GCC, Human Right, Middle East Women, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Women 100

Gulf of Taliban: Lawlessness and Misogyny in the UAE and Other Wild Places …………

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“The case of a woman who is facing deportation for reporting an attempted rape while being intoxicated in the United Arab Emirates highlights the ongoing struggle for women to have justice when faced with sexual violence in the ultra-wealthy Gulf country. According to reports, when the 26-year-old Kyrgyz woman arrived at a local police station following a taxi driver attempting to rape her, police officers told her she would face charges of drinking alcohol. Instead of acquiescing to the officers threats, she insisted on filing charges against the taxi driver for attempted rape………. “In November last year, two Saudi Arabian men were sentenced to two months in prison for “having sex with a minor” during a New Year’s holiday in the United Arab Emirates. According to local reports, both men were convicted of having consensual sex with a minor, despite the 15-year-old girl’s claims that she was forced to have sex with them in a hotel room. She is to be deported as part of her crime, court officials said……… In early October, two Pakistani men were charged with raping a Filipina waitress. Activists say they are unlikely to face harsh sentences and that the woman will be the one who faces the worst penalty………”

There are many other such cases in the UAE. Rape is reported routinely in the local newspapers. As are the “strange” Taliban-style sentences that focus on the female victims as guilty.
The treatment of victims as suspects is a purely local thing, but it is also common in other ‘nominally’ Muslim countries, like Pakistan and Afghanistan. Remember the Qatif girl in Saudi Arabia who was initially punished while her male rapists were barely touched about two years ago? Then there are many cases in Pakistan where women who dare file rape complaints (a rarity) are sentenced to stoning or life in prison for adultery. The guilty males are usually left alone. There was a case once when the woman filed a rape case while the rapist denied it. She was considered to have confessed to adultery (by filing a complaint) and sentenced for adultery, but not the man who denied the charge.
By some twisted local logic in the UAE, a woman who files a rape complaint is sometimes seen by some as exposing her “dirty” laundry. Then there is the local costume in the region of identifying certain single foreign women as being of “easy virtue” or even hookers. Especially if these single foreign women are from certain foreign (Asian) or Arab countries, like those mentioned in this item.  Anyway, this phenomenon is becoming common in the United Arab Emirates, especially in Abu Dhabi and ‘cosmopolitan’ Dubai.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Bahrain, Britain, GCC, Saudi Arabia, Weapons deals

David Cameron as Gulf Mercenary, Potentates Impotent with Greed, and Judy Collins……….

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“Don’t you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you’d want what I want
Sorry, my dear.
But, where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.
Don’t bother they’re here…….” Judy Collins (Send in the Clowns)

“The trouble is that Iran has won almost all its recent wars without firing a shot. George W and Tony destroyed Iran’s nemesis in Iraq. They killed thousands of the Sunni army whom Iran itself always referred to as “the black Taliban”. And the Gulf Arabs, our “moderate” friends, shiver in their golden mosques as we in the West outline their fate in the event of an Iranian Shia revolution. No wonder Cameron goes on selling weapons to these preposterous people whose armies, in many cases, could scarcely operate soup kitchens, let alone the billions of dollars of sophisticated kit we flog them under the fearful shadow of Tehran. Bring on the sanctions. Send in the clowns…………..”

This is what Fisk wrote, and it is worth a read. I suppose when he quoted Judy Collins “send in the clowns” he was referring to David Cameron. Cameron and his ministers have gone completely mercenary, just the way the Gulf potentates like their associates. They have thrown all pretenses at democracy and freedom to the wind as they fly to the dens of repression and despotism in Riyadh and Manama. And as they receive the bloody potentates at Downing Street. There is a matter of mutual interest: the British regime has its hand (or hat) extended for some of the oil money, while the potentates have their hands extended for the fat bribes commissions they would get from the weapons deals. They can always hire Pakistani or Western mercenaries to use these weapons, most likely on their own people, on our people.
(FYI: the Obama administration is no better. They are fully behind the repression in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, even as they falsely claim to support freedom and liberty. They must mean the freedom of these Arab regimes to repress their peoples, and the liberty of the potentates to loot their countries. And the liberty to sell weapons to regimes that will probably never know how to use them).
Cheers
mhg


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Corruption, religious police, Saudi Arabia

Arabian Peninsula: the Condemned Sorcerer and the Free Prince……….

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“A Saudi court sentenced an African man to 15 years in jail and 1,500 lashes with the whip for embezzling money from many people through sorcery. Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice arrested the unidentified man, in his 50s, following complaints by many of his victims in various cities in the Gulf Kingdom. “They seized him red handed after setting a trap for him in Riyadh…they found talismans, herbs, hair and other items used in his fraudulent activities,” Ajel Arabic language daily said……..”

