Teaching Coding in Al Balqa Applied University, Amman, Jordan

As part of my regular delivery of coding workshops in the Middle East, Africa and Greece within the wonderful Refugee Code Week initiative, I am not only sent to teach in refugee camps but also to the schools and colleges of the host countries. So during this week's schedule, I was assigned to provide Scratch coding sessions in the Al Balqa Applied University in Amman.

It was and is a fascinating experience. The administrative staff, lecturers and students are so enthusiastic in learning this branch of coding and delivering it to schools in Amman and elsewhere as part of assigned internships later in the year. 

One interesting thing that has impressed me in my work visits to the country is the high number of women undertaking engineering at universities and colleges. The attached photo from today of one of my workshops of engineering students provides ample proof of this.
There are a number or socio-economic factors why this is the case. But it is uplifting to see something so different to my own country Ireland where the numbers of females in engineering is still very low. We can learn from Jordan. So well done to Shoroq Trad, Haya Al-Omari ʚɞ and the other young Jordanian, Palestinian and other Middle Eastern women here in Jordan for taking on engineering and computer science as a future career!

Life in the Al Zaatari Syrian Refugee Camp

Below is an article that I wrote for the Galway Advertiser earlier this week.

In ten days time I am returning to Jordan to work teaching coding to teachers in local schools and in Syrian refugee camps.

The biggest humanitarian crisis since the aftermath of World War Two has led to an exodus of 5 million peoples from Syria since 2012.

In an effort to help refugees living within the Middle East, a small number of individuals from Galway in February 2016 became part of an ambitious digital learning programme designed to bring computer coding skills to thousands of children, teenagers and teachers living in camps and districts across the region. Known as Refugee Code Week (RCW) the initiative, led by the German software corporation SAP in partnership with the United Nations RefugeeAgency(UNHCR) and the Galway Education Centre, has developed course content and provided teams of IT volunteers from across three continents to upskill teachers from Syria and other Middle Eastern countries in delivering coding programmes to young refugees and the youth of host nations from eight years to twenty years of age.

The Galway volunteers taking part in the programme are Bernard Kirk , director of the Galway Education Centre and co-founder of RCW, Nuala Allen (SAP in Parkmore), Niall McCormick (Colmac Robotics) and Brendan Smith (NUI Galway).

Brendan Smith, who has through his Outreach projects at the university since 2004 worked with asylum seekers in Ireland, was seconded from the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at NUI Galway to become a master instructor in RCW as well as in a sister programme, namely the highly successful Africa Code Week that has been operating since June 2015.

Here is his story.

The Middle East has experienced unimaginable devastation since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As in all wars, civilians are the innocent victims.  In what was once one of the most modern countries in the region, it is estimated that 470,000 inhabitants have died since 2011, over 7.6 millions are internally displaced within Syria and over five million were forced to leave. Whilst approximately one million are in Europe, most are living in the neighbouring countries of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. In spite of the severe strain on their societies and economies, these host nations have responded with amazing generosity and friendship.  Lebanon has 1.2 million Syrians (in a total population of only 5.8 million that also includes 450,000 Palestinian refugees), Turkey has 2.7million and Jordan approximately 650,000.  Many refugees have lost family, friends, neighbours, homes and jobs. Scarred by their experiences of brutality and living in poverty often in enclosed camps in a foreign country, education and careers can become impossible luxuries as they spend their days struggling to survive.

There is a genuine fear that a whole generation of young Syrians will be absent from regular schooling. 

So it is essential that they are provided with the learning skills and knowledge that can offer them some genuine hope for a better future.  Refugee Code Week is part of that vision and commitment, with qualified trainers providing computer coding training to refugees in Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.

 I have worked in all four countries. But it was my time in the latter that introduced me at first hand to the sheer scale of this modern man-made disaster.

On my first trip on a small mini-bus packed with volunteers that left the Jordanian capital of Amman for the Al-Zaatari refugee camp located only a few kilometres from the Syrian border, I really was not sure what to expect. 

 Our destination represents the second largest refugee camp in the world. Surrounded by a deep trench, armed vehicles, military personnel, high fencing, barbed wire, with the sound of warplanes overhead, a huge mass of thousands of single-story prefabricatd wooden portacabins populated by over 80,000 confined inhabitants stretched before us.

It seemed to me then that we volunteers were but tiny pathetic dots on a human landscape where our high lofty aspirations would soon be dashed against the reality of everyday lives in an inhuman environment that was beyond our understanding.

