http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids....

Homemade Video by Hanin Elias (Ex Atari Teenage Riot)

I am so angry and scared of what happens right now in Gaza!

What can we do to stop the acts of Terror that are happening in the name of "fighting Terrorism"?
In the last two weeks of his presidency George W. Bush and the israeli Government put all on one card, total destruction of the palestinian people!
The so called Terrorists defend themselves with the lowest weapons possible, shoes, stone, carpetknifes and blow themselves up to show how down on the ground they are and our society keeps avoiding the facts of total Nazibehaviour from the israeli and U.S. government.
If we keep our mouth shut, our ears closed and our eyes closed we will soon live a life in endless Terror.

Hanin Elias

I WILL PLAY ONE LAST SHOW AT BLONDIE..S.

THE LOCATION IS AWESOME AND IT WILL BE A WILD GIG!

COMMONCOMMONCOMMON!

LETS GET WILD AND WASTED!!!!

 

Hi,
I arrived yesterday in Santiagos Airport after a 14 hours Flight form my little Island to Papeete over Easter Islands and then the Capital of Chile and got picked up by Rodrigo and Diego after a little Delay while i was surrounded by 20 Taxidrivers who wanted to talk me into having a Ride with them.
It was all exciting for all of us. For me because i live since 2 years on a small Pacific Island and have pretty much lost Touch with the outer World and anything that has to do with Music or big Cities or so...we drove right to a little cute Hotel and i could hardly speak because my Throat hurts and i guess i got a Cold on the Plane.
Today i saw my chilenian Band for the first time, Oliver who plays drums and Daniel who tried the guitar. The Bassplayer i will meet tomorrow. We tried some Songs and they showed me how they rehearst them before i came. We changed the Songs again and again until we where happy. It is really tight, the Show is after tomorrow and we just tried 3 Songs...My Set will be an hour.
After Rehearsal we went to the Cenctro Arte Alameda
www.centroartealameda.cl
where i will do a show as well. They have womens month in Chile and an Exhibition by female artists and a Filmfestival by female Directors.
We had dinner with the people from the Artcenter and i met lovely Rosa who runs the Place and i tried my first Piscal Sour. Then i met Robin from the former Cocteau Twins and we had an interesting Conversation about what Fans see in you and how most of them expect you to stay the same Person and play the Songs you wrote when you where a Teenie over and over again, like living in a Bubble where time stands still.
Repeating your old Energy over and over again.
I met some nice Fans and now i’m back in my little Hotel until we do some more Rehearsals tonight. I git some Coughmedicin and my favorite Nonijuice from the Pharmacy and hope that it will help, otherwise i have to perform my Songs in a Deathmetalversion...

"We are Tahitians"

(The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper
of the Socialist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday,
August 9th, 1995. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry
Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Fax: 612 281 5795. Email:
Republication is permitted with
acknowledgement. Subscription rates on request)

Two independence and anti-nuclear activists from Tahiti
-- Etienne Teparii and Chantal Spitz -- arrived in Australia last
week at the invitation of the Sydney Anti-Bases Action Committee,
in collaboration with the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific
Movement and Pax Christi Sydney. During their stay they took part
in Hiroshima Day activities, visited ports and unions to thank
those who had been taking solidarity actions against French
nuclear tests. The following are extracts from the story they
told a public meeting at the Tom Nelson Hall in the offices of
the Maritime Union of Australia and later at a meeting with "The
Guardian" and other left papers.

***************************

Chantal: I come from a little leeward island called Huahine,
about 170 kilometres from Tahiti. I live in a small village of
about 300 people. It's just a simple life. Not many cars. I don't
have electricity, I don't have a telephone, I don't have a fax.

I am a teacher. I teach in my little village. Our kids begin
school at three years old. A kindergarten school. I have them
from three to six years old. Of course, I try to teach them in
Tahitian language, but we have to teach them in the French
language.

Even if French and Tahitian languages are the two official
languages in French Polynesia, it's so long now that we teach
everything in French. It's very hard now to just teach in
Tahitian language because we don't have books printed in Tahitian
language so we have to prepare all the materials for the kids, to
try to translate all the lessons. So it's very hard.

