Monthly Archives: September 2011

Anti-Semitism, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Cairo, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Middle East, Muslims, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, US Foreign Policy

The Turks are Coming: Erdogan as a Softer Gentler Ahmadinejad?…………..

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      BFF

“Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday fired his visit to post-revolution Tunisia with the kind of trademark warning to Israel that has earned him hero status on his “Arab Spring tour.” After a rapturous welcome in Cairo confirmed the Turkish strongman’s soaring regional popularity, Erdogan came to Tunisia where the wave of pro-democracy revolts sweeping the Arab world all began. He said that Israel could not do whatever it wanted in the eastern Mediterranean and that Turkish warships could be there at any moment. “Israel cannot do whatever it wants in the eastern Mediterranean. They will see what our decisions will be on this subject. Our navy attack ships can be there at any moment,” Erdogan told a news conference shortly after arriving in Tunis………“Relations with Israel cannot normalize if Israel does not apologize over the flotilla raid, compensate the martyrs’ families and lift the blockade of Gaza,” Erdogan said. Ankara said it was prepared to escort any future Gaza-bound ship with naval ships……..”

Interesting how the popularity of the non-Arab neighbor leaders soars with the tempo of their anti-Israeli rhetoric. Long ago, there were the Soviets, (although it is hard imagining anyone, even Arabs, getting excited about an old fart like Brezhnev or the dour Kosygin). Then along came Ahmadinejad who went beyond his Iranian predecessors and adopted the old Arab and anti-Semitic theme of Holocaust-baiting. He became wildly popular on the Arab street until the vast semi-official Saudi media, which dominates Arab airwaves and owns most Arab TV screens, started working on him and on their favorite theme of sectarian divisiveness. Ahmadinejad’s other problem is that he represents a theocratic system of governance that most Arabs, be they Sunni or Shi’a or Episcopalian, reject (just as most Arabs reject a system of absolute tribal repressive monarchy). Few Arabs, and probably few Iranians, like the idea of supreme clerical rule.
So now there is a persistent vacuum of leadership in the Arab world, the type of vacuum Ahmadinejad himself had talked about in the past. The Al Saud have tried to fill that vacuum of leadership, to inherit the old regional mantle of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt that nobody could claim. The Saudis have failed even more than the Iranian mullahs, and for the same reason: they both represent regressive regimes, anomalies in this day and age. Iran is a repressive theocracy with quasi-democratic elements; Saudi Arabia is an even more repressive absolute one family dynasty where they pretend that the Quran is their ‘constitution’ while in fact it is the whims and greed of the ruling family that is the ‘constitution’.
Into the vacuum steps Turkey, newly reinvigorated both politically and economically. The Turks have long thought that they belonged in Europe; that their prosperity depended on being part of Europe. Events since the establishment of the Euro Zone indicate that the Turks can do fine without Europe, tyvm. Besides, the agnostic Europeans have a hard time shedding their ethnocentric ‘religious’ and racist prejudices and all the fears of the Siege of Vienna.
Having been rejected by Europe, the Turks have rediscovered their old domain, the Arab World, now the “sick man of the world”. They have also discovered that certain tweaks of their relationship with Israel can be wildly popular on the Arab street, if not in Arab palaces. The Turks are mindful of the growing new rivalry with their old Iranian rivals for places like Iraq and Syria (and possibly the Gulf). The Turks have an even better card: they have a democratic system of government that only two Arab states come even near to matching. And they know when to raise the rhetoric against Israel and when to tone it down, with the help of the Israeli right wing.
Then there is NATO………..
Cheers
mhg
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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Britain, France, Libya, NATO, North Africa

NATO and the Arab World: Are Happy Days Here Again? When Potentates are Divine and Groveling is Hip…….

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“NATO planes are still in the air and bombing targets over Libya, and Moammar Gadhafi is still on the loose. Nonetheless, NATO is taking something of a victory lap in the wake of an operation that broke new ground for the military alliance……….. Throughout the conflict, NATO has insisted that its actions are limited to supporting the U.N. resolution that calls for protecting civilians and enforcing an arms embargo. But NATO certainly pushed the boundaries, and critics say NATO ended up providing close air support for anti-Gadhafi rebels. To most observers, NATO was clearly taking the rebel side in a civil war and backing efforts to oust Gadhafi. Those critics worry that NATO risks becoming an armed service provider for the U.N. and other allies. That job description is a long way from what NATO still insists is its core, founding mission: to protect its members’ territory and population…….”

A few decades after the last European imperialists departed the Arab world, militarily speaking, they are back. The major, the only imperialist powers that ruled the Arabs for decades are back to their old turf. That would be the British and the French. Interesting that the British leader (a minority leader) comes from the Conservative (Tory) Party of Winston Churchill but he is hardly Churchill-esqu, and the French president du jour comes from the conservative ranks as well, but he is hardly de Gaulle-esque. But they are here in Libya and looking speculatively toward Syria (while completely ignoring Yemen and Bahrain).
 
Mr. Cameron is doing an Allenby, or is it a Kitchener? While the strutting Sarkozy is more ambitious, if more delusional, and is apparently going for a Bonaparte. Maybe Berlusconi is also dreaming of the old Roman Province of Africa but he is a bit late. Now we can say that NATO, or various parts of it, control the skies and the seas and the land of almost the whole Arab World, save for a sliver in Gaza and a very iffy Syria that is also teetering, and parts of Lebanon. Now NATO also controls all of the Middle East, save for these mentioned parts and theocratic Iran (remember that Turkey is part of NATO and Israel is practically an honorary member).

All that because the corrupt Arab system, and not just the League of Arab States, has failed the Arab peoples for decades. There was a time, decades ago, when Arabs were hopeful and had expectations of something better. Maybe they were delusional, but they had optimism and hope. In recent years, they have been reduced to bowing to potentates and absolute monarchs and dictators. It is now cool, nay it is hip, in much of the Arab world to bow and grovel to the potentates. One, or perhaps two, of these potentates are increasingly assuming the air of something beyond statesmanship, more like quasi-divinity, egged on by their all pervasive vast dynastic media that control the Arab skies and waves and the squads of thugs and mercenaries.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Iraq, nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, War on Iran, WTF

Nuclear Iran: Condi Rice’s Mushroom Cloud 2.0……….

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“Like the United States, they voiced particular alarm at Iran’s decision to move higher-grade uranium enrichment to an underground bunker — heightening their suspicions of its aims. “The absence of a plausible economic or commercial rationale for so many of the nuclear activities now being carried out in Iran, and the growing body of evidence of a military dimension to these activities give grounds for grave concern about Iran’s intentions,” British Ambassador Simon Smith said on behalf of London, Berlin and Paris. Davies said current IAEA monitoring of Iranian nuclear sites might provide some warning should Iran decide to “break out” and use its enriched uranium stockpile to develop nuclear bomb capability, but “that will come too late.”…………..”

Now it is: the plausibility, stupid! So, I had to go back to the earlier case: remember Iraq and Saddam and the smoking gun and the famous mushroom cloud? Here are some memorable quotes from the halcyon days of 2002-2003:

  • “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” –National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (2002)
  • “It’s a slam-dunk case!” –CIA Director George Tenet, discussing WMD and the case for war during a meeting in the Oval Office, Dec. 21, 2002
  • “We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” –Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (2003)
  • “We know he’s been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” –Vice President Dick Cheney(2003)
  • WEF?—-> “I think the burden is on those people who think he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are.” –White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, July 9, 2003
  • “British intelligence has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.” –President Bush, 2003
  • “King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia repeatedly exhorted the United States to “cut off the head of the snake” by launching military strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables….” Reuters (2010)
  • “The release of the BPC report in late June, and the Post op-ed today, coincide roughly with a revealing and important diatribe from the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al-Otaiba, who said this week that the UAE wouldn’t be unhappy at all if the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear program. “I think it’s a cost-benefit analysis,” said Otaiba, the representative of a notorious kleptocracy in Abu Dhabi…..” The Nation

Yada, yada, yada. Which in itself does not mean that the Iranians are not interested in nuclear weapons. It does mean, however, that Western intelligence can be totally stupid and can totally fuck up just a they did in Iraq. It does mean that some Iranian exile groups can also be self-serving in pushing the “nuclear bomb” issue, given that their intelligence sources are unreliable at best. There is a lot of fog around the Iranian nuclear program, some of it created deliberately by the Iranian regime itself and some of it, I suspect, by Western governments and their intelligence sources. Some of this fog is a result of ignorance and some of it is deliberate, on both sides.
Cheers
mhg


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Gulf states, Iran, Middle East, nuclear Iran, nuclear wepoans, WTF

On Bushehr Nuclear Power, Zaroastrian and Royal Pagan Rites on my Gulf of Madness……..

