“A hospital visit was out of the question; admission for Rohingya Muslims, a long-persecuted minority, always requires a lengthy approval process — time that the baby, named Parmin, did not have. In desperation, the pharmacy owner sent the family to the rarely staffed Dapaing clinic, the only government emergency health center for the tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims herded into displaced people’s camps. Although it was just 4 p.m., the doors were shuttered. “We became like crazy people, running everywhere,” the child’s grandmother, Daw Mu Mu Lwin, said. With no good choices left, the family returned to the pharmacy, where Parmin died, untreated, three and a half hours later, cradled in her grandmother’s arms. The baby’s death was part of a rapidly expanding death toll and humanitarian crisis among the Rohingya, a Muslim minority that Myanmar’s Buddhist-led government has increasingly deprived of the …………….Some aid workers fear they are being kept away so there are fewer witnesses to rampant mistreatment most basic liberties and aid even as it trumpets its latest democratic reforms and occasional bloodletting ……….”

Which brings me to a curiously silent figure: Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, allegedly acclaimed humanitarian freedom fighter of Burma (Myanmar). The lady has struggled for years for democracy in her country. Yet the lady has been stubbornly and deafeningly silent about the expanding systemic genocide in her country. Like many otherwise ‘good Germans’ of the 20th century, she has been silent on organized ethnic cleansing in her country. Understandably silent because she would have to pay a heavy political price, a price to be exacted not by the military rulers of the country, but by the Buddhist monks and their millions of followers. 

Burma and its Muslims: Myanmar Takes the Nazi Route
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mhg

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Mr. Ahmad Al Jarba, the Saudi-appointed current head of the Syrian National Council (SNC) will be in the United States this week, seeking ‘long term’ ties with the United States. Recent Syrian history is certainly against him. It is unlikely that he himself will last ‘long term’ enough, that he will be around much longer than his several predecessors who bit the dust quickly. 

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mhg

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“The flow of foreign fighters to Syria to join the war against Bashar Assad’s dictatorship is becoming the largest in the history of the global jihad, and the Syrian battleground is on the way to outstripping the 1980s Afghan war against the Soviets as a training ground for Islamic militants. Security services around the world are becoming increasingly alarmed at the implications for the safety of their citizens. American intelligence officials now put the number of foreign fighters who have gone to Syria since the war began in 2011 at between 8,000 and 10,000. Other sources put the total even higher, up to 12,000. The largest contingent is probably Saudis. Saudi sources put the number of their citizens who have gone to wage jihad in Syria at 1,200, of whom 300 are reported to have died on the battlefield. Jordanian sources report about a thousand Jordanians………….”

The prospects look grim. All forms of Jihad are humorless, but this Syrian Jihad is even more so. I mean with contingents from Saudi Arabia, Gulf Salafis, Chechnya, Bosnia, Libya, Algeria, and Jordan (especially Jordan) who can expect anything else? If there are such things as Algerian and Libyan humor, I have never heard of them. Have you ever heard of Wahhabi humor (there is some but the jokes start like this: these three true Salafi believers dive into a river of wine near a couple of skinny-dipping skinny houris, and………….)?

Not that Syrian humor was well-known even before the current tragedy started in 2011. Remember, the Baath Party has been in power in Syria since 1963. In Iraq it ruled briefly in 1963, but came back with a vengeance in 1968 to wipe out any Iraqi sense of humor (assuming any existed after four centuries of humorless Turkish rule). The terms “Baath” and “humor” don’t fit well in the same sentence, or in the same paragraph, or in the same chapter. Come to think of it, I can think of many terms that don’t fit anywhere near the word ‘humor’: Salafi, Al Saud, Al Khalifa (well, maybe just LOL), mullah, functionary, bureaucrat, Mitch McConnell, among others. 

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It could be one way to flush out malcontents, reformists, cynics, and even a few potential ‘terrorists’. It all depends on what you write the king about. After all, social media like Twitter and Facebook have opened avenues for protest and political activism, but they have also helped flush out active and silent regime opponents. 

“Not only does al Qaeda host Ansar al-Sharia, one of the militias responsible for the Benghazi attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. But U.S. intelligence now assesses that leaders from at least three regional al Qaeda affiliates—al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and members of the organization of Al-Mulathameen Brigade loyal to Algerian terrorist, Mokhtar BelMokhtar—have all established havens in the lawless regions of Libya outside the control of the central government. One U.S. military contractor working on counter-terrorism in Africa summed up the situation in Libya today as simply, “Scumbag Woodstock.” The country has attracted that star-studded roster of notorious terrorists and fanatics seeking to wage war on the West. An American counter-terrorism official used a different metaphor to describe the situation. “Libya today plays host to members and associates of several AQ-allied groups, in some ways becoming a jihadist melting pot,”………………”

An excellent description of them: a melting pot. In most Middle East countries, especially Arab ones, tribal and sectarian identities define a person and define political life (in the few places where there is a political life). The order is: Clan, Tribe, Sect, Religion, Country. In that exact order. Sometimes Ruler or King (or Sisi) is inserted before Country, sometimes they add God at the beginning to make it seem kosher and halal. 

