Monthly Archives: November 2014

Egypt, Human Right, Uncategorized

Great News: Egypt to Export its Expertise in Repression……….

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Egypt’s foreign minister is quoted in local media as asserting that Egypt is keen on transferring her expertise and experience in security issue to “sisterly” countries. He is quoted that Egypt is seeking to enhance the capabilities of “these countries” in matters of “internal security” with the overall goal of serving all our peoples.

Cute. Glad tidings for any Arab people who have not yet been subjected to arbitrary arrests, torture, summary death sentences, midnight knocks on the door, tear gas, and disappearances. If there is any rare Arab people that have not been subject to these, er, official diversions. Egypt has one important thing she can now export: the Sisi type of law and order, which is slightly nastier than Mubarak’s version of law and order.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

Valley of Christians, Valley of ISIS……….

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Allentown by Billy Joel

“For them, Allentown is Assadville, USA. Support for an authoritarian regime headed by a ruthless dictator may seem like strange position for a community so steeped in the culture of American democracy. But with Assad’s army standing as the only buffer between their ancient culture and its annihilation by ISIS—the majority of Allentown’s Syrian Christians are more than willing to overlook the contradiction………… Most Allentown residents of Syrian heritage are Orthodox Christians from the Wadi-al-Nasara region in western Homs province………..”

This Hollywood-style Caliphate and its fans do not cotton up to anyone of a different faith or a different sect. That is the main reason why many, possibly most, Syrians who are not Wahhabi-inclined stand with the Al Assad regime. Even many Sunnis, contrary to what we read and hear in the media.
That name of that place of origin of these people in Syria is telling. Wadi-al-Nasara translates from Arabic exactly to: Valley of Christians.

(P.S. As a teenager, I attended and lived in a preparatory high school in a small town not far from Allentown, PA. I never met any Syrians there, but I still had a blast as well as an education. Great people over there).
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Ali Khamenei, Fascism, Iran, Israel, Racism, U.S. Foreign Policy

Enter the Ayatollah as Spoiler: New Bi-Partisan Fascists of America…………

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Saban     Adelson
   Haim Saban                               Sheldon Adelson
“Major Democratic donor Haim Saban said on Sunday that if he were running Israel he would “bomb the living daylights” out of Iran if the current nuclear negotiations produce a bad deal for Israel. Speaking at a conference of the Israeli American Council at the Washington Hilton opposite Republican casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Saban said that if he were in the shoes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the event of a deal with Iran that he judged to be dangerous with Israel, “I would bomb the living daylights out of these sons of bitches.” Saban, a major Obama donor in 2012 and Hillary Clinton supporter in 2008, also expressed deep skepticism of Obama’s policy towards Iran………..“

I had written, just minutes ago, that:
“Even the wildest of the Iranian mullahs never say ‘bomb the hell out of Israel’, except maybe as retaliation’. These are two not-so-new faces of fascism in America: the new phenomenon of ‘ethnic’ fascists. They are jingoistic and racist and they don’t belong to any one political party. They are bi-Partisan”.
Of course just after penning this eloquent comment of mine, and before posting it, who should intervene but the big banana of Iran? I saw the following ‘inconvenient’ tweet by Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei: “Why should & how can Israel be eliminated? Ayatollah Khamenei’s answer to 9 key questions……….”

Which makes you wonder which side are all these guys on, and do they deserve each other? Blogging can be frustrating sometimes, no? No further comment for now………..
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Arabian Peninsula, GCC, Qatar, Wahhabi

GCC Summit: Brotherly and Sisterly Problems Between Little and Big Wahhabis……..

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The Gulf GCC heads of state are supposed to hold their summit for this year next month in Doha, Qatar. No, the Saudis did not pick December for the annual meeting because of Christmas or Hannukah. They just happened to pick this cool month.

Anyway, this year’s meeting, if it is held, will be different. Syria, Iraq, and Yemen are not the main entree on the menu. The Big Wahhabi Brother (Saudi Arabia) is seriously angry at the Little Wahhabi Brother (Qatar). The two ruling families often support and finance rival Jihadis in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere where Jihadis roam. The Al Nahayan Brothers who own Abu Dhabi and rule the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are in the Saudi camp for now. The poorer Bahrain rulers usually follow the Saudi orders and do as they are told. Anyway, the two regimes would probably like to ex-communicate Qatar, unless they can force the Doha regime to change its foreign policies. I doubt they have any hope of instigating another palace coup attempt in Doha as the Saudis tried in the 1990s.

Odd, these princes and potentates can force the prime minister of Great Britain to seek an excuse to ban the Muslim Brotherhood, but they can’t force little Qatar to do the same. But then David Cameron is after their money and he’d do almost anything to get some of it. The Qatari rulers don’t need any more money, not from the Saudis and Emiratis.

The other two GCC members who are not parties to this dispute, Kuwait and Oman, have reportedly been trying to mediate and resolve this issue, but without success so far.

