August 2012
32 posts
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“Remember Obama’s mantra: Iran must “fulfill its international...”
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Mursi's non-non-alignment
Mursi’s non-non-aligned position on Syria: Mu’allem described Mursi’s reference to the Syrian government as “oppressive” and the Syrian opposition as “actively seeking freedom, dignity and human justice,” as expressions emanating from “the leader of a party” and not “the leader of a non-aligned movement”.
See quote in Arabic here...
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Excerpt from Khamenei's inaugural speech at NAM...
Amen to that. Excerpt from Khamenei’s inaugural speech at NAM summit:
“The UN Security Council has an illogical, unjust and completely undemocratic structure and mechanism. This is a flagrant form of dictatorship, which is antiquated and obsolete and whose expiry date has passed. It is through abusing this improper mechanism that America and its accomplices have managed to disguise...
Syria: Vice President Ends Talk Of Defection →
“Tim Marshall spoke to Mr Sharaa in the Syrian capital and wrote on Twitter: “I am with the Syria Vice President. In Damascus. He has not defected.”
Officials had been forced to issue repeated denials amid rumours that Mr Sharaa - the most senior Sunni Muslim in the Damascus regime - had joined the opposition.”
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Qatar and Turkey's participation in Iran's NAM... →
Forget the value of Ban Ki Moon’s participation at the NAM summit against Israel’s protests, the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani will also likely attend, as well as Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Mursi’s participation makes a lot more sense now. While this doesn’t necessarily indicate a policy shift, it does imply a growing realization on the part...
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Two Cheers for Amerikan Jihadis!
Amerikan jihad unveiled. US policy analyst, Gary Gambill, argues in this Foreign Policy piece here ,entitled “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamism”, that Jihadism in Syria is good for US interests. He contends that Jihadis are most effective in eliminating the resistance axis and are useful to the US insofar as they will not accept a political settlement that would end the civil war. He...
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The new Liberal Enlightenment: Wahhabism meets...
I suppose it was only inevitable that the same liberal imperialists who tried to market the most repressive and archaic Arab regimes as symbols of the democratic, freedom-loving “international community”, and who desperately try to present sectarian executioners, rapists and terrorists as an armed “resistance” fighting “tyranny”, would promote a group of...
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Syrian outcome will affect future conflicts'... →
The principal motivation behind Russia’s Syria policy isn’t merely dictated by national interests or even geo-strategic ones but by the need to prevent a new American imperial world order with its accompanying modus operandi:
“We believe this issue attracts so much attention not only because of the scale of the bloodshed, which worries all of us, but also because the outcome of the...
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US drone strikes target rescuers in Pakistan – and...
Just a reminder [to the left which scoffs at anti-imperialists], that imperialism isn’t only our enemy because it undermines our dignity and independence, but because it is the BIGGEST KILLER. Imperialism is terrorism as Glenn Greenwald’s report below illustrates:
“The US government has long maintained, reasonably enough, that a defining tactic of terrorism is to launch a...
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The US' policy on Jihadism
Confused about the US policy on Islamic jihadis? Maybe this will help clarify a little: the more jihadism overlaps with the secular concept of Moqawama (resistance) and pursues irredentist and liberationist goals (i.e. Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Kashmir), which are essentially DEFENSIVE and driven by a rejection of oppression, with no ambitions to cleanse the nation of...
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My latest article for al-Akhbar, "Iran Attack: Too...
My latest piece for Akhbar here on why Iran is dismissive of Israel’s threats to attack it— the Hizbullah factor: “In part, Iran’s self-assured stand derives from the strategic value of the 2006 July War in Lebanon; a value which holds whether it serves to deter an Israeli or US strike or to prepare Iran and its most trusted ally, Hezbollah, for retaliation….Aside from its...
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Samir Kuntar narrowly escapes lynching by armed... →
The resistance hero, Samir Kuntar, who was imprisoned in Israel for 30 years on false charges and later released as part of a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hizbullah, narrowly escaped being lynched by a group of 500 Salafi thugs armed with swords, batons, knives and other weapons, on his recent visit to Tunisia (see Akhbar Arabic’s story here). Five others were injured, some...
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Brief analysis of Nasrallah's Jerusalem Day speech
Very interesting what Nasrallah DIDN’T mention or say: no condemnation of the Moqdad abductions as many had expected or were hoping for. No call for the release of the hostages, nothing, only shifting responsibility away from Hizbullah by declaring “it’s outside of our control” while laying blame on the media for the community’s outrage. In fact, Nasrallah launched an...
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“Happy International Quds Day to all my comrades. May each passing celebration of...”
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NYT fabricates Nasrallah quote →
Forget Farid Zakaria’s plagiarism, now you have this NYT fool who fabricates quotes. Here he quotes Seyyid Hassan Nasrallah as saying that a European blacklist would “destroy Hezbollah. The sources of our funding will dry up and the sources of moral political and material support will be destroyed.”
I have read and/or listened to almost every single speech Nasrallah has made and not once...
