Things We Are Not Told By The Media

I am a selfish person.

An Open Letter to Defense Minister, Ehud Barak

Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

By Bassam Aramin

30/05/08 "Counterpunch" -- - Honorable General Ehud Barak, you don't know me personally. I am a seeker of peace, and I struggle with all my strength and ability for the realization of a just peace that will bring calm and prosperity to Palestinians and Israelis together. I have suffered personally from your criminal occupation and I have paid a heavy price. Firstly, I was imprisoned when I was 17 years old and wasted seven years of my life in your barbaric prisons. Secondly, have you perhaps read or heard about what happened to the young girl Abir Aramin? She was a ten-year-old whom your soldiers killed with a rubber bullet from a distance of 15 feet on January 16, 2007 in front of her eleven-year-old sister Areen. Despite this I, the father of Abir — may she rest in peace — believe in the right of the Israeli person, as in the right of all people, to exist and to live in peace and security. So why do you not believe in our right to enjoy these same things, sir?

Where was the democratic nature of your state when your heroic soldiers killed my daughter before the eyes of her friends at the entrance to her school in Anata? Where were your democratic ideals when you closed the investigation file into Abir's murder for lack of sufficient evidence, this despite the fact that the crime is clear and was committed in front of more than ten witnesses? Was Abir really a threat to your soliders, sir?

I carry in my possession the weapons with which Abir threatened those soldiers. I have in my hand her school backpack, reinforced and armored, of course — the mechanical pencil she had, laden with dangerous lead cartridges, and her math book in which class she had a test the same day, which of course included detailed instructions on how to prepare chemical weapons. In addition to all this, she had a sharp ruler, which could for sure be used as a weapon to stab someone. Lastly, I found in her possession two pieces of chocolate that perhaps contained a bit of enriched uranium that would have certainly brought devastation upon your state, if she hadn't been tempted to take them in her hand for a taste seconds before she was shot.

Here I have to give your soldiers credit in their incredible ability to incapacitate and kill with such deadly accuracy. The bullet hit Abir exactly one centimeter from her hypothalamus—this caused her to immediately enter a coma and she died thereafter and went to dwell in the presence of God, sparing her the continuing pain and heartache herein expressed.

Thus, Abir Aramin can be added to the list of great successes and security accomplishments in the name of the state of Israel. But I request, Minister and General, in that I am the father of this young girl, at the very least an admission of responsibility for this murder, or its cause. It is your duty to bring the soldier who murdered Abir to court so he may be tried and judged a murderer and criminal.

I believe that there is no military solution to the conflict and when those cowards murdered my daughter, I announced that I did not want revenge, I wanted justice, even though revenge is much easier. The real fighter is one who chooses the harder path of the two for the sake of peace, and revenge is the path of the coward.

Sir, the Palestinian people cannot forever pay the price of the fear and suspicion of the Israeli people. Free my people from this abominable occupation so that your people may live in prosperity and be free from fear.

For sixty years, the Palestinian people have paid the price of the Israeli military occupation an occupation which, in celebration of the Israeli state's inception, carries out acts of outright antagonism that spill the blood of Palestinian fighters, women, children and elders indiscriminately. It is the Palestinian general public that provides a target for your war machine that does not protect the small from the grown. Our people has faced the same murderer since Gaza in 1956 — and the never-ending series continues.

I will not remind you now of the massacres that your government committed against my people; you know them far better than I. I read about them, heard about them — but you took part in them.

The question I pose to you is this: in light of your rich military experience, and as someone who himself has seen sixty years of conflict go by, when will Israel have the strength to finish the conflict militarily and realize a complete victory over the Palestinian people? Do you continue to believe that what cannot be done by might may be done by more might? Does the occupation conceal in its bag of tricks additional methods of killing that the Palestinian people have not yet had the misfortune to know?

If this is the case, perhaps it is a good idea for the Israeli government to try and use those methods. And perhaps they will be able to accomplish that tantalizingly complete victory…in another 60 years.

Sir, when will you understand that the conflict between us cannot be ended with an army? For despite all the effort and conceit of the occupation, it could not stop the stones of our children from hitting your occupying soldiers. How will you be able to stop the Palestinian uprising? This is a dream that will never come true, even in another 1000 years. Why are you not telling this truth to the residents of Ashkelon and Sderot, that there is no solution that will stop the Qassam missiles flying at them from a destroyed and blockaded Gaza except if there would be an end to the occupation?

This is the truth you've been running from for a long time.

Believe me, sir, that you will gain nothing out of continuing to detain people. More than 750,000 Palestinians have been detained from 1967 until today. What result has been achieved except an increased determination on our part for confrontation and resistance?

