Scratches of Syria: movie night

The Syria Club presents - Scratches of Syria short-movie night: Saturday Dec. 21, 7pm in the AUK Auditorium

Kuwaiti politician: Men should be allowed sex slaves. Female prisoners can serve the role.

Men should be allowed sex slaves and female prisoners could do the job – and all this from a WOMAN politician from Kuwait

Outrageous ideas: Salwa al-Mutairi’s suggestions have provoked discussion

A Kuwaiti woman who once ran for parliament has called for sex slavery to be legalised – and suggested that non-Muslim prisoners from war-torn countries would make suitable concubines. Salwa al Mutairi argued buying a sex-slave would protect decent, devout and ‘virile’ Kuwaiti men from adultery because buying an imported sex partner would be tantamount to marriage. And she even had an idea of where to ‘purchase’ these sex-salves – browsing through female prisoners of war in other countries. The political activist and TV host even suggested that it would be a better life for women in warring countries as the might die of starvation. Mutairi claimed: ‘There was no shame in it and it is not haram’ (forbidden) under Islamic Sharia law.’

For more images and to read the full story click here.

U.S. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan Return War Medals at NATO Summit

Peace and Love to All on Memorial Day...

Memorial Day Special: U.S. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan Return War Medals at NATO Summit

www.democracynow.org

Democracy Now! returns to Chicago, site of the largest NATO summit in the organization’s six-decade history, where nearly 50 veterans discarded their war medals by hurling them down the street in the direction of the NATO summit. We hear the soldiers’ voices as they return their medals one by one fr...

TIME's Person of the Year, from 1927 to 2011 (and 2012?)

We will soon find out TIME's 2012 Person of the Year! (click here)

TIME's Person of the Year, from 1927 to 2011

Very enlightening to look back and see who they have picked for every year all the way back to 1927 (click here)

Some of us did not make it to see another sunrise or sunset...

"Some of us did not make it to see another sunrise or sunset... You survived... Be happy.  Be grateful. Live and let live. COEXIST."

text and collage by Layza Quintz

I'm on the side of peace.

One of my friends, a really good person, posted the following comment on facebook this morning, "Feeling bad for Gaza and friends in Tel Aviv & Jerusalem. I know you're supposed to pick sides, and I know the underdog is XX, but it's equally hard when you have friends living in both places." Of course there were a number of replied against his remark, but another of my friends, also a really good person, replied, "I am on the side of peace."

I have been struggling with what, if anything, to post about Gaza the last few days knowing that whatever I post friends on either side are going to be upset, but these two good natured friends encapsulate exactly my feelings. 

This is not a football game where you should be cheering for one side or the other. As Harry Patch, the last surviving soldier known to have fought in the trenches of the First World War, said, "War is organized murder, and nothing else."

Thanks Charlez and Jeanine!

This Veterans Day remember...

"This Veterans Day remember - the best way to honor vets is to stop making so many new ones."

behind the scenes of our post-nuclear apocalypse film set in Korea...

We started shooting our post-nuclear apocalypse film, YEOK, on Monday night, August 6 (the same day that in 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan - we did not plan this, just a weird coincidence). As a thunderstorm rolled in, we began shooting. Here are a few of my photos of behind the scenes footage (for more photos and a video click HERE). Enjoy!

On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima...

On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, that instantly killed an estimated 66,000 people in the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare.

Worth the cost in blood and dollars? US to lower flag to end Iraq war...

US to lower flag to end Iraq war
www.bbc.co.uk

The US flag is to be lowered in Baghdad in a ceremony formally marking the end of US military operations in Iraq, after nearly nine years of war.

Rev. Al Sharpton reacts to Iraq troop withdrawal

Americans relieved to see the end in Iraq

www.msnbc.msn.com

 

Oct. 21: Rev. Al Sharpton reacts to President Barack Obama’s troop withdrawal announcement.

Osama bin Laden is Dead

war, destruction, birth, rebirth...

