Video of Syrian rebel leader eating heart of Syrian Solder Shows Evilness of Islamic Fundamentalism

The video of the leader of the Islamic fundamentalist Omar al-Farouq Brigade cutting out and biting the heart of a Syrian soldier shows that the Syria opposition contains a significant evil force that is a threat to peoples and communities all across the Middle East.
See Independent newspaper article here

My fear is that Western intervention will only encourage these elements as shown in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya with 200,000 deaths, ethnic cleansing, millions of refugees, destruction of minorities, loss of female equality, establishment of warlord fiefdoms, Jewish colonisation of the West Bank and  a rise in Islamic fundamentalism that is built on hate. To hear the comrades of Abu Sakkar cheer his actions with "Allahu akbar (God is great) clearly shows the madness of this religious zealots.
See my previous article on the destruction of the 2,000 year old Christian communities in the Middle East.

A Jesus in Today's Palestine

Could the story of the Nativity happen today in Palestine? 
Unlikely.
For would a poor young unmarried teenage girl in the West Bank, who had just announced that she was pregnant, not become a victim of male ‘honour’?
Even if she did survive, she and her new husband would have found it extremely difficult to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem due to road-blocks and travel restrictions placed on local inhabitants by the occupying Israeli military; the shepherds would have probably lost their grazing lands to compulsory acquisition for the erection of the ‘Security Wall’ and Jewish colonial settlements; and the three wise men from Iraq (Mesopotamia) would have being denied entry visas.

But even if the birth did manage to occur in Bethlehem, Israeli military border controls would have probably barred Mary’s family from crossing into Egypt to escape religious persecution thus sealing their faith.

Yet there is no doubt that an adult Jesus of the New Testament and of a modern Middle East would have ended their lives in a similar terrible fashion. For anyone preaching a message of peace and love, a call for people’s liberation from poverty and oppression, of respect for all races and creeds, of freedom for prisoners, and an end to the oppression of women would have made himself both an enemy of the state and of a religious fundamentalism that preaches intolerance towards non-believers and death to all apostates and blasphemers.

Yes, death would have come either from an American-made laser guided missile or from execution by a Islamic death squad.

Dying Embers of Middle Eastern Christianity

At a time when Christians across the world celebrate the birth of their founder, a dangerous cocktail mix of Christian, Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism is leading to the near extinction of native Christianity in its birthplace with a mass exodus of frightened Arab and other indigenous Christians fleeing rabid persecution.

At the beginning of the last century, Christians represented a quarter of the population of the Middle East. Their churches dotted the landscapes of what is now Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. When Islam appeared in the region in the seventh century, Arab Christianity was already six hundred years old. Its worldwide influence was profound. They practised the custom of ‘prostration’ now almost exclusively associated with Muslims, and had always used (and still does) the term ‘Allah’ to refer to ‘God’. Egypt's Coptic Christians gave to the early Irish Celtic church its tradition of monasticism. Assyrian Christian scholars translated many of the Greco-Roman and Persian scientific texts into Arabic, thereby helping in the flowering of Islamic civilisation under the Abbasid Caliphate. From the eight until the eleventh century the Nestorians, with their heartland in modern Iraq and Iran were the most influential of all Christian churches with bishoprics stretching as car as southern Arabia and eastern China.

A religious tolerance more or less held in the Middle East for centuries until it began to be replaced about one hundred years ago by hatred and even genocide. This began in World War One when, according to many leading historians, the Ottoman Turks massacred three million Armenians, Assyrian and Pontiac Greeks in World War One because of their faith and ethnicity.

From 2001, the ‘Born-Again Christian’ George Bush unleashed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that he termed a ‘crusade’ which has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Combined with the pro-Zionist views of influential right-wing American Christians, who believe that all of Palestine must become Jewish in preparation for Christ’s return to Earth for the great final battle of ‘Armageddon’ (aka the ‘Rapture’), the response across the Middle East and environs has been the unleashing of a wave of murderous religious extremism. Too often local Christian communitities became an easy and accessible target. Christians now make up less than 6% of the region's population.

