Something sinister is brewing around and below al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, and it has the hallmark of a familiar Israeli campaign to strip the Mosque of its Muslim Arab identity. This time around, however, the stakes are much higher.
The status of al-Aqsa mosque is unparalleled within the context of Muslim heritage in Palestine itself. It is also the third holiest Muslim shrine anywhere. But equally as important, it is a symbol of faith, resistance and defiance. Its story of struggle and perseverance goes hand in hand with the very modern Palestinian struggle for rights, freedom and identity. Praying at al-Aqsa at times seems like an impossible feat. Many Palestinians lost life or limbs simply trying to gain access to the mosque.
In a statement released on March 7, the Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs said Israeli forces carried out 30 attacks against Al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy sites during the month of February alone. Most of the attacks targeted Al-Aqsa itself. While the recurring violations at Al-Aqsa were led by Jewish settlers, according to the statement, they have done so under the watchful eye, protection and support of the Israeli police and army.
Most alarming about these attacks is their political context, which indicates that a great degree of coordination is underway between politicians, security forces and Jewish settlers.
In anticipation of a Palestinian backlash, on March 04, an Israeli court sentenced Islamic leader Sheikh Rade Saleh to eight months in prison for ‘incitement’. The Sheikh is the most outspoken Palestinian leader regarding the danger facing Al-Aqsa. Why silence Sheik Saleh now when the attacks against al-Aqsa are at an all times high?
It was on February 25, 1994, that US-born Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein stormed into the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of al-Khalil (Hebron) and opened fire. The aim was to kill as many Arabs as he could.
At that moment, nearly 800 Muslim worshipers were kneeling down during the dawn prayer in the holiest month of the Muslim Calendar; Ramadan. He killed up to 30 people and wounded over 120. Exactly 20 years later, the Israeli army stormed al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest Muslim site, and opened fire. The timing was no accident.
Like the rest of the West Bank, Al-Khalil is facing the dual challenge of armed Jewish settlers and Israeli occupation soldiers; the latter enforcing the military occupation, while providing further protection to the settlers. The settlers, extremists from the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba, often attack Palestinian residents of the town with complete impunity. Interestingly, many of Kiryat Arba settlers are Americans, as was Baruch Goldstein.
It was not enough that Israeli soldiers within the vicinity of the Ibrahimi Mosque allowed Goldstein – armed with a Galil rifle and other weapons – access to the mosque, but they opened fire on worshipers as they tried to flee the scene. Israeli soldiers killed 24 more and injured others. Goldstein, now a hero in the eyes of many in Israel, is often blamed solely for the massacre in al-Khalil. But in fact, it was a mutual effort between Goldstein and the Israeli army.
This symbiotic relationship between the army and settlers, which dates back to the early days of the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, continues.
While Israeli bulldozers dig into Palestinian land during the day, leveling mounds of ground and destroying olive groves for settlement expansion, heavy machinery burrows beneath the Old City of al-Quds, Jerusalem, at night. The Israelis are looking for evidence of what they believe to be ancient Jewish temples, presumably destroyed in 586BC and AD70. To fulfil “prophecyâ€, Jewish extremists believe that a third temple must be built. But of course, there is the inconvenient fact that on that particular spot exists one of Islam’s holiest sites: The Noble Sanctuary, or al-Haram al-Sharif. It has been an exclusively Muslim prayer site for the last 1,300 years.
The Noble Sanctuary, located in Jerusalem’s Old City, is the home of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. The site has been under constant threat, attacks, acts of arson and military violence for nearly five decades. The few Muslim clergy – belonging to the Islamic Trust which manages the area, along with the custodianship of Jordan – are mindful of the ever-lurking Israeli threat that oftentimes turns deadly. It was no surprise that late Israeli leader Ariel Sharon chose that exact place to carry out his proactive ‘tour’ of al-Aqsa compound in 2000. Many unarmed Palestinians, mostly worshipers, died on that day. Thousands more were lost in the following months and years as the entirety of the occupied territories and Palestinian towns inside Israel exploded with unprecedented fury. Sharon was later elected Prime Minister of Israel.
That same dangerous combination – rightwing politicians allied with religious zealots – is at work once more. They are eyeing Al-Aqsa for annexation, the same way the Israeli government is laboring to permanently annex large swathes of the occupied West Bank, to preclude any future settlement with the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli Knesset (Parliament) chose the 20th anniversary of the Goldstein massacre of Palestinians in al-Khalil to begin a debate concerning the status of Al-Aqsa compound. Right-wingers – which constitute the bulk in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – want the Israeli government to enforce its ‘sovereignty’ over the Muslim site, which is administered by Jordan per the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty of 1994. Israeli MP Moshe Feiglin, is the man behind the move, but he is not alone. Feiglin is a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, and has strong backing within the party, the government and the Knesset.
A major backer of Feiglin’s initiative is Miri Regev, also a far-right Likud member. Regev is demanding that the government establish separate prayer times for both Jews and Muslims in Al-Aqsa Compound. The model she wishes to duplicate is no other than the Ibrahimi Mosque. “We will reach a situation where the Temple Mount will be like the Cave of the Patriarchs, days for Jews and days for Muslims,†she said.
Of course, Regev omitted the fact that 20 years ago to the day, a Jewish extremist and Israeli troops killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinians kneeling for prayer.
On the next day following the Israeli government debate, a thundering sound was heard around 3 AM in the Wadi Hilweh neighborhood of Silwan, located south of the Old City of Jerusalem. Residents heard the “sounds of heavy duty machines digging under their houses throughout the night,†Ma’an reported. Then, a large wall suddenly collapsed, while a few houses sustained damage. The Israeli underground network of tunnels is growing, as some of these tunnels connect Wadi Hilweh to the Western Wall to Al-Aqsa.
While the danger of Al-Aqsa Mosque collapsing is very real, it is a representation of the mentality that rules Israel: one of annexation and military occupation, with no regard whatsoever to Palestine’s holiest site, also revered by over 1.6 billion Muslims around the world.
Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story†(Pluto Press, London)
The University of Virginia’s Office for Diversity and Equity has chosen Hajar Ahmed, a fourth-year student in politics to receive this year’s annual award along with a faculty member. It’s the first time the university has named two winners of the annual award, and the first time a U.Va. student has won.
The honor recognizes students, faculty or staff members who have demonstrated a deep commitment to diversity in the U.Va. community. The award was established to recognize the accomplishments of former President Casteen, who was the award’s inaugural recipient in 2010.
Specific criteria for the award include playing a leadership role in increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at U.Va. and making a sustainable and quantifiable impact in these areas. Ahmed, a member of the Most Passionate Pi Chapter of Theta Nu Xi Multicultural Sorority Inc. and vice president of the Multicultural Greek Council, led students beginning last year in a campaign, “Restore AccessUVA.â€
The banning of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Northeastern University in Boston on March 7, along with a university threat of disciplinary measures against some of its members, replicates sanctions being imposed against numerous student Palestinian rights groups across the country. The attacks, and the disturbingly similar forms of punishment, appear to be part of a coordinated effort by the Israeli government and the Israel lobby to blacklist all student groups that challenge the official Israeli narrative.
Northeastern banned the SJP chapter after it posted on campus replicas of eviction notices that are routinely put up on Palestinian homes set for Israeli demolition. The university notice of suspension says that if the SJP petitions for reinstatement next year, “No current member of the Students for Justice in Palestine executive board may serve on the inaugural board of the new organization†and that representatives from the organization must attend university-sanctioned “trainings.â€
In 2011 in California, 10 students who had disrupted a speech at UC Irvine by Michael Oren, then the Israeli ambassador to the United States, were found guilty, put on informal probation and sentenced to perform community service. Oren, an Israeli citizen who has since been hired by CNN as a contributor, has called on Congress to blacklist supporters of the campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel and to prosecute those who protest at appearances by Israeli officials. Some activists at Florida Atlantic University were stripped of student leadership positions after walking out of a talk by an Israeli army officer, and they were ordered by school administrators to attend re-education seminars designed by the Anti-Defamation League. Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (CSJP) was abruptly placed on suspension in the spring of 2011 and barred from reserving rooms and hosting events on campus. The university administration, before the ban, had a practice of notifying the campus Hillel in advance of any CSJP event. The suspension was eventually lifted, after a protest led by attorneys for the CSJP.
Max Geller, a law student and a SJP member at Northeastern whom I reached by phone in Boston, accused the university of responding “to outside pressures,†including that of alumnus Robert Shillman, who is the CEO of Cognex Corp., and hedge fund billionaire Seth Klarman, both supporters of right-wing Israeli causes.
“To prohibit students from holding leadership roles and student groups simply because they engaged in a peaceful political protest is antithetical to the university’s mission to educate students,†he said. “It erases any pedagogical value disciplinary process might seek.â€
“In the last year,†Geller went on, “I have received death threats, been publicly and unfairly maligned, and have been threatened with disciplinary measures. This has made engaging in speech about an issue about which I care deeply, both as a Jew and an American, a fear- and anxiety-causing prospect.â€
Israel’s heavy-handed reaction to these campus organizations is symptomatic of its increasing isolation and concern about waning American support. The decades-long occupation and seizure of Palestinian land and the massive military assaults against a defenseless population in Gaza that has left hundreds dead, along with growing malnutrition among Palestinian children and enforced poverty, have alienated traditional supporters of Israel, including many young American Jews. Israel, at the same time, has turned into a pariah in the global community. If it were to become devoid of American support, which it largely buys with political campaign contributions funneled through groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel would be adrift. There are a growing number of banks and other companies, especially in the European Union, joining the boycott movement, which refuses to do business with Israeli concerns in the occupied territories. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking before AIPAC on March 4, surprisingly devoted much of his talk to attacking the nascent BDS movement, which he said stood for “Bigotry, Dishonesty and Shame.†He called for BDS supporters to “be treated exactly as we treat any anti-Semite or bigot.†He warned that “naive and ignorant†people are being recruited as “gullible fellow travelers†in an anti-Semitic campaign.
Israeli officials are also apparently attempting to infiltrate the BDS movement and are using subterfuge to link it to Islamic extremism, according to The Times of London. The Israeli government in addition is pushing censorious, anti-democratic bills in the state legislatures of New York, Maryland and Illinois that would impose financial sanctions on academic organizations that boycott Israeli institutions. Meanwhile, the United States and others enthusiastically impose sanctions on Russia for an occupation that is much less draconian than Israel’s long defiance of international law.
The ADL-designed indoctrination classes for university activists are, according to those who have been required to take them, shabby attempts to equate any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
“Myself and two other members of SJP were forced to attend the ADL-sponsored ‘diversity training’ course or we would have violated the terms of our probation and in turn we would be suspended and/or expelled,†said Nadine Aly, a Florida Atlantic student activist who with other activists walked out of a lecture given at the university by an Israeli army officer, Col. Bentzi Gruber, who had helped devise the rules of engagement for Operation Cast Lead, the horrific attack on Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. I reached her by phone at the Florida campus. “The very idea that the administration is implying that it is racist to criticize Israeli policy is ludicrous. We were put on ‘indefinite probation,’ banning us from holding leadership positions in any recognized student organizations, including student government, at the university until our graduation. I was stripped of my position as president of SJP as well as a student senator, and the former vice president of the SJP lost her position as a Student House representative. It is a shame that this university, like most universities, bows to the pressure of the Zionist lobby and wealthy Zionist donors, when they should be protecting the rights of their students.â€
The persecution of scholars such as Joseph Massadand Norman Finkelstein who challenge the official Israeli narrative has long been a feature of Israeli intervention in American academic life. And the eagerness of university presidents to denounce the American Studies Association call for an academic boycott of Israel is a window into the insatiable hunger for money that seems to govern university policy. The current effort to shut down student groups, however, raises traditional Israeli censorship and interference to a new level. Israel seeks now to openly silence free speech on American college campuses—all of these student groups have steadfastly engaged in nonviolent protests—and has enlisted our bankrupt liberal elites and college administrators as thought police.
The failure among academics to stand up for the right of these student groups to express dissenting views and engage in political activism is a sad commentary on how irrelevant most academics have become. Where, in this fight, are the constitutional law professors defending the right to free speech? Where are the professors of ethics, religion and philosophy reminding students about the right of all to a dignified life free of oppression? Where are the Middle Eastern studies professors explaining the historical consequences of Israel’s violent seizure of Palestinian land? Where are the journalism professors defending the right of dissidents and victims to a fair hearing in the press? Where are the professors of queer and gender studies, African-American studies, Native American studies or Chicano studies acting to protect the voices and dignity of the marginalized and oppressed?
