The Catholic Church hierarchy nearly everywhere has been reactionary. The Catholic Church had been in with the ruling classes in Europe forever. This was one of the main reasons why the Bible was never translated into the vernacular and why masses were always held in Latin. The people could neither read not speak Latin, hence there was a huge disconnect between the Church hierarchy and the people.
This is similar to many other religions, especially eclectic religions of the Middle East such as Yezidism, Alawism and Druze. In all of these religions, the secrets of the religion are usually held in secret by a priestly caste of mostly men, though the Druze actually have female priests. For a long time, the secret book of the Yezidis was thought to not even exist except perhaps only in oral form – this is how secret it was. This ended when an actual copy fell into Western hands around 1900.
In all of these religions, the “real true” religion is in the hands of the priestly caste and they make sure not to tell any outsiders what the religion is about. Hence it has been very hard to get good data on any of these religions. The people are fed some watered down version of the religion that doesn’t mean much of anything and if you ask the average Alwai, Druze or Yezidi what their religion is about, you will only get some diluted harmless synopsis acceptable for outside ears. Usually what the people say the religion believes and what it really believes are two different things altogether.
The Catholic Church was in with the rich and in Europe especially in the Middle Ages it was very wealthy. It was this extreme wealth that enabled the Church to build those huge architectural masterpieces we see in the form of Medieval churches across the north of Europe, especially in France and England. They sold the peasants pie in the sky when you die like religions always do. It was this anti-people, pro-rich philosophy that made Marx so hostile to religion. He was not so much against it because he was a materialist and he thought it was superstition; he was also against it because he thought it was reactionary.
The hierarchy of the Church remained reactionary all through the 20th Century. Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador and the four Catholic priests assassinated in 1989 at the start of the great guerrilla offensive (a crime that was plotted in the US ambassador’s office of the US Embassy two days before) were the exceptions to this rule. The Church hierarchy in Venezuela and Nicaragua remain rightwing and hostile to the Sandinistas and Chavistas to this very day. Same with the church hierarchy in Spain to the best of my knowledge.
Although the Muslim Brotherhood is officially opposed to Al Qaeda and tends to take a legalist and democratic approach to obtaining power, the organization is nevertheless very radical and many radical Muslims gravitate to the MB as the only game in town. In turn, as they radicalize in the MB, the more radicalized people spin off to Al Qaeda, ISIS and other radical jihadi groups. Then some of the Al Qaeda people spin back into the Brotherhood, this time hiding their radical views.
It is not well known, but Hamas is nothing less than the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. The MB is illegal in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Qatar. They led an uprising in 1982 in Syria where 30,000 people were killed. The survivors went to Europe and also to Saudi Arabia where they met up with Egyptian MB members who were working and teaching in the Kingdom. These MB religious folk were then in turn influenced by the allegedly quietist Wahhabism, the official doctrine of Saudi Arabia. The MB religious teachers then supercharged Wahhabism while Wahhabism itself radicalized the MB teachers in terms of Islamic doctrine. It was this mixture of the Ikhwan and Wahhabism that eventually morphed into bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. From and around Al Qaeda all sorts of other radical jihadi groups emerged, especially in Iraq and Syria. Most of the groups in Syria are either Al Qaeda linked or inspired or if not, are not a great deal different from Syrian Al Qaeda, now called Al Nusra.
Another origin of Al Qaeda was in Egypt where as above, the MB served as a nursery of sorts for Islamic radicals. Radicals kept spinning off the MB and forming more radicalized splits. Sayed Qutb was one of the first, and Al Qaeda is simply Qutbism writ large. He was executed by Nasser in the 1950’s.
Another split occurred in the late 1970’s, when another radical group spun off of the MB and evolved into various factions. One of these factions developed the Qutbist notion that the entire Muslim world was now living in a state of jahaliyya or pre-Islamic ignorance. The entire society of Muslim Egypt was tainted by infidel and anti-Islamic influences. Some of these people dropped out of society and went to live like hermits in caves in the desert. They saw the entire society as corrupt and evil, so they had no alternative but to completely drop out of it and live in isolated hermitage like early Christians.
It was here that Zayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian eye surgeon and bin Laden’s 2nd in command, got his start. He developed some followers in the city he lived in and he eventually dropped out of society and went to live in caves with the rest of the radicals.
Around this time, a lot of these radicals got wrapped up in plot to assassinate Anwar Sadat, mostly for the crime of making peace with Israel. The assassins, of which there were several, were ex-MB members who had spun off from the group. About 1,000 radicals were rounded up after the assassination. Al-Zawahiri was one of them. There is footage of a wild-eyed Zawahiri in a crowded jail cell with ~40 other men. He is gripping the cell bars and shouting along with many others.
After his release, Zawahiri went on to form the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. This and several other very radical jihadi groups waged war on the Egyptian state in the early 80’s. Zawahiri’s movement, which had ~1,500 members, was crushed by the state. Jihadis were taken out into the Egyptian desert, tied to a pole and left there. It didn’t take long for them to perish from lack of food or water. In this way, the movement was crushed. Zawahiri fled Egypt and may have taken up with bin Laden in Sudan for a while.
The remains of Islamic Jihad combined with the nascent Al Qaeda forming in the Kingdom via the mixture of Egyptian and Syrian MB and Saudi Wahhabis to form the nucleus of the early Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda got increasingly radicalized during bin Laden’s stay there. Finally both men went to Afghanistan for the Afghan jihad which radicalized huge numbers of Muslims all over the world, mostly in the Arab World. As they fought in Afghanistan, they become increasingly radicalized. Zawahiri had always argued for fighting the “near enemy” first – the secular Arab regimes, but bin Laden’s radical theory was to switch from a war only against the near enemy to a war against the “far enemy,” which bin Laden called the US for its support for Israel and the secular Arab dictatorships.
