My Fellow Americans: why you owe it to me to vote on November 4th

I want to vote too, dammit! Can someone suggest a place I could relocate, where they would have a democracy too?

In the meantime, I will be enjoying this excellent (and quite funny) video, the sequel to the original '5 friends' video.
Gosh. I am so pumped up with this democratic flame that I'll go bang on the doors of the US consulate right now. :)

So, Americans: on the 4th of November, get out and vote.

You don't just owe it to yourselves. You owe it to the rest of the world, too. To the people out there whose lives are altered by decisions made in the Oval office. And there are many, many of them.

More importantly, you owe to those of us, who are staring at the electoral process- f**ked up as your electoral process may be! - from the outside, and are angry, because they don't get the same chance you do. We don't get to choose our governments. We don't get to choose our Presidents. We don't get a say regarding laws, regarding our education system, our foreign policy, nothing.
And it's frustrating beyond belief.

Providence has given you the right to vote. For the most powerful office in the world, moreover, and that's one heck of a responsibility. You DO NOT, under any circumstance, get a free pass on that. I don't care if you 'didn't ask for this responsibility'.

On November 4th, you will be in the Chocolate Factory, and we will be the Charlie Bucket-s, looking from the outside, our noses squashed against the glass, in jealousy.

And You owe it to us to vote right.

The tag line of a French newspaper says "Freedom of expression wears out when we don't use it".
I'll paraphrase, and tell you that Democracy wears out, when you don't use it.
So fucking use it already.

I remembered this exchange from Good Will Hunting, where Chuckie (Affleck) is getting mad at Will (Damon) for not using his gift of intelligence to get a good job, to do the right thing.
Applies here, too. (minus, hmm, the death threat. Clearly).

                                     CHUCKIE
                         Look, you're my best friend, so don't
                      take this the wrong way, but in 20
                      years, if you're livin' next door to
                      me, comin' over watchin' the fuckin'
                      Patriots' games and still workin'
                      construction, I'll fuckin' kill you.
                      And that's not a threat, that's a
                      fact. I'll fuckin' kill you.

                                     WILL
                         Chuckie, what are you talkin'...

                                     CHUCKIE
                         Listen, you got somethin' that none
                      of us have.

                                     WILL
                         Why is it always this? I owe it to
                      myself? What if I don't want to?

                                     CHUCKIE
                         Fuck you. You owe it to me. Tomorrow
                      I'm gonna wake up and I'll be fifty
                      and I'll still be doin' this. And
                      that's all right 'cause I'm gonna
                      make a run at it.  But you, you're
                      sittin' on a winning lottery ticket
                      and you're too much of a pussy to
                      cash it in. And that's bullshit 'cause
                      I'd do anything to have what you
                      got! And so would any of these guys.
                      It'd be a fuckin' insult to us if
                      you're still here in twenty years.

(Oh yeah, and did I mention - vote Obama?)


(To return to the first humorous tone of the post - a very funny song on Sarah Palin is here.)

What we think we like, what we say we like, and what we really like

The latest Tom Friedman article might be worth a read, but this paragraph, where he quotes a guy from the Carnegie Endowment, was worth highlighting:

When you ask young Arabs which leaders in the region they most admire,” said Sadjadpour, they will usually answer the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. “When you ask them where in the Middle East would you most like to live,” he added, “the answer is usually socially open places like Dubai or Beirut. The Islamic Republic of Iran is never in the top 10.”

The first part of the statement I'm familiar with, and is often quoted. The juxtaposition with the second - and obvious - statement made me smile. I don't think we - young Arabs - are hypocrites, but those we are taught to admire - those leaders who stand up to the enemy, for instance - are not those we really would like to follow...

Muslim and Jewish males, you may feel better about yourselves.

Going under the clipper wasn't all for nothing. More relevant for developing countries with high HIV/AIDS prevalence rates, but still.

Disclaimer: this does not allow you to practice unsafe sex.

Joke aside, such behaviour has unfortunately been observed in various areas of S.S. Africa, in a very perverse example of moral hazard, when it has been made known that circumcised men are less prone to HIV/AIDS contamination.

Nick Kristof on Somalia

Nick Kristof has an interesting (though a little analytically superficial) article on Al-Qaeda's endorsement of McCain. (McCain is good for recruitment, basically).