The policy of occupation only creates more and more people who rise up to fight occupation and refuse to accept its burden. The Palestinian prisoners who sit in your jails are among the most learned and erudite of our people, those are the most sensitive and humanistic. They have become educated in the tradition of liberty and democracy—and for this reason they will never agree to accept the occupation and subjugation. It is these men and women who will fight for peace, and if you want to realize peace you have no option but to set free these soldiers of peace first and foremost.

How much have you really benefited from your strategy of home demolitions, uprooting of trees, confiscating lands for questionable reasons and then establishing illegal settlements on those same lands? How much has it helped you to set up disgraceful checkpoints in every corner and every road of the West Bank and Gaza and at each intersection for the purpose of humiliating the residents of those areas, among them workers, students and political leaders. What is the expediency of all this, sir?

When will the bloodthirsty bullets of your soldiers be sated by the blood of our children? When will you be satisfied with our blood that you have already spilled and leave us? When will you leave our waters and our heavens? Do you not see the helmets upon which your soldiers write, "I was born to kill"? Do you not see your brave men killing children every day? How can you decide to prevent the people of Gaza from acquiring cooking gas and at the same time send them teargas and tanks and warplanes?

Only now do I understand the will of an Israeli woman in Italy — my colleague Eidan and I met her when we participated in a peace march from Perugia to Assisi as representatives of Combatants for Peace. When I asked her, "You aren't planning to return to Israel?" She answered me: "I swore that if Ehud Barak won the election, I will leave Israel forever." She continues to live there because you act according to a policy that says there is no Palestinian partner.

I cannot begin to express in this short letter the enormity of the moral failures that have harmed Israeli society. The newspaper Yediot Ahronot said that 40 per cent of new recruits to the IDF have criminal records and this may go a long way in explaining the long list of acts against Palestinian civilians that they commit during their service. This is supposed to be the most distinguished, moral army in the entire world, no? Is this why we find that 25 per cent of the soldiers of the army of the occupation took part in instances of torture and punishment of innocent civilians or were witnesses to such acts?

Sir, I want to submit that I have read the shameful report that every person of conscience should be horrified by, that talks of the torture of children in Hebron. And this — the strangling of Palestinian children by soldiers to test how much time they can stand without breathing, incidents that were committed by captains in your army, the most moral army in the world, this is the crown of shame on the brow of the occupation.

Sir, how do you justify your soldier's use of children aged 10 as personal shields that they tie to the front of your patrols when they search for wanted persons or break up a demonstration? Where does international law permit this? I am trying to understand if this use of children as human shields is in some way related to the science of modern warfare, for the accusation that I hear in all instances of the killing of children in particular and in the killing of Palestinian citizens in general is that the Palestinians fighters use citizens for human shields to hide behind. How can there be a legal justification and distinction even in the Israeli terminology, but not in the international terminology, between Israelis and Palestinians?

How can you justify the deaths of those innocents just trying to peacefully pass though the checkpoints that your soldiers put up at all entrances to villages, cities or camps that prevent pregnant women from walking to hospitals to deliver? Would you ever agree to let this happen to your wife? What would you do then?

There are, however, military men, Israeli soldiers that used to do battle with the Palestinian people who at the moment of truth found that they are no more than pawns in the hands of the occupation. They had the courage and the valor to announce unanimously that they refuse to be occupiers. They exposed the falsehoods of their leaders who claim that Israel is reaching out her hand for peace but she has no partner on the Palestinian side. They discovered that they had never met a real Palestinian fighter face-to-face in combat, and that instead their day-to-day work was chasing schoolchildren, enforcing closures, destroying houses and putting up checkpoints and roadblocks to stop children who aren't even 13 years old. They took a moral and courageous stance and without any difficulty found themselves a Palestinian partner from within the heart of the Palestinian movement, people who wasted the spring of their youth in the prisons of your occupation. Together they founded the organization Combatants for Peace. The name itself exposes the false promises and the policy that says there is no partner for peace. This organization, united in courageousness and and morality, is made up of people from both sides who understand that there is only one shared enemy that conceals the path of realization of peace and life together as two nations. This enemy is the illegal and immoral Israeli occupation. I am a member of this organization, and I call upon all who are searching for a true peace to join us.

We tell our peoples the truth, only the truth. We are committed to nonviolent resistance to the occupation, and I call here, in this very missive, to the people of our Palestinian nation that have been inscribed in the pages of history as the epitome of resilience, that have had the humanity to withstand decades of abuse and occupation with the purest steadfastness. I call also upon the people in Israel to accept moral and historic responsibility for the establishment of these two states together, and for a national, humanistic, peaceful intifada, a rising up against this unjust occupation that has transformed your children into war criminals and to abject murderers. You Israelis — stop sending your soldiers — your sons — to kill our children, because the blood of our children and the blood of all those Palestinian innocents will chase your soldiers and the generals of your army to judgment in international courts as the rest of the war criminals in the world. You must learn this lesson. The honorable general must surely be aware that the majority of captains and generals in the Israeli army are forbidden from entering any European state for they will be wanted persons there, to be arrested and taken to court as war criminals and for crimes against humanity?