Another poor African entrapped by the Commission for the Propagation of Vice.
He is lucky: only a few weeks ago they beheaded a fellow magician in public somewhere in the Kingdom without Magic. Normally they sentence sorcerers, witches, and magicians to have their heads chopped off in Saudi Arabia. Surprising hat this one was sentenced to only 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes. If he survives the 1,500 lashes (miracles do happen), then he can keep his head and go to prison. If he lasts 15 years in prison, then he will be out free. Now what is more just than that?

I was puzzled by the light sentence, that he was not having his head chopped off in public, until I read the charges carefully. The key word is “embezzlement”: that is what must have saved him. In country ruled by a kleptocracy, where the potentates get away with looting billions, embezzling a few rials is peanuts. The man may merely have some potential; as a true embezzler he is not there yet. That may explain the ‘mercy’ shown by the Wahhabi judge: fellow embezzlers stick together. Now all he needs is survive the 1,500 lashes and live long enough to taste freedom again. Many years from now, he can be out as free as, say, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan who allegedly received US$ 2 billion in bribes from BAE Systems for a huge weapons deal.
Cheers
mhg


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Anti-Semitism, Europe, Iran, Israel, Middle East

Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust: Demagoguery and Spreading the Bull……….

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“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust and the danger a nuclear-armed Iran, said on Tuesday that Israel must not shy from acting alone to thwart any threat to its existence. Addressing parliament ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, Netanyahu praised a European Union decision on Monday to place sanctions on Iranian oil exports. “But on this day of international cooperation and an important achievement against Iran, I want to remind everyone of the main lesson of the Holocaust against our people – that ultimately when there is threat to our existence, we must not leave our fate in the hands of others,”………”

Ahmadinejad used to specialize in near denials of the Holocaust. He taunted the West, especially the Europeans who were the planners and executioners and enablers of the Holocaust, with his nonsense. He knows exactly what happened so many decades ago in Europe, what was committed by the parents and grandparents of these Europeans, from Berlin to Krakow to Warsaw to Paris and other places. Not just by Germans: local police forces helped their new German masters round up their own Jewish neighbors to be shipped ‘east’. They were barely less guilty than the Gestapo and the Waffen-SS and even the Wehrmacht. Only about two decades ago, Austria
elected a known former Nazi officer as president (before that he was
their foreign minister then secretary general of the United
Nations!).
Yet his taunts are understandably insulting to the memory of the victims and to their descendents. One dreads what he will say later this week. Mercifully he has been silent on the subject for over a year; maybe someone told him it is not endearing. Maybe he will choose to shut up for once, being embroiled in more important issues at home.
Which brings us to that other Middle Eastern demagogue, Mr. Netanyahu. It is hard to take seriously, or find credible, someone who famously claims that “Ahmadinejad is worse than Hitler“.
Netanyahu has in recent years made quite a political art of using the terrible memory for his own political ends. He is an accomplished expert at what Americans call ‘spreading the bull’, and he knows how to spread it far and wide. In pushing for a destructive war in the Middle East, away from his own borders, he is willing to use any means. He is not being as disrespectful as Ahmadinejad, not nearly so, but he seems to exploit the memory in order to maintain the far right-wing uncompromising coalition that keeps him in power.
Cheers
mhg


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Bahrain, Culture, GCC, Human Right, Saudi Arabia, WTF

Love and Marriage and Repression in Abu Dhabi and the GCC…….

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“The UAE nationals have been advised not to marry foreign women due to social, legal and financial complications which arise following such marriages, said a renowned lawyer. Speaking at the Noor Dubai Radio, CEO of Bin Haider Advocates & Legal Consultants in the UAE, said a large number of cases are pending before the courts due to such marriages. He pointed out that the young men marry foreign women not to make family but to get rich. But if the husband’s income gets depleted, the foreign wives create problems which lead to court cases……… He said a decree by His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, fixed it at Dh50,000 which applies only in case of marriages with the Emirati women. While the marriages of UAE nationals with foreign women will be subject to what was agreed upon in the marriage contract with regard to alimony………….”

The potentates on the Gulf love to meddle in such private matters as marriage. The Bahrain royals are an exception for being less intrusive: they are too busy gassing, beating, and shooting their people (or throwing them in prison or handing them to imported Jordanian or Iraqi Ba’athist torturers). The Saudi princes don’t allow their ‘normal’ citizens to marry foreigners without government approval. It is seriously frowned upon. One can get fined heavily if one marries a foreign woman (or even a man) without royal approval. We are talking tens of thousands of Rials. But there is some hope: the man can always appeal to the king for an exemption (I hear he has a soft heart for true love, especially in cases of multiple polygamy). Besides, for true love there are always the Turkish novellas: I hear even the royals are attached to them.
The potentates of the UAE have been tightening the screws, really no pun intended here. (Really it is the al-Nahayan of Abu Dhabi that boss the others around). They have been trying to ‘regulate’ marriages and block citizens from marrying foreigners (mostly UAE men marrying foreign chicks). Other GCC states have also grappled with this issue; at least one regime has been threatening to form a government commission to look into these cases. This is one thing the GCC potentates can agree on: unify their marriage standards and laws. While at it, they may revisit the polygamy issue: the potentates and their Salafi shaikhs are experts on that (talking marriage here).
Cheers
mhg


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Middle East, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(4) Ron Paul in the Middle East………..

