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Tuesday 31st January 2012
Jonathan Jones in The Guardian:"This is one of the most brilliant exhibitions the British Museum has put on – and certainly the most confrontational, in its enthusiasm for a religion regularly represented in the British media as violent and extreme. Its power lies in the way it brings together history and archaeology with contemporary images and stories (even plane tickets are included) to give an immediate, graspable sense of religious experience. Liberal-minded non-Muslims, who are more than happy to admire Islamic art, may be challenged by what is a forthright celebration of Islamic belief itself, an argument for the beauty of Islam as a religion. Following the exhibition's reconstructions of the great pilgrim routes, you are led to your destination – an attempt to recreate the intense experience awaiting pilgrims at Mecca, where no one can say they have performed the Hajj until they have completed a series of exhausting and arduous ceremonial activities."
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Tuesday 31st January 2012
I toured it with a non-Muslim friend. He was as fascinated as I was to see how pilgrimages undertaken hundreds of years ago compare to those of today, where modernity and tradition meet, and the beauty of Islamic art, found in everything from milestones to water bottles.
This exhibition gives us a new window not just on to Islam, but on to modern London too.
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Tuesday 31st January 2012
Peter Aspden in the Financial Times:"The show has demanded new presentation skills of the museum. Whereas the objects from its collections normally tell the story with sufficient eloquence, there is more to say here. 'We have tried to evoke the feeling of being there,' says Venetia Porter, the exhibition’s curator. As you enter the corridor to go into the show, you are 'accompanied' by photographs of pilgrims and recordings of incantations. 'They are saying, ‘I am here,’ ' says Porter. The aim is to create, or at least hint at, the ecstatic relief of a spiritual journey ended".
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Thursday 02nd February 2012
George Monbiot, The Guardian: "These power-damaged people have been granted the chance to fulfil one of humankind's abiding fantasies: to vaporise their enemies, as if with a curse or a prayer, effortlessly and from a safe distance. That these powers are already being abused is suggested by the mendacity of those who are deploying them. The CIA, which is running the undeclared and unacknowledged drone war in Pakistan, insists that there have been no recent civilian casualties. So does Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan. It is a blatant whitewash. As a report last year by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism showed, of some 2,300 people killed by US drone strikes in Pakistan from 2004 until August 2011, between 392 and 781 appear to have been civilians; 175 were children. In the period about which the CIA and Brennan made their claims, at least 45 civilians have been killed. As soon as an agency claims "we never make mistakes", you know that it has lost its moorings..."
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Wednesday 01st February 2012
Inayat Bunglawala, New Statesman: "Back in June 2011, the Daily Mail published a column by Melanie Phillips in which she described ENGAGE as an "extremist Islamist group" and claimed that they were funded by the government. As I pointed out to the Leveson Inquiry, Mel P has a very particular worldview. She is on record for repeatedly suggesting that the "litmus test" for deciding whether someone is a "moderate Muslim" is whether they "'understand that fundamentally Israel is the victim in the Middle East." I suspect most sane people would happily fail her 'litmus test'."
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Thursday 05th January 2012
Jean Herskovits, NYT: "... the news media and American policy makers are chasing an elusive and ill-defined threat; there is no proof that a well-organized, ideologically coherent terrorist group called Boko Haram even exists today. Evidence suggests instead that, while the original core of the group remains active, criminal gangs have adopted the name Boko Haram to claim responsibility for attacks when it suits them. The United States must not be drawn into a Nigerian “war on terror” — rhetorical or real — that would make us appear biased toward a Christian president. Getting involved in an escalating sectarian conflict that threatens the country’s unity could turn Nigerian Muslims against America without addressing any of the underlying problems that are fueling instability and sectarian strife in Nigeria."
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Tuesday 10th January 2012
David Trilling: "When people read a news website, they don't usually imagine that it is being run by a major producer of fighter jets and smart bombs. But when the Pentagon has its own vision of America's foreign policy, and the funds to promote it, it can put a $23 billion defense contractor in a unique position to report on the war on terror. Over the past three years, a subdivision of Virginia-based General Dynamics has set up and run a network of eight 'influence websites' funded by the Defense Department with more than $120 million in taxpayer money. The sites, collectively known as the Trans Regional Web Initiative (TRWI) and operated by General Dynamics Information Technology, focus on geographic areas under the purview of various U.S. combatant commands, including U.S. Central Command.
