What Sakib's Reading

Osama and Orientalism: Where Islamophobes Meet Al-Qaeda | Religion and Theology | ReligionDispatches [www.religiondispatches.org] Posted: 30 Mar 2009 05:27 AM PDT The deeper problem is that many Muslims, at least in the United States, are internalizing this Orientalism. The result is that the Muslim community is not fighting this fight as equals and partners, but instead act as mere bystanders. They remain frustrated, wishing to do more, but do not have the capacity to get involved. Their understanding of the faith can be defined as much by CNN as anything else.

Drone Count: March 2009

Barack Obama ramped up his drone war on western Pakistan in the month of March. The frequency of attacks has increased since our previous update. Here are the most recent documented bombings on the allegedly sovereign state of Pakistan:

Mar 1 2009 - At least 8 people killed and 9 wounded in the village of Hebat Khan in the Sararogha area of South Warizistan, after 2 consecutive missiles were fired.

Mar 12 2009 - Obama's drones strike upon the Kurram agency with at least 24 new deceased. 4 missiles struck a residential building.

Mar 15 2009 - US unmanned Predator aircraft attacked in the Bannu district of NWFP in Pakistan. The village of Chota Janikhel was hit killing at least 5 people.

Mar 25 2009 - 2 missiles from a US drone kill at least 8 in Makeen, south Warizistan.

Mar 26 2009 - The town of Mir Ali in Sokhel, north Warizistan was attacked by a drone missile strike killing 5 and injuring the same number. It marked a drone attack on consecutive days.

These attacks have resulted in at least 50 killed since our prior report--for a total of 134 deaths from 8 strikes since the beginning of the Obama administration. Drones are undeniably an efficient killing machine. However, the efficacy of the amplification of this Bush-Obama policy that has resulted in the murder of dozens of innocent civilians, remains unproven.

What Sakib's Reading

The secret war against American workers [Salon] Posted: 30 Mar 2009 03:40 AM PDT

Jim Webb's courage v. the "pragmatism" excuse for politicians [Salon: Glenn Greenwald] Posted: 28 Mar 2009 06:02 AM PDT

Palestinian Land Loss

The above is a simple graphic of Palestinian land loss. Green represents Arab (Muslim and Christian) land that is inhabited by and belongs to the Palestinians. White represents Jewish controlled territory. The first snapshot is from 1946, the last from 2000. The picture speaks for itself.

The Guardian (UK) Investigates Israeli War Crimes in Gaza

Palestinian children used as human shields

Medics, ambulances, and hospitals targeted

Drones used to kill children, civilians

The Sweet Science

Can we all at least agree that Mike Tyson is the "baddest man on the planet"? Iron Mike was the most dominant heavyweight fighter ever and arguably the best of all time. In his prime, Tyson was absolutely unstoppable--raw, relentless, brute, and powerful. His entrance into the arena--shirtless or in a cut-out towel draped around his neck sent a bone-chilling fear into this opponents. They cowered in the ring, in anticipation of the most vicious uppercuts in the history of mankind. Referees counting to ten and the relative comfort of being face-down on the mat, were the only sense of relief and escape, for those that dared to face him.

Tyson created an aura that was unmatched. The ringside was electric, closed circuit/PPV homes at a premium, and kids with Mike Tyson's PunchOut, the most popular. Heavyweight boxing was at a pinnacle because simply put, Tyson was there and boxing mattered. The spectre of impending doom of his opponents filled the seats and minted money. A strong argument can be made that Muhammad Ali was equally entertaining, and the best heavyweight champion ever. Ali, was the polar opposite of Tyson--nimble, quick, flashy, and full of guile. He was without a doubt equally important for the sport and brought it to the heights that enabled Tyson to become a superstar.

Who's the best of all-time? We'll never know but this can be argued until the end of day. The mythical Tyson-Ali fight remains the most desired of matchups. You can't go wrong with the butterfly quick Ali, but I'll hang my hat on the man who eloquently stated: "Everybody has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth." Iron. Mike. Tyson.

The Fast and the Furious: Audi R8

Construction America

Driving to work yesterday, I passed 2 separate construction crews. The first was a 6-man team with large trucks and lumber equipment. In this group, 2 members were being used to direct traffic holding "STOP/SLOW" signs on the road, on either ends of the site. They were not more than 25 yards apart. 1 member was cutting a log, or at least looked like he was partaking in some sort of actual physical activity. Around him, 3 other men who were huddled together watched. About 15 miles down the road another crew had 4 members and one piece of heavy machinery. The machine operator cleared some debris from the side of the excavated road. The other 3 members carefully watched the machine operator.

