Category Archives: History

Power and Glory: from D-Day to another Qadisiyya………

      


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For the United States no war in modern history has been as necessary as WWII. No battle was as necessary as the reverse Norman conquest, the storming of the beaches of Normandie:

  • The USA and Britain had a day of glory and sacrifice, also a day of basically taking care of a necessary grim business on D-Day in the 20th century………

  • Before that the Russians (Soviets) had their own days of glory in Stalingrad (and Leningrad, and a few other places)………

  • So what, big deal. In the same century the Arabs had their own glorious battle in the Qadisiyyat Saddam قادسية صدّام and its continuing aftermath…….
  • I forgot the Ghazwat New York and all the little ghazwas of blowing up civilians in Iraq and Pakistan and Syria and other places……….
  • Then there is the very common Ghazwa of Tear Gas and the even more common Ghazwa of Political Prisons. These battles are well known in the Arab world, from Bahrain through Riyadh to Cairo and other places.

Cheers

mhg

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Sectarian GCC, Delusional GCC: Third Battle of Qadisiyyah, Second Battle of Karbala…….

      


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In
the year of Our Lord 15 Hijri (about 636 AD), the Muslim Arab fighters won a big victory at the Battle of Qadisiyyah in what is today’s Iraq. That opened the door for the spread of Islam to Mesopotamia and Persia and beyond.



In
September of 1980, while Iran was in revolutionary turmoil, Saddam Hussein’s army invaded the Iranian province of Khuzistan (a.k.a Arabistan). Saddam made several demands and goals for his invasion, none of which were met at the end of the war. Seeing the dire situation inside Iran, he had expected a quick victory, as did most Arabs and many in the West (even the once-venerable The Economist wrote stupidly in 1980 that Iran might become an Iraqi satrapy). Saddam got the support of all the GCC states of the Persian Gulf, moral support, propaganda support, money support, and weapons. He also got the support of all the Western powers: weapons, intelligence, even some limited military action. As well as supplies of chemical weapons and overlooking his use of WMD against Iraqi Kurds and Iranian soldiers. 
Not all Arabs sided with him: Syria, Libya, and Algeria among the Arab states, and a faction of the PLO, did not side with Saddam. The late King Hussein of Jordan, the man who lost Jerusalem and the whole West Bank to the Israeli IDF in one single day, even went to the front and fired some symbolic shots at the Iranians. Iraqi propaganda and Persian Gulf supporters called the war Qadisiyyah of Saddam. In the end Iraq came out of this war a financially broken country. That was when he turned his guns against the Gulf people who had stood by his side. He invaded Kuwait in August 2, 1990 and the rest is history.


Now
we have the Wahhabi terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, ISIL) sweeping across northern Iraq. The same great Gulf GCC
tribal sectarian minds that cheered Saddam before 1990 are now cheering ISIS. Many of them are claiming that ISIS is really a nationalist rebirth of the Baath Party, apparently a softer Iraqi Baath Party that can now get along with the absolute tribal rulers of the Gulf. Maybe it is not the same Baath Party that invaded Kuwait and threatened the terrified Saudi princes until the Americans showed up and chased them out. Now they claim they are cheering for the disenfranchised Sunnis of Iraq, the 20% who have not reconciled to losing power. 
Diehard
sectarians in the Persian Gulf region are coming out of the closet, out in the open; not that they were ever well hidden. From tribal academics to media stars to liberal-Wahhabi-men-and-women-about-town to the clownish chief of the Dubai Police Dhahi Khalfan, they are all in justification mode, using crass sectarian terms. The same crass sectarian terms they used in the 1980s until Saddam’s tanks moved toward the south in 1990.
Now they see this new turmoil in Iraq as a third Battle of Qadisiyyah, or maybe as a second Battle of Karbala, as the Wahhabi invaders in Iraq are hinting at.
 

It
is as if on my Gulf they have not learned any lesson from the past few decades. It is as if delusion is like an heirloom handed down from foolish fathers to foolish sons and daughters in the GCC countries of the Gulf.

Cheers
mhg

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Power and Glory: from D-Day to another Qadisiyya………

      


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For the United States no war in modern history has been as necessary as WWII. No battle was as necessary as the reverse Norman conquest, the storming of the beaches of Normandie:

  • The USA and Britain had a day of glory and sacrifice, also a day of basically taking care of a necessary grim business on D-Day in the 20th century………
  • Before that the Russians (Soviets) had their own days of glory in Stalingrad (and Leningrad, and a few other places)………
  • So what, big deal. In the same century the Arabs had their own glorious battle in the Qadisiyyat Saddam قادسية صدّام and its continuing aftermath…….
  • I forgot the Ghazwat New York and all the little ghazwas of blowing up civilians in Iraq and Pakistan and Syria and other places……….
  • Then there is the very common Ghazwa of Tear Gas and the even more common Ghazwa of Political Prisons. These battles are well known in the Arab world, from Bahrain through Riyadh to Cairo and other places.

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]


GCC Migration of Equus Asinus: Former Plain Donkeys become Leading Jackasses………

      


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“I don’t know if there’s already a designated creature, which holds the title of National Animal of Bahrain, but to my mind none would be more deserving than Equus asinus – the donkey. No other animal has toiled more for the people of Bahrain, nor contributed more to the country’s prosperity than this humble creature. Before the widespread use of motor vehicles, donkeys were the main means of transport. Every village, and central Manama itself, was teeming with donkeys. They were used to transport sweet water and kerosene around the neighbourhoods; they took goods to and from the market place; they pulled the municipal rubbish carts; they collected fish from the seashore; and, before air transport, they were used to bring ashore passengers from boats during low tide. It is thought that all domestic donkeys originated from the Nubian wild ass (Equus asinus africanus), and the first domesticated donkeys were probably imported into Bahrain during the Dilmun era, when the inhabitants of the islands practised a flourishing trade in the import/export business. Donkey bones dating from the third and second millennium BC have been unearthed at various archaeological sites around Bahrain, providing historical evidence of the close association between people and donkeys in Bahrain……………..”




The
writer says that he does not know if “there’s already a designated creature, which holds the title of National Animal of Bahrain”. I got news for her (or him): the people have already chosen the national animal of Bahrain, and they all seem to agree that it is the ass (or donkey or jackass). Or maybe I should say Al-Ass (or Al-Donkey or Al-Jackass). Why do you think they have been rebelling for three years?

That
article was written in 2007, before the people rebelled against all them long-eared Als. It was published by a daily that calls itself “The Voice of Bahrain”.

It
says here that Nubian asses were imported into Bahrain centuries ago, but that was probably on a small scale. I was told by sources in Bahrain and Kuwait that most donkeys of Bahrain seem to have migrated to the island with the Al-Khalifa clan. When the clan moved through Kuwait to Bahrain about a couple of centuries ago, suddenly the number of asses in Bahrain increased dramatically, while the number of donkeys in my native Kuwait decreased dramatically. I wonder if there is a connection between the dramatic shift in asinine demographics. That this is how the Equus asinus became the Equus asinus Bahrainicus.

I
was also told by someone who claims she is knowledgeable that, immediately after that migration, the average intelligence of a resident of Kuwait skyrocketed, even before I was born in the Sharq district. At the same time the average intelligence of a resident of Bahrain dropped sharply with the new arrivals. Street crime also increased on the island, eventually aided and abetted by Western advisers and weapons and imported foreign mercenaries. Looting and thievery on a grand scale, especially of land, also increased at that time and continues to be extremely high.

I
think this requires further study, and perhaps some deep thinking. More on this soon, stay tuned.

(FYI: this is a newly altered version of an older post. It is one of those posts that I enjoy going back and reading again, and revising. It is one of the posts I like to share every once in a while. I have made some slight changes on this current post).
Cheers
mhg

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Leaders in Retirement from France to America to Libya to Outer Space: So Where is Ahmadinejad?………

      


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So whatever happened to Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Where is the favorite bête noire of the Western world for the past decade? The favorite son of New York City every late September? He has gone awfully and uncharacteristically quiet. Almost like any former U.S. president, with the exception of Clinton. We mostly know where former leaders are in the West (not necessarily where they should be) and what they are doing (or trying to do):


  • Write s book or two (memoirs to make a lot of money and explain their lousy policies.



  • Give speeches and lectures (mainly to make a lot of money).



  • Start some institute (to stay out of trouble, like Clinton).



  • Appear a lot on TV (like Clinton).



  • Appear a lot on media wherever someone interviews you (like Clinton.



  • Have a lot of fun, and I mean fun (like Clinton).



  • Start work on a (Walter Mitty?) presidential library. All US presidents do that since it is funded by the public and through donations.



  • In France former presidents don’t have time to waste on libraries. They must quickly start collecting lawyers for the upcoming inevitable investigations and possible trials for financial corruption. From accepting cash bribes to accepting diamonds from West African dictators.This has always been the case after de Gaulle.


  • Russia hasn’t had a former president for almost two decades. So we don’t really know what happens to them. Wait, I know: they become prime minister and are recycled again through the merry-go-round.



  • Start collecting money quickly by working as adviser for foreign potentates and unsavory dictators as well as working as a lobbyist for corporations. Tony Blair of Britain is the only one that fits this bill so far: Churchill and Wilson and Thatcher would not think of it, the fools.



  • In Lebanon, nobody gives a f-ck what a former president says or does. Come to think of it, in Lebanon nobody gives a f-ck what a current president says or does.



  • In Syria and Egypt and Algeria and Libya and other Arab countries there is no such thing as a former president. If they don’t kill him quickly, they put him on trial for real or (mostly) trumped up charges. They end up hanging him or keeping him in prison for life. Probably serves them right in most cases.



  • Retire to the French or Italian Riviera (usually former kings are entitled to do that).



  • Host a talk show?



  • Die quickly.


Mr. Ahmadinejad has done none of the above, yet. He may start teaching at the university again. I did read somewhere that he is pushing a new college (no, not for Holocaust Studies and Verification). Then there is the Iranian Space Program and the promise to send a human into space within the next two years. He has expressed a desire to think about it.
Too bad no Arab country has a manned space program. I wish they all did, the whole Arab League from Syria down to Riyadh and through Somalia: imagine the possibilities. One can dream…
……..

Cheers
mhg

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A Syrian Caesar on the Crossing of another Rubicon toward Geneva……….

      


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“The bodies he photographed since the civil war began, showed signs of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture and killing. The defector who was codenamed “Caesar” by the inquiry team had, during the course of his work, smuggled out some tens of thousands of images of corpses so photographed by his colleagues and himself. “Caesar” did not see the torture or executions himself, but photographed the bodies afterward. The report explains, “The reason for photographing executed persons was twofold: First to permit a death certificate to be produced without families requiring to see the body thereby avoiding the authorities having to give a truthful account of their deaths; second to confirm that orders to execute individuals had been carried out.” That is to say, the Baath officials who ordered these 11,000 executions of prisoners of war were afraid that prison guards would take bribes to release the prisoners and just report them dead………….”

In the summer of 2011 I thought the Libyan revolt was becoming a lengthy civil war like Spain. But that was before NATO, Bernard-Henri Levy, John McCain, Qatar, and the UAE intervened to liberate that country. I have also compared the Syrian civil war to the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. Syria is almost as ugly as Spain was in those years, almost. I have compared the two wars in the past, in an older post in 2011 here and then in another post in 2012 here. There was also another one with the same theme last year. But Spain was not a sectarian war, it was an ideological rehearsal for World War II.
Both
sides in Syria have committed atrocities. But the regime almost certainly does it on a much larger scale than the opposition, simply because it has more destructive weapons and more prisons at its disposal, as well as more security agents. And, like all established Arab regimes, it has a more efficient bureaucracy of repression. The regime has a long history as a police state, while the opposition groups are just beginning, already aspiring to start their own future police state, no doubt using the experience of its Arab supporters and Wahhabi allies. The opposition militias have killed less, but they probably aspire to kill many more (of regime supporters and people of other faiths).
Still, one hell of a timing for this so-called Caesar to cross the Rubicon now while the Geneva talks are in session. One thing about the Syrian opposition and their supporters: they know how to time their ‘exposés‘ and leaked photos and videos for maximum effect.

Cheers
mhg

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Pop-History? the Invention of Jews and Ashkenazi Arabs…………

      


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This writer, Jihad Al Khazin writes for Al-Hayat, the Saudi daily newspaper owned by Prince Khaled Bin Sultan (funny how Western media call it an ‘independent pan-Arab’ daily). He refers to Arthur Koestler’s Thirteenth Tribe (a book I have not read) and speculates that the Ashkenazi Jews did not originate in historic Palestine, but were converts, originally a people of the Caucasus who claimed they were Jews in order to avoid persecution. (I must admit that is a cute one, a first, a real change, claiming to be Jewish to AVOID persecution). He also says there are no monuments or traces of any ‘fake’ Jewish prophets or kingdoms in Palestine. Then he oddly adds that he heard all the details from a student at Georgetown University, which presumably makes it like some sort of a gospel.

All this about the origins of some Jews may be of some historic interest, but it is of course quite irrelevant as far as the politics and facts (and fiction) of the Palestinian-Israeli issue are concerned. It is not the ‘race’ that matters. Many current Iraqis and Syrians and Egyptians and other “Arabs” including Palestinians are not of Arab origin either. Many Arab tribes were originally foreigners who emigrated to places like Iraq and Syria and Egypt after the Muslim conquests. It is not the blood, stupid; it is the culture and belonging, stupid.

This interesting piece was reproduced in Alarabiya (Arabic) website from al-Hayat.

Cheers
mhg

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Breaking News: Prince of Mecca Receives Mayor of Mecca, Holy Town is Doomed……….

