Monday, December 6, 2010

AIPAC Ordered Bush To Attack Iran - By Gordan Duff

http://islaminrussiaandabroad.blogspot.com/2010/12/aipac-ordered-bush-to-attack-iran.html


Sunday, December 5, 2010

AIPAC Ordered Bush To Attack Iran

By Gordon Duff
 
In a unique interview with an official at the highest policy levels of the Pentagon, White House and, eventually, CIA, we are offered a unique "behind the curtains" look at areas of policy making during the period between 1999 and 2007. Extensive notes have been taken of meetings with President Bush and all his top policy advisors. This is only a teaser.

A highly placed source within the White House and CIA confirmed, in an interview, that the invasion of Iran was scheduled for 2006 but planned in 1999. We have heard some of this before but not with so many pieces and, I am told, more to come. In an interview with a Bush administration policy official:


Q. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of your work at the White House? You have read my articles, what do you think of my take on things?


A. You are closer than anyone else in understanding how things worked, the only person willing to simply put it out there. You also come at things like the Pentagon people I have worked with, the ones who stood against Bush, Cheney and the AIPAC gang at the NSC (National Security Council.) I can also see that you don't have background material that you need. Some of it you have wrong, particularly the motives for Iraq. It was always Iran, Iraq was simply a door.


"The Iraq invasion was a 'done deal' in 1999, but not as you thought to steal oil and bilk billions, that was all gravy. Iraq, the entire Bush presidency, had one purpose, to remove Iran from the picture."


Q. You talk about journalists. What has your experience been?


A. I have good friends at the New York Times, Time Magazine, the Washington Post and others. They know all of this. They aren't fooled. They could write anything but it would never hit print.


Q. Back to the 2000 election. The first impediment was, I am told, removing John McCain from the picture. Was this the case?


A. "He was enemy # 1, stubborn, unpredictable and already tarnished by the Keating 5 scandal, with all his faults, he didn't have the serous skeletons in his closet that would fit the bill. McCain couldn't be blackmailed like Bush, thus McCain is a risk. Unless you can be controlled, blackmailed or bought or both, you will go nowhere in Washington.


McCain is a womanizer, the real thing. For a war hero, with McCain's charm that's nothing, he would never fall into the kind of trap Clinton did. Rove was assigned the job of getting rid of McCain. We all saw what was done in South Carolina. It was a masterful job."


Q. When you talk about McCain not being vulnerable, he certainly was in South Carolina, a few rumors and smears and he was gone. You say Bush is more vulnerable?


A. "A window into a lot of this can be found in the Rosen-AIPAC lawsuit. Bush has serious issues, let's just leave it at that.


As for Rosen, he just wasn't an AIPAC lobbyist, he sat inside the National Security Council until 2005 as the Rand Corporation's Director of Foreign Policy. When the press talks about an AIPAC employee and spying, he didn't join AIPAC until later, after his arrest.


The FBI investigation and his indictment for spying covered a time when he was at the center of the Bush administration, a key policy formulator at the highest levels of government. Rosen, indicted in 2004 for spying for Israel, was responsible for formulating American policy in the Middle East and largely responsible for the fate of the Palestinian people, a bit of a conflict of interest for an Israeli lobbyist and accused spy."


Q. Rosen has made some accusations, says AIPAC spies all the time and that they do nothing but watch pornography there. You worked with this guy, what do you know?


A. "Rosen has dirt on absolutely everyone. His divorce depositions are fascinating reading. They are sealed now but there are copies out there. I know that reporters at Time Magazine have them, others too. The FBI has tons, they were after Rosen for years. As for AIPAC, Rosen told me of their spy operations many times, but nobody needed telling, they were more than obvious to all of us.


Q. You talk about Rosen and his "black book," that he has dirt on "everyone." The news stories mentioned only porn. That doesn't sound so serious. Dirt, not just porn, what kind of dirt?


A. "Mostly sex stuff, gay bondage, clubs, expense money being spent on sex, liasons in public restrooms, that kind of thing. Many of the key people around the president are involved and there is FBI surveillance, massive amounts of it, photographs, videos, and one or more undercover informants recorded conversations with top National Security Council members. Spying, nuclear secrets passed to Israel, this was common place.


I witnessed, with two others, the top Bush counter-terrorism official, actually primary advisor to Bush on counter-terrorism, who had served Clinton and others, pass nuclear weapons plans to an Israeli agent, like it was nothing."


Q. Did the FBI know about this?


A. "For years, FBI agents, I have a list of names, worked to stop this. Then I learned that the Department of Justice killed the prosecution, Rosen's lasted into the Obama administration before it was dropped. Witnesses were threatened with prosecution and the guilty, the spies, were allowed to keep doing what they are doing. This is what Rosen knows and what he is talking about when he says AIPAC was involved in spying. It isn't just that AIPAC is said to receive information it is that it came from top administration officials."


Q. Let's get back to the sex thing. How high up does it go?


A. "One famous joke around the NSC, there was a photo of someone kissing Laura Bush on the cheek and shaking hands with President Bush. The same person had, not that long before, using those same lips and hands in a men's restroom."


Q. What do you know about 9/11?


A. "9/11 was planned as early as 1999 or before, to be executed as soon as the Bush team was in place. One meeting in April 2001, a meeting outlining the invasion of Iraq, may have been the green light.' Chalibi was in place early on, from day number one. I remember telling them he was a known crook, totally disreputable and that things in Iraq would fall apart immediately. Nobody in the National Security Council ever spoke about what they would do once Saddam was overthrown. Nobody really seemed to care.


