Category Archives: Arab Counterrevoltion

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Yemen

Saudis and Yemenis Exchange Visits: Good and Bad News on the Ground War…………

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One strain of the Saudi opposition, including the anonymous Mujtahidd, has been complaining about the path of the war on Yemen. The Wahhabi opposition support the Yemeni war in general: like almost all Arab Salafis they see it as a sectarian struggle. But they acknowledge that the bombing campaign against Yemen is not going well, no surprise there. They put the blame, rightly, on the princes leading it.


Last week they were complaining about the new young defense minister and crown prince to the crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS). They were critical of his taking a second princess wife and heading for a honeymoon in Paris while the country is at war.

This week they are complaining that the same prince MBS has left for a reported good time in the Maldives (islands in the Indian Ocean) while the war is not going well.

There is, however, some good news for those who want a more decisive war. For months some of the Saudi opposition and former president General Hadi Bin Zombie and his Riyadh hotel roommates have been urging a ground invasion of Yemen. Of course Hadi and his roommates had the chance to fight a ground war when they were in Aden, but they chose to escape to the safety and comfort of Riyadh. They left the war and the suffering to the Yemeni people. The good news is that during the second and third  honeymoons of Crown Crown Prince Mohammed the ground war has finally started.

Except the wrong side is waging the ground war, and it is going in the wrong direction for the Saudis. The Houthis and their Yemeni army allies have made bold incursions into Saudi territory and held military posts. Casualties were inflicted and weapons captured. Life in some southern towns and villages has been disrupted, some areas were forced to evacuate. 
Still, the Saudis don’t seem to know how to quit while they’re not ahead. Not yet…………


Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Foreign Policy, Yemen

Camelot in Riyadh: Best and Brightest of JFK or Dumb and Dumber of MBS?……..

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“Now Prince Mohammed has swiftly accumulated more power than any prince has ever held, upending a longstanding system of distributing positions around the royal family to help preserve its unity, and he has used his growing influence to take a leading role in Saudi Arabia’s newly assertive stance in the region, including its military intervention in Yemen. In the four months since his coronation, King Salman has put Prince Mohammed in charge of the state oil monopoly, the public investment company, economic policy and the Defense Ministry…………. But some Western diplomats, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the prince and the king, say they are worried about the growing influence of the prince, with one even calling him “rash” and “impulsive.”…… After meeting with both princes at a summit meeting of Gulf nations at Camp David last month, President Obama said the younger Prince Mohammed “struck us as extremely knowledgeable, very smart.” “I think wise beyond his years,” Obama added in an interview with the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya network……………. “Being with Prince Salman every minute — can you imagine what you would have learned?”………………”

A heart-warming analysis by David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times. You’d think a new Saudi age of Camelot is about to burst upon us. With an Arabian JFK and his two wives (so far), two Jackies for one Guinevere, ready to start an era of the Best and Brightest, instead of the Dumb and Dumber. But what about Lancelot, and would the Mufti be his Merlin?
Kirkpatrick, rather reluctantly and almost shyly, notes that some other Saudi princes have “reservations” about their new robber baron. But he salvages it all with the uber-diplomatic comment of Barack Obama to the Saudi semi-official Al Arabiya network. 
He said ““struck us as extremely knowledgeable, very smart.” No kidding Barack, no doubt you’ve been reading the groveling Saudi media. No doubt Prince Mohammed is smart enough to inherit the country from his father, but I’m not sure about ‘knowledgeable’. For one, MBS is waiting for his own PT 109 opportunity in the wrong place, in Yemen. Alas, it doesn’t look like the Yemenis are willing to accommodate him: he can’t have it long distance from Riyadh. He needs to get on some new boots (instead of the beautiful Najdi sandals that I really like: نعال نيدي) and dash across the lethal border if he wants to create his own PT 109 moment.

I doubt that Kirkpatrick or other N Y Times pundits waxed as poetic about another dynastic appointed dictator named Kim Jong Un. But then he had access to much less money than MBS. The pudgy Korean has not caused as much damage to his neighborhood (with bombs and cluster bombs) so early in his career. Not yet.

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Human Right, Nazism

Arabian Reich: Arbeit Macht Frei, Public Flogging Macht Frei, Tear Gas Macht Frei………

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It is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The Nazi concentration-death camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army as it swept across Poland toward Germany in January 1945.

Sometimes I think the 1960s terms used by JFK “Let them come to Berlin“, “Ich bin ein ‘Berliner'(?)” must have sounded naive and absurd to an average Russian in Leningrad or Stalingrad or to anyone in any Soviet village east of Poland. Barely 15 years after WWII and the horrors of Operation Barbarossa. By the 1980s, however, Reagan’s “Tear down this wall…..” sounded more reasonable and plausible.