This assault will not end with groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine. The refusal to hear the cries of the Palestinian people, especially those 1.5 million—60 percent of them children—who are trapped by the Israeli military in Gaza, is part of the wider campaign by right-wing operatives like Lynne Cheney and billionaires such as the Koch brothers to stamp out all programs and academic disciplines that give voice to the marginalized, especially those who are not privileged and white. Latinos, African-Americans, feminists, those in queer and gender studies also feel this pressure. Under a bill signed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, books by leading Chicano authors have been banned from public schools in Tucson and elsewhere in Arizona on the ground that such ethnic studies promote “resentment toward a race or people.†It is language similar to what former Ambassador Oren has used to justify his call for criminal prosecutions of BDS activists—that they are advancing “bigotry.†The neoconservatism that grips Israel has its toxic counterpart within American culture. And if other marginalized groups within the university remain silent while Palestine solidarity activists are persecuted on campuses, there will be fewer allies when these right-wing forces come for them. And come they will.
Those of us who denounce the suffering caused by Israel and its war crimes against the Palestinians and who support the BDS movement are accustomed to sleazy Israeli smear campaigns. I have been repeatedly branded as an anti-Semite by the Israeli lobby, including for my book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.†That some of these dissident voices, such as Max Blumenthal, who wrote “Goliath: Fear and Loathing in Greater Israel,†one of the best accounts of contemporary Israel, are Jewish does not seem to perturb right-wing Israeli propagandists who see any deviation from the Israeli government line as a form of religious heresy.
“I have been on tour discussing my book, ‘Goliath,’ since October 2013,†said Blumenthal, with whom I spoke by phone. “And on numerous occasions, Israel lobby groups and pro-Israel activists have attempted to pressure organizations into canceling my events before they took place. I have been slandered by teenage pro-Israel students, prominent magazine columnists and even Alan Dershowitz as an anti-Semite, and my family has been attacked in right-wing media simply for hosting a book party for me. The absurd lengths pro-Israel activists have gone to stop my journalism and analysis from reaching a wide audience perfectly illustrate their intellectual exhaustion and moral poverty. All they have left is loads of money to buy off politicians and the unlimited will to defend the only nuclearized apartheid state in the Middle East. As young Arabs and Muslims assert their presence on campuses across the country and Jewish Americans reel in disgust at Netanyahu’s Israel, we are witnessing pro-Israel forces wage a fighting retreat. The question is not whether they will win or lose, but how much damage they can do to free-speech rights on their way towards a reckoning with justice.â€
“It would be heartening if prominent liberal intellectuals would agree with all of my conclusions, or would accept the legitimacy of BDS,†Blumenthal went on. “But the only reasonable expectation we can hold for them is that they speak up in defense of those whose free-speech rights and rights to organize are being crushed by powerful forces. Unfortunately, when those forces are arrayed in defense of Israel, too many liberal intellectuals are silent or, as in the case of Michael Kazin, Eric Alterman, Cary Nelson and a who’s who of major university presidents, they actively collaborate with fellow elites determined to crush Palestine solidarity activism through anti-democratic means.â€
Hillel chapters, sadly, often function as little more than Israeli government and AIPAC campus outposts. This is true at Northeastern as well as at schools such as Barnard College and Columbia. And university presidents such as Barnard’s Debora Spar see nothing wrong with accepting Israel-lobby tours of Israel while Palestinian students must risk imprisonment and even death to study in the United States. The launching of campus-wide defamation campaigns from supposedly religious houses is a sacrilege to the Jewish religion. In seminary I read enough of the great Hebrew prophets, whose singular concern was for the oppressed and the poor, to know that they would not be found today in Hillel centers but would instead be protesting with SJP activists.
The campus Hillel centers, with lavish budgets and gleaming buildings on campuses often situated in centers of urban blight, offer running events, lectures and programs to promote official Israeli policy. They arrange free trips to Israel for Jewish students as part of the “Taglit Birthright†program, functioning as an Israeli government travel agency. While Jewish students, often with no familial connection to Israel, are escorted in these well-choreographed propaganda tours of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who remain trapped in squalid refugee camps cannot go home although their families may have lived for centuries on what is now Israeli land.
Israel has for decades been able to frame the discussion about the Palestinians. But its control of the narrative is coming to an end. As Israel loses ground it will viciously and irrationally attack all truth tellers, even if they are American students, and especially if they are Jews. There will come a day, and that day will come sooner than Israel and its paid lackeys expect, when the whole edifice will crumble, when even students at Hillel will no longer have the stomach to defend the continuous dispossession and random murder of Palestinians. Israel, by ruthlessly silencing others, now risks silencing itself.
Chris Hedges will deliver a lecture sponsored by the Northeastern University Political Economy Forum at 6 p.m. March 25 at West Village F, 20, 460 Parker St. in Boston.
Note: The following essay will be published in several parts. It was written in 1987 when I was 16 years old. After praying that I would find it, I recently discovered it in an old chest. I was moved to tears upon reading it, as I needed very much to be reminded of what originally inspired me to seek Truth, and eventually to embrace Islam. It explains how many people can recognize the wisdom of the Quran immediately, the first time it is read to them, like they would recognize the back of their hand. Please enjoy…
The Psyche
When asked, “Who are you?†most people respond similarly to this: “I am a man named Bob Smith, I am short and a little overweight. I am a computer technician. I am a nice guy.†These words describe Bob’s title, his physical and mental characteristics, and his occupation in society. But is that really WHO Bob Smith is?
Who are you? Are you merely the activities performed by your body, or are you something deeper than that? If you change your occupation or lose ten pounds, are you no longer the same person? Of course not! That’s ridiculous! There must be a being inside you who remains constant, no matter what mental or physical changes your body happens to go through. The identification with the body and ego instead of the soul is what leads to the fear of aging and death. It keeps us in a prison, which prevents us from knowing truths having nothing to do with our material body.
When you sleep, you are said to be your true self, for you are freed from intellectual and physical bondage. Your true self roams around in your subconscious, and you perceive this as “dreaming.†But where does this being go when you are awake? This being is you, yet is not confined to the physical realm. It perceives and experiences all that you do, yet is simultaneously a witness and judge of all your thoughts and activities. This being has the ability to wander around freely no matter what your body is doing. This being is your unconscious self. It reveals itself to your conscious mind through your conscience, your memory, your daydreams, etc.
This unconscious being is known as your soul, or “psyche.†In Greek mythology, Psyche is the daughter of sea and sky. Her form is a drop of dew upon the earth. This represents your spirit, which though residing in a physical form, is no different than the universal spirit. Each individual person has a psyche, and that is why humanity is said to be One, regardless of outer differences.
Deep inside each person is the psyche, who is a drop in the sea of what Carl Jung called the “Universal Consciousness.†This is the treasure-house of knowledge which is not confined to individual experience. Anais Nin wrote in her Diary: “The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.†This explains the similarity between religions of different cultures; the phenomena of knowing things which no one ever taught you – truths such as “I exist,†that you base your life on.
To tap into this unconscious knowledge, to bring the psyche into your consciousness is to become “enlightened.†When you bring your psyche out of the darkness of the unconscious, you awaken knowledge which has been lying dormant inside you. You become aware of ultimate realities and higher truths. Your true self is realized, and your purpose in life is revealed. Psyche is also represented in another myth by the Holy Grail for which Parsifal searches. To find and hold onto the Holy Grail is to find perfect fulfillment of your heart’s true desires.
Balance
In order to cope with the wisdom attained by getting closer to Psyche, who resides in the center of our being, we must have strength and balance; a give and take between our conscious control and unconscious domination. The reason we are imbalanced is because we repress certain aspects of our personality. They are called “Shadow Elements†by Jung – the repressed or unlived sides of your total potentiality. A balanced personality is well-rounded; strong enough to delve deeper into the unconscious and bring out more profound realizations.
Each person has both masculine and feminine sides to their personality. The masculine side deals with the release of psychic energy by means of action, extroversion, and strength; building and leading groups. It reacts to problems with intellect and reason. Defenses are masculine traits, including the inner defenses, as well as the desire to protect others from harm.The masculine side depends on the feminine side for energy, inspiration and the meaning for all this action.
The feminine side of the personality takes in and transforms energy so that the masculine can release it or make something out of it. Feminine traits are perception, intuition, nurturing, organizing, life-giving, and endurance. It responds to problems emotionally. It is sensitive and delicate, and depends on protection from the masculine side.
In a balanced personality, action is guided by intuition. Both aspects are needed in life and for creation. For example: to draw a picture, you need to take in and transform an image in your mind, and then use action to draw what you see; combining feeling with doing.
The soul is beyond both masculine and feminine. It has no sex to speak of. However, because of its sensitive, life-giving qualities, the psyche is thought of as feminine, just as God is referred to as masculine because of His powerful, creating and ruling qualities.
Everyone is unbalanced to some extent, due to the fact that we are human and therefore imperfect. The realization of this imbalance is the first step towards balance. Although some extreme imbalances are more obvious than others, we all must work to bring our unconscious Shadow Elements into our consciousness.
One example of an extreme imbalance is the stereotypical “macho man.†Such a person concentrates totally on developing his masculine traits and ignores his gentler, feminine, emotional traits. Because he pushes his emotions into his unconscious, there they grow and transform into anger, which at times overwhelms him and leads to violent outbursts of rage. The other thing that happens when he represses his feminine, life-giving side is that he feels empty and his life devoid of meaning. He uses lots of women to try and replace his feminine side and so get a sense of well-being. Unfortunately, none of his relationships last because he isn’t accepting the woman as a human being with a personality. The inner feminine cannot be replaced by an outer feminine.
When you are balanced inside, you don’t need so much to rely on outer, unreliable means of support. You are able to break free from the life-long search for happiness, and the rebellion against one’s own true self. When you can bring your Shadow Side out of the unconscious and achieve the balance necessary for a well-rounded personality, you can then delve even deeper into the unconscious to find the psyche and the boundless wisdom she offers.
In physics, a wave is a disturbance or oscillation that travels through space and matter, accompanied by a transfer of energy. Wave motion transfers energy from one point to another, often with no permanent displacement of the particles of the medium—that is, with little or no associated mass transport. They consist, instead, of oscillations or vibrations around almost fixed locations. Waves are described by a wave equation which sets out how the disturbance proceeds over time. The mathematical form of this equation varies depending on the type of wave. There are two main types of waves. Mechanical waves propagate through a medium, and the substance of this medium is deformed. The deformation reverses itself owing to restoring forces resulting from its deformation. For example, sound waves propagate via air molecules colliding with their neighbors. When air molecules collide, they also bounce away from each other (a restoring force). This keeps the molecules from continuing to travel in the direction of the wave.
The second main type of wave, electromagnetic waves, do not require a medium. Instead, they consist of periodic oscillations of electrical and magnetic fields generated by charged particles, and can therefore travel through a vacuum. These types of waves vary in wavelength, and include radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays.
Further, the behavior of particles in quantum mechanics are described by waves, and researchers believe that gravitational waves also travel through space, although gravitational waves have never been directly detected.
A wave can be transverse or longitudinal depending on the direction of its oscillation. Transverse waves occur when a disturbance creates oscillations perpendicular (at right angles) to the propagation (the direction of energy transfer). Longitudinal waves occur when the oscillations are parallel to the direction of propagation. While mechanical waves can be both transverse and longitudinal, all electromagnetic waves are transverse.
A single, all-encompassing definition for the term wave is not straightforward. A vibration can be defined as a back-and-forth motion around a reference value. However, a vibration is not necessarily a wave. An attempt to define the necessary and sufficient characteristics that qualify a phenomenon to be called a wave results in a fuzzy border line.
The term wave is often intuitively understood as referring to a transport of spatial disturbances that are generally not accompanied by a motion of the medium occupying this space as a whole. In a wave, the energy of a vibration is moving away from the source in the form of a disturbance within the surrounding medium (Hall 1980, p. 8). However, this notion is problematic for a standing wave (for example, a wave on a string), where energy is moving in both directions equally, or for electromagnetic (e.g., light) waves in a vacuum, where the concept of medium does not apply and interaction with a target is the key to wave detection and practical applications. There are water waves on the ocean surface; gamma waves and light waves emitted by the Sun; microwaves used in microwave ovens and in radar equipment; radio waves broadcast by radio stations; and sound waves generated by radio receivers, telephone handsets and living creatures (as voices), to mention only a few wave phenomena.
It may appear that the description of waves is closely related to their physical origin for each specific instance of a wave process. For example, acoustics is distinguished from optics in that sound waves are related to a mechanical rather than an electromagnetic wave transfer caused by vibration. Concepts such as mass, momentum, inertia, or elasticity, become therefore crucial in describing acoustic (as distinct from optic) wave processes. This difference in origin introduces certain wave characteristics particular to the properties of the medium involved. For example, in the case of air: vortices, radiation pressure, shock waves etc.; in the case of solids: Rayleigh waves, dispersion; and so on.
