Bouthana Shabaan is a Terrible Person

Holy shit Bouthania Shabaan is a miserable human being.

 

Are you all familiar with her infamous speech a few years ago where she was horrified to hear that Arab Americans wanted her to talk about human rights and loosening of the government in Syria while the Israelis were commiting atrocities in Palestine.  God she is miserable 

 Anyway, she’s at it again with a response to the UNDP Report on the Arab World.  http://www.counterpunch.org/shaaban07292009.html

 

Here are some choice clips from Shabaan. 

Human beings remain the most precious capital, and education is the key to mobilizing
this tremendous asset. So, let us start with an open and candid discussion
of the condition of education…

  

I have an idea.  Stop University entrance preference to high school students who join the youth Baath Party club.  Stop cancelling classes and bussing students to “spontaneous” demonstrations.

 

 

Neither the UN report nor The Economist reports blame Western powers for…
the bloody intervention in Somalia

 

Bloody for the Americans you fucking retard.  We went there because Somalis were inflicting one of the worst modern era atrocities on each other.

 

They also avoid any mention of the tragedies of women
and children, the extremely bad condition of education in Palestine and
Iraq as a result of brutal occupation.

 

Are you fucking kidding me?  How about the tragedies of women and children everywhere else in the Arab world.  How about the Syrian personal status law which robs women of virtually any rights to their children in the event of divorce, and allows girls as young as 13 to be married off unconsenting?  How about leniant sentances for honor killings?  How about brutal harrasment everywhere?

 

But it is undeniable that the Arabs failed to do one essential thing — which is to build active institutions which areable to mobilize, regulate and organize the social, economic and politicalforces in their societies

 

Holy mother fucking shit fuck what the fuck?!?  Fuck!

 Shabaan, you and your cronies are quite literally the impediments to this kind of development in your own country.

Bibi is Hilarious

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/07/19/world/AP-ML-Israel-Palestinians.html?_r=1&ref=worldOn Sunday, Netanyahu told his Cabinet there would be no limits on Jewish construction anywhere in ”unified Jerusalem.” ”We cannot accept the fact that Jews wouldn’t be entitled to live and buy anywhere in Jerusalem,” Netanyahu declared, calling Israeli sovereignty over the entire city ”indisputable.” ”I can only imagine what would happen if someone suggested Jews could not live in certain neighborhoods in New York, London, Paris or Rome. There would certainly be a major international outcry,” Netanyahu said.

George “We’ve noted that here” Mitchell, ye I pity.

Just how close is Yemen to total collapse?

I don’t know, but the Yemeni opposition is screaming and yelling about the reach of the secessionists this article from al sharq al awsat http://www.aawsat.com/details.asp?section=4&issueno=11187&article=527597

For some reason their website doesn’t seem to allow for copying and pasting, but the JMP (or at  least the guys doing the talking)seems to be pretty unimpressed with the situation as a whole, and are calling for Salih to start kicking some secessionist ass. 

What happens if mass arrests really start in earnest?

This is One of the Stranger Things I’ve Read Today

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/07/14/78723.html

وقال اسلام شهوان الناطق باسم الشرطة المقالة انه “تم اكتشاف نوعين من المنشطات الجنسية تدخل الى قطاع غزة من خلال المعابر الحدودية مع اسرائيل، الاول على شكل لبان والثاني عبارة عن قطرات توضع في الفم او تضاف الى اي مشروب”.

In short, Hamas is accusing Israel of smuggling sexual stimulants, in pill and drop form, into gaza.

وتابع ان “احد الموقوفين قال انه حصل على كميات كبيرة من المخدرات من ضابط في الاستخبارات وباسعار رخيصة جدا لان الضابط اخبره انهم (الاستخبارات) لا يريدون نقودا وانما توزيعه بين الشباب”.
One of the Gazans arrested distributing the pills said he got’m from an Israeli intel officer on the cheap, cause the Mossad isn’t in it for the $$$.  They just want them doled out to Gazan youth.

I just wish this were true, because I’m having a field day imagining the planning for his operation.

Mossad Officer 1: Man Yossi, I’m really having trouble sleeping at night.

Mossad Officer 2: Why’s that Shlomo?

1: It’s really eating me up all the pain and suffering we caused in Gaza.

2: Yeah, me too.

1: Especially on the younger generation.  I just wish there was something we could do…

2: Hmmmmm.  Maybe there is…

1: What do you have in mind?

