Rice accuses Iran and Syria of incitement over cartoons

The United States accused Syria and Iran of using the international row over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to incite anti-Western sentiment as worldwide protests continued and Islamic anger turned against Britain and America…

…Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, sharpened the political dimension of the controversy by charging Iran and Syria with stoking sectarian feelings.

Emerging from talks with the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, Dr Rice said that some Muslim countries were behaving responsibly, but “there are governments that have also used this opportunity to incite violence.”

“I don’t have any doubt that … Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes. And the world ought to call them on it,” she said.

But what about this?

A leading preacher in Saudi Arabia proclaimed a new spirit of defiance among Muslims after worldwide protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in European newspapers.

“A great new spirit is flowing through the body of the Islamic nation … this world can no longer ignore this nation and its feelings,” Saleh bin Humaid said in a televised sermon at the Grand Mosque in the Muslim city of Mecca.

“The nation has fought to back its Prophet Mohammad in recent days. It is the right of every Muslim to show joy at this defense of our beloved Prophet,” he added in Friday prayers, sometimes choking back tears.

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, last month withdrew its ambassador to Denmark, saying the Danish government had not done enough to assuage anger over cartoons published last September in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

It looks very much to me as if the Saudis have also ‘gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes’ - are you going to call them them on it, Condi?

No of course you aren’t, are you?

Just how heavily is the US economy into the Saudis these days? Is it still 6-7% of you total economy that relies on Saudi oil money?

It all goes to show that a trillion dollars buy a lot of blind eyes in high places.

One of the real joys of visiting Dr Crippen’s blog is his knack of getting right to the bone of the issue…

Most death certificates are no more than a doctor’s best guess as to cause of death. Some are works of speculative fiction. A death certificate usually means something like “I am sure the patient died of natural causes, probably of condition (…insert best guess here…) and there is nothing suspicious surrounding the death.â€?

The public – that’s you and me – needs to think very carefully about whether it really wants more forensic accuracy. If the gold standard is to be a precise cause of death, then there are going to have to be a lot of post mortems.

If the system encourages the families of the bereaved routinely to challenge death certificates, there will be a lot of such challenges and a lot of post mortems. In the wake of Shipman many doctors, and Dr Crippen for one, are going to say, “Well, I am sorry, I am not precisely sure of the cause of death� and decline to certify.

And that will mean chopping up granny.

Wonderful and straight to the point!

I don’t know, you spend all fucking day arguing the need for common sense and rationality in dealing with the complexities of Middle-Eastern politics and then you come across this…

Iranian regime opponents need more support

The more I think about it, the more I believe the most devastating possible blow to Islamic extremism worldwide would be the overthrow of ruling regime in Iran by the people of Iran.

Imagine the impact on radical Islamists if the Islamic Republic itself– the source of so much aid and comfort to their movements– were to topple at the hands of a people increasingly fed up with religious-based repression. Just as the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1978 encouraged the growth of Islamist movements internationally, the collapse of the regime would– to a large degree– take the heart and soul out of those movements.

How would Islamist leaders explain to their followers why people who had lived for decades under a system of Islamic law– dictating that women must be concealed and homosexuals must be executed– had taken to the streets in their hundreds of thousands to say “no more” and to demand a more democratic and secular Iran?

Yep, it’s another Gene’s classic pearls of ignorance from over at Harry’s Place and boy is this one a lulu!

Follow the logic of this one - in Gene’s opinion the way to undermine Sunni/Salfist Islamic Radicalism is… wait for it…

…to support a secular uprising in a fundamentalist SHI’A Islamic state.

Duh-huh!!!

Jesus-H-Tapdancing-Fucking-Christ you’d think with all the fucking obsessing they do over the Middle East at Harry’s Place that one of their regular ‘contributors’ would have learned the difference between a Sunni and a Shi’ite by now or that maybe one of the nodding dogs in the comments box over they might just get around to pointing out the difference between the two and the little matter of 1400 years of infighting, disputes and - in Sunni-dominated states - official repression which rather stands in the way of Gene’s big idea.

One can only wonder quite what other glorious insights into global politics and foreign policy Gene has remaining up his sleeve?

Maybe we could put the IRA out of business once and for all…

…by rounding up all the fucking Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Yeah, that’d work - about as well as destabilising Iran would work in putting Bin Laden out of commission.

You want to support the opposition in Iran then be my guest - hell its not like they couldn’t do with a bit of support - but for fuck’s sake at least take the time to understand exactly what it is you’re fucking dealing with before you go blundering in there and fucking about without the first fucking idea of why you’re there or what you’re trying to achieve.

Funny, I wonder who else should have taken that last bit of advice to heart…

What was it Heraclitus said?

Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed