Author: Ralph Raschen

If Daphne Caruana Galizia is right, Egyptians urgently need “democratic governance” too

Did [Maltese EU Commissioner John Dalli] say that democratic governance is the fountain from which everything else – human rights, free elections, freedom of speech – will flow, or did he say that Libyans are problematic because their religion preaches ‘vindication’ while ‘ours preaches forgiveness’?

Dahne Caruana Galizia, today

The father of [a] Muslim woman was killed by his cousin because he did not kill his daughter to preserve the family’s honor, which led the woman’s brother to avenge the death of his father by killing the cousin. The village Muslims blamed the Christians.

The Free Copts, the day before yesterday

The Middle East, the Maghreb, and the West: The bigger picture, described by Caroline Glick

So long as the Iranian regime remains in power, it will be that much harder for the Egyptians to build an open democracy or for the Saudis to open the kingdom to liberal voices and influences. The same is true of virtually every country in the region. Iran is the primary regional engine of war, terror, nuclear proliferation and instability. As long as the regime survives, it will be difficult for liberal forces in the region to gain strength and influence.

On February 24, the mullahs reportedly arrested opposition leaders Mir Hossain Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi along with their wives. It took the Obama administration several days to even acknowledge the arrests, let alone denounce them. Continue reading The Middle East, the Maghreb, and the West: The bigger picture, described by Caroline Glick

Cyrenaican “uprising”: Demonstration of Eritreans in Valletta

Some 100 members of the Eritrean community in Malta held a demonstration in Valletta this afternoon where they called on Malta and the international community to help evacuate asylum seekers stranded in Libya.

They said the Eritreans could not return to their country because they would be prosecuted [sic], and they were not part of the international evacuation effort and had thus been stranded, without protection, in Libya. Some were in danger of being shot, being mistaken for Gaddafi’s mercenaries. Continue reading Cyrenaican “uprising”: Demonstration of Eritreans in Valletta

Libya: Whom could NATO bomb for now?

The Libyan “government” or the “Libyan opposition”? Difficult question, isn’t it, all things considered?

Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) Make Weapons Grab in Libya

Islamist groups took advantage of civil unrest and seized a weapons depot in Derna, on Friday, 18 February and weapons at at port in al-Baida. The Islamist Weapons Inventory in Libya: first count based on news reports. Continue reading Libya: Whom could NATO bomb for now?

Evidence seems to be surfacing that GonziPN is neither directed nor paid by Daphne Caruana Galizia

Malta ‘will not act as a military base’ [sic]

by Scott Grech

The government is insisting that Malta has not been requested to act as a military base and is not preparing to act as such, as British Prime Minister David Cameron threatened Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi with military action yesterday, promising a no-fly zone and arms shipments to his enemies.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi stressed on Sunday that “Malta’s mission in light of the unrest in Libya is a humanitarian one”.

His words were echoed by Foreign Affairs Minister Tonio Borg on Monday, who commented that “the government’s priorities remain to evacuate Maltese people working in Libya and to help all the countries that have requested Malta’s cooperation in the evacuation of foreigners from the North African state”.

Source: The Malta Independent Online, 2/3/2011

“Kosovan” chickens coming home to Frankfurt not only to roost

To Frankfurt, the city where former German Foreign Minister and Belgrade-bomber-because-of-Auschwitz Joschka Fischer “planned the third world war” together with other members of his “flat-sharing community,” as he jokingly suggested while he was being heard in a procedure related to acts of terrorism (not yet aimed at Serbs, that time).

A “Kosovan” (post-modern meaning: guaranteed anti-Serbian Albanian) allegedly cried “Allahu akhbar” before he murdered two American soldiers today, injuring two other persons, at the airport of Frankfurt.

Could it be that he just wanted to remind Kosovo “liberation” romantics and – at least in this respect – tribalistic hotheads like Daphne Caruana Galizia just to carry on with their fact-independent “narrative” of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” in Libya, where Gaddafi is the new Hitler-Milosovic, without giving a damn about who or what might be next (especially when the uprising has begun as an Islamist one)? Did he just want to say that in order to act humanely, first of all you need Begriffe, not just “Libyan friends”?

Who knows.

Really?

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand your point. It’s quite obvious that the only people being killed in Libya are Muslim, because they are Libyan.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, Maltese anti-racist, 22 or 23 February 2011

“In the past days we have heard reports of innocent sub-Saharan Africans being beaten, stabbed and even killed, as they are wrongly suspected of being mercenaries hired by Gaddafi to kill the Libyan people.” Continue reading Really?

Libyan puzzle

Daphne Caruana Galizia on 23/2/2011:

[…] Joe Grima, with a spectacularly racist comment. “Il-poplu Libjan m’ghandux il-kultura li ghandu il-poplu Ewropew…. Dawn huma nies differenti.”

[…]

Presumably he meant that Libyan people are happy to be blasted to bits or cower in their homes because they’re ruled by a madman.

DEBKAfile on 27/2/2011:

The [anti-Gaddafi] rebels have rejected US and European offers of military assistance in the strongest terms warning that if foreign troops intervened they would redirect their guns from Qaddafi on the interlopers.

Andrew Bolt at heraldsun.com.au on 19/2/2011

When you hear “racist!’ now, you know some coward is once again just trying to shut a debate he fears he can’t win.