But appearances can be deceptive. When it was hastily established in 2012, Al Zaatari was a sprawling tent encampment in a barren desert devoid of facilities, rife with corruption and violence. Most of the refugees that fled to Jordan did so to escape almost certain death or persecution in the Syrian city and countryside of Daraa which was where the uprising against the Assad regime began in March 2011. 

 But the Jordanian government, UNHCR, NGOs and donor countries working with the Syrian residents have together transformed Al Zaatari into a fully functioning city. Drill holes tapped into deep underground reservoirs provide water by way of a fleet of trucks and local storage tanks to the camp’s 14,000 families. It is expected that piped water will be installed in all homes later this year.  As well as nine schools, three hospitals, two supermarkets, and a number of sports fields, one of the most striking physical features of the camp is the large shopping street known by the camp residents as the ‘Champ Élysées’ that is populated with a myriad of Syrian boutiques, butchers, bakeries, food stalls, cafes and bike repair shops.  

The main mode of transport is the bicycle, thousands of which were donated by the Dutch government, from it seems those that they found abandoned outside railway stations across the Netherlands. 

Beautiful hand-painted murals emblazon the exterior walls of hundreds of huts extolling the message of hope, or showcasing the beautiful natural Syrian countryside that residents left behind and hope someday to return too.  But the main theme of the wall art painted by local artists is Education and the benefits that this promises.  

This belief is critical as there are serious problems for the youth of the camp.

Each family is provided with a quota of daily bread and a small monthly allowance.  But to pay for extra food and essentials a high percentage of residents work either with the UNHCR or often illegally outside the camp. Many of these illegal workers are children who can be exploited and abused.  30% of the camp’s residents are of school-going age. But 25-30% do not regularly attend any of Al Zaatari’s nine schools because they work. Hence our role in introducing computer coding into the camp’s schools and in promoting the economic benefits that this should entail for child refugees is something that we believe strongly in.

The students teachers that we taught came from many different career backgrounds but all were warm, gracious, creative men, women and children that had an appetite to learn, to overcome the circumstances that had befallen them and to teach the new language of coding to the children of Al Zaatari. 

We also provided a Syrian female organisation in the camp known as the Tigers who organise social and educational projects for girls with programmable robot kits. Because of the circumstances that they find themselves in, being confined within a small geographical space, there was no doubt that many of the camp’s female teenagers were getting married younger than would been the case previously when they probably would have had the opportunity to continue on into further education.

The UNHCR personnel such as Abdul Qader Almasri welcomed us with open arms and provided laptops, rooms and translators.

There were some cultural differences though to get used too. Whilst it was okay for me to shake hands with my male students, this was not the case with regard to females.  Instead I would place my hand above my heart and gently smile when we were being introduced or when leaving. Though most young women I taught wore the veil known as the Hijab, some wore the Nijab which covers all of the face except for the eyes. As a teacher from Ireland, this took a little getting used to!

But a sobering thought for me of my time in Al Zaatari and elsewhere in the Middle East was that many of the friendly kind-hearted Syrian people that I taught, met and now consider my friends would have been tortured, enslaved, conscripted into armed groups or killed had they stayed in their country.

Note: I will be organising an exhibition of murals and paintings by Syrian artists from Al Za’atari in  Galway later this year.

Aleppo: Lessons from Beirut.

The two photographs above are not some of those being shown a lot recently of Aleppo past (beautiful) and present (ruins). Rather they show Beirut as it is now (top) and as it was (bottom).

The horrors being endured by the peoples of the Middle East seems to be only getting worse. In the last days of 2016 and the first days of 2017, bombings of civilian areas, massacres of unarmed men. women and children as well as forced population movements continue unabated.  Yemen, Iraq and Syria are turning into wastelands. The scenes on our television screens of Aleppo showing miles and miles of streetscapes lying in ruins are reminiscent of Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden at the end of World War Two. We have all seen the photographs of Aleppo then (glorious) and now (desolation). These images could also come from other Syrian cities – Homs, Deir ez-Zor, Daraa…
Promises of a better future and a return to the normality before the men with their guns, tanks and bombs came seem to be an impossible dream.
But there is hope that this nightmare will end.