One last word – the blood of Abir will remain as a black crown on the brow of every Israeli and every Jew in the world until her murderer is brought to justice and passes the remainder of his days in jail, among the murderers and the criminals.

Bassam Aramin is co-founder of Combatants for Peace. Translation by Mimi Asnes

An Open Letter to Defense Minister, Ehud Barak




If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Things We Are Not Told By The Media

I am a selfish person.

“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.

Read the rest here.

And Here






If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Things We Are Not Told By The Media

I am a selfish person.

June 27, 2008
DENVER — Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

Much of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land in the West is ideal for solar energy, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts.

Galvanized by the national demand for clean energy development, solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies’ desires to lease public land to build solar plants and then sell the energy to utilities.

According to the bureau, the applications, which cover more than one million acres, are for projects that have the potential to power more than 20 million homes.

Read the rest here


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Will You Publish This Story?

I am a selfish person.

Will You Publish This Story?

By Nida Mariam

23 October, 2008
Combat Law

Lubna, a young woman from Baghdad, mother of four, stranded in Cairo, narrates her ordeals to Nida Mariam

She left al Doura, south Baghdad, in the darkness before dawn.
At five a.m. one morning, in mid-2006, 40 days after her father had been murdered by militiamen in front of her mother's eyes, Lubna Hamed Rasheed, 35 years old at the time, bundled up her belongings, collected her courage, and told her toddler, "As soon as we cross the Iraqi border, we will be out of danger."

There was a stream of cars moving together from her street. And when she, her children, and her neighbours got into the bus station, to take the land route to Syria, it felt as if all of Iraq was waiting to flee.

***
In the moments before Lubna was to arrive for our appointment, I quickly scanned my email to find the record I had been sent of her. No testimony about her experience in Iraq showed up. Five short depressing sentences describing her situation since she had come to Egypt—that was all I had.


The doorbell rang. Dressed in a black abaya, clutching her phone and a loosely wrapped headscarf casually under her chin, she walked in. She had something of a spark in her smile. She greeted us with warmth.

Few minutes later, seated side by side on the comfort of a couch, I suggested something through Omaima, our translator, who sat in front of us, “We can keep your name and other details anonymous, if you’d like.” Lubna stirred some sugar into her tea, set the spoon down on the metal tray, and shook her head resolutely, “No, I wish you could publish this. I want everyone to know.”

***
They shot her father in the leg when he tried to escape. They shot him eight times in all.. But the hospital report said it would have made no difference had they not shot, at all. By the time they took out their guns and fired, his spleen was already bleeding. They had beaten him up badly enough.


That morning, Lubna's mother ran out of her home in al Khadra, west Baghdad, to save her husband from the militiamen. Again and again, she kissed their feet, begging them to stop, begging them for mercy, begging them to leave.

***
I requested Lubna to tell us about her life in Egypt.


Lubna left Baghdad in the darkness before dawn in mid-2006. She bundled up her belongings, collected her courage, and told her toddler: "As soon as we cross the Iraqi border, we will be out of danger"


“I will speak in an Iraqi accent,” she stated, checking with Omaima that her speech was comprehensible, before offering us the first-round, watered-down version, of the trial that was her life.

“I have four children—three daughters and a son. In Iraq I was married to this Egyptian man, when I came here with my children, he divorced me.”

Trite and tragic, that’s how she began.

“We didn’t find any housing. I didn’t know what to do. For six months we were homeless. We slept in the street.”

That the divorce was ugly and unfair and unresolved was sad, not surprising. But the legal particularities of her marriage to that man unravelled a little later.


Her four children, though born in Iraq, were by virtue of their father, registered as Egyptian citizens at birth. Now that he had abandoned her, she had no one else to turn to in Egypt. “And we can’t go back to Iraq because my children are Egyptian and I don’t have anyone in Iraq. I don’t have a house in Iraq. I have nothing there,” she explains. But even if Lubna were to decide to go back to the dangers of Baghdad, she could not take her children with her. They would be denied entry. These were the citizenship laws of the Arab world. Despite their mother’s nationality, as children of an Egyptian immigrant, they had no current legal status in Iraq.

She lay down her cup of tea and reiterated for a second time that afternoon, “My children are not in school. I am very upset because my eldest daughter is 14 years old and cannot read and write.” She explained that her daughters had been out of the classroom for three years now.

But why, if they were Egyptian nationals, were her children not able to enrol in public school?

