On the challenge of writing Politically from an Arab or Muslim perspective:

http://greatamericanpinup.blogspot.com/2006/01/suheir-hammads-zaatardiva-and-kazim.html

Well done.

Is Muqtada Al Sadr becoming the "Nasrallah of Iraq"?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061031/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq



Besides al-Sadr, the largest Shiite coalition in the 275-member parliament, the United Iraqi Alliance, had also condemned the checkpoints for inflicting what it described as "collective punishment" against residents of Baghdad's Shiite neighborhoods.

*"Kidnapping a man can't be a pretext for laying siege to these neighborhoods," Sheik Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer, a prominent Shiite lawmaker, said at a news conference.

Al-Maliki's threatened to further roil relations with the U.S. that hit a rough patch last week after Al-Maliki issued a string of bitter complaints — at one point saying he was not "America's man in Iraq."

Al-Maliki had apparently been angered by a statement from U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad that the prime minister had agreed to set a timeline for progress on reaching security and political goals — something al-Maliki denied. He also angrily rebuked the U.S. for a raid on Sadr city targeting an alleged death squad leader in which 10 people were killed.

*As it was a justification for Israeli war crimes against the Lebanese people. A person MUST read between the lines. Political and war captives cannot be the basis for wars when in fact, the US and Israel are engaged in a war against Muslims and their way of life, liberty and the persuit of Islamic States instead of US engineered democrazies. Particularly in light of Gitmo and Abu Gharaib. If that is indeed the case for "collective punishment" then boy, does the US have it coming to them.

Screw MOCKERY. We have had enough
of Israel's BRUTAL MOCKERIES!

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/781888.html

In the heaviest show of aerial power since the August 14 cease-fire, IAF fighter jets dived down at least six times to zoom low over the southern suburbs. No bombing was reported, but the roar of the jets caused concern among residents, some of whom took to the rooftops and balconies to watch.In south Lebanon, officials and witnesses reported IAF planes staging mock raids over the towns of Nabatiyeh and Tyre.

I.E. "staging" "mockery" "caused concern"....just like everyone they murder is a "militant".

Militant pregnant women at checkpoints and their stillborn little militants that die because they are denied transit to hospitals. Militant children with their buckets on the beach. Militant children on their way to school (a famous incident in which the IDF literally planted a shell on a path to a Palestinian schoolyard and detonated it by remote control) in which five children from one family were murdered in cold blood. The Militant boy named Mohamed Al Dura that was murdered in cold blood as his father sheltered him from IDF machine gun fire. The Militant activist Rachel Corey who was not only run over once by an IDF bulldozer but repeatedly.

So many militants and so much mockery!




She complains of how no one is helping them.

Jimmy Judd is dead.

http://www.willcoxrangenews.com/articles/2005/12/07/news/news3.txt

The strangest thing happened today. My daughter and I were on the road to Douglas and I was retelling the Miracle Valley tale for about the thousandth time. I thought about what an interesting story it is and how the two of us should "work on it" together. When I got home, I did a quick search on Jimmy's name and Miracle Valley and found much to both of our surprise and amazement, that the sherriff had died on Friday. This is the second time Miracle Valley has made such a strange re-entry into my life on this "visit" to SE Arizona. Last time, it was a deer when I wished to see an animal. The poem, called The Old West is about miracles and the deer and the valley in which Miracles are said to occur. And mammoth bones discovered.

Must be a sign.

http://carmenisacat.blogspot.com/2006/09/milk-is-white-love-is-black-you.html

Israel Using Dirty Weapons of Mass Destruction
(well, we all know this and some of us even know about
the flying nuclear waste from places like the Los Alamos
facilities that mysteriously lost some computers to
a forest fire...some of us actually know what DU is.
It is flying Nuclear Waste that kills two birds with one
very hot stone: eliminates the need for disposal
while simultaneously distributing radioactive
dust to everyone in close proximity to a war
zone, regardless of their role as "enemy
combatants". Or non, as the case may be.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/780584.html

Busby's report concluded that such results could be caused either by bunker-busting conventional bombs using uranium or a new kind of weapon bearing a "novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (e.g., a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash."

Ode To Patty D

They said we couldn't play together
no more-no more, couldn't play together
no more. I didn't get it. La dee da.
You were white, I was white.
You were poor, I was poor.
You were mean, I was mean.
Just didn't get it so we snuck around.
We borrowed the Japanese Flag from
an old house half-burned down,
stole a crystal ball.
It didn't tell us nothing.
I think it was because you were
an Eastern Hillbilly and I was a Western.
But it could have been your mean dog Trixie,
a gray pointer with gnashing teeth
or your brother David, may he roast in hell
for opening up the kitty that way.

