Beauty and truth are real, but not the kind spun by pompous and proud sawyers
Peek-a-boo, I love you. Well, not exactly ‘love’, but you can call it ‘want you’. Playing hide-and-seek in the corridors of the UN were two grown-ups. But Musharraf’s mandarins downplay it as innocent foreplay with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon. The old geezer calls it a lie, “that kind of a thing (shaking hands with the Pakistani president and his missus) doesn’t happen by chance. I don’t meet anyone by chance,” snaps an irate Sharon.
What’s going on with these fellas, I ask you? Why are they behaving like tikes? The biggest of course is George W. Bush, who came to the UN to address the General Assembly and wanted to pee. So, he scribbles a note to his Secretary of State Condi Rice if he could take a “bathroom break”. The late night comics festooned the note — caught on camera — with lewd humour, where Condi is shown writing back to ask: “Is it #1 or # 2?”
You’ll agree that spiking world leaders to let off air from their swollen selves is but an innocent sport for the silent majority, who must 24/7 suffer their grandiosity. When they trip they provide us comic relief, making good cartoon characters with their capers, looking fallible. That said, let’s grow up and talk adult stuff.
“I don’t mind if Pakistan and Israel begin a normalization process,” says Liaquat Ali Khan, a law professor at the Washburn University School of Law. But he argues that “illegitimacy and controversy” are two things that can impair the process.
“President Musharraf lacks the legitimacy to decide on behalf of his country. He’s not a democratically elected leader. It is a horrible decision for Pakistan to begin talks with Israel by the present government. It will lead to a lot of controversy,” warns Ali Khan, who left his hometown, Sialkot, 30 years ago, and is today one of the 10 or less Muslim professors of law in the US.
Jutting his neck out against the Harvard law professor, Allan Dershowitz, Ali Khan picks him apart for supporting “targeted assassinations” of Palestinians. “The idea of a Harvard law professor sitting on an occupying state’s (Israel) assassination committee is for many in the legal academy very disturbing.”
When Ali Khan questioned Dershowitz on his trashing of the Convention against Torture (1987), answered Dershowitz: “Ay, think so still, ’til experience change thy mind.” The man is willing to pull down even entire “villages of suicide bombers”, says Ali Khan, “he thinks perhaps that it takes a village to raise a suicide bomber. It does. When their entire village has been grabbed by the neck and choked, some kid (a ‘terrorist’) is surely going to be mad as hell.”
Calling him an Israeli “Jihadi”, who loves Israel to the extent of churning out creative legal arguments in its defence against blatant disregard for the International Court of Justice and the Red Cross, Ali Khan says that Harvard harbours bigots like Daniel Pipes, Dershowitz and Jessica Stern who insist that Muslims are “addicted to violence, and terrorism is in the roots of the entire Islamic world”.
They obsess that the “enemy (Muslim) is driven by his essence” and therefore must be wiped out. Ali Khan is preparing a demarche The Essentialist Terrorist, that challenges the Jews profiling of a Muslim as a person driven to violence by his essence.
And the next zinger from the Pakistani professor is, “This same Jewish clique is very accepting of the Pakistani president. Just read their journal called Commentary and you’ll get the drift ...” He says they like Musharraf because he does what Bush tells him to do, and Bush does what the Jewish junta dictates.
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At Dallas last year, a large Pakistani community came to hear Norman Finkelstein’s (author of Beyond Chutzpah) keynote address at the 2nd annual Palestinian Film Festival. “After talking to him and listening to other Jewish voices for peace and reconciliation, I was saddened by the realization that these voices of reason are never heard in our part of the world, or even by most Muslims in the West,” Ahmed, a longtime Pakistani resident in Texas tells me. “Finkelstein ‘philosophizes with a hammer’ to sound out quite a few hollow idols.”
Calling them “racist monomaniacs, chauvinist ethno-nationalists, and clinically abnormal personality types (e.g. Dershowitz) who monopolize all discourse in the mainstream media which is then picked up as the authentic voice of their community by the “other side” in this conflict. I think it’s imperative that Jewish voices for sane solutions to this conflict be given a larger hearing, so that the vise-like grip of the loudest and most uncouth elements on the framing of issues might be loosened.”
The same must be said of our Islamic hardcore groups who preach suicide bombing and terrorist killings of innocent civilians. These savages are as poisonous as the Zionists.
