“Raised a Christian, Manuel Gomez now goes by Mohamed Chechev, and counts himself among a handful of Tzotzil Indians converted to Islam by Spaniards in southern Mexico. “I am Muslim. I know the truth. I pray five times a day, celebrate Ramadan and have traveled to Mecca,” Chechev said in rudimentary Spanish. He lives in a mainly Protestant community in Chiapas called Nueva Esperanza on the outskirts of San Cristobal de las Casas, where he shares a modest house with 19 relatives and sells vegetables he grows on a plot of land……….. In the interior courtyard of the home, Chechev’s wife Noora (born Juana) and his daughter-in-law Sharifa (Pascuala) swept and cleaned laundry. They wore long dresses and a veil covered their hair………… And Chechev followed in the footsteps of another indigenous leader, Domingo Lopes, who was an official at an Adventist church before converting to Islam, introduced to the region by the Marabutin movement which moved to Mexico from Spain in 1993 in a bid to create a self-sufficient community. The Marabutin sect is a hangover from the days when Spain was part of the Muslim empire forsome seven centuries……………”
Oddly, the Mexicans have not rushed to pass laws against the Shari’a threatening their Agave Tequila. They have not, yet, taken a page from the worthies in Bible Belt Oklahoma which passed ananti-Shari’a law last year only to discover that it may apply to the Bible and the Ten Commandments as well. There was also something about Islamic danger in both Tennessee and Missouri. Call it the revenge of the native Mexican deity Quetzalcoatl against the Catholic priests who forced his fans, with iron and fire, to abandon him. Even more ironic: those who concerted these handful of Mexicans came from Spain, presumably without the regulation Catholic mullahs. And not seeking “oro y plata”. Okay, before the good people of the great states of Tejas and Arizona panic: this “Muslim” conversion thing is far away in Chiapas. It is not going to go far, it will not spill across the border. Never fear, the drug cartels still rule supreme, and the Evangelicals, as they will for many years to come. There will be no “officially sanctioned” polygamy along the border, not as much as already exists in Texas. Cheers
mhg
I discovered that Sa’ad Hariri, of Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, tweets. It said that he follows seven others, but five of them he owns and one is a relative. That leaves one other and it is Fouad Saniora (which some might say that he also owns, or shares with his Saudi masters), one of the guys who were praying ten times a day in July 2006 for an Israeli victory. When I first saw that he follows seven others I thought he meant the surviving sons of Saudi King Abdulaziz al-Saud (Ibn Saud), not just the Sudairi Seven. It turns out he is not following any of the usual potentates. I suspect he doesn’t realize they are tweeting incognito, that they tweet furiously, arthritis be damned. Most likely they have hired ‘fingers’ doing the walking and the talking for them. Oh, it says Hariri also follows Twitter! Now why didn’t I think of that? Cheers
mhg
“But for both sides the politics proved too tricky. Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has managed to cling onto his post but heads a parliament so angrily divided that it rarely makes a decision—and his mandate is by no means strong enough to force one through on his own. The movement led by Muqtada al-Sadr, a populist Shia cleric, which is powerful both in government and on the street, remained vehemently opposed to letting any American troops stay. When it became clear that Iraqi politicians, mindful of the residual Iraqi anger over American abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere, could not publicly approve of letting American soldiers have immunity from arrest, as any American administration must insist, the talks broke down and plans for a rapid and complete withdrawal began in earnest. In the United States, where Iraq has long been absent from the front page of newspapers, there were a few howls of protest at the news of the withdrawal………..”
Republicans are mostly pissed about the end of SOFA and withdrawal from Iraq. Candidates who never fired a shot in anger on a battle field are screaming against the “loss” of Eyeraq. You’d think Mesopotamia as there Jerusalem. Maybe the Republican National Convention next year the battle cry of this GOP diaspora will be “Next Year in Baghdad”, or is it Fallujah or Basrah or Abu Ghreib. Now I shall have to insist on all Republican Tea Party candidates going to Iraq. Not just the “viable” candidates like, well, I have to think more deeply on this “viability” thing. The American people are fickle and are prone to the “next morning: what the hell did I vote for” syndrome. By all means go to Iraq, talk to al-Maliki, talk to al-Sadr, text al-Sistani about staying. Then go for a group hike all he way to he Iranian border. And should you stray a bit and inadvertently cross over into the domain of the mullahs, the American people will understand. There is always 2016 or 2020…………
“Le Pen, who inherited leadership of the party from her father, has worked to shed the Front’s image as a racist fringe movement and move it more toward the mainstream, even as the French government itself tacks toward the right on immigration. All the same, she seems to be slipping in the polls after several weeks where it looked like she had a good shot at making the second round. It will be interesting to see what other U.S. politicians follow Paul’s lead and take the chance to meet with her. Even if GOP candidates might like her stances of immigration and Islam, they probably won’t see eye-to-eye on economics……….”
