Category Archives: Countries

The surge be praised but pass the ammunition

Afghanistan, Election 2008, Iraq, Iraq War

The potential meltdown of Wall Street has brought the economy front and center as “the” issue in the closing days of the election cycle. Even Friday’s debate, originally planned to focus on foreign policy, started out on the state of the economy and looming bail-out plan in congress. But Iraq is not about to disappear from the news. If the only measure of progress in Iraq is the raw number of U.S. casualties, then the “surge” be praised, but keep passing the ammunition. Darfur is also out of the daily news cycle these days, but the killing there has hardly abated. Afghanistan does make the headlines, in part because U.S. casualties are rising dramatically this year.

So five years and counting after the shock-and-awe sweep through Iraq and the May Day announcement of “Mission Accomplished” by George W. Bush, the mission continues and the death toll keeps rising. Here is yesterday’s count from al-Jazeera:

Deadly car bombs rock Baghdad Continue reading The surge be praised but pass the ammunition →

The OIC does not speak for Muslims

Books You Should Read, Islam in America, Islam in Europe, Islamic Law, Pakistan, Terrorism Issue

The OIC does not speak for Muslims

by Tarek Fatah, Muslim Canadian Congress, UN Geneva

I speak to you as a Muslim who was born in Pakistan and lived there for 30 years and moved to Saudi Arabia where I worked for 10 years. Since 1987 I have called Canada my home. As an author, journalist and Muslim activist, I have seen the role and agenda of both the soft and hardcore jihadis unfold before my eyes and across the Muslim world.

I approach the issue of freedom of speech and freedom of expression embodied in the 1948 UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights as defending a treasured right that few of my co-religionists can dream off, let alone cherish or possess. We are over a billion strong, but almost all of us live under varying forms and degrees of dictatorship and oppression. Barring a few exceptions such as Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia, and very recently Pakistan, Muslims live under the tyranny of rulers like those of Iran and Saudi Arabia who have used the religion of Islam as a tool to secure absolute power, and to trample all over the human rights of their citizens.

Barely a day goes by without news of gross violations of human rights of Muslims living in so-called Islamic countries. Whether it is honour killings of sisters and mothers or the harassment of gays and calls for their death; whether it is imprisonment of political opponents or attacks on minorities, we Muslims who live in the West are constantly reminded of the rights we enjoy under secular parliamentary democracies as individual human beings. Continue reading The OIC does not speak for Muslims →

Tzipi Livni is Israel’s Barack Obama

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Gender and Sexuality, Israel


Mahmoud Abbas and Tzipi Livni, 2006

Tzipi Livni is Israel’s Barack Obama

By Neri Livneh, Haaretz Correspondent, September 18, 2008

If, as John Lennon and Yoko Ono said, “Woman is the N—-r of the World,” then Tzipi Livni is Israel’s Barack Obama.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, Livni did not exploit the fact that she was a woman in order to get elected. She is also not married to one of the most beloved individuals in the world.

Instead, Livni won the Kadima primary despite being a woman, and despite being married to a private man who prefers to steer clear from the limelight. (Israeli comics – all of them men, of course – are now busy thinking up new puns on the old “Mr. Tzipi Livni and Mrs. President.”)

And all this while Livni is zealously trying to protect the privacy of her family, and is probably the last person anyone would turn to for a Rosh Hashanah cake recipe. Continue reading Tzipi Livni is Israel’s Barack Obama →

Bomb Attack on U.S. Embassy in Yemen

Sanaa, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


Smoke is seen billowing outside the U.S. embassy in Sanaa September 17, 2008. A car bomb set off a series of explosions outside the heavily fortified embassy in Yemen on Wednesday and a Yemeni security source said at least 16 people, including six attackers, were killed. Collapse
(Yemen News Agency, via Reuters)

U.S. Embassy in Yemen Attacked

By Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post Foreign Service, Wednesday, September 17, 2008

SANAA, Yemen, Sept. 17 — Attackers exploded a vehicle bomb outside the main gate of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen on Wednesday in what appeared to be a well-coordinated assault that triggered more explosions and heavy gunfire around the compound.

Yemen’s official Saba news agency said 16 people died in the incident, including six Yemeni soldiers, four civilians and six attackers. One of the civilians was an Indian woman at the embassy on business.

