Monthly Archives: January 2012

Iran

Iran’s Quasi-Democracy and Funny Elections………….

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“The number of candidates who registered for the 2012 parliamentary elections is at its lowest since the 1996 elections. Only 5,395 individuals registered to run for parliament, a 33 percent drop from four years ago. Women comprise less than 10 percent of those who have registered to run. Mostafa Mohammad Najar, the minister of interior, has attributed this decline to amendments made to the electoral law, such as the prerequisite that a candidate hold at least a master’s degree. Other factors include the prevailing climate of political apathy, the marginalization of reformists, and prospects of harsher disqualifications. In sharp contrast, the number of incumbents seeking re-election is at a record high for the 2012 poll. Of the parliament’s 290 sitting MPs, 260 are seeking reelection. With incumbency rates averaging 35 percent in the last 30 years, it will be interesting to see how many deputies will be reelected and how many will lose ground to freshmen challengers. The elephant in the room, however, is the absence of leading reformists…………..”

Iran is only a quasi-democracy:

  • The parliament is not a rubber-stamp. It often succeeds in rejecting the president’s nominees and have threatened to impeach him personally.  But that is part of the story.
  • People are elected freely, but not everyone can run for office, which reduces the freedom of the elections.
  • The president can run for only two consecutive terms (an idea borrowed from the Great Satan?), but his powers are also limited. (On the positive side, for some, this means Ahmadinejad will be out next year).
  • Reformists in Iran see no reason to contest the elections when the electoral system is distorted against them. Some of their candidates are always blocked by the clergy as ineligible to run.
  • Even when reformists get a majority in parliament, as they did a few years ago, their agenda is usually blocked by the Supreme Leader.
  • This not only discourages them from running and thus legitimizing the odd electoral system, it also discourages their many supporters from turning out to vote. Which in turn makes it meaningless for many of them to run. There is no point in running if the decks are stacked against them from the outset.

Cheers
mhg


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Iran, OPEC, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Algeria Refuses to Help Blockade of Iran, Saudis Pissed……….

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“Algeria said Thursday it will not boost crude oil exports in the event Iran suddenly cuts supplies to Europe after the EU imposed new sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear drive. “We have a programme in place that won’t be modified,” Energy Minister Youcef Yousfi told Algerian news service APS. EU foreign ministers agreed Monday on an immediate ban on oil imports and a phase-out of existing contracts up to July 1, as the West ramped up the pressure over Tehran’s nuclear activities and urged it to return to talks. However, Iran’s parliament is expected to consider next week a bill to ban oil exports to Europe much sooner, a move that could potentially raise prices………”

An article in the Saudi daily al-Hayat (owned by prince Khaled Bin Sultan) called Algeria a shumooliyya “totalitarian” state yesterday. That was the first time they call any Arab regime other than Libya and Syria by that epithet. They don’t do that unless they have a royal or princely green light, as part of state policy. I am not sure if this is related to the refusal of Algeria to join the Western blockade against Iran (unlike the Saudis). Yet it probably is: for a Saudi newspaper owned by a prince (they are all owned by princes or their retainers) to call anyone (bar none, well, maybe except North Korea) a “totalitarian” and undemocratic regime is a stretch. After all, this is the Absolute Tribal Polygamous Democratic People’s Kingdom of (Saudi) Arabia.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Israel, Syria, WTF

Israel-Iran-Syria Psych War: a Strange Announcement of a Strange Plane, about Hess……….