One promising fact is that Gulf media have not started to claim that Iranian Brigadier Qassem Suleimani of Quds Force is a regular visitor to Doha. Not yet. I recall how they started making fantastic claims and allegations about his secret visits to Cairo hotels just months before the military coup be Generalisimo Al Sisi against Morsi.

Will the GCC summit be held in Doha as scheduled? That depends on the mediations going on and on the caprice of the suddenly-insecure Saudi princes. A possible alternative is to go ahead with the non-summit but with lower rank representatives from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Caliphate, Iraq, Jihadis

The Economist Tackles Caliph Al-Baghdadi’s Mammary Fixation……….

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““IF I were a cow, I would be wearing a bra,” goes a lyric in a popular song about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State (IS). This reference to bovine lingerie—a poke at Mr Baghdadi’s supposed umbrage at the sight of naked udders—gets cheers from the audience in Metro al-Madina, a theatre in Beirut. The tune about Mr Baghdadi leading Islam into the abyss has proven such a hit that the Lebanese band performing it, The Great Departed, has extended its show…………”

Don’t know: people have their fixations ad complexes. They usually evolve, and in some cases maybe mature, over the years. Maybe baby Ibrahim Al Samarrai (a k a Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi) was nursed by a cold bottle and plastic nipple, care of an Al-Anbar version of Mothercare; never got to taste or see the real thing. They say it has some psychological as well as physical effects. Or it could be just one of the many quirks and obsessions, related to mammary and other glands, that the Jihadis tend to have. Like many other more normal people. This requires deeper analysis by qualified experts, not amateurs of this vital topic which most of us are.

Still, I suspect that it could have been worse for the Hollywood Caliph. Or maybe it was; time will tell.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Cinema, Hollywood, Israel

IDF Gets Two Big Famous Well-Videotaped Hollywood Fans………

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“On Thursday, billionaire Haim Saban threw a dinner at the Beverly Hilton to raise money for the nonprofit Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces. These fundraisers usually attract big names in tech and Hollywood, and this one raised more than $30 million. (Interest has amped up over the last few years due to Israel’s conflicts with Hamas in Gaza.) Attendees this time around included usual suspects such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Barbra Streisand. And then there was Pamela Anderson……………”

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, United Nations International Organizations, US Foreign Policy, Yemen

WTF? UN to Sanction Yemen Opposition Leaders, Charles and Hollande in Saada………

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“Lithuanian U.N. Ambassador Raimonda Murmokaite, chair of the council’s Yemen sanctions committee, said all 15 members had agreed to blacklist Saleh and Houthi rebel military leaders Abd al-Khaliq al-Huthi and Abdullah Yahya al Hakim. The three men are now subject to a global travel ban and asset freeze. Saleh has denied seeking to destabilize Yemen and his party warned after a meeting on Thursday that any sanctions on the former president or “even waving such a threat would have negative consequences on the political process.”…….. The United States submitted a formal request to the Yemen sanctions committee a week ago for Saleh and the Houthi leaders to be the first people designated…………”

Years ago some politicians in the United States often warned of “world government” encroaching on national sovereignty. They were usually conservative Republicans who were terrified of a UN-type world regime that would interfere in domestic US affairs. Some of them opined that it was part of an international conspiracy to dominate the world. They were considered ‘the crazies‘ in mainstream US media in those days. Now some of them run the asylum show.

Isn’t this exactly what the UN and the USA are doing now in places like Yemen? And can the UN really force various opposed Yemeni factions to follow international dictate on internal matters? And why does the UN and world powers not try to solve other ‘domestic’ problems with sanctions, as in Egypt and Bahrain? 

I have posted here before that sanctioning the Houthis is a meaningless  gesture. Unless it is a prelude to a more muscular intervention against them. As far as I know the Houthis don’t own properties in Europe or New York; they don’t shop in Paris and London, and they don’t spend their vacations in Nice or Geneva. They certainly don’t purchase their weapons from the West; otherwise Mr. Cameron and Prince Chuck Al Windsor and M. Hollande would be as regular visitors to Saada as they are to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Al-Qaeda, CIA, U.S. Foreign Policy, USA

Navy Seal Bin Laden Tattler: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?……….

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“Many a man would face his gun and many a man would fall………..
The man who shot Liberty Valance, he shot Liberty Valance, he was the bravest of them all………. ” The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

“Robert O’Neill is facing a backlash from ex-comrades angered by his disputed version of events at the al-Qa’ida chief’s Pakistan compound in March 2011 and his decision to go public. There are now three different versions circulating of who delivered the fatal shot that killed American’s public enemy number one during the raid, conducted by more than 20 commandos. Jonathan Gilliam, a former Seal, condemned the actions and motives of Mr O’Neill, who draws on his special forces experience in his well-paid appearances as a motivational speaker…………..”

