Category Archives: Arab Revolutions

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Libya, Religion, Salafi

MTV Shaikhs of Salafi Islam: Have Fatwa, Will Travel……………

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF

This idiotic shaikh from my hometown here tells his listeners that Qaddafi was not a Muslim and that it is not allowed to pray over him. No R.I.P. for him. Too many of these idiotic Salafi television shaikhs giving fatwas on everything. I call them MTV shaikhs, some call them mercenary shaikhs, others call them opportunistic shaikhs on the make. They are all of the above. They are the products of all these Shari’a colleges on the Gulf, and in Saudi Arabia, that spawn thousands of semi-educated would be clergy. They get competitive, and the only way to compete for a Salafi shaikh is to issue his own fatwas on everything under the sun.
They ought to be licensed (and preferably immunized and leashed), if you know what I mean.

Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Human Right, Salafi, Torture, US Foreign Policy

In the Shadow of the Fifth Fleet: “five months in custody, enduring beatings, torture, sexual assault and threats of rape……..”

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
     BFF

“When a Bahraini hospital started to take in casualties from the violent crackdown on protesters earlier this year, Rula al-Saffar was one of the first to volunteer. As a medical professor and president of the Bahraini Nursing Society, she was not on the staff of the overwhelmed Salmaniya hospital, but doctors needed all the help they could get. Saffar could not have known at the time that in stepping in to help save lives she was endangering her own. Within weeks she would be arrested, charged, convicted in a trial lasting minutes and sentenced to 15 years in prison, along with 19 other hospital medics………. Saffar was arrested on 4 April after receiving a late-night phone call ordering her to present herself to Bahrain’s Central Investigation Department for interrogation. “The minute I entered they just closed the gate, and suddenly I was blindfolded, handcuffed and started being pushed and cussed at the whole time. “I never knew why was I there. And then this woman started shouting at me, that you hate the system, that you were a protester against the system, against the king. “I kept saying: ‘No, this is not what happened,’ and of course the minute you say no they beat you up and they electrocute you … And I thought: ‘How dare you do this?’ Interrogation … as you see in a democratic country, I thought my country had the same thing, where you have a right for your lawyer, they read your warrant. But this is not what happened to us.” Saffar spent five months in custody, enduring beatings, torture, sexual assault and threats of rape… ……”

Yes sir, those mercenary interrogators from Pakistan and Jordan are sure earning their pay. As do the local thugs of the regime. That must be what the billion-dollar a year GCC aid was intended for. I wonder if they had some of those Salafi shaikhs they have in their pockets sanction such behavior as kosher, in a Salafi Islamic sense. For a price, of course. As for our Wahhabi faux-liberals on our Gulf, many of them think it is alright, as long as the Salafi shaikhs say so. In the shadow of the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Iraq, Libya, North Africa

“New” Libya: Qaddafi’s Corpse……………

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF

Saudi network Alarabiya reports that the Libyan rulers (NTC) have decided to bury the corpse of Mu’ammar Qaddafi in an unmarked grace in an unknown location. This is (at least) the second public atrocity committed by the new rulers. The first one, as I wrote here yesterday, was to allow the wounded and captive dictator to be tortured and killed. I wrote that he should have been tried, as Saddam was tried in Iraq for three years. I also speculated that killing Qaddafi was convenient escape for some of Libya’s current leaders and for many Western leaders who dealt with him, for a price.
Now making Qaddafi’s body vanish is another atrocity, another unnecessary act. Saddam Hussein’s grave is known and marked, and it has not caused him to come back to life. A dead body, no matter who had occupied it, deserves some dignity, one of many things the new rulers of Libya apparently need to learn after 40 years of dictatorship.

All this is a worrisome sign for the “New” Libya: it resembles what happened in Iraq when the Ba’athists (and their allies) first took over.
Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Iraq, Libya, NATO, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy

New Libya: One Last Questionable Atrocity or Two, Saddam and Muammar………

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF

I watched the grisly, nay ugly, savagery in the footage of Mu’ammar Qaddafi in captivity: at first wounded but very much alive, then dead naked and being dragged about. There is no way he was shot while trying to escape, but that is alright now, everyone wants the new Libya to start with a ‘clean’ slate. Nobody wants the new Libya to start with the usual extra-judicial atrocities that the old dictatorship committed.
Which brings me to the new ‘regime’, which will be what it is until a ‘proper’ government is elected by the people. That is why most Arab regimes are ‘regimes’: unelected, possibly unelectable, and I don’t mean just the republics. Now this killing of Qaddafi also helps the National Transitional Council clean its own slate, given that many of its members served in high positions under Colonel Qaddafi. It saves a lot of embarrassing and inconvenient court testimony by Qaddafi and his lawyers and witnesses. A lot of local names to be talked about: who did what under Qaddafi. With the dictator dead, there is no need to embarrass anyone. Then there is no need to embarrass Western leaders who dealt with the dictator and helped him, for a price of course. (I wonder what Berlusconi and Sarkozy and Tony Blair and many others feel now).
Saddam Hussein was tried for three years before being executed. (I recall the media in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain thought that was extra-legal, as if their own regimes care much for legal niceties: in both these countries people vanish without legal niceties, sometimes forever). But then the new Iraqi government was mostly composed of former exiles and not composed of his former officials. Nobody to embarrass with court testimony.
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Ali Khamenei, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Iran

The Marshal and the Ayatollah : What Went Wrong in Egypt………….

