Tag Archives: politics

Qatar – Accusations Denied – Region Opaque

24 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Last week, possibly after reading posts like this one on BackChannels — and as each BackChannels post suggests, there are many sources for aggregating data, Germany’s minister for development aid accused Qatar of aiding in the funding of Abu Bakr al-Baghdaddi’s Islamic State, albeit possibly without a shred of independent state-obtained (and held) evidence or intelligence.

This week: oh, what an embarrassment!

And that any should even think such a thing!  Perhaps somebody’s feelings have been hurt.

http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2014/08/24/qatar-denies-funding-extremist-islamic-state-group – 8/24/2014.

And yet . . .

How may any one state or defense organization of states audit another except by accepting declarations up front — while operating agents, perhaps, and again, “behind the curtains”, the same so convenient to the making of private agreements best kept private?

While often referring to the Islamic Small Wars as “wars for detectives and poets” — for intelligence sleuths and language experts — I’ve noted the same also pit the despotic against the democratic and the mendacious against those with great integrity — and at the end of a human day, not an ISIS day, integrity secures trust where power merely secures a vacuous obedience.

Qater’s royalty may well have taken a position looking westward and in the direction of peaceful cultural polyphony, but Qatar, no different than any other state featuring great wealth, may have also its outlaw elements: “Reports show that Qatar most recently seized nearly 75 percent of narcotics that traffickers were trying to smuggle here from South America” (reference published 9/17/2013).

Good for Qatar as regards that interdiction, but it brings up the question of how much criminal activity benefiting the terrorist fronts of Islam(ism) passes through the state, and, being presumably innocent of so many charges, how is it so much unwanted focus has come to rest on its name?

This post started not with Doha’s refuting Minister Mueller’s remarks but with alternative press agitprop in the form of a video.  Reference to proofs of terrorist funding from West Point, the CIA, The Washington Post?

Call them “poofs” — thin air.

Vanished.

Searching up “Qatar” via the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point: I found no specific report.

From The Washington Post three days ago:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/some-see-qatars-hand-in-collapse-of-gaza-talks/2014/08/21/7febabac-28f6-11e4-8b10-7db129976abb_story.html – 8/21/2014.

Today, the Post ran the AP’s article relaying the refutation by Qatar of any alleged Qatar-and-terrorism-funding connection.

Veteran journalist Christopher Dickey played the matter this way back in June:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been publicly accusing Saudi Arabia and Qatar of funding ISIS for months. Several reports have detailed how private Gulf funding to various Syrian rebel groups has splintered the Syrian opposition and paved the way for the rise of groups like ISIS and others.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html – 6/14/2014.

Accusations are not evidence, of course.

However, there remains with Qatar a certain discomfort borne of privilege, privacy, and the possession of serious money that may be getting loose  — shall I add the 😉 😉 ? — from known controls.

A Congressional Research Service report that showed up in search conveyed this note similar to the bank charge of 2009:

The U.S. State Department has characterized Qatar’s counterterrorism support since September 11, 2001, as “significant,”16 but noted in its August 2011 report on terrorism issues that U.S. officials “continued to seek improved cooperation and information sharing” with their Qatari counterparts.

The 2012 State Department report (released in May 2013) stated that “Qatar’s monitoring of private individuals’ and charitable associations’ contributions to foreign entities remained inconsistent,” (see below) and noted that the Qatari government “maintained public ties to Hamas political leaders.”17

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL31718.pdf – 1/30/2014.

So somebody’s holding out — ” . . . U.S. officials “continued to seek improved cooperation and information sharing” with their Qatari counterparts” — or is at least lazy about transparency involving security-related intelligence.

In light of the 2009 indictment of the Doha Bank for flubbing the record on billions of dollars of business in New York City, the fact that in 2012 Qatar’s monitoring of ” . . . contributions to foreign entities remained inconsistent” seems also telling.

We’re approaching the end of 2014 — the start of the 4th quarter is today less than a month away — and perhaps it’s time for Federal and independent research updates on Qatar’s sincerity or vigor as regards anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering policy and performance.

The Gulf state is home to exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and is a key financial patron for the Gaza Strip, which Hamas controls.

