The Saudi Lobby:
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thabet
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aziz
France has banned a domestic “Islamist” group. There is no such thing as true free speech outside the United States.
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razib, murtad fitri
this seems close to right
i was my intuition too…spent 15 minutes trying to disprove it, and couldn’t. though even in the USA there are issues with obscenity and the law against threatening to kill the president.-
aziz
its been a thesis of mine for a long time, actually. I am certain I’ve expounded in more detail on this at CoB but they broke all my tags when they oved from MT to WP so I can’t find stuff as easily anymore
actually i may have linked it from here – i need to go through http://talkislam.info/tag/free-speech/ and see…
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aziz
ah, we had a good debate about it earlier – just filter everything by “Corned Beef N’ Cabbage” out:
http://talkislam.info/2011/05/22/actually-heres-an-example-of-draw-muhammad-day/#comment-43113
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shams
there is no unfettered free speech in the USA either.
there is hate crime legislation and “hate speech”.
you and razib are so full of it your eyeballs are floating. -
shams
chu kno, my habbibi?
razib, murtaad fitri is just an assclown. i saw that years ago when the Divine Beloved lifted the scales of my hero worship of him from my eyes.
he is an organic conservative. he has insufficient grey matter in the ACC for empathy.
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shams
what is an “islamist”, Aziz?
definition? -
shams
“There is no such thing as true free speech outside the United States.”
wallah … there is certainly no free speech in countries with shariah law as the rule of law.
As long as defense-against-proselytization is in mutawatir the Generous Quran outlaws free speech.
Did you know the constitution of KSA IS the Noble Quran?
Are we gunna try Regime Change there? -
shams
do you think we could just go back, my habbibi?
back to when you were improving my polishing the mirror epiphany with your zen?i guess that isnt possible.
time travel to the past is impossible because of closed form timecurves.
ibn arabi and dr. carroll agree.-
aziz
its entirely up to you. Misrepresenting me and attacking me is not the way forward though.
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shams
i do not misrepresent you.
you think tolerance, religious freedom, and free speech are superior. those are western values.
not islamic values.-
aziz
again, you channel spencer. who tf are you to decide that these are not islamic values? in 1400 years of jurisprudence there has been plenty of debate on all of these. western my ass
mutazili, fatemi, abbasid, sufi, avicenna and much more. you are like a blind man in a library insisting that knowledge is dead
open your fing eyes
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shams
im not channelling spencer. he is like a talking dog on al-Islam.
al-Islam is a process…you dare cite the Mutaz’li? do you even know the First Obligation?
ive said before if razib and i had lived seven centuries ago, he would have been Ibn Rushd and i would have been Ibn Arabi.
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Matt
Hate speech terrorizes people and keeps them quiet. So there is no free speech if there is hate speech. Rather, you can balance interests. Of course, interests in the US and France are different. That whole Vichy thing, you know.
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aziz
The French Police State: arresting a woman for wearing niqab (VIDEO)
The woman’s shrieks as she is manhandled by the police are heart-rending. Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite
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Arwi
amusement park fracas over hijab, ” up to 100 cops from surrounding departments converged on the park” is sad, ludicrous and hilarious all at the same time.
I really wish the “notify” checkbox was unchecked by default.
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thabet
A 2006 study by Jeffrey Pickering and Mark Peceny found that military intervention by liberal states (i.e., states like Britain, France and the United States) “has only very rarely played a role in democratization since 1945.” Similarly, George Downs, and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita of New York University found that U.S. interventions since World War II led to stable democracies within ten years less than 3 percent of the time, and a separate study by their NYU colleague William Easterly and several associates found that both U.S and Soviet interventions during the Cold War generally led to “significant declines in democracy.” Finally, a 2010 article by Goran Piec and Daniel Reiter examines forty-two “foreign imposed regime changes” since 1920 and finds that when interventions “damage state infrastructural power” they also increase the risk of subsequent civil war. The best and most relevant study I have yet read on this question is an as-yet unpublished working paper by Alexander Downes of Duke University, which you can find on his website here. Using a more sophisticated research design, Downes examined 100 cases of “foreign imposed regime change” going all the way back to 1816. In particular, his analysis takes into account “selection effects” (i.e., the fact that foreign powers are more likely to intervene in states that already have lots of problems, so you would expect these states to have more problems afterwards too). He finds that foreign intervention tends to promote stability when the intervening powers are seeking to restore a previously deposed ruler. But when foreign interveners oust an existing ruler and impose a wholly new government (which is what we are trying to do in Libya), the likelihood of civil war more than triples.
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/03/24/social_science_and_the_libyan_adventure-
aziz
But interventions have rarely been for the purpose of bestowing democracy. Only Iraq really qualifies, and that halfway. (main reason was WMD).
Also you are including the Cold War in the sample which was completely dominated by realpolitik, expressly the opposite of democratization.
So the statistics are probably true but hardly relevant. Especially since the Libyan intervention is also not for democracy but civilian protection alone. Regime Change is not even on the mission goal list.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
“Leaders of the four dozen countries and international organizations meeting here today made it clear that they agreed that Col. Muammar Gadhafi would have to relinquish power, even though regime change is not the stated aim of the United Nations resolution authorizing military action against his forces.”
http://www.telegram.com/article/20110329/NEWS/110329654/1116
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aziz
yes, but that is not an operational goal of the NATIO mission. It is preferable outcome that would be a metric for determining when the mission ends, but it isnt a directly sought outcome y military force.
I confess I find some of the confusion about the NATO mission to be surprising. It si really quite simple and clear and direct. The model is really the Kurdistan no-fly zone, which was easily maintained for a decade after the opersian gulf war.
as a tangent, the wrongness of teh iraq war is further emphasized by the arab democracy wave. had we not gone in to iraq, its likely the iraqis would have pulled an Egypt right now.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
Aziz, is there a reason you are not paying attention to all the stories about what Obama is ordering covertly? Saying that you will take govenrments at their word about what their objectives are (especially when we are talking about what they will agree to in public with other nations for political reasons) is surprising to me.
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aziz
well, theres no confirmation about what the covert operations are, but it striikes me as equally naieve to assume that any whispers about a covert opration is immediately equivalent to a kill squad out for blood in your view.
Most military operations do have a covert aspect. This is a good thing. What form that covert aspect takes in Libya is something neither you nor I have any clue abot, so I wont really be speculating further.
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aziz
in case it wasnt clear, Im not guilty of taking the Obama Administration at its word, because it hasnt said a word about covert ops. Thats a leak from a source, and its more likely that its CIA agents sent to vet the libyan rebels and also provide intelligence for airstrikes, esp since gaddafis forces are now driving the same trucks as teh rebels use and dressing in civilian clothes. Its eyes, not boots, on the ground, if anything. But it may not be anything at all – we just dont know.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
As far as I can tell, Aziz, you are taking the Obama Admin at its word. The actions of the US and its allies would seem to obviously indicate that it wants and is working for regime change. I am not even saying whether I am for or against that, I am just saying that appears obvious and I am frankly am baffled by some of your comments, but perhaps I just don’t speak the language or understand the terminology of military operations.
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aziz
of course the NATIO operation desires regime change. They were explicit about that in the briefing!
But the *mission* of the military operation is NOT regime change. The mission is limited to protecting civilian populations.
This is not some exotic doublethink. Its the same as Operation Desert Storm, which was to force Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait, even though everyone in the coalition wanted him gone and said so repeatedly. But when Luwait was liberated, and the northern no-fly in effect, the coalition did not in fact “finish the job” because that wasnt part of the coalition mission.
The fact of a coalition – in this case NATO, of which Germany for example is a member – is that for major changes to the mission, everyone has to agree. If anything it is more likely that the job will go half assedly done. Germany is explicitly against arming the rebels for example. (along with China and Russia, but they are not members of NATO of course).
I suppose if it is obvious to you that our limited engagement in Libya is in deed *intended* to remove Qaddafi by force, then yes I fully understand why you’d be skeptical. Because theres no way the current operation can remove him, short of full-scale bombing of Tripoli, heavy collateral damage, and a significant ground force (CIA agents dont count – they are intelligence, not assassins, with apologies to Hollywood).
the CIA presence, alleged, will be to facilitate the mission objective – to provide intelligence on the rebels (who are we in bed with? what are the risks of arming them?) and on qaddafis forces (the better to target them. after all qaddafi has inteligence agents in the rebel camps too by now providing equivalent intel).
