Indonesia’s largest Muslim group calls for welcoming President Obama and condemns hardline protests.
(Via an emailer.)
Latest Updates: united states RSS
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thabet
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thabet
Glenn Beck is an American problem and has nothing to do with countries or people even remotely related to the ’stans’. Septics should create their own derogatory suffixes…
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thabet
Waterboarding for dummies:
Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.
The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding “session.” Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.
“This is revolting and it is deeply disturbing,” said Dr. Scott Allen, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University who has reviewed all of the documents for Physicians for Human Rights. “The so-called science here is a total departure from any ethics or any legitimate purpose. They are saying, ‘This is how risky and harmful the procedure is, but we are still going to do it.’ It just sounds like lunacy,” he said. “This fine-tuning of torture is unethical, incompetent and a disgrace to medicine.”
It is doubtful anyone will ever be held accountable for these, or other, crimes (no ‘change’ there then).
Meanwhile, we will continue to cover up crimes committed by the US, and to try and deflect attention from the acts of torture in which we wilfully participated. Jack Straw denies all knowledge despite evidence showing otherwise. David Miliband had to be humiliated by the courts while trying to cover up torture. And now Eliza Manningham-Bullshitter, former head of MI5, denies all knowledge saying the Americans hid the evidence from the UK — which shows he was either unfit for the job (CIA planes passed through the UK and used British facilities) or too stupid to use a search engine (in which case she would also have been unfit for her former job).
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arif
Beal says the reaction has largely been positive. But he has also been asked: “When are you going to open a Christian art gallery?” His response: The museum has, in fact, two galleries devoted to Christian art. And Christianity is infused throughout the museum, especially in the European collections. Beal, who is fond of Islamic ceramics, says, “It’s also important for non-Muslims to see this and understand the depth and beauty of Islamic art.” His next challenge: raising $1.5 million to open an Asian art gallery.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1970490,00.html#ixzz0hcMebqCm
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Turkey has recalled its ambassador from the US after the House of Representatives voted in favour of recognising the massacre of Armenians as genocide despite opposition from the Obama administration.
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US facing surge in rightwing extremists and militias:
The Southern Poverty Law Centre, the US’s most prominent civil rights group focused on hate organisations, said in a report that extremist “patriot” groups “came roaring back to life” last year as their number jumped nearly 250% to more than 500 with deepening ties to conservative mainstream politics.
The SPLC report, called Rage on the Right, said the rise in extremist groups was “a cause for grave concern” given their propensity to use violence during their heyday in the 90s, most notably with the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. It added that the issues driving support for such groups were increasingly populist and that “signs of growing radicalisation are everywhere”.
“Patriot groups have been fuelled by anger over the changing demographics of the country, the soaring public debt, the troubled economy and an array of initiatives by President Obama that have been branded “socialist” or even “fascist” by his political opponents,” the report said.
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thabet
US judge grants asylum to German home schoolers:
The reason for that fear has rarely, if ever, been the basis of an asylum case. The parents, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, want to home-school their five children, ranging in age from 2 to 12, a practice illegal in their native land, Germany.
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The family has been here for some time, having left Germany in 2008. But it was not until Jan. 26 that a federal immigration judge in Memphis granted them political asylum, ruling that they had a reasonable fear of persecution for their beliefs if they returned.
In a harshly worded decision, the judge, Lawrence O. Burman, denounced the German policy, calling it “utterly repellent to everything we believe as Americans,” and expressed shock at the heavy fines and other penalties the government has levied on home-schooling parents, including taking custody of their children.
(Via @sepoy.)
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arif
Another leader with the doomsday warning.
“It’s not an accident that a great earthquake took place in Chile,” Farrakhan, 76, said an hour into his three-hour address. “It was a precipitate of what I have to tell you today of what’s coming to America. You will not escape.”
“I will speak to the kings and rulers of the world. I will speak to the pope and the religious leaders because you have to know that your time has come,” he said. “I desire to guide you and warn you of things that are coming that you must try to prepare yourselves for because we are absolutely living in the change of worlds.”
Ah, the business of religion!
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arif
Have been reading this book lately and just found this after a quick search. Good news if this film is in the making.
Such a film may not be far off. Director Jonathan Demme is reportedly considering a film based on the award-winning book “Zeitoun,” which documents the true story of a Syrian-American man who helped rescue residents of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina but landed in jail when police suspected him of being a terrorist.
