Category Archives: France

Culture, France, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

The Prince and Contemporary Cultural and Intellectual Movements ………….

    

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“Defense Minister Prince Salman recently launched an academic chair for historical studies at King Saud University in Riyadh during a ceremony attended by intellectuals and academics in this particular field. Following a seminar organized by Dr. Noura Al-Asheikh, dean of the College of Arts and Community Service, Princess Hussa bint Salman spoke about her father and his penchant for history. Dr. Dalal bint Mukhallad Al-Harbi is one who received support to publish her book titled ‘Famous Women from Najd,’ which was published by King Abdul Aziz Foundation for Research and Archives in 1998, on the occasion of the Kingdom’s centenary.” Princess Hussa said Prince Salman’s thoughts were not at all isolated from contemporary cultural and intellectual movements………..”

Nope, the prince’s thoughts are not at all isolated from contemporary cultural and intellectual movements. Nor are the thoughts of the Grand Muftis Al at all isolated from contemporary cultural and intellectual movements. In fact there are unsubstantiated and non-credible reports that the old cleric was at one point an existentialist, hanging around Les Deux Magots in the old days with Sartre and de Beauvoir. Occasionally dabbling in Hegelian thoughts, holding court over coffee and rich buttery croissants, ogling les jeunes filles……
Those were the days.

(FYI: Dr. Noura Al-Asheikh and the Mufti Al Al Shaikh, and that other Minister Al Al Shaikh, among other potentates, are descendants of Shaikh Mohammed Bin Abdulwahhab. He was the founder of the Wahhabi sect and a close ally of the al-Saud. No relation to Mohammed Abdelwahab, the late great Egyptian musician and singer who was never a Salafi.)

Cheers
mhg


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France, Islamophobia, Racism

French Elections: Sarkozy Grows a Little Mustache, Halal Meat and Kosher Salt………..

 

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“Much of the press attention here has been focused on Sarkozy’s utterly shameless courtship of France’s xenophobic voters, most of them followers of the far-right National Front. In the debate with Fabius, Sarkozy said that France has too many foreigners, and repeated a proposal he had made to cut the annual number of legal immigrants almost in half. After National Front leader Marine Le Pen made the absurd suggestion that all meat in the Paris region was being slaughtered according to Islamic rules, known as halal, Sarkozy declared, with a straight face, that “the biggest concern of French people is halal meat.”…..…”


Francois Hollande is the Socialist Party candidate for the French presidency. He has been leading Sarkozy (Le Weasel) in most polls until recently. The right-wing are pushing him to make some appropriate anti-immigrant statements.
Nicholas Sarkozy (Le Weasel) has been moving to the right for about two years now. He started early with his own final mini solution for the European gypsies, deporting them en masse. Then he quickly targeted the naturalized French citizens, creating new laws that would punish them in ways different than what other French citizens face. He knows, of course, that most of these would not vote for his right-wing party. Now he is accelerating his shift. His ministers have been making statements about which segment of the population do not represent French ‘culture’, and you don’t have to be Geert Wilders to guess that one.
Now he is rumored by my unreliable source to be planning a printemps surprise on the French electorate: he will show up sporting a new little mustache. A mustache of the kind they haven’t seen in Europe for 67 years.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, France, Saudi Arabia, Syria

The Frustrated King and the Tragedy of Baba Amr………….

 

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The King of Saudi Arabia is apparently pissed at the Syrian opposition, especially the Free Syrian Army, for evacuating Baba Amr in Homs. The FSA said its withdrawal was “tactical”. Generalissimo Prince Khaled bin Sultan, the ‘hero’ who was trounced by the Huthi tribal militia in Yemen two years ago, snorted that “’Tactical’ my ass. That is what Napoleon said after Moscow. That is what Adolf said after Stalingrad.”


