Woken up 2.10am march 26th

Ok GWAGdom hasn't beckoned yet..... But you know no great loss. I bet those Georian paparazzi are lethal. However I have had a very interesting week. Best described as a cunning coalescing of terror and footaball. And of course we had peace in our time yesterday Adams and Paisley spoke to each other for the first time. Of course no one here is holding our breath. There have been too many false starts and its difficult to see how two tradiions that loath each other can govern together. Anyway

Spent Friday night with the Tipton three. Or rather Tipton Two, ( 0ne missed his plane) a nice couple of lads but no Moazaam Begg. I think that Gerry Conlan would be a good analogy, 25 years was a long time to serve for a couple of lines of speed and a year in Guantanamo is a bit over the top for lack of judgement.

The Tipton Three are an interesting case, its the closest that the British governement have got to admitting that Gunatanamo wasn't just a holdiong centre for enemy combatants. These three lads seem like they were a bit of a bad lot in Titpton. petty thieves no qualifiactaions not going anywhere fast so it looks like their families thought a bit of time in Pakistan might be a good idea to straighen them out. One was to get married so the other two and a fourth but he is missing presumed killed, went outr to Karachi to join them. There was a bit of time to spare before the wedding so although war was looming they thought it was a good idea to go to Afghanistan to "see what it was really like". So they set off but before they knew it the allies were bombing and they tried to get back to Karachi. However they couldn't speak Pashtun and got on the wrong taxi bus out, which took them further into Afghanistan where they were captured by the Northern Alliance and ultimately sold to the Americans for a bounty. After being held in Baghram Airbase for 3 months they were " renditioned" to Guantamao. Where they spent a year being tortured and interrogated.; Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time! `and I reallyt believe thats all that it was i don't think they are in any way related to the War on terror for example I can't really imagine OB telling me that the hotel he stayed in in Paris was a real classy joint with cum-stains all over the carpet.

The first thing I noticed on meeti ng them was how differnt they were from each other one was really chatty and confident the other very shy. They chose quite understandably not to watch the film which I would imagine would simply retraumatise them but we went for dinner afterwards. its in te anecdotes that it esaier to get the mettle of someone. The shy one openned up and was quite articulate but what was funniest was watching them eyeing up all the girls on the way past! One of them told us a story about the only one of them who had been brave enough to be interviewed by fox news was asked as an opennig question " whats its like to be an accomplice of a known terrorist" eg OB. Again like Moazaam its amazing to see how mentally stable they are. I know that some of the detainees like Australian David Hicks have completely cracked up by now. Just very ordinary lads from Tipton.

i've also broken a big story with the IFA this week. Been hastily engaged in some media management trying to play down George Bests wife beating credentials. Had to ask my dad for advice. The same week that NIreland beat Leichenstein 4-1 and this eveing I went to see a film about an Argentinian Goal keeper who was kidnapped and tortured by the Junta. all in the same week I "pull" an star striker.You see.....Torture and football.

N Ireland play Sweden tomorrow. I dreamt that they won. It would mean the first time that they qualified for a major tournament in 14 years.

New Year in Marrakesh

So we spent a couple of days in essouira the surfing capital of Morocco, I think that my passion for surfers may have been the incentive there. It was beautiful and sleepy and much more laid back than Marrakesh and a hell of a lot cheaper as as well.

Initally we have booked a hostel "the cave" on line at only £5 per night what a bargain. Now I have learnt a salutary lesson from this. That is you get what you pay for. we were lead through the windin g streets of the medina to a blue door with no sign and once in were hot by the smell of damp and mildew. The place was filthy and cold. There was a few wet suits hanging up to dry and a few surf boards up top, but alas no surfers.

I took one look at it and knew I couldn't stay there. I suppose that thats the biggest difference between being in your mid thirties and mid twenties is that you know that you don't have to put up with shit anymore. So off we were to find another pad. Which we did easily for the princely sum of a tenner!