[All italics added]

Tunisian freedom: “Death to the Jews” and Sharia

From Arutz Sheva:

Protesters are continuing their attempts to topple the interim government, which replaced the regime of former President Ben Ali. They also demanded that the parliament disband and the constitution be suspended so that a new one can be written, by an elected assembly.

One week ago, hundreds of Islamist protesters screamed “Death to the Jews!” as they marched down the main street of Tunis. The demonstration followed a Friday rally in front of the main synagogue in the country in which protesters threatened to bring back “the army of Mohammed” to slaughter the Jews.

Tunisian women, performing artists and others concerned about civil rights in the country have expressed concern that the riots may lead to an Islamist takeover of the government, thus ending the country’s equal rights for women.

Tonio Borg is right on this instead, Mrs #DCG

Dr #Borg noted that the UN Security Council was considering the imposition of measures against Libya. Malta was not a member of the council but would follow what the UN decided. His advice, however, was not to have undue haste. Malta, he said, had to safeguard its nationals and national interests, although it would not shirk from condemning what was manifestly bad.*

Malta is a vulnerable place, has no “iron dome”, depends totally on others as far as its defense is concerned, has less means for safeguarding its nationals’ (and its barranin‘s) lives than Israel has to protect Beersheba, and could soon be in a similar situation. Tonio Borg seems to be the same as always, while Daphne Caruana Galizia regresses out of moral zeal, giving space to a conspiracy theorist (plus Kosova-ist and Palestinianist, I guess): Fisk. Manifestly bad indeed. That tendency of hers should indeed not only be condemned, but also attacked, not only for the sake of Malta, but also for that of the “bigger picture”, a constantly increasing part of which is occupied by the exterminative Iranian regime and its international proxies. Next time some Iranian war ships pass the Suez Canal, as some Iranian war ships did a few days ago for the first time since about 30 years, and enter the Mediterranean, they might also turn to the left instead of turning to the right. While in the meantime the temporary winners of the Egyptian “revolution”, the military, are reported to have attacked a few Christian monasteries.

___
*) The Times of Malta website, yesterday; hashtags added, as a test, don’t know to “twitter” well yet, and if it could work, let’s see.

Egyptian democracy prospects brought to you by… “Sandmonkey”

A little note now for all the commentators who approvingly quoted and celebrated Sandmonkey, treated him as a martyr during the riots, and discover that now he’s joined the conventional liberal Egyptian line in essentially calling for tearing up the Camp David accords, remilitarizing the Sinai and opening up the border to Hamas. Oh he’s phrasing it better than that, but that’s what it amounts to. Continue reading Egyptian democracy prospects brought to you by… “Sandmonkey”

Maltese writer Daphne Caruana Galizia should perhaps partly rewrite one blog post of hers asap

Today she wrote that,

perhaps [The Times of Malta] could ring [Maltese FM] Tonio Borg and ask him whether we are still close friends with Gaddafi, and if not, what do we plan to do about it.

Continue reading Maltese writer Daphne Caruana Galizia should perhaps partly rewrite one blog post of hers asap

Egyptian prospects brought to you by Al-Jazeera, CNN, BBC, DCG, Hamed Abdel-Samad, etc. pp.: “Freedom and democracy” à la al-Qaradawi

Qaradawi and The Treason of the Intellectuals

By Andrew G. Bostom

Last Friday (2/18/11) marked the triumphal return to Cairo of Muslim Brotherhood “Spiritual Guide” Yusuf al-Qaradawi. After years of exile, his public re-emergence in Egypt was sanctioned by the nation’s provisional military rulers. Qaradawi’s own words were accompanied by images and actions during his appearance which should have shattered the delusive view that the turmoil leading to President Mubarak’s resignation augured the emergence of a modern, democratic Egyptian society devoted to Western conceptions of individual liberty and equality before the law.

[More at American Thinker]

Libya: Another Kosovar-Srebrenican Style Nakbashoah in the making?

An interesting statement could be found today in the online edition of The Times of Malta. The newspaper quoted “[t]wo Libyan fighter jet pilots landed in Malta” as saying (if in unison or one after another or otherwise, the newspaper wouldn’t say) that,

“[t]here are rivers of blood on the streets of Tripoli,”

and as adding,

that Serbian plans were being sent to bomb civilian protesters.

The site did not specify if so far only military protesters had been bombed, nor from where and whereto the plans were allegedly being sent – so that presumably the Serbian plans were and are still being flown in from Serbia or Pale (and/or, who knows, from Jerusalem and/or New York, too?). Furthermore, it does not appear to be absolutely clear whether the Libyan fighter jet pilots and/or the Times of Malta mean or meant that civilian protesters in Libya were already being killed (in addition to military protesters) or probably going to be killed directly and in masses by means of Serbian plans rather than through more conventional, less atrocious weapons (of mass destruction) and “only” following masses of vicious Serbian plans being sent from one place to another, probably to Gaddafi.

Continue reading Libya: Another Kosovar-Srebrenican Style Nakbashoah in the making?

Is it allowed to hold Islamic prayers in the streets of Catholic Malta, shouting “Allah u Akhbar”?

Just wondering again, like some Maltese policemen seem to, too (or don’t they?)…

Another question: I’m sure that Catholics often do prayers in the streets here too. But I think they have to ask for a permission, even though Catholicism is the State religion here. Did the Muslims in the video have one (a permission), or did they have only one for a (protest) demonstration? Or was that, the “prayer”, just a piece of art, protected by the right to freedom of expression anyhow?