The King is reportedly upset that the FSA could not hold long enough for his own elite National Guard, now preoccupied in Bahrain, to blitz across some border into Syria and relieve the people of Homs. Burhan Ghalioun of the Syrian national Council announced in Paris (possibly from a corner table at Fouquet, corner of Champs–Élysées & George V) the formation of a Supreme Military Council to support the Free Syrian Army (FSA) now that it may be too late. He reportedly offered the job to Marshal Tantawi who declined, adding that he has enough trouble with his own Salafis and Muslim Brothers, and has no intention of taking on the Syrian version (or was it the Saudi and Qatari versions?)


Bashar al-Assad, meanwhile, told anyone who would listen that the fall of Baba Amr and Homs proves that he is still loved by the Syrian people (especially those his security forces have not killed, yet). He added: “They were willing to die for me…….. and for the immortal ideals of the Ba’ath Party, WTF that be“.

His wife, smarter than her husband which is the normal case for Arab leaders, reminded him not to cancel the offer on that old dacha of Brezhnev overlooking the Black Sea.

Cheers
mhg


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France, Gulf states, Human Right, Syria, United Nations International Organizations, US Foreign Policy

True Lies in New York: Syrian Hypocrisy Prizes at the UN ………..

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Watched the UN Security Council “debate” on the Syria resolution. A lot of hypocrisy and grandstanding on both sides:

  • No doubt the Syrian regime is killing many people, most likely not as many as the “opposition” claims and reporters like Anderson Cooper immediately accept and repeat. The number of 260 killed for today is most likely exaggerated.
  • (There I just said it: the Syrian opposition lies as the regime lies; no thunder, no lightening has struck me yet. Not yet).
  • First hypocrisy prize goes to the French ambassador. He waxed nostalgic and sad and shocked about the Hama massacre some thirty years ago, about those responsible. A reporter asked the Frenchy why one of the Assads responsible for Hama massacre 1980(1?) has been living free in France even as he talked bout it. His stupid response: “We are a hospitable country”, and a quick exit.
  • Second hypocrisy prize goes to U.S. ambassador Susan Rice, who said with a straight face that the United States government stands with the people of Syria as they seek freedom and democracy. The same U .S. administration that supports the repression in Bahrain and supplies the regime with tear gas and guns and armored vehicles for crowd control. She did not comment on the Saudi regime, which is as repressive, and would kill as many people if need be to stay in power.
  • Third hypocrisy prize goes to the British ambassador waxing indignant about repression in Syria and countries that enable it. Even while his own government has been supporting repression and killings and arrests by the Bahrain regime.

  • The Mother of all Hypocrisy prizes goes to the Arab League, which represents some of the most despotic regressive corrupt regimes on earth. Yet it goes to the UN with a resolution to deal only with the repression in Syria: not in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, etc, none of whose people chooses its regime. The Syrian ambassador made a silly remark about Saudi women not being allowed to attend football (soccer) games while their regime talks about human rights. He was right on that point.


One American academic suggested that maybe now (after the Russian and Chinese vetoes) the Arab League should think of intervening a la NATO in Kosovo. I tweeted my favorite retort: that the Arab League, especially on the military side, can’t organize a piss-up in a brewery (as some Americans would say) let alone a military campaign.
Cheers
mhg


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Anti-Semitism, Europe, France, Muslims, NATO, Turkey, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Texas Governor Talking Turkey: Muslims and Terrorism and NATO and Republican Turkeys and Old Hickory…….

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“Well, obviously when you have a country (Turkey) that is being ruled by, what
many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that
type of activity against their own citizens, then yes. Not only is it
time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to
be in NATO, but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their
foreign aid, to go to zero with it.And you go to zero with
foreign aid for all of those countries. And it doesn’t make any
difference who they are. You go to zero with that foreign aid and then
you have the conversation about, do they have America’s best interest in
mind?………..”

