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Books by
Marvin X
Love and War: Poems /
In the Crazy House Called America /
Woman: Man's Best Friend /
Beyond Religion Toward Spirituality
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* * * * On
the Death of Osama bin Laden
By Marvin X
Well, well, well, as election season begins, Obama has a
feather in his cap, the body of Osama, the most wanted
man in American history. Thus the Obama Drama continues
for the hoodwinking of those addicted to the world of
make believe. As we imagined, Osama was living not in
some mountain cave, but in a mansion inside
Islamabad, Pakistan, of course whereabouts long
known by the Pakistani Intelligence and the CIA.
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For better or worse, he
was a
character created by America, first to
defeat the
Russians in Afghanistan, then to be the
bogeyman of the Global fascists in the
American military, finance, corporate,
university complex of white supremacy
institutions that shall now proceed to
reinstitute chattel slavery in America in
the form of wage slavery, with little or no
benefits for the workers who yet do not have
the boldness to seize the means of
production and institute a People's Republic
Ruled by the Consent of the Governed.
I
refer them to the poem “If We Must Die” by
Black Renaissance poet
Claude McKay.
Hopefully this will get their nuts out of
the sand and/or vaginas. A coward's death is
lighter than a feather; the warrior's death
is higher than
Mount Tai.
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No more jobs for life, no
job amenities, no free health insurance, no
social security.
Your life is a commodity in the free market
economy. It shall make money off you at
every turn, no free lunches, no free rides,
not even to the cemetery, better a cremation
in the nomadic European tradition so
accustomed by the North American Africans
addicted to white supremacy world of make
believe perpetuated by the Monkey Mind
Media.
Osama Bin Laden
[March 10, 1957 – May 2, 2011] was
an American creation, with full support of
Saudi Arabia, how else could nine of the sixteen
highjackers learn to fly but not how to land and while
training in America? How else could the Bin Laden fly
out of America on 9/11 when no other planes could fly?
Study the
House of Saud and the House of Bush!
And what is Barack
Obama but an extension of the Bush White Supremacy
Mythology, except in black face. When he imposes a
No-fly Zone over the Gaza Concentration Camp, I will
support him, until then, I will ride his ass like Roy
Rogers on Trigger.
|
Black ain't black
white ain't white
beware the day
beware the night. |
Source:
BlackBirdPressNews
posted 3 May 2011
* *
* * *
Rush Limbaugh: 'Thank God For President Obama'
(video)
* *
* * *
The Meaning of Osama bin Laden from a Street Perspective
By Marvin X
In the language of the street, Osama bin Laden checked
[March 10, 1957 – May 2, 2011] the white man. He put
traps in the White man's path, allowing us to breathe
another day while the white man focused on catching
Osama, just as the Black Panther Party took pressure off
the Negro people by having the police focus on the Black
Panthers as the main threat to the national security of
the United States. Can you imagine, some little Negroes
with pistols and shotguns are able to challenge the
might of the trillion dollar military industrial complex
called America! This is a joke of the highest order and
should receive an award at the coming Comedy Concert at
Oakland's Paramount Theatre on May 14.
What we must learn
from Osama is the interconnectedness of all things,
especially in the Global Village. On the highest level
of so-called civilization, there are only those who rule
and those who are ruled. Such ideological and religious
personas do not matter in the least, for they all go to
the same banks to bankroll their iniquities. It doesn't
matter if they are Muslim, Christian, Democrat,
Republican, Socialist, Communist, Gay, or Lesbian. Only
their interests matter, their narrow minded ideological
concerns, all else can be sacrificed, sometimes to the
highest bidder.
In the street,
there is little distinction from the cops and robbers,
they actually work together to keep crime alive. What
would the police do with a society free of crime? What
would the jailers and social workers, probation, parole
officers do? Osama has, beyond his wildest imagination,
helped usher in another Age of Man, ultimately helping
the downtrodden of humanity get the courage to stand up
in the face of oppression.
His main
contribution was helping overcoming the fear of death.
The suicide bombers gave us ample evidence death is no
matter, that a greater life awaits us, if we only rid
ourselves of the fear of death, if only we will invoke
the dictum my life and my death are all for Allah.
In the Mack God
philosophy, death is no matter, except as the price of
justice. For whatever twisted ideological perspective he
originated, whether Sunni or some weird combination
thereof, Osama gave the West its greatest challenge yet.
But in the end the
West shall face its greatest challenge as Baraka told
us, "In the end the Negro will be the terrorist." Thus
forget about Osama bin Ladan and concentrate on the most
oppressed sector of American society. They shall and
must be liberated by any means necessary, although we
suggest by the most scientific means possible.
The American wage slaves can join
them or stand on the sidelines, it doesn't matter. The
time has come for the liberation of the North American
Africans, and America may be destroyed in the process.
Who gives a damn?
1 April 2011
Source:
BlackBirdPressNews
* * *
* *
Washington Post Obituary: Osama bin Laden Killed at 54
Excerpts by
Bradley Graham
2 May 2011
Osama bin Laden, 54, who was born into Saudi riches,
only to end up leading a self-declared holy war against
the United States as head of one of the most ruthless,
far-flung terrorist networks in history, died Sunday in
the manner he had often predicted: in a strike by U.S.
forces. . . . Little in bin Laden’s privileged
upbringing as a scion of a wealthy Saudi Arabian family
suggested he would become the self-anointed champion of
Islamist extremism and the world's most wanted man, with
a $25 million bounty for his capture, dead or alive.
Though first exposed to fundamentalist religious
teachings during his teenage years, he was as a youth
much more pious than political—a tall, shy figure who
aspired with his many siblings to join the giant bin
Laden family construction business.
His experience in the 1980s leading
an Arab contingent against the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan engendered a fierce sense of militancy. The
subsequent arrival of U.S. troops in the Middle East,
initially deployed in 1990 to oust Iraqi forces from
Kuwait, served to focus bin Laden's ire on a view of the
United States as a domineering, corrosive threat to
Islam. . . .