The MB is hated and outlawed in Qatar and Saudi Arabia more on the grounds of rivalry than anything else. Qatar and the Saudis see the Ikhwan as a threat to royal power. After a military coup overthrew the elected MB government in Egypt, the new leader Sisi has formed a major alliance with the Saudis and the Qataris. The Saudis have responded by flooding Sisi’s government with oil money.
In Jordan, most of the Parliament is made of the MB members, which is one reason why the powers of the Parliament have been severely limited by the King.
The MB is quite active in north Lebanon near Tripoli where Lebanon’s 20% Sunnis live. These people have become increasingly radicalized and are now engaged in open warfare with Alawis living in some of these cities. Some of these Sunnis also seem to have gone to Syria to join up with the jihadi groups. The MB in this part of Lebanon is known for its dislike of Lebanon’s Shia and Hezbollah.
The MB was formed by Hassan Al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher, in 1922. It is one of the oldest radical Muslim groups in the world.
Tata writes: Maybe you could help me understand a phenomenon. In the Middle East and especially in the Gulf countries, homosexuality is punishable by the death penalty and decapitation. Paradoxically, I have often heard that the Arabs of the Gulf have many homo relations between them because they do not have access to women. It seems that it is rampant in the Gulf, and apparently the fear of dying does not stop them.
But I read a bizarre story about a Gulf prince who got caught in a fight in a gay nightclub in London with his lover. This guy is a hypermasculine Arab man, and he doesn’t look gay. But maybe Arabs have too much testosterone and are always horny, that’s why they put a tent on the head of their women and could fuck anything. I don’t know, it’s just a reflection.
The prince is in London, and there are no obstacles to have contacts with women, dozens of women if he want. He drives a Ferrari, he is rich, he is a prince, but he continues to go to gay nightclubs and avoids women? Why? Another rumor is of another prince from the Gulf who allegedly murdered one of his employees with whom he had gay relations. It seems that there is a mentality in the Gulf that if the guy is active rather than passive, he is not gay. Are these guys gay, bi or straight? Can a hetero sodomize a guy and be hetero nevertheless and continue to act full macho? I find this crazy and I do not understand this mentality.
I have heard that in the Arab World, you are not considered gay if you play the male role in gay sex. This is true in Morocco and Egypt at the very least. 20-30% of young Egyptian and Moroccan men have played the male role in gay sex. The guys who play the passive role are considered faggots. They are not necessarily persecuted though. It’s more that they are used sexually as a surrogate female by straight men.
William Burroughs and Paul Bowles lived in Morocco for years. Allen Ginsberg visited Burroughs in Tangier. I have also heard that Oscar Wilde went to Morocco with some other European gay men and had sex with teenage boys there. All of these men were basically gay. All of Burroughs neighbors knew that he was gay and was having sex with teenage street boys, but no one ever turned him in. I never heard the dynamics of the type of sex that Burroughs, Bowles and Wilde were engaging in with those Moroccan street boys. Apparently there was quite a bit of this going on in Moroccan society, and as long as you were very quiet about it, no one cared.
There is a lot of gay sex in Saudi Arabia. There are even quite a few of what could be termed gay bars. I am not sure of the sexual orientation of the men who are doing such things. Obviously if you prevent men from having sex with women, a lot of them are going to start screwing guys instead. That’s just the way men are.
Supposedly nothing is done about all of this gay sex in Saudi Arabia as long as they are very quiet and discreet about it. When they start getting loud about it, the authorities crack down. There were a number of arrests in Saudi Arabia recently at a gay wedding of two Saudi men getting informally married. There were female impersonators there, and the whole thing got out of hand pretty fast. The authorities raided the party and made a number of arrests.
Similarly, a group of gay men threw a wild gay party on board a boat on the Nile River recently. This was considered to be flaunting it, and these men were arrested, tried and sentenced to a few years in prison. The trial caused quite a fuss.
But I have heard that there are quite a few gay couples living quiet lives in Cairo. Everyone knows about it, and no one cares.
I read a recent article by a gay man who went to Egypt on vacation. He was on the Nile in Lower Egypt where he was renting boat boys to take him out on the river. He told how some of these teenage boys were openly propositioning him. Later he met with a gay couple living quietly in Cairo. Everyone knew about them, but it was accepted as long as they were discreet about it.
I read another piece by a gay man who went to Kuwait. He said Arab men of all ages were openly propositioning him. He was shocked at how open it all was. He went down to the beach at night, and he said there were all these gay men there cruising for sex on the beach, and quite a few of them were actually engaging in sex on the beach. No one was doing anything about it, but it all had to be kept on the down low.
Nevertheless, it is different in every country. The Shia take a very hard line against gay sex, and many gay men have been murdered in Iraq.
~8,000 gay men have been executed by the clerical regime in Iran.
In Iraq, Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa saying that gay men should be killed. After that, there were a lot of murders of Iraqi gay men.
Hezbollah is normally pretty liberal about the things that they allow under the rule, but they take a hard line on male homosexuality too. They don’t kill gay men in Hezbollah areas, but they do beat them up.
Male homosexuality is not accepted at all in Palestine, and gay men are often murdered in the Palestinian areas. Some have even sought refugee status in Israel as a result of this, and Israel did grant some of them this status. Male homosexuality is frowned upon in Syria and Lebanon, but there is quite a bit of it anyway. There are quite a few gay men among the Syrian refugees in Beirut, but they live in absolute terror as male homosexuality is frowned upon on Lebanese Islamic society.
They were also persecuted in Syria. I know of one case where gay men were arrested by Assad’s regime and imprisoned for a while. They were made to have sex with each other in front of Syrian police at the jail while the police sat back and laughed and ridiculed them. Of course, ISIS has been executing gay men in areas under its control, usually by throwing them off the top of tall buildings.
I know nothing about male homosexuality in Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Yemen, Jordan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Sudan or in the Islamic parts of Africa. Nor do I know much about it in the rest of the Islamic World, but I do know something about male homosexuality in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which is quite a complex situation. Maybe for a later post.
