What changed between 1991 and 2003 Iraq invasions? « Adonis Diaries

Cover via Amazon

Posted by: adonis49 on: April 4, 2010

What changed between 1991 and 2003 Iraq invasions? (Apr. 3, 2010)

The Morocco author Fatema Mernissi wrote in 1991 “Islam and democracy” after the first invasion of Iraq by President Bush the father or senior. In 2002, she wrote an introduction to the English edition. In 2010, the French editor Albin Michel asked Mernissi a fresh introduction to the updated French edition. Mernissi suggested that the English introduction should be fine and Michel replied: “Do you think that nothing happened between 2002 and 2010 that young Europeans might be interested in knowing?”

After a good night sleep Mernissi realized that among the many changes, apart that Islamic/Arabic youth are double the Western rate, one change stands out grandly: In 1991, the Arabs were terrified of Western supremacy in technology (smart bombs for example that CNN kept showing their devastating effects in collateral damages on civilians); in 2003 invasion it was clear that the American and British soldiers were the most scared of Islam virulence. Mainly, Islamic/Arab States had acquired the numeric information technology for disseminating instant news in sound, pictures, and videos and had begun rational communication discussions (jadal) on points and counter points to the benefit of every Arab/Moslems living in European States and the USA.

The unilateral monopoly in the diffusion and dissemination of information and “intelligence” was eroded: Moslems and Arabs could now enjoy 36 satellite channels broadcasting everywhere, including the most popular Al Jazeera channel that even the Western Medias watched for current and impartial news. Moslems in China were able to keep up with the rest of Islamic World events.

This information victory scared the Western civilization after it realized that the new Islamic/Arabic generations are no longer attuned to their local monopoly Medias run by dictators and monarchs: it is internet age and youth want changes and to discourse rationally. In 1991, Arabs had practically the CNN to cover the war in Iraq as direct source of information and it was biased toward showing the effects of “smart bombs” and Iraqi soldiers being shoveled alive under in the dune bunkers. Arab people got familiar with the term “collateral damages” and CNN failed to inform on the casualties. In 2003, Arab/Moslem masses had Al Jazeera channel to cover the war among 32 other satellite channels viewed for free. It is estimated that by 2012, Islamic/Arab States will have over 1,200 free channels as option for the world to watch information and discussion sessions.

For example, since 1948, Israel has devoured all Palestine and waged countless major pre-emptive wars and the Arab masses had to rely on American Medias for totally biased information; the pickiest watchers occasionally selected the BBC. Things have changed in this numeric information age. In 2003, Al Jazeera was offering as bonuses well targeted discussion panels with many foreign figures. For example, in 2001 and before the September attack on the Twin Towers, Al Jazeera ridiculed Taliban for bombing the ancient giant Buddhist idols in Bamyan (Afghanistan) while Richard Keller of the giant oil multinational UNOCAL was proclaiming “Taliban is good thing for us”

Western humanists grabbed the successes of the Islamic/Arabic satellite channels to become regular guest stars. For example, Dany Schechter of “Plunder: Investigating our economic calamity and the subprime scandal”; Adam Hochschild of “Burry the chains: Prophets and rebels in the fight to liberal”; and Chris Hedges of “War is a force that gives us meaning” are regular guests on Arab satellite channels.

Most ironic, it is the USA and a few European States that have been pressuring the obscurantist Arabic State dictators and monarchies to suppressing freedom of opinions and to shut down “controversial” Arabic channels. In France a few city mayors ordered Arabic channels banned for dissemination because the Arabs and Moslems living in these cities were hooked to Arabic channels and their mind being “poisoned” away from France patriotic indoctrination and inclusion programs.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Against Stealing Heritage Crimes (socialactions.net)
• Iraqi Christians under fire (telegraph.co.uk)
• Iraq Election Fallout May Spark New Wave Of Violence (huffingtonpost.com)
• Francis Fukuyama: What Became of the 'Freedom Agenda'? (online.wsj.com)
• Anwar Ibrahim discusses trial, Muslim issues (cnn.com)
• Dan Rather: Baghdad Blood and Baghdad Mud (Or, Whither Iraq) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Gunmen execute 25 in Iraq (msnbc.msn.com)
• A modern tragedy with heroes and villains, but still no name | Jason Burke (guardian.co.uk)

From Guantánamo to Desk at AlJazeera

Image via Wikipedia

By BRIAN STELTER

Of the 779 known detainees who have been held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — terrorism suspects, sympathizers of Al Qaeda, people deemed enemy combatants by the United States military — only one was a journalist.

