“A 24-year-old man died tonight at Qasr El-Eini hospital in Cairo after suffering a severe drop in blood pressure and heart failure after allegedly being tortured by prison officials. Essam Ali Atta Ali was serving a two-year prison sentence in the maximum security ward at Tora Prison after being prosecuted in a military court on 25 February in relation to the illegal occupation of an apartment. According to the victim’s cellmates, prison officials sought to punish Ali after catching him smuggling a mobile SIM card into the ward. Prison officers reportedly pushed hoses into Ali’s mouth and anus, causing severe bleeding. Ali’s brother told media that he saw his brother’s corpse at the hospital and it exhibited signs of serious injuries. According to several media reports, an officer from Tora Prison left Ali at the hospital as he lay in a critical condition. Attending physicians immediately noticed liquid secretions emanating from Ali’s mouth and suspected foul play. In the late hours of Thursday, MD Aida Seif El-Dawla of El-Nadeem Centre for the rehabilitation of victims of torture, broke the news of Ali’s death to the public through Facebook and Twitter. She called on activist lawyers to support a traumatised family in their quest for answers. Ali’s mother told media that her son was a victim of police brutality and that she will not rest until his killers are brought to justice………”
Is Egypt going back to the future? The military trials for civilians, arrest of bloggers, and torture continue, proving that the new Egypt is not much different from the rest. The SCAF junta is writing its own constitution for the country. It looks like Egypt is back into the camp of Arab moderates of the New Middle East again. Trials of civilians in military courts, arbitrary arrests and torture are nothing new in our region: both moderate and radical regimes have used them extensively. From Tehran to Riyadh to Manama and Cairo and Damascus, and a few other places. They all imprison and torture and execute and exile. The only difference is that some are called republics and others are called monarchies; some are allied to the West others are hostile to the West. Cheers
mhg
BFF
What does the promise of New Saudi defense minister Prince Salamn to “improve” the Saudi armed forces also means, besides fat commissions for the princes? It means bad news for the potentates of the UAE. Now the oligarchs of Abu Dhabi will have to spend more money, try harder, to catch to the Saudis in terms of being the biggest importers of weapons. And in terms of bribes and commissions paid to the potentates and their retainers. It is a race between our Gulf potentates to see who, which dynasty, can fleece the people faster and more effectively than the others. Cheers
mhg
“JEDDAH: A terror cell planning attacks against the Saudi Embassy, the King Fahd Causeway and other vital installations in Bahrain has been broken up, a Bahraini Interior Ministry spokesman said Saturday. Four members of the cell were detained in Qatar and turned over to Manama, while a fifth Bahraini was arrested inside the country, said Gen. Tareq Al-Hasan. The alleged targets also included the Bahraini Interior Ministry and other individuals. Al-Hasan said the four arrested in Qatar had been traveling by car from Saudi Arabia. Security officers at a checkpoint seized “documents and a computer containing information of a security nature (and) details on certain vital sites.” They were also carrying US dollars and Iranian rials………..”
If I were an Iranian official plotting terrorism in Bahrain or in Saudi Arabia, I would never hand the terrorists Iranian money, for two reasons: (1) American dollars, or Euro, or Gulf currencies are easier to use, and (2) Iranian money would look suspicious if these men get caught. A smart Iranian “control” would have them carry wads of Israeli NIS. If I wanted to make sure everyone “knew” the Iranians were behind a plot, I’d give the terrorists some Iranian currency, a lot of it. So, somebody is very stupid: it can be the Iranians, or the Bahrainis, or the Saudis. Who do you think is that stupid? Could it be all of the above? I suspect any of the above have operatives who are stupid enough. The good news (or is it the bad news) is that we have not read anything (yet) linking this “plot” to an Iranian used car dealer in Texas named Arbabsiar. But it is early.
The Bahrain and Saudi media are running away with it. Saudi semi-official network Alarabiya headlines that members of the appointed Bahrain sectarian “parliament” have claimed Iran and Hezbollah were involved (they forgot to add North Korea). Qatari media have not reported on this, yet. Which is also odd, but maybe they are as suspicious of the timing of this as I am.
I think somebody somewhere ought to quit while they are ahead: the question is where is that somebody? Tehran or Manama or Riyadh? Cheers
mhg
“eAsiaMediaHub US EAP Media Hub: #SecClinton: Assad has lost his legitimacy to rule & he should step down #Syria”
“Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah on Friday warned Israel and the US that a war against Iran and Syria would lead to an all-out regional conflict. “They should understand that a war on Iran and Syria will not remain in Iran and Syrian territory, but it will engulf the whole region and there is no escaping this reality,” Nasrallah said during a televised speech honoring “Martyrs’ Day.”……. “Iran is strong, united and has a one-of-a-kind leader and it will retaliate harshly,” he said in his speech, which was delivered in Beirut’s southern neighborhood ………..”
“Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called on the US administration and the Zionist entity to understand very well that a war against Iran and Syria will not stay inside Iran and Syria, but will roll instead and spread out to the entire region.…….. “
Hassan Nasrallah is sticking by the Syrian regime, even as the Iranian patrons are (very) slowly moving away. Perhaps the Iranians can see some writing on the wall, or hedging their bets as all politicians (by definition) do. Clearly one does not expect Nasrallah to see eye to eye with Secretary Clinton on Syria, certainly on Lebanon, but diverging from a possible Iranian view is unusual. Of course he diverges only from the views expressed by President Ahmadinejad, which are not necessarily the views of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not these days. Meanwhile a consensus is emerging that the Assad dynasty rule is about to expire. Things are getting interesting in Syria, but they will get even more interesting after the fall of the Ba’ath party. Cheers
mhg
“The external opposition continues to fudge its stance on external intervention, and with good reason: the internal opposition rejects it. This is the flaw to the model – for the majority in Syria deeply oppose external intervention, fearing civil conflict. Hence Syrians face a long period of externally mounted insurgency, siege and international attrition. Both sides will pay in blood. But the real danger, as Hannah himself noted, is that the Saudis might “once again fire up the old Sunni jihadist network and point it in the general direction of Shiite Iran”, which puts Syria first in line. In fact, that is exactly what is happening, but the west, as before in Afghanistan, prefers not to notice – so long as the drama plays well to western audiences. As Foreign Affairs reported last month, Saudi and its Gulf allies are firing up the radical Salafists (fundamentalist Sunnis), not only to weaken Iran, but to do what they see is necessary to survive – to disrupt and emasculate the awakenings that threaten absolute monarchism. This is happening in Syria, Libya, Egypt…………..”
It is all part of the Saudi-led GCC-funded Arab Counterrevolution. Its only goal is to maintain the status quo on the Gulf , at any price. Status quo means only one thing: keeping the al-Saud dynasty in power, with absolute unquestionable authority. Before the Arab “Spring”, it was aimed at any change in the broader Arab status quo. At the time they used developments in Iraq, post the invasion they had supported and participated in, to stoke sectarian fires. Even old Hosni Mubarak managed, with Saudi help, to ‘discover’ plots by Shi’as to convert his people and take over Egypt. They exaggerated fears of an Iranian threat with the goal of dividing the somnolent and often tame peoples of the GCC states into Sunni and Shi’a factions. It always works on the Gulf: fearful Sunnis seek the protection of the corrupt ruling dynasties, angry Shi’as become more vocal in their demands, which in turn is used by the palace Salafis to further stoke the fires of division. Amazing how one ancient doubtful Hadith about absolute loyalty to the (Muslim) ruler is being used by Salafi clerics to counter the Arab revolutions, but only in selective countries. Cheers
mhg
BFF “Egypt’s ruling military council is silencing critics while polishing its image amid increasing signs that it is plotting to stay in power behind the scenes even after a new parliament is in place early next year. Activists and politicians are worried that the military, the country’s most revered institution before the revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak in February, refuses to have its authority and financial interests answerable to an emerging democracy. Concerns were heightened this week when the military-backed interim government announced parameters for writing Egypt’s new constitution. The proposals allow the generals to appoint 80% of the constitutional committee. They also state that the defense budget would be kept secret and the military would be the “guardian” of the constitution, raising the possibility of intervention in legislative and presidential affairs……….” Egypt will probably have an elected parliament and president. But the military will remain the most powerful institution in the country: the military, not the parliament, not the president, not even the lousy Mubarak-appointed and Saudi-oriented Shaikh of al-Azhar. Like Turkey of old, like some Latin American nations of the past, the military junta is here to stay. It will not rule directly, its Arab and Western friends must have told the generals that is not a good idea. It will rule by pulling the strings, by drawing “red lines”: Arab potentates are fond of “red lines” that people should not cross. Like I said once before here, they will have their own Supreme Ayatollah Tantawi. That is Mubarak’s revenge against the Egyptian people, if they accept it. Cheers
mhg
“U.S. officials are concerned that Israel will not warn them before taking military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, a senior U.S. military official said Friday. The official, who asked to remain anonymous, told the CNN network that although in the past, U.S. officials thought they would receive warning from Israel if it did take military action against Iran, “now that doesn’t seem so ironclad.” The U.S. is “absolutely” concerned that Israel is preparing an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and this concern is increasing, CNN reported the official as saying. The U.S. has increased its “watchfulness” of Iran and Israel…….…..”
