Palestinian Poetry Blogging


The Flute Cried

The flue cried. If only I could go to Damascus as an echo.
Silk weeps on the shores and pass through a sobbing cry.
Landscapes filled with tears. The flute cried and tore the sky into two women.
It divided the road and broke the heart of the sand grouse.
It divided us so we'd fall in love. O flute, we plea for mercy!
We are not distant as the sunset. Are you crying out so cry in vain,
or to crush the mountain as well as Adam and Eve's apple? O shout of
infinitive silence, cry: Damascus, my woman, I will love and I will survive

The flute cried. If only I could go to Damascus as an echo.
I even believe in what I don't believe. Silky tears burn away our breath.
The flute cried. If only I could cry like the flute, then I would know Damascus.

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Gloating

Knacker Wants Search Warrants for Downing Street

Prisons furore threatens to engulf Reid

· Two more judges question cut in use of jail sentences
· Youth justice chief quits over many children in jail

The row over prison overcrowding threatened to engulf the home secretary, John Reid, last night after two more judges called into question his advice on sentencing and the chairman of the Youth Justice Board resigned in protest at the rising number of children in custody.

Rod Morgan, who quit the YJB, said the country was "on the brink of a prisons crisis", three days after Mr Reid told courts to issue custodial sentences more sparingly as jails reached capacity.

The home office is where the thick civil servants are sent, the smarter ones are sent to the Treasury and the Foreign Office.

tee hee the British judges and the police are punishing the government for the way they have been politicized and generally fucked around early morning raids and judges not sending criminals to jail.

The police could easily ring up the political aide or MP but instead they are being treated like any other criminal so 6am arrests.

The BBC

ugh was watching a debate on Newsight (BBC 2's current affairs show), and there was this guy called Richard North who wrote a book titled Scap the BBC saying impartially has to be scraped and that it is 'posh'.

Sorry but anti-BBC types piss me off, the Beeb like any large organization as problems but their arguments are like bollocks, they are against it because they want to be against it but what they are argue would end up with say a homegrown Fox News.

In America the Fairness Doctrine was scrapped in the 80s and now look at the current state of the media there, Fox News recently lied about Barack Obama

David Osler puts it much better than I - In defence of the subsidariat

Friday Cat Blogging


George all curled up


Heidi enjoying the good life

A Bit of Birthday Fun



hat tip to Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads

Birthday Blogging

Happy birthday to me, 21 years old today!

The Sugarcubes - Birthday



Birthday Cat Blogging


Heidi trying to open my presents


Where Am I?


George showing off his gorgeous coat


George in deep thought

My Birthday cake, its meant to be Muta, a character from The Cat Returns

A Bit of Fun

Your Inner European is Italian!

Passionate and colorful. You show the world what culture really is.

Who's Your Inner European?

Saturday Niece Blogging


My niece enjoying the company of Princess Heidi


Catching up on some reading

Friday Night Entertainment

The Long Blondes - Giddy Stratopheres

A funky and very catchy tune

Friday Cat Blogging


George


Heidi

A Bit of Fun!

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Noble Excellency Moonbootica the Mystical of Throcking in the Hole Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Palestinian Poetry Blogging

Other Barbarian Will Come

Other barbarians will come. The emperor's wife will be abducted. Drums
will beat loudly. Drums will beat so that horses will leap over human bodies from the Aegean sea to the Dardanelles. So why should we be concerned?
What do our wives have to do with horse racing?

The emperor's wife will be abducted. Drums will beat loudly and other barbarians will come. Barbarians fill the cities' emptinesses, slightly
higher than the sea, mightier than the sword in a time of madness. So why
should we be concerned? What do our children have to do with the children of this impudence?

Drums will beat loudly and other barbarians will come. The emperor's wife will be taken from his bedroom. From his bedroom he will launch a military
assault to return his bedmate to his bed. Why should we be concerned? What do fifty thousand victims have to do with this brief marriage?

Can Homer be born after us...and myths open their doors to the throng?

