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Is King Abdullah Doing a Good Job?
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what do you mean, I suppose this is a sarcastic comment?Originally posted by synthia@May 5th, 2004 - 12:58 pm
Oh, yes we all know his role.
what do you mean, I suppose this is a sarcastic comment?
It’s not sarcastic comment, it’s reality.
so give an example of what Abdullah did all wrong with the latest crisis in Iraq, besides making sure his country would survive?Originally posted by synthia@May 5th, 2004 - 1:06 pm
what do you mean, I suppose this is a sarcastic comment?
It’s not sarcastic comment, it’s reality.
so give an example of what Abdullah did all wrong with the latest crisis in Iraq, besides making sure his country would survive? [/b][/quote]Originally posted by Hild+May 5th, 2004 - 12:09 pm--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Hild @ May 5th, 2004 - 12:09 pm)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-synthia@May 5th, 2004 - 1:06 pm
what do you mean, I suppose this is a sarcastic comment?
It’s not sarcastic comment, it’s reality.
He’s not one is dealing with the crisis in Iraq; it’s not his responsibilities. But he still is trying to hang up on his old friendship with his old friend Saddam Hussein. Before war, Saddam Hussein sign agreement of kickbacks of free oil, King Abdullah is now demanding it from poor Iraqis, arguing that agreement is agreement, no matter what government sign it. Is this wrong? No. But is not moral. Confiscation of Saddam Hussein money. Is this wrong? No. But is not moral. They belong to Iraqis.
Alexandria
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I understand and realize that this is a particularly heated discussion, and obviously one that some feel very strongly about one way or another, about whether King Abdullah is doing a good job or not.
But let's be civil and mature about this.
Everybody need not need to come to a mutual consensus or agree with one another, but let's not resort to name calling of each other, the King and the royal family, or describing another member's point or opinon as being 'useless' or anything of that like.
But if things do get out of hand in this thread, it will be closed. Consider this the first and only warning.
Otherwise, carry on, discuss, debate, compare, etc.
Alexandria
But let's be civil and mature about this.
Everybody need not need to come to a mutual consensus or agree with one another, but let's not resort to name calling of each other, the King and the royal family, or describing another member's point or opinon as being 'useless' or anything of that like.
But if things do get out of hand in this thread, it will be closed. Consider this the first and only warning.
Otherwise, carry on, discuss, debate, compare, etc.
Alexandria
so give an example of what Abdullah did all wrong with the latest crisis in Iraq, besides making sure his country would survive? [/b][/quote]Originally posted by Hild+May 5th, 2004 - 12:09 pm--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Hild @ May 5th, 2004 - 12:09 pm)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-synthia@May 5th, 2004 - 1:06 pm
what do you mean, I suppose this is a sarcastic comment?
It’s not sarcastic comment, it’s reality.
I think some would argue that he was only trying to make sure that *he* (and hsi regime) would survive. If the heat became too hot to handle, there was an American plane waiting to whisk him away.
B
bluetortuga
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KA seems more concerned with events outside of Jordan than affairs in Jordan. Maybe he should put a halt on accumulating so many frequent flyer miles and work towards solving his country's problems: poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, crime (honor killings and otherwise). What's use of bringing the latest IT technology to Jordan when the majority of the people will never have need to access it? At least in Europe and Gulf States, the people enjoy a decent standard of living so much that the excesses of their royalty are not really an issue. The people are taken care of; the royalty can spend however they please.
What's use of bringing the latest IT technology to Jordan when the majority of the people will never have need to access it?
I could not get it! why people will "never" need to access it? what needs are in other country but not jordan?
Maybe he should put a halt on accumulating so many frequent flyer miles and work towards solving his country's problems: poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, crime (honor killings and otherwise)
many countries which have some or all of these problems -including the developed ones - also pay attention to technology, I cant find any correlation between facing these problems and information technology?
and by the way there is no illitracy problem in jordan,it has a high litracy percentage. The illitracy these days became the illitracy of computer and internet.and I think there is not much crimes in jordan-comparing to US for example ( and according to there is “honor killings” in Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, Uganda and the United Kingdom...)
