Category Archives: ethnic cleansing

Anti-Semitism, Culture, ethnic cleansing, Israel, Jews, Kuwait, Persian Gulf

On the Persian Gulf: the Disappearance of Saleem the Jew……

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Saleem Yehudi, Saleem the Jew. That was what everybody that I knew called him in those days. That is the way my father and uncles called him when I was a kid. Saleem is a common name in the Middle East, and they were distinguishing him from some other Saleem(s) they knew. There are/were Arab Saleem, Iranian Saleem, Jewish Saleem, African Saleem, etc.
My father often took me along when he had some business near the port in our small capital city on the northern mainland tip of the Persian Gulf. In those days the dhows and fishermen boats were moored to piers right downtown, just behind the Seif Palace. Often my father stopped at the small front office used by Saleem Yehudi. I recall the man behind his desk, he seemed old to me as a child, but he was probably middle aged. He always gave me a piece of candy or a cookie or two, no doubt to keep me from fidgeting and getting into trouble while he talked with my father.

Then a day came when there was no Saleem Yehudi. A day when I realized that I had not seen him in a long time, maybe a few weeks. I don’t recall his name coming up at our afternoon meal Sofra (roughly the equivalent of a Western dinner table). Normally in my family we discussed all developments, everything and everybody. Adults and kids, men and women eagerly participating, interrupting…..

One day I was tagging along behind my father on the way to the port, when I suddenly asked him “Where is Saleem Yehudi, father?”

There was a long pause before he said “Gone….. They’re all gone“.
“Gone? Gone where, father?” I’m not sure if I was concerned about Saleem the Jew or the piece of sweet he gave me.

Another long pause before my father said “Probably gone to Shiraz, or Tehran….” Then another pause, he usually thought out what he said to me, “Or maybe some port in Iran. They can’t go to Iraq anymore……. Maybe Israel“.

Saleem the Jew, another fellow traveler who disappeared, almost certainly involuntarily……

But that has been the story of the Middle East, from the days of Babylonia and Cyrus until now. Just like Saleem Yehudi, others of other faiths, Arab Muslims and Christians, were also displaced, sometimes forcibly, by the same conflict. They still are in parts of the Old Mandate of Palestine (now Israel and the ever-shrinking Palestinian Territories). It goes on among Arabs as well: in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, the Persian Gulf and other places. The ethnic cleansing goes beyond interfaith, to inter-sectarian. A mad search for an ever narrower false homogeneity that never seems to stop these days. It goes on and it dooms the region, especially the countries undergoing this ethnic and religious cleansing.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Crusade, ethnic cleansing, Islam, Muslims, Religion, Sectarian, Wahhabi

Worldwide Wahhabi Crusade Turns More Violent……….

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Yesterday was Ashura, a special day in a special month in the Middle East. But to some it was just another day that brought new opportunities for more sectarian bloodshed.
We occasionally complain about discrimination against Muslims in Europe. That is mainly because we expect better, much better, in the Western democracies than we do in our own “Islamic” region, where your tribe or faith or sect decides your fate. Where your tribe or faith or sect often seals your fate, in some places quite violently.

Just read the headlines from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and other places. In Iraq it is a daily occurrence, with cowardly terrorist bombings of unarmed civilian. In dysfunctional nuclear Pakistan, from Quetta to Karachi, it is becoming an almost daily occurrence. Even Afghanis kill their compatriots of another sect in Pakistan.

The news headlines yesterday did not bring anything new. From Pakistan to Saudi Arabia and through Iraq, many people were targeted and killed and maimed simply because of their sect. Most of the victims of terrorist killings were as usual Shi’as. It was a good day for mass killings from a Wahhabi Jihadist point of view, given that it was a special Shi’a day of pilgrimage. Many unarmed humans packed together practicing their faith, risking their lives, some of them knowing the risks. The killers were also Muslims. It was as usual part of an onging systematic campaign of killings, a one-way terrorist war against Shi’as. There is some occasional sporadic misguided retaliation, mainly in Pakistan or in Iraq, but the trend is clear.