Qatar denies financially backing Hamas, however, and has sought to play a role in brokering a truce to end fighting between the group and Israel.

http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/qatar-denies-backing-islamic-extremists-despite-hosting-hamas-leader/ – 8/24/2014.

Doha denies supporting the hardline ISIS insurgents who have overrun large parts of Syria and Iraq and who this week sparked global outrage with the release of a video showing the beheading of US journalist James Foley.

A spokeswoman for Mueller’s ministry said he had merely “referenced press reports” and had made “no concrete allegations”.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/08/22/Germany-regrets-minister-s-claim-on-Qatar-ISIS-funding-.html – 8/22/2014.

*

German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared to distance herself from the allegation too on Sunday.

“The IS militias are very, very well-equipped financially without, as far as I know, being directly supported by any state,” she said in an interview with ARD television.

http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2014/08/24/qatar-denies-funding-extremist-islamic-state-group – 8/24/2014.

Four days ago:

“This kind of conflict, this kind of a crisis always has a history … The ISIS troops, the weapons – these are lost sons, with some of them from Iraq,” Mueller told German public broadcaster ZDF.

“You have to ask who is arming, who is financing ISIS troops. The keyword there is Qatar – and how do we deal with these people and states politically?” said Mueller, a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the center-right Bavarian sister party of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.

Mueller did not elaborate and presented no evidence of a Qatari link to Islamic State.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/20/us-iraq-security-germany-qatar-idUSKBN0GK1I720140820 – 8/20/2014.

This abomination of a country has been ruled by the Al Thani family for almost 200 years (according to the CIA Worldbook). Among other things, the family owns and controls the Al Jazeera Media Network. In size it is the world’s 166th country. It has a nominal population of slightly over two million, of which 75% are between 25 to 54 years of age. In other words, it is an aging population with fertility significantly below replacement.

This is the banker to the world of terror – Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Boko Haram and more. They tend to pay more attention to Sunni organisations than to Shia. I say “more attention” but they have no problem funding Hezbollah and Syria, as well, just more quietly.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/20/the-bankers-to-the-terrorists/#ixzz3BKiuqMvB

“Hamas has been able to get away from its crimes thanks to support and sponsorship it receives from Qatar,” Prosor said on Monday as he spoke with reporters in New York outside a UN Security Council meeting on the Gaza conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Prosor-Qatar-will-soon-be-second-largest-sponsor-of-terror-371475 – 8/19/2014.

Additional Reference

http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/22/weapons-banking-drugs-and-slavery-financing-terrorism-creatively/ – 8/22/2014.

*

http://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/ex-mi6-chief-cites-isiss-saudi-qatari-donors/ – 8/5/2014.

Related:

http://www.mrctv.org/videos/former-british-intelligence-chief-speaks-substantial-and-sustained-saudi-funding-isis – 7/9/2014.

*

Saudi Arabia is furious at Qatar for its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and reportedly wants Qatar to expel two prestigious think tanks – Brookings Doha Center (BDC) and the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute (RQPI) – from the country.

http://www.thinktankwatch.com/2014/03/threats-to-close-brookings-rand-in-qatar.html – 3/20/2014.

*

To date, only a handful of Qatari nationals have been found to participate in
extremist-inspired activities in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, and the State Department evaluates the threat of indigenous terrorism as low in Qatar. The Embassy is aware of pockets of dissatisfied elements with extremist tendencies among Qataris and some expatriates here, but these elements do not appear linked or organized in ways that constitute a serious threat.

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05DOHA1657_a.html – 9/29/2005.

*

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have fined Qatar’s Doha Bank – New York branch a $5m civil money penalty. According to FinCEN and the OCC, the bank’s branch in Manhattan – USA was engaged in high-risk services accompanied by lack of adequate anti-money laundering controls which led to the failure to report $7.4bn-worth of suspicious transactions in a timely manner. The OCC penalty order (PDF) states that the enforcement action was based on AML “deficiencies and violations” that occurred at the branch during the period between May 2004 and January 2007.

http://www.acc-co.com/content.asp?ContentId=598 – 4/23/2009.

