Those Summertime Blues...


Suffocating heat, scorching sun, dryness, pallor, dehydrated limp bodies trudging along, searching for a tiny corner of coolness, a bit of air...
Searching desperately for a whiff of freshness, a caress of a breeze...nothing.

Nothing but heat and sitting in pools of sweat. Water, search for water. Maybe we should drink our own sweat instead.
A drop here, a drop there, counting them like precious little diamonds. The river is next door, eaten up by the Green zone...

Evenings are long, tediously long. A light bulb here and a candle there, generators pumping, then stopping then pumping again...sometimes there are none.

Fridges, freezers, air coolers, AC, fans, ventilators, forget it...only in the Green zone. Only in the comfort zone of the Brothel.

Thirst, infants dying of thirst and the river still eaten up by the brothel holders...

Quenching with the morning dew. Hoping it will change, maybe today, tomorrow, a little here and a little there, a piecemeal of hope, a tiny ray of light. But no, nothing.

And the genocide goes on...and on and on...

Have a look at the river, look at it - dirty, foul, still, water heavied with corpses, and yet, some take their cans, pots and pans and fill up. Water, water, water...

Water in the Brothel only.
For the whores to shower after each client. The clients of petro dollars, the clients of political religious sectarianism, the clients of Death...

So they shower and they drink and they sit naked, with bellies bulging, pregnant with blue infants, dead of thirst...And they quench theirs, mixing blood with whiskey, mixing blood with water and signing their dollar notes in red...Red from the red zone, red as the sunset, red as...

Summertime.

And I, in the background, have been humming it all day. That old Billie Holiday tune -
"Summertime and the living is easy..."

Yes easy, and my mind wanders to those easy days, easy simple days where I belonged to something, where I felt I connected to someone, a group, a place, a city...

Red zone and the dryness of life. The repetitiveness to the point of banality. The banality of death, the banality of existence…

Time has stopped. It turns around itself, in some robotic motion and delivers the same each day.

And in between the numbness, despair and grief creep out, like worms from a cracked wall. Slowly twisting their way, crawling back into my skin, underneath, tickling me and lodging there, nesting there...

I smoke away the night...inhaling the temporary silence and puffing it away, blowing a breeze of smoke, in the stillness, in the inertia, in the black, in the gaping wound that lays bare open, red open, very red, like the red zone, like our lives...

“Le rouge et le noir” from a Stendhal novel, forever mixing in the colorless palette of our days and our nights...

I throw myself back and fall on a cushion of memories...
I try hard to dig them up and out, excavate them, then I brush them one by one like some ancient archeological relic, and place them in front of me.
One by one...like little statues. Then I name them, give them dates, faces and colors...I revive them one by one, by recalling their sound, their texture, their shapes, their forms...

Summertime and the living was easy...

Sometimes lounging by an acqua blue pool, sipping chilled fruit cocktails. At other times, maybe a fancy dinner or a simple take away. Sometimes a stroll by the flowing river, under a luminous starry night, smelling the cooling palm trees. And sometimes, a drive around the city of Lights, listening to my favorite tunes...

Summertime and the living was good...

Reclining in a shady garden, bathing in the scent of jasmine, feeling the earth rock solid under my bare feet, solidly immutable, as if nothing will ever touch it...shake it.
Slowly tasting cold bright red grenadine juice or maybe an icy lemon sherbet with hues of fresh green mint leaves floating on the surface...listening to the ice cubes clicking in the glass as in a dance…

Summertime and Dance Festivals. All kinds of dances from all over the world.
Bodies in motion, in movement, expanding, contracting, breathing on stage, drawing life and giving it back to us...Pushing forth the possible.

Summertime and Art. Exhibtions, galleries, artists, paintings...
Splashing living colors on an asleep canvas, animating it, infusing it with outbursts of passion, with a primal scream, the scream of life.
And awakening it to a beauty made of different shades...etching them, engraving them in us like a pristine melody...Pushing forth the potential.

Summertime and Music Festivals. All sorts of music...
A medley of singers, musicians, instruments from the four corners of the world. Vibrations lulling us, rocking us, transporting us with their rhythms, sounds,lyrics and tunes to unknown places...Pushing forth a reality in the making.

Summertime and reality unfolding, growing, shaping its way, designing us and us designing her.
We were that reality and she was us. And we communicated with her and she responded and she grew and took form, pulsating with energy, with the possible, the potential, the unexplored...The blue sky was the limit.

Yes, summertime and those little moments of leisure, those moments of pleasure, awakening the senses, teasing them, ushering them in a new direction and reminding them that life could be good, was good, as good as it can be.

You may think this is all very "bourgeois". What you think is no longer relevant. You are no longer relevant.

Or maybe you think pleasure and leisure are only reserved for you. Or maybe you think that we are due to suffer so you can remain in your comfort zone judging...
Or maybe you think, we are not even entitled to the daily things that you take for granted... My, what a despicable lot you are.

What a despicable lot of thieves. Thieves of the potential, thieves of the possible, thieves of a reality that was in the making.

Just the thought of you has snatched me away from my rêverie. And I am reminded again, of yesterday, today and tomorrow...
Dots on a straight line...the same over and over again.

Summertime and the pools of crimson red blood. Summertime and the sounds of explosions, bombs, guns and tanks. Summertime and the dreary colors of green and grey army uniforms. Summertime and drinking molotov cocktails. Summertime and the stench of sewage and piled garbage. Summertime and inert lifeless cold bodies. Summertime and a river that stood still, murky with Death.

