Monthly Archives: July 2014

Death Penalty, Misogyny, Wahhabi, Women

From ISIS to Arizona: Two Faces of Barbarism………

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“The UN says militant Islamist group Isis has ordered all women and girls in Mosul, northern Iraq, to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM). UN official Jacqueline Badcock said the fatwa, or religious edict, applied to females between the ages of 11 and 46. She said the unprecedented decree issued by the Islamists in control of the city was of grave concern. Iraq is facing a radical Isis-led Sunni insurgency, with cities in the north-west under militant control. The ritual cutting of girls’ genitals is practised by some African, Middle Eastern and Asian communities in the belief it prepares them for adulthood or marriage…………..”

“I’ve never witnessed an execution that took that long,” Wood’s federal public defender, Dale Baich, told NBC News. “The state of Arizona today conducted a failed experiment. … It was horrible to watch.” Media witnesses said the execution — which followed a botched lethal-injection in Oklahoma, and a protracted one in Ohio using the same drugs — began as expected with doctors inserting the IVs into Wood’s veins. The witnesses said Wood, 55, thanked Jesus as his savior and delivered these final words: “I take comfort knowing today my pain stops, and I said a prayer that on this or any other day you may find peace in all of your hearts, and may God forgive you all.”…….”

Shows you that barbarism is an international phenomenon and not confined to Salafi nuts like ISIS. This is not the first time a man was tortured publicly before being put to death by injection in the United States by ‘the state’. I have written against execution by beheading and crucifixion in Saudi Arabia, but that seems like a humane quick way to die compared to what happened to this man in Arizona and what happened in that other state a few weeks ago. No doubt there are many cases where innocent people are put to death for crimes they did not commit, people we don’t read about because their execution is botched.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

POTUS, Russia, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Senate

Sticks and Stones: the Brilliant Red Senator and the Russian Thug………..

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“Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words will never hurt me………” (senatorial nursery rhyme)

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), was asked by the moderator of “Meet the Press” what Obama should have done about Ukraine-Russia dispute.

His reply? “He didn’t call Putin the thug that he is………..”

He seemed truly offended that the President of the United States, POTUS himself, Leader of the Free World, wouldn’t call the leader of the Russian Federation “a thug”.

Brilliant……….

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Human Right

The Writing on the Wall in Bahrain: End of the Peaceful Phase of the Uprising?……….

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“Bahrain’s Justice Ministry filed a lawsuit Sunday to suspend the activities of the country’s main Shiite opposition group Al-Wefaq for three months. The move by the government comes after top Al-Wefaq figures met with a U.S. State Department official without a Bahraini government representative present earlier this month. This angered the Gulf country’s leadership, who ordered U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom Malinowski to immediately leave Bahrain. The lawsuit, though, makes no mention of the meeting. Instead, Bahrain’s official news agency reported that the ministry is taking Al-Wefaq to court for violating regulations of transparency in their general meetings. The Ministry of Justice said it filed the lawsuit after Al-Wefaq broke the law……………”

This lawsuit is just a formality, the courts usually do whatever the regime wants them to do. The laws, those that are enforced in Bahrain, are enforced by imported mercenaries from foreign places like Jordan and Pakistan and Syria, and the courts are manned by imported Arab judges, mainly Egyptians. We can say the same about the many laws that are broken by the regime. But this case can go either way, depending on what the ruling Al Khalifa family want.

If this happens, as seems now likely, it probably will mark an important watershed in the ongoing struggle of the people of Bahrain against the repression and corruption of the ruling Al Khalifa family. So far the protests of the past three and a half years have been peaceful; all the violence has come from the regime’s security forces, its imported foreign mercenaries, and Saudi forces.

Al-Wefaq, whatever you think of its ideology and leadership, is the largest opposition movement; in fact the largest political bloc. There are other opposition groups, not all of them Shi’a, but all have been decimated. They are all being hunted, with the exception of Wahhabi-ized Sunni Islamist groups who are now closely allied with the ruling family and its tribal allies.

So what other avenue will be left for the people of Bahrain to demand their legitimate rights, to regain the old democratic constitution that the rulers have distorted and altered and then distorted the alteration again? The ruling family seems intent on gradually adopting an absolute tribal Saudi model of governance, and it has Saudi forces in its capital to enforce it. That means not only continued corruption and the apartheid policy, but also dwindling freedom of speech and possibly religious freedom.