So we mosied around Essouira and lay on the beach and read books ( Winter in Madrid, starts with promise but disappointing ending, but I got all my revolutionary zeal back, think I'll stick to Homage to Catalonia) had a few nice dinners. The food really is great here. And ended up at Taros a sort of roof terrace bar with a live band, all wearing those red tommy cooper hats and playing discordianty on key boards. I wasn't impressed. We had a six o'clock start the next morning so it was an early night.

So what is new year like in an apparentry "dry" country. Hmmmmm expensive. We saw new year in a highsociety bar called "Africa and Chic". It should have been sued for breaking the trade descriptions act. It was neither African nor Chic. We had considered going to Pacha Marrakesh but I was insistent we should have an authentic Moroccan new year.

The nod to Africa was to show a french documentary on africa which seemedto consist of lots of shots of hyenas eating zebras. Nice. The drinks were extortionate 160 dirhams or £11 for a round of a beer and a rum. the night was very quiet until we were asked to join a table of four lads from London. So very Morocccan hey? they were great craic and my travelling companion got her new year kiss so she was happy.

So my time in Morocco drew to a close it was great but I wouldn't hurray back. Marrakesh is beautiful but small. A perfect place for a weekend I think. The people are a strange mixture between extreme generosity and a bit fly. I was ripped off in bars , resteraunts, taxis just about everwhere right up to the taxi to the airport, while it is a poor country it leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth and eventually just winds you up!

What a culture shock, we’ve arrived in Morocco at fiesta time except it’s the sort of fiesta where sheep are sacrificed, one for each of the three days. There’s sheep everywhere on the front of motor bikes, in boots of cars, pass an artisan shop in the souks and there’s bleating coming out. A block of flats had baaing coming out of every flat. Just like a flock of sheep!

This also meant that everything shuts down for three days and there was a very real danger we weren’t going to be able to get back to Marrakesh for my flight home. We spent our first two nights in a beautiful Riad, complete with court yard and tiles an amazing garden, and a pool. It’s about twenty degrees here and sunny; we were a bit freaked out at first cos when the advert on the net said 25 mins outside Marrakesh; we thought that meant walking. It was actually in the middle of some Berber villages framed by the Atlas mountains: Muy tranquilo. So off we bundled to the local bus stop to stand with veiled women and Berber men with their pointy hooded cloaks, very Obi Wan Kenobi, I can see what inspired George Lucas!

We fought our way onto the bus where we were very much the main attraction; curious stares kept us company the whole way to the city. It was once we were off the bus that the frustrations really started. I haven’t travelled for a while and I’d forgotten just how hard simple things like crossing the road can be. Don’t be taken in by the appearance of a zebra crossing, the trick is just to walk and hope. Catchin,g a taxi takes perseverance and aggression, then try explaining where you want to go with minimal French and less Arabic when the taxi driver can’t read:

Marrakehsh and Placca Jemma el Fna is like walking back a few centuries or straight into the middle of Indiana Jones the square is huge surrounded by resteraunts where you can get a Tajine or cous cous for 30 dirham/2 pounds and the centre is full of food stalls and story tellers and snake charmers and every sort of curiosity . Women wearing the full niqba paint henna on hands. Behind the medina or the old town with mile upon mile of souk. Smelling of spices and chickens and piss and a dizzying kaleidoscope of colours; ‘ladee ladee you want to see my stall’.

Yet contrary to their reputation I have found the hawkers polite qnd not too pushy. I have also suffered no unwanted attention. Is it because I wear a head scarf? Or am I just too old now! I like to think its just because the west suffers from an orientalist view of Arab men portraying them as over sexed and a threat to their white women. Is there really so much difference between thuis idea and the colonial attitudes or are we still all stuck in the Marabar caves?

However today, Friday has been a day which showed a dark side to the place, both Eastern and Western. Anxious to get to the bus station on time to leave for Essouira we jumped into a cab on the square. I could tell it was a religious man who picked us up because of his dress and his beard. In the cab he was listening to a sermon which was being shreiked by a guy, I’m no Arabic speaker but I understood Haditha, Kabul, Iraq and Jihad. It was a little unsettling to say the least!

