Headlines:

• Russian Foreign Minister: U.S. Playing Geopolitical Game in the Middle East
• Qatar Aims to Rehabilitate Hamas Image in the Eyes of the West
• 'Pakistan to Remain at Receiving End Regardless of Whether Obama or Romney Wins'
• Hudud will not Impact Non-Muslims, Malaysian Minister Says
• East Turkistan: Chinese Authorities Multiply Raids on Uyghur Homes

Details:

Russian Foreign Minister: U.S. Playing Geopolitical Game in the Middle East:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the daily newspaper, Rossiiskaya, that the United States is playing a geopolitical game in the Middle East. Lavrov said accusations against al-Assad "are only a camouflage to cover a big geopolitical game. Another round is playing now, aimed at re-making the Middle East geopolitically. And players are taking pains to secure their geopolitical positions." According to Lavrov, the orchestrated Arab Spring uprisings that swept Arab states in the Middle East and North Africa and led to the proxy war against Libya and now the al-Assad regime in Syria are the fruit of George W. Bush's labor and his Middle East "Pro-Democracy Policy," reports The Voice of Russia. Bush's Middle East policy was crafted by the American Enterprise Institute and other neocon think tanks. "Of course he should be getting credit because he socialized the world to the notion that somehow democracy was possible in the Arab world," Daniele Pletka, described as a foreign policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told McClatchy last November. "This was an almost ridiculous notion before his presidency. And we shouldn't discount the liberation of 50 million Muslims who'd lived under oppressive Afghan and Iraqi rule." In June, the benefactor of the Arab Spring hatched by the CIA, the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, staffed with former Mubarak loyalists, put a capstone on its victory and declared a military dictatorship in Egypt. After the Muslim Brotherhood was installed in the Egyptian parliament, it engaged in a predictable purge and began jailing opponents and journalists like Egyptian television presenter Tawfiq Okasha, who was imprisoned for defaming Salafist president Mohamed Morsi, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood from its inception has served the interests of British intelligence and later worked with the CIA. Without the British, "Radical Islam would have remained the illegitimate, repressive minority movement that it has always been, and the Middle East would have remained stable and prosperous," notes John Coleman, a former British Intelligence agent. The clash of civilizations agenda fomented by the globalists and the neocon faction requires endless discord and sectarian violence if the balkanization of the Arab and Muslim world is to be accomplished. In his translation of Oded Yinon's "The Zionist Plan for the Middle East," Israel Shahak notes that the idea of sowing discord and fragmenting the Arab and Muslim world "is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme." Shahak points out that the American neocons who dominated foreign policy under Bush - and may once again do so under Romney - enthusiastically adopted the Israeli plan, which was conceived in the early 1950s soon after the establishment of the Israeli state. It resurfaced in the "Clean Break" document prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, at the time the prime minister of Israel.

Qatar Aims to Rehabilitate Hamas Image in the Eyes of the West:

The Emir of Qatar's visit to Gaza on Tuesday was a daring move according to analysts who believe the aim is to rehabilitate Hamas' image in Western eyes. This could coax it into the peace camp at a time when the Arab Spring revolts, and civil war in Syria, have been reshaping power balances across the Middle East. The Emir, Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, who is rare among Arab rulers in having met senior Israeli officials, denounced Israel's policies and praised people in Gaza for standing up to it with "bare chests" - but he also urged rival Palestinian leaders to abandon their feuds. The Gaza Strip is all but cut off from the world under a land and sea blockade by Israel and Egypt that is intended to obstruct the import of arms to Hamas. A Sunni Islamist group like several others supported by Qatar elsewhere, it has long been aided by Shiite Iran and its allies Syria and Hezbollah. In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas' arch-rival, said it hoped the Qatari visit would not hinder the rebuilding of Palestinian unity, nor endorse a separate Palestinian territory in Gaza. This was the first visit to Gaza by any national leader since Hamas seized control of the enclave where 1.7 million people live from Abbas' forces in 2007. Israel had pulled out its troops and colonists from the territory two years earlier.

