BHUTTO'S VANITY, AMERICA'S HYPOCRISY & PAKISTAN'S FUTURE

A New Year’s Eve Fable

by Maliha Masood, Matrix Correspondent
















Once upon a time, there lived a woman named Benazir. She was born in 1953 in a village in rural Pakistan, when the country was only six years old. Hers was a country brought into existence due to a bloody geographical operation known as the Partition. It was mostly a botched up political arrangement, engineered by three civil servants with very different agendas and three very different personalities. One was a dashing British viceroy, the last official ruler of the jewel in the crown before it rusted into oblivion at the stroke of the midnight hour in the year 1947. The other was a power hungry idealist who would be known in human resource departments as a bad team player. And the third was a terribly misunderstood Muslim lawyer who spoke in the clipped tones of the Queen’s English and dressed in the best of Saville Row suits that could have well been stitched by Noel Coward’s tailors. Unable to see eye to eye, the hapless threesome decided to draw a line in the sand somewhere in the northwest region of the ancient Thar Desert. That line would consequently split India into two hefty chunks. Pakistan was a result of this split (which of course means that at one point all of Pakistan used to be India and Pakistanis are intimate cousins to the Indians, however much everyone wants to pretend they don’t know the Other, so they behave like aliens from different planets living next door.) But let us leave that aside for another fable. For now we have something else to reckon with, a most wicked tale, full of woes, an eternal tale of ego and greed, nothing really that we humans don’t already know. So let us for old time’s sake gather around the holiday fire, eggnog in hand and lend our ears to what follows next.

From the very beginning, the Benazir girl was surrounded by riches and the usual smug attitudes of the privileged elite. An ethnic Sindhi in a land of refugees, she traced her belongings on tribal lines and on the legacy of a political dynasty. Her father Zufikhar, was a charismatic man with tons of promise. He was famous in diplomatic circles for his fiery and articulate speeches in the UN assembly that often concluded with a dramatic toss of his papers and a stormy exit befitting a Roman emperor. And just like Mark Anthony, Zulfikhar Ali Bhutto had his penchant for fine wine and Cleopatras. Upon becoming President in the early 1970’s, he turned into a socialist and began promising every Pakistani citizen the uncontested rights to roti, kapra aur makan. Food, Clothes and Housing. If only he could have delivered on such lauded hopes. There was a moment, however brief, in 1972 when Zulfi did pull a nice one, loading on the Pakistani charm on a peace treaty visit to Simla, just next door in India, which was saying quite a lot as the old enemies had just fought a bloody war a year ago that ended in more hatred and vexations for some time to come. There was much oohing and ahhing when father and daughter traveled up together to say Namaste to Indira Gandhi. Benazir was just 19 years old and freshly returned from a stint at Harvard where the gossip mills say she spent more time partying than she did studying in the stacks of Widener. But then again, Pinky (as was her nickname) couldn’t really help herself for being a bit of a party animal, not with those gaunt cheekbones, aquiline Bhutto nose and bold black eyes that practically screamed hot foxy babe who would be invited to the best bashes in Cambridge not just because of her name, but also because of her luminous model worthy face that oddly enough happened to be the face of a Muslim woman, make that a very stylish Muslim woman with the haughty features of European aristocrats. Cutting such an attractive figure as she did, it was no wonder that Benazir became a media darling as soon as the TV cameras spun in her direction. She lost no time in learning to wield the attention like a seasoned Hollywood pro and lapped up every glorious satellite beam coming her way. Indeed it was special the way it cast a flattering glow on her ebony tresses covered with the flimsiest of snow white veils for modesty’s decorum.

Now to make a long story short, Benazir’s father did not last long in public office. He soon shed his robes of being one with the masses for being one without opponents. Zulfi Bhutto got caught up in a ruthless game of power politics determined to root out anyone standing in his way, which eventually led to his own shortcoming. He was hanged in a Rawalpindi jail on charges of a murder conspiracy. Poor Benazir who was every inch her father’s daughter suffered a major loss. She had no idea at the time that a decade later, she would be sworn in as Pakistan’s first female Prime Minister, but this is precisely what happened in 1988 when the man who put her father to his death, was sent to his own funeral in a plane crash and so ended the rule of Zia ul Haq who had played an instrumental role in helping to root out the Russians from Afghanistan when the Americans came begging and pleading at his feet. Indeed, so desperate were the Americans that they along with their rich friends in Saudi Arabia, pledged guns and drugs and cash to outfit the soldiers of resistance who would later be called terrorists and fanatics by other names, such as Osama, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. After victory was declared and the Commies marched back to Siberia in shame, the Americans ditched their noble efforts and fled home, leaving behind a power vacuum mess that would end up hatching the roosters haunting today’s skyscrapers, subways and airports. This of course paved a clear path for the folks in Washington to wag their righteous fingers and scold their ugly monsters which they do in typical American fashion as done before in Vietnam, Latin America, and more recently in Iraq. The motto is simple. Just say the opposite of what you really want to achieve. It’s an old trick and it still works.

