julen 2002
Bagdad april 2003
Lawrence
av Arabien
| Iraq debate - Imperial War Museum - 23 rd 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. |
Irak 1936 — Iraq '03 — Islam — Kissingerplanen
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
Lawrence av Arabien
Se även: www.ejnar.se/5619/lawrence.html
Lawrence wrote two major works, each very different. Both have achieved widespread recognition.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom describes Lawrence's experiences while serving as a liaison officer with the rebel forces during the Arab Revolt of 1916-18. The book exists in two texts. The earlier, completed in 1922, runs to 334,500 words. Sometimes called the "Oxford" text, it remained unpublished until 1997. From this 1922 text Lawrence made a revised abridgement, cutting the length down to 250,500 words. He issued this abridgement in a private edition for subscribers in 1926. After his death in 1935, it was published for general circulation. It has since become a world classic, and was the principal source for David Lean's film Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Well over a million copies have been sold, and the book has been translated into many languages. Revolt in the Desert is, in Bernard Shaw's words, an "abridgement of an abridgement" of the original 1922 Seven Pillars. It was published in 1927 in order to pay off debts that Lawrence had incurred while producing the lavishly illustrated subscribers' Seven Pillars. Revolt was very successful, but was superseded when the whole subscribers' text was published for general circulation in 1935. There have, nevertheless, been a number of recent editions. There is a more detailed account of the 1922 Seven Pillars text on the Castle Hill Press website.
The Mint, a much shorter book than Seven Pillars, is in three parts. The first two describe Lawrence's experiences as an enlisted recruit in the RAF in 1922. The third part describes a later period of his service life, when he was serving at the RAF Cadet College, Cranwell, in 1925 and 1926. This book too has been translated into several languages.
nu har en del text flyttats till 3746 juni, speciellt Günter Grass
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