Related:

Money laundering in Qatar is not a major issue. The financial sector is strictly monitored by the Central bank. In order to best protect itself from money laundering, Qatar signed the Anti Money Laundering Law on September 11, 2002.

http://www.bankersacademy.com/resources/free-tutorials/347-aml-qatar – n.d.

*

Related on this blog:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/08/21/qatar-terrorist-refuge-and-financial-platform/ – 8/21/2014

Update November 25, 2014

Apart from cash advances to terrorist entities, the Qatari government seems to be directly involved in other activities, notably the shipping of planeloads of arms to Libyan jihadists. These shipments include a C-17 cargo plane carrying weaponry to a militia loyal to a warlord who had fought alongside Osama bin Laden; arms supplies to the jihadist coalition that now controls Tripoli after the launch of Operation Libya Dawn, and some $3 billion and 70 planeloads of arms to rebel forces in Syria.

Private fundraisers who coordinate donations from individual or corporate donors in Qatar are never detained or subjected to restrictions in Qatar, a privilege that means the transfer of considerable sums to al-Qaeda, Islamic State, Hamas, Jabhat al-Nusra and other Syrian Islamist groups.

The U.S. Treasury has given details of terrorist financiers operating in Qatar.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4898/qatar-terrorism – 11/22/2014.

# # #

As Regards ISIS: On Video — TWI’s Michael Knights and Michael Eisenstadt

22 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Regions, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

“In this new video series, Washington Institute experts assess the current state of military operations in Iraq and evaluate Abadi’s ability to extricate his country from deadlock, defeat, and disintegration.”

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/confronting-isis-and-the-future-of-iraq-video-series – 8/21/2014.

From the looks and sound of the productions, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (TWI) has launched a DIY-AH (do-it-yourself-at-home) effort to promote its fellows’ analyses.  May the TWI powers that be give them an upgrade in audio-visual recording technology.

What follows is an incomplete relay of the series, but in the way of the web, whether the viewer starts out with e-mail (as I did) or on TWI’s web page or YouTube, all routers lead back to some kind of primary media content.

Of course, if you heard it from me first — after I’ve heard it from them — in the older fashioned way of news, good!

“They are very good at using psychological operations to very quickly establish the sense that they control areas, putting up their flags on all key administrative buildings, cross-roads, wide visibility locations, and they’re very good at pursuing what they want in the mergers and acquisitions model of growth whereby they ruck into an area and immediately try to recruit the most like-minded insurgent group in the area to become part of ISIS.”  (1:28 – 1:59).

“First, you can’t address the ISIS threat in Iraq, without addressing the ISIS threat in Syria. Secondly, you can’t address the ISIS threat in Iraq and Syria without addressing the foreign fighter problem. And third, the U.S. really cannot “solve” the region’s problems, because they are rooted in issues of religious and political identity and legitimacy, and this is a problem that can only be worked out among Muslims themselves. ” (2:18 – 2:41)

My “big picture” thought, which might make sense of an $11 billion arms sale): what ISIS scours Qatar will devour.

One day.

However, there are many days between this day and that one, and the Ummah, bloodied from Afghanistan to Yemen, has been pushed by the ambitions and behaviors of its own subscription into a larger global conversation about rightful power, despotism, barbarism, and democracy.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/08/21/qatar-terrorist-refuge-and-financial-platform/ – 8/21/2014.

# # #

Qatar – Terrorist Refuge and Financial Platform

21 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal lives in Qatar, and today Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas is to meet him in Doha.

Is it even news?

What follows is about an hour’s worth of “scraping” across various searches containing the terms “Doha”, “Qatar”, “banking”, “financing”, “terror”, “terrorism”, “Hamas”, “Mashaal” – like Adolph, he’s achieved last name status — “funding”, etc.

The reportage underscores the idea that the Middle East Conflict has been sustained by an anti-Semitism that has its end the supersession of Islam, the same story that paved the way for Hitler’s adaptation of German Christian eschatology into the construction of the Nazi program of genocide that became the Holocaust.

Different talk?

Same walk.

Perhaps the question for Washington and the American public at large should be, “How did all this money and confusion get into our America the beautiful?”