The journalist, Sami al-Hajj, was working for Al Jazeera as a cameraman when he was stopped by Pakistani forces on the border with Afghanistan in late 2001. The United States military accused Mr. Hajj of, among other things, falsifying documents and delivering money to Chechen rebels, although he was never charged with a crime during his years in custody.

Now, more than a year after his release, Mr. Hajj, a 40-year-old native of Sudan, is back at work at the Arabic satellite news network, leading a new desk devoted to human rights and public liberties. The captive has become the correspondent.

“I wanted to talk for seven years, to make up for the seven years of silence,” Mr. Hajj said through an interpreter during an interview at the network’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

Among Al Jazeera’s viewers in the Arab world since the 9/11 attacks, perhaps nothing has damaged perceptions of America more than Guantánamo Bay. For that reason, Mr. Hajj, who did a six-part series on the prison after his release, is a potent weapon for the network, which does not always strive for journalistic objectivity on the subject of his treatment. In an interview, Ahmed Sheikh, the editor in chief of Al Jazeera, called Mr. Hajj “one of the victims of the human rights atrocities committed by the ex-U.S. administration.”

But Mr. Hajj has not restricted himself to Guantánamo and his own incarceration. He has expanded the network’s coverage of other rights issues, including press freedom in Iraq, Palestinians in Israeli prisons and the implications of the USA Patriot Act. On a Wednesday morning in mid-August, Mr. Hajj pushed Al Jazeera’s news desk to cover a hunger strike by political prisoners in Jordan, and he happily pointed to a nearby television when the Jordan news scrolled on the bottom of the screen.

Nor has his experience radicalized him: he said that, despite his upbringing in a violent and often repressive country and his experience in detention, he maintained a sustaining belief in democracy and the rule of law.

Terry Anderson, an Associated Press correspondent who was detained in Lebanon from 1985 to 1991 by Islamic fundamentalists, said he could understand Mr. Hajj’s chosen assignment.

“In prison, what do you do? You think about your life. You think about what you were doing, and how it led you here,” Mr. Anderson said.

Mr. Hajj’s story is well known to Al Jazeera viewers, but not to most Americans. (As with the experiences of many detainees at Guantánamo Bay, his version is uncorroborated by American officials or any documents.) After working at a beverage company and then trying to start a business in Azerbaijan, he began working as a cameraman for Al Jazeera in 2000. He was captured on Dec. 15, 2001, trying to cross the border back into Afghanistan with his camera and a correspondent.

He later came to believe that the Americans were seeking another Al Jazeera cameraman, one with a similar name who had recorded an interview with Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks.

After being detained by local authorities in Pakistan, Mr. Hajj was transferred into American custody and, he says, tortured and beaten at a prison at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan. He was moved to Kandahar and then transported to Guantánamo Bay in mid-2002. Looking back, he says he thinks that he was sent there in part because he was a journalist.

“I had seen a lot of things that I shouldn’t have seen,” he said, citing the treatment of prisoners at Bagram in particular. Mr. Hajj claims that in lengthy interrogations he was asked for details of the network’s staff, policies and processes and that some guards started calling him “Al Jazeera” as a nickname.

He said an interrogator once asked him, “How much does bin Laden pay Al Jazeera for all the propaganda that Al Jazeera supplies?”

“You’re asking the wrong question,” he replied, emphasizing that bin Laden was not a propaganda partner of Al Jazeera, “he’s a newsmaker.”

In American custody, he tried to keep practicing journalism, he said, writing eyewitness accounts for his lawyers and family members, interpreting fellow detainees’ stories of abuse and even making drawings of forced feedings during a hunger strike.

“I felt that I needed to document this for history,” he said, “so that the next generation knows the depth of the crime that was committed.” He audibly emphasized the Arabic word for depth as he spoke.

