Monthly Archives: January 2012

Israel, Middle East, Palestine, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Romney and Gingrich and GOPP: Kissing Netanyahu’s Ring, Kissing History Goodbye………

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Quotes from Republican candidates at the Florida debate last night:

“ROMNEY: Well, the reason that there’s not peace between the Palestinians and Israel is because there is in the leadership of the Palestinian people are Hamas and others who think like Hamas who have as their intent the elimination of Israel. And whether it’s in schoolbooks that teach how to kill Jews, or whether it’s in the political discourse that is spoken either from Fatah or from Hamas, there is a belief that the Jewish people do not have a right to have a Jewish state. …… I think he (Obama) disrespected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu……..”
 
Romney doesn’t give a fig about Netanyahu, He probably recognizes him for the political hustler and serial liar that he is; he probably admires him, if at all, for these qualities more than his being a statesman (he is not). What Romney meant to say was that Obama disrespects the New York and New Jersey and other northeast retirees in Florida. He is appealing to all the Jewish elderly retirees in south Florida, normally a strong Democrat bloc of voters.

“GINGRICH: It was technically an invention of the late 1970s, and it was clearly so. Prior to that, they were Arabs. Many of them were either Syrian, Lebanese, or Egyptian, or Jordanian……… ……..”

Funny, when I was a kid at school, many of my teachers were Palestinians: that is what everybody called them. Well before 1970. Gingrich supposedly studied history, so presumably he knows that he is lying here (as do most of his listeners, possibly even a few of the Republicans in the audience).
GOPP: Grand Old Pandering Party.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, GCC, Humor, Jordan, Muslims, religious police, Saudi Arabia, UAE

Funning about the Princes and the Muftis: Obama for Crown Prince or Jordanian Gauleiter……………

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“SAUDI ARABIA’s response to the Arab spring might be described as allergic. The tiniest whiff of protest last March prompted the government to outlaw demonstrations. Even as women, in effect, continue to be banned from driving, and dissidents jailed or banned from travelling, a new media law has clamped tighter restrictions on the press. Echoing events in tiny Bahrain, where the ruling family crushed Shia protests, Saudi security forces have responded to rising unrest in their country’s east, among the kingdom’s own 10% Shia minority, with blunt measures, including live gunfire that killed five protesters in recent months. Instead, the immediate beneficiaries of the Arab spring in Saudi Arabia may be a new generation of comedians and artists. They certainly stole the limelight on 19th January, at the opening of “We Need to Talk”.…..…” The Economist

I think they need to smile and laugh more than they need to talk. I will believe that Saudi comedy (an oxymoron?) has arrived if they start some joke with “Prince Nayef and the Mufti walked into this bar and…………” or “The Mufti stumbled into a Hussainiyah thinking it was the mosque and…………”
 
More seriously, I am not familiar with Saudi humor. I have known Saudis, mostly in business, but none of them ever cracked a joke within my earshot. Or maybe they did and I didn’t recognize it as a joke. I had thought joking was frowned upon over there: sort of like women driving, laughing in public, smiling in public, dressing different, thinking different from everyone else, thongs, tank-tops, mentioning the words ‘freedom’ or ‘protest’ or ‘Shi’a’, among other things.
Actually once in a shopping mall in Riyadh I tried smiling (in the United States I got used to the nasty habit of smiling at people in public, except in NYC subways). It was close to the noon prayer time, and the shaggy religious cops (Commission for the Propagation of Vice) were waving their (khaizaran) bamboo sticks ominously. They were coming toward me as they scowled at shoppers, hinting that soon all men should be inside a mosque and all women at home awaiting their pleasure. I flashed a smile at the nearest hairy one. His scowl deepened as he got closer. I decided that I had made a mistake and focused on a shop window: unfortunately it was a women’s lingerie shop with an Asian salesman behind the counter. I will write more about that later.
Back to the humor: Yet the Mufti of Saudi Arabia is often smiling in his photos. Shaikh Al Al Shaikh almost smiles as often as Ahmadinejad, and both smile much more than either crown prince Nayef or Ayatollah Khamenei (not that hard). It is possible that Saudi humor is a bit more ‘discernible’ than, say, Jordanian humor. I have never seen or heard any of the latter. I think they ought to openly outlaw humor in both countries: that way everyone, especially visitors, will know where they stand. In some Gulf places like the UAE, it is not illegal to laugh or even smile in public, especially if one is a man. Yet if you look directly at someone they would quickly scowl. Once you look at them, the face loses that ‘neutral’ inexpressive vacant look and a scowling (also vacant) mask covers everything. I suspect it is an attempt at showing some gravitas under scrutiny: it is a common Gulf issue.
I bet Obama could never get elected shaikh of Abu Dhabi or crown prince of Saudi Arabia (or Gauleiter of Jordan): he smiles too much in public.
Cheers
mhg