Now the lady in our fable was no doubt a lousy leader. She had her chances, not just once, but twice to be head of state and steer a sensible course of action. It was horribly neglected, busy as she was piling on the family wealth by dubious means, pinching a little here and there from the government coffers, eliminating opposition, (which seems to be an unfortunate family trait), and basically not making the most of the golden opportunity to do something decent and good for the people of Pakistan. For all her accolades of courage, let us remember her less than stellar track record as a two time PM, and let us not go around calling apples oranges. You can try all you want to call apples oranges or vice versa but what you get in the end is a big fat lie. And let us also not forget that the line between courage and stupidity is sometimes very thin and Benazir knew this as intimately as any mountain climber or thrill seeker. One fine day, when enough was enough, she was booted out of office and sent packing to London and Dubai where she lived a very comfortable life of bonbons and rococo furniture that could hardly be called exile. She tolerated it for eight long years, smarting all the time for being a relative Nobody overseas when she could be a Major Somebody back on her own turf.

Bhutto’s motive to make a spectacular comeback suited the Americans just fine. In fact, they made all the arrangements and extended all kinds of conveniences to make the deal cinch. Remember their old motto to speak in reverse code. So when you really want to create massive mayhem and spawn a breeding ground for terrorism, what do you do? You say you want democracy, knowing that is an impossible dream in a land teaming with fanatics and lo and behold, surprise, surprise, what you’ll end up getting in the end is precisely the antithesis of democratic rule and order. Of course, you make a big fuss in public, faking stoic sadness when your aims for democracy get literally shot down and this is the part when our fable takes a nastier twist and it’s up to you to call it tragedy or farce. Our brave but foolish leading lady dodges a sniper’s bullet and hits her head on the sunroof, fracturing her skull and bleeding toward death. You would think she would have known better after all the warnings she was given, yet just like her old Pinky self, the party co-ed who couldn’t resist a fun bash, our lady was a victim of her own vanity and incapable of resisting one last wave to her adoring fans. If she had really cared about the fate of those fans and the future of her country and of protecting her own pretty hide, she could have kept herself in check and remained underexposed. This of course was a tough act for a woman who loved a good limelight. And it is arguable that Benazir would have gone sooner or later, so long as she was a public figure and a woman in today’s Pakistan where her photogenic face, hip swaddling, head turning, pro Western presence couldn’t have been tolerated for long. Not by all those repressed mullahs and fundos, a sicko breed, very much in the minority of the country’s population, but being the most vocal breed, coming across as the majority. And so it was that Benazir Bhutto was called to rest alongside her beloved father’s grave in the village of her birth. As for whether she rests in peace or not, only the angels can know. What we do know for sure in our little fable is that the lamb was indeed devoured by the lions--just as predicted--and that the people who opened the cage are the ones wearing crocodile tears. Democracy? Yeah right! They wanted no such thing and now they’re having a field day in private chambers patting each other’s back for a lucky strike, a total freebie that came just in time to ring in the New Year with bells and whistles. Can’t you just hear the whoops of laughter….listen closely and maybe you will.

Hooray for the war on terror! Three cheers for Al-Qaeda!! Let’s hear it for those Jihadis!!! Go Islamic Militants!!! And may you, Pakistan, our most dangerous and most indispensable ally and public nemesis have yourself a long and uncertain future that will bring you more chaos, many more heartaches and give us more cause for celebrations. And so we must bid farewell to our fair maiden Benazir. Make no mistake. The Americans will have their moments of glory, however unjust they seem, but also remember this. Every civilization has a beginning and an end. And the day will come when America will indeed fall from its high and mighty hypocritical perch. As for this tattered rubbish heap of a nation the world knows as Pakistan, what can one say, except Allah knows best.

The End.

Maliha Masood is an award-winning writer and the author of Zaatar Days, Henna Nights. A former policy analyst at the International Crisis Group in Islamabad, she is the founder and president of The Diwaan Project, a Seattle-based cultural institute geared toward public education on global affairs. Maliha teaches a course on women and Islam at the University of Washington and is currently at work on her first novel set in contemporary Pakistan.

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BHUTTO KILLED IN BOMB ATTACK

by Speigel Online






















A suicide blast in Rawalpindi has claimed the life of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and an estimated 20 others.

A gun and suicide bomb attack killed Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and an estimated 20 others Thursday during a campaign rally in the city of Rawalpindi.

Bhutto died at Rawalpindi General Hospital shortly after 6 p.m. local time where she was being treated for injuries sustained in the attack, according to a member of Bhutto's political party. A senior military official confirmed her death to the Associated Press.

Supporters outside the hospital chanted "Dog, Musharraf, dog," referring to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, according to the AP.

The blast occured as Bhutto was leaving a political rally in which she urged thousands of supporters to canvas votes before parliamentary elections to be held Jan. 8. The AP quotes party security advisers as saying that the suicide bomber shot Bhutto in the neck and chest as she got into her vehicle before triggering the bomb.

"She has been martyred," Bhutto's security advisor, Rehman Malik, told Reuters.

"We repeatedly informed the government to provide her proper security and appropriate equipment including jammers, but they paid no heed to our requests," Malik told the AP.

Fellow former premier and rival opposition leader Nawaz Sharif came to the hospital and sat next to Bhutto's body. "Benazir Bhutto was also my sister, and I will be with you to take the revenge for her death," Sharif told a crown gathered outside the hospital. "Don't feel alone. I am with you. We will take the revenge on the rulers."

Bhutto served as Pakistan's prime minister two times between 1988 and 1996. She was the first woman elected prime minister in the Muslim world.

