Pakistan's Most "Unworthy Victim": Dr Aafia Siddiqui
The Journey of an "unworthy victim"
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skmj16h40wE ]
To This
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9U8u1taoYg ]
Caption Even the Heavens must surely weep!
The Ugly Side of U.S. Law or the hubris of Imperial Mobilization awaiting its Just Comeuppance?
By the American scholar extraordinaire, the keeper of America's conscience, and my teacher at MIT, Professor Noam Chomsky's definition, the "worthy victim" is always worthy of being mourned, celebrated, commemorated, as it is made victim by the bad guys or their allies. The "unworthy victim" is unworthy of being mourned or even worrying about, as it is made victim by the good guys or their allies.
As an example of each, the once innocent child Malala Yousafzai (that she obviously once was, before accepting the Faustian pact as an adult that had been made on her behalf by her parents when she was a child), the "worthy victim", a victim of the evil-doers, is to be honored and even celebrated, perhaps even anointed as the "peace-maker", and of course awarded the Nobel Peace prize as a teenager just for being shot at (non fatally) by the bad guys. Celebrating her makes the bad guys look really bad and advances the cause of empire's counter-insurgency operations against them. It also creates a hero from among the Untermenschen who can be thrust back upon them as empire's glorified representative to them. This imperial craft for colonizing the Untermensch was most impressively fashioned by the empire that once ruled the seven seas, and upon which the sun never set, Great Britannia:
'We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, --a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.' --- (Lord Macaulay, Minute on Indian Education, 2nd February 1835)
Martin Luther King Jr., examined that construction by taking it a step further for the even far more brutish legatee of Great Britannia:
'The white establishment is skilled in flattering and cultivating emerging leaders. It presses its own image on them and finally, from imitation of manners, dress, and style of living, a deeper strain of corruption develops. This kind of Negro leader acquires the white man's contempt for the ordinary Negro. He is often more at home with the middle-class white than he is among his own people. His language changes, his location changes, his income changes, and ultimately he changes from the representative of the Negro to the white man into the white man's representative to the Negro. The tragedy is that too often he does not recognize what has happened to him.' --- (Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope, page 307)
Malcolm X advanced that understanding of empire's Negroes one step further:
'Today's Uncle Tom doesn't wear a handkerchief on his head. This modern, twentieth-century Uncle Thomas now often wears a top hat. He's usually well-dressed and well-educated. He's often the personification of culture and refinement. The twentieth-century Uncle Thomas sometimes speaks with a Yale or Harvard accent. Sometimes he is known as Professor, Doctor, Judge, and Reverend, even Right Reverend Doctor. This twentieth-century Uncle Thomas is a professional Negro ... by that I mean his profession is being a Negro for the white man.' --- (Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1964, 1999 hardcover edition, Chapter Black Muslims, page 265.)
Malcolm X didn't just stop there. He further distinguished between the House Nigger (Uncle Thomas) and the Field Nigger:
'There was two kind of slaves.
There was the house Negro and the field Negro.
The house Negro, they lived in the house, with massa. They dressed pretty good. They ate good, cause they ate his food, what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near their master, and they loved their master, more than their master loved himself. They would give their life to save their master's house quicker than their master would.
The house Negro, if the master said 'we got a good house here', the house Negro say 'yeah, we got a good house here'.
Whenever the master would said we, he'd say we. That's how you can tell a house Negro.
If the master's house caught on fire, the house Negro would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the master got sick, the house Negro would say 'What's the matter, boss, we sick?' We sick!
He identified himself with his master, more than his master identified with himself.
And if you came to the house Negro and said 'let's run away, let's escape, let's separate', the house Negro would look at you and say 'man, you crazy! What you mean separate? Where is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than this? Where can I eat better food than this?'
That was that house Negro.
In those days, he was called a house nigger. And that's what we call him today, 'cause we still got some house niggers runnin around here.
This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him.
He'll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about 'I'm the only Negro out here. I'm the only one on my job. I'm the only one in this school.' You're nothing but a house Negro!
And if someone come to you right now and say 'let's separate', you say the same thing that the house Negro said on the plantation: 'What you mean separate? From America? This good white man? Where you gonna get a better job than you get here? I mean this is what you say. 'I ain't left nothing in Africa'. That's what you say.
Why, you left your mind in Africa!
On that same plantation, there was the field Negro.