This typical scene of construction workers embodies the American work ethic. It is not the work ethic that Obama so glowingly praises and refers to all of the time. Construction serves as a microcosm of what is a nationwide epidemic. Unskilled laborers making $45/hour for simple assembly line jobs, business consultants spending over half their days chatting on AIM, corporate executives playing Ponzi with client's hard earned monies--this is the reality. Is it any surprise that jobs have been shipped overseas to places like India and China where workers actually work? Utter laziness is just one of many causes of America's diseased economy. Perhaps the one with the hardest cure.

Norman Finkelstein on Gaza Massacre

Crossing Rafah

The recent Israeli massacre in Gaza has resulted in the death, carnage, and destruction that has become a recurring theme for both the Palestinians and Lebanese. The barbaric crimes committed by the Israeli Defense Forces is obvious. What has often been overlooked is the complicity of neighboring Arab states, mainly Egypt, in this unrelenting assault.

Israel and Egypt have enforced the land-sea-air embargo which has been in effect since June 2007--after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip. Under the pretext of declaring Hamas a terrorist organization, the war-torn coastal strip has been under a virtual siege for nearly two years. Very little goes in or out of Gaza through official border crossings. Nearly every consumer good from a can of Coke to oil, is smuggled through a series of tunnels along the Egypt-Gaza border. It is essential to the survival of people living in what is commonly referred to as the "world's largest outdoor prison."

The official border gate between Egypt and Gaza is in the town of Rafah. This border has been essentially sealed since the blockade was instituted in 2007--limiting the influx/outflux of both goods and people. Israel reduced the number of commodities allowed in, including foodstuffs such as lentils and macaroni, from 9000 to 20 during this time period. Furthermore, in late 2007, Israel began to cut fuel supplies to this embattled territory. In January of 2008, due to a lack of fuel, the only power plant in Gaza shut down its operations. This led to a breach of the wall at Rafah by Palestinians on January 23, 2008. It is estimated that almost half of the 1.5 Million residents of Gaza crossed into the Egyptian side of Rafah to purchase essential foods, medicines, and other goods of survival.

Crossing the Rafah border into Gaza remains a very difficult task, even for humanitarian aid or medical personnel. During the recent Israeli bombardment of Gaza, civilian refugees of war were not allowed into Egypt to escape air strikes and a looming ground invasion. An overstressed and embargo-weakened medical system was unable to adequately serve the Gazan population in the recent attacks that left over 1300 dead, and 6000 wounded. Egypt allowed a select few of the injured and maimed to cross the Rafah gates, to receive treatment in its own nation. Furthermore, Egypt denied passage for numerous casualties destined for treatment in Europe and abroad. These patients, predominantly children, were turned back to the inadequate care provided by the collapsing Palestinian health system. In addition, the Israeli border was completely closed as well, with an exceptionally limited number of people who even dared to venture near its checkpoints and heavily fortified Apartheid Wall.

To add insult to injury, Egyptian border officials made the entrance of humanitarian aid extremely difficult during this crisis. At the Rafah terminal, numerous international volunteer medical teams waited for weeks to gain entrance to Gaza, if they were allowed in at all. Convoys of donated aid from nations as wide-ranging as Venezuela to the United Arab Emirates, also waited for weeks before being allowed in. The Egyptian enforcement of the Israeli-led blockade undoubtedly led to preventable suffering, hunger, and death of the Palestinian population.

Despite claims of an open border by Egyptian officials--numerous first-hand accounts from American, South African, and Turkish medical teams prove otherwise. A litany of media reports by the international press also documents quite well, the virutal sealing of Rafah. There are a variety of reasons why Egypt may be enforcing this crippling, inhumane policy--covert agreements with the Israelis, US funding to an annual tune of up to $1.7 Billion, fear of populist ideology spreading to Egypt and threatening the established dictatorship, or profiteering from the smuggling industry. This much is clear--the underground tunnels will remain the lifeblood of the Gazan people until Crossing Rafah is no longer a myth, but a reality.

Crisis of Credit

Aspiring "polymaths",

Below is a video explaining the origin of the credit crisis. Who said economics is just for economists?


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo

Obama Wars: Attack of the Drones

A quick update on Obama's war on Pakistan:

Jan 18 2009 - Obama takes oath in office: "To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect."

Jan 23 2009 - Obama orders his 1st drone attack on Pakistan. At least 22 killed in North and South Waziristan

Feb 14 2009 - Obama's 2nd drone attack by a US Predator kills at least 32 in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan

Feb 16 2009 - Obama orders 3rd attack on Pakistan, in the Kurram agency, killing at least 30

In a flagrant violation of both human rights as well as Pakistan's sovereignty, that results in a total of at least 84 murdered since the Inauguration--many of whom are women and children. Please help us keep tally as we will continue to update the Drone Count

Will an "economic adjustment" mean a renewed American humility?

It's a fundamental question based on a fact pattern universally known and fairly well understood. The nation has been spending too much, producing too little, for too long. Debt is high, credit is low. There is little utility to delving further into the specifics before asking, what happened to the America we grew up reading about in history books? And more importantly, can it come back?

