Islamophobia – on the semi-periphery

No, Obama is not trying to shut down his Guantanamo Gulag

Posted on 2015/08/15 - 2015/08/15 by jd

Tariq Ba Odah

‘The administration of President Barack Obama urged a federal judge on Friday not to order the release of a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who has been on hunger strike for more than eight years and is described by his lawyers as being at risk of imminent death.’
via AP: USA resists immediate release for Guantanamo hunger striker

and…

‘U.S. intelligence and military officials cleared him for release five years ago from the Guantanamo detention center…’
via Reuters: Detainees’ lawyers question Obama commitment to close Guantanamo

https://twitter.com/MazMHussain/status/632383003323428868

Video and photo (above) from Witness Against Torture

liberté / sécurité

Posted on 2015/06/20 - 2015/06/20 by jd

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— Le Journal du Siècle.

Gary Sick explains Saudi Arabia’s War

Posted on 2015/06/06 - 2015/06/06 by jd

Listen to Gary Sick (also: wikipedia)

‘…Saudi Arabia’s decision to place the political threat from Iran above the actual military and ideological threat from radical Sunni Islamism is questionable at best. Both Al Qaeda and the self-styled Caliph of the Islamic State have openly proclaimed their intent to overthrow the corrupt Saudi royal family and take control of the two holy places—Mecca and Medina—that define the Islamic credentials of Saudi rule. Indeed only last week ISIL claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia that killed more than 20 people.

This threat from radical Sunni Islamism is the only credible external threat to Saudi independence and territorial integrity. No other movement, state or institution in the Middle East has undertaken anything remotely like this concerted anti-Saudi campaign. The Iranian regime has never evinced an aspiration to destabilize, much less attack, Saudi Arabia or any other Sunni state. Iran’s horrific eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s came in response to an outright invasion by Saddam Hussein, explicitly supported and funded by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies.

Today, Saudi Arabia, together with Qatar and Turkey, is supporting and funding radical Sunni Islamists in Syria (Nusra Front and other al-Qaeda affiliates). This effort may well achieve its goal of overthrowing the Assad regime, or at least carve out a mini Sunni state within Syria, but the result would be to empower a vicious and uncontrollable coalition of extremists whose policies make them essentially indistinguishable from ISIL. Deposing Assad will not end the Syrian civil war; it will simply reverse the players, turning many current regime supporters into insurgents while fueling a contest for supremacy among the Al-Qaeda militias and ISIL….’

Via Saudi Arabia's Widening War – Gary Sick – POLITICO Magazine
Part One and Part Two.

TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 fake-bomb tests

Posted on 2015/06/01 - 2015/06/01 by jd

‘…An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned.

The series of tests were conducted by Homeland Security Red Teams who pose as passengers, setting out to beat the system.

According to officials briefed on the results of a recent Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints.

via EXCLUSIVE: Undercover DHS Tests Find Security Failures at US Airports – ABC News.

CIA Director says US war has been going on for a thousand years.

Posted on 2015/04/12 - 2015/04/12 by jd

Who do they think they are at war with, exactly??

Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan:
‘It’s a long war, unfortunately. But it’s been a war that has been in existence for millennia…’
via Politics, Power, and Preventive Action » CIA Director: We’re Winning the War on Terror, But It Will Never End.

Brennan-at-HKS-2

Historic Nuclear Deal with Iran has Prevented a New War in the Middle East

Posted on 2015/04/03 - 2015/04/03 by jd

Former Ambassador Seyed Hossen Mousavian on Democracy Now….

‘I think there’s no difference between Israel and North Korea because North Korea has a few number of nuclear bombs. Israel has about 400 nuclear bombs. Therefore, they both are the same. They have nuclear bombs. There is a big difference between Iran and Israel. They really belong to two different wars on nonproliferation. Iran is member of the Nonproliferation Treaty and Israel has never been ready to accept it. There is no evidence in Iranian nuclear program. Iran does not have nuclear bomb. Israel has about 400 nuclear bombs. During last 10 years, Iran has given more than 7000 mandate inspections to International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA. This is completely unprecedented during the history of IAEA, no other country in the world has given access to IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, like Iran during the last decade. Israel, during last 50, 60 years, has not given even one inspection to the IAEA. Therefore, I believe the war and international community, they should judge who is wrong, who is right. Iran does not have nuclear bomb. Iran has accepted every level of inspection, transparency. Iran has accepted to have completely open nuclear program, and Israel does have a nuclear bomb and the country which does have nuclear bomb is blaming Iran, which does not have nuclear bomb.’
via Former Iranian Ambassador: Historic Nuclear Dear has Prevented a New War in the Middle East | Democracy Now!.