2: I’m never more at peace than when I’m taking some X and fucking some hoes.  Lets hook the highschool and college aged crowd up with some extacy. 

1: It’s the least we can do…

Seems like someone is losing it

I’m working to finish a miserable paper, so apologies for not posting. However, a few recent reports on Netanyahu caught my eye that suggests he’s really crossed the Rubicon into all-out neocon craziness.

Netanyahu appears to be suffering from confusion and paranoia. He is convinced that the media are after him, that his aides are leaking information against him and that the American administration wants him out of office. Two months after his visit to Washington, he is still finding it difficult to communication normally with the White House. To appreciate the depth of his paranoia, it is enough to hear how he refers to Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, Obama’s senior aides: as “self-hating Jews.”

Yes. Rahm Israel Emanuel is a real self-loather. How many weeks before Obama’s Jewish advisors get declared part of a new Judenrat by the Liknudiks and the settler movement?

I only mention Nazi terminology because it seems as if Netanyahu is already deploying it to defend the continued occupation of Palestinian lands.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the Nazi term ‘Judenrein’ in a recent meeting with the German foreign minister to condemn the Palestinian demand that West Bank settlements be removed, a confidant of the premier has said.

“Judea and Samaria cannot be Judenrein,” the confidant quoted the prime minister as telling Frank-Walter Steinmeier earlier this week.

Asked how Germany’s top diplomat responded to hearing the term used by the Nazis to refer to areas “cleansed of Jews”, the confidant said, “What could he do? He basically just nodded.”

There’s really not much to say once rhetoric like this is employed by the political leadership on a daily basis, except to say that I’m skeptical how long this current Israeli coalition is going to last if Obama sticks to his position on settlements.

Lastly, just to continue on the theme of media critique on this blog. You would think it would be newsworthy for American foreign correspondents to follow-up on these recent Israeli government statements (or allegations about personal views of the Prime Minister). However, I haven’t seen anything on the NYTimes website discussing any of this. Its as if only one side gets picked up for the racism, hate-speech, and actions of its leaders, while the vile statements or actions on the other side of the secuirty wall built upon Palestinian farm land friendship fence gets blocked by American media outlets.

Sarah Palin

So Palin’s stepping down from office.  No fucking way she’s doing this in ‘preparation for a presidential run’.  Bullshit.  Even if she felt she was going to lose in 2010 she’d just very publically announce she’s not running for re-election.

“Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional Lame Duck status in this particular climate would just be another dose of politics as usual, something I campaigned against and will always oppose,” she said.

And what the fuck does the above even mean? 

This is fishy.  Me thinks she fucked up somehow.  Badly.

Good for This Guy

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/world/middleeast/28westbank.html?ref=middleeast

In short, an Israeli plumber helps poor Palestinians in the Hebron area and is ridiculed by Israeli settlers and harrased by the IDF jeeps.

“The settlers keep the Palestinian farmers from their land by harassing them, and then after several years they say the land has not been farmed so by law it is no longer theirs,” Mr. Nawi said. “We are only here to stop that from happening.”

That is not the view of the settlers.

“He is a troublemaker,” asserted Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a spokesman for Israeli settler communities in the area. “It’s true that from time to time there is a problem of some settlers coming out of their settlements to cause problems. But people like Nawi don’t want a solution. Their whole aim is to cause trouble.”

I’ve spoken with Salafists(not takfiri murderers, just run of the mill salafists), and I’ve spoken with ideologically motivated Israeli settlers (as opposed to the majority who are financially motivated), and in my opinion the settlers are slightly ahead in the “bat shit insane outlook on life” meter.

I left Israel a few months back after conducting research there.  While I was in Israel I focused on the political dynamics of the settler movement.  Since I left I’ve ignored it because frankly it’s so despicable that reading about it puts me in a foul mood and there’s alot more interesting and important stuff happening in the Middle East.  Reading this article brought me back. 

These guys are FUCKING NUTS.  Period.

Here are some important quotes taken from Zertal and Aldar’s book, “Lords of the Land”

Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, one of the intellectual architects of the settler movement,

“The master of the universe has his own political agenda according to which politics here below are conducted.  Part of this redemption is the conquest and settlement of the land.  This is dictated by divine politics, and no earthly politics can supercede it.” 

Many of this guys disciples were some of the original settlers.  Some of them went on to help found Gush Emunim.  People who believe this stuff actually have influence in internal Israeli politics.  That is fucking insane. 

More from Kook,

“these borders… are ours, sanctified by divine holiness… It is not at all permitted to imagine giving up these lands.  This is a devine comandment that must be carried out on pain of death.” 