The field Negro, those were the masses. There was always more Negroes in the field than there was Negroes in the house.
The Negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers.
In the house they ate high up on the hog. The Negro in the field didn't get nothing but what was left of the insides of the hog.
They call them chetlands nowadays. In those days they called them what they were, guts!
That's what you were, a guteater. And some of you are still guteaters!
The field Negro was beaten, from morning till night.
He lived in a shack, in a hut. He wore cast-off clothes.
He hated his master. I say, he hated his master.
He was intelligent.
That house Negro loved his master. But that field Negro, remember, they were in the majority, and they hated their master.
When the house caught on fire, he didn't try to put it out, that field Negro prayed for a wind. For a breeze!
When the master got sick, the field Negro prayed that he died.
If someone come to the field Negro and said 'let's separate, let's run.' He didn't say 'Where we going?' he said 'Any place is better than here'.
We got field Negroes in America today.
I'm a field Negro.
The masses are the field Negroes.
When they see this man's house on fire, you don't hear these little Negroes talkin bout 'Our Government is in trouble'. They say 'thee Government is in trouble.'
Imagine a Negro, 'our Government'. I even heard one say 'our astronauts.' They won't even let him near the plant, and 'our astronauts'. 'Our Navy'. That's a Negro that's out of his mind.
That's a Negro that's out of his mind!
Just as the slave master in that day, used Tom, the house Negro, to keep the field Negroes in check.
The same 'ol slavemaster today, has Negroes, who are nothing but modern Uncle Toms. 20th century Uncle Toms, to keep you and me in check.
Keep us under control. Keep us passive and peaceful. And nonviolent. That's Tom making you nonviolent.
It's like when you go to the dentist, and the man is going to take your tooth. You're going to fight him, when he start pulling. So they squirt some stuff in your jaw called Novocain, to make you think they are not doing anything to you. So you sit there and because you got all that Novocain in your jaw, you suffer peacefully. Hahahaha.
There's nothing in our Book, the Qur'an, as you call it, Koran, teaches us to suffer peacefully.
Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful. Be courteous. Obey the law. Respect everyone.
But if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery!
That's a good religion. In fact, that's that old-time religion. That's the one that Ma and Pa used to talk about.
An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and a head for a head, and a life for a life.
That's a good religion.
And then anybody, no one resist that kind of religion being taught but a wolf, who intends to make you his meal.
This is the way it is with the white man in America. He's a wolf, and you're sheep.
Anytime a shepherd, a pastor, teach you and me not to run from the white man, and at the same time teach us don't fight the white man, he's a traitor, to you and me.
Don't lay down our life all by itself. No! Preserve your life. It's the best thing you got.
And if you got to give it up, let it be Even Steven.' --- (Malcolm X, House Negro vs. Field Negro Speech, Transcription by Project Humanbeingsfirst.org)
Pakistan's young Nobel laureate "worthy victim" of course, speaks with an Oxford accent. She lives in the UK under the protection of the massa while she is groomed to play her role as the future prime minister of Pakistan.
Because frequently occurring "worthy victims" continually refuel the necessary "doctrinal motivation, intellectual commitment, and patriotic gratification" to sustain "imperial mobilization" since "democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization" as Zbigniew Brzezinski puts it, it is not beyond empire to manufacture the "worthy victims" itself using the bad guys as stooges. The House Niggers of course shall all pretend that bad field niggers are responsible for the heinous acts and go to war on their own people on behalf of the massa.
Pakistan's exponentially aging "unworthy victim" on the other hand, sold to empire by Pakistan's ruler, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, under the rubric of empire's laws and manufactured evidence is consigned to 86 years in prison.
That is the straightforward reality of the matter. From Aafia Then, to Aafia Now, is but one insignificant step of imperial mobilization.
More pertinently, it is imperial hubris, awaiting its Just Comeuppance!
Oh Allah SWT, have mercy on this gallant soul... has she not paid the price of her Categorical Imperative sufficiently?
Open Letter to Pakistani Judicial Minds: Reclaiming Dr Aafia Siddiqui
Dear Hon Chief Justice of Pakistan and Her Best Judicial Minds:
Pakistan's destiny appears to be to blindly stagger from crisis to crisis. So, arguably, there is never the best moment to do anything but the present. All things must be done in the present when tomorrow shall only be the harbinger of some new existential crisis – which today already presages the looming Muslim on Muslim World War. Therefore, while we are managing our present crises and worrying about our future ones, I wish to draw your attention to finally reclaiming one of Pakistan's own – Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.