Definitely, I agree with your last point, and I've written about it here before (in another forum somewhere). That is, honour killings take place all over the world in different variations. Even in the West. In fact, it happens all the time.Originally posted by Laila@May 9th, 2004 - 2:20 am
Oh i missed "UN" after according to.\
Originally posted by Laila@May 9th, 2004 - 2:18 am
The difference is, in the West and in Israel (at least) the perpetrators are caught and brought to justice. That is generally not the case in the Middle East.and by the way there is no illitracy problem in jordan,it has a high litracy percentage. The illitracy these days became the illitracy of computer and internet.and I think there is not much crimes in jordan-comparing to US for example ( and according to there is “honor killings” in Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, Uganda and the United Kingdom...)
The difference is, in the West and in Israel (at least) the perpetrators are caught and brought to justice. That is generally not the case in the Middle East.
In Israel there is similar law to those in other countries of the ME, and the perpetrators there get less punishment .
Nice article about KA and how he's doing:
http://politics.slate.msn.com/id/2100205/
The Arab World's Can-Do Guy
Abdullah II's Jordan is a model for the Middle East.
By Lee Smith
Posted Friday, May 7, 2004, at 3:26 PM PT
Between Iraq on one side and Israel/Palestine on the other, "we're in a difficult neighborhood," Jordan's King Abdullah II told me in a recent interview. "And so we reach out to the West and say, help us succeed." On Thursday, it seemed the White House heard him.
Last month, Abdullah canceled his Washington trip after President Bush agreed to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposed unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and rejected the Palestinians' right of return. It wasn't a good time for an Arab leader to be photographed with a man many Arabs loathe. Nor did this week seem any more charmed, but the king waded into a quagmire and walked out of the Rose Garden with Bush promising a letter to Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and the White House's assurances not to prejudice future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Even more timely, Abdullah got the apology the Arab world was waiting for all week long.
"I told him I was sorry," President Bush related in a press conference after their meeting. He was sorry "for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners, and the humiliation suffered by their families."
Continue Article
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In wresting the magic words from the president, the man a European diplomat once referred to as "the Middle East's weakest leader" became the Arab world's can-do guy. The king's entourage is ecstatic, anticipating the kind of greeting Abdullah will receive back home. But U.S. officials also have reason to be happy with the royal Hashemite court. On April 29 in Amman, Jordan's capital, Abdullah's wife Queen Rania led a march against terrorism. The Pan-Arab daily Al Hayat reported that close to 150,000 people turned out, some of them burning photographs of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida associate Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian national who had allegedly plotted a chemical attack against several targets in Amman. A public demonstration like the one led by the queen is unprecedented good news for a U.S. president whose image is all too familiar with the working end of a matchstick. Surely, there's some consolation for the White House in the knowledge that if Arabs hate us, at least they hate those guys, too.
King Abdullah has been counting on the tide turning against the jihadists. "It takes tremendous pressure off the silent majority for them to speak out and say enough is enough," he told me. "We were hijacked by the loud minority, by the extremists. But sometimes, maybe it takes the shock of extremism to propel a new era of renaissance."
Jordanians were certainly shocked to hear that had Zarqawi's operation succeeded, an estimated 80,000 people would have died. Later, in a recorded message believed to have come from Zarqawi himself, the one-time "Afghan Arab" said that Jordanian officials had misrepresented the nature and extent of the attack. Sure, he'd meant to kill a lot of people, but not 80,000.
Since Zarqawi is a member of the Bani Hassan, one of the region's largest tribes, with groupings in both Jordan and Iraq, some commentators have wondered if this wouldn't signal another potential insurgency in Iraq: first Baathist remnants, then foreign jihadists, and now all the region's Bedouins bound to each other by blood ties. No, says one Jordanian journalist familiar with the tribes. "It's a personal matter for Zarqawi. It's not tribal, it's jihadist. The tribes aren't going to follow him anywhere. Bedouins aren't religious zealots. They pursue their own interests, and the state represents those interests."
The Bedouins dominate Jordan's government, police, and military. The king's royal court chief, appointed shortly before the Iraq war, is a member of the Bani Hassan, as are thousands of members of the Jordanian army, historically the Arab world's crack fighting unit. Jordan's Palestinian population, comprising roughly 50 percent of the country, runs the private sector. They are also the country's liberalizing force.
"After 1948," explained a Palestinian financial analyst based in Amman, "our families realized the kids had to have something to fall back on. There was no land, so we got educations instead. Palestinians went to Europe, the United States, the Gulf, and now that we're in Jordan, we know how business works. But if we get too much power, it throws off the delicate balance between us and the Trans-Jordanians, or Bedouins."