'Pakistan to Remain at Receiving End Regardless of Whether Obama or Romney Wins':

White House race between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney is a curious affair around the globe, but not for Pakistan, according to an editorial in a Pakistan daily. The editorial in the Express Tribune said that for Pakistan, it will make a very little difference which candidate ultimately wins the election. Both the candidates clearly dislike each other, have scant regard for their opponent, yet, closely agree to what the other believes on a lot of issues than they disagree. Most importantly, both Obama and Romney are wholly committed to drone strikes in Pakistan. According to the report, Romney tried to differentiate himself from Obama on his Pakistan policy by claiming that he would attach strings to the aid given to Pakistan, but seemed unaware that this has already happened under the terms of the Kerry-Lugar Bill. Traditionally, Republicans have maintained warmer ties and given more aid to Pakistan, but have also been more comfortable dealing with the country's military dictators, the report said. That history will not matter too much, though, since there is a bipartisan consensus in Washington that Pakistan is brimming with rogue actors and that a military option, in the form of drone strikes, is completely necessary, it added. According to the report, the military and civilian governments will breathe a sigh of relief after both candidates rejected the debate moderator's proposal that the US "divorce" Pakistan. The aid spigot will remain even if there is a change of guard in Washington, it said. Foreign policy has barely been a blip in this election both because of the tiny substantive difference between Obama and Romney and also because elections are settled on economic, not international, issues.

Hudud will not Impact Non-Muslims, Malaysian Minister Says:

Hudud will not have an impact on non-Muslims in Malaysia, Umno Minister Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom has said, disputing the repeated warnings by political ally MCA to the Chinese community on the controversial Islamic penal code. In a written reply to Tan Tee Beng (IND-Nibong Tebal), the minister for Islamic affairs, explained that hudud, which prescribes the amputation of hands for theft, could only be applied to those who come under the jurisdiction of the Syariah court - Muslims. "Therefore, hudud law will not impact non-Muslims," he concluded. MCA has been using the hudud issue to warn the non-Muslim community away from voting for Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in the coming polls, insisting that the pact's "dominant" partner PAS would insist on its implementation despite its ties with secular DAP and PKR. Hudud has remained a sensitive touch point in Southeast Asia's third-largest economy, which has a 60 per cent Muslim population, with political parties continuing to spar over the subject in the run-up to the 13th general election. The idea of an Islamic criminal code has been used to either scare the minority Chinese voters, or shore up support among the majority Malay-Muslim community. The Malay community is seen today as split three-ways among the ruling BN's mainstay and the country's biggest Malay party, Umno, the opposition's Islamist PAS, and PKR, which is seen as an urban liberal party.

East Turkistan: Chinese Authorities Multiply Raids on Uyghur Homes

Authorities in China's troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang are carrying out raids on the homes of local residents following clashes between ethnic minority Muslim Uyghurs and armed police in the region's central city of Korla, an exile group said. Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, said there had been deaths and injuries among police and protesters on Friday after angry Uyghurs gathered outside a police station on Tuanjie Road in the city. "There were deaths and injuries on both sides during the violence," Raxit said. "The local authorities have enforced a news blackout since the clashes took place, and have been conducting raids." Uyghur residents of Xinjiang frequently report midnight, house-to-house raids on their homes during "strike hard" anti-terrorism campaigns, and after violent incidents. Xinjiang has been rocked by sporadic violent incidents in recent years, including three days of deadly ethnic riots in Urumqi in 2009 that left at least 197 people dead, according to official figures. The region is currently under tight security ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha on Friday and a crucial leadership transition for China's ruling Communist Party at a national congress on Nov. 8. Security and surveillance personnel are stationed in mosques across the region, and public assembly is forbidden, Raxit said.

Abu Hashim