Month: May 2011

The story fast capturing headlines this week is all about the infidelity of ex-terminator and ex-governor of California, and now, soon to be ex-husband of Maria Shriver, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Questions over the breakup of Schwarzenegger and Shriver were answered when the ex-bodybuilder…

…announced to the world that a female member of the couple’s house staff had given birth to his love child a decade ago. Apparently, he forgot to mention this to his wife, until last week.

Now, the big question perplexing America’s media is just who is the mother?

Meanwhile, in New York’s Rikers Island prison, IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn is ruminating on his folly in believing every black hotel chambermaid in New York must find him irresistible.

It’s not the first time Strauss-Kahn has made that wrong assumption when in the presence of the fairer sex. Hearing of his arrest, 31-year-old French writer Tristane Banon…

…has now revealed a similar assault on her, back in 2002, when she interviewed Strauss-Kahn for a book she was writing.^[1]

Stories of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sexual assaults on womankind have abounded on the internet for years. Back in 2003, the Daily News reported that, while filming ‘Twins’:

Assistant director Linnea Harwell told the Los Angeles Times that Schwarzenegger regularly displayed himself naked when she went to fetch him from his trailer and once pulled her onto a bed while he was wearing only underwear.

“He was laughing like it was all a big joke. Well, it wasn’t. It was scary,” she said.”

In another incident at the time:

Carla Baron, a stand-in for “Twins” female lead Kelly Preston, said Schwarzenegger and his own stand-in once crowded her from the front and back, suggesting “a Carla sandwich” as the Austrian star stuck his tongue in her mouth.”^[2]

All of which leaves one wondering whether it wouldn’t be justice for Schwarzenegger and Strauss-Kahn to be sharing a cell in Rikers Island prison together?

When men achieve a certain power-status in the world, they seem to reach a moment in their lives when they believe all women find them irresistible. It isn’t true, of course. The only person who finds them irresistible is themselves.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his big empty mansion, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn in his tiny barred cell, may now find they have the time to ruminate on that fact.

None of this media attention, on two fairly worthless male members of the human race, has deflected the US government this week from its primary aim of milking the killing of Osama bin Laden for much more than it could ever be worth.

Not content with killing their enemies, the 18th century Polynesian native people went one step further by cooking and eating them. Thus was the sad fate of Captain James Cook, among others…

It would seem that the US administration, unsatiated by the mere death of Osama bin Laden, is determined to metaphorically cook and eat him, by disparaging his existence in any demeaning manner they can conceivably conjure.

Having published video footage of a frail old man, wrapped in a blanket, watching home movies; made much of the ‘dong syrup’ in his medicine cabinet, and guffawed at the sensational ‘outing’ of the dyed beard, they’ve now slipped another slice of juicy ‘news’ to the waiting media – he owned a porn video.^[3]

Needless to say, the US media has pounced on this like a starving dog scavenging a rotting mouse carcase. Within minutes, a plethora of tasteless jokes and double entendres was cascading forth onto the airwaves:

Is this, perhaps, one tasty bin Laden morsel too far?

Americans spend over thirty-three billion dollars every year on pornography. That forty-four dollars per head of the population, or, to put it another way, approximately two dirty videos each.^[4]

Has the vilifying of Osama bin Laden’s dead body become just another case of American hypocrisy – the US pot calling the al Qaeda kettle, black?

Moralism in the US may still be preached from the pulpits, but in the political arena the behavior and actions acknowledged to accompany it are long dead and buried. Whether the act is one of sexual assault, fathering a love-child out of wedlock, or assassinating one’s enemies, there are precedents (and presidents) galore to justify them.

Former N.C. Senator John Edwards fathered a love-child with campaign worker Rielle Hunter while his wife was dying from cancer; South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond; US President Warren Harding; US President Grover Cleveland; Utah Senator Arthur Brown; Benjamin Franklin; Thomas Jefferson, and more recently, Jesse Jackson, have all sired children out of wedlock – to name just a few.^[5]

For Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn there may well be yet more skeletons, duly emerging from various closets, to add to their not inconsiderable embarrassment.

But, who knows, maybe the US government can divert attention by announcing further revelations of Osama bin Laden: he bit his toe nails, waxed his pubic hair, or – oh, no! – could he possibly have been gay?