Yet as with Russia and China, US foreign policy is driven by an imperial greed that has nothing to do with freedom, democracy, liberty and justice. Its key global allies are bigoted religious authoritarian regimes such as Israel with its campaign of colonisation of Arab lands by foreign Jewish settlers; Saudi Arabia where Christian worship and that of other religions is banned, where school children are taught to hate ‘infidels’ or non-believers, and where conversion from Islam to any other religion (apostasy) is punishable by death; Iraq where a campaign of ethnic cleansing has led to possibly 500,000 Christians fleeing the country since 2004; and an Egypt where religious discrimination is practiced, where churches are bombed; where reports of the kidnapping, rape and forced marriages of young Christian Coptic women to Muslim men are increasing.

The great Irish writer and Protestant cleric Jonathan Swift was correct in his analysis that “We have enough religion to make us hate each other but not enough to make us love one another”.

So surely there is an obvious case for the expulsion of these and other countries from a United Nations with its ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ that includes Article 18 which states “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”?

Sadly the EU and the Irish government will do little of substance to end religious and other types of persecution in countries where they have vested economic interests.

This is the text of one of my previous posts that I think it is worth republishing at the time of the year that we celebrate the birth of a figure who preached tolerance, peace and love to all living things, but who ended up being tried as a threat to state and religion before being tortured to death.
Sadly his followers since have too often inexplicably used his name and teachings to kill and maim on all continents and in all centuries.
Just as astonishing is the fact that a modern day Jesus Christ from the biblical lands of Israel/ Palestine would more than likely be killed in his mother's womb or die a very young man.
For an evil stalks that blood-stained land masquerading on one side as "Allah" or "God's Will" and the other as "Defense of Democracy & Western Values" in a county known ironically as the 'Holy Land'.

Could the story of the Nativity happen today in Palestine? Unlikely.

For would a poor young unmarried teenage girl in the West Bank, who had just announced that she was pregnant, not become a victim of male ‘honour’?
Even if she did survive, she and her new husband would have found it extremely difficult to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem due to road-blocks and travel restrictions placed on local inhabitants by the occupying Israeli military; the shepherds would have probably lost their grazing lands to compulsory acquisition for the erection of the ‘Security Wall’ and Jewish colonial settlements and the three wise men from Iraq (Mesopotamia) would have being denied entry visas.
But even if the birth did manage to occur in Bethlehem, Israeli military border controls would have probably barred Mary’s family from crossing into Egypt to escape religious persecution thus sealing their faith.
Yet there is no doubt that an adult Jesus of the New Testament and of a modern Middle East would have ended their lives in a similar terrible fashion. For anyone preaching a message of peace and love, a call for people’s liberation from poverty and oppression, of respect for all races and creeds, of freedom for prisoners and an end to the oppression of women, would have made himself both an enemy of the state and of a religious fundamentalism that preaches intolerance towards non-believers and death to all blasphemers.
Yes, death would have come either from an American-made laser guided missile or from execution by a death squad after the customary gruesome torture.

The Renewed Enslavment of Women

Today on International Women's Day, it is sad to reflect on how little progress has been made on women's right.
If treatment of women was the litmus test of civilisation, then most countries would be judged barbaric.
Across the world, women are still denied political and economic status equal to that of men even though they do must of the work. On a domestic level, the cooking of food, the cleaning of a home, the nurturing and education of children, the paying of household bills, the provision of male entertainment and the sourcing/manufacturing of clothing is still the prerogative of the female.
But in the increasingly fundamentalist societies of Islamic Asia and Africa such as Sudan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Pakistan and Afghanistan the re-appearance of Sharia Law has meant that women are experiencing renewed oppression, being denied basic human rights such as education, travel and free association. Women are now being purged from hospitals, offices and schools in countries such as Iraq where until recently they were well represented. Males are using them the scapegoat for the ills of society as exemplified by the upsurge in so-called 'Honour-Killing', a horrible symbol of male dominance. For a female to walk the street with her hair uncovered or unaccompanied by a male relative now runs the risk of death.
Though it has to be said that many courageous women are fighting against this renewed onslaught by religious chauvinism. In Iran, the women's movement is probably the largest mass movement of opposition in the country. Likewise in Pakistan, professional women are leading the battle against government proposals to accept Sharia Law in the border tribal areas.
In the process they are becoming invisible beings, faceless, with no identity forced to obey all the whims of their male masters.
In areas of the world where Aids is rife, sex with a female virgin is often viewed as a cure for the disease.