Although Saudi Arabia has pledged $100 million to anti-terrorism activity, the sectarian Sunni vs Shiite competition nonetheless plays through the politics.  There’s simply an awful lot of cash in the pool, and the pool would seem as dirty as it can be.

For the day, perhaps for its long history of shady banking and association with well known promoters of Islamic terrorism, Qatar perhaps deserves greater focus and increased scrutiny as a state-sponsor of terrorism, and if not for direct financing then for allowing or enabling indirect financing of the same criminality under its (therefore incompetent) auspices.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have fined Qatar’s Doha Bank – New York branch a $5m civil money penalty. According to FinCEN and the OCC, the bank’s branch in Manhattan – USA was engaged in high-risk services accompanied by lack of adequate anti-money laundering controls which led to the failure to report $7.4bn-worth of suspicious transactions in a timely manner.

http://www.acc-co.com/content.asp?ContentId=598 – 4/23/2009

Related four years later:

“The core disconnect between Washington and these two countries on the issue of terrorist financing stems from their unique political dynamics and security calculations, which drive them both to allow some local fundraising channels for foreign extremist and other groups. These dynamics also determine the extent of Kuwaiti and Qatari cooperation with America’s counter-terrorist financing agenda. Accordingly, Washington should not expect substantive changes in their approach to terrorist financing unless a shift occurs in some aspect of these basic calculations.”

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-terrorist-funding-disconnect-with-qatar-and-kuwait – 5/2/2014.

Though you wouldn’t know it from visiting Qatar Islamic Bank’s web site, because they choose not to disclose their Shariah advisory board there, the chairman of the bank’s Shariah Advisory Board is none other than Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a man we have referred to in the past as “Creepy Qaradawi.”

http://www.shariahfinancewatch.org/blog/2010/10/04/qatar-islamic-bank-wins-bank-of-the-year-award-at-the-arabian-business-awards/ – 10/4/2010.

Related, four year later:

“Responding to reports that the Egyptian-born Qatari cleric had been sent to Tunisia or Yemen, Al Qaradawi said on his official Twitter and Facebook accounts that he has spent over 53 years in Qatar preaching, calling and writing about Islam “without anyone telling me before what to say, what not to say or why are you saying that.”

http://dohanews.co/al-qaradawi-debunks-rumors-deported-qatar/ – 4/20/2014.

Recently, a group called the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) raised about $6.5 million in Qatar. The group is led by Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, a top Muslim Brotherhood cleric who calls himself the “Mufti of Martyrdom Operations.” He never shies from supporting Hamas and suicide bombings and got into a bit of hot water in 2009 when he said that the Holocaust was a judgment upon the Jews from Allah. He prays that the Muslims will deliver the next judgment. In November, the IUMS declared that Muslims must “revive the duty of jihad in all its forms” and prepare for the destruction of Israel.

http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/americas-friend-terror-funding-qatar – 5/20/2014.

In the 1990s, Doha was among the most active “financiers” behind the separatist rebellion in Chechnya. It sent money to local militants and trained Arab terrorists who participated in attacks on the Russian Army in the North Caucasus. When the rebellion was put down and peace began returning to Chechnya and the Arab “mujahedin” were almost completely destroyed, Qatar’s Emir provided a refuge for Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, “president” of the self-proclaimed Republic of Ichkeria and his many supporters, providing them with benefits and even government jobs.

http://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/qatar-state-sponsor-of-terrorism/ – 6/4/2013.

Cited Source:

http://orientalreview.org/2013/05/23/qatar-is-funding-international-terrorism/comment-page-1/ – 5/23/2013.

Most notably, Qatar, a longtime U.S. ally, has for many years openly financed Hamas, a group that continues to undermine regional stability. Press reports indicate that the Qatari government is also supporting extremist groups operating in Syria. To say the least, this threatens to aggravate an already volatile situation in a particularly dangerous and unwelcome manner.

With new leadership in Doha, we remain hopeful that Qatar – a country that in other respects has been a constructive partner in countering terrorism – will continue to work closely with us to oppose and combat those who adhere to the warped and murderous ideology of Hamas and al-Qa’ida.

http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl2308.aspx – 3/4/2014.