Welcome the Persian New Year, Spring Equinox, and Super-Moon!  Click on links below for more info:

Spring Equinox Signals Persian New Year : NPR

 

super moon : NPR

and goodbye to so much!  Click on links below for more info:

U.S. Launches Missile Strikes On Libya : NPR

In Bahrain, Iconic Pearl Monument Destroyed : NPR

 

Japan Races To Reconnect Power To Nuclear Plant : NPR

NPR Funding Targeted: House Votes To Defund National Public Radio

www.huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday voted to end federal funding to National Public Radio. Republican supporters said it made good fiscal sense, and Democratic opponents called it an ideological attack that would deprive local stations of access to programs such as "Car Talk" and "All Things Consider

 

U.N. Approves Airstrikes Against Libya

From: 
Nicholas D. Kristof

So, quite astonishingly, the UN Security Council with American backing has approved air strikes against Libya: http://nyti.ms/ezHil4 One moment Washington is against a modest no fly zone, and the next it's approving air strikes -- but all that stalling means that the window of opportunity to remove Qaddafi may have passed. Your thoughts?

U.N. Approves Airstrikes Against Libya

nyti.ms

The Security Council approved a measure on Thursday authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect Libyan civilians from harm at the hands of forces loyal to Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi.

NOAM CHOMSKY: "Gaza: One Year Later"

On December 27, 2008, Israel began one of the bloodiest attacks on Gaza Since 1948. The three week assault killed some 1400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. One year later, little to no rebuilding has taken place and the siege in Gaza continues.

Speaking in Watertown, Massachusetts on December 6, 2009, linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky delivered a talk entitled “Gaza: One Year Later.” See video on link below:

NOAM CHOMSKY: "Gaza: One Year Later"

The (Ottoman) Empire Strikes Back

What a shame that so much is lost with a Euro-centric or Western biased point of view. I'm obviously a 'somewhat' educated individual. I studied hard in school. I was a good student, but for the life of me, I can not remember almost anything being taught -from kindergarten to graduating one of the top students in my high school, to college to graduate school- about The Ottoman Empire (or about much of the rest of the world - besides Western Europe and the USA). I was in complete awe traveling in Turkey last winter (see: Christmas at the Aya Sophia..., Troy..., Ephesus..., Hierapolis-Pamukkale...).

For those that do not know: The Ottoman Empire lasted more than 600 years (1299-1923), spanned three continents, controlling much of Southeastern Europe, Western Asia and North Africa, and was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. With Constantinople (Istanbul) as its capital city, and vast control of lands around the eastern Mediterranean during the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent (ruled 1520 to 1566), the Ottoman Empire was, in many respects, an Islamic successor to the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.

Interesting article in the today about a rekindling of interest, pride and nostalgia in Turkey for their Ottoman past:

Frustrated With West, Turks Revel in Empire Lost

By DAN BILEFSKY

Published: December 4, 2009

ISTANBUL — More than eight decades ago, Ertugrul Osman, an heir to the Ottoman throne, was unceremoniously thrown out of Turkey with his family. He lived to be 97, spending most of his years in a modest Manhattan apartment above a bakery.

Johan Spanner for The New York Times

The traditional costumes of a band in the Sultanahmet district of Istanbul invoked Janissaries, elite Ottoman-era soldiers.

Johan Spanner for The International Herald Tribune

Cenan Sarc, 97, the descendant of an Ottoman pasha, was 10 years old at the time of the Empire’s collapse in 1922.

Mustafa Ozer/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Thousands mourned Ertugrul Osman, an heir to the Ottoman throne, in Istanbul.

But in September, at his funeral in the garden of the majestic Sultanahmet Mosque here, thousands of mourners paid their respects, including government officials and celebrities. Some even kissed the hands of surviving dynasty members, who appeared shocked at the adulation.

