“Conspirators” behind Unrest: Syria’s Assad enlightens us!

UPDATE: Massacre in Latakia, Syria.

“Freedom does not come in ‘Home Delivery.’”

Whether the event took place in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, Syria and Jordan, we keep hearing the same exact accusations by the tyrants who think they “own” the countries they rule.

• On December 30, 2010 Zein El Abedine Ben Ali’s threatened to “punish the rioters”in his speech. He said he “understood” people’s anger but that violence will not be tolerated (source)
• On January 31, 2010, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt “acknowledged” the grievances of the demonstrators, but blamed the “Muslim Brotherhood” opposition movement for the disorder and looting of recent days, saying that Islamists had “striven to cause chaos”.
• King Abdullah of Jordan blamed Israel for Arab anger!
• On February 18, the “King” of Bahrain blamed Iran for the uprising against his family’s 200+ years in power!
• On February 26, 2011 Qaddafi claimed that the protesters were young people who had been manipulated by Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s leader, and were acting under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs!  A day earlier, Qaddafi’s son blamed Canada for the Libyan unrest! Later,  Qaddafi blamed the United States, hallucinogenic drugs, Egypt, young adults, “greasy rats,” gangsters, and (my personal favorite) “someone with a beard.“
• On March 2nd, 2011 Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen dismissed the rally by his people as “a copycat action” mimicking protests in other Arab countries. He charged that the “riots” had been fanned by Israel and the United States.
• And On March 30, 2011 Assad blamed conspirators for the uprising! His “aides” stressed how important his address to his people would be, that it would contain “great news,” but turned out to be no more more than the speeches delivered by Mubarak, Qaddafi and Saleh! Same wording, same blame and same wish: to hold on to power!

And so on!

The rulers, naturally, never fault themselves or even question their governments of tyranny and oppression! If it’s not outside and/or foreign forces they can place the blame on, then it’s definitely the people’s fault!  Meanwhile, the guilty people are getting poorer while the rulers are becoming billionaires!

Compare this to the times of the Islamic Empire (632-1918) when the Arab world was united and border-less. Israel and Zionism did not exist and people lived in absolute peace and in unparalleled prosperity. At that time, Europe was deep in the abyss of its Dark Age period (5th – 15th Century)!

The political system then was really parallel to what we currently have in the U.S.: one elected President and “governors” running the vast parts of the empire. History attests to this prosperity and advancement in sciences, literature, architect, medicine, etc. Even the numbers we use (1, 2, 3) are Arabic numbers! The empire introduced the “zero” and everyone paid the “tax” (Zakah) and at one time, no poor family could be found to whom this “tax” could be paid in the form of assistance.

Now it’s exactly the opposite: Rulers are attached to their thrones! They steal the wealth and appoint their families to help them suffocate and steal more of their countries resources. They bribe and steal to achieve more power. Getting to power, as the modern world had witnessed was often based on a militant uprising against another (previous) ruler, promising prosperity and economic changes and such empty and false promises. Assad himself had promised, when he took office after the death of his father, that he would make Syria the envy of the Arab world and that every Arab would wish that s/he had the Syrian citizenship!

And such are the oppressive regimes of the Middle East. Blind, Ruthless, Tyrants… and we support them because of OIL or “our” interests while we call for democracy! The hypocrisy.

These regimes must GO!

Related Articles

• Assad blames conspirators for unrest (guardian.co.uk)
• Syrians join the Arab protests (guardian.co.uk)
• Gaddafi must go, but Assad stays. So saith the Obama misadministration. (bokertov.typepad.com)
• Israel not eager to see Syria’s Assad go (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Freedom & Dignity for Palestinians: Mona Eltahawy’s Remarks; J Street 2011

Mona Eltahawy speaking at the J Street Conference 2011 (2.27.11) . These are her complete opening remarks.

History before Our Eyes: Broader Implications of Democracy Movements in the Arab World.

Panelists:

Mona Eltahawy, Journalist
Ron Pundak, Director General, The Peres Center for Peace
Robert Serry, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process

Moderator: Steve Clemons, Senior Fellow, New America Foundation
Chair: Ambassador Samuel Lewis, Former American diplomat and former head of the U.S. Institute of Peace

 

Our absurd obsession with Israel is laid bare

The Middle East meant only Israel to many. Now the lives of millions of Arabs have been brought to Europe’s attention

Nick Cohen The Observer, Sunday 27 February 2011

The Arab revolution is consigning skip-loads of articles, books and speeches about the Middle East to the dustbin of history. In a few months, readers will go through libraries or newspaper archives and wonder how so many who claimed expert knowledge could have turned their eyes from tyranny and its consequences.