When Lubna finally found a place to live in October 6 City just months ago, she had approached the local school authorities, “But they wanted the children's documents from their schools in Iraq, and I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t bring them. My father was killed in the war. My brothers are in detention. I don’t have anyone to run for this and bring the papers.” For all she knows the teachers at that school are dead; and from what she remembers the US Armed

Forces occupy the building now.

And then there was the issue of rent. For five days the landlord had been knocking on the door, demanding the payment, threatening to throw her out again. The last time he had come she had pretended as if she was not home. She could not bear the thought of being back with her children on the street.
Was there anywhere that she had tried to go for assistance?

When Lubna went to the Cairo offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), she was turned away at the gate. The security guards informed her that, despite her Iraqi nationality, she was not eligible for refugee status. “Because my children are Egyptian, we can stay here, so they don’t consider me a refugee.” Omaima, who works extensively with all refugees and helps them with their applications to UNHCR, explained that though Lubna was, in a sense, a refugee, she had a better legal standing than other Iraqis in Cairo, who are granted recognition as asylum seekers primarily in order to be issued residency permits. These other Iraqis do not have the right to employment. As a mother of Egyptian nationals, Lubna has the right to live and work in Egypt.


Lubna’s life has been triumph more than tragedy. For one, despite the legalities surrounding the fact that her nationality is different than her children, she managed, against the odds, to bring them with her to Egypt


Lubna tried to work as a housemaid, but had a lot of problems because of that. She can’t leave her children out of her sight, often afraid to even take them outside. She thinks someone might kidnap them. She gets frightened every time the doorbell rings; she thinks someone has come to attack even though she knows ‘these things’ don’t happen in Egypt. “I have something like a phobia”, she reveals, “Maybe from Iraq, because our life was just in horror. I was seeing people being killed and being raped and being abducted and everything.”

Her mind switched tracks for a brief moment. “Will you publish this story?” she asked in anticipation. “Maybe someone will have a good heart to help me,” when the idea of what we had just begun started to sink in.

***

Lubna decided to leave al Doura because of "those men who cover their faces and only show their eyes". She doesn’t know who they are. Sectarian tensions erupted in this part-Shia, part-Sunni neighbourhood where people once inter-married. These men had gone in and mutilated her neighbour's son. These men started breaking in, looting houses, murdering people, and raping girls. There were blackouts, randomly. She no longer felt safe for her daughters and stopped sending them to school.

She used to make a good living off the lorry that was in her name. She didn’t ever have to work as such, as the lorry driver would transport cement and other building material from construction companies to markets around Baghdad. Then the men stole her lorry, and she lost everything.

The war did not leave anything behind.

II

The second time I met Lubna I drove out to her place in October 6 City, with my friend, Mai, who was kind enough to come and play translator. The weather was gorgeous and Lubna came out, her younger daughter and youngest son trailing behind, to the main street to meet us. Once again, her headscarf draped loosely around her head, she held her phone in her hand. And as before, there was warmth.

As we sauntered back to her block, and up her building stairs, I prepared myself for what I knew from the email would be in her apartment. Nothing. “Lives in a bare flat with not a single piece of furniture; needs clothing—has only one blanket for all five of them to sleep under,” part of it had read.

As we entered, Lubna’s two elder daughters emerged from the bedroom and gathered around us with shy smiles. The younger two children went out to the small balcony to play. We sat down on mats on the floor in the living room, and I gleaned from her manner a newfound sense of belonging, “We didn’t have a place before, but now this is considered our place,” she said. The worst had come to pass, and she was picking up the pieces and beginning to provide for her children a notion of normality that she knew she must maintain.

“You know what you’re like when you don’t sleep for a day?” Lubna directed the question toward me, to get me to fathom what it had been like when she was homeless on the streets. “I would take the children to many places, from morning to night, we would want to sleep but couldn’t. We were very tired.”

Poignant and pointed, she continued, “We’d stay around Saeeda Zainab, or outside the Iraqi embassy. Sometimes, if I had money enough from people at the masjid, we’d go to Mansoora, other times we’d go to Alexandria, and stay at the homes of other Iraqis. For example, in Syria, I met this Iraqi woman, so I went to spend the night with her. In Alexandria, I knew some Iraqi people so I went to spend the night with them. Sometimes I’d stay at some person’s place, sometime in the street, sometime in another person’s. I would just go because I needed to sleep.”

But it wasn’t as easy as that; there were issues of personal pride and cultural etiquette involved, “As soon as I started to feel that they were not very welcoming anymore, I would leave. I would take my children and walk in the streets again.” I hadn’t noticed, but Haneen, her eldest daughter had gone into the kitchen. She came out carrying a tin tray with three small glasses of tea. She set it down between us and rejoined our circle of conversation.

***

Months after Lubna’s husband had divorced her, her husband’s uncle’s wife called and asked to take her eldest daughter, Haneen, to their family home in upper Egypt for a wedding. Lubna went to the police station and signed papers to ensure that she was the sole legal guardian of her four children. She then made her husband’s uncle’s wife put her palm on the Koran and swear that she would return her daughter to her. Then she let Haneen go.

When her husband’s uncle’s wife returned to Cairo after the wedding she told Lubna that Haneen had decided to stay on with her father.

In upper Egypt, Lubna’s mother-in-law told Haneen that Lubna was dead. She then put Haneen to work in the field and to milk the cows in the shed, which Haneen did not want to do.

One day Haneen managed to call Lubna. She was crying. Her grandmother, Lubna’s mother-in-law, was planning to sell Haneen’s hand in marriage to a much older man for a sum of 9000 LE.

From then on, with the help of a sympathetic aunt, Haneen would call Lubna crying almost every week. Lubna used all the tactics she had. And even threatened to fax President Mubarak and inform the police until she had her daughter back. It took eight months before Lubna had Haneen back in her custody.

***

Lubna’s life has been triumph more than tragedy. For one, despite the legalities surrounding the fact that her nationality is different than her children, she managed, against the odds, to bring them with her to Egypt.

When coming to Egypt via Syria, the fact that she was Iraqi and her children Egyptian caused her much trouble. She explained, “I had my passport, I could easily get into Syria with no visa, because I am Iraqi. But as Egyptians, my children should have a visa, even simply to pass through.” Furthermore, as they were minors they were all registered on her husband’s passport, and he had already left. With no Egyptian embassy operating in Iraq at the time, Lubna had to issue them some strange one-way transit document that nobody had seemed to recognise and sign a paper promising to leave Syria for Egypt in two weeks time. But the authorities wouldn’t let her in easily, the bus driver begged the police on her behalf. Lubna faced much harassment from then. Then they let her through into Syria but refused to let her take the road to Jordan. They insisted she take a flight. And then there was a ray of luck, “The Egyptian ambassador sympathised with me, when he saw me crying at the Egyptian embassy. He called me in, asked them to bring me food, and he took the children and got their photos taken for the travel document, even though it was after hours, and at 2 pm the embassy closed its doors. But he sympathised with me when he saw the little one crying. He was a young man, and had very good, kind manners.” She considers him the one who saved her life, kept her family intact. By then, however, Lubna was already out of money, so she sold her cell phone, borrowed money from some generous refugees and bought five plane tickets to Cairo. She arrived in Cairo with not a guinea in hand.

Lubna’s present legal predicament is her own nationality. Her passport has expired. “I wanted to renew my passport and when I went to the Iraqi embassy they ask me where my mehram is! I went three times to Iraqi embassy in Mohandiseen last month.” Lubna is 37 years old she and is still considered a minor and requires an immediate male relative in order to renew her citizenship documents. The male relative has to be Iraqi so even her husband coming, were he to oblige her, would not do. Lubna has no other relatives in Egypt. With her father dead, and her brothers traumatised, she has no one to help her from Iraq.

“How can I bring those here?

Everyone has their own problems and we are all scattered around the globe, I cannot reach any of them. How can I bring you someone if I don’t have anyone?” she asks rhetorically. As for protection for her children, “They said, ‘we are not responsible for them, they are Egyptian, ’” explaining how she is falling through the crack. Lubna’s situation presents the precariousness of a woman’s legal status in the current socio-political milieu of the Middle East.


Despite her divorce and everything else, Lubna has kept her children together, and when I asked if they have any physical or psychological problems because of everything they’ve been through, she praises God, “Besides Mohammed’s cough, the kids are fine, mashallah.” The toll has perhaps all been borne by her, “I have a problem. I get nauseous quite often. When I put cold water I feel better, and it affects this area,” physically indicating a searing pain around the crown of her head. “The pain stays,” she says, “And sometimes I feel faint.”

***

Before the fall of Baghdad, Lubna says she would never bother to have breakfast at her home in al Doura: "I would take a cab, and go to my mother's in al Khadra to have breakfast there every morning. Every morning, I would go to have breakfast with her. We would have thick cream and hot bread.”

“We were something beautiful back then."

That is:


> before her father was killed;

> before her mother withdrew from social life;

> before her brothers were tortured;

> before her family was scattered—her sisters seeking asylum in Syria, her brothers getting detained in Buka prison and Abu Ghraib;

> before her brother-in-law was caught in a landmine;

> before her cousin was cut up;

> before another was blown up;

> before yet another went to the market and never returned;

> before all of that,

> before the fall of Baghdad, while still sitting around and chatting in the garden over breakfast, they were something beautiful.

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Things We Are Not Told By The Media

I am a selfish person.

I know this is the past. At that time I was homeless. So I could not bring this into the blog. But here we are with the facts of Sadam Hussein And The West prominantly US and Israel, but UK, France and the others were closely associated. Just watch the Utube movies and make up your own mind.



