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“Iran has condemned the “negative” position of the Gulf GCC which had criticized the Iranian “provocations” toward some Arab states in the Gulf. The spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, Ramin Mehmanprast that the “regional policies of the Islamic Republic has always been one of mutual respect, good neighborliness, and noninterference……Regrettably some have waged a campaign against Iran…….. He considered that the GCC ministers expressing their deep worry about developments in the Iranian nuclear issue” an unnecessary thing……..”

Okay: the “GCC” ministers have criticized Iran’s nuclear program, just as the new Bushehr plant is now providing electric power. The Iranians interpret the IAEA reports different from the way Western powers interpret them (the glass half-full vs. the glass half-empty syndrome). As for me, I have no idea if the glass is half-full or half-empty: there is an important difference, depending on which half is empty and which is full and taking into consideration one of Newton’s Laws. I do hope the Iranians are right and there will be no nuclear weapons in the Middle East (except in Israel), but I have my doubts on this issue. I would dread the prospect of a nuclear arms race between the mullahs in Tehran and the potentates in Abu Dhabi. I also wonder if mullahs would lie to us? In any case, nuclear technology has a logic of its own, sort of like when……..oh well, no sense getting obscene here.
What is
 intriguing in this brief and ordinary report from a daily newspaper in my home town on my Gulf, is the unrelated picture and the caption it added to this report. This picture below is captioned with the words “Iranian Zaroastrians perform their religious rites at the Temple
of  Fire in Tehran”.
    Also sprach the mullahs?
To
 foreign eyes it looks quite innocent, maybe even quaint and cute (as it does to me in fact in a different context). Now WTF does the photo have to do with the nuclear program? This is something that divisive semi-official Saudi media outlets like Alarabiya or Asharq Alawsat often publish, not a daily that claims some remnant of the old bygone pre-Salafi liberalism of my hometown. In the Gulf of Madness, such photo and caption only serve to fan flames and divisions these days. Before you know it, there will be retaliation: some Saudi princes will start bowing to al-Lat or Hubal of the good old pagan Jahiliya days, or some Egyptian expatriates who have gone native will start worshiping a Pharaoh again (that era may be over now but there are plenty of princes available). In this age of confessional and sectarian tensions stoked by irresponsible potentates and their retainers……………..
(I found the photo rather cute: men and women performing their common rites. WTF is wrong with that?)
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Britain, Corruption, Mercenaries, Weapons deals

Gulf Arms Race: the Best Armed Foreign Mercenaries, it is the Commission, Stupid!………

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“At the Defence Security and Equipment International arms fair in London’s Excel Centre, there is no shortage of options for dishing out bad days, weeks, months and whole lifetimes. The Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, addressed the delegates yesterday morning, extending a warm welcome to the various invitees, among them military procurement officers from Angola, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The 65 national delegations asked to buy weapons in London include 14 regimes defined as “authoritarian” by human rights groups, who have highlighted the use of British arms in suppressing opposition movements in the Middle East……….. Saudi Arabia is by far the biggest buyer of British weapons and also the largest importer of arms globally. Saudi contracts earned the UK about £300m last year, according to arms trade analysts the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute……………”

So, all this means that the citizen of the UAE and Saudi Arabia is the best armed citizen anywhere in the whole wide world. Funny, they don’t look it: I suppose I should correct and say that the UAE foreign mercenary is the best armed foreign mercenary anywhere in the world.
According to SIPRI, it now looks like Saudi Arabia is the biggest arms importer in the world. The United Arab Emirates was the biggest Arab arms importer and the second largest arms importer in the world for several years, but no more. The UAE has less than one million citizens (plus a few million temporary foreign laborers) while Saudi Arabia probably has some 15 million citizens (plus millions of temporary foreign laborers). Now the potentates in Abu Dhabi will try harder to surpass the potentates in Riyadh. They certainly can afford it more than Riyadh can. That also means that some Saudi prince(s) will collect billions in commissions (called bribes in impolite and crude company, but I won’t stoop to that), much more than their Emirati (Abu Dhabi) potentates who will collect less in arms commissions (also called bribes in impolite and crude company, but I won’t stoop to that either).
Now we will have a race: the UAE potentates will seek to regain their position in weapons imports and, not incidentally, in the size of commissions their potentates receive. These fat bribes commissions are paid by the oh-so-generous Western arms exporters, who will then add the cost to the export price. Almost like money laundering: well, it is a way to launder the public money of these Gulf states back to the potentates with the help of the exporting companies. Remember the British BAE Systems and the scandal of the US $2 billion weapons deal bribe to Prince Bandar Bin Sultan (allegedly)? That was the investigation by the Serious Frauds office (SFO) that Tony Blair killed. It was called the al-Yamama deal. A lot of laundering there, more than the proverbial but real Chinese laundry in my neighborhood.

Maybe there are good honest reasons for amassing and storing all these weapons in desert warehouses. Maybe it is the fear of the scowling Iranian mullahs across the Gulf, maybe it is some mistrust of the resolve of the Western allies whose fleets fill my Gulf. In at least two cases it is the fear of the people, which explains the foreign mercenaries. Yet somehow I can’t shake off this nagging feeling that “It is the commissions, stupid!”
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Islamophobia, Lebanon, Middle East, Muslims, Racism, Religion, WTF

United States of Paranoia? Imported Baggage, “Native” Baggage, Pakistani Beaver Hunters……………..

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“Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, America’s Muslims have become the country’s internal enemy. Conservative forces have seized upon the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” as a rallying point. Amid all the hate, Americans have lost sight of the real problem: the fact that their country has become paranoid………. Indeed, Gabriel, who emigrated to the US years ago from Lebanon, is America’s siren on all things Islamophobic……… Gabriel’s position can be summarized as follows: The US is suffering from terminal cancer and is infected with rampant Islamist cells that are eating away at the country, its liberties and its constitution. “Our enemy,” writes Gabriel, “is not an organization of people living overseas plotting to attack. Our enemies are the neighbors next door, the doctors practicing in our hospitals, and the workers who share our lunch break. Our enemies are terrorists driven by a dangerous ideology and clothed in deception who operate under cover and laugh about the advantages our sensitivity training, gullibility, and political correctness give them.” Some 300,000 copies of Gabriel’s first book, which contains these sentences, have been distributed. TV stations now set aside ample airtime for her and her ideas. She has been invited to give presentations to US Senate committees, the FBI, the US Special Operations Command, the Joint Forces Staff College, the Republican Party, the Tea Party movement and Christian conferences…………….”

This Lebanese right-wing chick represents the imported half of American paranoia. She arrives on these shores (well, lands at an airport) with more than one kind of baggage. We all do so, or most of us who arrive from our baggage-rich Middle East. We carry our racial, ethnic, sectarian, and historical prejudices and sometimes hatreds. Whether we come to settle, to study, to medicate, or just to visit. Most of us move on “into America”. Some of us hang on to the old baggage, urged on by ongoing events back home. You can see, hear, and read our baggage, our sectarian and confessional and ethnic prejudices, in our actions and our statements (and our blogs, like this one). That applies to many of us, to this lady and to me, but to different degrees. It seems she is re-fighting a lost Lebanese civil war, re-fighting a lost demographic war, living a Lebanon that did not exist for most Lebanese outside the capital region. But that was a war that also pitted Muslims against Muslims and Christians against Christians. It was a war of the warlords and before it ended it gave birth to Hezbollah.

Besides, there are many benefits to doing the right-wing talk and conference circuit: Sarah Palin isn’t doing bad on the circuit, nor is Glenn Beck and many others who peddle fear-mongering to simple worried folks. Fear-mongering is the gold rush of these people and they have discovered their own mother lode and are milking it for all its worth.

Remember
that old commercial for Salem cigarettes that said “You can take Salem out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of Salem”? We are like that Salem cigarette. Sometimes the baggage and the ghosts await a new generation to throw them in the dumpster.

