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=> Re: I wonder where Tack could be?

Re: I wonder where Tack could be?

Posted by Marcello (Guest) - Friday, November 15 2013, 21:23:31 (UTC) from 71.107.52.17 - pool-71-107-52-17.lsanca.dsl-w.verizon.net Network - Windows XP - Safari Website: http://us.mg1.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.gx=1&.rand Website title: Redirect

I harbor no personal animosity toward Taoro or anyone. After all, Taoro is from the community, and we can learn from one another without endless tit-for-tat personal attacks, or scrambling through the Net for a paragraph here, a writer there, in an attempt to try to substantiate what I see as emotional (and not intellectual) arguments about how many this religion has killed and in what gruesome manners, without asking why or how these things have come to be? When the Danish cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, drew a caricature of Muhammad with a bomb packed in his turban in 2006, the Muslim world protested, and in many places, extremely violently. At the time, I was watching the after effects on the news. Angry mobs of Muslim men burning down flags, cars, store fronts, making threats. In their anger and rage demonstrated that blood had to be shed (as it did) to right the wrong of insulting their prophet and their collective dignity. But who else aside from the Muslims had blood on their hands? What the news left out was that this was a local Danish attack on South Asian Muslims that blew up in violent proportions across the globe, certainly in the Muslim world, and in parts of the West where Muslims reside. South Asian Muslims are in ways similar to Mexicans in the U.S.: they offer cheap labor and take jobs that most Danes are either over-qualified to take, or are considered as being exploitative: too little money for too much hard labor; although, there are Danish citizens of Pakistani or Bengali descent who are educated and have been assimilated into the secular European social fabric. As a non-religious person, and someone who enjoys freedom of thought and freedom of speech, my initial reaction was to think, 'Fuck off and go back to the Muslim world!' That was my emotional reaction. But my later response was to ask myself how and why did this come to be? Well, the Danish sent their soldiers as part of the NATO forces occupying Afghanistan, possibly near the Afghan and Pakistan border, where the Pashtun tribe lives, the same community of people who have become the victims of targeted kills by drones, be they guilty of a crime or not, since extrajudicial killings require no due process. Then of course the refugees fleeing the war end up in other countries, Muslim or secular European, whomever will take them. They, being from the countryside, are seen as vile, uncouth, uncivilized, and unbearable to live among, since their ways are almost the absolute opposite of Europeans who unlike the Muslim world underwent a reformation (though bloody as it was) and the Age of Enlightenment. Anyway, I think that the initial spark that blew up the powder keg (in addition to other factors, of course) was that the caricature of the Muslim prophet was not a representation of an Arab Muslim (whom Muhammad was), nor did it display the facial features of a Turk, Persian, or Indonesian Muslim; but of a South Asian Muslim, specifically, a Pakistani. If in the U.S. American cartoonists began depicting La Virgen De Guadalupe as a thieving, drug dealing, vicious prostitute, there will certainly be a backlash from the Mexican/American community, either via legal demonstrations, or unfortunate acts of violence. Fortunately, this has not yet happened and it hopefully will not. And if it did, we'd see the after effects on Fox News of the "uncivilized illegals" trying to take America away, or Mexico back (which, by the way, is true among some Mexican or Chicano organizations' rhetoric, like La Raza, who assert that half of Mexico was stolen through force.) Which brings me to Iraq and this piece written by the astute and esteemed journalist, Patrick Cockburn (pronounced Co-burn or Coke-burn) the brother of the late, Alexander Cockburn, about the Shia reaction during Ashura to what an English contractor, unintentionally perhaps, did to the picture of the Shia Imam Ali (Muhammad's brother-in-law) and a flag depicting Imam Hussein (Muhammad's grandson) during the memorial of Hussein's death and beheading in Karbala, Iraq. The outrage shown on mainstream news outlets may lead many to react and think, "there go the crazy Muslims again... religion of Peace, my ass!" even if there were valid explanations offered by pundits exploring the many causes for the outburst, aside from the obvious reasons that could be possibly comparable to ripping and tearing down flags bearing images of Jesus during Easter if (hypothetically) a Christian country had been waged war upon and occupied by outside non-Christian forces. And history is the last of all places people will reach to attempt to grasp and understand as best they can the various reasons for these incidents of outrage and extreme acts of violence. Having said that, I by no means give a free moral pass to any one to commit crimes against another human being. I am simply trying to understand the reasons why these things happen. For me, being civilized doesn't mean wearing a suit, or reading poetry, or going to the theater; nor is being spiritual based on growing a beard and submitting to God, YOUR GOD OVER MINE. We have a long way to go to intellectually and emotionally evolve to be rendered as truly civilized in order to deal with the one of most important questions of our human experience: That of freedom and responsibility. WEEKEND EDITION NOVEMBER 15-17, 2013 Foreigners Flee Iraq Oil Flare-Ups Shia Fury Erupts by PATRICK COCKBURN http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/15/shia-fury-erupts/ Hundreds of foreign workers are being hurriedly evacuated from Basra in southern Iraq following violent protests by Iraqi oil workers and