And you tiptoe back into my mind, writhing your way back and I know you want to steal these memories too... dissecting them one by one, smashing my little statues just like you have smashed all that reminds me of us...of me.

Thieves of the night, thieves of Life.

Summertime and the living was easy. Am still humming it till the bitter end...

“...one of these mornings, you're going to rise up singing
then you’ll spread your wings and you’ll take the sky
but till that morning...hush...don’t you cry.”


Painting : Iraqi artist, Ali Al-Tajer.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Dearest Layla, thank you, again, for another heartwrenching blog. So much has been stolen from Iraq and Iraqis, it just boggles the mind. In a country where there are two rivers, and its people dying of thirst. Thieves lust for what is under Iraqis' feet, yet there is no electricity.

I've just seen on TV USans trying to rescue SIX men from a mine, while, as a result of their greed, thousands upon thousands are displaced, dying and maimed, hungry and thirsty. Is this not the deliberate destruction of a sovereign nation and its people?

May the wonderful Iraqi Resistance bring this to an end soon, as it is the only Hope - the obvious widespread apathy among the world of nations gives no cause for Hope. May all the thieves in/of Iraq be brought down to their knees soon.

In solidarity.
Anonymous said…
[Or maybe you think pleasure and leisure are only reserved for you. Or maybe you think that we are due to suffer so you can remain in your comfort zone judging...
Or maybe you think, we are not even entitled to the daily things that you take for granted... My, what a despicable lot you are.]

I will ask you the same questions you presumably put to the Americans.
Anyway, you sound like an old hooker; too old now to get any johns. So you sit reminiscing on the good old days. Indeed "Summertime and the living was good" but for you and at the expense of the majority Shia!
Your misbegotten privileges are gone and for good. Deal with it.

Why did you block my posts? What are you afraid of?
G.Gar said…
A very sincere post devoid of even a slightest normal sort of hypocracy. Putting down your passions and anger with such tranparency on this virtual paper, is a healthy cleansing experience to both yourself and your readers.
Layla Anwar said…
zainab,

you don't get it do you?
I block your posts, because you acutely remind me of that same stench of sectarian garbage and rot that I smell daily.

This is my blog and I want to keep it pure from putrid vermin like yourself.

I want to keep it pure for my own sensual passions...unbriddled by faces of sectarians dressed, clad in black like blood sucking vampires...

Unlike you, zainab, I do not need to secretly masturbate to the picture of my favorite mullah and then flagellate myself in repentance.

Unlike you zainab, I did not need to kiss american ass to get me anywhere.

So do you get it now you little crappy jealous frustrated retard ? Or do I need to call in your sistani to draw you a picture with a new fatwa ?

Now fuck off little one.
Anonymous said…
A beautiful, heartbreaking post Layla. Your writing is so poetic it has the ability to cut deep into our hearts.

How can we in the west ever imagine what it is like to go through a long, hot summer with so little water? What monsters are those "people" who do this to you.

Layla, I have a question please. I understand and can appreciate that many who call themselvessShia are despicable. Fundamentalists usually tend to be, in all countries. However, it has been my understanding that there are many "normal" Shia who were able to live side by side with Sunnis, intermarry and socialise together. If so, they also would be despising the disgusting actions of the militias done in the name of their religion. Is this correct?
Layla Anwar said…
Daphne,

In reply to your question, yes of course there are shias who disapprove of the blood baths done in their name by the mullahs and the militias. I need to remind everyone that the militias are the armed wing of the political parties currently ruling from the Green Zone.

I was married to a shia myself,
My friends are shias, some of my relatives and family members are married to shias, I have relatives who are shias...

And do remember that the former govt under Saddam Hussein employed over 5 million shias. The army was majority shia, the party itself was majority shia...

Iran in the 80's , with the advent of Khomeini and his political shi'ism, armed and trained some shia groups for the overthrow of the regime.

Today these same people are in power and they are called the Dawa Party of which Al Maliki, Al Jaafari and Muqtada Sadr are active members. Ditto for al Hakeem of the SCRI.

All these people came from Iran.
Some of them like Muwafak Al Rubaie is an iranian national. So is al Hakeem so is their grand senile ayatollah Sistani.

The above is a very brief list of those sent by Iran and who worked in close collaboration with Washington DC prior to the invasion and prepared the invasion.

A lot of people wish to obliterate these facts - but these facts will never be forgotten.
Anonymous said…
Layla, thank your for responding so clearly.

I did believe this, but with the horrors going on now, I had started wondering.

I DIDN'T know that so many Shia were employed by Saddam. These "little" points are so important when trying to get across to people that we have been fed lies.

I had read that Saddam Hussein fought the ten year war against Iran for this very reason. He knew the Iranians wanted to control Iraq. As they had done through the centuries when they were called Persians as far as I can tell.

Thank you for explaining all this so well.
Anonymous said…
[The army was majority shia]

The conscripted cannon-fodder were majority shia. The officer corps was mostly sunni.

[I DIDN'T know that so many Shia were employed by Saddam.]

Yeah, they were _employed_ by Saddam and his clan.
Anonymous said…
Layla my dear sister,

It is only a matter of time when the whores will drink the blood of there own. For you live by the knife and you will die by the knife.

Bush will get his in the end for he is no God nor good person and he will answer for his deeds. The greed that flows in his body in the place of blood will be the making of it.

Yes Layla the whores may have water and there other needs taken care of but they too will answer for their deeds.

Iraq in time will be back and stronger then ever before, and these hornets of the lion will sting like never before and these people that have turned their backs will pay and be sorry.

Yes Layla let the whores have their day for their true day will come. Take care my dear sister!

Savage
Unlike you zainab, I did not need to kiss american ass to get me anywhere.

So do you get it now you little crappy jealous frustrated retard ? Or do I need to call in your sistani to draw you a picture with a new fatwa ?

Now fuck off little one.

Way to go Layla, a women after my own heart.
And I to thank you for your explanation.

Kangaroo
Anonymous said…
Starkly beautiful in its heart-wrenching brilliance.

Dear Layla... dear, dear Layla...
Anonymous said…
pity zainab, she has to grin and bear entire mahdi and badr death squads banging her senseless on alternate nights in order to feed her five children whom she had from five different marriages of pleasure in qum, but in truth her little heart is still as white as a lily and tenderly throbs for a young blue-eyed yank who promised to take her with him to the u.s. and make her a honest amerikkkan woman after his army has finished depopulating iraq.
Layla Anwar said…
to anonymous regarding the Shia in the Army...

Wrong again. You said they were only cannon fodder. Not true.
The good majority of the Republican guards, and there were 150'000 of them, elite army, were shia.
The top army officers were both shia and sunnis.
They worked not for Saddam Hussein but for Iraq. Seems you either are too young, amnesic or simply here to spit more sectarian disinformation.
That same disinformation brought forward by Chalabi, Makiya, Al Hakeem, Sistani etc... the collaborators and brought the Americans to invade, occupy, pillage, rape and murder....

Will you ever feel a bit of shame anonymous or will you remain blinded with your own inferiority complexes and hatred???
Anonymous said…
Iraqis are "Renaissance" Arabs, the only ones who are aware of their willpower and use it to oppose the "adverse fate" and mold their own history instead of passively waiting and hoping for good things to be "descended" within them and around them as if from heaven.
Anonymous said…
"They worked not for Saddam Hussein, but for Iraq."

Layla, sorry to say this, but in these last times you are beginning to sound like one of those politically correct leftists chanting "No Bush No Saddam".

I thought you recognized and loved your martyred President as the embodiment of the Spirit of the Nation...
Angel said…
Hello Layla,

It would seem you are not to enjoy summer this year, again. This post has a diferent feel to it. Are you OK?

Savage is spot on, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Lets hope the militias kill eachother off.

Maybe they can take Bush with them, as well? If they don't have the Bush exit plan in place by now, there's something wrong.

Stay safe.
G.Gar said…
Layla, I do thnk that Zainab is an Irani who is trying to fuel sectarian tension, in order to serve the goals of the sponcer of sctarian terror in the middle east- Iran.

Never descend to the level of those who are inferior to you.

Jr

please come and handle the rubbish. It seems that the new generaion of cockroashes have developed immunity against state of the art insecticides
Layla Anwar said…
venezulean,

Seems no one is pleased ...
One does not exclude the other.

Seen in context, one needs to remember that the Iraqi Army is 70 years old institution and was the pillar of the Iraqi nation.

Under the pretext of debaathification, for which the shia political parties applauded and engaged in, the army was dismantled. All of the army...

Hence when someone like anonymous comes and makes claims that the army was solely there to serve Saddam Hussein as an individual man (and the insinuation is the Saddam Clan by the commentator anonymous) then it is important to remind those who insinuate that way, that the Army was an Iraqi army and not a clan army...
Layla Anwar said…
Amre al Abyad,,

I do not know who this zainab is for sure. She had left some pretty ugly comments on the previous post, in arabic and her use of words in arabic and english point to the fact, that s/he is either an iraqi iranian, or an iraqi who lives in the U.S or should I say bought by the US and the mullahs.
I will settle for the last hunch.

Having said that, some people, like Zainab need to hear his/her own language. Stooping to their level is sometimes a necessary task.
Anonymous said…
If any army is a puppet to one man it is clearly the American. No one army has been spread so thin and so wide as Bush has the US Army.
Layla Anwar said…
Hello Angel, hello Savage,

Well guess what? The militias are at each other's throat in the South of Iraq i.e in Basrah to be more precise. Keep praying folks.
And do not forget to include the kurdish peshmergas in your prayers.
Layla Anwar said…
Hi Diana, thank you for the accolades. Thank God am not too big headed , otherwise my ego would have burst by now :-)
Layla Anwar said…
Hi Kathy,

Please join your prayers to that of Angel and Savage.
Layla Anwar said…
Hi Kangaroo. I suppose you are a first time commentator here. Nice to meet you and welcome to my blog.
Layla Anwar said…
thinker,

hello. As I was reading your statement, this song from Joe Cocker came to mind. "With a little help from my friends".
And usually when such occurences happen, I stop and look for the message...
Sadly, Iraq's "friends" abandoned her long time ago.
If anything the occupation has managed to do quite well - maybe we should start calling it the "art of occupation" - is to ensure that a schism without and within prevents any form of "renaissance" on a grass root level inside Iraq.
If you have a song to reply to that with, I would be much obliged.
Layla Anwar said…
lady,

and the worst bit is that the American army is made up of volunteers... Makes one think hard does it not?
Anonymous said…
Layla,
The volunteer military was born of the Vietnam disaster and people being drafted (involuntary).

