Opinions
Khamenei utter retaliatory threats, asserting a peaceful purpose for nuclear energy, and quote the Quran in support. Meanwhile the Telegraph has reported that Israel has been conducting military preparedness exercises, among armed forces and civilians.
The rumour of Mossad involvement in a recent fatal explosion near Teheran and that Israelis were the main source of information accusing Iran of militarising its nuclear program contained in the International Atomic Energy Agency's latest report should cause serious concerns internationally. And if these are true clearly the Agency must revise its position and seek objective verification to avoid taint or lose credibility, and become labelled as another tool of Israeli aggression.
From Iran's viewpoint nuclear capability would strengthen its hand in discussing disarmament. Iran maintains that Islam opposes the use of nuclear energy in war and has signed and ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; Israel has not and holds stockpiles of nuclear arms. Iranians stressed this point at a nuclear disarmament conference last June in Tehran, noting that the West continues to maintain stockpiles while demanding that others cease nuclear development, however peaceful. Clearly the two sides are far apart and must be brought closer; this is not likely to happen in the current climate of sabre-rattling
Netanyahu's bluster and threats to bomb Iran could boomerang and give the Iranians the excuse they need, if they needed one, to build a bomb. It is unlikely that Israel would act without US support. But Obama's recent delegation to Israel was snubbed when Netanyahu's agents refused to assure them that he would give Obama prior warning of any attack on Iran. Menachem Begin had bombed Iraq in June 1981 without warning the USA.
The world is so crooked today, so selfish and greedy and everyone craves everyone else's property or seeks to deny them comparable advantages. Why should not Iran develop nuclear energy for peaceful uses? Even if it wants to use it militarily, it is hardly likely to survive the fallout from retaliation. The Mossad might even now be plotting to eliminate Iran's key nuclear scientists having killed three in the last few years, and are searching for Mohsen Fakhrizadeh who headed the program when it was slowed in 2003 due to sanctions.
If as some say Israelis are motivated by memories of Hitler, this alone cannot explain the behaviour among people born decades after, even allowing for the intense holocaust indoctrination that they receive. Mimicking that behaviour is unlikely to bring them peace, much less peace of mind. Copying Hitler's methods will not settle Middle East issues; yet few Israeli politicians seem to understand this, and fewer still seem to realize that what they do to the Palestinians, Lebanese and to some extent the Jordanians is exactly what they allege they had suffered under Hitler. Surely if Israel needs assurance of its right to exist it should adopt a less belligerent and inhuman approach to the people whose lands it has seized and at least provide them a decent alternative, not war, since any war against a Muslim state is potentially war against all - perhaps barring Saudi Arabia, which will do American bidding. There are those who feel that the cascade of falling regimes in the Middle East, however justified, is the result of Western support for local insurgents hoping to gain from regime change.
The unreliability and dishonesty of major governments indicate that we have awful leaders. Last week when French President Sarkozy told President Obama that Netanyahu was a liar - many in Israel would heartily agree - he could have continued "so are we all – all at some time liars. We are after all politicians. Lying is our business."
Sarkozy's apology was another one but his grovelling tended to confirm Israel's power. But he may have done it tongue-in-cheek since he chose an ambassador ironically called Christophe Bigot to deliver the apology! Similarly Obama is busily doing Netanyahu's bidding in seeking Russian and Chinese support for sanctions.
So, if you did not know before who ran the world, this should tell you.
Hassle in getting Saturday
shopping done
There were those days when I was a boy growing up back home when I longed to be all grown-up so I could hang out with my old man and his friends. I longed for this especially on a Saturday, when all the households around us shifted into gear to get the chores done. I always drew the short straw for Saturday chores, which meant I had no choice but stand side-by-side with my mother. Not so my old man, and it was the same with his peers. Saturday was a day of fun when they met to bond, crack jokes and give each other loud and gleeful high-fives. Meanwhile, wives and mothers, sons and daughters, slaved away, in my mother's words, from "fo'day morning to midnight".
Saturday always dawned with the families around us rising early to take a trip to the other town to "make market". To "make market" meant haggling with the numerous vendors over the costs of items as ground provisions, vegetables as the long bodi, or thick slices of mottled, green-skinned, yellow-fleshed pumpkin. Each item was bought, the change counted, and then carefully wrapped in week-old newspapers and put into a large wicker basket.
My mother owned one of these wicker baskets. It was as wide as a bassinet with a handle curved into a half-circle and attached from one side to the other at its centre. My mother's market basket was a lethal affair. Such was its age that the wicker had become undone around the top. These pieces of wicker pointed outwards like thorns, and were just as sharp. Trim these 'thorns' off and it released another row from a layer below. It was a basket comparable to the mouth of a shark with its teeth laid out in rows.
My mother was well-known for making her way quickly through the aisles in the market. However, she was more famous for lingering by the mounds of ochroes and breaking the tips to check for freshness. She could hold up a dirt-encrusted cassava, clip under its skin with a finger nail and examine the starchy white inside to tell whether it would "boil", which meant becoming soft after cooking. The vendors looked at her with the detached patience acquired with years of entrepreneurship. If they fretted, it was among themselves at the end of day in the cathartic moment of an anguished group.
My mother was infamous for her distracted walking through the shopping crowd with the basket held in front, its spikes of broken wicker causing havoc among the bare-limbed and large-calved shoppers before her. I walked carefully behind, barely holding on to her skirt as she skimmed above the wave of shoppers. And since I followed in her wake, I drew the majority of vexed glares from those who were unfortunate enough to be in the way of the spikes.
She was not the only one going at this pace. All around us the other mothers had children following, the boys helping to carry the weight of purchases, a few of the older girls holding younger siblings upon thin, frail hips. Like these other women, my mother too was driven by the shortening of the hours of the morning. This was most discernible in the rising of the humidity around as the day grew older. As the day wore on the number of chores before her did not grow less.
Part of the "making market" was for the traditional Saturday soup. This was a thick, starch-based concoction that contained at minimum five different starchy roots, pieces of brined meat and battened down with the heat of fiery peppers. It was a chore peeling the yams, eddoes, the dasheen that turned blue when boiled, the finger-nail assessed cassava, the potatoes, for this weighty meal. I was given this task of peeling all these tubers into a huge basin of water. It was a herculean task for a young boy with small hands.
Where was my old man when this was all happening? He was kind enough to drive us to the market place. He parked the car, came out of the driver's seat, hitched his pants up above the hips, checked the integrity of his belt, and then ambled leisurely off to meet up with his friends. It was here where they spent the two hours or so it took for their wives and children to get the "marketing" done. These men passed the hours bonding, people-watching, eating vast quantities of baras with curried channa, called "doubles", and drinking cold soft-drinks under the burning sun.
My mother and her sisterhood, with us kids, returned to the cars stumbling like soldiers after battle. The shopping baskets were cornucopias. Our mouths were parched, the top of our heads on fire from the hot sun.
My old man left home mere moments after arrival from the market. This time he was heading to the car mechanic, there to meet up with his friends yet again. He returned late Saturday afternoon, his appetite whetted with drinking, moments after the pot of soup was lifted off the fire.