Contrast that with sitting at a café in Essouira, there where young children selling packets of tissues always a depressing sight, but beside us was a fifty something year old French bloke sitting with a young Moroccan boy of maybe 12 or 13:. Occasionally the man would spek to the boy who looked bored and fiddled with the man’s video camera: I don’t think I am jumping the gun to think I was witnessing sex tourism in action. I felt sick and angry, I wanted to do something, to say something, but realised that there was little I could do. Poverty means people will sell their children for a few pounds.

So Michael Stone tried to blow up Stormont today.....At what point did the security on te gates see the unreckonisable Milltown cemetary murderer Michael Stone and think " I know he's here to wish devolved government all the best." Morons. Anyway maybe he was tring to do us all a favour and get rid of all the useless NI politicians in one go.THAT WAS A JOKE, IN POOR TASTE BUT STILL A JOKE.

So we are poised at a potentially pivotal moment in NI history, the hand of history is weiughing heavily on all our shoulders. So much so we all have lumbago. i thnk the most noticable thing is that none of the public are talking about it ( well they are the Michael stone farce) but not the potential for peace bit. Its stalled as usual and noone really believes that its going to work now.

Anyway I'm off to the bond movie that far more gripping.

I spent saturday with Moazaam Begg, Guantanamo detainee. there's not many a girl that can say that. I had spent the Friday night before fretting and making sure that I didn't get pissed and breathe alcohloic fumes over him the next day, that wouldn't have been very professional. I was nervous at the prospect of spending a whole day with someone I didn't know. The fact that he is regarded by the US state department as the most dangerous man in the world added that extra edge.

When I met him off the plane the firt thing I noticed is that he's really small. I mean really! so a pint sized threat to freedom then I thought. He met me quite affably and and I took him to a local school which was hosting a model united nations. As we entered the hall, the 'pakistani' member of the "security committee" was reporting back and advocating wiping Israeloff the map with the novel method of stoning. If the ground could have openned up and swallowed me I would have wished it too......great, to walk in on an islmophobic sterotype. To to his credit Moazaam laughed. He was fascinated by the engagement of the young people and when he made his speech at the end it was very powerful. He pointed out the simlarities between the policies of the British Govt in the 1970s in N. Ireland and the policies of the war against terror in rejecting the rule of law and removing peoples human rights and showed how counter-productive these were. He also made the salient point that at the same time that the people of Northern Ireland weren't allowed to hear the voice of Gerry Adams in the media, he was the very person that the British govt were talking too. He pointed out that no conflict has ever been resolved by refusing to speak to the participants and that the governements would eventaully talk to them anyway as they did the IRA.

It was almost ironic to hear this man who apparently is an al- qaeda matermind speak about reconcilliation and forgiveness. And more so to see him present awards to school children! Anyway after that he was keen to go on a tour of Belfast, but since shamefully I have rarely been outside Esat or South Belfast. I dragged him on the open-tiop bus tour and we froze! He was particularly taken with the republican and loyalist iconograpghy of the Shankill and the Falls, the two but especially the Shakill didlook particualarly bleak on Saturday.....very sort of mid sixties depravation....but of course with the added bonus of loyalist hate murals.

After the bus tour we went for a coffee before the lecture when he told a little about his ordeal. the crashing boredom, the lack of hope at times, the pressure his wife was under trying to hold the family together.

For those of you who don't know Moazaam Begg moved from Birmingham to Pakistan in 2001 with his family. He had become radicalised when he had vsited Bosnia on aid mission and seen the aftermath of Srebrenica and the Serbs persecution of the Muslims in Bosnia as a whole. It changed his perspective on the world and he started to identify with the suffering which he pecived that Muslims were experiencing thoughout the world. Surely one of the most distinct differences between western culture as it stands in the 21st century and Islamic culture is this bond with the Ummah or the great brotherhood of Muslims throughout the world. Western secular culture has become so focussed on the individual that we find it impossible to understand why a young muslim man might fell compelled to go and fight for his "brothers" in a different country. However I think it is most helpful to draw parallels with the internationalism displayed by socialist and communists in the early 20th century. The international brigades in Spain for example were made up of many idealistic young men and women from throughout the world willing to fight for the republivcc and thus their ideals. Indeed the vast majhority of the US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are there because they really believe that they are up holding freedo.