The show of reverence for the man who might have been sultan, historians said, was a seminal moment in the rehabilitation of the Ottoman Empire, long demonized by some in the modern, secular Turkish Republic created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923. During Ataturk’s rule, the empire was remembered mainly for its decadence and its humiliating defeat and partition by the Allies in World War I.

Mr. Osman’s send-off was just the latest manifestation of what sociologists call “Ottomania,” a harking back to an era marked by conquest and cultural splendor during which sultans ruled an empire stretching from the Balkans to the Indian Ocean and claimed the spiritual leadership of the Muslim world.

The longing for those glory years — by religious Muslims and secularists alike — partly reflects Turks’ frustration with a European Union that seems ill disposed to accept them as members. And in a country where the tension between religion and secularism is never far from the surface, members of the new governing class of religious Muslims have seized upon nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire as a way to challenge the pro-Western elite that emerged during Ataturk’s rule, and to help forge a national identity of Turkey as an aspiring regional leader.

“Turks are attracted to the heroism and the glory of the Ottoman period because it belongs to them,” said the director of Topkapi Palace, Ilber Ortayli, who, as the keeper of the sumptuous residence where Ottoman sultans lived for 400 years, is also a zealous unofficial gatekeeper of the Ottoman legacy. “The sultans hold a place in the popular consciousness like Douglas MacArthur or General Patton have for Americans.”

The current vogue of all things Ottoman, from the proliferation of historical docudramas to the popularity of porcelain ashtrays adorned with harem women, is sometimes manifesting itself in ways that would surely have made a real sultan blanch.

During Ramadan, Burger King offered a special sultan menu featuring dishes popular in the Ottoman years. In the television commercial promoting the meal, a turbaned Janissary — a member of an elite group of Ottoman soldiers — exhorts viewers not to “leave any burgers standing.”

Ottomania has also infected the nation’s youth; 20-somethings at hip dance clubs here wear T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like “The Empire Strikes Back” or “Terrible Turks” — the latter turning the taunt Europeans once used against their Ottoman invaders into a defiant symbol of self-affirmation.

Kerim Sarc, 42, the owner of Ottoman Empire T-Shirts and the scion of an illustrious Ottoman family, believes that the newfound fondness for a mighty empire that lasted more than 600 years and once reached the gates of Vienna is linked to the long struggle for membership in the European Union. The bloc has imposed tough conditions on Turkey, including asking it to compromise in its longstanding dispute over Cyprus.

“We Turks are tired of being treated in Europe like poor, backward peasants,” he said.

The Ottoman renaissance is equally prevalent in the nation’s highest political circles, where the Muslim-inspired Justice and Development Party government has been aggressively courting former Ottoman colonies, including Iraq and Syria, in at least a partial reorientation of foreign policy toward the east that Turkish analysts have labeled as “Neo-Ottoman.”

That shift has alarmed officials in Europe and Washington, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to reassure President Obama when he meets him at the White House on Monday that Turkey has not abandoned its Western course.

It is a sign of the Ottoman Empire’s new hold on the popular imagination that in January when Mr. Erdogan publicly rebuked the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, over the war in Gaza, at a debate at Davos, Switzerland, he was greeted enthusiastically by his supporters back in Turkey with the chant, “Our fatih is back!” The allusion was to Fatih — or conqueror — Sultan Mehmet II, the towering sultan who at age 21 conquered Constantinople, now Istanbul, in 1453.

Colleagues said Mr. Erdogan proudly displays an original decree in his office by Sultan Mehmet II granting autonomy to religious minorities within the empire.

“The Ottoman Empire conquered two-thirds of the world but did not force anyone to change their language or religion at a time when minorities elsewhere were being oppressed,” said Egeman Bagis, the minister for European Union affairs. “Turks can be proud of that legacy.”

Pelin Batu, co-host of a popular television history program, argued that the glorification of the Ottoman era by a government with roots in political Islam reflected a revolt against the secular cultural revolution undertaken by Ataturk, who outlawed the wearing of Islamic head scarves in state institutions and abolished the Ottoman-era caliphate.