I’m not much of an expert on gay rights because as a straight man, the subject does not interest me much.
However, it has long been rumored that the leader of Oman is a gay. He has never admitted it, but many think he is anyway. I understand that people in Oman don’t care much one way or the other about their ruler being gay.
I did not even bother to watch much of this video because his videos and articles make me so sick. The problem is that this guy’s whole shtick is that he is not racist at all in any way whatsoever! No really. That’s exactly what he says. And that’s how he comes across, endlessly, in article after article and video after video. And that is exactly why this man is so dangerous.
Mr. Flaherty is a journalist, and a good one at that. But in his middle age, he has decided to branch out into the area of Black crime, except that his focus has a twist – it’s all about Black crime against Whites. The subtext of every Flaherty article or video is that Black people are deliberately singling out Whites to attack as hunters single out prey. Nothing could be more nonsensical. Blacks do not preferentially prey on Whites. It’s nonsense. 89% of Black homicides are of other Black people. Most Black crime is Black on Black crime. Much is made of Black men raping White women, but Black men rape Black women at 5X the rate that they rape White women. There are all sorts of nutty arguments that try to deal with these uncomfortable truths while keeping the lousy theory alive.
The principal one was symbolized by the noted theory of Le Griffe du Lion, a very racist White professor of…get this…sociology! He did some fancy mathematics showing that Black people mostly see other Black people all day long and don’t see many White people. So of course they prey mostly on their own kind. That’s who they are around all the time! If Blacks were around Whites just as much as they were around Blacks, their propensity to hunt Whites preferentially as a predator hunts its prey (Le Griffe’s exact words) would come out.
But the other side can play that game too. There are 6X more Whites than Blacks. If Blacks displayed no preference at all in victims, they would kill 6X more Whites than Blacks, right? This argument spouts the rejoinder of “But they are only around their own kind all day…” which is probably a tautology and is certainly not falsifiable, so it fails as theory on its face.
Flaherty wrote a book called, White Girl Bleed a Lot. It’s all about Black crime against Whites. Yes Blacks commit some very bad crimes against Whites. But they commit just as bad or worse crimes against their own kind. So only writing about Black crime against Whites is lying in a sense, and worse, you are selling a form of poison to the masses. Racist poison. A really nasty racist poison.
Because nothing drives Whites up the wall more than the idea that Blacks preferentially prey on them as victims. Some of these theorists even go as far as to say that Blacks are waging a low level guerrilla war against Whites. Oh what nonsense.
But if you study ethnic conflicts all over the world, one of the things that sets off massacres and ethnic cleansings is the notion that Group B, the outgroup, is trying to kill us, Group A.
Hitler set off the genocide by saying the Jews were trying to exterminate Germans.
The Rwandan genocide was set off in the same way.
The Sunni-Shia wars start off in exactly the same way. ISIS propaganda goes to great lengths to show how the Shia are preferentially singling out and slaughtering the Sunni. “They’re trying to kill us all,” is the message.
This was the line that the Young Turks used to kill 1.7 million Armenians. “The Armenians were starting a war against the Turks and they were trying to kill all the Turks.”
The genocide against Muslims in Bosnia was set off Serbian lies that, “The Muslims were trying to kill the Serbs.”
Even the anti-Communist slaughters of the last century which the US fully participated in, each and every one of them, were predicated on the idea that the Communist killers were going to seize power and kill lots of people.
Hitler justified his genocide against the Jews by saying that they were Communists and that the Communists were mass murderers who were “killing millions of Christians” in the Ukraine. Yes, the fake Holodomor, the terror famine that never even happened, was used as a pretext for the Holocaust. Remember that the next time any of you wants to rant about “Stalin’s terror famine.” Every time you say that, you are repeating Nazi propaganda. Does it make you feel good to parrot Hitler?
Many of the massacres of Indians were predicated on the notion that the Indians “were coming to kill us all.” In the original wording of the Declaration of Independence, there is language about how savage the Indians fought, knowing none of the rules of decency in wartime. “They’re savages, so we need to kill them all.” See how that works?
In Indonesia in 1965, there was supposedly a Communist coup to take over the government. All the world’s media reported it exactly that way. Except that it never happened. There was a fake Communist coup to take over the government. “The Communists tried to take over and they are going to kill millions of people” lie was then used as an excuse to kill 1 million Communists all over Indonesia in only a few months. Most were hacked to death with machetes. Islamic fundamentalists were used by the US and Indonesia in this slaughter.
The CIA was on the scene immediately and they supplied the new government with lists of known Communists. These lists were then used to single out people for killing. The US media then lied about the whole affair, with the execrable New York Times leading the charge. Later there was an attempt to bury this mass slaughter as “unfortunate but necessary and a good idea in the long run.” It was only years or even decades that we learned the truth about the fake coup and the mass slaughter. The Left was devastated in Indonesia and has remained in a meager state to this day. Obviously people in Indonesia have gotten the message about what happens to Leftists.
Hence it follows that once White people get it in their heads that “the Blacks are trying to kill us” we can set ourselves up for some serious persecutions of Blacks based on that narrative. I doubt if we will start massacring Blacks, but “the Blacks are trying to rape and kill Whites” was always the excuse for lynchings and Jim Crow.
It’s an ugly narrative, and it’s a lie.
I could write articles about this sort of thing too. I see articles all the time about Black people acting terrible, killing each other, killing White people, you name it. 98% of the time, I choose not to write about it. Why write about it? Yes, we know Black people commit tons of crime, including violent crime. Yes, we know Black men have a high homicide rate.
Yes, we know that Black men kill many White people – but they kill far more Black people and by and large, they prey mostly on their own kind.