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Tuesday 17th January 2012
"My dear brothers, please remember that the Prophet (peace be upon him) himself had to endure a lot of suffering. This is nothing compared to what he faced during the siege at Shib-e Abu Talib. As we have decided to follow in his path, we have to face difficulties. Please don’t worry about us – think about the country, about the people of the country, about the Islamic way of life..."
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Wednesday 18th January 2012
Ravi Somaiya & John F Burns in the New York Times: "The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday that Abu Qatada, a radical Islamic preacher regarded as one of Al Qaeda’s main inspirational leaders in Europe, cannot be deported from Britain to his native Jordan because his trial there would be tainted by evidence obtained by torture....Aides to Mr. Cameron said that when the prime minister travels to Strasbourg next week to address the Council of Europe, which oversees the court, he will map out British proposals for limiting the court’s powers to overrule the findings of the domestic courts of European Union states. One idea that has gained support among British critics of the European court is a 'democratic override' to allow national parliaments to annul court rulings on some issues, including those that affect national security".
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Friday 20th January 2012
The Guardian reports: "The judge-led inquiry into the UK's alleged role in the torture and rendition of detainees after the 9/11 attacks, already boycotted by most human rights groups, has been scrapped by the government...Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a commander of anti-Gaddafi forces, and Sami al-Saadi saidthey were tortured after being returned to Libya in a joint US/UK operation. These new investigations would have further delayed the start of the Gibson inquiry."
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Friday 20th January 2012
John Pilger in the New Statesman: "Since the Second World War, the United States has:
1) Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of them democratically elected.
2) Attempted to suppress a populist or national movement in 20 countries.
3) Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
4) Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
5) Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
In total, the United States has carried out one or more of these actions in 69 countries. In almost all cases, Britain has been a collaborator. The 'enemy' changes in name - from communism to Islamism - but mostly it is the rise of democracy independent of western power, or a society occupying strategically useful territory and deemed expendable, like the Chagos Islands..."
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Monday 23rd January 2012
Haaretz: "The owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Andrew Adler, has suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu consider ordering a Mossad hit team to assassinate U.S. President Barack Obama so that his successor will defend Israel against Iran. Adler, who has since apologized for his article, listed three options for Israel to counter Iran’s nuclear weapons in an article published in his newspaper last Friday...."
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Tuesday 24th January 2012
Sameer Rahim in the Telegraph: "Last Friday the novelist Salman Rushdie pulled out of a planned appearance at the Jaipur literary festival in Rajasthan, India citing specific death threats made against him...The case grew murkier on Saturday when the director-general of the Mahrashta police (in charge of dealing with the Mumbai underworld) denied any knowledge of a plot: "When we had no information that gangsters or paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld had planned to eliminate Mr Rushdie,” he told The Hindu, 'how could we have shared it with anybody?' ”
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Thursday 26th January 2012
Jonathan Laurence in the NYT: "...Over the next 20 years, Europe’s Muslim population is projected to grow to nearly 30 million — 7 to 8 percent of all Europeans — from around 17 million. Granting Muslims full religious freedom wouldn’t remove obstacles to political participation or create jobs. But it would at least allow tensions over Muslims’ religious practices to fade. This would avoid needless sectarian strife and clear the way for politicians to address the more vexing and urgent challenges of socioeconomic integration"..
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Thursday 19th January 2012
Mark Perry in FP:"A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran....Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives -- what is commonly referred to as a 'false flag'operation...".
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Wednesday 14th December 2011
Agora website: "One of Paris’s most prestigious theatres was being protected by riot police and guard-dog patrols on Thursday after it became the latest target in a wave of Catholic protests across France against so-called “blasphemous” plays....The head of the Théâtre du Rond-Point on the Champs-Elysées complained of death threats in the runup to Thursday’s premiere of the play Golgota Picnic by the Madrid-based, Argentinian writer Rodrigo García. Two men reported to have links to fundamentalist Catholic groups were arrested at the weekend while attempting to disable the theatre’s security system...Civitas, a lobby group that says it aims to re-Christianise France, has called for a large, peaceful street demonstration 'against Christianophobia' this weekend."
