The Trial of Pharaoh, Seven Thousand Years After, by Jamil Shawwa

Mubarak of Egypt’s bad luck brought him to govern in the era of the Internet, and facebook, and Twitter but mostly in the era of freedom and in the era of the Arab countries turn to breathe and feel what most of the world has been having for some time; democracy and human rights. Mubarak otherwise would have gotten away or at least would have not fallen the way he did. His predecessors were luckier, will, maybe not Anwar El-Sadat, he was assassinated, but at least to some it is better than to be overthrown by the same people that the Egyptian leaders for thousands of years never respected, never took into account and never felt that they even deserve any kindness or consolation. Mubarak’s  bad luck made him the sacrifice for the Egyptians thousands of years of suffering, and humiliation.  He is probably the least evil or the lesser evil among many. One of the worst was Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose stupidity and demagoguery made him wage a war that was in its idiocy worse than the war of 1948 that the Arabs waged and lost but still did not learn. Mubarak and his sons are on trial, dragged to jail, waiting for their prosecutors, 80 million strong, the population of Egypt, and millions of other Egyptians through out the history of Egypt and since those poor Egyptian slaves that built the pyramids,. The defence attorneys are few, they are disappearing, the Pharaoh fell, and the friends and the pretenders are gone. Ramses, and all the other Pharaohs are crying Hosni Mubarak and are cheering him in the same time, they did not have to go through what he and his family will go through. They do not want to be in his place. Mubarak however showed class when he left, I  predicted that he will leave, but did not predict that it would be that way, a revolution that no one, at least not us the ordinary people thought of, I still  encouraged it not only for him but for all the non elected Arab leaders. I personally understand how the Egyptians feel, and lived in Egypt and used to see the humiliation in their faces every day, everywhere, in police stations, in the streets, in the cafes, in the overcrowded buses, in living in grave yards, in the lines for a loaf of bread-if they could get even that and was not filled with screws and other stuff- in the lines for cigarettes, human lines were Egypt’s daily routine. But Mubarak did not invent that system, Nasser did, still, Mubarak shared the responsibility. But I do not encourage humiliating him, not Mubarak, show him grace, if you need to put him on trial, let it be, but do not try him on behalf of all the Pharaohs and do not try him on behalf of hundreds of millions of Egyptians through out history that have never been respected in their country. Treat Mubarak as Russia treated Gorbachev, let him live in peace for the remainder of his life. He did not kill his people as Saddam did, or Qazzafi the psychopath, or the king of Bahrain or the president of Yemen, or the butchers of Syria. He represented a system he did not create, he did not reform or change it and he bears responsibility, otherwise the rest would say the same thing, we did not create the system but found it. He just played a game and thought that he will get away with it, but once all was done, and the game was over, he left, he did not fight.  Let the last pharaoh rest in peace. There will never be again another pharaoh.

The Cowards of Gaza, the Cowards of Damascus, The Cowards of Tehran and the Cowards of Hezbollah…..…An X-ray by Jamil Shawwa

In the Middle East, right now, there are four "groups" that to call them human would be an insult and humiliation to humanity, to call them political groups, would be an insult to politics, already an insulting word, so we cannot add insult to injury. To call them parties, would be an insult to all the legitimate political and social parties around the world, to call them leaders, would be an insult to the word and meaning of the word leader which usually points out to those that inspire and those that motivate. So let us call them with a word they love, a word they respect, and a word that belongs to them, that is attached to them, and that is identified for them, Cowards.  Let us start with the Cowards of Gaza, Hamas, they are firing rockets, why, and now they are begging and kissing the feet and the behinds for restraint, but this is how cowards live and operate. They are lowlifes, no respect, although they won an election, but they won it because the other alternative, the PLO, was arguably, worse, politely putting it, corrupt. Again, the people of Gaza should rise against the terror of Hamas and the rest of the TV and multimedia terrorists groups, they are the occupier, not Israel, Israel withdrew from Gaza, was ready to withdraw from the West Bank and was ready to talk about Jerusalem and the Golan, but the cowards disappeared, they prefer to live in the dark, they are the night bats, they cannot survive the light, they prefer to fire rockets, and dig tunnels, and live like animals. They have taken the Palestinian people, who have been as complacent as anyone can be through out their history in this crime, as hostages. The Palestinians can drop all this trash, and can start anew, and can bring respect to people that have never had respect, the Palestinian people.  Throw out Hamas, now.

In Syria, we have worse situation, maybe, See, it is a competition as who the worst is, who is the most criminal and who is the most terrorist, and who is the most hypocrite and who is the most demagogue; this is an x-ray of the garbage of the Middle East. The Alawis, a fraction, less than 5% of the population, a gang, a mafia, a group of suicidal maniacs, they commit suicide if the party decides so, hijacked a country that matches the Palestinians in hypocrisy, and a country that has a reputation of having ill reputed merchants and politicians and a country where the majority Muslim Sunnis are weak, and where the grand Syrian Sunni families were unrealistic, naive and idiots, basically. The Ba'ath mafia rules Syria, but a group of Syrians are fighting back now; those are the freedom fighters that Syria never had or known, they do not want to be anymore attached to that garbage. Throw out the Alawis and Al-Ba’ath and that helpless, poor, irrelevant, disillusioned, Al-Assad, now.