If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Life In a Garage For One Person

I am a selfish person.

This is what I wrote thrre years ago when I was sleeping in a garage, homeless.

My day started at 9 am in a garage in Washington Avenue, which I rent to keep my worldly goods . I sleep there. I am homeless person. I am 39 years old. I grew up 'ere in Bristol. Came here as a 14 year old kid and liked the place. It became my home. The reason I am sleeping in the garage is because the Bristol City Council cannot find a home for me.

So first thing after taking a leak outside is to see that I gulp down the painkillers and go back to bed for a little lie down for the pain killers to hit me. After about 15 minutesI shut the garage and went down the post office to get my mail. I go to the delivery office when I can walk a bit. No letters but never mind. Now I have to go to do my business with a toilet. I go every morning to Dan's - a good friend - to have a cup of tea and a shit. Dan and Ben share a house in High Street. That is where I spend most of the time apart from a few pubs and other friends. There is an Internet connection cable-wise and a laptop. Answered the emails and serfed the net. Put TV on watched the BBC news 24 for my daily injection. There I get the government and the corporate view of the total scene. But to be serious about news there are other outlets on the net I serf into. For example two men were arrested in Lancershire with the largest amount of chemical explosives, rocket launchers, and BNP literature in how to make bombs. This item did not appear on todays news. Why? Because they are British National Party -a Nazi party. So we have to go to these web sites to find out what really is happening in the world today. I like Information Collection House by Tom Feeley. Another good web site is Democracy Now from America. Now the time is 1 PM. I am going to have me bath. It is essential I have a bath everyday as that is where I do my exercises for my bent back.

Time to go to the pub. Pint of Guinness and a sandwich will do me fine as there is not enough money to make ends meet. I used to get incapacity benefit when I was living in Bloy Street. Now as I am homeless - when I need it most - the benefit agency took the incapacity credits off. The pub I went to is called the Green Bank. It is situated at the junction of Greenbank Road and Bellevue Road in Easton, Bristol. It is one of the oldest buildings in the area. There I had a drink with an old timer called John. He is in his mid seventies I think and have lived all his life around Easton. Likes techno music and enjoys sitting there drinking his pint and doing a cross word puzzle. I don't go to the pub everyday as the money is not enough to do that; but today is good day with a bit of sunshine and showers.

A friend of mine Jef turned up after work and invited me for a splif and a cup of tea at his place. It is in Green Bank Road, Smoked a couple of joints of high grade bud and two mugs of tea went down.

Excused myself from my friends place and went for a walk. I bumped into another mate of mine and he was happy to invite me for a drink. Went to the Whitehall Tavern,.a builders' pub. Lowest price for a pint in the area. Couple of youngish kids who looked like ravers joined our table and one of them asked me whether I want any acid - LSD. I told him "Well give us a sample and I will buy some tomorrow." Always on the blag and it worked. He gave a Da Vinci Code acid tab. So I popped it in me mouth and washed it down with Tequila. Next half hour was the waiting time to get the acid working. I stayed put and downed couple of more tequillas.

Got out when the acid hit me and went for a walk on the cycle track on me own. This Bristol to Bath cycle track is great. I remember doing work on it in the 80's. Now I am walking it. Acid is the best painkiller after speed & amphetamine. I know I will be very stiff and suffer the next day but what an opportunity to go walking. I don't remember how long how far I walked but I enjoyed it. Came back to the garage and as I got a bit wet from a shower, I changed. What can I do now. No money. Went to bed!

Washington Avenue,homeless,Greenbank Road,Bellevue Road,Easton,Bristol

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

North American Bully Boys

I am a selfish person.

>"History shows us that nations that are strong militarily over time have to have a strong economy," McCain said this month.

Yeah now we know. If you don't agree with us we will come in and kill you your family etc etc init? Bastards.


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

ENGLAND

I am a selfish person.

this is very right as anyone who want to live in this country should not pollute this country. At the same time Britains who want to go and live in another country shoul do the same.

ENGLAND

I think this really sums it all up.

After hearing that many cities did not want to offend other cultures by putting up Xmas lights, so DIDN'T!

After hearing that the Birmingham council changed its opinion and let a Muslim woman have her picture on her driver's licence with her face covered.

After hearing of a Primary School in Birmingham where a boy was told that for PE they could wear Football League shirts (Aston Villa,Birmingham, West Brom etc) but NOT an England shirt as it could offend others !

This prompted the editorial below written by a UK citizen.
Published in a British tabloid newspaper.

IMMIGRANTS. NOT BRITONS, MUST ADAPT.

Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on London , we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Brits.

However, the dust from the attacks has barely settled and the 'politically correct' crowd begin complaining about the possibility that our patriotism is offending others.

I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to Britain . However, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some born here, need to understand.

