Trump makes noise…..
Others claim holy money links with God……
Who is more dangerous?
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Category Archives: U.S. Politics
Donald Trump and the Pussycats: from Washington to Jerusalem……
Everybody has been following the debates, arguments, and food fights between Donald Trump and “others”. From his Republican rivals to the Pope to the Bush family to the Clintons and former Mexican leaders/oligarchs. He certainly does not back down from a fight, he usually doubles down. In the process, he calls his detractors and rivals some choice words (some of them well-deserved).
Tsk, tsk: politics were supposed to be served discreetly, like a slow Borgia poison, not so bluntly as a broadsword or Roman gladius.
Can you imagine Senator Mitch McConnell, majority leader, saying of a President Trump what he has been saying of President Obama for seven years? Trump would almost certainly call him what he exactly thinks of him: a pussy from Kentucky at best.
Can you imagine Israel’s Benyamin Netanyahu coming to a joint session of the U.S. Congress in order to openly sabotage American foreign policy as he did last year? A right-wing foreign leader? A President Trump would openly call for his deportation, adding the “pussy” and “liar” epithets as well.
Can you imagine a President Trump bowing down to some tribal autocratic kleptocratic prince? Or walking around holding his hand as Bush did in Crawford?
Can you imagine him politely, too politely, deferring to a foreign leader, be they Chinese or Russian or Middle Eastern?
This is not to endorse him or overlook the tools of bigotry he has been conveniently using against easy targets like Muslims, refugees, and desperate Latin workers that his own businesses probably hire. Cheap shots he takes, but that has become one tool of American politics these days.
As for the nonsense he utters about Obamacare and the Iran Nuclear Deal, it is just political posturing. The horse has already left the barn on these issues, as all Republican candidates know but pretend not to know.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Spelling Mediocrity: Hillary Clinton at the State Department………
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In this election season, it is natural and necessary to look at the record of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of States. Here is what I see:
Her record at State is mediocre at best. She did not manage to deal with the Arab uprisings effectively, and I suspect that she set the stage for worsening American-Russian relations and the re-emergence of the Cold War.
Her prediction of 2011 that Bashar al Assad has no place in Syria and will be out within weeks. Her support in 2011 for bombing Libya to aid the “rebels” and the premise that it will lead to democracy.
Soon enough, ISIS emerged within weeks in Syria, thanks to the Wahhabi ideology, money, weapons, and volunteers from “moderate” Wahhabi allies she courted and heeded. ISIS is now entrenched in Libya & other places, also thanks to the Wahhabi ideology, money, weapons, and volunteers from “moderate” Wahhabi allies she courted and heeded. She, and her aides, were not creative in both these important cases.
The Nuclear Deal with Iran would never have been reached if the hawkish Clinton was still Secretary of State. Possibly military action of some sort would have been initiated in the Persian Gulf.
I am not going to talk about Iraq and her repeating the Saudi mantra about Al Maliki and how if only he would leave. That was stupid as we can see that things got even worse now after al Maliki left…..
Her trade policies were a continuation of the mindset that created NAFTA a generation ago and pushed for the TPP deal last year. If she wins, don’t expect any changes in that regard.
As for Benghazi, Benghazi, well, that is/was a silly Republican opportunistic mantra that seems to have lost steam……
The point is: she was at best a mediocre secretary of state, and I am being generous here. John Kerry proved a superior secretary, and I wonder what could have been achieved if he had started in 2009…….
Dommage……….
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Republican Debate: Going Silly over Syria and the New Communist Crescent………
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So, Republican candidates met two nights ago for a debate. It was completely focused on foreign policy, and almost all of it on ISIS (DAESH), Syria, Iraq, and Muslim refugees. Oddly they ignored the huge gorilla that has been roaming within the American room for many years:
- In 1993, Wahhabi terrorists tried to blow up one of the World Trade Center Towers in New York.
- Then they blew up the U.S. embassy in Tanzania, killing and wounding .
- In the fall of 2000 the Wahhabi terrorists attacked the USS Cole in a Yemeni port, killing and wounding .
- In Sept. 2001, the Wahhabi Mother of All Terror Attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon killed almost three thousand Americans.
- Then came the attacks in Madrid, London, Bali, and Paris. Then the attacks in Kenya.
- Then they attacked in West Africa, Libya, and Egypt (The Russian Airliner), and inside Russian cities.
- Then the Wahhabi attacks on Shi’a mosques in Kuwait in 2015.
And the suicide attacks across Iraq since 2003. And the sectarian attacks on non-Wahhabi worshipers in Pakistan. - And the beheadings and burnings and mass killings of people of other faith in Syria and Iraq, those who are Shi’as, Alawites, Yazidis, Christians, etc.