That isnt the same thing as working towards qaddafis ouster. Not by a long shot. I guess I dont knwo how to explain this any more clearly than this, so perhaps we just have to agree to disagree based on our different understanding of military operations. I am no expert in that regard but I’ve certainly been paying attention to direct sources and comparing the details to previous engagements such as Desert Storm, Kosovo, and Kurdistan. All of which were indeed sucessful in permitting the local populace to choose their own fate and leaders (flawed as those choices may be) without actually toppling the dictator in question directly.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
Aziz,
But above, you said that the removal of Qaddafi may be a metric for determining the end of the mission. Now you compare to Kuwait, so you’ve lost me there.
It also seems clear that the US and its allies are not only encouraging rhetorically members of the regime to abandon Qaddafi but they are negotiating directly with members of the regime and with the rebels towards regime change.
It seems clear to me that the US is trying to remove Qaddafi (again I am not necessarily saying that’s a bad thing). You are correct that there are many steps they are unwilling to take to accomplish that goal but it seems that they are doing other things towards that goal.
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thabet
What form that covert aspect takes in Libya is something neither you nor I have any clue abot, so I wont really be speculating further.
So it boils down to a form of ‘trust’. You’re welcome to trust NATO et al.
I (and presumably Abu Noor) don’t.
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aziz
you’re taking the allegation that there are covert troops already in Libya at face value, yo’re assuming if they are there they are an assassin squad rather than the role these ops usually play, and you’re assuming that the UN resolution is what, a smokescreen? a giant conspiracy? which NATO is simply ignoring on the ground. You presumably also dont believe that NATO is in control of the operation and that Obama is pulling teh strings – even though the Secretary of Defense has practically verged on insubordination in his zeal to insist that there wont ever be US troops on the ground in libya and that other countries have the capability to handle the rest of the mission from here.
All of this takes at least as much willful… faith, as apparently own position. Lets call it the maximalist cynic position, where everything is always a lie and the only reason anyone does anything is to get some oil and kill brown folk.
MY position is certainly trusting, yes. But I believe the overding motive is stability and status quo. In other words, I see Establishmentarianism. This isnt about trust but simple (and cold, ruthless) cost-benefit. The humanitarian impulse is a benefit, but not the only one. Forces on th eground is a cost, which is too high. There are other costs and other benefits and NATO (whose primary mission is stability, and status quo) has clearly made that calculation.
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thabet
nd you’re assuming that the UN resolution is what, a smokescreen?
It’s the usual BS of using “international law” and “international norms” which align with your own geopolitical and economic interests. “Civilians” are easily discarded when the need arises. The UNSC is just a chamber for the victors of WWII with the biggest guns. It doesn’t represent the “international community”.
Other countries are no less guilty of this than ‘western’ ones. Turkey was quick to talk openly about Mubarak going, but had to be persuaded to offer some support in Libya because Turkish companies have big contracts with Gaddafi’s regime (presumably Mubarak’s cronies stopped Turks entering Egypt, hence one of the first public statements welcoming the removal of Mubarak was from the head of Turkish industrialists’ organisation welcoming the chance to enhance commercial ties). The GCC was clearly two-faced in getting the Arab League to “protect civilians” in Libya while endorsing an invasion of Bahrain by those well-known defenders of human rights, the Saudi royal family.
And yes, my view needs a form of ‘cynical’ faith, but the entirety of human history is on my side…
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thabet
Especially since the Libyan intervention is also not for democracy but civilian protection alone.
What is the evidence for this?
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aziz
the text of UN Security COuncil Resolution 1970 and 1973. Also here is NATO’s mission description:
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_71652.htm?
here is teh full text of 1973
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/17/un-security-council-resolution
which constrains the NATIO mission.
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thabet
Ok, so they’ll be protecting civilians who support Gaddafi?
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aziz
if support means getting into trucks and killing rebels, then probably not (but reading the background on libya and teh depth of general populace hatred of qaddafi, the only “civilians” who support him are members of the Revolutionary Councils who have enjoyed significant perks.)
Civilians – true loyalists to Qaddafi – atre more in danger from the rebels than the NATO bombings, since bombings are limited to military targets (which is why the rbels have not been doing so well. qaddafis forces are adopting civilan guise, smaller trucks, etc. woudl be useful to have some intel on the ground to distinguish them… but I digress)
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thabet
Yes, this will be another example of going into a country which we don’t understand and pretending to be good guys, leaving behind no better or worse a mess, but enriching people at the top so long as they remain our pets.