Other properties, however, although usually described in terms of origin, may be generalized to all waves. For such reasons, wave theory represents a particular branch of physics that is concerned with the properties of wave processes independently of their physical origin.[1] For example, based on the mechanical origin of acoustic waves, a moving disturbance in space–time can exist if and only if the medium involved is neither infinitely stiff nor infinitely pliable. If all the parts making up a medium were rigidly bound, then they would all vibrate as one, with no delay in the transmission of the vibration and therefore no wave motion. On the other hand, if all the parts were independent, then there would not be any transmission of the vibration and again, no wave motion. Although the above statements are meaningless in the case of waves that do not require a medium, they reveal a characteristic that is relevant to all waves regardless of origin: within a wave, the phase of a vibration (that is, its position within the vibration cycle) is different for adjacent points in space because the vibration reaches these points at different times.
International Boxing Federation (IBF) light-heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins takes on Kazakhstani pugilist Beibut Shumenov on April 19th. The bout will take place at the DC Armory in Washington D.C., just a couple hours from Hopkins’ home town of Philadelphia. Hopkins, age 49, is already the oldest boxing champion in history. And if he wins this fight over Shumenov, who currently holds the World Boxing Association (WBA) light-heavyweight belt, Hopkins would become the oldest boxer to hold two titles at the same weight concurrently.
“I’m coming back to break another record by unifying the title and I’m looking to get my first knockout since I fought Oscar De La Hoya in 2004,†Hopkins told the press. “I know Shumenov is tough, but I’m tougher and I’m not going to let him make a name for himself by being the one to stop me.â€
Hopkins previously defended his middleweight title in Washington D.C. in 1998 with a 7th round technical knockout win over Robbert Allen. “It’s no secret that my one of my biggest goals has been to unify the titles and getting to do that in a city where I have a lot of history is the best-case scenario,†said Hopkins. He last fought in October last year outpointing Karo Murat in his first defense since beating previously unbeaten Tavouris Cloud for the title in March 2013.
Shumenov, age 30, sports a record of 14 wins and 1 loss. He recently knocked out Tamas Kovacs in three rounds. He started his career only seven years ago. “I am very excited that the fight is going to happen against one of the greatest fighters ever,†Shumenov told the press. “I am going to do everything possible and impossible to get the victory.â€
The fifth-seeded team of Sania Mirza of India and Cara Black of Zimbabwe reached the quarterfinals of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Paribas Open following a straight-set victory over Americans Raquel Kops-Jones and Abigail Spears. The Indo-Zimbabwean duo beat the unseeded American team 6-3, 6-4 in one hour and 12 minutes in the second round of the $5,946,740 hard court Premier WTA tournament. Mirza and Black saved five of the eight break chances they faced and converted five of the nine chances they got. They won 59 points to 44 for their rivals.
Mirza and Black have not gone beyond the quarterfinals in four tournaments they have played this season. They reached the quarterfinals of both the Australian Open and the Qatar Open. But, conversely, they suffered first round exits at the both the Sydney Open and the Dubai Open. Sania Mirza maintains a WTA Women’s World Doubles Ranking of 11.
Sri Lankan opening batsman Lahiru Thirimanne hit a century to lead Sri Lanka past defending champions Pakistan by five wickets to regain the Asia Cup title in Dhaka, Bangladesh at the historic Shere Bangla Stadium. The left-handed Thirimanne notched 101 for his third one-day hundred to anchor Sri Lanka’s successful chase of a 261-run target in 46.2 overs for Sri Lanka’s fifth Asia Cup title.
Pakistan captain Misbah-ul Haq blamed the defeat on losing early wickets. “I think losing the first three wickets quickly put us under pressure and although we managed to reach 260, it was some 20-30 short,†said Misbah. Poor fielding also hurt Pakistan in the final with Akmal, Sharjeel Khan and Hafeez dropping catches. “It doesn’t mean that coaches aren’t working or the boys are not doing hard work in the field,†Misbah said. “We try our best but unfortunately in important matches we missed a few chances.â€
However, despite the defeat, hope rides high in Islamabad heading into the upcoming Twenty-20 World Cup. Misbah-ul-Haq cited his players’ performance in the Asia Cup as reason for optimism heading into the World Twenty20. Pakistan pulled off impressive run chases against India and Bangladesh prior to losing the final to Sri Lanka.
Misbah said the run-scoring by the likes of Ahmed Shehzad, Umar Akmal and Shahid Afridi on Bangladesh wickets indicated the team can perform well when that country hosts the World Twenty20 beginning on March 16th. “There’s a disappointment that we couldn’t win the final, but the morale of the team is very good,†Misbah told the press. “We have a very good chance (in World Twenty20) … especially because the batsmen are in good form.â€
Pakistan was placed in a daunting group for the World Twenty20, a group that includes India, Australia, defending champion West Indies and a qualifier. Dare we call it the Group of Death? Nonetheless, Pakistan remains one of the most successful teams in the burgeoning short format of the game, having qualified for the very first World Twenty20 final in 2007. Pakistan went on to win the event two years later in England in 2009.
Fatima Al-Zeheri (Photo by Iraqi American Society for Peace and Friendship)
On March 7, Phoenix Center for the Arts organized a colorful reception to welcome artwork by Iraqi refugees.
The reception began on Friday with a traditional Iraqi dance known as Chobi which was performed by Iraqi American Society for Peace and Friendship (IASPF).
The purpose of this art show was to build bridges between art lovers. Each piece of art displayed in the gallery represented a personal journey of struggle and triumph each Iraqi immigrant faced. “For these artists, art is a way to reconcile past and present: to build a bridge between a life uprooted by war and the struggle to adapt and thrive in a new country,†said Fatima Al-Zeheri, an artist and she also leads the youth council of IASPF.
According to Al-Zeheri, the artists all grew up in Iraq, or their parents are from there. Through the lens of art, each artists portrays Iraq in a different way. Celebrating its history, landscape, heritage, culture and especially their hard working women – a shared theme among these artists.
“We would like to say that Iraq has been going through a lot for decades, but its people are still celebrating its history and culture,†Al-Zeheri enthused.
For example, the Invisible Women painting by Al-Zeheri illustrates Iraqi women’s household roles with colors hinting uncertainty and hope simultaneously.
Nada Adnan uses symbolism in her artwork to demonstrate the connection to both the past and the present.
Shatha Abed, on the other hand, chose to paint the loving bond of friendship.
However, the star of the night was Qasim Ayyed who has been honored in Iraq and Jordan for his signature artwork which is focused on representing historical, traditional, and cultural aspects of old Iraq.
The success of the art show was evident as the room filled with curious onlookers who drove from around the state to satisfy their hunger for the arts.
“The theme was very well perceived as they witnessed a variety of artwork relates to one theme,†Al-Zeheri concluded.
To learn more about Iraqi American Society for Peace and Friendship, visit: www.iaspf.org
Shariq Mansoor, founder and CTO of FusionOps, has been honored with the “Pros to Know†award by Supply and Demand Chain Executives, in the “Providers to Know†category. Masoor has demonstrated the unique ability to take complex problems, such as supplier collaboration or supply chain analytics – and deliver elegant solutions. He holds patents and has pending patents for his unique approaches.
FusionOps, delivers supply chain analytics as a self-service application, not as a build-it-yourself tool. FusionOps is supply chain analytics simplified – enabling self-service analytics for supply chain business users – while leveraging the most advanced cloud-based, Big Data platform available. Supply chain analytics not only requires aggregating massive amounts of data, but also developing highly complex algorithms, such as Purchase Price Variance, On-Time-In-Full, Inventory Turns, etc. FusionOps delivers this complex technology as an elegant and easy-to-use application. Library given grant for Muslim series
The Bettendorf Public Library has received a $3,500 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association to host a five-part “Let’s Talk About It†reading and discussion series, “Muslim Journeys.â€
The Bettendorf Public Library is one of 125 libraries and state humanities councils across the country selected to participate in the project, which seeks to familiarize public audiences in the U.S. with the people, places, history, faith and cultures of Muslims in the U.S. and around the world. The “Muslim Journeys†theme that the Bettendorf Public Library has chosen to explore is “American Stories.†The first program will explore “Prince Among Slaves: The True Story of an African Prince Sold into Slavery in the American South†by Terry Alford. It will be facilitated by Augustana College Professor Cyrus Zargar at 1 p.m. March 19. This discussion will be repeated at 6 p.m. April 16.
Additional books to be discussed are “Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation,†“The Columbia Sourcebook of Muslims in the United States,†“A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, From the Middle East to America,†and “The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and Islam.†The grant also will fund an array of supplementary programs featuring lectures, exhibits and film showings through the month of August.
For details, visit the library’s website at www.bettendorflibrary.com, Facebook, or contact the information desk at 563-344-4179.
Muslim organizations to launch new council
Eight major national American Muslim organizations held a news conference last week at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to announce the formation of the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO).
US Council of Muslim Organizations will be an umbrella group that will serve as a representative voice for Muslims as that faith community seeks to enhance its positive impact on society.
The new national council’s first priority will be to build on Muslim citizenship rights by conducting a census of American Muslims to create a database that will be used to enhance political participation in upcoming elections.
In a statement prior to the planned launch, USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal said: “A national council unifying Muslims in the United States has long been a dream of our community.
The goal of the US Council of Muslim Organizations is to help strengthen relationships among the member organizations in order to better serve members of the Muslim community and all Americans. “A detailed census will allow the larger Muslim community to better participate in our nation’s political process.â€
Organizations participating in the initial launch include: (More organizations may be added at a later date.) The Mosque Cares (Ministry of Imam W. Deen Mohammed) , Muslim American Society (MAS), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North American (ICNA), Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA), Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA) and Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA).
By Farhan Iqbal, Engineering Undergraduate, Western Michigan University
Farhan Iqbal
Islam is the world’s second largest religion, and has shown a significant increase over the last decade in many countries across the globe, including the United States. Recognizing the need for education about this growing faith, the Comparative Religion Department at Western Michigan University recently brought Dr. Alisa Perkins, a specialist in Islam in America, onto its faculty. I enrolled in Dr. Perkins’ Islam in America seminar the first time she offered it at Western, in Fall 2013. As an international Muslim student from Pakistan, and a second year Aerospace Engineering major at Western, I was eager to learn about how Americans view Islam and about Muslims’ experiences in America. I thought this class would be a good way for me to get my questions answered.
Dr. Alisa Perkins (third from right) walks to Kalamazoo Islamic Center with WMU Students
Early in the semester, I proposed the idea of a class visit to the mosque, and my classmates agreed that this would be a great experience, not just for us, but for other interested members of the campus and surrounding community. Excited by the enthusiasm of my peers, I began planning the event with the help of Dr. Perkins, Imam Hafiz Nauman from the Kalamazoo Islamic Center, and members of the WMU Muslim Student Association.
The event was held on Tuesday, October 22, 2013 at 10 a.m. Even though it was the first snow flurry of the season, several dozen people including WMU students, faculty and staff, as well as members of the Kalamazoo community braved the cold to meet in front of Waldo Library for the event. “We thought it was a good idea to walk from the center of campus to the mosque together,†Dr. Perkins explained. “This would give participants a sense of the close proximity of the two institutions, which are about a third of a mile apart. It would also allow non-Muslim students to share the short but meaningful journey that some of their Muslim peers make every day.â€
Arriving at the mosque, were welcomed by Imam Hafiz , Muslim Student Association members, and others from the Kalamazoo Islamic Center who had volunteered for the event. Imam Hafiz gave us a tour of the mosque which included the men’s and women’s prayer halls, the Sunday school classrooms where children and teen-agers are instructed in Arabic language and the Holy Qur’an, and the social gathering rooms. He gave us a brief introduction on Islam and how Muslims pray, including an explanation of the reasons for gender division at the mosque. Alex Gibson, a WMU pre-major in Global and International Studies and Arabic, commented, “I liked the imam’s explanation of why men and women were separated. It was to respect women and limit distractions of the opposition sex so one can focus on God.â€
After the tour, Imam Hafiz invited everyone to sit with him in a large circle for discussion, and to help themselves to hot drinks and snacks. A lively conversation followed, concerning topics such as the connections between Islam and other Abrahamic faiths; misconceptions about Islam in the media; the life of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and the history of Kalamazoo Islamic Center, which was founded in 1972 by students from Western Michigan University. In relation to this, Imam Hafiz Nauman revealed a fact that surprised many of the visitors: He himself had been a WMU student not too long ago, and in fact had graduated with an advanced degree in engineering in 2005.