- And the attacks in Boston and San Bernardino (2015).
- All driven by Wahhabi ideology and by Wahhabi volunteers and Gulf Salafi money.
So the Republicans met in Las Vegas and talked about what?
How better to ally the USA with the repressive tribal Wahhabi powers that theorized for and (still) finance and arm and man the terrorist groups. And the Turkish Caliph Erdogan who opened his borders to allow the Jihadists and their weapons to get into Syria. A couple of them bandied about something called “a Shi’a Crescent” that the silly humorless King of Jordan and the Wahhabi media have publicized, just to divert attention. You’d think Joe Stalin was back and eyeing the Middle East. The famously one-dimensional Senator Graham tried to out-Wahhabi the real true-blue Saudi and Qatari Wahhabis by demanding a re-invasion of Iraq.
Oh, and several of the Republican military service-evaders also promised to shoot down Russian planes over Syria, whether the Syrian people want them to shoot Russian planes over ‘their’ country or not. Whether the UN sanctions it or not.
A couple of them were more sensible, but the trend was toward showing ersatz muscularity and toughness overseas. At least over a Las Vegas microphone.
One saving grace: unlike the GOP debates of 2012, they did not all publicly and verbally kiss the posterior of Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu. In fact none of them did, except in denouncing the ‘international’ nuclear deal.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Fatwa on Donald Trump and the Republican Dilemma of Arab Princes………
It is no secret that most Arab princes and potentates would prefer a Republican administration in Washington. That is based on long-standing oil and other mutual business relations as well as on the warlike statements of Republican politicians toward Iran, Lebanon, and others. Most of them believe a Republican would have attacked Iran years ago, something the Saudis openly urged as the Wikileaks cables exposed, although George W Bush declined to do so. On several Middle East issues, they take the same stand as the Israeli Likud rather than the Obama administration.
Yet Mr. Trump presents them with a dilemma in the aftermath of the recent Wahhabi terrorist attack in San Bernardino. Actually even before that attack. You see, they don’t realize that he is unlikely to win the GOP nomination, and if he did he will not win the presidency. Americans have never elected to the presidency a gambling boss with a big mouth who is openly bigoted. Not in the past hundred fifty years anyway. And they are not about to do so now. So the princes worry about his Muslim-baiting and Nazi-like proposals on how to treat Muslims in the United States.
The potentates have not heard of my tweeted Fatwa that by March or April Mr. Trump will be back in the trash-bin of history or on reality TV (both, since he needs the money). They actually believe he has a chance of winning, and therefore they can’t afford to antagonize him. Hence their official silence from Riyadh to Doha and Abu Dhabi toward his outrageous, politically-motivated, public uttering against their faith.
Of course no U.S. president would do what Trump is proposing, nor would he in the prohibitively unlikely event that he is elected. But going public with such proposals eggs on many people into more violent Islamophobia, especially many Republican voters of the historic know-nothing inclination. In other words the Trump bullhorn makes those so inclined ever more hateful.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Lesson of the Jews: Should Muslims Cower after Every Wahhabi Act of Terrorism?……..
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Personally, I see that Muslims have been cowering these past few days in the face of public bigotry. I must add that I have noticed this “bigotry” only through the media, which tend to magnify the importance of every unusual position and statement. After all, the crimes of terrorism have been committed by a Wahhabi minority, and they have targeted Muslims and others. The Wahhabi terrorists no more represent Islam than the Trump bigots represent a majority of the American people.
We should remember what happened to the Jews of Europe, who also cowered as they faced open popular and official bigotry and were easily shipped like cattle to their deaths across a bigoted Europe. Bigotry needs to be condemned loudly and publicly, especially by its victims.
Cowering in the face of bigots gets you nowhere, just ask American blacks who have lived through the Old South (and much of the North). Muslims in the United States should condemn this Wahhabi terrorism, as they have mostly done, but they should also confront the noisy minority of bigots forcefully and publicly. While keeping in mind that this is an election season, and that is when the mutants come out…………
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Jizya: ISIS Tax Plan, Republican Tax Plan, Royal Tax Plan………
A new twist on the current, and perennial, political (not economic) tax debate in the USA:
Reports tell us that the Wahhabi Islamic States (ISIS or DAESH) has demanded the United States, as the leading Western power, should be ready to pay a special Jizya tax to their Caliph Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi. This Caliph was born Ibrahim Al Samarrai, so I assume Al Baghdadi is his married name, as they do in the West.