Qatar, no less than any other person or state, cannot have it both ways, and the remarks by the Treasury Department’s Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, David Cohen, do little to inspire confidence in change.  In fact the excerpt from his speech fits well within this collection of cited material in that even a subjective researcher’s haul actually reflects what is immediately available through the search engines: the headlines are simply NOT screaming, “Qatar cleans up banking, expels Khaled Mashaal, exiles Quaradawi” or some such.  The drift appears quite opposite of that.

While Hamas tactics directly orchestrate the murder of children in Gaza and in Israel (it’s certainly attempted by the hour), the bankers and royals of Qatar comfortably keep company with fellow billionaire Mashaal.  They’re living large, and Gazans have been made to live very small because of them.

The Clinton Foundation and the terror group Hamas share a key donor: The government of Qatar, a leading backer of terror groups that has emerged in recent years as Hamas’ chief financial lifeline.

Qatar, which has been designated by the State Department as a “significant terrorist financing risk,” has pledged more than $400 million to Hamas since 2012 and has long harbored one of the terror group’s senior leaders, Khaled Mashaal.

At the same time, Qatar has sought to curry favor with elite Westerners, donating between $1 million and $5 million through 2013 to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-foundation-hamas-share-major-donor/ – 7/11/2014.

Apaches and Javelin defense systems are heading off to Qatar as part of our wonderful relationship with the terror-sponsoring nation that also happens to share close ties with Hamas and Al Qaeda. The weapons are valued at $11 billion.

http://www.independentsentinel.com/obamas-11-billion-arms-deal-with-terror-sponsoring-nation-of-qatar/ – 7/22/2014.

“Qatar is a very strange place. They rely on the U.S. for protection and invest heavily in the U.S.,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), noting that the U.S. has its largest Mideast airbase—Al-Udeid Air Base—in Qatar.

“[But] at the same time, just miles away from [the airbase], you can find the head of Hamas (Khaled Mashal), and there was even a Taliban embassy there for a while too. All of these things make for a foreign-policy anomaly,” Schanzer told JNS.org.

http://www.jns.org/latest-articles/2014/7/25/gaza-conflict-spotlights-role-of-qatar-the-hamas-funding-us-ally#.U_XzEsVdV8E= – 7/25/2014.

It’s getting harder and harder to deny that Doha and Ankara, two long-standing allies of the United States, are full Hamas partners.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/04/hamas_s_bffs_turkey_qatar_israel_gaza – 8/4/2014.

HAIFA, Israel – The latest ceasefire between Israel and Hamas ended Friday morning when Hamas resumed its costly campaign of rocket attacks on Israel even as its 2 million constituents suffer from wrenching poverty.

Although the millions of Palestinians packed into the small strip suffer from chronic unemployment, and lack of electricity and running water, Hamas and its backers such as Qatar have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on tunnels and rockets with one goal in mind: killing Israelis.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/08/08/hamas-backers-spend-fortunes-on-rockets-and-tunnels-while-gazans-live-in-misery/ – 8/8/2014.

“Qatar has three Knesset seats for terrorism,” Kariv said, according to Israel Hayom.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/08/18/israeli-arab-knesset-members-visit-hamas-funding-qatar/ – 8/18/2014.

“There will be no return to negotiations in Cairo before we have ensured favorable circumstances that will force the enemy to meet the demands of the Palestinians.”

Mashaal said that the Palestinians’ top demand was the lifting of the blockade on Gaza

http://www.timesofisrael.com/mashaal-hamas-defiant-after-assassinations/#ixzz3B2DFDgVG – 8/21/2014.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will meet Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and the emir of Qatar, in Doha Thursday, according to sources in Ramallah.

http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Abbas-to-meet-Mashaal-Qatar-emir-in-Doha-371720 – 8/21/2014.

Related Reference

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/08/20/German-minister-accuses-Qatar-of-financing-ISIS-.html – 8/20/2014.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html – 6/14/2014.

http://cnsnews.com/video/cnsnews/former-british-intelligence-chief-speaks-substantial-and-sustained-saudi-funding-isis – 7/9/2014.