Looking at the larger picture, Black criminals simply prey on other humans. They rob, rape and kill Hispanics, Asians, Whites and Blacks. They attack everyone. They are not real particular. And the evidence shows that if anything, they by far preferentially select their own kind for violence and they preferentially select against White victims. So if anything, Blacks prefer to prey on their own kind and it looks like Blacks actively avoid preying on Whites. If that’s the reality, then it’s quite a poisonous stew to cook up to sell the lie that Blacks preferentially attack Whites. “They’re coming to kill us! The Blacks are trying to kill us White people!” It’s not only a lie, but it’s a very dangerous lie, a mental poison with grave effects.
Just to see what sort of vibes Flaherty is churning up, look at the commenters. Looks like Niggermania, Chimpout, American Renaissance and Stormfront. There are all sorts of very vicious and ugly remarks against Black people as a race on there. So even if Flaherty really is a non-racist as he insists, look at all the wild racism that his irresponsible (or worse) videos and articles sprout. He’s fertilizing the land with poison, watching the weeds he watered grow and take over the land and choke out all the good and decent crops, all the while protesting that he had nothing to do with it, he was just some innocent farmer trying to grow crops. Yeah. Crops of weeds.
Whenever I see that language, I think, “This person is promoting hatred against Phil, Tulio and Alpha.” I think that’s unacceptable. None of these Black people do much of anything wrong, they all live like good, law abiding citizens, and in short, they are good people. Selling hate propaganda against good people just because they are Black is just wrong.
And that is why you, Mr. Flaherty, are wrong.
And that is why you, Mr. Flaherty, are promoting a very dangerous lie.
It is about time the Gulf nations made alliance with Iran. Iran wants to have peaceful relations with the Sunni Arab world; it’s the Sunni Arabs who hate the Shia, the niggers of Islam and the niggers of the Arab World. It’s like the Jim Crow South with the Sunni Arabs as good old boy crackers enforcing Jim Crow against the poor Shia niggers.
The modern version of this lie sees Shia taking power across the region as “Iran expanding its influence in the Arab World” and “Iranian expansionism.” It’s total crap.
All of these are local conflicts and local political situations. In few Arab countries, there are many Shia and the Shia have obtained quite a bit of power. This is due to the situation inside the nation, not some BS Iranian expansionism.
Hezbollah is popular in Lebanon because the masses love them. They have 85% support across all sects. They are even very popular with Lebanese Christians. The Lebanese Army is a joke, so Hezbollah is seen as effectively the Army of Lebanon or the National Resistance. They support over there because the people love them, not because of some “Iranian expansionism” lie.
In Syria, yes, the Shia have been in power for decades, but the regime is aggressively secular and does not favor any confessional group. The Syrian business community is mostly Sunni. They’ve always run the businesses over there. Many Shia Alawi who are members of Assad’s sect are very poor because the only Alawis who have benefited from the regime are those with tribal and family ties to the regime. 70% of the Syrian military is Sunni. 70% of Syrian officers are Sunni. 70% of Syrian government officials are Sunni. In recent elections, Sunnis won 85% of seats.
Yet the vile Israelis and the US keep talking up this big lie about Syria as a “Shia supremacist state” where all the wealth, power and government is in the hands of the Shia and the Sunnis have nothing. The whole army is said to be Shia, as no Sunni would want to fight for the Shia government. The only reason they fight is because they have a gun to their backs. All of this is a huge lie as the government is secular and is not confessional or discriminatory in any way, shape or form. If the Shia are running a Shia supremacist state, why do the Sunnis have most of the money in the country as they run the business community? Why are the Christians wealthier than the average Syrian. I thought the government was Shia supremacist and the non-Shia get nothing?
Furthermore, the Shia sect that runs Syria is called Alawi and they are one of the most secular of the Muslim sects. They do not go to mass. They do not fast at Ramadan. They never go on hajj. They are very secular and most of the women do not wear the hijab.
The religion is a strange mishmash of ancient pagan sects like Mandeanism, Christianity and a very secular version of Shia Islam. Alawi worship Jesus, celebrate Christmas and every Alawi household has a picture of Jesus hanging on the wall. Paganism is present in the Alawi believe that the stars represent the souls of dead humans. After we die, we ascend to the heavens and turn into stars. This is taken from the ancient Mandeanism sect, star worshipers who follow John the Baptist as their spiritual leader. There were a number of them in Iraq, but many were killed as infidels in the recent civil war. However, Saddam protected the Mandeans.
There is a huge debate in Islam around whether or not the Alawi are even Muslims! Many Sunnis state emphatically that they are not Muslims and instead they are a heretical schismatic sect of apostates who must be killed.
The case for this discrimination was first made by Syrian Ibn Taymiya centuries ago who could be said to be the father of the modern Salafi Islam of Al Qaeda, ISIS and the rest. Indeed, Salafis revere Taymiya and pore over his writings. The Alawi state that they are indeed Muslims, albeit an extremely secular variety of nearly New Age Muslims.
Considering that this is one of the most secular sects in Islam, why would they be confessionalists? Why would they discriminate against other sects if they are barely even Muslims and not particularly religious in the first place? Religious discrimination in the Muslim world is tied to fundamentalism. The secular regimes have usually been much more nonprejudicial. So the Alwai have run Syria for 50 years, and Syria is hardly a case of Iranian expansionism. Please!
Iraq is the latest flash point. This is not a case of Iranian expansionism either. Saddam somewhat repressed the Shia, although millions of Shia were Baath Party members, and most of the army were Shia.
When the US military rolled through the Shia cities of the South during the Gulf War, they expected a warm welcome. It was the other way around. A convoy would be driving down a street in Nasariyah with nary a problem in sight. They got halfway down the street when the whole street opened up on them with automatic weapons and RPG’s. Most of them were hiding on rooftops. These were Shia Baath Party people, Shia Iraqi military veterans and also a lot of Shia who were simply Iraqi nationalists who would rather live with Saddam than be conquered by foreign invaders.
Of course, our criminal, Nazi-like war of aggression against the Iraqi people resulted in the overthrow of Sunni rule. With democracy, obviously a Shia government was elected, as 60% of the population is Iraq is Shia. The US and Israel are now screaming that Iraq is a case of Iranian expansionism. The Hell it is. It’s a case of democracy! The Shia are the majority, so democratic elections of course elected a Shia government. Democracy in action. I guess the US and Israel are opposed to democracy now?
Of course the new Shia government has friendly ties with Iran. The Shia Alawi government of Syria also has close ties with Iran. The Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon has close ties with Iran. None of this is “Iranian expansionism” or “Iran conquering the Arab world.” Instead these are Shia populations in the Arab World who have formed a natural and normal confessional alliance with Shia Iran. Shia are going to ally with Shia. What do you expect them to do?
Yemen
In Yemen, the Shia are 45% of the country. This group is called Zaidis, and they are barely even Shia. They only differ from Yemeni Sunnism on one or two things. While most Zaidis call themselves Shia, some call themselves Sunnis, and others say that they are both Sunni and Shia. So the sect isn’t even pure Shia according to their own members.
A tribal group in the north called Houthis who are mostly Zaidi launched a very popular civil war from the north all the way to the south of the country, eventually overthrowing the government. The US- and Saudi-installed president, a man named Hadi, was airlifted out to Saudi Arabia where he continued to insist that he ran the country. Hadi was very unpopular, and frankly most Yemenis hated him.
The Houthi revolt had the support of the majority of Yemenis. The Yemeni Army was loyal to a former president named Saleh, who was also a Houthi Shia. Most of the Yemeni Army, 70-80%, went over to the side of the Houthis. So the vast majority of the army goes over the side of the armed revolution that overthrows the state, and the revolution is still not legitimate? Well, when is a revolution legitimate then?
The US went along with this folly and insisted that Hadi was still the real president of the country. Well, no he wasn’t. Ever heard of a revolution? When an armed revolution happens and overthrows the government, the new armed group is the new government. I would say they are even under international law. Revolutions have been a legitimate way to overthrow states forever now. Or do we now say that all revolutions are illegitimate? Would that apply to our own revolution then? That would have to be illegitimate too, right, because the US says that armed revolutions cannot install legitimate governments?
The remaining 25% of the Yemeni Army started fighting the Houthis, but they were close to defeat. Suddenly, the Saudis, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and Sudan all jumped into the war and attacked Yemen. They invaded Yemen, a sovereign country. That’s a Nazi like war of aggression, illegal under international law. Yet the US and UK gave full support to this invasion.
Since that time, the Saudis have been bombing all over the country. The Saudi and UAE militaries also invaded, but they did not get far. They set up a few garrisons, but they came under constant attack and suffered heavy casualties. The Saudi military is terrible and is not capable of fighting any war. The UAE military is about as bad. The US has been supplying intelligence and command and control facilities to the invaders from the beginning. At least 10,000 Yemenis are dead at the hands of the US and the UK in this sickening war. Whenever the Saudis start running low on bombs, we rush-deliver more bombs to them.
Al Qaeda has a large presence in Yemen, and they quickly waged war against the Houthis and Saleh’s army. The Gulf states have been funneling supplies to Yemeni Al Qaeda ever since the invasion, using them to help overthrow the Shia Houthis. When the war started, Saudi Arabia and the UAE flew 300-400 ISIS and Al Qaeda jihadis from Syria down to Yemen to fight against the Houthi. The UAE and the Saudis continue to run jihadis into Yemen, typically by ship. The Saudis have never launched one attack against the Al Qaeda and ISIS in Yemen, and the US has had a quite but not completely hands-off policy too, as the US and UK are using ISIS and Al Qaeda in Yemen to overthrow the Houthi.
The Houthi takeover had nothing to do with “Iranian expansionism.” That’s a paranoid lie of a fever dream. The Shia are 45% of Yemen. The Houthis have always been very popular in Yemen. In fact, the Shia Houthis ruled Yemen for centuries with no problems whatsoever. Even many Sunni Yemenis say they support the Houthi because they say that the Houthis know how to run the country. The Houthis have some friendly relations with Iran, but it boils down to little more than moral support. US and Israeli charges of the Iranians running weapons to the Houthis appear to be complete lies.
This is part of ISIS’ endgame – unleashing total civil war in Iran with the goal of conquering the nation. This is one of the principal goals of the organization.
That’s pretty serious. Bottom line is blame the Gulf Arab states for this attack. This is what the Saudis, Bahrainis, UAE and Kuwaitis want. It’s all about “get Iran.” The pitiful and laughable Trump tour of Saudi Arabia recently where he gained the support of the Gulf in the war on terrorism is a joke! The US then signed a deal to sell the malign Saudis billions more in weaponry.
Oh and the deal was the the weaponry from US weapons manufacturers which was said to be made in the US was then shifted over to Saudi Arabia! So the weapons we are selling them won’t even create jobs in the US. Trump exported a huge amount of US jobs! Not a single word this pathological liar of a President says can be trusted.
Then Trump tweeted about how Qatar is failing in the war on terrorism and how the Gulf countries are cutting off ties with Qatar due to Qatar’s ties with terrorism. This is laughable! Yes Qatar has ties to terrorism, but so does Kuwait, Bahrain and especially UAE and Saudi Arabia, two of the worst. So the Gulf nations are forming a “common front against terrorism” against Qatar and the US is going along with this phony, lying charade. Pitiful! And not one US MSM outlet will ever tell you the truth about what is going on over there. Since none will, I will do that right now.
As I said, the other Gulf countries sponsor just as much terrorism as the Qataris. The reason for the “anti-terrorist: shunning of Qatar is because in recent days, Qatar has developed close ties with Iran. Now how this ties in with Qatar’s support of the Al Nusra Front (Al Qaeda in Syria) and their war against the Shia, I have no idea.