This is the era of the whistleblowers and the tattlers and opportunists. Some do it, blow the whistle, for personal reasons, some do it for principled reasons. Everybody is now entitled to their brief television interview, perhaps their book, and maybe their movie based on the book. From former top cabinet members to former Navy Seal members. Everybody wants to be Captain America, except for the ones who are dead and those who choose not to talk.

He sure doesn’t seem to live up to the image that has been publicized about the Navy Seals . But then neither do the leading politicians and others who publish selective secrets after leaving office.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Caliphate, Iran, Iraq, US Foreign Policy

The Return of Qassem Suleimani: about Petraeus…………

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“When Islamic State militants retreated from the embattled town of Jurf al-Sakher last week, the Iraqi military was quick to flaunt a rare victory against the extremist group, with state television showing tanks and Humvees parading through the town and soldiers touring government buildings that had been occupied by the militants since August. However, photos soon emerged on independent Iraqi news websites revealing a more discreet presence — the powerful Iranian general Qassem Suleymani, whose name has become synonymous with the handful of victories attributed to Iraqi ground forces. Local commanders said Lebanon’s powerful Shiite Hezbollah group was also on the front lines. Shiite militias have played a key role in driving the Islamic State out of the so-called Baghdad Belt of Sunni villages ringing the capital…………..”

Qassem Suleimani has become like a mysterious military celebrity of the current Middle East wars. According to foreign media reports. He is hard to pin down, except for an occasional sneaked photograph and many rumors in Arab and Western media.

He treads in places where David Petraeus and his various men used to tread, some of them still do. Petraeus was more ‘official’ in his task and in his travels. Suleimani is not: he has been reported in various Middle East cities, from Baghdad to Damascus to Cairo and Beirut. If all that is true, then no doubt he has also been to a few other cities as well, (possibly incognito?). Excluding Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and maybe Riyadh, of course.

Petraeus was the man of the last decade. Suleimani seems like the man of both the last and current decades. Petraeus had to fly thousands of miles in order to be able to tread on those unstable sands. He had to fly all the miles back to DC and Langley to get away from the field (which he did not really). Suleimani and his mullahs live in the neighborhood: he can, and probably does, walk across borders to retrace the footsteps of Petraeus. Much shorter and easier than a march from Hanoi to Saigon.
Does that tell us something? I sure hope so, now more than ever, given the U.S. election results. More on that later………..

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, GCC, Yemen

Is Al Sisi Being Pushed into Foreign Military Adventures?………

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“The Associated Press has learned that U.S. Arab allies Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are discussing the creation of a military pact against Islamic militants, with the possibility of a joint force to intervene around the Middle East. Four Egyptian military officials have confirmed the talks to The Associated Press. They say the alliance would be separate from the U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. The alliance, they said, could intervene in other extremist hot-spots: Libya, where militants have taken over several cities, and Yemen…………”

Confronting the terrorists of ISIS is one thing: that is facing a danger close to home, with clear intentions to violate many regional states. Going beyond that into the realm of intervention in other countries is a risky proposition. I doubt this group of governments can organize a serious military campaign against an ‘armed’ foe rather than against unarmed civilians.

The Gulf GCC princes and potentates may believe that Egypt can be a formidable military ally that can be used in trouble spots from Libya to Yemen and possibly the Persian Gulf. They are wrong.

On paper that may seem to be true. Egypt has a huge army and some of the best American and other weapons in the region. As does Saudi Arabia and the under-populated United Arab Emirates (where nearly 90% of the population are foreign laborers and expatriates). The military prowess is all on paper: it is an accountant’s military prowess.

The Egyptian military has not been able to reclaim full authority over parts of the Sinai Peninsula, where Islamist Jihadis and various outlaw and trafficker gangs hold sway. They had one experience in outside intervention, in Yemen in the 1960s, and did not perform well. That 1960s army was supposed to be motivated and patriotic. This current Egyptian army is top fat and in reality it serves an entrenched oligarchy that only its top officers can identify with. Its soldiers cannot identify with their political and economic masters and are unlikely to fight effectively on their orders against a tenacious and fierce enemy. Not if their own homeland is not threatened.

Generalisimo Al Sisi would do well not to allow his military be “rented” by the princes and potentates to fight their wars. He would only get stuck in a quagmire in Yemen, again, or in some other place. Yemen especially comes to mind, because this week Saudi royal media have been quoting Egyptian “experts” warning about the Houthis and the Bab El-Mandab Strait. Ironically, both Egypt and Saudi Arabia have had miserable military experiences in Yemen in the past half century, the Saudis against the same Houthis a few years ago.

The Al-Nahayan brothers who rule the UAE have no military experience except maybe carrying Saudi baggage in Bahrain. But they also have some of the most expensive Western weapons and lethal toys that money can buy, and they may be deceived into thinking that is sufficient to wage real warfare against determined enemies.

They need bodies, reliable bodies that they think can wage war. Something like a huge army of mercenaries that is an efficient fighting machine. They may think they have found it in Egypt. I have no doubt that they are wrong.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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