Pakistan on the Precipice

Pakistan's well-liked, populist leader Benazir Bhutto's return to her native country was the stuff of history. The word "triumphant" is a good start in describing the events of Thursday morning October 18. Greeted by hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of elated supporters, the Muslim world's first female leader stepped off the jet on to her native soil for the first time since being exiled 8 years ago. The streets of Karachi were jam-packed, the entire nation of 160 million (and millions abroad) discussing the event unfolding as if this little figure was about to miraculously solve the nation's myriad problems with a wave of her hand.

The miracle never happened. Instead, there came a disaster.


In the wake of the double car-bombing, while corpses still lay on the street at this hour and the irrelevant death toll statistics climb, emotions flare and the naked truth of the situation this country finds itself in is laid bare for the entire globe to see.

Extremism is not the right word for what happened in Pakistan late this evening. Jihad is not correct either, nor its many variants and derivatives like terrorism or fundamentalism. This was the act of psychotics, of animals and savages, of beings who deserve no mercy and shall receive none from God or us vicegerents of His on Earth.

Those amongst the mujahideen in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere who claim that civilians are legitimate targets in their war are wrong. They are so wrong in fact, that they believe that God Himself is on their side. They believe somewhere in their minds, honestly believe, that their God wants them to machine-gun mothers, to explode vests amongst crowds of factory workers, to assassinate children and grandmothers for the right to ascend to Paradise.

These are not Muslims, nor Jews, Christians or Hindus. These are not even human beings.

And yet, of all the nations who have a fundamental responsibility to promote and defend a faith from aggressors, and to rescue it from incompetents and mushrikun, the United States of America has taken upon itself to save Islam.

No, I won't blame the U.S. for this decision. There are enough valid things to blame it for. Nay, I condemn the leaders of the Islamic states. I condemn Mubarak, al-Assad, Abdullah and Musharraf. I condemn Abbas and Abdullah II, al-Maliki and Zayed and al-Maktoum, and Aziz. These are the creatures who claim to be men and leaders while they sit in their palaces and estates as rivers of blood flow around them. These will all meet their Creator in the end.

This is it, oh sons and daughters of Jinnah and Iqbal, oh Children of the East. The last line's been crossed. Your fate lies at the end of two polar opposite paths, either salvation and glory or failure and anarchy. How you decide will affect your children and the children of every nation that shares your faith, your opposition to evil and your hopes for something better than the status-quo. Choose wisely.

Soul on Ice

September 5, 1965

...I feel impelled to express myself to you extravagantly, and words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs leap in my mind. But I beat them down, refuse to write them, because it all seems so predictable and trite. I feel humiliated by the words you inspire me to write to you. I refuse to write them.

You have tossed me a lifeline. I have changed tremendously over the years. But I had always had a strong sense of myself and in the last few years I felt I was losing my identity. There was a deadness in my body that eluded me, as though I could not exactly locate its site. I would be aware of this numbness, this feeling of atrophy, and it haunted the back of my mind...a certain intimation of emptiness.

Now I know what it was. And since encountering you, I feel life strength flowing back into that spot. My stride, which was tentative and uncertain, has begun to recover.

Emphatically Yours,

Eldridge.

///

September 15, 1965,

...I place a great deal of emphasis on people really listening to each other, to what the person has to say, because one seldom encounters a person capable of taking either you or themselves seriously. I had a profound desire for communicating with and getting to know other people, but I was incapable of doing so, I didn't know how.

Do you know what shameless thought just bullied its way into my consciousness? That I deserve you, that I deserve to know you and to communicate with you, that I deserve to have all this happening. What have I done to merit this?

I seek the profound. And it is not a fraud, forced out of desperation. We live in a disoriented, deranged social structure, and we have transcended its barriers in our own ways and have stepped psychologically outside its madness and repressions. It is lonely out here. We recognize each other. And, having recognized each other, is it any wonder that our souls hold hands and cling together even while our minds equivocate, hesitate, vacillate and tremble?

Peace. Don't panic, and don't wake up.
Dream on, I am
Yours,
Eldridge.


Extract from "Soul on Ice" by Eldridge Cleaver. 1968.

GOP Debate Pics

Following up on the last column, I ask the question:

Do you want any of these men as your President?