Was the co-pilot a muslim?

Posted on 2015/03/29 by jd

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USA TSA: ‘Signs You Might Be a Terrorist’

Posted on 2015/03/27 by jd

‘…These are just a few of the suspicious signs that the Transportation Security Administration directs its officers to look out for — and score — in airport travelers, according to a confidential TSA document obtained exclusively by The Intercept….’
via Exclusive: TSA’s Secret Behavior Checklist to Spot Terrorists – The Intercept.

Treason by any other name — the Israeli edition

Posted on 2015/03/24 - 2015/03/24 by jd

…But there is a real scandal here, and that’s Israel using stolen intelligence as part of a deliberate campaign of messing around with American partisan politics. That’s why the White House is angry: "It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy," a senior US official told Entous.

If Entous’ reporting is correct, the Israeli government used the leaked information to help Republicans build support for new sanctions among Democrats, which would be necessary to overcome Obama’s veto. Israel was using stolen information to help Mitch McConnell and John Boehner foment a Democratic rebellion against the president….’

via Israel stole classified US information and used it to help congressional Republicans – Vox.

Peace with Iran could mean less profits

Posted on 2015/03/20 - 2015/03/20 by jd

‘…The possibility of an Iran nuclear deal depressing weapons sales was raised by Myles Walton, an analyst from Germany’s Deutsche Bank, during a Lockheed earnings call this past January 27th. Walton asked Marillyn Hewson, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, if an Iran agreement could “impede what you see as progress in foreign military sales.” Financial industry analysts such as Walton use earnings calls as an opportunity to ask publicly-traded corporations like Lockheed about issues that might harm profitability.
Hewson replied that “that really isn’t coming up,” but stressed that “volatility all around the region” should continue to bring in new business. According to Hewson, “A lot of volatility, a lot of instability, a lot of things that are happening” in both the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region means both are “growth areas” for Lockheed Martin…’
via Big Bank’s Analyst Worries That Iran Deal Could Depress Weapons Sales – The Intercept.

Ivana Hoffman died for an Anarchist Syria

Posted on 2015/03/11 - 2015/03/11 by jd

Ivana Hoffman

‘…A hint of defiance, a look of liberated joy: that’s the expression etched on the face of this foreign fighter. Ivana Hoffman, 19, did not leave Germany to fight for Islamic State, of course, but for the Kurdish struggle.

In the photograph being widely distributed, she stands in front of the emblematic hammer-and-sickle icon. Hoffman was a communist, fighting to “defend the revolution”, she said. What is being forgotten is that the great war of northern Syria is not simply a defensive struggle against Isis’s barbarism but a revolution in its own right, and the likes of Hoffman are heroes of the left.

[….] In northern Syria, the struggle is led by the Democratic Union party, a radically democratic, feminist, leftwing force and an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ party. Once Stalinist, the PKK has evolved, now drawing inspiration from the libertarian socialism of the US theoretician Murray Bookchin….’

via Why the revolutionary Kurdish fight against Isis deserves our support | Owen Jones | Comment is free | The Guardian.

There is a very thin line between the Islamic State and the Jewish State

Posted on 2015/03/09 - 2015/03/09 by jd

‘…”Those with us, should receive everything” in terms of rights, he says, according to Israel’s Channel 2. “Those against us, it cannot be helped, we must lift up an axe and behead them – otherwise we will not survive here,” Lieberman said during an election rally…’
via Lieberman: Behead Arabs who aren’t loyal to Israel.

