Salmiya

When I recently watched again the BBC production Around the World in 80 Treasures , I stumbled over the remark by Dan Cruickshank about the tapestry copy of Pablo Picasso's Guernica in the United Nations building in New York City. When Collin Powell and John Negroponte delivered (now it is clear to everyone) their lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction in a press conference on February 5, 2003, the picture was veiled with a large blue curtain. Guernica from 1937, which is an epoch-making reminder of the horrors of war (we recall that German and Italian fascists, in what was called Operation Rügen, killed, in several raids, hundreds of innocents), should not interfere with media coverage when war had been declared on the Iraqi people. http://www.slate.com/id/2078242/

The "Most Wanted Man" in Iran, Abdol Malik Rigi, had temporarily been mentioned in Iran's PRESSTV news network as possibly being involved in the Shiraz blast yesterday. The explosion, which killed at least eleven, might in fact be an accident. In a rare interview broadcast in July last year, the outlaw, drug trafficker and leader of the terrorist organization Jundullah confirms that he is not supported by CIA but by Balochis living in Sweden. Interesting in any case. http://www.hd.net/iran.html

We have not forgotten that presidential candidate Senator John McCain "was just trying to add a little humor to the event" , as his spokesman Kevin McLaughlin told news agencies later. It was about one year ago at Murrels Inlet VFW Hall in South Carolina , and McCain was asked when he thought the US Military might "send an air mail message to Tehran." In view of the recent mix-up by the Senator of Al-Qaeda and Iran, when touring the Middle East showing his competencies and when responding to General David Petraeus' testimony about the current situation in Iraq to the Congress , we are still rather concerned about his further actions once the American people have elected him their next President.

These days, the so far 3rd war (not the second!) in the Gulf region marks its 5th anniversary. The operation was called Shock & Awe and I was watching the bombing of Baghdad live on my TV in a flat in Kuwait. Incredible, Baghdad and its avenues at the Tigris river were brightly illuminated when the first bombs blasted! It looked more like a Hollywood movie. How could that be broadcast to the World? While we were sitting here in a totally dark, blacked-out Kuwait! I really can tell, I was shocked and awed. We had spent the last days before the outbreak of war with shopping of the special kind, hoarding meat, tuna fish and vegetables in cans, getting large amounts of rice and noodles, buying candles. Our former Faculty Dean had briefed the brave of us, who were about to stay, in one of the then rare Faculty meetings: There might be curfews in Kuwait. The Americans troops will be in Baghdad within 72 hours. University will be closed for a week or so. Life will go on. But the...

Is there free speech in the Arab World? Qatar seems to try to make respective arrangements. BBC WORLD is broadcasting the latest forum discussion today and tomorrow. Very interesting speakers . GMT Saturday 8th March 08.10 and repeated at 14.10 and 20.10; Sunday 9th March 00.10 and repeated at 08.10 and 20.10 Here are the results: THE LATEST DEBATE - MARCH 3rd, 2008 : MOTION: THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT MUSLIMS ARE FAILING TO COMBAT EXTREMISM RESULT: MOTION CARRIED 70.4% - 29.6% "An overwhelming majority at the latest Doha Debate has criticised Muslims around the world for failing to combat extremism. The vote came after a former Islamic fundamentalist accused Saudi Arabia of acting like "a machine" in pumping millions of dollars into the support of Islamic extremism. Ed Husain, a British campaigner against fundamentalism, challenged the many Muslims who travel each year to Mecca to stand up to extremism "right there", claiming "Saudi Arabia has totally demol...

It took 18 months after his controversially perceived lecture at Regensburg University for coming to the conclusion that he has to meet the clerical representatives of Islam for further clarifications. In an open letter signed by 38 Muslim scholars and leaders the Holy Father had been invited for a friendly dialogue of the two major monotheistic faiths some time ago. Now he wants to talk with them. Pope Benedict XVI, who had travelled to Istanbul last year (Byzantium, as he still called it) and there had visited the Blue Mosque, was very reluctant in apologizing for his not really helpful quotation of a 14th Century Byzantine Emperor who had criticized Islam and had called it violent and irrational. It must be remembered that in what is called the Middle Ages in the West, a dark and inhumane era when plague and other epidemics were depopulating much of Europe, it was Islam which had preserved the Greek philosophers’ knowledge. The countries in the Middle East and beyond then represen...

This morning I received a chain email by a friend and colleague with the following content: "Normality March, 02 2008 By Faheem Hussain "It's very nice to be a sort of normal person for once, I think this is about as normal as I'm ever going to get." - Prince Harry on his time in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. The BBC reported these words with approval. It’s nice to know that this is what is considered normal for a young man in the UK. I guess it is normal to send 23 year olds to join an illegal occupation army. It is normal to call in air strikes (this was Harry’s job) to drop 1000-pound bombs on villages killing and destroying men, women, children, animals. It is normal to go on foot patrol in an occupied country and look down with contempt on the poor people of the country and it is normal to feel the hatred emanating from the people of the occupied country. I am sure that Prince Harry feels terribly elated and uplifted by his 10 weeks in Helmand where he di...

In his recent report to the Board of Governors , the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei states (under item 56) that Iran has expressed its readiness to implement the provisions of the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the modified text of its Subsidiary Arrangements General Part, Code 3.1, “if the nuclear file is returned from the Security Council to the IAEA”. It is an unprecedented opportunity for the UN Security Council to de-escalate this sensitive standoff, as CASMII states : “Nuclear inspections by the IAEA have proven to be the best and only non-violent safeguard against nuclear weapons proliferation. No country in the world has been able to develop nuclear weapons while its programme has been under the inspections of the IAEA. In the case of Iraq, nearly the entire weapons program was exposed and neutralized in the 1990s through a rigorous inspection process.” It’s high time now to take the cha...

The National Intelligence Estimate which has considerably relieved the strain on Iran’s nuclear program was not entirely new. While IAEO Director General Mohamed ElBaradei wrote in October 2007 that there is no evidence that Iran was working actively to build nuclear weapons, largely confirming NIE, Seymour Hersh reported already one year ago about clandestine results of the C.I.A. activities which were perceived in the White House with hostility. He wrote in The New Yorker on November 27, 2006 (!): “The Administration’s planning for a military attack on Iran was made far more complicated earlier this fall by a highly classified draft assessment by the C.I.A. challenging the White House’s assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb. The C.I.A. found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency. (The C.I.A. declined to co...