villagers over two incidents. In one of them, a British security man tore down a poster or flag bearing the image of Imam Hussein, a figure highly revered by Shia Muslims. The violence may make international oil companies more nervous about operating in Iraq, which is at the centre of the largest oil development boom in the world. The fighting started on Monday when oil workers refused to remove Shia banners and flags when asked to do so by a British security adviser who then took them down himself – by one account, tearing a poster of Imam Hussein. This happened just before Ashura, the Shia day of mourning for the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, who was killed by the Caliph Yazid at the battle of Kerbala in 680, the anniversary of which falls today. An Iraqi witness was reported as saying: “Workers were provoked and squabbled with the British guy, but he suddenly pulled a pistol and started shooting and wounded one Iraqi worker.” The man was later removed to hospital bleeding heavily. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has called for the deportation of the unnamed British security man. Iraqi officials in Basra said he worked for the security firm G4S at a camp run by Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield services company. The camp is near the giant Rumaila field, close to the border with Kuwait, which produces a third of Iraq’s oil output. BP and China’s CNPC have been seeking rapidly to raise production at the field. Accounts differ on exactly what happened, but there appear to have been at least two incidents when Shia oil workers and people living in nearby villages believed that images of their most venerated religious figures had been desecrated. “A British employee took down a flag for Hussein and a picture of Imam Ali from the cars of the security company, and tore them down with a knife,” Ali Shaddad, a member of Basra’s provincial council, told Agence France-Presse. “This provoked a group of workers and they went and hit him repeatedly.” At least part of this incident was caught on a video uploaded to YouTube, It shows a man in a flak jacket being dragged from a white vehicle and hit repeatedly by men in dark blue T-shirts, who carry long sticks and spades. He falls occasionally but generally manages to stay on his feet before he is rescued by Iraqi soldiers. In the background is the wall of a Schlumberger camp, topped with barbed wire. An Iraqi field engineer employed by Schlumberger describes the incident, saying it started at 10am on Monday when an Iraqi driver working for the security team attached a Shia holy flag to the antenna of one of the vehicles. He was asked to remove it by the head of security and refused, so “the team leader jumped up on the car and he tear up [sic] which made the Iraqi driver and his colleagues [all Shia] to be angry”. They reportedly called in protesters from outside the company to join the attack. The days leading up to Ashura are always a particularly sensitive time in Iraq, with millions of Shia involved in the mourning ceremonies. The Iraqi Oil Report website said that BP, the main operator at Rumaila, was scaling back its workforce and that employees of Baker Hughes and Schlumberger “were massed at Basra airport”. There were conflicting reports about whether the oil services companies were shutting down their operations. In an earlier incident affecting Baker Hughes, an Egyptian worker had removed the flags commemorating Imam Ali and Imam Hussein from company vehicles. Protests prompted Iraqi authorities to arrest the Egyptian on charges of insulting a religion, while Baker Hughes suspended its operations in the country and declared force majeure because of “a significant disruption of business”. In general, the international oil companies that have poured into Iraq in recent years are barely affected by the violence which is killing about 1,000 civilians a month. Most are Shia caught by blasts from car bombs and suicide bombers driving vehicles packed with explosives. The number of incidents and casualties has reached a level not seen since 2008, at the end of the last round of the Shia-Sunni civil war in which tens of thousands were killed. The deaths are mostly in the cities and towns of central and northern Iraq, while the oil companies are developing fields around Basra in the far south. Their foreign workers live in fortified camps, protected by security companies, and move in well-protected convoys. At this time of year, Shia-dominated districts in Iraq are a forest of banners and flags, and walls are covered with portraits of revered religious leaders past and present. Some 41 people, mostly Shia pilgrims, have been killed so far during the Ashura festival by bombings that bear the hallmarks of al-Qa’ida. In one attack, 17 pilgrims died and 65 were wounded by a suicide bomber who targeted a procession of pilgrims north of Baquba, near Baghdad, in a mixed Sunni-Shia province notorious for its violence. Two million Shia are expected to make pilgrimage to the shrine of Imam Hussein in Kerbala today, protected by 35,000 soldiers. As part of the ritual, the mourners beat and cut their heads and chests and whip themselves with chains to emphasise their grief and as a sign of remorse for failing to defend Imam Hussein. The quality of security firms in Iraq varies enormously. Some are highly disciplined and discreet, while others have been trigger-happy – making them extremely unpopular. PATRICK COCKBURN is the author of Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. --------------------- - BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

The full topic: I wonder where Tack could be? pancho - Friday, November 15 2013, 17:00:20 (UTC) Re: I wonder where Tack could be? Marcello - 11/15 21:23 Re: I wonder where Tack could be? pancho - 11/16 01:37 Re: I wonder where Tack could be? Taoro - 11/16 08:26 Re: I wonder where Tack could be? pancho - 11/16 11:51 Re: I wonder where Tack could be? Marcello - 11/16 22:19

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