The main topic - and both protagonists - are of no interest to me. However, this I found interesting:

Somalia has been in chaos for many years, but in 2006 an umbrella movement called the Islamic Courts Union seemed close to uniting the country. The movement included both moderates and extremists, but it constituted the best hope for putting Somalia together again. Somalis were ecstatic at the prospect of having a functional government again.

Bush administration officials, however, were aghast at the rise of an Islamist movement that they feared would be uncooperative in the war on terror. So they gave Ethiopia, a longtime rival in the region, the green light to invade, and Somalia’s best hope for peace collapsed.

I said that (admittedly in a less articulate fashion, and with more profanity) nearly two years ago. (Kristof, you plagiarist.)
But it's good that someone finally acknowledged it.
Somalia is a nasty mess that has lasted for so long we got bored with it. The US administration's 'feelings' and subsequent irrational behaviour have helped extend it.


BTW, Pyjama Samsara blogs from there.

Tel Aviv 101: *A* is also for...

(previous - and happier - 'Tel Aviv 101' entries are here and here).


A is for Arabs

Despite the poor and neglected Arab city of Jaffa being integrated in the Tel Aviv municipality, the only Arabs you see in TA are either national cinema or sport celebrities; or those who work in cafés or something. Occasionally, you’ll see a Palestinian woman and her daughter in a mall.

I remain a little shocked. Nevertheless, most Tel-Avivians are quite welcoming and won’t stare at you (too much). And having a token Arab friend is apparently a necessity. :)

A Palestinian flag sticker covers the Israeli flag on a license plate. Parked in Tel Aviv. Didn't see the owner though.

A is for Annexation

The anschluss of Jaffa, once the largest Palestinian city, into the Tel-Aviv municipality in 1954 is both an urban and a political crime. An old, decaying minority-inhabited city annexed to the young, economic capital of the country means that the inhabitants of the latter have every reason, from money to politics, to spill over into the older smaller city and give its inhabitants the boot.

Which is exactly what happened - and is happening in Jaffa, as its Arab inhabitants are regularly driven out - and not just bought out, but expelled. Since then Tel Aviv mayor Shlomo "Cheech" Lahat, announced a policy of "Judaising" Jaffa in the 1970's, housing permits were mostly forbidden for Arabs. Religious schools and synagogues are built in the heart of Arab neighbourhoods. And now, there is an ongoing effort by a real-estate developing firm, Amidar, to evict 500 families from the Ajami neighbourhood. Which will succeed.

Photographer Yehudit Illani keeps a very nice blog (with great photos, of course) of the recent developments in Jaffa.

.
A is for Anti-Arab Racism

Yeah, well, not everyone around TA likes Arabs. That's still Israel, after all.
A tag by the 'Anarchists against the Wall' -- a group of long-haired young people whose seem to recruit primarily among video store clerks -- commemorating the death of ten-year old Ahmed Moussa killed by Israeli soldiers during a demonstration against the wall, says

“Ahmed Moussa / 1998-2008 / Naa’lin”. “The Wall is built on the bodies of children”.

Racist taggers have had a couple of desecrating variations (pardon the weak translation):

“Fucking Arab” - “yeah, the wall is built on bodies of children!”

“Others like him will reproduce”

How I let down Barack when he needed me the most

Barack sent me an email* telling me that I can make a difference for him, and how I can (giggling uncontrollably) "change America".



But then, shame on me, I let him down. And now, it's all over the media:




He also sent me some hate email, which I cannot publish because I'm trying to maintain a certain level of decency here.


Seriously, don't you LOVE the elections in the US? Ah, wouldn't it be cool if we had some 'round here too...

* email is from the Obama-Biden campaign. I am on their mailing list, patriotic as I am.

So I need your opinion...

Collective wisdom needed!

This will help my decision-making process for my PhD programme; I've got other variables under control, but in terms of brand name, I'm not sure: which is better?

Please vote!!!

Argh! - Blog action Day (updated - link added at the end)

I got so caught up in my own mess that I omitted blogging in the past week, as I pre-posted a couple of entries (ha, ha - gotcha!) and got off my computer a bit, that I missed taking part in the Blog Action Day. Shame on me. What blogging development practitioner am I, missing this...
So to rectify this mistake, I am still, with a few days of delay, going to join in and address this year’s topic: poverty. And, à défaut of a professional analysis on the state of poverty in the world, I’ll just share some quick thoughts about poverty in Egypt.