This war goes beyond our native region, spreading into Europe. I recall at least one case of a planned mosque in a Scandinavian city a few years ago. The strong opposition to the mosque did not come from the native Europeans. It came from other dominant Muslims who were of another sect. A Shi’a mosque was strongly opposed, fought against, by Wahhabis in a European country. Establishing a Shi’a mosque is even harder, nay impossible, in many Muslim countries. It is impossible, verboten, in places that have strong Wahhabi influences like Indonesia, Malaysia or Egypt. In these places people have to practice their rites ins secret and risk arrest or worse. Sounds familiar to some in old Europe, doesn’t it?

It is almost like a Wahhabi crusade, absofuckinglutely no pun intended. As violent and with as much indiscriminate mass killings as in the original European crusades.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, Cairo, Egypt, ethnic cleansing, Muslim Brotherhood, Nazism

Egypt’s Wayward Liberals: New Arab Fascism, Arab Neo-Fascism…………..

      

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“Liberal talk-show hosts denounce the Brotherhood as a foreign menace and its members as “sadistic, extremely violent creatures” unfit for political life. A leading human rights advocate blames the Brotherhood’s “filthy” leaders for the deaths of more than 50 of their own supporters in a mass shooting by soldiers and the police. A hypernationalist euphoria unleashed in Egypt by the toppling of Mr. Morsi has swept up even liberals and leftists who spent years struggling against the country’s previous military-backed governments. An unpopular few among them have begun to raise alarms about what they are calling signs of “fascism”: the fervor in the streets, the glorification of the military as it tightens its grip and the enthusiastic cheers for the suppression of the Islamists. But the vast majority of liberals, leftists and intellectuals in Egypt have joined in the jubilation at the defeat of the Muslim Brotherhood, laying into any dissenters. “We are moving from the bearded chauvinistic right to the clean-shaven chauvinistic right,” said Rabab el-Mahdi…………….”

Egypt’s “liberals”, who are not necessarily secularists or ‘democrats’, are on a fake roll, and on a rampage. They are savoring the demise of their Muslim Brotherhood rivals, and they are not taking any prisoners. Nor is the military junta that is ruling Egypt now (not that it ever stopped ruling). The language of Egypt’s so-called liberals, so long cowed under Mubarak, has been of Nazi (as in 1930s Germany) quality. They are using the same language the Nazis used against the Communists and the Social Democrats (and, incidentally, the Jews). They are hinting, not too subtly,  at something like “ethnic cleansing”: ‘eradication’ of the Muslim Brotherhood. Turning a blind eye to mass arrests of members who were not part of the government, turning a blind eye to proscriptions and property-confiscation, even as Mubarak fuloul are immune (some of them actually brag of having helped with the military takeover).
Egyptian media normally do not believe in gray areas. They often go over the top, exaggerate the goodness of one side (the ruling side) and evil of another side (the side that is out of power). I never cared for the Muslim Brotherhood, although I never equated them with the truly evil Salafists (so much for my objectivity). Now, after following the current hysteria in Egyptian media, they seem more honest to me than many of their current rivals. After all, they never censored or banned or closed the media of their rivals (or maybe they did not have the time). Their own media has been shut down by the military, with the enthusiastic approval of their “liberal” rivals.
Cheers
mhg

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Canada, Donkeys and Asses, ethnic cleansing, Jackasses

Asses of Columbus Straddle the Rio Bravo del Norte, O Canada…………..

         

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“In 1495, the ass first appeared in the New World brought by Christopher Columbus. Shortly after America won her independence, President George Washington imported the first mammoth jack stock into the young country. Despite these early appearances of donkeys in American society, the donkey did not find widespread favor in America until the 1800…………….”

So what it says is that the donkey (ass, jackass) arrived in America with Columbus. I am not sure how many priests sailed on those three ships. Yet three centuries later, the asses had replaced the natives of the new world. More than that: they dominate both houses of the U.S. Congress, especially the House of Representatives. Not to mention that they dominate and rule most countries south of the Rio Bravo del Norte. And north of it: I almost forgot Mr. Stephen Harper of Canada.

