Robert Fisk: An urge to smash history into tiny pieces
Published: 08 September 2007 The Independent on Sunday

What is it about graven images? Why are we humanoids so prone to destroy our own faces, smash our own human history, erase the memory of language? I've covered the rape of Bosnian and Serb and Croatian culture in ex-Yugoslavia – the deliberate demolition of churches, libraries, graveyards, even the wonderful Ottoman Mostar Bridge – and I've heard the excuses. "There's no place for these old things," the Croat gunner reportedly said as he fired his artillery battery towards that graceful Ottoman arch over the Neretva. The videotape of its collapse was itself an image of cultural genocide – until the Taliban exploded the giant Buddhas of Bamian.
And yet there I was earlier this week, staring at another massive Buddha – this time in the Tajiki capital of Dushanbe, only a few hundred miles from the Afghan border. So gently was it sleeping, giant head on spread right hand, that I tiptoed down its almost 40ft length, talking in whispers in case I woke this creature with its Modigliani features, its firmly closed eyes and ski-slope nose. Saved from the ravages of iconoclasts, I thought, until I realised that this karma-inducing god had itself been assaulted.

The top of its head, eyes and nose are intact, but the lower half of its face has been subtly restored by a more modern hand, its long body, perhaps three-quarters new, where the undamaged left hand, palm on hip, lies gently on its upper left leg above the pleats of its original robes. So what happened to this Buddha? Surely the Taliban never reached Dushanbe.
A young curator at Dush-ambe's wonderful museum of antiquities explained in careful, bleak English. "When the Arabs came, they smashed all these things as idolatrous," she said. Ah yes, of course they did. The forces of Islam arrived in modern-day Tajikistan in around AD645 – the Taliban of their day, as bearded as their 20th-century successors, with no television sets to hang, but plenty of Buddhas to smash. How on earth did the Bamian Buddhas escape this original depredation?

The Buddhist temple at Vakhsh, east of Qurghonteppa was itself new (given a hundred years or two) when the Arabs arrived, and the museum contains the "work" of these idol-smashers in desperate, carefully preserved profusion. Buddha's throne appears to have been attacked with swords and the statue of Shiva and his wife Parvati (sixth to eighth centuries) has been so severely damaged by these ancient Talibans that only their feet and the sacred cow beneath them are left.

Originally discovered in 1969 30ft beneath the soil, the statue of "Buddha in Nirvana" was brought up to Dushanbe as a direct result of the destruction of the Buddhas in Afghanistan. Taliban excess, in other words, inspired post-Soviet preservation. If we can no longer gaze at the faces of those mighty deities in Bamian because the Department for the Suppression of Vice and Preservation of Virtue in Kabul deemed them worthy of annihilation, we can still look upon this divinity in the posture of the "sleeping lion" now that it has been freighted up to Dushanbe by the local inheritors of Stalin's monstrous empire. A sobering thought.

A certain B A Litvinsky was responsible for this first act of architectural mercy. Eventually the statue was brought to the Tajiki capital in 92 parts. Not that long ago, a fraternal Chinese delegation arrived and asked to take the sleeping Buddha home with them; they were told that they could only photograph this masterpiece – which may be the genesis of the "new" Buddha in the People's Republic.

Needless to say, there are many other fragments – animals, birds, demons – that made their way from the monastery to the museum. And I had to reflect that the Arabs behaved no worse than Henry VIII's lads when they set to work on the great abbeys of England. Did not even the little church of East Sutton above the Kentish Weald have a few graven images desecrated during the great age of English history? Are our cathedrals not filled with hacked faces, the remaining witness to our very own brand of Protestant Talibans?

Besides, the arrival of the Arabic script allowed a new Tajiki poetry to flourish – Ferdowsi was a Tajik and wrote Shanameh in Arabic – and in Dushanbe, you can see the most exquisite tomb-markers from the era of King Babar, Arabic verse carved with Koranic care into the smooth black surface of the stone. Yet when Stalin absorbed Tajikistan into the Soviet empire – cruelly handing the historic Tajiki cities of Tashkent and Samarkand to the new republic of Uzbekistan, just to keep ethnic hatreds alive – his commissars banned Arabic. All children would henceforth be taught Russian and, even if they were writing Tajiki, it must be in Cyrillic, not in Arabic.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was similarly "modernising" Turkey at this time by forcing Turks to move from Arabic to Latin script (which is one reason, I suspect, why modern Turkish scholars have such difficulty in studying vital Ottoman texts on the 1915 Armenian Holocaust). Get rid of the written language and history seems less dangerous. Didn't we try to do the same thing in Ireland, forcing the Catholic clergy to become hedge-preachers so that the Irish language would remain in spoken rather than written form?