American right-wingers get excited about some French rightists, thinking they are of the same ideology of “no regulation, cutting taxes, eliminating the government, giving corporations a free reign”. Yet the most right-wing French politicians often are to the left of the most liberal Democrat in the United States. Even Nicolas Sarkozy, once touted as a right-winger, is to the left of most Democrats in the US Senate in matters of economic policy, social programs, and especially health care. They are usually anti-immigrant and hostile to their Muslim compatriots, but they have no intention of ever gutting the social programs that the French people have come to enjoy, like retirement and an extensive public health program. In France, as in all of Europe and all industrial countries, health care is considered a human right, as it should be in the US as well. That is why American right-wingers usually keep their distance from their “leftist” French namesakes. That is why this courting will never get anywhere: besides it is unpatriotic and unseemly for a right-wing American Teabagger to be seen hobnobbing with someone with a French accent. It is just a ‘so un-American’ thing to do, possibly even anti-American in some quarters. Cheers
mhg
BFF “Huneish Nasr last saw the boss he served for 30 years standing in the ruins of Sirte looking confused as all hell broke loose around them. “Everything was exploding,” said Nasr, Muammar Gaddafi’s personal driver, recalling the moments before the deposed dictator was caught last week. “The revolutionaries were coming for us. He wasn’t scared, but he didn’t seem to know what to do. It was the only time I ever saw him like that.” Minutes later, euphoric rebels had ended Gaddafi’s last stand, over-running the ruined quarter of his birthplace that had served as his final, ignominious refuge. Nasr said he threw his hands up in surrender as gun-toting rebels approached. He was knocked to the ground with a rifle butt, which blackened his left eye. Gaddafi was being pulled from a drainpipe just before Nasr fell …………..”
Why only interview Qaddafi’s old driver? There are scores of Qaddafi’s former minions in power now in the new Libya, why not interview them? They certainly can tell more ‘juicy’ tales than this man. Maybe they don’t want to embarrass folks like Mustafa Abdul Jalil and others of the NTC by asking them about their years working with and for Qaddafi. Cheers
mhg
“Months before MF Global teetered on the brink, federal regulators were seeking to rein in the types of risky trades that contributed to the firm’s collapse. But they faced opposition from an influential opponent: Jon S. Corzine, the head of the then little-known brokerage firm. As a former United States senator and a former governor of New Jersey, as well as the leader of Goldman Sachs in the 1990s, Mr. Corzine carried significant weight in the worlds of Washington and Wall Street. While other financial firms employed teams of lobbyists to fight the new regulation, MF Global’s chief executive in meetings over the last year personally pressed regulators to halt their plans. The agency proposing the rule, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, relented………….”
Who said there is no bipartisanship in the U.S. Congress? There is in fact a lot of it, but it is not used to help the American people. Look at Goldman Sachs: how many federal government potentates, of both parties, have come from that vampire venerable institution? Not to mention other financial institutions. Jon Corzine (good Blue Northeast Democrat) used to be chairman of Goldman Sachs, before he decided to purchase the state of New Jersey as a senator, then as a governor. Robert Rubin was a honcho of Citibank (Citigroup) before he joined the Clinton administration. And there have been many others. Then there is the money, lobbyist money, political cannabis, “Texas Weed” as I might call it. The money unites both parties in a bond of unprecedented bipartisanship. There is something that is noble about lobbyist money, corporate money: nothing could bring these two major parties together like lobbyist money. Nothing like bipartisanship based on free markets and the freedom of corporate expression (the latter courtesy of, a gift of, the Supremes).
You won’t see an English translation of this junk analysis piece from the Saudi semi-official daily Asharq Alawsat. There are many pieces like this one in the same paper and they are never shown on the English website, only in the Arabic version in order to keep the faithful, faithful. The stupidity of the story is just too breathtaking (or rather the implied and assumed stupidity of the Arab reader is breathtaking). It is a wild story written by a Lebanese chick named Huda al-Husseini who is a regular on the daily and its sister Alarabiya website. She specializes in outlandish stories. It tells of how the Iranian mullahs have made a deal with al-Qaeda to take over Egypt! Yes, Wahhabi Saudi al-Qaeda, that same al-Qaeda.
But wait, there is more: according to the story either Israel or Iran will sooner or later attack the “Arab world”, wtf that be (Saudi? Egypt? Syria? Algeria? Somalia? All of the above?). Unfortunately you need to read it in Arabic and it is too long for me to bother translating now: maybe the weekend during the Cowboys-Seahawks game. If you thought the Saudi embassy plot was ‘fanciful’, this one will knock your socks off, provided you wear socks. “Al-Qaeda returns to Egypt under an Iranian cover…” Now all we need to confirm this story and make it legitimate and credible is a corroborating column by David Ignatius quoting the usual “high Saudi official” that all this is true. We know these people never lie, not when they are overseeing the holy places. Cheers
mhg
BFF “Chairman of Iran’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Hassan Firouzabadi warned on Wednesday that any possible attack on Syria will put an end to the existence of the United States and the Zionist regime.
“If the Westerners break up the resistance front against the occupying Zionist regime, all Muslims will rise up, and in that case there will remain no U.S. and no Zionist regime,” he said.
They are talking about the use of Libya’s model for Syria to frighten and weaken the position of the Syrian government, but in fact they are not capable of implementing such a plan for Syria, he said.
On the developments in the Middle East and North Africa, he said that the Zionist regime is the real loser of the Islamic awaking in the region.…..”
About his threat of “no USA and no Zionist regime“: somehow I don’t buy it.Besides, it is very un-General-like and rude. Even Patton would not use such terms.Patton used worse, but not in public, and he was a realist, not a panderer.
I got news for this strange Iranian general. This Arab ‘awakening’ did not start as an Islamic awakening. Many Islamists went AWOL, stayed home, or sided with the regimes initially. They joined toward the end, and I suspect some of them, nay many of them, especially the Salafis, are on the side of the Arab Counterrevolution led by Saudi Arabia and others. Yet he is right in the sense that Islamists will gain much, perhaps more than the secular young people who started the uprisings.Unfortunately. Cheers
mhg
“Palestinian efforts to join U.N. agencies beyond its cultural arm are “not beneficial for anybody” and could lead to cuts in funding sure to affect millions of people, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon warned Thursday. In an Associated Press interview, the U.N. chief reiterated the world body’s support for a viable, independent Palestinian state — but lamented the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to join U.N. affiliates before the U.N. itself………”
Moony seems to be in a hurry here, effectively taking sides. Effectively telling the Palestinians not to bother applying beyond the UNESCO. It is odd that a UN secretary general takes sides so quickly. Luckily Moony is just a top international bureaucrat and his opinion is unlikely to sway anyone except the already-swayed. Unlike other previous UN secretaries general, I have no doubt that Moony will easily win a renewed term. Especially now. Cheers
mhg
BFF Lara and Yuri “The Tunisian government has issued an arrest warrant for the widow of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in connection with a corruption investigation into the “International School of Carthage”, the Tunisian state-run news agency reported on Monday. The International School of Cartage was founded by Suha Arafat – wife of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat – and former Tunisian First Lady Leila Ben Ali Trabelsi, wife of ousted Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In 2007, the Tunisian authorities withdrew Suha Arafat’s Tunisian nationality…………..” Interesting: Yasser Arafat spent many years flying around Arab capitals like a King Lear, kissing kings and potentates and dictators (he had no choice; these were the only kinds of Arab leaders available). He did end up in an enclave or hamlet in the West Bank. His widow prefers more amenable pastures to the available bit of “Palestine” she talks a lot about. Somehow the Palestinian leadership, the PLO and Fatah, caught the usual Arab ruling-classes bug: they got fat and rich and distant. As corrupt as any other Arab potentates, dictators and absolute tribal monarch.After Oslo, once the aid money started flowing again. Cheers
mhg
Rattlesnake Ridge 
BFF