ihath

The man honked at me as I was about to take a left turn. He was trying to rush me, as in “turn already!”. Instead, I stop the car and look in my rear view mirror. Now, he is more angry, his face is turning red and he starts honking repetitively. Honk, honk, honk. It was a beautiful sunny day in Vancouver, Tracy Chapman was playing on the radio and I was in a good mood. I can’t remember why I was in a good mood, but I distinctively remember that sense of serenity that I felt on that day. The guy comes out of his car, his face is red and he tells me to kiss a certain body part of his. I ask him if he would like me to do that in the street right there and then, or if he would rather we go somewhere else. Now his face is all contorted, he starts calling me all sorts of names which I don’t wish to repeat in polite company. I blow him a kiss, “love and peace brother, have a nice day”. I answer him. Ok! now I am ready to take that left turn, now that he looks like he will start frothing at the mouth at any minute. I think what annoyed him the most is the fact that he couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. Yeah! I am annoying like that.

Remember how I told you that I don’t get depressed, I get even. Well the next story is a perfect example

When I lived in Scotland, we had your typical busy body neighbor. He would stick notes on the entrance to our apartment with a list of his complaints. We made too much noise, my daughter cried too much and we didn’t pick up the newspaper from our door step promptly enough in the morning. So one day when I got fed up with his notes. I took a sheet of paper and drew a big and colorful smiley face on it. I wrote underneath it, “Smile, life is too short”. I stuck the paper in the exact place where he usually stuck his notes. He became the butt of jokes in our apartment building and we never saw another note from him ever again. Not to me and not to anybody else in our building. It is funny how you can turn somebody’s anger against them and still maintain your cool.

So next time you meet an angry miserable person, don’t miss your chance to have some good clean fun. If you are mad at ihath, ihath will teach you a lesson on how little she cares about what others think of her.

Like when somebody calls me a bitch. I always respond by saying,” Now that is original, I have never been called that before …….. Not!”. Then I start laughing. It always drives the person mad.

It is time for plan B.

I am going to buy Israel. Yes! you heard that right. That is my plan. I will buy the whole country and convert it into a state where each person has a single vote and each person is equal. It will resolve the conflict and everybody will be happy.

I have been an activist for 2 years, I have gone to numerous demonstrations. I have been part of a small but active group, we have hosted forums, contacted politicians, the media, tried to raise awareness about the human rights violations against the Palestinians. I have spend many weekends standing on the streets giving out leaflets, I learned to speak at public forums and give presentations, something I wasn’t very good at in the beginning and I have learned to refute every argument slung at me with concise yet razor sharp rebuttal. I wrote hundreds of letters to editors of our major newspapers, pointing out their biases. I got so frustrated with our major newspapers that I eventually gave up writing letters to the editor and started writing my own articles and had limited success getting some of the published. The plan was to create public pressure in north America that would force Israel to give basic human rights to the Palestinians. The thought was to use the same tactics as with the Apartheid government in south Africa, that by creating international pressure on the south African government was a impetus for change, that we could do the same with Israel. In fact many people involved with the pro Palestinian movement have been involved in the anti Apartheid movement as well. We wrote up pamphlets and other literature, we built a cool website and we have a yahoo newsgroup to spread the news. We have had our small successes here and there were times when I felt the message was getting through, but in the mean time things have only gotten worse for the Palestinian people. During those two years, Israel had started to build the separation wall which will encircle Palestinian communities into little isolated islands. The policy of targeted assassinations had started and on most days at least a few Palestinian civilians have died. Recently we have heard the American President give Israel the green light to do as they please and the rest of the world doesn’t seem to care, not beyond words anyway. . We have seen Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abed Al Azziz Rantissi assassinated, and nobody seems to care. So I think it is time to acknowledge that despite of all the hard work of the last two years it really made no difference. I felt so mad at first when I heard George Bush over the radio few days ago commending Ariel Sharon and giving him backing to everything he has ever dreamed of. And then I realized that I have no reason to be mad. President George Bush simply had the courage to clearly and honestly outline the American policy towards Israel and Palestine. This has been America’s policy all along, under Clinton, Bush the father, Reagan. They all paid lip service to the Palestinian right of self determination while allowing Israel to do as they wish. I read in a news paper that this is drastic change in the American policy towards the middle east. It isn't. This is exactly the American policy in the middle east all along. I admire President Bush for being honest, I admire him for having the courage to get real. I finally realized it was time to stop paying lip service to my own believes and get real as well. It is silly to think that you can keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results. I think it is time to abandon plan A and envision a new plan. Ladies and gentlemen I present to you my plan B. A plan that will create a revolutionary peace in the Middle East without shedding a single drop of blood or engaging a single soldier.