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Tuesday 01st November 2011
Ed Vulaimi, CommonDreams.org: The former chief prosecutor for the US government at Guantánamo Bay has accused the administration he served of operating a "law-free zone" there, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the order to establish the detention camp on Cuba. Retired air force colonel Morris Davis resigned in October 2007 in protest against interrogation methods at Guantánamo, and has made his remarks in the lead-up to 13 November, the anniversary of President George W Bush's executive order setting up military commissions to try terror suspects. Davis said that the methods of interrogation used on Guantánamo detainees – which he described as "torture" – were in breach of the US's own statutes on torture, and added: "If torture is a crime, it should be prosecuted."
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Sunday 18th December 2011
Reprieve website: "Lawyers for the son of a victim of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan have written to the British Foreign Secretary, asking him to clarify what the UK’s policy is on providing intelligence used by the US in its ‘targeted killing’ campaign. Leigh Day & Co, acting on behalf of Noor Khan, whose father was killed earlier this year in a drone strike on a jirga – or council of elders – in North West Pakistan, have asked William Hague to provide answers to key questions on how far the UK assists the US in its drone strike programme. Several reports have stated that British intelligence agencies have provided information on the whereabouts of alleged ‘militants’ targeted by the CIA’s illegal campaign, which has resulted in the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians...Clive Stafford Smith, Director of legal action charity Reprieve, said:'CIA drone strikes are killing huge numbers of civilians and destabilising Pakistan. The British people have a right to know what their country’s policy is regarding our involvement in this illegal and disastrous campaign'.”"
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Monday 09th January 2012
John M Owen, NYT: "Political Islam, especially the strict version practiced by Salafists in Egypt, is thriving largely because it is tapping into ideological roots that were laid down long before the revolts began...Liberalism in 19th-century Europe, and Islamism in the Arab world today, are like channels dug by one generation of activists and kept open, sometimes quietly, by future ones. When the storms of revolution arrive, whether in Europe or the Middle East, the waters will find those channels. Islamism is winning out because it is the deepest and widest channel into which today’s Arab discontent can flow.
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Thursday 13th October 2011
Liam Fox's unofficial adviser Adam Werritty was warned by MI6 that his interventions in Iranian politics risked jeopardising British diplomacy in the Middle East....The Foreign Office confirmed for the first time that Mr Gould had spoken to the two men while Dr Fox was a Shadow Defence spokesman and before Mr Gould was appointed to Tel Aviv last year. Dr Fox has already been censured for inviting Mr Werritty to a meeting with Mr Gould when he was Defence Secretary.
Mr Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran and has made several visits. He has also met senior Israeli officials, leading to accusations that he was close to the country's secret service, Mossad.
Related Links
Liam Fox scandal & BICOM
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Sunday 16th October 2011
Pepe Escobar in Asia Times Online: "To believe that a Mexican drug cartel would invest in a troublesome political hit in the US capital expecting to collect a bundle of opium (from "liberated" Afghanistan) is also a non-starter. But the picture changes if one considers the benefits for the Mujahideen-e-Kalq - the fundamentalist, terrorist organization that wants to bring down the Islamic Republic. Or the possible benefits for a ghostly al-Qaeda in terms of creating a three-way-war involving Washington, Tehran and Riyadh. There's also the Israeli false flag option. Apart from the fact that the plot does look like an American Israel Public Affairs Committee wet dream delivered to Holder on a silver plate, the Israel lobby in Washington as well as assorted Zionists would love nothing better than to rally alongside a causus belli established in Washington itself, leading perhaps to a US strike of some sort against Iran without direct Israeli involvement...." ..."
