At what cost, Kuwait?
I was doing a google search today on Kuwaiti films, and filmmakers, and came across
an (outdated) BBC article about Kuwait banning Fahrenheit 911 from being shown in state movie theatres. I am completely incensed!
"We have a law that prohibits insulting friendly nations," said Abdul-Aziz Bou Dastour of the Information Ministry."
Since when is a nation that refuses to return money that you had given them to safeguard when you were being attacked called a "friend"?!
And why do you consider a nation that supports and propagates war including mass killings against Muslims a "friendly nation"?!
Kuwait! Wake up from your reveries! Realise that you are committing grevious harm against the Ummah by being "friends" with a nation that supports the massacre of innocent people!
This is a friendship with blood on it, and you can still pull out of it before you have completely sold yourself out.
On a personal note, I am extremely dismayed. You call yourself a democracy when you have laws that censor free speech, public opinion, including equal treatment of all citizens (ie: women's vote + more). This is not Democracy, it's Hypocracy.
I have a feeling I will be one of the very few Anti-Bushists in Kuwait... in support of Palestinians and Iraqis, and against the US invasion of Iraq (+ Afghanistan). If that means that I may get arrested for my political views, then I am a dissident at heart with no apologies.
posted by Truth Seeker at 12/13/2004 04:31:00 PM
16 Comments:
not a lot of people share your opinion. Its hard for us to forget what Saddam and Iraqi soldiers did to us. Its even more disturbing that the PLO supported Saddam in '90, so we have little sympathy for the palestinian cause. Its not fair to generalize I know, but frankly I don't really care. The US saved our ass, I personally am eternally grateful for that, and I would give them all my money and my own life for them to do it again. So they can keep the cash, its trivial for me.
Kuwait banned the film as a show of respect to Bush.
But you can still find it in kuwait in the obscure streets of Hawali. You can a lot of things that are banned in obscure streets in Kuwait ;)
The cash bit I was referring to was Saudi Arabia. The film not only spoke against Bush, but also Saudi Arabia, which Kuwait calls a friend, after having been financially screwed over by them.
I understand that for many Kuwaitis it is hard to forget GWI atrocities committed against them, and unlike many of them, I believe that the Iraqis have already paid for that with the severe sanctions set against them. *Every day* for the last 10-12 yrs they were bombed, and have suffered many lives lost, include famine, oppression, and the hardships of tyranny as well as American betrayal (re: the Kurdish uprising).
Kuwaitis may not foget what was done to Kuwait, and believe me, I understand that, but I cannot see how supporting an illegal war against Iraqis, and having a whole new generation which had nothing to do with Gulf War I suffer, will help 'settle the score', so to speak. Nor how standing back and allowing Israeli zionists massacre Palesntinian children on a daily basis will help assuage anything.
One wrong does not justify previous wrongs.
While the Kuwaiti government goes all out to stop what they view as insults against Bush from being shown in their national cinemas, American universities are teaching students that Kuwait's Emir along with Western Oil companies plotted to steal Iraqi oil. I don't see Bush's government, in turn, doing what it can to stop this.
Some friends... its time to reevaluate the meaning of friendship.
PS: Even though our political views maybe completely polar to one another, I would still want to have coffee with you at the mall, inshallah;-)
okay i'm missing something
" Since when is a nation that refuses to return money that you had given them to safeguard when you were being attacked called a "friend"?!
"
are you talking about saudi arabia ? what money ?
Hello Forzaq8,
Thanks for visiting my Blog. I will check yours out in a few minutes.
Yes, I was referring to Saudi Arabia. When Kuwait got attacked, aside from freezing its country's assets, it deposited vast amounts of money in Saudi to "safeguard" until the war was over.
Once it was over, Saudi claimed it was never asked to safekeep any money, despite Kuwait's complaints. Based on what I have been told regarding this incident, Kuwait never recovered its assets from their 'friend'.
I agree, we can disagree on politics but we can still chill out and be friends :). I hate discussing politics anyway, it never achieves anything pragmatically. but i do believe what you call 'war' against iraqies is actually a 'liberation' for their people. Ten years from now they will be grateful that Bush came in and kicked off Saddam. Finally their country will be able to utilize its resources appropriately and the people will stop living in constant fear, a fundamental right to every human being. Its unfortunate that innocents had to die on the way...but I guess sacrifices are inevitably necessary for freedom.
As for the palestinian cause, i don't see what kuwait can do that it hasn't done already. The government has given them ridiculous amounts cash from oil revenues and off of the backs of kuwaiti citizens (part of my parents salary was automatically deducted every month for the PLO in the '70s)and all that for Mrs. Arafat's lovely shoe collection in Paris. what else can we do as a small country with little political power in the global domain other than 'stand back'? whatever it is that we can do, its not worth risking our relationships with powerful allies, thats being honest and realistic.
i admire your passion and patriotism. i stopped caring about politics a long time ago, hearing your frustrations is refreshing.
The liberation from Saddam has happened, now Iraqis are under occupation, and massacre under a new tyrant. They are worse off now than they were under Saddam... sadly enough.