There were no immediate reports of American casualties. The embassy is located in the center of Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, but the building is set far back from an outer security wall.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Continue reading Bomb Attack on U.S. Embassy in Yemen →

The Mecca Railway

Islamic Rituals, Ottoman Empire, Photography, Saudi Arabia, Turkey


Engine “Abdul Hamid” on the Mecca Railroad; Source: National Geographic Magazine XX(2):158, 1909

[A few years before World War I, when the Ottoman empire was still an empire, the Sultan Abdul Hamid sponsored a railway link between Damascus and Mecca for the pilgrim route. Although the Hijaz Railway is little known today, it has already merited a Wikipedia article. The following is from a report published a century ago on the opening of the railway. Webshaykh.]

The gauge of the line is the somewhat curious one of 1.05 meter (3 feet 5 1/4 inches), which was necessary, when the line was first commenced, to correspond with the gauge of the Beirut-Damascus line, over which the rolling stock had to be brought. The branch to the Mediterranean, at Haifa, was constructed subsequently. The rolling stock has been obtained principally from Belgium, with the exception of the engines, which are made by a German firm. The rails were supplied by the American Steel Trust, but a French firm domiciled in Russia, and by the firm of Cockerill, in Belgium.

The engineers in charge of sections were also of various nationalities — French, Poles, Hungarians, etc. — while the guiding spirit in the construction has been Meissner Pasha, a very able German engineer. Continue reading The Mecca Railway →

Cholera outbreak spreads in Iraq

Iraq, Iraq War


The victims include seven children and two women.

Reported in Al-Jazeera, Thursday, September 11, 2008

Babel, a central Iraqi province, is on alert after Iraqi authorities declared it a disaster zone marking the country’s latest cholera outbreak.

At least five people died on Thursday while 90 new cases had been reported, local and national health officials said.

Babel’s provincial council, said: “The laboratory reports from Babel health department indicate there are 200 cases of suspected cholera, vomiting and diarrhea in the province”.

At least 20 people, including seven children and two women, have died from cholera in the past three days, a local official said. Continue reading Cholera outbreak spreads in Iraq →

Pro-McCain Group Dumping 28 Million Terror Scare DVDs in Swing States

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Election 2008, Film and Video, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Israel, Terrorism Issue


Sally Lopez of Lemoyne, PA displays a copy of the DVD that came in the mail.

by Erik Ose, The Latest Outrage, September 12, 2008

This week, 28 million copies of a right-wing, terror propaganda DVD are being mailed and bundled in newspaper deliveries to voters in swing states. The 60-minute DVDs, titled “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” are landing on doorsteps in a campaign coinciding with the 7th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Funding is coming from a New York-based group called the Clarion Fund, a shadowy outfit whose financial backers are The program was originally shown on Fox News in the days leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections, and right-wing activist David Horowitz toured the country screening the film on college campuses during 2007. Mainstream religious groups have called Obsession biased and divisive. It cuts between scenes of Nazi rallies and footage of Muslim children being encouraged to become suicide bombers. Continue reading Pro-McCain Group Dumping 28 Million Terror Scare DVDs in Swing States →

Hardliner Repression of Iranians Online

CyberOrient, Iran

Hardliner Repression of Iranians Online

by Elham Gheytanchi, Co-authored by Babak Rahimi, The Huffington Post, September 10, 2008

As Tehran’s nuclear crisis grabs headlines and there is talk of easing relations with Iran by opening an US interest section in Iran for the first time since hostage crisis of 1979, an ominous development is taking place inside Iran: the escalation of state repression against Iranian dissidents online. In the wake of the ninth anniversary of the July 1999 student uprising, which shocked the regime to its foundation, the hard-liner administration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stepped up the arrest of political dissidents, who have used the Net as an alternative medium to express their views against the Islamic Republic. Coupled with their suspicion of the international community, and continued attachment to a dogmatic vision of an Islamist society, the recent developments raise concern over the extent to which hard-liners are determined to muzzle dissent in cyberspace, hence advancing their sphere of influence over the Iranian civil society — especially over women’s rights and human rights groups who have suffered the most in the latest attacks. Continue reading Hardliner Repression of Iranians Online →