On Oct. 18, Bhutto returned to Pakistan after eight years in exile, only to escape a suicide bombing (more...)at her homecoming parade in Karachi, which killed more than 140 people. But she nonetheless continued campaigning in the hopes of becoming Pakistan's prime minister for a third term.

Bhutto was allowed to return to Pakistan after making a deal with Musharraf brokered over two secret meetings in Dubai last summer. Musharraf had charges of corruption against Bhutto lifted and allowed her to return to Pakistan in return for her supporting his re-election as president.

Musharraf has been sharply criticized for his failure to stem Islamic extremism. He also sparked extended, violent protests after he suspended the Supreme Court's chief justice in March. The justice was reinstated in July.

But it was Musharraf's firing of the Supreme Court in early November and his imposition of a state of emergency that ushered in the most recent political crisis in Pakistan. Many saw the move as an effort to retain both his position as president and as army chief of staff, a state of affairs in violation of the Pakistani constitution. Bhutto did not shy away from criticizing Musharraf's apparent power grab and he resigned from his military duties at the end of November.

Bhutto's enemies included Taliban extremists and al-Qaida, who despised her for her support of the US-led fight against terrorism and pledged to send suicide bombers after her. She had even gone so far as to say that, if she were in power, she would allow US forces to attack al-Qaida targets in Pakistani territory.

The US had recently been trying to get Bhutto and Musharraf to cooperate in stabilizing the country. A $300 million (€206.6 million) aid package for Pakistan authorized by the US Congress on Wednesday requires that the country reach certain goals in its efforts to fight terrorism and ensure democratic reform.

Bhutto was expected to fair well in the January elections. Her violent death threatens to precipitate more chaos and mass protests and derail her efforts to secure free elections and a peaceful transition to civilian rule.

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DAY ONE - THE WAR WITH IRAN

by Douglas Herman, Rense.com




















The war began as planned. The Israeli pilots took off well before dawn and streaked across Lebanon and northern Iraq, high above Kirkuk. Flying US-made F-15 and F-16s, the Israelis separated over the mountains of western Iran, the pilots gesturing a last minute show of confidence in their mission, maintaining radio silence.

Just before the sun rose over Tehran, moments before the Muslim call to prayer, the missiles struck their targets. While US Air Force AWACS planes circled overhead--listening, watching, recording--heavy US bombers followed minutes later. Bunker-busters and mini-nukes fell on dozens of targets while Iranian anti-aircraft missiles sped skyward.

The ironically named Bushehr nuclear power plant crumbled to dust. Russian technicians and foreign nationals scurried for safety. Most did not make it.

Targets in Saghand and Yazd, all of them carefully chosen many months before by Pentagon planners, were destroyed. The uranium enrichment facility in Natanz; a heavy water plant and radioisotope facility in Arak; the Ardekan Nuclear Fuel Unit; the Uranium Conversion Facility and Nuclear Technology Center in Isfahan; were struck simultaneously by USAF and Israeli bomber groups.

The Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the Tehran Molybdenum, Iodine and Xenon Radioisotope Production Facility, the Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories, the Kalaye Electric Company in the Tehran suburbs were destroyed.

Iranian fighter jets rose in scattered groups. At least those Iranian fighter planes that had not been destroyed on the ground by swift and systematic air strikes from US and Israeli missiles. A few Iranian fighters even launched missiles, downing the occasional attacker, but American top guns quickly prevailed in the ensuing dogfights.

The Iranian air force, like the Iranian navy, never really knew what hit them. Like the slumbering US sailors at Pearl Harbor, the pre-dawn, pre-emptive attack wiped out fully half the Iranian defense forces in a matter of hours.

By mid-morning, the second and third wave of US/Israeli raiders screamed over the secondary targets. The only problem now, the surprising effectiveness of the Iranian missile defenses. The element of surprise lost, US and Israeli warplanes began to fall from the skies in considerable numbers to anti-aircraft fire.

At 7:35 AM, Tehran time, the first Iranian anti-ship missile destroyed a Panamanian oil tanker, departing from Kuwait and bound for Houston. Launched from an Iranian fighter plane, the Exocet split the ship in half and set the ship ablaze in the Strait of Hormuz. A second and third tanker followed, black smoke billowing from the broken ships before they blew up and sank. By 8:15 AM, all ship traffic on the Persian Gulf had ceased.

US Navy ships, ordered earlier into the relative safety of the Indian Ocean, south of their base in Bahrain, launched counter strikes. Waves of US fighter planes circled the burning wrecks in the bottleneck of Hormuz but the Iranian fighters had fled.

At 9 AM, Eastern Standard Time, many hours into the war, CNN reported a squadron of suicide Iranian fighter jets attacking the US Navy fleet south of Bahrain. Embedded reporters aboard the ships--sending live feeds directly to a rapt audience of Americans just awakening--reported all of the Iranian jets destroyed, but not before the enemy planes launched dozens of Exocet and Sunburn anti-ship missiles. A US aircraft carrier, cruiser and two destroyers suffered direct hits. The cruiser blew up and sank, killing 600 men. The aircraft carrier sank an hour later.

By mid-morning, every military base in Iran was partially or wholly destroyed. Sirens blared and fires blazed from hundreds of fires. Explosions rocked Tehran and the electrical power failed. The Al Jazeerah news station in Tehran took a direct hit from a satellite bomb, leveling the entire block.

