Nineve
Günter Grass
Was gesagt werden muss
Rojava
Lawrence of Arabia
During his years in Arabia Lawrence rode the razors edge between his duty to the British empire, and his moral duty to Feisal and the cause of Arab independence. The British military leadership believed an Arab uprising against the Turks would aid their war with Turkey's ally, Germany. Arab leaders were lead to believe the British were sincere in their desire to free the Arab people from the Turkish yoke. Unfortunately for the Arabs, the British agenda was governed by the politics of empire, not the aspirations of the Arab people. Several times in Seven Pillars Lawrence expresses his shame at dealing with the Arabs under false pretenses.
Immediately after the fall of Damascus Lawrence returned to England. In 1919 he served in the British Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, working closely with the Feisal to secure Arab independence. The Arabs had helped the Allies win their war with Germany, but now it was time for England and France to get back to empire building. The French were determined to rule Syria, while the British had similar ambitions in Palestine and Iraq. In the ultimate betrayal, Syria, Palestine and Iraq were given over to France and Britain as mandated territories - colonies in all but name. Feisal, who ruled in Damascus after the war, was ousted by the French in 1920.
Exhausted and disappointed after the Paris Peace Conference, Lawrence returned to England. He had begun work on his chronicle of the Arab revolt while in Paris. He published the first edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, A Triumph in December of 1926.
fotot från 11 maj 2003
Massakern 1842
på Elphinstones
armé.
Bagdad april 2003
—
Irak
1936
—
Iraq
2003
—
Harold Pinter
The drone-killing policy is made by Brennan and signed off by Obama. They must be held responsible. Unfortunately that is unlikely to happen. The appalling reason:
Despite the bad reviews overseas, drone strikes remain persistently popular with the American public, with about two-thirds expressing approval in polls. And despite the protests of a few liberal Democrats or libertarian Republicans, they have enjoyed unusual bipartisan support in Congress, where they are viewed as reducing the threat of terrorist attack and keeping American operators out of harm’s way.
Someone should probably start to drone-murder random people in the U.S. That might change the perspective.
Kurdistan?
The Syrian Kurds have their democratic vote in Syria. Just like Kurds elsewhere have their votes in their country (except in the kurdish ruled KRG - Barzani ignores all voting.) What is wrong with that?
There are very sound reasons why there never was a Kurdish national state. Ask Saladin. It is impossible to set up one Kurdistan. It would be civil war from day one until the end. Too many different Kurdish people, too many clans/mafias who have hated and fought each other for centuries, extremely diverse powerful political groups with guns - from Islamists to anarchists.
Do we really need to repeat a South Sudan experiment?
cite: b | Jul 22, 2016 3:28:34 PM | 20
U p p
"Peoples of Egypt, you will be told that I have
come to destroy your religion. Do not believe it! Reply
that I have come to restore your rights!"
(Napoleon Bonaparte, 1798)
"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands
as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Your
wealth has been stripped of you by unjust men... The
people of Baghdad shall flourish under institutions
which are in consonance with their sacred
laws."
(General F.S. Maude, commander of British forces in
Iraq, 1917)
Harold Pinter - föredrag 23 sep 2004
Iraq debate - Imperial War Museum - 23rd September 2004.
Freedom, democracy and
liberation.
These terms, as enunciated by Bush and Blair essentially mean
death, destruction and chaos.
Tony Blair describes the insurgents as terrorists.
There is clearly a body of foreign nationals which
has entered Iraq since the invasion and which is
committing terrorist atrocities. But the heart of
the insurgency is widespread Iraqi resistance to a
brutal and savage military occupation.
Cutting off
somebody's head is a barbaric act. But so is
the dropping of cluster bombs on totally innocent
people and tearing them apart.
At least 20,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq
and many thousands more mutilated for life. We
don't see the corpses or the mutilated children
on television.
The US invasion of Iraq was not only totally
unjustified, illegal and illegitimate, it was a
criminal act of immense proportions and one which
will have profound consequences throughout the
world.
But the invasion was also quite consistent with
declared American foreign policy. American foreign
policy now aims at ‘FULL SPECTRUM
DOMINANCE' – that is the US
Administration's term, not mine. Full spectrum
dominance means control of air, sea land and space.