In my village we are trying to do something like an alternative
school, so the kids can come after the official school, and we
try to teach them the legends of the island, and the culture. The
old women would come and teach the children to weave. The men
would come and teach them to play music and to carve. We are
trying to keep our culture still alive.

And of course, we fight for our freedom because we are not
French, we will never be French: we are Tahitian for more than
1,000 years, and we will be Tahitian forever.

We are teaching our kids to be proud to be Tahitians, because we
were taught that to be Tahitian was really a bad thing. Because
(we were taught) all non-white people are stupid and don't think,
and that we need the white people to come and to teach us how to
speak, how to think and how to express ourselves.

It took us 20 or 25 years to get rid of these ideas which the
school and colonialism put in our heads. So now we are teaching
our kids to be proud to be Tahitian.

I have three kids: 22, 18, and 13 years old, and they are very
proud to be Tahitian. As I was forbidden to practice my language,
Tahitian, because it was forbidden when we were kids, I chose to
live in small villages with my kids so they were right in the
middle of the Tahitian people, so they could learn the language
and the customs. The two older ones join us in the struggle for
freedom and the struggle against the nuclear testing.

Actions against French tests

For the last 20 years we were just a few people marching against
the nuclear testing. In 1992 when (France) decided to stop the
testing in Mururoa, people in French Polynesia thought that never
more would there be danger for them, and never more would they
have to worry about what will happen to the kids tomorrow.

Since President Chirac decided to resume the testing, never
before have we seen as many people as we saw marching in the
streets. We marched around the island. That was the pro-
independence party (Tavini Huiraatira) march.

We marched during six days around the island and for the first
time we were about five or six thousand around the island during
six days and five nights.

On the last day, June 29, we reached (Tahiti's capital) Papeete.
On June 29, 1880, we became a French (colony). This day everybody
joined the march in the city and we were like 15,000 people. We
saw people who never dared to march in the street. In most of the
islands there were protest marches on the 29th, on every island,
and that is the first time.

And when the Rainbow Warrior (Greenpeace protest ship - Editor)
came back from Mururoa ... we were something like five or six
thousand people on the harbour and the French army was marching
in the town because it was Bastille Day.

Now it's getting so strong and people are getting so concerned.
For the first time we feel the people just want to be free and
just want to express themselves.

When we reached the two entrances of Papeete we heard that the
Rainbow Warrior was not allowed to come to the main harbour
and had to go far down. So we decided to stay on the beach in the
town and there were meetings. But when we (Tavini and its
supporters) stopped at the edges of the town all the other
movements went and welcomed the Greenpeace group.

We blocked Papeete for three days and only decided to go back
home because Oscar [Oscar Temaru is the leader of Tavini
Huiraatira] was leaving on the Rainbow Warrior. So we all went
home and waited for the next step which was on Bastille Day.

The new association against nuclear testing held a march in the
night with candles on the 10th of July on the 10th anniversary of
the (French Government's bombing of the) Rainbow Warrior.

Something to hide

Etienne Teparii is on the Management Committee of the Polynesian
Liberation Front, Tavini Huiraatira, the anti-nuclear, pro-
independence party in Tahiti. He comes from the island of Hao in
the Tuamotu Archipelago, in the nuclear testing zone, one of five
Tahitian archipelagoes. Etienne works regularly with Free
Nuclear-Radio Tefana in Tahiti.

Etienne: We must consider the period from 1966-1974. During these
eight years, all the statistics have been hidden by the French
army. These statistics exist, about the health of the people who
worked on the sites of Mururoa and Fangataufa. These statistics
are under Defence Secrets. It is a law voted by the national
French Parliament.

What does it mean, this Defence Secrets? For example, when in
Mururoa someone dies, automatically the doctor must be a military
doctor. That's a law. And the papers are secret, even the family
has not the right to know anything about the death. Sometimes
they are sent to Paris to the Military hospital.