A shrewd propagandist with an
understated though commanding presence, he showed
particular talent in bringing together terrorist
elements under the umbrella of his loose movement. His
brazenness in taking on the United States struck a
popular chord, and his ability to wrap himself in the
imagery of the prophet Muhammad carried deep resonance
in the Muslim world. His deft use of international media
helped magnify his message of murderous defiance against
Western influences and restoration of a long-ago Islamic
order. . . . Osama bin Laden’s father, Mohammed bin
Laden, emigrated as a youth from the Hadramawt region of
Yemen, arriving as a penniless laborer in 1925 in what
would become the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Energetic and
engaging, Mohammed bin Laden had a knack for engineering
and found his way into the construction business.
By the late 1930s, he had established
his own firm and was working on palaces for the royal
family. In time, he became a favored contractor for the
huge projects the kingdom undertook with its
ever-growing oil riches.
Mohammed bin Laden had already taken
multiple wives and had more than a dozen children when,
in 1956, he married 14-year-old Alia al-Ghanem, who came
from a Syrian family of citrus farmers. In 1957, Alia
gave birth to a son, Osama, which means “young lion” in
Arabic.
Mohammed divorced Alia when Osama was
a young boy and arranged for her to remarry Mohammed al-Attas,
who worked as a midlevel administrator in the bin Laden
company. He and Alia had four other children. . . .
Attending an elite private school in Jiddah—the al-Thager
Model School—Osama bin Laden joined an after-school
Islamic study group in eighth or ninth grade. In time,
he adopted the beliefs and practices of an insistent
piety, praying multiple times a day, letting his beard
grow and arguing for a restoration of Islam in Arab
politics.
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Bin Laden continued this
religious study after he entered Jeddah’s
King Abdulaziz University in 1976, where he
participated in the Muslim Brotherhood, an
Islamist organization intent on imposing
Koranic law throughout Muslim societies.
But
he remained quiet and deferential, focused
on the search for a pure spiritual life.
Only years later did his religiosity harden
into a fanatical hatred.
He studied management and
economics but never earned a university
degree, leaving for a job with the bin Laden
family business as a manager in Mecca. By
that time, the bin Laden company, headed by
Osama’s older brother Salem, had been handed
the enormous task of renovating the holy
cities of Mecca and Medina.
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At 17, bin Laden had
married his first wife: Najwa, a 14-year-old
first cousin whom he had gotten to know
during sojourns to Syria to visit his
mother’s family. After university, he took a
second and then a third wife, women who were
better educated than his first. He would
marry two more known times and father at
least 23 children.
The Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in late 1979 profoundly
influenced bin Laden’s course. Muslims
around the world rallied to the Afghan
cause, volunteering to help the mujaheddin
resistance against the Soviet army.
For the first years of the war, bin
Laden served essentially as a philanthropic activist,
traveling back and forth between the war front and Saudi
Arabia, carrying donations for the Afghan rebels.—WashingtonPost
* * *
* *
Allan Nairn on Obama’s Targeted Killing of Bin Laden
It definitely
should be an occasion for rethinking everything on a
much bigger scale than Afghanistan. The first thing that
struck me was seeing the Americans out in the streets
celebrating outside the White House, outside the old
World Trade Center site, people cheering, people
exultant. And while some of that may come from
bloodlust, I think a lot of it comes from a sense of
justice. People like justice. They want to see it. And
in this case, I think many people have the feeling,
well, he got what he deserved. This was a man who had
massacred civilians; he got what he deserved. And
there’s a lot of truth to that.
But if we recognize
that someone who is willing to kill civilians en masse,
someone who is willing to send young people out with
weapons and bombs to, as President Obama put it, see to
it that a family doesn’t have a loved one sitting at the
dinner table anymore, see to it that a child and a
parent never meet again, if we say that someone like
that deserves to die, then we have to follow through on
that idea, and we have to recognize, OK, if these things
really are so enormous, we have to stop them. Killing
bin Laden does not stop them. Bin Laden is dead, but the
world is still governed by bin Ladens.
People cheer
because they thought they saw justice, but this was not
justice delivered by—a kind of rough justice delivered
by victims. This was one killer killing another, a big
killer, the United States government, killing another,
someone who’s actually a smaller one, bin Laden. And the
bin Laden doctrine that, to take out the CIA office that
was at the World Trade Center, it’s OK to blow up the
whole World Trade Center, to teach Americans a lesson,
it’s OK to slaughter thousands of Americans—that
doctrine lives on in the American White House, in the
American Pentagon. You know, every day—and in seats of
authority all over the world.
Every day, the
U.S., directly with its own forces, or indirectly
through its proxy forces, its clients, is killing, at a
minimum, dozens of people. I mean, just since Obama came
in, in the one limited area of drone strikes in
Pakistan, something like 1,900 have been killed just
under Obama. And that started decades before 9/11. We
have to stop these people, these powerful people like
Obama, like Bush, like those who run the Pentagon, and
who think it’s OK to take civilian life.
And it doesn’t seem
that they can be stopped by normal, routine politics,
because under the American system, as in most other
systems, people don’t even know this is happening.
People know the face of bin Laden. They know the evil
deeds that he’s done. They see that he is dead, and they
say, "Oh, great, we killed bin Laden." But they don’t
see the other 20, 30, 50, 100 people who the U.S. killed
that day, many of them children, many of them civilians.
If they did, they probably wouldn’t be out in the street
cheering about those deaths.
We’ve got to stop
this practice. And Americans aren’t doing it. Egyptians,
Tunisians are doing their part. They’ve risen up against
the repression they face. I think we need an American
uprising, if we’re to put a stop to this kind of killing
of innocent people. And we need an American Romero,
someone like
Archbishop Romero of Salvador, who, in the face of
massacres, of daily massacres of what in the end was
more than 70,000 Salvadorans, stood up and said to the
army of his country, "Stop the repression. Defy your
orders to kill, because there’s a higher principle."
About a little more
than a week ago, I was in El Salvador and visited
Romero’s old home, which I had never been to before, and
saw that on his bookshelf he had
Why Not the Best?, a campaign book by Jimmy
Carter, which he had apparently been reading. Romero
wrote to Jimmy Carter in his capacity as the archbishop
in 1980, asking Carter to stop supporting the Salvadoran
military that was slaughtering his people. And from what
I know of Romero, he probably really believed that
Carter would respond. He didn’t. Carter kept sending the
aid. And within weeks, Romero himself was assassinated
by death squad, that had originated from U.S. backing.
