US failed to democratise Arabs

We didn't need Carnegie to tell us this, but a report for an American institute helps convince people sometimes (at least it's something to quote in your next anti-US speech)...

Democratic reforms in the Middle East have failed to take off or even leave a nominal impact on Arab countries, according to a study published by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Arab countries largely remain autocratic, the study said and blamed the current US administration for failing to transform them to democracy. The study called for a clear strategy with rational objectives for democratic reforms in the region.

Check out the reaction of Arab 'pro-democracy' activists:

Commenting on the study, Dr Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organisation for Human Rights in Syria (NOHR), said the US and the EU have never been sincere about promoting democracy in the Arab world and no one in the region would believe the Americans and the Europeans any more.

"Call for democracy is meant to blackmail the regimes rather than implementing real changes in the region. They are sure that any reform will not be in favour of Israel which makes them abandon the support for change," he said.

...

Dr Qurabi said Arab activists have fallen prey to their autocratic governments because of miscalculation regarding the true intention of foreign power to support the democratisation process in the Arab world.

"The more pressure the US exert on regimes in the Arab world the more pressure the regimes inflict on activists. In many countries, democratic activists are portrayed as either puppets of the West or terrorists and agents of Al Qaida."

More at Gulf News

Radioactive Ammunition Fired in Middle East May Claim More Lives Than Hiroshima and Nagasaki


This is very disturbing:

By firing radioactive ammunition, the U.S., U.K., and Israel may have triggered a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East that, over time, will prove deadlier than the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan.

So much ammunition containing depleted uranium(DU) has been fired, asserts nuclear authority Leuren Moret, "The genetic future of the Iraqi people for the most part, is destroyed."

"More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing (of nuclear bombs) has been released from depleted uranium weaponry since 1991," Moret writes, including radioactive ammunition fired by Israeli troops in Palestine.

Moret is an independent U.S. scientist formerly employed for five years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and also at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both of California.

Adds Arthur Bernklau, of Veterans For Constitutional Law, "The long- term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence. Iraq is a toxic wasteland. Anyone who is there stands a good chance of coming down with cancer and leukemia. In Iraq, the birth rate of mutations is totally out of control."

Moret, a Berkeley, Calif., Environmental Commissioner and past president of the Association for Women Geoscientists, says, "For every genetic defect that we can see now, in future generations there are thousands more that will be expressed."

She adds, "the (Iraq) environment now is completely radioactive." Dr. Helen Caldicott, the prominent anti-nuclear crusader, has written: "Much of the DU is in cities such as Baghdad, where half the population of 5 million people are children who played in the burned- out tanks and on the sandy, dusty ground."

"Children are 10 to 20 times more susceptible to the carcinogenic effects of radiation than adults," Caldicott wrote. "My pediatric colleagues in Basra, where this ordnance was used in 1991, report a sevenfold increase in childhood cancer and a sevenfold increase in gross congenital abnormalities," she wrote in her book, "Nuclear Power is not the Answer"(The New Press).

Caldicott goes on to say the two Gulf wars "have been nuclear wars because they have scattered nuclear material across the land, and people---particularly children--- are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease essentially for eternity."

Because of the extremely long half-life of uranium 238, one of the radioactive elements in the shells fired, "the food, the air, and the water in the cradle of civilization have been forever contaminated," Caldicott explained.

Uranium is a heavy metal that enters the body via inhalation into the lung or via ingestion into the GI tract. It is excreted by the kidney, where, if the dose is high enough, it can induce renal failure or kidney cancer. It also lodges in the bones where it causes bone cancer and leukemia, and it is excreted in the semen, where it mutates genes in the sperm, leading to birth deformities.

Nuclear contamination is spreading around the world, Caldicott adds, with heaviest concentrations in regions within a 1,000-mile radius of Baghdad and Afghanistan.

These are, notably, northern India, southern Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tibet, Pakistan, Kuwait, the Gulf emirates, and Jordan.

Read on here.

