honorable entity; if this was the case then Nasralah should not violently protect those who stand accused of this crime. He, Nasralah, has been known to say that he will “cut off the hand” of anyone who attempts to arrest any Hezbollah member no matter what. These are not the words of an honorable entity or of an honorable man. The due course of law must prevail and either convict or acquit those who are accused, this is the proper way to proceed. Hezbollah has the double responsibility to follow through with the due course of law because they now hold the greater share in the current government. Failure to hand in the accused to the authorities proves that Hezbollah, the entity was complicit in this crime.

Knowing the stubbornness and tribal mentality of Nasralah and Hezbollah, though, it is almost certain that they will not do the honorable thing. They will protect the accused men and risk throwing the country in to further diary and civil strife. The reason given by the paranoid Hezbollah for refusing to hand over the accused is that the STL is controlled by “the Zionist entity” otherwise known as Israel. Which may be true but where is the proof? Let Hezbollah prove that their accusation is true and again, the only way to achieve this is through the due process of law and not by taking unilateral and stubborn decisions that will bring us further to the brink just because Nasralah is deluded in thinking that he and his Hezbollah are above the law. It would have been better for Nasralah not to have spoken, for he has truly shown his colors and his disregard for the Lebanese public and Lebanese judiciary system. No one is above the law and this is something he must learn now or else remove himself from political life as he is unfit and unqualified to fill this role…. Not that there are any Lebanese politicians who are any better than him, mind you, but as a matter of principle, if such a thing still exists.

I keep hoping that someone will act honorably but I am not holding my breath.

Four Trillion Dollars

The US has, so far, spent in excess of four (4) trillion dollars on the Afghan and Iraqi wars in the last 10 years. Four Trillion Dollars. that’s $4,000,000,000,000.00 in numeric values. It is a mind boggling cost for two wars that have, in essence, failed. Afghanistan is not really better off than it was before the war and neither is Iraq. Sure, Sadam Husain was deposed, Bin laden killed, and the Taliban ousted. But conditions have become worse for the average Afghani and Iraqi citizens. Only a handful few have benefited from these wars. 4 trillion dollars is the value of the lives of 6,051 US soldiers, 2,300 contractors, 18,000 members of the Iraqi and Afghan security forces, 3,520 Pakistani soldiers, and the number to trump them all, 137,000 civilians. All killed because of these two meaningless wars.

4 Trillion dollars distributed evenly among the entier population of the wolrd of 6,775,235,700 would have given everyone of us $590.

4 Trillion dollars that could have been used to fight poverty, to fight diseases like aids and cancer, to feed the entire world many times over.

4 trillion dollars that could have been used to educate, instead of kill, Afghani and Iraqi children, which would have been a better way to bring on the deposition of both the Taliban and Husain.

4 trillion dollars that could have been spent to bring peace to the Middle East.

4 trillion dollars that could have been invested in researching alternative energy sources.

4 trillion dollars that could have gotten us to Mars and back many times over.

Instead, we got two failed wars that had no strategy, no specific objective, and a plethora of lies, deceit and subterfuge. Two wars that helped propagate the 2009 financial crisis. Money well spent? More like a waste. And now the money holders are terrified and forcing governments, like Greece, to cut down on essential social programs.

Meanwhile more people continue to die. More soldiers come back home with barley adequate support. Afghanistan is falling apart and looks likely to be overrun by the Taliban all over again. Al-Qaida still exists even without Bin laden. Iraq is about to fall in to further chaos. The poor keep getting poorer while the few who benefited from these wars get richer.

This is Bush legacy. 4 trillion dollars is the cost of 137,000 dead civilians.

US threatening Palestinians with suspension of Aid should they choose to seek a unilateral deceleration of state hood at the UN

Like this article from Haaretz claims, that the United States Senate "Resolution 185 calls on Palestinians to halt bid for unilateral recognition at UN"

I believe this is a mistake on the part of the US senate in just proves that the US government and all its branches do not learn from their mistakes.

For all the promises that Obama made in his 2009 Cairo speech now seem to be, more so than before, empty words.

Granted that the Palestinians have resorted to barbaric methods to fight for their lands, killing innocent Israeli citizens, one should not deny the very real fact that the Israelis are guilty of the same barbaric acts against the Palestinians and the Lebanese. The difference is that Israel always had, and always will have, the upper hand with their American funded, technologically advanced, morally deficient military.

Granted that the Israeli citizens have suffered greatly at the hands of Palestinians. But the Palestinians have suffered far more and continue to do so. I am not sure if the American politicians are ignorant or simply ignoring the fact that it is the Israeli government that they blindly support that displaced an entire population from their home and land or that it is the Israeli government that that continues to build illegal settlements on land that belongs to the Palestinians.

Everyone punishes the Palestinians. The Israelis punish the Palestinians, the Lebanese punish the Palestinians, the Jordanians punish the Palestinians, and now, it would seem, the US is about to take an active role in punishing the Palestinians.

Again, it is granted that the Palestinians have engaged in violent campaigns against the Israelis, but the proportion of force used by the Israelis against a stateless population, made stateless by the Israeli state, is by far of a much greater magnitude.

The US should not be punishing and already punished people. This move will achieve nothing but further aggravate the situation by making the already abysmal lives of Palestinians even more intolerable. The more intolerable a situation that a people live in the more likely they are to eventually revolt. There is nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose.

The US senate move is morally wrong and will cause extremism to increase. Extremism threatens the security of Israel. There for this motion by the US senate is designed to “de-legitimize” Israel…. Inevitably.

What the senate should have done, had it been a moral and conscientious body, is to threaten Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu with the suspension of Aid should he continue to refuse to take real, solid, and coherent steps to make peace with the Palestinians. What the US senate should do is fall in line with many other nations who do consider Israel to be an apartheid state.

It is all fine and dandy that Israel is America’s closest ally. But Israel is an ally who is alleged to be racists and is allegedly accused of crimes against humanity. An Israel has one of the most powerful lobbies in the US.

The good thing is that the Palestinian authority is being defiant in the face of this unconscionable threat.

Problems of the world financial system from a dyslexic's point of view (or why i hate money)

Money: Every one wants it and those who have it want more of it.

Money: Has more to do with numbers than anything else. Numerical value of the note, numerical value of the cost, numerical value of its quantity.

Cost: The amount of money has to pay for a service or product. 

Everything costs money. The system we live in is based on money. Everything is valued with it. Value goes up and down with supply and demand. Which means that a billionaire has more rights because he can afford something that has high demand but low supply while a person who is in more dire need of it cannot.

We pick up the phone to talk to an old friend, we pay the cost.

We live in a house or apartment, we pay the cost.

Transportation, costs.

Keeping good health, costs.

We take a dump and flush the toilet and we pay a cost, the cost of the water we just used to flush the toilet, the cost of waste our body generates from the food we bought over the phone for delivery to eat at the house we live in. apparently our fesses has monetary value.