At 9:15 AM, Baghdad time, the first Iranian missile struck the Green Zone. For the next thirty minutes a torrent of missiles landed on GPS coordinates carefully selected by Shiite militiamen with cell phones positioned outside the Green Zone and other permanent US bases. Although US and Israeli bomber pilots had destroyed 90% of the Iranian missiles, enough Shahabs remained to fully destroy the Green Zone, the Baghdad airport, and a US Marine base. Thousands of unsuspecting US soldiers died in the early morning barrage. Not surprisingly, CNN and Fox withheld the great number of casualties from American viewers.

By 9:30 AM, gas stations on the US east coast began to raise their prices. Slowly at first and then altogether in a panic, the prices rose. $4 a gallon, and then $5 and then $6, the prices skyrocketed. Worried motorists, rushing from work, roared into the nearest gas station, radios blaring the latest reports of the pre-emptive attack on Iran. While fistfights broke out in gas stations everywhere, the third Middle Eastern war had begun.

In Washington DC, the spin began minutes after the first missile struck its intended target. The punitive strike--not really a war said the harried White House spokesman--would further democracy and peace in the Middle East. Media pundits mostly followed the party line. By ridding Iran of weapons of mass destruction, Donald Rumsfeld declared confidently on CNN, Iran might follow in the footsteps of Iraq, and enjoy the hard won fruits of freedom.

The president scheduled a speech at 2 PM. Gas prices rose another two dollars before then. China and Japan threatened to dump US dollars. Gold rose $120 an ounce. The dollar plummeted against the Euro.

CNN reported violent, anti-American protests in Paris, London, Rome, Berlin and Dublin. Fast food franchises throughout Europe, carrying American corporate logos, were firebombed.

A violent coup toppled the pro-American Pakistan president. On the New York Stock Exchange, prices fell in a frenzy of trading--except for the major petroleum producers. A single, Iranian Shahab missile struck Tel Aviv, destroying an entire city block. Israel vowed revenge, and threatened a nuclear strike on Tehran, before a hastily called UN General Assembly in New York City eased tensions.

An orange alert in New York City suddenly reddened to a full-scale terror alarm when a package detonated on a Manhattan subway. Mayor Bloomberg declared martial law. Governor Pataki ordered the New York National Guard fully mobilized, mobilizing what few national guardsmen remained in the state.

President Bush looked shaken at 2 PM. The scroll below the TV screen reported Persian Gulf nations halting production of oil until the conflict could be resolved peacefully. Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, announced a freeze in oil deliveries to the US would begin immediately. Tony Blair offered to mediate peace negotiations, between the US and Israel and Iran, but was resoundingly rejected.

By 6 PM, Eastern Standard Time, gas prices had stabilized at just below $10 a gallon. A Citgo station in Texas, near Fort Sam Houston Army base, was firebombed. No one claimed responsibility. Terrorism was not ruled out.

At sunset, the call to prayer--in Tehran, Baghdad, Islamabad, Ankara, Jerusalem, Jakarta, Riyadh--sounded uncannily like the buzzing of enraged bees.

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WHY IS YAZAN SAWALHA IN PRISON?

by Megan Tady, In These Times





















Israel has detained the son of a prominent Palestinian peace activist, and refuses to say why.

Yazan Sawalha turned 20 years old on Monday in an Israeli detention center. His family had been hopeful that after 40 days under interrogation by the Israel Security Agency, Yazan would be home to celebrate his birthday.

“All the family is sad today,” said Mohammad, Yazan’s father. “Normally we have five plates around the table. Today is the first birthday since Yazan was born that he hasn’t been with us.”

Mohammad, a prominent Palestinian peace activist and founder of the Palestinian House of Friendship, spoke from Nablus with In These Times on Monday evening. He told his son’s story with an urgency and passion that belied his weariness. Powerless to stop his son’s arrest, he is using all of his energy to bring him home.

It was deep in the middle of the night on November 8 when Israeli soldiers “crashed their way” into Mohammad’s house. The masked soldiers searched the house before taking Yazan away in his pajamas. They said nothing about who they were, where they were taking Yazan, or why.

“The most harmful part of it was he was taken from the house without any legal statement shown to us that they have the right to come and to search the house,” Mohammad said. “The soldiers who took him were masked; we didn’t see their faces, which added to ambiguity and to our fear as a family about where he was. Where was he taken and by whom? Where is our son? Where is Yazan?”

Mohammad immediately appealed to two organizations for help: the human rights group HaMoked, comprised of Palestinian and Israeli staff, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). He was finally able to determine that Yazan was being detained at Kishon/Jalameh interrogation center in Haifa. A week later, he was transferred to Moscobiya prison in Jerusalem.

Andrea Konig, media relations staff member at ICRC-Jerusalem, told In These Times via e-mail that “the ICRC office in Nablus has been approached by Mr. Sawalha’s father [and] news about his detained son was transmitted to him.” Konig said any further information about Yazan’s case was confidential and could not be shared.

For the first 27 days of his detention, Yazan was denied access to a lawyer and the ICRC. When the ICRC was eventually able to meet with Yazan, they relayed that he appeared in good physical condition. Still, Mohammad is plagued with worry that Yazan is being mistreated. During the visit with the ICRC, Yazan had been surprised to learn the date and time.