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“The Israeli military says a drone that can fly as far as Iran has crashed in central Israel on a routine experimental flight. The military says there were no injuries in Sunday’s crash, and it was investigating the incident. The Heron TP drone is also known locally as the Eitan. It has a wingspan of 86 feet (26 meters), making it the size of a Boeing 737 passenger jet. It is the largest unmanned aircraft in Israel’s military arsenal. The drone figures to be featured prominently in any potential Israeli operation against Iran and its expanding nuclear program………”

This is a strange ‘incident’, if all these details are true. Why would they need a “drone” the size of a Boeing 737? What does it have to do with Iran? Do they plane to drop the whole Netanyahu cabinet over Tehran? Then will it still be a “drone”? And why announce these details by a military that is usually secretive? And was it really an Israeli drone? Was it the Assad cabinet of Syria seeking a deal a la Rudolph Hess?
And how is all this related to the 1994 attempt by James Woolsey (former CIA director) to land a plane on top of Bill Clinton?
Cheers
mhg


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CIA, Iran, Islamophobia, MEK, Mujahideen Khalq, Muslims, War on Iran

James Woolsey, a Muslim Adolf Hitler, and Bombing Bill Clinton……….

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“The United States should consider military strikes against not just Iran’s nuclear sites but the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard infrastructure, argued former CIA director James Woolsey in a radio interview today. Comparing the Guards to Adolph Hitler’s blackshirts, Woolsey named several “fair game” Guard-related targets, including Iran’s space program, ballistic missile program, training facilities and the Guard’s substantial commercial interesta………. The ex-CIA director said the U.S. should consider these military options if Iran blocks the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway or takes other significant aggressive action…………..”

I know someone is not worth taking seriously when they start comparing others to “Adolf Hitler” and his murderous groups. It is perceived as an easy and cheap way to make a point, except that it doesn’t. Idiotic and dishonest politicians use it a lot. They always compare some Arab or Muslim to Hitler, never a European (not even a fucking German or Austrian), never even an Asian or African. One has to be a Muslim Middle East leader to be compared to Hitler. Now, how stupid is that?


Mr. Woolsey has been advocating a new Middle East war ever since he started showing up on Fox News a few years ago, even at the peak of the war in Iraq. He never volunteers to join, though: they never do, these fattened and comfortable warmongers.
James Woolsey was director of the CIA under Bill Clinton, but briefly. Apparently Clinton was not impressed with Woolsey and stopped seeing him (or maybe he was too boring, probably both). Media reports said (alleged) that he tried desperately to make appointments with the president and that Clinton just refused to see him. There is a famous case in 1994 of a lone pilot who circled the White House and crash landed his airplane on its South Lawn. Some media reports initially claimed it was CIA chief James Woolsey, desperately trying to see Bill Clinton who still refused to grant him an audience.

Cheers
mhg


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Israel, Latin America, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Florida Race Tightens: Disrespecting Obama and Motherhood before Netanyahu and Cuba……..

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The Florida Republican race is reaching the home stretch. it is desperation time for the Republican candidates. The focus shifts to the special interest groups. The talk is about Space, Israel, and Cubans longing for the days of Batista. Last debate they talked about who would hire the most “Latinos” in their administration. Then there always lurks Netanyahu:

Romney: I’d hire Netanyahu if he were not Israeli prime minister.

Sanrotum: There you go again, disrespecting Netanyahu. You should be ashamed of yourself talking like that about a great American patriot. I’d hire Netanyahu even while he is PM of Israel. Hell, I’d hire him even if he were an Iranian ayatollah.

Romney: I like patriots too. I’d never disrespect Netanyahu. It is Obama who is always disrespecting Netanyahu. I would never do that, not while running for president, for heaven’s sake. I’d rather disrespect my own mother and the intelligence of the American people than Netanyahu, at least until November 2016.

Santorum: I don’t believe you. Anyway, I’d also hire Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles (aka Bambi).
So there, you try beating that.

Gingrich: He sounds like a great Cuban-American and a good Catholic. I’d have to ask Callista first.

Ron Paul: I wouldn’t hire Netanyahu if he were the only man available for the job. Not unless he can bike for 27 miles, which he can’t because they don’t have a 27 mile stretch in that whole place over there. I’d rather send Netanyahu, along with Newt and all the rest of you pandering schmucks to that new moon base Newt and Callista are building.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, NATO, Syria

America Getting Ready to Liberate Syria from Itself: about Iraq and Libya and Maysaloon…….