And so the Tajiki couples and the children who come to look at their past in Dushanbe cannot read the Shahnameh as it was written – and cannot decipher the elegant Persian poetry carved on those extraordinary tomb-stones. So here is a tiny victory against iconoclasm, perhaps the first English translation of one of those ancient stones which few Tajiks can now understand:
"I heard that mighty Jamshed the King/ Carved on a stone near a spring of water these words:/ Many – like us – sat here by this spring/ And left this life in the blink of an eye./ We captured the whole world through our courage and strength,/ Yet could take nothing with us to our grave."

Before Marriage - - - >

He: Yes. At last. It was so hard to wait.

She: Do you want me to leave?

He: NO! Don't even think about it.

She: Do you love me?

He: Of course! Over and over!

She: Have you ever cheated on me?

He: NO! Why are you even asking?

She: Will you kiss me?

He: Every chance I get!

She: Will you hit me?

He: Are you crazy! I'm not that kind of person!

She: Can I trust you? He: Yes.

She: Darling! After marriage - - - simply read from bottom totop

A letter sent to Truro Masjid by Glen Pearson M.P. for London North Centre

Halifax Chronicle Herald, Sunday, April 29, 2007

Afghanistan and Iraq: the same war
by David Orchard and Michael Mandel

Four years ago, the U.S. and Britain unleashed war on Iraq, a nearly defenceless Third World country barely half the size of Saskatchewan. For 12 years prior to the invasion and occupation, Iraq had endured almost weekly U.S. and British bombing raids and the toughest sanctions in history, the "primary victims" of which, according to the UN Secretary General, were "women and children, the poor and the infirm." According to UNICEF, half a million children died from sanctions-related starvation and disease.

Then, in March 2003, the U.S. and Britain, possessors of more weapons of mass destruction than the rest of the world combined, attacked Iraq on a host of fraudulent pretexts, with cruise missiles, napalm, white phosphorous, cluster and bunker-buster bombs, and depleted uranium (DU) munitions.

The British medical journal The Lancet published a study last year estimating Iraqi war deaths since 2003 at 655,000, a mind-boggling figure dismissed all too readily by the British and American governments despite widespread scientific approval for its methodology (including the British government's own chief scientific adviser).

On April 11, 2007, the Red Cross issued a report entitled "Civilians without Protection: the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis in Iraq." Citing "immense suffering," it calls "urgently" for "respect for international humanitarian law." Andrew White, Anglican Vicar of Baghdad, added, "What we see on our television screens does not demonstrate even one per cent of the reality of the atrocity of Iraq." The UN estimates two million Iraqis have been "internally displaced;" another two million have fled largely to Syria and Jordan, overwhelming local infrastructure.

An attack such as that on Iraq, neither in self-defence nor authorized by the United Nations Security Council, is, in the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal that condemned the Nazis, "the supreme international crime." According to the Tribunal's chief prosecutor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, such a war is simply mass murder.

Most Canadians are proud that Canada refused to invade Iraq. But when it comes to Afghanistan, we hear the same jingoistic bluster we heard about Iraq four years ago. As if Iraq and Afghanistan were two separate wars, and Afghanistan is the good war, the legal and just war. In reality, Iraq and Afghanistan are the same war.

That's how the Bush administration has seen Afghanistan from the start; not as a defensive response to 9-11, but the opening for regime change in Iraq (as documented in Richard A. Clarke's Against all Enemies). That's why the Security Council resolutions of September 2001 never mention Afghanistan, much less authorize an attack on it. That's why the attack on Afghanistan was also a supreme international crime, which killed at least 20,000 innocent civilians in its first six months. The Bush administration used 9-11 as a pretext to launch an open-ended so-called "war on terror," in reality, a war of terror because it kills hundreds of times more civilians than the other terrorists do.

That the Karzai regime was subsequently set up under UN auspices doesn't absolve the participants in Americas war, and that includes Canada. Nor should the fact that Canada now operates under the UN authorized International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mislead anyone. From the start, ISAF put itself at the service of the American operation, declaring "the United States Central Command will have authority over the International Security Assistance Force" (UNSC Document S/2001/1217). When NATO took charge of ISAF, that didn't change anything. NATO forces are always ultimately under U.S. command. The "Supreme Commander" is always an American general, who answers to the U.S. president.

Canadian troops in Afghanistan not only take orders from the Americans, they help free up more U.S. forces to continue their bloody occupation of Iraq.

When the U.S. devastated Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (1961-1975), leaving behind six million dead or maimed, Canada refused to participate. But today Canada has become part of a U.S. war being waged not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in a network of disclosed and undisclosed centres of physical and mental torture, like Guantanamo Bay in illegally occupied Cuban territory. What we know about what the U.S. government calls terrorism is that it is largely a response to foreign occupation; and what we know about American occupation is that it is a way the rich world forces the rest to surrender their resources.

General Rick Hillier bragged that Canada was going to root out the "scumbags" in Afghanistan. He didn't mention that the Soviets, using over 600,000 troops and billions in aid over 10 years, were unable to control Afghanistan. Britain, at the height of its imperial power, tried twice and failed. Now, Canada is helping another fading empire attempt to impose its will on Afghanistan.

Canadians have traditionally been able to hold their heads high when they travel the world. We did not achieve that reputation by waging war against the world's poor; in large part, we achieved it by refusing to do so.

Canada must immediately, and at the minimum open its doors to Iraqis and Afghans attempting to flee the horror being inflicted on their homelands. We must stop pretending that we're not implicated in their suffering under the bombs, death squads and torture. This means refusing to lend our name, our strength and the blood of our youth in this war without end against the Third World.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

David Orchard is the author of The Fight for Canada: Four Centuries of Resistance to American Expansionism and ran twice for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative party. He farms at Borden, SK and can be reached at tel 306-652-7095, davidorchard@sasktel.net, www.davidorchard.com.

Michael Mandel is Professor of International Law at York Universitys Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto and author of How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity. He can be reached at tel 416-736-5039, MMandel@osgoode.yorku.ca.

Masterpiece


WOMEN'S REVENGE
"Cash, check or charge?" I asked, after folding items the woman wished to purchase.
As she fumbled for her wallet , I noticed a remote control for a television set in her purse.
"So, do you always carry your TV remote?" I asked.
"No," she replied, "but my husband refused to come shopping with me,
and I figured this was the most evil thing I could do to him legally."



UNDERSTANDING WOMEN
(A MAN'S PERSPECTIVE)

I know I'm not going to understand women.
I'll never understand how you can take boiling hot wax,
pour it onto your upper thigh, rip the hair out by the root,
and still be afraid of a spider.



WIFE VS. HUSBAND

A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word.
An earlier discussion had led to an argument and
neither of them wanted to concede their position.
As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs,
the husband asked sarcastically, "Relatives of yours?"
"Yep," the wife replied, "in-laws."


WORDS

A husband read an article to his wife about how many words women use a day...
30,000 to a man's 15,000.
The wife replied, "The reason has to be because we have to repeat everything to men...
The husband then turned to his wife and asked, "What?"



CREATION

A man said to his wife one day, "I don't know how you can be
so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time.
"The wife responded, "Allow me to explain.
God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me;
God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you !



WHO DOES WHAT
A man and his wife were having an argument about who
should brew the coffee each morning.
The wife said, "You should do it because you get up first,
and then we don't have to wait as long to get our coffee.
The husband said, "You are in charge of cooking around here and
you should do it, because that is your job, and I can just wait for my coffee."
Wife replies, "No, you should do it, and besides, it is in the Bible that the man should do the coffee."
Husband replies, "I can't believe that, show me."
So she fetched the Bible, and opened the New Testament and showed him at the top of several pages, that it indeed says .......... "HEBREWS"




The Silent Treatment
A man and his wife were having some problems at home
and were giving each other the silent treatment.
Suddenly, the man realized that the next day, he would need his wife to wake him
at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight.
Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (and LOSE), he wrote on a piece of paper,
"Please wake me at 5:00 AM." He left it where he knew she would find it.
The next morning, the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and he had missed his flight. Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn't wakened him,
when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed.
The paper said, "It is 5:00 AM. Wake up."
Men are not equipped for these kinds of contests.





God may have created man before woman, but there is always a rough draft before the masterpiece .

Iranian people cannot be simply compartmentalized into fanatical pro-theocracy religious people and then secular pro-Western democrats. A large number of Iranians are very difficult to classify. (
Pilgrimage of Karbala on PBS

Watch Video on www.pbs.org

Iran is not just

March 20, 2007: Vali Nasr, Professor, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, and author of THE SHIA REVIVAL, discusses Iran's emerging regional role and the escalating tensions between Iran and the United States with anchor Daljit Dhaliwal.

DALJIT DHALIWAL: Professor Vali Nasr, welcome to Wide Angle.VALI NASR: Thank you. It's good being with you.DALJIT DHALIWAL: What do you make of what you just saw? Put this all into context for us.

VALI NASR: Well, I think it revealed the depth of the emotional attachment to Shiism within Iran. And I think that's very interesting because most people in the West look at Iran and they think of the country as being ruled by a theocracy [with] a population that has become secular and anti-regime and is disaffected with Islam. And that's not the picture that we see. We see an enormous amount of attachment and emotion with the core values of Shiism and particularly with the myth of Karbala. And in the film I was particularly amazed and interested in seeing this associated with this social class in Iran that you often associate with secularism. Families with women who are not wearing the head scarf, have dyed hair; have a dog in their house. And yet their son at one point served in the Revolutionary Guards. And he's so attached to the popular aspects of the religion that he crawls on his stomach towards the shrine in Karbala. And I think that raises a more important issue. Nowadays in the West we talk about how we can extricate Iran from Iraq, as if the relationship of Iran to Iraq is mandated by the highest authorities in the Iranian government. And when we look at this movie, we look at the footage, we see the amount of attachment at the popular level Iranians have to Iraq, where most of the shrines are, where the myths of their religion come from. One wonders how exactly you can exclude Iran from Iraq now. I mean, this goes to the core of the religion that the Iranians and the Iraqis share, that is Shiism, and the fact that the centers of Shiism are in Iraq. And you cannot get Iranians to turn away from Iraq because that's where their whole religion is.