In my opinion, when people get to know others from different backgrounds face to face, it improves understanding more so than just reading about others or watching films about them. Also, when people experience something for themselves, such as a mosque visit, it makes a deeper impression then simply hearing about what that would be like. Unfortunately, many non-Muslims do not have any access to information about Islam or its followers outside of the mass media, which is not always the best source of unbiased information. “It was wonderful to hear an imam speak about Islam in person as opposed to hearing the media rattle off about the “Middle East†or “terrorism,†commented WMU Honors College and Comparative Religion major Rachael Pulice. “Everyone there at the mosque was very kind and open. This made a wonderful representation, in my opinion, of genuine Islam.â€
Organizing this event was important to me for many reasons but perhaps most significant was that it was a way for me to help give my fellow students the chance to gain a kind of knowledge that they might not have had otherwise. “I never would have gone to the mosque on my own,†WMU nursing student Maggie Murgittroyd explained. “This is in part because I know it is a holy place, but also because it was an unknown. Imam Hafiz was incredibly approachable. He gave meaningful responses to our questions. He had a great deal of knowable about religious history, or history in general about the local community. I really enjoyed going hope to continue to learn more about Islam.â€
The success of the first mosque visit prompted me and the other organizers to make it an ongoing event taking place once every semester. I plan to minor in Comparative Religion minor at WMU, and continue to cooperate with Dr. Perkins and Imam Hafiz Nauman in organizing these campus and community-wide visits. In fact, our second visit to Kalamazoo Islamic Center is coming up on March 20, 2014. Like last time, we will meet in front of Waldo library at 10 a.m. The event is free and open to all. Please check out the comparative religion website for more information on this program, which is part of WMU’s Islam Global Forum initiative: http://www.wmich.edu/religion. I hope to see you there!
Mufti Hussain Kamani speaks to the audience at MCWS about ‘adab at the Prophetic Manners and Etiquette seminar.
Canton–March 8, 2014–MCWS held a seminar on the vitally important issue of prophetic manners and etiquette.
Many people were present for the seminar, approximately 200 people packed the gym at the mosque; the seminar was taught from a prepared Powerpoint presentation by Mufti Hussain Kamani of the Qalam Institute.
The Qalam Institute charged an admission fee for those who attended, and the students registered.
Mr. Kamani has a classical Islamic education and is very knowledgeable about the faith. He studied in an Indian madrasa, and is taught by a shaykh as well.
He broke his day-long presentation into three broad categories, manners with the self, manners with family, and manners with society.
Then he went through several different issues in each category, quoting ahadith relevant to those issues. It seemed as though he had studied the ahadith in great detail and then passed on to his listeners those lessons he had learned which were most striking to him.
He advised, for example, to initiate Salaams; he said Prophet (s) never used foul language and disliked to hear it. He said Prophet (s) when he spoke would speak succinctly and beautifully, emphasizing that the Companions could “count his words.â€
Kamani also said that the most hated person in Allah’s eyes is a quarrelsome person. Also he said that “kindness adds beauty†to everything, and when kindness is withdrawn from anything that thing becomes defective.
Kamani gave many other pearls of wisdom from Prophet’s (s) beautiful teachings, and the audience of all ages listened attentively, many taking notes.
Mr. Kamani provides the same seminar in many other locales–for more information please see qalaminstitute.org.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He wrote the chapter on “Obama At War†for the book, Grading the 44th President: A Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.
The U.S. is backing Ukraine’s extreme right-wing Svoboda party and violent neo-Nazis whose armed uprising paved the way for a Western-backed coup. Events in the Ukraine are giving us another glimpse through the looking-glass of U.S. propaganda wars against fascism, drugs and terrorism. The ugly reality behind the mirror is that the U.S. government has a long and unbroken record of working with fascists, dictators, druglords and state sponsors of terrorism in every region of the world in its elusive but relentless quest for unchallenged global power.
Behind a firewall of impunity and protection from the State Department and the CIA, U.S. clients and puppets have engaged in the worst crimes known to man, from murder and torture to coups and genocide. The trail of blood from this carnage and chaos leads directly back to the steps of the U.S. Capitol and the White House. As historian Gabriel Kolko observed in 1988, “The notion of an honest puppet is a contradiction Washington has failed to resolve anywhere in the world since 1945.†What follows is a brief A to Z guide to the history of that failure.
1. Afghanistan
In the 1980s, the U.S. worked with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to overthrow Afghanistan’s socialist government. It funded, trained and armed forces led by conservative tribal leaders whose power was threatened by their country’s progress on education, women’s rights and land reform. After Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew Soviet forces in 1989, these U.S.-backed warlords tore the country apart and boosted opium production to an unprecedented level of 2,000 to 3,400 tons per year. The Taliban government cut opium production by 95% in two years between 1999 and 2001, but the U.S. invasion in 2001 restored the warlords and drug lords to power. Afghanistan now ranks 175th out of 177 countries in the world for corruption, 175th out of 186 in human development, and since 2004, it has produced an unprecedented 5,300 tons of opium per year. President Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was well known as a CIA-backed drug lord. After a major U.S. offensive in Kandahar province in 2011, Colonel Abdul Razziq was appointed provincial police chief, boosting a heroin smuggling operation that already earned him $60 million per year in one of the poorest countries in the world.
2. Albania
Between 1949 and 1953, the U.S. and U.K. set out to overthrow the government of Albania, the smallest and most vulnerable communist country in Eastern Europe. Exiles were recruited and trained to return to Albania to stir up dissent and plan an armed uprising. Many of the exiles involved in the plan were former collaborators with the Italian and German occupation during World War II. They included former Interior Minister Xhafer Deva, who oversaw the deportations of “Jews, Communists, partisans and suspicious persons†(as described in a Nazi document) to Auschwitz. Declassified U.S. documents have since revealed that Deva was one of 743 fascist war criminals recruited by the U.S. after the war.
3. Argentina
U.S. documents declassified in 2003 detail conversations between U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Argentinian Foreign Minister Admiral Guzzetti in October 1976, soon after the military junta seized power in Argentina. Kissinger explicitly approved the junta’s “dirty war,†in which it eventually killed up to 30,000, most of them young people, and stole 400 children from the families of their murdered parents. Kissinger told Guzzetti, “Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed… the quicker you succeed the better.†The U.S. Ambassador in Buenos Aires reported that Guzzetti “returned in a state of jubilation, convinced that there is no real problem with the US government over that issue.†(“ Daniel Gandolfo,†“Presente!â€)
4. Brazil
In 1964, General Castelo Branco led a coup that sparked 20 years of brutal military dictatorship. U.S. military attache Vernon Walters, later Deputy CIA Director and UN Ambassador, knew Castelo Branco well from World War II in Italy. As a clandestine CIA officer, Walters’ records from Brazil have never been declassified, but the CIA provided all the support needed to ensure the success of the coup, including funding for opposition labor and student groups in street protests, as in Ukraine and Venezuela today. A U.S. Marine amphibious force on standby to land in Sao Paolo was not needed. Like other victims of U.S.-backed coups in Latin America, the elected President Joao Goulart was a wealthy landowner, not a communist, but his efforts to remain neutral in the Cold War were as unacceptable to Washington as President Yanukovich’s refusal to hand the Ukraine over to the west 50 years later.
5. Cambodia
When President Nixon ordered the secret and illegal bombing of Cambodia in 1969, American pilots were ordered to falsify their logs to conceal their crimes. They killed at least half a million Cambodians, dropping more bombs than on Germany and Japan combined in World War II. As the Khmer Rouge gained strength in 1973, the CIA reported that its “propaganda has been most effective among refugees subjected to B-52 strikes.†After the Khmer Rouge killed at least 2 million of its own people and was finally driven out by the Vietnamese army in 1979, the U.S. Kampuchea Emergency Group, based in the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, set out to feed and supply them as the “resistance†to the new Vietnamese-backed Cambodian government. Under U.S. pressure, the World Food Program provided $12 million to feed 20,000 to 40,000 Khmer Rouge soldiers. For at least another decade, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency provided the Khmer Rouge with satellite intelligence, while U.S. and British special forces trained them to lay millions of land mines across Western Cambodia which still kill or maim hundreds of people every year.
6. Chile
When Salvador Allende became President in 1970, President Nixon promised to “make the economy scream†in Chile. The U.S., Chile’s largest trading partner, cut off trade to cause shortages and economic chaos. The CIA and State Department had conducted sophisticated propaganda operations in Chile for a decade, funding conservative politicians, parties, unions, student groups and all forms of media, while expanding ties with the military. After General Pinochet seized power, the CIA kept Chilean officials on its payroll and worked closely with Chile’s DINA intelligence agency as the military government killed thousands of people and jailed and tortured tens of thousands more. Meanwhile, the “Chicago Boys,†over 100 Chilean students sent by a State Department program to study under Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, launched a radical program of privatization, deregulation and neoliberal policies that kept the economy screaming for most Chileans throughout Pinochet’s 16-year military dictatorship.
7. China
By the end of 1945, 100,000 U.S. troops were fighting alongside Chinese Kuomintang (and Japanese) forces in Communist-held areas of northern China. Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang may have been the most corrupt of all U.S. allies. A steady stream of U.S. advisers in China warned that U.S. aid was being stolen by Chiang and his cronies, some of it even sold to the Japanese, but the U.S. commitment to Chiang continued throughout the war, his defeat by the Communists and his rule of Taiwan. Secretary of State Dulles’ brinksmanship on behalf of Chiang twice led the U.S. to the brink of nuclear war with China on his behalf in 1955 and 1958 over Matsu and Qemoy, two small islands off the coast of China.
8. Colombia
When U.S. special forces and the Drug Enforcement Administration aided Colombian forces to track down and kill drug lord Pablo Escobar, they worked with a vigilante group called Los Pepes. In 1997, Diego Murillo-Bejarano and other Los Pepes’ leaders co-founded the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) which was responsible for 75% of violent civilian deaths in Colombia over the next 10 years.
9. Cuba
The United States supported the Batista dictatorship as it created the repressive conditions that led to the Cuban Revolution, killing up to 20,000 of its own people. Former U.S. Ambassador Earl Smith testified to Congress that, “the U.S. was so overwhelmingly influential in Cuba that the American Ambassador was the second most important man, sometimes even more important than the Cuban president.†After the revolution, the CIA launched a long campaign of terrorism against Cuba, training Cuban exiles in Florida, Central America and the Dominican Republic to commit assassinations and sabotage in Cuba. CIA-backed operations against Cuba included the attempted invasion at the Bay of Pigs, in which 100 Cuban exiles and four Americans were killed; several attempted assassinations of Fidel Castro and successful assassinations of other officials; several bombing raids in 1960 (three Americans killed and two captured) and terrorist bombings targeting tourists as recently as 1997; the apparent bombing of a French ship in Havana harbor (at least 75 killed); a biological swine flu attack that killed half a million pigs; and the terrorist bombing of a Cuban airliner (78 killed) planned by Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, who remain free in America despite the U.S. pretense of waging a war against terrorism. Bosch was granted a presidential pardon by the first President Bush.
10. El Salvador
The civil war that swept El Salvador in the 1980s was a popular uprising against a government that ruled with the utmost brutality. At least 70,000 people were killed and thousands more were disappeared. The UN Truth Commission set up after the war found that 95% of the dead were killed by government forces and death squads, and only 5% by FLMN guerrillas. The government forces responsible for this one-sided slaughter were almost entirely established, trained, armed and supervised by the CIA, U.S. special forces and the U.S. School of the Americas. The UN Truth Commission found that the units guilty of the worst atrocities, like the Atlacatl Battalion which conducted the infamous El Mozote massacre, were precisely the ones most closely supervised by American advisers. The American role in this campaign of state terrorism is now hailed by senior U.S. military officers as a model for “counter-insurgency†in Colombia and elsewhere as the U.S. war on terror spreads its violence and chaos across the world.
11. France
In France, Italy, Greece, Indochina, Indonesia, Korea and the Philippines at the end of World War II, advancing allied forces found that communist resistance forces had gained effective control of large areas or even entire countries as German and Japanese forces withdrew or surrendered. In Marseille, the CGT communist trade union controlled the docks that were critical to trade with the U.S. and the Marshall plan. The OSS had worked with the U.S.-Sicilian mafia and Corsican gangsters during the war. So after the OSS merged into the new CIA after the war, it used its contacts to restore Corsican gangsters to power in Marseille, to break dock strikes and CGT control of the docks. It protected the Corsicans as they set up heroin labs and began shipping heroin to New York, where the American-Sicilian mafia also flourished under CIA protection. Ironically, supply disruptions due to the war and the Chinese Revolution had reduced the number of heroin addicts in the U.S. to 20,000 by 1945 and heroin addiction could have been virtually eliminated, but the CIA’s infamous French Connection instead brought a new wave of heroin addiction, organized crime and drug-related violence to New York and other American cities.