To entice volunteers, education and money is used. An 8 year commitment is required and you can split that between active and inactive duty, but during that time period you’re always available to the gov’t in the case of war. This is one of the reasons Iraq is still called a war by Bush. Once Iraq is no longer deemed a war, then all the inactive/reserve/national guard soldiers will need to be brought home. It is against the law to deploy them (although I’m sure they’d find a way around that). Soldiers are now seeing how the gov’t is keeping them deployed and they're leaving the military in droves.

The kicker is that Democrats are trying to bring the draft back. Yep, now they claim politicians wouldn’t want war if their sons/daughters had to go. So the group that got rid of the draft now wants it back, because they have no leverage against other politicians when people ‘voluntarily’ join the military.

Only in America!
Anonymous said…
Dear Layla,

I am afraid that I have no "songs" within "memory shot" for you at the moment, but here are some thoughts on your comment:

1) Iraq has no "friends". She only has "children". Foolish, ungrateful, stray, prodigal as the other Arab nations may be, like every other "mother" She is "doomed" to keep loving them without conditions, hoping in them beyond reason and setting the good example to them till Her last breath.

2) The only "schism" which the dust-biting and bleeding Imperial Beast succeeded in creating is the one between the Iraqi patriots (of all religious and ethnic groups) on one side and the non-Iraqi (Persian) and aspiring non-Iraqi (Kurdish separatist) collaborators on the other side. Personally, I would tend to look on the bright side of the whole shady business: at least now it is clear who is the "wheat" and who is the "chaff".

3) As for the "renaissance", once you are "re-born", or "resurrected", there is no force on earth, heaven or hell that can make you die again. Iraq had made it back from "death" decades before the Invasion, and since then, since the end of the Dark Ages of colonialism and the advent of the "Resurgent-ist" (literally) Revolution, She has been alive, and still is, in spite of the lethargic world surrounding Her, aware, proud and willful, resisting and "re-existing" forever.

Take care of yourself.

Regards.
Anonymous said…
My Dear Layla,

Wow..Mashah'Allah this is one mighty powerful post.Absolutely beautiful.You manage to take us to a new level everytime..Thank you

I have re-read this post several times during the course of the day as each time it transported me back to the times when the "living was good"; and that for 99,9999999% of us Iraqis.
Before any of your commentators jumps at my throat ,notice I said good not perfect, because no where is perfect,as simple as that.
More importantly notice also that I did not say for 100% of Iraqis because am being fair... i have to account for Zainab the murderous scrounger above and her likes
(that's assuming she is Iraqi????!!!!)

And this is what I have to say this nameless creature:

1- First and foremost (and I believe Layla has said this previously) I strongly suggest you change your name asap,as you are sullying the name of our Honourable Sitna ZAYNAB may peace be upon her.

2- You said " Indeed "Summertime and the living was good" but for you and at the expense of the majority Shia!"

I recently came across a new expression IGNORANUS, the definition of which is: A person who is not only ignorant but who's also an asswhole.
And I find that this description fits you perfectly..
You IGNORANT ASSWHOLE,the lack of water, the lack of electricity, the lack of security and safety, the lack of medicine,the diseases etc are affecting all Iraqis with no distinction as to religion or sect you dumbfuck. But of course I did say all Iraqis,and I mean the true Iraqis, this certainly does not include the stooges of the green zone and/or you for that matter.
Only today hundreds of Iraqis (mostly Shia's no less) were bombed to death by none other than your beloved american Masters with the help ,no doubt, of your sectarian iranian sub masters.
They're Shia you IGNORANUS, the ones you claim to care for..But no,those don't count because maybe,just maybe they're a tad too Iraqi, a tad too patriotic and refuse to dance to the tunes of the Qum band.Or maybe, just maybe, the famous Zionist tactic had to be used today, lets kill a few of our own and cry wolf... after all the end justifies the means. And the end for your lot and your iranian/israeli/american masters is more blood,more destruction and more petrodollars.And that is all you care for you evil little nameless creature.

3- Finally, you said " Why did you block my posts? What are you afraid of?"
You know am really curious..Your masters control all the mainstream media, your/their (your one and the same) lies and fallacies are portrayed daily on every news channel, every newspaper, by your leaders/representatives,etc..presumably by now,the whole world is brainwashed to believe you/them..Presumably your so called case has been heard wide and clear.So why on earth do you feel the need to come to this particular blog?WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?
Anonymous said…
layla, if you could bring only one thing from iraq's past back into being, which would that be ?
Anonymous said…
Layla Anwar is Layla Anwar is Layla Anwar.
Anonymous said…
My Dear Layla,

Didn't mean to make it a long comment above, but I felt I needed to reply to the nameless creature once and for all.Thanks for the opportunity.

Back to the subject at hand.

You talk of scorching heat and no water.

Only today, i heard on CNN that the temp in Washington DC. has reached new highs of 38 degrees C, prompting all transportation to be halted...Imagine, they have ac,water, all the comforts but they still couldn't function because of the heat..and they call that heat..The Iraqis have to put up with 50 degrees in the shade, no water, no electricity, nothing but yet they have not only to function but to show gratitude to the american people!!!!

Also on CNN, a couple of weeks ago, when there floods in the UK, again people were distraught 'cos they had no drinking water for a couple of days..this despite the fact that stacks of bottled water were being distributed to every household!!!!

Mind boggling...

As you rightly pointed out in more than one of your previous posts, for them, we are faceless, nameless,and needless.

Allah Kareem.
Hey Layla,

Long time reader, first time commenting, but I post you all the time on my site, hoping people will understand what crimes and carnage have been committed on the innocent people of Iraq.