All Muslims Declared Insane:

http://www.islamonline.net/iol-english/dowalia/society-7-2-2000/society1.asp

Ibn Umar (raa) reported that Allah's Messenger (pbuh) as saying: "Every intoxicant is Khamr and every (type of) Khamr is prohibited. The one who drinks wine in this world and is addicted to it dies without repentance and will not drink it in the Hereafter."3

http://www.islamweb.net/ver2/archive/article.php?lang=E&id=844&ShowVoteResult=yes

A recent study revealed that alcohol use costs the U.S. a staggering billion US dollars a year, more than all illegal drugs combined, in the form of lost workdays and drunken driving accidents. Alcohol is a most addictive psychoactive drug; about six million Americans persistently misuse it and another 8 million are permanently addicted to it. This year about 100,000 will die from alcohol-related causes and hospital beds are littered with chronic alcohol abusers suffering from heart disease, stroke and liver failure. Others spend years in and out of treatment centers with their lives wrecked as well as of those close to them. Most of such outpatients suffer from illnesses such as anxiety, depression and schizophrenia. Yet alcohol is a socially accepted common drink and flows freely throughout the American society. Alcohol manufacturers spend more than 1 billion in advertisements promoting its relaxing and pleasing effects. That is three times the annual budget of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) for alcohol research. Unlike other drugs, no war has been declared on its misuse and any talk of restriction conjures up the failures of 1920's prohibition era. There is no discussion of its ill effects except in relation to road accidents, despite the knowledge that it is responsible not only for death of others on the road but is also harmful to the one who uses it.

In Pre Islamic Arabia:

Drinking would provide escape from deep-rooted personal insecurities and the instability of family life, just as it does today. (Hahaha much like Pre Islamic America ya think?)

A well organized plan for gradual change. The Islamic prohibition on alcohol was a logical final step of a well organized plan executed over a period of 3 years, communicated by the Qur’an and put into practice by the Prophet. Thus the heavy and problem drinkers were gradually weaned off this habit. We could assume this to have some resemblance to the present-day systematic desensitizing hierarchy used in behavioral therapy.However, the most important factor was the believers’ whole-hearted readiness to give up drinking when the Divine command came: "Surely al-khamr (intoxicants; wine and alcoholic drinks) is forbidden." This command was enough to stop drinking instantaneously, throw away any and all drinks and to break up or empty existing pots, skins full and other containers of fermented date, palm, honey and grape in every gathering and household until the streets of Madinah flowed like streams of alcohol as a testimony to the greatest anti-alcohol movement ever witnessed by humankind. It was an extraordinary exhibition of willpower installed by faith.

Thus it is clear that the current epidemic of alcohol abuse cannot be remedied unless the supporting structures and mechanisms are put in place in the American society. Therefore, it is time that American Muslims with their rich tradition and reGreater Syria methodology, get busy working to help their compatriots beset with problems such as those associated with the use of alcohol.

From The Archives of Shame

I've only met one person who worked for Homeland Security in my travels. He was a bastard.

We were in Cyprus evacuating and there were many women with small children. They had loaded us up at the crack of dawn (from the refugee center) and taken us to the Cypriot airport. We waited and waited. The C 130s could only hold a hundred passengers each. Our group was in line and the next plane was having trouble so we just had to stand there and guard our places. One woman I had run into several times in the years preceeding our fateful day...a muslim woman from Louisiana....was having problems guarding her own place from her own daughter...a girl who had married a muslim man and "reverted" and then, the mother in law had "reverted" and was in Lebanon in order to take care of her autistic grandson because her daughter was obviously a bit selfish. Anyways...as we were waiting, another busload of us appeared and they just made a line by ours and when they opened up the screening booth, they just hopped right in before us..we'd been waiting almost four hours.

Well...the little kids were getting dehydrated and the poor mothers in our tribe were having a hard time. My powerful friend had taken the previous cargo jet outta Cyprus so it left no one but me to protect our little hapless band of idgits.

So I stepped up to the plate..there was nothing I could do about the "line cutters" who had arrived after us because this mofo from Homeland Security just didn't care about First Come First Serve...he hated us all because afterall, we were mostly LEBANESE Americans and children. So....I went up and told him that the babies and women need to go FIRST. They were getting massively dehydrated and in fact, one flaked out Lebanese woman who was the wife of a doctor had completely lost it and was getting medical attention from the airport nurses and medics (who, by the way asked ME if they should give her some valium so I asked her doctor husband who was used to the woman's neuroses and he said, point blank, "no" and neither one of them could look at me during the long haul to Newark because his wife had started yelling at me because I said to her: Are you maybe hysterical?).

So the Homeland Security guy treated me like I had no right to be a nurse and talk about the Titanic Method of "women and children first" and was just such a major asshole.

I asked for his name. And a piece of paper to assign numbers to my tribe so that the women and children could go have a diaper change and a drink without losing their place in line to the usurpers. He denied me a piece of paper! Said I was just screwing everything up and I had no "authority" to do such a thing!