      


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“Makkah Emir Prince Mishal Bin Abdullah received at his office in Jeddah on Saturday Makkah Mayor Osama al-Bar. They discussed development projects being implemented in Mecca for the welfare of pilgrims and visitors, unplanned districts, land encroachments, compensation for expropriation of properties, the public transport project in the holy city, the Makkah Gate project and other issues. Al-Bar congratulated the prince on his appointment as the new emir of the province…………”

Okkkkkay. Expropriation of properties indeed. As for the fate of mecca and how the princes and potentates and their retainers and business partners have ruined its heritage, I refer you to the following links, if’n you are interested:

Destroyers of Islamic Heritage, Looters of Mecca……

Holy Greed: Paris Hilton Does Mecca, Takes Over Prophet Mohammed’s Childhood Home………

Saudi Culture: Bulldozing the Graves of Mohammed and Omar into Las Vegas…….

Birthplace of Islam: Where Dogma and Greed Face History………

Buying the Soul of Britain, Raping the History of Islam, Sacking Mecca………

Cement Shortages May not Save Mecca from its Las Vegas Future………

Cheers
mhg

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Religion in Egypt: from Saladin to Sisi, from Jerusalem to Beckett……..

      


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“The Shia leader added that the decision of Endowment Minister Mohamed Mokhtar to prevent Shia celebrations came “to prevent Salafis from causing a strife in the community.” He noted that they’re going to commemorate the event by visiting the mosque individually and praying, but to continue the rest of the rituals at home. He vowed that Shias would be quiet and would keep the sanctity of the mosque as to stop “the strife the Salafis want to ignite.” The Egyptian Shia community have demanded greater protections in the country’s new constitution expected to go to public referendum by the end of the year, particularly more emphasis on freedom of religion as well as protection from discrimination and hate speech………….”

Egypt has not changed since the days of Hosni Mubarak ( did you know that he is not the president anymore, technically?). Religious freedom is as restricted now as it was before the alleged so-called ‘revolution’. In the end, that so-called ‘revolution’ was won by revolutionary Saudi Arabian princes and the Jacobin United Arab Emirates shaikhs. In fact religious freedom is worse now, for the Wahhabi Salafis, who take their political cue from their Saudi masters, are monitoring all minority religions, be they Shi’as or Copts or Vegans. They are making sure the old Egyptian idea of religious freedom is never taken seriously.
 
FYI: Egypt was Shi’a for a couple of centuries under the Fatimid Dynasty. Until the Fatimid caliph made the fatal mistake of appointing Saladin (Salah El-Din) as his military commander. He staged a coup d’etat, closed Al-Azhar (which was established by the Fatimids), and appointed himself as the new ruler. Saladin did atone for his treachery later by liberating Jerusalem from the barbarous European invaders and occupiers. Now the Muslim Brothers are probably waiting for General Al Sis to atone for what they consider his betrayal of Mohammed Morsi who had appointed him head of the military. They might as well be waiting for Samuel Beckett’s elusive creation.

Cheers
mhg

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Destroyers of Islamic Heritage, Looters of Mecca………

      


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“Two million Muslims have flooded into Saudi Arabia’s Mina Valley from Mecca for the start of the Hajj pilgrimage this week. Dressed in simple white garments and freed from their worldly possessions, they are following in the footsteps of the prophet Muhammad. But in Islam’s holiest city, there is increasingly little sign of the prophet’s legacy – or the frugal life he espoused. “The authorities are trying to destroy anything in Mecca that is associated with the prophet’s life,” says Irfan al-Alawi, director of the UK-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, who recently returned from a trip to the city. “They have already bulldozed the house of his wife, his grandson and his companion – and now they are coming for his birthplace. And for what? Yet more seven-star hotels.”…………..”

Notice that the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation is based in Britain, not in Hijaz. In Saudi Arabia, they would have some prince leading it: it would be like having a fox in the hen house.
I have written earlier posts on this topic, how a combination, an alliance of royal greed and Wahhabi dogma has destroyed, is still destroying the priceless historical monuments of early Islam. It is downright criminal what the Al Saudi princes and their merchant allies and retainers are doing. Properties closest to the Kaaba are the priciest, and that is where monuments of early Islam were located. Ergo, these monuments were doomed once the Saudi princes set their eyes on that prime land, within walking distance to the Holy Mosques. Here are some links to my earlier posts on this:

Saudi Culture: Bulldozing the Graves of Mohammed and Omar into Las Vegas……

Buying the Soul of Britain, Raping the History of Islam, Sacking Mecca……

Birthplace of Islam: Where Dogma and Greed Face History……

Eid and Haj and Abraham and the Martyred Sheep of Mecca….

Cheers
mhg

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