by Don Nash, Unknown News
July XIX, MMV
Our world owes much to Arabic traditions and Muslim influence. Modern science, medicine, philosophy, poetry, and culture would be in a world of hurt were it not for advances made by Islam. We use Arabic numerals, and the word algebra comes from the Arabic word ‘al jabr’, which means “restoration of balance” to both sides of an equation.
Algebra was developed by a Muslim named Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi, who was born about 1,225 years ago. Or as we’d say without Arabic numbers, about MCCXXV years ago, in the year DCCLXXX.
Al-Khwarizmi is considered to be the ‘father of algebra’, and he was raised in Baghdad, the same Baghdad of Iraq upon which George Bush wages preemptive war. He was born in Persia (now commonly called Iran), in the city of Khiva (now part of Uzbekistan) — little-acknowledged facts which may soon give the fascist talking heads an absolute spasm.
Al-Khwarizmi (left) pretty much invented heavy math, which Bush never quite figured out. |
‘Al jabr’, remember, means “restoration of balance.” It’s almost soothing in meaning and pronunciation. A little algebraic balance is exactly what our world is in need of.
‘Intifada’ is another Arabic word which has much relevance in our world’s current climate of political insanity and preemptive violence. A fair portion of the world’s violence is the direct result of bone-headed U.S. political adventurism. Well, and America’s intractable support of Israel, and Israel’s apartheid mistreatment of the Palestinian people.
The current acceptable form and usage of intifada comes directly from the Palestinian people and their suffering under the repression and apartheid policies of the Israeli government. A fair measure of the Israeli tyranny worked on the Palestinian people is the responsibility of Ariel Sharon, who is, by the by, George Bush’s boss.
Intifada can mean ‘shaking off’, and it can also mean ‘uprising’. Our world could use a little shaking off and some uprising. Speaking only for myself here, I’ve just about had all that I intend to put up with from lying Bush administration criminals. They lied the U.S. into the illegal Iraq preemptive war, lied to the American people, and lied to Congress. Bush lied to Tony Blair, or was it the other way around? Given the push-me pull-you nature of Bush and Blair, I suppose that beginnings and origins are mostly a moot point.
Bush lied to the United Nations, and had General Colin Powell lie to the United Nations Security Council. Bush lied to Kofi Annan, and lied to Pope John Paul II. I’m not really up to speed on the consequences of lying to popes, but that can’t be a good thing.
Bush lied to America and the world in May of 2003 (MMIII) when he told us all, “the hostilities in Iraq are over.” Whoops, he really told a whopper that time. Bush got Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice to lie. They lied about the weapons of mass destruction that were supposedly in Iraq, and that was the big lie in the first place. Iraq didn’t have WMDs, didn’t have nuclear weapons or nuclear threats. Bush and his cohorts lied about all of it.
Intifada: It’s time for shaking off Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al. Intifada: It’s time for uprising against the politics of deceit. It’s time for shaking off the ill-conceived premise of preemptive war. It’s time for defiance and intifada.
It’s time for intifada against the illegal detentions of Muslims, kept in perpetuity in the discreetly out-of-the-way nowhere that is Guantanamo Bay. It’s time for shaking off the moronic idea that the detainees can be kept without due process and without access to any form of justice. It’s also grossly inhumane.
Americans are supposed to be, at least in theory, a civilized people. To hear Bush and his boys tell it, Americans are still civilized and the rest of the world is barbaric. The proof is in the illegal detentions. Intifada!
It’s time for shaking off the torture that is now in wide practice by the leadership of the United States military. Secretary of Death Donald Rumsfeld can deny all the evidence, but the proof is in the evidence. It’s time for uprising against such a medieval practice.
Torture is beneath American dignity, and it’s time for shaking off the authors of such a sadistic idea. Torture hasn’t worked on the “enemy combatants,” and torture hasn’t worked on the illegal detainees in Guantanamo Bay. Not in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or wherever. Torture only leaves Americans worse than those that the “war on terror” is supposed to be against.
Intifada: Shaking off and uprising against that which is pathologically abhorrent. But no, intifada isn’t about violence or bloody revolution. Intifada is about defiance against that which is morally offensive, defiance against that which is the political expedient.
Intifada is uprising against that which is dishonest and without ethical support. Intifada is shaking off that which is corrupt beyond salvation. Intifada is standing up against that which is illogical and past the boundaries of common sense and common decency.
Intifada is about shaking off poverty, rising up against genocide. Intifada is about shaking off and uprising against the root causes of poverty and genocide. Intifada is defiance against the G-8 (G-VIII) nations and the global corporations that support and pull the G-8 strings of power. Intifada is defiance of the World Bank and it’s war criminal president.
Intifada is about shaking off and uprising against apartheid, whether the apartheid is practiced by Israel or the United States or Great Britain or France or Mexico or Kuwait or Russia or China or fill-in-a-blank for any damn nation-state around our planet. Any government that is in open practice of that which is criminal and tyrannical against humanity, must feel the common defiance of global intifada.
Politicians in America are not about to stand up and rattle the status quo. Politicians in America are perfectly comfortable with the corrupt system of special-interest patronage that they have established for themselves and their friends. The common American people are locked out of the political process and America’s Congress no longer represents the American people.
Global intifada: It’s time for uprising and shaking off that which does not represent ‘we the people.’ The Republican and the Democratic political parties have a vise-like death grip on the American political system, and we the people will get no help from either. Global intifada!
By extension, the situation in Britain seems much like that in the U.S. Australia appears to be much the same, as does the rest of the “civilized and democratic west.” The developing nations of the third world are, for the most part, puppet regimes installed and supported by the globalization carnival, and serve as proxies for the G-8 vultures.
It’s the everyday common people who must pay the price for the horror inflicted by globalization and the cannibalizing of humanity everywhere. So it is time, time for defiance and resistance to political insanity that is running rampant around our world, time for global intifada!
Global intifada is about saying no to world leaders, saying no to the global corporations. Global intifada is about asking the wee small questions, such as, “Why is our nation killing that nation’s people?” It’s about asking the global corporations, “Why are you exploiting that nation’s resources?” Global intifada is about saying no to crass corporate commercialism.
Global intifada is about asking the U.S. government why it supports Israeli apartheid on the Palestinian people. Global intifada is about asking the U.S. government why it continually blocks United Nations sanctions on Israel.
It’s not scary. Global intifada is as simple as whispering the word to your friends, as simple as writing one letter to a Congressperson and telling them, “global intifada.” It’s about telling one person that you are in defiance of political insanity and the hypocrisy that our world is stained by.
Stand on your front porch and yell the word one time, and you don’t even have to explain it. Using the term global intifada doesn’t make you a terrorist, or even a supporter of terrorism. It’s not about terror at all, it’s about ending terror.
Global intifada makes you human, it leaves you thinking, and it can be personally satisfying. Our world is racked by so much insanity, bloodshed, political hypocrisy, the time is now for global intifada!
© by the author.
Source: http://www.unknownnews.org/050719a-dn.html