I said fine. It's on you buddy if one of these babies goes into a hypovolemic crisis (many of the kids had diarrhea as well from the uncertain conditions we'd been bathing and eating in for four days).

Finally he followed me and said, "here is some water...go distribute it."

And I said NO. YOU DO IT. IT IS YOUR JOB.

So...I got my tribe through on the next C130 (a whole collection of short stories in that tale!) using my number system which completely foiled the attempts of other line breakers to further delay our departure....and you know what?

In the waiting area of the Cypriot airport....where I had to rush to find my children because I SWORE to my tribe that I'd be the last to board and if anyone had babies, they'd go before me with MY OWN CHILDREN....all the mommies and daddies came up and thanked me.

Homeland Security my ass. They are Nazis and don't give a damn about humans. They are sick little bureaucrats drunk on their own authority.

My two cents.

Good Boy, Lucky Girl

Finally, I saw
it came running down
after the rocks
that it knocked
into antecedence,
little chips
from the slag.
The dog had watched
it many times,
I could tell
by the twitch
of his ears,
the way he snuck
outside at dawn
in the freezing cold
to see it.
I really wanted it
as much as he,
could almost smell
the pelt, feel
the squirrel run.
I finally saw it.
I'm such a lucky girl.
Daylight sometimes finds us all.

http://www.geocities.com/midisandlyrics/whenthesaintsgomarchingin.mid

or maybe it's this:

http://www.geocities.com/midisandlyrics/winchestercathedral.mid

But where in the world would people be without this:

http://www.geocities.com/midisandlyrics/hesgotthewholeworldinhishands.mid

or this particular SNAFU:

http://www.geocities.com/midisandlyrics/houseoftherisingsun.mid


There is a house in New Orleans, they call the "Rising Sun",
It's been the ruin of many a good girl
And oh God, you know I'm one
Oh God, you know I'm one
Oh God, you know I'm one.

I imagine those songs, without the word G-D would just be...well....just songs to our great Mazda, the one, the sublime but somehow, it just wouldn't work:

And oh Mazda, you know I'm one.

Damn.

Every time a poet does this,
they risk quitting forever - Darla Whitehead

Which Lingua Franca


In the most Oriental chapters of chaos
are the great portals of time, the backwards
and forwards of speech are opened, closed
bang bang bang, interpretation in the breezes.
The dietary is shared with disaster
in the pigment of newsprint and rally.
Who bothers about the senate anymore
when each thing branches into a hundred more,
a very long history of policy is the groundwork
for a mudslide in a milieu of plunder.
There isn't a quick fix for this, there isn't
a new order. There is this right now
in the revocation of prairies, that haze.
Your God and mine. That makes two.
The future isn't written in Latin anymore.

http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2005-05/08/article03.shtml

And of course, there's this:

After the Communist takeover in 1949, Mao Zedung set about dividing the Muslims into nationalities so they would identify with their 'ethnic' origin and not their 'Muslim' identity.
According to population statistics of 1936, the then Kuomingtang Republic of China had an estimated 48,104,240 Muslims. After the introduction of Mao's policies, this number was reduced to ten million. No official Chinese explanation has ever been given for this apparent disappearance of around 38 million Muslims. The mass extermination and destruction of the Muslims of China pales before the much publicized plight of a handful of Tibetan monks or the democrats of Tiannaman Square.

Talk about a Holocaust!

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HI06Ad01.html

In the past the Hui were among the least orthodox Muslims in the world. Many smoked and drank, few grew beards, and Hui women rarely wore veils. Increased contact with the Middle East, however, has wrought changes. Thousands of Hui students have returned from colleges in Arab countries over the past few years and they have brought with them stricter ideas of Islam. Mosques in Ningxia have now begun to receive worshippers five times a day, more Hui women have taken to wearing headscarves, and skullcaps are in wide evidence. There is a strong identification among the Hui community today with the wider problems of the Islamic world. "It's American policy that has given all of us Muslims a bad reputation," said Yang, Tai Zi Mosque's female imam, quivering with indignation. "We are a peace-loving religion, but look what they [the Americans] have turned us into. Look what lies they spread about us," she continued. The 50 women surrounding her all nodded slowly in assent. For many non-Muslim Chinese, this identification of the Hui with communities outside of China is problematic. "Earlier the Hui were just like us except they didn't eat pork. Now they think they are very special. They think of themselves as foreigners," a Foreign Office official in Ningxia complained. The Hui are exempt from China's one-child policy, and affirmative-action schemes reserve special seats for them at universities and government departments. In interior regions such as Ningxia that have been left out of the economic boom of China's coastal region, competition for jobs is intense and resentment against the Hui's "special" privileges is increasing.

Boy I miss him.