Monthly Archives: August 2011

Ali Khamenei, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Syria

From Tehran to Riyadh: of Revolutions and Selective Memories………

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      BFF

“Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei announced on Wednesday that “we are very worried about situation in Bahrain.” The Leader made the remarks as he addressed worshippers at prayers marking Eid ul-Fitr. The Leader called on people in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen to vigilantly guard their revolutions so that the arrogant powers would not hijack their revolutions. “Muslim nations whether in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, and in the rest of countries need to be vigilant today. They should not allow the victories they have gained to be hijacked by enemies.” The Leader also pointed to NATO attacks on Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, saying those countries which consider themselves as owners of the Libyan revolution are those past colonial powers who helped suppress the Libyan nation………….”

I agree with the ayatollah about Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, and Bahrain, especially Bahrain. But he forgot all about the protests and the repression in Syria. Must have been a simple lapse; people do forget one or two countries sometimes. That is also the reason why Saudi media focus on Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria, and forget all about the struggle and the repression in Bahrain.
And about those parliamentary elections next March: it would be interesting to see who is allowed to run and who isn’t.
Cheers
mhg


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Economics, Iran

Iran: Softcore Criticism vs. Hardcore Criticism of the Regime……..

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““I do not care about statistics. Every day about 2000 letters and messages are received by our office in which many complain about inflation and other problems,” the grand ayatollah told worshippers at prayers marking Eid ul-Fitr in the shrine city of Qom. As a marja taqlid (a Shia cleric regarded as a source of emulation), Makarem Shirazi also referred to cultural issues and said, “If ethical issues are undermined, the system, Islam, and Quran also suffer damages.” Elsewhere in his speech he called on officials to be open to criticism. “There is constructive criticism among these criticisms.” He added it is not correct to say that everything is good and “close our eyes to realities”…………………..”

The grand ayatollah is being gracious, conceding that people have a right to ‘criticize’ mundane things like inflation, the price of bread, gas, etc. That is normal: they do that all over the Middle East. He will probably be a little less gracious if people get to criticize a bit more hardcore issues, like the unemployment that is in double digits and much higher in truth than official data would indicate. After all, without employment people won’t be able to buy these items about whose prices they complain (like bread, gas, etc). I also suspect the cleric will be even much less gracious if people start doing some hardcore criticism, about silly things like freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and elections. He would be especially pissed off if the decide to criticize the raison d’etre for the whole system. That is a definite no-no all over the region.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, Iran, Libya, Persian-American Gulf, Racism, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy

On Libyan Aid, al-Megrahi Mystery, Schumer’s Chutzpah , Iran Air 655, and Billions of Money ………….

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“Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is calling for a halt to U.S. aid to the new Libyan government if it refuses to re-arrest Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of planning the 1998(sic) bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Schumer sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today calling on the State Department not to help the National Transitional Council (NTC) — which is struggling to stand up a government in the wake of the fall of Muammar al-Qaddafi — with either direct aid or by giving them access to frozen Qaddafi funds, unless it jails Megrahi. “If the new Libyan government continues to shield this convicted terrorist from justice, then they should not get one more cent of support from the United States,” said Schumer. “We put American lives and money on the line to help the Libyan people secure their freedom. It’s time the Libyan government lives up to its commitment to create a free and accountable society by handing over al-Megrahi so that justice can finally be done.” Megrahi was released by the Scottish government in 2009 on compassionate grounds………….”
(Actually it was 1988 not 1998)

It is tempting to say that Chuck Schumer had chutzpah, but that would be an easy shot. He is well known for that in New York and Washington.
The Western deals were done with Qaddafi. Libya gave up its search for WMD, billions were paid to families of the victims, al-Meghrahi was released by the British government (which claimed it was the Scottish regime that released him), Qaddafi’s sons were feted at the U.S. State Department, etc, etc. That is not all: some Western, and pliant Arab, media even started a little campaign of rewriting history, reviving old reports of possible Syrian and/or Iranian and/or Hezbollah and/or al-Qaeda involvement. Woops, scratch out al-Qaeda: it did not exist in 1988.
Now, with the “compensation” blood money safely in the bank accounts, with Qaddafi on the run, with a new regime in London, there is talk of “repatriating” al-Megrahi back to his Scottish homeland. After all, the Western governments and their doctors were “duped” by the Libyan tin-horn dictator into believing that Megrahi was dying. They were promised that he would die within months! Can’t trust them Arabs, even after the billions of dollars you wheedle out of them in compensation (in Arabic it is called ‘diyya‘: blood money that the killer pays to avoid execution).