My first awareness of poverty, as a child, was when I read about people buying the subsidized bread from government bakeries a day after it was made - 10 piastres (2 $cent) for 3 loaves, rather than 5 piastres a loaf of fresh bread.

5 piastres were the smallest coin denomination at the time. 5 piastres bought you a chewing-gum. And just then, I realized that some people didn’t even have it.

I didn’t buy anything from the school canteen for a week.

Poverty in Egypt has only been getting worse. The new 50 piastres coin looks like the 5 piastres of my childhood. And has roughly the same purchasing power - a 900% inflation rate.

The people who didn’t have the 5 piastres for the loaf of bread now have them; but the bread costs 25 or 50 piastres now.
Development in this country does not trickle down. The destitute have consistently increased, and poverty is increasingly visible.

The rise of poverty, and the continuous disregard to poor people will have to either be rapidly addressed - or the poor masses will take things in their own hands. And it won’t be pretty.

-------------------
But never mind me. If you want to read a real development economist working on poverty, I strongly recommend this Q&A with MIT's Esther Duflo. Reading this reminds me of why what we're trying to do matters.

The constant zapper

I once realised that, even when I find an interesting channel, I still zap between a couple dozen other channels to see if I can find something better. Even if I know that any other programme won’t be better, only different. I still zap.

The problem is, it also applies to many other things in my life. Books. People. Jobs. Even PhD programmes, for fuck’s sake.

Zap, zap, zap.

I decided to stop doing that. Will try. I will stop at the first interesting channel I see, and fight that stupid urge to keep changing channels anyway.

Face it - the QIZ agreement with Israel works

The Qualified Industrial Zones agreement (QIZ - read ‘quizz’) is an Egypt-Israel-US agreement whereby industrial goods gain duty-free access to the US provided they contain Egyptian and Israeli inputs.

When it started 4 years ago it was heavily denounced as ‘forced normalisation’ by the US. Which is not totally untrue. But the fact is, as op-eds were raging in both government and opposition newspapers, investors were, to quote a friend who then worked in the ministry of external trade, ‘lining up at the QIZ office at the ground floor, to apply for QIZ qualification’.

Government rag Al-Ahram had a happy and upbeat article (on Oct.15^th) about the prêt-a-porter industry under the QIZ. Sure, it’s a government newspaper talking about a government-sponsored agreement so you can expect all praise, but still. The numbers are there:

Nearly 700 firms spread over 15 sites, large increases in exports (30 to 34% increases in linen exports, for instance). Etc etc.

The fun part is when someone complains that some companies are functioning at ‘only’ 80% of their capacity, and when another complains about the lack of manpower (huh?? in Egypt??): “there are only 35,000 workers in the General Free Zone and we need 6000 more…”

Let’s face it: this agreement, despite its obvious politics-shoved-down-your-throat aspect, is working. And I’m in favour of anything that increases competitiveness!

* A question to readers: (Israeli ones in particular): is the QIZ even remotely an issue in Israel? And, to your best knowledge, do you think that Israel benefits from it, economically or politically?

Comments are open...

Sukkot in Cairo!

(photos, stories, and conversations are purposefully made non-specific. Apologies if it takes away from the story..)

I managed to get myself out of bed last Monday - sleeping being my prime activity in Cairo - to attend a Sukkot celebration (a Jewish holiday) in Cairo. Figured it could be fun to see whether my Jewish compatriots were good cooks. (answer: hmm... not really.)

I phoned Carmen Weinstein, the head of the Jewish community council in Cairo, to see if I could come - “hi, my name is Mohamed, can I come to Sukkot?” - she had one question (which she repeated, eeek, 3 times): “are you a journalist?” - I assured her I wasn’t. She said I was welcome.

Actually, the only suspicious people about this little enterprise of mine were the half-dozen policemen at the entry of the Maadi synagogue. Whom I am sure ran my license plate to check me. Oh well.

Later, as I chatted with Carmen’s sister, she laughed and told me that Carmen wasn’t very keen on journalists, who generally ‘report things they don’t even understand’. As I thought of the (much bedeviled and ultimately cancelled) visit of old Egyptian Jews last May (that I first mentioned here)and the abysmal media coverage it received, I couldn’t but nod in agreement.

The crowd was as follows: 20 or so people, overwhelmingly female, average age 65, lingua franca Arabo-french. The only Hebrew I overheard was a new kid at the Israeli embassy from Rishon Letzion, and some tall girl speaking broken hebrew with a heavy American accent - surely an AUC exchange student. And the man who did the Torah reading - the only person with a kippa. (thank God I didn’t bring mine. :). And a couple of frenchies - because, as we established, there’s always a frenchie :).