The Map erroneously includes Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan as part of the Arab World.

To a generation of politically active if not morally consistent campaigners, the Middle East has meant Israel and only Israel. In theory, they should have been able to stick by universal principles and support a just settlement for the Palestinians while opposing the dictators who kept Arabs subjugated. Few, however, have been able to oppose oppression in all its forms consistently. The right has been no better than the liberal-left in its Jew obsessions. The briefest reading of Conservative newspapers shows that at all times their first concern about political changes in the Middle East is how they affect Israel. For both sides, the lives of hundreds of millions of Arabs, Berbers and Kurds who were not involved in the conflict could be forgotten.

If you doubt me, consider the stories that the Middle Eastern bureau chiefs missed until revolutions that had nothing to do with Palestine forced them to take notice.

• Gaddafi was so frightened of a coup that he kept the Libyan army small and ill-equipped and hired mercenaries and paramilitary “special forces” he could count on to slaughter the civilian population when required.

• Leila Ben Ali, the wife of the Tunisian president, was a preposterously extravagant figure, who all but begged foreign correspondents to write about her rapacious pursuit of wealth. Only when Tunisians rose up did journalists stir themselves to tell their readers how she had pushed the populace to revolt by combining the least appealing traits of Imelda Marcos and Marie-Antoinette.

• Hearteningly, for those of us who retain a nostalgia for the best traditions of the old left, Tunisia and Egypt had independent trade unionists, who could play “a leading role”, as we used to say, in organising and executing uprisings.

Far from being a cause of the revolution, antagonism to Israel everywhere served the interests of oppressors. Europeans have no right to be surprised. Of all people, we ought to know from our experience of Nazism that antisemitism is a conspiracy theory about power, rather than a standard racist hatred of poor immigrants. Fascistic regimes reached for it when they sought to deny their own people liberty. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the forgery the far-right wing of the decaying tsarist regime issued in 1903 to convince Russians they should continue to obey the tsar’s every command, denounces human rights and democracy as facades behind which the secret Jewish rulers of the world manipulated gullible gentiles.

Syrian Ba’athists, Hamas, the Saudi monarchy and Gaddafi eagerly promoted the Protocols, for why wouldn’t vicious elites welcome a fantasy that dismissed democracy as a fraud and justified their domination? Just before the Libyan revolt, Gaddafi tried a desperate move his European predecessors would have understood. He tried to deflect Libyan anger by calling for a popular Palestinian revolution against Israel. That may or may not have been justified, but it assuredly would have done nothing to help the wretched Libyans.

In his Epitaph on a Tyrant, Auden wrote:

“When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter
And when he cried, the little children died in the streets.”

Europe’s amnesia about how tyranny operated in our continent explains why the Libyan revolution is embarrassing a rich collection of dupes and scoundrels who were willing to laugh along with Gaddafi. His contacts in Britain were once confined to the truly lunatic fringe. He supplied arms to the IRA, funded the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, Vanessa Redgrave’s nasty Trotskyist sect, and entertained Nick Griffin and other neo-Nazis. We should not forget them when the time comes to settle accounts. But when Tony Blair, who was so eloquent in denouncing the genocides of Saddam, staged a reconciliation with Gaddafi after 9/11, his friendship opened the way for the British establishment to embrace the dictatorship.

It was not only BP and other oil companies, but British academics who were happy to accept his largesse. The London School of Economics took £1.5m from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, money which by definition had to have been stolen from the Libyan people, despite being warned to back away by Professor Fred Halliday, the LSE’s late and much-missed authority on the Middle East, who never flinched from looking dictators in the eye.

“I’ve come to know Saif as someone who looks to democracy, civil society and deep liberal values for the core of his inspiration,” purred the LSE’s David Held as he accepted the cheque.

Human Rights Watch, once a reliable opponent of tyranny, went further and described a foundation Saif ran in Libya as a force for freedom, willing to take on the interior ministry in the fight for civil liberties. Meanwhile, and to the surprise of no one, Peter Mandelson, New Labour’s butterfly, fluttered round Saif at the country house parties of the plutocracy.

