Category Archives: Terrorism Issue

The Zero/Sum Game and Israel

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Development, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


It seems this year that the Republican Antique Ideas Road Show is more about flubs than substance. Having made the cable-show “debates” (which are like T-ball compared to Major League baseball) the center of political attraction, the news media and late night talk show hosts are reveling in their good luck. With the crew assembled it is inevitable that one or more of them will stick their feet (or some other insignificant part of their anatomy) into their mouths. There was no “oops” moment last night in South Carolina, no 9-9-9 upside downside and no smoking gotcha gun moment, but Rick Perry is still as insensitive to political realities as Cain is to a woman’s dignity. Perry’s litmus test for “foreign aid” would be to start at zero and let each country prove it deserves our help. Each country, as Perry admitted, includes Israel. While his campaign was quick to release a statement assuring the Israel Lobby that they would obviously have no problem proving their case for Israel, the mere suggestion that American aid to Israel be re-evaluated is flirting with rhetorical fire. If Obama had made such a suggestion, Fox News anchors would be ranting above their usual derisive decibels.

Perry’s ignorance of foreign policy, while perhaps not as deep-dished as Herman Cain’s knowledge outside the pizza box, is front and center in this case. First of all, there is a cardinal rule in both major parties not to alienate the so-called “Jewish vote”; suggesting that aid to Israel can be reevaluated is not a wise political move, especially when it echoes the Libertarian sentiments of Ron Paul. I suspect that Perry is not aware of the recent book by John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt arguing that it is not in the best interests of our government to continually bow to the “Israel lobby.” Continue reading The Zero/Sum Game and Israel →

All-American Muslim

Film and Video, Islamophobia 101, Terrorism Issue


The Bazzy-Aliahmad Family

Watch ‘All-American Muslim’ This Weekend

By Alyssa Rosenberg, Thinkprogress.org, Nov 10, 2011 at 1:38 pm

Normally, I would never tell you to watch something just because it would make someone mad. But noted Islamophobe Pamela Geller is apparently vexed that TLC’s All-American Muslim, a new reality show about a group of Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan, doesn’t achieve what she thinks of as balance, by which she means including storylines where Muslims commit crimes based on their faith. So I’d really like to see the show, which premieres at 10 on Sunday, do smashingly well as a rebuke to folks like her, and to the idea that we should based practitioners of a faith by its extremists.

You should also watch All-American Muslim because it’s a very good show: warm, funny, with great characters, high-stakes storylines, and the some of the most thoughtful discussions of faith I’ve ever seen on mainstream television, or in mainstream popular culture at all. First, the characters: it’s nice to have so many people to like on a television show. Blowsy Shadia’s the least observant member of her fairly observant family, but she’s sweet and funny. Nawal and Nader are expecting a son, and watching them attend a childbirth class, even though it’s not traditional in Dearborn’s Muslim community, or seeing Nader get extremely anxious when faced with a tiny, adorable baby in a tutu makes Up All Night‘s instincts for parenting comedy look clumsy. And seeing the Muslim football coach of Dearborn’s high school team explain to the Christian parents of a black player how he’s trying to balance the obligations of Ramadan for observant players with the need to get the team in championship shape is a great moment of dialogue. In an era of increasingly vile reality television characters, and in a fall television season that’s stumbled in part by relying heavily on abrasive main and supporting characters, it’s a nice to have people to get invested in and to root for. Continue reading All-American Muslim →

The haram that is not sacred

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Muhammad, Nigeria, Terrorism Issue