When I was in Paris. I was there for around 25 years, I created
an association to welcome people coming from Tahiti to France.
I was prohibited from meeting these people and the rate was about
100 people per year attending for medical purposes. Later I heard
there were about 200 people per year.
What disease they had, nobody knows. And why? Because the
statistics are under Defence Secrets.

Sometimes people tell us about the disease. Oscar has 54
people who will sign the testimony. We have a very serious
problem concerning this question of silence. It is important, and
we have only 54 persons and we know that since 1966-1992 there
were around 20,000 people (affected).

Affect on people

Chantal: It seems to me there are too many cancers for the style
of life we have -- no stress, no traffic ... Cancer is a disease
for a civilised people.

Our society is changing. When I was a kid, we were raised right
in the main city, Papeete. We planted our coffee. Really the
traditional life, right in the city. That was 30 years ago. We
were self-sufficient. We exported coffee, oranges, vanilla... We
did not import many things. We ate fish. We had maybe four ships
a year from France. We grew traditional food like taru, umara and
had our own milk, and so on...

(The military) needed many, many people to build the airport in
Papeete. If we did not have the bomb, we would not have an
international airport. They took all the men on the island of
Tahiti, and that was not enough, and so they took the men from
the outer islands to come to Papeete and to Mururoa, to build all
those big roads, airports, houses for the military.

So everyone came to Papeete, to the main city. There was then no
more agriculture, no more fishing, coffee, vanilla. Now we don't
have anything. Everyone wants a salary at the end of the month.
Everybody wants to be in the big city because there is TV, video,
the modern life. You cannot ask these kids who were born in
Papeete but are not from Tahiti to go back to their islands
because there is nothing.

We are 200,000 in the whole of French Polynesia. In Papeete there
are 180,000 -- only 20,000 people live in the outer islands.

In the traditional way of life, the way we lived, you had the
land of the family and all the big families owned the land.
You had many houses, all the uncles, the grandfathers, the
grandmothers, everybody was on the land.

The modern way of life is just like here (Australia) -- the
mother, father and the kids. When they have 10 kids and no money
to feed them, it's really a big problem. So they fail at school.
They drink, they plant and conceal drugs, they beat people, they
go to jail, and when they come out from jail they are more
violent.

I am sure that in the coming years it will explode in Papeete.
Young people have nothing.

Ten per cent of the population are really rich, rich, rich
because of the nuclear testing.

Thirty or forty per cent are middle class, and the rest don't have
nothing.

The Guardian | Phone: (02) 212.6855
65 Campbell Street | Fax: (02) 281.5795
Surry Hills. 2010 | Email:guardian@peg.apc.org

By Ibn Warraq Best-selling author and Muslim dissident Ibn Warraq argues that freedom of expression is our western heritage and we must defend it against attacks from totalitarian societies. If the west does not stand in solidarity with the Danish, he argues, then the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. AP Ibn Warraq: "How can we expect immigrants to integrate into western society when they are at the same time being taught that the west is decadent, a den of iniquity, the source of all evil, racist, imperialist and to be despised?" The great British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, "Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being 'pushed to an extreme'; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case." The cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten raise the most important question of our times: freedom of expression. Are we in the west going to cave into pressure from societies with a medieval mindset, or are we going to defend our most precious freedom -- freedom of expression, a freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives? A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth. Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize. This raises another more general problem: the inability of the West to defend itself intellectually and culturally. Be proud, do not apologize. Do we have to go on apologizing for the sins our fathers? Do we still have to apologize, for example, for the British Empire, when, in fact, the British presence in India led to the Indian Renaissance, resulted in famine relief, railways, roads and irrigation schemes, eradication of cholera, the civil service, the establishment of a universal educational system where none existed before, the institution of elected parliamentary democracy and the rule of law? What of the British architecture of Bombay and Calcutta? The British even gave back to the Indians their own past: it was European scholarship, archaeology and research that uncovered the greatness that was India; it was British government that did its best to save and conserve the monuments that were a witness to that past glory. British Imperialism preserved where earlier Islamic Imperialism destroyed thousands of Hindu temples. On the world stage, should we really apologize for Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe? Mozart, Beethoven and Bach? Rembrandt, Vermeer,  Van Gogh, Breughel, Ter Borch? Galileo, Huygens, Copernicus, Newton and Darwin? Penicillin and computers? The Olympic Games and Football? Human rights and parliamentary democracy? The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights and cultural freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and conscience. No, the west needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes. The Cartoon Jihad: Did European newspapers make the right decision by reprinting controversial Danish caricatures that disparagingly depicted the Prophet Muhammad? How can we expect immigrants to integrate into western society when they are at the same time being taught that the west is decadent, a den of iniquity, the source of all evil, racist, imperialist and to be despised? Why should they, in the words of the African-American writer James Baldwin, want to integrate into a sinking ship? Why do they all want to immigrate to the west and not Saudi Arabia? They should be taught about the centuries of struggle that resulted in the freedoms that they and everyone else for that matter, cherish, enjoy, and avail themselves of; of the individuals and groups who fought for these freedoms and who are despised and forgotten today; the freedoms that the much of the rest of world envies, admires and tries to emulate." When the Chinese students cried and died for democracy in Tiananmen Square (in 1989) , they brought with them not representations of Confucius or Buddha but a model of the Statue of Liberty." Freedom of expression is our western heritage and we must defend it or it will die from totalitarian attacks. It is also much needed in the Islamic world. By defending our values, we are teaching the Islamic world a valuable lesson, we are helping them by submitting their cherished traditions to Enlightenment values.