That was Texas governor Rick Perry talking Turkey, addressing a hall apparently full of cheering turkeys. Turks would be surprised to hear that their government is Islamic terrorist.
I wrote here once that the Hitler comparison should be banned by a United Nations resolution, and I was half serious. Now I expect Rick Santorum (and fellow right-wingers at AIPAC) to pick up the slack now and call Turkish prime minister Erdogan a new Hitler, thus joining Nasser and Saddam Hussein and Ahmadinejad in the pantheon.
Funny how Hitler was an Austro-German beer-drinking European from a Catholic background, yet Arab and Muslim leaders have the privilege of being exclusively compared to Hitler in the West. Someone like Andrew Jackson (Old Hickory himself) might object, feeling left out, his Trail of (Indian) Tears demeaned. Many Southern (post-Reconstruction) leaders, governors and “famous” U.S. senators, might feel left out as well. With Hitler’s charred remains still warm in Moscow, the French government of newly American-liberated France massacred thousands of Muslim Algerians who wanted either full equality with the white settlers on their land or independence. Europe of the EU is now full of new little leaders that might be carelessly called would be Hitlers, some of them partners in government (Netherlands and that very same Austria). They also aim their fear-mongering and venom toward people that are mostly Semitic. Again.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, France, Iran, NATO, Persian-American Gulf, Syria, US Foreign Policy

BHL d’Arabie: the Liberation of Syria and the Gulf………

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Speaking of the liberation of Syria, whatever happened to Bernard-Henri Lévy? The French pop-philosopher and liberator of Libya has not yet landed in Latakia to rally the opposition against the al-Assad regime. Actually Tartus would be a better spot for him than Latakia. He might be waiting for the opposition to establish their own ‘beachhead’, their own Tripoli (Libyan Tripoli not the Lebanese Salafi-Muslim-Brother Tripoli). Then he can sweep ashore, a la Douglas MacArthur. BHL d’Arabie, Lévy of Arabia!
Or maybe he has a more ambitious target in mind, maybe he is waiting or an opportunity to sweep the shores of the Persian-American (not yet French) Gulf. The liberation of Iran from the mullahs may be his next ambition: to bring down the theocracy and raise the flag or freedom, modernism, Wahhabism, and international oil companies. To drive the last Western nails, figuratively speaking, in the coffins of Mossadegh (nationalizer of oil) and Ayatollah Khomeini. For that goal, he can count on a small army of our Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood cheerleaders (only cheerleading, no fighting, not even puffy pompoms).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Culture, France, Human Right, Islamophobia, Muslims, Religion, Salafi

France’s Jeannette Bougrab: Why She May be Right about Islam and Christianity and Judaism and……………

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“La secrétaire d’Etat à la Jeunesse Jeannette Bougrab réagissait dans un entretien au journal Le Parisien aux succès électoraux des islamistes au Maroc, en Tunisie et en Egypte. Elle est elle-même d’origine algérienne, fille de harki, le nom donné aux supplétifs algériens de l’armée française pendant la guerre d’indépendance. “C’est très inquiétant”, a-t-elle déclaré. “Je ne connais pas d’islamisme modéré”. “Il n’y a pas de charia +light+. Je suis juriste et on peut faire toutes les interprétations théologiques, littérales ou fondamentales que l’on veut, mais le droit fondé sur la charia est nécessairement une restriction des libertés, notamment de la liberté de conscience“, a-t-elle ajouté………………”


She says there is no such thing as “Sharia-light”, that religious law leaves no room for freedoms. On some level she is right, of course: once you apply the religious laws, any religious laws, be they Muslim or Christian or Jewish, you are pushed to go ‘all the way’. Freedoms are inevitably restricted. Salafis and Muslim Brothers who say they will apply “limited” Shari’a are playing for time. Limited Shari’a is like limited ‘virginity’ or limited ‘death’: it doesn’t exist, doesn’t make sense (at least I don’t think so). Religion can be moderated on an individual level: you pray, you fast, you lead your life the way you want within the law. Once the state starts to apply the Shari’a, or the laws of the Old Testament, the Bible and the Talmud, then there is no moderation. This applies to Muslims and Christians and Jews. Americans, more than  all other Westerners, are still grappling with this now that Christianity has become part of Republican political platforms. Jews in Israel are trying to fend off an aggressive Jewish-Salafi onslaught on civic society.
In some places, Saudi Arabia and Iran, they are mixing up Caesar with God, usurping power, and in the Saudi case wealth, in the name of Allah. Caesar was deified after he died.
Cheers
mhg


