Monthly Archives: August 2013

Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC

GCC: Ruling Despots Ready for Massive Protests in the Repressed State of Bahrain?……

      

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“The highly patriotic stand of the National Unity Assembly (NUA) was commended by the Premier. He hailed the gathering at Al Fateh Mosque, organised by the NUA at the height of the unrest, to re-emphasise their loyalty to the nation and thwart attempts of conspirators to hijack the nation. His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa said this as he visited the NUA headquarters yesterday. “As we foiled the conspiracy together, we have to stand together now in one trench to eradicate terrorism,” he said, urging solidarity with the government in confronting terrorism and toughening punishment on its perpetrators and instigators. He stressed the government’s resolve to carry out the will of the Bahraini people to protect society from the dangers of terrorism……………….”

Also sprach Gulf Daily News, one mouthpiece of the repressive ruling kleptocrats of Bahrain, as the people of that country get ready for more massive protests in the capital Manama on August 14. The Bahrain uprising started on February 14, 12011, and is halfway through its third year, but it is opposed by most Arab governments including those of countries that allegedly have experienced so-called uprisings and revolutions (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia). Official Arab institutions, never known for their courage or love of freedom, also side with whoever the Arab despots support and often with whoever has the money (the acronym for money would be G-C-C).

Already, Persian Gulf potentates and their tame and controlled media are lining up behind the rulers against the people. Governments, absolute rulers, their merchant class allies, Salafi Wahhabis, tribal types, and others are calling on the regime to crush what some of them call the “terrorists“. “Terrorist” is an epithet used by the rulers and their media for most of the people of Bahrain. Even some on the Gulf who demand freedom in their own countries are opposed to the Bahraini people’s demands (it is the sectarian-tribal instinct). Even European expatriates, especially the British, are doing their bit for the side of the rulers (the absolute Shaikh of Bahrain is reported to have traveled four times to Britain this year alone and he certainly does not go to attend soccer games).
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria

Saudi Princes Offer to Buy Syria from Russia..……

      

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“Saudi Arabia has reportedly offered to buy arms worth up to $15 billion from Russia, and provided a raft of economic and political concessions to the Kremlin – all in a bid to weaken Moscow’s endorsement of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The diplomatic initiatives were anonymously voiced to Reuters by multiple Gulf state diplomats and senior leaders of the Syrian opposition, in the wake of last week’s meeting in Moscow between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi National Security Council chief Prince Bandar bin-Sultan. The Saudi politician has orchestrated his country’s foreign policy in recent months. “Bandar offered to intensify energy, military and economic cooperation with Moscow,” a senior Syrian opposition figure told Reuters. “Bandar sought to allay two main Russian fears: that Islamist extremists will replace Assad, and that Syria would become a conduit for Gulf, mainly Qatari, gas at the expense of Russia.” The $15 billion figure was touted by a representative of the anti-Assad opposition….………..”

The Saudi princes want to liberate Syria from its current rulers and hand it to others who are allied with them. So they offer to pay Russia in order to get Syria, effectively offering to buy Syria from Russia. They have again resorted to their best and most effective strategy for buying friends and gaining influence. There is nothing they have to offer anyone besides money, and they use it extensively. They have no ideology or set of values that appeal to anyone outside the ruling family. Nobody anywhere admires them for who they are or for what they do. It is all to do with how much they are willing to pay. That applies to the Arab peoples and to foreign countries, from North America all the way across to the western shores of the Pacific Ocean. Apparently their attempt to buy the Russian government, or to buy Syria from the Russian government, has failed so far.

Cheers
mhg

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Espionage, Iran, Israel

Espionage in Jerusalem: From Tehran with Love……………

      

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“Yitzchak Bergel, 46, of the Meah Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem allegedly spied for Iran and offered to kill Zionists. The man has six children, three sons and three daughters. His sons attend the Talmud Torah Torah V’yirah religious school and his daughters attend the Bnos Ruchel religious school. Bergel attends prayer services at the Toldos Aharon synagogue in Jerusalem. As we reported earlier, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man was arrested after he was caught spying for Iran, according to a report by the Tazpit News Agency. Israel Police said that an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man, a member of the radical Neturei Karta sect in Jerusalem, has been arrested in July on charges of attempting to spy on Israel for Iran…………….”

An unusual story. This man was like the Israeli equivalent of the Mujahideen Khalq, the Iranian group that does Israel and Mossad’s bidding inside Iran.
Cheers
mhg

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Drones, Egypt, Israel

War of Drones Reaches the Sinai: Everybody Hitting Muslims and Arabs…………

      

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“Egyptian security officials say an Israeli drone fired a missile in the northern Sinai peninsula, killing five suspected Islamic militants and destroying a rocket launcher. Residents heard a large explosion Friday in the region near the border with Israel. The officials say the attack was in cooperation with Egyptian authorities. The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. The Israeli military said they are looking into the report. Egypt’s military and security forces are engaged in long battle against Islamic jihadists in the largely lawless peninsula..………….”

American drones have been blasting Muslim and Arab territory in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, North Africa, the Sahel with impunity for a few years. The intended targets have been Al-Qaeda terrorists, but many civilians have been killed and injured. They have also been spying on whoever they have not been bombing, including Iran (remember the hacked RQ-170 Sentinel drone of Dec. 2011?).
Now Israel seems to be getting into the act. Israeli drones have reportedly been violating Lebanese and Syrian, possibly other, airspace for some time. Now they seem to be engaged in attacks over the Sinai Peninsula, almost certainly with the consent of the Egyptian military. The Egyptian military, good at overthrowing governments and shooting civilians, apparently cannot pacify the Sinai any more than it can win wars. It seems to have decided to subcontract the security of the Sinai to the Israelis. If media reports today are correct.

So what we have are foreign drones waging war over Muslim and Arab territory, a battle-front extending from South Asia to the African Sahel. Now the Sinai has been added. Next target of drone attacks to fill the gaps? Possibly Gaza and Libya.

Cheers
mhg

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Egypt, GCC, Saudi Arabia, Sex, Slavery, Trafficking

From the Gulf with Lust: Young Summer Girls for Rent in Egypt…………

      

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“Each summer, wealthy male tourists from Gulf Arab states flock to Egypt to escape the oppressive heat of the Arabian Peninsula, taking residence at upscale hotels and rented flats in Cairo and Alexandria. Many come with their families and housekeeping staff, spending their days by the pool, shopping, and frequenting cafes and nightclubs. Others come for a more sinister purpose. In El Hawamdia, a poor agricultural town 20 kilometres south of Cairo, they are easy to spot. Arab men in crisp white thawbs troll the town’s pot-holed, garbage-strewn streets in their luxury cars and SUVs. As they arrive, Egyptian fixers in flip flops run alongside their vehicles, offering short-term flats and what to them is the town’s most sought-after commodity – underage girls……….. A summer-long misyar or “visitor” marriage runs from 20,000 Egyptian pounds (2,800 dollars) to 70,000 Egyptian pounds (10,000 dollars). The legally non-binding contract terminates when the man returns to his country. The “dowry” that Gulf Arab men are prepared to pay for sex with young girls is a powerful magnet for impoverished Egyptian families in a country where a quarter of the population subsists on less than two dollars a day…………..Some 75 percent of the respondents knew girls involved in the trade, and most believed the number of marriages was increasing. The 2009 survey indicated that 81 percent of the “spouses” were from Saudi Arabia, 10 percent from the United Arab Emirates……………”

Misyar, the part-time for-sex-only no-commitment marriage is quite common in Saudi Arabia, its birthplace, and has spread across the other Persian Gulf monarchies. It is almost like ‘going steady’ in the West if you get my drift. As I recall, Saudi-style part-time summer “misyar” for-sex-only marriage was made legal (halal, kosher) in Egypt by Al Azhar shaikhs only a year or two before Hosni Mubarak was deposed. I commented on it in a posting here at the time. It was apparently part of, the icing on the cultural shift that Egyptian society experienced under thirty years of the Mubarak regime and his opening of Egypt to Wahhabi cultural and religious influences of his Saudi allies.
Misyar in itself, like the Mut’a among some Shi’as, is not necessarily harmful or criminal. If it is done between consenting adults, except that it is not in this Egyptian case. This report here deals with a more criminal version of Misyar, basically pedophile trafficking in poor underage Egyptian girls. Selling and buying them as sex salves.
Cheers
mhg

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Latin America

Álvaro García Linera of Bolivia………

      

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“The profile of Álvaro García Linera, a leading intellectual and political figure, is atypical. Born in 1962 in Cochabamba, he is a trained mathematician and sociologist. Since 2005 he has served as the communist vice-president of the “Plurinational” State of Bolivia, working alongside Evo Morales, the country’s first president of indigenous background. Following studies in Mexican universities, García Linera returned to Bolivia in 1985 and engaged in political activism. In 1992, he was arrested for his participation in the Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army. He spent five years in prison without trial. It was there that he studied sociology which he then taught upon his release. He has since led conferences not only in South America but also in Spain and France. He is an intellectual renowned throughout Latin America and the theoretician behind the awakening of indigenous identity which he considers the most revolutionary element of Bolivian society………………”
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, GCC, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria

Field Marshal Bandar of the Caucasus, Lebanon, and Syria, and Qatar………

      

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“In a country of the blind, the one-eyed jack is king” Not Nietzsche


“Many of these Russian fighters and their Syrian comrades are (theoretically) under the command of a single man: Bandar bin Sultan. For one thing, the top Saudi security man is their main financier, arms source, and their virtual political spokesperson, whether directly or through his deputy, the head of the Syrian National Coalition Ahmad al-Jarba……….. His most recent experience of a military nature took place in Lebanon, after 2006, when Bandar convinced the Saudi king to bankroll a militia for Saad Hariri. Some observers familiar with that experience say that Bandar spent more than $200 million to build this paramilitary force, only for the whole plan to meet a catastrophic defeat in less than 20 hours of fighting, in May 2008. In Syria, Bandar bin Sultan did not deviate from his usual approach. He has set very high expectations, and today, according to some who met him over the past few weeks, he sees no issue more important than Syria. For instance, Bandar rarely mentions Yemen, Iraq, or Lebanon, except from the standpoint of defeating Iran and Hezbollah in the Levant……… Nevertheless, these concerns did not prevent Bandar from wagering on his fighters’ achievements over the next few months. For instance, the Saudi prince wants to see breakthroughs by the rebels in northern Syria, starting in Aleppo, and in the south, where he will try to convince the Jordanian regime to allow fighters and weapons to flow into Daraa and the Golan….……”