Only ten years ago, Beirut was synonymous with death and destruction. Once known as the Paris of the East, civil wars and military invasions from 1975 onwards reduced the Lebanese capital to rubble. Armed militias, military checkpoints, air bombings, kidnappings, sectarian killings, religious conflicts and foreign occupations transformed the city and countryside into a nightmare world reminiscent of scenes from the film Mad Max
A few months ago, I travelled to Lebanon to teach coding to Palestinian and Syrian  refugee teachers as well as to students in Lebanese schools.  In a country of only 4+ million citizens, there are over 2 million refugees mainly from Syria. This is a putting a huge strain on an already fragile Lebanese society. A national political deadlock of 29 months was only ended in November when the post of Presidency was finally filled. Mounds of waste were highly visible on inter city roadsides and in front of major buildings as a result of what many Lebanese say is due to endemic political corruption. The garbage crisis is so bad that there is a fear that it could contaminate the whole of the Mediterranean Sea.
Yet is spite of the past and present problems, Lebanon still inspires me and fills me with grounds for optimism.
The capital city is being rebuilt. Hotels are welcoming foreign tourists. Couples kiss, hold hands and share romantic moments together in public places. Families cycle along the seafront. Unaccompanied women drive cars, walk the streets, socialise together. The cafes and bars are full of young people. The streets around the American university are awash with students of both sexes and of different cultures. Mosques and churches exist in relative proximity. Public museums, galleries and hotels welcome visitors. No other country has done more to welcome refugees than Lebanon.
All of this takes places in what was until very recently a brutal urban battleground. Of course this is not to ignore the serious social problems that still exist. Women complain of experiencing sexual harassment on the streets; the refugees often live in cramped poor neighbourhoods; corruption and political patronage are talked about openly; and the urban geography is based along religious and ethnic lines.

But the most important thing is that Druze, Christian, Shia, Sunni, atheist, Armenian are living and mingling in the same city with lines slowly blurring as time moves on.
In spite of the fragility of Beirut society, it offers a possibility of a return to the past for the Middle East. For this region that was the cradle of civilisation never belonged to one faith, one people or one ideology. For thousands of years its cities were always mixed, always cosmopolitan.
I sincerely hope to be given the opportunity to once again work in Lebanon as part of the ambitious and highly beneficial 'Refugee Code Week' learning initiative.

Working in the Al Za'atari Syrian Refugee Camp in northern Jordan.

Diary Entry One:

A few weeks ago, along with my good friends Nuala Allen, Aphrodice Foyo Mutangana, Mark Tate-Smith, and Bernard Kirk, I was based in Jordan as part of the SAP Corporate Social Responsibility Galway Education Centre & UNHCR programme to train young educators in computer coding so that they themselves can teach children and teenagers.
We were based at the Al Za'atari Syrian Refugee Camp in northern Jordan. It is the second largest camp in the world.
30% of the camp's Syrian residents of over 80,000 are children of school age. Half of them do not attend any of the nine schools in the camp because they work in nearby farms or elsewhere. Families need incomes. So as refugee adults are not legally allowed to work, parents often had to get their sons and daughters to take up work wherever they can. Child labour is a reality.
NGOs onsite and Jordanians are encouraging additional foreign aid to be used to create jobs that do not take work away from Jordanians and thus in the process allow all children in the camp to stay in full-time education.
We as volunteers are part of this initiative to upskill young people so that they might have a positive future.
But all the Jordanians and Syrians that I am working with are true angels doing their very best for people in a country that is one of the poorest in the Middle East.
Next month, I will be back in Africa once again under the Africa Code Week programme, another great SAP initiative spearheaded by the visionary Claire Gillissen.

 

Diary Entry Two: My Students: Innocent Victims of War.
Photograph shows students at my all-day coding workshop this afternoon in the Al Za'atari Syrian Refugee Camp.
These wonderful young men and women come mainly from the Daraa district of Syria.
If they had stayed in their homeland many of the people smiling at you would not now be alive.
They fled with their families to escape war, persecution and death; their educational studies, careers and dreams shattered in the process.
Thanks to the generousity of the Jordanian people as well as dedicated volunteers and funds from the United Nations, the EU and NGOs/governments from Norway, Japan, Kuwait, Britain, USA and many other countries, they hopefully will be able to believe in themselves once again, to have children, jobs and to lead long, peaceful and happy lives in Syria or in some other place.

