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May 27

Amnesty International: NATO, “Keep The Progress Going”

Amnesty International, the most renowned non-governmental organisation focused on human rights, has had what seems to be its latest advertisement campaign, on behalf of Afghan women, circulated, widely, and immense and much deserved controversy has accompanied it.

“NATO: Keep The Progress Going!” reads the outdoor poster, announcing Amnesty International’s ‘shadow summit for Afghan women‘; this blatantly colonial feminist message has caused Amnesty International to face tremendous backlash, at least briefly.

Guests of the shadow summit ‘for Afghan women’ included none other than Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright. The same sanction-defending, ‘the price (read: a half million dead Iraqi children) was worth it’ Madeline Albright. The practitioner of humanitarian militarism herself. Read more

May 23

NATO-Free Summit And Rally Make Light Of Obama Crimes

I spent nearly one week in Chicago as an attendee of the NATO-Free World Counter-Summit for Peace & Economic Justice and as a protester in the anti-NATO rally which engulfed much of the local and national media, at least in brevity, and I must say that I was thoroughly exasperated with both the summit and rally when it came to what was seemingly intentional white-washing of the crimes committed by the Obama administration; though I was not at all surprised.  Read more

May 16

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Pain-Relief

The smell of Bengay is an aroma that drowns out the entire house; it is a perpetual reminder of open-ended efforts to subdue deep-penetrating pain, to quiet an ache that has not subdued. The unmistakable smell of menthol greets me in the morning time – a signal of sorts, that my father must be awake, and in agony, due to a back that seems to have given up on withstanding all that it has for 52 some odd years. Read more

May 15

The Catastrophe

If these battered walls and buildings had the means to speak, would they crumble beneath our feet and mourn those once buried amongst the concrete and the soot? Would they grieve their bent steel and blackened architecture? Would there be stories behind each bullet embedded in even the smallest of fractures?

What would we be told of this throbbing fragment of discarded history, held together by shards of ignored words etched out in the stillness, bellowed through madness and whispered behind closed doors?  Read more

May 11

The Children Of Iraq: Devastation Untold

“…Line up the bodies of the children, the thousands of children — the infants, the toddlers, the schoolkids — whose bodies were torn to pieces, burned alive or riddled with bullets during the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Line them up in the desert sand, walk past them, mile after mile, all those twisted corpses, those scraps of torn flesh and seeping viscera, those blank faces, those staring eyes fixed forever on nothingness. This is the reality of what happened in Iraq; there is no other reality….”

- Chris Floyd, December 17, 2011

The following is part of a presentation given at the side event of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, a tribunal established in order to investigate allegations of war crimes in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon; the presentation is a compilation of  figures and statistics that carry with them names, and identities. They are brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, grandchildren – they are children who have been forced into suffering unimaginable terror, who have been quickly and unashamedly forgotten, or worse, ignored. This is “humanitarian” imperialism and its cost in human suffering, in all of its blood-red glory. Read more

May 9

Haze Of War: A Lebanese Story

My mother and her brother, Ali, went to see relatives in Southern Lebanon during a casual visit – it was a Friday in the 1980′s and it was the first time she was there on a weekday; as per her usual routine she typically visited relatives in South Lebanon on the weekends.

My mother’s cousin, and my aunt, Houda, who was 15 years-old at the time, was sitting next to a few of her companions, almongst the olive groves across from grandmother’s home; my mother and uncle Ali arrived in Southern Lebanon, in our village of Arab Saleem, to Houda’s surprise. Houda’s joy at seeing them was noticeable in the brightness of her eyes and in her face according to those around her. Houda left her friends and quickly ran to hug and kiss my mother and uncle, exclaiming: “Who is planning to die today? This is the second week you arrive while the atmosphere is not pleasant.” Read more

May 2

On The Hatred Of Women and The Love Of Power

I was invited to be a guest on Al Jazeera’s segment know as “The Stream” in order to discuss the debate surrounding Mona Eltahawy’s latest piece on Foreign Policy, ‘Why Do They Hate Us’; unfortunately I was unable to actually get a chance to speak due to Eltahawy defending her piece quite verbosely. Though I am slightly disappointed I have decided to pen what it was I meant to say to Eltahawy, live on Al Jazeera: Read more

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