Of course, none of those people have real experience with military issues or, in fact, much of anything else."


Q. How was the Iran invasion supposed to work?


A. "This is where so many have it wrong. In fact, there was never serous discussion about terrorism or Al Qaeda or bin Laden. These things weren't even a sideshow. The only talk about any of it was how it could be used to justify going into Iraq and then attacking Iran.


Q. The intel on Iraq, we all know it was wrong. When was that learned?


A. "The administration didn't believe false intelligence, it created it, order it in place before the election to be ready for, well I guess, 9/11. Silencing Plame and Joe Wilson, those were the same people who planned the creation of the phony intelligence. There was never a discussion of a serious terrorist threat against the United States. These guys would have fallen off their chairs laughing themselves to death. It was all a joke to them, 9/11, the Iraq invasion, all of it."


Q. Back to Iran, how was the invasion to start?


A. "Everything was going to happen in Bahrain. Plans were to attack Americans, blow up clubs, restaurants. There were plans to stage a "Tonkin Gulf' type attack and blame it on Iranian torpedo boats. Guys in the military were aware of this and there was strong opposition. Marine Colonel Joe Molofsky was the real hero here. He did more to scramble administration plans than anyone else, Molofky and General Mattis. These were really straight shooters, how I learned to trust the Marine Corps.


The government there, their security services, I believe they were deeply involved. It would have been good to see something about this in Wikileaks."


Q. You said that war had to start by 2006. Was there a timetable?


A. "Absolutely. General Petraeus was sent to Iraq to quiet things down, not to win a war or create a lasting peace, nothing like that. His job was to shut things down so an operation against Iran could be staged from Iraq."


Q. But that never got off the ground…


A. "No kidding, and Bush was enranged. It was the only reason he was put in office in the first place, as long as Iran survived, he was a failure, no matter what happened to the US."


Q. Didn't they know that war with Iran would have driven oil to $300 a barrel and collapsed the American economy?


A. "There were never briefings on that like there were never briefings on stabilizing Iraq. Nobody cared, nobody noticed and it was never discussed. It was really all about Iran and orders came in and people did what they were told like good little soldiers."


Q. Orders? From where?


A. "All of it, all foreign policy issues, were out of AIPAC, they ran everything in the Bush adminsitration. That was the whole point of it. We never were told why we had to destroy Iran only that it had to be done. Nobody ever asked why. Nobody ever believed Iran had a credible nuclear program and, eventually, we were all very certain they never would. There was never an issue about Iran being a threat or not. There was never an issue of motive of any kind. These were orders, plain and simple, the administration that will come into office in 2001 will be tasked with destroying Iran, tasked by AIPAC who will control all key position in the administration."


Q. Was there talk about Lebanon and the threat of Hizbollah?


A. "There really weren't talks at all, only planning on how to follow policy, never on what policy should be or what was right or wrong. There was never a discussion about the United States, what was good for America or bad for America. People were generally oblivious to there being an America."

 
http://sabbah.biz/

MUSLIM WORLD: Poll shows majority want Islam in politics; feelings mixed on Hamas, Hezbollah

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/12/hamas-hezbollah-islam-sharia-public-opinion-muslim-countries.html




MUSLIM WORLD: Poll shows majority want Islam in politics; feelings mixed on Hamas, Hezbollah

December 5, 2010 | 11:53 am
Meccaminihaj7 A majority of Muslims around the world welcome a significant role for Islam in their countries' political life, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, but have mixed feelings toward militant religious groups such as  Hamas and Hezbollah.

According to the survey, majorities in Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan and Nigeria would favor changing the current laws to allow stoning as a punishment for adultery, hand amputation for theft and death for those who convert from Islam to another religion. About 85% of Pakistani Muslims said they would support a law segregating men and women in the workplace.

Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria and Jordan were among the most enthusiastic, with more than three-quarters of Muslims polled in those countries reporting positive views of Islam's influence in politics: either that Islam had a large role in politics, and that was a good thing, or that it played a small role, and that was bad.

Turkish Muslims were the most conflicted, with just more than half reporting positive views of Islam's influence in politics. Turkey has struggled in recent years to balance a secular political system with an increasingly fervent Muslim population.

Many Muslims described an ongoing struggle in their country between fundamentalists and modernizers, especially those who may have felt threatened by the rising tides of conservatism. Among those respondents who identified a struggle, most tended to side with the modernizers. This was especially true in Lebanon and Turkey, where 84% and 74%, respectively, identified themselves as modernizers as opposed to fundamentalists.

In Egypt and Nigeria, however, most people were pulling in the other direction. According to the poll, 59% in Egypt and 58% in Nigeria who said there was a struggle identified with the fundamentalists.

Despite an overall positive view of Islam's growing role in politics, militant religious organizations such as  Hamas and Hezbollah spurred mixed reactions. Both groups enjoyed fairly strong support in Jordan, home to many Palestinians, and Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based. Muslim countries that do not share strong cultural, historical and political ties to the Palestinian cause, such as Pakistan and Turkey, tended to view Hezbollah and Hamas negatively.

Al Qaeda was starkly rejected by majorities in every Muslim country except Nigeria, which gave the group a 49% approval rating.

 -- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam's holiest site in Saudi Arabia. Credit: Caren Firouz / Reuters 

America's 3 addictions: Oil, Chinese Credit and War - Ghulam Muhammed | The Big American Leak By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN - The New York Times

Sunday, December 05, 2010

America's 3 addictions: Oil, Chinese Credit and War

America cannot overcome its addiction to either Middle East oil or Chinese credit.