Writing letters didn’t work in that case. And it doesn’t
work here. You know, we’ve got to put a stop to this.
Bin Laden is dead. And bin-Ladenism, if you want to call
it that, should die also.—DemocracyNow
* * *
* *
Bush rejects Taliban offer to
surrender bin Laden
Second week of bombing begins; Media visits village
hit by missile
By Andrew
Buncombe
Monday, 15 October 2001
After a week of
debilitating strikes at targets across Afghanistan, the
Taliban
repeated an offer to hand over Osama bin Laden, only to
be rejected by President Bush. After a week of
debilitating strikes at targets across Afghanistan, the
Taliban repeated an offer to hand over Osama bin Laden,
only to be rejected by President Bush. The offer
yesterday from
Haji
Abdul Kabir, the Taliban's deputy prime minister, to
surrender Mr bin Laden if America would halt its bombing
and provide evidence against the Saudi-born dissident
was not new but it suggested the Taliban are
increasingly weary of the air strikes, which have
crippled much of their military and communications
assets.
The move came as
the Taliban granted foreign journalists unprecedented
access to the interior for the first time. Reporters
were escorted to the village of Karam in southern
Afghanistan, where the Taliban said up to 200 civilians
were killed in an American bombardment last Wednesday.
The reporters saw clear evidence that many civilians had
been killed in the attack, though they could not confirm
the number of deaths. "I ask America not to kill us,"
pleaded Hussain Khan, who said he had lost four children
in the raid. In the rubble of one house, the remains of
an arm stuck out from beneath a pile of bricks. A leg
had been uncovered near by.
Another old man
said: "We are poor people, don't hit us. We have nothing
to do with Osama bin Laden. We are innocent people."
Washington has not commented on the bombardment. Mr
Kabir said: "If America were to step back from the
current policy, then we could negotiate." Mr bin Laden
could be handed over to a third country for trial, he
said. "We could discuss which third country." But as
American warplanes entered the second week of the
bombing campaign, Washington rejected the Taliban offer
out of hand. "When I said no negotiations I meant no
negotiations," Mr Bush said. "We know he's guilty. Turn
him over. There's no need to discuss innocence or
guilt."—Independent
* * *
* *
Remarks by the President on Osama Bin
Laden
Excerpts by
President Barack Obama
Today, at my
direction, the United States launched a targeted
operation against that compound in Abbottabad,
Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the
operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No
Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian
casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin
Laden and took custody of his body. For over two
decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda’s leader and
symbol, and has continued to plot attacks against our
country and our friends and allies. The death of bin
Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in
our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.Yet his death
does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt
that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against
us. We must—and we will—remain vigilant at home
and abroad.
As we do, we must
also reaffirm that the United States is not—and never
will be—at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as
President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is
not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader;
he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has
slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries,
including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by
all who believe in peace and human dignity.
Over the years,
I’ve repeatedly made clear that we would take action
within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is
what we’ve done. But it’s important to note that our
counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead
us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.
Indeed, bin Laden had declared war against Pakistan as
well, and ordered attacks against the Pakistani people.
Tonight, I called
President Zardari, and my team has also spoken with
their Pakistani counterparts. They agree that this is a
good and historic day for both of our nations. And
going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue to
join us in the fight against al Qaeda and its
affiliates. . . . Let us remember that we can do these
things not just because of wealth or power, but because
of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with
liberty and justice for all.—East Room
/ 2 May 2011 /
WhiteHouse
* * *
* *
Letter to America
Excerpts By Osama
bin Laden
Think not of those who are killed in
the way of Allah as dead. Nay, they are alive with their
Lord, and they are being provided for. They rejoice in
what Allah has bestowed upon them from His bounty and
rejoice for the sake of those who have not yet joined
them, but are left behind (not yet martyred) that on
them no fear shall come, nor shall they grieve. They
rejoice in a grace and a bounty from Allah, and that
Allah will not waste the reward of the believers."
[Quran 3:169-171]
The Nation of victory and success
that Allah has promised:
It is He Who has sent His Messenger
(Muhammad peace be upon him) with guidance and the
religion of truth (Islam), to make it victorious over
all other religions even though the Polytheists hate
it." [Quran 61:9]
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Allah has
decreed that 'Verily it is I and My
Messengers who shall be victorious.' Verily
Allah is All-Powerful, All-Mighty." [Quran
58:21]
The
Islamic Nation that was able to dismiss and
destroy the previous evil Empires like
yourself; the Nation that rejects your
attacks, wishes to remove your evils, and is
prepared to fight you. You are well aware
that the Islamic Nation, from the very core
of its soul, despises your haughtiness and
arrogance.
If the
Americans refuse to listen to our advice and
the goodness, guidance and righteousness
that we call them to, then be aware that you
will lose this Crusade Bush began, just like
the other previous Crusades in which you
were humiliated by the hands of the
Mujahideen, fleeing to your home in great
silence and disgrace. If the Americans do
not respond, then their fate will be that of
the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to
deal with their military defeat, political
breakup, ideological downfall, and economic
bankruptcy. |
 |
This is our message
to the Americans, as an answer to theirs. Do they now
know why we fight them and over which form of ignorance,
by the permission of Allah, we shall be victorious?—Guardian
* *
* * *
Has Osama Bin Laden Been Dead for
Seven Years
and are the U.S. and Britain covering it up to
continue war on terror?
By Sue Reid
11 September 2009
The U.S. State
Department offered a reward of $50million for his
whereabouts. The FBI named him one of their ten 'most
wanted' fugitives, telling the public to watch out for a
left-handed, grey-bearded gentleman who walks with a
stick. Yet this master terrorist remains elusive. He has
escaped the most extensive and expensive man-hunt in
history, stretching across Waziristan, the 1,500 miles
of mountainous badlands on the borders of Pakistan and
Afghanistan.
Undeterred, Barack
Obama has launched a fresh operation to find him.