Given where this is going, what alternative will the people have? You figure this one out, but it looks like the writing is on the wall…………

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Blockade of Iran, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Palestine, Sanctions, US Foreign Policy

Human Shield Theory, Axis of Evil Theory, and other Propaganda Tools………

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Yesterday I watched former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on CNN dutifully repeating the usual claim that Hamas is using Gaza civilians as human shield. She was giving the usual bi-partisan spiel, or spin, about the newest Gaza war. But then that is the exact opposite of the spin or spiel we get from Hamas and its supporters.

Usually whatever Mr. Netnayahu claims is initially accepted, before the other side starts its own PR machine. It is taken for granted to be true in most media here, unless otherwise claimed or proven. Apparently Hamas has learned this lesson, a fact that caused a frustrated Netanyahu to grumble recently about “telegenically dead Palestinians“.

I am not sure about the claim that Hamas is deliberately placing rocket launchers amid civilian areas. I doubt it. But it is telling that nobody, not even Arabs, believe that Israel is using its civilians as human shield. That tells me something about certain national perceptions.

So, we are to believe that Palestinians don’t love their own people, their children, and use them as human shield, and that Israelis love their people and don’t use them as human shield.

But hasn’t this same ‘human shield’ story been used against other countries as well? Or the similar idea that some regime, Cuba or Iran, is impoverishing its own people, holding them as human shield, because it invites a Western economic blockade by not succumbing to the will of Western powers? The idea that the countries of an Axis of Evil would use their people as cheap fodder while the Axis of Goodness would not. Some might say that the numbers of war veterans wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq and then neglected by their own countries would refute that.

This “human shield” charge is largely based on Western notions that other peoples do not care for their citizens as much, that human life is cheaper in Palestine than it is, say, on the streets of Chicago on a Saturday night, or in Compton (Calif), or in parts of the Bronx or in Detroit on any night. Which is obviously untrue.

During WWII, the Germans could have claimed that Churchill was using civilians as human shields. And vice versa. And while we are talking old wars and human shields, think of Stalingrad and London under the Blitz.

Stay tuned…………
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, GCC, Gulf states, Qatar, Saudi Arabia

Saudi and Qatari Monarchs Meet to Push for Democracy……….

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Saudi media report the Emir of Qatar Shaikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani flew to Jeddah and met with Saudi King Dr. Servant of the Two Holy Shrines Abdullah.

I will guess why such a sudden meeting: they met to discuss how best to introduce electoral democracy into Syria AND how to improve the state of electoral democracy in Iraq. With the help of their Wahhabi elves and helpers who had snuck into these tow countries uninvited.

Speaking of democracy, agencies report the meeting was attended as follows:

  • On the Saudi side those attended were: the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud – and Interior Minister Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef Al Saud
  • On the Qatari side: Shaikh Abdullah Bin Nasser Bin Khalifa Al Thani (prime minister & minister of interior) – Shaikh Ju’an (Hungry in Arabic) Bin Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani – Shaikh Mohammed Bin Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani – Shaikh Khalid Bin Khalifa Bin Abdulaziz Al Thani – Shaikh Abdullah Bin Thamer Bin Moahmmed Al Thani (Qatari ambassador in Saudi Arabia).

But it couldn’t just be about Syria and Iraq and Lebanon and other hard to deal with Arab countries. Not even just Gaza and Hamas. Prince Mohammed is the Saudi minister of interior, the man in charge of police, internal security, religious police, prisons, arrests, interrogations, enhanced interrogation, and all the interesting things that happen to those convicted (and even some who are never convicted).

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Arab League, Arab Media, Egypt, Gaza, GCC, Israel, Palestine

Two-Front War on the Gaza Ghetto: Role of the Bloody Arab Hands ………

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Gaza is facing a two-front war, and the people of Gaza are facing two determined enemies. This has been the case for years. World media is pre-occupied with only one front of this newest Gaza-Israeli war. But this has always been a two-front war, with the people of Gaza and their Hamas fundamentalist rulers facing two hostile enemy fronts. We all know about the northern-eastern front with Israel, but the other front helps weaken the Gazans and directly helps the Israeli assault. 

The second front, the southern front with Egypt should be considered worse from an Arab point of view. Egypt has always been part of the strategy to defeat Hamas by starving out the people of Gaza in their ghetto, a ghetto created largely by Arab regimes collaborating with the Israeli government blockade. Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi, new Mubarakist leader of Egypt, is tightening the screws on Gaza even as his Israeli allies are bombing and shelling the hell out of them. Even as much of Arab media, mostly controlled by Persian Gulf princes and potentates, focus on the northern front with Israel, preferring not to shed any light on the role of the Likudnik Egyptian regime in the Israeli strategy.