There is a dangerous dualism that has haunted Islamic societies since the very start of the faith. I am speaking about the haram that results from individuals and groups that seek to enforce a distinction between haram and halal through violence. The recent waves of sectarian killings are a chilling reminder of the harm that can be caused in the name of stamping out haram. In the north of Nigeria, as reported by al Jazeera, as many as 150 people may have been killed in a single day by Boko Haram, a militant group whose name means “Western education is sacrilege.” The irony of this name is tragic. When I think of the hadith “Seek Knowledge even unto China,” I do not think that the Prophet only meant to look eastward for knowledge. When I think of the extraordinary contributions Muslim scientists and philosophers made to the earlier classical heritage of knowledge, I do not think the Prophet would have disapproved. When I think of sacrilege, I remember that the Prophet forbade his followers to violate the truce of the sacred month and prohibited those who fought for him from mutilating the bodies of those who fought against him. There is much that is haram in this world, but it appears that the value of human life is not as sacred for some Muslims as it is for Allah as the Merciful One or for Muhammad as a Prophet for peace. Continue reading The haram that is not sacred →

Over and almost out (of Iraq)

Iran, Iraq, Iraq War, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue

The Iraq war is finally over. And it marks a complete neocon defeat

by Jonathan Steele The Guardian, October 23, 2011

The Iraq war is over. Buried by the news from Libya, Barack Obama announced late on Friday that all US troops will leave Iraq by 31 December.

The president put a brave face on it, claiming he was fulfilling an election promise to end the war, though he had actually been supporting the Pentagon’s effort to make a deal with Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to keep US bases and several thousand troops there indefinitely.

The talks broke down because Moqtada al-Sadr’s members of parliament and other Iraqi nationalists insisted that US troops be subject to Iraqi law. In every country where they are based the US insists on legal immunity and refuses to let troops be tried by foreigners. In Iraq the issue is especially sensitive after numerous US murders of civilians and the Abu Ghraib scandal in which Iraqi prisoners were sexually humiliated. In almost every case where US courts tried US troops, soldiers were acquitted or received relatively brief prison sentences.

The final troop withdrawal marks a complete defeat for Bush’s Iraq project. The neocons’ grand plan to use the 2003 invasion to turn the country into a secure pro-western democracy and a garrison for US bases that could put pressure on Syria and Iran lies in tatters.

Their hopes of making Iraq a democratic model for the Middle East have been tipped on their head. Continue reading Over and almost out (of Iraq) →

Lecture in New England

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Conferences and Talks, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


On Monday, October 24, 2011, I will be delivering a lecture entitled “What’s Happening in Yemen?” at the Portland campus of the University of New England in WCHP Lecture Hall at 6 pm. For more details click here.

This talk will focus on the impact of the “Arab Spring” political protests that started in Yemen, located at the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, in February. These led to unrest that brought the country to the brink of civil war and economic collapse. Yemen has been ruled by a military leader, Ali Abdullah Salih, who came to power in 1978. In 1990, North and South Yemen were united, followed by a brief civil war in 1993. Before the recent protests there was a secessionist movement in Yemen’s south and an open tribal rebellion near the border with Saudi Arabia. In the past decade the United States has given millions of dollars in aid to President Salih to theoretically combat al-Qaida in Yemen. Questions addressed include the influence of conservative Saudi-backed salafism, the nature of Yemeni tribalism, the role of youth and students in protesting for their own future in a democratic Yemen, and the exaggerated fears about Yemen as a terrorist haven. President Salih once remarked that ruling Yemen was like dancing on the heads of snakes. Now that the snakes have bitten, what is next?

The fast and furious plot to occupy Iran

Iran, Islam in America, Obama Administration, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism Issue


Manssor Arbabsiar is shown in this courtroom sketch during an appearance in a Manhattan courtroom in New York on October 11, 2011

by Pepe Escobar, Al Jazeera, October 12, 2011

No one ever lost money betting on the dull predictability of the US government. Just as Occupy Wall Street is firing imaginations all across the spectrum – piercing the noxious revolving door between government and casino capitalism – Washington brought us all down to earth, sensationally advertising an Iranian cum Mexican cartel terror plot straight out of The Fast and the Furious movie franchise. The potential victim: Adel al-Jubeir, the ambassador in the US of that lovely counter-revolutionary Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

FBI Director Robert Mueller insisted the Iran-masterminded terror plot “reads like the pages of a Hollywood script”. It does. And quite a sloppy script at that. Fast and Furious duo Paul Walker/Vin Diesel wouldn’t be caught dead near it.