Working with the Pakistani Army, elite squads of U.S.
and British special forces were sent into Waziristan
this summer to 'hunt and kill' the shadowy figure
intelligence officers still call 'the principal target'
of the war on terror. This new offensive is, of course,
based on the premise that the 9/11 terrorist is alive.
After all, there are the plethora of 'Bin Laden tapes'
to prove it.
Yet what if he
isn't? What if he has been dead for years, and the
British and U.S. intelligence services are actually
playing a game of double bluff? What if everything we
have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since
the early days after 9/11 is a fake—and that he is being
kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support
for the war on terror?
Incredibly, this is
the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among
political commentators, respected academics and even
terror experts. Of course, there have been any number of
conspiracy theories concerning 9/11, and it could be
this is just another one. But the weight of opinion now
swinging behind the possibility that Bin Laden is
dead—and the accumulating evidence that supports
it—makes the notion, at the very least, worthy of
examination.
The theory first
received an airing in the American Spectator magazine
earlier this year when former U.S. foreign intelligence
officer and senior editor
Angelo M. Codevilla, a professor of international
relations at Boston University, stated bluntly: 'All the
evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than
Osama Bin Laden.' Prof Codevilla pointed to
inconsistencies in the videos and claimed there have
been no reputable sightings of Bin Laden for years (for
instance, all interceptions by the West of
communications made by the Al Qaeda leader suddenly
ceased in late 2001).
Prof Codevilla
asserted: 'The video and audio tapes alleged to be
Osama's never convince the impartial observer,' he
asserted. 'The guy just does not look like Osama. Some
videos show him with a Semitic, aquiline nose, while
others show him with a shorter, broader one. Next to
that, differences between the colours and styles of his
beard are small stuff.' . . . [Professor
David Ray] Griffin suggests [in his book
Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?] that
Western governments used highly sophisticated, special
effects film technology to morph together images and
vocal recordings of Bin Laden.So if they are fakes, why
has Al Qaeda kept quiet about it? And what exactly
happened to the real Bin Laden?
The answer to the first question
may be that the amorphous terrorist organisation is
happy to wage its own propaganda battle in the face of
waning support—and goes along with the myth that its
charismatic figurehead is still alive to encourage
recruitment to its cause. As for the matter of what
happened to him, hints of Bin Laden's kidney failure, or
that he might be dead, first appeared on January 19,
2002, four months after 9/11.
This was when Pakistan's President
Pervez Musharraf told America's news show CNN: 'I think
now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a kidney
patient. The images of him show he is extremely weak.'
In his book, Professor Griffin also endorses this
theory. He says Bin Laden was treated for a urinary
infection, often linked to kidney disease, at the
American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001, two months
before 9/11. At the same time, he ordered a mobile
dialysis machine to be delivered to Afghanistan.
How could Bin Laden, on the run in
snowy mountain caves, have used the machine that many
believe was essential to keep him alive? Doctors whom
Griffin cites on the subject think it would have been
impossible. And what of the telling,
small news item that broke on December 26, 2001 in the
Egyptian newspaper Al-Wafd? It said a prominent
official of the Afghan Taliban had announced that Osama
Bin Laden had been buried on or about December 13. . . .
'He suffered
serious complications and died a natural, quiet death.
He was buried in
Tora
Bora, a funeral attended by 30 Al Qaeda fighters,
close members of his family and friends from the
Taliban. By the Wahhabi tradition, no mark was left on
the grave,' said the report. The Taliban official, who
was not named, said triumphantly that he had seen Bin
Laden's face in his shroud. 'He looked pale, but calm,
relaxed and confident.'
It was Christmas in
Washington DC and London and the report hardly got a
mention. Since then, the Bin Laden tapes have emerged
with clockwork regularity as billions have been spent
and much blood spilt on the hunt for him. Bin Laden has
been the central plank of the West's 'war on terror'.
Could it be that, for years, he's just been smoke and
mirrors?—DailyMail
* *
* * *
Osama bin Laden’s Second Death
(Paul Craig Roberts)
Killing One Monster—Unleashing Another
(Tim Wise)
Perhaps the only thing more
disturbing than the celebrations unleashed in the
wake of bin Laden’s demise was the cynical way in
which the president suggested that his killing
proved “America can do whatever we set our mind to.”
If this is, indeed, the lesson of bin Laden’s death,
then this only suggests we clearly don’t want to
diminish, let alone end, child poverty, excess
mortality rates in communities of color, rape and
sexual assault of women (including the many
thousands who have been victimized in the U.S.
military), or food insecurity for millions of
families; because we aren’t addressing any of those
things with nearly the aplomb as that put to warfare
and the killing of our adversaries.
We are, if the president is
serious here, a nation that has narrowly constricted
its marketable talents to the deployment of
violence. We can’t manufacture much of anything, but
we can kill you. We can’t fix our schools, or build
adequate levees to protect a city like New Orleans
from floodwaters. But we can kill you. We can’t
reduce infant mortality to anywhere near the level
of other industrialized nations with which we like
to compare ourselves. But we can kill you. We can’t
break the power of Wall Street bankers, or jail any
of those bankers and money managers who helped
orchestrate the global financial collapse. But we
can kill you. We can’t protect LGBT youth from
bullying in schools, or ensure equal opportunity for
all in the labor market, regardless of race, gender,
sexuality or any other factor. But we can kill you.
Booyah, bitches.— TimWise
* *
* * *
The Power of Nightmares, (Part 1/3), “Baby it’s
Cold Outside“
/
The Power of Nightmares, (Part 2/3), "The
Phantom Victory"
The Power of Nightmares, (Part 3/3), “The Shadows in
the Cave”
Immortal Technique--Bin Laden
* *
* * *
On Osama Bin Laden’s Death
By Chris Hedges
I spent a year of
my life covering al-Qaida for The New York Times.
It was the work in which I, and other investigative
reporters, won the Pulitzer Prize. And I spent seven
years of my life in the Middle East. I was the
Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. I’m
an Arabic speaker. And when someone came over and
told Jean and me the news, my stomach sank. I’m not
in any way naïve about what al-Qaida is. It’s an
organization that terrifies me. I know it
intimately.