Hoping that if it is even one person or two people, understanding the devastation, maybe we can make a difference somehow.

With what the Supreme Court of America put into the White House in 2000, the struggle is momentous

Also I need to understand more myself, and thank you for your explanations.
Anonymous said…
“…Iraq is no longer deemed a war, ……will need to be brought home.”

If I start a fight with a kid, unprovoked, is that a legitimate action? America’s slaughter of Iraq can’t possibly be called a war. Interestingly, Vietnamese call their resistance to the American invasion, “The American War”, while America calls it the Vietnam War. And now we have the Iraqi War? Several white nations attacked Iraq and we have a war? This is a “crime,” and if we append Bush’s chosen term, it becomes a “War Crime,” nothing less.
Several centuries of the history of colonialism has instructed us that democratic governments are engineered out of power by the colonials, when that government is not compliant with the designs of the “colonials.” Had Saddam not exercised rigid control over Iraq, its disintegration would have been engineered by the CIA. The CIA’s dilemma was that they could not “break” Saddam’s “hold” on the country, by covert action, so an invasion was necessary. Regime change in Iraq was planned well before Bush was (dis)counted into office by the Supreme Court. Saddam is accused of Halabja and other “atrocities.” He was not accused of obliterating the communist party, the list of names being handed to him by the CIA. Many would not need “The Family Jewels” to know that the CIA has so engineered numerous atrocities; a US president was never so accused. From McKinney to the present day, all US presidents are guilty of “Crimes Against Humanity,” including Jimmy Carter.
AlurduniAlurr said…
I thought I should come by and give this link about the Alawi's
s said
I recently came across a new expression IGNORANUS, the definition of which is: A person who is not only ignorant but who's also an asswhole.

I always found that IGNORANUS fits the creature they call the President of the USA
Anonymous said…
I get a steady rivulet of strange mail telling how horrible Jews are. Apparently there is no crime of which they are not guilty. I find myself wondering: How do they find the time to be so evil? Are they on amphetamines or something?

A curious odiousness runs through it. I don’t care whether you like Jews, but these birds need their heads examined. Anyway, here’s me on the horribleness of Jews.

They can’t compete with Christians.

The history of Christianity has been one of murder, torture, and Stalinism, of witless intolerance of things not intolerable and an utter refusal to mind its own business. Look at the record. Look at almost any part of the record. The question is how to choose.

During the witch hunts of 1450-1700, god knows how many tens of thousands of women were tortured savagely and then burned alive, for the sin of having a wart. This demonstration of God’s love and Christian charity was perpetrated not just by Christians, but by the church.

Jews can’t play in this league. They are outclassed.

Then there was the Inquisition, run by that infamous Jew Thomasberger Torquemadastein. (For recent graduates of American universities, there wasn’t really a Jew by that name.) For centuries countless people screamed for days as their shoulders were torn from their sockets, before they were burned alive, in Jesus’ name, amen. This too was a church operation, supported by such as their Most Christian Majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella.

I’m making a list of thousands of Christians tortured to death by Jews. Wait. I’m thinking….

Much of this churchly barbarism has had Jews as its target. Christians were always trying either to kill Jews or to convert them. Why they thought it was any of their business what Jews believed, or Cathars, or Moslems, I do not know. If you didn’t agree with them, they would burn you. Just like Jesus said to do.

If a king decided to go on a Crusade, which is to say an explicitly Christian war, he started by robbing the local Jews to pay for it. (Christians allowed Jews to work only as bankers and moneylenders, and then complained that they were bankers and moneylenders. The logic scintillates.) The army, typically a mob of illiterate louts, massacred Jews along the way and, if they took Jerusalem, they burned the synagogue with the Jews in it. Jesus loves me, this I know….

The sordid tale of Christian compassion continued through the Reformation and beyond. In 1692 the unpleasantly Christian people of Salem, Massachusetts killed 21 (if memory serves) people for being witches. The victims weren’t Jews, probably because the good people of Salem couldn’t find any. In the American South, the Christian churches of the time upheld slavery as God’s will, and these were preachers who saw what slavery really was. We have since romanticized it as happy nigras pluckin’ de banjo and grinning a lot. In fact it was godawful. Check the Spanish Christianization of South America.

Certainly as late as 1882 the Catholic Church was saying that the killing of Christian children by Jews at Easter was “a common practice” and that for the sacrifice to be effective the child had to die “under torment.” (Giuseppe Oreglia de San Stefano, SJ, quoted in Hitler’s Pope, by John Cornwall, page 42 in the Spanish edition. If Pius XII wasn’t an ally of Hitler, he sure simulated it well.) This is sick, evil stuff, and it runs through Christianity like marbling in steak.

By comparison, Jews are pikers. You might as well compare a shoplifter to the Boston Strangler.

Then there’s Israel. I don’t like what the Jews are doing in Israel, and neither do a lot of Israelis, but it is amusing to compare the crimes of Israel with those of, say, the US. America has caused the death of far more people in Iraq than Israel has killed Palestinians, and with far less excuse.

Note the double standard. When Israel kills kids in bombing attacks, it is a crime, but when the US regularly does the same thing in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, it’s just collateral damage, necessary to bring democracy to people who didn’t ask for it, and anyway it didn’t happen, and besides it was an isolated incident, meaning one that was detected, and of course the dead were all terrorists, toddlers and all. Throw in the carnage in Vietnam, another American war started on lies, and the rise of Pol Pot, directly attributable to the war next door, and Israel looks like a pretty wet squib, crimewise.