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“As the violence in Syria spirals out of control, top officials in President Barack Obama’s administration are quietly preparing options for how to assist the Syrian opposition, including gaming out the unlikely option of setting up a no-fly zone in Syria and preparing for another major diplomatic initiative. Critics on Capitol Hill accuse the Obama administration of being slow to react to the quickening deterioration of the security situation in Syria, where more than 5,000 people have died, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. Many lawmakers say the White House is once again “leading from behind,” while the Turks, the French, and the Arab League — which sent an observer mission to Syria this week — pursue more aggressive strategies for pressuring the Assad regime. But U.S. officials insist that they are moving cautiously to avoid destabilizing Syria further…………..”


What is it about Arab opposition groups that they always beg for the West, their former colonial masters, to come back and rescue them from their own local dictators? This is becoming an unfortunate Arab phenomenon. Don’t they remember what happened with the Ottoman Turks and the British and the French? When the Hashemite rulers of Hijaz (original custodians of Mecca and Madinah and Jeddah) sought British help and got more than they bargained for? Do they remember the French and Faisal and Maysaloon?
First some Iraqi groups encouraged Western intervention against their repressive Ba’athist rulers. Then the Libyans did the same against Qaddafi. Now the Syrian ‘opposition’ groups want foreign intervention to liberate them.
Why do other peoples make their own revolution and these Arab “revolutionaries” insist on the easy way: Western forces and warplanes? Why can’t they do as the Tunisians and Egyptian did? Some of the same people who taunted the Iraqis for being “liberated” by Americans and British forces are now begging for American and British and French forces to kill their compatriots and liberate them. Even the Arab Saudi League is now seeking foreign intervention (in Syria but not in Bahrain).
Do you know why the peoples of Bahrain, Yemen, and Qatif don’t ask for foreign intervention against their repressive rulers? Do you know why the democracy-loving West is not offering or contemplating intervening in these countries (at least not on the side of the people)?
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, U.S. Congress, US Foreign Policy

Obama and Clinton and Hypocrisy on Democracy: Weapons of Repression to Bahrain…………

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“President Barack Obama’s administration has been delaying its planned $53 million arms sale to Bahrain due to human rights concerns and congressional opposition, but this week administration officials told several congressional offices that they will move forward with a new and different package of arms sales — without any formal notification to the public. The congressional offices that led the charge to oppose the original Bahrain arms sales package are upset that the State Department has decided to move forward with the new package. The opposition to Bahrain arms sales is led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), and also includes Senate Foreign Relations Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee chairman Robert Casey (D-PA), Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), and Marco Rubio (R-FL). Wyden and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) have each introduced a resolution in their respective chambers to prevent the U.S. government from going through with the original sale, which would have included 44 armored, high-mobility Humvees and over 300 advanced missiles. The State Department has not released details of the new sale, and Congress has not been notified through the regular process.……….”


The ruling al-Khalifa clan in Bahrain have been masters of deception. For years they managed to cultivate the image of a cosmopolitan liberal monarchy, even as they applied a system of discriminatory apartheid against a majority of their people. They were aided in that by some bought and paid-for European expatriates (especially Brits) as well and slick public relations campaigns. All this was exposed in recent years as the people rose demanding their rights. The whole façade finally fell apart last spring when the regime and its imported mercenaries failed to crush the people’s uprising. It had to invite an invasion by foreign (Saudi) forces to help repress the protests. They are still repressing and killing people, even as they fill Western media with talk of reform.