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From the lay person's perspective, the American economy has two fundamental problems. The first is that there are vast, established parts of the economy which are wholly phantom in nature. (The second will be addressed at a later date and time.) Bernie Maddoff's ponzi scheme is one such piece. Sub-prime mortgage backed securities are another. But sadly, the phantasm doesn't end there. Large national law firms, for example, are engaging in massive layoffs as work stops coming in. The phantom component to their business plans wasn't some non-existent client--it was inflated value for the work they were providing. Ideally, when a client hires a consultant or retains an attorney, fees are paid for a service which will ultimately save the client money. The value added to the client must excede fees charged. Billing that works off of a percentage of value-added (ie attorney/consultant takes home 10% of value-added) has been discussed for years, but the difficulty and uncertainty in actually quantifying the value-added leads clients and consultants to choose hourly billing instead.

Regardless of how fees are calculated, the ratio of fees to value-added is the most important decision making factor when deciding to retain services in most cases. The problem with law firms and other struggling service providers is that their rates are too high for the value that they add. That's why business has slowed. While no one may actually have quantified value-added, clients are often more savvy than metrics. They know their bottomlines and have a sixth-sense for where their profits actually come from. They've stopped buying because the fees to value-added ratio is simply too high.

So, why doesn't service-providing America simply drop prices? It's incredibly humbling for a professional who has built his or her livelihood for charging for their time and spent decades preparing to charge a high rate, to accept that maybe their work/their time/their effort is simply not as valuable as previously thought. If the market will require, in order to stay in business, an adjustment in prices, will the result correspond with a Darwinian selection of the humblest surviving and the arrogant dying off?

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Recessions, and especially depressions, are times for soul-searching and a reevaluation of the metrics by which we determine our own success. If before, the pursuit of material things allowed us to self-value, now with their evaporation and without practical opportunity to pursue them at will, we find value in new things. We revalue our time, what it is worth. What before might have been a $500/hr services, is now $250. Not because quality or effort has dropped, but because the value to the client never actually supported $500. We are in this mess because we moved away from our equilibrium, our pricing, lending and investing was not sustainable.

Sustainable pricing has been ethically necessary in some form or another since the beginning of professional services ethics. Engineers, lawyers, even auto mechanics engage in it all the time. I took my car to the body shop once, to ask if a scratch could be touched up. The previous shop I had taken it to gave me a $300 estimate. At the second auto shop, the mechanic took a look at the scratch, grabbed a towel and some de-greaser, and cleaned the scratch out to the point it was barely noticeable. By doing so, he lost the $299 he could have charged me by bidding less than the first shop. But he was honest, so he did the job at lowest cost to me. I now take my car to his shop only.

As we move forward, we need to realize that there is little difference between the a mechanic charging me $299 for a service he could to for $5 and a lawyer charging $500 for a service that only adds $3000 to the client's value (assuming the maximum sustainable ratio of fees:value-added is less than 1/6, which I believe it might be) or a doctor charging $600 for a procedure that he could charge $400 if HMOs or Medicare weren't footing the bill. What was the additional money going to pay for before for the client? The prestige and ego of retaining a pricier service?

Ultimately, inflated prices for professional services will have to go the way of mortgaged backed securities and magical Madoff funds. Hopefully, the void left will be filled with a renewed sense of honesty and humility.

Critical Points of Philosophy in Nevada v. Simpson

This post originally appeared on EagleIOnline, Boston College Law School's student blog.

EagleIOnline has been too understaffed to provide in-depth legal analysis of the upcoming critical, groundbreaking case: State of Nevada v. Orenthal James Simpson, et. al. Unfortunately for our readership, green and virginal 1L Sakib, EagleIOnline’s newest opinion columnist, has been tasked with this assignment.

NEWTON, MA State of Nevada prosecutors filed charges, 1 misdemeanor and 7 felonies, against OJ Simpson and 3 of his associates in relation to his storming of a Las Vegas hotel room. The mildly entertaining fact pattern is as follows:


• Simpson and his girlfriend, a creepy dead-ringer for his late ex-wife, were staying at the Palms Las Vegas in a humble $250 per night room. The Goldman family has yet to claim ownership of all complementary shampoos and soaps.
• Ex-con, Thomas Riccio, the man who displayed impeccable scruples in his auctioneering of Anna Nicole Smith’s diaries, contacted OJ about memorabilia OJ suspected had been stolen from him, including the “Trial of the Century” suit he wore at his acquittal hearing.
• “The Juice”, feeling the squeeze of the $33.5 million dollars in civil liability owed to the Goldman family, did not rent a car in Vegas. He arranged for an old golfing buddy, Walter Alexander, to put together a crew and get a truck to aid Simpson in the recovery of his stolen personal property.
• Alexander assembled the crew. AC Collins was unavailable, so Alexander recruited “helpers.” (Use your imagination… your vivid imagination.)
• The crew reached the Place Station casino-hotel, a class A dump, and Riccio led them to a room where memorabilia dealers Alfred Beardsley and Bruce Fromong were waiting for a prospective buyer.
• Chaos ensued as Simpson’s motley crew rushed into the room with the gusto of the famed “Electric Company” offensive line.
• One of the gang, probably the one playing the role of Scooby, yelled, “I’m a cop and you’re lucky this ain’t L.A. or you’d be dead.” EagleIOnline failed in efforts to contact Mark Fuhrman for comment.
• Simpson added quisitive insight: “Don’t let nobody get out of here. Motherfucker, you think you can steal my shit and get away with it?”
• Simpson had his men grab up all of the memorabilia in the room and fled to the parking lot. Only then did Simpson check what it was that Beardsley and Fromong had–the scheme recovered only one Simpson item.

Any solid legal analysis would begin by spotting the issues and then applying facts to precedent. The facts of this case beg the question, why is there even a prosecution? Sure, guns were drawn, but they weren’t fired. Sure, there was an intent to take property from someone who had possession, but it was assumed to be wrongful possession. OJ was given a chance to take what was rightfully his, and he took it. Are OJ Simpson’s actions anything other than American?

According to the State of Nevada, there are several minor, ancillary laws on the books: burglary, assault, robbery, kidnapping, conspiracy, etc. which the facts might support OJ violating, in technicality. Many states have “blue laws”, but prosecutions tend to follow evil, anti-American wrongfulness, like killing your ex-wife and her boyfriend in cold blood.

As any 1L worth their liberal arts degree can tell you (or in my case, worth my minor in Middle Eastern Cultures), this issue is not of law, nor of fact, but rather of philosophy. A diligent researcher need not delve far into the annals of philosophy to find classical precedent. In Euthyphro, Socrates inquires as to why Euthyphro seeks to prosecute his father for murder. When Euthyphro explains that he’s doing it because he’s being pious, The Socratic Methodologist asks for more. “Piety is what I am doing now; that is to say, prosecuting any one who is guilty of murder, sacrilege, or of any similar crime.” Our analytical Athenian uncle did not accept this shallow argument, and neither shall we.

Why is the Clark County prosecutor bringing the Simpson case despite the fact that Fromong has been quoted as saying, “Never at any time was I ever, [sic] did I feel threatened by O.J.,” and Beardsley requested that charges not be filed? Piety is what he is doing now? But piety to what? To the Law! To the law? But what does the law gain from turning OJ into prison pulp? Respect in the eyes of others? Who are these others? Respect by who and for who? By the citizenry for the government? By blacks for whites? By C-list celebrities for the tabloid cabal? By adoring fans for some soon-to-be-famous prosecutor? These are critical points not of fact, nor of law, but of philosophy.

Bibliography:
“OJ Got Stung Going in with a Sting,” by Stacey Silberman, Hollywood Today, October 1st, 2007.
“Accounts reveal how alleged Simpson caper crumbled,” Associated Press on CNN.com, September 23rd, 2007.
“OJ Simpson has some wiggle room for second great escape,” by Tony Allen-Mills, The Sunday Times, September 23rd, 2007.
“A Timeline of the Latest OJ Simpson Case,” Associated Press, September 22nd, 2007.
Criminal Complaint, State of Nevada v. Orenthal James Simpson, et. al., September 18th, 2007.
Apparent Tape of O.J. Released in Vegas, Associated Press, September 17th, 2007.
Euthyphro, Transcribed by Plato circa 380 B.C.E., Translated by Benjamin Jowett.

Class division, the economy, and public radio stealing my blog entries

This post originally appeared on the now defunct blog, Team Sakib.

One of my favorite shows on NPR is Marketplace, NPR's daily business review. While most business or economics media outlets (like WSJ) target their programming for affluent and powerful businessmen (who, I'm sure, command a strong demand in the advertising sector), Marketplace tends to make that pull a little less. Yes, Marketplace is still economics skewed for the rich, like CNBC, but it makes that assumption that these rich might want to hear a slightly more balanced approach.

Anywho, last night's Marketplace show stole a couple of ideas I had for posts. Or rather, featured other people who had the same ideas that I did, and got the job done fleshing them out much sooner and better. I'll discuss the larger issue one now and save Cal-Berkeley's analysis of Facebook vs. Myspace for later.

The financial gap is everyone's problem

by John Authers, investment editor, The Financial Times

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And that could be a problem — for the rich.

That's not an original observation. It goes back at least as far as Karl Marx, who talked of "two great hostile camps" that could sort out their differences either through revolution or in "the common ruin of the contending classes."

Nobody on Wall Street is advocating revolution. But if UBS, the biggest bank in Switzerland, can say it finds that "low-income Americans have been in a recession all this century" that says something.