This is an essay from the author Naomi Klein who is very well respected and loved by me. Hanin May 5, 2005 How to End the War By Naomi Klein A billboard in Basra reads "Raise your hand for reconstruction, not a weapon of destruction." Editors' Note The following essay is adapted from remarks made at the National Teach-in on Iraq sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. The teach-in was held on March 24, the 40th anniversary of the first teach-in on the Vietnam War, which was held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The central question we need to answer is this: What were the real reasons for the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq? When we identify why we really went to war—not the cover reasons or the rebranded reasons, freedom and democracy, but the real reasons—then we can become more effective anti-war activists. The most effective and strategic way to stop this occupation and prevent future wars is to deny the people who wage these wars their spoils—to make war unprofitable. And we can’t do that unless we effectively identify the goals of war. When I was in Iraq a year ago trying to answer that question, one of the most effective ways I found to do that was to follow the bulldozers and construction machinery. I was in Iraq to research the so-called reconstruction. And what struck me most was the absence of reconstruction machinery, of cranes and bulldozers, in downtown Baghdad. I expected to see reconstruction all over the place. I saw bulldozers in military bases. I saw bulldozers in the Green Zone, where a huge amount of construction was going on, building up Bechtel’s headquarters and getting the new U.S. embassy ready. There was also a ton of construction going on at all of the U.S. military bases. But, on the streets of Baghdad, the former ministry buildings are absolutely untouched. They hadn’t even cleared away the rubble, let alone started the reconstruction process. The one crane I saw in the streets of Baghdad was hoisting an advertising billboard. One of the surreal things about Baghdad is that the old city lies in ruins, yet there are these shiny new billboards advertising the glories of the global economy. And the message is: “Everything you were before isn’t worth rebuilding.” We’re going to import a brand-new country. It is the Iraq version of the “Extreme Makeover.” It’s not a coincidence that Americans were at home watching this explosion of extreme reality television shows where people’s bodies were being surgically remade and their homes were being bulldozed and reconstituted. The message of these shows is: Everything you are now, everything you own, everything you do sucks. We’re going to completely erase it and rebuild it with a team of experts. You just go limp and let the experts take over. That is exactly what “Extreme Makover:Iraq” is. There was no role for Iraqis in this process. It was all foreign companies modernizing the country. Iraqis with engineering Ph.D.s who built their electricity system and who built their telephone system had no place in the reconstruction process. If we want to know what the goals of the war are, we have to look at what Paul Bremer did when he first arrived in Iraq. He laid off 500,000 people, 400,000 of whom were soldiers. And he shredded Iraq’s constitution and wrote a series of economic laws that the The Economist described as “the wish list of foreign investors.” Basically, Iraq has been turned into a laboratory for the radical free-market policies that the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute dream about in Washington, D.C., but are only able to impose in relative slow motion here at home. So we just have to examine the Bush administration’s policies and actions. We don’t have to wield secret documents or massive conspiracy theories. We have to look at the fact that they built enduring military bases and didn’t rebuild the country. Their very first act was to protect the oil ministry leaving the the rest of the country to burn—to which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responded: “Stuff happens.” Theirs was an almost apocalyptic glee in allowing Iraq to burn. They let the country be erased, leaving a blank slate that they could rebuild in their image This was the goal of the war. The big lie The administration says the war was about fighting for democracy. That was the big lie they resorted to when they were