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Monday 31st October 2011
Basheer Al-Baker: "It seems that King Abdullah must now quickly support a series of important changes. His first order of business is to appoint a new defense minister to replace Sultan, who held the position since 1962. This is difficult for several reasons. The first is that the ministry has virtually been the fiefdom of the prince for 50 years. He is the only decision maker in a ministry whose budget is half the annual budget of the country. Most of the defense budget is spent on foreign arms deals, of which the US always has the lion’s share....He has to put an end to the endemic corruption, particularly evident in its commissions policies. Some of these commissions have become international scandals, such as the Yamama arms deal in 1985, which cost Saudi Arabia US$86 billion. The British press revealed in 2007 that the commission on the deal reached US$2 billion and that the main negotiator for the Saudi side was Prince Bandar, son of Prince Sultan. Worse yet, the Saudis speak of billions of dollars which go to Prince Sultan and his sons from the purchase of weapons...Even if the king succeeds in all of this, there is widespread concern among Saudis today that Prince Nayef may soon become king. A Saudi source says that the general atmosphere in the country now is fraught with anxiety...Some predict that Nayef’s reign will be such that the brewing discontent in the kingdom will come to the surface, thus opening a new period of unrest".
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Tuesday 15th November 2011
AP reports: "German police arrested a new suspect Sunday following the discovery of an extremist group believed to have killed 10 people in what the country's top security official called 'a new form of far right terrorism'...Prosecutors suspect the group, which was discovered only last week, of having murdered eight people of Turkish origin, one Greek national and a German policewoman over the past decade. .German news weekly Der Spiegel reported the group in the DVDs also claimed responsibility for a 2004 attack in Cologne with a small bomb filled with nails that left 22 people injured, mostly Turks. "
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Sunday 27th November 2011
Richard Norton-Taylor in the Guardian: "The army's former chief legal adviser in Iraq has accused the Ministry of Defence of moral ambivalence and a cultural resistance to human rights that allowed British troops to abuse detainees and beat the Basra hotel worker Baha Mousa to death...Mercer's advice on how British soldiers should treat prisoners was repeatedly ignored. Instead, he was effectively suspended – "sent into the wilderness," as he puts it. After the abuse of many Iraqi detainees, the deaths of others in the custody of British troops, and millions of pounds spent on compensation to Iraqi families – all of which, he says, could have been avoided – he was vindicated in 2009 by the supreme court, which upheld the advice Mercer had given six years earlier: that British troops occupying a foreign country were bound by the Human Rights Act..."
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Friday 09th December 2011
Quds Press, Cairo: "Egypt's Foreign Ministry has confirmed that the UN General Assembly has adopted two new resolutions submitted by Egypt regarding nuclear disarmament and the danger of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East...The second resolution put forward by Egypt on behalf of the Arab bloc and adopted by an overwhelming majority of the General Assembly, warns of the dangers of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and stresses the need for Israel to sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."
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Sunday 25th December 2011
Joseph Dana in the National: "Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza celebrated the return of their loved ones last Sunday as the final wave of prisoners were released in an exchange between Hamas and Israel. However, one prisoner was notably absent. Marwan Barghouti, the jailed Fatah leader known by many Palestinians as the "prince of resistance", remains behind bars in Israel despite promises from the Palestinian leadership that his freedom would be secured through the exchange of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. On the eve of the prisoner swap, Barghouti released a 255-page book, written secretly behind bars and smuggled out via lawyers and family members, detailing his experience in Israeli jails....Despite his vocal support for the two-state solution and attempts at reconciliation with Israeli civil society, Barghouti has remained a puzzling and aggressive figure for Israel"
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Saturday 07th January 2012
Gili Cohen, Haaretz: "Israel’s military rabbinate released an educational document ahead of the holiday of Hanukkah last month, featuring a photo of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount without the Dome of the Rock, Haaretz...The photo was featured in a packet prepared by the Military Rabbinate issued to Israel Defense Forces bases ahead of Hanukkah, under the section titled 'The Festival of Jewish Heroism,' which included an article and a quiz on the Jewish struggle against Hellenistic rule."
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Tuesday 11th October 2011
Anna Davis in the Evening Standard: "Education Secretary Michael Gove stopped eight schools sending pupils to a Palestinian literature festival. Mr Gove challenged headteachers in Islington and Haringey to justify why they planned to participate in the event, run by a branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. As a result none of the schools attended the Tottenham Palestine Literary Festival over the weekend. Former children's laureate Michael Rosen was among those who took part....Vivian Wineman, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, told the Jewish Chronicle: "I can think of few organisations which would be less appropriate to run a workshop in a school than the PSC."