UBS believes that inequality is a deepening problem for everyone, and not just the poor.

And Wall Street is right to be worried. First of all, it makes the job of investing harder.

That's because numbers on the aggregate economy become meaningless when you have two separate economies, one built around the rich and the other around the poor.

So, good luck on deciding where to put your money. If you want to lend, look no further than the subprime mortgage debacle. The headlines show the U.S. economy barely slowing down, and yet the subprime mortgage industry is in crisis.

The theory is that diversification will look after you. Mortgages and other loans are now packaged up and sold on as securities. If you buy a security representing a range of mortgates, defaults should stay at a manageable rate.

But that assumes all borrowers are living in the same economy. If they are living in two, one of which is in crisis, such comfortable assumptions go out of the window.

And if you want to invest, luxury goods are a good investment but there is a limit as to how many of those goods the rich will buy. Selling to the increasingly poorer economy looks risky.

Marx said that inequality could be a problem for everyone. He proposed his own solution, which would certainly not go down well with the wealthy. But remember his other option was "common ruin."

Wall Street is taking that more seriously than you'd think.

The economy has been absolutely rosy from my vantage point, the upper class vantage point that is. Yet, it is not hard to believe that as gas prices rise, and with them the price of any basic good that has to be shipped, the price of heat and hot water, and the cost of simply getting to work everyday, that the lower class economy is struggling. It's ironic how it seems that affordable energy is a key element to development--see Iran's struggles with subsidized gas prices as the country regresses from developing third world country (a rare breed) to militaristic economically-stunted third world country (see Pakistan). In the US, we've seen high gas prices the last seven years, and with it we've seen a slow-down in all sectors of the economy, except on the street, where luxury consumer goods seem to be more prevalent now than ever before (I have no citation).

The trend seems to be rather entrenched, and the result imminent, though not through drastic discrete events. Over time, it seems the rich will continue to get richer, the poor will continue to get poorer. More than terrorism, more than the war, more than civil liberties, this should be the foremost concern of American Muslims. Yes or no?

Pat Effing Buchanon makes sense?

This post originally appeared on the now defunct blog, Team Sakib.

Islamo-fascism?
by Patrick J. Buchanan - September 1, 2006

“President Likens Dewey to Hitler as Fascist Tool.”

So ran the New York Times headline on Oct. 26, 1948, after what Dewey biographer Richard Norton Smith called a “particularly vitriolic attack in Chicago” by Harry Truman.

What brings this to mind is President Bush’s assertion that we are “at war with Islamic fascism” and “Islamo-fascism.”

After the transatlantic bomb plot was smashed, Bush said the plotters “try to spread their jihadist message I call – it’s totalitarian in nature, Islamic radicalism – Islamic fascism; they try to spread it, as well, by taking the attack to those of us who love freedom.”

What is wrong with the term Islamo-fascism?

First, there is no consensus as to what “fascism” even means. Orwell said when someone calls Smith a fascist, what he means is “I hate Smith. ” By calling Smith a fascist, you force Smith to deny he’s a sympathizer of Hitler and Mussolini.

As a concept, writes Arnold Beichman of the Hoover Institution, “fascism … has no intellectual basis at all nor did its founders even pretend to have any. Hitler’s ravings in ‘Mein Kampf’ … Mussolini’s boastful balcony speeches, all of these can be described, in the words of Roger Scruton, as an ‘amalgam of disparate conceptions.’”

Richard Pipes considers Stalinism and Hilterism to be siblings of the same birth mother: “Bolshevism and fascism were heresies of socialism.”

Since the 1930s, “fascist” has been a term of hate and abuse used by the left against the right, as in the Harry Truman campaign. In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. claimed to see in the Goldwater campaign “dangerous signs of Hitlerism.” Twin the words “Reagan, fascism” in Google and 1,800,000 references pop up.

Unsurprisingly, it is neoconservatives, whose roots are in the Trotskyist-social Democratic left, who are promoting use of the term. Their goal is to have Bush stuff al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran into the same “Islamo-fascist” kill box, then let Strategic Air Command do the rest.

But the term represents the same lazy, shallow thinking that got us into Iraq, where Americans were persuaded that by dumping over Saddam, we were avenging 9/11.

But Saddam was about as devout a practitioner of Islam as his hero Stalin was of the Russian Orthodox faith. Saddam was into booze, mistresses, movies, monuments, palaces and dynasty. Bin Laden loathed him and volunteered to fight him in 1991, if Saudi Arabia would only not bring the Americans in to do the fighting Islamic warriors ought to be doing themselves.

And whatever “Islamo-fascism” means, Syria surely is not it. It is a secular dictatorship Bush I bribed into becoming an ally in the Gulf War. The Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in Syria. In 1982, Hafez al-Assad perpetrated a massacre of the Brotherhood in the city of Hama that was awesome in its magnitude and horror.

