My Take on That 10th Anniversary

On September 11 2001, I was in my backyard bringing in the washing at Oxford Avenue, Leicester when my neighbour Ola, a British-born Pole, looking pale and frantic exclaimed to me , " Did you know what happened to the Twin Towers in New York?"

I had seen a snippet of that in the news.  So I replied, "What do the Yanks expect after what they did to Iraq and Palestine?"  She looked at me in disbelief and went straight back into her house.

A week or so later, we went to Asda Supermarket ( a subsidiary of the American retail giant Walmart) at Oadby.  At the entrance I noticed a big book of condolences for the victims of 9/11.  It was already half-full with jottings of sympathy and support - and a tirade at the perpetrators who by that time were already identified as Muslims.

I took a deep breath and wrote this in the book.  "What about the deaths of 1/2 million children in Iraq from American sanctions after the Gulf War?  Who are crying and feeling for them?"

Madeleine  Albright was Clinton's Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001.  The video above was done on December 5 1996 where she calmly asserts that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children as a result of American sanctions  was - 'we think the price is worth it'.


After our shopping was done, I went back to look at the book.  The page with my comment had been torn off and removed.  It seemed that in this case - 'sauce for the goose' is not sauce for the gander.


Then on September 11 2002 my place of work was planning a minute's silence on the first anniversary.    I took a walk to the toilet instead - at one minute before the minute's silence.  Selective demonstration of mourning is not my cup of tea!!

Today, ten years after - and while the world still reeks of the blood of the hundreds of thousands killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and Gaza, and Libya at the hands of the Judaeo-Christian Nato Forces and Israel ............



..... I prefer to look at the larger picture - to think outside the box of analyses and perceptions that we willy-nilly accept from the West - that America's grief and humiliation is also ours - that their culpability  for the deaths, torture, sufferings and humiliation of the non-whites remain white-washed.




Finally on this day, spare a thought or a tear for Palestinians.


Their day of grievious pain is everyday - not just on anniversaries.