But I’m also
intimately familiar with the collective humiliation
that we have imposed on the Muslim world. The
expansion of military occupation that took place
throughout, in particular the Arab world, following
9/11—and that this presence of American imperial
bases, dotted, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but
in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Doha—is one that has done
more to engender hatred and acts of terror than
anything ever orchestrated by Osama bin Laden.
And the killing
of bin Laden, who has absolutely no operational role
in al-Qaida—that’s clear—he’s kind of a spiritual
mentor, a kind of guide . . . he functions in many
of the ways that Hitler functioned for the Nazi
Party. We were just talking with Warren about
Kershaw’s great biography of Hitler, which I read a
few months ago, where you hold up a particular
ideological ideal and strive for it. That was bin
Laden’s role. But all actual acts of terror, which
he may have signed off on, he no way planned.— CommonDreams
* *
* * *
Will Osama’s death give Obama new life with
voters?
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
3 May
2011
President
Obama
accomplished something historic with the
take down of America's and the world's public
enemy number one symbol of terrorism, Osama bin
Laden. His accomplishment was so unassailable he
got such virulent and relentless Obama critics
as talk show guru
Rush Limbaugh, Former Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney
to applaud him for his actions.
A number of
chronic Obama bashers with varying degrees of
enthusiasm cheered the president for the bin Laden
kill. Even more gratifying, he got near universal
approval from millions of Americans across all
ethnic, racial and faith lines for his action. But
the cheers, applause, and praise—as politicians,
star athletes, and entertainers have found to their
bitter chagrin—lasts only so long; as the saying
goes what have you done for me today. . . .
The bright side
to this is that Obama's resolute action against
Osama bin Laden defused the major weapon in the
GOP's attack arsenal that they have used to pound
Democratic contenders in years past and especially
Obama in 2008. And that is the smear that Democrats
are soft on the military and the war on terrorism
and that Democrat's softness puts America's in
mortal danger of terror attacks. . . .
The execution
of bin Laden and Obama's willingness to expand the
Afghan war has pretty much made that a moot point
for the GOP.— TheGrio
* *
* * *
Osama bin Laden’s
body buried at sea
U.S. moves quickly to bury
slain al Qaeda leader in accordance with Muslim
tradition
2 May 2011
Osama bin Laden, the long-time
figurehead of the al Qaeda terrorist network, has
been buried at sea after
being killed in a U.S. raid in Pakistan.
Pentagon officials said Monday that bin Laden's body
was be handled in accordance with Muslim traditions,
which include strict rules on burial taking place
within 24 hours after death. Sources confirmed to
CBS News national security correspondent David
Martin that his body was released into the sea from
a U.S. Navy vessel on Monday, likely into the Indian
Ocean.
Bin Laden was a Saudi national,
but officials tell CBS News that the Kingdom was
unwilling to have his remains repatriated. He was
killed in a U.S. raid launched early Monday in the
relatively-well-heeled town of Abbottabad, near the
Pakistani capital of Islamabad.— CBSNews
* *
* * *
In bin Laden killing,
media—as usual—regurgitates false Government
claims
Excerpts by
Glenn Greenwald
3 May 2011
Yesterday,
it was widely reported that bin Laden "resisted"
his capture and "engaged in a firefight" with
U.S. forces (leaving most people, including me,
to say that his killing was legally justified
because he was using force). It was also
repeatedly claimed that bin Laden used a
women—his wife—has a human shield to protect
himself, and that she was killed as a result.
That image—of a cowardly through
violent-to-the-end bin Laden—
framed virtually every media narrative of
the event
all over the globe. And it came from many
government officials, principally Obama's top
counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan.
Those claims
have turned out to be utterly false.
From TPM toda: "It was a fitting end for the
America's most wanted man. As President Barack
Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser John
Brennan told it, a cowardly Osama bin Laden used his
own wife as a human shield in his final moments.
Except that apparently wasn't what happened at all.
. . . Hours later, other administration officials
were clarifying Brennan's account. Turns out the
woman that was killed on the compound wasn't bin
Laden's wife. Bin Laden may have not even been using
a human shield. And he might not have even been
holding a gun."
Politico's Josh Gerstein adds: "The White House
backed away Monday evening from key details in its
narrative about the raid that killed Osama bin
Laden, including claims by senior U.S. officials
that the Al Qaeda leader had a weapon and may have
fired it during a gun battle with U.S. forces."
Gerstein added: "a senior White House official said
bin Laden was not armed when he was killed."
Whether bin
Laden actually resisted his capture may not matter
to many people;
the White House also claimed that they would
have captured him if they had the chance, and this
fact seems to negate that claim as well. But what
does matter is how dutifully American media outlets
publish as "news reports" what are absolutely
nothing other than official White House statements
masquerading as an investigative article.— Salon
* *
* * *
Bin Laden not armed during U.S. raid
He said the
decision to kill rather than capture bin Laden was
made by forces on the ground, not by the White
House, which earlier authorized the rehearsed raid
that included contingencies for, but no expectations
of, capture.
CIA Chief Leon
Panetta, later Tuesday told NBC News, "The
authorities we have on Bin Laden are to kill him.
And that was made clear. But it was also, as part of
their rules of engagement, if he suddenly put up his
hands and offered to be captured, then they would
have the opportunity, obviously, to capture him. But
that opportunity never developed."
U.S. forces
faced a firefight throughout the raid, Carney said
at the briefing. "We expected a great deal of
resistance and were met with a great deal of
resistance. There were many other people who were
armed in the compound," Carney said. There had been
conflicting information about the circumstances
under which the al-Qaida leader was killed. Some
reports said that bin Laden was armed and that the
woman was used as a human shield.
Describing the
raid, Carney said
two other families lived in the bin Laden compound
in the outskirts of Abbottabad, some 60 miles from
the capital of Islamabad. One family lived on the
first floor of the bin Laden building and one family
in a second building. One team began the operation
on the first floor of the bin Laden house and worked
their way to the third floor; a second team cleared
the separate building.