Which brings me to the curious case of Iran Air Flight 655, shot down over the Persian-American Gulf in August of 1988 by a U.S warship. It was flying from Iran to Dubai with 290 civilians on board, 66 of them children. All on board were killed. Not much compensation was paid for those civilian victims, nobody was jailed or even threatened with prison. The Iranians are not even whining nearly as much about it, or maybe they are but we don’t read about it or see in or CNN, Fox, etc. No interviews with teary relatives. Besides, they were all Middle Eastern people on Iran Air 655: mostly Iranians with a few Arabs and other expendables.
I bet nobody is willing to give back the money in exchange for sending Al Megrahi back to Britain.
Cheers
mhg


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Arabian Peninsula, Corruption, Death Penalty, Human Right, Saudi Arabia, Slavery

Middle East Executions: Twenty Three Maids Waiting in a Row……….

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“And the storybook comes to a close.
Gone are the ribbons and bows.
Things to remember, places to go,
Pretty maids all in a row………..” The Eagles

Media report that twenty three Asian (Indonesian) women are awaiting the executioner’s sword on death row in Saudi Arabia. Several others, imported housemaids, already had their head chopped off. Remember Sakineh Ashtiani of Iran and all the fuss made by the Saudi-owned Arab “intellectuals” and Western media, especially the extremely righteous French media (and rightly so)? Everybody was indignant, so was I, and rightly so, until her gruesome death sentence was changed by the regime in Tehran.
Where are they now? Everybody is so silent about the plight of these numerous women, imported housemaids trapped into horrible situations in a grim society, waiting to have their heads chopped off in the Kingdom without Magic. Yet the kingdom cannot live without these millions of housemaids, and fierce bargaining goes on with the Asian government officials about their wages, work conditions, etc. They are even advertised in the newspapers for sale or “transfer” from one “owner” to another, just as they used to do in Old Virginia when a new shipment of slaves arrived from West Africa. Even Bernard Henri Levy, who was at the forefront of the Ashtiani campaign (and the Libyan campaign), is silent. Amnesty International comments but says they have “no presence” in Saudi Arabia. Of course not, Amnesty and human rights have no presence.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Libya, North Africa, WTF

Three Goals of the Libyan (Rebel) TNC, Schmucks Watching Pinocchio……….

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So far the Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC) has focused on tow main goals: (1) Securing Tripoli and the rest of Libya from the Qaddafi loyalists and cronies (although many of the TNC were Qaddafi cronies until this year) and, (2) Killing Khamis Qaddafi, if only because they have claimed killing him so many times, like every two days, then denying it. It looks like securing Libya (from the Qaddafi loyalists should be easy, there aren’t many of the left). Securing the death of Khamis Qaddafi, which the TNC rebels seem obsessed with, will be difficult.

Aljazeera quoted a TNC military leader today that over 50 thousand Libyans have been killed since the beginning of the uprising. He may be a military leader and I am not, he may be inside Libya and I am not, he is a Libyan and I am not, but I doubt very much that anywhere near that number were killed. I just KNOW it, as he should, except that he uses his emotions instead of his brain.
I suggest a third goal for the TNC: (3) Telling the truth and nothing but about what goes on inside Libya.Watching Pinocchio might help.

Oh, and make sure you add term limits in the new Libyan constitution: no more president for more than eight years. No more of the usual Arab lifetime schmucks.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, France, India, Mercenaries, US Foreign Policy, Yemen

Africa, the Arab World, the (New) New Colonialism………….