Thomas Friedman in his NYT article: The Big American Leak, missed naming the THIRD addiction: WAR.

That too seems to reach a dead end.

Just to survive, US will have to downsize at all levels and make ready to survive in this cur-throat world as a third rate power in days to come.

American Jewish gnomes are poised to move to fresher pastures. India, a tempting target, should raise its walls against the new invasion of conspirators and exploiters.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/opinion/05friedman.html?_r=1
New York Times


Op-Ed Columnist

The Big American Leak

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: December 4, 2010

O.K. I admit it. I enjoy reading other people’s mail as much as the next guy, so going through the WikiLeaks cables has made for some fascinating reading. What’s between the lines in those cables, though, is another matter. It is a rather sobering message. America is leaking power.
Josh Haner/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
Let’s start, though, with what’s in the cables. I think I’ve figured it out: Saudi Arabia and its Arab neighbors want the U.S. to decapitate the Iranian regime and destroy its nuclear facilities so they can celebrate in private this triumph over the hated Persians, while publicly joining with their people in the streets in burning Uncle Sam in effigy, after we carry out such an attack on Iran — which will make the Arab people furious at us. The reason the Arab people will be furious at us, even though many of them don’t like the Persians either, is because they dislike their own unelected leaders even more and protesting against the Americans, who help to keep their leaders in power, is a way of sticking it to both of us.
Are you with me?
While the Saudis are urging us to take out Iran’s nuclear capability, we learn from the cables that private Saudi donors today still constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide — not to mention the fundamentalist mosques, charities and schools that spawn the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. So basically our oil payments are cycled through Saudi Arabia and end up funding the very militants whom our soldiers are fighting. But don’t think we don’t have allies. ... The cables tell us about Ahmed Zia Massoud, an Afghan vice president from 2004 to 2009, who now owns a palatial home in Dubai, where, according to one cable, he was caught by customs officials carrying $52 million in unexplained cash. It seems from these cables that the U.S. often has to pay leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan to be two-faced — otherwise they would just be one-faced and against the U.S. in both public and private.
Are you still with me?
Yes, these are our allies — people whose values we do not and never will share. “O.K.,” our Saudi, Gulf, Afghan and Pakistani allies tell us, “we may not be perfect, but the guys who would replace us would be much worse. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are one-faced. They say what they mean in public and private: They hate America.”
That’s true, but if we are stuck supporting bad regimes because only worse would follow, why can’t we do anything to make them reform? That brings us to the sobering message in so many of these cables: America lacks leverage. America lacks leverage in the Middle East because we are addicted to oil. We are the addicts and they are the pushers, and addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.
When we import $28 billion a month in oil, we can’t say to the Saudis: “We know the guys who would come after you would be much worse, but why do we have to choose between your misrule and corruption and their brutality and intolerance?” We’re just stuck supporting a regime that, sure, fights Al Qaeda at home, but uses our money to fund a religious ideology, schools, mosques and books that ensure that Al Qaeda will always have a rich pool of recruits in Saudi Arabia and abroad. We also lack leverage with the Chinese on North Korea, or with regard to the value of China’s currency, because we’re addicted to their credit.
Geopolitics is all about leverage. We cannot make ourselves safer abroad unless we change our behavior at home. But our politics never connects the two.
Think how different our conversations with Saudi Arabia would be if we were in the process of converting to electric cars powered by nuclear, wind, domestic natural gas and solar power? We could tell them that if we detect one more dollar of Saudi money going to the Taliban then they can protect themselves from Iran.
Think how different our conversations with China would be if we had had a different savings rate the past 30 years and China was not holding $900 billion in U.S. Treasury securities — but was still dependent on the U.S. economy and technology. We would not be begging them to revalue their currency, and maybe our request that China prevent North Korea from shipping ballistic missile parts to Iran via Beijing airport (also in the cables) wouldn’t be rebuffed so brusquely.
And think how much more leverage our sanctions would have on Iran if oil were $20 a barrel and not $80 — and Iran’s mullah-dictators were bankrupt?
Fifty years ago, the world was shaped in a certain way, to promote certain values, because America had the leverage to shape it that way. We have been steadily losing that leverage because of our twin addictions to Middle East oil and Chinese credit — and the WikiLeaks show just what crow we have to eat because of that. I know, some problems — like how we deal with a failing state like Pakistan that also has nukes — are innately hard, and ending our oil and credit addictions alone will not solve them. But it sure would give us more leverage to do so — and more insulation from the sheer madness of the Middle East if we can’t.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Demolition of Babri Masjid is demolition of Indian history - Ghulam Muhammed | Accidental Historian - Richard Eaton - Paramita Ghose - Hindustan Times

Demolition of Babri Masjid is demolition of Indian History. Hindutva extremists cannot fool the world with their skewed version of 'faith-based' mythologizing of Indian history and Brahmin Aryan's vain attempts to treat Muslim Rule as alien while trying to settle in as the very original inhabitants of India divinely chosen to rule the lesser children of God. The Aryan Brahmins cannot digest what they have chewed. Bigger fish always swallow small fish.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai


"Unlike the Sangh Parivar's fanciful claims that 60,000 temples were demolished in the medieval period, Eaton showed through scientific data and intensive research into primary sources that the number was actually 80 over the entire spread of Muslim rule in India from 1190 to 1760. He also investigated why, when and where the temples were destroyed and the wide range of motives that led to their destruction". --- Paramita Ghosh



http://www.hindustantimes.com/The-accidental-historian/Article1-634479.aspx


HindustanTimes Mon,06 Dec 2010


The accidental historian
Paramita Ghosh, Hindustan Times
Email Author
December 05, 2010

Grand historical narratives have almost always had humble beginnings in the exacting labour of microscopic research. French Annales historians such as Marc Bloch and Fernand Braudel showed how to mingle the modesty of a local schoolteacher's profession with the ambitious scope of a historian's
vocation. Richard M Eaton, liberal India's favourite western scholar, has followed in their footsteps.


In town for the Medieval History Journal's annual lecture, Eaton turned into a historian from two encounters. He met India via Iran and he travelled through an American county looking for a teaching job. On any subject. It turned out that they wanted a history teacher.
In the Sixties, this gameyness turned the 21-year-old college graduate with a degree in philosophy towards history with a small detour through soil chemistry.

"I was posted in Tabriz as a Peace Corps volunteer…. Before the (Islamic) Revolution, the government of Iran thought Americans could teach anything, so I was asked to teach soil chemistry in an agricultural school," says Eaton with a laugh, sitting on one of the ramparts of the Lodhi tomb, remembering a journey to Delhi in the mid-sixties by train from Iran across the Baluchistan desert.

Eaton's book, Essays on Islam and Indian History (2000) has been the backbone of most arguments for denying the Hindu right's charge of Islam as the sole guiding principle for the destruction of temples by the Mughal rulers of India, and makes it essential reading, especially in our post-Ayodhya times.

Historian Harbans Mukhia says Eaton shifted the terms of debate in medieval history.
"Unlike the Sangh Parivar's fanciful claims that 60,000 temples were demolished in the medieval period, Eaton showed through scientific data and intensive research into primary sources that the number was actually 80 over the entire spread of Muslim rule in India from 1190 to 1760. He also investigated why, when and where the temples were destroyed and the wide range of motives that led to their destruction".

For example, according to Eaton's book, in 1679, temples patronised by Rajput chieftain, Rana Raj Singh, were destroyed by Aurangzeb for having backed his brother and rival, Dara Shikoh.

According to Eaton, the recent Ayodhya judgment - which some have interpreted as 'legitimising' the Babri demolition - is a "panchayat decision" and is symptomatic of the success with which Hindu fundamentalists have been able to project the concept of a 'Hindu nation' versus a 'Muslim nation' onto the 16th century.

"The idea of India as a nation or even two nations is a modern construct. And there was no sustained pattern of a Hindu resistance to Muslim rule unlike Chinese history which was marked by unstable dynasties and their violent overthrow," he says.

Unlike many western scholars whose need to 'understand' Islam is as recent as the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, if not 9/11, Eaton's interest stems from evidences of Islam's pluralism. That this is not a popular idea, even among Muslims themselves, owes a lot, he says, to the technology of communication.

"Earlier, you had local, village Islams... Then came the steamship. Muslims from different parts of the country started going for the Haj together. Travelling on the ship, they began to see themselves as a single community," he says.

"The TV, radio, ship, broke down differences between here and there. It made it all one."
Why is history writing in India skewed? National movements, says Eaton, made it necessary for historians to justify India, and Pakistan, in bipolar terms.

"Historians became servants of politics," he says.

"Post-Independence, the use of Persian declined and historians did not look up sources in the original. To discover new information, you have to go to the mofussil record rooms and not just sit in Calcutta and expect them to come to you."

Or, think that if the information was not in Delhi or Kolkata, it was in London.

If history doesn't stand still, should historians? Eaton, who witnessed the birth of the Subaltern Studies school in the '80s, says its latter-day tendency to do historiography "by keeping the British Raj in the centre" defeated its initial work of writing history from below.
Eaton says his work has Marxist 'influences'.

"Marx," he says, "taught that history is not just pushed along by great men."


As for Partha Chatterjee, the leading light of the Subaltern school, he is, says Eaton, "an old monument".

Thursday, November 25, 2010

2 Jews > than 257-300 and 700 Indians dead and injured in 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attack - By Ghulam Muhammed

Friday, November 26, 2010

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

2 Jews > than 257-300 and 700 Indians dead and injured in 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attack


In the wake of the anniversary of 26/11, India’s English ‘paid media’ gives more front page and column space to the 2 Jews rather than to the 257-300 dead and 700 injured in 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai, as if the Indian and other foreigner dead have not of equal status to the 2 Jewish dead, whose relations are now moving heaven and earth back in the Jewish city of New York and creating more international media drumbeats than Indian Government could, over the entire period the tragedy has been hanging on India’s security concerns.

While the grandfather of the saved child harangues from TV screens that we will fight the terror with goodness and peace, his clenched fist that attacks the air again and again gives lies to his any announced peace moves.

The tradition of Jewish victim-hood to thrive on claimed reparations and compensation over tragedies visiting the community through ages, has come out in the open when even though the grandfather categorically states that he is not after the money, his moves are all paved with dreams of compensation and donation money that is to make mockery of the poor dead and injured Indians that have suffered the same or even worst fate as they are yet to be either compensated and/or rehabilitated.

It is a shame that media that is the pulse of the people in any nation, in India should be do sold out to Mammon, that it has completely lost touch with the feelings and sentiments of the fellow citizens and is more concerned with foreigners, whose presence on their sacred soil is still to be explained if it was not being used for improper information gathering and anti-Indian activities. Chabad House has yet to be cleared for its real antecedents. Let Indian authorities be aware of the consequences of any moves in haste to become unintended victims of international terrorism by joining the fight with those that have their own agenda, not necessarily in the best interest of the people of India.


Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

Monday, November 22, 2010

Class offers 'eye-opening' look at Islam's complexities

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20101122/NEWS/11220313/-1/cyclone_insider/Class-offers-eye-opening-look-at-Islam-s-complexities


Class offers 'eye-opening' look at Islam's complexities

By REID FORGRAVE • rforgrave@dmreg.com • November 22, 2010 

On the second floor of Meredith Hall at Drake University, Mahmoud Hamad, an assistant professor of politics, dangles his feet off the edge of a table.

Behind him, the first Powerpoint slide of a student presentation, "Political Islam," is displayed. The three students have a difficult goal for their presentation: to detail the different roles of Islam in the governments of Turkey, Algeria and Egypt. But Hamad's goal for this honors-level class, "Islam in the 21st Century," is far loftier: To step back from today's heated political rhetoric and examine the nuances of the world's second-most popular religion (behind Christianity) and its place in the 21st century.

This is the first time the class has been taught at Drake University, and it could hardly come at a more opportune - or more difficult - time. Next year will mark 10 years since the 9/11 attacks changed the popular American view of Islam from one of ignorance or mere curiosity to something far more complicated.

And in recent months, Islam has found itself at the nexus of debates central to our understanding of American democracy. The planned Muslim community center near ground zero has pitted property rights and religious freedoms against respect for a national tragedy. The proposed Quran burning in Florida played freedom of speech off the sensitivities of Muslims worldwide and the safety of American troops. And the recent firing of Juan Williams from National Public Radio, after he spoke of his fear of Muslims in airports, has generated a discussion of tolerance vs. free speech, and some debate about media partisanship.

In his class, Hamad, a thoughtful 35-year-old raised in Egypt, forces discussion out of sometimes-reluctant students. He hopes to broaden their views of Muslims, views mostly shaped by polarized political rhetoric. Only one student in the class is a Muslim: senior Isaiah Ellison, president of the Drake Muslim Students Association and son of Rep. Keith Ellison of Minneapolis, the United States' first Muslim congressman.

"They appreciate the opportunity to learn from someone from a different culture and religious background," Hamad said. "The kind of debate we have might have been a little bit alarming in the last few months. But I take it as a learning opportunity. Not as a threat. Because you cannot blame students for what they hear in the media."


As Islam gets thrust repeatedly into the national debate, American Muslims such as Hamad speak of an increasing awareness of their "other-ness." Hamad's wife, Shaimia, who wears a hijab, talks of the looks she's gotten in recent months. Their oldest son, Omar, 6, recently asked why he keeps hearing about Islam on the news programs his father always has on.

Hamad knows he can't explain it all to a 6-year-old and also knows his moderate voice doesn't always have a place in the national political rhetoric.


He knows tensions between Islam and Christianity have become more pronounced in the past decade, following centuries of unease. But his goal in this class focuses on the here and now: to influence the thinking of his 18 politically inclined students.

"Democracy can't function without engaged, committed and educated citizens," Hamad said. "(Islam's place in the West) is going to be on the policy radar for a very long time. You owe it to yourself and your nation to know more about those issues."
Instructor follows path from Cairo to Drake

For Hamad even to be here - teaching to a group of mostly white, mostly Christian students at a private university in the Midwest - is an improbability.

When Hamad was growing up in Cairo, the Egyptian capital of 17 million people, he wanted to be a fighter pilot. But poor eyesight dashed his dream at a young age. His mom was a physician, his dad a journalist, and soon, Hamad's dreams shifted: He wanted to teach.


Growing up in the Middle East, Hamad couldn't escape the impact of politics on daily life. Developments in the Arab-Israeli conflict dominated the news. His first political memory was the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar El Sadat by Islamic fundamentalists enraged by Sadat's peace treaty with Israel. Hamad's next political memory came when he intently followed the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. He was 7.

"In the Middle East, you are within the fire," he said.


Hamad studied at Cairo University and figured he'd teach there, too. But he got a Fulbright scholarship and in 1999 began graduate work at the University of Washington. It was a time, after the Cold War but before 2001, when there was little animosity between the Arab world and America. He was living in Seattle when the 9/11 attacks changed that.

After earning his doctorate from the University of Utah, he ended up at Drake by accident. He hadn't heard of the school until he saw the Democratic presidential debate hosted by Drake in 2007. Soon after, Hamad met longtime Drake political science professor Arthur Sanders at a conference, and he told Hamad of a job opening. Hamad interviewed for a dozen jobs across the country, but Drake felt right. He started in 2008, teaching courses in introductory politics.


The course on Islam sprang out of Hamad's decision to take students on a three-week summer tour of Egypt, Drake's first study-abroad program in the Middle East. The students studied up on the country, then went on a whirlwind tour: visiting the Pyramids, taking a night safari in the desert, visiting military museums. But Hamad felt he was merely scratching the surface.

"We need to provide students with something that is relevant, informative and thought-provoking about Islam," he said.


Average American 'has no idea' what Islam is

Hamad's course covers the gamut of 21st century Islam, from the basics of the religion, to the treatment of women, to democracy in Islamic countries, to perceptions about Islam in the United States. The class is more debate than lecture. One assignment is to interview and write about a Muslim living in Des Moines.