No doubt Prince Bandar fancies himself some kind of strategist. He wants to be known as such rather than just another corrupt prince (you know: BAE Systems, Al-Yamama, SFO, Tony Blair, etc). And he is a strategist by Al Saud standards: the one-eyed jack is king in a country of the blind. He can plan and strategize (do strategery, as he learned serving in the Bush White House). On more than one front. He can liberate Syria and Lebanon (maybe the two are related) while keeping Iraq highly unstable and Bahrain under control and the Al-Thani of Qatar in their rightful place playing second or third fiddle. Putting Iran on the defensive until the USA or Israel come to their senses and start a new war in the Middle East. In the meantime keeping the captive peoples of the Arabian Peninsula (aka the Saudi people) under tight control.
 
It should be easy: Hitler did it by declaring war on Russia and America in the same year and making it stick for more than one whole year. Until his natural stupidity caught up with the fake aura of invincibility. But Hitler was never before defeated by the ragtag barely-armed Houthi tribal clan of Yemen, his Stalingrad was further north than Yemen or Syria or Lebanon.
Cheers
mhg

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GCC, Saudi Arabia

Rock Star Appointed Saudi Deputy Defense Minister…………….

      

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                              Rock star turned deputy minister
“Saudi king Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz appointed on Tuesday Prince Salman bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz as deputy defense minister, Al Arabiya television reported. Prince Salman has occupied the post of assistant secretary general of the National Security Council (NSC) for intelligence and security affairs. He is now replacing outgoing deputy defense minister Prince Fahd bin Abdullah……………..”

It looks like the King recently fired one nephew, Prince Khalid Bin Sultan, as Deputy Defense Minister and replaced him with his own (the King’s) son Fahd. Now, barley a few months later the king has fired Fahd and replaced him with another son of Prince Sultan, a brother of the man he fired last spring. The new deputy minister has chubby cheeks (face cheeks) and looks like one of those Saudi singers or wtf passes for a local rock star, if you will. But he was born to this job.
It is nice to be a king of Saudi Arabia, it is great to be  a prince in Saudi Arabia. Of course, you still have to look in the mirror every day, and live with it.

Cheers
mhg

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Pakistan, Sectarian, Wahhabi

Pakistani Saga of Muhib Ullah: Loved by Allah, Hated by Others…………

      

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“The violence in Quetta started early Thursday when unidentified gunmen killed Muhib Ullah, a junior police official, and wounded his four children as he was on his way to a market. The assailants escaped. Hours later, as the senior leadership of the Quetta police gathered for the funeral at Police Lines, considered to be a relatively secure official neighborhood that houses the lodging and offices of the police force, the suicide bomber evaded security measures and detonated his bomb. The explosion ripped through the funeral service as police officers and relatives scrambled for cover. One of the fatalities included a deputy inspector in charge of field operations, Fayyaz Ahmed Sumbal, who died in the hospital from his wounds. A low level insurgency has simmered in Baluchistan as nationalists have taken up arms against the federal government. The provincial capital has also been hit by sectarian violence as extremist Sunni militants have targeted Hazaras, a minority community belonging to the Shiite sect……………..”

His name, Muhib Ullah is, was, a hopeful sign: it means “Loved by God”. Apparently that love was not enough to save his life, or to save his children from harm. Nor was it enough to allow him a dignified peaceful funeral. In some places, the hatred is strong enough to go against a wishful name, strong enough to defeat the deity, be it called God, Allah, Yahweh, or whatever.
Pakistan is one place where Salafi terrorism has taken deep root, where sectarian hatred is the norm in many regions. All courtesy of Wahhabi clerics and their ideology and the petro-money that helped spread it over the past few decades.

Cheers
mhg

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Germany, Israel

Bibi Netanyahu Joins Cartoon Network in Germany………..

      

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“German daily Stuttgarter Zeitung published a caricature of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as he poisons the dove of Middle East peace. According to the drawing, the prime minister is spilling poison from a bottle marked “settlement construction” onto a peace of bread, as the dove stands next to him, holding an olive branch in its mouth. In early July, the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung, a daily newspaper, published a caricature criticizing Germany’s military aid to Israel. “Germany presents” the drawing’s subheading read, elaborating: “For decades Israel receives arms, sometimes for free. Israel’s detractors believe Israel to be a voracious Moloch. Peter Beinart condemns this situation.” Beinart is a liberal Jewish professor and journalist known for his critical stance on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. …………….”
Cheers
mhg

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