The following oped is now almost a decade old. Do something please --- and I outline below how to proceed for those of greater and finer judicial acumen. If Pakistan's best judicial minds, her best soldiers of truth and justice, fear calling a spade a spade to the point of summun, bukmun, umyun, then who, or what, can the ordinary plebeians seeking justice on earth look towards? Death? It, obviously, ends injustices for all --- the kamaal is to have it end for the living, wouldn't you agree?
Dare to tug on the loose yarn of the absurd cloak to unravel the entire garment of global deceit forcibly inflicted upon all mankind today?
FLASHBACK: Remembering Aafia Siddiqui in 2011 – 38 years old, frail victim of Imperial Mobilization
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." --- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The following letter accompanied this Flashback emailed to many lawyers, professors, jurist doctors, et. al.
Dear friends and teachers, AOA (Assalaam O Alekum - may peace be with you).
A frail woman is teetering at the very edge of existentialism. I write you In great sadness and with much anguish, for "only the dead have seen the end of war" (Plato). Those silent on this case are just as silent on all cases from Palestine to Pakistan, Afghanistan to Iraq. Aafias are the victims of every war. Taking a stance on this one, our contemporary, is taking a stance on every Aafia from time immemorial.
While we can do nothing about the dead (except lament, or, for the professional academic, write books upon books and treatise upon treatise to get tenure as professors and win accolades for one's scholarship), there is something we can do for the living.
Please read the legal concept outlined below in the Editorial. It was set as an international precedent at Nuremberg by the Military Tribunal in which Robert Jackson, the chief prosecuting counsel for the United States, argued culpability of all Allied destruction of Europe resulting in the slaughter of millions of innocent civilians, on the doorstep of those from whose first crime of aggression, "all the evil that followed".
That concept is also a key construct for ascertaining legal culpability and for apportioning criminality in both secular law, as well as moral law, where first cause is held more culpable than its effects. This is almost universal, and a legal truism. Those who claim to be Jurist Doctors, cannot but be aware of it.
See my layman's argument below. If argued in proper legalize by those skilled in that profession, it can surely enable refreshing a legal precedent for contemporary times of the here and the now which is entirely clouded in the villainous calculus of "imperial mobilization" (a term from Zbigniew Brzezinski).
Zahir Ebrahim,
Editorial: Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and Justice in the Service of Empire
The Only Truth About US Justice is that Justice is in the Service of Empire!
First Article on Thursday, February 11, 2010 | Letter to Editor Friday, February 12, 2010 | Oped Saturday, February 13, 2010 | Last Updated February 26, 2010
Turned down by all newspapers in the world, from The New York Times to Pakistan's Dawn and Daily Times
Yvonne Ridley's anguished opinion 'Truth about US justice' appeared in Wednesday's edition of Pakistan's prominent English Daily, The News, on February 10, 2010, and also appeared worldwide before then.
Ms. Ridley bemoans the travesty of justice in the US court's pronouncement of its guilty verdict on the frail, tortured daughter of Pakistan, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. The veteran journalist is perhaps unaware of the import of the following revealing words of a US Supreme Court justice which were uttered in 1951:
"To those who would paralyze our Government in the face of impending threat by encasing it in a semantic strait-jacket, we must reply that all concepts are relative."
This lesser known utterance by the highest lawman of the United States came right on the heels of the victorious Allies administering the absolute victor's justice at Nuremberg to the defeated Nazis with these famous words of its chief prosecuting counsel for the United States, Robert H. Jackson:
"... we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
Indeed, if there is one monumental statement made at Nuremberg, it was possibly this:
"... the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole".
In other words, Justice Robert H. Jackson averred that all the destruction of civilian cities from Dresden, Hamburg, ... to Tokyo in Allied fire-bombings which deliberately killed millions of innocent civilians, was not culpable crimes against humanity because its sin and criminality was absorbed by the Supreme International Crime of the first aggression!
Culpability for "all the evil that follows" is always solely apportioned by victors to the account of the first aggressor (the one who is defeated).
