Monthly Archives: September 2012

Culture, Europe, GCC

Archdukes of Austria, Washington, and ArchPrinces of the Gulf………….

   

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Did u know that they still have Archdukes in Austria? And now they have an Archduchess in DC (no, she is white as in Anglo)? Now if that don’t beat the Arch of St Louis. And I had though the last Austrian Archduke was offed by a Serb in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914.
I don’t recall personally meeting (as in shaking hands with) an Archduke before: just a viscount or two, a few sirs (lots of these around: a dime a dozen), one nearly plebeian queen and her consort once (there could have been an Archduke lurking around), a prince and his sad doomed beautiful bride once. No archdukes that I know of so far, but unlikely to run into any in this neck of the woods.

Maybe we ought to start having Archdukes, or maybe just Arches, in our Gulf. Imagine the elegance of having to pronounce: ArchShaikh Khalifa Bin Kleptocrat of Bahrain, ArchMufti Al Shaikh of Riyadh, ArchMullah ShamsUlSomethingOrOther of Tehran, ArchEmir Shaikh Taiss Bin Haiss (or maybe Haiss Bin Taiss) of the Salafis, ArchShaikh Ras Bin Ghlais Bin Shaiboob of WTF. Has a certain ring to it, nicht war?

It would be fine so long as these Arches don’t start slapping each other on the face with limp white gloves and demand satisfaction with a duel at dawn somewhere. Using slingshots (what we call nabbata) of course.

Cheers
mhg
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Kurds, Turkey

Oh, Did You Say Turkey Wants Freedom for Syrians?…………

   

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“The first hearing of Turkey’s biggest trial against members of the press has started, involving 44 journalists. Thirty-six of those have been in pre-trial detention since December, facing terrorism charges and accused of backing the illegal pan-Kurdish umbrella group, the KCK. “This trial is clearly political,” said Ertugrul Mavioglu, an investigative journalist, whose terrorism charges for interviewing Murat Karayilan, a member of the KCK – which includes the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) – were dropped in December last year. “The government wants to set an example; it wants to intimidate,” he added. “Journalists are being told: ‘There are limits on what you are allowed to say.'” Human rights groups repeatedly criticise the Turkish government for the prosecution of pro-Kurdish politicians and activists and journalists who exercise the right to freedom of expression………..”

Oh, did you say the Turkish government wants the people of Syria to be free to speak their minds?
Cheers
 mhg
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Iran, Israel, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Tale of Netanyahu and the Red Line: Is It a Small World After All?………

   

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“It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears.
It’s a world of hopes and a world of fears.
There’s so much that we share, that it’s time we’re aware
It’s a small world after all.
It’s a small world after all.
It’s a small world after all…..
” Disneyland Anthem.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday launched an unprecedented verbal attack on the U.S. government over its stance on the Iranian nuclear program. “The world tells Israel ‘wait, there’s still time’. And I say, ‘Wait for what? Wait until when?’ Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel,” Netanyahu told reporters on Tuesday. “Now if Iran knows that there is no red line….…….”

Except the world is not telling Netahyahu “wait, there’s still time”. The world is telling him that an unprovoked attack on another country is an act of aggression, illegal according to international law. Just like Hitler’s attack on Poland was in 1939 (to use one of his most often evoked monstrous characters). The “world” is almost seven billion people who are not quite represented by a few right-wing kooks and spineless politicians in the U.S. Congress, certainly not represented by Joe Lieberman or Bugs Bunny.
Netanyahu is telling the “world”, his “world”: “let me at him, I wanna get him. Please hold me back, I don’t wanna a hurt him“. It is getting almost tedious, boring, if it were not so dangerous. Now, if you feel that you are in the Red Zone, Bibi, then go for the TD, to use a favorite fall Sunday term. Otherwise, it is time for Bibi to STFU (a k a ShutTheFuckUp). Saying it politely, of course.
Cheers
 mhg
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Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Corruption, GCC

Arab Forum on (Selective) Asset Recovery: Gorillas and Chimps and Grand Robberies…………..

   

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“Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs Michael Froman and Attorney General Eric Holder will lead a high level delegation consisting of officials from the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and the National Security Staff to Doha, Qatar from September 11-13, for the inaugural Arab Forum on Asset Recovery. The United States is co-organizing the Forum with the government of the State of Qatar………. Corruption has been a core public grievance in the region, and the United States has worked closely with the new governments and citizens of Arab countries in transition as they fight corruption and seek justice by recovering stolen assets….…………..”