Make Love Not War

Back in March of 2007 I wrote about the Google Trends tool and soon after Brother Amad at Muslim Matters picked up on it and also it was reported that Zaid Shaker or it might have been Hamza Yusuf who spoke at length about it- but it seems that Muslims are just as addicted to sex as their non-Muslim counterparts even when its their avowed enemies- the Israeli's.

Here is an interesting Israeli-Arab twist to the idea of sex and the internet in the Middle East. Ratuz.il is a website that caters to Israeli porn addicts. They installed a tool to allow them to track the web locations of their visitors and low and behold the majority of visitors were coming from Iran, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Suadi Arabia. They immediately converted their website into an ARABIC version after which the charts when out of this world with hits. Get this, .il addresses are blocked in these countries.

What makes this more than a tale of clever entrepreneurs making a buck off Middle Eastern sexual repression is that Ratuv isn't an ordinary porn site. It's a clearinghouse of political parody porn, making fun of Israeli affairs such as sex scandals and often featuring Mossad agents or army soldiers getting out of uniform, thus providing a view of the Israeli military seldom seen in the Arab world. The next step, says Ratuv's manager, is to make movies with Israelis and Arabs performing together, in order to foster more intimate relations between the two peoples . . . read on at the LA Times

What gets me is that these are the people most likely out in the streets yelling and screaming for the downfall of Isreal or even if they are not doing that they most likely are buying into the world conspiricy propaganda that is rife through out the Arab streets. Globalization at its best (or worst) and yet the Palestinians continue to suffer.

The rare American imam

MISSION VIEJO, Calif. — Sheik Yassir Fazaga regularly uses a standard American calendar to provide inspiration for his weekly Friday sermon.

Around Valentine’s Day this year, he talked about how the Koran endorses romantic love within certain ethical parameters. (As opposed to say, clerics in Saudi Arabia, who denounce the banned saint’s day as a Satanic ritual.)

On World AIDS Day, he criticized Muslims for making moral judgments about the disease rather than helping the afflicted, and on International Women’s Day he focused on domestic abuse.

“My main objective is to make Islam relevant,” said Sheik Fazaga, 34, who went to high school in Orange County, which includes Mission Viejo, and brings a certain American flair to his role as imam in the mosque here.

As a previous member of "Sheikh Fazaga"'s community, I whole heartedly agree with many of the statements in the article. In fact, the OC Muslim community is a privileged one because of its many religious and community leaders who are going the extra mile to share the message of Islam in a relevant and refreshing manner; Sheikh Yassir is only one example, but an excellent one.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about communities in the Arab world. Although the issue of first- and second-generation immigrants is not present, religious sermons are still mostly superficial and completely irrelevant. One is likely to hear a khutbah (sermon) about respecting elders or performing prayers, but not about global poverty, hunger, AIDS, justice, corruption, democracy,... Many immigrant imams in the US are only reiterating what they are used to "back home", which is usually just as irrelevant there as it is in the US.

Even worse, in a growing number of countries in the Arab world, religious sermons are very closely scrutinized by the government to that extent that imams no longer have a say in what they discuss during their sermons. The text of the khutbah is distributed to the imams beforehand by the religious authority and most imams just read it out-loud.

No wonder I'm sitting here blogging away instead of getting ready for Friday prayer. I think I was spoilt by So. Cal. khutbahs.

A Democratic Israel- an oxymoron?

"Why then does the U.S. government continue to fully support a country whose very identity and institutions are based on ethnic and religious discrimination that victimize its own citizens?"

That is an amazing question. I can not even begin to explain why we in the United States continue to support a country that has broken more UN resolutions then Saddam, or why we in the West continue to believe the lie that Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East- if elections make a nation democratic then by all means we have more democracies in the Middle East then we readily admit to- but unfortunately democracy is not just about having elections. It is about freedoms and rights that are protected, it is about institutions and civil structures.

For those of you who do not know, Israel is a Jewish state, and any who are not Jewish are second class citizens. If we in the West continue to feed into the this idea and support a state that is not truly in line with Democratic principles then we are fooling ourselves and setting up for a catastrophe of great magnitude.