If anybody truly believes that the US administration worries about Israel “attacking” Iran without them knowing, then I still have that perfect three legged and half-blind camel for sale. Clearly the Obama-Clinton administration and the Likud coalition are playing a game of good cop and bad cop, in the style of the Keystone cops. Israel has no way of getting into Iranian airspace without American knowledge. The United States owns the airspace over the entire Middle East, with the possible exception of Iran and Syria. Israel also has no way of getting into Iranian airspace without the cooperation of some other Middle East regimes. Iraq and Turkey and Syria will not allow attacking jets to cross their territory. That leaves only the potentates on my Gulf (and Jordan). The controlled Saudi media have been softening their people, and in some other Persian-American Gulf GCC states, by beating the sectarian drum. It is possible now, after this long and fierce media campaign by the al-Saud that a “not insubstantial” segment of Saudi society will not object to cooperation with the Israelis in an attack across the Persian-American Gulf. That segment includes the crucial Wahhabi palace ulema, the tamed Salafi royal clerics like Shaikh Al Al Shaikh, who will no doubt issue the appropriate fatwa. Then again, all this can be just part of psychological war against the mullahs. It might just stay that way, hopefully. Cheers
mhg
BFF “This summer a senior Saudi official told John Hannah, Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, that from the outset of the upheaval in Syria, the king has believed that regime change would be highly beneficial to Saudi interests: “The king knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.” This is today’s “great game” – losing Syria. And this is how it is played: set up a hurried transitional council as sole representative of the Syrian people, irrespective of whether it has any real legs inside Syria; feed in armed insurgents from neighbouring states; impose sanctions that will hurt the middle classes; mount a media campaign to denigrate any Syrian efforts at reform; try to instigate divisions within the army and the elite; and ultimately President Assad will fall – so its initiators insist……….. The radical armed elements being used in Syria as auxiliaries to depose Assad run counter to the prospect of any outcome emerging within the western paradigm. These groups may well have a bloody and very undemocratic agenda of their own………The origins of the “lose Assad” operation preceded the Arab awakening: they reach back to Israel’s failure in its 2006 war to seriously damage Hezbollah, and the post-conflict US assessment that it was Syria that represented Hezbollah’s achilles heel – as the vulnerable conduit linking Hezbollah to Iran. US officials speculated as to what might be done to block this vital corridor, but it was Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia………….”
Bandar Bin Sultan, Saudi Prince of thieves, is advising the West on how to topple the Ba’athist dictatorship in Damascus and almost certainly install a worse regime of Salafis and other fundamentalists. That may be fine with the al-Saud rulers in Riyadh: the Salafis are their fifth columnists, bought and paid for, from the Persian-American Gulf states to Egypt and North Africa. The West will almost certainly miss the Assad dictatorship, once the Islamists rule in Damascus. Imagine the Taliban wedged between Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel. It is especially the latter border that should give the West second thoughts. (I trust there is no need for my regular readers to have me repeat the well-known story that BAE Systems had given bribes commissions of about GBP1 billion (US$ 2 billion) to Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan for his role in a huge British-Saudi arms deal. Tony (Yo) Blair killed the British Serious Frauds Office (SFO) investigation of it because it threatened a new British deal to sell weapons systems and pay the princes yet more bribes commissions. That came to be known as the al-Yamama scandal, and it set Tony Blair on his path to multimillion contracts with Arab and other oil potentates after he left office).
Cheers
mhg
BFF “Huneish Nasr last saw the boss he served for 30 years standing in the ruins of Sirte looking confused as all hell broke loose around them. “Everything was exploding,” said Nasr, Muammar Gaddafi’s personal driver, recalling the moments before the deposed dictator was caught last week. “The revolutionaries were coming for us. He wasn’t scared, but he didn’t seem to know what to do. It was the only time I ever saw him like that.” Minutes later, euphoric rebels had ended Gaddafi’s last stand, over-running the ruined quarter of his birthplace that had served as his final, ignominious refuge. Nasr said he threw his hands up in surrender as gun-toting rebels approached. He was knocked to the ground with a rifle butt, which blackened his left eye. Gaddafi was being pulled from a drainpipe just before Nasr fell …………..”
Why only interview Qaddafi’s old driver? There are scores of Qaddafi’s former minions in power now in the new Libya, why not interview them? They certainly can tell more ‘juicy’ tales than this man. Maybe they don’t want to embarrass folks like Mustafa Abdul Jalil and others of the NTC by asking them about their years working with and for Qaddafi. Cheers
mhg
You won’t see an English translation of this junk analysis piece from the Saudi semi-official daily Asharq Alawsat. There are many pieces like this one in the same paper and they are never shown on the English website, only in the Arabic version in order to keep the faithful, faithful. The stupidity of the story is just too breathtaking (or rather the implied and assumed stupidity of the Arab reader is breathtaking). It is a wild story written by a Lebanese chick named Huda al-Husseini who is a regular on the daily and its sister Alarabiya website. She specializes in outlandish stories. It tells of how the Iranian mullahs have made a deal with al-Qaeda to take over Egypt! Yes, Wahhabi Saudi al-Qaeda, that same al-Qaeda.
But wait, there is more: according to the story either Israel or Iran will sooner or later attack the “Arab world”, wtf that be (Saudi? Egypt? Syria? Algeria? Somalia? All of the above?). Unfortunately you need to read it in Arabic and it is too long for me to bother translating now: maybe the weekend during the Cowboys-Seahawks game. If you thought the Saudi embassy plot was ‘fanciful’, this one will knock your socks off, provided you wear socks. “Al-Qaeda returns to Egypt under an Iranian cover…” Now all we need to confirm this story and make it legitimate and credible is a corroborating column by David Ignatius quoting the usual “high Saudi official” that all this is true. We know these people never lie, not when they are overseeing the holy places. Cheers
mhg
Rattlesnake Ridge 
BFF