Man's inhumanity to man (& it is very rarely women) always saddens me; killing a human being purely because of his/her race, religious belief, ethnicity or social class is pure evil. Sadly this barbarism is on the rise again in the 21st century.
After my classes finished today, I went to the camp perimeter to look over at Syria in the distance (only 10kms away) and I counted my blessings that I have been given an opportunity by SAP/GEC to play a small part in helping these people, who did not ask or want to be refugees torn from the country that they love, to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
This hope was reinforced by the fact that my co-mentor today was my good friend Aphrodice Foyo Mutangana.
Aphrodice is from Rwanda where I worked a few months ago as part of Africa Code Week. Whilst there I witnessed at first hand a country that had arose in a few short years from the ashes of an apocalypse to become, at many levels, a beacon of sunshine for a whole continent.
In 1994, over 800,000 people were butchered to death in the Rwandan genocide, a crime of unparelled butchery carried out by neighbour against neighbour, citizen against citizen. But today it has adopted a policy of reconciling genocide victim and perpetrator; has implemented a programme of 'community togetherness' that is possibly the best in the world; promotes women's rights, technology empowerment, sustainable economic development and reforestation as well as re-introducing once extinct wildlife to its countryside.
If this central African nation can rebuild after such a devastating human tsunami, the Middle East can become a peaceful region of cultural and religious diversity and tolerance.
My work as part of a team of enthusiastic visionary tech-savvy men and women has still much to give to the inhabitants of Africa, Middle East and Ireland.

 

 

Diary Entry Three: Residents Helping Each Other.
Our volunteer group spent the first few days in the Zaatari refugee camp providing computer coding workshops to teachers and students all of whom were forced by war to give up promising careers and jobs in Syria to flee to the safety of Jordan.
But it was the following day that was for me a true epiphany. For we could then truly enjoy the fruits of our labour as we watched the young men and women, that we had mentored, enthusiastically take on the task of teaching coding to the children of the camp on a one-to-one or one-to-two basis..
From early morning until early evening on that day 'our students' transformed what we had taught them into a subject that excited the interest and imagination of the children in their care.
Survivors of an ongoing brutal conflict that is destroying their homeland and their people, they have shown how, even in the darkest hour, the light of humanity can still shine through and that everyday life has to continue

Death of Peace activist in Middle East. He was a friend of mine

A few days ago I went to my local Catholic church to attend a mass in memory of a wonderful peace-loving man from the Middle East who was horribly tortured in prison by soldiers before being taken out through a screaming mob of religious fanatics to a hillside where he was publicly executed.

A social revolutionary, he was someone that I admired not just for what he had achieved in his short life but how he overcome prejudices even before he was born. For his mother was a young teenage girl who became pregnant whilst unmarried. In their very conservative traditional society, this would have meant being stoned to death. But her fiancée saved her from such a fate by marrying her even though he knew that the baby was not his.

Born into poverty, the child was forced to flee with his parents from their homeland to escape certain death at the hands of religious extremists.  The refugee family later returned to their village and lived quietly for many years. But later in life, the son became a target for the political and religious establishment when he started to travel around the country as a leading advocate for pacifism, religious tolerance, women’s rights, respect for children, and for a egalitarian classless society in order to end the economic exploitation of the masses by a wealthy clerical and political elite. Women and men flocked to open air rallies to hear him speak. His exploits were legendary: he once through his words saved a woman accused of adultery from being stoned to death by a group of fundamentalists. He befriended criminals, the sick, the poor, social outcasts, peoples of different faiths as well as members of the hated occupying army and their compliant state officials.  He condemned the hypocrisy of the all-powerful religious establishment who felt threatened by his ideology. They constantly harassed him, tried to break up his meetings, planted spies amongst his followers. Ever the pacifist, even when he was physically threatened, he never allowed his followers to use physical force to defend him.  But his enemies finally got him arrested on trumped-up charges of being both a blasphemer and an enemy of the state. He was condemned to a slow agonising death by a jeering crowd whipped up into a frenzy by clerics saying he had insulted their religion.

During his lifetime and since his death, some people have referred to him as a prophet, others say he was the son of God and there are those who think he was mad and delusional. I though over the years have been inspired by the radical progressive teachings of love, respect, liberty, equality and justice that were taught by this poor Jewish man from Galilee. Though I never met him, I would like to think that Jesus was a friend of mine.

May I extend New Year greetings of peace and goodwill to all my friends who are Muslims, Jews, atheists, Pantheists, Hindus, Buddhists, Druze, agnostics, Bahai’s and Christians. The cultural diversity and religious differences that we share strengthens our friendship.   
Áthbhlian faoi mhaise daoibh.

