Fall Of The Pharaoh

I can barely sleep I am so excited that the revolution has arrived en masse despite the queen of my kingdom telling me that the world will end in 2012 anyway, according to the ancient Mayan predictions and the man I share my life with is in a rush to replace our t.v, and get every satellite channel possible, because ‘ there is finally so much news to watch’!

From the declaration of the new state of Southern Sudan and the remarkable return of the 'Arab Street' through the contagious revolutions in Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia, the migrant worker strikes in the Emirates – however small they may be - and the Palestinian leaks, this year is off to an amazing start. Hopefully Algeria, Morocco and Jordan will soon follow suit. It appears that the world as we know it is either exploding, imploding or mud-sinking from the floods.

If the Gulf War made CNN famous these are the moments for Al Jazeera to finally be recognised beyond the nomadic tents. People around the world are either glued to their HD Screens or in a state of semi-paralysis with clawed fingers over their smart-phones, tweeting and mobilising the masses through the social networks. 

This week there seems to be no other news or nothing else to do but keep a watchful eye on the slaves' revolt against the last-standing Pharaoh. If he plans to follow Ben Ali to Jeddah, they may as well pick up Abdullah of Jordan along the way and prepare for their host to face opposition too...

As for the Palestinians it is always the most painful when those you perceived to be your own sell you out ,and as each new leak came to the surface I felt more and more sick (though somewhat unsurprised).  The worst of course was the PA’s support of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians inside Israel and the abandonment of the right of return . Sad though, that Erekat felt justified in blaming the messenger and calling on his thugs to attack the news network.

Both the artery of Africa and the heart of the Middle East are bleeding into the Meditteranean and Red seas, now is the time for the empire to wake up and realise that the Arab and Muslim masses do not favour their "moderate" puppets and if true democracy is to reign, then the only slogan you will hear is GOD IS GREAT!

And all the while, the Oligarchs of the 'free world' are sitting at the (World Economic Forum) in Davos pretending all is well when in actual fact ...Rome Burns!

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag
and Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back
after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, the tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live. 

Gil Scott-Heron

For The Tunisians & Egyptians

 (Picture Source: google)

Trust the place where civilisation began to bring on the revolution and kick out their despotic, up -America's-ass, useless, sell-out, impotent, tin(petrol)pot, Israel-serving, puppet leaders !

 

The Rescuers

I was recently roaming through the airport duty free bookshop in one of the Gulf States which used to have strict censorship on reading material. Up until a year ago, I was unable to find some books or magazines on the shelves of any of the bookstores, and I was told by the managers that the government had restricted the material due to the content (often on cultural or religious grounds). Imagine my surprise that just a few metres beyond the immigration counter, where my passport was stamped signifying departure from the country, I find THE NOMAD. Attractive title for a desert demon like me. 

Let me be clear at the outset - this is not a book review and the attraction began and ended at the cover for me. A little below the title was the name of the author - Ayan Hirsi Ali. This woman - nay, this opportunist posing as a woman, has made it her life's work to save Muslim women from the horrors of Islam. Of course she managed to escape the atrocities perpetrated by religion by claiming persecution and faking asylum papers, denouncing Islam, becoming a born-again-atheist, rose to fame as a politician and now writes about how bad Islam is.

It really sickens me that there are a growing number of so called "Ex-Muslims" (sudden growth after 9/11) making a point to run down the religion and claim to have had a raw deal and now want to enlighten and rescue the rest of us. The likes of Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan are punted and celebritised in the western media for the "wonderful" work they're doing to liberate the ignorant Muslims. They claim their personal journeys have led them here and that they cannot rest until the rest of us are saved. Strangely though, these liberators haven't stopped for a moment to ask if we Muslim women need or want their liberating! And if they have so strongly rejected the religion, and turned to atheism, why bother to indulge in religious rhetoric of any kind, why act as prophetic saviours? Shockingly, she claims that from her experience in visiting Israel and Occupied Palestine, she found Israel to be a liberal democratic state with lovely beaches where women and men enjoy equality and that it is the fault of Palestinians that they live in squalor because they're corrupt.