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“The African strongmen are going the way of Nkrumah, and in extreme cases Gaddafi, not Nyerere. The societies they lead are marked by growing internal divisions. In this, too, they are reminiscent of Libya under Gaddafi more than Egypt under Mubarak or Tunisia under Ben Ali. Whereas the fall of Mubarak and Ben Ali directed our attention to internal social forces, the fall of Gaddafi has brought a new equation to the forefront: the connection between internal opposition and external governments. Even if those who cheer focus on the former and those who mourn are preoccupied with the latter, none can deny that the change in Tripoli would have been unlikely without a confluence of external intervention and internal revolt. The conditions making for external intervention in Africa are growing, not diminishing. The continent is today the site of a growing contention between dominant global powers and new challengers……. The contrast with Western powers, particularly the US and France, could not be sharper. The cutting edge of Western intervention is military. France’s search for opportunities for military intervention, at first in Tunisia, then Cote d’Ivoire, and then Libya, has been above board and the subject of much discussion. Of greater significance is the growth of Africom, the institutional arm of US military intervention on the African continent………………” China and India intervene in Africa in an economic and commercial capacity. They are militarily to weak (compared to Western powers) and too ‘distant’. And they are too ‘new’ to the region, as world powers and not ethnically. The West, especially the French have always intervened militarily in Africa, except for a hiatus of a couple of decades. That hiatus was only Anglo-American: the French never stopped, as French presidents continued to send expeditions to prop up their favorite dictators. The West is back in force now, from Somalia, to Libya, to Cote D’Ivoire, to other spots overtly or covertly. Is it a new age of colonialism for the “Dark Continent”?
And speaking of Western intervention: the Arab World is not exactly free of it. From Iraq to Libya to Yemen to Lebanon to Sudan to Somalia and other places, the West is engaged against a host of foes, real or perceived. Like Africa which it overlaps, the feeble and corruptly managed Arab world can’t seem to get its (shit) act together, persistently inviting outside intervention: intervention from the West, Israel, Turkey, and Iran. The whole region is like a vacuum wittingly or unwittingly begging for intervention (prostrate and legs wide open, I’d say if I were rude and crude, which I ain’t). Some of the potentates even hire foreign mercenaries from South Asia and form foreign legions of Colombians and Australians and Blackwater denizens, among others. The Arab world is supposed to have been educating at least three generations since the wave of independence in the 1940s. Yet in the past several decades the Arabs have never been less independent than they are now and arguably never less ably led.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, France, Libya

Libyan Rebels Shoot Khamis Qaddafi for Tenth Time, Turns Out to be Sarkozy Dressed as Beau Geste…..

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“Hours earlier, Mahdi al-Harati — the vice chairman of the rebels’ Military Council, the military wing of the National Transitional Council — told CNN that Khamis Gadhafi died after a battle with rebel forces Sunday night in northwest Libya, between the villages of Tarunah and Bani Walid…………” CNN News

Later, as The Onion would, or should, report, the Libyan rebels of the TNC announced that they made a “normal everyday honest” mistake about having killed Khamis Qaddafi for the tenth time. They had actually shot Nicolas Sarkozy who was disguised as Beau Geste in the uniform of French special forces sergeant.

Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Middle East, Water Wars

Iranians Protest for Water and the Environment ………….

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“There have been several demonstration in Tabriz, in the province of Eastern Ajerbaijan, and in Orumieh in the province of Western Azerbaijan. The police have used tear gas and plastic bullets to disperse the demonstrators. According to unconfirmed reports, dozens of people have been injured or arrested. ………The reason for the demonstrations has been the rapid deterioration of Lake Orumieh, which has been drying up, fueling strong reaction from Azerbaijanis and environmentalists alike. Emergency legislation proposed pumping a large volume of water into the lake, but was voted down in the Majles, also prompting angry protests by the deputies from the two Azerbaijan provinces as well as other provinces in the area. Jamshid Ansari, a reformist deputy from Zanjan, said that addressing the problem of Lake Orumieh is a national problem, and if not addressed properly, 18 of Iran’s provinces will be negatively affected. Twenty-two Majles deputy have written a letter to Majles Speaker Ali Larijani stating that the government must take responsibility for the political, social, and economic consequences of Lake Orumieh’s deteriorating state..…………”

A first in the Middle East, as far as I know: a protest that has to do with water and an environmental issue. This type of protest doesn’t get as much coverage outside Iran, mainly because it ‘supposedly’ doesn’t make a direct political point. But it does. It gives us a brief look into two serious future Middle East issues: water and the environment (and pollution). Many people, but not most are aware of the water issue. Hardly anybody worries about the environment.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Corruption, Economics, Human Right, Libya, Saudi Arabia

Common Arab Epitaph: Brother Leader, Very Rich but Very Cheap…………

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“His name of choice was the Brother Leader, though his nearly 42 years of rule were rarely brotherly, and his leadership left a country with plentiful oil in shambles……… Given Colonel Qaddafi’s noted flamboyance, the residences of the House of Qaddafi were not quite as grand as people might have supposed. They lacked the faux grandeur of Saddam Hussein’s marbled palaces. There are no columns that bear the colonel’s initials, or fists cast to resemble his hands or river-fed moats with voracious carp. But in Baghdad and Tripoli, the physical remains of the leader’s rule still projected the distance between power and powerlessness. As rebels and residents started to pick through the detritus of the Qaddafis’ lives in recent days, there was a sense of laying claim to a country commandeered by the Arab world’s longest-ruling leader…………“For somebody who’s very rich, he was very cheap,”……..”