I mean, we all know the war was illegal to begin with, and Saddam was just a pretext to acquiring Iraq's oil. Bush doesn't give a toss about the Iraqis. If they did not have a drop of oil, he'd have not done a thing 'for' them.
i don't have a blog (yet )
anway , i was in saudi before 2/8/1990 ,i tell you some of what i know
freezing of assest was requested by kuwaiti goverment , its was needed to stop people messing with kuwaiti money before the goverment get its hold on it again ( it somewhat worked , some did run away with millions but billions were safeguarded that way )
kuwait didn't have assest that much in saudi arabia in the first place , most of kuwait money was either in europe or usa
and they both did freeze kuwaiti account at the start of the invastion .
about that money you say that saudi didn't return , that is the first time i hear about it , i i'll try to ask around about it , but i never heard about it while i was there
and if you don't want to call saudi a friend who do you want to call a friend ?!? i'm sorry you may hate saudi arabia ( hell i do , i lived there for some years and hated it ) but that can't make us ignore the fact that they helped us , on the offical and non offical
its not like bush is putting the oil in his bank account! iraq's oil belongs to iraq and it will stay that way, none of it is making bush a billionare! When the US went into Kosovo he didn't make any money. When they went into Afghanistan he didn't make any money either. But because Iraq has oil everybody is screaming and yelling that bush used to own oil stocks.
but assuming that its true, even if his purposes for liberating iraq were misguided and selfish, does it really matter? As long as the action achieved a good outcome, do we care about his personal intentions? I think in the name of freedom, any means justify the end. Iraqies are now free, at least in the long term. They just had a dictator overthrown so of course things are going to be unstable for a little while. the chaos is a normal short term consequence, but in the longterm people in iraq will have access to a normal life to which they've for so long been denied.
I can picture ten years from now an Iraqi artist being grateful that he can pursue art without being forced to join the military, a young woman not terrified from the threat of being raped as punishment for her family's political dissonance, a child hopping away gleefully with access to clean water, food and medicine..with them in mind, I can picture all of them personally digging up some oil and shipping it off to george bush's estate in Texas with a note 'thank you for helping us live'.
Actually, Afghanistan does have oil... so of course there is money to be made out of invading and controling its oil pipelines.
I HIGHLY recommend everyone gets a daily dose of Amy Goodman from http://www.democracynow.org
I listen to her in the mornings, and you would be quite surprised at the facts that are coming out regarding the profits Bush and Cheney are making of off this war.
War is a multi-billion dollar industry... I find it hard to accept that Bush is not making any money out of it.
Check out the movie by a Kuwaiti director "Waleed el 3awathi" was banned in Kuwait too
Thanks Miryam! I'll do that:-)
Wow, I've got to meet this guy! I just got done reading an article on him and his latest film. Turns out he submitted his movie to be screened at the Muslim Film Festival, which was founded by a friend of mine, here in California! Ha! Small world indeed!
I hope someday Kuwait's gov't will decide to be less totalitarian in its approach to public political opinion and more open to providing a platform for them to be expressed and showcased.
I am optimistic:-)
Hi Muslim Artist
http://zaydoun.blogspot.com/2004/08/kuwait-bans-fahrenheit-911.html
http://zaydoun.blogspot.com/2004/08/more-on-moore.html
http://zaydoun.blogspot.com/2004/08/it-gets-worse.html
Hi MA,
I usually hate comments on old posts because i always lose them. However, i couldn't resist this one.
Seems to me that you naively do believe in good politics & politicians. Because you do believe in the opposite (bad politics & politicians). All politics is bad. Its only about power & money & its as old as Kane & Abel.
Now, regarding the ban in Kuwait and our democracy, i feel judgement here, and i don't really appreciate that. Democracy & freedom of speach is all relative and relatively we are enviable in the Middle East for the rights we have.
Last but not least, we do not find friends within the Arab/muslim nations around us because their interest in our goodies (tiny country + oil + location) and we are a protectorate of the US (as we were a protectorate of the Great Britain in the late 1800s till 1961). And in those years we were invaded twice by Iraq and once by Saudi Arabia. So yes, the US is our allie and we do not get into their other politics and they dont get into ours (not that we have much).
As to the Saudi's steeling our money, i think this is far from correct and unless documented, i wouldn't believe that if i were you. Plus repeating rumours is not very intellectual & i'm afraid to say 'very Arab' along side endless theories/tales of conspiracy.
The Kindgom of Saudi Arabia is a friend, and their generosity in hosting our government in exhile and hundreds of thousands of Kuwaities is felt & appreciated forever.
Sheba, Welcome! Welcome to my blog!
no judgement was passed on you, so I would hope you do not take my words to heart.
I do not believe that it is ok to censor public political opinion, in that case, a government who does so might as well define themselves as a totalitarian government, rather than a democratic one. As far as I see, based on media reports, Kuwait does practice the censorship of freedom of political expression.
I could not help but also notice the contradiction in your commentary:
You say :
Last but not least, we do not find friends within the Arab/muslim nations around us because their interest in our goodies
However, you go on to mention: The Kindgom of Saudi Arabia is a friend.
About the goodies, sure, maybe neighboring countries may want what you have, however, realize that the US is no different. If Kuwait was not a wealthy nation, the US wouldn't give a flip about it. Like you said, "politics is all about money and power". Although it may be, it doesn't mean it should be. Politics are not to blame as much as the people behind it who implement their wicked ways.
Perhaps Kuwait chooses not to get into the 'other' politics of the 'right' hand belonging to a country that gives it protection, however when the 'left' hand is smashing the Islamic Ummah through:
-illegal mass deportation and detention and torture of innocent Muslim men, without due process or trial
-illegal wars and invasions, as well as
-supplying oppressors with weaponry to use against unarmed refugees and civilians in manners that are completely against Islamic humanitarian principles, including as International Humanitarian laws, then as an Islamic nation, it is Kuwait's duty to speak out against this.
Perhaps my political views may be deemed as naive, and I take no offense to that whatsoever [grin], you are entitled to your opinion... absolutely:-)
However from where I stand, my view of Kuwait's friend is far from rosy...
War is good business. Kuwait is the staging area. Hotel room prices, rentals, transporting food, ammo, parts for vehicles, troops, fresh fruit and super prawns through local contractors--nothing personal against Michael Moore, just bad for business.
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