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Moqdadism: the new Shi'ite political force
Some historical context to the Miqdad clan’s abduction of over 20 Syrian FSA fighters: If the AMAL movement was a response to the state’s negligence of South Lebanon on the economic and security levels, and Hizbullah was a reaction to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982, then Moqdadism is surely an expression of Shi’ite rage and frustration today; rage at...
“Those decrying the abduction of FSA rebels and a Turkish diplomat by the Miqdad...”
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After Aleppo: A Return to the Status Quo
Nicolas Nassif’s very insightful analysis of the reasons for the Syrian government’s cohesion here:
“The Syrian army is the president’s army and it falls when he falls.
Perhaps herein lies the West’s, and especially the United States’ insistence, on a political transition that results in Assad stepping down, while preserving the army’s unity to avoid the repetition of the 2003...
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Ayalon Predicts Syria’s Fragmentation and for...
This is the US-Israeli agenda in Syria, see Naharnet report here:
Israeli deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon noted on Friday that the Arab world is passing through a phase that will restore it back to the way it was before World War I, reported Israel Radio.
He also predicted Syria’s fragmentation into provinces, adding that Lebanon will suffer the same fate in the future.
He ruled out the...
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Interview with me on Sunni Revival in Nir Rosen's...
I only stumbled on this yesterday and had completely forgotten I was ever interviewed for it. It’s an excerpt from Nir Rosen’s book on the sectarian fallout of the US invasion of Iraq, “Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World”, in which I am quoted. Although the interview on the Sunni revival dates back to 2007, it is even more relevant now...
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The worst piece so far on Syria
I know I keep using superlatives like “the worst”, “the lowest” , “the silliest” etc. to describe mainstream media reports, but this article, ” Why the Palestinians are turning against al-Assad”, really does exceed all others in disinformation, bias, and outright fabrication of truths that are readily available for us to fact-check given that the author, Jonathan Schanzer (vice...
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Reuters' sectarian agitation
I had my wisdom tooth extracted today, but reading this Reuters report below was by far more painful. The report resorts to the most brazen sectarian agitation and warmongering; the resistance front is reduced to an all Shi’ite alliance while its imperialist serving enemies (GCC, Turkey etc) are identified first and foremost as Sunni. The words Sunni and Shiíte are inserted so frequently...
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Iran will not allow Assad to fall
Iran means business:
“Jalili vowed that Iran will never allow Assad’s regime to fall, calling it part of an anti-Israeli axis in the Middle East led by Tehran. “Iran will never allow the resistance axis — of which Syria is an essential pillar — to break,” Jalili said.
“What is happening in Syria is not an internal issue but a conflict between the axis of...
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My latest article for al-Akhbar: Khamenei and... →
“Hezbollah’s commitment to the Faqih does not represent a political commitment to a national head of state but an intellectual commitment to a sacred Islamic figure and his successors, whose commands are considered “fixed truths…The party’s allegiance is owed primarily to the Faqih and only secondarily to Iran the state. Though religious and political, the nature of the party’s...
Claims Russian general was killed in Syria are... →
Claims Russian general was killed in Syria are “brazen lie” - Russian military
MOSCOW. Aug 8 (Interfax) - The Russian Defense Ministry has described as “a brazen lie” foreign media reports claiming that a Russian general was allegedly killed in Syria.
“Such claims are not intended for a sensation. They are an apparent provocation targeting Russian...
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AP attempts to whitewash Riad Hijab: he agreed to...
AP’s reports on Syria are becoming increasingly insulting to one’s intelligence. See this piece on Riad Hijab’s defection here:
“Syria’s prime minister began planning his break from the regime two months ago when Bashar Assad offered him the post and an ultimatum: Take the job or die….The criminal Assad pressed him to become a prime minister and left him no...
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“Only the most totalitarian kind of hegemony could succeed in turning the...”
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The nature of the Syrian war
I don’t understand the logic of those who see the Syrian government’s war against proxy forces as a bid to “hold on to power”. Yes, the stamping out of protests at the beginning of the uprising was precisely that but how can the conflict still be seen through the lens of regime survival and not the survival of Syria as a nation-state? How can anyone not understand that...
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Mohammad Marandi on the difference between Romney... →
I am proud to be a friend of Seyed Mohammad Marandi. Mohamad is an associate professor of English Literature at University of Tehran and the founder and director of Institute for North American and European Studies there. Talking to al-Jazeeraa English, he turns colonial discourse on its head in the video link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgUnLcNZndQ
“The Iranians have been talking. The...
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"The Eccentricities of Bashar al-Assad"
Ah Angry Arab. For every good piece he writes (his last one about mainstream media for example), he must counterbalance with a really offensive one just to prove he is “balanced”. I really don’t understand how a tenured professor who teaches at a prestigious American university doesn’t understand why Ben Ali and Mubarak were more “humble” in their last days...
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AP tries to make the Syrian opposition sexy
In a desperate bid to whitewash the unruly bunch of criminal thugs, foreign and local mercenaries, Salafi takfiri jihadis, sectarian warlords and terrorists, mainstream media is now resorting to the oldest marketing trick in the book: sex sells. Hence AP’s attempt here to pimp up that sleazy, piggy-faced, greasy-haired, over-privileged playboy who sports Miami Vice attire and has a penchant...