Another problem is that Qatar is very friendly with the Ikhwan or Muslim Brotherhood. Yes this is a fundamentalist Islamic organization but it is a huge group with vast support across the Arab World. In the last Egyptian elections, the MB won 75% of the vote. That’s how popular they are in Egypt.
Hamas is actually the Palestinian branch of the MB, a fact that they try to keep on the down low because Palestinians are some of the most secular people in the Arab World and the MB has never been very popular there.
The MB has significant support in Jordan where they are seen as a threat to the dictatorship. Much of Parliament is made up of MB people.
The MB is frankly who is running the entire war in Syria against the Assad regime because the MB has always been the major opposition group in the land. The MB simply dissolved into countless jihadi groups which have proliferated across the land during the civil war, including Al Nusra and ISIS, both of which have MB roots. The MB has also been a significant factor in the civil war in Iraq.
Saddam repressed them to some extent, but after the US conquered Iraq and turned it into a US colony, the MB was legalized and had quite a bit of support.
Al Qaeda itself was created by MB radical preachers exiled from Egypt and Syria who came to Saudi Arabia in the 1980’s on and mingled with the Wahhabis, who were largely quietist at that time. This toxic stew brewed for a long time under it cooked up a dish called Al Qaeda. In that sense, Al Qaeda definitely has MB roots.
Although they share the same beliefs, the MB is very heavily repressed in Saudi Arabia and UAE and I am not sure of its status in Bahrain and Kuwait. The MB is very popular in Saudi Arabia, and the problem is more that the Saudis see them as a threat to Wahhabi power of the Royal Family. There is a similar problem in UAE.
On the other hand, Qatar has long been friendly to the MB. This is why Hamas for a long time had one of their major headquarters in Qatar. However, with the mess in Egypt with the MB winning elections followed by the military coup by General Sisi, the Gulf states have gotten a lot more worried about the MB. Recently Hamas was forced to vacate their long held offices in Qatar due to pressure from the other Gulf states. However, Qatar continues to have friendly relations with the MB, so Qatar is now on the enemies’ list of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan and Egypt because they fear and hate the MB.
The MB does have terrorism ties but not in a formal sense. The MB itself renounced armed struggle and is sworn to take power peacefully. However, it is constantly producing radicals who spin out of the organization and take up arms to join the jihadi groups. At that time, they are not formal members of the MB anymore. And former jihadis spin back into the MB on a regular basis. So the MB is not a terrorist organization so much as an incubator for jihadis and terrorists. Hence, the shunning of Qatar for its close relationship with “the terrorist MB” was another one of the laughable, fake and lying reasons for the shunning. This was reported with a straight face by the “free press” in the US.
They’re lying to you. Every day. All day long. They’re lying to you. Get it in your heads. The US MSM is a formal propaganda system as effective or more so as the propaganda media systems in Communist countries.
Some interesting ideas along these lines from a commenter:
Halal Butcher of Lhasa: It’s immaterial. Polygamy is Arab culture sanctified through Islam. Condemning polygamy and sharia law inside Sunni Arabia is like…
1) Poking fun at their greatest national hero Mohamed.
2) Civilizational self denial. Comparatively, it’s like asking Hindus to eat beef or condemn casteism as racism.
To ease the problem (categorically I’m not against Arab nationalism), here’s something I posted at another site:
……………………..
Should Muslims lobby to be recognized a separate race?
The more religious Muslims sure act like a race visually and symbolically through their costume, language of worship, diet.
Now should they lobby to be recognized as a separate race, and for whose sake?
PROS:
If the Muslims were a separate race like the Jews, the less religious Muslims can comfortably become secular or even agnostic and atheist, just like Freud and Marx are still considered Jewish by broad segments of Jewry.
Racial discrimination still carries a more negative tag than other forms of prejudice.
Now religious struggle can hoist the banner of national liberation against foreign aggression. Boko Haram/IS boys are just freedom fighters against foreign fascism.
So Muslims can tell the kufirs, “Look, we are a 1.5 billion+ race, DON’T FUCK WITH US.”
CONS: I can’t name any, except it might heighten Muslims vs kufirs tension immediately.
Other possibilities:
a) The Shiites might also declare themselves a race different from that of Sunnis.
b) Some Muslim scientists could declare their finding that Koran recital can trigger mutation or racial change.
c) Under the banner of ‘We Muslims aren’t racist’ and racial harmony:
i) The secular Muslims can now seek peace with kufirs, chanting M. L. King fashion: ”I have a dream…” or “I’ve been to the Al-Aqsa (Temple Mount) top..”
ii) Traditionally Muslim women don’t marry non-Muslim men, under the new racial setting they could – interracial marriage no big deal, right?
d) The homo Muslims who fight for gay rights under the banner of ‘Gay Jihad’ can dilute the religious controversy and might even give jihad a good name, at least to the liberals.
No pun intended – there really are a number of serious sites on ‘gay jihad’:
The US, NATO and our allies always insist that any anti-Western rebel group has no agency. They’re all just puppets being pulled by the evil Putin or the ayatollahs or whatever. They have minds of their own. They lack desire, needs, wants, goals and willpower. They are all silly pawns who obey their masters in some other country who push them around like chess pieces. They have no more agency than a robot.
But the other side does it too. The Left claims that the Syrian rebels are mercenaries paid by the US. The truth is that radical Sunni Salafists have come from all over the Arab World to fight the Shia heretics ruling Syria. It’s all part of the Sunni-Shia Civil War breaking out all over the region. And 70% of the rebels are Syrian Sunni Muslims. Only 30% are from outside Syria, but those are not puppets either. They are anti-Shia fanatics who want to put in Islamic Law.
In the Ukraine, the US claims that everything was fine until the evil Russians came in and stirred things up. In other words, the Donbass rebels have no agency. They are just puppets pulled by Putin. But why would anyone agree to be a puppet for some other country. The truth is that the Donbass rebels rose up on their own due to a Nazi coup fomented by the CIA and the US State Department. Russia opposed them rising up all the way. They wanted a federalized state instead.
For a long time, Russia refused to aid them and only stepped in when they were on the verge of defeat, and the native Russians in the area were getting massacred. Polls consistently show that 94% of Donbass people do not want to be part of Ukraine. Of course, anti-US polls are always inaccurate because fear and other spooks and bogeymen. All populations polling in a direction the US doesn’t like are literally living under Josef Stalin’s rule and they are terrified to poll against whatever the government tells them to. Cuz you know they might get sent to the gulags. And get a bullet from an NKVD firing squad. Because you know anti-US populations have no agency. They all love America, and they only reason they poll that way is fear and other spooky bogeymen.
Putin doesn’t have 87% support, he has 0% support. Russians are terrified of Putin and if you answer a poll question wrong, Putin’s friend Beria will put a bullet in your head. Or you go to Siberia. Or Putin starves you to death in a new fake terror famine like the last one. Because you know Putin is the spooky USSR. He’s really Stalin. Stalin never died, you know. He just reincarnated as Putin The Evil.
You realize things were much worse under Yeltsin and 20X more journalists were killed under Yeltsin? Russia was much more authoritarian under Yeltsin than it is under Putin. But Yeltsin had 6% support. Oh well, hand wave, but Putin’s a dictator. Yeltsin? That pickled liver was Our Man in Moscow. How could he be bad. Everyone who is pro-US has a halo over their head, didn’t you know that? No really.
The Crimeans rose up on their own. The Crimeans were always a part of Russia or the USSR. There never was any country called Ukraine. It sprung up for the first time in 1991 and claimed it owned the Crimea. The Crimeans oppose being part of Ukraine from Day One and they even passed a number of resolutions saying that they were not a part of Ukraine.
Basically they never agreed to be part of Ukraine. When the US fomented a coup and the new Nazis came in and said they were joining NATO and throwing Russia out of their base in Crimea (presumably to turn it into a NATO base) Putin had to act. He had no alternative. There was no way he could lose his warm water port and allow NATO to set up a naval base right next door. Nor could he allow NATO to take Ukraine and set up an army right on his doorstep. Polls done by Western polling groups have consistently found that 87% of Crimeans support the annexation.
But see, the US and NATO claims that Crimeans and Donbass people have no agency. They have no minds of their own.
The Jews do this same garbage. Palestinians rising up on their own, maybe because Jews treat them worse than chattel. Well of course not! Zionism is wonderful! The Palestinians love it so much. They love Jews! They would never hurt one Jew, ever.
The Jews say that if it weren’t for Syria, Libya, and Iraq there would be no Palestinians. Before they said that about the USSR. The Palestinians were only rising up because the Soviets were whispering in their ear and telling them to. Hence we took down Libya, Iraq and now Syria on the orders of the Jews because in the US, we do whatever the Jews tell us to do. Iraq, Libya and now Syria were ordered to be taken down by the Israelis. First of all, they were all enemies of Israel, but second of all, if we got rid of all of those countries, the Palestinian revolution would end immediately.
Because, you know, the Palestinians are only shooting rockets and settlers because the Syrians, Iraqis, and Libyans tell them to and give them guns and stuff. This is also why Iran is on the list. Iran is the last of the Jews’ enemies to remain standing. All of the others have been taken out. Granted, Lebanon is an enemy of the Jews, but they have no military so no one cares much about them. Take out Iran and take out Israel’s last remaining enemy. And the Palestinians won’t fight anymore because they only fight because the evil Iranians tell them to. And they won’t get one more bullet because all the weaponry comes from Iran.
A similar thing is playing with Hezbollah. Does Hezbollah exist, maybe, because Israel repeatedly invaded Lebanon? Of course not! That has nothing to do with it! The Lebanese Shia love the Jews. They want to run up to Jews and kiss them on the lips! Nope, instead, Hezbollah only exists because of Iran. Every time a Jew mentions Hezbollah, they say Iran in the next sentence. Because you know Hezbollah are just puppets. Nasrallah is a man on a string.
They and he have no agency. They only take orders from Iran. They don’t. They don’t take orders from Iran. Hezbollah does whatever the Hell it wants and it is not unusual for them to have different goals and aims than the Iranians. The Iranians have no real control over them. Hezbollah is an independent entity with a strong anti-Israel position so Iran supports them, but Iran can’t tell them what to do. Hezbollah gets to do whatever the Hell it wants to. But as the interests of Iran and Hezbollah coincide it is unlikely that Hezbollah will do crazy things not approved of by Iran. On the other hand, Hezbollah is not some wing of the Iranian military taking direct orders from Iran like the Jews say.
Now if you want to say that Iran arms Hezbollah, you have a point. And part of the reason the Jews are trying to destroy Syria is because that way they can end the Iran – Syria – Hezbollah arms pipeline.
Another good case is Kashmir. If you think Indian Hindus are irrational and nuts in general, wait until you see how they feel about Kashmir. Want to see an Indian Hindu have a chimpout? Mention the word Kashmir. They will raise their voices, start yelling, pound the table and get threatening and menacing. And they will say one word over and over: “Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan!”
Because you see, Kashmiris have no agency. Kashmiris love India! They love Hindus! They want to kiss all the Hindus on the cheeks! They’re loyal Indian citizens! They have no beefs with India. Kashmiris have total love for India. They would never rebel. In fact, not one Kashmiri has ever taken up arms against India. Not one. Nope. Instead, 100% of the Kashmiri rebellion, armed and otherwise, is being caused by the evil bogeyman Pakistan.
Now Pakistan does aid some of the more radical armed Kashmiri groups, but most of the groups are actually headquartered outside of Kashmir in Pakistani Kashmir. They don’t have much of a presence in Kashmir itself. And now the resistance is mostly just constant rioting and stone throwing like in Palestine. But no matter. I’m sure every one of those stone throwers is a Pakistani in disguise. Those sneaky Pakistanis! They’re everywhere! Look out there’s one under your bed right now, Hindu! Boo! Pakistan! Boo! Boogeyman!