Read more

ِِ
‘

‘‘اچھا تو بیوی سے تمہاری لڑائی کس طرح ختم ہوئی؟‘‘
‘‘وہ گھٹنوں کے بل رینگتی ہوئی میرے پاس آئی۔۔‘‘
‘‘اچھا تو اس نے شکست تسلیم کرتے ہوئے کیا کہا؟‘‘
کہنے لگی‘‘چلو چارپائی کے نیچے سے نکلو۔۔آئیندہ زبان سنھبال کر بات کرنا۔۔‘‘


وجہء سکوت
‘کیا تم نے کبھی ایسا منظر دیکھا کہ عورتوں کی محفل میں مکمل خاموشی چھا گئی ہو۔۔‘
‘جی ہاں!کل ہی لیڈیز کلب کی میٹنگ میں اس وقت مکمل سناٹا چھا گیا۔۔جب چئیر پرسن نے کہا کہ کلب کی سب سے عمر رسیدہ خاتون سٹیج پر آکر سب سے پہلے خطاب کریں۔۔‘‘

NPR interview about Rumi with Coleman Barks


WBUR's Connection series a call-in radio show, with Coleman Barks as the guest

Belinda Stronach did right with Peter Mackay?




This agreement was published in the Globe and Mail, June 5, 2003 under the heading "Tory leadership deal. Peter MacKay won David Orchard's support at the Tory leadership convention based on a deal hastily scrawled on a piece of paper."

May 31, 2003 Agreement between Peter MacKay and David Orchard

1) No merger, joint candidates w[ith] Alliance. Maintain 301.

2) Review of FTA/NAFTA - blue ribbon commission with D[avid] O[rchard] w[ith] choice of chair w[ith] P[eter] M[acKay's] agreement. Rest of members to be jointly agreed upon.

3) Clean up of head office including change of national director in consultation (timing w[ithin] reasonable period in future, pre-election) and some of DO's people working at head office.

4) Commitment to making environmental protection front and center incl[uding] sustainable agriculture, forestry, reducing pollution through rail.

[Signed by Peter MacKay and David Orchard]

Israeli Author, Peace Activist Tanya Reinhart Dies at 63

The Israeli linguist, author and peace activist Tanya Reinhart has died of a stroke at the age of sixty-three. Reinhart was one of the most outspoken critics of Israeli government policies and one of Israel's leading advocates for Palestinian national rights. She was professor emeritus of linguistics and media studies at Tel Aviv University and Global Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at New York University. She wrote columns for Israel's largest daily newspaper, Yediot Ahranot, and had an active following of readers around the world for her critical perspectives on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Her books include "Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948" and "The Road Map to Nowhere." In December, she moved to New York saying she could no longer live in Israel due to its treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

For many years, Reinhart was an outspoken critic of Israel's handling of the Palestinian problem. She argued that Israel should abandon the West Bank and Gaza:

Israel should withdraw immediately from the territories occupied in 1967. The bulk of Israeli settlers (150,000 of them) are concentrated in the big settlement blocks in the center of the West bank. These areas cannot be evacuated over night. But the rest of the land (about 90%–96% of the West bank and the whole of the Gaza strip) can be evacuated immediately. Many of the residents of the isolated Israeli settlements that are scattered in these areas are speaking openly in the Israeli media about their wish to leave. It is only necessary to offer them reasonable compensation for the property they will be leaving behind. The rest — the hard-core "land redemptions" fanatics — are a negligible minority that will have to accept the will of the majority.

جناب الطاف حسین نے فرمایا "جیو پر حملھ آزادی صحافت پر حملھ ھے۔۔
تو جناب جنگ کے جلے ھوے پرچے اب کراچی کی ہوا میں اڑ رھے ہیں۔ اور اگر آپ کی ناک حساس ہے تو آپ جلے ہوے انسانی گوشت کی بو بھی محسوس کر سکتے ہیں۔
وہ حملھ کس پر تھا

Jeremy Matthew Glick is an author and activist, best known for his appearance on The O’Reilly Factor on 4 February 2003.

Glick is a co-author of the book, Another World Is Possible, and should not be confused with another Jeremy Glick, a passenger on hijacked UA flight 93.