And three or four veiled women, whom I assumed were friends of someone, or lived nearby and grew up in the synagogue’s vicinity, etc. I was sooooo wrong: they turned out to be the children of Jewish women married to Muslims, so they celebrate both religions- they just happen to be practicing Muslims. And who, as children to a Jewish mother, were viewed as Jews by the Community... I found that so simple, yet so fascinating!

There was also this loud and a little weird Egyptian (Muslim) guy, who turned out to be the Community’s lawyer-cum-MC-cum-caterer apparently, whose strangely-shaped belly was almost as inflated as his ego! He numbers the Jewish community in Cairo to 1000 people (several multiples of other estimations), many being intermarried, etc, and who choose to stay out of the public realm.

And ten old Egyptian Jewish women bickering in Arabic. I laughed hard when one of them asked me - “oh, so you’re Gloris’ grandson?”
Ah, grannies...

Half an hour later, of course, I was joyfully chatting with some ladies about life in Egypt and abroad (as many of their relatives and children do), traffic, how taxi drivers take advantage of old ladies (I ended up driving one of them, who was too afraid to take a taxi alone, home), of the holidays, I was forcefully fed more greasy fish-fingers, etc.
The usual :)

It was straight out of a history book. A glimpse of a strange past, of the vestiges of a reality that no-longer existed. For instance one of them, an octogenarian with whom I had a long chat, seemed straight out of André Aciman’s ‘Out of Egypt’: she said she lived all her life here, felt “almost Egyptian” (she’s an Italian citizen, somehow), and that her dad swore he’d never visit Israel and that she’d never been, had no intention to, had no relatives there (“pas une fourmi!”, she said), and that she “was born, has lived, and will die here”.

I was made to promise I would make it to the Adly synagogue on Monday if I were still in Cairo then - “Lazem tigi lundi prochain - inshallah. Khalaas, promise?*”

* you must come next Monday, God willing. Alright, promise?

(A related post on Egyptian Jews is here, btw.)

Fresh anti-Muslim hate crimes in the US, after the distribution of the hate DVD

In a previous post I discussed how a racist organisation distributed 28 million anti-Muslim DVDs to people in swing states in the US.

Well, the repercussions are here: Anti-muslim hate crimes. Women and children attacked with chemical sprays in a mosque. Thank you, Clarion Fund and Aish-ha-Torah.

Read Amie’s post.

Who lost money in the Egyptian stock market crash?

Egypt always complains that the middle class is disappearing - which, by pure logic, is completely dumb: there will always be a middle! The middle has just changed, that's all...

I was struck when I read that these two people died because they lost a lot of money in the recent stock market crash:

The first is a man who killed himself, after he lost a lot of money in the stock market AND had 40,000 EGP stolen from his car.

The second died of a heart attack upon realising that he lost a lot of money in market crash.

Here’s the thing though. The first guy is an electrician who owns a small shop. The other one owns a dairy shop (labbaan, ya3ni).

People like these generally lack formal education and are considered to be generally among the lower classes of the population.

Only the fact is, such people are quite rich. Richer than my family, for instance. Their incomes are, however, undeclared, they pay no taxes, contribute nothing to the society’s common pool.

Yet they still ask the white-collars for their bakshish, and expect to receive alms for the holiday seasons, so they can buy that beach house on the north coast :)

Egypt has evolved and changed far more rapidly than it wants to acknowledge; the concentration of wealth has shifted classes. I’ll try to develop that in a further post... :)

I almost feel nothing towards the poor bastards who died of financial sadness. At least, if they won’t pay taxes, they won’t breathe my air.

Cairo: Harpies and brides

Cairo.

Got here a few days ago to spend Eid with the family. Interesting bus ride(s) it was, Ramallah-Jerusalem-Eilat-Taba-Suez-Cairo. Potential post and photos of the trip itself later.

Unlike my previous visits, where going to Cairo was a temporary but undesired last resort, my visit to Cairo this time is a real ‘expat visit’. Which is a little uneasy but not very cumbersome.

I spend my time perusing my brother’s broadband connection - no internet at home in Ramallah -, binge eating ka7k (Eid cookies - see photo), watching old Egyptian films, and skillfully avoiding my aunts, otherwise known as the Harpies (and Dependents).