Global War on Women: Japan finally issues official apology & awards compensation to the Sex Slaves of its WW2 military.

In World War Two, it is estimated that circa 200,000 women from Korea, China, Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere were kidnapped and forced to work in brothels as the sex slaves of the Japanese military. The term 'comfort women' that is used to describe them is an insult to the systematic brutality, torture and rape that they suffered over many years in captivity.
Now an agreement has been reached between the South Korean and Japanese government with the latter issuing an official apology for the enslavement of the women and granting one billion yen towards the surviving 46 elderly South Korean female victims. Credit for this long overdue action must be given to the decades long campaign by Korean female activists. 

In this war the Japanese Imperial soldiery felt it was their warrior right to rape the female members of the enemy population at will. The military brothels staffed by sex slaves were only one aspect of the abhorrent treatment meted out to the women of the countries they conquered. The 'Rape of Nanking' in China was aptly named. When the city fell to the Japanese army in December 1937, tens of thousands of females of all ages were gang raped with many horribly mutilated and then murdered.
In Europe during WW2, mass rape on a huge scale was carried out by Soviet armies in Germany during 1945, as a form of 'revenge' for the barbarity of the Nazi occupation in Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia. 



Women: The First Victims of Men's Wars
Throughout history women are always the primary victims of the wars perpetuated by men. Their bodies are treated as trophies to be used and abused by the male victors. Most of the main ancient religious texts justify or accept this fact.

Sex Slaves in 21st Century
Sadly kidnapping and sexual enslavement of women is back with a vengence and openly being perpetuated by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on the Yazidi and Christian populations as part of a policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide against religious minorities, by Boko Haram in Nigeria and by Christian militias in the Central African Republic. There are countless reports issued by Amnesty and other human rights organisations about large scale sexual violence against women by Libyan people-trafficking gangs in an anarchic state ruled by crazed religious warlords.

ISIS - An Ideology of Hate, Death & Destruction

Followers of the Islamic Caliphate (ISIS) were responsible for the massacre of at least 128 men and women enjoying a night socialising with friends and family in Paris. In the same week these religious Nazis massacred people on a popular shopping street in Beirut, at a funeral in Baghdad and at a mosque in Yemen.
In Syria-Iraq, they are attempting to obliterate millennia-old cultures by brutally exterminating ancient peoples such as the Yazidis and  by blowing up Palmyra and Nineveh.
Their ideology is based on a belief that there is no place on Earth or in heaven for atheists, agnostics, secularists, gays, feminists, democrats, socialists, Christians, Yazidis, Druze, Bahais, Hindus, Buddists, pagans, Jews, Alawites, Shiites and other Muslims that don't follow their warped version of Islam.

ISIS is funded and spiritually inspired by a misogynist religious fundamentalist elite in the Arabian peninsula whose wealth is based on oil. From the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, governments in USA, Britain, France, Israel, Pakistan and Turkey have armed jihadis to overthrow secular or secular tolerant regimes in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonial Israel and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia were supported no matter what their crimes. The illegal Iraq war led by Bush and Blair triggered the rise of jihadism in the Levant and Iraq.
If the people of the Middle East of all faiths and no faiths are to live in peace and with justice, the duplicity towards ISIS and other jihadis as well as the Israeli occupation/colonisation of the West Bank has to end.
But what must not happen is a loss of civil liberties in Europe nor an intolerance towards others. ISIS and other jihadis are trying to fan the flames of a religious war and are using terms such as crusades and infidels as part of this campaign of hate. We must not fall into this trap. Tolerance and respect must be the key words and deeds.