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Monday 24th October 2011
Daud Abdullah writes in The Guardian: "The "exposure" of the former special branch officer Bob Lambert comes at a convenient time: it can serve as a distraction from the scandals that have engulfed the neocon tendency in the government. Lambert has been a staunch critic of the government's Islamophobic rhetoric and exclusivist policies. This, to a large extent, explains the excitement that has greeted disclosure of information about Lambert's past career among certain people....Recently, the home secretary detained and issued a deportation order against Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the Islamic movement in Israel. Lambert was one of the expert academics who testified against the order in court and spoke about his work in countering anarchy and terror on our streets. In his characteristically balanced statement he acknowledged the work of the Community Security Trust, the group that lobbied the home secretary, in combating fascism. But, he pointed out that their analyses on Israel lacked balance and objectivity."
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Monday 24th October 2011
InstitCivitas has called for a national day of protest against a blasphemous theatre production on Jesus
Réjouissons-nous de constater que dès la première représentation de ces spectacles obscènes et blasphématoires à Paris, l’indignation des chrétiens se manifeste avec dignité et fermeté et néanmoins sans excès, malgré tout ce que peut écrire une certaine presse spécialisée dans la désinformation. Jeudi comme vendredi, des jeunes gens issus de mouvements divers ont démontré qu’une belle jeunesse pouvait se coaliser pour défendre l’honneur du Christ à travers une grande réaction spontanée qui s’étendra, je l’espère, de jour en jour.
Que cet élan encourage le plus grand nombre à participer à la manifestation nationale contre la christianophobie, ce samedi 29 octobre à Paris.
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Wednesday 26th October 2011
Anas Al-Takriti: "...Not only has the West misunderstood and misread the Arab region, its people, cultures and religions over the past 90 years since the end of World War I, it continues to largely misunderstand, misread and grossly underestimate the Arab world and its people even at its most spectacular hour...A Eurocentric view emerged over the years regarding the potentially terrifying prospect of an Islamic state; The Sharia-based political structure has often been described as male-dominated, authoritarian, dogmatic, and hostile to its neighbours and the West. Yet, the discourse of Islamic movements during the revolutionary phase and in the run up to elections has been anything but."
Related Links
Peter Oborne in the Telegraph: ...We must not repeat the mistakes of the past.
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Thursday 03rd November 2011
The BBC reports, "French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo has named the Prophet Muhammad as "editor-in-chief" for its next issue to mark the electoral victory of Islamist party Ennahda in Tunisia...The cover of the next issue, which comes out on Wednesday, shows Muhammad saying '100 lashes if you are not dying of laughter'...In 2007, the French magazine's then editor was acquitted of insulting Muslims by reprinting cartoons of Muhammad which had originally appeared in a Danish newspaper two years previously.
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Tuesday 08th November 2011
Richard Peppiat in the Independent on Sunday: "Record numbers of young, white British women are converting to Islam, yet many are reporting a lack of help as they get used to their new religion, according to several surveys....While other major religions have established programmes for guiding new believers through the rigours of their faith, Islam still lacks any such network, especially outside the Muslim hubs of major cities....Another finding revealed by the Leicester study was that despite Western portraits of Islam casting it as oppressive to women, a quarter of female converts were attracted to the religion precisely because of thestatus it affords them."
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Wednesday 09th November 2011
The Guardian: "..., this month, the "Put Babar Ahmad on trial in the UK" e-petition, secured its 100,000th signature, thereby crossing the mark required to trigger a parliamentary debate. Backed by a handful of celebrities, including comedian Mark Thomas and boxer Amir Khan, and a few dozen British mosques, the Ahmad e-petition is one of only five so far to have attracted more than 100,000 signatures (but little press coverage)...So will MPs, especially those Conservatives who have been so exercised by our perceived loss of sovereignty to the European Union, now use this opportunity to denounce the very real loss of sovereignty to the US on the issue of extradition and champion the cause of a British citizen on the floor of the Commons?"
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Friday 11th November 2011
Al Jazeera : A court in India has found 31 people guilty of killing 33 Muslims in a single house during severe religious and communal riots in the state of Gujarat in 2002..A court in India has found 31 people guilty of killing 33 Muslims in a single house during severe religious and communal riots in the state of Gujarat in 2002. Modi, who is seen by many in the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party as a future candidate for prime minister, denies all accusations about his handling of the riots and has never apologised for the violence.