"It's been eye-opening for me," said Ellison, who has learned about the many faces of his faith in the class. "It's material people want to understand: 'Why do women in Afghanistan dress the way they do?' 'Why do suicide bombers say "Allahu Akbar" before they detonate themselves?' "

The students' debate comes in the shadow of a time when many American Muslims say they feel more cognizant of their "Muslim-ness."

"A lot of my classmates, that's when their world started, with 9/11," Ellison said. "If that's your building block, everything related to Islam has a negative connotation to it. Being able to talk with other Americans who aren't Muslim about Islam, it's been good for me. People understand the complexity of the issue."


For Merle Domer, a 22-year-old senior majoring in religion and philosophy, the class has been a revealing look at timely issues. Debates have frequently gotten heated, especially on current events. It was "mind-boggling," she said, when Hamad brought in several local Muslim women who work as doctors and scientists. Seeing Muslim women who mesh fluidly with the Western world upended her view of subservient women in Islam.

"The average American citizen really has no idea what Islam really is about, me included," Domer said. "I'm a religion major. I thought I knew the religion. But Americans get such a diluted version of what the average Muslim is really like. All we hear is the rhetoric of the media."

She sees Hamad as a professor who wants students to challenge conventional wisdom.

"I hope we come away from this class realizing how much we don't know about other cultures," she said. "That there's always another side to the stories."

Difficult to raise sons as Muslims, Americans

But perhaps the most insightful view students get on Islam in 21st century America comes from Hamad's own daily life.

Hamad and his wife have grappled with how to raise their two young boys as Muslims and as Americans at the same time.


"I think the media is making it more complicated for us," his wife said. "I don't think my kid would ever notice he's different unless someone else pointed it out to him."

Hamad makes an analogy about seeing his religion being used for political purposes: that people such as Terry Jones, the pastor who proposed burning the Quran, are similar to Muslim extremists who've given their religion a bad name.

"They are basically collaborating to achieve the same political objective, which is to divide this country," he said. "To many Muslims, it's offensive that their religion is being used as a scapegoat or a scarecrow to achieve limited political objectives. I know it's a winning strategy in the short term. I don't think it's a winning strategy for the nation in the long term. As an American Muslim, I care for this nation. And I want my kids to have the kind of life that we came to America for."

Sunday, November 21, 2010

How US-UK Create ‘Terrorist’ States: Yemen as a Case Study By Tim Coles -

http://www.yementimes.com/DEFAULTDET.ASPX?SUB_ID=34502


How US-UK Create ‘Terrorist’ States: Yemen as a Case Study



Tim Coles
 
Redress, Al-Jazeerah, CCUN

Published:02-08-2010

How to create your very own terrorist state
Tim Coles takes us through 11 steps necessary to create a “terrorist state”. Using Yemen as a case study, he argues that these steps precisely match US and British policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran as well as Yemen to grow “very poisonous seeds”, some which have ripened while others are ripening.

So, you want to create your own terrorist state, do you? Follow these simple instructions and you will be able to grow “very poisonous seeds. These seeds are growing now. Some have ripened and others are ripening,” as Eqbal Ahmad explained.

In 2002, the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) made it clear that America, with Britain’s help, intends to increase terrorism by chasing terrorists around the world instead of capturing them, or, better still, addressing their grievances – this is the real world, after all, which is dominated by financial interests, so there’s no time for rational solutions here.

The NSS reads: “The United States and countries cooperating with us must not allow the terrorists to develop new home bases. Together, we will seek to deny them sanctuary at every turn.”

The policy of giving terrorists no “haven”, rather than working to end terrorism, gives the US and Britain the excuse to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars” by chasing terrorists around the globe and, more worryingly, to actually cause terrorism.

When terrorism occurs, Britain and America then have the perfect excuse to invade, isolate, impose sanctions on and/or corrupt the given country, as we see in Pakistan, Iran and elsewhere. Under Obama, this horrendous pretext to achieve “full spectrum dominance” was expanded.
So, here is how to create your own terrorist State, using Yemen as an example. This will come in handy as a pretext to invade or impose sanctions on the country of your choosing later on as a continuation of your plans for “full spectrum dominance”.

Step 1:

Make sure you have a media and an education system sophisticated enough to omit what your country does to others, but emphasize what other countries do to you.


This will enable your domestic population to hate the people of the other country, allowing you to pursue your agenda without the risk of being overthrown by your own population. In 2002-03, unprecedented numbers of protestors demonstrated in London against the Iraq war. This could be dangerous for future wars because the public might one day try to overthrow you. Therefore, domestic subversion is also a good tactic if you can do it.

Step 2:
 Select a country that has suffered under your colonial rule in the past. Aden, now Yemen, was occupied by the British in 1839. In 1947, the Amir of Dhala’s son, Haidan, led an uprising which was crushed with overwhelming firepower from Britain’s Royal Air Force. In a study for the RAND Corporation, Bruce Hoffman explained:

“No sooner than the threat from Haidan been neutralized than trouble erupted from another tribe, in the nearby village of Al Husein... Once again punishment was applied from the air. Four Mosquitoes and three Tempests from No. 8 Squadron were ordered to destroy the village. The rocket and cannon air strike, the after-action report stated, “was most impressive and awe-inspiring, and the attack undoubtedly made an impression not easily forgotten.”