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Britain, Iran, Israel, Middle East Nuclear, Mossad, nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Short Western Memories: Khomeini, the Chemical West, and the Bomb………………

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“The Israeli President warns us now that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. Heaven preserve us. Yet we reporters do not mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said exactly the same thing in 1996. That was 16 years ago. And we do not recall that the current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999. That would be 13 years ago. Same old story. In fact, we don’t know that Iran really is building a nuclear weapon. And after Iraq, it’s amazing that the old weapons of mass destruction details are popping with the same frequency as all the poppycock about Saddam’s titanic arsenal. Not to mention the date problem. When did all this start? The Shah. The old boy wanted nuclear power. He even said he wanted a bomb because “the US and the Soviet Union had nuclear bombs” and no one objected. Europeans rushed to supply the dictator’s wish. Siemens – not Russia – built the Bushehr nuclear facility. And when Ayatollah Khomeini, Scourge of the West, Apostle of Shia Revolution, etc, took over Iran in 1979, he ordered the entire nuclear project to be closed down because it was “the work of the Devil“. Only when Saddam invaded Iran – with our Western encouragement – and started using poison gas against the Iranians (chemical components arriving from the West, of course) was Khomeini persuaded to reopen it………………”

Even within the short span of the past year we have heard and read several different conflicting assessments of the Iranian nuclear program:

  • It is military. No, it is civilian. No, it is both.
  • They are zeroing on the nuclear bomb. They have not decided yet.
  • They already have everything the need for a bomb.
  • They will have a bomb this year. They will not have a bomb until at least next year.
  • They won’t be able to before 2014, or is it 2015.
  • The IAEA says they have suspicions, but no proof, that it is possible that the Iranians may be thinking of perhaps maybe looking into the possibility of  staring to think of the probability of the degree of feasibity and applicability of the likely scenario of …………..
  • Dagan of Mossad says they have not started the bomb yet.
  • Netanyahu says they will have a bomb soon and that Ahmadienjad is worse than Hitler, will continue to be worse than Hitler even after his term expires and he leaves office in 2013.
  • Ehud Barak says war is closer unless the Iranians relent. Ehud Barak says war is months away. When asked about it, Ehud Barak responded “what war?”
  • They want to be able to build a bomb whenever they want.
  • But Ahmadinejad said they don’t want a nuclear bomb.
  • The Saudi princes, who never ever lie, are convinced they are building a bomb. So are their Salafi muftis.
  • The shaikh (sorry, king) al-Khalifa of Bahrain is certain they are building a bomb. Foreign minister al-Khalifa of Bahrain (aka Bon Vivant) is taunting us, saying “are you going to take that from the mullahs?” WTF that be. Several other al-Khalifa potantates seem to concur with the two already mentioned.
  • Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid of Dubai says he does not believe the Iranians are building a bomb. He thinks they have no reason to. Besides, he says “Even if they did, who gives a fuck”?
  • The al-Nahayan brothers of Abu Dhabi who own the UAE want the United States to attack the Iranian, and be quick about it.
  • The ayatollah has issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.
  • Obama, since he is only secretly a Muslim, can’t openly abide by the Khamenei fatwa.
  • Newt Gingrich says their goal is to attack the United States.
  • Rick Santorum insists he had a vision that their aim is to establish a Persian Caliphate in all the Blue States, before sweeping through Georgia.
  • Ron Paul thinks everybody this side of the Atlantic (and some on the other side) are out of their minds. He is most likely right.