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Saturday 19th November 2011
Helen Pidd & Luke Harding in the Guardian: "Police investigating a German neo-Nazi terrorist group have discovered a hitlist of 88 possible targets, including two prominent members of the Bundestag and representatives of Turkish and Islamic groups...According to Spiegel Online, investigators discovered the list during inquiries into the activities of the so-called National Socialist Underground (NSU), which is suspected in a string of terror attacks in Cologne and Düsseldorf from 2000-2004. The number 88 is significant, corresponding in the alphabet to HH, or Heil Hitler...On Tuesday, the Hessen branch of the domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or BfV, admitted one of its agents had been present in April 2006 when two members of the NSU shot dead a 21-year-old Turk in an internet cafe...Following the discovery of the terror cell's base in the quiet town of Zwickau, near the Czech border, the German government is under pressure to explain how the group managed to murder undetected for so long."
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Wednesday 23rd November 2011
Paul Goodman in ConservativeHome: "Eric Pickles and Sayeeda Warsi are battling to win control of the first-ever Government initiative to tackle anti-Muslim hatred - which is due to be launched this week as part of a new Coalition integration policy....The tussle between Pickles and Warsi raises questions about which Ministers have charge of the initiative, the nature of the new council, and who represents British Muslims - if anyone....The Foreign Office has overhauled Labour's Engaging with the Islamic World programme. The Education Department has a new counter-extremism unit. And above the whole structure sits Downing Street.."
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Wednesday 23rd November 2011
George Bush and Tony Blair have been found guilty at the symbolic Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal of committing "crimes against peace" during the Iraq war. An initiative by Malaysia's former premier Mahathir Mohamad, the ruling came after a two-year investigation and four-day hearing. The tribunal is also expected to later hear torture and war crimes charges against seven others, including Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney...
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Friday 25th November 2011
"More than any other country, Israel, must adapt to the new political climate in the region. Israel's well-being will depend on an honorable peace with the Arabs. Such a fair and honorable peace cannot be achieved by merely imposing Israel's own terms on the others. In the past, Israel was able to deal with the Arab leaders. But, history has repeatedly taught us that a true, fair and lasting peace can only be made between peoples, not ruling elites...Sooner or later, the Middle East will become democratic, and by definition a democratic government should reflect the true wishes of its people. These democratic governments cannot afford to pursue foreign policies..
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Thursday 01st December 2011
Report from Middle East Monitor (MEMO): "On 25 June 2011, the celebrated Palestinian social, political and civil rights leader, Sheikh Raed. arrived at London's Heathrow airport at the invitation of the independent media research MEMO. The purpose of his visit was to take part in a widely publicised ten-day programme of speaking engagements across the UK. During his visit, Sheikh Raed was scheduled to address the British public and parliamentarians on issues related to the Middle East and the plight of Palestinians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Three days into his trip, Sheikh Raed was arrested and detained by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) and then told that he would face deportation."
An investigation into what happened, the role of lobby groups and the legal challenge
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Saturday 03rd December 2011
Mark Malloch-Brown in the Guardian: "...I always noticed that Iran was an issue on which the US and others tended to defer to British views because, unlike Washington, we had our embassy, our own listening post. We were better informed. But that privileged position also carried the seeds of its own undoing as it fed a real suspicion of Britain in Iran. We were seen as the Americans' proxy, doing their business – and in the eyes of many Iranians, particularly in the regime, no doubt spying for them...More troublingly, you do not have to be an Iranian with a persecution complex to concede that Britain has not used its privileged knowledge of Iran to particularly good effect. It has been a loyal camp follower of a narrow American diplomacy..."
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Sunday 04th December 2011
Victoria Brittain in the Guardian: "Eighteen years after the Lawence murder, the case of Babar Ahmad may be poised to trigger another, equally explosive outcry into the institutional racism and Islamophobia that have allowed him to remain in a high security prison in Britain for more than seven years fighting extradition to the US. The Crown Prosecution Service has refused to prosecute him for the crimes that the US alleges he has committed here....Only last week it was revealed that the police, with extraordinary laxity, in 2003 sent material gathered from his house to the US, without showing it to the Crown Prosecution Service. Along the way, the Home Office, and regrettably some MPs, have failed to see the huge resonance of this case for Britain."