Banks: An entity that takes our money, makes money off of it in the form of interest, gives us money in the form of loans which we pay back with interest so that the bank can make more money, sells our debt to someone else to make money out of.

Government: an entity that we set up to offer necessary services to the people so that we may live comfortably. It also collects taxes on everything including the money we make. sadly governments run more like profit making corporations and are just as corrupt so the people end up paying the government and getting no services to low quality services when we should be getting the best service, especially when the taxes we pay almost burn a whole through our pockets.

Dyscalculia, a form of dyslexia, means difficulty with numbers and calculations. I am a full fledged dyslexic. Not only do I have difficulty with words but I also have difficulty with numbers, among many other things. So handling money, being an object of a pure numerical nature, presents a problem for someone like me who has difficulty with numbers. So just imagine a person like me trying to make sense of a system of numbers on which everyone relies on and everything runs on. I can never be a financial adept person because the system we rely on for daily life is all about numbers.

We throw away our lives, our dreams, our hopes our aspirations and restrict ourselves to studying what will make us more money rather than what will benefit humanity. Think of all the university students who are forced by their parents to study a profession that is contrary to their dreams. University students follow the field that will make them more money; few follow a career that they are really interested in despite of the money factor. 

We are told of our inalienable human rights, the right to exist, the right to good health, the right to education, the right to live a happy life, the right to be equal. But no one has his rights, not even in the most democratic of countries we do not have our right, not as long as daily life is based on something called money. A millionaire throws a banquet that costs $300,000 to celebrate his vanity. Caviar, Champaign, gourmet cuisine, large quantities of food and drink, much of which ends up not being consumed. Billions of dollars are spent on insuring the "security" of G8 and G20 meetings of the worlds "greatest" heads of state, who meet to discuss the state of the world economy. Meanwhile a family gets evicted to the street from their homes because they defaulted on loan. Millions of people starve to death in poor countries where there are severe droughts. Children starve to death while the millionaire throws a banquet to satisfy the vanity of his ego and the G8/20 heads of state laugh and dance and "discuss" the state of the economy while business men indulge their vain egos so that they may make more money while people get evicted and others die of hunger. With the amount of money wasted by the wealthy to indulge their vanity they could feed the world many times over. They could provide education for poor children many times over. They could provide more than adequate living conditions for everyone many times over.

Equality. We are told that all human beings are equal. That we live in a mostly democratic world and that everyone has the opportunity to be what they want to be. This is a lie.

A poor starving child from Africa is not equal to the son of a billionaire. the child from Africa has to work, be sold, scrounge garbage for unhealthy dirty food, while the son of a billionaire has to do nothing as everything is provided for him. A billionaire can afford to send his son to the best university while the hungry child of Africa gets no education other than hunger. A billionaire can buy anything he wants any time he wants, a middle class man has to think a hundred times before buying what he needs, not what he wants, or take a lone from the bank so that the billionaire can make more money from the interest the middle calls man will end up paying back to the bank. A billionaire can live in comfort, have his own swimming pool, several cars, several, homes, expensive toys, while the middle class man buys a car with money he does not have, has a home he cannot afford with the money he does not have, needs tools to improve his efficacy so that he can make more money to pay off the bank for the money it lent him to buy the things he needs with the money he does not have. A billionaire does not need to work and employs people to mange his affairs while he, the billionaire, has a good time. The middle class man has to work a 9-5 job that is not secure, has no one to mange his affairs, is only allowed an occasional vacation too short to be significant or enjoyable. 9-5 jobs kill the spirit of a dreamer. meanwhile people are dying of hunger.

Where is our equality?

I am a dreamer. I dream of traveling from one place to another, studying people, their history and their culture. But there is no job that will give me this privilege, or rather there are too few of these jobs so many people like me end up without it even if they merit it.

Being a dream does not mean I am lazy. I do my share of work to the best of my abilities, and I am very successfully at any job I do. But the money system that makes slaves of us all is not something I can deal with.

Being dyslexic does not mean I am stupid, it just means that it takes me 10 times the effort than a normal person to deal with a system that was designed for normal people.

I am not a cripple. Just because the system we live in is not designed for someone with my difficulties it does not mean I am crippled, it just means that those who design things for the least common denominator of the masses does not take in to account people like me. I am not a least common denominator. I have legitimate needs a dyslexic. for me to survive in this un-egalitarian world system I need tools, to get the tools I need money, money are numbers and I, by the nature of my makeup, have difficulty with numbers. I work for my needs. I work hard to get what I need. What I need will help me improve my life and my chances of making more money. But that is not my objective. I would rather not make money and just be. I would be willing to work for free for something I believed in and that has meaning for me rather than work just to make money without feeling alive or interest in the job that I am doing. In spite of my hate for my 9-5 slave job I still, with my sense of dignity, honor, and professionalism, do the job more than the best that I can. I work to make money to buy the tools I need to make my life easier, but i also have living expenses; rent, groceries, food, clothes, transportation, taxes. Keeping the balance is difficult for someone like me and usually it means that I do not get the tools that I need till much, much later. By the time I have what I need, my spirit would be broken.

We are equal. By no means are we equal. Not while children die of hunger while rich mean indulge their vanity with lavish and wasteful banquets. By no means are we equal. Not when "wealth" is unevenly disturbed. Not when some people have it easy and most do not. Not when some can afford to go to ridiculously expensive universities.

If we had equality, then education would be free and it would be on par with the best Ivy League university.

If we had equality, then the starving child from Africa (or anywhere else for that matter) could throw the same feast as the billionaire.

If we had equality, then a dyslexic like me would not have to worry about loosing focus and ending up on the street because my mind is not made to deal with numbers.

I should not have to worry about dealing with money. Education is not a commodity. The poor and less fortunate should not have to starve to death or live off of garbage.

I am not a financially minded person. I cannot give numerically sound solutions to the money problem. I can however give suggestions that no non-dyslexic would ever grasp. Ideas that are so removed from the reality we live that no one can even fathom it. For instance; one way to make things more equal would be to base all prices on a percentage of what the person buying the item makes. For example, to buy a house one would have to pay say 30% of their annual income. If someone makes $100,000 a year he would pay $30,000 while a person who makes $1,000,000 a year would pay $300,000 for it. If the house was priced at $300,000 the lower wage buyer would not afford it without resorting to a loan. But with a percentage price everyone can afford what they need and thus everyone would be equal. You no longer need hefty amounts of money to do anything. Just a percentage. This would also not adversely affect the person selling because he or she would also be buying things at a percentage form others. With a percentage based system everyone can afford what they want or need. The starving child in Africa can have a banquet equal to that of the billionaire for almost nothing and can buy that same proverbial house discussed above for a percentage of what he makes, even if it’s just 30% of one dollar.