Cheers
mhg

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Britain, ethnic cleansing, France, Human Right, Racism

Privately Run Public Gulags: Immigrant Detention Camps of America, Britain, and Australia…………..

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“The men showed up in a small town in Australia’s outback early last year, offering top dollar for all available lodgings. Within days, their company, Serco, was flying in recruits from as far away as London, and busing them from trailers to work 12-hour shifts as guards in a remote camp where immigrants seeking asylum are indefinitely detained. It was just a small part of a pattern on three continents where a handful of multinational security companies have been turning crackdowns on immigration into a growing global industry. Especially in Britain, the United States and Australia, governments of different stripes have increasingly looked to such companies to expand detention and show voters they are enforcing tougher immigration laws……………But the ballooning of privatized detention has been accompanied by scathing inspection reports, lawsuits and the documentation of widespread abuse and neglect, sometimes lethal ……….”

Look for France’s Sarkozy to adopt this idea if his electoral fortunes get worse in the coming months. That should seal his re-election in the ‘new’ France.
This looks like a definite accelerating trend in the English-speaking major countries now. Private prisons, private security firms for military installations and embassies, and now private detention concentration camps for illegal immigrants. Anybody can tell you that private for profit security companies seek to maximize profits (surprised?) and that the public sector seeks to ensure humane treatment as well as the proper public policy. The twain shall never meet. I know, they say oversight and inspections will take care of that. Harrrrumph.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Corruption, ethnic cleansing, GCC, Human Right, Saudi Arabia, UAE, US Foreign Policy

Delusional Bahrain: Despots and Miscreants and a Precocious Schmuck Minister………….

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“MOI: Groups of miscreants were out in various areas of Bahrain today in response to calls made through social media websites. Since their movements were illegal, security forces dealt with them and some of the miscreants were arrested and legal actions taken against them.
With regard to incidents at City Center, at around 4:00pm a group of miscreants and lawbreakers broke into the shopping mall to create chaos and spread terror among the public there. As a result the security forces, including women police, had to interfere and deal with them and some of them were arrested and legal actions taken against them.
The Ministry of Interior apologises to the mall management and the public for any inconvenience caused and affirms that the situation everywhere has returned to normal……….”
Ministry of Interior of Bahrain, the body in charge of police, midnight raiders, looters, imported foreign mercenary thugs, politically nationalized foreign goons (from Pakistan, Syria, Jordan, and former Iraqi Ba’athists), torturers, and all round nice guys of the al-Khalifa team. All presided over by a precociously schmuck minister of interior. The country is now a ghettoized occupation zone and these ruling schmucks talk about “normality”.

“The people of Bahrain have won a victory for democracy by their very high participation in the ‘supplementary’ elections……” Regime Spokesman

The rulers of Bahrain are holding another phony election which most of the people of Bahrain have decided to boycott.
Nobody in the whole wide world believes what the regime says on this issue except the governments of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, a couple of other GCC potrntates and some experts in the United States State Department (okay, the latter pretend they do, like the lady in bed who only “thinks of England”).
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Corruption, ethnic cleansing, GCC, Human Right, Mercenaries

The Orwellian Glory of Bahrain? Khalifa and Winston Smith and O’Brien……………….

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                                           Glory of the nation? 
“Even amid the crackdown, officials insist that Bahrain remains a democratic country adhering to, in the words of Abdulla al-Buainain, a judge, the “rule of law.” (E-mails to the government information office and a public relations firm hired by Bahrain went unanswered.) But the frustration of Mr. Alderazi is evident across the kingdom. The most despised government figure for Shiites, Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the king’s 75-year-old uncle and the world’s longest-serving prime minister with four decades in office, has become the center of an attempt at a personality cult; his portraits adorn intersections. “Glory of the nation,” one describes him……… Most dangerous, though, is the exacerbation of sectarian hatred in a country that has never really reconciled the narratives of the Khalifa family’s long-ago conquest. No one claims that Sunnis and Shiites ever lived in harmony here. But the country stands as a singular example of the way venerable distinctions of ethnicity, sect and history can be manipulated in the Arab world, often cynically, in the pursuit of power. Programs on state-owned television like “The Observer” and “The Last Word” baited activists as traitors and encouraged citizens to inform on one another. ………………”