The Obama administration has also learned to master deception and double standards. While they talk of freedom and democracy in, say, Iran and Libya and Syria, they turned their back on the people of Bahrain. They have been deathly silent about Saudi Arabia, the absolutely most repressive regime in the Middle East, possibly in the world after North Korea. It should not have been surprising that the Obama administration planned to sell weapons to the al-Khalifa clan to help them crush the newly resurgent protests. There was some opposition in Congress, from legislators in both parties. That is how the Obama administration hit upon this trick for selling the same weapons of repression to Bahrain, but in several smaller packages that can bypass congressional approval. A masterful piece of trickery, almost Clintonian, something the al-Khalifa would do, and have done.
Change? As far as the Middle East is concerned, the change Mr. Obama once claimed is nothing new, certainly nothing Arabs and Muslims can believe in. Unless they are repressive absolute tribal dynasties with deep pockets.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria

Syrians and their Foreign Friends……

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“Syrian media outlets reported Friday that President Bashar Assad’s security forces seized huge quantities of weapons used by rebels across the country, including Israeli-made arms. According to the unconfirmed reports, Assad’s troops seized a machinegun, Israeli-made bombs, automatic rifles, various explosive devices, protective vests, night-vision equipment and military uniforms, among other things. Syrian television showcased the weapons Friday evening and claimed that some of the arms originated in Israel. Some of the weapons featured Hebrew inscriptions, yet it was unclear who was holding the arms and where the images were photographed. The latest Syrian reports are apparently meant to discourage anti-Assad rebels and present them as traitors who enlist the help of the “Zionist enemy”…………” Haaretz

“Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast also immediately condemned the kidnapping of the Iranian pilgrims in Syria, calling the act inhumane and unjustifiable. “These acts, which are against humane principles and moral and international obligations, are by no means justifiable, and it is expected that these people take immediate action to free Iranian pilgrims,” Mehmanparast said Thursday. In December, five Iranian electrical engineers were abducted on the way to a power plant in the troubled Syrian city of Homs by unknown gunmen. Two more Iranian experts, who were trying to clarify the situation of the five abducted engineers, have also been kidnapped………..”

The Syrian regime claims the rebels are using Israeli weapons, hinting they are connected to Israel. Yet the Israelis have no reason to side with the Islamists who are likely to rule Syria if and when the Assad regime falls. Their only beef with the regime has been that it facilitates arms shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon. They certainly seem to have managed to have an unwritten peace in the Golan for a quarter of a century. Israeli farms and Israeli wines thrive in the Golan: they wouldn’t want to disrupt that.

On the other hand, some Syrian opposition groups, and Saudi media, have claimed in the past that Iranian forces and Hezbollah fighters are helping the Damascus regime. One Saudi source, most likely Alarabiya, even repeated allegations that Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army is helping Assad.
I have my usual doubts about that: the Syrian Ba’ath Party has been training security forces to crush dissent since 1963. They are experts at that sort of thing and don’t need any outside help. It is possible that they get Iranian and Hezbollah help, since both support the Assad regime. Yet it is unlikely they would send men and certainly not to a degree that matters, probably weapons and maybe advice (so are the Russians). If they are intervening, they are clearly not doing so to the vast degree as the Saudi military intervention against the Bahrain uprising. Besides, the West would certainly know if any foreign countries are intervening in Syria: they wouldn’t need the Syrian opposition to tell them.
Cheers
mhg


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GCC, Iran, OPEC, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Iran Feels the Oil Blockade Heat but Denies it: Back to 1980-88 in the Gulf?……….

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“Ahmadinejad said during a speech at a gathering of the personnel of Sarcheshmeh Copper Complex in the city of Sarcheshmeh, the southeastern province of Kerman, on Thursday. The European Union formally imposed an oil embargo on Iran and agreed to a freeze on the assets of the Central Bank of Iran on Monday, but existing contracts will be honored until July 1. “The West must be aware that the Iranian nation… does not need them. You impose embargo on Iran’s oil but do not see that the United States has not bought oil from us for 30 years, but nothing happened, and Iran followed its path with dignity,” Ahmadinejad said, addressing European countries. He stated that the sanctions are futile……….” Mehr News

Yet this next news item seems to contradict Ahmadinejad’s assertion that the sanctions will not hurt. He is right in one respect: the sanctions are unlikely to hurt the regime. They always hurt the people:

“A top Iranian diplomat has expressed Tehran’s displeasure over an announcement by certain Persian Gulf Arab states to replace Iran’s oil exports, saying Iran will consider such a move as “unfriendly”. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iranian deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, made the remarks during a meeting with the undersecretary of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Khalid Al-Jarallah, in Kuwait City on Thursday. Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi last week said that his country will make up for any shortfall in world oil supply caused by sanctions against Iran. ………” Mehr News

The Iranians must have a sense of having been here before, a sense of déjà vu (all over again). During the utterly senseless and futile 1980-99 war, their petroleum facilities were bombed and they were under an American economic siege. Not only did the Saudis pick up the slack and expanded their market share, other Gulf states also sold their own oil for Ba’athist Iraq’s account (Saddam’s exports were severely curtailed).
The Iranians resorted to the “tankers war’ to punish other Gulf exporters, which led to some naval skirmishes with the U.S. navy. The Iranians did not do well in those skirmishes, had some of their speedboats and offshore oil platforms destroyed. The lowest point came on July 3rd 1988, when the USS Vincennes shot down a civilian Iranian airliner (Iran Air 655) over the Gulf, killing nearly 300 civilians. The ceasefire was declared in August.
Had those passengers been Westerners (like the Pan Am 103), and had the guilty party been Libya (like the Pan Am 103), the Iranian victims would have received more than a billion dollars from Qaddafi (just like the Pan Am 103 victims). All posthumously of course (just like the Pan Am 103 victims).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Human Right, UAE, Weapons deals

Disgruntled Bins of a Feather: UAE in the Footsteps of Bahrain?………….

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“But it has tolerated little dissent during the regional upheaval, trying and sentencing at least five pro-reform activists and stripping the citizenship of another seven last year on charges that they represent a threat to state security. It also disbanded the elected boards of two of the UAE’s most prominent civil society groups, Human Rights Watch said. “Unfortunately, we saw last year that the United Arab Emirates decided to suppress freedom of expression in the country by harassing and trying a number of activists, and by attempting to limit freedom of association in the country,” HRW’S deputy Middle East head Nadim Houry told the conference. Subsequently a group of men dressed in traditional Emirati clothing burst into the conference and demanded it end because Human Rights Watch did not have a permit to host such an event. Attendees heard the men identify themselves as officials of the Ministry of Economy. They flashed an identification card, HRW researcher Samer Muscati, one of the conference’s organizers, told Reuters, but they could not see it long enough to determine who had issued it. “We speculate that these guys are not who they claim to be. They seem to be state security, not from the Ministry of Economy,” he said. Officials of the UAE Interior Ministry and the Dubai government’s press office declined to comment on the identity of the men…………..”

They are all the same, really. If they feel threatened by dissent, the Bin Technocrat Bin Zayed al-Nahayan act no different from the slimy Bin Technocrat al-Khalifa potentates of Bahrain. No different from the Bin Technocrat al-Saud princes. They crack down and arrest and gas and imprison and torture and, if they have to, they kill.
Why else do you think they are buying all these American JDAM bunker-busters? Did you thing it was to attack China or Iran or North Korea? No, it is to bunker-bust the shopping malls if they are ever taken over by irate citizens. Correct that: there are only about 12% or so in the UAE who are citizens” They can’t possibly fill a shopping mall. Only the citizens are entitled to feel disgruntled, if done silently. Citizens are allowed to be disgruntled silently only, but the almost 88% who are temporary foreign laborers are not allowed to be disgruntled even silently.
It is not clear how they monitor and prevent silent disgruntlement. They can’t just send their flunkies with ID’s to stop it. These security goons aren’t smart enough to tell who is disgruntled and who is not, especially when nobody is supposed to smile in public anyway.
Maybe the potentates have purchased some new equipment from the helpful Western government (possibly the eager British) or North Korea for that.
Cheers
mhg


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