But in the so-called developed world, the situation is some instances is even worse with females experiencing unprecedented exploitation and slavery.
There is an explosion in exploitative pornography fueled by the Internet, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ease in restrictions travelling between European countries.
Over the last two decades, Western Europe, North America and Turkey are the main destination for millions of young women from Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa who have been kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, drugged and gang-raped often bey their own male compatriots before being sold and enslaved as prostitutes to led a life of servitude servicing the sexual desires of mainly rich white men. Thousands of these torture camps dot the landscapes of Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy and the USA.
Governments do little to stem the flow or punish the pimps and the human traffickers.
The working life of a prostitute is light years away from the romantic image portrayed by Julia Roberts in 'Pretty Women'.

In Ireland, in spite of the fact that our President and Deputy Prime Minister have been females for decades, few women hold positions of power in the business and academic boardrooms.
Galway University where I work is often considered to be a vanguard in liberal values. However only 6% of professors are female which is the lowest representation in the Irish third level sector.
Yet it was not always like this. I am proud to state that in ancient Celtic Ireland women were often leaders and well represented in sectors that were considered male only preserves in other societies. Click here to read my previous article on 'St. Brigit and the Remarkable Power of Irish Celtic Women.

America, Barack Obama & the Gaza Crisis

The following is the text of a letter of mine published recently in the 'Galway Advertiser' newspaper that I wrote in response to a series of letters from 2 writers condemning local anti-war protesters:
(Photos from a recent pro-Palestinian Demonstration in Galway City)

The letters of Messrs McDonogh and Harrison seem to view local anti-war protesters as blinkered anti-American ideologues. The former states that he has not read any articles from “the socialists, lefties and liberals” condemning Islamic terrorists.As a member of this motley crew, I for one have written often condemning Islamic fundamentalism particularly for its attacks on women and non-Muslims. Hence I deplore their recent beheading of the ‘leftie’ Iraqi Kurdish feminist Nahla Hussein for her human rights activism. Sadly similar events are a daily occurrence in a country where a US-backed government legislates that women have less rights than they had under the dictator Saddam and where one of the world’s oldest Christian communities has all but disappeared since the Americans illegally invaded to topple its secular regime and secure control of its oilfields.
So if Mr. McDonogh wants to organise a public protest against terrorism in all its forms including that of the Islamists, I for one will join him. For amongst us Galway ‘lefties’ they are those who previously campaigned on issues such as Soviet invasions, Chinese imperialism, British injustices against the Irish, South African Apartheid…

Proud of American Connections

I worked in the USA, am proud of its historical connections with Ireland, have many American heroes and daily enjoy its technological innovations. But I recognise too that it is successive US regimes and its allies that stand accused of the greatest number of civilian deaths and human rights abuses since the aftermath of WW2.

Afghanistan: World's No. 1 Narcotic State

Hence unlike Mr. Harrison, I am wary of any Irish military involvement into propping up a misogynist Afghani regime supported by warlords and drug barons who have, as a result of the US-led invasion, created the world’s No.1 narcotic state that has brought untold misery to neighbourhoods across Ireland and elsewhere.

"We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser"

Washington promotes the Afghan conflict as a war against international terror and for civilised values. But this reminds me of the WW1 Allies that tricked millions of young men from Ireland and other Imperial dominions into fighting for freedom and democracy when in actual fact they were used as cannon fodder to create a future world order that would attempt to deny Irish Independence, betray pan-Arab nationhood, secure British control over Middle Eastern oilfields and increase white colonisation of Africa.

President Eisenhower Warns Americans of the Power of the Military-Industrial Establishment

In his last address to the nation, President Eisenhower warned the American people to be vigilant of the dangers posed to their liberties by the growing power of the military-arms industrial establishment. This is truer today than it was in 1961. War is big business for corporations linked to the lobbyists, Dick Cheney and others connected to the Bush administration. Trillions of dollars have been paid to them as a result of operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel while they appear immune to the recession that is tearing the heart out of the rest of the US economy.
The wave of popular radical movements currently gaining power across Latin America are indeed anti-Washington but primarily because they know that their white, elitist, traditionally repressive regimes were kept in power for decades by the USA in return for access to cheap raw materials.

