Poor Ophelia divided from herself and her fair judgment Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts…. — Hamlet (IV.v.) As was the case with the British and Roman empires that preceded it, Washington has long had a fondness for the divide and conquer paradigm and has ruthlessly fomented sectarianism in the post-Cold War […]
GAZA – A new video released by an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) spokesman has unnerved many in the global Muslim community for its use of sectarian rhetoric and slurs targeting Shia Muslims that are often used by leaders of extremist Wahhabi terror groups.
SANA’A, YEMEN — A phalanx of flickering video cameras frames the portly Saudi Imam in a shimmering half-light, as he exhorts a brigade of Sunni Muslim mercenaries from the East African nation of Sudan to prepare for battle with rebels from Yemen’s Shia sect known as Houthis.
The (Saudi) King Salman Bin Abdulaziz brought you to defend the Prophet Muhammad; Salman gave you the honor of defending the Prophet Muhammad’s companions.”
The Badawi family. Victims of the Rashideen suicide car attack. Interviewed by Vanessa Beeley July 2017 (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)
Vanessa Beeley
21st Century Wire
“They sieged us, starved us, mocked us and then tempted our children with potato chips before blowing them up. Have they no heart?”
The west’s support of Salafist terrorist groups in Syria, Libya and beyond is well known. Few leaders the west even try to hide this fact, they simply give the terrorists somewhat anodyne English names whether it be something as specific as ‘Free Syrian Army’ or something more obtuse like ‘moderate rebels’, ‘democracy fighters’ etc.
One of the many tragic byproducts of the American and British war of aggression on Iraq has been the development of a deeply sectarian leadership in Baghdad. Between 1968 and 2003, the Arab Socialist Ba’ath party of Iraq governed a secular state where Sunni and Shi’a, Orthodox and Catholic held important positions in government and each could and indeed did achieve increasingly good lives.
A protest against US military action in Syria during a rally in New York on Friday, April 7, 2017. (AP/Andres Kudacki)
MINNEAPOLIS– The annual Global Peace Index, recently released for June 2017, has found that while the world is more peaceful now than last year, violence has increased significantly overall in the past decade.
Although the situation has improved in many countries, the ten lowest-ranking nations – known as the world’s “least peaceful” countries – have shown little change in recent years.
What does one call a style of doing politics that only allows a state to interact with, engage in diplomacy with and have normal business relations with states which exhibit beliefs, lifestyle and cultural norms that are the same as yours, even when this has no impact on the daily business of commerce and cooperation?
The answer is: SECTARIAN POLITICS.
As someone with experience of writing about Russian affairs I have long since come to realise that there is little about the pathological hostility to Russia of so many elite people in the West is grounded in reality.