caught in the other lies. But it’s a different kind of a lie in the sense that it’s a useful lie. The lie that the United States invaded Iraq to bring freedom and democracy not just to Iraq but, as it turns out, to the whole world, is tremendously useful—because we can first expose it as a lie and then we can join with Iraqis to try to make it true. So it disturbs me that a lot of progressives are afraid to use the language of democracy now that George W. Bush is using it. We are somehow giving up on the most powerful emancipatory ideas ever created, of self-determination, liberation and democracy. And it’s absolutely crucial not to let Bush get away with stealing and defaming these ideas—they are too important. In looking at democracy in Iraq, we first need to make the distinction between elections and democracy. The reality is the Bush administration has fought democracy in Iraq at every turn. Why? Because if genuine democracy ever came to Iraq, the real goals of the war—control over oil, support for Israel, the construction of enduring military bases, the privatization of the entire economy—would all be lost. Why? Because Iraqis don’t want them and they don’t agree with them. They have said it over and over again—first in opinion polls, which is why the Bush administration broke its original promise to have elections within months of the invasion. I believe Paul Wolfowitz genuinely thought that Iraqis would respond like the contestants on a reality TV show and say: “Oh my God. Thank you for my brand-new shiny country.” They didn’t. They protested that 500,000 people had lost their jobs. They protested the fact that they were being shut out of the reconstruction of their own country, and they made it clear they didn’t want permanent U.S. bases. That’s when the administration broke its promise and appointed a CIA agent as the interim prime minister. In that period they locked in—basically shackled—Iraq’s future governments to an International Monetary Fund program until 2008. This will make the humanitarian crisis in Iraq much, much deeper. Here’s just one example: The IMF and the World Bank are demanding the elimination of Iraq’s food ration program, upon which 60 percent of the population depends for nutrition, as a condition for debt relief and for the new loans that have been made in deals with an unelected government. In these elections, Iraqis voted for the United Iraqi Alliance. In addition to demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of troops, this coalition party has promised that they would create 100 percent full employment in the public sector—i.e., a total rebuke of the neocons’ privatization agenda. But now they can’t do any of this because their democracy has been shackled. In other words, they have the vote, but no real power to govern. A pro-democracy movement The future of the anti-war movement requires that it become a pro-democracy movement. Our marching orders have been given to us by the people of Iraq. It’s important to understand that the most powerful movement against this war and this occupation is within Iraq itself. Our anti-war movement must not just be in verbal solidarity but in active and tangible solidarity with the overwhelming majority of Iraqis fighting to end the occupation of their country. We need to take our direction from them. Iraqis are resisting in many ways—not just with armed resistance. They are organizing independent trade unions. They are opening critical newspapers, and then having those newspapers shut down. They are fighting privatization in state factories. They are forming new political coalitions in an attempt to force an end to the occupation. So what is our role here? We need to support the people of Iraq and their clear demands for an end to both military and corporate occupation. That means being the resistance ourselves in our country, demanding that the troops come home, that U.S. corporations come home, that Iraqis be free of Saddam’s debt and the IMF and World Bank agreements signed under occupation. It doesn’t mean blindly cheerleading for “the resistance.” Because there isn’t just one resistance in Iraq. Some elements of the armed resistance are targeting Iraqi civilians as they pray in Shia mosques—barbaric acts that serve the interests of the Bush administration by feeding the perception that the country is on the brink of civil war and therefore U.S. forces must remain in Iraq. Not