12. Ghana
There seem to be no inspiring national leaders in Africa these days. But that may be America’s fault. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a rising star in Ghana: Kwame Nkrumah. He was Prime Minister under British rule from 1952 to 1960, when Ghana became independent and he became president. He was a socialist, a pan-African and an anti-imperialist, and, in 1965, he wrote a book called Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah was overthrown in a CIA coup in 1966. The CIA denied involvement at the time, but the British press later reported that 40 CIA officers operated out of the U.S. Embassy “distributing largesse among President Nkrumah’s secret adversaries,†and that their work “was fully rewarded.†Former CIA officer John Stockwell revealed more about the CIA’s decisive role in the coup in his book In Search of Enemies.
13. Greece
When British forces landed in Greece in October 1944, they found the country under the effective control of ELAS-EAM, the leftist partisan group formed by the Greek Communist Party in 1941 after the Italian and German invasion. ELAS-EAM welcomed the British forces, but the British refused any accommodation with them and installed a government that included royalists and Nazi collaborators. When ELAS-EAM held a huge demonstration in Athens, police opened fire and killed 28 people. The British recruited members of the Nazi-trained Security Battalions to hunt down and arrest ELAS members, who once again took up arms as a resistance movement. In 1947, with a civil war raging, the bankrupt British asked the U.S. to take over their role in occupied Greece. The U.S. role in supporting an incompetent fascist government in Greece was enshrined in the “Truman Doctrine,†seen by many historians as the beginning of the Cold War. ELAS-EAM fighters laid down their arms in 1949 after Yugoslavia withdrew its support, and 100,000 were either executed, exiled or jailed. The liberal Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup in 1967, leading to seven more years of military rule. His son Andreas was elected as Greece’s first “socialist†president in 1981, but many ELAS-EAM members jailed in the 1940s were never freed and died in prison.
14. Guatemala
After its first operation to overthrow a foreign government in Iran in 1953, the CIA launched a more elaborate operation to remove the elected liberal government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. The CIA recruited and trained a small army of mercenaries under Guatemalan exile Castillo Armas to invade Guatemala, with 30 unmarked U.S. planes providing air support. U.S. Ambassador Peurifoy prepared a list of Guatemalans to be executed, and Armas was installed as president. The reign of terror that followed led to 40 years of civil war, in which at least 200,000 were killed, most of them indigenous people. The climax of the war was the campaign of genocide in Ixil by President Rios Montt, for which he was sentenced to life in prison in 2013, until Guatemala’s Supreme Court rescued him on a technicality. A new trial is scheduled for 2015. Declassified CIA documents reveal that the Reagan administration was well aware of the indiscriminate and genocidal nature of Guatemalan military operations when it approved new military aid in 1981, including military vehicles, spare parts for helicopters and U.S. military advisers. The CIA documents detail the massacre and destruction of entire villages, and conclude, “The well documented belief by the army that the entire Ixil Indian population is pro-EGP (Guerrilla Army of the Poor) has created a situation in which the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants alike.â€
15. Haiti
Almost 200 years after the slave rebellion that created the nation of Haiti and defeated Napoleon’s armies, the long-suffering people of Haiti finally elected a truly democratic government led by Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991. But President Aristide was overthrown in a U.S.-backed military coup after eight months in office, and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) recruited a paramilitary force called FRAPH to target and destroy Aristide’s Lavalas movement in Haiti. The CIA put FRAPH’s leader Emmanuel “Toto†Constant on its payroll and shipped in weapons from Florida. When President Clinton sent a U.S. occupation force to restore Aristide to office in 1994, FRAPH members detained by U.S. forces were freed on orders from Washington, and the CIA maintained FRAPH as a criminal gang to undermine Aristide and Lavalas. After Aristide was elected president a second time in 2000, a force of 200 U.S. special forces trained 600 former FRAPH members and others in the Dominican Republic to prepare for a second coup. In 2004, they launched a campaign of violence to destabilize Haiti, which provided the pretext for U.S. forces to land in Haiti and remove Aristide from office.
16. Honduras
The 2009 coup in Honduras has led to severe repression and death squad murders of political opponents, union organizers and journalists. At the time of the coup, U.S. officials denied any role in the coup and used semantics to avoid cutting off U.S. military aid as required under U.S. law. But two Wikileaks cables revealed that the U.S. Embassy was the main power broker in managing the aftermath of the coup and forming a government that is now repressing and murdering its people.
17. Indonesia
In 1965, General Suharto seized effective power from President Sukarno on the pretext of combatting a failed coup and unleashed an orgy of mass murderthat killed at least half a million people. U.S. diplomats later admitted providing lists of 5,000 Communist Party members to be killed. Political officer Robert Martens said, “It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad. There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.â€
18. Iran
Iran may be the most instructive case of a CIA coup that caused endless long-term problems for the United States. In 1953, the CIA and the U.K.’s MI6 overthrew the popular, elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh. Iran had nationalized its oil industry by a unanimous vote of parliament, ending a BP monopoly that only paid Iran a 16% royalty on its oil. For two years, Iran resisted a British naval blockade and international economic sanctions. After President Eisenhower took office in 1953, the CIA agreed to a British request to intervene. After the initial coup failed and the Shah and his family fled to Italy, the CIA payed millions of dollars to bribe military officers and pay gangsters to unleash violence in the streets of Tehran. Mossadegh was finally removed and the Shah returned to rule as a brutal Western puppet until the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
19. Israel
Just as the U.S. uses its economic and military power, its sophisticated propaganda system and its position as a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council to violate international law with impunity, it also uses the same tools to shield its ally Israel from accountability for international crimes. Since 1966, the U.S. has used its Security Council veto 83 times, more than the other four Permanent Members combined, and 42 of those vetoes have been on resolutions related to Israel and/or Palestine. Just last week, Amnesty International published a report that, “Israeli forces have displayed a callous disregard for human life by killing dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, in the occupied West Bank over the past three years with near total impunity.†Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories condemned the 2008 assault on Gaza as a “massive violation of international law,†adding that nations like the U.S. “that have supplied weapons and supported the siege are complicit in the crimes.†The Leahy Law requires the U.S. to cut off military aid to forces that violate human rights, but it has never been enforced against Israel. Israel continues to build settlements in occupied territory in violation of the 4th Geneva Convention, making it harder to comply with Security Council resolutions that require it to withdraw from occupied territory. But Israel remains beyond the rule of law, shielded from accountability by its powerful patron, the United States.
20. Iraq
In 1958, after the British-backed monarchy was overthrown by General Abdul Qasim, the CIA hired a 22-year-old Iraqi named Saddam Hussein to assassinate the new president. Hussein and his gang botched the job and he fled to Lebanon, wounded in the leg by one of his companions. The CIA rented him an apartment in Beirut and then moved him to Cairo, where he was paid as an agent of Egyptian intelligence and was a frequent visitor at the U.S. Embassy. Qasim was killed in a CIA-backed Baathist coup in 1963, and as in Guatemala and Indonesia, the CIA gave the new government a list of at least 4,000 communists to be killed. But, once in power, the Baathist revolutionary government was no Western puppet, and it nationalized Iraq’s oil industry, adopted an Arab nationalist foreign policy and built the best education and health systems in the Arab world. In 1979, Saddam Hussein became president, conducted purges of political opponents and launched a disastrous war against Iran. The U.S. DIA provided satellite intelligence to target chemical weapons that the West helped him to produce, and Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials welcomed him as an ally against Iran. Only after Iraq invaded Kuwait and Hussein became more useful as an enemy did U.S. propaganda brand him as “a new Hitler.†After the U.S. invaded Iraq on false pretenses in 2003, the CIA recruited 27 brigades of “Special Police,†merging the most brutal of Saddam Hussein’s security forces with the Iranian-trained Badr militia to form death squads that murdered tens of thousands of mostly Sunni Arab men and boys in Baghdad and elsewhere in a reign of terror that continues to this day.
21. Korea
When U.S. forces arrived in Korea in 1945, they were greeted by officials of the Korean People’s Republic (KPR), formed by resistance groups which had disarmed surrendering Japanese forces and begun to establish law and order throughout Korea. General Hodge had them thrown out of his office and placed the southern half of Korea under U.S. military occupation. By contrast, Russian forces in the North recognized the KPR, leading to the long-term division of Korea. The U.S. flew in Syngman Rhee,a conservative Korean exile, and installed him as President of South Korea in 1948. Rhee became a dictator on an anti-communist crusade, arresting and torturing suspected communists, brutally putting down rebellions, killing 100,000 people and vowing to take over North Korea. He was at least partly responsible for the outbreak of the Korean War and for the allied decision to invade North Korea once South Korea had been recaptured. He was finally forced to resign by mass student protests in 1960.
22. Laos
The CIA began providing air support to French forces in Laos in 1950, and remained involved there for 25 years. The CIA engineered at least three coups between 1958 and 1960 to keep the growing leftist Pathet Lao out of government. It worked with right-wing Laotian drug lords like General Phoumi Nosavan, transporting opium between Burma, Laos and Vietnam and protecting his monopoly on the opium trade in Laos. In 1962, the CIA recruited a clandestine mercenary army of 30,000 veterans of previous guerrilla wars from Thailand, Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines to fight the Pathet Lao. As large numbers of American GIs in Vietnam got hooked on heroin, the CIA’s Air America transported opium from Hmong territory in the Plain of Jars to General Vang Pao’s heroin labs in Long Tieng and Vientiane for shipment to Vietnam. When the CIA failed to defeat the Pathet Lao, the U.S. bombed Laos almost as heavily as Cambodia, with 2 million tons of bombs.
23. Libya
NATO’s war on Libya epitomized President Obama’s “disguised, quiet, media-free†approach to war. NATO’s bombing campaign was fraudulently justified to the UN Security Council as an effort to protect civilians, and the instrumental role of Western and other foreign special forces on the ground was well-disguised, even when Qatari special forces (including ex-ISI Pakistani mercenaries) led the final assault on the Bab Al-Aziziya HQ in Tripoli. NATO conducted 7,700 air strikes, 30,000 -100,000 people were killed, loyalist towns were bombed to rubble and ethnically cleansed, and the country is in chaos as Western-trained and -armed Islamist militias seize territory and oil facilities and vie for power. The Misrata militia, trained and armed by Western special forces, is one of the most violent and powerful. As I write this, protesters have just stormed the Congress building in Tripoli for the fourth or fifth time in recent months, and two elected Representatives have been shot and wounded as they fled.
24. Mexico
The death toll in Mexico’s drug wars recently passed 100,000. The most violent of the drug cartels is Los Zetas. U.S. officials call the Zetas “the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and dangerous drug cartel operating in Mexico.†The Zetas cartel was formed by Mexican security forces trained by U.S. special forces at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, and at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
25. Myanmar
After the Chinese Revolution, Kuomintang generals moved into northern Burma and became powerful drug lords, with Thai military protection, financing from Taiwan and air transport and logistical support from the CIA. Burma’s opium production grew from 18 tons in 1958 to 600 tons in 1970. The CIA maintained these forces as a bulwark against communist China but they transformed the “golden triangle†into the world’s largest opium producer. Most of the opium was shipped by mule trains into Thailand where other CIA allies shipped it to heroin labs in Hong Kong and Malaysia. The trade shifted around 1970 as CIA partner General Vang Pao set up new labs in Laos to provide heroin to GIs in Vietnam.
26. Nicaragua
Anastasio Somosa ruled Nicaragua as his personal fiefdom for 43 years with unconditional U.S. support, as his National Guard committed every crime imaginable from massacres and torture to extortion and rape with complete impunity. After he was finally overthrown by the Sandinista Revolution in 1979, the CIA recruited, trained and supported “contra†mercenaries to invade Nicaragua and conduct terrorism to destabilize the country. In 1986, the International Court of Justice found the United States guilty of aggression against Nicaragua for deploying the contras and mining Nicaraguan ports. The court ordered the U.S. to cease its aggression and pay war reparations to Nicaragua, but they have never been paid. The U.S. response was to declare that it would no longer recognize the binding jurisdiction of the ICJ, effectively setting itself beyond the rule of international law.
27. Pakistan ; 28. Saudi Arabia ; 29. Turkey
After reading my last AlterNet piece on the failed war on terror, former CIA and State Department terrorism expert Larry Johnson told me, “The main problem with respect to assessing the terrorist threat is to accurately define the state sponsorship. The biggest culprits today, in contrast to 20 years ago, are Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Iran, despite the right-wing/neocon ravings, is not that active in encouraging and/or facilitating terrorism.†In the past 12 years, U.S. military aid to Pakistan has totaled $18.6 billion. The U.S. has just negotiated the largest arms deal in history with Saudi Arabia. And Turkey is a long-standing member of NATO. All three major state sponsors of terrorism in the world today are U.S. allies.