I’m generally amused with the reaction of relatives when they are told I work in Palestine.

“You’re crazy! It’s dangerous!”

“The Jooz!”

“The Palestinians work for the Jooz!”

and of course “You’ll give your mother a heart attack!”

I usually reply by saying that my next posting will be in Darfur. That usually shuts them up, until someone breaks the silence - by asking for more food.

Made friends with my delightful new niece Nada (well, she’s almost 7 but the one time I saw her she had just been born). She declared that she likes me and wants to put me in her backpack to take home. I am so grateful!

Nada directed the pose.

Have received a couple of marriage suggestions from elderly relatives so far - “you should definitely meet my cousin’s daughter! She’s lovely and pretty and educated and well-raised. I’m not saying you should marry her quite yet (!!!). Just meet her!”

The prospect of meeting someone - just meeting - this way gives me the creeps. Eeeeeew.

(wrong onomatopoeia, I know. Which one would you use for ‘the creeps’ anyway?)

Also Doing some catching up with old friends, with daytime coffees now an option due to the end of Ramadan, and trying to arrange my outings with groups of friends who don’t hate each other (yet). It’s hilarious how ‘alliances’ have shifted while I was away... In a sense I’m grateful I missed this.

So, overall, all good here. A blessed Eid-ul-Fitr to all.

And happy new year 5769!

Go visit Global Themes!

I regularly contribute to Global Themes, a very enjoyable photography website. The theme of photos changes weekly, and contributions from all across the world are posted.

This week’s theme is “Places of Worship” - a favourite item of mine! - and these are a few of my photos this week.

Go to the GlobalThemes! Enjoy!

Mormon Assembly Hall, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Royal Pagoda, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Who said you can't pray AND sun-tan at the same time?

Hare Krishna worshippers, Tel Aviv beach.

St. Mark Cathedral, Venice, Italy.

Al-Aqsa mosque, East Jerusalem, Palestine.

How the international media handled the hostage crisis in Egypt: what the 'locals' are really worth to the world, and to ourselves

A 10-day ordeal has ended happily, with the rescue of 19 people kidnapped in the South-West of Egypt who were kept and shuttled around the Sahara desert - reportedly from Egypt to Sudan to Libya to Chad - and rescued by Egyptian troops.

One thing bothers me in the coverage of the story. In many media sources, the 8 Egyptians kidnapped are barely mentioned, as if unworthy of mentioning (they are, after all, just local guides and drivers, who gives a shit!)

Here’s a good example:


It bothers me when the local guides, translators, drivers, etc who get harmed because of their work for foreigners and do not receive the most basic respect or acknowledgement or, worse, are left to drown - or die - by their former employers (do I hear someone say Iraqi translators?)

I remember when French journalist Florence Aubenas was kidnapped in Iraq a couple of years ago. The French media always referred to her along with her Iraqi guide, Hussein Hanoun, who was also kidnapped. Giant photos of both were postered on the Paris City Hall (photo below; source) and even wall stencils.

I thought this was incredibly respectful on the part of both the French media and people; the man was working for Aubenas and, as such, he was embraced by the French media community and population as a colleague.

Is it a French quirk, to care about other people’s hostages? Was it just because the lead figure was French?

I checked various media sources, starting with the French.

Le Figaro talks about the “19 otages”. Same for Libération. Le Monde : "19 otages européens et égyptiens". LCI talks about “19 personnes, dont 11 touristes”. Le Journal du Dimanche cites the "11 touristes occidentaux et leurs huit accompagnateurs égyptiens". Ditto for the Nouvel Observateur. Even Belgian (walloon) press goes for a “19 otages” title.

Hats off for the French media. Bravo, et merci a la presse française!

How about the US ?

CNN : “the 11 European tourists and their Egyptian guides”. Fox News does a little better and actually mentions how many Egyptians were abducted as well. CBS news goes nationality neutral - “19 hostages”, as does the NYTimes.

Even German press (which could’ve, very understandably, dissed all non-German hostages since it had 5 kidnapped nationals) was more respectful than BBCNews, with the Frankfurter Allgemeine’s “elf europäischen Touristen und ihrer acht ägyptischen Begleite”. Die Zeit does even better and talks about “Die 19-köpfige Reisegruppe, darunter auch 5 Deutsche".