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Long before Celeste exposed her antipathy for the Jews, we had already found many things in common to talk and laugh about during our summer at Harvard. In short: we got on famously. Her humour was infectious; her mind razor sharp, and her presence edifying. She always wore silver jewellry that she makes with her hands. I found it fascinating to hear her describe the process — how delicately she set each little stone in silver to craft it into unique pieces of art. When I praised what she wore, she’d take it off and give it to me, “take it.” I’d remind her that I don’t wear silver.
The forty-something flew out from Arizona to enrol in two creative writing classes. But Harvard disappointed her. One class proved to be contrary to what it claimed to teach, so she dropped it, hoping to replace it by another. That never happened because the professors she emailed didn’t bother to reply. The second class was a disaster too: “By the time I was privy to the lack of instruction or structure in the class, it was too late for me to transfer, so half of my expected Harvard instruction was not met which cost me both time and money in the long run ... ‘Harvard for Dummies’ is what the university should call its courses.”
Growing up in Santa Fe in New Mexico, an ancient town with great physical beauty, arts and artists, writers and actors, Celeste’s taste in fine arts was honed with historical grace. “I’ve always liked working with my hands, either redoing things to make them better, or creating beauty.” The designs from the Byzantine, Egyptian, and Roman era appeal to her aesthetics. “I find them to be subtle. I only make what I like.” And that is what keeps it an art form. “If I had to make jewellry just to produce, it would just become a job and not art, so I am happy with selling limited, handmade pieces.”
Tucked in her resume are 15 years of work experience in Hollywood. Since the entertainment industry is predominantly Jewish, Celeste offers a rare inside view: “The Jews are the most organized, incestuous tribe on earth, and they truly scorn anyone who confronts them. They are disliked by most because of their insatiable greed which has no limit and they will do anything, without shame, to take whatever they can lay their hands on. They are taught from the day they are born to prey upon all other races.”
Being on a first-name basis with stars like Bob Hope, Robert Redford, Bette Midler and Robert Duval, Celeste declares, “I have learnt how unimportant it is to be famous or wealthy. You are who you are, no matter what your bank balance reads or how many people know your name. I have met some really great people and some really big ass*****.”
Beauty and truth are real but not the kind spun by pompous, proud and portentous swayers
Peek-a-boo, I love you. Well, not exactly ‘love’, but you can call it ‘want you’. Playing hide-and-seek in the corridors of the UN were two grown-ups. But Musharraf’s mandarins downplay it as innocent foreplay with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon. The old geezer calls it a lie, “that kind of a thing (shaking hands with the Pakistani president and his missus) doesn’t happen by chance. I don’t meet anyone by chance,” snaps an irate Sharon.
“President Musharraf lacks the legitimacy to decide on behalf of his country. He’s not a democratically elected leader. It is a horrible decision for Pakistan to begin talks with Israel by the present government. It will lead to a lot of controversy,” warns Ali Khan, who left his hometown, Sialkot, 30 years ago, and is today one of the 10 or less Muslim professors of law in the US.
Calling him an Israeli “Jihadi”, who loves Israel to the extent of churning out creative legal arguments in its defence against blatant disregard for the International Court of Justice and the Red Cross, Ali Khan says that Harvard harbours bigots like Daniel Pipes, Dershowitz and Jessica Stern who insist that Muslims are “addicted to violence, and terrorism is in the roots of the entire Islamic world”.
At Dallas last year, a large Pakistani community came to hear Norman Finkelstein’s (author of Beyond Chutzpah) keynote address at the 2nd annual Palestinian Film Festival. “After talking to him and listening to other Jewish voices for peace and reconciliation, I was saddened by the realization that these voices of reason are never heard in our part of the world, or even by most Muslims in the West,” Ahmed, a longtime Pakistani resident in Texas tells me. “Finkelstein ‘philosophizes with a hammer’ to sound out quite a few hollow idols.”
Long before Celeste exposed her antipathy for the Jews, we had already found many things in common to talk and laugh about during our summer at Harvard. In short: we got on famously. Her humour was infectious; her mind razor sharp, and her presence edifying. She always wore silver jewellry that she makes with her hands. I found it fascinating to hear her describe the process — how delicately she set each little stone in silver to craft it into unique pieces of art. When I praised what she wore, she’d take it off and give it to me, “take it.” I’d remind her that I don’t wear silver.
