Category Archives: Media

Arab Revolutions, Media, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen

Unequal Media Wars, Proxy Wars in the Middle East……….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

The Saudi Wahhabi opposition (Mujtahidd and others who support ISIS) recently claimed that the new defense minister Mohammed Bin Salman, the crown prince to the crown prince, has ‘purchased’ a hundred thousand Twitter accounts, possibly other social media as well. That he plans to hire many security workers to man them and use them. It claims he plans to use them to build up himself in the media. That is not new, some of the top potentates, as well as the most vociferous fundamentalists now ‘own’ millions of followers. 

Anyway, right now the media wars for the West are being won by the Arab princes. Hands down. When it comes to media control and public opinion, billions of dollars make a big difference, especially in influencing Western opinion (but not so much non-Gulf Arab opinion). That is why the Saudi and Qatari potentates have spent billions acquiring existing major traditional Arab media outlets and establishing new ones. From Asharq Alawsat (owned by King Salman) to Al-Hayat (owned by prince Khaled Bin Sultan) to Alarabiya (Saudi royal in-law) to Al-Jazeera and Al-Quds Al-Arabi (Qatari royals) to Middle East Online (UAE) to Al-Arab (owned by Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal but searching for a home outside the Gulf after being ejected from Bahrain), to LBC, among others. And many others.

Now major Western outlets and news agencies often grab anything headlined by Saudi and Qatari networks and magnify them as ‘truths’. By the time they are bounced around the globe and return to where they started from, they ‘are’ quoted as ‘the truth’. A neat trick. It is like the claim that in Yemen, ‘loyalists’ to deposed president Hadi Al Zombie (actually mostly Southern Independence and AQAP) are fighting the Houthi-Saleh alliance on his behalf. Or the myth that Yemen’s war is a proxy war between saudi Arabia and Iran: except that it is the Saudis who are directly bombing Yemen (no proxies there) with Western munitions including cluster bombs. There are no proxies there now, unless the rented Sudanese and Senegalese and Egyptian troops land in Yemen. But then some clever reader might ask: and who are the Saudis acting as proxies for?

Initially the Houthis were not Iranian proxies or allies either: they had their own agenda. Colonel Saleh certainly is not: he was a close Saudi ally for years, even though he is a Zaidi, (or Shi’a) as Western media keep mentioning. But now the Houthis have moved closer to the Iranians for practical reasons, so they are Iranian-backed, but it is still farfetched to call them proxies or stooges.

Yet references to the legend of ‘proxy’ wars in Yemen and Syria continue in the media………

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
[email protected]

France, Hate Speech, Islamophobia, Media

Garry Trudeau: We Are NOT All Charlie Hebdo…………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“Garry Trudeau, the Pulitzer Prize-winning satirical cartoonist behind Doonesbury, says his fellow satirists at Charlie Hebdo “wandered into the realm of hate speech.” Trudeau made the remark during his acceptance speech of the George Polk Awards in Journalism, according to Peter Bale, the head of the Center for Public Integrity. “Free speech… becomes its own kind of fanaticism,” Trudeau also reportedly said, adding that the job of satirists is to punch up, not punch down…………”

This point of view is not new, others have expressed it during the international cacophony following the terrorist attacks in Paris. But now someone, a great one, at the top of the business of satire has spoken. Funny, it doesn’t sound like blasphemy, either.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
[email protected]

Arab League, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Humor, Media

Arab Media Outlets: a Rainbow from the Mad to the Angry to the AIPAC to the Smart…….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

New Arab media sprout almost every day. Both online and offline. I am only listing some with the word “Arab” in them. Otherwise there are more, many many more. Briefly, here are some that exist now, some that will exist, some that should exist, and some that should not exist:

Al-Quds Al-Arabi (=Arab Jerusalem):London-based. Used to be Qatari-funded but pro-Palestinian. Now totally Qatari-owned and nicely sectarian.
New Arab: sounds like Qatari or Emirati-funded propaganda website. I would guess more Qatari, tentatively.
Free Arabs: Not really ‘free’, me thinks. U.S. based, a bit cutesy. Seems more like it should be renamed AIPAC Arab or some other pro-Likud or Mujahideen Khalq or Neoconservative funded group.
AlArabiya: owned by an in-law of the Saudi royal family. Has close ties with Asharq Alawsat which is owned by Saudi King Salman.
AlArab:news network owned by Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (he sued Forbes for underestimating his wealth). Now looking for a home base after being kicked out of Bahrain on its first and last day of broadcasting.
Angry Arab: I don’t know who the hell funds this one. Almost certainly self-funded from the sale of non-Israeli hummus.
Mad Arab: partly owned by Alfred E. Neuman and his wife.
Arab Garlic: partly owned by The Onion but based in Gilroy, California.
Humorless Arab: you’d think it is a Jordanian outlet, but t goes deeper than tat……
Pissed off Arab: just about anybody between Bahrain and Casablanca who is not a ruler, relative of a ruler, or minion of a ruler.
Stoned Arab: almost certainly headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Dumb Arab: probably based and operated by the League of Arab Nations (Arab League).
Smart or Thinking Arab: in exile, in prison, dead, or ruling the rest of them.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
[email protected]

Iran, Israel, Media, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Washington Post Editors Join the Lobby to Derail a Nuclear Deal………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“AS THE Obama administration pushes to complete a nuclear accord with Iran, numerous members of Congress, former secretaries of state and officials of allied governments are expressing concern about the contours of the emerging deal. Though we have long supported negotiations with Iran as well as the interim agreement the United States and its allies struck with Tehran, we share several of those concerns and believe they deserve more debate now — before negotiators present the world with a fait accompli…………….”
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Caliphate, Jihadis, Jordan, Media

Marvel Comics to Recruit the Heroic Homeric King of Jordan………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“He’s ex-special forces and he cuts a mean figure in his combats, but now the internet is turning Jordan’s King Abdullah II into a warrior-king – a story only very loosely based on the facts. King Abdullah promised a swift reaction to the killing of a pilot by Islamic State – Jordan bombed IS positions and executed two Iraqi prisoners. The news cycle also highlighted the king’s hands-on military background, and one of the most-shared images is a photo (shown above) posted on the official Royal Hashemite Court Facebook page. It has attracted about 5,000 likes – but is actually an old photo that was posted on the the royal court’s official Instagram account eight months ago………..”

American mainstream media always go over the top, overshoot the target at the beginning when they initially focus on a foreign leader. He is either all evil (Putin, Chavez, Castro in past years) or all goodness (Netanyahu, Netanyahu, Netanyahu, King of Jordan). They quickly rush into bestowing accolades or declaring virtual war on foreign leaders.

King Abdullah of Jordan has been raised this week to mythic levels by both the U.S. media and by some humorless Jordanian social media fans, possibly freelancers. Suddenly the cable channels are waxing poetic about this Homeric king, how he ordered quick retaliation, how he led the air raids on ISIS (actually a stupid thing for an authoritarian king to do, but he is too smart to do it). How he tipped the wing of his jet over the tribal home of the murdered pilot Al Kassasbeh.

Even Bibi Netanyahu doesn’t get such accolades nor raised to such mythic levels, not even inside the house of his most avid groupies, the U.S. Congress. Well, I take that last sentence back……
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Caliphate, Iraq, Media, Syria, Terrorism

Seeking the Caliphate: Advice to Wayward Journalists and Concubines…….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

Kenji Goto of Japan was beheaded today, as seemed inevitable if the ISIS Caliphate did not receive the freed Sajida Al Rishawi. It is becoming gradually, and painfully, obvious that two types of travelers, fellow travelers, now head into harm’s way at their own risk. They should know the potential consequences by now. These two are:

  • Foreign journalists who seek information or a scoop or glory in harm’s way. They should know by now that these Wahhabi cutthroats go by identity and have no respect for non-combatants. A foreign journalist is the same to them as a foreign soldier. Just stop doing it, and if you do go in, be ready to bear the consequences. If I go there I fully expect to get beheaded, why shouldn’t these foreign journalists expect the same? Just don’t do it.
  • Foreign women who seek their glory in warming the beds of the cutthroats. They should by now know the consequences: if you get in, you are in for the long haul.
  • If you want to report on human tragedy there are many other places that need world attention more than Iraq and Syria. Go to North Africa, or the Sahel, or Yemen, or Pakistan: seek your resurrection and glory elsewhere. Just stay the hell out of Syria and Iraq. Ditto if you are a European woman who wants to shack up with Jihadists. 