Last week, Saif, the “liberal” promoter of human rights and dining companion of Mandelson, appeared on Libyan television to say that his father’s gunmen would fight to the last bullet to keep the Gaddafi crime family in business, a promise he is keeping. The thinking behind so many who flattered him was that the only issue in the Middle East worth taking a stand on was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the oppression of Arabs by Arabs was a minor concern.

 

 

The longevity of the regimes presided over by the Gaddafi, Assad and Mubarak families and the House of Saud ought to be a reason for denouncing them more vigorously, but their apparent permanence added to the feeling that somehow Libyans, Syrians, Egyptians and Saudis want to live under dictatorships.

The European Union, which did so much to export democracy and the rule of law to former communist dictatorships of eastern Europe, has played a miserable role in the Middle East. It pours in aid but never demands democratisation or restrictions on police powers in return. That will have to change if the promise of the past month is to be realised. If it is to help with democracy-building, Europe will need to remind itself as much as the recipients of its money that you can never build free societies on the racist conspiracy theories of the Nazis and the tsars. They are and always have been the tunes that tyrants sing.

Related Articles

• Our absurd obsession with Israel is laid bare | Nick Cohen (guardian.co.uk)
• UN: 100,000 Libyan Refugees Fled East and West (israelnationalnews.com)
• Gaddafi: I love revolts – when they occur somewhere else (hotair.com)

Dictators Are Us; Toppled One by One

QADDAFI’S HORRIFIC CRIMES – VERY GRAPHIC!

What are these people thinking?

Are they that dumb, deaf and blind?

They all repeat the same thing… it’s as if they have the same mother.. or father (Ramses II) for that matter!

Some Predictions for the remaining morons!

Caesar Maddness: Gaddafi

 

Caesar Gaddafi

 

 

The similarities between the recent actions of the Libyan dictator with Nero in the Great Fire of Rome suggest that the Libyan dictator is suffering from Caesar madness.

Nero Claudius Caesar, the fifth emperor of ancient Rome, burned down the city of Rome in the year 64 AD out of sheer madness; he finally committed suicide in the year 68 AD.

Currently, the people of Libya are faced with a complicated figure like Colonel Muammar Gaddafi who has brutally bombed public places and killed hundreds of his own countrymen.

The violent oppression of the people suggests Gaddafi is not willing to learn from history as he continues his struggle to maintain his grip on power.

In the recent upheaval in Libya, a large number of aircraft have reportedly fired at crowds of protesters in the city of Benghazi and Tripoli, launching one of the most violent mass killings.

In a televised conference, Colonel Gaddafi called protesters hooligans and said he would fight the people of Libya until the last bullet.

Gaddafi, who is regarded as the strangest leader in the Arab world, was born in the city of Sirte on June 7, 1942.

 

The Libyan People’s Committee for General Security, the regime’s highest security agency, has broadcast a message on state-run television calling on “citizens to co-operate and inform on those who led on the youth or supplied them with money, equipment or intoxicating substances and hallucinatory pills.” The Telegraph

He entered the army when he was 18. In 1969, he led a bloodless rebellion with junior military officers against the former king Idris al-Senussi when he was only 27-years-old.

Gaddafi came to power at a time when Arab nations were in a difficult psychological state following their defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

By using new rhetoric about fighting Zionism and imperialism in the post-war political climate, Gaddafi managed to attract the attention of most Arab nations.

In the past 42 years Gaddafi has used various political techniques but over the past seven years, in a 180 degree turn, he embraced the United States and the West.

Since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq Gaddafi has submitted to the United States and the West as he worries that the time for his own collapse has come as well.

In 2003, Gaddafi signed an agreement with the United States handing over control of nuclear installations and advanced weaponry to the United States.

The Libyan dictator also paid USD 1 billion as compensation for the 1988 explosion of the Pan American flight over Lockerbie Scotland.

Since then, Gaddafi’s regime has become a favorite of the US and the West’s because he provided information about Islamic and Arabic resistance movements to the CIA.

Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, who has long been seen as the successor to his father, has established deep ties with Israeli leaders and the Zionist Lobby of the United States.

Thereby, Libya abandoned the anti-US and anti-Israel bloc to join the American and Western allies. This unimportant change, however, failed to gain the approval of the Libyan population.

This is because the people of Libya question the logic behind Gaddafi’s decision to hand over control of expensive weaponry worth upward of USD 20 billion to the United States without referring to public opinion.

