Genocidal Projects Underway

ARAB LEAGUE meets in Cairo: Will Monitoring Continue?

The question is whether the League monitors will be renewed, and if renewed, how it will change in Syria. Monitoring is something the League is attempting to do in Yemen, Somalia and the Sudan. Nigeria too is being closely studied, as war ignites in the north.

The Arab League has undergone a striking change: the establishment sided with the people on the streets. Actually, it is not nearly so simple. Paranoid conservative actors like Omar Bashar in Syria and Bashar Al Asad in Syria and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, keep the League out of peacemaking in any of these places.

Genocidal Projects Underway

It must have been the invasion and occupation of Iraq that set the Mid East table spinning. In any case, the clerics have given us a set of genocidal projects: Iran is making a nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles. In Palestine and Lebanon radical clerical elites teach genocide to their congregations, against Jews. In Saudi Arabia, militant Wahhabi clerics teach intolerance, ever takfir, licensing the slaying of elected officials and their staffs. In Israel, hard-line rabbis direct investors and settlers to roll up Arab Palestine – a slow motion genocide. Meanwhile, in the USA, Republican candidates for president call for a Crusade against the Persians immediately.

Behind all these countries, including Israel, clerics lurk, book in hand. They want a return to the early Medieval period, when religions clashed. Of course they are a minority, a usurping unelected group, deluded and aggressive, murderous. But they go for power and enforce bad laws.

Elections in Egypt - An Islamist sweep

With the final third voting, the Egyptian people has given 70% o0f parliamentary seats to Islamists. In today's elections, the Muslim Botherhood took 47%, while the hard-line Salafis took some 25%. The remainer went mostly to the Egyptian bloc, which is an umbrella for the liberal parties, business and minorities. For example, Naguib Sawiris, a Copt, directs a business-friendly group which won support across Egypt. 


Libyan rebels seize offices in Benghazi -

The National Transitional Council now has to be mobile after hundreds of demonstrators seized NTC offices in the eastern city of Benghazi. Even in Benghazi, people are not giving up their weapons. The problems today stem from tribal rivalries, and from the lack of any democratic history.


Saudi Arabia -  The Kingdom pulls out of the Arab League

The Saudis are very angry with Hafiz al Asad and his regime.On the 21st, they pulled out of the Arab League. The Saudis are now aligned with Qatar, and the UAE. Also on Jan.21, Saudi Foreign Minister gives a speach where he demands that Russia and China stop vetoing the vetoes.


Syria -  The mystery of Douma

FSA takes over Douma, a suburb of Damascus. Syrian army stays on the ring road, as the FSA troops pull back. Strange. Now the government forces cannot patrol in most regions of Damascus. All the forces connected with the regime have fallen back.


Yemen - Ali Saleh leaves Yemen for the USA

Giving an empassionate speach to a picked crowd, Ali Abdullah Saleh flies to the USA for medical treatment. Sana'a erupts in spontaneous expressions of joyful anxiety.

The Need for Islamic Legal Reform -

My own graduate work was in fiqh and shari'a so it is easy to see how the bad laws got into the shari'a texts. Stoning, for example, was a old Jewish law, attested in both Old and New Testaments. The cutting off of hands and gouging out of eyes was a Byzantine law taken from the Gospels “If your hand offend thee, cut it off. If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out...” Terror is condemned in the Qur'an, at each step, from its conception as a plot, to its execution to the consequences. As for Jihad, there is no theory of war in the Qur'an: a warning against 'mischief on the earth and corruption in it' offering rights and rites for its victims.

What the Radical Clerics Want -

Only the radical clerics want war. But they have used their assumed status, to influence other simple-minded bigots. They play on fears, and don't care much about the other. For example, in a recent prisoner-exchange, Bibi Nitanyahu traded some 1,300 HAMAS prisoners, for one Israeli. A good bargain, in their view, as (to them) the life of a Jew is worth more than any number of Arab dead.

These shared genocidal projects are beyond being shameless, or noxious. The costs of their crimes and damages can never be calculated. The Mid East is going nuclear. By the year 2016, Iran may have ready its bombs and missiles.

Sometimes the ball is in the Russians court. They support Syria. Russia's only base in the Med is at Tartus, Syria. It is a client state. Relation between Tehran and the Kremlin are more complex. The only peaceful scenario I can foresee features Russia putting the squeeze on Iran.

Regional Changes -

As we noted last week, there are regional changes underway. Turkey has been deeply embarrassed by its naïve 'reunion' with Iran and Syria – disabused. In some place, like Yemen and Egypt, life is turning back to normal: some much-needed supplies are flowing in, though not nearly enough.

Egyptian politics are much more volatile than the press has it. Everyday there are incidents. It's a big country, concentrated along the Nile and in the Delta. The Copts are taking a beating, and curiously, many Muslims have vowed to protect their Christian minority..

Tunisia has the best chance, it seems, of returning to pre-revolution 'prosperity.'

('We've been down so long it looks like up to us.')

Algeria deserves constant study, for several reasons. Mass demonstrations still occur, but the government has done some amazing things, like increasing fresh water by a third, using desalination.

In Sudan, in Jongle state in the South of North Sudan, the Lau Nuer and the Merlei tribe are battling it out, while Sudan prosecutes another genocidal campaign against former SLA people in Kordofan.

People are placing bets on whether Syria, Yemen, Sudan and Nigeria will erupt in a civil wars – led by clerics. The odds are, respectively, one in 4; one in 3, one in 2. and one in 3.

Curiously, sectarianism is a subliminal, if not direct, element, in all these genocidal projects. In the United States, amongst the Southern Republicans, the debates were led by Mike Huccabee, a fundamentalist preacher.

Anti-intellectualism is rife, not just in the southern USA, but virtually all countries we looked. Ignoring history and science will get us nowhere.

Meanwhile, the table is turning now, the clock ticking.

-John Paul Maynard, Harvard University