Anyway, my focus is the Middle East. The Nazis posted a cruel slogan at the entrance to their concentration camps, which housed mostly Jews but also dissidents, leftists, and other undesirables. The absurd slogan was “Arbeit Macht Frei“, something the cotton plantation owners never thought of in Old Dixie. In the Middle East, one can imagine new slogans based on that one. The Saudi princes can erect “Public Flogging Macht Frei“, or “Absolute monarchy Macht Frei“. The Egyptian regime can erect “Bullets Macht Frei“. The Bahrain rulers can erect “Tear Gas Macht Frei“, or “Kleptocrats Macht Frei“. They and the rulers of UAE can both quite reasonably erect “Foreign Mercenaries Macht Frei“. The caliphate of ISIS might put up “Concubines Macht Frei”. Tony Blair might add to his letterhead “Oil Oligarchs Macht Frei”. No irony intended………..

BTW: did you read that the British Ministry of Justice “is hoping to profit from selling its expertise to the prison service in Saudi Arabia, a country notorious for public beheadings, floggings, amputations and courts that regularly violate human rights.…………”?

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Egypt

R.I.P: Egypt Finally, Officially, and ‘Legally’ Buries the Tahrir Uprising………..

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Over the holiday here, an Egyptian court in Cairo and absolved former dictator Hosni Mubarak of charges in the killings of thousands of Egyptian civilians. The court also absolved the minister of interior, the man who hired and gave orders to the police, security agents, the goons, and assorted torturers and killers who pulled the trigger and wielded other instruments of pain and death. Not counting some of the military.

Egypt‘s Al Sisi, “elected” with almost 98% of the vote in restricted and sparsely-attended elections, said he “accepts” the decision by “his” court, which ends legal action against the former dictator. He joked that Egypt must look to the future and not the past.

Thus the cruel comedy, the thin masquerade that a successful uprising, a revolution, occurred in Egypt, is put to rest. The royal Arab princes and potentates will not be disappointed by this development which they fully expected because they have already paid its price in billions of petroleum money. Media photos showed minions of some Gulf potentates celebrating the final absolute death of the Tahrir Uprising in the court room.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Egypt, Espionage, Human Right

Takhabur: a Potent New Orwellian Arab Weapon……….

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Egyptian media can be some of the wildest in the Middle East, bar none, when it comes to toeing the official line. Remember when the once-venerable Al-Ahram, the big banana of Egyptian newspapers, doctored photos of world leader to put Hosni Mubarak at the front? They are doing even more now.

One headline I saw yesterday: “Muslim brothers caught with ‘certificates’ of Takhabur (تخابُر) with Hamas”.  (تخابُر is a broad Arabic word that can have any of several connotations: communicating; contacting; exchanging information).
‘Certificates of Takahbur‘: imagine how far you can go in telling your people how stupid you believe they are, maybe not in so many words. This “Takhabur” in Arabic is a recent twist of the term that Arab regimes (and their controlled media) have been using against their foes and against those they don’t like or suspect.
Takhabur: “communicating, exchanging news or information but also perhaps ideas” or “talking to”. You can get arrested for takhabur with The Onion or with Mad Magazine or with the CIA or the Mossad or Dhahi Khalfan, even with your next door neighbor, if they want to get you.
Anyway, they twist things to make it sound so sinister in a way that some regimes can do with impunity. The Egyptian military regime has even brought the charge of “takhabur” against president Morsi, and he was the president of the country! He was supposed to do “takhabur” with leaders and countries, just like any other head of state! Imagine how much ‘takhabur‘ Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi is doing now with oily princes and potentates? How else could he do his job?

Now they are piling on Caliph Erdogan of Turkey, but that is okay: the Turkish Caliph ensconced in his billion-dollar palace deserves it. Suddenly the Egyptians are strongly pro-Greek on the Cyprus issue and on any other issues that come to their mind. They might even award ancient Troy to the Greeks, again. The Greeks must be amused.
Takhabur. A simple Arabic word has acquired terrifying connotations and meanings in the hands of Arab depots and potentates and their security agents and kangaroo courts. Journalists, former officials, dissidents, and doubters can spend many years in prison because of that word. From the Persian Gulf to the stagnant Nile, from Manama to Cairo, the regimes are using it to get you.
Remember the word: takhabur. Other non-Arab regimes in the Middle East (Iran, Turkey, Kurds, maybe Israel?) also use their own version of it to intimidate, but it sounds so pregnant with meanings and connotations in the Arabic language. So threatening on multiple levels.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Counterrevoltion, Bahrain, Culture, History, Mecca

After Freezing the Spring: Arab Regimes are Erasing its Symbols…..