“Ottomania is a form of Islamic empowerment for a new Muslim religious bourgeoisie who are reacting against Ataturk’s attempt to relegate religion and Islam to the sidelines,” she said.

In a society struggling with its identity, not everyone welcomes the phenomenon.

Some critics accuse its proponents of glossing over the empire’s decline and of glorifying an anachronistic system that, at the very least, was mired in corruption and infighting in its later years. The massacre of Ottoman Armenians between 1915 and 1918 stands as a particular dark spot in the history of the empire.

“The religious Muslims now in power are trying to feed the Turkish people an Ottoman poison,” said Sada Kural, 45, a housewife and staunch supporter of Ataturk’s vision. “The Ottoman era wasn’t a good period; we were the sick man of Europe, rights were suppressed and women only got the vote after Ataturk came to power.”

While some bemoan what they consider the crude commercialization of a nation’s history, others, like Cenan Sarc, 97, who was 10 years old at the time of the empire’s collapse in 1922 and is the descendant of an Ottoman pasha, cautioned against idealizing an era of dictatorship.

Mrs. Sarc recalled her idyllic childhood in a mansion on the Bosporus, a poetic time, she said, when fathers ruled, mothers stayed at home and Islam held sway. But, she insisted, “we can never go back to that time.” Ertugrul Osman, the Ottoman heir, had himself accepted obscurity. When he visited Turkey in 1992, for the first time in 53 years, and went to see the 285-room Dolmabahce Palace, which had been his grandfather’s home, he insisted on joining a public tour group.

Asked frequently if he dreamed about restoring the empire, he always emphatically answered no. “Democracy,” he said, “works well in Turkey.”

Original article here: Frustrated With West, Turks Revel in Empire Lost

More Schools, Not Troops

Pretty much everything this guy writes is brilliant! Nicholas D. Kristof's original article is here:

More Schools, Not Troops

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: October 28, 2009

Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad one, most likely a waste of lives and resources that might simply empower the Taliban. In particular, one of the most compelling arguments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off: For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Nicholas D. Kristof