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Hezbollah, Lebanon, Media, Uncategorized, Whistleblowers

Hezbollah’s Mysterious Eager Talkative Whistleblower Commanders………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“Around a kitchen table in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a midlevel Hezbollah commander moved empty coffee cups and a plastic water bottle around a cell phone, demonstrating how his men repelled an assault by what he said were Islamic State fighters along Lebanon’s border with Syria……..Sporting a neatly trimmed beard, weathered face, and thick khaki cargo pants, this commander, now in his 40s, first fought for Hezbollah during the group’s operations against Israel, when small teams of fighters carried out clandestine cross-border raids. The current war he’s fighting, against rebels trying to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, is much different………. But just as Hezbollah has changed the Syrian war, the conflict has also changed Hezbollah. The organization has become much larger, and its fighters have received the training that only involvement in a long conflict can provide. But at the same time, in some ways, the party is becoming unwieldy and more vulnerable to corruption and infiltration………..”

It says: “Around a kitchen table in Beirut’s southern suburbs“: a cute American touch. Around a kitchen table in the suburbs where Hezbollah is alleged to be entrenched. There have  been several of these anonymous Hezbollah blabbermouths in recent months, all eager to let it all pour out for some Western reporter who often can’t understand Arabic and can’t tell a Lebanese accent from a proverbial hole in the ground.

This Abu Ali: a cute local ethnic touch picking that name, no doubt a ‘nickname’ suggested by some amenable ‘locals’. Somehow it reminds me of Tom Friedman’s favorite Arab cab driver. Abdo in Cairo, Abed in Beirut, Abul Abed in humorless Amman (and maybe Abboudi in Baghdad and Abu Dong in Beijing).

I wonder if he was truly a forties-something Hezbollah ‘commander’ or just a pretender. I can’t imagine the Party allowing its commanders to talk openly to Western media about sensitive issues. Not even seasoned commanders. They probably suspect that some Western correspondents are Mossad agents. This ‘commander’ could be a March 14 minion, he could be Mossad, he could be a cross-dressing actress for that matter. He could be some clever Lebanese scammer doing it for the money. I am not sure, but there have been so many of these improbable blabbing ‘commanders’ of Hezbollah in Western newspapers that I take each and every one with a grain of salt. To be polite. Unless Hezbollah sent to them to implant certain ideas.

And these whistleblowers seem to only talk to Western media correspondents, mainly those hostile to Hezbollah.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

[email protected]

Al Aqeda, Arab Revolutions, Cairo, Media, Muslims, Saudi Arabia

Friedman Dumps Faithful Abdo for Two Saudi Intellectuals…….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, one of the most respected Arab journalists, wrote Monday in his column in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: “Protests against the recent terrorist attacks in France should have been held in Muslim capitals, rather than Paris, because, in this case, it is Muslims who are involved in this crisis and stand accused. … The story of extremism begins in Muslim societies, and it is with their support and silence that extremism has grown into terrorism that is harming people. It is of no value that the French people, who are the victims here, take to the streets………….. “Muslims need to ‘upgrade their software,’ which is programmed mainly by our schools, television and mosques — especially small mosques that trade in what is forbidden,” Egyptian intellectual Mamoun Fandy wrote in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat…………”

Friedman has finally dumped his all-wise Arab taxi driver. Abdo in Cairo, Abed in Beirut, Abul-Abed in humorless Jordan have all been ditched in favor of something new (at least new to me). Something he considers loftier (I disagree on this one). Friedman has settled on the prototype of great Arab thinker and intellectuals. And where did he find both? In a newspaper owned by Saudi Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Yep, in Prince Salman’s Asharq Alawsat. That font of intellectual power.