If you do not see how this works then your mind too stuck in the system we are slaves to. Actually your situation would be more comparable to the people in the caves of Plato’s allegory of the cave where they know nothing more than their environment of a poorly lit cave. Remember, because of my dyslexia, dificulty with words, I cannot explain this concept in complete detail that would make sense inside my mind, the idea is far more compete and details but all I can offer is a solution with out details. It is up to others to fill in the details or to confront me with questions that would bring out the details. For me, a dyslexic, saying that a percentage based solution would make us all equal is enough to explain all the details that are stuck in my mind. This is how my mind works. Sorry. Make the effort and meet me half way and you will discover that there is more to my idea than the simplistic explanation I have already given. And if you think this solution is weird enough as it is, wait till you hear my more radical solutions like how we can eliminate the need for money entirely....... but that idea I know is very far fetched and long before its time.

Why people cannot grasp my idea? Well because everyone has been brought up to believe that money is everything and everyone should strive for more of it. So we go back to supply and demand, which is an artificial method of placing value on something and which can be manipulated. We are brought up to believe that money is everything and that the more we have of it the more privileged we become and the more "equal" we become. meanwhile our inalienable human rights become more alienable.

Regardless of whether my idea is sound or implausible. There exists a massive world wide problem that requires a solution soon before the world crisis becomes worse.

I invite you to debate this “crazy” suggestion of mine. Use the comment box. Let’s discuss if this idea will work or not.

Addendum: OK OK... I know what I'm suggesting is ludicrous at best.  I am just trying to promote the idea that something needs to change and that humanity can no longer go on living with this ugly system or to be slaves to money.

Gaza flotilla round two.

Gaza is a Palestinian territory that is administered by Hamas, the extremist Palestinian resistance group. Hamas is designated as a terrorist group though the truth is they are an extremist resistance group that utilizes terror to drive the Israeli occupying force back. There is no doubt that the methods employed by Hamas are barbaric at best, indiscriminately killing innocent civilians, children women and elderly. However, it is important to note that the Palestinian people have been subjected to a slow genocide by the Israeli Defense Force also. When a more powerful and better equipped aggressor comes by and begins to bulldoze ones family home, burn your crops, drive you out of your country, shoot dead innocent children, women and elderly, one’s mind can no longer see reason and thus resorts to any means necessary to fight back. Both Israelis and Palestinians have a valid, albeit immoral, reason to terrorize and kill each other. The cycle of violence did not start 60 or so odd years ago. The conflict is in the middle east is several millennia old. Lebanon, Palestine and Israel have been the at the center of worldwide conflicts for thousands of years going back to the days of the Sumerians, and maybe even before that, progressing to the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, Greeks, Romans, crusaders, Muslim caliphates, Ottomans, French, English, German, Americans.... the list is very long.

Why has this area existed in a state of conflict for so long? It was, and still is, a strip of land that joins Asia, Africa, and Europe together and is open to the Mediterranean Sea. It is a cross roads of clashing civilizations and destructive armies. This piece of land has been historically, militarily and biblically strategic and has seen far too much conflict over the ages.

Hamas, extremist as it is, insisting on imposing a man made truncated version sharia law, oppressing women, stripping away civil liberties, and enforcing Islamic observance on a population that is already far too oppressed, dehumanized, and destitute. When one lives in dire, dark, and deplorable conditions most of his or her life, would resort to the only source of power that would keep their minds intact; the hope that through religion and faith one may find the peace that he or she covets more than anything else in the world. 

Hamas won the Palestinian democratic elections of 2006 fair and square. This victory did not sit well with Israel and the American Bush administration and much of the world’s greatest powers. It did not sit well with them to the extent that they encouraged a split between the Palestinians. So now we have two Palestinian authorities with which Israel fatalistically deals with one side and not the other. Fatalistic because one may not achieve peace by making deals with a faction that does not represent all the Palestinians. What would be the point in making peace with the PA while ignoring Hamas, like the proverbial big pink flying elephant in the room?

The world wanted to see democracy in the Middle East, the west encouraged it. And when the people chose Hamas instead of Fatah, more so because Hamas seemed to be far less corrupted than Fatah, whose members have sold out their people for personal gains, interests, and wealth, its really not hard to understand why the Palestinian people chose an extremist Hamas who "seemed" to be pious and not as corrupted as Fatah, in spite of people's knowledge of Hama's extremism, the west decried the choice of the people and punished them for their democratic choice. How is this a promotion of democracy when by the west? 

The majority of Palestinians are not extremists. The majority of Palestinians will not abide and do resist Hamas Islamic laws. But the fact is that as long as there is conflict Hamas will always have supporters. The more Israel tightens its grip on the Palestinians the more people will turn to the one organization that still stands in the way of the more advanced Israeli military. 

The electoral win of Hamas angered the Israeli government so much that they placed Gaza, strong hold of Hamas, under blocked and handed power back to the PA in the west bank. 

What has the blockade achieved? Nothing good. Gazans have been forced to live under even worse conditions than before, prisoners in their own land, threatened by random death from random attacks. Terrorized. For the Israelis Hamas is a terrorist organization, and rightfully so, but for the Palestinians it is the Israeli Defense Force that is a terrorist organization, and they too are right. 

Hamas is not representative of all Palestinians, not even of all Gazans at this point. The Gaza blockade is aimed against Hamas, they say, not the Palestinian people. Yet who suffers the most if not the innocent average Palestinians who just want to live in peace? Who suffers from this blockade if not the children who are missing out on a proper education that would eventually bring them out of the darkness that they live in. Who suffers if not the elderly who have no access to medical treatment and mothers who cry because they cannot feed their starving children. It is the civilians who always suffer in any conflict. Israeli civilians and Palestinian civilians caught in the cross fire between two terrorist groups claiming to be holier than the other and failing to do their duty and protect the innocents.

For me, it is both armed and political sides that are to blame for the plight of both the Israeli and Palestinian innocent civilians. However, let us be fair and recognize that the Israeli military is far better equipped than the rock throwing, homemade rocket launching, and suicide vest Palestinian militants. This is not to say that the “crud” weapons of the Palestinians do not inflict horrors, however, there is no balanced proportion of fire power when Israel is backed up by billions of dollars of military Aid from the US, Israel has one of the strongest lobby groups in the world, Israel has a very powerful propaganda machine, and Israel also benefits from the guilt of the west for the horrible wrongs and crimes don onto the Jewish people for the past 2,000 years that culminated in the Nazi administered holocaust where 6 million innocent human beings, the majority of which where Jewish, where brutally murdered by a racists regime. Sadly the cycle of violence of the thousands of years past has not yet needed though, and now Israel stands precariously close to where Germany did during the third reich, only this time it is the Israeli regime that holds the upper hand. Let’s be frank and call it what it is.

I am not trying to “delegitimize” Israel. I am trying to point out the facts from the fiction of the propaganda machine. I am not in any way saying that the Palestinians militants are in any way blameless. I am just stressing, to put it in biblical terms, that at this point Israel is Goliath, and Palestine is David. The balance of power, wealth, and military rests in the hand of Israel, not Palestine. And though both Israelis and Palestinians are suffering equally because of the conflict, the ratio of Israelis suffering is far less than that of the Palestinians who are suffering.

So in 2007 Israel laid a blockade against Gaza, turning it in to a mass prison camp. However, because of the Internet and the lightening speed and ease of communication in our current times, the Israeli propaganda machine is beginning to falter as the world is beginning to receive news directly from the Palestinians territories, unfiltered by the Israeli propaganda machine.

This is not to say that the Palestinians do not have their own propaganda machine but it is a crude machine and not as effective as the Israeli one.

The world woke up to the plight of the Palestinians, and it is the Palestinians they wish to help, not Hamas, not the PA, but the innocent Palestinian civilians who are suffering the most as a result of this horrible conflict.

Last year, 2010, a flotilla set out to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza with catastrophic results. The Israeli commands sent to stop the flotilla shot dead several activists, in international waters. It was a PR nightmare for an Israeli regime that had become complacent in the wrongful knowledge that they have the Americans and the rest of the world in their pockets. MV Mavi Marmara lost 9 lives in the raid conducted by Israeli military. 9 peaceful activists died. And Israel took a massive PR blow as they were unable to recover their previous PR image of being a tolerant and ethical military.

A year later, 2011, and a new flotilla is on its way to end the Gaza Naval blockade and already the Israeli propaganda machine is at work to avoid a repeat of last year’s disaster. Already the Israeli propaganda machine is spewing out falls stories, like this video of a gay man who was allegedly denied to participate with the flotilla by “extremist” elements. The video turned out to be a Hoax that came from an Israeli government employee. The Israeli propaganda machine was also hard at work to discredit the peaceful flotilla by sending out false roomers that there are extremist elements on board who have expressed the desire to kill IDF soldiers, which is a fallacy. Israel has also attempted to control the flow of information by threatening journalists not to take part or report on the situation, which Netanyahu was forced to back track on due to international pressure. Why would they want a media blackout on the topic if not to act freely with impunity and with no evidence to the country by independent journalists, to discredit the flotilla by planting weapons and thus justifying the use of force against them?

Israel is losing the PR campaign and it is time that the Israeli government made real, tangible peace with the Palestinians. The conflict must come to an end before it is too late and all the region flares up in a conflict without end. Think of the innocent children, women and elderly of Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. Think of all the families that are destitute because of this conflict. Think of all the wrong that had been done against innocent civilians, Lebanese, Israeli, and Palestinian alike. The leaders of our peoples are wrong to commit us to an endless and pointless war when we can, indeed, live in peace and tolerance as long as the religious zealots and the corrupt politicians are put back in place. This is like the chicken and the egg story, Peace will not come from violence, and violence will never achieve peace.

I hope that the Gaza Flotilla succeeds without any nasty incidents. And I hope that peace will be achieved and wiser heads prevail. The people deserve real peace. All the People and not just one faction, group, or nation.

The state of things to come

Some, in the Arab world, think that Israel is preparing for another war with Lebanon. Well, with Hezbollah more specifically, but Hezbollah operates from within Lebanese lands so… Hezbollah’s methods are not what the most Lebanese have in mind. Most of us do not condone Hezbollah’s violent methods of resistance. The Lebanese also know that civilians do not stand a chance against an old enemy who will bombard them indiscriminately in order to fight Hezbollah. Many civilians will die and Israel will never achieve its objective without resorting to genocide. Because the only way to stop a gorilla style enemy like Hezbollah, with violent means, would be to exterminate them all. And with the history of the Israeli people it would be unthinkable for them to resort to such a method openly nor would be an acceptable solution ever. Genocide has never achieved anything positive and never will.

This, however, does not mean Israel, the state (not the Jewish people and let’s make that distinction right now), is not capable of such a feet. With their advanced American funded military and their previous heavy handed record they are already engaged in a very slow form of genocide. It only takes one fanatic to send us all to hell. We Lebanese know this all too well because we have seen firsthand what extremism can do. With Lebanon’s sectarian constitution extremism is encouraged in all its forms to insure the balance of power between our many warring warlords, of all 18 recognized Lebanese religious sects, to keep their asses warm on that cushioned seat of power they covet so much. 

The majority of Lebanese also know how ruthless the IDF is. They, the IDF, Have allowed the Sabra and Shatila massacre to happen right under their watchful eyes. Sure the massacre was carried out by a Lebanese extremist Christian group. But it did happen with the blessings of the Israeli defense force, this is a known fact. I don’t know how an offensive armed force can be called a “defense” force but that’s beside the point. Innocent unarmed women children and elderly where raped, tortured slaughtered, and mutilated by extremists under the watchful eyes of the Israeli Defense Force. And it is not the only such incident. There was the bombardment of a UN shelter at Qaana in 1996, the continuing destruction of Lebanese infrastructure every 3 years or so, there is the high number of civilian casualties as a result of the 2006 second Lebanon war and many, many more such examples.

I still have horrible memories of all these incidents but the one that I remember the most is the 1996 war. I remember seeing live footage of a car that was carrying a fleeing family being attacked by Israeli forces. A news team was close by, they got out to film the carnage and found, to everyone’s horror that a little girl was still alive inside the burning remains of the car. Her tear stained and seared childe face crying from the physical pain and the emotional pain that of realizing that all her family members where dead beside her. The car continued to burn and consume all that was within it.

I have also seen footage of the atrocities, of what everyone calls "terrorists" and suicide bombers, killing innocent Israeli children, women and elderly. Their pain is just as real as Noor who burned in that car. When I was young I was lead to believe that the innocent always survived. I was obviously too naive to know that the opposite is more true than not. I understand the need for resistance against an aggressor like the IDF but to kill innocent children, women and elderly indiscriminately goes far beyond resisting an invading enemy. There is no honor, only damnation, in killing an innocent unarmed human being. People who inflict pain, torture and death upon innocent civilians are, indeed, terrorists. Which is why I not only consider Hezbollah a "terrorist" organization but also the "IDF" and any other military or militia that derogatorily calls dead civilians as collateral damage. A Terrorist is anyone who fights dishonorably against a weaker and helpless opponent weather by crude gorilla style methods or by remote control superiority. Violence is unacceptable and anyone who resorts to violence against someone not his or her size then they are certainly terrorists in my opinion.... But I am detracting. 

The Lebanese know also that Hezbollah is an extremist group. We have suffered at the hand of the only openly armed militia in Lebanon that has created a state within a state. An Uncontrollable entity made so courtesy of the Assad Syrian regime. Many Lebanese would like to see Hezbollah declawed. However, we have also suffered at the hands of the not so openly armed militias of the other group’s as well, those who claim to be pro west or pro east, they are all the same as Hezbollah and no one should ever doubt this for a minute.

Hezbollah, unfortunately, is the only force standing between the Lebanese and this army from the south that condones massacres and has superior American made and American funded weapons. Lebanon does not have the same luxury as Israel to invest billions of dollars in improving the Lebanese Army. Mostly because our corrupt politicians prefer to pocket the money. And again, as with any conflict, the real people who suffer are the innocent civilians who never wanted a war to begin with nor who want the corruption to continue but the way things are set up its just impossible to think of it differently… it’s just one of those mysteries that confound me as to how blind some of my Lebanese brothers and sisters can be. Which is not to say that all people are like that because I know some, or rather many who are like-minded as me…. More or less.

Lebanon is still feudal state in an uneasy balance as it is. The Lebanese people are not looking forward to yet another war with an indiscriminate Israel no matter how much Hassan Nasralah, secretary General of Hezbollah, is looking forward to a confrontation with Israel, if only to divert attention from his embattled Syrian ally Havez al Assad who cracking down on peaceful protesters of the Arab Spring who are demanding their right for peace and democracy. 

Israel is on a leash at the moment because President Barak Obama is holding them back. This poor man of a president must have it really hard to discover that he cannot get anyone to listen to reason and everyone is either disappointed with him or outright hate him for one reason or the other. He inherited a massive mess from his extremist predecessor, but instead of blaming the economy crisis on the man who perpetuated it and the illegal war against Iraq and the mess he made of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the entire world for that matter. The blame instead is placed on America’s first ever black president as if everyone is collaborating to make him look bad and avoid having another black president for a long time. But that’s beside the point.

Israel has a strong lobby that is working hard to make life difficult and impossible for Obama as a way for Israel to bite back for being kept on a short leash. You see it’s a political game of misplaced egos. Meanwhile real people will die because no one wants a delicate ego of some very important prick to be bruised. So yes, innocent civilians will die instead.

There will be no trouble from Israel until after the 2012 US elections. They, the current Israeli government, is banking on a republican win, which would mean the money would continue to flow from US tax payers’ pockets to the Israeli government who will use the funds and military aid to conduct a very slow and invisible form of genocide. Unfortunately for the Israeli’s, Arabs tend to breed faster than they get killed. So the efforts of the Israeli government to “protect” its “security” with unprecedented violence and the funds and military aid flowing from US taxpayers to Israel would ideally be nothing more of a waste of resources and time and human souls on a pointless and violent Endeavor that without a doubt is bound to fail even if they achieve their goal of eliminating Hezbollah. Hezbollah being a gorilla resistance group will reform and still exist and still cause problems for Israel, the harder you pound Hezbollah the more likely they will grow in popularity and power.

If Obama gets reelected, however it will be a coup that will send ripples of change across the globe that would eventually bring to a resolution the Arab Israeli problem. For the mere fact that the US can no longer afford to keep funding a lost cause when the mater can, indeed, be resolved amicably. But Israel has a strong lobby in the US, even when there exists a portion of this lobby that is pro-peace and recognizes Netanyahu for the bigoted warmonger that he is. The Israeli lobby is very powerful and the extremist elements within it are allied with extremist elements of the American Republican party. The Israeli government wants the money to keep flowing from America, and the republicans want the Israeli Lobby’s support to bring down Obama at the next elections. This is not a conspiracy theory; it is clear as day in the news. All it takes is one fanatic to bring us to the brink as bush did and maybe worse.

A republican win will lead to the loosening of the Israeli leash and that will then plummet the region in to perpetual war that would benefit the weapon dealers while women, children, and elderly get slaughtered by those same weapons. Children orphaned by someone who made a profit over it. Hundreds of thousands will be displaced if not millions. All hopes for a tolerant Arab world post Arab spring revolts will vanish in favor of extremist elements. And the violence continues to flow as the money continues to flow from the US, as long as they can afford it. For the Israeli lobby has to be aware that if the American people are confronted with more economic problems because of a war they cannot sustain, it will eventually bring them to cut their budgets further and thus like the oil that we are running out of so will Israel run out of American aid and then it will be a disaster as the entire region erupt into an endless cycle of violence that will kill more innocent civilians. All because of Netanyahu’s ignorance, misguided hyper inflated ego, and his unwillingness to give peace a chance.

With Obama reelected, Netanyahu will lose all hope and be faced with no other choice but to comply and make peace. But that is not the only outcome since there still is the threat of Iran and its nuclear ambitions and it’s meddling in Lebanon and Syria. That alone presents a different set of problems that can bring us all closer to the brink than anything else.

But to get back on topic. No the Israelis will not attack pending the results of the US presidential elections of 2012.

This does not mean, however, that the Syrian regime will not order Hezbollah to cause problems which would provoke Israel into attacking Lebanon thus diverting attention from the Syrian regimes own massacre of its own people in an final attempt to extinguish the fire of the revolution of the Arab Spring protesters who want change and peace and an end to violence.

This time however Hezbollah will find itself fighting on more than one side as this time, because of Lebanon’s increasing sectarian mentality, perpetuated, by Lebanon’s war lords of March 14 and March 8, camps will lead to a new Lebanese civil war. And take it from someone who knows; There really is nothing civil about any kind of war.

Meanwhile more civilians will die.

This is what they call politics. And it is up to all peace loving people around the world to put pressure on their governments in order to end this cycle of stupidity once and for all. Everyone, Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians, and Israelis, deserve to live in peace and free of dear and violence. May better heads prevail? I would hope so.

Disclaimer:

Of course, my analysis, though based on facts and history, should not be taken as expert advice. My analysis hinges on being accurate but I am not privy to the kind of information that would make it absolutely factual. So this is more the ramblings of a man stricken with grief and anger at the situation rather than a real journalistic article. This blog is an opinion, well informed as it may be. Also, I have not lived in Lebanon since 2006. But I did end up witnessing the 2008 street skirmish before moving on to Canada. and this tirade is directed at all non peace loving fools.

Dar al-Fatwa elects to keep Lebanon in the dark ages

If the Lebanese have any more doubt about the necessity to secularize Lebanon, or that they should reduce the power and influence of the patriarchs of Islam and Christianity and all other patriarchal religious denominations of Lebanon, the this little tidbit should hopefully begin to wake them up. Dar al-Fatwa has rejected a law that would grant Lebanese women protection from domestic abuse as a matter of civil law rather than religious law, which more often than not means that the male is favored, be he in the right or wrong.

Dar al-Fatwa argues that introducing a "western" law in to Lebanese society means giving in to western style decadence and the destruction of Lebanese society as women would wiled the power to brake a family by threatening to send the husband that is beating her, or abusing, her or being cruel to her, with prison. They seem to think that this would traumatize the kids. So in other words they would prefer to condone that the woman, the wife, the mother of these very children who they say would be traumatized by their mothers "threats" against their abusive fathers, to be mistreated, beaten to a pulp, humiliated before her children so that their daughters would learn their place in life and that their sons would learn that this is the proper way to treat a woman. The kids will be traumatized they say! And they have the audacity to say this as if Lebanese society is not traumatized as it is already because of this culture of abuse that they so vehemently want to protect. 