As with Gadhafi, whom Bush let out of the penalty box after he agreed to pay $10 million to the family of each victim of Pan Am 103 and give up his nuclear program, America can deal with Syria as Israel did after the Yom Kippur War – for an armistice on the Golan that has stuck, as both sides have kept the deal.

America faces a variety of adversaries, enemies and evils. But the Bombs-Away Caucus, as Iraq and Lebanon reveal, does not always have the right formula. Al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran all present separate challenges calling forth different responses.

Al-Qaida appears to exist for one purpose: Plot and perpetrate mass murder to terrorize Americans and Europeans into getting out of the Islamic world. Contrary to what Bush believes, the 9/11 killers and London and Madrid bombers were not out to repeal the Bill of Rights, if any ever read it. They are out to kill us, and we have to get them first.

Hamas and Hezbollah have used terrorism, but, like Begin’s Irgun and Mandela’s ANC, they have social and political agendas that require state power to implement. And once a guerrilla-terrorist movement takes over a state, it acquires state assets and interests that are then vulnerable to U.S. military and economic power.

Why did the ayatollah let the American hostages go as Reagan raised his right hand to take the oath of office? Why did Syria not rush to the rescue of Hezbollah? What did Ahmadinejad not rocket Tel Aviv in solidarity with his embattled allies in Lebanon? Res ipse loquitor. The thing speaks for itself. They don’t want war with Israel, and they don’t want war with the United States.

“Islamo-fascism” should be jettisoned from Bush’s vocabulary. It yokes the faith of a billion people with an odious ideology. Imagine how Christians would have reacted, had FDR taken to declaring Franco’s Spain and Mussolini’s Italy “Christo-fascist.”

If Bush does not want a war of civilizations, he will drop these propaganda terms that are designed to inflame passions rather than inform the public of the nature of the war we are in, and the war we are not in.

I am Zizou!

This post originally appeared on the now defunct blog, Team Sakib.

Above: Tipu Sultan wrestles a tiger. Below: Zizou headbutts Materrazi.

Zidane undoubtedly lost France the match. His snapping like that is inexcusable in almost every circumstance. There is one possibility where Zidane may well have been merited in putting that biggot on his back. Sherif and Shakeer will back me up on this from Messick's Muslim Societies class, specifically the unit on Algeria in France.

As we all know, racial tensions run high in Europe, between Muslims (Arabs, Turks, Africans or Pakistanis depending on the country) and the indigenous white Europeans. Before the World Cup, FIFA made combating racism an underlying theme for the World Cup, and even threatened forfeiture of matches for teams whose players or fans engaged in racist acts. Zidane himself has been at the center of this issue for the last decade. Undoubtedly the best soccer player ever to play for France, Zidane is a marketing icon in France and Nike and others have used him to push the "New France" image of racial integration, including the motto for the '98 France squad that Zidane carried to WC championship, "black, blanc and beur" (black, white and arab). Zidane's image as a ghetto born Algerian son of immigrants has not been with the clenched fist or with a defiant Allahu-Akbar, but rather the image has been of the ghetto child becoming France, an integrated, accepting and championship-winning France.

And yet, at his finest hour, at the top of his game, having scored one goal, and almost won the game on a second, Zidane still could not escape the "dirty terrorist" accusation. FIFA Player of the Decade, unanimously considered the 3rd best player (and best midfielder) in history, Zidane was nothing more than a "dirty terrorist" sand nigger. So much for "black, blanc, beur", for the Nike campaigns, for the image and the effort. So much for the "New France".

It is well known that Zidane has been extremely careful in downplaying his Muslim-ness, his politics, even his heritage, in hope that he could just play soccer. And yet the 2006 tournament MVP, simply couldn't just play soccer and escape the baggage. On the field, it was there. His home (Europe) continued to reject him, even as he transcended his game, his country, his continent, to be the best soccer player Europe has ever produced. In a tournament supposedly being played to create mutually understanding and harmony, hearing remarks like those Materazzi is accused off undermines and delegitimizes the whole endeavor. If the 1998 Cup was the symbol of the victory of multiculturalism, the fact that racism and xenophobia are now more prevalent in both Europe and in international soccer is the demise of both Europe and soccer as a positive force. And with the demise of soccer as a positive force, Zidane seemed to quit playing it. Maybe the most telling moment of the game was not the instant when Zidane headbutted Materrazi, but the split second when he, walking up the field, turned his back on the ball, stopped playing soccer and squared up the racist Italian. Maybe Zidane didn't let his country down as much as the game, with its false promise of growing equality and acceptance, let Zidane down. And let all of Europe down. Maybe the game simply wasn't worth playing anymore.

Zidane has yet to speak, but has plans to do so soon. Such deliberation doesn't bode well for the possibility that Zidane simply snapped. Maybe more is at work. Maybe soccer failed him, and his people, despite his world class efforts. I'm not saying that this was his conscience thought process, but I'm certain that this failure of soccer, the World Cup, dominance, recognition and fame to grant that which he and millions of other French minorities have been denied must have played a role in the split second dismissal of soccer from the equation of Zizou's decision making.