Dickinson, Elizabeth.  Playing with Fire: Why Private Gulf Financing for Syria’s Extremist Rebels Risks Igniting Sectarian Conflict at Home. Saban Center, Brookings, December 2013.

Addendum – 8/24/2014.

Qatar – Accusations Denied – Region Opaque

Either the state has been maligned, the state is lying in some part, or the state hasn’t control of its wealth or revenue throughput.

Every time out on this perilous blog brings insight into the fast mediated conflict environment.  How would one report news from the “left” without compromising with the demands of an Hamas or PLO/PA  . . . or an ISIS?  Is there time to ask a question when a camera hog tells you, more or less, that “proof is irrefutable” and the news has been reported already by the CIA, West Point, The Washington Post?  Do you says “Wait a minute” at the first assertion or do you give the talker his rope?

# # #

 

 

Link

17 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Political Psychology, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

As ethical, apolitical, and professional members of the academic community, we find the open letter for the people in Gaza1 an outrageous diatribe lacking context and deliberate vilification of the sovereign state of Israel and, by extension, every Israeli. In publishing such invective, The Lancet has allowed itself to become a platform for distorted political activism, as has been previously noted by others.2,3 Because we are scientists and physicians who are accustomed to incorporating all data into the formation of educated opinions (even public commentary), we are obliged to redress the imbalance.

http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/S0140673614613143.pdf – 8/15/2014.

An updated reference to the same may be found here under the title, “True about The Lancet – And Shame on It for the Anti-Semitic Knuckleheads It Chose to Support With Its Platform” (July 28, 2014, updated August 17, 2014).

# # #

 

Aside

15 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Jewish rejectionism — start with Pharaoh (what a lousy deal for everyone else!) — includes the rejection of Jesus and Muhammad as the representation or agent of God on earth. Them’s might be fightin’ words, as some say out in my backyard, but the sensibility may have begun (who knows?) with the idea of taking the power asserted by a deeply narcissistic monster — Pharaoh — and throwing it out into the universe and beyond to become the Almighty, the “King of the Universe”, a god immensely greater than what Pharaoh (today: Baghdaddi) would purport to represent. Not only do the Jews refuse Pharaoh’s legitimacy (and leave — with God’s help and under his aegis) but the “instructions” received refuse also to begin with mention or allusion to either mankind or power — and then the form of discussion invoked is that of vigorous inquiry and argument, a look-twice-and-think-about-it method of understanding one’s own humanity. Against that kind of a start, the Roman gods become decorative as well as instructive in other ways, or we should not speak of nor comprehend in Narcissus in the first place.

After Hillel (“the Elder” and the more obscure), Jesus-Paul-Constantine have the thorn of what to do with the Jews; Muhammad later wrestles the same question with perhaps Arab elan with the seduction ot surrender and subsequent easy slaughter of the Banu Qurayza.

And here we are and with a huge political problem.

If no one gets the story that yesterday imagined, then all are more free to get on to a new footing.

However, yesterday has its charms. Whether I pick up a fountain pen 🙂 or the young, mostly, dress up to “war” in societies of “creative anachronism” — http://www.sca.org/ — or primitives cling and some nutty alphas would be khalifas, the nostalgic affords the comfort of the fixed, known, and in terms of time, spacious. A man at a computer is busy — a man with a fountain pen and foolscap has time for dreaming.

Against this depiction of monotheist man and time, Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah dwell in the romance of their own spacious, timeless experience. The technology of the progressive appears in their environment –or they would not be counting on fiber optic communications cables to abet their “defense” of southern Lebanon — but the mind remains locked in a yesterday becoming continuously more distant from the day that has developed around their enterprise.

Writing like that is like reaching back and trying to pull a brother out of a time hole.

“What are you doing back there?”

“Living as we’ve always lived.”

“Is that so good?”

“It’s worked for us a long time.  We have a deep investment in a promise yet to be fulfilled.”

“That’s some promise.”

“It’s the whole world.”

“The whole world isn’t your world.  Perhaps you should try something a little more modest.”

“We’ll think about it.”

