All things Middle East related

i doubt there will be any kind of action taken, that's the friendliest nation towards the US over there, and there are strong military ties (not to dubai, but the UAE).

Yes, and this horrific tale from 2007 makes it seem far more frequent than Dubai authorities would like people to think:

15 year old French boy (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/world/middleeast/01dubai.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

There were, in fact, three Emirati men in the car, including a pair of former convicts ages 35 and 18, according to Alex. He says they drove him past his house and into a dark patch of desert, between a row of new villas and a power plant, took away his cellphone, threatened him with a knife and a club, and told him they would kill his family if he ever reported them.

Then they stripped off his pants and one by one sodomized him in the back seat of the car. They dumped Alex across from one of Dubai’s luxury hotel towers.


And quite a few more.

Also from the article:

The authorities not only discouraged Alex from pressing charges, he, his family and French diplomats say; they raised the possibility of charging him with criminal homosexual activity, and neglected for weeks to inform him or his parents that one of his attackers had tested H.I.V. positive while in prison four years earlier.

...

Despite its shortfalls, the United Arab Emirates have combined Islamic values with the best practices from the West to create “the most modern legal system among the Arab countries,” said Salim Al Shaali, a former police officer and prosecutor who now practices criminal law.

Really? the "most modern legal system" in all of Arabia? Charging the victims with homosexuality and fornication?

1) To call such a system barbaric is an to insult barbarians. It doesn't even rise to the level of Hammurabi's Code (an eye for an eye) from ~1800 B.C. If this is the most modern system, I would hate to be under the jurisdiction of the others.

2) What cowardly laws. The laws of these cultures are designed, in essence, to protect "the honor" of Islamic men by denigrating others, to institutionalize unequal treatment under the guise of the Rule of Law (we are all equal under the law - it's just that some of us are more equal than others), and to "protect" men from themselves i.e. women are punished for dressing in a manner that "tempts" men; rape is only provable by confession or the eyewitness testimony of two other men (so - two guys are just standing by watching a rape? Seems like the more manly thing to do would be to stop the attack. Guess that's just me). Sorry, but "real" men don't need laws to punish folks for tempting them, they just control their base urges and move on. But then, I guess these women (and boys) are just asking for it.

3) All in all, the Islamic Code ultimately fails and leads to inequities b/c it attempts to legislate divine morality and not just any divine morality - the divine morality of a 7th century BC nomadic culture. By claiming the law to be divine, and denying its human invention, the inequities have become so entrenched as to be unassailble by logic or rationality.

(Yes, I know there are many areas of the Sharia that deal with non-religious issues. At the same time, the code is a unified thing - much like the laws of the US or the individual States. Even if not directly referencing legislated divine morality, that morality forms the context from which all the law is viewed).

Until they divorce themselves from the Sharia code, Islamic countries will continue to be backwaters of justice, hindering their own growth and rightfully held in contempt by all who accept the Rule of Law.

I just wish we could free ourselves from the Great Oil Dependency so that we could let these backwaters of civilization go their own way and extinguish themselves through their own shortsighted pride.

Also from the article:



Really? the "most modern legal system" in all of Arabia? Charging the victims with homosexuality and fornication?

One of your better posts, JR. wordy but wise, sir.

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not a good time to go see the pyramids, horrible whats going on over there. We shouldnt support this

Now Morsi is equally unliked, but removing him power could be seen a major step backwards for the revolution. After all, Morsi — as he is quick to point out — was democratically elected. If he can be forced out by violent protests or military order, then what kind of democracy does Egypt really have? The people want him gone, but are they willing to do so at the cost of giving power back to a military that can order a president around? The world now waits for his answer.

^^^i found this section of an article fairly enlightening.

'Democratically' elected, to be fair. If the MB weren't out bullying the rural voters he wouldn't have got in.

not a good time to go see the pyramids, horrible whats going on over there. We shouldnt support this


Talk about a weird time , even the New President of Iran is telling them to calm down .

Probably using the money and guns Obama sent them.

Egypt in terms of importance/influence within the region is maybe just behind Saudi Arabia. Not a good situation now. Probably should stop writing checks

I just wish we could free ourselves from the Great Oil Dependency so that we could let these backwaters of civilization go their own way and extinguish themselves through their own shortsighted pride.

You can thank those greedy ****s for that. They lobby to kill any type of energy/fuel type improvements so they can continue bilking in the cash from oil.


That said, we only get a small supply from the middle east so why in the hell do we continue to **** around over there is beyond me.