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arif
Not sure if this has been posted here already or not. Note that it suggest this is a lone voice but it starts by saying it was a protest by women (plural).
Muslim women staged a protest at a D.C. mosque Saturday to demand that mosque leaders remove a 7-foot partition behind which women pray separately from men.
Fatima Thompson and other women staged a “stand-in” at the Islamic Center on Massachusetts Avenue in Northwest. “Every woman should be able to stand with the congregation. That’s the correct way,” said Thompson, who converted to Islam 18 years ago.
snip–
but Fatima Goodwin, a mosque employee who also worships there, said Thompson is acting alone. “Not a single woman that prays here has expressed disagreement with the partition,”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/22/AR2010022204657.html
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thabet
Warmongers and advocates for torture, on both sides of the Atlantic, discover ‘human rights’.
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thabet
In response to the Binyam Mohamed court case verdict, Con(man) Coughlin complains:
Why don’t our judges just come clean and sign up with the Taliban?
I would like to respond with a complaint of my own: why doesn’t Con(man) Coughlin come clean about the fact that he is nothing more than a propaganda shill for the security services:
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thabet
Jeremy Scahill on the ‘expanding US war in Pakistan’.
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Stephen Walt thinks Tony Blair’s appearance at the Chilcot inquiry vindicates the basis of the book he co-authored with John Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
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I could have told you this 12 months ago for no cost (and I am not even an ‘expert’):
In a report issued by the Center for New American Security think tank, Major General Michael Flynn, deputy chief of staff for intelligence in Afghanistan for the U.S. military and its NATO allies, offered a bleak assessment of the intelligence community’s role in the 8-year-old war.
He described U.S. intelligence officials there as “ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced … and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers.”
An operations officer was quoted in the report as calling the United States “clueless” because of a lack of needed intelligence about the country.
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manas
How good can AlJazeera get?
This is a new high- America’s New Frontline- Africa. -
thabet
A very interesting documentary by Rageh Omaar at Al-Jazeera about America’s ‘new frontline’ in the war on terror, which was opened in Africa when the Bush administration decided to topple the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia.
Omaar, Somali-born and a former BBC reporter, travelled the width of Africa from the Horn of Africa, crossing the pan-Sahel region, through to oil-rich West Africa. The documentary pins the blame directly on the Bush administration for the current troubles in Somalia, and for letting poor countries of the Sahel region use the war on terror as a cover to violently suppress localised problems (e.g. the Tuareg in Niger).
Omaar asks whether Barack Obama can or will change course by ending his documentary in Cameroon, contrasting the earlier positive moves (e.g. Obama’s support for a Somali politician ousted by the Bush-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia), with the negative activities such as the training received by a special forces group belonging to the Cameroonian president-dictator.
Unsurprisingly, there are lots of comments by those interviewed, including some local activists, that the US is only interested in resources of these states — the Sahel region has significant deposits of uranium, and West Africa has lots of oil and gas.
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thabet
Merve Kavakçı makes an argument which I know Aziz is fond of too:
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thabet
An interesting argument for why Muslim nations should take up the task of helping Afghanistan:
The solution? Muslim and regional states must fill the void.
Emirati, Jordanian and Turkish troops have been in Afghanistan, though in small numbers and doing very limited roles.
The author, Arif Rafiq, continues to the meat of his argument:
The Organization of the Islamic Conference, the association of more than four dozen Muslim states, should set up an Afghanistan contact group, led by Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The group would lead a coalition of Muslim states responsible for political reconciliation, peacekeeping, economic development, and governmental capacity building in Afghanistan.
I like the idea of the Organization of the Islamic Conference do something other than bleating about ‘Islamophobia in Europe’, though it is unlikely to happen.
And just as some would like the US to admit to its mistakes in Muslim countries, it would be good if Muslim countries which have a dubious foreign policy of their own could admit to some of their mistakes; especially Pakistan and Saudi Arabia with respect to Afghanistan. Though, again, I wouldn’t advise holding my breath waiting for that to occur.
It’s a nice idea by Rafiq. On paper at least.
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Taliban ‘increases fourfold’ according to US report:
Are these all ‘ideological Taliban’? No:
Some of the major insurgent groups, including one responsible for a spate of recent American casualties, actually opposed the Taliban’s harsh Islamic government in Afghanistan during the 1990s, according to the reports, described by US officials under the condition they not be identified.
“Ninety percent is a tribal, localized insurgency,’’ said one US intelligence official in Washington who helped draft the assessments. “Ten percent are hardcore ideologues fighting for the Taliban.”
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American soldiers ‘lose heart’ in Afghanistan:
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The men are frustrated by the lack of obvious purpose or progress. “The soldiers’ biggest question is: what can we do to make this war stop. Catch one person? Assault one objective? Soldiers want definite answers, other than to stop the Taleban, because that almost seems impossible. It’s hard to catch someone you can’t see,” said Specialist [Raquime] Mercer.
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thabet
I was surprised as anyone else at the ‘big news’ over the weekend, but I’ve found a lot of the bytes that were virtually spilt on Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize to be quite odd, to say the least.
Now, as regular readers of Talk Islam are likely to know, I am unlikely to win any awards from the resident Obama fan club. But I don’t see why people are having a go at Obama for winning a peace prize decided by a panel appointed by the Norwegian parliament. Obama didn’t ask to be awarded the prize, let alone be nominated a mere 12 days into his presidency. If people want someone to blame for ‘devaluing the prize’ they should be venting their spleen at Thorbjørn Jagland, Kaci Kullmann Five, Sissel Rønbeck, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn and Ågot Valle.
While I can quite understand the scepticism that may have greeted this news from those in Baghdad, Kabul or Gaza (as I can equally see why many view it positively), what is perhaps more bizarre is the response from the following two groups:
1. American Right: I didn’t think this segment really cared about what ’socialist Europe’ thought about the US. Why then are they complaining about a prize which is and selected by a semi-secretive committee made up of elitist politicians from a country which promotes ‘ideologies’ like ‘equality’?
2. Stridently anti-Western (but nonetheless Western) Muslims: I’ve seen lots of stuff on mailing lists, Facebook, Twitter and various forums and what struck me was this group of people, who usually dismiss anything Western as ‘evil’, were complaining about a prize, which is funded by the interest accumulated on the assets of a dead Swede and given out by a bunch of disbelieving (pdf) Scandinavian feminists, to a man in charge of the US, the source of all evil in their worldview anyway. Why are they then complaining so loudly in my inbox?
There might be lots to criticise Obama about; but winning the Nobel Peace Prize isn’t one of them. If anything, I think it is a brilliant move on the part of the committee as noted by Philip Weiss:
Even those on the anti-war left should calm down and just move on to more important things. The prize in their view has long been tainted by awarding it to some extremely dubious pro-war characters. And if Obama is simply a continuation of Bush, then why do they care so much about the prize? I’ve just counted a dozen other news items which require more attention, and have been lost in the news cycle lunacy and frenzied response to the announcement.
And with that I’ll leave you with the words of Ali Eteraz:
On the Nobel prize controversy: if we can have pre-emptive war we can have pre-emptive peace.
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thabet
Sarfraz Manzoor talks to a former Guantanamo Bay guard who ended up converting to Islam:
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thabet
The Special Relationship has to be one of the most hyped-up international/geopolitical relationships today. At least in our press, because it seems only British journalists and political pundits, and our political classes, seem to obsesses over it. This is most definitely an imperial hangover; a desire to still be seen as a great world power on the coattails of a genuine global superpower.
The UK needs to realise its place in the world has changed significantly since the end of WWII and the end of its Empire. In the 1950s it launched an invasion of Egypt, and helped topple a democratically-elected government in Iran. This sort of foreign policy needs to be consigned to the history books, though sadly this isn’t the case as yet.
This doesn’t mean the nation has to decline and become poor. It might be possible to become a ‘good global citizen’ by advocating more equitable and fair international cooperation or participating as a genuine neutral observer in conflicts. But to do this the nation, and especially our political classes and bureaucracy have to get over the self-obsessed preoccupation with our ’standing’ in the world, ditch the “global deputy sheriff” role our governments seem keen to play, and become realise we are a ’smaller’ nation. Not doing so seems to harm not only other people, but the nation too.
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I’m taking this with the necessary amount of sodium chloride, but a report at a report at an unfriendly news outlet claims Nicolas Sarkozy thinks Barack Obama is ‘incredibly naive and egotistical’. (Sarkozy calling someone else egotistical is a bit of a joke.)
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Barack Obama says he will not cut troop numbers in Afghanistan.