30. Panama
U.S. drug enforcement officials wanted to arrest Manuel Noriega in 1971, when he was the chief of military intelligence in Panama. They had enough evidence to convict him of drug trafficking, but he was also a long-time agent and informer for the CIA, so like other drug-dealing CIA agents from Marseille to Macao, he was untouchable. He was temporarily cut loose during the Carter administration but otherwise kept collecting at least $100,000 per year from the U.S. Treasury. As he rose to be the de facto ruler of Panama, he became even more valuable to the CIA, reporting on meetings with Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and supporting U.S. covert wars in Central America. Noriega probably quit drug trafficking in about 1985, well before the U.S. indicted him for it in 1988. The indictment was a pretext for the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, whose main purpose was to give the U.S. greater control over Panama, at the expense of at least 2,000 lives.
31. The Philippines
Since the U.S. launched its so-called war on terror in 2001, a task force of 500 US JSOC forces has conducted covert operations in the southern Philippines. Now, under Obama’s “pivot to Asia,†U.S. military aid to the Philippines is increasing, from $12 million in 2011 to $50 million this year. But Filippino human rights activists report that the increased aid coincides with increased military death squad operations against civilians. The past three years have seen at least 158 people killed by death squads.
32. Syria
When President Obama approved flying weapons and militiamen from Libya to the “Free Syrian Army†base in Turkey in unmarked NATO planes in late 2011, he was calculating that the U.S. and its allies could replicate the “successful†overthrow of the Libyan government. Everyone involved understood that Syria would be a longer and bloodier conflict, but they gambled that the end result would be the same, even though 55% of Syrians told pollsters they still supported Assad. A few months later, Western leaders undermined Kofi Annan’s peace plan with their “Plan B,†“Friends of Syria.†This was not an alternative peace plan, but a commitment to escalation, offering guaranteed support, money and weapons to the jihadis in Syria to make sure they ignored the Annan peace plan and kept fighting. That move sealed the fate of millions of Syrians. Over the past two years Qatar has spent $3 billion and flown in planeloads of weapons, Saudi Arabia has shipped weapons from Croatia, and Western and Arab royalist special forces have trained thousands of increasingly radicalized fundamentalist jihadis, now allied with al-Qaeda. The Geneva II talks were a half-hearted effort to revive the 2012 Annan peace plan, but Western insistence that a “political transition†means the immediate resignation of Assad reveals that Western leaders still value regime change more than peace. To paraphrase Phyllis Bennis, the U.S. and its allies are still willing to fight to the last Syrian.
33. Uruguay
The foreign officials the U.S. has worked with include many who have benefited from their cooperation in American crimes around the world. But in Uruguay in 1970, when Police Chief Alejandro Otero objected to Americans training his officers in the art of torture, he was demoted. The U.S. official he complained to was Dan Mitrione, who worked for the U.S. Office of Public Safety, a division of the US Agency for International Development. Mitrione’s training sessions reportedly included torturing homeless people to death with electric shocks to teach his students how far they could go.
34. Yugoslavia
The NATO aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999 was a flagrant crime of aggression in violation of Article 2.4 of the UN Charter. When British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told Secretary of State Albright that the U.K. was having “difficulties with its lawyers†over the planned attack, she told him the U.K. should “ get new lawyers,†according to her deputy James Rubin. NATO’s proxy ground force in its aggression against Yugoslavia was the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), led by Hashim Thaci. A 2010 report by the Council of Europe and a book by Carla Del Ponte, the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, support long-standing allegations that at the time of the NATO invasion, Thaci ran a criminal organization called the Drenica group which sent more than 400 captured Serbs to Albania to be killed so that their organs could be extracted and sold for transplant. Hashim Thaci is now the Prime Minister of the NATO protectorate of Kosovo.
35. Zaire
Patrice Lumumba, the president of the pan-Africanist Mouvement National Congolais, took part in the Congo’s struggle for independence and became the Congo’s first elected Prime Minister in 1960. He was deposed in a CIA-backed coup led by Joseph-Desire Mobutu, his Army Chief of Staff. Mobutu handed Lumumba over to the Belgian-backed separatists and Belgian mercenaries he had been fighting in Katanga province, and he was shot by a firing squad led by a Belgian mercenary. Mobutu abolished elections and appointed himself president in 1965, and ruled as a dictator for 30 years. He killed political opponents in public hangings, had others tortured to death, and eventually embezzled at least $5 billion while Zaire, as he renamed it, remained one of the poorest countries in the world. But U.S. support for Mobutu continued. Even as President Carter publicly distanced himself, Zaire continued to receive 50% of all U.S. military aid to sub-Saharan Africa. When Congress voted to cut off military aid, Carter and U.S. business interests worked to restore it. Only in the 1990s did U.S. support start to waver, until Mobutu was deposed by Laurent Kabila in 1997 and died soon afterward.
***
Major Joe Blair was the director of instruction at the U.S. School of the Americas (SOA) from 1986 to 1989. He described the training he oversaw at SOA as the following: “The doctrine that was taught was that if you want information you use physical abuse, false imprisonment, threats to family members, and killing. If you can’t get the information you want, if you can’t get that person to shut up or stop what they’re doing, you assassinate them—and you assassinate them with one of your death squads.â€
The stock response of U.S. officials to the exposure of the systematic crimes I’ve described is that such things may have occurred at certain times in the past but that they in no way reflect long-term or ongoing U.S. policy. The School of the Americas was moved from the Panama Canal Zone to Fort Benning, Georgia, and replaced by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001. But Joe Blair has something to say about that too. Testifying at a trial of SOA Watch protesters in 2002, he said, “There are no substantive changes besides the name. They teach the identical courses that I taught, and changed the course names and use the same manuals.â€
A huge amount of human suffering could be alleviated and global problems solved if the United States would make a genuine commitment to human rights and the rule of law, as opposed to one it only applies cynically and opportunistically to its enemies, but never to itself or its allies.
Synopsis of the Friday Sermon delivered by Ameer Mustapha Elturk on February 21, 2014:
February is Black History Month in America. The history of the African people and their freedom from slavery is commemorated and remembered during this month. The well known human rights activist Malcom X met his fate in the same month 49 years ago. He was martyred on February 21, 1965.
Islam promotes absolute equality and fraternity among the human race regardless of one’s skin color or faith. The notion of equality and brotherhood is articulated in a very profound way in surat al-Hujurat, “O mankind! We created you (all) from a male and a female and made you nations and tribes that you may know one another. Surely, the most honorable among you with Allah is the most righteous. Verily, Allah is all-knowing, all-aware†(al-Hujurat, 49:13).
In 1776 Benjamin Franklin and John Adams among other founding fathers of America asked Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence that defined America and what it stood for. After a few iterations and much deliberation, the released document opened up with, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.â€
Thirteen years later, in 1789, the French revolution was set in motion. Peasants and laborers revolted against the bourgeoisie class calling for the abolition of feudalism raising the slogan, “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.â€
As recent as 1945, the Preamble of the United Nations Charter opens up with these words, “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.â€
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) reads, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood…†Yes, you read that right, “a spirit of brotherhood.â€
Article 2 reads, “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status…â€
Not long after the release of the UDHR document in 1948, blacks in America revolted against the inhumane treatment and rancid racism that knew no end in sight. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s reshaped the laws and policies in place. Despite these changes, and in spite of the pleasantries one finds in the Declaration of Independence and the UDHR, blacks are still discriminated against. Twelve centuries before the French Revolution and the birth of the Declaration of Independence, Prophet Muhammad (s) not only preached the ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity, he actually established these principles.
Islam not only recognizes different people and languages but declared that all people regardless of their origin, skin color, ethnic background, faith, and gender belong to one family, the family of Adam (as). All mankind are in essence, “Banu Adam†belonging to the first couple, Adam and Eve. Therefore, by birth, all people are equal before the Creator, Allah (swt). “O mankind! We created you (all) from a male and a female†(al-Hujurat, 49:13).
Naturally, it was Allah (SWT)’s will and decision to create people with different colors and nations. The fact that the ayah begins with “O mankind,†and not “O believers,†tells us that Allah (swt) does not discriminate between his servants by skin color or what region of the world they belong to, or for that matter what they believe in.
“And indeed We have honored the children of Adam†(al-Isra’, 17:70). With this ayah, Muslims acknowledge the honor Allah (swt) bestowed upon Luqman before the dawn of Islam, the status of Bilal, the Prophet’s (s) caller to prayer, and Allah (swt)’s favor conferred upon Malcolm X centuries after the birth of Islam among many others. All of them, Luqman, Bilal and Malcolm X, were blacks of African descent.
Bilal Ibn Rabah (ra) was owned by Ummayah Ibn Khalaf and was among the first to pledge his faith to the Prophet (s) as a Muslim. His faith in Allah (swt) was undeniably unshakable. Bilal (ra) did not relinquish his faith despite being brutally persecuted. He insisted on repeating “Ahadun Ahad,†One, One. During the conquest of Mecca when the Prophet (s) returned to Mecca triumphant, he (s) was accompanied by Bilal (ra) as they entered the Ka’bah and removed the idols and images displayed while repeating Allahu Akbar. The Prophet (s) then ordered Bilal to climb to the top of the Ka’bah and call the ‘Athan.
Abu Dharr (ra) was remembered for his strict piety. The Prophet (SAW) once said, “He who likes to look at the piety (asceticism) of Jesus the son of Mary, look at Abu Dharr.†Abu Dharr once slipped and called Bilal, “O son of a black woman.†Bilal complained to the Prophet (s) and he became angry. Not knowing that Bilal had complained to the Prophet (s), Abu Dharr came to him and the Prophet (s) turned away from him. Abu Dharr asked, “O Messenger of Allah, have you turned away because of something you have been told?†The Prophet (s) replied, “Have you reproached Bilal about his mother? By the One who revealed the Book to Muhammad (s) none is more virtuous over another except in righteous deeds. You have none but an insignificant amount.â€
One slip almost made all of Abu Dharr’s pious acts disappear. We must watch what we say and always be mindful of people’s feelings and sensitivities to racial among other slurs that might be offensive. The status of Bilal, the Ethiopian, among the companions was very high. He occupied a distinguished position among the companions of the Prophet (s). Omar (ra) would often say, “Abu Bakr is our master and he freed our master.†Bilal would humbly reply, “I am only a man who used to be a slave.†His memory is still with us today whenever we hear the call to prayer. Bilal (ra) was honored by Allah (swt).
Luqman the wise, a well-known sage mentioned by pre-Islamic poets, was also honored by Allah (swt) at a time when slavery was the norm. An entire surah in the Quran is dedicated to Luqman. Ibn Abbass (ra) describes him as an Ethiopian slave who worked as a carpenter. Other Sahaba claimed that he was short with a flat nose and thick lips, and Allah (swt) granted him wisdom but not prophethood. “And indeed, We bestowed upon Luqman wisdom: ‘Be grateful to Allah’†(Luqman, 31:12).
Luqman was consulted by many people for advice. His golden advice to his son was, “O my son! Do not join others in worship with Allah, verily; joining others in worship with Allah is a great injustice (Zulm)†(Luqman, 31:13). He would counsel his son saying, “My son! Sit with the learned men and keep close to them. Allah gives life to the hearts with the light of wisdom as Allah gives life to the dead earth with the abundant rain of the sky.†Luqman was given abundant good. “(Allah) gives wisdom to whomever He will. And whoever is given wisdom has indeed been given abundant good. But only those with insight bear this in mind†(al-Baqarah, 2:269). The etched legacy of Luqman in the Qur’an will continue to be remembered and celebrated until the end of time.
From the distant past to merely decades ago, a man from African descent by the name of Malcolm X was also honored by Allah (SWT). Malcolm was himself once racist against whites. He was taught that white men were evil – this was in retaliation to the centuries of humiliation blacks suffered from the institution of slavery that reduced a slave to 3/5th of a man.
When Malcolm embarked on the pilgrimage to Makkah, his feelings changed as this spiritual journey changed his outlook and ultimately, his life. He saw with his eyes and felt with his heart the true meaning of equality and brotherhood. When he returned from this life altering experience, Malcolm said, “I met blonde-haired, blue-eyed men I could call my brothers.†The worldview, white men are evil, quickly changed and he had a message for all races. He became a well-known human rights activist and promoted equality and challenged the government’s racist stance. Allah (SWT) honored Malcolm X with martyrdom when he was assassinated on February 21, 1965 in New York City during the height of the Civil Rights movement.
In 1975 Imam Warithuddin Muhammad (RA), the son of Malcolm’s mentor from the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, broke away and took with him a multitude of members from his father’s organization to form his movement that embraced mainstream orthodox Islam. We as Americans are all indebted to Malcolm X and Imam Warithuddin Muhammad as they helped influence and shape Islam in America.