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aziz
entrenching the people at eth top? who are we entrenching? Check out eth NYT article I linked above, its clear that the rebels are not an existing elite but a genuine grassroots movement.
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aziz
argh, lost my original reply. reposting comment
the evidence is simple – the text of UN resolutioj 1973 and the official NATO mission.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/17/un-security-council-resolution
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Dean Esmay
I’m skeptical and wondering what their definition of “democracy” is for the basis of this and further, what criteria they’re using; nation after nation that has gone under intervention by foreign powers has turned democratic in the wake of that, and democracy in general has spread steadily since WWII and even more since the end of the Cold War. We did not intervene in the Balkans in the 1990s with an explicit goal of setting up democracies there but it’s exactly what we wound up doing, just for example (and it was Clinton that made that the goal in Iraq, originally, by the way). I don’t have time or energy right now, but the full study appears to be here and that may answer some questions about their methodology and reasoning http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2006.00413.x/abstract;jsessionid=6B74AF85EC15276B57770187CED402FC.d02t02
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aziz
(and it was Clinton that made that the goal in Iraq, originally, by the way).
uh, what? this statement makes zero sense.
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thabet
This is Juan Cole in 2008:
If not all Arabs are Muslims, only a minority of Muslims is Arab. Iranians (70 million strong) are not Arabs. Turks are not Arabs. Pakistanis are not Arabs. Malaysians and Indonesians are not Arabs. Nigerians and Senegalese are not Arabs. But all these national or ethnic groups are predominantly Muslim.
Here’s Juan Cole last week:
Obviously, when needed, even Western Liberals are happy to equate ‘Arabs’ and ‘Muslims’ to justify their own wars. (This is even before we ask since when do the authoritarian, violent and oppressive states in the Arab League get a chance to behave like ‘democrats’ and defenders of ‘human rights’? Maybe when Western Liberals say so.)
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aziz
This is a solid criticism of Cole, but not of the broader argument he makes – Arab/Muslim world approval is basically a fig leaf, since we know and have documented the utter hypocrisy of the Arab world in particular with regards to democracy and liberal freedoms.
But the point Cole makes does stand if you simply substitute “Arab” for “Muslim” in his argument. He may be guilty of a flourish here, but the issue of Libya IS an Arab and European problem, and therefore the involvement of Arabs and Europeans in primary action and initiative is appropriate. The US and Obama himself have come under heavy criticism from the Rumsfeldian neoconservatives for not owning the operation outright. I think this is an important distinction, one which Cole also makes quite effectively – the Libya operation is nothing like Iraq. The better model is Kosovo, or the lack of action in Rwanda and Bosnia.
Lets discuss the arguments against intervention in the other thread.
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thabet
Moron Le Pen is as ignorant of her own history as she is of Islam:
“I think that France can be secular because it’s a Christian culture and you notice that in Muslim countries they have more difficulty,” she told LCP, the French parliament’s TV channel.
“Muslim countries that are secular got there in general by force,” she continued, citing the examples of Turkey and Iraq.
In December, the 42-year-old compared Muslims praying in the street to the German occupation during World War II, shortly before she took over from her father Jean-Marie as head of the anti-immigrant party.
“Secularism is absolutely not compatible … not natural in Islam, because Islam mixes the spiritual and the temporal,” she told LCP on Friday.
“France is France. It’s a country with Christian roots and that’s also what’s given us our identity. It’s secular, we’ll hold this identity and we won’t let this identity be changed.”
But, of course, her goose-stepping fascism and racism are completely compatible with secularism.
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thabet
The French, morally sophisticated and classy as ever:
Le Pen, the frontrunner to succeed her father Jean-Marie Le Pen as head of the party, made the comments on a television show last Thursday with about 3.4 million viewers watching. On Monday she dismissed any suggestion of a gaffe. “My comments were absolutely not a blunder, but a completely thought-out analysis,” she told a news conference, adding she was merely saying out loud what everyone thought privately.
Not to be outdone, Napoleon II has proposed banning Muslims from praying in public:
After his expulsions of gypsies and a crackdown on immigrant crime, the French President will warn that the overflow of Muslim faithful on to the streets at prayer time when mosques are packed to capacity risks undermining the French secular tradition separating state and religion.