Step 3:
 Make sure that your selected country has a neighbour across the sea, or on its border, which has also suffered under your colonial rule. You will need to do this for Step 7 later on. In 1925, the colonial administrator, Douglas Jardine, not to be confused with the cricketer, explained the geostrategic importance of Aden and British Somaliland, now Somalia:

“Berbera, the capital [of Somaliland], is but 160 miles across the Gulf from Aden, and is, therefore, but 12 days distance from London and six from Bombay. It cannot be said that this proximity to our main imperial trade route has been of much benefit to the protectorate in the past; but it might prove at any time to be of incalculable value.”

Indeed, it turned out “to be of incalculable value”. Another colonialist, H.B. Kittermaster, explained: “The dry coastal climate makes the [Somaliland] Protectorate as good as Aden for the production of salt. This is already being done in a primitive way by the natives, and negotiations are now in progress with a British syndicate to develop the industry scientifically.”

Today, the countries are more generally used along the oil trading routes.

Step 4:
 Now that you have chosen a country, in close proximity to its exploited neighbour, you’ll want to ensure that the suffering inflicted upon it had continued throughout the course of, say, one hundred years. This is long enough to foster intergenerational resentment and hatred of your own country.

Britain’s “establishment of the Middle East Command (MEC) headquarters in Aden in 1960 helped fuel the fires of revolution”, Stephen Dorril explained in his history of MI6.

“The 1962 Defence White Paper, “The Next Five Years”, stated that Britain would continue to back the local sultans in South Yemen and the Gulf, and that the Aden base would be the permanent headquarters of this strategy... Aden was to be one of the three key points in Britain’s global military deployment... Fifty thousand Lee Enfield rifles were shipped from the UK to Yemeni royalists. According to the 21st SAS Volunteers Commander Richard Pirie, the mercenaries deployed in Yemen were paid GBP 250 per month from the Foreign Office and from the MoD [Ministry of Defence].”

British and Scottish mercenaries were paid GBP 100,000 a year to launch a chemical war against the population which resulted in the slaughter of 200,000 Yemenis, largely in defence of what was then an oil refinery run by the British.

Step 5:
 Now that you have fostered enough resentment and ruined a country’s chance of socio-economic recovery, you might want to try betraying even the mercenary elements of that country attempting to side with you. In 1979, America and Britain began funding, arming and training the Afghan mujahideen in order “to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap”, to quote US President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

This worked. Russia and the mujahideen ruined Afghanistan – and out of the ashes rose the Taliban, whom Britain and America supported almost up to 9/11. Britain’s leading independent terror specialist, Jason Burke, documented how many of the more fascistic elements of the mujahideen were Yemenis who “had distinguished themselves at the battle of Jalalabad in 1989”.

By 1992, however, the US had not supported those factions who were outraged by the intricacies of the unification of the Yemen Arab Republic and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.

Step 6:
 Capture and torture people from all over the world in a prison such as Guantanamo Bay. Deny them habeas corpus: no charge; no trial; no representation; no right to a lawyer; no right to visits from friends, relatives or the Red Cross; and do so for an indefinite period.

Select people whose religion is the same as those in the terrorist state you are looking to create (in this case Islam). This will create a sense a kinship among those you are turning into enemies. This will make the enemies seem more closely knit, yet from varying countries, giving your country the excuse to invade country after country. Also, use your media to dehumanize the captives, making them seem guilty without evidence.

Once you have traumatized those prisoners of the same religion – which your education system regards as incompatible with modernity – release them to the country you wish to turn into a terrorist state. They may all get together and plot revenge which you can then use to justify attacking the country. In 2009, Barack Obama began releasing former Guantanamo Bay hostages to Yemen.

Step 7:
 Destroy the stabilizing government of the neighbouring country. In 2006, Britain and America supported Somali warlords, such as Abdullah Yusuf, who invaded Somalia in order to overthrow the emerging government (the Union of Islamic Courts) and replace them with a fascist government nobody wanted (the Transitional Federal Government, or TFG). The TFG then launched a campaign of famine, torture and violence so extreme that hundreds of thousands of Somalis fled across the sea to seek refuge in Yemen, with tens of thousands fleeing each year.

Once you have ruined the neighbouring country, poor, displaced, oppressed, Muslim refugees will flock to the country you are trying to turn into a terrorist state (Yemen). Here, clerics in madrassas [religious schools] will have a constituency of desperate people whom they can radicalize and turn into future terrorists, as happened in Pakistan in the 1980s when millions of Afghans fled from Soviet troops and the mujahideen (as we saw in Step 5), many of whom became the Taliban in the early 1990s.

Step 8:
 Murder people without charge or trial in both countries with new, super-weaponry, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones). This will terrorize and radicalize the population of the country you are trying to turn into a terrorist state. Hopefully, your media will attempt to vindicate the drone attacks by either not reporting them or else uncritically quoting officials who claim that the drones target terrorists. Without journalists challenging these official statements, the public may assume that they are correct. (This is happening in more and more countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, Yemen, Somalia and possibly even Haiti).

Step 9:
 Omit as much of the previous steps as you can from public knowledge via the media and education system of your own country. This will make any action from the country you are trying to turn into a terrorist state seem unprovoked, giving you the chance to invade as an act of self-defence. It will also allow you to carry on without your public overthrowing you (as mentioned in Step 1). Also, get your media to make meaningless statements about the country you are trying to turn into a terrorist state, such as “Osama Bin Laden’s grandfather was born there”, or “the failed Christmas underpants bomber (Umar Farouk Abdulmuttallab) was radicalized there by the cleric Anwar Al-Awlaqi” - even though Abdulmuttallab’s father informed the FBI of his son’s radicalization months before, which the FBI ignored – or, “Nidal Malik Hasan, the major who killed several of his colleagues at a US base, was radicalized there” – even though this was not terrorism because they were military targets.

