Arabophobia and Islamophobia: Quote of the Day

''''I actually believe that Arabs are feigning outrage when they protest what they call American (or Israeli) "atrocities." They are not shocked at all by what in truth must seem to them not atrocious at all. It is routine in their cultures. That comparison shouldn't comfort us as Americans. We have higher standards of civilization than they do. But the mutilation of bodies and beheadings of people picked up at random in Iraq does not scandalize the people of Iraq unless victims are believers in their own sect or members of their own clan. And the truth is that we are less and less shocked by the mass death-happenings in the world of Islam. Yes, that's the bitter truth. Frankly, even I--cynic that I am--was shocked in the beginning by the sectarian bloodshed in Iraq. But I am no longer surprised. And neither are you.
Yes, I know, I know, Islam is a peaceful religion. But peace does not rule in the world of Islam.''

Note that the author does not make a difference between Arabs and Muslims. The author does not know that one Muslim out of five lives in southeast Asia, outside the Arab world. The country with the biggest Muslim community is outside the Arab world (India)...Ignorance about Islam is pervasive in the US...

P.S. A reader wrote in the comment section that the biggest Muslim community in the world is in Indonesia. The official known figures are 174 millions for India (2001 census) and 210 millions from a 2004 census in Indonesia. Thanks Kisimak.

Puppet Politics

The US foreign policy can be viewed as an enterprise consisting of installing puppet governments wherever they think they, and their ally Israel, have vital interests. It happens also that American foreign policy is now focused on the interests of Israel. It is also focused on those countries who oppose the unbridled expansionnist colonialism Israel has been following in its regional and international politics, and not interests limited to survival and nationhood for the victims of the Holocaust, which they supposedly claim to have.

The US thus helped to install puppets as rulers in many Arab countries, strenghtening the hold of Israel on the palestinians and producing the absence of any reasonable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Puppets are in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon,Iraq, etc... Even Bashar El-Assad is a candidate, but they don't want him. After all, it is the masters who choose their puppets...
Now the US has turned to Muslim countries outside the Middle East but of vital geopolitical significance to the Midlle East. They have just reintsalled their puppets in Somalia.

The dangers of such foreign policy is that it creates resentment and hatred. It strips people from their dignity as a group and a society and discourages their free will. It leads to lower self-esteem derived from the feeling the citizen of these countries have of not commanding respect, and, of course, from resentment and hatred. Resentement feeds terrorism in the sense that it supresses positive mobilisation around a constructive project and therefore a true resistance.

Lets suppose that Terrorism exists by itself, outside any foreign policy and any resentment, as an abnormal phenomenon of failed states, as the US pretends, and I am not denying that this kind of terrorism exist ed actually in Afghanisan, it may be easy to fight it. But the kind of generic terrorism that the US is fighting is derived not from failed states but mostly from US failed foreign policies. Is it then necessary to fight a terrorism willingly provoked by these foreign policies ? And if so can anybody tell me how to end this kind of terrorism ? I am just wondering because it appears to me that to end this kind of terrorism requires that people around the globe, but especially in Muslim and Middle Eastern countries, must be totally submitted to USrael or must be exterminated. Submission or Death. It reminds me of a slogan I saw on Cuban highways 'Socialismo O Muerte'. There is no other alternative.

What kind of foreign policy is this ? This is no foreign policy. This is madness.