Slate: Dramatic bin Laden death details may be bogus
Carney said Navy SEALs encountered two al-Qaida
couriers on the first floor of the compound building
holding bin Laden and his family. A woman caught in
crossfire there died, he said.— MSNBC
* *
* * *
Osama, Obama and Bush:
Apt Comparisons, Missed Opportunities
By Bruce A. Dixon
The real
difference between Republicans and Democrats in a
case like this isn't in how the White House would
act. The difference is how rank and file Democrats,
the so-called antiwar movement choose to react. If
this were 2006 or 2007, many would recall the
widespread news reports of Bin Laden's death back in
December of 2001, and the fact that Bin Laden audio
or video tapes had a habit of emerging at incredibly
convenient times for the Bush administration, like
the eve of the 2004 election. Why should a
government and military establishment, antiwar
activists would wonder aloud, that told
hundreds of well-documented lies to get us into
Iraq alone be trusted to tell the truth now?
 |
The difference is, those are questions
that don't get asked with a Democrat in
the White House. Democrat Barack Obama
doesn't just start with a clean slate.
Thanks to the president's bipartisan and
visionary policy of “looking forward,
not back” atrocities and crimes of
administrations past are forgiven and
forgotten, and all the excuses offered
for them enshrined as unquestioned
historical fact.
The Pentagon says they killed Bin Laden
in a weekend firefight, won't show
pictures and dumped the body at sea.
That's it and that's all. Unless another
courageous soldier like Bradley Manning
comes forth, we'll never know any
different, end of story.
Assuming the official story is mostly
true, could Bin Laden have been captured
alive and put on trial? Not likely. |
No matter who
was in the White House, the US never had any
intention of capturing Bin Laden alive and bringing
him to trial. Afghan authorities in the fall of 2001
offered to apprehend and turn Bin Laden in to US
officials, if only they were provided with some
actual proof he was responsible for 9-11. Bush
spurned the offer, preferring to invade and install
a new Afghan “government” of feudal warlords, drug
smugglers and aid profiteers. The team allegedly
sent to kill Bin Laden was not instructed to capture
him alive, but to do just what it did. To kill him.— BlackAgendaReport
* *
* * *
Obama decides not to
release bin Laden death photo
The White
House had been weighing the release of a photo,
in part to offer proof that bin Laden was killed
during a raid on his compound early Monday.
However, officials had cautioned that the photo
was gruesome and could prove inflammatory. "It
is important to make sure that very graphic
photos of somebody shot in the head are not
floating around … This is not who we are. We
don’t trot this stuff out as trophies," Obama
told CBS News, according to White House
spokesman Jay Carney.
"Given the
graphic nature of these photos, I think releasing
them would create some national security risk," the
president said, according to Carney's account. The
president decided against making the images public
after a spirited debate within government over the
potential impact of their release.— MSNBC
* *
* * *
Osama bin Laden's death:
The US patriot reflex
By Gary Younge
While many
nations suffered from al-Qaida's terrorism and few
in the world will mourn Bin Laden's death, the
United States is the only place where it sparked
spontaneous outpourings of raucous jubilation. . . .
This was not so much the exercise of American power
as the performance of it. Coming eight years to the
day after George W Bush landed on the USS Abraham
Lincoln to announce "Mission accomplished" in Iraq,
news of Bin Laden's death was yet another mediated
milestone in this war on an abstract noun. Like the
capture of Saddam Hussein, the murder of Bin Laden
changes little. Al-Qaida was never a top-down
organisation, and was in decline anyhow – and the
principal reason for its waning fortunes is the
uprisings in the Arab world, revolts that have
mostly taken place against America's client states.
 |
But
to suggest that "justice has been done",
as President Obama did on Sunday night,
seems perverse. This was not justice, it
was an extra-judicial execution. If you
shoot a man twice in the head you do not
find him guilty. You find him dead. This
was revenge.
And
it was served very cold indeed. Given
the nature of the 9/11 attacks a popular
desire for vengeance in the US is a
perfectly understandable and legitimate
emotional response. It is not, however,
a foreign policy. And if vengeance is a
comprehensible human emotion then
empathy is no less so.
Americans have a right to grieve and
remember those who died on 9/11. But
they have no monopoly on memory, grief
or anger. Hundreds and thousands of
innocent Afghanis, Iraqis and Pakistanis
have been murdered as a result of
America's response to 9/11. If it's
righteous vengeance they're after,
Americans would not be first in line.
Fortunately it is not a competition, and
there is enough misery to go around. |
But those who
chant "We killed Bin Laden" cannot display their
identification with American power so completely and
then expect others to understand it as partial. The
American military has done many things in this
region. Killing Bin Laden is just one of them.
If "they" killed
Bin Laden in Abbottabad then "they" also bombed a
large number of wedding parties in Afghanistan,
"they" murdered 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha and
"they" gang-raped a 14-year-old before murdering
her, her six-year-old sister and their parents near
Mahmudiyah. If "they" don't want to be associated
with the atrocities then "they" need to find more to
celebrate than an assassination. Vengeance is, in no
small part, what got us here. It won't get us out.— Guardian
* *
* * *
|
Deathers take over where birther left
off
By Shannon Travis
Now, a
surprisingly diverse crop of people are
questioning whether Osama bin Laden is
actually dead.Some media outlets and
bloggers are calling them "deathers."
Their claims follow a wide range: Some
believe that the world's most-wanted
terrorist was not the man killed Sunday,
others think bin Laden is dead but was
killed many years ago, and still others
believe that the September 11 mastermind
is alive—and secretly being
interrogated.
One
Fox Business Network host is not going
quite that far. Judge Andrew Napolitano
at one point declared that "Osama bin
Laden is dead," but he later seemed
unconvinced. Napolitano also questioned
the president's authority to kill him.
Napolitano began his Monday show by
saying bin Laden was "killed on the
illegal whim of the president."
|
 |
Moments later,
he added, "Osama bin Laden is dead. And the
president seems to think he has the right to
kill whomever he wants so long as the person is
perceived as a monster and the public supports
it." And yet the judge also questioned whether
officials are "telling us the truth or pulling a
fast one to save Obama's lousy presidency."
Later in the broadcast, Napolitano asked a
guest, "Do you believe he's dead, or do you want
some more evidence: a photograph, a testimony of
an eyewitness? Something other than the words of
a president whose words we have doubted before?"
Others who are
questioning bin Laden's death include a libertarian
talk radio host, a well-known liberal anti-war
activist and some everyday Pakistani students. What
their claims all have in common—much like claims
that the president was born outside the U.S.,
instead of in Hawaii—is that they go against the
agreed-upon facts.Obama's decision not to release
the photos of bin Laden's death seems to be stoking
"deather" fires. Alex Jones is a Texas-based talk
radio host who also runs various websites and whose
YouTube channel claims more than 24 million views.
He is sometimes called a right-wing conspiracy
theorist.
After the
president's announcement of bin Laden's death, Jones
told his listeners in one broadcast, "My friends,
this is a complete and total hoax." "Where is the
body?" Jones asked in another show. "My White House
sources nine years ago, on record, confirmed that he
had been killed and was frozen on ice." Cindy
Sheehan, who is certainly not an ideological ally of
Jones', appears to agree with him on bin Laden's
death. Sheehan became famous for protesting
President George W. Bush's Iraq policy—even camping
out at the White House and the president's Crawford,
Texas, ranch—after her son was killed in the war.
Shortly after the president's bin Laden
announcement, Sheehan planted seeds of doubt on her
Facebook page and
blog.
"It's not that
I don't believe Obama about Osama because he's
Obama, I don't believe him because he is just one in
along line of butt-naked emperors," Sheehan wrote.
"The only proof of Osama being dead again that we
were offered was Obama telling us that there was a
DNA match between the man killed by the Navy SEALs
and OBL. Even if it is possible to get DNA done so
quickly, and the regime did have bin Laden DNA lying
around a lab somewhere—where is the empirical
proof?" Sheehan continued.— CNN
* *
* * *
My Reaction to Osama
bin Laden’s Death
By Noam Chomsky
6 May 2011
It’s
increasingly clear that the operation was a planned
assassination, multiply violating elementary norms
of international law. There appears to have been no
attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as
presumably could have been done by 80 commandos
facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim,
from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies
that profess some respect for law, suspects are
apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress
“suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the
FBI, Robert Mueller,
informed the press that after the most intensive
investigation in history, the FBI
could say no more than that it “believed”
that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though
implemented in the UAE and
Germany. . . . Less is said about Pakistani anger
that the U.S. invaded
their territory to carry out a political
assassination. . . . We might ask ourselves how we
would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at
George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and
dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially,
his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not
a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who
gave the orders to commit the “supreme international
crime differing only from other war crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of
the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for
which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of
thousands of deaths, millions of refugees,
destruction of much of the country, the bitter
sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest
of the region.— GuernicaMag
* *
* * *
Killing Bin Laden:
Hit, Execution or justified military action?
By Ashahed M. Muhammad
[A]n unarmed
Osama bin Laden was shot in the chest and head. His
body was later taken to the ocean and dumped.
According to Obama administration officials, this
was done consistent with Islamic burial requirements
and rituals.
Imam Dawud
Walid of Masjid Wali Muhammad in Detroit, Michigan
said if those in charge of the operation were truly
concerned with handling the body according to
Islamic law, they would have
turned the body over to the family of Osama bin
Laden
to allow them to determine what to do going forward.
“Specific
information hasn't been made public about Mr. Bin
Laden's so-called Islamic burial, but in terms of
traditional Muslim protocols, it is not acceptable
to perform a sea burial,” Imam Walid told The Final
Call. “Having the (funeral) prayer being said in
English and then having a body disposed at sea is
outside of traditional Islamic laws,” he added. . .
. Mohammed Shafiq, director of the UK-based Ramadhan
Foundation, a group working to provide a more
positive image of Islam and Muslims, appealed for
“calm and extra vigilance.” Reflecting the views of
many, he said he would have preferred a trial for
Osama bin Laden.
“Osama
bin Laden has been responsible for preaching hatred
and using terrorism to kill innocent people around
the world and it would have been more suitable for
him to be captured alive and put on trial in an
international court for the crimes he has
committed,” said Mr. Shafiq. “Every human should be
held responsible for their actions in a court of law
and Osama bin Laden is no different.”— FinalCall
* *
* * *
The Targeted
Assassination of Osama Bin Laden
By Marjorie Cohn
9 May
2011
When he
announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed
by a Navy Seal team in Pakistan, President
Barack Obama said, "Justice has been done." Mr.
Obama misused the word, "justice" when he made
that statement. He should have said,
"Retaliation has been accomplished." A former
professor of constitutional law should know the
difference between those two concepts. The word
"justice" implies an act of applying or
upholding the law. Targeted assassinations
violate well-established principles of
international law. Also called political
assassinations, they are extrajudicial
executions. These are unlawful and deliberate
killings carried out by order of, or with the
acquiescence of, a government, outside any
judicial framework.
Extrajudicial
executions are unlawful, even in armed conflict. In
a 1998 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur
on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
noted that "extrajudicial executions can never be
justified under any circumstances, not even in time
of war." The U.N. General Assembly and Human Rights
Commission, as well as Amnesty International, have
all condemned extrajudicial executions. In spite of
its illegality, the Obama administration frequently
uses targeted assassinations to accomplish its
goals. Five days after executing Osama bin Laden,
Mr. Obama tried to bring "justice" to U.S. citizen
Anwar al-Awlaki, who has not been charged with any
crime in the United States. The unmanned drone
attack in Yemen missed
al-Awlaki
and killed two
people "believed to be al Qaeda militants,"
according to a CBS/AP bulletin.
Two days before
the Yemen attack, U.S. drones killed 15 people in
Pakistan and wounded four. Since the March 17 drone
attack that killed 44 people, also in Pakistan,
there have been four drone strikes. In 2010,
American drones carried out 111 strikes. The Human
Rights Commission of Pakistan says that 957
civilians were killed in 2010.
The United
States disavowed the use of extrajudicial killings
under
President Gerald Ford. After the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence disclosed in 1975 that the
CIA had been involved in several murders or
attempted murders of foreign leaders, President Ford
issued an executive order banning assassinations.
Every succeeding president until George W. Bush
renewed that order. However, the Clinton
administration targeted Osama bin Laden in
Afghanistan, but narrowly missed him. . . .— CommonDreams
* *
* * *
Abbottabad Pakistan Villagers, Osama Bin Laden
Video Was Faked
(video)
* *
* * *
 |
Stylish, Beautiful People
Omar bin Laden [born 1981], a metals
trader who has been living in Cairo,
appears at pains to disassociate himself
from his father's belief in political
violence. "We want to remind the world
that Omar bin Laden, the fourth-born son
of our father, always disagreed with our
father regarding any violence and always
sent messages to our father, that he
must change his ways and that no
civilians should be attacked under any
circumstances," the statement said. . .
. Omar bin Laden) and his mother
Najwa bin Laden published a book
authored with
Jean Sasson in late October 2009,
titled
Growing Up bin Laden. . . . He
married
Jane Felix-Browne, legally named
Zaina Mohamed Al-Sabah, a parish
councillor from
Moulton, near
Northwich in
Cheshire in the United Kingdom, in
July 2007. |
The marriage was conducted in September 2006 in
Islamic ceremonies in both Egypt and Saudi
Arabia, after which the couple spent three weeks
together in Jeddah before Zaina returned to Britain
for several months. . . .
Omar bin Laden published a complaint on
May 10, 2011, that the
burial at sea of his father deprived
the family of a proper burial.
—Wikipedia
* *
* * *
Shock and Awe
War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages . . —Marinetti's Manifesto
|
 |
* * *
* *
* *
* * *
 |
Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties.
Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
* *
* * *
|
The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” |
 |
His father distrusted the police, who had frequently
called him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr. Kennedy’s
father “relished Muhammad Ali’s quip that the Vietcong
had never called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places his
father, and Mr. Wright, in sympathetic historical light.
* * * * *
 |
Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.”
|
Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this
simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding
like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just
metaphor for metaphor’s sake.
She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—WashingtonPost
|
Rock the Casbah
Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World
By
Robin Wright
While
Wright's book, which examines the
multifaceted "counter-jihad"—the phenomenon
of moderate Muslims confronting violent and
authoritarian interpretations of Islam—is
consistently engaging, it too often feels
more like advocacy than analysis, and tends
to be overly coloured by optimism. Wright's
Rock the Casbah—taken
from the title of the famous Middle
East-themed song by The Clash—picks up where
her earlier
Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle
East left off. And that's the
problem. Wright finds new reform-minded
Muslims to praise, but conceptually, this
book is almost identical to her previous
one. An
award-winning journalist, Wright originally
set out to write about the counter-jihad in
both the Middle East and the West. (The
book's working subtitle—still found on some
websites—was
How Sheikhs, Comedians, Rappers, and
Women Are Challenging Osama Bin Laden.)
Her overview of this subject proves quite
appealing.—TheNational
|
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* * *
* *
 |
Jerusalem: The Biography
By Simon Sebag Montefiore
Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgment Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of three thousand years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence. How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the “center of the world” and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a gripping narrative, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city in its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalem’s biography is told through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women—kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores—who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem. |
As well as the
many ordinary
Jerusalemites
who have left
their mark on
the city, its
cast varies from
Solomon, Saladin
and Suleiman the
Magnificent to
Cleopatra,
Caligula and
Churchill; from
Abraham to Jesus
and Muhammad;
from the ancient
world of
Jezebel,
Nebuchadnezzar,
Herod and Nero
to the modern
times of the
Kaiser,
Disraeli, Mark
Twain, Lincoln,
Rasputin,
Lawrence of
Arabia and Moshe
Dayan.
Drawing
on new archives,
current
scholarship, his
own family
papers and a
lifetime’s
study, Montefiore
illuminates the
essence of
sanctity and
mysticism,
identity and
empire in a
unique chronicle
of the city that
many believe
will be the
setting for the
Apocalypse. This
is how Jerusalem
became
Jerusalem, and
the only city
that exists
twice—in heaven
and on earth.
* *
* * *
 |
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
By Ilan Pappe
It
is amazing, according to Pappe, how the
media had not managed to see the
similarities between the ethnic
cleansing that was happening in Bosnia
with the one that is happening in
Palestine. According to Drazen Petrovic
(pg.2-3), who has dealt with the
definition of ethnic cleansing, ethnic
cleansing is associated with
nationalism, the making of new nation
states and national struggle all of
which are the driving force within the
Zionist ideology of Israel. The
consultancy council had used the exact
same methods as the methods that were
later to be used by the Serbs in Bosnia.
In fact Pappe argues that such methods
were employed in order to establish the
state of Israel in 1948.
The
book is divided into 12 chapters with 19
illustrations in black and white, with 7
maps of Palestine and 2 tables. These
include old photographs of refugee
camps, and maps of Palestine before and
after the ethnic cleansing of 1948.
Pappe continues his writing as a
revisionist historian with the intention
of stating the bitter truth to his
Israeli contemporaries and the fact that
they have to face the truth of their
nation being built upon an ethnic
cleansing of the population of
Palestine.
|
One can sense an optimistic hope in Pappe’s
writing when he talks about the few who
are in Israel who are aware of their
country’s brutal past especially 1948
and the foundation of the state upon
ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.—PaLint
* * * * *
|
By Nidaa Khoury
Khoury's poetry is fired by belief in
the human and the spiritual at a time
when many of us feel unreal and often
spiritually hollow.—Yair
Huri, Ben-Gurion University
Written in water and ink, in between the
shed blood. Nidaa Khoury's poems take us
to the bosom of an ancient woman . . .
an archetype revived. The secret she
whispers is 'smaller than words.'—Karin
Karakasli, author, Turkey
Nidaa Khoury was born in Fassouta, Upper
Galilee, in 1959. Khoury is the author
of seven books published in Arabic and
several other languages, including The
Barefoot River, which appeared in Arabic
and Hebrew and The Bitter Crown,
censored in Jordan. The Palestinian poet
is studied in Israeli universities and
widely reviewed by the Arab press. The
founder of the Association of Survival,
an NGO for minorities in Israel, Khoury
has participated in over 30
international literary and human rights
conferences and festivals. Khoury is the
subject of the award-winning film, Nidaa
Through Silence. |
 |
* *
* * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
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