This idea of England being a multicultural centre for community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Britons, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle. This culture has been developed over centuries of wars, struggles, trials and victories fought by the untold masses of men and women who laid down their lives and of the millions of men and women who have sought freedom.

We speak ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, learn the language!

If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture. If St.George's cross offends you, then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet.


We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don't care how you did things where you came from. This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this.

But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our National Motto, or Our Way of Life, I encourage you take advantage of one other great British freedom, 'THE RIGHT TO LEAVE'.

We didn't force you to come here. If you don't like it GO HOME!!

You asked to be here. So accept the country that accepted YOU. Pretty easy really, when you think about it.

If we all keep passing this to our friends (and enemies) it will also, sooner or later get back to the complainers, lets all try, please.

No matter how many times you receive it... please forward it to all you know

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Zionism

I am a selfish person.



And

Stuart Littlewood considers the impossible mission of a British public relations firm hired by Israel to boost the image of the Middle East’s most notorious land-grabber, ethnic cleanser and all-round threat to world peace.

Israel "brand" will magically smell sweeter

If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Big Brother In UK

I am a selfish person.

Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society.

A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

This is a bit un-British init? I mean next thing will be to carry your passport to buy a frigging tin of baked beans?

UK: Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Things To Come In US

I am a selfish person.

After years of testing, the Active Denial System -- the pain ray which drives off rioters with a microwave-like beam -- could finally have its day. The Army is buying five of the truck-mounted systems for $25 million. But the energy weapon may face new hurdles, before it's shipped off to the battlefield; a new report details how the supposedly non-lethal blaster could be turned into a flesh-frying killer.

The contract for the pain ray trucks is "expected to be awarded by year's end," Aviation Week notes. "A year after the contract is signed, the combination vehicle/weapons will start be fielded at the rate of one per month."

It's been a very long time coming. As we've previously reported, there have been calls to deploy the Active Denial System in Iraq going back to 2004. But it's always been delayed for legal, political, and public relations reasons. Anything that might be condemned as torture is political dynamite. Interestingly, the version being bought is not the full-size "Version 2," but a containerized system known as Silent Guardian, which Raytheon have been trying to sell for some time. They describe Silent Guardian as "roughly 1/3 the size and power of the other Active Denial Systems," and quote it's range as "greater than 250 meters." The larger system has a range somewhere in excess of 700 meters

.


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Do I Ever Know

I am a selfish person.

When I have a drink of alcohol in the morning I become very sluggish in doing things, which have to be done through the day. But if I have a pipe of ganja in the morning, I do not feel that sluggishness, but I feel the need for a drink. Nice: best thing to do is to get all the illegal immigrants in my system out. That might work. Atleast I got a frigging scape goat. Sorry goat. I am a goat myself.

Thoughts which come to you when you listen to Political Views of the Zionist BBC.


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Who said This?

Everyone is dysfunctional viewed in someone elses eyes.


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

The Unending Torture of Omar Khadr

I am a selfish person.

This is about a kid who got arrested in Afghanistan by the mighty US army and transfered to Gitmo and tortured for years. It is not for feeble minds but you can get to know what our politicians do behind closed doors.


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Recession?

I am a selfish person.

"petrol at Morrisons 99.8p a ltr and spent £15 in liddles came home with more than I could carry up in 1 go. God bless the recesion" Says my mate and the hell is he at? Is what I want to know. It is geting better for the poor people. Fuck the share holders and bankers.

And he continues, "fantastic value every were....roast beef frozen dinner. You know the sort of thing ...sliced beef,gravy,yorkshire,roasters and some veg £1 each!! feel hungry fine have 2".

I skyped, "hope yu dont throw alf of it in the bin sir!"

Then the rest:

[17:41:35] XXXXX says: Giant tins(800grm) ravioli bolognaise 65p OK its not gormet food but its still nice eating and fills you up...I cant get over how cheap everything was!

[17:42:35] alwaysshariff says: you have not bin there for a long time init?

[17:45:36] XXXXX says: some little while....fucking shame they dont deliver to the door...just have to keep poping back...and remember to take some carriers as the fuckers charge....3p each!

Well you have to excuse him, as he is not someone who goes to Lidle that often. I am a cretin, as I do not have a wife and kids ever, but as one little person in this fine country; I digress. How I love it when the big man falls!


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

State Of A Nation

I am a selfish person.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Facing a huge hole in Chicago's current and upcoming budgets, Mayor Richard Daley announced on Tuesday a plan to partially shut down city government for six days.

Along with several other measures, the mayor's plan was aimed at saving $62 million for the city's corporate or operating fund, which currently faces a $469 million shortfall.

Under the plan, city employees, with the exception of mostly public safety workers, would not work and would not be paid for the day after Thanksgiving or for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve this year and in 2009.