Rabbi Schlomo Aviner, the occupation of the West Bank is, “above the moral umane considerations of the gentiles to our land.”

Some other nutbag, “Zionism failed because it tried to make the Jewish people into what it is not-that is, a normal people, one people amongst the peoples of the world, and thereby make the land of Israel into what it is not, i.e. what every state constitutes for the people that lives in it.”

The gist of that being; Israel and the world had so indulge our settlements because of our religiously devinded perception of the world and the Jewish peoples place in it.

These people are bat shit insane.  They are a black eye to the state of Israel.  A lot of Israeli’s realize that. 

Something I found fascinating from “Lords of the Land”, (and I’m too lazy to find the line in the book so you’ll have to trust me that it’s there) immediately after the ’67 war the Mossad issued a white paper advising that Israel create some kind of Palestinian state in the newly annexed land ASAP.  In the face of Kook and others adulation at the newly aquired land the political establishment crumbled and discarded the suggestion. 

If only…

Hizballah Chalks Up Unrest in Iran to Western Meddling

Before the Iranian elections, many in the press were lauding what they percieved as democratic process unfoldin before their eyes in Iran.  How wrong they were.

I often feel the same way when people wax romatically about Hizballah being a democratic institution. 

Naim Qassem does a good job of showing Hizballah’s democratic colors with this quote,

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ikm_10atcC9AbuTY6ahreXHuXvlQ

“The extent of Western and American involvement in Iran’s internal affairs is now clear.  What is going on in Iran is not a simple protest against the results of the presidential election. “There are riots and attacks in the streets that are orchestrated from the outside in a bid to destabilise the country’s Islamic regime.”

This is an affront to all the Iranians who have bravely protested, been viciously beaten and in many cases killed by Basji thugs.  Honestly, what a despicable message from Hizballah.

Countering Counter-radicalization

Al Qaeda North Africa (AQNA) claimed responsibility for the murder of American aid worker, killed earlier this week in the Mauritanian capital, in an audio tape released two days after Leggett’s death.

Ostensibly, AQNA targeted the victim because he was alledgedly converting Muslims to Christianity.  However, I found this bit from an al-Jazeera article interesting, and perhaps quite revealing as to why AQNA decided to target Leggett.

http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A82A3821-8C5E-46C4-96EC-72BE8D5AFC3F.htm

يعمل القتيل لانغيس مديرا لمؤسسة “نورة لإنارة طريق الأمل والتنمية”، وهي منظمة غير حكومية تعمل في مجال تأهيل السجناء، ودعم التعاونيات الخيرية والاجتماعية.

The victim worked as director for the foundation “Illuminating the Path of Hope and Development” and NGO that works in professional education for prisoners and charitable and community aid.

This is speculation on my part, but it seems likely to me that this is an examply of AQNA countering counter-radicalization efforts.  A target recruiting demographic for AQ is prisoners who feel they have no hope of future upon their release.  The victim was giving prisoners training and hope for a better life.  Exactly the the things that AQ banks on an absence of when they attempt to radicalize recruits. 

The article went on to say that the victim, who prefered to be called Abu Ibrahim was well liked by locals.

One can only hope that actions like this by AQNA will only serve disenchant the local populace and farther isolate AQNA.

Obama on Mousavi

This is what Obama had to say about the difference between the policies of Ahmedinijad and Mousavi:

“The difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised. Either way, we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons. And so we’ve got long-term interests in having them not weaponize nuclear power and stop funding organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas. And that would be true whoever came out on top in this election.”

Andrew Sullivan lamented, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/the-mousaviahmadinejad-comparison.html

“Obama has been pretty great so far but his absurd conflation of Mousavi and Ahmadinejad was bewildering and offensive.”

What’s bewildering and offensive about this?  Mousavi is an old guard guy with ties to a variety of different oppressive organizations that are part of the Iranian political system.  He was vetted and found to be suitable to run for president of Iran.

What’s going on in Iran now is amazing.  It’s breathtaking.  That doesn’t mean the President of the United States has to get all doey eyed about a guy whos most radical campaign promise was to speed up privatization (a fantastic idea for Iran, but not exactly  calling for the end of wilayat al faqih) .

This may sound a little convoluted, but I have unlimited support for the courageous people demonstrating in Iran, and guarded support for Mousavi. 

He’s not the leader of a movement he started.  He’s found himself put as the figurehead of a bottom up movement.