Therefore I see Mozaam as just another in a long tradition of idealistic young men, who may be naive, but who genuinely want to fight injustice. I am not defending violence of any type which is always abhorrent and I firmly believe that you can't bomb your way to peace but rather tha demonising the "other" it might be better to understand him or her because at least that is a place that dialogue can start.

Anyway I am off the point, Moazaam was kidnapped by the CIA in Islamobad and taken to Baghram airbase in Afghanstan were he was kept for nearly a year in one of the CIAsblack prisons, (he ones which are not supposed to exist) His family didn't know where he was, and while he was there is was subject to "rigourous interrigation methods" ie. sleep depravation, beatings, shackled night and day, hearing a women screaming in the next room and led to believe that it was his wife. He witnessed a prisoner being beaten to death by guards and that was before he was flown to Guantanamo. He states nclearly that Guantamo while dehumanising and arduous was nothing compared to Baghram.

Yet it was his compassion that I was most touched by and his resilience. He told me that while he didn't believe in fate he felt that his experiences had changed him for the better, and that he found a new vocation, he was able to articulate the suffering and injustice that many suffered by few could comminicate. He also humanised the guards and spkoke of the anomaly between his own realationship with a guard, who was later discharged for abusing prisoners, who had actually been a friend to him. It forced me and others to look into our souls, onloy by recognising that we are all capable of cruelty can we challenge that impulse.

In an earlier conversatain we had touched on religion and the dangers of when a leader or indeed anyone thinks that god is speking directly and only to him. In Mozaams words even the Dalia Lama doesn't think that! I shared with him my experience of seeing the Dalai Lama speak and him saying that "it is silence and mediation that all religions can communicate" He seemed taken with this and mentioned it later in his lecture.

The lecture was sold out, 350 people came to see him speak. In the questioning afterwards he was grilled about all the mis-information that is being generated about him bythe the US ministry of misinformation. That he had an arsenal of weapons, that he had known al-quaedas no.2, even that he had been charged with benefit fraud ( although the charges were dropped)> all accusations he was easily able to counter. All aid workers were issued with flap jackets in Bosnia it was dangerous work. He migh thave been in Bosnia at the same time as the al-quaeda no.2 but Bosnia is a big place. It would be like accusing me of being involved in the UDA because my family come from East belfast. And benefit fraud or not, surely only the Daily Mail could advocate three years of torture, humilation and human rights abuses for alledgedly fiddling the dole.

Instead of my day with Moazaam being arduous it was a delight and I witnessed such humility and genrosity of spirit that it made me reflect that i had a great deal of spirtitual growth to do myself. Ultimately it was clear that we all despite our differences have more in common than we have differences.

I think I will add my article which I wrote previously about my time in Israel to this blog but be warned its very long.

love island why I am I not there

I must say that after a shocking start I am loving " Love Island" it has the entertainment value and bathos of a Sheridan play. Its the reality show for those of us with too short an attention span for Big Brother ( fewer weeks and characters) and an addiction to celebrity. It feels like I'm fourteen all over again talking about who fancies who and the contestants seem to revert to teenagers as well.
Listening to one of the contestants claiming that she prays before every soft porn shoot, that she performs well must have been irony yeah?
Another, a reformed drug addict, should be our lesson to never touch coke. Her self delusion is astounding. and could only have been formed by years on the columbian marching powerder. In fact she still has all the mannerisms. She's one of the only peoples whose "real". the constant knock backs from her love interest are sign that the vibe between them is authentic. As Fern put it " he won't dance with her, he won't look at her he says he reminds her of his sister. He must fancy her!" And the man of choicean ex satanist who won't have sex before marriage.
In this humpty dumpty world, professional reality TV contestants, use public humilation as therapy. The languiage is littered with therapy speak. Great. But surely Foucault or Baudillard should be our theorist of choice for " Love Island". really I think you're all missing out.