It somehow looks that British press is the most discriminatory of all. The Guardian tells of the “10-day ordeal of five Germans, five Italians and Romanian”. HUH? In another article, it mentions the “eleven European tourists taken hostage”. The Independent goes for “a group of tourists and their guides… The group, which includes five Germans, five Italians and one Romanian, disappeared…”.

Obviously, various countries view local victims very differently! And it seems that Britain falls behind the rest of the world in this regard.

In a case-by-case basis it all goes down to the choice of the journalist, obviously. Yet generally there’s an attitude that countries can project, about whether they themselves believe that their nationals are worthwhile or worthless.

Egypt consistently fails at that. We have no respect whatsoever for ourselves or for our people. And not just the guides and the drivers. I mean, we had an ambassador kidnapped and murdered in Iraq. An Ambassador, the man who is the country abroad. No one cared.

Actually, I'm curious -- what did OUR press write? That might be a good indicator...

Al Ahram, the government newspaper par excellence, titled "World praise for Egypt's ability to successfully end the ordeal of the foreign tourists". Al Gomhuriya, in all its glory, mentions the "foreigners and egyptians abducted" and then goes raving about the "11 tourists" who made it home, etc etc.

I banged my head on the table. Ha! THIS is where it comes from: they don't care about us because we don't care about ourselves!

(the editorial salvages things a bit, with Osama Saraya referring to "the egyptians and tourists kidnapped".)

Opposition newspaper Al-Masri al-youm refers to "the liberation of Tourists and Egyptians" but is kind enough to give us a photo of one of the Egyptian hostages (the only one i've seen, actually) reunited with his son, on the front page.

At least someone in this country gave a shit about its locals.

Why are we so worthless to ourselves, I wonder?

When racism and politics collide: "Obssession"

Ali brought to my attention the recent mass-mailing of anti-Islam DVDs in the US. According to the Huffington Post (read this article! Read it!), 70 large newspapers are distributing 28 million copies of the DVD, titled “Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West” - which was first broadcast on Fox News (where else?)

In today’s McCarthyist world, Muslims are the new witches. (the witches with a beard, ha, ha). We - Muslims and non-Muslims alike - are actually getting used to it.

But the fact remains that 28 million DVDs - can we say, an average of 4 people per household == 100 million potential viewers? That’s a shitload of money spent to make a point. And to scare a country.

The DVD features the likes of Daniel Pipes, the Richard Reid of the academic world (a terrorist, and a failed one with that) whose pathetic life is dedicated to demonise all Arabs in academia, and who reminds me of the Saddam Hussein character as the Devil’s bitch in South Park; Walid Shoebat, an Evangelical Christian falsely pretending to be a ‘former terrorist’ and who says that “Islam is the Devil” (oh, how inventive!); and Nonie Darwish, also known as the Milka Cow (I met her - she does look a little purple) a voice-for-sale whose father, an Egyptian officer, was killed by the Israeli army so she decided to, ehemm, mass-embrace Ho Hos, and the Israelis (and somehow blame Egypt, Islam, Muslims, Arabs, Pakistanis, various brown people, and Ho Hos, for the death of her dad).

So who funded this crap?

Aptly described as “shadowy” by progressive Jewish website “Jews On First!”, the Clarion Fund is (nominally) behind the distribution. NPR does a great job digging (and some more) behind the origins of this new front organisation. The Clarion Fund is set up by the film’s producer, Israeli-Canadian Rabbi Raphael Shore, who works/ed (his current employment situation differs according to sources) for Aish HaTorah (‘Fire of the Torah’), a hardline Jewish advocacy group. Tikun Olam reports more on that. Let’s simply say that - Clarion’s postal address is Aish’s!

Despite supposedly being an apolitical charity, Aish - and its front organisation, Clarion - are heavily connected to numerous pro-McCain groups; the DVD distribution operation has immediately been considered - particularly given the geographical distribution of the film - to be a pro-McCain (and, of course, anti-B Hussein O) move.

I refuse, however, to acknowledge that this is just a political gimmick. IT IS NOT. Fear-mongering is a full-time activity for many in this world, and Muslims are sitting ducks. The rabid anti-Muslim racism featured in this film and which is an underlying policy of the organisations behind it, should be dealt with as a purely racist attack on a religion, and on the millions of American Muslims (and Muslims overseas) who strive to be a building block in their community.

So I’ll end this entry by referring you to Hate Hurts America, which does a great job working on minority advocacy, and their latest website “Obsession with Hate” which provides a point-by-point rebuttal to the film’s lies.