^{[1] “IMF chief Strauss-Kahn undergoing tests over sex charge” BBC, May 16th 2011}

^{[2] “SEX STORIES GRIP AH-NOLD” Daily News, October 5th 2003}

^{[3] “Bin Laden’s porn has been found” FP, May 13th 2011}

^{[4] “Internet Pornography Statistics” Internet Filter Review}

^{[5] “Politicians and their ‘love children'” Access Atlanta}

Filed under: Immoral politics

There’s not a lot for Americans or Brits to be jovial about these days. Trolling through the news sites is a somewhat depressing business. Gasoline prices are out of control on both sides of the Atlantic; we read today that George Mitchell, the US envoy to the Middle East, is to resign after failing to make any progress with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The British ex-prime minister, Tony Blair, remains the Quartet’s envoy for Mid-East peace, but as no-one has heard sight nor sound of him in months (which gives Brits at least one reason to believe life could still be worth living) it seems likely his success in that area is on a par with his career as British prime minister.

Floods are causing havoc throughout much of America; forest fires rage in Britain (a calamity virtually unknown in that country). All-in-all, a whole vista of doom and gloom stretches across the Northern hemisphere, which even the demise of Osama bin Laden has failed to shift.

So, you think you’re badly off?

Remember the nation our respective governments raped, pillaged, and ransacked for seven long years; the war zone that kept us entertained night after night with epic dramas of ‘shock and awe’?

Iraq is still there. Just.

It’s still there, and it’s still a hellhole – long abandoned by the media whose sponsors used it to raise audience figures and sell burgers, beer, and every other commodity Westerners would cry themselves to sleep over, if their supply dried up.

A nation forgotten by Americans and Brits too upset by the price of gasoline to worry what their government’s brutal actions created, in a land thousands of miles away.

McClatchy Newspapers still has a bureau in Baghdad, staffed by a few dedicated Iraqi journalists. One of them is Leith Hammoudi. This is his blog entry for yesterday:

I don’t know how to start this blog. I am still under the effect of the shock that happened to me only less than an hour ago. I was about to lose my life and my lovely son because of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I used to bring sweets to my family every Thursday from a close bakery on the main street. Today I did the same thing but I went only about half an hour ago. My son Haider insisted to join me so I took him. In my way back home and Just less than ten steps from the sweets bakery, I hear sound of shooting and I thought that some kids are playing with fireworks. I was shocked to know the issue is bigger than my simple mind. I saw by my own eyes two young boys covering their faces with black scarves holding two pistols and shooting a broker inside his office in a very cool blood and walked away.

At that moment, I was only thinking about my son so I covered him with my body and kept him behind me while I was looking at them walking to the other side calmly. My son was shocked and asked me innocently “what was going on dad” and I told him its only some kids who are playing with fire work. When they left, I found out that the man was injured in his shoulder and I saw him after second ina taxi going to the hospital.

I came back home thinking about what I just saw. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Dozens of questions came to my mind at one second. What if I were in front of them? Would they shoot me? Would they shoot my son? Why did I bring my beloved son with me? OMG. I don’t even want to think about that at all. Among all the questions came a real big one, Why I am still in Iraqi while I can live somewhere else?? At the end and when I couldn’t answer any of my questions, I remembered that this is my third facing with death and Thanks God I am still alive. the first one was in 2005 when a car bomb detonated in a place I always pass through and the second time when a mortar shell fell near the bus I was in while coming to work while today is the third one. I don’t know when I am going to face it one more time and I don’t know if I would survive or not.”^[1]

So, you think you’re badly off?

Despite the recent inauguration of a new power plant in Baghdad- supplied by the Iranians – five hours power per day is all the average Iraqi citizen can expect. The US/UK invasion (the rest of the ‘coalition’ so pathetic as to be unworthy of mention) began in March 2003. Almost a decade later, the country is being left to fester by the ‘coalition’, despite International Law demanding that the perpetrators reconstruct the infrastructure.

Eight years on, the violence in Iraq continues unabated. No, it doesn’t make the US TV news. To show it would be evidence of America’s utter failure in that country (with a bit of British assistance).