Keeping the two parties happy has been one of the major tasks of Jordan's Hashemite rulers since the country's declaration of independence in 1946, and they haven't always been successful. The king's great-grandfather, Abdullah I, was assassinated by a Palestinian radical in 1951, and in 1970 his father Hussein crushed a Palestinian rebellion that threatened to overthrow the state. Whether or not King Abdullah II agrees with most Arabs that the security fence separating Israel from the West Bank is an "apartheid wall," his government is worried it's going to cause security problems for Jordan. In cutting West Bank residents off from Israel, and thus one of the few sources of income available to them, Jordan fears a new wave of refugees its own economy can't sustain.
As Philip Robins details in his new History of Jordan, the kingdom has often appeared to be on the verge of coming apart at the seams. Indeed, the Hashemites, who are direct descendants of the prophet Mohammed, have always had a somewhat precarious existence in the region. After World War I, the British thanked these leaders of the Arab revolt for turning on their Turkish masters by carving out parts of the former Ottoman Empire for them to rule. Transjordan, later Jordan, was given to Abdullah's great-grandfather, Syria to his great-grand uncle Faisal. When the French kicked Faisal out of Damascus, the British stacked together several wildly diverse precincts—with Kurds in the north, Arab Bedouins in the center, and Shiites in the south—called it Iraq, and wished Faisal well. That nation's Hashemite monarchy ended with an assassination in 1958, and of course the situation in neighboring Iraq today makes life harder for the one Hashemite still ruling an Arab state. However, as King Abdullah told me, "We're not using the regional problems as an excuse not to go forward, and that tends to be a trend in this part of the world."
The country's motto is "Jordan First," distancing itself from the "all-for-one" Pan-Arab ideologies that during the last half-century did little more than conceal vast reserves of enmity between Arab rulers. Reform is the answer, the king says, emphasizing economic reform that he hopes will provide a safety net that will make it possible to enact riskier political and social reforms.
"I believe we're setting the trend for the Middle East," he explained. "If we do succeed, then the experiment works. Change is always difficult, it's always frightening. If you can show a country next to you that you've done something and it's worked, it's always a good argument to be able to move forward. If we set the pace in the region for democratic, political, social, economic reform then we're not only doing something for our people, we're doing something for the whole region."
That President Bush's apology was given to Abdullah II to accept on behalf of the whole region suggests that while the White House has gotten Iraq wrong in lots of important ways, it recognizes what reform ought to look like. "My descendants are descendants of the prophet," the king said, "and as the direct line, I think we know what we're talking about."
Lee Smith, who lives in Brooklyn, is writing a book on Arab culture
http://politics.slate.msn.com/id/2100205/
The Arab World's Can-Do Guy
Abdullah II's Jordan is a model for the Middle East.
By Lee Smith
Posted Friday, May 7, 2004, at 3:26 PM PT
Between Iraq on one side and Israel/Palestine on the other, "we're in a difficult neighborhood," Jordan's King Abdullah II told me in a recent interview. "And so we reach out to the West and say, help us succeed." On Thursday, it seemed the White House heard him.
Last month, Abdullah canceled his Washington trip after President Bush agreed to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposed unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and rejected the Palestinians' right of return. It wasn't a good time for an Arab leader to be photographed with a man many Arabs loathe. Nor did this week seem any more charmed, but the king waded into a quagmire and walked out of the Rose Garden with Bush promising a letter to Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and the White House's assurances not to prejudice future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Even more timely, Abdullah got the apology the Arab world was waiting for all week long.
"I told him I was sorry," President Bush related in a press conference after their meeting. He was sorry "for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners, and the humiliation suffered by their families."
Continue Article
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In wresting the magic words from the president, the man a European diplomat once referred to as "the Middle East's weakest leader" became the Arab world's can-do guy. The king's entourage is ecstatic, anticipating the kind of greeting Abdullah will receive back home. But U.S. officials also have reason to be happy with the royal Hashemite court. On April 29 in Amman, Jordan's capital, Abdullah's wife Queen Rania led a march against terrorism. The Pan-Arab daily Al Hayat reported that close to 150,000 people turned out, some of them burning photographs of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida associate Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian national who had allegedly plotted a chemical attack against several targets in Amman. A public demonstration like the one led by the queen is unprecedented good news for a U.S. president whose image is all too familiar with the working end of a matchstick. Surely, there's some consolation for the White House in the knowledge that if Arabs hate us, at least they hate those guys, too.