So he wants Mr. Obama to pay the old Islamic Jizya tax that used to be imposed on non-Muslim subjects partly in order to exempt them from military service. That tax used to have some logic to it: you can’t expect a Christian citizen, for example, to join an army that fought to convert other Christians to Islam. So maybe the U.S. Congress, under a new old leadership, will take up this new ISIS tax plan. Nothing like the promised miraculous “tax cuts and a strong defense and protecting social security and reduced deficit” plan they have been pushing. Should be fun watching C-Span. Should also be fun watching the Republican (and maybe the Democrat) presidential candidates take up the issue in their endless sound-bite “debates”.
The Saudi princes and other regional potentates, unlike ISIS, do not directly tax their people and businesses. They apply what I would call a princely (royal) tax on the whole country. The numerous Saudi royal princes get first cut of the oil revenues, for just being who they are, for the accident of birth. They also get to expropriate public land at will. In recent years they have been destroying ancient Islamic monuments and converting them into parking lots, half-empty shopping malls, and luxury hotels and apartments for local potentates and others from neighboring oligarchies.
Not a bad racket……….
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
Fatwa on Dynastic US 2016 Election ……….
My Fatwa for the US Election 2016?
Old Corporate Money vs. New Corporate Money = Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton
New Corporate Money Wins…….
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
[email protected]
Tale of Two Invasions: Threat to Texas, Assault on Yemen……….
“Amid unfounded, Internet-fueled rumors that U.S. Special Operations Forces might be trying to take over parts of the southwest, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered Texas State Guard forces under his control to keep an eye on the U.S. military during a large upcoming training exercise. The exercise is called Jade Helm 15…………..”
Texas has gone xenophobic. No, not towards Mexicans or even Muslims. Like Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, Texans now worry about a foreign invasion, but not by Saudis and their African mercenaries. Its worst nightmare comes from Washington, DC.
The U.S. military plans some exercises in Texas. Normally that would not cause any consternation in Tejas. Except that now the commander in chief is a blackish man who is a Democrat from Hawaii (by way of Illinois and possibly some distant shores as well).
Texas politicians, from governor on down, are making a lot of noise about a possible U.S. invasion of Texas. You’d think it is Mr. Putin marching into Ukraine. Imagine Mr. Obama as General Santa Ana, leading an army to reclaim Texas. But this is not new for embattled Texas: when they are not busy executing poorer convicts or keeping Mexicans out, Tejas officials are often concerned about a Yankee invasion from the north. It would be the third invasion from the North: the first one was by the immigrants of the Mexican province of Tejas before 1836, the second during the Civil War.
The previous governor even hinted at possible secession from the Union, now that Abe Lincoln is dead and buried for good by his own Republican Party. The party that has switched places with the Old Democrat Party of the CSA and Jim Crow and Dixiecrats.
Now about the assault and possible invasion of Yemen by a bought and fully-paid African-Saudi coalition………..
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
[email protected]
WTF Foreign Policy: Will Kansas and Mississippi Invade Iran?…….
“As the United States and Iran come closer to a historic nuclear deal, many US states are likely to stick with their own sanctions on Iran that could complicate any warming of relations between the long-time foes. In a little known aspect of Iran’s international isolation, around two dozen states have enacted measures punishing companies operating in certain sectors of its economy, directing public pension funds with billions of dollars in assets to divest from the firms and sometimes barring them from public contracts. In more than half those states, the restrictions expire only if Iran is no longer designated to be supporting terrorism or if all US federal sanctions against Iran are lifted – unlikely outcomes even in the case of a final nuclear accord. Two states, Kansas and Mississippi, are even considering new sanctions………….”
Several of these God-fearing fly-over states were happy when the US started shipping agricultural products to the Godless Communists of the Soviet Union. As were some other non-fly-over agricultural states on both coasts of the United States. That was years ago during the old Cold War.
Now it looks like many states, both fly-over and on the two coasts, right and left, have imposed their own ‘sanctions’ against Iran. It is not clear why this is so, since the US government has its own tough blockade. Since the Iranians never attacked Pearl Harbor nor the Twin Towers or the Pentagon, others did.
You’d think these local legislatures would be more concerned with ‘local’ stuff like economic growth, taxation, education, infrastructure, crime, racism. Rather than engaging in their own little cold wars. Could it be related to ‘political’ money and political clout from the Israeli lobby? Or could it be that they seek funds from ‘other’ sources? Could it be the effect of a new Israelite prophet of the extreme American Right and Evangelicals? All of the above? It could, it could.
I must admit my first reaction on reading the piece was an audible: WTF!!!!
My second reaction was: thank God Kansas and Mississippi (and California) don’t have long-range bombers and naval forces anywhere near the Persian Gulf.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
[email protected]