Even the aggressor's pretext for its first invasion of Poland as its own preemptive self-defense against terrorism (the Gleiwitz terrorist incident aka Operation Canned Goods), was outright rejected at Nuremberg as merely the self-inflicted inside-job to synthesize a Machiavellian pretext for extending German Lebensraum. As Hitler had put it to his Generals in Bavaria:
"[I will] give a propagandist reason for starting the war [and don't] mind whether it was plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterward whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war it is not the right that matters, but victory."
Justice Robert Jackson unequivocally affirmed that the Nazi quest for full spectrum dominance of Europe was illegal by international law, under any pretext:
"The intellectual bankruptcy and moral perversion of the Nazi regime might have been no concern of international law had it not been utilized to goosestep the Herrenvolk across international frontiers. It is not their thoughts, it is their overt acts which we charge to be crimes."
And in order to ensure that these legal words of immense import were never re-semanticized for "imperial mobilizations" by future 'ubermensch' Reichs, but rather, that these concepts remained inviolably "encas[ed] in a semantic strait-jacket", the very definition for the word 'aggressor' was ab initio proposed by Justice Robert Jackson as a state which first initiates:
"invasion of its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State. ... If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
That is quite an objective measure in international law for ascertaining who is the most guilty aggressor party, and who to fry first for crimes against peace, for monumental crimes against humanity.
So, even if Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is actually guilty as charged (for the sake of argument); is indeed the heinous mastermind of Al-Qaeeda (a Hegelian Dialectic which is examined elsewhere); or even if she was merely a dupe recruited by the Talibans/Al-Qaeeda as their waterboy (just as the CIA recruited Muslims from around the world to fight as the lauded Mujahideen against the USSR with proclamations of "god is on your side"); by the same yardstick as was used to hang the Nazis while awarding medals of bravery to the Allies who killed millions of innocent civilians in the defense of Europe against the aggressor, all the evil which has followed from the terrorist acts of an individual in aiding and abetting the militant-response against the invasion forces in Afghanistan is similarly legally subsumed by the monumental acts of state terrorism! The superpower's utilization of the 911 terrorist incident to "goosestep the Herrenvolk across international frontiers" is little different from the Nazis'.
Therefore, in any fair justice system interested in bringing real criminals closer to their day of accounting, before Dr. Aafia can be charged for her criminal conduct of responding to the invading forces in Afghanistan by her frail physical might, the leaders of the 'free world' and their financial supermasters seeking their own "Lebensraum" must be put on trial for their "supreme international crime ... [of] goosestep[ing] the Herrenvolk across international frontiers."!
To anyone with even half a brain, but one which is not entirely uncongenial to reflection, it must have been rather obvious from day-one that in the light of public revelations of the egregious circumstances of Dr. Aafia's bizarre capture and the subsequent orchestration of her show trial (instead of simply assassinating the accused if she was such a diabolical threat to mankind), any "justice" administered to Dr. Aafia Siddiqui would only be comparable to the proclamation of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland: "off with her head".
It must also have been apparent to those inclined to perusing statecraft rather than watching television or reading newspapers for their knowledge of current affairs, that the show trial of Aafia Siddiqui was designed primarily to serve an agenda of the state. Namely, one of calculatingly exercising the "high degree of doctrinal motivation, intellectual commitment, and patriotic gratification" deemed necessary for a "sustained exercise abroad of genuinely imperial power." A careful reading of Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard makes the political science and the various mantras behind "imperial mobilization" abundantly clear.
Therefore, at least for these abnormal people who actually try to comprehend the forces which drive terrorism, both the pirate's as well as the emperor's, there is nothing surprising in the guilty verdict, nor in the conduct of the servile Pakistani rulers leading up to the verdict, and nor in the utterances of the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Ann Patterson. To have expected anything else after all the careful preparations that went into enacting this puppetshow, the show trial and its attendant media demonization of Dr. Aafia, only betrays immense naiveté of the inner-workings of empire.
In my view, the prima facie 'Truth about US justice' is that "justice" is in the service of empire, as it always has been! The madam Ambassador of the United States to Pakistan has only executed the core purpose of her diplomatic post rather faithfully in the service of her empire.
Justice in these times, like everything else, including science, politics, history, literature, cinema, news (which is often indistinguishable from cinema), and of course political-science, is continually put in the diabolical service of empire. The only veritable truths are the imperial proclamations of the white man – from who did 911 to Global War on Terror to Global Warming to Global Epidemics to Global Financial Collapse to Global Governance. These history-constructions by incremental faits accomplis are the sine qua non for one-world government and cannot be constrained in any moral or legal "semantic strait-jacket".
It's not like the beleaguered Pakistanis don't know it – we even have the East India Company's achievements to guide us – but apparently, we, the 'untermensch', never quite seem to learn its lessons. And that's really the only pernicious secret of the enduring hidden strength of the golem behind all its guns and butter offerings to its victims before slaughtering them. The veritable strength of its 'Samson locks': our own price!
The former Director of the ISI, Brig. Tirmazi, narrated the following about us Pakistanis in his 1996 book Profiles of Intelligence:
'... It would be fair to ask what we [the ISI] did to counter the US machinations? Well we did not, and could not do any thing beyond reporting to the highest authority in the country. There are reasons for our inaction:
One, neither the ISI nor the IB is designed or equipped to counter the machinations of a Super Power.
Two, an important factor is our own price. A lot has been said and written by some of our American friends about the price of a Pakistani. Dr. Andrew V. Corry, US Counsel General at Lahore, once said, "Price of a Pakistani oscillates between a free trip to the US and a bottle of whisky." He may not be too far wrong. We did observe some highly placed Pakistanis selling their conscience, prestige, dignity and self-respect for a small price.' (page 45, emphasis added)
That evergreen description however has not captured the grotesque reality of the English-enabled intellectual Negroes flourishing in Pakistan today. Their "price" is not measured in such pecuniary terms.
Given this tortuous backdrop of modernity, the point of the unsubtle resignation request made by the courageous Ms. Ridley to show some moral backbone among the errand boys and girls of empire, even as it is merely being rhetorical, is entirely meaningless even in its rhetoric for two reasons: 1) it is a moral request in a global governance system which is beyond good and evil, one which brazenly asserts "hegemony is as old as mankind", and which puts morality itself directly in the service of empire; and 2) given that the highest-order-bit of the systemic disease among the 'untermensch' has apparently already been apportioned as our national destiny!
Crises are defining moments for nations, and for a people. Some rise to it. Others fall before it. Pakistan as a nation has evidently decided the latter course of action – and this is palpably apparent from the statements of Pakistan's own Ambassador to Washington:
'"Foreign relations are not discussed in poetry, ... Saddam Husain's last speech was also full of poetry but it could not save him or his nation"', and that 'relationships between nations are based on ground realities'.
Read its full deconstruction in: Bringing back the lost Zen to Pakistan
While it is true that most in Pakistan are very upset by what has befallen Dr. Aafia Siddiqui as yet another victim of "imperial mobilization" – only one among the millions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan's Tribal-Belt, all along the 'arc of crisis' in the "global zone of percolating violence", etc. – the handful who did publicly protest this latest visitation of empire's justice upon a frail tortured woman in a nation of almost 200 million, did so only symbolically.
While many an English-enabled 'house Negro' only expressed faith in empire's Justice.
The English language Pakistani press is full of their editorials which span the gamut of intellectual servitude from heaping scorn on any public expression of empathy with the victim, to outright blaming the victim. And this combined show of moral bravado despite the fact that Dr. Aafia has become the inextricable symbol of the summation of all the abhorrent injustices purveyed upon women in wars – from rape to rape – and no mere words can ever capture her indescribable agony!
Yet, most Pakistanis among the 'field Negroes' daring to express a modicum of moral outrage only displayed our fine moral tenor from the comforts of our living room. Just as we did when Iraqi women were being raped, tortured, and disappeared in the service of empire not too long ago. Then we returned back to our daily grind.
Symbols of morality, like talismans, are no match for hard orchestrated events of "imperial mobilization". And especially when arsonists are running all the fire brigades in a nation where its masses are more closely tied to their daily bread than to matters of state or national survival. The apathetic public well understands that many more arsonists eagerly await in the wings to take the place of their predecessors. The masses are well aware that the Pakistani elite, the ever patriotic praetorian guards, and their coterie of miserable sycophants have already learnt that while one's abject service to empire can sometimes be hazardous to one's existential wellness, it also routinely calls for new faces in many a chief's seat and presents the fabulous opportunity to loot and plunder anew in the name of patriotism.