When the likes of Hirsi Ali and Sultan speak, the West is ever willing to listen and support their views, propagating it through media, Internet, and even assisting them in establishing organisations to support their causes. What concerns me more though, is the increasing number of Muslim women who are falling prey to similar jargon. No, I'm not speaking of women who want to be liberated by these opportunists, but rather, the Muslim intellectuals who get caught up in the limelight, the fame, the excitement of being asked their opinion on varying issues related to Muslim women in particular, and in multicultural fora where they unknowingly perpetuate the image of destitute, abused, controlled Muslim women who need to be saved by America, much as they have saved the Iraqis and Afghanis who are obviously living the American dream now!

Message to those ex-Muslims and the apologists:

I am a Muslim Woman

I am a proud Muslim Woman

I am a proud, educated, strong, liberal, dynamic, extraordinary Muslim Woman

Unashamed and unapologetic

I do not need you to be my saviour

I do not need your liberation

I do not want to live your American nightmare

Take your imperialism elsewhere

I choose Islam

I choose submission

Submission, not to you or man, or America,

I choose submission to the Almighty - my only liberator!

I am a Muslim Woman

and all your promises of grandeur are meaningless to me

Take your philanthropy elsewhere

It is not needed nor wanted here. 

Tonight I can write...

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Pablo Neruda

* sent by Lamb

Woman Of The Omani Desert

(Picture Source: Photograph by James L. Stanfield)

Ghareeba Hamed Said Fox al Harsousi, like other Bedouin women of her country, wears the distinctive Omani burqa, or mask. Saffron powder gives her face a yellow cast.

Women Behind Bars

Traditionally, the concept of women in prisons has always been considered as an afterthought in the greater discourses addressing male incarceration. This is rather surprising considering that globally there are about half a million women in prisons – and that translates into 4.3 percent of women worldwide and 2.65 percent in Africa.

Imprisonment by nature has many deprivations – DUH ! I mean what kind of treatment do criminals expect after all ?

Reading abit on the subject I found that the issues affecting female prisoners range from spacial concerns to abuse of prisoners, inadequate access to health care and the plight of children who are born in prisons. For me however the most unexpected of issues was the treatment of menstruating prisoners.

Considering the regular and inevitable nature of menstruation, it would be expected that prison authorities would have some kind of system in place to deal with it. On the contrary, the prison context creates a situation where menstruating becomes both punishing and painful. In Zimbabwe, women are forced to find alternatives to sanitary towels, like pieces of blankets or prison uniform, tissues and newspaper. Also, the adverse conditions worsened where women did not have underwear to wear during their periods

In countries where prison officials provide sanitary products, the roll out is slow and inadequate with women sometimes receiving one or half a pad per day. Women in Nigeria's Kaduna Prison had to share one pad between two women every month or sometimes even every two months. Disposal of sanitary products creates a great challenge to female prisoners when toilets are few or come simply in the form of open buckets; this creates a health risk as infants live in the cells and buckets could also overflow, and users could potentially be splashed with bodily waste.

The needs of female prisoners in terms of nursing, healthcare, menstruation and recreation are often overlooked and women are forced to make do in squalid, unsanitary conditions. It has been found that many women prisoners have experienced violent crimes either as children, wives or partners. The prison situation does little to stop the cycle of abuse and yes the reasons for the incarceration of women vary widely but the common thread remains the low levels of education and extreme poverty.

For me the most pathetic part of all of this is that women in prisons are still only considered as an after thought to men in prison.

Happy New Year !

(Picture Source : google)

                     I saw an angel in the marble and carved until I set him free  - Michelangelo 

May you carve this year into the realisation of all your dreams.
Thank you for your visits, comments and interactions.

Aluta Continua ... DD