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Wednesday 07th December 2011
Matthew Cassel in CommonDreams: "...The thousands of police dressed in full riot gear and armed with teargas, rubber bullets, batons, electric tasers – all of which were used against protesters and journalists – were everywhere around Miami.The 'model', as Miami public officials called it at the time, was the brainchild of police chief John Timoney....Now the Miami model is coming to Bahrain. The Associated Press reported on Thursday that Timoney has been hired by the kingdom's interior ministr,"as part of reforms, following the release of a report last week by a government-sponsored fact-finding commission".
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Thursday 08th December 2011
M K Bhadrakumar in atimes.com:"The easy thing to do is to blame the Taliban. But Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid quickly condemned the "wild and inhuman attack by our enemies, who are trying to blame us and are trying to divide Afghans by making such attacks on Muslims". The Taliban blamed the "invading army" for the attacks, referring to the foreign troops in the country....Pakistan would be a great loser if Afghanistan descended into sectarian strife and the weakening of the Pakistani position in the Afghan endgame would help the US. In sum, US interests are, paradoxically, very well served in the current scenario if sectarian tensions escalate in Afghanistan and Western troops become the only really credible provider of security. That is to say, any number of forces could be interested in indirectly buttressing the US's regional strategies. "
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Sunday 11th December 2011
David Kirkpatrick, NYT: "The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group whose political party is leading in parliamentary elections here, on Thursday accused Egypt’s interim military rulers of attempting to undermine the legislature’s authority and interfering in the writing of a new constitution. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party said it was withdrawing from an advisory council being formed by the military leaders, saying that the military was trying to give the new council a major role in writing the constitution....The military council’s new plan and the Brotherhood’s response mark the beginning of a new round in an escalating conflict between the two sides — the military, Egypt’s most powerful institution, and the Brotherhood, its strongest political force — over the drafting of the Constitution and the military’s future role."
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Friday 23rd December 2011
Rana Khazbak: "Sheikh Emad Effat, who was killed at the age of 52 on Friday by military police with a gunshot to his heart, was a revolutionary Islamic scholar who affected the lives of hundreds of students he tutored and taught at Al-Azhar Mosque and Dar al-Iftaa, the Muslim world’s premier institution for legal research. Effat was killed in Tahrir Square when military police violently cracked down on a sit-in by the cabinet building. His family and students suspect that he may have been targeted because of his criticism of the ruling military council and, most importantly, due to his last fatwa, which forbade voting for parliamentary candidates associated with the Mubarak regime and former members of the dissolved National Democratic Party."
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Tuesday 27th December 2011
Guardian, quoting APP: "More than 100,000 people have rallied in support of the Pakistani cricket legend and opposition politician Imran Khan in the country's biggest city, Karachi, further cementing his status as a rising force in politics...Khan's rising popularity could be a concern for the US, given his harsh criticism of the Pakistani government's co-operation with Washington in the fight against Islamist militants. He has been especially critical of US drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan and has argued that the country's alliance with Washington is the main reason Pakistan is facing a homegrown Taliban insurgency."
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Wednesday 28th December 2011
An Israeli weekend television program told the story of how Naama had become terrified of walking to her elementary school here after ultra-Orthodox men spit on her, insulted her and called her a prostitute because her modest dress did not adhere exactly to their more rigorous dress code...Orthodox male soldiers walked out of a ceremony where female soldiers were singing, adhering to what they consider to be a religious prohibition against hearing a woman’s voice; women have been challenging the seating arrangements on strictly “kosher” buses serving ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and some inter-city routes, where female passengers are expected to sit at the back.
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Friday 30th December 2011
Simon Jenkins, The Guardian: We can suppress a yawn at David Cameron's sermon on Christian values and Ed Miliband claiming the Helmand army is making Britain "secure, peaceful and happy". More troubling is the foreign secretary, William Hague's, declaration on Facebook of a Christmas ambition to increase "international pressure on Syria, push Burma in the right direction, improve the situation in Somalia, and protect women's rights in the Middle East" among other uplifting goals...None of the areas of Hague's concern had anything to do with Britain, let alone being within Britain's sovereign domain, nor have they been for over half a century. The power has gone. The legitimacy has departed. Only the language of implied command echoes through the Foreign Office's post-imperial dusk.
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