Cheers
mhg


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GCC, Human Right, Middle East Women, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Women 100

Gulf of Taliban: Lawlessness and Misogyny in the UAE and Other Wild Places …………

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“The case of a woman who is facing deportation for reporting an attempted rape while being intoxicated in the United Arab Emirates highlights the ongoing struggle for women to have justice when faced with sexual violence in the ultra-wealthy Gulf country. According to reports, when the 26-year-old Kyrgyz woman arrived at a local police station following a taxi driver attempting to rape her, police officers told her she would face charges of drinking alcohol. Instead of acquiescing to the officers threats, she insisted on filing charges against the taxi driver for attempted rape………. “In November last year, two Saudi Arabian men were sentenced to two months in prison for “having sex with a minor” during a New Year’s holiday in the United Arab Emirates. According to local reports, both men were convicted of having consensual sex with a minor, despite the 15-year-old girl’s claims that she was forced to have sex with them in a hotel room. She is to be deported as part of her crime, court officials said……… In early October, two Pakistani men were charged with raping a Filipina waitress. Activists say they are unlikely to face harsh sentences and that the woman will be the one who faces the worst penalty………”

There are many other such cases in the UAE. Rape is reported routinely in the local newspapers. As are the “strange” Taliban-style sentences that focus on the female victims as guilty.
The treatment of victims as suspects is a purely local thing, but it is also common in other ‘nominally’ Muslim countries, like Pakistan and Afghanistan. Remember the Qatif girl in Saudi Arabia who was initially punished while her male rapists were barely touched about two years ago? Then there are many cases in Pakistan where women who dare file rape complaints (a rarity) are sentenced to stoning or life in prison for adultery. The guilty males are usually left alone. There was a case once when the woman filed a rape case while the rapist denied it. She was considered to have confessed to adultery (by filing a complaint) and sentenced for adultery, but not the man who denied the charge.
By some twisted local logic in the UAE, a woman who files a rape complaint is sometimes seen by some as exposing her “dirty” laundry. Then there is the local costume in the region of identifying certain single foreign women as being of “easy virtue” or even hookers. Especially if these single foreign women are from certain foreign (Asian) or Arab countries, like those mentioned in this item.  Anyway, this phenomenon is becoming common in the United Arab Emirates, especially in Abu Dhabi and ‘cosmopolitan’ Dubai.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Bahrain, Britain, GCC, Saudi Arabia, Weapons deals

David Cameron as Gulf Mercenary, Potentates Impotent with Greed, and Judy Collins……….

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“Don’t you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you’d want what I want
Sorry, my dear.
But, where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.
Don’t bother they’re here…….” Judy Collins (Send in the Clowns)

“The trouble is that Iran has won almost all its recent wars without firing a shot. George W and Tony destroyed Iran’s nemesis in Iraq. They killed thousands of the Sunni army whom Iran itself always referred to as “the black Taliban”. And the Gulf Arabs, our “moderate” friends, shiver in their golden mosques as we in the West outline their fate in the event of an Iranian Shia revolution. No wonder Cameron goes on selling weapons to these preposterous people whose armies, in many cases, could scarcely operate soup kitchens, let alone the billions of dollars of sophisticated kit we flog them under the fearful shadow of Tehran. Bring on the sanctions. Send in the clowns…………..”

This is what Fisk wrote, and it is worth a read. I suppose when he quoted Judy Collins “send in the clowns” he was referring to David Cameron. Cameron and his ministers have gone completely mercenary, just the way the Gulf potentates like their associates. They have thrown all pretenses at democracy and freedom to the wind as they fly to the dens of repression and despotism in Riyadh and Manama. And as they receive the bloody potentates at Downing Street. There is a matter of mutual interest: the British regime has its hand (or hat) extended for some of the oil money, while the potentates have their hands extended for the fat bribes commissions they would get from the weapons deals. They can always hire Pakistani or Western mercenaries to use these weapons, most likely on their own people, on our people.
(FYI: the Obama administration is no better. They are fully behind the repression in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, even as they falsely claim to support freedom and liberty. They must mean the freedom of these Arab regimes to repress their peoples, and the liberty of the potentates to loot their countries. And the liberty to sell weapons to regimes that will probably never know how to use them).
Cheers
mhg


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Corruption, religious police, Saudi Arabia

Arabian Peninsula: the Condemned Sorcerer and the Free Prince……….

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“A Saudi court sentenced an African man to 15 years in jail and 1,500 lashes with the whip for embezzling money from many people through sorcery. Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice arrested the unidentified man, in his 50s, following complaints by many of his victims in various cities in the Gulf Kingdom. “They seized him red handed after setting a trap for him in Riyadh…they found talismans, herbs, hair and other items used in his fraudulent activities,” Ajel Arabic language daily said……..”

Another poor African entrapped by the Commission for the Propagation of Vice.
He is lucky: only a few weeks ago they beheaded a fellow magician in public somewhere in the Kingdom without Magic. Normally they sentence sorcerers, witches, and magicians to have their heads chopped off in Saudi Arabia. Surprising hat this one was sentenced to only 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes. If he survives the 1,500 lashes (miracles do happen), then he can keep his head and go to prison. If he lasts 15 years in prison, then he will be out free. Now what is more just than that?

I was puzzled by the light sentence, that he was not having his head chopped off in public, until I read the charges carefully. The key word is “embezzlement”: that is what must have saved him. In country ruled by a kleptocracy, where the potentates get away with looting billions, embezzling a few rials is peanuts. The man may merely have some potential; as a true embezzler he is not there yet. That may explain the ‘mercy’ shown by the Wahhabi judge: fellow embezzlers stick together. Now all he needs is survive the 1,500 lashes and live long enough to taste freedom again. Many years from now, he can be out as free as, say, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan who allegedly received US$ 2 billion in bribes from BAE Systems for a huge weapons deal.
Cheers
mhg


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Anti-Semitism, Europe, Iran, Israel, Middle East

Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust: Demagoguery and Spreading the Bull……….

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“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust and the danger a nuclear-armed Iran, said on Tuesday that Israel must not shy from acting alone to thwart any threat to its existence. Addressing parliament ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, Netanyahu praised a European Union decision on Monday to place sanctions on Iranian oil exports. “But on this day of international cooperation and an important achievement against Iran, I want to remind everyone of the main lesson of the Holocaust against our people – that ultimately when there is threat to our existence, we must not leave our fate in the hands of others,”………”

Ahmadinejad used to specialize in near denials of the Holocaust. He taunted the West, especially the Europeans who were the planners and executioners and enablers of the Holocaust, with his nonsense. He knows exactly what happened so many decades ago in Europe, what was committed by the parents and grandparents of these Europeans, from Berlin to Krakow to Warsaw to Paris and other places. Not just by Germans: local police forces helped their new German masters round up their own Jewish neighbors to be shipped ‘east’. They were barely less guilty than the Gestapo and the Waffen-SS and even the Wehrmacht. Only about two decades ago, Austria
elected a known former Nazi officer as president (before that he was
their foreign minister then secretary general of the United
Nations!).
Yet his taunts are understandably insulting to the memory of the victims and to their descendents. One dreads what he will say later this week. Mercifully he has been silent on the subject for over a year; maybe someone told him it is not endearing. Maybe he will choose to shut up for once, being embroiled in more important issues at home.
Which brings us to that other Middle Eastern demagogue, Mr. Netanyahu. It is hard to take seriously, or find credible, someone who famously claims that “Ahmadinejad is worse than Hitler“.
Netanyahu has in recent years made quite a political art of using the terrible memory for his own political ends. He is an accomplished expert at what Americans call ‘spreading the bull’, and he knows how to spread it far and wide. In pushing for a destructive war in the Middle East, away from his own borders, he is willing to use any means. He is not being as disrespectful as Ahmadinejad, not nearly so, but he seems to exploit the memory in order to maintain the far right-wing uncompromising coalition that keeps him in power.
Cheers
mhg


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Bahrain, Culture, GCC, Human Right, Saudi Arabia, WTF

Love and Marriage and Repression in Abu Dhabi and the GCC…….

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“The UAE nationals have been advised not to marry foreign women due to social, legal and financial complications which arise following such marriages, said a renowned lawyer. Speaking at the Noor Dubai Radio, CEO of Bin Haider Advocates & Legal Consultants in the UAE, said a large number of cases are pending before the courts due to such marriages. He pointed out that the young men marry foreign women not to make family but to get rich. But if the husband’s income gets depleted, the foreign wives create problems which lead to court cases……… He said a decree by His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, fixed it at Dh50,000 which applies only in case of marriages with the Emirati women. While the marriages of UAE nationals with foreign women will be subject to what was agreed upon in the marriage contract with regard to alimony………….”

The potentates on the Gulf love to meddle in such private matters as marriage. The Bahrain royals are an exception for being less intrusive: they are too busy gassing, beating, and shooting their people (or throwing them in prison or handing them to imported Jordanian or Iraqi Ba’athist torturers). The Saudi princes don’t allow their ‘normal’ citizens to marry foreigners without government approval. It is seriously frowned upon. One can get fined heavily if one marries a foreign woman (or even a man) without royal approval. We are talking tens of thousands of Rials. But there is some hope: the man can always appeal to the king for an exemption (I hear he has a soft heart for true love, especially in cases of multiple polygamy). Besides, for true love there are always the Turkish novellas: I hear even the royals are attached to them.
The potentates of the UAE have been tightening the screws, really no pun intended here. (Really it is the al-Nahayan of Abu Dhabi that boss the others around). They have been trying to ‘regulate’ marriages and block citizens from marrying foreigners (mostly UAE men marrying foreign chicks). Other GCC states have also grappled with this issue; at least one regime has been threatening to form a government commission to look into these cases. This is one thing the GCC potentates can agree on: unify their marriage standards and laws. While at it, they may revisit the polygamy issue: the potentates and their Salafi shaikhs are experts on that (talking marriage here).
Cheers
mhg


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Middle East, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(4) Ron Paul in the Middle East………..

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If Ron Paul ever makes it to the White House, he’ll probably be assassinated quickly (unless he gets an infarct first, not that I wish him any ill, he is the most decent of the two GOP candidates who have some decency). There are just too many private interests and little public empires that he endangers. The list of enemies starts with the defense industry, the neocon foreign policy establishment, the foreign services and security contractors, wild evangelicals, Rapture freaks, and his own putative vice president (wtf that be). Ron Paul doesn’t do any Muslim-baiting. He is the only GOP candidate who does not pander to anyone, American or foreign. He is also the only one not waiting in line to kiss Netanyahu’s a… er,…….. ring.

Paul is an isolationist in the old Republican tradition. His idea of drastically cutting the bases in Europe and Asia is a sensible one (Germany and Japan do not need them, nor does the cash-strapped USA). The United States does not need hundreds of bases in Europe and East Asia. The United States can do with a limited number of bases in friendly Middle East and Gulf countries and with the Fifth and Sixth Fleets to cover the Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean. More important, Paul believes that the United States does not need to be dragged into an unnecessary destructive war in the Middle East, pushed by the Likud and its allies in Israel and by some potentates and the Salafis on the Gulf.
I have deliberately not mentioned Ron Paul’s domestic economic and regulatory policies with most of which I strongly disagree.
Cheers
mhg


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Israel, Middle East, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(3) Mitt Romney and the Middle East……….

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Mitt Romney hasn’t expressed any solid core position on foreign policy regarding the Middle East. Nothing that diverts much from the usual republican positions. That can be good or it can be bad. He has many former GOP ‘experts’ on his advisory staff but only one of them is from an Arab (non-Muslim) background. He has expressed the usual mandatory love and admiration and adoration for Benjamin Netanyahu. But that is now a necessary thing for all GOP candidates, actually for all Democrat politicians as well. Kissing Netanyahu’s ring has become bigger than kissing the ring of the German veteran who sits in Rome, in the Fisherman’s shoes. He has, however promised that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon as long as he is president. That is the closest thing to a definite policy he has expressed. (Oh, and he has refused to promise to re-invade Iraq, which means McCain and Lieberman will have to do it solo).
Cheers
mhg


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