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mhg

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I am doubtful about the exact purpose of all this, but why not? Everybody else in the region seems to spend a lot of time and resources doing military exercises and parades. From Iran to North Africa they do it all the time. Even faraway NATO powers do exercises all over the region. Even Al Qaeda terrorist franchises do it, wherever they do these things. So why not the Saudis?

“And it’s also likely that this year’s results could be ignored by granting the “most politically suitable” party the right to form a government under dirty sectarianism and Iranian orders. Despite all current divisions and upcoming violations, Iraqi elections remain unusual given the standard of regional elections from Iran in the east to Algeria in the west. Political pluralism and the real diversity of the top figures and parties mark the Iraqi elections with a value that is worth appreciating……………”

This one deserves the Joke of the Week Award. He is the current general manager of Saudi semi-official Alarabiya network and former chief editor of Prince Salman’s newspaper (Asharq Alawsat). A propagandist for the absolute tribal super-sectarian Saudi princes complaining about the sectarian Iraqi elections and their imperfect outcome. How they decide the government and how much sectarian influence there is. Sectarianism pervades Iraq but an even more extreme version of it pervades every other Arab country, even those that have only one sect (e.g. Egypt and North Africa). There is a lot of sectarianism in Iraq, unfortunately, but nothing as near as there is in Saudi Arabia and most other Arab countries. The Iraqi elections are imperfect but so have been elections in other countries (some of them downright funny although not humorous). Some might say that having no elections is the ‘optimum’ of political imperfections.

Ahmad Al Jarba is the Saudi-appointed leader of the Syrian Coalition of Something Opposition (the damn name keep changing every few months just as the leaders change, so I have lost track of the latest model). He was in Washington this past week, making what he has been told are the ‘right noises’, like opining that: “we seek to establish a civil democratic heterogeneous state in Syria………..”. Even as his Jihadi militia allies take hostages, chop heads, and kill, all based on identity.

Meanwhile there were some gruesome news from Saudi Arabia, the country whose princes appointed Mr. Al Jarba to lead an alternative to the Al Assad regime. Raef Badawi, the young man who started the Saudi Liberal Network had his original sentence increased to 10 years (from 7 years) in prison plus 1000 lashes (one thousand instead of 600) and a fine of one million shekels riyals. He had been was convicted of “opposing mainstream values”, meaning being a non-conformist, as well as mocking theologian symbols. Ten years and a heavy session with the official torturer for a thousand lashes for being a “non-conformist”. The Wahhabi court also recommended that he be tried for apostasy (changing his religion from Wahhabism) which carries a sentence of death.

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“An insider in Israel’s nuclear program believes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is employing needless fearmongering when it comes to Iran’s atomic aspirations, in order to further his own political aims. Brigadier General (res.) Uzi Eilam, who for a decade headed the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, does not believe that Tehran is even close to having a bomb, if that is even what it really aspires to. “The Iranian nuclear program will only be operational in another 10 years,” declares Eilam, a senior official in Israel’s atomic program. “Even so, I am not sure that Iran wants the bomb.”………… “

“”Has the world learned a lesson from the mistakes of the past? Today we are again faced with clear facts and before a real danger. Iran calls for our destruction, it develops nuclear weapons.” The stated links between the Holocaust and Iran showed how more than six decades later, the mass murder of Jews during World War II is still a central part of Israel’s psyche……………”

So it seems that former senior Israeli professionals who know a few things tend to discount the nuclear fear being pushed by Mr. Netanyahu. These would be retired chiefs of Mossad, AEC, Defense, etc. 

“BDF Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Shaikh Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa extended on behalf of all BDF personnel heartfelt congratulations to His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa on the election of Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Hakim Al-Shenou as President of the International Military Sports Council (IMSC)…………..”

“His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa has sent a cable of congratulations to Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Hakim Al-Shenou on his election as President of the International Military Sports Council (CISM)….….”

“President of the General Organisation for Youth and Sport (GOYS) Hesham Mohammed Al-Jowdar has extended congratulations to the Kingdom’s leaders on the successive achievements by the Bahraini sports, which, he said, is the fruitful result of the outstanding conditions provided in the country. He lauded the election of Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Hakim Al-Shenou as President of the International Military Sports Council (MISC)……….”

GOYS? CISM? IMSC? MISC? WTF?

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