During the interview, Mr. Hajj displayed a deep wound on his left leg, which he said he suffered when he was pinned against cell bars during a beating at Guantánamo. He reiterated that the emotional trauma was more extensive than the physical; he says he continues to see psychotherapists.

Asked about questioning about Al Jazeera, a Pentagon spokesman said members of the media “are not targeted by U.S. forces, but there is no special category that gives members of media organizations immunity if captured engaging in suspicious, terror-related activity.” The spokesman added that all detainees were treated humanely while in custody.

According to Zachary Katznelson, the legal director for Reprieve, a human rights group that represented Mr. Hajj, the allegations changed over the years: “First, he was alleged to have filmed an interview of Osama bin Laden. It was another cameraman. So, that allegation disappeared. Then the U.S. said Sami ran a jihadist Web site. Turns out, there was no such site. So that allegation disappeared. Then, the U.S. said Sami was in Afghanistan to arrange missile sales to Chechen rebels. There was no evidence to back that up at all. So that allegation disappeared.”

Mr. Hajj’s release, back to Sudan on a stretcher, came in May 2008 after lobbying by human rights groups and the government of Sudan. The Pentagon spokesman said Mr. Hajj’s release to Sudan “indicated our belief that the government of Sudan could effectively mitigate the threat posed” by him.

Since his release, he has put on weight and honed his rhetoric. He splits his time between Al Jazeera and the Guantánamo Justice Center, a group he co-founded for former detainees. Through the center he is helping to prepare legal action against former President George W. Bush and officials of his administration.

Even during a translated interview, he remained keenly sensitive to language, calling the detainees at Guantánamo “captives,” to call attention to what he says is a “place outside of law.”

When a visitor mentioned “enhanced interrogation techniques,” an American term that characterizes harsh treatment of detainees, Mr. Hajj interrupted the interpreter and said, in Arabic, “instead of torture?”

“We are giving the wrong impression” with that term, he said. “We as journalists are violating human rights because we are changing the perception of reality.”

Oddly, while in a prison sanctioned by American authorities, Mr. Hajj put his faith in the American political system. He gathered bits of news from the guards and, leading up to the 2004 election, was sure that American voters would reject Mr. Bush, which would lead to his freedom. When the guards informed him that the president had been re-elected, he was stunned.

“I was sure I would outlive Bush,” he said.

Videos of the Day #2

Time for Justice - Duch on Trial (videos, Cambodia)
http://forum.eastwestcenter.org/Khmer-Rouge-Trials/

Home (full-length movie created for World Environment Days, expires June 29)
http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

The Google Channel (featuring Google Wave at this moment)
http://www.youtube.com/user/Google

Al Jazeera English Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlJazeeraEnglish

Bottom of the Blog Wonders

Today I began rounding out our choice of news and other gadgets which appear at the bottom of Starting Points, always after the regular postings (my originals, re-posts from others). You have to scroll down to see all these goodies. They're not just cute. They're an integral part of this blog.

So is the right sidebar, to which I also added a few more gadgets today, all designed to make your online life easier and a little more fun. (Yeah, I know some of the diverse postings here can get a little heavy.) There will many new link headers in the sidebar in coming days.

Here's a rundown of today's new sidebar gadgets:

• Translate This Blog or Any Other Webpage (new)
  
• Dictionary Help Tools (new)
  
• Sidebar Search Menus (new)
  
• Google Phrase Translator (new)
  

And here's a complete list of all that's now at the bottom, since the original posting explaining what I was doing down there has now gone into the blog's March 2009 archive:

• Breaking News Customized for This Blog (unique, covers all areas mentioned in the blog logo)
  
• BBC News (new)
• Al Jazeera Video News (new)
• TwitterSearch (a very easy way to get the best of Twitter fast)
  
• Many Other Social Networks (new, may not yet cover your favorite)
• Easy Wikipedia Search
• Google Mini Search
• Google Tools (new)
• Search YouTube
  

I re-named some of these gadgets to better reflect what they do. Collectively, they're a unique set of tools which to a significant degree replace typical blog postings and facilitate net search- and-explore processes. Try out as many as you can. The learning curve is pretty flat. Play around -- you can't break anything.