The Boy on the Beach

In a week when parents in Ireland and elsewhere are happily bringing their children back to school after the summer holidays, it is soul-shattering to see the body of three year old Alan Kurdi washed up on the shores of Bodrum in Turkey.
He drowned, along with his five-year-old brother Galib, mother Rehan, and eight other refugees, yet more victims of money-worshipping traffickers many of whom come from the same countries of the people that they are treating as nothing more than commodities.
Galib should have been going to school this morning accompanied by his brother Alan and mom. 
Alan's family left their home in the city of Kobane as they, like millions of other Syrians and Iraqis, were forced to flee a new terrifying evil that has appeared in the Middle East, devouring and brutalising everything in its path. Islamic Caliphate (aks Daesh) and other religious fundamentalist groups such as Al Nusra are committing massacres and ethnic cleansing on a scale rarely seen for centuries.
Like apocalyptic scenes from the movie 'Mad Max', the world has been turned upside down as we daily see on our television screens, villages and towns across Syria and Iraq that only a few years ago were peaceful settlements, now witness the cancerous ISIS  crucify Christian children; gang rape and murder female lawyers and doctors; throw gays to their deaths from high rise buildings; establish slave markets populated by Yazidi girls and young women to be sold off as sex slaves; bomb schools and marketplaces; behead Shi’a soldiers, triumphantly hold aloft the heads of female Kurdish fighters; parade caged Kurdish Peshmerga through streets lined with jeering crowds and burn alive a caged Sunni Jordanian pilot.
This evil did not appear from nowhere. The US invasion of Iraq destroyed not only the state’s infrastructure, but destroyed also a tolerance between religious communities in many parts of the region providing the environment for a brutal fanaticism to flourish. Brainwashed by Imans promoting the intolerant strand of Islam known as Wahhabism that is prevalent in Saudi Arabia; funded and armed by wealthy religious fanatics amongst the Saudi and Gulf Arab elite; supported by the Israeli, American and Turkish regimes due to their common hatred of the secularist Assad state, the policy of ISIS and other similar groups is simple - eliminate the large indigenous Christian, Shia, Alawite, Druze, Bahai and Jewish populations of the Middle East many of which date their ancestry back thousands of years. In the process atheist, secularist and gay people have been butchered all in the name of a supposedly  all-merciful Supreme Being. Ancient pagan temples, Christian churches, Palmyra and Nineveh are being bulldozed and dynamited in the cradle of civilisation. The rich history and varied cultures of the peoples of the Middle East is disappearing before our eyes.
Millions of refugees have a right to return home. But that never happen whilst Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Gulf States are allowed to dismember Syria for short term political gain. They have let the Genie out of the bottle; the onus is on them to put it back.

Destruction of a multi-cultural & multi-religious Middle East by ISIS

Kurdish female fighters defending Kobane against ISIS

The killing machine known as Islamic State continues its campaign of terror against the peoples of the world, this time targeting Kurdish and Turkish youth gathering together in Suruc to plan out the rebuilding of Kobane, a Syrian town that had been destroyed by the same religious fundamentalist movement a few months previously. 

IS practice a violent form of religion that uses ethnic cleansing, rape, slavery, crucification and beheadings to brutally carve out and supposedly reestablish a mono-religious theocracy that is a fantasy and never existed in history. The Middle East was always a mix of religions, ethnicity and ideologies in spite of the mad ravings of these sadistic misogynist psychopaths.

Sunni, Shia, Christian, Jew, Yazidi, Druze, and atheist must once again live side by side in the Levant and Iraq.
But this will never happen if governments of the region continue to condone rather than confront this cancer. Typical of this attitude is the Turkish government failure to hold a day of mourning for the victims of this massacre which occurred on its own soil (it did so for the recent dead of the anti-democratic sectarian Saudi king!). In fact they have helped the rise of ISIS as it shelled and slaughtered Syrian Kurds in full view of the Turkish army positioned on its border with Syria.

Middle East becoming a Human Slaughterhouse.

Assyrian Christians demonstrating in Beirut

 The persecution of Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Israel and Lebanon is wiping out indigenous cultures that have existed for thousands of years. 
Followers of Islamic Caliphate (aka ISIS) are endeavouring to make the Middle East, once the cosmopolitan heart of the world, a mono-religious and monocultural region. They see no reason for the existence of secularism, atheism, socialism, feminism, Alawites, Yazidis, Christians, Jews, Druzes and Shi'ites. Their message is one of misogyny, hate and a glorification of death to the 'unbeliever'. They have introduced stoning to death, beheadings, crucifixion, female slavery and the covering of women in public as normal societal traits.
 

Iraqi Christians in Mosul before the arrival of ISIS

Credit must go to the Kurds for holding back this tsunami of evil. Sadly ISIS is growing in influence and power by the refusal of Turkey over and above pure tokenism to aid the Syrian Kurds in their life or death struggle against the Islamist; by Saudi Arabia's promotion of the puritanical strain of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism; by the United States destruction of Iraq and support for expansionist Israel; by Europe and the West's decade-long adherence to support the enemies of the Assad regime at any price.
But today it is not only in the Middle East that Christians are being attacked. They are now the most persecuted and discriminated against worldwide.
Check out Irish Times article from December 2014
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/christians-most-persecuted-and-discriminated-against-worldwide-1.2046934

Kurdish Women Defeat Islamic Caliphate.

So appropriate that misogynist Islamic Caliphate, who deliberately target and murder professional women in towns they capture, are being defeated in Kobane Syria by Kurdish forces containing female soldiers led by female Kurdish commanders such as Baharin Kandal, Narin Afrin and Afsin Kobane (nom de guerre).

Check out BBC News article.

Women make up one third to one half of the peshmerga secular PKK resistance. There are all female units within the YPJ of the Syrian Kurdish resistance.

Photo: AFP News

I salute these brave warriors that are standing up for humanity against a nihilist religious fundamentalist force of evil that has nothing to offer the world except genocide, beheadings, crucification, torture, rape, female slavery, forced marriage and mass public executions. 
They are showing women all across the Middle East that their sex are equal to men.
Thanks to US air strikes, the Kurds are managing to stem this tide of hateful men dressed in black, whilst the cynical Turkish military do nothing.

Check out my previous blog article on the subject of the Islamic Caliphate entitled
Islamic Caliphate must not be allowed to destroy the multi-cultural & religious diversity of the Middle East

Tony Blair - Warmonger & War Criminal.

The arrogance of Tony Blair in denying today that the 2003 US-led invasion is responsible for the Mad Max nightmare world of today's Iraq is pathetic.
No humiliation or apology for co-leading a war that has led to millions of ordinary people being killed, maimed, forced from their homes, regions and countries. His war has fragmented countries, turned neighbour against neighbour and led to a rise of an insane, anti-female, sectarian, intolerant, brutal Islamist fundamentalism that has no respect for sanctity of human life. 
Saddam was a vicious bloody tyrant. But in Iraq just before the US invasion, it is estimated that 25% of marriages were mixed, between Sunni and Shia, Kurd and Arab. People were encouraged to attend each other's places of worship. In Baghdad up until 2003, Christians, Sunnis and Shiites mixed socially. 
Now that has changed beyond recognition.The 2,000 year old Christian communities of Syria & Iraq are close to extinction due to the actions of western neo-cons, American right-wing Christians and Sunni extremists. The map of the Middle East is being redrawn in the blood of the innocents by jihadists.

Whilst the Middle East has been ignited since the Iraqi invasion, Blair of course has done well financially, making millions on the international lecture trail. But It is unacceptable and immoral that Blair acts as an international 'peace envoy' in the Middle East for the EU, the UN and others, paid of course by our taxes. Sack him from this position, let the British Labour Party disown him and put him and Bush on trial in the Hague for war crimes.

Mad Max nightmare -Solution to Syria is not more Weapons & Bombings

We are watching a country disintegrating before our eyes. We are witnessing the redrawing of the boundaries of the Middle East along religious lines that has no place for minorities or for justice and tolerance.
The Arab Spring is transforming into an Arab Winter as the dreams of the original female and male protestors of Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya are being lost in a tsunami of violence.

A massive population exodus, fanatical religious fundamentalism, ethnic cleansing and genocide are happening due to the actions of countries that talk loudly of peace and democracy but are in fact the warmongers, and arms merchants/manufacturers that are making huge fortunes from this war. 

An Islamist Saudi Arabia, a monarchical Qatar, a theocratic Iran, a resurgent nationalist Russia, a repressive Turkey, a profit hungry EU and a corporate-controlled US are arming the advocates of hate, torture and mass killing. They are creating a nightmare world of Mad Max that is leading to the formation of repressive warlord fiefdoms guarded by private sectarian armies. A relatively modern intact country is been bombed back to the Stone Age. This is what happened across large parts of Iraq after the US invasion. 

The only solution is a total arms embargo on all participants in the conflict and an all party peace conference involving all sides including Iran.

Click here to read my article of three years ago on the Disappearance of the Christians from the Middle East, a community that represented 25% of the region's population less than one hundred uears ago.

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.

Arab Uprisings Reminiscent of Eastern Europe

Is history repeating itself? The wave of popular revolutions sweeping across the Arab world is reminiscent of events in Europe over twenty years ago. A series of mass street protests and strikes across Poland ended the fifty-four year authoritarian rule of the Communist Party when the regime was forced to hold democratic elections in 1989. Like a game of dominoes, the success of Polish ‘people power’ caused a knock-on effect of uprisings across all of the one-party Stalinist countries of eastern Europe. The seemingly indestructible edifice of militaristic Soviet puppet governments imploded within a matter of months.