Therefore, Ms. Yvonne Ridley's impassioned moral hint to the distinguished American Ambassador to Pakistan:
'She should then pick up the phone to the US president and tell him to release Aafia and return Pakistan's most loved, respected and famous daughter and reunite her with the two children who are still missing. Then she should re-read her letter of August 16, 2008 and write another ... one of resignation.',
will only deprive madam Ambassador of a well-earned livelihood and comfortable retirement for no fault of her own. She merely faithfully discharged her service contract to her own empire. And it will do nothing for Pakistan either, for we, as a nation, are serving exactly the same interests. When these aren't even our own!
I humbly recommend instead that madam American Ambassador be the next in line to be awarded the glorious Freedom Medal by the White House. President Obama has already received his Nobel Peace Prize.
Postscript: The Curious Case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and Imperial Mobilization
Justice is a delicacy best served cold, preferably in cold blood, in full service to the Hectoring Hegemons!
This Postscript to Project Humanbeingsfirst Editorial of February 13, 2010, was written the day after Dr. Aafia Siddiqui's sentencing by a US Court to 86 years in prison
"It is my judgment that Dr Siddiqui is sentenced to a period of incarceration of 86 years," --- U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman
Caption Harmless innocence Melt, Flours of all hue, and without thorn the rose (Milton, Paradise Lost): Is this merely the Ugly Side of US Law? The matching facade of Pakistan's outrage over Dr. Aafia Siddiqui's Treatment
"Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes, that a name, a phrases, a standard has meaning only when associated with the considerations which give birth to nomenclature. To those who would paralyze our Government in the face of impending threat by encasing it in a semantic strait-jacket, we must reply that all concepts are relative." --- Justice Vinson, U.S. Supreme Court, 1951 AD
First, Alice in Wonderland: Justice is a delicacy best served cold, preferably in cold-blood, in full service to the Hectoring Hegemons – just ask jurist doctor Rafia Zakaria, General Secretary, Board of Directors Amnesty International USA: Zahir Ebrahim Responds to Rafia Zakaria's and Amnesty International's Call for 'prosecution of Taliban leaders for war crimes'!
You have a right to ask: if the government is so concerned with "Significant Developments in Terror Threats Since 9/11, Officials Say", then, why must "they persist in fighting it precisely in the same way to create more of it,"?
Because: 'War on Terror' is not about 'Islamofascism' – Please get with the real agenda you people!
But simple minds will choose to not understand this – that mantras alone can't efficiently enable "imperial mobilization":
Successful social engineering also requires actual defining acts of terror that can believably foster "conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being", and cleanly separate time into a "before" and an "after".
The New Pearl Harbor of 9/11 was necessary to shatter "the public's sense of domestic well-being." It immediately accomplished that separation of time into epochs, and instantly cemented the long running mantra of the new boogieman du jour, the "The Roots of Muslim Rage." Bernard Lewis had planted that seed in the Council on Foreign Relations' Foreign Affairs magazine a full decade before 9/11, self-servingly concluding: "It should now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations."
As Hitler too had well understood, mantras must be backed by real acts of fabricated terror in order to realize their full potential as effective PROPAGANDA which can mobilize a nation to do what they would normally not accept to do.
And it also needs recruits, preferably young angry men and women whose "Muslim Rage" can be harvested, especially for suicide missions.
The hectoring hegemons need that "empire's justice" which has been juridically administered to the poor Pakistani scapegoat Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, so that it becomes more and more believable to blame future acts of fabricated terror on "radicalized Muslims", "home grown terrorists", "Islamofascism" et. al., in order to continue to justify the on-going baby-step construction of domestic police-state.
The entire world must be eventually governed as a global police-state because: "World government could only be kept in being by force."
To anyone with even half a brain, but one which is not entirely uncongenial to reflection, it must have been rather obvious from day-one that in the light of public revelations of the egregious circumstances of Dr. Aafia's bizarre capture and the subsequent orchestration of her show trial, any "justice" administered to Dr. Aafia Siddiqui would only be comparable to the proclamation of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland: "off with her head".
It must also have been apparent to those inclined to perusing statecraft rather than watching television or reading newspapers for their knowledge of current affairs, that the show trial of Aafia Siddiqui was designed primarily to serve an agenda of the state. Namely, one of calculatingly exercising the "high degree of doctrinal motivation, intellectual commitment, and patriotic gratification" deemed necessary for a "sustained exercise abroad of genuinely imperial power." A careful reading of Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard makes the political science and the various mantras behind "imperial mobilization" abundantly clear: The Only Truth About US Justice is that Justice is in the Service of Empire!