Jeez. Okay, Mitt's not so hideous, but like, he really is just a handsome face. No darling readers, this is what a real President ought to look like:


=//Turnquest

The Question of Iran

There's been a recent surge (no pun intended) of chatter in the mainstream media concerning a possible invasion/air-strike/surgical bombing of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The thought has been buzzing around in the background of policy circles in Washington (and Tel Aviv for that matter) for a while, certainly at least since W's State of the Union address on January 29, 2002 where he made his infamous "axis-of-evil" remark.

Of course, nowadays we can joke about that strange, aberrant era, the time of W and neo-cons, of the "war against terror," "orange alerts" and "dirty bombs." And though we still have with us some of the proponents of pre-emptive strikes and jingoism like Coulter, Rush and Mike Evans, other more temperate voices like Gore, Olbermann and Carter have risen to reclaim territory in the public sphere. The far-right is on the retreat.

Need more proof? Go and take a look at the candidates for the 2008 Presidential race. Not one of the at least 5 supposed frontrunners on the GOP side has broken through as a clear winner yet. All bets are off. Average Republicans are splintered in their choice to back a candidate and a considerable percentage have yet to declare their allegiance to anyone.

Left-wing or right, looking at the GOP and Democratic debates, it's two totally different worldviews. One side seems stuck on the September 12, 2001 mentality of "gotta find those terrrorists, smoke 'em out, get those varmints on the run, gotta defend America." The other is making once-taboo topics like universal health care, diplomacy and multilateralism, ending the occupation of Iraq and seriously fighting global warming the centre of political discussion. On the ground, in the small towns, in the living rooms of America, the people are not worrying about an invisible invasion of bearded Muslamo-Nazi goons. They care about their kids going to a good school, about being paid fairly for their hard work and about building a decent savings for retirement. Come to think of it, that doesn't sound too different from what most Iranians, Iraqis or anyone else wants.

So why so much Iran-this, Iran-that talk? Honestly, it's pretty simple. War talk hijacks the debate. It is a red herring, as they say in fiction. A random, false lead that interrupts the story and sends the pursuer of truth down the wrong path. It halts the relentless tide of progress and all of a sudden, we find ourselves back in 2002 talking about WMDs and the imminent threat of Iraq and Saddam.

It irks me greatly that so many of America's supposedly finest journalists and politicians continue to confuse the two distinct nations of Iraq and Iran. I shudder to think if we start mixing up the two Koreas, or Australia and Austria, or Israel and Palestine.

The W age is fast coming to a close. Some lefties say it's already done, that anything W says is irrelevant and a joke and that no-one trusts him anymore anyway. His approval ratings have been slumming around in the record-lows for more than a year. A popularly-supported military offensive by the U.S. or its surrogate instrument Israel is unthinkable now. The move has no support amongst regular people, moderate politicians nor, most importantly, with rank-and-file military commanders.

The worst part about this whole sideshow is that while we waste newspaper and website space on empty Iran talk, the blood of the children of Iraq still spills every day.

Iraq (with a *q*) is the real issue, and has been, for four, going on five, long years. May God have mercy on those suffering people.

=//Turnquest

simple answers to common dilemmas

simple answers to common dilemmas.

1. there's this girl i really like, but i don't know if she likes me...

a: ask her out. coffee always works.

2. i'm broke man, i've got credit card bills, student loan bills, rent bills, gas bills, food...

a: get a job. (and keep it).

3. i don't really have any friends...

a: talk to other people who look like they don't have friends either. or make friends with at least one person who has a lot of friends and pretend a lot.

4. i'm sooo damn horny, i'm going to explode.

a: jerk off. or hire an escort.

5. i wish i knew what to do with myself.

a: anything is better than nothing. or ask God.

6. i'm not sure where to go for my holidays...in fact, i'm not even sure if i should take time off or just work...

a: Iraq. or maybe Fiji.

7. i'm bored.

i'm not. va chier, stik personne laide.

8. my boyfriend and i wanna get married, but we want to make sure we're ready. we have a lot of fun and he's nice to me, he takes me out to fancy restaurants, buys me all sorts of nice gifts...we talk for hours on the phone and we always make each other laugh. but i'm not sure... i mean, is this guy really the right one for me?

a: no.

9. why not?

a: you wouldn't be asking me this question right now. instead, you'd be busy f*ckin'.

=//Turnquest