everyone fighting the U.S. occupation is fighting for the freedom of all Iraqis; some are fighting for their own elite power. That’s why we need to stay focused on supporting the demands for self-determination, not cheering any setback for U.S. empire. And we can’t cede the language, the territory of democracy. Anybody who says Iraqis don’t want democracy should be deeply ashamed of themselves. Iraqis are clamoring for democracy and had risked their lives for it long before this invasion—in the 1991 uprising against Saddam, for example, when they were left to be slaughtered. The elections in January took place only because of tremendous pressure from Iraqi Shia communities that insisted on getting the freedom they were promised. “The courage to be serious” Many of us opposed this war because it was an imperial project. Now Iraqis are struggling for the tools that will make self-determination meaningful, not just for show elections or marketing opportunities for the Bush administration. That means it’s time, as Susan Sontag said, to have “the courage to be serious.” The reason why the 58 percent of Americans against the war has not translated into the same millions of people on the streets that we saw before the war is because we haven’t come forward with a serious policy agenda. We should not be afraid to be serious. Part of that seriousness is to echo the policy demands made by voters and demonstrators in the streets of Baghdad and Basra and bring those demands to Washington, where the decisions are being made. But the core fight is over respect for international law, and whether there is any respect for it at all in the United States. Unless we’re fighting a core battle against this administration’s total disdain for the very idea of international law, then the specifics really don’t matter. We saw this very clearly in the U.S. presidential campaign, as John Kerry let Bush completely set the terms for the debate. Recall the ridicule of Kerry’s mention of a “global test,” and the charge that it was cowardly and weak to allow for any international scrutiny of U.S. actions. Why didn’t Kerry ever challenge this assumption? I blame the Kerry campaign as much as I blame the Bush administration. During the elections, he never said “Abu Ghraib.” He never said “Guantanamo Bay.” He accepted the premise that to submit to some kind of “global test” was to be weak. Once they had done that, the Democrats couldn’t expect to win a battle against Alberto Gonzales being appointed attorney general, when they had never talked about torture during the campaign. And part of the war has to be a media war in this country. The problem is not that the anti-war voices aren’t there—it’s that the voices aren’t amplified. We need a strategy to target the media in this country, making it a site of protest itself. We must demand that the media let us hear the voices of anti-war critics, of enraged mothers who have lost their sons for a lie, of betrayed soldiers who fought in a war they didn’t believe in. And we need to keep deepening the definition of democracy—to say that these show elections are not democracy, and that we don’t have a democracy in this country either. Sadly, the Bush administration has done a better job of using the language of responsibility than we in the anti-war movement. The message that’s getting across is that we are saying “just leave,” while they are saying, “we can’t just leave, we have to stay and fix the problem we started.” We can have a very detailed, responsible agenda and we shouldn’t be afraid of it. We should be saying, “Let’s pull the troops out but let’s leave some hope behind.” We can’t be afraid to talk about reparations, to demand freedom from debt for Iraq, a total abandonment of Bremer’s illegal economic laws, full Iraqi control over the reconstruction budget—there are many more examples of concrete policy demands that we can and must put forth. When we articulate a more genuine definition of democracy than we are hearing from the Bush administration, we will bring some hope to Iraq. And we will bring closer to us many of the 58 percent who are opposed to the war but aren’t marching with us yet because they are afraid of cutting and running. Naomi Klein is a columnist for In These Times, the British Guardian and The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper and the author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies.