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF

“The scene in Egypt looks grim. More than eight months have passed since Jan. 25, when the sparks of revolution finally brought Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule to an end. Yet we have witnessed no real policy changes from the provisional Military Council. The postrevolution era is marked by as much—if not more—brutality as faced the Egyptians during Mubarak’s reign as witnessed by the dozens of Copts killed in recent clashes. The censorship of journalists, bloggers, newspapers, and other publications continues. It seems that the confiscation of journalistic work has become a defining characteristic of the postrevolution era. Worse, nothing suggests that the Military Council will surrender its authority to an elected civilian president in the near future, despite their statements to the contrary. An addiciton to power has taken hold, especially in the mind of Marshal Tantawi………..”

Just as I wrote here: the military will be the supreme power, with some elected politicians suffocating underneath it. Just like in Iran where elected politicians are subservient to an unelected leader. Ayatollah Tantawi, meet Marshal Khamenei.
What went wrong in Egypt is simple. The people did not finish up the ‘revolution’. They kept the old regime intact except for the top two or three men. Lenin had it right in 1917, at the beginning, by insisting on a complete overthrow of the old order, as did the Iranian Ayatollah in 1979, as did Castro in 1959. Unfortunately those three old revolutionaries failed to create free societies: they got rid of their ‘democratic’ partners and replaced the bad old orders with bad new dictatorships.
Now the military junta is set to share power in Egypt: it is the Egyptian version of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). They will share power, but they will be first among ‘equals’, at best. This suits the Arab oligarchs fine, they are sighing with relief: the SCAF is now using the same divisive sectarian tactics (vis-a-vis the Christian Copts) that are used by the Saudi and Bahraini regimes in the Gulf. But the brave Egyptian people need to make another final push to be rid of the military junta.
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Religion, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Al-Azhar and the Salafis: a Relic of the Mubarak Days and the Evangelical Al, Abdel Wahab………

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF

The semi-official Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat reports that Ahmad al-Tayeb, the Shaikh of al-Azhar and a former functionary of Mubarak’s ruling party, has met with the Saudi Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs in Cairo. The newspaper headlines that the two have reached an agreement to stand firm in the face of any attempts to “touch (or is it fondle) Sunni  societies”, a blatant sectarian statement if there ever was one. They did not specify who or what was threatening to touch “Sunni societies”, no reference was made to Hip-Hop, Rap, or Angry Bird. I know the Saudi muftis frown upon Barbie and Sponge Bob. An official invitation for Egypt to join the GCC will not be far now, unless the Egyptian ‘uprising’ becomes a true ‘revolution’ that sweeps away military rule.

Mr. al-Tayeb was appointed by former dictator Hosni Mubarak from among his ruling party functionaries, whereby he promptly dropped the civilian suit for a cleric’s robe (not thobe). The Saudi Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs is yet another Al Al Shaikh, this time Abdulaziz Al Al Shaikh. Readers of my blog know by now that there are many Al Al Shaikh in top Saudi government positions, including ministers, the chief Mufti, and the chief justice. My readers also know by now that all the Al Al Shaikhs are descendants of Imam Mohammad Bin Abdulwahhab, after whom the Wahhabi sect was named. The Imam Abdulwahhab was a close ally of the Al Saud from way back in the days before the early Old West. The two clans have intermarried over generations (but it is usually a one-way traffic if you know what I mean).
 
The Salafi Imam Abdulwahhab is not to be confused with the late great Egyptian musician and singer Mohammed Abdel Wahab who was never a Salafi or a fundamentalist. Not even an Evangelical nor one of the Hasidim.
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Libya, Middle East

Unfinished Libyan Gunfight at the OK Corral………….

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF

“The scrublands that surround Moammar Kadafi’s hometown have become a confused patchwork of loyalties. As vehicles of the revolutionary forces patrolled the dusty villages in newly seized territory Sunday, many residents peered angrily from their homes. “The rebels are worse than rats. NATO is the same as Osama bin Laden,” said a father, his seven children crowding around him. Surt has been a primary target in the seven-month NATO bombing campaign that helped rebel forces gain control of most of Libya. The intensity of the bombing, coupled with recent rocket attacks by the opposition forces, has turned Surt into a “living hell,” several families said. Hundreds of families fled the city Sunday, anticipating a new assault. But too frightened, angry or mistrustful to flee to opposition-controlled territory, many sought refuge in nearby loyalist homes……….”