King Abdullah has been counting on the tide turning against the jihadists. "It takes tremendous pressure off the silent majority for them to speak out and say enough is enough," he told me. "We were hijacked by the loud minority, by the extremists. But sometimes, maybe it takes the shock of extremism to propel a new era of renaissance."
Jordanians were certainly shocked to hear that had Zarqawi's operation succeeded, an estimated 80,000 people would have died. Later, in a recorded message believed to have come from Zarqawi himself, the one-time "Afghan Arab" said that Jordanian officials had misrepresented the nature and extent of the attack. Sure, he'd meant to kill a lot of people, but not 80,000.
Since Zarqawi is a member of the Bani Hassan, one of the region's largest tribes, with groupings in both Jordan and Iraq, some commentators have wondered if this wouldn't signal another potential insurgency in Iraq: first Baathist remnants, then foreign jihadists, and now all the region's Bedouins bound to each other by blood ties. No, says one Jordanian journalist familiar with the tribes. "It's a personal matter for Zarqawi. It's not tribal, it's jihadist. The tribes aren't going to follow him anywhere. Bedouins aren't religious zealots. They pursue their own interests, and the state represents those interests."
The Bedouins dominate Jordan's government, police, and military. The king's royal court chief, appointed shortly before the Iraq war, is a member of the Bani Hassan, as are thousands of members of the Jordanian army, historically the Arab world's crack fighting unit. Jordan's Palestinian population, comprising roughly 50 percent of the country, runs the private sector. They are also the country's liberalizing force.
"After 1948," explained a Palestinian financial analyst based in Amman, "our families realized the kids had to have something to fall back on. There was no land, so we got educations instead. Palestinians went to Europe, the United States, the Gulf, and now that we're in Jordan, we know how business works. But if we get too much power, it throws off the delicate balance between us and the Trans-Jordanians, or Bedouins."
Keeping the two parties happy has been one of the major tasks of Jordan's Hashemite rulers since the country's declaration of independence in 1946, and they haven't always been successful. The king's great-grandfather, Abdullah I, was assassinated by a Palestinian radical in 1951, and in 1970 his father Hussein crushed a Palestinian rebellion that threatened to overthrow the state. Whether or not King Abdullah II agrees with most Arabs that the security fence separating Israel from the West Bank is an "apartheid wall," his government is worried it's going to cause security problems for Jordan. In cutting West Bank residents off from Israel, and thus one of the few sources of income available to them, Jordan fears a new wave of refugees its own economy can't sustain.
As Philip Robins details in his new History of Jordan, the kingdom has often appeared to be on the verge of coming apart at the seams. Indeed, the Hashemites, who are direct descendants of the prophet Mohammed, have always had a somewhat precarious existence in the region. After World War I, the British thanked these leaders of the Arab revolt for turning on their Turkish masters by carving out parts of the former Ottoman Empire for them to rule. Transjordan, later Jordan, was given to Abdullah's great-grandfather, Syria to his great-grand uncle Faisal. When the French kicked Faisal out of Damascus, the British stacked together several wildly diverse precincts—with Kurds in the north, Arab Bedouins in the center, and Shiites in the south—called it Iraq, and wished Faisal well. That nation's Hashemite monarchy ended with an assassination in 1958, and of course the situation in neighboring Iraq today makes life harder for the one Hashemite still ruling an Arab state. However, as King Abdullah told me, "We're not using the regional problems as an excuse not to go forward, and that tends to be a trend in this part of the world."
The country's motto is "Jordan First," distancing itself from the "all-for-one" Pan-Arab ideologies that during the last half-century did little more than conceal vast reserves of enmity between Arab rulers. Reform is the answer, the king says, emphasizing economic reform that he hopes will provide a safety net that will make it possible to enact riskier political and social reforms.
"I believe we're setting the trend for the Middle East," he explained. "If we do succeed, then the experiment works. Change is always difficult, it's always frightening. If you can show a country next to you that you've done something and it's worked, it's always a good argument to be able to move forward. If we set the pace in the region for democratic, political, social, economic reform then we're not only doing something for our people, we're doing something for the whole region."
That President Bush's apology was given to Abdullah II to accept on behalf of the whole region suggests that while the White House has gotten Iraq wrong in lots of important ways, it recognizes what reform ought to look like. "My descendants are descendants of the prophet," the king said, "and as the direct line, I think we know what we're talking about."
Lee Smith, who lives in Brooklyn, is writing a book on Arab culture
I don't think that's accurate--
It is.