Al-Rashed, who is “one of the most-respected Arab journalists” but only in Riyadh and the Gulf states. He used to be the editor in chief of Asharq Alawsat, and is now general manager of Saudi semi-official Alarabiya network but also moonlights in Asharq Alawsat. Both parts of the vast Saudi royal media that spans the Middle East and Europe. Mr. Fandy is ‘very close’ to the Saudis. I remember him mainly for ranting during the late Mubarak months, maybe 2010 0r 2009, about the Muslim Brotherhood members of the tame parliament being Iranian agents and that they should not be allowed in the puppet Mubarak parliament. Apparently he thought that parliament was not puppet enough (the next one will surely be puppet enough). I mean, you can’t get any more intellectual than that.
Now one of them wants a million-man Arab march, but of course a march not in Saudi Arabia, the incubator of Wahhabism. I recall last time a million Arabs marched was in Cairo in 2011. They were eventually betrayed and the old Mubarak regime is back in power, even more beholden to Saudi and UAE money.

Besides, it is impossible to get any prominent Arabs, besides Mahmoud Abbas, to publicly claim that “Je suis Charlie”. Almost universally Arabs believe that Charlie Hebdo blasphemed the Prophet, which it did of course (the French are deep into blaspheming, and not just against Islam). Unless Friedman and his “intellectual” pals can get Generalissimo Al Sisi and a certain ailing old king to set the tone by joining the march. The palace muftis can also tag along for the ride.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

[email protected]

Arab Politics, France, Media, Saudi Arabia

Raif Badawi: Tous les dirigeants arabes sont Charlie……..

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“Saudi Arabian rights activist Raif Badawi has been publicly flogged for insulting Islam despite international outcry over the sentence handed down by a court in the conservative kingdom, Amnesty International and his wife said. The flogging Friday in Jeddah was the first of 20 such sessions imposed by a Saudi court after Badawi’s 2014 conviction. He was arrested after creating an online forum in 2008 that his wife says was meant to encourage discussion about faith……….Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, said the video was difficult to watch. “It’s a scene I cannot describe. It was horrible,” she said from Canada. “Every lash killed me……….”

Some of the Middle East potentates and dictators rode the Charlie Hebdo bandwagon. Some of them sent leaders, officials, or had mock marches in their capitals. All in support of Charlie, that is Charlie Hebdo, a magazine I occasionally browse online, a magazine they would never allow in their own countries. Solidarity with a magazine they all think should not be allowed to publish anywhere in the world. Others were more discreet about the whole affair.

They arrest journalists, writers, and common citizens who openly speak. Not “blasphemy”, just criticism of government and its oligarchs.

Now they ride the bandwagon of “freedom of the press”, as they ‘celebrate’ the defense of free speech in Paris, only in Paris. From the Persian-American Gulf to the Nile River. At the same time they arrest more people at home, and they sentence more free speakers to prison on trumped up charges, and they sentence people to internal and external exile, and they publicly flog free speakers in their countries. M. Hollande and Mr. cameron never protest such travesties. And the freedom-loving Western leaders keep arming them with the weapons needed to keep up the repression. In exchange for some nominal fee………

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

[email protected]

Arab Politics, Lebanon, Media

New Decency in the Middle East: the Potentates Acquire Friedman……….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   KuwaitCox2

I think Thomas Friedman, the erstwhile liberal globalist columnist (that was many years ago), may have become a fully-owned subsidiary of the Al Nahayan Brothers or some other potentates.
In his most recent column, speaking of “decent places” where Friedman can stay at 7-star hotels and have access to the kleptocratic absolute tribal potentates who seek to liberate places like Syria and Libya and Yemen for freedom and democracy. Never mind that regime critics are imprisoned or sent into internal and external exile.

Surprisingly, Friedman also mentions Lebanon as a decent place. It may be, but I suspect he means his own “comfort zone” in the Wahhabi-ized regions that are owned by Hariri and the Saudis and the March 14 bloc. Definitely not the regions of Lebanon that defeated the Israeli IDF twice. These latter would be mainly in the two souths: South Lebanon and South Beirut. And we know who dominates these regions.
Odd, this time he never mentions the name of the taxi driver who drove him from the airport in the UAE, nor what they discussed. Let me think. The choices from his past visits are usually between: Abed in Lebanon, Abdu in Egypt, Abu El Abed in Ramallah, el Obud in the Gulf, Abu Dong (only in Beijing)………….

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]