It also of course means control of the world's
resources.
The United States has over 700 military
instillations in 132 countries, including this one.
It already has a vast military base at Baghdad
airport. These bases are not there by accident or
for ‘humanitarian reasons'. They are
there to keep a stranglehold on the world and they
will do it by any means at their disposal.
The disclosures of torture in Iraq should come as
no surprise to anybody. The Americans have been
exporting torture for years. They have been
teaching torture techniques to military
representatives of various dictatorships at Fort
Benning in Georgia for a very long time. Fort
Benning was called the School of Americas but was
actually known as the ‘School of
torture'. They practice it themselves at home,
in the vast gulag of prisons across the United
States where over two million people are held in
custody, the majority black. Restraint chairs,
where convicts are strapped and left naked in their
own urine and excrement for days, the use of gas
and stun guns, the random brutality, the systematic
rape and abuse of young men and women – all
of these things and more an affront to human
dignity – are common practice. So torture in
Iraq, at Bagram in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo
Bay are simply par for the course. That is the
nature of the beast.
But the US is not finding things so easy and the
less easy they find things the more dangerous they
become. But there is a growing resistance worldwide
to this arrogant, brutal, complacent, destructive
force, a force which holds the concept of
International Law and the United Nations in
contempt, and whose only vocabulary is bombs and
death.
The United States possess more ‘Weapons of
Mass Destruction' than the rest of the world
put together. It is at this moment developing new
nuclear systems which it is prepared to use at the
drop of a hat. It is totally indifferent to the
death of others and will murder anyone who gets in
its way. It is the most feared, most powerful and
most detested nation the world has ever
known.
The invasion of Iraq was an act of state terrorism.
So it is Bush and Blair who are in fact the
terrorists. I believe they must be arraigned at the
International Criminal Court of Justice and tried
as war criminals.
Günter Grass über George W. Bush
"Eine Bedrohung des Weltfriedens"
Mit scharfen Worten hat der Literatur-Nobelpreisträger Günter Grass den US-Präsidenten George W. Bush für seine Politik in der Irak-Frage kritisiert. Ausserdem unterstellte er Bush, dass er aus privaten Motiven handele.
In der Zeitung "Welt am Sonntag" verglich der 75-jährige Schriftsteller Grass den US-Präsidenten mit einer jener "Gestalten in Shakespeares Historiendramen, deren einziger Ehrgeiz es ist, vor den Vater, den alten, sterbenden König zu treten und zu sagen: "Siehe, ich habe deine Aufgabe vollbracht".
Bush jr. werde in der aktuellen politischen Situation "von privaten, familiären Motiven geleitet", sagte Grass. "Die gefährliche Kombination aus familiären, wirtschaftlichen und politischen Interessen in diesem einen Politiker hat ihn zu einer echten Gefahr werden lassen", fügte er hinzu.
Nach Ansicht von Grass ist der Terrorismus eine Konsequenz des Zorns und des Hasses der so genannten Dritten Welt auf den äberfluss der ersten Welt. Er forderte eine "Weltordnung, bei der die entwickelten und unterentwickelten Länder am gleichen Tisch sitzen und sich die Rohstoffe, die Technologien und das Kapital dieser Welt in der gerechtesten Weise teilen."
SPIEGEL ONLINE - 28. Dezember 2002, 15:33
URL: www.spiegel.de/politik/debatte/
Nobelpristagaren i litteratur 1999
Günter Grass har skrivit den 7 april 2003 om att han tackar Schröder och Fischer, att han är stolt över att vara medborgare i ett land som är mot angreppskrig och som är för freden.
Nobelpristagaren i litteratur 2005
Harold Pinter har starkt tagit ställning mot de amerikanska bombningarna på Balkan samt mot alla imperalistiska angreppskrig för oljans skull. :)
är stolt över det modiga valet av nobelpristagare - de flesta av senare års pristagare har varit personer som gjort insatser för världsfreden.
Nobelpristagaren i litteratur 2006
Pamuk om Pinter
Enligt DN 15 okt 2006 har Orhan Pamuk uttryckt sig så här nyligen:
Låt oss därför
fråga oss hur förnuftigt det är att
svartmåla kulturer och religioner, att
obarmhärtigt bomba sönder länder i
demokratins eller yttrandefrihetens namn.