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France, Israel

Israeli UN Diplomat Claims to be Wild and Free……

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“Israel’s ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor attended a luncheon for France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen “by accident,” his spokeswoman told AFP on Thursday. Prosor attended the event in honor of the far-right leader at the United Nations in New York. It was Le Pen’s first meeting with an Israeli official. Prosor’s spokeswoman Karean Peretz told AFP that the ambassador’s attendance was the result of a misunderstanding. She did not elaborate. The French newspaper Le Monde reported that Prosor told reporters before entering the event: “I am a free man.”……..”

And I say to all that: hey, you can take them whenever and wherever you can get them. It is just one right-winger meeting another. I mean it is not like he dined with the daughter of Goebbels or Goering. It only means that Mr. Prosor is wild and free, just like the ass of the proverbial nun in the famous joke.
Cheers
mhg


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Culture, Economics, France, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

French Right and American Right: a Never Requited Love…………….

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“Le Pen, who inherited leadership of the party from her father, has worked to shed the Front’s image as a racist fringe movement and move it more toward the mainstream, even as the French government itself tacks toward the right on immigration. All the same, she seems to be slipping in the polls after several weeks where it looked like she had a good shot at making the second round. It will be interesting to see what other U.S. politicians follow Paul’s lead and take the chance to meet with her. Even if GOP candidates might like her stances of immigration and Islam, they probably won’t see eye-to-eye on economics……….”

American right-wingers get excited about some French rightists, thinking they are of the same ideology of “no regulation, cutting taxes, eliminating the government, giving corporations a free reign”.
Yet the most right-wing French politicians often are to the left of the most liberal Democrat in the United States. Even Nicolas Sarkozy, once touted as a right-winger, is to the left of most Democrats in the US Senate in matters of economic policy, social programs, and especially health care. They are usually anti-immigrant and hostile to their Muslim compatriots, but they have no intention of ever gutting the social programs that the French people have come to enjoy, like retirement and an extensive public health program. In France, as in all of Europe and all industrial countries, health care is considered a human right, as it should be in the US as well. That is why American right-wingers usually keep their distance from their “leftist” French namesakes. That is why this courting will never get anywhere: besides it is unpatriotic and unseemly for a right-wing American Teabagger to be seen hobnobbing with someone with a French accent. It is just a ‘so un-American’ thing to do, possibly even anti-American in some quarters.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab League, Arab Revolutions, France, Libya, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Syria

Thwarted in Iraq, Buoyed in Libya: McCain Seeks a New Maysaloon in Syria……….

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“With NATO bombing of Libya set to end, U.S. Sen. John McCain on Sunday raised the possibility of some kind of military attack on Syria, where the government of Bashar Assad has been accused of brutally cracking down on protesters. “Now that military operations in Libya are ending, there will be renewed focus on what partial military operations might be considered to protect civilian lives in Syria,” McCain (R-Ariz.) said at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Jordan. “The Assad regime should not consider that it can get away with mass murder. Kadafi made that mistake and it cost him everything.” There was no immediate response from the Assad government, which has blamed “armed groups” for the violence that has swept the nation since mid-March. ……….. Still, there is a school of thought that an impasse has been reached seven months into the protest movement and some kind of foreign intervention may be the only way……….”

Foreign intervention? How about Chinese intervention? Or Iranian intervention? Are they as kosher as French intervention?  Maybe McCain will join Sarkozy in leading a new Battle of Maysaloon to retake Syria.


The French reneged (along with the British) on their promise to the Arabs under the Hashemites of Hijaz after World War I. The Brits installed Faisal as King of Syria, only to see the French invade and kick him out to Iraq. Later on, the British allowed Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi forces to invade Hijaz and annex it to their Nejdi kingdom. Jordan and Iraq were the consolation prize.
Cheers
mhg


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