My plan is to do a Bill Gates stunt, develop some software and convince everybody in the world that they have to buy it. I will become a bazilionaire and use the money to buy the state of Israel. I will simply buy everything there is to buy in that country, land, media, businesses whatever is up for sale, I will buy it. It’s not a very big country so it is not that hard to buy either, all of it or most of it. I figure I will need about 85 billion dollars to accomplish the task. Once I have majority ownership stake in the country I will create a quiet revolution. I will fire the Knesset (Israeli parliament) and remove the prime minister out of power. Megalomaniacs like myself should not rule countries so instead I will instate my good friend Alyson as the interim ruler of the state for a year. Alyson is a zen new age type of person, very concerned with justice and equality in the world. However because of our special friendship and since I am the one that placed her in power I would expect that my ideas would have some influence on the new government. Alyson will assemble a transitional government whose members will represent all the various ethnic groups living in Israel: Jewish, Palestinian, Badu, Druze, People who believe they are the next messiah, all the different groups. During that year a provisional constitution will be drawn - guaranteeing equal rights to everybody, one citizen one vote. The provisional constitution will be subject to the approval of the transitional governing counsel, but I am already sure that will adopt the constitution that I have drawn for them because it is so great, I can’t imagine they will possibly be able to improve on it. That year will also be used to prepare for elections and reeducating people about concepts of human rights, justice and equality, yes even the Palestinian deserve equal rights, what a radical concept. We will call the new state Israstien and create a new flag that is representative of all the ethnic group. The transitional government can choose a different name if they like - hey I always said I believed in democracy and freedom of the individual. In fact I was raised in a democratic family. When I was a kid my dad always said that we were a domocratic family. To teach us the principles of democracy he would let my brother and myself vote on decisions like which restuarant to go to on the weekend or what activities to do during the summer holidays. I frequantly called my dad's democracy a one legged democracy, because we only voted on the things of little consequance. All important matters were decided in my fathers head all by himself. My father would always respond by telling me that as the head of the family he maintains certain veto rights. I am only telling you this story to illustrate that I was raised with democracy flowing in my blood. But I digress, back to plan B. The west bank and gaza strip will become part of Israstien. All hostilities will end and there will be nothing to fight over, once everybody has equal rights. Eventually, democratic elections, in the end will have a big party. Dance, music and plenty of ululations. We will party for days as if we are in some perpetual weddings, the party will go on until everybody is too tired to party anymore, one long rave, beats having a genocide but is equally tiring. Finally, everybody will go home to sleep it off and when they get up there will be peace, just like that.

Anybody wishing to make a donation to my free Israel fund please make a donation, each dollar will get me closer to my goal. All you skeptical lefties shaking your heads at my idea, Capitalism rocks! we just haven’t seen it applied appropriately until now, but I intend to change that. Wealthy people of the world, unite!

Alyson will be moved to rule over my next purchased country.

The darnest things have been said about Iraqi people. Take this speech for an example.

No it wasn’t George Bush who gave this speech, but rather Imam Ali. The man who married prophet Mohammad’s daughter and is highly respected as a close follower of the prophet by all Muslims and is especially revealed among the Shea. Imam Ali gave this speech when he got fed up with Iraqi people that were dragging their feet at supporting Imam Ali in his fight against his rival. This speech is recorded in the book Nahj al Balaga “path of eloquence” that records the most famous of Imam Ali speeches and sayings. The book is considered to be one of the top examples of eloquent usages of the Arabic language.

If this is said about us by the people we adore, can you imagine what is said about us by the people we loathe?

This is a small part of an address of the brutal governor of Iraq, Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf. Having come to Iraq to quell a rebellion during the Umayyad dynasty. The “prince of true believers” is a reference to caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, who sent Hajjaj to Iraq to suppress the rebellion against him. The speech must have sent shivers down the backs of his audience. He proceeded to rule over Iraq for about 20 years with an iron fist. It is reported that he liked to gouge peoples eyes out with his own hands and chop people’s ears off. After his death many rulers had difficulty ruling over Iraq because he was a tough act to follow. Saddam came close. After Al-Hajjaj, the Iraqi people kept assassinating their rulers and rebelling against them. Earning us the dubious reputation of being supreme trouble makers. Al-Hajjaj promised and then he proceeded to deliver.

Luckily not all those wishing to rule over us deliver on their promises. Like George Bush promising us peace and prosperity . Oh well! you know what they say about something sounding too good to be true. On the weekend I heard on the radio George Bush say that Iraqi people are not used to freedom and that force is necessary to deal with us.

Mon Dieu! We must be the most miserable nation on earth. Sometimes it does seem that way. It seems like we are inherently violent. We are cursed. But then, I remember violence in hockey in Canada, L.A riots in the US, mob like lynching of Nazi collaborators in the Czechoslovakia after WWII and I force myself to remember that we are inherently human.

Here is a speech that I long to hear and so far haven’t

O People of Iraq. One day you will become the people of mediocrity and boredom.
We have been at the forefront of major historical events for far too many times and we have paid a heavy price for it. The time has come for us to take our leave and sink into obscurity. Let us give away our oil for free to the US, in fact let us deliver it to them for free with no extra charge, for this wealth has been nothing but a curse upon us. The land of the proud and free are more deserving of it, anyway, we are neither proud nor free, so we have no use for it. Let us tell Iran that they are welcome to their fight against great satan, for their quest is brave, but we shall ask them to conduct their blood bath against Americans off our lands. We shall tell the American’s that their war on terrorism is fair and just, however we shall ask them to conduct it far away from us. We have no desire to liberate Palestine, though we wish our Palestinian brothers and sisters well on their own quest for obscurity. Furthermore we have no desire for the Messiah to come back. We do not wish to be a model democracy in the middle east, because we think that Israel is doing a fine job of it, the slow genocide against the Palestinians is a nice middle eastern twist to the concept of democracy, but I digress. We simply want to raise our kids and spend our time taking care of our families. In the afternoons we shall sit around drinking tea and chat idley away for hours. We will be so bored that we will have to makeup stories and riddles in order to entertain ourselves. O People of Iraq, the time of national pride is over, we have pioneered dreams of Arab nationalists and Islamic idealists, but now we must leave all that behind. We shall become the most boring nation on earth. But wait a minute, that might become something to base national pride on. Ok! I revise that, we shall become the almost most boring nation on earth. We will allow a country like Holland earn the first price in that category, but we will be a close second. My goal is to ensure that all our lives get into a rut. From now on, our country will not be mentioned on CNN, history books will ignore us and powerful world leader will find nothing to say to us. The time of grandiose visions by powerful men is over.