"It's all in the wrist"
(scene from James Bond's Octopussy)
Caption "It's all in the wrist", said Kamal Khan in Roger Moore's 007 Octopussy, as he proceeded to repeatedly put wool over his simpleton victim's eyes with his clever sleight of hand. But James Bond wasn't living in a fool's paradise of "the crowd of the simpletons and the credulous." He knew smoke and mirrors scam when he saw one. Beating Kamal Khan at this own game with a slyer wit, he blandly observed to the marveling simpleton after pocketing his winnings: "It's not really in the wrist you know!"
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Published February 11, 2010 to September 30, 2019
Pakistan's Most "Unworthy Victim": Dr Aafia Siddiqui by Zahir Ebrahim | Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
For Love of Imam Hussein (A.S.)
One does not even have to believe in the religion of Islam, or God, to be inspired by the resistance of Imam Hussein in Karbala!
For Love of Hussain (A.S.)
[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vovB33NRtw ]
For Love of Hussain (A.S.) An independent film by Presbyterian Pastor John Shuck from Portland Oregon, USA, and Josh Townsley. In October of 2018, John and Josh traveled to Iraq with Caravan 72, sponsored by the Husayniah Islamic Society of Seattle for Arbaeen, a 50 mile walk from Najaf to Karbala, Iraq. Presbyterian Pastor John Shuck: "Justice. That is the main take-away from all of this. The courage to stand with the oppressed against the powerful; to take a stand, for truth, to take a stand for justice, to take a stand that requires sacrifice. That is the essence of Imam Hussein, alaihis salam, and true Islam. And true humanity." (minute 14:45)
"Insaan ko baidar tou ho laine do
har qom pukari gi hamaray hain Hussein"
"Let human beings awaken from their slumber
and every nation shall claim Hussein is Ours"
--- Shayar-e-Inquilab (poet of revolution)
Josh Malihabadi
Karbala is a uniting force for Muslims, nay all humanity, if people can only realize its full significance. The significance of a real man, not in mythology or in theory, willingly standing up for the highest ideals of man --- to live in freedom and justice without fear and indignity and no price being high enough for seeking that virtue.
Unlike abstract theological principles like the Biblical Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you have others do unto you") never put into practice so as to ever become exemplary for all peoples, Karbala is a real exemplary event that defined a real categorical imperative enacted by the courage of Imam Hussein.
Karbala can attract all humanity if some Muslims don't despoil its name with strange behaviors, superstitions, or its minimization. Karbala is the singular categorical imperative to create a just world ---- not by endlessly talking about it in utopian platitudes and moral clichés as virtually all religions and utopian philosophies do, but by fighting oppression in practice in the style of dignity and perseverance of Imam Hussein and his family at Karbala!
Imam Hussein is the inspiration for all humanity to withstand primacy with dignity.
Imam Hussein is the hope of every oppressed that someday justice shall prevail.
And Karbala is that road to justice for any self-respecting people empowered to strive to make that someday happen today.
In a just world, by definition, all peoples of all persuasions can find space for themselves, each according to their own beliefs, traditions and culture. All high minded theories like the Golden Rule easily become a practical categorical imperative and put into practice by all in a just society, but only in a just society where all abide by the same rules enacted by the fiat of just laws in which no one takes undue advantage of another. That can only transpire when tyrants, their special interests, and their systems of oppression to keep the people in bondage of one kind or another, are defeated, and perpetually kept defeated.
This is the straightforward meaning of Every day is Ashura, every place is Karbala ---- for indeed, tyranny is everywhere, and will continue to raise its head everywhere, in every era, and therefore, by the logic of freedom and liberty being a desirable virtue for all (unless one asserts that living in bondage to the ubermensch is virtue), its antidote must also arise in every place, in every era.
Mankind to this day knows of no other exemplary resistance against tyranny among any peoples and civilizations that parallels Karbala.
They were inspired, nay mandated, by their own beliefs to stand up to the tyrannical government and its evil ruler; if you are inspired by your beliefs to strive for justice, if your moral sensibilities do not permit you to become well adjusted to the systems of evil of your time, then, irrespective of what those beliefs and sensibilities are, Karbala shows you how to stand up to evil in an uncompromising template of manhood that is itself the zenith of moral resistance. This resistance template is the gift to all humanity by Imam Hussein.