We can not champion democracy in the Middle East- ARAB NATIONS- and continue to hold Israel as a exemption. If Israel is to be truly considered a liberal democratic society then it needs to be held to higher standards then we currently hold it as. We can not lower the bar for this nation or any other. Israel has to be criticized and brought into line with all liberal democracies. No more special treatment.

Get rid of the Pharaoh in Egypt along with the Prince of Israel.

Read more about the second class status of non-Jews in Israel.

Rosie O'Donnell on Iran and Tower 7

If you can get past the poor video quality, you'll love this!

Recommended by Alia Aboul-Nasr

Beginning to understand Iraq (and the Middle East)

When internal fighting and killing first started in Iraq around two years ago I was very distressed and completely confused. The US occupation is illegal, unjust, and inhuman; that's an easy one to figure out. But, what do I say about the "sectarian violence"? Are Muslims really killing each other? Who do I protest against? Will I do more harm than good by speaking against one political party or another?

Since then the chaos has spread to other parts of the region, and has gained more news and media coverage. According to mainstream American media, all the problems in the Middle East seem to boil down to one thing: the Sunni-Shia struggle.

I am still not entirely clear about the situation in Iraq; I don't think anyone can be given the limited and distorted media coverage. Still, there is one thing I know for a fact: the so-called Sunni-Shia sectarian violence only started after the US-led occupation. Iraqis had peacefully coexisted for decades until they were "shocked and awed".

No, I am not in denial. There are definitely ignorant, misled Sunnis and Shias who are perpetrating the daily massacres against innocent Iraqi civilians. However, I refuse to believe that all Iraqi Shias are carrying out an Iranian plot to take over Iraq, or that all Iraqi Sunnis want to avenge Saddam's death by killing as many Shias as possible.

As for speaking out against regional political parties and figures, I will strongly condemn any party that chooses to work closely with foreign powers (US,UK,Israel France,...), against the interest of its own people. If that happens to be "Shia" groups in Iraq and "Sunni" parties in Lebanon then so be it. I trust that people will be mature enough to realize that my political opinions are based on political stances, not religious ones.

In the past week or so, I have come across several excellent articles that offer interesting analyses of the situation in Iraq and the Middle East in general (links and excerpts below). I think they are a must-read for anyone looking to truly understand the situation in the Middle East. These articles all make the point that there is so much more to the situation than Sunnis and Shias.

As far as Muslims go, we cannot afford to be ignorant about the situation. We cannot sit back and watch as our enemies divide us.


Sunnis Will Not Be Persuaded That Iran Is Their Real Enemy
"Despite the US-Shia alliance that brought his rule to an end, sectarianism did not become serious until the US-led occupation replaced Saddam's regime with one based on quotas, a process destined to divide Iraq along sectarian and ethnic lines."

The Shia-Sunni Divide: Myths and Reality
"The consensus in both Sunni and Shia circles appears to be that attempts to emphasise Sunni- Shia rivalries are intended to deflect attention from both the US occupation of Iraq and continuing Israeli aggression. That the US is working to fuel such tensions is almost an article of faith for Muslims on both sides. In its attempt to create an anti-Iran alliance, they say, the US is resorting to a strategy which aims to raise the spectre of sectarianism across the Muslim world."

How Easy It Is To Put Hatred on A Map
"Our guilt in this sectarian game is obvious. We want to divide the "other", "them", our potential enemies, from each other, while we - we civilised Westerners with our refined, unified, multicultural values - are unassailable."


Baghdad New Alliance
"Bush’s new strategy can be described as a policy of escalation and rejection of conceding failure. In addition, it is a plan to take revenge on Baghdad that deprived him from achieving the long-promised victory. By allocating 17,000 additional troops to Baghdad – while knowing that there are no clearly-defined fighting fronts – Bush in fact seeks to cause the biggest amount of damage to its people and buildings."