Zizou's story is important to each of us, the children of immigrants and converts to a foreign religion, because it is a part of our story. A story of questionable acceptance, doubt in human nature, faith in the system, and hope for a new paradigm tomorrow, where the margins become part of the page and slogans like "black, blanc, beur" shift from slick sneaker advertisements to constitutions, laws and societal conscience.

the man vs. post-structuralism

This post originally appeared on the now defunct blog, Team Sakib.

dedicated to mohamed haroun

he sits in quiet
waiting to pounce
he lurks around me
privacy denounced
he is the system
and beneath the system
his power and anger boils
his greed much greater than cotton or gold or oil

he looks to steal the light out of souls
rip open your heart like the temple of doom
the ghost colored figure emotions of anguish, guilt, sorrow and pride
horrors not even capable of pharoan before his tomb

i sit alone across from his lair
he sits beside me
wind blowing his maine of golden hair
we ponder why he does it
and why i must resist
and why he must continue
why wont he cease and desist
but he is in his place, his role
and i am in mine
and we sit on these steps
sun dying with time

and we look to our left
we look to kent
and in the 5th floor window
we see the Indian Civ TA from tashkent
and in the window below his
we see our buddy Foucault
Michael greets us
he begins with, "Hello"

F-man is quite big here
Eddy made him so
He subverts my companion
who has become a bit slow
but often they seem chummy
Michael and the Man
as if ambiguity and civil rights
go hand-in-hand
but I look to wise Foucault
for the answers that lay beneath
why the man and I sit here in quiet
with our passions, ambitions and future underneath

sakib, you know the drill
you and he are in constructed roles
and if the construct were different
you would both switch souls
with his soul the rebel
and yours the oppressor
with both of you swapped
and no one the better

i say you frenchie this nihilism is mad whack,
your theories and methods are better than that

how would you know sakib?
did you read my book?

well frog, i listened in class
and my engineering degree is proof
reading is a pain in the ass
but semantics aside, isn't it you
who says there's more to me than construction
that my soul holds something true

and with those words
kent falls dark
the TA falls asleep
and the man turns out to be a farse
i sit there now alone
everything deconstructed
alone with my soul
no man, no ideology, no steps, no oppression
just me

i am all i have
my only evidence is me
and all i can think of is
"There is no God but Thee"

The Game Thickens, Sickens: Denmark, Cartoons, Iran and O-I-L

A version of this post originally appeared on the now defunct blog, Team Sakib.

It seems the entirety of the relevant Muslim world is flipping out over the cartoons printed months ago in a Danish newspaper demeaning the Prophet (pbuh).

This Wikipedia summary provides an approximate chronology. The thing blew up when the Danish government was asked to either censure the paper or issue an apology by several Muslim governments, and it refused. Now Danish embassies are being bombed and closed throughout the Middle East and in Pakistan and other Euros are at threat too.

Muslims have to realize, we can't expect enemies to deal with us civilly. The barbaric, uncivilized types that run conservative, xenophobic, European newspapers are the same types that run conservative, xenophobic, American media outlets. You will not get Michael Savage to apologize for hating on Islam, because Michael Savage hates Islam.

My friend, OS, brought this article to my attention today in the Guardian. In it, a European Muslim group accuse the Danish newspaper of having a "double standard" because it refused to publish a cartoon demeaning Prophet Isa (p) (Jesus in whitey's speak) three years earlier. The paper gave a straight reason why it refused to publish the Jesus cartoon:

I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them.

Furthermore, Jyllands-Posten stated that the Jesus cartoons were unsolicited and the Mohammed (pbuh) cartoons were drawn upon request by the paper. This provides a very simple explanation for why the cartoons were published. The newspaper's editors felt the Mohammed (pbuh) cartoons would be enjoyable to their readership and would not provoke their target readership to outcry. Given that the newspaper aims to sell to right-wing, Christian, xenophobic, Islamphobic Eurotrash, this seems like sound marketing logic.

The Muslim group's objections are meritless and frivolous. They are analogous to accusing the Ku Klux Klan of having a double standard for lynching black men and not white men.