Those who fought for equality during the Civil Rights movement of the sixties led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. may have been victorious in achieving their objective of equality as a matter of law. In reality however, the fight for true equality is far from over. Black people are still discriminated against. Not long ago, I was informed by a member of our congregation who happened to be black and live in the city of Warren where our Islamic Center is located that, the Warren police refused to document incidents of discrimination against him.
Sadly, our community is not immune from this type of discrimination. The gap between the indigenous African American population and immigrant Muslims and their offspring needs to be closed. Imam Luqman (RA) of Masjid al-Haq in Detroit, shortly before he was killed, cried out to the affluent immigrant Muslims inviting their attention to helping and supporting the down trodden, deprived and disadvantaged brothers and sisters in Detroit rather than donating huge sums of money to Republican and Democratic politicians. His cries fell on deaf ears.
He was entrapped by the FBI to purchase stolen merchandise. At the site where the exchange of goods was to take place, Imam Luqman met his fate. He didn’t need to resort to stolen merchandise to care for his community. It makes one wonder, are we living our faith? We preach equality, fraternity and brotherhood. Are we practicing what we preach? Only Allah (SWT) knows what would have been the outcome had the affluent Muslims in the suburbs paid enough attention to Imam Luqman’s cries and community needs.
Another sad reality impeding our community is the use of abhorrent racial slurs. Sadly, racial slurs and name calling such as using the word abd (pl. abeed,) akata, adoon, jareer and/or kallu, are different words in Arabic and other languages that mean slave(s) or Negro. We must refrain from using these and other derogatory and offensive terms and be sensitive to the feelings of others.
The challenge that lies ahead is tearing down the wall of discrimination against blacks and other races that separate and divide us. Muslims of all races and colors should be completely integrated to exhibit the true hue of Islamic brotherhood. Interracial marriages should be welcomed. Integration among the diverse Muslim community as we promote Islam in America is a must.
Despite the prejudice, bigotry and discrimination that existed for decades in Arabia, Muslims came together whether they were white, black, Arab or non-Arab. Whether it was Suhaib al-Rumi, Bilal ibn Rabah, Abu Bakr or Salman al-Farisi, they were all considered equal before the law under Islam and became real brothers in faith. Islam didn’t just introduce and teach a concept, this revolutionary societal shift was practiced and established – a custom that has sadly escaped our community.
The Prophet (s) in his farewell sermon sums it up as he says, “O people, your Lord is One and your father is One. An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over a black nor does a black have any superiority over white except by piety and good action. All mankind is from Adam and Eve, and Adam from dust.†Let us come together as a community and truly work on eradicating divides between race and ethnicity as a single nation of brothers and sisters in Islam.
After a 15-year civil war, two illegal Israeli occupations lasting two decades, all while only being an independent country for 80 years, Lebanon was on its way to independence.
According to BBC News, in 1985, a so-called “security zone†in southern Lebanon was set up, supposedly to stop “guerrilla attacks†on civilians living in northern Israel. But the Hezbollah fighters’ main aim was to end the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Each year they killed dozens of Israeli soldiers, while hundreds of Lebanese and even more Palestinians were killed annually by the Israeli army. Finally the human price of the war became too high, and after public pressure in 1999, Prime Minister Ehud Barak was elected on his pledge to withdraw Israeli forces from Lebanon within a year. Hezbollah emerged as a military force in the early 1980s during Israel’s second invasion, and subsequently branched out into civil and political activity. According to its policy, “Islamic resistance units†are fighting “for the liberation of the occupied territories and the ejection of the aggressive Israeli forces.†Though it must be said that this group has been denounced by the United States as a terrorist group.
On June 24th, 1999, February 7th, 2000, and May 5th, 2000, Israeli military aircraft attacked several power stations and bridges near Beirut, as part of more frequent air attacks on Lebanese infrastructure. A significant issue relating to the withdrawal is regarding Alsheikh Mountain, known as the “Shebaa Farmsâ€, which still remains unsettled. It has been occupied by Israel since 1967, with the United Nations considering the area to be Lebanese territory and thus the withdrawal must encompass it. It still remained under Israeli occupation. Before dawn on the morning Tuesday, May 23rd, 2000, the Israeli Army began evacuating troops and weapons from Bint Ja Bail, its second-largest base near the Lebanese border. Barak ordered the abrupt eviction of Israeli troops later that night, with Hezbollah resistance fighters hot on their tails. On May 24th, 2000, Israel officially withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon, which it had been occupying since 1978.
That summer of 2000 was the first in decades where families were now free to visit their homeland. Many families from all over the world went to go see what was left of the aftermath, as well as to introduce this beautiful Mediterranean paradise to their children. July 5th, 2000 was the day my family and I left from Detroit Metro Airport, and went together for the first time, to Lebanon. Though I went to Lebanon at the age of two, my sisters had never been, so now they were finally able to meet aunts, uncles, and first cousins. But it was still too late to be able to meet the grandparents, as it was never safe enough to go to the country prior to this independence from Israel.
If you did not know about this withdrawal from the news, you would have heard about it by the celebrations held worldwide. Specifically, in Dearborn, Michigan as it is the largest concentration of Arab-Americans outside of the Middle East. Main roads within Dearborn were closed because they were covered with people cheering for the newfound peace in Lebanon, and the new hope of being able to soon return. Though in Lebanon, while there were celebrations, there was also the grim reality that there are still hazards at every turn. According to the UNIFIL, (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon), July 2000 report from the Secretary-General, it was stated that southern Lebanon had seen dramatic change now that the guns had fallen silent after more than two decades. Though he warned, “the situation in the Israel-Lebanon sector fell well short of peace, and the potential for serious incidents still existed.â€
When Israel occupied Lebanon, they put landmines underground in specific target areas in efforts to mass-clear the land that they had planned for upcoming take-over. And after their withdrawal in May 2000, in accordance with United Nations law, the Israeli government was ordered to hand over the map of where each landmine was placed. But they did not, and with the United States assisting in taking the pressure off Israel, there was no push from the United Nations for this map. So of course there were future incidents caused by these landmines. Consequently, two weeks into our family vacation in Lebanon, my mom’s nephew stepped on a landmine while working in the fields. Thankfully, he lived.
Coming back to the late 1990’s, “The generation of the fighters of Hezbollah were the children who witnessed the 1982 occupation, which lasted till the year 2000,†said Fawwaz Traboulsi, an Associate Professor of Political Science and History at the Lebanese American University in Beirut and American University in Beirut. Also an author, his most recent book, A History of Modern Lebanon, discusses the two resistance movements that spurred post Israeli invasion of 1982. The first resistance was a leftist resistance comprising of three Marxist parties, forming the Lebanese front for national resistance that began in September of 1982; the Islamic Resistance of Hezbollah followed this one year later. The leftist resistance was weakening by the civil war, though “by the 90’s it was Hezbollah mainly that was the official resistance movement with great success, culminating in the year 2000 with the withdrawal, or let’s say the eviction, of the Israeli troops from Lebanese territory,†said Traboulsi.
This is why Hezbollah is the only party within Lebanon that is legally armed. Even though they represent the Shia of Lebanon, people of all sects and faiths relate to this movement. Even famous singer Julia Boutros dedicated her career to the resistance movement. She wrote a song titled the loved ones, in which she actually recorded the music video for it in Bint Ja Bail. The southern village of Bint Ja Bail is a landmark for a major victory when the village was regained for its citizens. With lyrics such as “Thanks to your fighting, we’ll free our prisoners and our conquered land. Our homes and our honor will be saved by your devotion†there’s no wonder why Boutros, whom is Christian, also founded a non-profit organization with all proceeds going for the resistance movement. Due to the Hezbollah resistance came libration of Lebanese land; 10 percent of Lebanese territory that was occupied by Israel was re-gained.
Syria’s claim for their continued presence in Lebanon was to halt the internal violence in an otherwise divided land. So in June 2001, a year after the eviction of Israeli troops, when Syria saw that things were on its way to stabilization, they withdrew 6,000 troops from Beirut. About 20,000 still remain in northern and eastern Lebanon, which is the boarder that they share. Syria itself, which had controlled most of the non-occupied territories, did not withdraw the rest of its troops until 2005, when it was pressured out by powerful diplomatic intervention from the United States and the United Nations. This happened after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister. Hariri was assassinated in February 2005 by a car bomb in Beirut. This sparked anti-Syrian rallies and the resignation the of the cabinet of Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami. Though it just so happens that the following year is when Israel invaded Lebanon yet again. Next week’s issue, part six, will be on this invasion of 2006, better known as the July war. Since it was in the summer time, many families of Lebanese decent, from all-over the world, were their visiting. So we’ll have first-hand accounts of this terror they lived, as well as how it just may hint to current politics.
It was a truly historic moment Tuesday when Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein took to the Senate floor to warn that the CIA’s continuing cover-up of its torture program is threatening our constitutional division of power. By blatantly concealing what Feinstein condemned as “the horrible details of a CIA program that never, never, never should have existed,†the spy agency now acts as a power unto itself, and the agency’s outrages have finally aroused the senator’s umbrage.
As Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, chair of the Judiciary Committee that will be investigating Feinstein’s charges noted, “in 40 years here, it was one of the best speeches I’d ever heard and one of the most important.†That was particularly so, given that Feinstein’s searing indictment of the CIA’s decade-long subversion of congressional oversight of its torture program comes from a senator who previously has worked overtime to justify the subversion of democratic governance by the CIA and other spy agencies.
But clearly the lady has by now had enough, given the CIA’s recent hacking of her Senate committee’s computers in an effort to suppress a key piece of evidence supporting the veracity of the committee’s completed but still not released 6,300-page study that the CIA is bent on suppressing.
The Senate’s investigation began in earnest with the Dec. 7, 2007, revelation in The New York Times that the CIA had destroyed videotapes of its “enhanced interrogation techniques,†despite objections from then-President Bush’s director of national security and the White House counsel. At that time, then-committee chair Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., sent staffers to begin the painstaking process of reviewing the limited material that the CIA was willing to make available; their preliminary report wasn’t issued until early 2009.
By then, Feinstein had assumed the chairmanship and, as she recalled in her Tuesday speech, “The resulting staff report was chilling. The interrogations and the conditions of confinement at the CIA detention sites were far different and far more harsh than the way the CIA had described them to us.â€
Feinstein, ostensibly backed by new President Barack Obama, who had campaigned as an opponent of the CIA’s methods, obtained the committee’s bipartisan backing for an expanded investigation. But the CIA, led at the time by Obama appointee Leon Panetta, the former Democratic congressman, put numerous logistical obstacles in the way of the Senate investigation.
As Feinstein pointed out, “the CIA hired a team of outside contractors—who otherwise would not have had access to these sensitive documents—to read, multiple times, each of the 6.2 million pages of documents produced, before providing them to fully-cleared committee staff conducting the committee’s oversight work. This proved to be a slow and very expensive process.â€
It was so slow that the committee’s investigation has only now been completed. Along the way, documents that Senate staffers found interesting would then mysteriously disappear from the system. One such set of disappeared documents, referred to as the “Internal Panetta Review,†is now at the center of the CIA hacking scandal.
The Panetta Review became relevant in June, when the CIA offered its critique of the Senate study. But as Feinstein points out, “Some of those important parts that the CIA now disputes in our committee study are clearly acknowledged in the CIA’s own Internal Panetta Review. To say the least, this is puzzling. How can the CIA’s official response to our study stand factually in conflict with its own Internal Review?â€
Relations between the Senate committee responsible for oversight of the CIA and the agency were so poor that, as Feinstein states, “after noting the disparity between the official CIA response to the committee study and the Internal Panetta Review, the committee staff securely transported a printed portion of the draft Internal Panetta Review from the committee’s secure room at the CIA-leased facility to the secure committee spaces in the Hart Senate Office Building.â€
Feinstein defended the committee staff’s spiriting information away from the CIA:
“As I have detailed, the CIA has previously withheld and destroyed information about its Detention and Interrogation Program. … There was a need to preserve and protect the Internal Panetta Review in the committee’s own secure spaces.â€
The response of the CIA was to hack the computers that Senate staffers had been using at the CIA off-site location, and the agency’s acting general counsel filed a crimes report with the Department of Justice against the Senate committee’s staff.
That was too much for Feinstein, who outed the CIA’s counsel:
“I should note that for most, if not all, of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, the now acting general counsel was a lawyer in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center—the unit within which the CIA managed and carried out this program. From mid-2004 until the official termination of the Detention and Interrogation Program in January 2009, he was the unit’s chief lawyer. He is mentioned by name more than 1,600 times in our study. And now this individual is sending a crimes report to the Department of Justice on the actions of congressional staff—the same congressional staff who researched and drafted a report that details how CIA officers—including the acting general counsel himself—provided inaccurate information to the Justice Department about the program.â€
Enough said, except that White House spokesman Jay Carney put the president on the side of those like current CIA Director John Brennan covering up torture: “The president has great confidence in John Brennan and confidence in our intelligence community and in our professionals at the CIA.†It’s something that George W. Bush would have said.