“The inaugural meeting of the Arab Forum on Asset Recovery will be hosted in Doha, Qatar on September 11 to 13, 2012. The meeting is co-organized by Qatar and the United States presidency of the G8, with technical support from the StAR initiative. The Forum will bring together the G8, Deauville Partners and Regional countries for a multi-faceted effort that raises awareness of effective measures for asset recovery, provides a forum for regional training and discussion of best practices on cases, and identifies country-specific capacity building needs………. The primary objective of the Forum is to start a process of collaboration on the issue of asset recovery in the region, through periodic meetings and other activities……….. provide regional training to practitioners engaged in tracing, freezing, and
recovering the proceeds of corruption.……………..”


Are they serious? Is the purpose to help recovery of stolen assets or is the purpose to teach the attending regimes and rulers how to better hide the assets they have stolen, are still stealing, from their peoples? They invite regimes from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Russia, Lebanon and others to discuss recovery of assets stolen by other despots and oligarchs.
What about billions stolen by absolute tribal ruling clans and their retainers in the Gulf GCC countries? Por ejemplo, just one example, the (very) late Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud left a fortune reported (check my past postings for sources, and also here earlier) at around US $ 220-230 billion (BILLION), give or take a few billions. Forbes Magazine would call it “self-made”: as if he made that fortune from his piggy bank change or from flipping falafel in Riyadh? How about recovering the many other billions stashed by the princes, potentates, and shaikhs?

Are these people out of their collectivefuckingminds? Meeting with the biggest Arab thieves to discuss recovery of money stolen by the smaller Arab thieves of poorer places like Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Libya? The international bureaucrats and Western governments (including the European Union, Canada, and the USA) can sit with straight faces with the grandest thieves of history in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian-American Gulf and discuss recovery of a few millions or maybe a billion stolen elsewhere. What about right there within a short distance from their forum where the potentates of the UAE and the shaikhs of Qatar and other states continue to usurp the people’s wealth? That, the robbery of the peoples of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula by their rulers, is almost certainly the grandest robbery in history.

Yet these organizations and governments ignore the huge smelly gorillas sitting with them in the same room and search for the little chimpanzees and their peanut stash. In that they, the Western powers and the international financial organizations they control, are accomplices in the grandest of robberies.
Maybe it is true: it takes a (big) thief to catch a (smaller) thief.
Cheers
mhg
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Arab Revolutions, Syria, US Foreign Policy

Some Garbage Analysis of the Middle East and U.S. Policy……………

   

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“Yet there are elements of the man’s personality, nature and mentality that would certainly affect the political outlook on Russia, for example, or on Iran, or on the role played by the United States in places like Syria. Here, differences emerge in the stances of the two candidates for the US Presidency– and the primary point of disagreement lies in the fierceness of the electoral battle over the role of the United States at this stage of history…………. The battle is coming, from the point of view – or according to the wishes – of some, after the presidential elections, in the form of an American-Iranian confrontation in the Syrian context…………………”

Some Garbage Analysis of the Middle East and U.S. Policy in the region (Saudi-centric). Fact is, this is the least important issue for American voters this year.

Cheers
mhg
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Israel, Palestine, U.S. Politics

Oh Romney, Oh Jerusalem, Oh Jesus Holy Christ Obama……………..

   

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“But the standard rationale for treating Jerusalem’s status as uncertain is that the partition plan designated it as an internationally ruled “corpus separatum.” Neither America nor anyone else is consistent on this point, either. In a last blast of imperialism, the corpus separatum was mapped to avoid Jewish or Muslim rule over Christian sites. ………….. I suspect that if Mitt Romney is elected, he will be absolutely irresponsible about cutting taxes on the rich and ballooning the deficit—but I don’t think he is reckless enough to move the American embassy to Jerusalem before a peace agreement. Doing so would remove the last shred of American credibility in the Arab world. It might very well ignite a new intifada, which—trust me—would not be healthy for those of us who live in Jerusalem. How many Americans will vote based on what the Democratic platform says about the Jerusalem? You can count them on your thumbs. This may be the most ideologically stark American election since 1932, if not since 1860. Most American Jews will vote for Obama. If they are worried about Israel, they will notice that Obama has upped funding for Israeli missile defense, vetoed U.N. resolutions criticizing Israel, and kept Benjamin Netanyahu from launching a disastrous attack on Iran. The minority of Jews who support Romney don’t care if the Democrats put the entire Israeli national anthem in their platform, in Hebrew. Most evangelicals will vote Romney, and are similarly unconcerned about whether “Jerusalem”—or “God”—is in the Democratic platform ……………..”