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If Ron Paul ever makes it to the White House, he’ll probably be assassinated quickly (unless he gets an infarct first, not that I wish him any ill, he is the most decent of the two GOP candidates who have some decency). There are just too many private interests and little public empires that he endangers. The list of enemies starts with the defense industry, the neocon foreign policy establishment, the foreign services and security contractors, wild evangelicals, Rapture freaks, and his own putative vice president (wtf that be). Ron Paul doesn’t do any Muslim-baiting. He is the only GOP candidate who does not pander to anyone, American or foreign. He is also the only one not waiting in line to kiss Netanyahu’s a… er,…….. ring.

Paul is an isolationist in the old Republican tradition. His idea of drastically cutting the bases in Europe and Asia is a sensible one (Germany and Japan do not need them, nor does the cash-strapped USA). The United States does not need hundreds of bases in Europe and East Asia. The United States can do with a limited number of bases in friendly Middle East and Gulf countries and with the Fifth and Sixth Fleets to cover the Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean. More important, Paul believes that the United States does not need to be dragged into an unnecessary destructive war in the Middle East, pushed by the Likud and its allies in Israel and by some potentates and the Salafis on the Gulf.
I have deliberately not mentioned Ron Paul’s domestic economic and regulatory policies with most of which I strongly disagree.
Cheers
mhg


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Israel, Middle East, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(3) Mitt Romney and the Middle East……….

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Mitt Romney hasn’t expressed any solid core position on foreign policy regarding the Middle East. Nothing that diverts much from the usual republican positions. That can be good or it can be bad. He has many former GOP ‘experts’ on his advisory staff but only one of them is from an Arab (non-Muslim) background. He has expressed the usual mandatory love and admiration and adoration for Benjamin Netanyahu. But that is now a necessary thing for all GOP candidates, actually for all Democrat politicians as well. Kissing Netanyahu’s ring has become bigger than kissing the ring of the German veteran who sits in Rome, in the Fisherman’s shoes. He has, however promised that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon as long as he is president. That is the closest thing to a definite policy he has expressed. (Oh, and he has refused to promise to re-invade Iraq, which means McCain and Lieberman will have to do it solo).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Media, Arab Revolutions, censorship, Egypt

Funny RSF Watermelon Press Freedom Report: Saudi Arabia Richer and Freer than Egypt?…………..

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This new report for 2011-12 by Reporters without Borders has some odd results for the Arab States:

1- Finland           45- Comoros           47- United States of America    
78- Kuwait            93- Lebanon          112- United Arab Emirates          114- Qatar    
117- Oman            122- Algeria            128- Jordan            134- Tunisia     
138- Morocco        152- Iraq                       153- Palestinian Territories      154- Libya
158- Saudi Arabia       159- Djibouti         164- Somalia  
166- Egypt         170- Sudan        171- Yemen    
173- Bahrain                176- Syria 

  • Saudi Arabia (158) is rated better than Egypt (166) for press freedom. So is Somalia. Can anyone fucking believe that (other than the Saudi princes)? In Egypt, even with SCAF military council, the media can criticize the politicians and the rulers more freely than most Arab states. In Saudi Arabia, any negative reference to the king and princes can get one fired and land them in prison. I submit that Saudi press (inside Saudi Arabia, not the offshore-based) is the least free in the Middle East, less free than Iran and Bahrain and Syria.
  • Then Jordan and the UAE are rated higher than Iraq: the media can and does criticize al-Maliki openly in Baghdad, but can they criticize the rulers of the UAE or the king of Jordan as freely?
  • The UAE (112) and Jordan (128) are listed as freer than India (131) and Tunisia (134). Now if you so much as look sideways at an al-Nahayan shaikh you’d be charged with terrorism in Abu Dhabi, yet it is rated higher than democratic India!
  • Frankly, no Arab country should be listed as freer than India (with the possible exception of Lebanon and Iraq and Tunisia).
  • I have had issues with the RSF reports in recent years. There is something fishy, they read like the kind of watermelon reports we have in the Gulf region.