(Okay,
 that was our excuse, but what is behind all these crazy native Americans going paranoid? And I don’t mean “real” native Americans; just the new arrivals of the past three centuries. It takes many born natives to create this mad frenzy and fear by millions of a few hundred ragtag shaggy mountain men, dare I say beaver trappers, in the allied states of Pakistan and Afghanistan.)
Cheers
mhg


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Death Penalty, Human Right

Executions: the Islamic Kingdom of the Republic of Texas………

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“In Texas, Steven Michael Woods is slated for execution on Tuesday, despite considerable doubts about his guilt. The inmate is fighting to have his sentence commuted, but his chances are diminishing. State Governor Rick Perry is considered a champion of the death penalty. It’s a gruesome record, but Rick Perry is proud of it. “Your state has executed 234 death-row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times,” NBC’s Brian Williams told the Texas governor during this week’s presidential debate. Did he ever struggle to sleep at night, Williams continued, “with the idea that anyone of those might have been innocent”? Before Williams had finished, the auditorium erupted in cheers, even whistles, as if the spectators welcomed this killer number. ………. For one man, however, it was a bad omen: Steven Michael Woods. Woods, 31, is incarcerated in the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, which houses Texas’ death row, a four-hour drive east of the capital Austin. His execution for capital murder is set for Tuesday — one day after the next Republican debate. It would be the 19th execution this year in Texas alone……… There are indeed grave doubts about the verdict. Marcus Rhodes, Wood’s co-defendant and a former friend, has admitted to the double murder in question and already been sentenced — but to life in prison. Rhodes’ DNA was found on the weapons, but not that of Woods. Yet all courts so far have rejected Wood’s appeals………..”

I have forgotten which country has executed more people this year: the Islamic Republic of Texas or the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Islamic Absolute Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or the ‘People’s’ Republic of China. Maybe it is Texas, the state that executes the most people in North America, in the only country in the Western hemisphere that still has the death penalty. Odd thing, the rate of murders probably keeps ahead in Texas compared to other large states. Apparently they need a body after each homicide, anybody, doesn’t always have to be the guilty party. At least in Texas they don’t do it in public, unlike Saudi Arabia and Iran.
(Steven Michael Woods was a drug dealer and he was apparently no sweetheart. He was executed this evening, But the show ain’t over: three more are slated to be executed in Texas within the next two weeks).
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Iraq, Salafi, Terrorism

Terrorism in Iraq: a Love-Hate Relationship with America, a Repossessed SOFA……..

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““The terrorists stopped the bus at gunpoint and killed 22 men,” said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Hadi Rizayig, the provincial police chief. The highway is protected by the Iraqi Army, he said. Shiite pilgrims have been a frequent target for Sunni insurgents who are trying to revive the sectarian violence that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war just a few years ago. The attack on Monday came less than four months before the remaining United States troops, who surged into Iraq in large numbers in 2007 to stem the sectarian violence, are scheduled to leave the country. In Anbar, a province with a heavily Sunni Muslim population, insurgents have launched many attacks while posing as soldiers or security guards. And on Monday, one of the women who was forced off the bus told officials that four gunmen dressed in military uniforms had stopped the bus at a fake checkpoint……………”

At some point a few years ago, Salafi (and perhaps Ba’athis remnant) terrorists in Iraq discovered the joys of leaving American forces alone. Possibly the fact that these terrorists, also called “insurgents” by more genteel Western people and some delusional Arabs, were defeated in almost every direct military confrontation had something to do with that. Or maybe it were the severe retaliations that ensued. Or maybe they discovered the ease with which to kill Shi’a (and often Sunni) civilians: getting more bang for their bucks donated by neighboring Arab Salafi potentates. Most likely it was a combination of both. And also the fact that many Iraqis stopped sheltering, feeding, and providing them with women.
Now their goal seems odd: on the verge of realizing one of their old ‘stated’ goals, getting rid of the Americans, they are escalating the violence. As the prospects of a renewal of SOFA fade, their attacks get fiercer and bloodier. It is as if they want the American forces to remain in Iraq. If it didn’t sound so ridiculous, I’d suggest that some uber-hawkish U.S senators like McCain, Lieberman (Joe not Avigdor, and wtf is he nowadays?) and Graham are behind these baboons.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Libya, North Africa

