Let’s all remember: the true peace is the one that follows not the one that precedes the storm.

If anything, sources that have the support and protection of power and institutions should be treated as suspicious not superior. There are very few words that make me as nauseous as words like ‘prestige’ and ‘prestigious’. Prestige is often a shortcut for getting power’s approval and blessings, which automatically, in my view, should disqualify any intellectual from being taken seriously.

Any sensible human being who has traveled a bit around the world knows that freedom is a myth that doesn’t exist anywhere. They would realize that the red lines and different forms of oppression, though change from one place to another, they actually do exist everywhere based on who is in power.

I propose that we change its abbreviation from ISIL or ISIS into a new name that contains the initial letters of each country or lobby that contributed to its existence.

There is no enemy. It is impossible to genuinely understand any human being and still consider them enemies. Enemies are a myth created to keep us killing each other, to distract us from what matters in this world. If there is an enemy, it is perhaps those who try to convince us that we have one.

I want to bring to life voices that have been erased and silenced before, during, and after the occupation of Iraq in the two gulf wars, because such voices carry the danger of humanizing the Iraqi people, a thing that has to be avoided at all costs by warmongers and war profiteers.

Should we then be surprised that when Western powers destroy a certain country that there will be an influx of refugees? Do we expect these wars to happen and for their effects to simply stay 'over there'? How can we really expect all this to happen while people here carry on doing business as usual? Do Westerners expect to just relax and enjoy a cold crisp beer on their porches on a warm summer night and see no refugees before their eyes after all these wars waged by their governments?

It should not be a secret to any independent and conscientious thinker, writer, or journalist that what has been happening in Syria since 2011 is nothing but complex and dirty attempts by multiple regional and global powers to 'Iraqize' Syria by other means.

I thought about how in every ‘Third World’ country that gets ‘liberated’ from its dictators, the first things that go up are luxury hotels and residential areas for Western expats and gated communities from which to administer the newly formed governments in places like Baghdad’s Green Zone.