When it comes to the suffering of the Palestinian people of Gaza and shedding their blood, the culprits with bloody hands are not only Israeli forces, but Arab dictators and tribal princes from Cairo to Riyadh.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Europe, European Union, NATO, Russia, United Nations International Organizations, US Foreign Policy, WTF

The Angry Euro-Centric International Community: Torn Between Ukraine and Gaza…….

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Headline today in the Huffington Post: “Global” anger at Russia grows……..

Odd: I look around the globe, the media in several languages, and I don’t see worldwide intense anger. There is sympathy and a desire to uncover the culprit(s), but no anger. I see some regional real anger and some regional pretend anger, and I see mostly some politics mixed with anger, and it is focused on a particular part of the globe. In recent years, it seems that the world has gone back to the old Euro-centric order, just as it did during the eighteenth and nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Apparently when the angry “international community” or “the world” is mentioned the acronyms that matter are NATO and EU. Forget about UNO and BRICS and PIGS and TRICKS and SCO and WTF and the rest.

No wonder the angry “international community” is never angry when third world airlines are shot down, especially when shot down by NATO missiles (Iran Air 655, Libyan Air).

I guess “global” here means the West: “European Union” or “North American”. The Rest Of the World, almost 85% of it,  are just that, ROW, and not part of the “global community”, since we don’t see much if any of the same “outrage” across Asia (outside Malaysia) or Africa or Latin America, or the Middle East. The same applies to “The International Community” that we often see in Western headlines. The Int’l Community is often angry at someone or the other (Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Freedonia, etc). The “Int’l Community” is never ever angry at the European Union or the USA or Canada. And why should they?

Now speaking of “global” outrage, and speaking of Gaza……….

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Air Disasters, Airlines, Iran, Libya, Russia

Are All Airliner Shootings Deliberate Massacres? It Depends on Who Shoots and Who Gets Shot Down……

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Poor Malaysians, they seem so unlucky with their airline this year. Still, if it had not been for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the struggle for Eastern Europe, this disaster would not have been so important. Still, not all airline disasters are equal. Let us look at a few cases when commercial civilian airliners have been shot down by military forces of governments:

1973: A Libyan Airlines Boeing 727-200 plane was shot down by Israeli fighters in Egypt’s Sinai Desert on 21 February, 1973. It was believed that the pilots got lost due to bad weather and equipment failure over northern Egypt, resulting in the plane entering Israeli-controlled airspace over the Sinai desert. Israeli fighter jets shot down the plane. Out of 113 people on board, only five, including the co-pilot, survived.
So, an Arab airliner shot down by Israel over occupied Arab land.

1983: A Korean Air flight was brought down by the USSR on 1 September 1983. The Boeing 747 civilian airliner from New York to Seoul was shot down by a Soviet jet just west of the Russian island of Sakhalin killing all 269 passengers and crew, including US congressman Larry McDonald. The Russians believed it was a US military surveillance plane and fired tracer rockets as a warning but it did not respond, the Soviet fighter pilot later said. US president, Ronald Reagan called the shoot down “a massacre“.
So, shot down over Soviet/Russian territory.

1988: On 3 July 1988 the US warship USS Vincennes, in the Persian Gulf, fired a surface-to-air missile to shoot down Iran Air flight 655 travelling from Bandar Abbas in Iran to Dubai. All 290 passengers, mostly Iranians on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and all the crew were killed. US Navy officials later said the Vincennes’ crew believed they were firing at an Iranian F14 jet fighter, claiming the plane was off the ‘usual’ commercial route and did not respond to requests to change course. Iran, perhaps echoing Ronald Reagan, called it “a barbaric massacre“.
So, an Iranian airliner shot down by a U.S. navy ship. Not over the Gulf of Mexico, nor within sight of Manhattan. In the ‘Persian’ Gulf, right in Iran’s own backyard. 

2001: Ukrainian military shot down a Russian passenger jet containing 78 people on 4 October 2001 as it flew over the Black Sea travelling from Tel Aviv in Israel to Novosibirsk in Russia. Russian crash investigators concluded the Tu-154 was hit by a Ukrainian ground-to-air missile despite the fact it was on its flight plan on an international airway which did not fall under any restrictions imposed by Ukraine. It exploded in mid-air, sparking speculation it was downed accidentally by Ukranian military on exercises in Crimea.

So is it a crime to shoot down a civilian airliner? You may be shocked to find out that it depends, but you shouldn’t. Apparently it mainly all depends on two factors: (1) Who does the shooting; (2) Who is shot down.