Judge both countries by the same measure, say I.

Few do. Countries are built on bullshit. Part of Israel’s bullshit is that the Palestinians left in 1948 because they wanted to, Jews being highly moral and incapable of atrocities or ethnic cleansing. Part of America’s bullshit is essentially identical: Americans are highly principled people and do not commit the atrocities that, for example, they documentably commit daily in Iraq. You might ask the Indians about ethnic cleansing. I note that Israel’s Arab citizens are better treated than American blacks were in 1950.

I’m always willing to believe the worst of people, and it’s certainly the way to bet, but Jews do not have the solid credentials of savagery that Christianity does. I guess they just lack spirit.

Yet still I get the strange mail. I have wondered why the weird hostility to Jews. It is weird. I loathe a lot of people, and constantly try to add to the list, but I’m not obsessive about it. People who worry about Jews are obsessive. It eats them up. They see Jews peeking from everywhere. When the New York Times, a Jewish paper, supported Bush’s war on Iraq, as did almost the whole country, it was on orders from Jerusalem. When the Times turned editorially against the war, as had almost the whole country, it was to Stab Our Boys in the Back. You know, the leftwing anti-American Jew media. Everything whatever is controlled by Jews, with malign purpose. Why?

Charles Murray, who isn’t, is the coauthor of The Bell Curve. Writing in Commentary, a Jewish magazine, he notes the following:

In IQ the average American Jew is at the 75th percentile. Six times as many Jews as others have an IQ of better than 140. The imbalance increases for still higher IQ’s. In 1954, on an IQ test given to all kids in the public schools of New York, of those scoring above 170, 24 of 28 were Jews. This is neither new nor debatable. Those who study such things, most of whom are not Jewish, have known it for decades.

Writes Murray, “In the first half of the 20th century, despite pervasive and continuing social discrimination against Jews throughout the Western world, despite the retraction of legal rights, and despite the Holocaust, Jews won 14 percent of Nobel Prizes in literature, chemistry, physics, and medicine/physiology. In the second half of the 20th century, when Nobel Prizes began to be awarded to people from all over the world, that figure rose to 29 percent. So far, in the 21st century, it has been 32 percent. Jews constitute about two-tenths of one percent of the world’s population. You do the math.” Uh…yeah.

If you say on the web that Jews are smart, you get furious mail saying no they aren’t, no they aren’t, no...they...are NOT, in a rising scream. This leaves the writers in the interesting position of saying that Jews control publishing, television, the press, retail, wholesale, Hollywood, Wall Street, international banking, the research institutions, the schools, and the universities. But they aren’t very smart. (I forgot planetary motion. They control planetary motion.) (And watermelon futures. Never forget watermelon futures.)

In my experience of Jews, which is considerable, they aren’t just bright but, worse, they respect intelligence and scholarship, in anybody. If you speak three languages or play a good game of chess or made high scores on your GREs, they are likely to say, “Geez, that’s really good.” With Jews, being a nerd doesn’t carry the opprobrium it does elsewhere. Maybe nerds dress funny, but they’re smart. Jewish women are unmistakably attracted to smart men. (They seem to prefer smart Gentiles to smart Jewish men, but that’s another matter.)

This sets the stage for trouble. The United States is a profoundly anti-intellectual country, and Jews are a profoundly intellectual people. They tend to look like space aliens to much of the country. In America, (or Mexico, for that matter) smart is tolerated, barely. If a Gentile kid pops high on his SATs or grabs a Merit scholarship, he can still be socially accepted as long as he shows that he didn’t really mean it. Any bright kid runs into this. Jews don’t see things this way.

And of course Jews are usually urban. Take people who are bright, culturally inclined towards things intellectual, who live in cities and have a cosmopolitan outlook, and you get people who are fluently conversant with books, the arts, politics, other countries, and such like. They regard this fluency as very much a good thing. So do I. What exactly is the problem?

Being smart, they rise, especially in a brain-intensive civilization, and then seem to control things, and to an extent do, and the rest resent them. (Hitler detested Jews as a genetically inferior people who dominated German intellectual life.) It is easy to hate what you feel inferior to. This is why people who disliked the Russians hated the French, why people who merely dislike blacks hate Jews. It was impossible to feel inferior to Russians, who wore bad suits. Just as in the band-saw shriek of feminists, “We are too equal,” there is audible a fear that maybe they aren’t, in the anti-Semites insistence, “They did it by conspiring,” there is a worry that maybe they didn’t.

- Fred Reed
Angel said…
Hello Layla,

How are you coping?

Have you heard what is happening on the Nineveh Plain?

I have heard nothing for a while, and am a bit worried.
Anonymous said…
S, in a part of your great post you said:

"Or maybe, just maybe, the famous Zionist tactic had to be used today, lets kill a few of our own and cry wolf..."

How very true. And the truth will never come out to the masses, because the Zionists control the media.

Hey, Kangaroo Brisbane Australia, good to see another Aussie here!

I intend to go to your blog as soon as I send this. Great that another Aussie is doing his best to spread the word!!!
Layla Anwar said…
Hi everyone, will try to reply to the latest comments.
In the meantime, I please urge you to read the iraqi blog by Mohamed, the last of the iraqis...link below.

http://uruknet.info/?p=m35208&hd=&size=1&l=e

You can also visit his blog and leave your words of support if you wish. just follow the links from uruknet.info.