He will doubtless be accused of pandering to the far Right: the issue of Muslim prayers in the street has been brought to the fore by Marine Le Pen, the charismatic new figurehead of the National Front, who compared it to the wartime occupation of France.
Her words provoked uproar on the Left, whose commentators took them as evidence that far from being the gentler face of the far Right, Ms Le Pen, 42, is no different from Jean-Marie, 82, her father, who has been accused of racism and Holocaust denial.
According to his aide, Mr Sarkozy agrees with the junior Le Pen that the street cannot be allowed to become “an extension of the mosque” as it does in some parts of Paris, which are closed to traffic because of the overflow of the faithful. Local authorities have declined to intervene, despite public complaints, because they are afraid of sparking riots.
“People overreacted to Marine Le Pen’s comments,” said the aide, referring to the furore in which she was accused of rabble-rousing racism. “She is right: this phenomenon is unacceptable.”
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Lawrence of Arabia
Sixte-Henri de Bourbon-Parme, a descendent of Louis XIV, is suing over a retrospective art exhibition of the work of Japanese artist, Takashi Murakami, being held at Versailles. The descendant of the old aristocracy says the exhibit is un-French and dishonors and denatures French culture.
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thabet
I suggest we carve a portion out of European states (starting with France) and create a state for the Romani people:
With [Nicolas Sarkozy's] deportation of Romani people because they are Romani people — whether or not they are in the country legally — for electoral gain, we are seeing the start of something much more sinister. The embrace of heavy-handed discrimination of a vulnerable minority by a mainstream political party of a leading European country.
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thabet
Thousands of people turned up to an event in Leicester to show their opposition to the far-right English Defence League (EDL) last weekend.
A report in The Graun also noted that the Tea Party is forging links with the EDL, highlighting shrill racist lunatic Pamela Geller:
An Observer investigation has established that the EDL has made contact with anti-jihad groups within the Tea Party organisation and has invited a senior US rabbi and Tea Party activist to London this month. Rabbi Nachum Shifren, a regular speaker at Tea Party conventions, will speak about Sharia law and also discuss funding issues.
The league has also developed links with Pamela Geller, who was influential in the protests against plans to build an Islamic cultural centre near Ground Zero. Geller, darling of the Tea Party’s growing anti-Islamic wing, is advocating an alliance with the EDL. The executive director of the Stop Islamisation of America organisation, she recently met EDL leaders in New York and has defended the group’s actions, despite a recent violent march in Bradford.
The EDL also plans to meet up with their neo-Nazi friends across Europe if and when Geert Wilders’ trial comes to an end:
French and Dutch “defence leagues” will join the EDL and several other anti-Islamic organisations on 30 October to coincide with the end of Wilders’s trial for hate speech and inciting racism.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
Here in the U.S., most of these right wing anti-Muslim groups portray themselves as staunch defenders of Israel and friends of Jews (at least of right wing Jews). I’m interested in how that plays out in Europe, where most of these far right groups one would normally assume to be very anti-semitic.
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thabet
I’m interested in how that plays out in Europe, where most of these far right groups one would normally assume to be very anti-semitic.
The EDL claim to have a ‘Jewish division’ and, unfortunately for one particular staunch pro-Israeli activist, he was caught with his proverbial pants around his ankles wrt the EDL.
I believe this also is one of the issues Charles Johnson has with his former friends.
Btw, did Johnson ever apologise for heaping slurs and crap onto Muslims for years before he started portraying himself as a voice of moderation and toleration?
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shams
charles got fooled.
just like i did.
i apolo brother thabet….i punch myself in the neck evry day.
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thabet and 
Arwi are discussing. 
shams, 
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee are discussing.
Arwi 12:44 am on March 11, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Saudi Arabia’s record is no better than Iran’s when it comes to respect for human rights.
Saudi is surely far worse. A limited, flawed and marred democracy is better than a monarchy, and women in Saudi are struggling for the right to drive while women in Iran have far more autonomy, professional opportunity and public participation.
thabet 11:05 am on March 21, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
thabet 10:20 am on March 13, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
thabet 12:06 am on March 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
thabet 4:09 pm on March 21, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply