Monthly Archives: December 2015

Caliphate, Migrant labor, Misogyny, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi

The “Other” Islamic State: Stoned Women of Arabia………

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“In the coming days, a Sri Lankan woman is to be led to an outdoor pit in Saudi Arabia. Her arms and hands will be tightly bound, her body buried up to her breasts. Saudi men will then surround her and begin to hurl rocks at her head to kill her slowly. A married housemaid, she was convicted of adultery, while the man, a bachelor, also a vulnerable Sri Lankan migrant worker, was given 100 lashes……… It is a measure of how violent Saudi Arabia’s capital punishment laws are that beheadings can at times seem compassionate. Decapitation, after all, is nothing compared to lapidation. Beheading is quick; stoning, slow. It’s death by torture.………”

Executing women, almost all of them foreign laborers, is quite common. Many Sri Lankan housemaids have been beheaded, others reportedly await the sword. Occasionally a few are stoned to death, usually for adultery, but their male partner in the ‘sin’ always gets off easy: lashes, prison, deportation. There is no doubt that some Westerners also manage to screw around in the Wahhabi Kingdom Without Magic, but one never hears or reads about one being executed.

Several Asian countries, including Indonesia, have periodically banned their poor from working in Saudi Arabia in the past, but these bans don ‘t last. The poverty is too rampant and the temptation of money is too strong. While the wages paid these housemaids equal a pittance by Western and even by Saudi standards, they are a lot by some South and Southeast Asian standards. So, the executions continue, fed by a system that forces confessions through beating, coercion, and language barriers (hence deception).

It must, however be mentioned that some American “Red States” have also executed convicts through methods that can be classified as torture. Especially the use of certain drugs that take a long time to kill. That is why many European countries ban the export of certain drugs to the United States. The Death Penalty should be ended from the last country in North America, the last developed country, that still practices it.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Britain, Caliphate, Jihadis, Syria

Syria: Bringing the Terrorist Patriarchs In from the Cold…………

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“David Cameron was derided for claiming that there are “about 70,000 Syrian opposition fighters …who do not belong to extremist groups” and who might be potential allies of the coalition against IS. The Kurds are not included in that count………… In fact, most experts agree with the prime minister’s intelligence-derived assessment. Charles Lister of Brookings Doha Centre reckons that there are over 100 armed factions with a total of 75,000 fighters, many of whom operate under the Free Syrian Army umbrella, who could be considered “moderate” by Syrian standards. Even more problematic from a Western point of view is the idea of partnering with either Ahrar al-Sham or Jaish al-Islam, two big Salafist groups that have connections with Jabhat al-Nusra (JAN), al-Qaeda’s increasingly powerful Syrian affiliate………..”

Interesting but predictable. The Economist agrees with David Cameron about the 75 thousand “moderate” fighters in Syria, something  I doubt very much. It quotes the Brookings Doha Center (in Qatar, hardly a neutral party) as confirmation. Then it notes that more than 30, 000 of these are Al Qaeda affiliates (probably some 50 thousand in this case). So again they tag Al Nusra and Ahrar Al Sham cutthroats as “moderates”.
Remember when the Al Qaeda, the creator of Al Nusra and later ISIS, were considered the worst of the worst? Not anymore.

I wrote a couple of years ago that Al Qaeda may be invited to “come in from the cold“. I repeated last spring when the Nusra seemed the last great hope of the Arab oil potentates in Syria. Now it is being invited in from the cold. Not only in Syria: in devastated Yemen, the Saudi and allied mercenary bombings have allowed Al Qaeda to take over more towns in the south.
Will ISIS be too far behind? Perhaps with a little push from the moderate Wahhabi “allies”?
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, California, Iran, Jihadis, Petroleum, Russia, Syria, Turkey

The Strange Turkish Russian Iranian Syrian Oil and Pistachio Deals with DAESH…….

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When news seeped out about ISIS/DAESH selling and exporting oil over a year ago, I suspected a Turkish connection, even though Western and Saudi/Qatari media claimed there were deals between ISIS and the Assad regime. After all, the weapons, volunteers, and possibly much of the money for the Jihadis in Syria flowed through the long Turkish border. And ISIS/DAESH controls areas along the border.  And there have been credible reports of cooperation between Turkish military and intelligence and the Jihadists in Syria. These days, when a terrorist or accomplices escape from a European country, they head for Turkey: that is the trailhead to lands controlled by ISIS.
Now the Russians have come out and said it openly, with claims of documentation. Iranian media have also carried and seemed to support the Russia claim.
The Turks could not be original, so what did they do? A day or two later they made their own claim of Russian-ISIS oil deals. I didn’t know Russian needed Syrian or Iraqi oil.
Wait, there is more. To make matters more entertaining, there are now reports on the social media of Turkish claims that Iranians also made oil deals with ISIS/DAESH. Tit-for-tat, since the Iranians seemed to support the earlier Russian claims. I didn’t know that the Iranians also needed Syrian or Iraqi oil. I had thought they spent the past few years trying to sell more of their own oil, not buy foreign oil from their Wahhabi enemies.
What next? Turkish claims of Iranian deals to buy Aleppo pistachios from ISIS? Iranian claims of Saudi oil deals with ISIS? Qatari claims that the Bahrain regime imports some of its nasty interrogators from ISIS? Oh, wait……….
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Jihad, Syria, Terrorism

False Black Flags of Terror: Daesh-istas and ISIS-istas and Tri-Colors………

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Supporters of the Arab Jihadis on social media are evolving, at least in appearance. Some of the Daesh-istas still use their own version of some green-white-black flag (supposedly a flag of some future de-Assadized, Wahhabi-ized Syria) as their own avatars. They know it is more politically correct in some powerful quarters than the black flag of ISIS or Al Nusra and other such terrorist  groups.

Others are bolder, they are now sporting the black version of the Saudi flag openly. Some others are too coy to do that, hence the new tri-color flag. But their hearts are still with those behind the self-appointed Caliph Al-Samarrai, now of Raqqa/Mosul but formerly Saddamist jailbird of Samarra. They are just too shy or timid, or maybe too politically-correct in an endearing Wahhabi fashion, to openly raise the ugly little black Wahhabi flag of the head-choppers and man-burners and market bombers.

So, they use some concocted version of the Syrian flag, the green and white and black flag. It hints, nay it points at support for some of the Jihadis in Syria and elsewhere, without specifying. It is cleverly Daesh-esque but not so openly, ISIS-esque but not so openly. Safe, cute, but not so cute given all the blood…….
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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