Binyamin Netanyahu agrees with your sardonic blogger that Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.
In related news:
The 166-page report, “Separate and Unequal: Israel’s Discriminatory Treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” shows that Israel operates a two-tier system for the two populations of the West Bank in the large areas where it exercises exclusive control.
What’s that word pro-Israeli fanatics get scared of?
Apartheid.
Abu Hamza is one of several men whose extradition to the US has been temporarily blocked by the European Court of Human Rights, because they are not satisfied he will be treated humanely:
The court in Strasbourg has already been considering the cases of the four men for three years, and has asked for more submissions to be made before it reaches a final ruling.
The far-right jackboots are, unsurprisingly, unhappy. It’s PC gaawn maaaaad!! some squeal. One actually complains “I am a white English heterosexual male, what rights do I have, zero zilch nada!”.
The point these so-called Defenders Of Western Civilisation fail to grasp is highlighted very clearly in a judgement by David Hope:
One of the men who has won this temporary reprieve is Babar Ahmad:
The Human Rights Lobby strikes again!
Simon Cowell, the multimillionaire who doesn’t live here, exploits desperate and mentally ill for a living, backs Conservatives shocker.
Cambodian deportation of Muslim Uighurs criticised by UN.
The UN refugee agency condemned the deportation.
“The forced return of asylum-seekers without a full examination of their asylum claims is a serious breach of international refugee law,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement.
Agency spokeswoman Kitty McKinsey said her agency had sent staff to Phnom Penh’s main airport on Saturday to try to physically stop the deportation, but authorities circumvented this by using a military airport.
Thousands of people are missing in Pakistan, including relatives of British citizens:
According to estimates by campaigners in the UK and Pakistan, hundreds of British families have relatives who have just “vanished”.
They are believed to be “enforced disappearances” – people are being picked up and detained by the state because they are thought to be associated with terrorist activity.
The report says some of these individuals are relatives of British Pakistani families who ‘supported the Taliban’. That is besides the point. Arbitrary arrest and detention, and detaining someone without charge, whatever his or her views, is a descent into barbarism. Given leaks of videos showing the Pakistani army beating up ‘Taliban suspects’ and reports of mass killings in Swat, it isn’t hard to imagine these suspects may have been tortured or maybe even killed.
Some of the families want the British government to intervene:
“I am a British National and I have always worked hard. I would like the British government to help its citizens find answers and make sure human rights are not violated in Pakistan…”
I don’t expect the British government to be that concerned, especially given revelations that MI5 colluded in the torture of terror suspects in Pakistan.
Wajiha Al-Huweidar, a Saudi human-rights activist, said the move was nothing short of hypocritical. “Since when is interfering in people’s private lives part of the human-rights agenda?” she asked The Media Line rhetorically. “It reflects what they do. They harass people all year long and during holidays they give away candy to people.”
“The religious police know very well that most Saudis want to see them disappear from streets and public places, because they only represent aggressiveness and oppression,” Al-Huweidar said. “I think the Saudi government has realized that its reputation is damaged worldwide and its image is ruined among Saudis, so now they are trying to beautify this repressive institution by using a new slogan… The religious police have to understand their time is over and they have to go.”
religious police is a contradiction. it’s not the culture of islam to nose into people’s religion.
The appearance of Cage Prisoners at a rally organised by human rights lawyers who work on cases involving Guantanamo Bay detainees, together with Amnesty International and Sunny Hundal has resulted in some of the usual argy-bargy in the comments over at Pickled Politics, given Awlaki’s involvement with Cage Prisoners and his (shall we say) controversial views (I presume he sides with the anti-hegemons). Apparently, Cage Prisoners did offer a response to the banning of a lecture by Anwar Al-Awlaki at a fundraiser back in August.
It is fair to ask questions about Cage Prisoners and any other organisations, and who they associate with, but some of the n-th degree associations being used to castigate Sunny seem a bit ridiculous (one can draw a link of this kind from one of his critics, The Spittoon bloggers, straight to Robert Spencer!). Some of the commentators, including a former Pickled Politics blogger now at The Spittoon, raised the point about what to do with ‘known terrorists’, or those who were held with ‘unpleasant’ views, and whether the rights of such people should be taken seriously given their disdain for the rights of others. Within the English legal tradition at least, this difficult challenge (yes, it is difficult) was answered superbly by David Hope, one Britain’s senior judges, in the case of Abu Qatada (pdf link):
Iran’s universities punish students who disputed vote.
More anti-hegemons:
The new disciplinary actions came as officials reported that a presidential panel has begun an investigation of the humanities curriculums at universities, the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported. Although the panel was formed a year ago, it did not start work until after recent calls to purge universities of professors and curriculums deemed “un-Islamic,” based on the fear that the teaching of secular concepts helped fuel the political unrest following the June 12 election.
Israel boycott and divestment campaign developments this week:
The Norwegian Finance Ministry has announced that the government of Norway will be divesting from Elbit, a major Israeli defense contractor with operations in Asia, North America and the Middle East. Speaking at a Oslo press conference Sept. 3, the Norwegian Finance Minister, Kristin Halvorsen, said that the decision had been recommended by Norway’s Ministry of Finance council on ethics, charged with assuring that government investments abroad meet ethical guidelines, because the Israeli arms firm was providing the technology used in the construction of the West Bank separation barrier (referred to as the “fence” in the Israeli media).
The Israeli cosmetics company, Ahava, which illegally manufactures and appropriates its products in occupied Palestinian territory, has dropped its spokesperson ‘Sex & the City’ star Kristin Davis amid a public relations debacle sparked by the peace group CODEPINK’s Stolen Beauty campaign….
Davis’ dismissal, and the accompanying blow to Ahava’s image, follow the successful launch of CODEPINK’s Stolen Beauty campaign designed to spread word of Ahava’s illegal practices — its products are falsely labeled as “Made in Israel” but in actuality are made in an illegal settlement in occupied Palestinian territory, and often contain resources appropriated from occupied land, in clear violation of international law.
Tagging this ‘hegemony of human rights discourse‘ to highlight how these campaigns are largely undertaken by non-Muslims to help Muslims as an expression of their participant’s commitment to universal human rights.
ACLU sends defense department letter requesting information about Bagram detainees.
Yesterday the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent a letter to the Department of Defense asking them to reconsider releasing information — such as “a list of names, citizenship, length of detention, [and] capture location” — about detainees held at the detention facility at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
aziz, 
thabet, and 
shams are discussing. 
Ya'ni is discussing. 
bdr is discussing.
shams 10:22 am on December 27, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
meh.
big whup. israel is not a “liberal” democracy. that implies adherence to enlightenment principles.
israel is a religious democracy.
Israel is a jewish democracy like turkey and iraq are islamic democracies like America is a protest democracy like GB is an anglican democracy like germany is a judeoxian democracy.
there are no true secular enlightenment democracies that im aware of.
because of the consent of the governed.
shams 10:24 am on December 27, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
PROTESTANT democracy.
WEC doctrine got us into the twin quagmires of Iraq and A-stan, brother thabet.
get a clue.
thabet 2:34 am on December 29, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I agree with this.
It’s a number of Western liberals who don’t.
aziz 10:54 am on December 29, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
good point, in fact there is a lot of parallel between Israel and Hamas!