Monthly Archives: January 2014

AIPAC, U.S. Politics

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Famous Self-Hating Anti-Semite?……….

      

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“A recent letter attacking Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is causing an internal brouhaha at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, The Cable has learned. The powerful lobbying outfit, known for its disciplined non-partisan advocacy for Israel, recently issued an action alert about the Florida congresswoman’s waffling on Iran sanctions legislation. The letter urged members to contact Wasserman Schultz and cited a disparaging article about her in a conservative website founded by a prominent Republican political operative. That AIPAC was driving hard for new Iran sanctions legislation surprised no one. But its use of a right-wing blog to target a well-connected Jewish Democrat with a long history of support for Israel raised eyebrows among some current and former AIPAC officials………….”

Cheers
mhg

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Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Jihadis, Religion, Syria

Revival of Religious Intolerance in Syria………

      

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“On December 2, 2013, al-Nusra Front seized the town of Maaloula for a second time. Militants entered the most famous Christian town in Syria, where residents still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ, and kidnapped nuns from the Greek Orthodox monastery of Mar Takla, in addition to vandalizing several churches. Earlier in June 2013, the historic town first came into the international media spotlight when al-Nusra militants seized it, before being expelled by the Syrian army. While ISIS adopts a hard-line position calling for the immediate wholesale implementation of Sharia provisions on Christians, including demolishing churches, al-Nusra has a less strict attitude. One leader in al-Nusra, speaking to Al-Akhbar, claimed that the group had not found any man, woman, or child in Maaloula, and said, “The residents fled before we entered, with the exception of the nuns.” But a man who identified himself as Abu Sarkis, a leader in the National Defense Committees, told Al-Akhbar that as the Islamist fighters entered Maaloula, they cried “God is Great,” and, “O Christians: Convert to Islam and you will be safe.” He added, “Afterward, Christians were told that they had three options: convert to Islam, pay the jizya [a tribute for non-Muslims], or leave.” It was as though history was repeating itself in the Levant……………….”

It sounds about right, at least in some cases. It all depends on which group or militia captures them. Some of the cutthroats would treat them even worse, much worse, if you get my drift.
The Jihadis pretend they emulate early Muslims. That they try to follow the footsteps of early Islamic conquerors, who gave the peoples of the conquered lands similar options. Which was more merciful than the European conquerors, be they Romans, crusaders, or inquisitors, gave their captive victims. Yet these modern Jihadis are not the same. The ancient Muslims were in line with the practices of their time. These modern Wahhabi Jihadis yearn for another era, an era they think they can relive by resorting to outdated bloodthirsty practices. Speaking of bloodthirsty practices: now if they could get their murderous hands on some cluster bombs or…………..
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Politics, Iraq, Sectarian

Iraq: the Old Saddam, a New Saddam, Al Maliki, and Allawi………

      

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“Although the army has surrounded the city in the past few days, they have not entered it. The protesters gathered on the square agree that if the soldiers were to enter the city, they would be lynched. “The people of Fallujah have no faith in the army.” Saddam’s flag, with the three stars of the Baath Party, has become a symbol of resistance to the central government in Baghdad. “Maliki is the new Saddam!” Sheikh Khaled Hamood al-Jumaili looked fierce and bitter as he said these words, his hatred for the prime minister in Baghdad shining through. “The weaker he and his government become on the domestic front, the stronger they have to appear on the outside,” he continued…………………..”

“The plush accommodation halls on the outskirts of this southern Iraqi city, normally reserved for visiting Shiite pilgrims, now teem with displaced Sunnis fleeing violence in the western province of Anbar. There and elsewhere, sectarian tensions are brewing as Iraq spirals into the worst cycle of violence it has experienced in years. But here, in one of the holiest cities for Shiite Muslims, Sunni children play on brightly painted swings as families gather in the waning winter light beside clipped magnolia-lined lawns. The scenes are an effort by Shiite religious authorities to portray a picture of harmony as sectarian violence grows. Al-Qaeda’s local franchise, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is building strength in Anbar amid a Sunni-majority population that is growing increasingly disillusioned with the Shiite-led federal government…………..”

So the people who supported the old genuine Saddam and raise his flag are now accusing Al Maliki of being a “new Saddam”. Maybe he is, maybe not: but that charge may actually be an improvement, it sounds like the promising seed of a compromise.

Iraq is being divided by sectarian (and
hence political) tensions, some of it created by Iraqi politicians,
including the ruling parties in power now. But a lot of it is also
imported from the neighboring countries that keep inciting sectarian
tensions as well as sending terrorist volunteers and money into Iraq. There are many people in Al Anbar who only need a motive to rise against the foreign Wahhabi Salafis who terrorize Iraqis of all sects. They did that once before. One problem with Iraq is that the politics are now almost totally sectarian (and ethnic), with a few tokens of inter-sect alliances. Allawi is a Shi’a (sort of) head of a Sunni bloc, Al Maliki’s bloc has a few Sunni allies; but tokenism is not enough to cleanse violent sectarianism.

Al Maliki and Allawi are not helping. Al Maliki seems intent on remaining in power, while Allawi is not trusted by most Iraqis. It would be healthy if both of them would vanish from the political scene. Maybe they both can go back into exile: Al Maliki can go back to Syria and Iran while Allawi goes back to Yemen and London and Amman (or even Riyadh, where he is popular in the palaces). Things may start to get better, especially if the neighboring regimes would stop meddling in Iraq.

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Cairo, Egypt

End of a Revolution: When Tahrir Square became SisiPlatz…….

      

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“Three years after the start of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, thousands of Egyptians rallied in Cairo’s Tahrir Square Saturday calling for another military man to become their leader. The anniversary rallies came against the backdrop of deadly Cairo bombings in a country deeply polarised between supporters and opponents of Mubarak’s successor, the deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. At least 29 people were killed in clashes across Egypt during Saturday’s rival rallies…………….”

“Tens of thousands of people gathered in the square, carrying Egyptian flags and holding posters bearing photos of Egypt’s Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, of Egypt’s late president Gamal Abdel Nasser and even of Mubarak. The crowd that occupied the square until midnight was the second layer of civilian-security sifting: A photo of Sisi or a banner emblazoned with a poetic slogan urging him to run for presidency would grant whoever was carrying it full immunity. Those without such protection tools could see an angry mob turn against them in a matter of seconds and in a manner described by many as simply bloodthirsty. Tahrir Square was a deadly trap for anyone who is not publicly and boisterously applauding the current military-backed regime. Several journalists were harassed or attacked by regime loyalists and by noon, it was clear that foreigners were considered spies ………….”

Nothing like this level of violent repression was seen in Egypt during the combined long years of King Farouk, Gamal Abdel Nasser, or Anwar Sadat. The number of the dead keeps climbing. Over fifty this past weekend, officially. Many more have probably died in the six months since the military coup of July 2013 than died during the uprising against Mubarak. Not many died under Morsi, yet he will be ‘tried’ for murder. Many more will die now, either at the hands of the military, its security, or at the hands of Islamist terrorists. Tahrir Square, once a symbol of an uprising
against a dictator, now has its mobs clamoring for another strongman,
one of Mubarak’s generals, to take over in name what he already has. In the old tried and true style of Franco, Peron, Pinochet, Suharto, Mubarak, and others.
Tahrir Square, named Liberation Square by Gamal Abdel Nasser, is now unofficially Sisiplatz, or AlSisiPlatz.

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Egypt

Generalísimo Al Sisi of Egypt: Torn Between Eisenhower, De Gaulle, and Franco……….

      

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“Egypt’s prime minister said Thursday the spirit of the Arab Spring was still alive in his country and that the army chief likely to run for the presidency was no dictator, but more a De Gaulle figure……………..”

Actually Dr. Al Beblawi went on to compare Al Sisi to General De Gaulle and General Dwight Eisenhower (but oddly not Generalísimo Franco, the most famous counter-revolutionary of the last century). Except that neither De Gaulle nor Eisenhower came to power by a military coup d’etat, Franco did. Eisenhower defeated Nazi Germany during the war, and Al Sisi defeated Tahrir Square and liberated Rab’a Al Adawiya and Mohammed Morsi. Come to think of it: why not Napoleon Bonaparte? He also claimed to be saving France. Al Sisi will be hard pressed to show an Austerlitz in his resume, maybe Mr. Mubarak’s War on Pigs of 2009?

De Gaulle’s return to power was called the Fifth Republic. Sisi’s will probably be called the Third Republic (Nasser was the First, Sadat-Mubarak were the Second).

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Syria, United Nations International Organizations, US Foreign Policy

BYOT Party in Montreux: your Pocket Guide to Geneva on Syria………

      

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The Geneva (actually Montreux) conference on Syria was finally held, after many false starts. Ministers, princes, potentates, and rebels all showed up. They say nearly thirty countries and organizations were invited, or just
crashed the party. It is not clear why 30, unless they mean all the
disparate and desperate Syrian opposition groups and militias and
various Arab potentates. The countries and parties and their interests
could have been represented by only three parties: Secretary Kerry for the
Friends of the Syrian Opposition, the Syrian regime, Russia for the
Friends of the Syrian Regime, and Secretary General Moony of the UN. Oh,
make that four parties: I left out France, since the French still have
the usual Anglo-Saxon complex and need to have their own representative.
It was like a BYOT party at some college. Here is a summary of the highlights and the various positions:

  • The Syrian Opposition (some of it) to Bashar Al Assad: ‘Step down and let us take over’.
  • The Qatari Minister: ‘Yeah, you’re supposed to be a dead man walking. Three years now!’.
  • Syrian government reps: ‘ForgetAboutIt! We are running in the elections‘.
  • Saudi Prince Saud Al Faisal (to Saudi-appointed Al Jarba of the Syrian SNC): ‘Your Excellency Mr. President‘
  • Syria’s Waleed Al Mu’allim (muttering): ‘LOL, president of the Syrian-Turkish border?’
  • Ahmad Al Jarba: ‘LOL in your Baathist eye. I am the legitimate president of the SNC. Ask His Highness the Prince. It says so on my Twitter account @PresidentJarba’.
  • Secretary John Kerry: ‘We are here to negotiate the overthrow of Al Assad and the easing into power of the opposition, wtf they are‘.
  • Ban Ki-Moon (of the UN): ‘It is a good thing I withdrew my invitation to the Iranians. They would have disrupted the conference, and we would not have gotten any results‘.
  • Hassan Rouhani of Iran: ‘Davos is fun-ner than Montreux or Geneva. Cooler egotistical bastards here, but count your fingers after every handshake‘.
  • Al Zawahri from some cave in Pakistan: ‘Next year or the year after in Geneva‘.

Cheers
mhg

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Finance

The JPMorgan Dimon Model: Screw Up, Get a Raise……….

      

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“JPMorgan’s board voted to raise Chief Executive Jamie Dimon’s annual compensation for 2013, a turnaround from last year when it slashed his compensation by half in light of a trading debacle, the New York Times reported. A series of meetings to formulate the pay package turned heated at times, with vocal minority of directors wanting to keep Dimon’s compensation largely flat, citing about $20 billion in fines the bank paid in the last year to federal authorities, the paper said………………”

So, this is new age banking: break the law, cause your bank to pay $20 billion in fines. And get a raise.

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, History, Syria

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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History, Israel, Jews, Palestine

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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Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Saudi Arabia

King Congratulates Egyptian President Zombie on Referendum……..

      

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Alarabiya reports that Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has congratulated the military-appointed interim Egyptian President Adly Mansour Al Zombie on the success of the ‘results’ of the referendum on the new constitution.
The Servant of the Two Holy Shrines assured President Al Zombie that the referendum reflected the unity of the Egyptian people as reflected by the results which reflected the free will of the people. Alarabiya reports all that wisdom was in a telegram sent by the king to the Egyptian president. The king, however, did not promise to hold similar free referendums in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Not yet.
Can you believe all this gavno about free will and popular unity (or was it free unity and popular will)? And don’t these guys believe in text-ing these days? I mean it can’t be any more expensive than a telegram.

Cheers
mhg

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