"Islam is very aware of and concerned with ... resolving problems of poor treatment" They say.

Are they really aware of the pervasiveness of the problem? This reminds me of the dismissive acknowledgments of the existence of a "problem" within the catholic church of certain child abuses accusations. They are "very aware" of the "problems" they say. If that was true then praising the virtues of this law would be their priority to promote the proper solution to the real problem. They claim to speak for "Islam" as if the Quran does not afford women reverence, respect, and recognition for being the life bearers. Everyone with some religious ambitions these days seems to think that their traditional understanding of what the scripture says is exactly as it should be without taking in to account the true meanings of the words that they so readily recite out of context just to suite their own warped and colored understanding of what "Islam" is all about. They condone the beating of women because women terrify them. 

They warn against "cloning Western laws that encourage the breakdown of the family" without considering how Lebanese families are already broken. Broken by the many intra family savage and brutal feuds over inheritance. Broken by the many inter-family feuds that would put the Capulets and the Montagues to shame. broken because of parents who force their children to follow in their footsteps or to disregard their children’s aspirations in favor of their own visions. Broken by far too many abusive fathers. And also by many abusive mothers. If these Dar al-Fatwa men do not understand how much a boy can be traumatized by seeing his mother, the woman he worships most in the world, beaten before his eyes, will not traumatize him, then they have absolutely no connection to reality. I had an abusive father. The fact that I choose not to get in to too many details about this topic should indicate how much the topic agitates me. It is not a period in my life I wish to remember. Being too small and helpless to protect my mother form the monster my father was sometimes.

Lebanese women are strong willed, courageous, and opinionated. They can normally hold their own until the man, who feels like he was bested, resorts to the only method he knows. Violence to shut her up. Many times when i walked the streets of Beirut I would hear an argument from one apartment or another, a woman and a man would be arguing until suddenly you hear the sound of a hard slap to the face that would make average people flinch to hear it followed by womanly screams of agony and, more often than not, followed by the sound of crying children and occasionally the sound of family and neighbors intervening to contain the situation. 

I was in a cab one day heading off to work. We were stuck up in traffic near a fast food grill restaurant when I noticed a woman berating her husband while holding one of her young children in her arms. The man was not saying much. I flinched before it happened and it happened very quickly. The man just slapped the unsuspecting woman so hard the she almost dropped the baby as her face twisted and her head, followed by her body, swiveled with the force of the blow. 

Women had a code for when they appeared at work all bruised. If they could not cover up their bruises with too much make up they would claim to have fallen or tripped or been in minor car accident or anything similar but never admitting that they were beaten by their husbands as it would stigmatize them. But it the truth was written clear as day in their eyes. 

Dar al-Fatwa also declared as "heresy" a clause that criminalized marital rape. This one always boggles my mind. They outright condone rape. Marital or not they condone rape. They condone marital rape because they still believe that women are property and that a wife’s duty is to satisfy her husband however she chooses. I find this mentality infuriating especially when it comes from Muslims. The Quran insists on the proper and respectful treatment of women and the Quran requires a man to respect the woman's, be she wife or otherwise, right to consent or not to. Unfortunately, their interpretation of Islam is based more on ancient tribal values that have survived to this day rather than actual Quranic understanding. Tribal values that are patriarchal and regard women as nothing more than property, which is also a mentality that goes against the teaching of the Quran... They know this, but choose to ignore it because first, it will diminish their patriarchal privileges by granting women the legal right to emaciate them when they wrong her. The second reason is that the religious community does not want to lose its grip on the power they hold in Lebanese politics. These are the kind of groups that contribute to the Lebanese sectarian problem because of their incessant interference in maters that should not be left to their ignorant hands. 

This is one of many reasons why Lebanon should do away with the sectarian system and secularize. Lebanese Women... ALL Women... deserve their lawful right to be safe from abuse of any kind and absolute equality in the eyes of the law. Lebanese law, because of its diverse religious nature. The Lebanese need a unified identity and that identity cannot be based on ones religion because Lebanon’s historically rich religious background. Our society can no longer function with the decadence of the religious patriarchal system. The west may be decedent in the eyes of Lebanese conservatives but one should not throw stones in a house of glass. Women should be protected under the law and this should not be a matter of debate. Doing otherwise would be a step backwards in to the darkness that we are striving to avoid. 

My Super Fast and Super Slow Dyslexic Brain.

I am dyslexic. By definition this means I have difficulty with words.... and numbers... and handwriting... and motor coordination... and.... well to be honest describing dyslexia can be complicated. Some call it a learning disability but I beg to differ. It’s just that dyslexics have a different learning style than most people and when placed in an environment that is rigid in its instructional manner... you know... the assembly line style of learning that almost every school and academic institution employs... then yes it becomes a problem. But this problem is can be compared to a tall man trying to enter through a door that was made for someone half his high.

Being dyslexic can be cumbersome when dealing with daily life stuff. Like paying bills, keeping grocery lists in check, dealing with government bureaucracy (though admittedly almost everyone finds that process troublesome) and so on. Because we have difficulties dealing with such things some people might see us as "stupid"... "Lacking"... "Unqualified"... we are judged by a world that expects us to comply and be homogenic, when our reality is that we are anything but homorganic or compliant with the established structure. It makes us dyslexics.... rebels.

Yes. Dyslexia can be a burden sometimes... Frustrating more than anything else because most humans have a need to belong and we have this constant nagging feeling that we do not belong. I cannot speak for most of my dyslexic brothers and sisters around the world but at least I myself try not to be arrogant, knowing that the way my brain works is far more complicated than that of the average person. Some say dyslexics think in images. This is true to some extent but it does not paint the whole picture since we dyslexics tend to think not just with pictures, but with all our sense and the contents of our body. It is a little bit like ESP. or at least how I define ESP. Extra Sensory Presumption, in my opinion, is not some supernatural thing that we have inside of us. But because we rely on our senses to learn, we give the appearance of having supernatural ESP like abilities. Dyslexics can anticipate and can come up with answers to questions no one can answer..... But we are not always accurate and being arrogant only sets us in our ways and stops us from realizing our mistakes. Honesty is important to a dyslexic. Honesty towards others and honesty towards ones self. The reason: we get carried away very easily and our imagination can run amok mixing in with reality in a hard to separate mélange of thoughts and experiences. Honesty plays the role of anchoring us in the here and now when we have the tendency to infinitely float free of gravity.

Being as dyslexic as I am, I have a hard time finding the right words to describe how my brain works. But I keep trying to give it a shot every now and then. So here goes:

Sometimes my brain is triggered in to processing at a hyper speed. A burst of thoughts that dissipates quickly and that crunches more data than my consciousness can sort through and analyze and certainly more than our poor short term memory can handle. A dyslexics short term memory synapses are not on par with other more normal people. The trigger can be anything; a smell, an idea, a word, a touch, a sound, a site... anything. When our brains are triggered it lights up like a transparent light bulb in a very dark room. For those of you have lived with electricity rationing and problematic power grids like I have will understand the image I am trying to paint here. Back home in Lebanon we where plagued by electricity problems and sometimes the power is restored for a fraction of a second and usually at a higher voltage and current than normal so the lights seem brighter than they should be for that fraction of a second before the light diminishes again. When my brain lights up it is like the proverbial light bulb. It is intense and brilliant and reveals everything within its environment at the speed of light. When a thought is triggered it is a complete thought that can, if it were translated to words, fill up several volumes of books on the subject of that thought... literally. For instance, If i where to think about say creating a new educational system, my mind lights up and produces thought patterns that would lay down the details of everything that is required, every possibility that would be achieved, every little detail that can be thought of, all in just a fraction of a second. But then the power is cut off and the light diminishes softly and everything I thought of recedes in to the darkness from which it came from leaving grasping for straws to hold the thoughts together. A lot of the details are lost because of my short term memory and because of the sheer speed at which the information flows to my consciousness. Like the proverbial light that diminishes and leaves an afterglow until our eyes have adjusted again to the darkness of the room.

That is one of my frustrations with being dyslexic in a world of non-dyslexics; That I can never fully explain or convey these incredible thoughts of things and solutions to problems adequately enough for others to understand what I try to explain unless they take the time to patiently ask questions in an effort to comprehend rather than dismiss me as a lunatic or a fool. I know because I am living proof that dyslexics can come up with unconventional simple solutions to massive complicated problems. I have done it so many times that those who made the effort to listen and understand have nicked named me the miracle maker. Yet the majority of people usually look at me as if I was insane.... which is probably not far removed from the truth but there is a stark sanity to my madness. That much I know and believe.

Slavery in the Arab World

Slavery in the Arab world still exists to this day. Of course they do not call it "cleaning service". At least in Lebanon they do. Basically it is an off where people go and flip through a catalog of Asian and east African women and men, the client selects the one they like best and soon thereafter the unsuspecting individual leaves their home and family behind with the promise that they will be sending home money monthly for sustenance. The bewildered person arrives at Beirut airport and is whisked away to the new employer’s house where he or she ends up living in a small bathroom sized room with nothing more than a matters. The maid is then instantly required to learn all of madam's wishes and to comply with them at all times. Many of these "maids" are locked in the house; they rarely get a chance to leave the house or apartment lest they run away. And if they do run away they cannot go back to their country because their employer would be in possession of their passports. The "maid" has to be alert 24/7 at the beck and call of her masters.

More often than not these poor "maids" are subjected to beatings whenever they do something wrong or whenever "madam" feels like venting her frustration on someone. Sometimes the punishment goes beyond beating. A man went as far as to burn two of his "maids" after having severely beaten them up. The Lebanese courts did no more than fine him $333. Often, these poor "maids" are sexual harassed and some cases raped. When I was young and still at high school, I remember once when a schoolmate was bragging about his sexual exploits. "I cam home and there was no one but me and the maid... I got her drunk... striped her naked and had my way with her” He seemed to imply that the poor girl was a willing participant, but somehow I doubted that. Everyone in while in the news or by word of mouth we would hear of a "maid" who had jumped to her death from one of the tall apartment buildings. Why? hushed voices tell of how badly she was treated. How she was denied leave to go home and see her children. How she was denied pay. How whenever something goes missing in the household the first person to be accused and beaten for it is the "maid". very rarely though, the "maid" manages to escape only to end up on the streets of Beirut in the hands of one pimp or another who forces her in to prostitution.

My mother, being the humanitarian that she is, has harbored many of these run away "maids" under threat of being imprisoned herself for doing something so illegal as being human. She would heir a "maid" and helps her get off the street. My mother treated these women with dignity. They were not maids to us. We were not allowed to order them around or have them do our chores for us and we were expected to respect them. I love my mother for her idealism and I am happy to have inherited that trait form her. Sometimes the women that we harbored would manage to save enough for their trip back home or to move on to new more adduced households. Many of them always returned to see my mother and simply chat. My mother always had presents to give away anytime they showed up and especially on special occasions like Christmas and Ramadan. 

But this blog is not about my mother and her humanitarian expeditions. This is a blog about the pervasiveness of slavery in the Arab world. I used to think the situation was bad but I quickly found out that the situation in other more affluent Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE was by far much worse.

I lived for two years in Dubai and I cringed every time I met an Indian "laborer" most of these men had come from India with the promise of a better pay. They would arrive at Dubai airport and spend sometimes days sleeping on the floor waiting for their "sponsor" to show up with the appropriate paperwork before they are faired off to a construction site where they lived like sardine in an un-air-conditioned cargo container. Atmospheric temperature in the UAE reaches 55c in summer. I had the misfortune of seeing one of these hell holes once. I had hired a young Indian man called Shafi as an IT technician. The kid was well educated. I drove him home one day and he showed me where he lived with his father and I was shocked. I wanted to do something but he asked me not to get myself in trouble. I insisted, he was grateful but insisted that nothing could be done for now.

Some of these men are forced to work around the clock and sometimes they just loose it and take advantage of a law in Dubai that stipulates that in the case of man slaughter the family of the deceased would be paid "blood money". For some of these wretched Indian souls, this was a sacrifice they were willing to make so that their families back home would survive.

Back home in Lebanon I was once invited over to a new acquaintance’s place for dinner. The "maid" was a quiet person and looked terribly reached and frightened of her "madam". I felt uncomfortable and felt like saying something when the poor woman made an insignificant mistake and was slapped for it. At some point I could no longer bare it and I intervened on her behalf "please stop treating this human like an animal" I asked my host. The host, the mother of my acquaintance, reeled around laughing. "This is not a human being, she is an animal and will be treated as such" at that point I excused myself and abruptly left.

This was not an isolated cases. People regarded these poor migrant workers like animals. The masters mocked them all the time and made sure to make them feel stupid at every turn. Some of these poor migrants where actually well educated. Doctors, economists, historians. All turned to doing menial work for wealthier people in wealthier countries because the economy back home was virtually nonexistent. 

The Lebanese are an arrogant bunch. But the Saudi Arabians, being oil rich affluent and all, are by far more arrogant. For the rich Saudis, everyone can be bought, literally. And when a person is bought they can do anything they like to them. One Sri Lankan woman last year barley escaped her prisoners and upon medical examination it was discovered that she was tortured by her "employer" with needles and nails being stuck in to her body.... 24 nails and needles seen on x-ray which doctors eventually managed to remove some of them. These are the kinds of horrors that migrant workers endure at the hands of those without humanity and who think that humans can be owned like any property and that they can do whatever they want to what "belongs" to them.

Yesterday I read an article at the BBC website, a report about an Indonesian woman who was executed, beheaded, for killing her employers. Of course the Saudi courts probably ignored her testimony regarding how she was badly beaten on a regular basis and the courts probably ignored that migrant workers in Saudi Arabia (or any other Arab country) cannot complain about such sad acts against them to the authorities as they have no rights and no structure or law that exists or is enforced to protect them from abuse.

So the poor woman who probably resorted to murder in an attempt to defend herself, her body, and her mind like any human would do when confronted by an abusive jailer who regards you as property and with no legal authority to defend you, was beheaded. I abhor violence and killing anyone for whatever reason is wrong, I do not deny that, but this is an extenuating circumstance and if justice is to be blind then justice needs to take in to account such incomprehensible and appalling situations as this poor beheaded "maid" has to endure before she lost it and killed in an act of self preservation those who broke her and destroyed her and humiliated her and tortured her and when no one and no authority was willing to protect her or the multitude of migrant workers who are in the same situation as she was in.

Saudi Arabia (and most of the Arab world for that matter) is not the bastion of Islam that it processes to be. For Islam does not condone this kind (or any other kind) of barbarism. The sooner that my Arab brother and sister learn the lessons that they should learn and start treating others with dignity and respect of their human rights, the better it will be for everyone involved. 

As for the Lebanese, well… my dear brother and sisters…. If you want to be a proud nation… if you want an end to the political stupidity that ravages our country…. Then it is time to wise up and start treating everyone around you with dignity…. Slavery is wrong and no matter what name you white wash it with it is still slavery and still wrong.

Netanyahu makes intentional mistake after intentional mistake

So the not so great Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has come up with a decision to, not only toughen up on Palestinian "terrorists" in Israeli jails, but also making sure that when and if these "terrorists" are released they will not have a chance at a new life. 

Like most conservatives, Netanyahu probably thinks that education is "absurd " especially when given to prisoners and more so if they are Palestinian prisoners.

Maybe he does not know that the key to get these "terrorists" to stop being "terrorists" is to give them an alternative to what they already know... an education that will enable them to change their lives and take up jobs as productive citizens.

Obviously Netanyahu, in my opinion, will achieve the following by doing what he has proposed:

1. Insure that when the Palestinian prisoners are returned to whatever new Palestinian is standing at that moment that they will be unproductive trouble makers.

2. Insure that when the Palestinian prisoners are released that they will continue to "threaten" Israelis existence and thus use it as a tool against the Palestinians

3. Insure that he tactfully violates their human rights without by marginally not violating said human rights

undoubtedly some will argue that because these people are "terrorists" then they deserve no benefits what so ever. My argument for that is that prisons are there to reform people and not make them worse.

Also some will argue that with an education the prisoners will one day use that knowledge against Israel. Which is likely to happen but also likely not to happen. If a terrorist has no their agenda than terrorizing than no matter how much time behind bars they spend they will not change... especially when they are not being reformed through an education that is targeted at making them better people

Furthermore, not all the prisoners are terrorists, some of them are prisoners because of the apartheid Israeli government does not distinguish between a decent Palestinian and a violent Palestinian. So, inevitably, Israeli prisons for Palestinians are nothing more than "terrorist" factories... especially with no educational benefits being given.

Everyone is entitled to an education and the way out of this cycle of violence is through educational and dialog. But these words are alien to Netanyahu who without a doubt has no interest in peace what so ever. 

To break the cycle of violence what is needed is compaction, understanding, kindness, and an education.

All Netanyahu will achieve is intentionally make matters worse for not only Palestine, but equally as much for Israel. Maybe he knows this and does so to ensure that funding from the USA will never run out, or maybe he does not know this and will be in for a nasty surprise sometime in the future. Seriously! I do not understand how the great Israeli people could support someone who is so wrong for Israel.

A greater revolution is brewing

The Arab Spring started in Tunisia. All though it was an ARAB spring, the entire world was captivated and enthralled in the bravery of those who stood in the face of brutal suppression of the Arab regimes with their tear gas, bullets and tanks. It started in Tunisia and spread to Egypt and then Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. Absent still are the voices of the Iranian protesters, but their time will come soon enough. The world watched with horror as people where slaughtered and despots deposed. Despite the continuing agony of the Libyan and Syrian people, and despite the heavy crack down in Bahrain, the aspirations of the people did not diminish. And the world watched with amazement with western powered too confounded to react. For decades they have tried to instill such change in the east and failed. They failed because they advanced such motions as means to advance their own interests rather than that of the people, and they failed because they supported some of these despots, also for their own interests. The oil must flow.

What was an Arab spring is now slowly growing and becoming a worldwide spring. The financial crisis of the last few years has left many people disappointed with the lies and corruption of their own governments. The failure of world governments, especially those of the western world, have sparked out cries from their people demanding a better life. Demanding their rights to be respected by the Political parties, the corporations, the banks and the bean counters who never factor in the human aspect of their ill advised decisions and policies. The money must flow.

The Greeks have taken to the streets to protest austerity measures that will diminish the rights and life of the Greeks. The Spaniards too have risen spontaneously to demand change and to challenge the injustice and in human ways of a system that has not only failed them, the Spaniards, but the entire population of the earth.

The greed of the corporations, the insensitivity of sellout politicians, the corruption of a system of governance that is old and obsolete and no longer of the people and for the people, the entire financial system which, as it currently stands, violates our human rights on a daily basis. A system that is un-egalitarian and that favors those who have rather than those who do not have. A system by which success is measured, as if being a successful human can be measured by the amount of money one has or makes. What of those who do not care about money? What of those who want to be free of the chains and restrictions of finance? What of those who no longer wish to be humiliated by a system that claims equality but that is far removed from it? We are being lied too. We have been lied too for a very long time. We are told that money will make our lives better and that it will improve our quality of life but from my personal experiences, and the experiences of a multitude of human beings, I know that this is not true. Especially when there are far too many greedy people in this world who force the rest of us to become salves to this unjust system. This system that is worshiped at the stock exchange market, a religion of numbers that have no human value. The numbers must flow.

Slowly the world is being caught up by the spark that started in Tunisia. The revolution is not going to remain a regional affair. It will, undoubtedly, spark flames where ever people are being oppressed and humiliated and it does not matter if the antagonist is a bloody tyrant, a bloody ideology, or the bloody un-egalitarian financial system. Humanity must flow.

Check out this map of protests around the world. See these red marks increase over the next few years. The after mass will be ugly but what comes after that hell will be a worldwide necessary change. Necessary because we the world population is nearing 7 billion, our recourses are dwindling and are being mismanaged by the small percentage of ridiculously wealthy greedy corporate and state tyrants.