SakibKh (12:29:27 PM): its like asking the klan to apologize for lynching black ppl
OS (12:29:31 PM): hahahaahahahahaah
SakibKh (12:29:33 PM): and not poor white ppl
OS (12:29:35 PM): yeah
OS (12:29:41 PM): or asking why ******************************
SakibKh (12:30:08 PM): its like "the klan rejected the proposal to lynch earl, a poor white man living in a trailor park three years earlier"
SakibKh (12:30:42 PM): the grand wizard said "lynching earl would have been offensive to many klan members. it would not have been enjoyable"
SakibKh (12:31:16 PM): "we solicited n*****s to lynch" the wizard added "that's the difference between the two cases. earl was completely unsolicited"
OS (12:32:40 PM): just put this on ure blog
SakibKh (12:32:44 PM): civil rights activist kanye titta asked, "how can the klan distinguish between the two cases? this smacks of a double standard"
SakibKh (12:32:51 PM): i might
OS (12:32:57 PM): yah
SakibKh (12:33:35 PM): i smell a masterpiece entry coming up
SakibKh (12:33:38 PM): titled:
SakibKh (12:33:47 PM): BREAKING NEWS: Europe is Racist, Anti-Muslim
OS (12:34:03 PM): no no
OS (12:34:17 PM): breaking news: Muslims: You're Being Racist
SakibKh (12:34:22 PM): ?
OS (12:34:24 PM): Europe: We don't give a f***
OS (12:34:28 PM): ps-we hate you and leave our countries

Anywho, for all of those people out there who want to be quick to condemn the Muslims burning and rioting at the Danish and Austrian Embassies across the world, I say screw condemnation. The only use condemnation will have is to "show them that we are not like that". They think that our beloved Prophet (pbuh) was a psycho with a bomb in his turban, bent on killing and maiming. Astughfurullah!

Do I have any concern with the protection of Danish property? No, Mr. Salafi, I don't. Mr. Salafi has been very upset about the uproar and the incursion upon property rights by Muslims in this whole affair. According to him, property rights are sacred in Islam and should not be violated and that Muslims should not concern themselves with the doings of the Kaafir (infidels in whitey's speak). Mr. Salafi, I say to hell with the brush strokes, I will focus on the entirety of this Monet. The Danes want to provoke a fight? (And by the government's crass reaction, it is possible they do) Then let them have the hell that they've created. It certainly won't take me 3 excuses to forgive my brothers in Beirut and Cairo and Islamabad, much less 70.

Of course, Iran has an appropriate response. An Iranian newspaper is holding a contest on "Holocaust Cartoons" to test the West's tolerance for free speech. Obviously, clever, well planned, and also offensive. Iran is proving itself as a land of civil libertarians. Someday, I need to make a list of Iran's greatest hits. This would rank up there, along with their response after 9/11, when the Iranian government condemned all terrorism, especially the Zionist plots to bring down the World Trade Center. Iran pledged to help the US in any way possible to strike back at Israel for 9/11. CLASSIC.

But the end game of this all is possibly expressed by a incredulous Russian politician. This dude is theorizing that:

1. The US is attacking Iran on the day of the Israeli elections, March 28th.
2. The cartoons explosion (caused by the very very very late non-apology by the Danish PM) is part of an American plot to create a division between Europe and the Islamic world and make Europe more inclined towards war.
3. Russia should remain relatively indifferent, but show marginal support for the Muslims against the US/KKK/EU alliance.
   

Wow. It certainly is true that the US is benefiting from all this unrest in Europe. The Americans can make the Euros look at Muslims as a short-term nuisance that can be exterminated, and make them forget about OIL DEPENDENCE and US/EU competition. Classic diversionary advantage. I'm not saying there's a conspiracy, but I am saying that Dubya/Cheney/Zionists/Exxon-Mobile is the benefactor.

Comments?

Desi Futures Gone Up in Smoke?

This post originally appeared on the now defunct blog, Team Sakib.

It seems like whenever I someone asks me if I smoke hookah, my response is an instant conversation killer. So I don't smoke hookah, I've never tried it and I really feel no impulse to do so. Why is that so alienating to most 19-22 year old Desi kids?

Look, I lived in a virtual smoker's den. I spent a full year chillin in clouds of second hand, riding the sheesha hangouts as a "hangout killing hanger-on". I've seen enough bowls be packed to replicate it so its not harsh (I think so at least), and I know that 1 and 1/2 coals is the ideal placement for most large hookahs. I've seen the effects of ice chambers and I know the tongue motion to produce rings (but not hearts).

But the whole culture is still not appealing. It's too much of a social crutch. It's too easy to fall into the trap, where time flies by and your conscious is lost. It's like thefacebook.com, just with tobacco.

Do I feel that those who smoke are bad people? Not in the least. Smoking hookah is the least thing someone can do and its debatable as to whether its haraam/mukhrooh/etc. Those who smoke surely don't think they're engaging in haraam, and thus you really can't blame them for much.

But then why does my personal choice not to smoke lead to the inevitable "oh"? Is it guilt in people? Do people think I'm an uptight prude? Or is it that I might kill a potential hangout by not being down w/ an outting to the hookah bar? "Better not call Sakib, then we can't go to Casbah". Hmmm... Mad curious on this one.

People don't like leaving comments on the blog, but if you're feeling courageous, chime in on this question:

Do you think my choice not to smoke is adversely affecting my social life?