By complying with the West, Gaddafi intended to prepare grounds for the transfer of power to his son Seif al-Islam.

At the time, the US and European nations had agreed to the gradual transfer of power from Gaddafi to his son Seif al-Islam.

Despite the agreements, Colonel Gaddafi witnessed increased domestic turmoil and he was faced with the waves of political dissatisfaction within his own office.

The waves of the tsunami of Egypt and Tunisia quickly reached the shores of Libya creating a difficult situation for the Libyan dictator.

Millions of Libyans protested the domestic and foreign policies of Colonel Gaddafi and confronted government forces.

The wave of unrest reached various cities across Libya and thousands of people have been killed by the direct bullets of African mercenaries.

Gaddafi has hired 50,000 mercenaries from all over Africa and has placed them in major Libyan cities.

Some say Seif al-Islam has contacted Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak requesting a squadron of fighter jets to bomb the people of Libya.

Eyewitnesses in various cities have reported that several F-16 fighter jets have bombed crowds of people protesting against Colonel Gaddafi.

The United States and countries that support Gaddafi have been quiet about the massacre of Libyans at the hand of mercenaries in a bid to advance their own interests.

Western analysts believe the reason why the US gave Gaddafi a free rein to commit the massacres was to create mayhem in the nation.

The US and NATO member-states will then occupy Libya and control its oilfields using the protection of Libyan people.as an excuse.

The current situation is too complicated to be able to make an accurate assessment of the outcome of the protests.

But still it seems Gaddafi’s situation is not better than that of Ben Ali and Mubarak’s, the former Tunisian and Egyptian dictators.

Many of Libya’s political figures compare Gaddafi’s recent oppressive measures to a headless chicken that will soon inhale its last breath.

HH/MSD/HGH

Source

Related Articles

• Libya: Colonel Gaddafi To Speak On State Television (news.sky.com)
• Israel’s Shimon Peres ‘full of hope’ for Libyan protesters (thejc.com)
• Gaddafi offers cash rewards to Libyans to betray pro-democracy protesters (telegraph.co.uk)

The Women of Revolution in the Middle East

 

 

 

 

 

You've Come A Long Way Baby!

 

Different Traditional Costumes

Here we go again: Saudi King Supports Bahrain King

Saudi Arabia has pledged to stand “with all its capabilities” by Bahrain’s ruling royal family amid pro-democracy protests inspired by revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt which toppled US-backed government. Press TV

The Saudi Government [as reported by Aljazeera Arabic site] demanded their religious leaders to issue fatwas condemning any type of protest..

The Saudi, Jordanian and Syrian corrupt governments are very concerned… that their thrones will soon become as good as toilets!

The statement came as US Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, for a two day visit.

He told reporters that he was in Riyadh to “reassure, discuss and understand what is going on.”

Bahrain is home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which has served as a hub for operations in Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and East Africa.

Bahrainis, inspired by revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, dubbed have been expressing disappointment with the political reforms of the past decade, which have failed to bring prosperity and real change.

The protests, however, took a new turn on Thursday after the brutal crackdown on protesters in Manama, which left at least five people dead and more than 230 injured.

At least eight people have been killed and hundreds injured in the clashes since the uprising in the Arab world reached Bahrain last week.

Thousands of protesters continue to mass in Manama’s Pearl Square. They are pressing for political reforms, including the release of political prisoners and the sack of the incumbent Prime Minister Khalifa Bin Salman.

A group of protesters, however, called for the ouster of the entire ruling monarchy.

 

Meanwhile, in Jordan

The Jordanian religious leaders issued Fatwas SUPPORTING protests and stating that such are but a religious mandate to speak against evil, corruption and oppression. Unlike the Saudis, who issued fatwas declaring protests… sacrilegious!

Jordan’s king enjoys absolute powers, ruling by decree: He can appoint and dismiss cabinet and parliament whenever at anytime.

Amani Ghoul, a teacher and member of the movement that organised the protests insisted the protests will continue until their demands are met.

“We want a complete overhaul of the political system, including the constitution, the parliament dissolved and new free and fair elections held,” she said.

 

Related Articles

• You: Saudi Arabia says it’s ready to help Bahrain’s rulers (washingtonpost.com)
• Bahrain Opposition Groups Mull Response (online.wsj.com)
• Bahrain Uprising: High Stakes for the U.S. (thedailybeast.com)