This over-ripe Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa has created a bipolar society on the island of Bahrain. For many years outsiders, especially Westerners, saw only what they were ‘directed’ to see. Or they saw what they wanted to see. They saw one Bahrain: cosmopolitan, open to foreign business, pro-Western, rulers and their elite retainers speak English, yadda, yadda, yadda….
They did not see “most” of Bahrain. The Apartheid system that kept a majority of the people oppressed. They did not see the kleptocracy that stripped the land the wealth of the small country. They did not see the imported foreign mercenaries from places like Pakistan and Jordan and Syria who helped repress and torture for a fee. Many preferred not to see, especially the British expatriates many of who openly sided with the despots this year, for a price.
I recall some Europeans get nearly teary eyed talking about the last Shaikh of Bahrain (before the son promoted himself to king), how he allowed Westerners free access to the beautiful beach at one of his palaces. Only Westerners, they emphasized: no Asians, no Arabs, no Bahrainis, not even Saudis! I recall that one German, only one European some years ago, who muttered that “you should go outside Manama and see the squalid Shi’a villages”.
Now they have created an Orwellian nation of native informers, just to help the foreign mercenaries keep things under control.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Egypt, ethnic cleansing, Gulf states, Humor, Occupied Bahrain, Persian-American Gulf

Bahrain Opposition, Jordanian Fondlers, About Moroccan Humor, GCC Potentates, etc………….

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“And they’ve given me a name
The call me the fondler, yeah the fondler
I feel around around around around around…..” The Fondler (Bob Rivers)

Bahrain’s main opposition al-Wefaq “Society” issued a statement saluting Jordanians who protested against their government sending troops and security agents and torturers to help repress the people of Bahrain. Jordan is a major source of “interrogators”, also affectionately and fondly called “fondlers” by some extremely non-affectionate potentates, to certain regimes of the Persian-American Gulf. Jordan is the second source of mercenaries into Bahrain, after Pakistan (and not counting Saudi occupation troops and the foreign mercenaries that the UAE potentates have sent). I am not sure this is a major reason for the Saudi idea of Jordan joining the GCC, but it must have helped. Al-Wefaq notes that imported mercenaries also include Syrians (most likely anti-regime) and Yemenis and Baluchis. (Bahrain’s potentates prefer Sunni mercenaries and they prefer them third-world hungry, unlike the Abu Dhabi potentates who prefer white Blackwater types, and Colombians, and Australians and White South Africans, etc).
I still stick by my “extremely educated” prediction that Jordan will never be a full member of the GCC. It ain’t gonna happen, even if the peoples of the GCC and Jordan are never allowed to vote on this issue (nobody i going to vote on this issue, not even the Moroccan people who are probably more ‘with it’ politically). Besides, my Gulf region needs humor more than anything else these days of grim Salafi ascendancy, and Jordanians are not exactly known for their sense of humor (if any), as I have been at pain to point out here. I don’t know much about Moroccan humor, I assume it is better than Algerian humor (probably no contest here). Both countries may become toothless meaningless “associate members”, just a way to save face for the Saudi potentates from the embarrassment of their desperate invitation.
From a point of humor, Egypt would be the best candidate. Egyptians are almost the only Arab people, nay the only Middle East people, with some sense of humor. Even the 30 years of Mubarak could not completely get rid of it, even decades of the growth of Salafi Wahhabism could not do it.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, ethnic cleansing, Gulf states, Human Right, Mercenaries, Saudi Arabia