[. . . ] Detta våldsamma, grymma krig är
Amerikas och västs stora skam.
Författare som Harold Pinter och Arthur Miller,
är den västliga världens stolthet.
Was gesagt werden muss
Von Günter Grass
"Warum schweige ich, verschweige zu lange, was offensichtlich ist und in Planspielen geübt wurde, an deren Ende als überlebende wir allenfalls Fussnoten sind.
Es ist das behauptete Recht auf den Erstschlag, der das von einem Maulhelden unterjochte und zum organisierten Jubel gelenkte iranische Volk auslöschen könnte, weil in dessen Machtbereich der Bau einer Atombombe vermutet wird.
Doch warum untersage ich mir, jenes andere Land beim Namen zu nennen, in dem seit Jahren - wenn auch geheimgehalten - ein wachsend nukleares Potential verfügbar aber auäer Kontrolle, weil keiner Präfung zugänglich ist?
Das allgemeine Verschweigen dieses Tatbestandes, dem sich mein Schweigen untergeordnet hat, empfinde ich als belastende Lüge und Zwang, der Strafe in Aussicht stellt, sobald er missachtet wird; das Verdikt "Antisemitismus" ist geläufig.
Jetzt aber, weil aus meinem Land, das von ureigenen Verbrechen, die ohne Vergleich sind, Mal um Mal eingeholt und zur Rede gestellt wird, wiederum und rein geschäftsmässig, wenn auch mit flinker Lippe als Wiedergutmachung deklariert, ein weiteres U-Boot nach Israel geliefert werden soll, dessen Spezialität darin besteht, allesvernichtende Sprengköpfe dorthin lenken zu kännen, wo die Existenz einer einzigen Atombombe unbewiesen ist, doch als Befürchtung von Beweiskraft sein will, sage ich, was gesagt werden muss.
Warum aber schwieg ich bislang? Weil ich meinte, meine Herkunft, die von nie zu tilgendem Makel behaftet ist, verbiete, diese Tatsache als ausgesprochene Wahrheit dem Land Israel, dem ich verbunden bin und bleiben will, zuzumuten.
Warum sage ich jetzt erst, gealtert und mit letzter Tinte: Die Atommacht Israel gefährdet den ohnehin brüchigen Weltfrieden? Weil gesagt werden muss, was schon morgen zu spät sein könnte; auch weil wir - als Deutsche belastet genug - Zulieferer eines Verbrechens werden könnten, das voraussehbar ist, weshalb unsere Mitschuld durch keine der üblichen Ausreden zu tilgen wäre.
Und zugegeben: ich schweige nicht mehr, weil ich der Heuchelei des Westens überdrüssig bin; zudem ist zu hoffen, es mögen sich viele vom Schweigen befreien, den Verursacher der erkennbaren Gefahr zum Verzicht auf Gewalt auffordern und gleichfalls darauf bestehen, dass eine unbehinderte und permanente Kontrolle des israelischen atomaren Potentials und der iranischen Atomanlagen durch eine internationale Instanz von den Regierungen beider Länder zugelassen wird.
Nur so ist allen, den Israelis und Palästinensern, mehr noch, allen Menschen, die in dieser vom Wahn okkupierten Region dicht bei dicht verfeindet leben und letztlich auch uns zu helfen.
Källa: Der Spiegel 4 april 2012
Age of empires
Various invaders conquered the land after
Nebuchadnezzar's death, including Cyrus the Great
in 539BC and Alexander the Great in 331BC. In the
second century BC, it became part of the Persian
Empire, remaining thus until the 7th century AD, when
it was captured by Arab Muslims (Abbasids). The capital
was moved to Baghdad which became an important
commercial and cultural centre in the Middle Ages.
Mongol invaders in AD1258 sacked Baghdad and murdered
the Abbasid caliph. After much conflict over supremacy,
the country was conquered by the Turks in the 17th
century and became part of the Ottoman Empire. Turkish
rule continued unchecked, and with very little
development, until the end of the 19th century.
Källa: Arab Net
