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29-06-2010, 04:11 AM
(This post was last modified: 29-06-2010, 04:14 AM by Peter Dawson.)
Regarding this blog:
http://www.arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/
I’ve only read the entries for 2010 so far, and the blog as it is in 2010 does seem to be the exact kind of blog I was looking for five years ago – the one that explained why Iraqis decided to start fighting each other, rather than fight the invaders, when America attacked them in 2003.
Obligingly, today (June 28 2010) I notice she has written the perfect introductory post for her blog. The blog as a whole is quite chastening to read (as a Westerner), the more you read of it.
I'd like to encourage others to take a look, and hear what people think of it.
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I haven't checked in there for some time but I do think it is an excellent blog. A different perspective which every westerner needs to know about.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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I've been subscribed to Layla Anwar's RSS feed for maybe 3 years now. A lot of her stuff is very difficult to read and she nurses a visceral hatred for all things American that can blind her to the many Americans and others who can see the evil that is the US State as clearly as she can and who do their best to combat it. I don't remember its precise content but I recall making a sympathetic comment on the blog maybe two years ago - I got roasted by way of reply. I'm not complaining either. She has been through hell and is currently exiled with her extended family in Syria. Her main point about 'do-gooders' in the west is that it's just tooo easy to be armchair sympathisers who, when the chips are down, are as complicit as the rest of a placid population in the crimes of the West. I have to say she has a point.
She's Sunni and also nurses a visceral hatred for both Iranians (of whatever stripe) and shi-ites - with especial venom reserved for al Maliki and his 'collaborators'
As you say though, the blog does give shocking insights into the despair that is the lot of the Sunni population of Iraq, living as it does in a state of perpetual terror, forced homelessness and exile.
It's odd how things turn out too sometimes. It was Layla Anwar - an Iraqi exile in Syria (of all people) who introduced me to the music of Canadian folk singer Loreena McKennit - of all people. She was smitten by her 'Caravanserai' piece and posted a link to it. I have probably listened to more Loreena McKennitt since that introduction than almost any other - much of it anguished, soul-full, heart-rending stuff - some setting the words of Keats poetry to song and lots of it her own stuff - Recommended FWIW.
Peter Presland
".....there is something far worse than Nazism, and that is the hubris of the Anglo-American fraternities, whose routine is to incite indigenous monsters to war, and steer the pandemonium to further their imperial aims"
Guido Preparata. Preface to 'Conjuring Hitler'[size=12][size=12]
"Never believe anything until it has been officially denied"
Claud Cockburn
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I can understand why she turned off the comments on her blog - I'd do the same if I were in her position. But that's not to say it's wise to turn off the comments.
The first big problem I ran into on her blog was
the way she handled some you-tube footage of US soldiers "killing in cold blood" an "unarmed" old Iraqi man. But the "unarmed" old man seemed to be in possession of some explosives, which seemed to explode at the end of the clip, helping end his life, and I'd like to ask her what she thought it was that exploded. It's as if she didn't even see it.
So while I appreciate the new perspective she gives, she does seem to be a bit erratic, which you need to keep in mind when reading her.
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As for the Kurds, apart from a handful that speak out against the Occupation, the majority have been brainwashed with so much chauvinistic propaganda, that to me, I consider them as the main culprits along with the Shiites of Iraq, in Her downfall.
In other words, they fertilized the ground for the Anglo-American, Iranian and Israeli occupation of the Land of the two Rivers.
But it does not stop here. The Arabs, including the Palestinians, forgot all about our genocide, and sided with the power of rhetoric. The Iranian rhetoric.
And while the people of Iran are protesting en masse, defying the most vile militia in the world, those Arab "brethren" are still dancing like monkeys to the Iranian drums...
This is a chapter of our history I shall never, ever forget.
I did say in the past, Iraq was the fig leaf that fell and exposed all...
It still is and shall remain so.
http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2009/...nfall.html
