BBC Sources On The Arab World

 
Currently a range of valuable BBC sources can be found which deal with the Arab World. To start with, links to details about twelve Arab Nations can be found here . Furthermore, when accessing details on any of these specific nations a range of other links can also then be found.

Then here is this link to a BBC's item called the "Arab Spring : 10 unpredicted items". Each of these ten items then provide their own links, which themselves then lead on to extra items.

My own bits and pieces on the Middle East can be found via the labels shown below, although these are mainly related to items about Iraq. It was where I undertook my National Service in 1955/56. The experience and the events of that time helped to push me into politics.

The links I provide are as much for my own purposes as anything else. They will supplement my growing library on the Middle East. Its political complexities should be high on our agendas.  Perhaps the BBC will get round some day to giving an equally serious survey of British politics.

21 December - Now there is more, here.



  

League Table Of Shame

Click onto the above to enlarge and read the statistics of judicial murders.

Amnesty has published its report on "Death Sentences and Executions in 2008" stating - "Last year 2,390 people were executed in countries around the world. This represents a significant increase since 2007 with more countries in Asia using the death penalty than anywhere else. Amnesty’s annual death penalty report also reveals that at least 8,864 people were sentenced to death. The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Beheadings, electrocutions, hangings, lethal injections, shootings and stonings have no place in the twenty-first century."

China carried out at least 1,718 executions, 72% of the global total — the actual number (as in many other countries) is believed to be much higher. But if the populations of the 15 countries that carry out the most executions are taken into account, Iran and Saudi Arabia emerge as more zealous employers of capital punishment than China. At the top appears the hideous league table for executions per million for the "top" nations executions.

Hat Tip : Iraqi Mojo

Shia Delight

To get a feeling of why the Shia risk life and limb to make the pilgrimage to Karbala in Iraq (often from Iran) see this 15 minute video. Unfortunately, I am unable to follow the sub-titles or the words that are sung. But I still find it moving (although I am an atheist). I gained access to this via Iraqi Mojo's blog.

A Move To Shia-Sunni Unity In Iraq

Iraqi Mojo reports on this move.

Given the significance of religion in Iraqi politics, lets hope it is as significant as the Ian Paisley/Gerry Adams deal in Northern Ireland.

P.S. In time the hard line Shia and the hard line Sunnis might become the Iraqi Chuckle Brothers, just like these Northern Island counterparts.

P.P.S. If only Maqtada Sadr would learn to chuckle kindly.

Understanding Iraqi Kurdistan

Via Iraqi Mojo I have discovered this telling article by Michael J. Totten on Iraqi Kurdistan. It is something he wrote in the early summer which has just been published.

In it he calls for the establishment of a separate,independent and recognised nation to be set up in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. I don't share this viewpoint as (a) the region remaining as part of Iraq offers one of the few avenues for the spread of democratic and civic society values inside the whole country and (b) it would cause massive intervention from an intransigent Turkey who have always acted vigorously to contain the demands of their own Kurdish population, especially in relation to activities from Kurdish paramilitary groups who operate from the mountains in southern Turkey and northern Iraq.

Indeed, Totten himself has backed off somewhat from his initial conclusion about the need for independence and now calls it his plan "B". But his article is invaluable for his description of life in Iraqi Kurdistan. Where he points out that it is a region which suffers from fewer terrorist assaults than Spain does.

For anyone with a serious interest in Iraq, it is an important read. Soma, the Iraqi-Kurdish Digest published in Sulaymaniyah is then well worth an examination.

That Man From Iran

For the video of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University see this item posted by Iraqi Mojo. For a response to the claim in his speech that "in Iran we don't have homosexuals, like in your country", see this as posted by Rantings Of A Sandmonkey.

Five Blogs (plus ten others) That Make Me Think.

Not In Any Order Of Merit

1. Yourfriendinthenorth.
2. Iraqi Mojo.
3. The Labour Humanist.
4. Gauche.
5. NewerLabour.

These are the blogs I nominate for the "Thinking Blogger Award" - as promised in the last item I posted. If they don't think that it is naff, this entitles them to display the Award Symbol which can be found in my right hand column between my lists of "Links" and "Previous Posts."

Under the rules of this meme, they are now each entitled to name five others.

My Criteria

I have not included anyone whom I have discovered has been nominated by others (so sorry NightHawk and Eric Lee). To the best of my knowledge, the five listed above are individuals who operate blogs which have comment boxes and readily enter into discussions with other sensible bloggers.

I appreciate the nonsense element of this form of chain. From the first names that were posted, it could in theory spread like wildfire from 5, 25, 125, 625 ... so that after ten stages almost 10 million will be reached. I think that we would soon run out of anyone that I would wish to see recommended..

The Five I Have Chosen

Yourfriendinthenorth. This is criticism and common sense about politics and life in Northern Ireland. I have a long term interest in the situation there, having served on the Commons Select Committee on Northern Ireland and on the British Irish Parliamentary Body.

Iraqi Mojo. Born in Baghdad and grew up in America. Posts significant items and provides a first class set of links to and on Iraq. I did my National Service in Iraq in 1955-56 and I am fully involved today with "Labour Friends of Iraq".

The Labour Humanist. This is not just an anti-religous set of tracts and it covers positive humanist issues and values. It appeals to my own "A Gentle Atheism".

Gauche. Paul Anderson seeks to follow in the footsteps of my favouite author George Orwell. No one does it better.

NewerLabour. Not to be confused with New Labour. Otherwise, ignore the handle Tom Miller uses. I have not sold out. He is a good read, showing what it is like to be a left-leaning 21 year old in Britain today. As someone who is nearly 50 years older, I need this stimulous - even if he is supporting Cruddas for Deputy Leader.

Five "Thinking" Links Falling Outside My Criteria

For all of these see my Links in the right-hand column.

1. Johann Hari.
2. Open Democracy.
3. Democratiya.
4. Independent Labour Publications.
5. Labour Friends of Iraq.

Then, for listening there is Little Atoms (see "My Links"). With a special mention for great footballing words of wisdom from (and on) Roy Keane via "A Love Supreme".

The special Harry Barnes Award for comradely blogging goes to Bob Piper. Bob, I am sorry that I haven't got the skills to manufacture a comradely gong.

All My Yesterdays

This gives access to a telling twenty minute film about Iraq made in 1953. Whilst it is a romanticised, sanitized British Pathe News "propoganda" film; it does show something of the great potential of Iraq then and now.

I undertook my National Service at the RAF Movements Unit in Basra in 1955 and 1956. The film shows the docks in Basra which I visited at least once a week. There is coverage of one of the railway staions in Baghdad. I visited the equivalent in Basra on almost a daily basis. The buses are of a style that is recognisable, whilst the plane shown at the start and the close is not unlike the RAF Hastings in which I flew into and out of Habbaniya. At the time Habbaniya was a huge RAF base close to Fallugah, containing some 3,000 troops.

When I arrived the British bases were British Crown Territory and were on land we held sovereignty over. Many Iraqis fear that there will be attempts by Britain and America to extend such practices into the future. It is important for us to show that when we go we do so fully.

Above all it is the people of Iraq who appear throughout the film, but not in the context in which I saw exploited labourers and people living in poverty. I attempted to explain some of this in the first half of the item I posted under the title "Then and Now".

I thank Iraqi Mojo for presenting this historical material. In April I flew the length of Iraq from Arbil in the north, past Baghdad and Basra. Whilst in 1956 as I flew to be demobbed, we went out over Iraqi Kurdistan then via Ankara. The closing and opening sequences of the film bring back these memories. In between, there is much more which transports me to my yesterdays.