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There is something bout history and monuments and revolutions that bothers Arab regimes, be they absolute tribal monarchies or militry dictatorships or Jihadi terrorists:

In 2011, the ruling family of Bahrain wasted no time in erasing Pearl (Lulu) Square, a landmark of the capital Manama and symbol of the popular uprising. In its place they created an ugly crossroad named after the imported forces that helped crush the protests.

Now Egyptian media report on a huge parking garage being erected in Tahrir Square, symbol of the Egyptian Uprising of 2011. That upriing was killed by the old regime feloul, the Egyptian army, Egyptian Wahhabi-liberals, and Persian Gulf oil money.

But what is new here? Saudi authorities have been for years destroying monuments to that older revolution that was led by Mohammed from Mecca and Madinah fifteen centuries ago. Historical structures and monuments of early Islam, especially in Mecca, have been gradually erased to be replaced by lucrative shopping malls and 7-star hotels. A truly royal land grab. And the ultimate counter-revolution, Arab style.

Of course this is not an aberration, there is a pattern. The Jihadis, the ultimate modern counter-revolutionaries, have been busy destroying other monuments to history from Iraq to Libya .

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

 
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Arab Counterrevoltion, Egypt, GCC, U.S. Foreign Policy

Nile Chutzpah: Cairo Regime advises USA on Official Violence……

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“Egypt on Tuesday urged U.S. authorities to exercise restraint in dealing with racially charged demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri – echoing language Washington used to caution Egypt as it cracked down on Islamist protesters last year. It is unusual for Egypt to criticize such a major donor, and it was not immediately clear why the government would have taken such a step. Ties between Washington and Cairo were strained after Egyptian security forces killed hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters following the army’s ousting of freely elected President Mohamed Mursi in July 2013………..”

The regime of Generalisimo Self-Appointed Field Marshal Al Sisi Bin Coup Al Dictator regularly rails against ‘intrusion’ of NGOs, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Now it thinks it sees an opportunity to strike back at the Obama administration (and maybe the US Senate). Regime media (owned and controlled) is full of smug comments about how the USA cannot advice others on the Ferguson affair and human rights. That is, when they are not railing against some imaginary joint plot between the U.S. administration and the Muslim Brotherhood whose freely-elected regime was overthrown by Generalisimo Al Sisi. That coup of last summer was pushed for by an alliance of Egypt’s Wahhabi liberals and Mubarak veterans (feloul) and it was financed by Persian Gulf princes and potentates, mainly from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Counterrevoltion, Cairo, Egypt, Human Right

Counter-Revolution: the Pussycat, the Coyote, and a Butcher of Cairo?………

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“You say you want a revolution
Well, you know We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know We all want to change the world”  The Beatles’ “Revolution”

“A day after Egypt barred representatives of Human Rights Watch from entering the country, the group disclosed the source of the government’s alarm: a report implicating senior officials, including Egypt’s current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in what it called the “widespread and systematic” killings of protesters. Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, said Monday that it had conducted a yearlong investigation into violence that followed the military’s ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi, and found that the killings of demonstrators by the police and army forces “likely amounted to crimes against humanity.” Official statements during the killings made clear that the attacks “were ordered by the government,”………………”

Many Egyptians who write and talk on politics in public seem delusional or confused, actually both, when they talk of “revolution”. Some talk of several opposing revolutions: (1) the Tahrir “revolution” of January-February 2011; (2) the June 30 “revolution”, referring to the large protests of the opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood president Morsi on June 30, 2013, many of the protesters were calling on the army to return to take over again; (3) the July 3 military coup of 2013, when Generalisimo Al Sisi staged a coup against the man who had promoted him to minister of defense. Some deluded former Egyptian liberals (and Wahhabi liberals) called that a “revolution”. That last one, the coup, was the final nail in the coffin of the  Egyptian uprising of Tahrir Square, the final act in the counter-revolution: it was reportedly financed by money from the potentates of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Saudi princes.

The Rabi’a (Raba’a) massacre in August 2013 by the army and security forces of Al Sisi was the largest in the history of modern Egypt. More than one thousand unarmed people were reported shot and killed, and many wounded. It occurred at a square outside a mosque named for a famous early female Islamist poet of Iraq (Rabi’a Al-Adawiya). The massacres continued beyond that. Many were killed over the months after that. Almost two thousand have been sentenced to death for their political affiliations. Tens of thousands have been arrested, most of them have not been tried.

