Category: Sociopolitical Observations

The all too real need

First posted on my short-lived blog Tharwalizations. 

Nationalism, Baathism, Islamism, whateverism, etc, indeed, the various isms that have swept across the region in the late 90th and early 20th Centuries onward have been nothing but a betrayal of its amazing ethnic diversity and all the intermixing that has been taking place for centuries. What we need is something new, a new idea of who we are, a new conception, no matter how vague, that can allow us to celebrate our differences and turn them into a source of strength rather than trouble and internecine warfare and mayhem. WE need to knit ourselves again into new fabric that can be reinserted back into the civilized world, for all our sakes.

Lost in Jubilation!

As always in our turbulent region, victory is in the eye of the beholder, and we so desperately need to feel victorious we are willing to see victory even in ruins. No wonder our victors have recently been nothing more than charlatans, thieves and murderers.Indeed, neither victory nor victors are what they used to be. As the old saying goes: “The times are no longer the times, and men no longer the men (la al-dinyeh dinyeh, wa la al-naas naas).” Civilization in these parts has gotten so bloody old, it seems, the gift of victory has much depreciated in value over time. Continue reading “Lost in Jubilation!” →

The Sahhaf Mentality!

The former Iraqi Minister of Information, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, who was the last such minister to serve under Saddam Hussein, has long gone down in history as the man who kept on denying the reality of what was actually taking place in the country with regard to the unfolding battle and kept on issuing defiant statements as he had clearly been instructed to do right until the moment US troops stormed into Saddam’s palace in Baghdad. Continue reading “The Sahhaf Mentality!” →