The website, Iraq Today, chronicles the violence on a daily basis. Here is today’s entry, though it could be any day picked at random:

Kurdish rebels kill police officer in attack – agency

Reported security incidents

Baghdad:
#1: In Baghdad, a roadside bomb struck a vehicle belonging to the Ministry of National Security in al-Ghazaliyah district in western the capital, wounding two ministry employees aboard, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Iraqi security forces rushed to the site of the first blast, but another roadside bomb exploded near their vehicles and wounded two policemen and a soldier, the source said.

#2: In a separate incident, a bomb detonated at a liquor store in Bab al-Sharji district in downtown Baghdad, wounding a civilian and damaging the store, the source said.

#3: In eastern Baghdad, a roadside bomb went off near a U.S. military convoy in Baladiyat district, the source said without giving further details.

#4: Five casualties were reported in north-east Baghdad following an explosion in the area, security sources said today (Wednesday). The source told Aswat al-Iraq that “a bomb exploded in Palestine Street, wounding five civilians.”

Mussayab:
#1: Police found the bodies of two men with gunshot wounds in the town of Mussayab, 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad, a Babil province police official said.

Hilla:
#1: Police found the body of a teenager bearing signs of torture in a town near the city of Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, a Babil province police official said.

Tikrit:
#1: The Director of Tuz township’s Nationality Certificates Office Director in Salahal-Din Province has been injured in an explosive charge blast in his car on Thursday, a police source said. “An explosive charge, stuck to the car of Tuz township’s Nationality Certificates Director, Lt.
Brig. Madih Nouri, blew of under his car in the city of Tikrit on Thursday, seriously injuring him,” the security source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

Kirkuk:
#1: Iraqi police say a lawmaker from the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc escaped an assassination attempt in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk. Police Brig. Gen. Khattab Omar says bombs exploded Thursday morning near the house of Arshad al-Salehi, a Turkomen member of Iraqiya. Al-Salehi and his family were in the house at the time but suffered no injuries.

A mortar round landed in the early morning on the house of Arshad al-Salihi, a Member of Parliament and head of a political group represents the Iraqi Turkoman minority, destroying part of his house, a local security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

#2: Hours later, two people were wounded in central Kirkuk when a roadside bomb struck the convoy of Major General Jamal Tahir, a chief police in Kirkuk, while he was visiting the house of Arshad al-Salihi which was attacked by a mortar round earlier in the day, the source added.

Mosul:
#1: A roadside bomb went off near a police patrol on Wednesday, wounding three policemen and one civilian, in western Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.”

That’s just one relatively ‘uneventful’ day in Iraq.

If all that violence occurred in Britain, or Texas, on a single day the populace would be up in arms demanding action. In Iraq, it happens every day – seven days a week, 365 days a year.

But, oh, did you know – the price of gasoline in the US has just gone up another five cents.

So, you think you’re badly off?

^{[1] “Facing Death” Inside Iraq -McClatchy}

^{[2] “War News for Thursday, May 12, 2011” “Iraq Today”, May 13, 2011}

Filed under: Never had it so bad

There are times I just feel like writing. You know the mood; there’re questions inside that aren’t properly resolved. Sure, you can sit down in an armchair and mull them over, but it never seems to produce a tangible answer to what’s puzzling you. So, you make yourself comfortable at the keyboard, pour a glass of French red, and begin hammering away at nothing in particular.

It’s Osama bin Laden, of course. Not him personally, you understand. I think I wrote in a recent post that him being alive or dead is of no concern to me. No, it’s more what his death – or, our reaction to it – is doing to us as people.

Let’s consider the whole concept of right versus wrong. For that’s truly the crux of the issue. To suggest that the cold-blooded killing of three thousand people on 9/11/2001 was not wrong would be madness. More than madness; idiocy.

Yet the cold-blooded killing of one unarmed man in Pakistan – albeit the alleged mastermind behind the deaths of those three thousand on 9/11/2001 – is, we are told, right.

Except, according to the US intelligence services he wasn’t the mastermind, that was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. However, assuming he was the ‘big boss’ behind the ‘taking out’ of the three thousand, can it be right to kill him in cold blood?

To answer that question it’s necessary to examine the concept of ‘right’ versus ‘wrong’.

Society sets certain rules necessary to its (relatively) smooth functioning. We make laws for the purpose. Yet even as we make those laws, we break them. Society says the speed limit on this road is 40 mph, but it’s late in the evening, the road is clear, so we feel justified in driving at 60 mph. (Unless we happen to be a Republican in a pick-up truck, in which case we set the cruise for 39 mph and to hell with the queue behind us – but I digress) It’s unlikely the local sheriff’s deputy would agree with our logic, but then he makes his money from issuing tickets.