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Friday Night Entertainment

Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special 2006 - Mark and Karen perform their sizzling Salsa

Friday Cat Blogging


George enjoying the warmth


Heidi doing what she loves most, snoozing.

Music Video Blogging

A barmy but quite brilliant music video by Muse for their tune 'Knights of Cydonia', I am not generally a fan of Muse since they seemed a pale reflection of Radiohead but this song is not bad and the video is very cool which always helps.

Palestinian Poetry Blogging


On The Slope, Higher Than The Sea, They Slept

On the slope, higher than the sea, higher than the cypress, they slept.
The iron sky erased their memories, and the dove flew away
in the direction of their pointing fingers, east of their torn bodies.
Weren't they entitled to throw the basil of their names on the moon in the water?
And plant bitter orange trees in the ditches to dispel the darkness?

They sleep beyond the limits of space, on a slope where words turn to stone.
They sleep on a stone carved from the bones of their phoenix.
One heart can celebrate their feast in nearly no time.
Our heart can steal a place for doves to return to earth's bedrock.
O kin sleeping within me, at the ends of the earth: Peace be upon you! Peace.

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Iraq - A Bloody Mess

A U.S. helicopter hovers over Haifa Street in Baghdad January 9, 2007. REUTERS/Namir Noor-Eldeen

UN launches £30m Iraq refugees appeal

One in eight Iraqis have left their homes in what is the largest long-term population movement in the Middle East since the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948, the UN's refugee agency said today.

The UNHCR released the figures as it launched an appeal for $60m (£30.8m) in emergency aid for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced" people.

Many people who have left Iraq or moved to other parts of the country have run out of resources or would do soon, the organisation said, leaving them and their host communities increasingly vulnerable.

"There are increasing reports of women forced to resort to prostitution, as well as growing child labour problems," the UNHCR said. "The appeal includes programmes to identify and register the most vulnerable among the displaced so they can get the support they need."

The organisation and its partners estimate that, of a total Iraqi population of 26 million, around 1.7 million Iraqis are internally displaced and up to two million people have fled to nearby countries.

If Iraq is such a 'example of democracy' why have so many Iraqis been forced to flee? Could not have anything to do with the civil war going on or the lack of infrastructure.

I imagine a lot of the conflict going on right now could of been fixed if clean water and electricity was provided regularly, instead of bothering to do boring stuff like that oil companies are rubbing their hands with glee over the oil in Iraq and how this can be used to manipulate prices. Meanwhile the Bush Junta continue to live in fantasy land and the Neocons are crying because their illusions have been shattered and their war supporters are falling over themselves to justify the continuation of this bloody war, labeling anyone who disagrees an 'Islamofascist supporter', they are unable to admit when wrong and choose to lie instead.

It saddens me how those who criticised this war at the start were pushed to the sidelines, attacked or ignored and have now been proven right.

The Forgotten War

22 to a cell - life in a notorious Afghan prison

Shaima left her violent husband and married a man she loved. They lived happily, but after a few years the police came after her - adultery is illegal in Afghanistan - demanding 4,000 afghanis (£42) in exchange for her freedom.

The family did not have the money, and now Shaima, whose expressionless face is adorned with delicate tattoos, is in Afghanistan's high-security Policharki prison with two children by her second relationship.

"I thought my [new] father-in-law was solving the case," she says several times in a low voice. Shaima, 30, stares at Fariba, her five-day-old daughter who sleeps in tightly wrapped swaddling clothes on her lap.

She shares a bunk-lined room with 11 other women and 10 children. Close to 80 adults live in the women's wing of Policharki, which houses about 1,300 in total. The women's few possessions hang above each bed - a child's knitted hat, a pair of socks, a small velvet bag. They eat their meals squatting on the floor next to the heater in each room. Clothes hung up to dry line the halls.

Afghanistan's biggest prison, just east of Kabul, was renowned for the torture and killing of thousands during the communist era. More recently, it has been the scene of deadly riots and prison escapes.

So remind me again how woman's lives in Afghanistan have improved since kicking the Taliban out of Kabul? Because I can't tell the difference.

In the rush to invade Iraq, Afghanistan has been consigned to the sidelines.

Friday Night Entertainment

Mark Ramprakash and Karen Hardy's amazing Argentinian Tango (they would eventually win the series) from BBC's Strictly Come Dancing

Friday Cat Blogging


Heidi in her favorite place


George keeping warm

Palestinian Poetry Blogging

I Will Slog Over This Road

I will slog over this endless road to its end.
Until my heart stops, I will slog over this endless, endless road
with nothing to lose but the dust, what has died in me, and a row of palms
pointing towards what vanishes. I will pass the row of palms.
The wound does not need its poet to paint the blood of death like a pomegranate!
On the roof neighing, I will cut thirty openings for meaning
so that you may end one trail only so as to begin another.
Whether this earth comes to an end or not, we'll slog over this endless road.
More tense than a bow. Our steps, be arrows. Where were we a moment ago?
Shall we join, in a while, the first arrow? The spinning wind whirled us.
So what do you say?

I say: I will slog over this endless, endless road to its end and my own.

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Disgusting

FBI files detail Guantánamo torture tactics

Captives at Guantánamo Bay were chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor for 18 hours or more, urinating and defecating on themselves, an FBI report has revealed.

The accounts of mistreatment were contained in FBI documents released yesterday (pdf) as part of a lawsuit involving the American Civil Liberties Union, a civil liberties group.

In the 2004 inquiry, the FBI asked nearly 500 employees who had served at Guantánamo Bay to report possible mistreatment by law enforcement or military personnel. Twenty-six incidents were reported, some of which had emerged in earlier document releases.

Besides being shackled to the floor, detainees were subjected to extremes of temperature. One witness said he saw a barefoot detainee shaking with cold because the air conditioning had bought the temperature close to freezing.

On another occasion, the air conditioning was off in an unventilated room, making the temperature over 38C (100F) and a detainee lay almost unconscious on the floor with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been pulling out his hair throughout the night.

This is just repugnant, torturing another human being, it is beyond my comprehension how anyone can condone such a practice or make it (un)official policy. Torture is of very little use when gathering intelligence, if your causing pain to an individual they'll tell you anything to make it stop, it doesn't make any sense to use it to get information.

Guantanamo Bay is an abomination in itself, holding prisoners without telling them what they are charged with. Its simple, if the detainee is guilty produce evidence and prosecute, if not let them go, its wrong to hold people against their will without telling them why they are in there in the first place.

Makes me very angry reading news such as this.

Iraq

Iraqi PM rules out second term

· Maliki: I wish I could step down
· Man held over Saddam video
· Co-accused 'to be executed Thursday'

Nuri al-Maliki has said he wants to step down as prime minister of Iraq, as one of his advisers revealed that a man accused of recording Saddam Hussein's execution on his mobile phone has been arrested.

In a candid interview with an American newspaper, Mr Maliki said the most difficult decision he had ever made was taking the prime ministerial post.

"I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again," he told the Wall Street Journal.

Sounds like Nursi al-Maliki wants to have a long healthy life. Who would want the poison chalice of PM of Iraq? A country which is currently engulfed in a civil war

Saddam's execution certainly pleased the Iranians.

I think out of this whole mess the Iranians have gotten the most of out of it, getting rid of an enemy on their doorstep, having a Shia friendly government installed.

Iran also scares many US/Western backed Arab dictatorships, because the Iranian people overthrew their Shah, the same could happen to them if their populace is given the right nudge yet the US has spent a fortune in lives and money giving wrong nudges, effectively forestalling the organic revolutions.

How can the US and the UK go on about 'democracy' when they back Mubarak's regime and the House of Saud? To many Muslims in the ME that appears hypocritical, so its no wonder the Bush Junta aren't 'winning hearts and minds', and that 'freedom on the march' proved shortlived.