The Battle of Bahrain, the Battle of Algiers…………

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“It’s become a nightly duel in Bahrain: Security forces and anti-government protesters waging hit-and-run clashes in one of the simmering conflicts of the Arab Spring. So far, the skirmishes have failed to gel into another serious challenge to the Gulf nation’s Western-backed monarchy after crushing a reform rebellion months ago. But there are sudden signs that Shiite-led demonstrators could be poised to raise the stakes again on the strategic island, which is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. Hundreds of demonstrators Wednesday made their boldest attempt in months to reclaim control of a central square in the capital Manama, which was the symbolic hub of the protest movement after it began in February. Riot police used buses to block roads and flooded streets with tear gas to drive back the marchers before dawn. Hours later, mourners gathered in a Shiite village in another part of Bahrain for a 14-year-old boy they claim was killed by security forces. Clashes flared until early Thursday across the oil hub area of Sitra before the boy’s burial. “Down with the regime,” chanted some of hundreds of people…………Bahrain remains the outlier of the Arab revolts. Its Sunni rulers have managed to hold their ground – and even tighten their grip with military help from neighboring Saudi Arabia……….”

It is not exactly a Battle of Algiers, mainly because the violence is decidedly one-sided. But it is as persistent as the struggle of Algeria, understandably so given that the same principles of equality and justice and freedom are at stake. And it is bloody, involves attacks on civilians and their neighborhoods, and midnight raids, and arrests, and torture, and threats of, and actual, assault on men and women. And so it continues, until the system of Apartheid is dismantled, the original constitution is restored, the foreign mercenaries and occupation forces sent packing. It is a tall order. A tough one for an island that is now effectively a Saudi province.

Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Corruption, ethnic cleansing, Human Right

Photoshop of Facts in Bahrain: Where the Buck Does not Stop…………

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““The situation has evolved because the king and certainly the crown prince are much more committed to the rule of law and human rights than other persons in the government and the Al-Khalifa clan,” he said in a phone interview late Thursday. “The mere fact that the king has appointed this commission and the Interior Ministry is cooperating shows me things have changed.” The investigation itself, he warned, cannot right relations between Bahrain’s rulers and its Shi’ite population, which says it is systematically denied access to land, housing and state employment on sectarian grounds. “This doesn’t address the endemic problems, doesn’t address the need for political change, for a new constitution, the economic disparities or the political division of Sunnis and Shi’a. All the underlying problems remain,” Bassiouni said. “That’s not going to solve the problems of power disparities between the Shi’ite population and the Sunni rulers, nor the feeling of injustice the Shi’a community has.”……… “What I have found so far is the extraordinary willingness of the minister to listen to anything we bring to his attention and act on it, whether it’s suspension of police officers, arrest of police officers, or release of detainees,” he said. “It leads me to believe that on his part there was never a policy of excessive use of force or torture…that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I think it was a case of people at the lower level acting ……………”

Perhaps Mr. Bassiouni is trying to goad the ruling family of Bahrain back toward serious negotiations, which would mean serious concession to the rights of the people. To do that he may be willing to “photoshop” some facts. It is a novel approach: in most other cases of abuse those at the top were, rightly, blamed. He is blaming some at the bottom, hard case to make an absolute oligarchy. Yet his “investigation” is just starting.
The fact that people were tortured, assaulted, killed is blamed on “lower level” people”. Perhaps Bassiouni can also blame it on the fact that many regime mercenaries speak no Arabic (mostly Urdu) or a different dialect of Arabic and could not properly communicate with their victims. Then he needs to explain why Bahrain’s official media, the BTV, was a bullhorn of sectarian and ethnic hatred for so long? And why so many mosques and religious structures were deliberately demolished? And did the Pakistani mercenaries accuse the protesting Arab people of Bahrain of being traitors and part of an Iranian plot? And did the foreign mercenaries invite the Saudi National Guard to invade and wreak havoc? And did the thugs (baltagiya) decide on their own to conduct organized systematic raids of people’s homes after mid-night? Does this mean we will be seeing trials of those responsible and court decisions? The toughest case will be to explain the regime’s appointment of an (alleged) former torturer to attend the failed “dialog”.
Cheers
mhg


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