“When [the ICRC official] mentioned that to me, it made me really cry as a father because I understood that he must have been in isolation without being in touch with the outside world,” Mohammad says.

Mohammad saw his son for the first time since his arrest last week during a hearing that extended Yazan’s detention for another six days. They were not allowed to speak.

“We just looked at each other,” Mohammad says. “He looked at me; I looked at him. He gave me a smile; I gave him a smile. He gave me a kiss by air.”

Mohammad says his family is still unsure what the Israeli government wants with a second-year economics student at An-Najah University. Yazan has not been formally charged. A November NPR story reported that Israeli security officials said Yazan was involved in “serious terror activity,” but would not give details.

Yazan isn’t the only Palestinian prisoner who has been denied access to a lawyer and kept in isolation. This type of treatment, and worse, is a “phenomenon” in Israel and the Occupied Territories, said Mohammad. It’s also breach of international law.

Israel is a signatory to international laws that absolutely prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

“When I went to the ICRC, I saw several people, especially mothers, who came to complain that they had not heard anything about their sons for months,” Mohammad says.

In 2005, the human rights group HaMoked received 4,460 requests to help locate detainees.

“Every night, young Palestinians are taken from their houses to be interrogated by the General Security Services of Israel,” Yael Shalem told In These Times via e-mail. Shalem is an administrator at the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information, an organization working to help peacefully end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Last spring, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem interviewed 73 Palestinians who has been detained by the Israeli government. They found that two-thirds of the detainees had experienced at least one of four forms of abuse, which included beating, painful binding, curses and humiliation, and denial of basic human rights.

One 22-year-old detainee, called “A.M.,” provided testimony to B’Tselem in 2006 of his experience. “I was put into a tiny cell, 2 meters by 2 meters. There was no window and it wasn’t ventilated. The cell’s door was like a metal bomb shelter door. There was a mattress on the floor. I was alone in the cell and I stayed there until the next day.”

Thirty-one-year-old “S.A.,” who had been detained and interrogated in 2005 by the Israel Security Agency, said he was tied to a chair for many hours. “I had severe back pains because I had been sitting tied to the chair for so long. There was only one break in the interrogation, for an hour, which was when I got my lunch, while still tied to the chair with only one hand released to eat.”

Despite Yazan’s hardships, Shalem said he is “lucky to be the son of his father, who knew how to contact international friends.” Mohammad has ties to Brandeis University in Massachusetts, where he helped lead a Middle East Youth Leaders Exchange Program. Friends from the university’s surrounding communities have been rallying support for Mohammad, and generating letters of outrage to the Israeli embassy and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Many of the letters have been written by Jewish Americans.

Eve Brown-Waite, a writer and mother in Deerfield, Mass., wrote, “I am concerned for this young man who has not been charged with any wrong-doing, for his family, who by the accounts of friends of mine who know them, are good people working for peace and friendship between Palestinians and Israelis, and for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Surely this type of breach of civility and legality can only undermine that process.”

Katharine Baker, a member of the American Friends of the Palestinian House of Friendship, says she reacted to Yazan’s detention in a “very personal way.” Baker first met Mohammad several years ago when he was traveling in western Massachusetts, and then visited his family, and met Yazan, in Nablus in 2006.

“We immediately began to tell our friends about this,” Baker says. “It always seems that the more you can give public attention to an issue like this, the better it is for the victim. Rather than the secrecy of taking someone and holding them incommunicado, we’re trying to challenge that.”

Baker says the groundswell of support isn’t just about Yazan, but about all of the “random imprisonments and the people who are in jail with no charges and access to legal help.”

For Mohammad and his family, bad fortune doesn’t knock twice; it barges in. On Dec. 4, nearly one month after Yazan’s arrest, Israeli soldiers were back at Mohammad’s house.

“When they came into the house they were banging hard on the front door, threatening that if you don’t open quickly we’re going to explode the door,” he said. “So I went and I opened the door, and they said ‘Everybody should come here.’”

Mohammad told the soldiers that his wife was getting their 13-year-old son Majed out of bed. “While his mother was waking him up, Majed said, ‘Mommy, it’s not the time to go to school now.’ She told him, ‘No, you need to wake up, the soldiers have come.’ He started crying and shivering and I took him and put him in my hug and wrapped him in a blanket.”

The family was told to wait in a room while the soldiers “turned the house upside down.” When the soldiers finally left, they didn’t tell the family, who was still huddling together.

“We waited for about 10 minutes before we discovered that there was no noise in the house,” Mohammad says. “I started shouting, ‘Is there anybody there?’ Then I went with my daughter and started searching and we found no one, but the front door of our house was open.”

As if a hurricane had hovered on their home, the damage to each room was immense. A phone call at 5 a.m brought more bad news; the Sawalha’s second home, which they were in the process of moving from, had also been raided.

Photos of the wreckage reveals a gutted mattress and a bed frame turned on its side like a squirming beetle; a gaping oven with the door torn off; papers, books and valuables strewn across the floor that could take hours, if not days, to reorganize.

“This kind of action didn’t just damage the furniture; it also damaged the peace of my family, and the peace of the child that is only thirteen years old,” Mohammad said.

As Mohammad’s family pieces their lives back together, and tries desperately to free Yazan, across the world, politicians in Annapolis and Paris have been meeting to discuss a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians.