Basically they have fucked up and its going to take decades to repair the damage done and I'm not even sure its possible and you have the I/P issues hanging over everyone's head.

Book Review - The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Rosa Menocal



My brother gave me this book for Christmas and what a most delightful read it was, capturing the Golden Age of Al-Andalus, where Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in relative harmony, how Muslim-Christian relations were not black and white and how fundamentalists on both sides created conflict.

I think it would cause your average 'clash of civilization' idiot's brain to explode, that while the rest of Europe clawed its way out of the pieces of the Roman empire, the light of civilization still shone at the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba, how the city's vast library would prove a treasure trove for translators and would give a boost to learning in the rest of Medieval Europe that the Christians under Umayyad rule translated their ancient liturgy into Arabic and how this developed into the Mozarabic language.

How tangled relations were with Christian kingdoms after the fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba as each Taifa fought to become its successor, take for example El Cid, who served both Christian and Muslim masters in his long military career.

The book provides wonderful snapshots of Al-Andalus at various stages of its history, well worth reading if you are despairing about the present day rush for 'clash of civilizations' .

The Execution of Saddam

To The Bitterest End

Execution as pornography

Crowds Protest Saddam Hanging in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Enraged crowds protested the hanging of Saddam Hussein across Iraq's Sunni heartland Monday, as a mob in Samara broke the locks off a bomb-damaged Shiite shrine and marched through carrying a mock coffin and photo of the dictator.

The demonstration in the Golden Dome, shattered in a bombing by Sunni extremists 10 months ago, suggests that many Sunni Arabs may now more actively support the small number of Sunni militants fighting the country's Shiite-dominated government. The Feb. 22 bombing of the shrine triggered the current cycle of retaliatory attacks between Sunnis and Shiia, in the form of daily bombings, kidnappings and murders.

Monday's protest came on a day that saw the U.S. military kill six Iraqis during a raid on the offices of a prominent Sunni political figure, who was suspected of giving al-Qaida in Iraq fighters sanctuary.

I knew this would happen, executing him turns Saddam into a icon which can be usd by the Sunni insurgency and those who are sympathetic to their cause, I fear for British and American troops if he turns into the 'Eid Martyr'. To all intents and purposes Saddam was handed over to the Shiites, and this has just fueled the civil war even more now, I hope the Bush Junta and their poodle Blair are happy with their 'war.'

There is no doubt Saddam was a evil dictator but there are many more regimes as bad as he, the Burmese and Saudi ones come to mine. Not to mention how during his time as dictator he was supported by the US.

But I leave it to the Rude Pundit to spell it out

And once he hangs, as he will any time now, once he's videoed pissing himself while dangling from the noose, maybe even a close-up on his last hard-on, then it's time to go to work. Cut that fucker's head off his corpse and graft it onto George W. Bush's right shoulder, so that it rots away next to him just like Iraq, so the President can watch the decay every time he looks in the mirror and smell it constantly. Rip out Hussein's bones and shove them up the asses of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, Michelle Malkin, and more and more - Saddam's got two hundred something bones, so line up a bunch of neocons and warmongering whores, bend 'em over, and give 'em a souvenir. Dry Saddam's organs and grind them into a powder and pour it into the water supply of the United States so we can each consume a little bit of the man who so drove our leaders crazy that they destroyed our economy, our military, our morality to topple him, yes, let us all drink that in, toasting the hanging of Saddam Hussein as a demonstration of what great and noble and righteous and merciful humans we are. Send his cock to Tony Blair so he can go fuck himself.

New Year Day Ballet

Romeo & Juliet (Alessandra Ferri & Angel Corella)

Happy New Year!

To celebrate New Year I give you bountiful cat blogging of my beautiful kitty cats.

I wish all my blog readers a most wonderful 2007!


Heidi and George snuggle buddies


Heidi who is 100% Princess


George showing off his shiny coat


Heidi giving the look 'why disturb me in my slumber', George is already well into deep sleep so he doesn't mind.