Till soon . Be well.
Anonymous said…
Raise your hands who think Fred Reed is not a disgusting zionazi psycopath!
Layla Anwar said…
Fred Reed, another IGNORANUS. He reminds me of that zionist scum bag "academic" (hahahahaha), called Raphael Patai. Now thankfully this scum bag is dead...He has Bernard Lewis another zionist jewish scum replace him.
Typical of zionist jewish mentality to remain the "eternal victim" whilst plundering, stealing, murdering, raping others...Zionist jewish scum that Fred Reed is.
Fred Reed this is for u
What do you do
With the Zionist Jew?
What you Got to Do
Just Kick it

A Zionazi? Penalty?
Just Kick it

(In the head)
Anonymous said…
Anything less then extreme hate for the Jews seems to receive lots of outbursts of hatred and childish behavier.( No,I`m not a Jew!!)
Many of us share the same Views concerning Irak and US Politics ,but the value of this Post is greatly degraded by childish "name callings"usw.
Dear Layla, please concentrate on reporting and not insulting.
Layla Anwar said…
not habibi,

oh dear me, the sacred cow has resurfaced once more...
Anything, you say, but do not touch the zionist jews.
And why so?
Calling the zionists jews scum bags is very fitting - unless of course you have another agenda!
And next time you wish to leave a message here, do not use your condenscending politically moralitisc tones and tunes...
I know what am doing, and I don't need your guidance on how to handle your "sacred-scared cows"....
And one huge PS for you- Am NOT a reporter.
Anonymous said…
Layla..you crack me up!

What happened to little deer and JR?
Are you blocking their post?
Layla Anwar said…
lady,

if I recall correctly, little deer has left the first message on this post, so how could I be blocking her ?
As for JR, maybe he's on vacation from one liners...and commenting under a different pseudo.
Layla Anwar said…
to the anonymous who asked me if there is ONE THING, I can bring back from the past what will it be-

Thing or person anonymous?
Layla Anwar said…
al urdunee al hurr,

hello and thanks for the link. Madame Allawi and Monsieur Allawi the CIA agents, who along with Chalabi, another CIA agent and a crook - the Petra bank crook, and the rest of the scum, BArazani, Talabani, Hakeem, Kharianee etc... WILL END UP in the dustbins of history as TRAITORS, THIEVES and CRIMINALS. Oh yes they will!
Layla Anwar said…
to anonymous who asked me about the post occupation vision that I envisage...

Right now and to be totally frank with you, my vision of the future is limited to today...

Sad but true, but I will think about it - and Creatively visualize the "best scenario" possible. Alas, and I already see a stumbling block here, I can't think of ONE political personality thus far, who will combine both raw intelligence and leadership like Saddam Hussein did. I am willing to be pleasantly surprised though...but am not holding my breath either.
Layla Anwar said…
Hello S,

Thank you for your very à propos comments. Zainab the little nameless creature, is exactly what she is ..little and nameless...

As for the rest of your comments about the heat and flood waves in Europe and the US. Absolutely spot on. Even nature should not touch their little comfort, but as for us...well we can easily rot away.

Westerners will never learn, but only the hard way. Maybe Nature has prepared more surprises for them in the future.
Layla Anwar said…
hello angel,

Alas, have no news from my christian side. Some that I have been trying to contact have simply disappeared...and cannot be reached.

I hate what is being done to the christian community in Iraq. Be it in Mosul, Baghdad, Dohuk ...etc...

It is a shame, it is apalling, it is disgusting, it is a crime, it is beyond words.
Layla Anwar said…
thinker,

Am still waiting for that song !
Layla Anwar said…
life,

in part of your comments, you mentionned that the CIA handed Saddam Hussein a list of the CP members. I do not think the CIA needed to do that.
The CP on more than one occasion made a public alliance with the Baath Party. Their members were known to all...

Now the question is , did Saddam Hussein totally obliterate the PC?
I am not sure of that.

I remember once having a discussion with some prominent PC members and they told me when they will "overthrow " the regime through " a revolution", they will take each baathist and torture them to death...

I was shocked to tell you the truth. But then, my shock finally abated when it became common knowledge, that the PC allied itself with Allawi, the butcher of Falluja, the agent and the crook...
And that other PC members ARE ACTIVE supporters of Muqtada al Sadr, the psychopath!!!

I personally believe that the PC in Iraq had committed several serious mistakes, politically speaking and their stalinist agenda simply did not manage to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis in a substantial manner....

Moreover, I am disgusted to learn daily that a lot of the PC members have shown their true sectarian faces today...
Layla Anwar said…
life,

Many freudian slips in above reply...Replace PC with CP...
Maybe I unconsciously see them as a computer with a data memory but no political creativity...
Anonymous said…
"to the anonymous who asked me if there is ONE THING I can bring back from the past what will it be.
thing or person anonymous ?"

Write whatever you wish.

And then .. BECOME that.
Anonymous said…
Layla,

"I can't think of ONE political personality thus far, who will combine both raw intelligence and leadership like Saddam Hussein did."

Every Iraqi, and for that matter every Arab, is "pregnant" with a "little Saddam".

We need to act like Socratic "midwives" on one another.
Alan the Red said…
Hi Layla,

Today I give you "Every Woman is a Goddess". Enjoy :-)

http://iamgoddess.blogspot.com/

and this:

The Creed of the Holy Spirit

I believe in the Blessed Sophia.
I believe that she is Our Heavenly Father's Beloved Daughter.
I believe our souls dwelled with them in the Beginning, in harmony and love.