For Mohammad, such meetings seem futile. “I think they are not going to do anything if human rights are violated, if there is a very deep scar in our souls and in our spirits as Palestinians. I am one of them.”

But that deep scar doesn’t prevent Mohammad from wanting lasting peace. “What [the Israeli government is] doing in detaining our people, in destroying our spirit—that will not give them security. Only the opposite. It will create hatred in the hearts and in the minds of the coming generations. We need to be respecting each others rights, and that way we guarantee the lives of Israelis, and the lives of Palestinians.”

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I AM LEGEND

a film review by Malik Isasis









It was a cold, slushy night when I decided to trek out into the elements in Manhattan to see yet another movie that destroys New York City. Another is coming next month called Cloverfield. Filmmakers love destroying New York City on celluloid. Digital effects have allowed filmmakers to act like little children knocking over legos, most often sacrificing story development to CGI effects. Maybe it’s because New York has so many things to knock over.

Robert Neville (Will Smith) with his German Shepard, Sam spend his days trying to normalize the fact that he is the only living being in New York City and possibly the world, as far as he knows. Neville and Sam drive through the haunted city, in which we are constantly aware of by the sight of the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges lying eerily at the bottom of the Hudson River; the concrete jungle has literarily become a jungle as lions hunt deer.

Like in 28 Days Later and its predecessor 28 Weeks Later, New York City like London is a wasteland. There’s nothing like dystopia to bring out the worst and the best in the human race.

Will Smith is affecting in the role of Robert Neville who loses everything and carries the burden of finding a cure to virus that has caused humans to devolutionize and become enraged zombie/vampire like creatures. I Am Legend is an allegory and it reflects humanity’s preoccupation with destroying itself, and the hubris in which humanity has extricated itself from the animal world to play God (See George Bush for details).

Director Francis Lawrence (Constantine) uses CGI effects, effectively when envisioning New York as a wasteland; however, the CGI falls flat when used to replace actors. All of the zombie/vampire creatures were all computer-generated images, and it came off as such. Filmmakers of Lawrence’s ilk need not to be so lazy and cast humans. It worked just fine in the 28 Days Later series.

This is Will Smith’s best acting. In Legend he is not relying on his charm as in other films. He is able to capture the isolation, and desperation of a man who is able to flee into the recesses of his imagination to have relationships with his dog and inanimate objects.

What drives us? The need to be loved and wanted; when we are not loved and wanted, we die. We are social beings. I Am Legend captured the isolation that makes the thought of being the only person in the world, down right scary…scary enough to recommend it.


Grade B+

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THEY LOVE ME, THEY LOVE ME NOT

by Malik Isasis














Like Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has surged in the polls but his narrative in the corporate media has been vastly different than Huckabee’s.

Oprah Winfrey has thrown her support behind Obama and with a scheduled three-state tour, it has sent political operatives and their media whores into a spinning frenzy. Even National Public Radio has jumped on the band wagon of trying to marginalizing Oprah’s influence with headlines like, “How Much Can Oprah Help Obama?” (audio here). Here is a sample of a piece from Fox News’ John Gibson titled “Why Oprah Gives Obama Political Leeway”: This Oprah-palooza is a big test for her famous power to bring in women, particularly white women. White women are, of course, the basis of her great success. She is also, obviously, a black woman and she is also trying to pry black votes from Hillary Clinton. So she is telling her female audience don't buy that solidarity thing and vote for a woman — Hillary — but telling black people do buy the solidarity thing and vote for the black man.

Shilling it Up

When the axe came into the forest, the trees said, “The handle is one of us.” -African Proverb

The political operatives have pulled their conservative Negro, Shelby Steele, out of the stable with his new book, “A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited about Barack Obama And Why He Can’t Win” to make the rounds on the cable news channels. Isn’t it cute how white pundits bring out black conservatives to validate their white supremacist ideology? In the clip below watch how Sean Hannity guide his black buck down a predetermined path.



National Public Radio, got into the act, again. Listen to the Shelby Steel interview and listen as he goes unchallenged.

The corporate media and their henchmen won’t come straight out with their plans of sabotaging Obama’s campaign; they will do it with a smile and blame it on his inexperience. Just as Howard Dean’s surge was interrupted in 2003, they the corporate media will try and interrupt Obama’s surge with a whisper campaign and it will be death by a thousand paper cuts. So they hope.

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I HEART HUCKABEE

by Malik Isasis






















The corporate media and their shills have developed a new crush on Republican Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee who has risen to second place in the national polls and into first place in Iowa. They've been gushing over the mild mannered, and sweet demeanor of the Southern Baptist minister, and former Arkansas governor as if he were a breath of fresh air. But it’s if the media is giving us a redux of 2000 as thy portrayed George Bush as a breath of fresh air and as a compassionate conservative.

Mike Huckabee was one of three Republican presidential candidates who raised a hand when asked if they didn’t believe in evolution. It is clear that Huckabee is cresting on a wave of disaffected religious right who voted for Bush. And like Bush, he is driven by faith-based rather than reality-based ideology.