Step 10:
 Wait for a terrorist attack to occur, in the country itself, against a British national stationed there, such as an ambassador who had previously worked in another country you helped to destroy.

When the British ambassador to Yemen, Tim Torlot (who had worked for the British government in Iraq) was attacked in April 2010, the “left” and “right” media leapt at the chance to emphasize how dangerous Yemen is to Britain (for which we planned in Step 1).

Careful reading shows that few newspapers actually revealed their sources. The Independent revealed a source, namely that the Yemeni Interior Ministry said the attack “bore all the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda”, but as Britain and America are training and funding the Yemeni government and secret services, any information provided by them is biased. The Independent also revealed that the primary sources for the incident are “Yemeni newspapers [which] cite anonymous security sources” to name the bomber as Osman Ali Noman Asaloi. In other words, it could be a total fabrication.

The Guardian alleged that some Al-Qaeda members fled Yemen to Somalia via Aden. Perhaps they bumped into the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing from the Western-backed Transitional Federal Government?

The Times reported that “no group claimed responsibility for the attack”, yet the press, basing their information on the Yemeni government, blamed Al-Qaeda. The Times also admitted that “terrorism is merely a symptom of Yemen’s overwhelming problems”, but did not mention that they began in 1839, when Britain invaded, and continue up to the present. This emphasizes the importance of Step 2.

The Telegraph reported: “The Interior Ministry later stated: “This operation reflects the state of despair which has hit the terrorists after the painful pre-emptive strikes which they received in their hideouts at the hands of security services”, which are being trained and funded by the US and Britain, one might add, but this offers no evidence that the victims are “terrorists”.

Step 11:
 Now sit back and wait for the country to boil over into extreme violence, making sure you poke the bear with sticks, such as increased drone attacks and security raids by the puppet government being armed and trained by your own.

After a few years, you will have yourself a nice terrorist state. Later, academics can refer to the country as a “failed state”, perhaps even invoking your “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), omitting, of course, exactly why it has become a “failed state” and why one needs to exercise R2P.

While your domestic population assumes that you are either incompetent or out there to combat terrorism, you can secure energy routes or raw resources. As Liam Fox, the defence secretary of the 2010 Liberal Democrat-Conservative “coalition” government, explained:

“In the years ahead energy security, economic security and national security will be inextricably linked. If we want to ensure that we can keep the lights on in Britain then we need to develop a comprehensive energy strategy. It is simply a matter of risk management. Such a strategy will need to have three components: diversity in the type of fuels we use; diversity in the geographical sources of those fuels; and the security structures that will guarantee the safe transport of these fuels.”
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COMMENTS
 
 
 
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khamis Al Yamani
2010.08.18
 
Kaleef... U really show how imature u r in analising case studies like one above.., once u keep insisting that Yemen is a failed state being pulled by its own Govt.,corruption..,war of muslims on muslims in saada & yet has been very clearly indicated how that is being planted by US & Britain. I guess u need to take a tour of the country the say the water basins of yemen is runing dry cos i've been seeing waterfall in mountns of Taiz, Ibb & Hadramout which no other Arabian country of Arabian Peninsula has the kind of scene. Thats exactly what they (US & Britain) wants people like u to think & judge thru there well organised media.
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michael
2010.08.18
melbourne
 
CORRECTION PLEASE chemical weapons used in Yemen by EGYPT against northern royalists . Actually Mustard gas was used,a wicked act under any circumstances.
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Tom Pruett
2010.08.17
 
It would seem that when we, in the US, label somone in their own country a terrorist because they are acting against the rulers in their own country, that we are sticking our nose into someone elses business. Is there any wonder that we are despised in so much of the world? No matter how pure our goals are, we cannot help but being percieved as presumptios outsiders. About all we accomplish is to make ourselves the focus of the dissatisfaction rather than the unresponsive rulers in these various countries. Cops have long known better than to put themselves between two combatants in a domestic dispute, so why does our government not recognize the folly of the same?
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kaleef
2010.08.08
 
clap, clap clap, nice case study but if it was'nt for the british in aden the yemeni people would still be licking due off the rocks like mudskippers, the uk dragged them into the 20th century despite been set in old tribal ways and brainwashed by immams basicaly afraid of change in the future as they lose their grip on the then dosile uneducated yemeni's.And its all to easy to point the finger at the west when you yourselves are steeped in the home grown bile of corruption, war muslim on muslim in saada the separatist movement in the south and the growing threat of al quiada all over yemen planting the seeds unrest and mayhem against the security services to bring yemen into a failed state as your government just burys its head in the sand but still happy to take money from the usa, 19bn last year to be precise . A 3rd of the people in yemen are in poverty and the presadent builds a mosque costing 100 million dollers while the country slowly runs out of water. it semms you are quite happy in your interpratation of your events but look at the state you the yemeni and YOUR government have got yourselves into, stop pointing the finger at others when their are another three pointing straight back at you.
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Abdulhamid Abdulwahab Alsharai
2010.08.06
California
 
good assessment of the events, but there is nothing new to it. this has been going on in Yemen for as long as i can remember. The only difference is that the yemeni government has been using it against its own people
Post a Comment
tareq
2010.08.02
 
Mr.Tim, I'm really impressed by your precise explanation of this phenomenon. Since, for example, in Yemen, they started arresting people with no accusations under the slogan of " the war against terrorism".