The first Muslims in America were kidnapped black Africans

Posted on 2015/03/06 by jd

‘…Some of the stories in [the book] “One Nation, Under Gods” [by Peter Manseau] are more surprising. “It is perhaps the greatest of forgotten influences on American life and culture,” Manseau writes, that some 20 percent or more of Africans living in America around the time of the Revolutionary War were Muslims, a quantity that “dwarfed the number of Roman Catholics or Jews.” The majority of enslaved Africans did practice such Western African religions as Yoruba and Obeah, all of which contributed to the distinctive customs of African-American Christianity. But we also have a handful of stories of African Muslims abducted to the U.S., where, as in the case of one Omar ibn Said, they astonished the natives by writing fluently in a strange alphabet (Arabic) and impressed, if also bewildered, everyone with their abstemious piety….’

via The stubborn myth of the Christian country: Why the U.S. has always been “one nation, under gods” – Salon.com.

Islamic Early North America

Posted on 2015/03/05 by jd

‘…In 1528, a Moroccan slave called Estevanico was shipwrecked along with a band of Spanish explorers near the future city of Galveston, Tex. The city of Azemmour, in which he was raised, had been a Muslim stronghold against European invasion until it fell during his youth. While given a Christian name after his enslavement, he eventually escaped his Christian captors and set off on his own through much of the Southwest.

Two hundred years later, plantation owners in Louisiana made it a point to add enslaved Muslims to their labor force, relying on their experience with the cultivation of indigo and rice. Scholars have noted Muslim names and Islamic religious titles in the colony’s slave inventories and death records.

The best known Muslim to pass through the port at New Orleans was Abdul-Rahman Ibrahim ibn Sori, a prince in his homeland whose plight drew wide attention. As one newspaper account noted, he had read the Bible and admired its precepts, but added, “His principal objections are that Christians do not follow them.”

via The Muslims of Early America – NYTimes.com.

Bibi says: Iran, Iran Iran, and Stand. Down.

Posted on 2015/03/04 - 2015/03/09 by jd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Txrcpl49GQ

why do the children of Abraham fight so much?!

Posted on 2015/02/27 by jd

Yeah, exactly. This is also my point that I say as a (98%) atheist.

Here’s my point: if Christians don’t own God and God “owns” heaven (remember when you said, “Duh. Of course.”?), then why do so many Christians get so worked up with judging and damning other religions?

Jesus was Jewish.

If you are a follower of the Christian faith, it seems like some kind of bizarre, religiously self-inflicted wound to be anti-Semitic.

Additionally, Muslims see Jesus as one of the greatest and most powerful of God’s prophets.

Shall we take it upon ourselves to condemn an entire religion when we share a common spiritual ancestor in Abraham and a common belief of the teachings of Jesus?

via Dear Fellow Christians: We Don’t Own Heaven.

Bombing non-Muslims.

Posted on 2015/02/23 - 2015/02/23 by jd

Tedd Rall asks

‘When’s the last time the United States bombed a non-Muslim country?’
via In the Propaganda War Against ISIS, US Flails.

#AtheistTerrorism — Armed and Atheist in North Carolina

Posted on 2015/02/14 - 2015/02/14 by jd

‘…Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, who lived in the same condominium complex as the victims, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder. He is being held at Central Prison in Raleigh.

Police searched Hicks’ home the night of the shootings and found two fully loaded handguns, a fully loaded AR-15 Bushmaster rifle, two shotguns, five other rifles, two other handguns and two pellet guns, according to one search warrant. They also found numerous magazines with varying amounts of ammunition, boxes of ammunition, shotgun shells, BBs, gun scopes and other gun-related items, the warrant states…’

via 14 firearms seized from Chapel Hill shootings suspect’s home :: WRAL.com.

1790 USA: ‘Muslim American community white for purposes of the law’

Posted on 2015/02/13 by jd

‘…Let’s start at the beginning. By the time of the American Revolution, a sizeable Moroccan Muslim community—known as “Moors” in the language of the era—had developed in and around Charleston, South Carolina. Some of the community’s members were likely former slaves, but many others had chosen to immigrate from Morocco, with which the U.S. had a so-called “Treaty of Friendship.” Morocco, indeed, was the first African nation to recognize the new United States during the Revolution. Worried about being denied rights due to South Carolina’s system of slavery, a group of Muslim Americans petitioned the state’s courts requesting that they be recognized as white. A tribunal of judges led by prominent South Carolinian Charles Pinckney agreed with their petition, and the state legislature passed the Moors Sunday Act (1790), designating this Moroccan Muslim American community white for purposes of the law….’
via If This 1780s Southern Politician Fought Islamophobia, We Can Too.