Okay, I’ll admit to a certain flippancy, but when Douglas Bader said, “Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men,” he wasn’t too far off the mark.

What he was actually saying was that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are not fixed in stone, however many laws society creates. They are, in fact, subjective rather than objective.

Is there anyone out there who honestly believes Osama bin Laden was not acting from an, albeit misguided, sense of righteousness? I suppose there may be some who simply believe he was ‘evil’, but most sane individuals would accept that people do what they consider right for them, even if the end result is obviously wrong for somebody else. Bin Laden was, in his own eyes and those of his followers, a freedom fighter. He believed what he was doing was right.

Terrorism is nothing new. When the Romans invaded Britain in 43AD, the Anglo-Saxons terrorized the Romans at every opportunity. And can you blame them? Some bloody foreign army suddenly comes tramping across your cornfields, raping your women and stealing your chickens, and then expects you to lay down your arms and lick their feet. No way!

I remember, a couple of years ago, when Obama was campaigning for the presidency, a video of his ex-pastor did the rounds of the media circus, and America was aghast at this black cleric talking of 9/11, and telling his congregation that, “America’s chickens had come home to roost.”

It was then I realized that Obama could never be the president that many hoped he would be. It was because Obama, faced with the words of his pastor, betrayed him. I knew that the cleric, whose name now escapes me, was courageous enough to tell the truth. But Obama, like Iscariot before him, denied his own pastor for the thirty pieces of silver that was the White House.

The problem with governments is that they tend to look after their own. Take the US government, and that of Saudi Arabia, as examples. We all know the civil rights record of Abdullah is appalling. He’s a barbarian of the first order. Yet, America (and Britain) treats him like a prodigal son. Stuff what he does to his subjects, Abdullah is a western customer par excellence, and consequently deserves red carpet treatment.

What Abdullah wants, Abdullah gets. He wants arms; give him arms. He wants US military boots to protect him; give him US military boots to protect him. He wants a kiss…

…give him a kiss.

It’s hardly surprising that some Saudi individuals should view the West in general, and the US in particular, as their enemies, given the arrangement existing between Abdullah and certain western leaders and their governments.

The US did withdraw most of their military personnel from Saudi in 2003, but only after the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan had stretched the military to its limits. Opening up those new fronts in the Middle East was even more reason for al Qaeda to increase its resentment of the West.

Does any of this justify the cold-blooded killing of a man in a small Pakistani town with the unlikely name of Abbottabad?

At the end of the game, history – at least, the history that bears any relation to fact – will declare this a contest of ‘right’ versus ‘right’, in which ‘right’ eventually won or lost, depending on your viewpoint. The methods utilized to fight the contest, on both sides, can never be anything else but wrong.

The incontrovertible facts are that nothing on this earth can justify the events of 9/11/2001, yet equally, nothing justifies democratic governments supporting an evil regime that tortures and victimizes its subjects in the most brutal of ways.

America’s chickens certainly came home to roost on 9/11/2001, but in a manner that could never be acceptable to any sane human being. The crime committed on that day was hideous by its choice of innocent victims, guilty of no crime against anyone, mere scapegoats for the brutal policies of successive US governments. As though, somehow, they might have been able to change those policies.

As to whether we in the West have right on our side? I believe we do. There can never be a right reason for taking the lives of those who have done no wrong, or holding them responsible for the actions of their governments.

Nevertheless, 9/11 was no act of war, but a criminal act, whatever George W Bush may have said. Wars can only ever be waged against other nations, not organizations, despite the colloquial names given to the ‘war on drugs’, or the ‘war on cancer’, or other marketing ploys common in capitalist countries.

The cold-blooded killing of an unarmed Osama bin Laden can never be justified, whatever his alleged crimes. For ‘alleged’ they now will always be. For us to accept his fate as justifiable is to turn ‘wrong’ into ‘right’. It is tantamount to legalizing the lynching of blacks in 1950’s America.

To make acceptable such corruption of our societal values of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ – those that legally declare a man to be innocent till proven guilty by due process of law – is to corrupt ourselves and our society.

We embark on that path at our peril.

Filed under: Wrong is right and right is wrong