If you study the Kashmiri rebellion, it has internal roots. It never got going until about 1969 anyway because before that, the Kashmiris had tried to work peacefully within the system. Only when India blocked all efforts at peaceful change did the Kashmiris rise up. And in the worst of the armed conflict, 90% of the rebels were native Kashmiris.
India says, “Kashmiris are puppets cuz evil Pakistan bogeyman wants to steal our land hurr!” Actually, this is just more Indian lies. Only 6% of Kashmiris want to split off and join Pakistan. Most have traditionally only wanted an independent state in Kashmir. By the way, the UN has ordered international scofflaw India to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir to decide the fate of the region since 1949. India has always flatly refused. Because you know we can’t have people deciding their own destiny or anything like that.
Conspiracy theory is life. Life is conspiracy theory.
Maybe Pynchon was right after all. Paranoia is the default operating mindset in our modern disinformation-polluted world.
At the age of 59, I have concluded that life or at least politics and geopolitics pretty much operates on conspiracy theory. in other words, modern life itself is in part conspiracy theory. The conspiracy theory is the truth and the lie is what everyone got told happened.
If you throw out all the “conspiracy theory” stuff, you end up with a lot of fake news. The world news people get is whatever the State Department, Pentagon and CIA want you to believe happened. Disinformation is everywhere and the Western press is more dishonest than Pravda in the USSR.
Every time you hear the phrase “conspiracy theory” or “Russian propaganda” go do some heavy research into what happened. I have done this many times in the last couple of years.
With regard to Syria and Ukraine, most of the “Russian propaganda” was simply the truth. The fake news was whatever the MSM-CIA wanted you to believe. That’s right. The MSM is the CIA. It’s all one thing. The MSM is part of the Deep State, and the CIA sits at the pinnacle.
I was appalled at the outrageous lying during the war in Ukraine. The West’s lies were continuous and appalling. Syria was even worse. I do not think I have ever seen so much lying in a war before. We are entering and new era of Der Luggenkriegs (The Lying Wars). I believe most wars that the West is reporting on where the West has an interest will be characterized by a nearly unfathomable amount of MSM lying.
Look at the “conspiracy theories” for:
The death of Arafat. Natural causes. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. Actually poisoned by radiation by an Israeli spy working as his cook),
The downing of the jet at Lockerbie. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. Qaddafi didn’t do it and was set up.
The attack on the aid convoy in Aleppo. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. Actually a false flag attack done by a US drone and then blamed on Syria and Russia. 17 innocent aid workers were killed by the US in this false flag.
The downing of M17 in Ukraine. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. Neither Russia nor the rebels did it and not only was the plane not hit by a missile but there was no missile period. The jet was downed by a Ukrainian fighter and the investigation was deliberately delayed, botched and corrupted with a fraudulent final report.
The shooting down of the Russian jet over Turkey. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. Actually this was done in coordination with the US. We told Turkey 24 hours before that those jets would be in that exact location at that exact time.
US helping moderate rebels. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. In fact, US, Israeli, Saudi, Qatari and Turkish intelligence forces operate on the ground with Al Qaeda. There may have been a number of them caught in Aleppo at the end of the siege.
The chemical weapons attack by “Assad” on Damascus that killed 1,400 people. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. First the attack never even happened! There was no attack! The incident was a false flag attack done by Turkey and Al Qaeda. A small amount of sarin gas was released in the area by Al Qaeda, leading to low levels in the blood of residents. But the levels were so low as to be harmless. There were no 1,400 people. Instead about 400 people were killed, all Alawi and Christian government supporters who had been kidnapped from Northern Syria a year before. All of the dead identified so far were Alawi and Christian government supporting civilians who were kidnapped in that incident. They were killed by being put in a room with gas canisters leaking a toxin, perhaps carbon monoxide. Others were beaten to death, shot or had their throats slit. The symptoms displayed by the victims looked nothing whatsoever like Sarin poisoning. Instead they looked like carbon monoxide poisoning. A Turkish opposition parliamentarian is accusing Turkey of doing this as a false flag.
“ISIS” Suicide bombings of Kurdish Left rallies in Suruc and Istanbul. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. The government knew about both bombings and allowed the plots to go forward. Then police kept the injured from leaving the scene and beat up the survivors.
The “Gulen” coup in Turkey. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. There was no Gulen coup. Gulen had nothing to do with this. Erdogan lies like a rug! There was indeed a coup and Erdogan received warning of it some hours before but he allowed it to go forward to crack down on the opposition. The coupists were Ataturkist Turkish ultranationalist seculars. The US was also involved. The US put the coup in motion to get rid of Erdogan as he had started cooperating with Russia a week before.
Trump won the elections by winning the electoral collage, and all the polls were off. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. Actually the polls were perfect.The polls were 100% correct. They predicted the popular vote well, and as far as certain state votes, Republicans committed mass election fraud in Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin at the very least and probably in a lot of other places. Hillary actually won Wisconsin, Florida and North Carolina by ~2-3 points, more in Pennsylvania but less in Michigan. Real recounts were never done in any of those states. 70,000 votes in Detroit alone were not counted, apparently deliberately. However, even partial recounts found 26,000 fake Trump votes in Pennsylvania, 5,000 fake Trump votes in Wisconsin and 2,000 fake Trump votes in Michigan. And all of those were acknowledged by the states. Why so many fake votes and why are they all for Trump? They have been using those damn voting machines to steal elections since 2000, and they will do it forever until we stop them. It’s pretty hard to have an accurate poll when there is mass electoral fraud going on! Polls can’t predict fraud. The exit polls were far off from the actual count. Everywhere on Earth, that means electoral fraud. P.S. Exit polls started veering far off from results in 2000, when they put those damned computers in. The charge is being made by some of the US top statisticians.
Alpha Unit
Robert A. Lindsay