“It’s a shame to see you keeping yourself down there.  Frankly, it’s not looking like much fun, rather bloody and self-defeating, but, hey, it’s your call, and trust the world to be around when you’re ready to join with it rather than fight to the end of your day.”

# # #

Another Comment – Gaza and Suzerainty

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Middle East, Regions

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

As Hamas and ISIS and others of the Muslim Botherhood continue to ruin the “Religion of Peace” for its peaceful adherents, the promotion of Mahmoud Abbas has been adopted in some quarters as a make-do path for Gaza’s reconstruction.

Not so fast.

From The Awesome Conversation —

Abbas is a non-starter, a first-rate anti-Semite in his own right, and even though he comes out of the Soviet-post-Soviet pan-Arab Nationalist Era of Thuggery, he has still in mind the destruction of Jewry.

Nope.

The near answer for Gaza — and we are nowhere close to it today, but I believe it’s coming: I am just a little ahead of the story — is local Gazan rule within the confines of Israeli or Israeli-Egyptian suzerainty.

Hamas cannot be Hamas without having in mind the expansion of Islam and elimination of Israel and of world Jewry.

Abbas cannot be Abbas without perpetuating the myth of the benign dictator. The closest I’ve seen to that may be Pervez Musharraf, and it is to be noted that he handed in his stars, left office as a civilian president, and handed the military baton to a general who swore not to interfere with the politics of the state. Ever so slowly, Pakistan has been lurching into the present (while Musharraf has been arrested on trumped past deeds . . . dictatorship — and now his — seems a hard habit to break in some places. 🙂

So my two cents reduced to a half-penny: 1) Free Gaza From Hamas; 2) Occupy, disarm, and transform Gaza into a quasi independent city-state, and 3) assign to Gazans the responsibility of educating their children toward modern and peaceful lives, and 4) leave to the United States, Israel, and Egypt the matter of Gaza’s internal and external security.

Among top reasons for the taming of Abbas (ooh, he would not like that!) is that we (the people of the United States) largely write the paycheck for his own Israeli-training-in-Jordan security force. Beyond that, he hasn’t got a better program to offer anyone than Hamas.

Referring to the latest in plans bandied about, Alan Johnson has suggested in World Affairs (August 12, 2014), “Crucially, it also offers a framework to re-establish the authority of those Palestinians who oppose terror, recognize Israel, and want to negotiate a two-state solution—the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas.”

To actually want a sincere “two-state solution” would seem to require a great reduction in the leadership’s reserved (and not so hidden) animus for Jews.

Mahmoud Abbas has had a problem with that.

“Since Ahmadinejad left the political stage, Abu Mazen is the number one leader in injecting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel poison,” Yuval Steinitz told a Tel Aviv security conference Wednesday, using the name by which Abbas is popularly known in Arabic.

“Under Abu Mazen the level of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement in the (Palestinian) Authority has reached new highs, where the bottom line is the destruction of Israel,” said Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/18454 – 1/30/2014.

Feel welcome to web-search “Mahmoud Abbas, anti-Semite” and let me know know if you find “Abu Mazen’s” inner Martin Luther King.

Gazans, of course, may be expected to have an issue with Israelis for the military operations visited on their sorry heads courtesy of cynical human-shield producing Hamas.

Ask an American southerner about lingering resentments.

Blood has a long afterlife in the land but memory of conditions — of Hamas behaving in a manner ensuring the wasting of lives — proves generally more clarified, more powerful, and more persistent.

Navigational path out of this hell?

First in the heart: eject Hamas and with it the falsely advanced “Palestinian cause” — reference: Efraim Karsh’s Palestine Betrayed (Yale UP, 2010) and others on the industry that has become the “middle east conflict” (never mind all the other concurrent and breathtakingly bloody and cruel middle east conflicts) — and be born again: Gazans!

Then take a fresh look at the neighbor who has been ever ready for peaceful development, humanitarian service, and trade.

One day Gazans will look back at Hamas, which will require looking backward, for to have it otherwise would be like having tried driving somewhere without taking one’s eyes off the rear-view mirror.

