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Ed Webb

The real story of Bahrain's divided society | Tahiyya Lulu | Comment is free | guardian... - 0 views

  • the facts of the matter speak for themselves. Corruption, crony capitalism and a lack of transparency add up to uneven development and a vast disparity in wealth. By and large, Bahrain's Shia are losing out in the country's economic boom.What this reflects, to a large extent, is the success of the Bahraini regime's strategy to deal with challenges to its legitimacy by promoting and reinforcing identity politics within a system of privileges where certain groups and individuals are favoured over others. In a word: discrimination.
  • Continuing a discriminatory tradition set by imperial Britain during Bahrain's time as a British protectorate (when police were recruited from British-colonised India), the regime today relies on defence from imported mercenaries, while Bahraini Shia are denied the right to serve in their own armed forces.
  • Bahrain's sectarian divide therefore stems from economic disparity and the denial of civil rights.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • A better way to understand the current uprising is as a movement for civil rights and liberties. The demands are for transition from a system of privileges for a few at the expense of the many towards a system of greater rights for all. That is presumably why the Shia-dominated "cannot-haves" of the anti-government, pro-reform crowds appear to have crossed the sectarian rift and drawn in Bahrainis from a range of political platforms including liberals, secularists and human rights activists.
  • it is not the demands of the pro-reform protesters at Pearl Roundabout but the Bahrain government's rule by repression and discrimination that is pushing this country towards a "sectarian abyss".
Ed Webb

Muslims sue FBI for alleged First Amendment violation | 89.3 KPCC - 0 views

  • “I feel that at times I am being followed,” he said. “I definitely feel that all my phone calls are tapped. I feel that my emails are filtered and tapped. I feel like I can’t have a loving conversation with my wife. “My wife and I both feel that way. We feel like we can’t even keep the phone in the room on and have a loving conversation without assuming the FBI is monitoring that conversation. I feel like there’s probably FBI in this room right now.”
    • Ed Webb
       
      Having lived in a surveillance society, I relate to this feeling very well. It is pernicious. The invasion by the state into private spaces is deeply corrosive of human dignity.
Ed Webb

The Ludicrousness of 'Taking Back Yoga' | OPEN Magazine - 0 views

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    Hybridization a fact of modern world. Anti-essentialist argument about futility of self-orientalizing identity politics.
Ed Webb

Obama's Secret Plot To Bring 100 Million Muslims to the US | Mother Jones - 1 views

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    File under WTF?
Ed Webb

Religious Freedom USA | - 0 views

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    Oh, FFS
Ed Webb

A Special Place in Hell-Israel News - Haaretz Israeli News source. - 0 views

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    Is this an abuse of the term 'revolution'?
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