I read last week that Saudi royal celebrity Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal is delaying the start of his new Arabic television news network (Al-Arab). It was supposed to start broadcasting this year, but has been postponed at least until sometime in 2014. Like that other Saudi semi-official network, Alarabiya, it will be stationed outside the kingdom. Only state television and radio can operate inside Saudi Arabia. Al-Waleed has picked Bahrain to house his new network: news and tear gas go together these days. But don’t expect his network to cover the nearly three years old Bahrain popular uprising that continues just outside its future studios. Al-Waleed also famously owns part of News Corp, which makes him part owner of Fox News and Sarah Palin and the Cheneys. Fox is also the most Islamophobic U.S. network; perhaps Islamo-phobic but apparently not so Wahhabi-phobic. Saudi princes and their kin and retainers control all the “Saudi” media inside and outside the kingdom. They have also bought and control much of the media in the eastern part of the Arab world, including Lebanon and the Gulf, as well as almost all Arab media that operate from Europe. The controlled media is now like petro-money, their main tool of regional and even international policy. Saudi daily newspaper Asharq Alawsat, different editions of which are published in Riyadh and London, is often described by Western media and pundits as “pan-Arab” or ‘independent” or “independent pan-Arab”. It is none of the above: it is owned by Saudi Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, hardly independent or pan-Arab. Saudi daily Al-Hayat, different editions of which are published in Riyadh and London, is also often described in the West as “independent” or “pan-Arab” or both. It also is none of the above: it is owned by former deputy defense minister Prince Khaled Bin Sultan al-Saud, hardly independent or pan-Arab. Alarabiya network is owned and operated (from Dubai) by an in-law of the Saudi royal family. Ever wonder why you never read about a Saudi journalist being arrested in the kingdom? Unlike most Middle East countries, unlike Egypt and Iran and Iraq and Tunisia where journalists often spend time in prison? That is because of the system of pre-emptive censorship (they call it self-censorship): all media publications are approved before publication. Anything that is not considered kosher or halal by the regime is never printed: that way nobody goes to prison. Not that it is likely that anything controversial will ever be published anyway by the cowed writers and journalists. All local media are owned by the princes, their in-laws, or their retainers and partners among the business elites. They are all basically state-owned and state-controlled media. That explains why Saudi Arabia often gets better ratings from NGOs like Reporters Without Borders, RSF, than other Middle East countries. You see: nobody is “allowed” to go to prison for what they publish because nobody is allowed to publish anything that might land them in prison. Who said conformity is not always good?
“Israel’s president Shimon Peres secretly addressed 29 foreign ministers from Arab and Muslim countries during a Gulf security summit in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago, drawing a round of applause from the audience, an Israeli daily revealed Monday. Peres, reportedly speaking via video link from an office in Jerusalem with an Israeli flag behind him, discussed issues related to Iran, radical Islam and “his vision for world peace,” according to Yedioth Ahronoth. The paper said New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman attended the meeting and was behind the leak …………..”
Thomas Friedman devised the old so-called Arab Peace Plan that the Saudis stole and claimed their distracted king had devised. For some time after that Friedman seemed alienated from the Al Saud, confining his Arab contacts to airport taxi drivers named Abed or Abdu or Abboodi, depending on the particular Arab country he was visiting. Now he seems to be back in from the cold in the Persian Gulf region. Maybe they want him to devise a new plan for the Gulf region. The potentates must need his help in the next Lebanese elections, wtf that is, and the coming Iraqi elections. The good news is that both Saudi surrogates Ayad Allawi (Iraq) and Sa’ad Hariri (Lebanon and Saudi Arabia) have about as much chance of leading their countries as I do of leading Israel or Bosnia. Cheers
mhg
“A Syrian Islamist rebel group wants to trade 12 kidnapped nuns for 1,000 women prisoners held by the government, a pan-Arab newspaper has reported. A spokesman for the “Free Qalamoun” group told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that the nuns were safe. He said they would not be freed until several demands were met. These include the release of 1,000 Syrian women held in regime prisons according to the spokesman. The reports have not yet been independently confirmed. An official at the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Damascus said the nuns were safe but would not comment on which group had taken them. Islamist fighters who captured the Christian village of Maaloula north of Damascus moved the nuns from the Greek Orthodox monastery of Mar Thecla.………….”
My initial thoughts were: If this is true, it will mean that the flow of foreign females for Jihad sex from Tunisia and other venues has dried up. The Salafis now have to resort to grabbing nuns (probably considered old and not very sensuous) and trading them for younger females. There have been reports of chicks from other places, Chechnya and Bosnia (and let’s not forget Ingushetia) going to Syria to entertain the cutthroats and indirectly help liberate Syria. As a result, they can also contribute to the future Islamic State of Syria by populating the place with many new little Wahhabis. I still don’t understand why the Wahhabi folks on the Persian Gulf who supply money and weapons and some of the volunteers can’t also supply the women. They can always impose some of their Salafi values by insisting that there be no cross-tribal or even cross-national fraternization or conjugation (or that other kind of “ation”). PS: Initially they responded by saying they had the nuns in ‘protective custody’. Now apparently the kidnappers-liberators have changed their minds: they are now asking to exchange the captive nuns with some of the female prisoners. Otherwise…….. what?
“Egyptian army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has pulled ahead of pop star Miley Cyrus to claim the top spot in Time magazine’s annual reader poll for person of the year, in a vote that saw accusations of hacking for the second year in a row. Time announced the results on Friday, revealing that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan came in second with 20.8% of the votes. He came in just above Cyrus, who had 16.3% of the vote. The vote comes ahead of the magazine editors’ person of the year announcement next week. To reach the top spot, Sisi collected 26.2% of the votes……… “Sisi’s numbers were driven by massive support from his native Egypt: the country accounted for the largest number of votes on the Time.com poll,” said the publication in a statement. “India and the United States provided the second and third highest number of responses, respectively.” Cyrus’ presence alongside two political leaders is a combination of the poll’s criteria – selecting a person based on influence rather than merit – and the susceptibility of online polls to computer-assisted trickery. Brutal dictators have also succeeded in past years’ votes. Kim Jong-un won the 2012 online reader poll. That win was pinned on the motley group of internet pranksters………………..”
They are celebrating in some Arab media this first victory by General Sisi. All this is almost meaningless: it doesn’t mean any of these celebrities and coup-makers will be on the cover of Time.
Some Gulf and Egyptian media made it sound like he will be on the cover of Time. It says here Kim Jong-Un won the 2012 person of the year ‘readers poll’, mostly through votes of pranksters in Seoul and California. None of them will be Person of the Year: even Time is not that dumbed down, not yet. Maybe the cover of Mad Magazine. I also suspect mostly Egyptians and Saudi royals voted for Sisi. They did it probably because they have a lot of time on their hands. Most other people around the world wouldn’t know Sisi from a Nono.
(The Guardian also claims Sisi “was elected deputy prime minister after the coup“. Nobody elected him: he appointed himself). Cheers
mhg
“Nelson Mandela helped popularize use of sanctions. His greatest impact was as a moral leader, but Nelson Mandela also left a legacy in diplomacy by helping popularize the use of international sanctions to pressure a government to change its policies. Since sanctions were imposed in an effort to end apartheid and bring down South Africa’s white-minority government, they have been used hundreds of times, especially by Western countries. President Clinton, who ordered sanctions against Cuba, Libya, Iran and Pakistan, mused near the end of his second term that the United States had become “sanctions-happy.”…………..”
Cute but poisonous distortion of history in the L.A. Times. It says: “Nelson Mandela helped popularize use of sanctions”, and I haven’t read a pile of dung (caca, if you prefer) that smelled worse than this one today. Mandela inspired starving out the peoples of Cuba and Iran? This piece somehow ties American and Western sanctions against Third World peoples to Mandela. The cruel Western blockades of Cuba and Iran were apparently inspired by Nelson Mandela, according to this twisted logic.
Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher, applied sanctions exclusively to several third world countries, but refused to apply sanctions against the worst offender of the time, the apartheid White supremacist regime of what was called (with a straight face) the “Republic of South Africa”. AS did much of the U.S. Congress. After all, it ain’t kosher (nor halal) to blockade white folks, even in Africa.
“An enthusiastic crowd all but crushed chief negotiator Mohammad Zarif upon his return to Tehran, after a deal had been reached with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany. The foreign minister deserved a gold medal for his diplomatic skills, the Iranian newspaper Arman Daily wrote enthusiastically, noting that the world had come a step closer to global peace “without Iran having to abandon its principles.” The deal evoked a completely different reaction in Saudi Arabia and Israel. Abdullah al-Askar, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the influential Shura Council, spoke darkly of what he called Iran’s “evil agenda.”………………”
Chairman of the ‘Foreign affairs Committee’ indeed! I’d say this was a joke, if Wahhabis had a sense of humor. Der Spiegel calls it “influential”. Nobody would seriously say this appointed advisory council, the Shura, is influential. It was appointed to rubber stamp some limited bureaucratic decisions of the princes. Der Spiegel would never call such an appointed impotent group influential if it were in another country. Influential? In Arabic they say it is a “صفر على الشمال: a zero on the left side of a number”, meaning it is meaningless, null and void.
Syrian Activists and Saudi media on WMD: “If at First You don’t succeed, try again and……….”
“Opposition activists again accused President Bashar al-Assad’s forces of using poison gas in Syria’s civil war on Thursday, and said victims had been discovered with swollen limbs and foaming at the mouth. The activists told Reuters two shells loaded with gas hit a rebel-held area in the town of Nabak, 68 km northeast of Damascus, on a major highway in the Qalamoun region. They reported seven casualties……….. They reported seven casualties. Separately, the Syrian Revolution Coordinators Union also accused Assad’s forces of using poison gas..………….”
After which Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Al-Yamama, leader of the Syrian opposition and putative future viceroy for Syria, will also declare refutable evidence of Syrian regime use of poisoned gas. The Islamic Heritage Revival Society, Jabhat Al-Nusra, the Saudi Religious Police, the Prime Minister of Bahrain, and the Ringling Brothers (and Barnum & Bailey) will also confirm the use of WMD in Syria. Alarabiya and Asharq Alawsat and Mad Magazine will now headline the gruesome incident. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich), head of the House Intelligence (this did not use to be an oxymoron) is considering a demand for action. The French and British governments will offer to confirm the use of poison gas.
Qalamoun is the site of an ongoing battle that will very likely lead to the ejection of the opposition groups from another strategic area. Remember, the claims of the use of WMD got louder and accelerated after regime forces defeated the opposition in Qusayr earlier this year.
“Israeli intelligence has assassinated Hassan al-Laqqis. A deadly breach has taken out one of the leading minds of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon. The executioners snuck under cover of darkness and struck a blow to Hezbollah deep inside its stronghold. The five bullets did not penetrate the head of Hassan al-Laqqis alone but also the heart of the Resistance itself. The assailants followed Laqqis, snuck in, and struck down the head of Hezbollah’s air defense division, and one of the Resistance’s most important “electronic minds.” The perpetrators fired five shots – one of which missed – killing Laqqis after several botched assassination attempts in the past. There is no doubt that this is a Mossad operation, no matter who carried it out directly – whether takfiri groups or collaborators…………..” Once upon a time, Arab regimes and Arab media blamed Israel for almost every political assassination and sabotage. Even for many of the killings that were perpetrated by other Arabs. Take the Sabra-Shatilla refugee camp massacre of 1982 (somewhere between 750 to 2,000 unprotected unarmed Palestinian civilians were murdered). It is true that Israeli occupation forces stood by and let “the Lebanese” killers into the camps, but those who shot, stabbed, and raped the unarmed refugees were Lebanese. The killers are now mainly part of the March 14 pro-Saudi political bloc led by Saad Hariri and the Gemayyel clan and others. Yet for decades Arab media mostly blamed the Israelis without pointing the finger at the actual killers. That day is past, gone. Most official Arabs now blame other Arabs (of other sects or other parties) and occasionally they blame Iran. Even if Israel is the guilty party. In this case Israel is almost certainly the guilty party, perhaps along with some Lebanese collaborators, who can be from the March 14 and their Salafi allies or just paid agents.
“Donkeys turn binmen as Gaza fuel crisis bites…. On a sweltering November afternoon, 10-year-old Alaa skips barefoot along a road in Gaza City picking up festering bags of rubbish and throwing them onto his father’s donkey-drawn cart. ………. People like Abu Jabal, who own a donkey and cart, are being increasingly relied on by Gaza’s Islamist Hamas government as the fuel crisis worsens. “In the past few days there’s been more pressure on us and more rubbish collecting work,” he told AFP. “At first we were tasked with picking up the rubbish outside the hospital, but now we’ve had to take collections from outside people’s homes as well.”……………….”
Now I know why the Israelis included donkeys, jackasses, and asses among items they had banned from being imported into Gaza. I had speculated about that in a posting a couple of years ago here. Too late for Hamas, of course, since they are ensconced inside Gaza and in power, just as the extreme right-wing is securely in power inside Israel. Speaking of donkeys and asses and the right-wing, I wonder how the boys in Ramallah are faring these days. Also speaking of Hamas and Fatah (PA) and Israel and jackasses: these three four groups have so much in common, I am surprised they can’t reach a quick deal. Then again, maybe it is this common regional affinity to asses and jackasses that encouraged US Secretary of State John Kerry to launch his latest futile peace initiative.
“Stephen Nderitu, a donkey cart operator in Nanyuki town, has been in the business for the last ten years. He has never dared bring a female donkey to town. You see, in 1949, the town’s colonial Urban Council imposed a by-law banning female donkeys. It was then a major hub for European colonial settlers. The Council was provoked by the “disgusting” mating habits of the beast of burden outside the Settler’s Store in heart of town. “Some rogue operators from farms and ranches on the outskirts of the town have been sneaking their female donkeys to do business in the town,” Nderitu said last week. “It is still illegal.”………….. However, another operator Peter Karigwi who has been in the business since 1997, said he has learnt to operate females without courting trouble. He argued that the solution to the problem is to “castrate all the male donkeys and the females will operate in peace without interference.”………..”
Maybe that last solution works for Kenyan donkeys, but not feasible for other asses.