Shift

Forward

 Independent

Interdependent

Gaza

# # #

Impromptu – “Kurdistan! Israel! USA!”

10 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Kurdistan, Middle East, Politics, Regions

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

(Posted 8/10/2014; Event: 8/9/2014)

Israel-Kurd Magazine, Issue No. 1 – 2009

There is some horrible news out of Kurdistan today. Ekurd.net reports that Mawloud Afand, editor of an Israel-Kurdish magazine called Israel Kurd “disappeared ten days ago in [the] Kurdistan region of Iraq.” Israeli news sources say he was kidnapped by Iranian intelligence in the city of Sulaimaniyah. Ekurd.net claims that Iran had told the Kurdish government to shut Israel Kurd down and it refused.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/06/25/iran-kidnaps-pro-israeli-kurd-iraq-mawloud-afand/ – 6/25/2012

Related: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/topic/israel-kurd-magazine/ – 7/16/2012.

ERBIL-Hewlêr, Kurdistan region ‘Iraq’, — A number of Israeli political experts say Israel will be among the countries that would support Iraqi Kurdistan if it declared independence. They also suggest that Kurdistan not make the decision hastily and ensure the grounds are properly prepared first, Rudaw reported

http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2012/5/state6172.htm 5/1/2012.

Furthermore, with their initial sale last week of a tanker full of oil, to Israel no less, the Kurds have shown that they are willing not just to cleave themselves from Baghdad but to stand as a magnanimous force for stability in the region.

According to numerous reports by Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, the tanker SCF Altai transferred a cargo of Kurdish oil from another tanker United Emblem, which had been plying the Mediterranean for two weeks after loading at the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The SCF Altai then docked at the Israeli city of Ashkelon and off-loaded its crude.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2014/06/23/iraqs-kurds-sell-oil-to-israel-move-closer-to-independence/ – 6/23/2014.

In 1966, Iraqi defense minister Abd al-Aziz al-Uqayli blamed the Kurds of Iraq for seeking to establish “a second Israel” in the Middle East. He also claimed that “the West and the East are supporting the rebels to create [khalq] a new Israeli state in the north of the homeland as they had done in 1948 when they created Israel. It is as if history is repeating itself.”

http://www.meforum.org/3838/israel-kurds – Summer 2014.

What attracts me to a story like this one is the possibility of encouraging and securing ethnic self-determination for a true ethnic minority.  In that regard, Kurds and Israelis may understand one another.  The above scholarly piece by Ofra Bengio goes into detail on the history of the Kurdish-Israeli relationship, and that in turn informs just a little bit how it has turned out that members of the Kurdish community seeing an Israeli group in Lafayette Park (in front of the White House) would (naturally) join them in solidarity.

Update November 12, 2014

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/11/10/canadian-israeli-woman-fighting-with-kurds-against-isis-audio/ – 11/10/2014

# # #

Lisa Dafteri – “It’s Terrorists Against Humanists”

08 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

“We are the generation that stays quiet about political corruption, favoring political correctness instead.  We pride ourselves in sticking up for the underdog while throwing our friends and allies to the dogs.”

(8/8/2014)

However you get the news . . . you get it.

Hamas hasn’t a human program or a prayer to offer anyone.  Its officers have made themselves millionaires (actually, Khaled Mashaal is a billionaire) on the way to dealing death to their own constituents, including 160 children recruited for the construction of their tunnels.

Of ISIS, one only finds worse things to mention — rape and rapine all the way to attempted genocide, Shiites, Christians, Yazidis, and anyone else just because and as it strikes BadDaddy’s fancy.

Talk about the “Hamaside” and “Muslim Botherhood” . . . .

WASHINGTON — U.S. warplanes made a second wave of airstrikes Friday in northern Iraq against the militants who have besieged a religious group and threatened the city of Irbil, a Pentagon official said.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, spokesman for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, said the second wave of strikes used a drone to attack a mortar position while four FA-18 fighter-attack planes hit a seven-vehicle convoy outside Irbil.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/08/obama-iraq-airsgtrike/13767377/ – 8/8;/2014.

BBC Live (right now – 8/8/2014/1723 ET):

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28709792

# # #