Cheers
mhg


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Islamophobia, Muslims, Religion, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(2) Rick Santorum & the Middle East: “Mein Kampf gegen die Muslime und Araber”………

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“Santorum believes “it is the duty of each and every American citizen who abhors terrorism and supports freedom to stand up and say, ‘I support Israel.'” He has attacked Obama for putting “Israel’s very existence in more peril” and says Palestine’s statehood bid at the United Nations is a sign that the Palestinians “feel weakness — they feel it, they see it, they know it — and they’re going to exploit it.“………”

Like I said earlier: (Congressmen don’t get much in-depth foreign policy experience unless that sit on certain specialized committee or subcommittee. Just look at poor Rick Santorum, the subject of my next brief posting).

Oh well, Santorum was a one-term senator. He is a rust-belt gun-slinging (shoot the duck, shoot the duck) Catholic who talks the evangelical omni-phobic Bible-belt talk, and walks the unique Bible-belt walk. He too is betting the Middle East farm on the Rapture and mass conversion when the “moment is right”.
He’s got the Bible (Old and New Testaments) and his own wild fascist ideas. I’d offer him a copy of the Quran as well, in English, except he might charge me with harassment or of being some kind of Islamo-terrorist Jihadist Salafi motha.
He hasn’t yet published “Mein Kampf gegen die Muslime und Araber”. I doubt that he ever will: remember earlier this week I posted here quoting someone who likened his campaign to a person who is dead but he doesn’t know it, although everybody else does.
Cheers
mhg


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Iraq, Islamophobia, Israel, Middle East, Muslims, Palestine, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(1) Newt Gingrich and the Middle East: Calculated Muslim-Baiting…….

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“Gingrich’s faltering presidential campaign was completely resuscitated by a 5 million donation from Las Vegas casino king and super-Zionist Sheldon Adelson. (According to Wikipedia, Adelson is currently the 8th wealthiest American and 16th wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $23.3 billion.) Rising from the ashes, Gingrich now has won the South Carolina primary and has a decent chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee…… Adelson and his Israeli-born wife, Miriam, have spent time and money lobbying for a bill to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Gingrich has promised that his first executive order as president would be the embassy move. Adelson is an ardent Zionist. Since 2007 the Adelson Family Foundation has made contributions totaling $100 million to Birthright Israel, which finances Jewish youth trips to Israel, Adelson is such a hard-line Zionist that he even stopped supporting AIPAC when it appeared to support a 2007 peace initiative championed by Olmert, President Bush, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In 2009, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which is a hard-line Zionist group that wants Israel to retain the occupied territories and expand the Jewish settlements, presented Adelson its most distinguished and historic award, the Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion for outstanding achievement in Zionism. His wife received the Louis D. Brandeis Award. The couple now have their names on one of ZOA’s major awards, the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award. Adelson is intimately involved in Israeli politics………..”

Newt Gingrich has promised to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. That is a standard promise for most presidential candidates in the United States, and reneging on the promise afterwards is also standard procedure. The idea of where the embassy is located has no strategic implications, and I suspect that most Arab regimes will just do some posturing and then accept it. Unless it is moved to East Jerusalem.

Gingrich does not seem to believe that the Palestinians deserve their own state(-let) on the West Bank (and Gaza?). This may seem like a strongly pro-Israeli policy, but it is not necessarily so in the long-term. It means he prefers Israel to annex territory covering anywhere between 2 to 3 million more Palestinian Arabs (in addition to Arab Israelis who are less than 24% of the population). Yet what would they do with all these Arabs? Citizenship and voting rights mean a huge, nay a seismic, political shift. An apartheid-type policy is not an option in this day and age (even the Bahrain regime on the Gulf is having trouble keeping its apartheid policy intact). Besides, it would truly upset and turn off most Jewish-Americans who would not condone such policy (in comparison Jewish-Russians probably wouldn’t give a fig about it, nor would the “Christian” right).
Gingrich has also done some of the usual Republican Muslim-baiting. He made some appropriate (to the right wingers) noises about the dangers the Shri’a law presents to the United States. He knows there is no such danger because it won’t happen. He also was slated to share the speaking stage with Dutch Neo-Nazi politician and rabble-rouser Geert Wilders at an anti-Muslim rally a couple of years ago in New York, but he was smart enough to go AWOL on that day. His Muslim-baiting is calculated, unlike that of some other republicans: that only means he is smarter than his colleagues in the Party.

I have not posted anything recently about my earlier suggestion that Newt Gingrich take a hike, literally, on the Iraq-Iran border. That was meant to shore up his foreign policy credentials.  But that hike may be impossible now, given that overt American military presence in Iraq is limited to John McCain and Joe Lieberman camping in Falluja. (Congressmen don’t get much in-depth foreign policy experience unless that sit on certain specialized committee or subcommittee. Just look at poor Rick Santorum, the subject of my next brief posting).
Cheers
mhg


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Multidisciplinary: Middle East, North Africa, Gulf, GCC, World, Cosmos…..