B
bluetortuga
Guest
The US does little and nothing. The police have to be convinced the guy is going to kill you before they do anything. They basically have to see you bloodied and battered before they intervene. Thousands of women have died at the hands of violent husbands, even after reporting the threats to the police. The US shouldn't be preaching to anyone concerning domestic violence.
Um, excuse me? The US tries and prosecutes those accused of honor crimes. Here is a recent one: In addition, every city has several shelters where battered women can turn. I am sure that 1000s of women have died at the hands of their husbands, as most murders are committed by close family relatives, but it is not because there are no social services available to prevent this, or because there is no place for the woman to turn. It is also not true, which was our original point, that the men who commit these murders get away with no punishment, which is generally the case in the Mid-East.
alia_musallam
Gentry
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I think that u are overstating your point, as men in the me do get punished for honour crimes, but unfortunately they get lighter sentences as its considered as a form of 'crime passionel'.
B
bluetortuga
Guest
http://www.jordantimes.com/wed/homenews/homenews7.htm
Another example of KA's failure to reign in the honor killings in Jordan. A man gets six month's for killing his sister. If the unwritten law is that having a child out of wedlock is punishable by death, then shouldn't the father of the baby be put to death also? Maybe her brother wasn't man enough to stand up to the boyfriend. But then, human nature always uses brute strength against those people, things or situations we can conquer/subdue easily. If this poor girl has to die, then her boyfriend should have been killed also. Why haven't the Jordanian authorities done anything about the boyfriend if this killing is justified; or this crime of passion? Why is it that when a woman is raped in some ME cultures, she is put to death for having "shamed" the family?
KA rules by absolute authority - he can do whatever he wants. Just as he can dissolve parliament at a moment's notice, he can outlaw honor killings.
Another example of KA's failure to reign in the honor killings in Jordan. A man gets six month's for killing his sister. If the unwritten law is that having a child out of wedlock is punishable by death, then shouldn't the father of the baby be put to death also? Maybe her brother wasn't man enough to stand up to the boyfriend. But then, human nature always uses brute strength against those people, things or situations we can conquer/subdue easily. If this poor girl has to die, then her boyfriend should have been killed also. Why haven't the Jordanian authorities done anything about the boyfriend if this killing is justified; or this crime of passion? Why is it that when a woman is raped in some ME cultures, she is put to death for having "shamed" the family?
KA rules by absolute authority - he can do whatever he wants. Just as he can dissolve parliament at a moment's notice, he can outlaw honor killings.
Your totally right on King Abdullah. He won't do anything on honor killings, because he doesn't want to anger certain peoples.Originally posted by bluetortuga@May 11th, 2004 - 10:16 pm
KA rules by absolute authority - he can do whatever he wants. Just as he can dissolve parliament at a moment's notice, he can outlaw honor killings.
Wish he would just gird his loins and put a stop to these senseless, brutal, utterly unfair murders.Originally posted by bluetortuga@May 11th, 2004 - 10:16 pm
KA rules by absolute authority - he can do whatever he wants. Just as he can dissolve parliament at a moment's notice, he can outlaw honor killings.
KA rules by absolute authority - he can do whatever he wants. Just as he can dissolve parliament at a moment's notice, he can outlaw honor killings.
KA does not have absolute authority.
he can dissolve the parlement ( by constitution) but can not put laws.
You are both sort of right. Technically, KA doesn't have absolute authority. But it's not as though Jordan is even close to having a democracy. KA controls most of what happens in Jordan because he has the authority to appoint and because he controls the upper house of Parliament. So, pretty much, what he wants goes.Originally posted by Laila@May 18th, 2004 - 7:44 pm
KA rules by absolute authority - he can do whatever he wants. Just as he can dissolve parliament at a moment's notice, he can outlaw honor killings.
KA does not have absolute authority.
he can dissolve the parlement ( by constitution) but can not put laws.
KA has absolute authority and power. he can dissolve the parlement and can make laws on his own will. he already did.Originally posted by Laila@May 18th, 2004 - 7:44 pm
KA rules by absolute authority - he can do whatever he wants. Just as he can dissolve parliament at a moment's notice, he can outlaw honor killings.
KA does not have absolute authority.
he can dissolve the parlement ( by constitution) but can not put laws.
and can make laws on his own will
that is not true.
Originally posted by Laila@May 23rd, 2004 - 8:45 pm
and can make laws on his own will
that is not true.
that is true, he can make laws on his own will
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