Hi Friends:) This is an interview of one of my favorite writers and thinkers of today, Arundhati Roy. I thought you would maybe find it interesting... Hanin 'The War That Never Ends' By Arundhati Roy And Anthony Arnove War Times 30 September, 2003 Q. THE WAR ON IRAQ HAS BECOME AN OCCUPATION. IS IRAQ A NEW COLONY? Yes, but it's proving to be a pretty recalcitrant one. Maybe we should rethink the notion that Iraq has been "conquered." American soldiers are dying every day, more now than during the war. Q. THE U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN THREATENING IRAN, SYRIA AND NORTH KOREA. DO YOU THINK IRAQ WAS JUST A PRELUDE? In this particular chapter of War and Empire, the war on Afghanistan was the real prelude. Basically "The War on Terror" is Bush's perfect war, the war that never ends. The weapons deals that never stop. The oil fields that never dry up. But maybe those who supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were too quick to declare victory. In both countries now, U.S. troops are bogged down in a kind of quick sand. That's why the U.S. government is trying to coerce other countries like India and Pakistan to clean up the mess it has left behind. If the United States now attacks Iran, Syria, or North Korea, its troops will be further strung out across the globe. But then the physics of Empire seems to be encrypted in some way--overreach and implode. Maybe that's what will happen. But the downside is that the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons might ensure that the American Empire is the last empire the human race will ever know. Q. HALLIBURTON JUST ANNOUNCED INCREASED PROFITS LARGELY BECAUSE OF ITS IRAQ OPERATIONS. WHO'S PROFITING FROM THIS WAR AND WHO ISN'T? Halliburton is an old player in Iraq. It's not every corporation that can boast of having the army and the entire military might of the most powerful country on earth at its disposal, risking life and limb in order to increase its margins of profit. If I were a U.S. soldier, risking my life and sanity in the 100-plus-degree deserts of Iraq, I'd be asking some pretty serious questions of the CEOs of companies like Halliburton. How much do you earn? How much do I earn? What do you risk? What do I risk? Equally, if I were a student, or a school teacher, or a health worker or a single mother in the United States, reading about the huge cuts in public spending, I'd be asking a very simple question about this war: Who pays, who profits? I think what I find most insulting of all is the complete confidence with which George Bush the Lesser and his henchmen do what they do, assuming that American people are just plain stupid, and that public memory is fickle. America's poor are being exploited and put on the frontlines to ensure further profits for America's rich. It's for this reason that it's ridiculous and self-defeating to be "anti-American." America is not one homogenous mass of brutality. One-fifth of the armed forces are African American. I don't imagine anywhere close to one fifth of the profits of this war go to African American people. Asians and Latinos are in the army, hoping to get citizenship. What a great system. Get the Blacks, Asians, Latinos, and poor whites to fight your boardroom battles for you… Q. IRAQ IS BEING OPENED UP FOR PRIVATIZATION IN THE NAME OF DEMOCRACY. WHAT IS PRIVATIZATION ABOUT? It's quite unbelievable. The kinds of things that are being done these days in the name of "democracy" would be laughable if it weren't so savage. Privatization is the anti-thesis of democracy. It is the process of transferring public assets, held in trust for the public good, to private companies to amass private profit. It is simply unacceptable. Q. SOLDIERS AND THEIR FAMILIES ARE SPEAKING OUT AGAINST THE OCCUPATION. WILL THIS HELP RALLY INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION? I think speaking out against the occupation is the bravest thing that a soldier can do. I have always admired the U.S. soldiers who spoke out against the Vietnam War. In fact, in places like India, when people get randomly racist and anti-American, I always ask them: When do you last remember Indian soldiers speaking out against a war, any war, in India? When soldiers speak out, people really sit up and listen. I cannot think of a better way of rallying international opposition to the occupation. To those American soldiers who have had the courage to speak out, I send my heartfelt salaams. Q. PRESIDENT BUSH HAS ASKED INDIA TO SEND TROOPS TO HELP "CONTROL" IRAQ. WHAT IS YOUR REACTION? Bush probably knows that rightwing religious fundamentalists, regardless of what religion they subscribe to, are brothers in arms. George Bush, Osama bin Laden, Ariel Sharon, the mullahs of Pakistan and the L.K. Advani's and Narendra Modi's of India have no trouble understanding each other. In India, the present government is not just right wing, it is skating very close to fascism. For the first time in the history of independent India, the Indian government (the coalition led by the Bharatya Janata Party) is trying hard to align itself with the U.S.-Israel axis. It is not a coincidence that the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, conducted with the brazen collusion of the government and the police, took place so soon after Sept. 11. Neither is it a coincidence that the case is closed internationally, because killing Muslims now, after Sept. 11 is somehow seen as acceptable. If Indian troops aren't sent to Iraq, the reason won't be a lack of will on the part of the Indian government. It will be because the proposal has caused serious outrage among Indian people, a majority of whom were also incensed by the war in Iraq. Anthony Arnove is the editor of Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War and Terrorism and War (interviews with Howard Zinn). He is an editor at International Socialist Review.      