Pulling the Wool

Here is an example of a vacuous account of Huckabee: >Huckabee's rise in the polls is partly attributable to his style - a mix of self-deprecation, velvety voice, and sharp wit - honed during years of appearances on radio and television and in the pulpit. He aired a humorous commercial suggesting he would deal with illegal immigration by enlisting tough-guy actor Chuck Norris. When he was asked during a recent debate whether Jesus Christ would have shared his support for the death penalty, Huckabee batted the question away by saying, "Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office."

Just as Bush and Co. are using the same sales job for a war with Iran, the corporate media are repeating their sales job of Bush in 2000. Despite his “velvety” voice, Huckabee is for sustaining the occupation in Iraq, and expanding war and occupation to Iran. He’s Bush’s ideological twin, driven by a lack of imagination and is without any sense about the world community. If elected, he would surely be the capstone to the great fall of the United States continuing on with Bush's and the neocon's agenda of world domination.

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NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER

by Malik Isasis

















If you were to open the fridge and take a swig of milk from the carton and discover that the milk is sour, you probably won’t put the milk back into the fridge and return the next day to drink from the same carton. This is the miraculous logic in which the corporate media handles Bush’s complete incompetent and belligerent governance. Bush’s inability to assimilate humility or fault has been sustained by the media’s obfuscation. Bush shits, and they walk behind him with a pooper-scooper.

Bush is not retreating, nor surrendering from madness even in the face of sixteen US intelligence agencies reporting that Iran had given up its nuclear ambition in 2003. “Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,'' Bush stated on December 3, 2007. If they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon?

What a jackass.

In the press conference Bush stayed on point like a trained chimp. Repeating nonsensical phrases like, "This is heartening news. To me, it's a way for us to rally our partners." He believes that if he repeats things, it makes them true. His elementary explanation of world events is frightening. See here.

Pressing Our Luck

If Bush is a chimp, what does that make the corporate press who sits and laughs at his jokes? He plays them like a fiddle and all they do is blush as if the wind has blown up their skirts.

The revelation of Iran’s frozen nuclear ambition reveals nothing new about Bush, but it speaks volumes about the lack of investigative reporting on the part of the corporate media.

Iran was never a threat to the United States, and it was never about Iran being a threat. This is why news of Iran’s cancelled nuclear program doesn’t change Bush’s attitude toward Iran. His puppeteers’ eyes are on the oil fields.

Bush is a contemptuous person who has mastered the art of dehumanization. He is able like all mass murders to compartmentalize and justify a need to fulfill a blood lust and the press sits back and cheer him on like a Jerry Springer audience.

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ODE TO SEINFELD

by Maliha Masood, Matrix Correspondent







My parents love watching Seinfeld. So obsessive is their devotion to the show that they even started coordinating their prayer schedule with the televised broadcasts so as not to miss an episode.

During the summer season, when maghrib or sunset prayers shift as late as 9:30 p.m, Ammi and Abboo would be quickly doing their ablutions, and then rolling out their prayer rugs, bowing and prostrating towards Mecca, chanting verses in Arabic before they sat down to see Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer in action. Every weeknight, from Monday to Friday, my folks are absorbed in the reruns that comes on from 10 to 11 p.m. It’s their after dinner treat and they usually have desert and green tea while chuckling over the same old jokes they’ve known and memorized over the years.

My mother would balance a plate of fruit on the armrest of her Lazyboy, peeling Washington state Granny Smith apples, a thin cotton shawl covering her gray hair, her arthritic feet propped up on a footstool. She’s fond of talking to the K-man in Urdu as if he could hear her and see her through the television screen to a small living room in Seattle, where Ammi’s often comparing him to the bumbling, clumsy servants we used to know in India and Pakistan. As soon as Kramer barges into Jerry’s apartment and starts raiding the fridge, my mom would say something like, “ayee, jinaab, tashrif layee,” a formalized way of saying to a king or noble man, do come in and make yourself present. She likes to make fun of Kramer in this way. And she calls Elaine “giddy battany”, a colloquial Urdu term for being short, which apparently also applies to me as Ammi routinely compares her eldest daughter to Elaine’s feisty take no prisoners confrontational side that I have somehow perfected.

As for my Dad, he vacillates back and forth between Jerry and George, enjoying Jerry’s glib comebacks, but reveling in George’s misery and sticky snafus, his general disdain and dissatisfaction with life. Abboo’s always been a sucker for the underdog, and according to him, I’m a dead ringer for George as well, his twin alter ego, given my track record. Last night, while I was over at their place, we all watched an episode together, an older one, in which Jerry gets dumped by the Southern Belle ex girlfriend of George, when she tells him “I can’t be with someone I don’t respect”. We all imitated in our best Southern drawl accents the part where she says, “I saw your act. It’s so much fluff.” And then the chortles took over. My father made the comment, “the poor fellow is flabbergasted that she’s looking down on him being just a lowly cashier.” I stole a look at my mom who said that the actress playing the Southern Belle looked vaguely Iranian.

Often times, you can tell the age of the show by the font on the word Seinfeld at the start of each episode, the straighter smoother letters signifying a show circa 1992, when Seinfeld was dangerously low in popularity and I recall Abboo talking about a new sitcom that was basically about nothing. But he kept watching it and gradually warming up to it and after the show went off the air and the stars had made their millions, my dad developed a cult like following to the four-some characters and their neurotic New York humor and roped my mother into becoming a fan as well, which might sound rather strange considering how my parents are devout Muslims, traditionalists who wouldn’t dream of missing any of their daily five prayers along with reruns of their favorite sitcom.