The good guys in this Washington production are the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). In the words of Attorney General Eric Holder, they uncovered “a deadly plot directed by factions of the Iranian government to assassinate a foreign Ambassador on US soil with explosives.”

Holder added that the bombing of the Saudi embassy in Washington was also part of the plan. Subsequent spinning amplified that to planned bombings of the Israeli embassy in Washington, as well as the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Buenos Aires. Continue reading The fast and furious plot to occupy Iran →

Which man will you buy a “Used” plot from?

Iran, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue


The “very scary” Iranian Terror plot
by Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, October 12, 2011

The most difficult challenge in writing about the Iranian Terror Plot unveiled yesterday is to take it seriously enough to analyze it. Iranian Muslims in the Quds Force sending marauding bands of Mexican drug cartel assassins onto sacred American soil to commit Terrorism — against Saudi Arabia and possibly Israel — is what Bill Kristol and John Bolton would feverishly dream up while dropping acid and madly cackling at the possibility that they could get someone to believe it. But since the U.S. Government rolled out its Most Serious Officials with Very Serious Faces to make these accusations, many people (therefore) do believe it; after all, U.S. government accusations = Truth. All Serious people know that. And in the ensuing reaction one finds virtually every dynamic typically shaping discussions of Terrorism and U.S. foreign policy.

To begin with, this episode continues the FBI’s record-setting undefeated streak of heroically saving us from the plots they enable. From all appearances, this is, at best, yet another spectacular “plot” hatched by some hapless loser with delusions of grandeur but without any means to put it into action except with the able assistance of the FBI, which yet again provided it through its own (paid, criminal) sources posing as Terrorist enablers. The Terrorist Mastermind at the center of the plot is a failed used car salesman in Texas with a history of pedestrian money problems. Dive under your bed. “For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents,” explained U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and “no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere and no one was actually ever in any danger.’”
Continue reading Which man will you buy a “Used” plot from? →

Plot of the day

"Arab Spring", Iran, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism Issue


The Saudi ambassador to the US Adel al-Jubeir speaks during Middle East peace conference in Maryland in 2007

The news dominating coverage of the Middle East today catapults Iran and the Palestinians over the ongoing Arab Spring. Even the fact that tens of thousands of Syrians turned out in Damascus to support the Asad regime pales in relation to the James Bond scenario of Iranians, drinking tequila with Mexican drug runners in order to set up the assassination of the Saudi ambassador in Washington. It sounds like a movie plot, but then so does the whole Arab spring since February. American officials are acting as though they have slam-dunk proof, which is a dangerous sign when no one has seen even an iota of that proof apart from the allegations given by Attorney General Holder. And it seems the culprit has confessed, so what more needs to be said? The plot is plausible to most Americans, I suspect, because one expects Iran to engage in terrorism and the government officials in Iran despise the Saudis as much as they do the United States. It sure makes Eric Holder, who has come under blistering attack by Republican hawks, smell like a rose.

Also headlining the news today is the agreement between Israel and Hamas in which some 1,027 Palestinians being held in Israel jails will be exchanged for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, captured some five years ago. And the plot thickens, because the exchange of 1000/1 is taken as a victory by both sides. The dark side is that such a deal reinforces the notion that Israel lives are more valuable than Palestinian lives at the same time as individuals are being freed rather than blown up. Given previous hard-line rhetoric of Netanyahu, the idea of such a trade also seems something dreamed up in a novel.

There are serious plots in which people die every day, such as more bombs in Iraq. And there are, in biblical terms, rumors of plots. These two events today would be earth-shaking on any day, but are especially ripe for punditry at this juncture in the region. What will the impact of this release mean on the Palestinian quest for statehood in the U.N.? What new sanctions can be brought out against Iran? And if the Saudi ambassador had been killed, along with a number of Americans, what would have been the response of the Obama administration? I can only imagine the re-election landslide if Obama and the Israelis were to successfully launch an attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear plant. He would be drinking tea all the way to a second term in the White House.

Let’s see what new plot unfolds tomorrow…