This is what 42 years of occupation does: In Gaza, Hamas Suddenly Become Moderates, from CNN:
Friday’s clashes were the latest between Gaza’s Hamas rulers, who have said they are moderate Muslims pledged to the Palestinian cause, and more extremist Islamic groups.
Jund Ansar Allah is part of the radical Islamist movement that follows the doctrines of the “Salaf,” or the predecessors — referring to the early generations of Muslims. They reject all modern influences such as politics and government.
Read more.
Impressive how the propaganda and blackmail starts, from MSNBC:
On Sunday, Netanyahu told his Cabinet there would be no limits on Jewish construction anywhere in “unified Jerusalem.”
“We cannot accept the fact that Jews wouldn’t be entitled to live and buy anywhere in Jerusalem,” Netanyahu declared, calling Israeli sovereignty over the entire city “indisputable.”
“I can only imagine what would happen if someone suggested Jews could not live in certain neighborhoods in New York, London, Paris or Rome. There would certainly be a major international outcry,” Netanyahu said.
The international community considers Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem to be settlements and an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking because they complicate a possible division of the city. Israel does not regard them as settlements because it annexed east Jerusalem after capturing the area in 1967. The annexation has not been recognized internationally.
Someone should tell Bibi, how would people react if Jews bulldozed Palestinian homes in New York, London, Paris or Rome? There would certainly be a major international outcry there, too.
In 2000, Al Gore was believed to have won the Elections, but Florida proved otherwise and George W. Bush was chosen as the winner by the Supreme Court in what was a political decision to maintain peace and order.
In 2004, John Kerry was expected to defeat the allegedly unpopular George Bush, but surprising to many and shocking to foreigners, Bush retained the Presidency.
In 2008, change was the theme, and leveraging technology, Barack Obama was swept into power.
Reading the post mortems in US and British media, you cannot help but realize that there is
- a brewing hatred for the sitting President in the respective periods (Ahmedinehad in Iran and Bush in USA)
- a power struggle going on amongst the clericals (who basically represent the neoconservatives in American politics).
I think this just reiterates the role of religion in politics. During Bush’s regime, the US swayed towards right wing religion, Iran did the same thing at the government level even though the population sought more secularism and democracy. What is happening now is the friction between the forces of religion and secularism. America had its own struggle in the 2008 elections, Iran tried to in 2009, to no avail… but don’t expect those lingering issues simply disappear.
Could this be the end of the beginning?
Behind the scenes Khamenei’s arch rival, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is believed to be working to remove the Supreme Leader and is even reported to be considering abolishing the post of Supreme Leader altogether in what would be the biggest constitutional change since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Rafsanjani is the head of Iran’s Expediency Council and crucially the Assembly of Experts which is responsible for overseeing and if necessary removing the Supreme leader. He is also a prominent backer of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated presidential candidate who has become the focal point for protestors.
(…)
According to Al-Arabiya, high-up sources say that Rafsanjani has already gained enough support within the Assembly for the removal of Khamenei, but has found less of a positive response to the proposal to replace the position of Supreme Leader altogether.
The following doesn’t even need to be true to enrage Iranians; but if the Regime is importing Arabs to fight off protesters in Iran, then this will only ignite the movement further, from Independent.co.uk:
The Iranian opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi is under 24-hour guard by secret police and no longer able to speak freely to supporters, according to the film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf.
Mr Makhmalbaf, 52, an informal spokesman abroad for the protest in Iran, said that Mr Mousavi was not under arrest but “he has security agents, secret police with him all the time. He has to be careful what he says.”
In a telephone interview, Mr Makhmalbaf, the director of the 2001 film Kandaha, denied suggestions that the protests against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were losing steam.
“The regime, arguably, is losing ground, not the protests,” he said. “Ordinary Iranians are openly rejecting the legitimacy and power of Ayatollah Khamanei. That is entirely new, unheard of.”
Mr Makhmalbaf, a friend of Mr Mousavi for 20 years, said that there were reports from Iran that some of the militia deployed to suppress protest were “speaking Arabic”. “That is unconfirmed but it suggests that the regime is unable to trust its own security forces to repress the Iranian people,” he said. “It suggests that people are being used from abroad.”
Iranians have an affinity with Arabs because of their shared religion. But beneath that veneer, lies two major rifts with Arabs:
- even within the religious affinity, Iranians are (like Iraqis, who are Arab) largely Shiite,
- nationalistically speaking, Iranias are Persians, ie. non-Arabs, and many still resent how the Muslims came to their country and imposed Islam onto them.
Any suggestion that the Regime is bringing in Arabs to fight off the Iranians taking to the street will backfire.
None of this is PC per se, but it is real: while an Iranian and an Arab will exchange pleasantries, an uneasy tension will exist between them, as well.
If these images of Clerics joining the protesters are real, then the Regime is beyond doomed:
Some extremely powerful words and sights from Tehran, in the wake of the Iran Elections:
So long as the protesters shield themselves with Islam and stay united, indeed the Regime will fall.
The chanting can be translated to:
“God is Great!”
Followed by (this is when the chorus is at its loudest at 0:36), if you speak and understand Farsi, you cannot help but get chills here
“Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid! We are all together!”
And then
“Death to the Dictator!”
By now, you can imagine the dictator they’re referring to isn’t the President Ahmadinejad.
Did CNN censor - or at least try to shut up Deepak Chopra - Read more on Huffington Post and see for yourself:
Update: the source of the leak is a hoax, but the fact remains: for the GOP to send up John McCain and Sarah Palin to the batter’s box after George Bush’s disastrous tenure shows how reckless the POW (Party of War) is. I do not see how America’s shifting demographics will allow for the GOP to remain a viable party…
Original post:
Remember: the GOP is the Party of War… so if their second in command does not know the basics, that is a dangerous thing. From Martin Eisenstadt, the leak who told FOX that Palin was clueless on geography, let alone geo-politics:
So yes, to be clear, last week I was the one who leaked those things to a producer at Fox News who works with Cameron. Carl and his producers are good guys, and I don’t want them to have to worry about protecting their sources (and going through the wringer ala Judith Miller or Matt Cooper) on something like this.
As you know, I was one of the foreign policy advisers on the McCain campaign who worked with Randy Scheunemann to help prep Sarah on her debate with Joe Biden. Did we outright give her a geography quiz when we started the prep? No, of course not. But yes, in the context of the prep, it slowly became apparent that her grasp of basic geo-political knowledge had major gaps. Could she have passed a multiple choice test about South Africa or NAFTA. Probably. But it was clear that she simply didn’t have the ease of knowledge that we come to expect from a major party political candidate. Other slights came up, too: Not knowing the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas. Or the difference between the Shiites and Suni. Or when it came to international terrorist organizations, knowing that the IRA was in Northern Ireland, and ETA in Spain.
Read more. The point is, we saw that happens when someone runs the country without knowing that Iraq has Sunnis and Shia and they don’t get along. I don’t think we can afford to have more of these types of people in charge… yet both John McCain and Sarah Palin did not seem to know this very basic fact.
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