“For somebody who’s very rich, he was very cheap”, he said: one can say that about others: the Bin Ali, Mubarak, the al-Assad, al-Khalifa and other potentates not yet faced with the moment of truth.
Of course, many Arab “brother leaders” or “their majesties” are so rich mainly for the same reason that most of their people are poor: they need more of the resources for themselves, their extended families, and their cronies. I mean, for example if everybody in, say, Saudi Arabia was above poverty level then someone like Prince al-Waleed would be unlikely to be on the Forbes list of the richest billionaires. When there are so many thousands of princes and their supporting retainers and sycophants, well, there will be less for the rest.
(FYI: Forbes Magazine every year lists the source of the prince’s wealth as “Self-Made”. You’d think he flipped burgers are the DQ or started in the royal mail room).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Culture, Egypt, GCC, Gulf states, Human Right, Humor, Jordan, Libya, Persian-American Gulf

On Gulf Intellectuals, Tribal Liberals and Arab Uprisings, the Edifying Hashtag, Oxymoronic Humor………..

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“What is interesting is that many (Gulf) clerics and shaikhs played the sectarian game, and did not try to distinguish the political issue from the sectarian issue. I was surprised at this huge amount of hatred among some of these people, and these hatreds were reflected in their positions and their statements and their relations with ‘others’. It is sad to say that the Arab Spring has deteriorated to civil war and strife in places like Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Syria……… Unfortunately the ‘intellectual’ in the Gulf region could not break away from what has been ordained for him, just as he can’t break away from his sector or tribe or personal interest. In Saudi Arabia, I have not seen any brave position from the Islamist or ‘liberal’ intellectuals regarding the events in Bahrain, these Islamist and ‘liberal’ intellectuals were open and shameful reflections of the mouthpieces of the regimes…………..”

Professor al-Rasheed is well-acquainted with the history and ‘cultural’ life, such as it is, of Saudi Arabia (especially) and the Gulf region. She is right about most of the GCC so-called ”intellectuals”:


  • Most Gulf Islamists, especially the Salafis, essentially nurse from the Saudi teats. Most of the time I suspect they are basically a ‘fifth column’ for the Wahhabi state, wittingly or unwittingly. (I do have moments when I feel more gracious toward them).

  • Many Gulf ‘intellectuals’, but not all, be they Islamist or otherwise, are palace ‘intellectuals’, sycophants of one faction or another of the palace. Often, they are sycophants of the Saudi palace, either directly or through the tribe or through other affiliations. I once called them “tribal liberals” last spring.

  • I suspect some Gulf intellectuals think they are “liberals” if they carry a laptop around, sprinkle their speech with a few English terms (they/we especially love the term “hashtag”, it is so edifying) and believe women should ‘eventually’ have the right to drive but in due time. All in due time. Let the princes decide: they know best.

  • All Gulf ‘intellectuals’, shy away from criticizing public beheadings in the streets of Riyadh, maybe because those who are beheaded are mostly poor foreign migrant workers (men and women), but most likely because they shy from upsetting the potentates.

  • Most, but not all, Gulf ‘intellectuals’ also believe that people in places like Syria and Libya should revolt against their oppressors but not people in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Yemen. They take their cue from their regimes, or from the Saudi regime.

  • Most Gulf ‘intellectuals’ were cool and tepid toward the uprisings in Tunisia and especially in Egypt, until the palace accepted the change. Then they were suddenly all for the people’s uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, after the fact.

  • Most Gulf ‘intellectuals’ were quiet about Syria, until the “palace” and princes started opining, and they all fell in line.

  • Most Gulf ‘intellectuals’ were always for the regime and against the people in Bahrain, because the “palace” was clearly on the side of the despots: it put troops on the ground to prove it. In this case, they are unfortunately divided by sector.
  • Most ‘intellectuals’ on my Gulf fiercely support the right of people to self determination and free elections in places like Iran, Syria, Libya, Gaza (but not the West Bank), but they don’t think any other peoples in the Middle East need to vote in free elections or talk freely against their rulers.

  • There are real free-thinking ‘intellectuals’ on my Gulf: I have known some of them and I read for some of them. And no, it is not an oxymoron to say ‘Gulf intellectual’, anymore than it is to say ‘Egyptian intellectual’ or ‘Jordanian intellectual’ or ‘Iranian intellectual’ or ‘French intellectual’. It is not even nearly as oxymoronic as saying “Jordanian humor”. More on this last point in another post.

Cheers
mhg


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