In retrospect, Hosni Mubarak was like a pussycat compared to the blood-stained coyote that Al Sisi has become. One difference is that people were not delusional under Mubarak, they knew what they had and owned up to it. These days many of them play a game of “pretend freedom”.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Counterrevoltion, Bahrain, GCC, Mercenaries, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates

Twist of Fate: Are the Saudis Hiring Foreign Forces to Face Possible Wahhabi Attacks?………

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“Saudi Arabia has deployed thousands of troops from Egypt and Pakistan along its frontier with Iraq, amid fears of invasion by the al-Qaeda splinter group that has declared a radical Islamic state across the border. Panicked by the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis), Riyadh has taken the drastic step of calling in military assistance from its close allies ……. Saudi Arabia spent an estimated GBP 35 billion on defense last year……………”

Most Arab regimes spend a lot of money on importing weapons, even though many, nay most of them face no external threat. But their focus is not defense against a foreign enemy. The priority is to keep the regimes, the ruling elites, the oligarchies, in power. The target, especially since the Arab Uprisings in 2011, has been potential domestic unrest.

Foreign mercenaries are not new in the Persian Gulf countries. Bahrain has been notorious for importing some of the nastiest of them from countries like humorless Jordan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq (mainly former Baathists), among others. The rulers of Bahrain, who are also seriously humor-challenged, need mercenaries because they refuse to hire much of their own citizens.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) have often relied on foreign military personnel, but they famously went even more international recently. The ruling potentates went ahead in 2011 and reportedly formed an elite parallel mercenary army organized by former Blackwater officials. The mercenaries are chosen from Colombia, South Africa, Australia, and other places. Colombian media even reported that country was facing a shortage of qualified military officers because of the money offered veterans by the UAE (which has very few citizens among its population).

Saudi Arabia does not face the same population problems as Bahrain or the UAE. About 15 million of its 24 million population are citizens, and thus eligible to serve in the military and security services. Yet their have been reports over the past few years of secret Saudi agreements with governments of Pakistan, Malaysia, and others to supply mercenary forces “when needed”.

Now this new report of Egyptian forces makes some sense. Egypt has a huge reserve of under-employed military personnel (all security personnel are probably needed t home these days). Egypt is not facing any foreign threats, contrary to what local media reports (unless Al Sisi goes foolish and intervenes in Libya). With many of the Muslim Brotherhood opposition either shot by the military or hanged or in prison, they can afford to send a few thousand to Riyadh.

Yet it is highly unlikely that the Al Saud will openly rely on foreign mercenaries. They can’t exactly aspire to become an important regional player and OPENLY depend on foreign mercenaries to defend the regime.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Counterrevoltion, Egypt, Health, Healthcare, Science

The International Plot against the Egyptian Military’s Miracle Drugs………

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“Hepatitis C. Virtually all of the non-A, non-B post-transfusion hepatitis described years ago in textbooks were found to be attributable to HCV after its RNA genome was cloned in the late 80s. It is estimated that there are 180 million people chronically-infected with HCV. Detection is routine and the virus is therefore largely screened out of the world’s blood supply. But individuals who have received blood or blood products before this time may have inadvertently contracted HCV. HCV is less transmissible than HBV and usually involves direct injection of blood or blood-products into the bloodstream and monogamous heterosexual couples have a low risk of contracting it from an infected mate (CDC Hepatitis C Information for Health Professionals). Most of the HCV transmission today in the developed world is among intravenous drug users, while those who experimented even only once with injectable drugs are at risk of being infected (CDC Viral Hepatitis Statistics & Surveillance). There is no vaccine for HCV and there is no expectation that an effective vaccine will be available anytime soon…………..”

Apparently these people have never heard of the new miracle drug invented by the Egyptian Army under the leadership of Field Marshal Al Sisi. Actually it is a dual-cure for both Hepatitis-C and HIV (AIDS). A leading Egyptian military scientist promised this past Spring that you can shove the drug into a kebab or kufta and eat it and get cured. The whole miracle “kebab” treatment was presented with much fanfare at a public gathering, with speeches and with General Al Sisi himself attending.

Some media, nay all media outside Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain had a field day with this army alleged invention. No report yet if the Egyptian military has plans to invent a democratic system that works for Egypt and the Arab world. But they do know a system that cures a country from wanting to go democratic.

Egypt Rejects Sisi Invention, Signs with Gilead for Hepatitis-C Cure……

Is Medical Pilgrimage in Egypt’s Future? the Army Says So about their Acne Cure………
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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