Is there an irony to this? I don’t see why, but plenty of others will, perhaps because they’re not used to the idea of us Muslims being halfway normal. The idea of loving Seinfeld is so American, so mainstream, so not newsworthy. People like my parents are not supposed to exist according to the popular media, books and literature. When you add to their Muslim factor, the aspect of immigration, the story gets all the more complicated.

All immigrant stories have in common history, language, economics, statistics, class conflicts and colorful grandmothers. But how many include a love affair with sitcoms? And what does that ultimately say about what it means to be an immigrant and an American? We need to enlarge concepts and definitions that cannot remain stuck in issues of integration and self-segregation, the assumption being that Muslim immigrants in large part are not well assimilated in the cultures of their adopted homelands, given the currency value of terms such as Londonistan.

There’s also the aspect of choice when it comes to assimilation. But what is not taken into account is that some people, like my parents, may not need to choose to assimilate. They did not need to because they were already assimilated into the West long before coming to the West, a little known truism that does not come up often in fiction and novels, perhaps because best sellers have to be constructed on shock value and horror stories rather than simple boy or girl next door accounts. My dad grew up in Karachi enamored with rock and roll and Hollywood. My mom went to a Catholic college in India and sang hymns.

Many of my American friends are at a loss to understand my parents’ fixation with Seinfeld. They presume my folks are not familiar with American idioms and slang that the characters pepper in their speech, and that their silly offbeat, often raunchy comedy is at odds with our Pakistani Muslim immigrant values that shouldn’t be appreciating such gibberish. I guess it’s time to level the playing field and expose a different side of who we are, one that tallies with our individuality, and not just what others want us to be.

These days, I cannot help but wonder that you cannot be a Muslim in this country if you don’t fit the caricatures. And if you dare invent a new model, such as Muslims who love Seinfeld, then you may as well risk being an imposter. It does help that in manners of appearance, you could not possibly mistake my mother for being none other than an immigrant, a traditional, soft-spoken elderly Muslim woman in her headscarf and accented English. But to believe the same lady is throwing punchy verbal jabs at Kramer every night after her prayers, is to perhaps suspend your imagination.

Many times, the Seinfeld episodes have become parables for our own personal triumphs and crisis in life. When I was unhappy with my job or had trouble juggling independence with marriage, my dad immediately compared the situation to George, the way he keeps having some problem or another to deal with. He then translates in Urdu, “kuch na kuch garbar hay”. Always some kind of commotion. I chalked it up as a learning lesson from good old Georgie. It is this identification with the characters and their emotional ups and downs that explains our connection to Seinfeld, amazingly transcending issues of race, culture, religion, nationality.

Contrary to popular opinion, Muslims and non-Muslims have a lot more common ground than differences and it is this focus on a shared humanity that makes my parents resonate with Seinfeld. No doubt, Abboo and Ammi are hardly living the lives of smart single Manhatannites, who take themselves a tad too seriously to the point of borderline narcissism and unhealthy obsessive compulsive disorders. At their age, my parents are just trying to get through the days, still working ten-hour retail shifts in their seventies and having to cope with the nuisances of getting old. I’m lucky they’re still near me and everyday, if I want to, we can talk and laugh together. That’s what keeps us going and it does not matter whether we’ve seen that particular Seinfeld episode once or ten times, because it’s the frivolous indulgence of that half hour on TV that counts.

Most people who park themselves on a couch in front of their flat panel screens would agree about the pleasures of a silly sitcom after a long hard working day. It’s pure escapism much like the Bollywood movies my family grew up watching that have now become the rage among trendy Americans. But I know for a fact that my Indian born parents would take Seinfeld over Bollywood any day. They really get the characters, who are sometimes more real to them than our flesh and blood relatives.

Of course, none of this stuff would make it into immigration statistics or that checkbox on government forms where we have to signify racial identity by marking Asian or Pacific Islander, because there is of yet no checkbox for Pakistani/Indian Muslims who love silly American shows. To know this is to know my parents as individuals, to see their identity outside of Islam, outside of what makes them alien and different. In the course of their seven decades, their eyes have witnessed many things and if memory has a storage room of names, then consider the ones that my parents have accumulated. Karachi. Saddar. Tariq Road. Bori Bazaar. Seattle. Mount Rainier. Wallingford. Kirkland. 520. Jerry. Elaine. Kramer. George. Newman. J. Peterman. Soup Nazi.

On that note, my Dad recently told me to stay away from a Lebanese grocery store where I like to get my falafels and hummus, the reason being my constant skirmishes with the owner who according to Abboo is the Middle Eastern version of Soup Nazi. So there you have it. There’s an answer to all of life’s trials and tribulations thanks to Seinfeld.

Make no mistake. Behind my mom’s veil and my dad’s brown face are the beating hearts of Muslims wedded to their faith. Immigrants, technically yes. But immigrants who love quirky American humor and reruns of their favorite sitcom.

Maliha Masood is an award-winning writer and the author of Zaatar Days, Henna Nights. A former policy analyst at the International Crisis Group in Islamabad, she is the founder and president of The Diwaan Project, a Seattle-based cultural institute geared toward public education on global affairs. Maliha teaches a course on women and Islam at the University of Washington and is currently at work on her first novel set in contemporary Pakistan.

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