From "Chicago mayor to shut down government for six days"

A report released Tuesday by the Working Poor Families Project reveals that more than 28 percent of American families with one or both parents employed are living in poverty.

The report, “Still Working Hard, Still Falling Short,” is based on data for the period from 2004 through 2006 gathered from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.

The report finds that 9.6 million households can be described as low-income or “working poor”—defined as families that earn less than 200 percent of the official poverty level. There were 350,000 more such families in 2006 than in 2002. More than 21 million children now live in low-income working families—an increase of 800,000 in four years.

Wicked init bloody mouthy North Americans are suffering, my day is looking good.




If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Things You learn Watching Snooker

I am a selfish person.

It is an interresting game like painting a picture, reverse wise. But you can learn somethings from the game.

Did you know that there are 1 in 20 and 1 in 200 women have colout blindedness. Hmmmm there is one famous snooker player who is colour blind. Find out who he is and let me know?


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

1421: The Year China Discovered the World

I am a selfish person.

Arnhem Land, jutting into the Arafura Sea at the top of Australia, has always been a special place for Aboriginal people. Just how special has been reinforced by the discovery of an extraordinary collection of rock art recording life in the area for the past 15,000 years, up until 50 years ago.


Alongside ancient paintings of thylacines, a mammal long extinct on the mainland, are images documenting modern-day inventions – a car, a bicycle wheel, a biplane and a rifle – as well as portraits of a missionary and a sea captain. Scientists documenting the rock art, spread across at least 100 sites in the remote Wellington Range, say it ranks among the world's finest.

It also appears to rewrite Australian history, undermining the widely held assumption that the continent was isolated and largely unvisited until the First Fleet arrived in 1788. The paintings suggest that, on the contrary, the people of northern Australia have been interacting with seafaring visitors from Asia and Europe for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years.

Australian history rewritten in rock art

According to Gavin Menzies, they expect Chinese Junks depicted in the rock paintings. If that is true then there will be more proof for the case.




If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Are We Part Of This?

I am a selfish person.

A bit past midnight on a balmy night in late August, Hedayatullah awoke to a deafening blast. He stumbled out of bed and heard angry voices drawing closer. Suddenly, his bedroom doors banged open and dozens of silhouetted figures burst in, some shouting in a strange language.

The intruders blindfolded Hedayatullah and, screaming with fury, forced him to the ground. An Afghan voice told him not to move or speak, or he would be killed. He listened for sounds from the next room, where his brother Noorullah slept with his family. He could hear his nephew, eight months old, crying hysterically. Then came the sound of an automatic rifle, after which his nephew fell silent.

The rest of the family -- 18 people in all, including aunts, uncles, and cousins -- was herded outside into the darkness. The Afghan voice explained to Hedayatullah's terrified mother, "We are the Afghan National Army, here to accompany the American military. The Americans have killed one of your sons and his two children. They also shot his wife and they're taking her to the hospital."

"Why?" Hedayatullah's mother stammered.

"There is no why," the soldier replied. When she heard this, she started screaming, slamming her fists into her chest in anguish. The Afghan soldiers left her and loaded Hedayatullah and his cousin into the back of a military van, after which they drove off with an American convoy into the black of night.

The next day, the Afghan forces released Hedayatullah and his cousin, calling the whole raid a mistake. However, Noorullah's wife, months pregnant, never came home: She died on the way to the hospital.

Read All abou it!



If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!

Things We Are Not Told By The Media

I am a selfish person.

Mr Brown was very proud to implement plans to get rid of all the regulating bodies in the banking system and create a new one called National Economic Council(NEC).

"The NEC is being portrayed as a kind of “economic war cabinet,” tasked with taking urgent measures to guide Britain through troubled waters in the world’s financial markets. It will meet in Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, codenamed Cobra, which is usually used to coordinate emergency action in the face of a threat to national security.

The council comprises 17 ministers, including eight cabinet members plus Brown, Chancellor Alistair Darling and Foreign Secretary David Miliband. It includes several businessmen drafted into government in Brown’s reshuffle last week. It will also take advice from a group of specially designated “business ambassadors,” consisting of the heads of major financial and industrial institutions. According to reports, “It is hoped their expertise will give the group better insight into the workings of the City.”

These measures have attracted little substantive commentary in the media. The decision to establish a new body, separate from the Treasury, has either been accepted uncritically as one of a number of special measures adopted by the government to try to contain the crisis, or as mere political window dressing for a government that is on the ropes.

The presence of a number of unelected and newly appointed ministers, drawn from big business circles, belies such complacent descriptions. The NEC includes the minister for economic competitiveness and small business, Baroness Vadera, the minister for the City, Paul Myners, Science Minister Lord Drayson and Communications Minister Stephen Carter."

This is like getting the crooks to make laws for the future. Well have a look at this for more info.


If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!