Finally, so far, I am going to combine two trashcans in one, Hezbollah and Iran that is the lowlifes, the Mullahs, the Rasputins that run Iran. The two are interconnected and intertwined and they are the cousins of another sect, the Alawis in Syria, so you can see the connection, the three feed into each other, and the three live through each other. The Shia power has already risen in the Arab countries, and why not, but it is a twofold problem, first is  a Sunni majority that are so tyrant and ignorant that it never treated the Shia well- Check the Gulf countries, and the other is  Iran and the powers of the political hypocrisy, they are really are guns for hire, not sure how to explain it though, basically, I know that they act pursuant to political agendas and not ideology; yes, I think this is a good explanation. Hezbollah and Iran, again, pursuant to certain political agendas, as it seems or turned to be, might drag a semi country-Lebanon- into chaos as they did in 2006. See, if you look around, you see that once the Arab countries start cleaning up their trash, peace is here, Israel has no problem, the US, the EU, Russia, China, no one has a problem in granting the Palestinians their rightful place among the civilized nations, and grant them a state in the West Bank and Gaza side by side with the State of Israel, no one, except for the cowards, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Ba’ath and Alawis and the ultimate losers, the ultimate hypocrites and the ultimate joke and the ultimate clowns, the Mullahs of Iran, they do not want to see a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, they want to see destruction. The Mullahs enemies, their only enemies, are the Arab Muslim Sunnis. That is Iran, nothing more and nothing less and that concludes our X-ray for the day.

Go ahead; Make My day. Shut Down the Government...America America...by Jamil Shawwa

In 1981, and after the sounding defeat of Jimmy Carter, the new president, the Grand Old Party lifesaver, Ronald Reagan declared, “government is not the solution, government is the problem”. In 1993, Bill Clinton declared, “the era of big government is over”. Both presidents, a republican and a democrat, used that rhetoric during economic downturns like the one we live in now. Since then every president, every candidate for office tried to emulate and imitate and tried to get into this wagon or off the wagon of blaming the federal government for everything that goes wrong in this country, from their perspective. Almost all has been and is political rhetoric, no substance and false. America is the federal government; it is the glue that made America the greatest country on earth. The federal government is the government of the people and for the people and by the people and it is the fifty states combined and it is the union that we all live and breathe through its healthy and renewed veins. America loves to discuss, talk, argue, deliberate, and convince, this is how this country was built and this is how the constitution was crafted, out of excruciating years, months, days, and hours of deliberations. America’s lifeline and foundation is there for everyone who is interested to read, in the federalist papers and in the drafts of the constitution and in the bill of rights. The founding fathers of the republic, The United States, put the power over the purse in the hands of the elected body, the congress, and not in the hands of the elected executive, the president. They wisely knew that you need more than just one individual, even if that individual was the elected president of the United States, to decide what money can and where to be spent. We have witnessed an impasse like the one we are witnessing right now back in 1995, when few republicans, infuriated by the loss of George H. Bush and the winning of a little known southern state governor by the name of Bill Clinton, that they created what came to be known, for couple of years and then disappeared, as the republican revolution when bill Clinton got reelected in 1996 and defeated a good man but with no charisma, Bob Dole. They shutdown the government, showed people that they are meanies, they did not intend to, but republicans come across- in general- in the American psychic as inconsiderate meanies, and sometimes according to some as bunch of SOBs. Americans felt then, in 1995, and now, that they were out of touch, did not care about the elderly, women, children, all they cared about was to tell Americans, that you need to depend on yourself only, that it is you that can make or break things, that the government is not a babysitter, that if you do not work hard, no one really can carry you or your burden. The republican party’s message then and now is that America cannot afford to be a welfare state, America cannot pay for women abortion clinics; this one actually resides deep in religious reasons, many of them are religious christians that feel that clinics that cater to abortion and unwed mothers are sinners, and that the government cannot support such sin. In that particular one, they forget or try to forget the separation of state and religion or the separation of church and state, or the synagogue and state or the mosque and state, America now is for all and not only for church goers or mosque goers or synagogue goers. The news just updated of a tentative deal between president Obama and the republicans to avert a shut down of the government, but until when, no one yet is sure. The issue is not that, it is the blackmailing of America that some in the republican party use every now and then to get their way, but in the process and in the midst of all the political spinning and rhetoric, those extremists do not realize that they are hurting the very same country that they claim to defend and pretend that they care about. The government is the people, it is the women and children, it is the parks and the museums, it the military and the troops that stay day and night all over the world to make sure that we are safe here and that we have freedom here, and that our foundation is solid. The federal government is not a strange body that you need to fight, on the contrary, it is the very heart and soul of this country that you need to nourish like a baby, and protect. The problem is not the government, it is us, we the people who make the rules, and write the bills and the laws and create the policies and the politics. Do not attack the government, do not shut down the system, reform it, protect it, and keep it alive. Those tactics of shutting down the livelihood of the people will not work, they never did, in the past the republicans lost and they will lose again if the tactics continue.