Hi Friends, cause i gave up on Music business (not music of course) just having my own fair label in a rip off world was no more fun.. I decided to give the songs away right now when they are still fresh, cute demoversions as................................................... free downloads for a few days. Till thursday 26th of january! Hurry up and Enjoy! Love, Hanin

Who am I?   Who am I? Am I the being my parents created by projecting their wishes on me of who they wanted me to be and who they wanted me not to be? Am I the being my teachers created by telling me what not to do and creating social and cultural illusions in me of who they thought I was supposed to be? No, I am not either? Am I a compendium of the past lives I have had? No, I am not, for as deep as this is, it is still much shallower than the truth. Am I endless space without the limits of time? Yes, but how am I going to experience it? What is your notion of your self? Do you have the goal of becoming endlessness. How were you planning on getting here so that this is your constant awareness? Most people who have this as a notion of self find that the notion or the state breaks down every time there is what they call stress in their lives. What do you do then? Do you force yourself to meditate more; do you go on a vacation to get away from yourself? Do you suddenly indulge in drugs, alcohol, food or desperation? Do you often despair of the path you are on thinking you will never get there or that God meant it for everyone else except you? Almost everyone thinks this over and over. What you do when you think this? Do you train yourself to think differently, create new thought patterns for yourself that are ‘more spiritual’? Most people on a so-called spiritual path do this over and over again. Why don’t you stop playing around and simply let go? Is it because you think that exceptionally bad things are going to happen, particularly very dark parts of your self are going to emerge? Relax! So what if they do? If they do, you are going to get closer and closer to Source. “How’s that,” you think, “that’s the last thing Source is.” Wrong: Source is everything, including all of your ‘bad thoughts,’ ‘bad actions’ and all of the evilness that you can conjure up. You can’t become the wide open space by becoming something good, by dropping your past projections and adopting ‘spiritual thoughts’ or doing anything else. You can only arrive at Source by allowing all of your parents’ ‘do’s’ and ‘do nots,’ all of your teachers’ projections, all of the thoughts, actions, hopes and despair from past lives and everything else you have ever been or identified with. Most of these things are the things you have been trying not to be. You might call them your ‘negative self.’ The point is that most people attempt to become spiritual by being less. They have notions of what it means to become spiritual and they force themselves to become spiritual by becoming a ‘fake self’ based on these notions. This fake self is usually an attempt at the opposite of the ‘negative self.’ Then they attempt to suppress what they have been before with a shiny new spiritual image. This isn’t Source, and it isn’t anything near it. If you wish to become Source, you are going to have to become all of its parts, not an illusory abstraction of it. This means that you are gradually have to allow all of the parts you have been in this lifetime and all of the other lifetimes you have been incarnate. At the same time, you are going to have to gradually let go of your personal boundaries and become everything that anyone has ever been. There is something you had better understand right at the start: You can’t control the process in any way. The moment you decide to go on a path to Source (and there isn’t any other true path), beings from the angelic realm and other areas of consciousness whose principal job is to guide human beings along their spiritual path are going to come into your consciousness and guide you. You aren’t going to understand them and probably are not going to know them by name because you don’t need this. They are simply going to take you through all of the experiences and energies that you need. You will need to follow them, for you will not know the path yourself. This frightens many human beings. In your egoic mind you are used to the illusion of control. If you are not in control of a situation, you attempt to gain control. Even modern psychology teaches this. Yet, constant surrender is the only path there is. Please learn and practice this. It is the only practice that remains constant throughout the years of becoming Source.