Violence though was lessened by the ground-breaking decision of the Soviet Union under a reformist Mikhail Gorbachev government not to intervene in its satellite states as it had done so often in the past.

But the struggle for liberty and democracy knows no boundaries. Within a few years the USSR itself, then the world’s second superpower, disintegrated as its own peoples finally unshackled their chains of bondage.

In 2011 the majority of the Arab states, reeling from mass popular protests, are mainly one party regimes kept in power this time by the economic and military support of the USA, the world’s number one superpower.

Egypt for instance has long being the second largest (after Israel) recipient of American aid. Yet these funds, totalling c$2bn annually, are not used to improve the quality of life of the poverty stricken Egyptian people but primarily to buy arsenals of sophisticated weaponry from American arms manufacturers to keep a hated elite in power and to help Israel maintain its illegal siege of Gaza.

Thankfully it is Barack Obama in the White House and not George Bush leading to the hope that the Arabs will be able to eject their rulers from Yemen, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Of course the struggle for freedom and justice cannot be contained and inevitably it will be the turn of the Israeli colonists in the West Bank to face the wrath of both the enslaved and the exiled Palestinian peoples supported by the freed Arab populace of neighbouring countries. Peace in a war -ravaged Middle East will possibly then have a chance to blossom in a more fertile soil.

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.

Finding the Truth in Netanyahu’s Speeches

My article below appeared as a letter in a recent edition of the Galway Advertiser:
One could agree with the sentiments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he says that an air, sea and naval blockade is necessary to “…prevent militants groups from getting weapons… whose only goal (is) to hit civilians and kill as many… women, children, old people…Under international law and under common sense and common decency, (there is a need to) interdict this weaponry and to inspect the ships that might be transporting them.”

Likewise Netanyahu could be correct in his analysis that allowing an aggressive Middle East state to obtain nuclear weapons “…threatens …world peace in a way that very few events could possibly threaten it. (This) nuclear challenge represents a ‘hinge of history’ and ‘Western civilization’ will have failed if (a Middle East state) is allowed to develop nuclear weapons…”

So it is time for the United Nations, supported by the Big Four Powers, to confiscate Israel’s nuclear arsenal and put in place a cordon to finally end the flow of 90 billons of dollars in US military and financial aid that has gone into the country since 1976 which has provided the IDF with the F16s, Apache helicopters and Sparrow/Sidewinder missiles necessary to kill thousands of civilians in its neighbouring states and facilitate the colonial occupation and settlement by racist fundamentalist settlers of Arab lands. Cromwell would gladly approve of a policy that has overtones of “To Hell or To Connacht”. Today the 1.5million civilians in the densely populated over-sized concentration camp known as Gaza can look out from bombed-out tenement buildings across the security walls onto the fertile fields and clean tidy settlements of what was, until only a few decades ago, their family lands.

Netanyahu talks of the ‘Jewish State’. But even in biblical times, the ‘Holy Land’ was never a land of Jews alone who were in fact only one of many indigenous peoples which included Canaanites, Amorites, Philistines and Samaritans. Jerusalem itself was a Jebusite city until conquered by a Jewish army under King David.

The Jewish people in Europe were almost wiped out 70 years ago by a regime that wanted to remove them from lands in Eastern Europe that it laid claim too based on racist myths. The Jews were forced from their homes, that were then given to German colonists (as with many other indigenous peoples in Eastern Europe), and herded into concentration camps where movement of food and other supplies was tightly controlled. Any individual resistance to this blockade led to a brutal armed response onto the entire population.
Ironic then that we see today’s descendants of that Holocaust behave like Nazis of old. They arbitrarily dictate what goes into Gaza and what doesn’t. Allowing canned meat but not canned fruit; allowing mineral water but not fruit juices. Banning computers, school books and cement is reminiscent of Hitler’s ideology of denying education and other basic human rights to ‘inferior’ races.

Europe should follow the example of the activists of the ‘Rachel Corrie’ ship (named after a female American peace activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer when she acted as a human shield protecting a Palestinian home from demolition) to ensure that history does not repeat itself. We owe it to the memories of the victims of the attempted genocides of the Jews, Armenian Christians, Kurds and Muslim Bosnians in the Europe-Middle Eastern region during modern times.