Category Archives: Human Right

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Human Right, Libya

Colonel Gaddafi: the Libyan iPhone, the Arab iPad……..

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      BFF

News networks have been showing us macabre scenes of thousands of Libyans lining up, in long snaking lines, to see the mutilated body of their former dictator Colonel Qaddafi. Reminds me of the long lines of thousands of people in the United States of Europe who wait in line on the day a new iPhone or iPad comes out. No reports if any Libyans camped out overnight near the frozen food storage facility to be the first to see th  Islamistseir erstwhile leader. Meanwhile, the family of Mu’ammar Qaddafi have asked for his body, something they should be granted. Islam requires respect for the body of the dead, not mutilation and public exposure.
Meanwhile the Libyan people are waiting for their next leader(s): be they democrats, kleptocrats, or Islamists. Possibly a mix of all of the above with less of the ‘democrats’ and more of the kleptocrats and fundamentalists, if the ruling Arab potentates have anything to do with it. And the ruling Arab absolute monarchs are set to have a big say in what kind of government the Libyans will have: not a good start.
Cheers
mhg


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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……..”

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     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


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GCC, Human Right, Muslims, Persian-American Gulf, Religion, religious police, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Saudi offshore Tolerance Center in Vienna? What about Riyadh?………….

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      BFF

“Saudi Arabia and Austria are launching a Vienna-based inter-faith and tolerance center with the goal of promoting tolerance in Saudi Arabia. Many critics of the initiative have pointed out that the Gulf kingdom prohibits any religion from practicing in the country besides Islam and say the center is a futile attempt to support the country’s radical views. “Saudi Arabia is willing to financially participate in this project, and to place all its moral and political resources behind such a center, without infringing … on its autonomy or independence from any political interference,” King Abdullah told officials and reporters on the project……..……”

This is truly a joke of the week. Saudi Arabia is the most intolerant country in our galaxy. It has no citizen who is not a Muslim. It does not allow any other religion to be practiced. There are no churches, no synagogues, no temples, no pagodas, no ashrams. Bibles and Torahs and Hindu and Buddhist books are banned. Foreigners who practice their faith at home occasionally have their homes raided by the religious police (Committee for the Propagation of Vice). Santa Claus would be beheaded in a public square if he showed his jolly tubby self in Riyadh (so would Burl Ives). This is truly offshore tolerance: “stay tolerant in your country and we remain intolerant in our country”.
Not only that: they have spread their extremely intolerant Salafi ideology to other places that now have become intolerant. Pakistan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Malaysia, some half-witted Egyptians and Lebanese and Syrians. All that in addition to their Salafi and Muslim brotherhood “fifth column” in some of the GCC states of the Persian-American Gulf.
This whole public tolerance campaign is just a prepaid public relation stunt that reeks of bullshit. Spelling hypocrisy the Wahhabi way.
Cheers
mhg


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Death Penalty, Human Right, Saudi Arabia

Head-Chopping Absolute Reformers of the Arabian Peninsula……….

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      BFF

“The king of Saudi Arabia is once again making headlines for overturning a court ruling that sentenced a woman to ten lashes for driving a car. For many, this is further proof that King Abdullah is a force for moderation and reform. Fareed Zakaria, for example, has called the Saudi dictator a “man of wisdom and moderation.” Then again, the king could also have considered stopping the recent beheading of Abdul Hamid Al Fakki for the crime of “sorcery.” Instead, he chose to do nothing. While the residents of Salem in 1692 would be proud, modern pundits would do well to hold their praise for the monarch. Al Fakki was arrested in 2005 after he supposedly agreed to put a spell on a man to leave his second wife. In fact, Al Fakki was entrapped by a member of the Saudi religious police and reportedly beaten and coerced into a confession. The one-minute video of his beheading is surely one of the most horrific scenes I have ever witnessed………..”

The writer adds this link to the video of the beheading of the foreign “sorcerer”. Don’t watch it before dinner.
Cheers
mhg


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Egypt, Human Right, Saudi Arabia

Egyptian Prisoners, Saudi Prisoners, Saudi Lawlessness…………..

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      BFF

“Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday announced that Saudi Arabia had decided to free a number of Egyptian prisoners currently languishing in Saudi jails within the next few days. “There are only a handful of Egyptian prisoners in Saudi Arabia, divided into two groups,” said Ahmed Rageb, assistant foreign minister for consular and immigration affairs. “The first are those who received jail sentences for crimes committed. We can’t do anything about these, because they’re being treated according to Saudi law.” “Those in the second group, however, will be released before the end of October, in line with an agreement we reached with Saudi ambassador to Cairo Ahmed Al-Qattan,” added Rageb……..”