Generally third world airliners, when shot down by anyone but especially by Western missiles, are not much lamented or compensated. The Iran Air 655 victims were ignored in the West. If it had been an Iranian missile shooting down a Western airliners, Tehran would have been invaded, with full UN approval. Iran would have been blackmailed and forced to pay extortion in billions of dollars in compensation for the Western victims, who tend to be much more valuable as victims than others are. No such compensation was offered or paid, as far as I know, for Iran Air 655 victims or the Libyan victims.

Third world victims are always deemed to be worth less than Western victims. That is a fact; too bad you can’t take it to the bank, though. But I admit it is sometimes a self-made valuation suggested by unrepresentative and repressive governments.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Al-Qaeda, Iraq, Islam, Jihadis, Sectarian

Liberated Mosul Going Christian-Frei and Shi’a-Rein……..

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“Christians were fleeing Iraq’s jihadist-held city of Mosul en masse Friday after mosques relayed an ultimatum giving them a few hours to leave, the country’s Chaldean patriarch and witnesses said. “Christian families are on their way to Dohuk and Arbil,” in the neighbouring autonomous region of Kurdistan, Patriarch Louis Sako told AFP. “For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians.” Witnesses said messages telling Christians to leave the city by Saturday were blared through loudspeakers from the city’s mosques Friday……….The patriarch, who is one of the most senior Christian clerics in Iraq, and residents contacted by AFP said Islamic State militants had in recent days been tagging Christian houses with the letter N for “Nassarah”, the term by which the Koran refers to Christians………”

Arab supporters of the terrorist marauders in Iraq, including Salafis and Wahhabi liberals are claiming that Mosul and other towns were liberated by ‘revolutionary’ Iraqis seeking justice. Yet the same ‘liberators’ of Mosul and other Al-Anbar towns have issued Nazi-like warnings for ‘others’, especially Christians, to convert or leave town, forfeiting their property, or die. The Shi’as who did not leave were massacred and ended up in mass graves, as we saw in photos and films distributed by the Terrorists.


In recent week some Arab media had been minimizing the role of ISIS a (ISIL) in the war in Iraq and stressing the role of ‘angry’ Sunni tribes. Part of the regional strategy of the petroleum princes. Some went so far as to suggest that the ISIS Wahhabis are leaving Mosul to be run by the Iraqi Sunnis. I was skeptic of that claim, nay I was sure it was not true. It was not true.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Al-Azhar, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, History, Islam, Islamic History, UAE, Uncategorized, Wahhabi

Grand Ayatollah of Al Azhar Gets His Just Reward on the Gulf………

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Qatari daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi reports that His Excellency the ‘Great Imam’ shaikh of Al-Azhar went to Dubai last week by private plane. He was to receive the Dubai Holy Quran International Prize (WTF that be). He is reported to have received the award as “Islamic Personality of the Year” as a reward for his efforts in the service of Islam (WTF they be). It does not say if he is rewarded for siding with the military coup that overthrew the elected Muslim Brotherhood presidency of Mohammed Morsi in July 2013, nor if he was awarded for siding with Hosni Mubarak during the uprising of 2011. As I noted in a recent post here, he was bound to win the prize.

This is news to most people, the fact that now Shaikh Dr. Al Tayeb calls himself the “Great Imam”, or is it the “Grand Imam”? Apparently the Al Azhar bureaucracy and its hierarchy are now copying some of the Shi’a (Shi’ite if you prefer) titles like Grand Ayatollah, etc. It is now not too fat-fetched that Dr. Shaikh Al Tayeb will pop out some day with the title “Grand Ayatollah” of Al Azhar, possibly earned from one of them ubiquitous online for-profit theology colleges.

Now what would their Wahhabi allies and financiers in Riyadh think of all this? A Grand Ayatollah leading Al Azhar, just as its original creators of the Fatimid Dynasty had intended? Thus undoing the military coup of Salah El Din Al Ayyoubi (Saladin) who overthrew his Fatimids bosses and benefactors long before Al Sisi overthrew his Morsi boss and benefactor. Saladin did atone for it later by liberating Jerusalem from the European barbarians. No wonder there are complaints, warnings, and fears about the spread of Shi’ism in Egypt. No wonder the military regime and its Salafi and Wahhabi-Liberal allies ban Bahrain activists and Iranian tourists from coming to Egypt. It can be risky. Look, even the recently Wahhabi-ized Al Azhar shaikhs are adopting Shi’a titles now. Soon they might start allowing Shi’a mosques and Husseiniyyas all over Cairo. Who knows, some day we might see Al Sisi playing Shimr, or maybe even Al-Hurr, in a re-enactment a Shi’a passion play about the Battle of Karbala.

And our princes and pals on the Persian-American Gulf had thought their man Al Sisi had come to power and was generously rewarded in order to stop all that.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]