I believe that Sophia is the Divine Daughter.
That She lives in all women, and her strength and grace inspires all;
And she has sinned, learnt and is now strong and free.

I believe that Sophia is the Great Mother.
She is the Eema, the image of the hight of our strength;
And she has tutored me along Her Holy Path.

I believe that Sophia is the Holy Soul.
The Pneuma, the inner Crone of death and understanding within me;
And that She will bring completion in my waning days.

I believe that Sophia is the Spirit of God.
She is the Celestial Mother, and unites the Father and Child;
And She has given us knowledge of Their nurturing ways.

I believe in the Aeons, the Spirits, the gods of the Unknown God.
They are ruled by Sophia, they are Her children;
They all come from the Mother and to Her they shall return.

I believe in Reincarnation.
Her soul allows us to cycle throughout the prinsonhosue of matter;
Until we achieve the Liberation of the Light of Her Unknown Source.

I live in duty to restore honour to The Holy Spirit.
In prayer and reverence of all Her rituals;
From the masks of saints and goddesses, to restore honour to the True Queen.

love and kisses ;-)
Maitreya
Alan the Red said…
Hey Layla,

I'll give you another one:

I have given them eyes to see,
and they have not seen.
I have given them ears to hear,
and they have not heard.
I have given them a mind to discern,
and they have not discerned
The Ways of Holiness.
I have given them a Heart,
and they have not loved one another
Or the Holy Mother.

I have given them a bright star
to guide them to the Holy Land,
Yet they have wandered in the Deserts
of Desire and Despair.

And when they came to the Holy Land,
The chosen Ones took with them
The ways of Descecration and War.
The Chosen Ones defiled and laid waste
The Holy cities, the Holy Temples,
The children, the Mothers and the Old Ones;
The Chosen Ones Defiled Her Holy Daughters
And Sacred Land.

From Their Way , who has returned
To the Ways of Sanctity and Holiness?

Who has prepared their Hearts for Her Return?
Who has raised for Her, Her Sacred Temples?
Who has clothed and honoured Her Sacred Daughters?
Who has fed Her little Children?
Who has cared for the aged and the crippled?

Who has purged Her Holy Land from the Ways of War
And laid the Sacred Ground with the Ways of Peace?

Oh Ye children of Man, I say,
Prepare yourselves with fasting and with Prayers

For the Lamentations of the Mother are Great

For Her Temples and Beloved are Naught,
And they See and Behold Her Not.

c. SharOn Alder, Pistis Sophia, October 2005

And I'll throw in a song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjYeDh7Qkqs

"Look at the stars,
Look at how they shine for you,
and everything you do."

Maitreya
Alan the Red said…
At the very core of Islamic philosophy there is evidence of what can be called a vision of the Motherhood of God.

In the first Sura of the Koran, the Fatiha that is recited by millions of Muslims in their daily devotions, God is called Al Rahmin, the merciful and compassionate one. "Ramin" is derived from the Arabic for "womb" or "matrix", mercy is also a feminine attribute, and so Muslims are reminded that God can be either woman or man. Every day God is compared to a mother and woman.

The Sufi poetry teaches the feminine qualities of joy, love, tenderness and self sacrifice on a path of true knowledge derived from the spiritual heart. The spiritual rebirth of the individual is not unlike the trial and tribulation of physical childbirth, according to the Sufis. They take the principle of divine love and use it to facilitate the process of alchemical transformation from mundane human to spiritual being.

A Sufi Ode to the Divine Mother

On the face of the earth there is no one more beautiful than You
Wherever I go I wear your image in my heart
Whenever I fall in a despondent mood I remember your image
And my spirit rises a thousand fold
Your advent is the blossom time of the Universe
O Mother you have showered your choicest blessings upon me
Also remember me on the Day of Judgement
I don't know if I will go to heaven or hell
But wherever I go, please always abide in me.
Anonymous said…
Raise your hands who think Maitreya is not a disgusting dead-brain psycopath!
old hack said…
we're leaving soon.

I don't think the sunnis have a prayer once we do either. The fighters will make it easy for Iran to commit genocide under the guise of fighting terrorism
Layla Anwar said…
maitreya,

for once you make sense...
You are right in stating that al Raheem comes from the etymological root of Raham which means womb in arabic...And ummah comes from umm which means Mother...
For more on the feminine side of the divine in Islamic discourse, please have a look at the Tao of Islam...Sorry but do not have the author in mind..google it...
As for the poetry, will read it thoroughly and reply to you later.
Layla Anwar said…
old hack...

You make me laugh...seriously laugh.Because you think that the Americans are protecting sunnis?
hahahahaha...poor boy...Did you know that your govt is sleeping with Iran, a temporary marriage, the shia way?
Think again old hack before you come and spread your gems of wisdom.
Layla Anwar said…
For the other junks who leave commens which I do not publish -
Do bear in mind the following please.

1) am not your personal secretary, therefore have absolutely no obligation to publish anything you say.

2) to the sectarian shias who leave hard porn messages. my reply is - sorry cannot help you there, go and see a sexologist...in the meantime keep flogging yourselves.

3)for those who insinuate and doubt, one sentence for you :
I OWE you NOTHING. But you owe me heaps...

Now kiss it and shove off...
Anonymous said…
Mr. Reed:
Thanks for educating me on the negative IQ value. Since you appear to belong to the "high IQ'd" group, I may assume that you have engineered such a value. Excellent! Let me guess, IQ level is -2576. How close am I?

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