The first group of Egyptian “had received prison sentences and are treated according to ‘Saudi’ law‘” (they are lucky they were not beheaded). Then the “second” group, that will be released soon, was held for what? There is no explanation of why and for how long they have been held. Are they held according to Saudi lawlessness? I know many Saudi citizens are also being held according to the country’s lawlessness (no charges, no trials, no lawyers). Some of the Saudis have been held for months, some for years. The Egyptians may be more fortunate than many of the Saudis: they have a government that looks after their interests if they are arrested without charges. The Saudis have no one to look after their interests if they are arrested without charges (the U.S.  State Department wouldn’t dare).
Khaled al- Jehany has been held since March without a trace, without charges, others have been held for years. Saudi law is what the king and the princes decide since the courts are peopled by tame palace judges and clergy.
Wahhabi faux-liberals in Gulf media tend to overlook these ‘nuances’ of human rights in the region. But they probably have no choice.

Cheers
mhg


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

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

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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


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

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

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      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


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Human Right, Saudi Arabia

One Opinion on Saudi “Elections” of Royal Cheerleaders…………

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      BFF

“This experiment is not enough, though, because the citizens only elect half of the members of their local parliament. Furthermore, these bodies are not vested with important powers; they are more like advisory councils without any authority. Their benefit consists for the government and the regime in demonstrating to the West that certain democratic reforms are being carried out in Saudi Arabia, too……………Yes, that is exactly what is happening. They already did so during the first elections of this kind in 2005, and ended up profiting from this tactic. Back then they tried to demonstrate to those forces in the West that are exerting increasing pressure: We are organising a political ballot here and we have begun to lead the country away from dictatorship and toward political participation. But the Saudi people’s thirst for more far-reaching participation, for enforceable political rights and elected representative bodies with genuine powers, can likewise no longer be overlooked. The current local elections may have primarily a decorative character……….…”

He says that only half the municipal councils are elected and they are only ‘advisory’. He is the director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights (none of which exists) in Saudi Arabia (CDHR).
Like I said, when the princes all have to run for elections in order to become rulers of the various Provinces, when they have to be elected as “princes” then those will be real elections. Not for some toothless, non-binding advisory municipal cheerleading councils (okay, they probably don’t chant “rah rah rah, push ’em back, way back” but it is the same).
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Human Right, Iraq, Racism, Saudi Arabia

Sectarian Wahhabi Logic of a Saudi Mouthpiece………….

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“These words mean that the al-Assad regime is trying to win over the minorities by scaring them of the dangers posed by the majority. Yet the real problem here is not the al-Assad regime, but rather what the minorities themselves have done in our region; the Christians in Lebanon and Iraq, even the Shiites in Iraq and Bahrain, who are committing a grave mistake by sliding into the quagmire of supporting dictatorships, under the pretext that they will be protected against the majority. It is important here to repeat what I heard from a rational, liberal friend, who is far removed from sectarian views, about his reaction to the actions of minorities these days in our region. My friend’s opinion reflects the view of a substantial portion of the rational liberals in our region……….This is the mistake which befell the Shiites in Bahrain, and although they are not a minority in their own country, they are amongst their Arab surroundings. The same thing happened with the Shiites in Lebanon, given their surroundings, especially because they believe that there are embers [of an uprising] under the ashes in Iran…..” Asharq Alawsat (Saudi daily)

This from one of the chief editors of the semi-official Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat. His masters’ voice. He is blaming the people of Iraq for again not letting the remnants of the Ba’ath regime, those who would not even defend Baghdad against the invaders, maintain power. He is blaming the people of Bahrain for resisting the Wahhabi-inspired policy of discrimination and Apartheid applied by the Al Khalifa rulers. He is drumming up that old sectarian and racist nonsense that his Saudi masters and their paid Salafi agents and fifth columnists have used effectively around the Gulf. He is urging the oppressed people of Bahrain to co-exist with others, meaning that they should accept second class status under an unelected minority regime (he might add: worse than the one in Syria which is repressive and dictatorial but does not apply a policy of Apartheid).
He is also taking a swipe at Christians and a few other minorities in the Arab world, perhaps because they are not allied enough with his Wahhabi masters.
Cheers
mhg


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Anti-Semitism, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Human Right, Muslims, Qatar, Religion, Saudi Arabia

Yusuf al-Qardawi: ‘Pay as You Pray’ Anti-Semitic Shaikh of Islam……………

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Yusuf Al-Qardhawi represents some of the worst aspects in a certain class of Islamic clergy. He is a loud demagogue, and his dogma is quite flexible, depending on who wants him to be flexible. Which makes him, like the rest of us, inconsistent. That flexibility presumably comes at a price. He supported the uprising in Egypt toward the end. He supported the uprisings in Libya and Syria after the fact and especially after his Qatari masters started supporting them. He is against any uprising in Bahrain and has said so, and certainly in Saudi Arabia, for the same obvious reasons. Some might say that is because the Saudis and Qataris can pay him well, better than anyone else can.

Some of his opinions can be found on his website, but only some of them. Others he would not revisit, like his pro-Nazi ranting about Hitler being the instrument of God to punish the Jews. He opined that Hitler was part of God’s punishment of Jews and expounded on how Jews are enemies of God and how they exaggerate the Holocaust. All these anti-Semitic remarks within two minutes in this video.
Cheers
mhg