Kandahar, Afghanistan–It’s 25 years since the Soviet Union pulled its troops out of Afghanistan. The US is due to remove most of its forces at the end of the year. So what have these and other Afghan campaigns taught us?
Last Ramadan I drove through the badlands outside Kandahar to see the house where President Karzai grew up. I was the guest of the president’s brother, Mahmoud Karzai.
“It has changed beyond all recognition,†he said as we drove into the village of Karz. “This mosque I remember. I used to play with Hamid over there. But where is our house?â€
The driver pulled up. “This is it?†asked Mahmoud. “It cannot be.â€
We got out in a flat field of dried mud, surrounded by mud-brick houses. Mahmoud’s bodyguards fanned out while Mahmoud climbed on a small eminence. “The driver’s right,†he said. “This is our home.†He gestured at the empty space.
“What happened?†I asked.
“The Russians,†he replied.
“Why?â€
“Any clan prominent in the mujahideen had their property demolished. These houses were where my cousins lived. The night the Soviet governor demolished our house, they were all lined up. Then they were shot. Every last one of them.â€
It is now the 25th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and it is perhaps a good moment to compare the Soviet and American interventions.
On the surface, the two invasions are quite different – the Soviets came to extend the Soviet Empire while the West, we are told, intervened after 9/11 to root out the terrorism and bring democracy. Yet there are many uncomfortable similarities.
Both the Russians and the Americans thought they could walk in, set up a friendly government and be out within a year. Both nations got bogged down in a long and costly war of attrition that in the end both chose to walk away from.
The Soviet war was more bloody – it left 1.5 million dead compared to an estimated 100,000 casualties this time around, but this current war has been far more expensive. The Soviets spent only $2bn (£1.2bn) a year in Afghanistan while the US has already spent more than $700bn (£418bn).
Moreover this time arguably less has been gained. Twenty-five years ago the Soviets withdrew leaving a relatively stable pro-Soviet regime in place – Najibullah’s government collapsed only when the Soviets cut off supplies of weapons a full four years later.
But 13 years after the West went in to Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda and oust the Taliban, America and its Allies find themselves about to withdraw with neither objective wholly achieved. What remains of al-Qaeda has moved to the Pakistani borderlands, and elsewhere, while the Taliban have a major influence over maybe 70% of southern Afghanistan. That share can only increase later this year when the British and the Americans withdraw most of their troops.
There is another precedent to this war. For the last five years, I have been writing a history of the First Anglo-Afghan War which took place from 1839-1842.
The book tells the tale of arguably the greatest military humiliation ever suffered by the West in the East. The entire army of what was then the most powerful nation in the world was utterly destroyed by poorly-equipped tribesmen.
On the retreat from Kabul, of the 18,500 who left the British cantonment on 6 January 1842, only one British citizen, the assistant surgeon Dr Brydon, made it through to Jalalabad six days later.
The parallels between the current war and that of the 1840s are striking. The same cities are being garrisoned by foreign troops speaking the same languages, and they are being attacked from the same hills and passes.
Not only was our then puppet, Shah Shuja, from the same Popalzai sub-tribe as President Karzai, but his principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the Taliban’s foot soldiers.
It is clearly not true, as is sometimes said, that its impossible to conquer Afghanistan -many Empires have done so, from the ancient Persians, through Alexander the Great to the Mongols, the Mughals and the Qajars.
But the economics means that it is impossible to get Afghanistan to pay for its own occupation – it is, as the the then Emir said as he surrendered to the British in 1839, “a land of only stones and menâ€.
Any occupying army here will haemorrage money and blood to little gain, and in the end most throw in the towel, as the British did in 1842, as the Russians did in 1988 and as Nato will do later this year.
In October 1963, when Harold Macmillan was handing over the prime ministership to Alec Douglas-Home, he is supposed to have passed on some advice.
“My dear boy, as long as you do not invade Afghanistan you will be absolutely fine,†he said. Sadly, no one gave the same advice to Tony Blair.
It just seems to prove Hegel’s old adage that the only thing you learn from history is that sadly no one ever learns anything from history.
(This is the first part of the fourth and final installment of a series of presentations on “Guantanamo North†which investigates the plight of Muslim Prisoners in our Metropole [i.e., a Center of Empire] sponsored by the Muslim Foundation of America in North California.)
Charles Swift, is a mainstream American lawyer some of whose ancestors were on the Mayflower – the initial English settlers to settle in America in the 17th, Century, and a female antecedent was sentenced to execution (by burning) in the infamous Salem (Mass.) Witch Trials (1692-1693 CE [Common Era]) which led him to state that “The American tradition has a dark side to it,†too. Particularly, the paradigm shift after 9/11 to the American set of ideals enshrined in the Republic’s Constitution when the White House commanded action against other nations (mostly Islamic) to present them from initiating armed conflict against America, which was mostly in Washington’s mind, — and to further the goal of regime change. (Iraq was no martial threat to the U.S.A., but, now, after Bagdad’s regime change, is the most capitalistic nation in the world. Besides, our intervention gave the opportunity a large contingent’s of the District of Columbia’s real enemy in the G.W.O.T. [the Global War on Terrorism] – of al-Qaeda into the fray – who in Mesopotamia were almost negligible during Saddam Hussein’s ruthless reign. Also, this was against “our†strategic interests in the War Against Terrorism, and has led to a high probability of a Salafi take over from the majority Shia in the Land of the Two Rivers. This “fundamentalist†denomination derived from the older Wahhabi practices are a part of the Sunni Islam. Salafis are a much sterner Islam which rejects many practices of other Muslims and is “fundamentalist.†As such, they have been highly critical of recent Modernist incursions into Dar al-Islam to the point they have taken up arms against the West. The Salafis are a minority within Islam.
Although they are a sub-sect within Islamic culture, and, since most of the “soldiers†within the G.W.O.T., who oppose the West come from that grouping, they are mistakenly taken to represent the whole of Islam – especially in like manner purported against those in American Islam.)
Further, torture was the norm which is against the Eighth Amendment of the nation’s Constitution and inner ideals, but, in the Bush Administration, it became the normal practice of our (U.S.’) intelligence community.
Lt. Commander Swift (retired), although not being a follower of the Prophet (s) has a great empathy for the civil rights of Muslims which was garnered during a twenty year career as a (U.S.) Naval counsel. This officer was denied promotion and subsequently cashiered out of the Navy for a vigorous successful challenge to George W. Bush’s Administration policy on the Military Tribunal system at Guantanamo.
(The North American States acquired the land for the Naval base on Guantanamo Bay on the Caribbean island of Cuba in the Spanish American War of 1898. When Havana, after their country’s emancipation from their Colonial masters, the country was held in trust for four years by the United States following the aforementioned conflict with Spain, but became totally independent (from the United States)in 1902; and, thereafter, granted the U.S. a long term lease of that Base on Guantanamo Bay acquired in the Cuban-American Treaty of 1903. The Platt Amend, 1934, to the previously alluded Treaty gave the United States of America perpetual ownership to the land and sea approaches to the base. In 2002, an infamous prison was established within Gitmo to house prisoners (of War) from the G.W.O.T. in conditions against several of the Geneva Conventions and the Laws of War. The torture of Muslim detainees by the opinion of George W. Bush’s legal advisor, John Yoo, (who has returned to teaching at the Boalt Hall Law School within the University of California campus) inside your researcher’s city of Berkeley, established the “right†of America to torture in these pre-emptive Wars.)
Lt. Commander Swift, then in the Judge Advocate Corps was designated to represent the Yemeni Salim Hamdan, the personal Chauffeur of Osama bin Laden, in May 2003. The lawyer/officer was ordered to plead Hamdan guilty in this first Tribunal at Guantanamo. It was against his ethics as a lawyer representing a client; so, he went to the civilian Courts to argue his client’s case against his being guilty of war crimes, for which he was noted in the National Law Journal of being one of the best attorneys in the States for his defense of the Islamic detainees enmeshed in the naval legal system.
(If the G.W.O.T. is truly a War, those captured should be held as prisoners of war until hostilities are over; then, if the victorious party feels individuals detain had committed War crimes, should be tried only then. As for the concept of illegal combatants, which “W†([Baby] Bush junior) put forth due to the fact that the opposing faction did not don a uniform makes no sense, for what tribal contingent does wear a uniform? Therefore, to treat them immediately as criminals punishing them as murderous felons for fighting for a non-governmental entity, and, thereby, incarcerating them with long sentences is against the Law of War and the Geneva Conventions!
Under the those Treaties, they are prisoners of War until individuals suspected crimes can be tried when all witnesses still available can come forth to testify.
Therefore, the manner that the Administration fought was askew, and put many under the category of War criminals themselves. [The Kuala Lumpur War Commission has found seven members of George W. Bush’s government guilty of war crimes in 2012.]!)
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (RNS) Many Malaysians are invoking the power of prayer to aid the massive multinational search operation for the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared without a trace early Saturday.
To aid the hunt and keep hope alive for the missing 239 passengers and crew, many Malaysians are taking to Islamic mosques, Buddhist and Hindu temples and even shopping malls, where shoppers Tuesday (March 11) wrote and hung up prayers and well-wishes on special “message of hope†displays.
On Sunday, a former Malaysian prime minister joined multifaith groups for prayers at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where Flight 370 took off for Beijing. Prayers have continued across Malaysia, where Muslims make up the majority of the population, and significant numbers of ethnic minorities, including Chinese and Indians, follow other religions.
In Penang, in Malaysia’s northwest, four special prayer sessions were held Tuesday by the Muslim, Buddhist, Christian and Hindu communities, the New Straits Times newspaper reported. At the Penang state police headquarters, about 1,500 Muslim officers, some overcome by emotion, took part in a mass solat hajat prayer for the speedy recovery of the jet, it said.
At the upscale Pavilion Mall in Kuala Lumpur, accountant Jeffrey Sim wrote a prayer on a specially printed note for tying to a “message of hope†display wall. “I want to send them loving kindness, and the hope that they are in a safe place and happy, whether here or on the other side,†said Sim, 60, a Buddhist.
The display wall was one of several organized at malls in the capital by Malaysians for Malaysia, a civil society organization that promotes unity. One handwritten prayer read: “World unites because of you, may Allah be with us!†Another said, “The power of prayer can create miracle where hope is lost.â€
In his prayer, Hidayat Kamalzaman, a business intern, hoped for the flight’s safe return and said Islamic belief could sustain Muslims during difficult times. “The Koran says that if God says it will happen, it will,†the 21-year-old said. Relatives of the missing “will keep faith and it will help them cope. We Muslims believe there’s a reason for everything that happens.â€
Mainland Chinese relatives of missing passengers, who are less likely to be religious after decades of religious repression by China’s ruling Communist Party, arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday from Beijing, after a first batch Monday. They were processed through the airport without exposure to waiting reporters, in line with Malaysia Airlines’ commitment in Beijing to protect their privacy, and taken to a suburban hotel.
Criticism of the Malaysian response continued in China’s state-run media. “Do the security checks at this airport meet the standard of guaranteeing aviation safety?†asked a commentary in the Legal Daily newspaper.
Some Malaysian travelers accepted such criticism. “Sometimes security in Malaysia is a bit lacking. We know how they work,†said G.S. Koh, 57, a Kuala Lumpur architect. “In the U.S., we travel there and see the difference in terms of security, like taking off belts and shoes. We don’t have that here, there’s a difference in standards,†he said at the city’s airport.
If greater security means longer check-in times, “we could be here for four hours before departure, but we have no issue with that†to stop terrorism, said Koh. He said he hopes Malaysia will utilize Interpol’s passport checking system, currently mostly used by the U.S., United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates. “There are a lot of lost passports around,†he said.
Angeline Ng, a sales and marketing employee in Kuala Lumpur, disagreed. “Three hours is too long. I think the security measures are fine for now,†said Ng, 36. “The rate of plane accidents is much lower than for road accidents,†she said after tying up her prayer at the Pavilion Mall on Tuesday: “hoping for a miracle†for the missing passengers and crew.
One Malaysian thinks he can deliver a miracle. Prominent shaman Raja Bomah, or Ibrahim Mat Zim, prayed at the airport entrance Monday and then said he thought the plane was still in the air or had crashed into the sea, reported Bernama, a state news agency. Using a fish tap hook and bamboo binoculars to aid his search, the shaman, a victim-hunter for decades, said he had been invited by a national leader.
The government welcomes all help to trace the missing flight, including from “bomohs,†or shamans, as long as their methods conform to Islamic teachings, said government official Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom, according to the news agency.