On the Ground

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It’s hard to do the calculation precisely, but for the cost of 40,000 troops over a few years — well, we could just about turn every Afghan into a Ph.D.
The hawks respond: It’s naïve to think that you can sprinkle a bit of education on a war-torn society. It’s impossible to build schools now because the Taliban will blow them up.
In fact, it’s still quite possible to operate schools in Afghanistan — particularly when there’s a strong “buy-in” from the local community.
Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea,” has now built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan — and not one has been burned down or closed. The aid organization CARE has 295 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, and not a single one has been closed or burned by the Taliban. The Afghan Institute of Learning, another aid group, has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with none closed by the Taliban (although local communities have temporarily suspended three for security reasons).
In short, there is still vast scope for greater investment in education, health and agriculture in Afghanistan. These are extraordinarily cheap and have a better record at stabilizing societies than military solutions, which, in fact, have a pretty dismal record.
In Afghanistan, for example, we have already increased our troop presence by 40,000 troops since the beginning of last year, yet the result has not been the promised stability but only more casualties and a strengthened insurgency. If the last surge of 40,000 troops didn’t help, why will the next one be so different?
Matthew P. Hoh, an American military veteran who was the top civilian officer in Zabul Province, resigned over Afghan policy, as The Washington Post reported this week. Mr. Hoh argues that our military presence is feeding the insurgency, not quelling it.
Already our troops have created a backlash with Kabul University students this week burning President Obama in effigy until police dispersed them with gunshots. The heavier our military footprint, the more resentment — and perhaps the more legitimacy for the Taliban.
Schools are not a quick fix or silver bullet any more than troops are. But we have abundant evidence that they can, over time, transform countries, and in the area near Afghanistan there’s a nice natural experiment in the comparative power of educational versus military tools.
Since 9/11, the United States has spent $15 billion in Pakistan, mostly on military support, and today Pakistan is more unstable than ever. In contrast, Bangladesh, which until 1971 was a part of Pakistan, has focused on education in a way that Pakistan never did. Bangladesh now has more girls in high school than boys. (In contrast, only 3 percent of Pakistani women in the tribal areas are literate.)
Those educated Bangladeshi women joined the labor force, laying the foundation for a garment industry and working in civil society groups like BRAC and Grameen Bank. That led to a virtuous spiral of development, jobs, lower birth rates, education and stability. That’s one reason Al Qaeda is holed up in Pakistan, not in Bangladesh, and it’s a reminder that education can transform societies.
When I travel in Pakistan, I see evidence that one group — Islamic extremists — believes in the transformative power of education. They pay for madrassas that provide free schooling and often free meals for students. They then offer scholarships for the best pupils to study abroad in Wahhabi madrassas before returning to become leaders of their communities. What I don’t see on my trips is similar numbers of American-backed schools. It breaks my heart that we don’t invest in schools as much as medieval, misogynist extremists.
For roughly the same cost as stationing 40,000 troops in Afghanistan for one year, we could educate the great majority of the 75 million children worldwide who, according to Unicef, are not getting even a primary education. We won’t turn them into graduate students, but we can help them achieve literacy. Such a vast global education campaign would reduce poverty, cut birth rates, improve America’s image in the world, promote stability and chip away at extremism.
Education isn’t a panacea, and no policy in Afghanistan is a sure bet. But all in all, the evidence suggests that education can help foster a virtuous cycle that promotes stability and moderation. So instead of sending 40,000 troops more to Afghanistan, how about opening 40,000 schools?

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“war on terrorists” vs. “war on terrorism”

Interesting article by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, not the best - I always find he takes too long to get to the point and/or buries it among a lot of other stuff, but I like his distinction between “war on terrorists” vs. “war on terrorism” as well as his statement, "winning requires partnering with Arab and Muslim societies to help them build thriving countries, integrated with the world economy, where young people don’t grow up in a soil poisoned by religious extremists and choked by petro-dictators so they can never realize their aspirations."


Op-Ed Columnist
Still Not Tired
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 3, 2009

He didn’t want to wear earplugs. Apparently, he wanted to enjoy the blast.

That is what The Dallas Morning News reported about Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, the 19-year-old Jordanian accused of trying to blow up a downtown Dallas skyscraper. He was caught by an F.B.I. sting operation that culminated in his arrest nearly two weeks ago — after Smadi parked a 2001 Ford Explorer Sport Trac, supplied by the F.B.I., in the garage of a Dallas office tower.

“Inside the S.U.V. was a fake bomb, designed to appear similar to one used by Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing,” The News wrote. “Authorities say Smadi thought he could detonate it with a cellphone. After parking the vehicle, he got into another vehicle with one of the agents, and they drove several blocks away. An agent offered Smadi earplugs, but he declined, ‘indicating that he wanted to hear the blast,’ authorities said. He then dialed the phone, thinking it would trigger the bomb. ... Instead, the agents took him into custody.”

If that doesn’t send a little shiver down your spine, how about this one? BBC.com reported that “it has emerged that an Al Qaeda bomber who died last month while trying to blow up a Saudi prince in Jeddah had hidden the explosives inside his body.” He reportedly inserted the bomb and detonator in his rectum to elude metal detectors. My God.

Or how about this? Two weeks ago in Denver, the F.B.I. arrested Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghan immigrant, and indicted him on charges of planning to set off a bomb made of the same home-brewed explosives used in the 2005 London transit bombings. He allegedly learned how to do so on a training visit to Pakistan. The Times reported that Zazi “had bought some bomb ingredients in beauty supply stores, the authorities said, after viewing instructions on his laptop on how to build such a bomb. When an employee of the Beauty Supply Warehouse asked about the volume of materials he was buying, he remembered Mr. Zazi answering, ‘I have a lot of girlfriends.’ ”

These incidents are worth reflecting on. They tell us some important things. First, we may be tired of this “war on terrorism,” but the bad guys are not. They are getting even more “creative.”

Second, in this war on terrorism, there is no “good war” or “bad war.” There is one war with many fronts, including Europe and our own backyard, requiring many different tactics. It is a war within Islam, between an often too-silent Muslim mainstream and a violent, motivated, often nihilistic jihadist minority. Theirs is a war over how and whether Islam should embrace modernity. It is a war fueled by humiliation — humiliation particularly among young Muslim males who sense that their faith community has fallen behind others, in terms of both economic opportunity and military clout. This humiliation has spawned various jihadists cults, including Al Qaeda, which believe they have the God-given right to kill infidels, their own secular leaders and less pious Muslims to purify Islam and Islamic lands and thereby restore Muslim grandeur.

Third, the newest and maybe most active front in this war is not Afghanistan, but the “virtual Afghanistan” — the loose network of thousands of jihadist Web sites, mosques and prayer groups that recruit, inspire and train young Muslims to kill without any formal orders from Al Qaeda. The young man in Dallas came to F.B.I. attention after espousing war on the U.S. on jihadist Web sites.

Fourth, in the short run, winning this war requires effective police/intelligence action, to kill or capture the jihadists. I call that “the war on terrorists.” In the long run, though, winning requires partnering with Arab and Muslim societies to help them build thriving countries, integrated with the world economy, where young people don’t grow up in a soil poisoned by religious extremists and choked by petro-dictators so they can never realize their aspirations. I call this “the war on terrorism.” It takes a long time.

Our operation in Afghanistan after 9/11 was, for me, only about “the war on terrorists.” It was about getting bin Laden. Iraq was “the war on terrorism” — trying to build a decent, pluralistic, consensual government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world. Despite all we’ve paid, the outcome in Iraq remains uncertain. But it was at least encouraging to see last week’s decision by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to run in the next election with a nonsectarian, multireligious coalition — a rare thing in the Arab world.

So, what President Obama is actually considering in Afghanistan is shifting from a “war on terrorists” there to a “war on terrorism,” including nation-building. I still have serious doubts that we have a real Afghan government partner for that. But if Mr. Obama decides to send more troops, the most important thing is not the number. It is his commitment to see it through. If he seems ambivalent, no one there will stand with us and we’ll have no chance. If he seems committed, maybe — maybe — we’ll find enough allies. Remember, the bad guys are totally committed — and they are not tired.

original article here: Thomas L. Friedman: Still Not Tired

the fog of war...

Robert McNamara dies: No escape from Vietnam

"Robert McNamara (who passed away today) waited 30 years before conceding in his 1995 memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, that he had waged the war in error... McNamara admitted in his book that the U.S. government had never answered key questions that drove its war policy, such as whether the fall of Vietnam would lead to a communist Southeast Asia and if such an occurrence would really have posed a grave threat to the West. "It seems beyond understanding, incredible, that we did not force ourselves to confront such issues head-on," he wrote. He said he wanted to help prevent the country from making similar mistakes in the future and that he fretted that just as Washington misperceived Vietnam a generation ago, it remained in danger of making a similar mistake. "We ought to learn the history of the Muslim religion," he told TIME in 1995. "Most Americans don't know the difference between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites, but we need to know that because that's going to be a major issue in the world of the future."

McNamara continued to wage his campaign to make amends for Vietnam through the end of his life, most notably in Errol Morris' Oscar-winning 2003 documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. And he was a vocal critic of the Bush Administration's war in Iraq..."

Troy...

I can't believe we made it to Troy! You feel the history all around you despite the fake Trojan Horse that you can climb up... fun though... It was also a fun boat ride to get here... but it is mighty cold!!