This whole quadrennial noise (it is just noise) in U.S. politics about Israel and Jerusalem is aimed at two American constituencies this fall. The first one, the Jewish voters, will continue to vote heavily Democratic, partly because they can smell demagoguery in disguise and their whole “modern” history screams against it (at least when it is non-Jewish demagoguery). Maybe a few elderly migrant voters in Florida can be terrified and swayed, which is one possibly useful target. The second receptive constituency is the Evangelicals and Bible-belters who will not vote for Obama in any case, even if his name were Jesus Holy Christ (with or without the ‘Obama’).
Come to think of it, the same Evangelical Bible-belters would probably vote against Jesus Christ himself, once they see how he is dressed, how he speaks and, more important, what he preaches.

Cheers
mhg
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Arab Politics, Egypt, Iraq, Israel

Muslim Brothers and Israelis: Their Land from the Tigris to Beyond the Nile……….

   

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“A delegation from the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood and its political party visited the headquarters of the Freedom and Justice Party Saturday to meet with FJP leaders. The meeting was attended by Ayad al-Samarrai, secretary general of the Iraqi Islamic Party; Saad al-Katatny, former speaker of Egypt’s People’s Assembly; and Essam al-Erian, acting head of the FJP. Samarrai, who also serves as the speaker of the Iraqi parliament, said he came to Egypt to visit a number of political leaders, including President Mohamed Morsy, as well as Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb and Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie……… He added that the delegation explained to the FJP the Iraqi initiative to resolve the crisis in Syria…..……”

There is allegedly a quote, an alleged quote, supposedly inscribed outside the Israeli Knesset that says something to the effect that (roughly): “Your land, O Israel, is from the banks of the Nile to the Tigris River (or is it the Euphrates, or both?)……” This quote has been widely repeated for decades in the Arab world to indicate that Israel has expansionary ambitions that includes territory well beyond the historic land of Palestine. I have never seen this quote so I can’t vouch for it, but it has been quoted by Arab politicians frequently, especially by the late Yasser Arafat.
 
This Iraqi visit to Cairo was a sightseeing one, for other Muslim Brothers to inspect their new Egyptian acquisition. Now there is no doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood is realizing its own long ambitions to control the Arab lands well beyond this Euphrates-Nile boundary. In fact it is trying to, maybe it is poised to, control the Arab world from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian-American Gulf. With a few exceptions in Iraq and Lebanon and maybe Syria, maybe.
Now, to be truly Iraqi the delegation should have included representatives of the Sadrist current, the Da’awa Party, the KDP (Kurdish), PUK (without an “E” but also Kurdish), the Kurdish Donkey (Ass) Party (it exists but is widely ignored for some reason), PKK, and the Emir of the Un-Islamic State of Iraq  who can be Saudi or Egyptian or Libyan or Sudani…………

(These Samarrais, several of them, and other Islamists, served the Baath Party under Saddam quite well, thankyouverymuch. Now that the dictator is dead they, are suddenly rediscovering that they are really Muslims. Not just any Muslims, but Sunni Muslims. Not just any Sunni Muslims, but Muslim Brothers, with a few wild bomb-strapping Salafis thrown in for flavoring).
Cheers
mhg
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Espionage, Humor, Iran, Middle East

More on Iran’s Qassem Suleimani: Solving the Mystery………………

   

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I wrote yesterday about Qassem Suleimani, the elusive chief of the Iranian Quds Brigade (of the IRGC). It turns out he has been traveling around the world in disguise: that may explain why he can travel freely and so quickly, and be at so many places at almost the same time. These following conflicting reports may shed more light on the man, perhaps eventually unveiling his true identity:

  • My unreliable al-Qaeda source reports that Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani has another incarnation that is, in fact, none other than Ayman al-Zawahiri, better dressed and on steroids.
  • A Syrian source suggested the ridiculous idea that Suleimani is often disguised as Colonel Riyadh al-As’ad, head of the Free Syrian Salafi Army. Perhaps thinned out and beardless.
  • My equally unreliable Bahrain source, right in one of the royal dens palaces at al-Rifa’ enclave, that in fact he is known in Bahrain as Shaikh Ali Salman. Suleimani is none other than head of the al-Wefaq main opposition bloc. (My source rejected the competing notion, pushed by Shaikh Nasser the younger son of Shaikh King Hamad, that Suleimani might be occasionally disguised as either Nabeel Rajab or Sameera Rajab).
  • My Saudi source mentioned something about Shaik Nimr al-Nimr, the opposition cleric who was shot and arrested by al-Saud security forces last month. I explained that Nimr is smaller in size, and he would need a new set of attire. He retorted angrily: “How about the Mufti Shaikh Al Al Al Shaikh as an Iranian mole?” I think he was being sarcastic, but I am not so sure.
  • A Gulf Salafi source, close to the Society for Revival of Islamic Heritage, told me that Suleimani is in fact hanging out in the GCC states, that he moves between Kuwait and Bahrain, with stopovers in Qatar to coordinate with Emir Shaikh Hamad al-Thani (cattily adding “and his wife”). The Salafi, having a Salafi’s usual priorities, added that Suleimani avails himself of both the Shi’a temporary Mut’a marriages and the Wahhabi part-time bedroom-only Misyar marriages on his travels.
  • My Israeli source sent me a terse cryptic message saying: “I know what Netahyahu will come up with, but World War II has been long over.…”
  • I was also told by a GOP source that Sheldon Adelson, the family values Las Vegas and Tel Aviv man, tried to insert an item in the Republican Party platform about Suleimani, to make killing him a national goal more worthy than Killing Osama Bin Laden. It got nowhere.
  • Another source told me something unsettling: that Qassem Suleimani is everywhere, in image if not in body and soul. He pointed out something I did not know: that he is the favorite dartboard image in places as far flung as Riyadh, Manama, Tel Aviv, Washington, Arlington, and Omaha pubs (not sure about that last one). He added that some princes and potentates (both Saudi and Bahraini) in fact end up staring at the general’s image whenever they demurely excuse themselves to go and “powder their noses”.


Cheers
mhg
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Arab Revolutions, Syria

Free Syrian Army, National Syrian Army, Syrian Military Council, WTF Army……..

   

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In reference to my earlier posting on Syrian opposition
armies, groups and bands. Media report that the Syrians have formed yet a new army. It is apparently, perhaps, formed in Jordan, and called the National Syrian Army.
So, the Syrian opposition are plagued with unusual disunity, a complete breakdown of coordination on the ground and lack of cooperation among the exiles in Turkey. So what do the brilliant minds think of? Why, what else: a new army, a new militia. At least the Syrian people are lucky: they have so many militias willing to “free” them, so many Arab despots and princes and potentates eager to urging the West to “liberate” them.
Cheers
mhg
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Arab Revolutions, Jihadis, Syria

Syria’s Jihadists: Jabhat al-Nusra, Al Farouq Brigade, AQAP, Bloods, Crips, Chihuahua ……….

   

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“The fighter, Abu Mohamed al-Shami Abu al-Absi, led a brigade known as Jubhat al-Nusra, which calls itself a Qaeda affiliate. His body was found Wednesday in an area known as Sarmada on the Turkish border, several rebel fighters said in interviews over the Internet. All said he had disappeared three days earlier and was evidently kidnapped and assassinated. His killing aroused calls for revenge from his family as well as the group of Islamist brigades operating in the area, known as the Islamic Shura Council, in which he also played a leading role. Some quickly pointed the finger at a major fighting group based in Homs, Al Farouq Brigade, which is considered Islamist but is opposed to Mr. Absi’s hard-line ideology. Brigades often collaborate on specific actions or fights, but each typically reports to its own leader. “There has been tension between Al Farouq fighters and the rebels from the Shura Council,” said the commander of another brigade in the area, speaking on the condition of anonymity for his safety. “Now his tribe and the Shura Council want to take revenge against the Farouq brigade,” he continued, lamenting the growing complexity of the rebel forces. “Every day we have new Islamic movements.”………….”

Now we know what the latent Syrian potential has been. We know they (Aflaq and Bitar) produced the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party (modeled on European Nazis and Fascists). The party that fucked up (literally and figuratively) both Syria and Iraq for fifty years.
But think what they could not produce all these years of Ba’athist dictatorship and repression. The creative talent that was, has been, suppressed for decades. A bounty, an embarrassment of riches: Jabhat al-Nusra, Al Farouq Brigade, al-Tawheed, Kidnappers Anonymous, Bloods, Crips, Chihuahua Cartel, Haqqani Network, the Corleone, Al Capone, al-Qaeda in Iraq, Al QAP, Salafis for True Democracy, Islamic Heritage Revival Society, Al-Sau………ops, sorry, got carried away there………..
Cheers
mhg
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