The Right Wing Arab Spring: will Libya Join the New Humorous GCC?………

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“The head of Libya’s National Transitional Council on Monday night delivered his first public speech in central Tripoli. Speaking to thousands of supporters in Martyrs’ Square, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said Libya would adopt sharia law. But, as the New York Times reports, Jalil insisted that Libya would never again fall into the hands of extremists. We will not accept any extremist ideology, on the right or the left. We are a Muslim people, for a moderate Islam, and will stay on this road. We strive for a state of the law, for a state of prosperity, for a state that will have Islamic sharia law the basis of legislation. Meanwhile Amnesty International has accused fighters of Libya’s National Transitional Council of committing war crimes in their battle to overthrow leader Muammar Gaddafi……….”

This man, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, has decided that Libya will adopt the Shari’a. He has not asked the Libyan people, he has not ‘offered’ to allow them to vote on the issue. My, and others’, suspicions about these Libyan rebels are coming true. Many of the leaders were minions of Qaddafi until recently. The rest were Salafi and Muslim Brother fundamentalists who were either in exile or in Qaddafi’s prisons. A few among the exiles were pro-democracy. Qaddafi himself espoused some cocktail of Islamism-Arab nationalism-Qaddafiism-Africanism; but like all Arab despots, he was foremost for himself, his family, and his tribe. As they say, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.
The next Libyan regime will be fundamentalist, but not anti-western (nor fiercely independent) as the regimes in Iran and Gaza. It will be more like the Saudi regime, a theocracy that is acceptable to the West. I can almost see the Qatari, Emirati and others dancing a jig of celebration. That is what it will be for a while, until the ruling group breaks up into its warring factions, unless they find a formula to share the pie.
Speaking of all this: the new Libya may become another Saudi candidate for membership of the Gulf GCC. (I know, I know: Libyans probably have about as much humor as Jordanians, which is next to nil, but try telling that to the Gulf potentates).
Then there is Papa Sarkozy and Mama Cameron, or is it the other way around…………
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Egypt, ethnic cleansing, Gulf states, Humor, Occupied Bahrain, Persian-American Gulf

Bahrain Opposition, Jordanian Fondlers, About Moroccan Humor, GCC Potentates, etc………….

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“And they’ve given me a name
The call me the fondler, yeah the fondler
I feel around around around around around…..” The Fondler (Bob Rivers)

Bahrain’s main opposition al-Wefaq “Society” issued a statement saluting Jordanians who protested against their government sending troops and security agents and torturers to help repress the people of Bahrain. Jordan is a major source of “interrogators”, also affectionately and fondly called “fondlers” by some extremely non-affectionate potentates, to certain regimes of the Persian-American Gulf. Jordan is the second source of mercenaries into Bahrain, after Pakistan (and not counting Saudi occupation troops and the foreign mercenaries that the UAE potentates have sent). I am not sure this is a major reason for the Saudi idea of Jordan joining the GCC, but it must have helped. Al-Wefaq notes that imported mercenaries also include Syrians (most likely anti-regime) and Yemenis and Baluchis. (Bahrain’s potentates prefer Sunni mercenaries and they prefer them third-world hungry, unlike the Abu Dhabi potentates who prefer white Blackwater types, and Colombians, and Australians and White South Africans, etc).
I still stick by my “extremely educated” prediction that Jordan will never be a full member of the GCC. It ain’t gonna happen, even if the peoples of the GCC and Jordan are never allowed to vote on this issue (nobody i going to vote on this issue, not even the Moroccan people who are probably more ‘with it’ politically). Besides, my Gulf region needs humor more than anything else these days of grim Salafi ascendancy, and Jordanians are not exactly known for their sense of humor (if any), as I have been at pain to point out here. I don’t know much about Moroccan humor, I assume it is better than Algerian humor (probably no contest here). Both countries may become toothless meaningless “associate members”, just a way to save face for the Saudi potentates from the embarrassment of their desperate invitation.
From a point of humor, Egypt would be the best candidate. Egyptians are almost the only Arab people, nay the only Middle East people, with some sense of humor. Even the 30 years of Mubarak could not completely get rid of it, even decades of the growth of Salafi Wahhabism could not do it.
Cheers
mhg


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