Witness non Muslims visiting Imam Hussein (as) in Karbala to pay their deepest respects, in deepest humility, to the noble grandson of the noble Prophet of Islam at Arba'een, in the largest human peaceful march and congregation on earth that most Westerners as well as most Sunni Muslims in the world have never heard of:
[ https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=i+love+imam+hussain ]
Becoming familiar with this gift of Imam Hussein as the categorical imperative of Islam rather than the ritual of teary eyed remembrance of their pain and suffering that it has become, automatically begs attention towards the beliefs and ideals of Imam Hussein; and that in turn opens the doors for understanding the meaning of Islam as "deen-ul-haq" (see What does the Holy Qur'an say about Haq - Truth and Justice? The Noble Path of Islam: Denying to Caesar what is not Caesar's - Surah Al-Asr of the Holy Qur'an).
Therefore, whether or not one believes in Islam as a Divine religion for the Guidance of mankind (non Muslims), whether or not one believes in Imam Hussein as the only legitimate Imam of his time to whom obedience was made obligatory upon all Muslims as per verse 4:59 (majority of Muslims), analyzing the reality of Karbala with an open mind, and without prejudice, opens the Pandora's box of intellectual and spiritual inquiry. Its potential to transform mankind to overcome our collective banality of evil will remain hidden until then. With specious theories upon theories from the fertile imagination of useful idiot philosophers stupidly masking Primacy, or perhaps cunningly, like the controllers in Plato's cave, taking its place as mankind descends further and further into a kind of totalitarianism in which the mind itself is enslaved in complete servitude without the use of the bayonet. "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.", timelessly observed the German philosopher.
The path to breaking free from the force of that invisible bayonet is tickling higher states of consciousness in man.
Karbala invites towards that tickling, towards that striving.
Karbala inspires. Karbala uplifts the human spirit. Karbala demonstrates how not to succumb to the banality of evil. Karbala exemplifies how not to remain aloof from evil looking from the sidelines; how not to close one's eyes to evil rulers and evil systems of oppression; how not to acquiesce; how not to make excuses of expediency and practicality. Karbala exemplifies the limits for not accepting evil government.
Karbala exemplifies the limits to which a human spirit can resist tyranny without itself becoming evil; the limits to which a real human being along with his family members and close companions can deliberately say "No" to evil rulers knowing fully well what the outcome shall be.
This is the import of Karbala; Imam Hussein knowing fully well that his menfolk shall be killed and his womenfolk taken prisoners for their resistance; the categorical imperative of resistance deemed more important than individual lives.
This single act of Imam Hussein has inspired more rebels throughout world history than any other resistance template (a future essay will survey this history in autobiographical words).
Karbala's significance as an 'uswae-hassana' only seems to be lost on Muslims – those who cry for Imam Hussein and those who make fun of those who cry for Imam Hussein and those who ignore Imam Hussein as the singular role model for continually reforming cultural Islam back to the original religion of peace and justice, the Divine Guidance to mankind – especially today!
It is high time this travesty in misunderstanding Karbala is recognized by the public themselves and its holy narratives liberated from artificial sacrosanctness and antediluvian superstitions which have now become enshrined in the public face of Shiadom. The world public today cannot accept this throwback to the Dark Ages as liberating philosophy of resistance, let alone be attracted to it as a categorical imperative of moral existence!
So come revisit Karbala as the timeless categorical imperative of Islam gifted to all humanity, on how to rise up to systems of oppression without yourself becoming a barbarian in the process. Watch Islamophobes and their Machiavellian concoctions like "militant Islam" scurry for cover.
As we gather to commemorate Imam Hussein's "naizat" in this Muharram, and in every Muharram, let's not forget the categorical imperative that the noble Imam's "naizat" made incumbent upon every human being, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. To strive to live free of tyranny and oppression is surely the most important Haj, the most important prayer, the most important guidance of the religion of Islam to all mankind.
In shared "Gum-e-Hussein" of the captain of "safinah-tun-nijaat" for all mankind,
as-salamu 'alayka ya Sayed-us-Shuhada
Excerpted from: Categorical Imperative and Karbala – Open Letter to Muslims and Non Muslims
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