Will Barack Obama's Presidency Lead To a Benign Change
in American Foreign Policy?

I hope that Barack Obama creates a more benign America. He is to be congratulated for his opposition to the Iraq war and Guantanamo as well as for appointing the world’s greenest and most scientific-savvy administration expected to implement a pro-environmental economic programme to combat climate change and to create millions of sustainable jobs in insulating homes and expanding renewable energies.
for Jewish settlers recently arrived from Europe. In the most densely populated region on Earth, its inhabitants are being used as target testing of sophisticated high-tech US weaponry operated by Israelis. As with the Nazis ‘Iron Fist’ approach, any feeble fight-back by the Palestinians unleashes huge destructive firepower.But I fear that he will do little to tackle one of the greatest threats to world peace, namely the expansionist terrorist state of Israel that acts as the US policeman in the region. Its ongoing land, sea and land blockade of Gaza represents one of the longest sieges in modern history and conjures up images of Nazi occupied Eastern Europe. Walled-in Gaza is the world’s largest ghetto/concentration camp, the majority of its 1.5million population made up of refugee families ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homes in what is now Israel to clear the wayEx-US President Jimmy Carter last year publicly lamented the stranglehold that the Zionist lobby has on all levels of US politics. The signs are that little will change. On the day after he received the Democratic nomination, Obama spoke at the ‘American Israel Public Affairs Committee’, the most powerful of US Zionist groups, to confirm that an undivided Jerusalem will always remain Israeli while calling for the isolation of democratically-elected Hamas. His secretary of state Hilary Clinton has been a long-time fan of Israel. She calls for action against Iran over its nuclear development while deliberately ignoring Israel’s huge stockpile of illegal nuclear weapons.The response from the world to the plight of Gaza is pathetic. To equate the victim with the aggressor is disingenuous. By their unwillingness to stand up to Israel, the Arab League, the US, EU and the Irish government fail to see history repeating itself in that today’s dispossessed Palestinians were the Jews, Armenians, Irish, Amerindians, Chinese, Aborigines and Poles of yesterday. Unlike courageous Jewish and/or Israeli peace movements such as ‘Not In My Name’ and JATO, they do nothing to get to the root cause of the conflict, namely Israel’s failure to implement UN Resolution 242 that includes withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders. Without such a move, there will never be peace between an increasingly militarily aggressive West led by Israel and an increasingly angry hostile militant fundamentalist Muslim world.

A Jesus in today’s Palestine

This is the text of one of my letters that appeared in local Galway newspapers just after Christmas. It sadly portrays I believe the evil that exists masquerading on one side as "Allah or God's Will" and the other as "Defense of Democracy & Western Values" in a county known ironically as the 'Holy Land'.



Could the story of the Nativity happen today in Palestine? Unlikely.

For would a poor young unmarried teenage girl in the West Bank, who had just announced that she was pregnant, not become a victim of male ‘honour’?
Even if she did survive, she and her new husband would have found it extremely difficult to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem due to road-blocks and travel restrictions placed on local inhabitants by the occupying Israeli military; the shepherds would have probably lost their grazing lands to compulsory acquisition for the erection of the ‘Security Wall’ and Jewish colonial settlements and the three wise men from Iraq (Mesopotamia) would have being denied entry visas.
But even if the birth did manage to occur in Bethlehem, Israeli military border controls would have probably barred Mary’s family from crossing into Egypt to escape religious persecution thus sealing their faith.
Yet there is no doubt that an adult Jesus of the New Testament and of a modern Middle East would have ended their lives in a similar terrible fashion. For anyone preaching a message of peace and love, a call for people’s liberation from poverty and oppression, of respect for all races and creeds, of freedom for prisoners and an end to the oppression of women, would have made himself both an enemy of the state and of a religious fundamentalism that preaches intolerance towards non-believers and death to all blasphemers.
Yes, death would have come either from an American-made laser guided missile or from execution by a death squad after the customary gruesome torture.