The new Libyan rulers, or rather their NATO and other allies, have so far failed to dislodge the Qaddafi side from Sirte (or is it Surt) and Bani Walid. Apparently Bani Walid was a near disaster for the new Tripoli government. There are also other towns and villages and regions that are still contested in the vast Libyan desert. Neither Bani Walid nor Sirte have turned into the decisive OK Corral that the NTC and world media expected it to be. The Clantons are still fighting, the Earps are trying, and Doc Holiday NATO is getting frustrated.
Told ya: Arab dictators and depots, be they royal or military, are very hard to dislodge. Bin Ali and Mubarak were surprised by the speed of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, but the others were ready. From Libya to Syria to Yemen to Bahrain to Algeria, even to Saudi Arabia, the oligarchs were ready when the Arab Spring spread toward their neck of the woods.
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Human Right

Former Clinton-istas Lobbying for Gulf Regime of Apartheid ………….

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF

Sorini, Samet & Associates
“In April, the AFL-CIO filed a complaint with the US Department of Labor calling on it to terminate the Bahrain-US Free Trade Agreement in light of the mass sackings of workers in Bahrain following the protests. To formulate the response to this, Bahrain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs hired the services of Sorini, Samet & Associates LLC, a government relations firm specializing in international trade legislation. The point man at the firm is Andrew Samet, who has previously served as Deputy Undersecretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration. The Bahrain government was to pay the firm an hourly fee ranging between $100 and $550 with an initial non-returnable retainer of $25,000. One would imagine these guys helped arrange the July meetings of Bahrain’s ministers of labour and industry with US officials and policy wonks in Washington DC (after Samet visited Bahrain in May)……….”

They all do it: Republican, Democrats, Vegans, Liberals, Conservatives, Vegetarians, Carnivores, etc. Nothing personal against the people or in favor of the repressive regime. As Sal Tessio told Tom Hagen (Godfather I): It was business…….<br>
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Libya, Religion, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Alarabiya: Libya Denies Reopening the Tripoli Synagogue, about the Shari’a and Monarchy…………

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF

“The current differences among the Libyans would not stand in the way of forming the forthcoming government after fully liberating the country, the head of the National Transitional Council (NTC) told Al Arabiya. Mustapha Abdul Jalil said that Libya is currently passing through a critical phase on all sides, but once a full control on Sirte is achieved, a series of “drastic changes” will follow. In his special interview with Al Arabiya, Jalil said that sharia (Islamic law) will be the main base of legislation in the new Libya. A balanced Islamic religion, away from extremism, will be applied in the country, he added……….” Alarabiya (Saudi)

Alarabiya headlined this in its Arabic edition as “Abdul Jalil denies he permitted reopening the Jewish Synagogue in Tripoli”. And “Abdul Jalil says Libya will not be radical in the future”. It did not say that “Libya will reinstate the monarchy with an imported Saudi prince, possibly Bandar”.
Now why is this semi-official Saudi network stressing the “synagogue” issue in the Arabic version? Could it be because there are no synagogues nor any churches nor any temples in Saudi Arabia and they and their Salafi agents want this to be the form? You betcha.
He also said that they will have the “Shari’a” as the main source of law. This means, if they follow the Saudi model, that certain social mores will apply and that they will disregard Islamic rules about corruption and repression. Sort of like Saudi Arabia (and almost all other Islamic countries but to a lesser extent, with or without the Shari’a).
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Human Right, Saudi Arabia, UAE

Is it Possible to Insult the UAE Potentates?…….

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF         

“During the 10 month old Arab Spring, the United Arab Emirates expressed its opposition to the trial of Egyptian former president Hosni Mubarak, sent troops, as part of the “Shield of the Arabian Peninsula,” to oppress the Bahraini uprising, and arrested several activists who demanded reform. The arrests started with blogger Ahmed Mansour who was detained, as rumored, while talking in a Friday prayer about supporting the Arab Spring, the Egyptian revolution, and the third Palestine Intifada, which failed to materialise a few months ago. The other four detainees are Nasser Bin Ghaith, Fahad Al-Sihhi, Hassan Ali Al Khamis, and Ahmed Abdulhaleq Ahmed. All five are accused of publicly “insulting” the country’s president and top officials. ………”

Insulted the president and top officials? It is not like they told these worthy potentates to go and do something to themselves. They put it more politely than that. They just called for political reform and more freedoms, something that royally pissed off the shaikhs of the Al Nahayan clan of Abu Dhabi.
The rulers of Abu Dhabi did not only object to the trial of Mubarak, they objected to his popular overthrow. They were as pissed as the Al-Saud that the Egyptian people wanted him out. The brilliant Saudi king is on record for having famously said early February that the Egyptian protesters were “foreign infiltrators and agents of foreign powers”. They both thought the U.S.A. could and should keep him in power by force if necessary, sort of like they are doing in Bahrain.
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]