“The head of Hezbollah’s Shura Council Sheikh Mohammad Yazbek said over the weekend that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who is scheduled to arrive in Lebanon Friday, is not welcome.“The visit of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to Beirut is not welcome, neither is the phony [U.N. Special Envoy Terje Roed] Larsen or the messenger of evil [Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs] Jeffrey Feltman,” Yazbek was quoted by local media as saying. Yazbeck accused Larsen, who is tasked with overseeing the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, of being biased toward Israel. UNSCR 1559 was adopted in 2004 and calls for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah. The latter has defended its arms as the only means to fend off Israeli aggression…………”
Hezbollah
and Jeffrey Feltman are old pals, they go way back to the good old days when Mr. Feltman was US ambassador to Beirut. The Lebanese opposition at the time claimed he was the true leader of the March 14 right-wing movement. They nearly claim that he led the March 14 and the old Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir and the Saudi ambassador in daily prayers for an Israeli victory in the summer war of 2006. They also strongly suspect that many Arab oligarchs joined that prayer, via teleconferencing or Skype. I fully agree with this last assessment: the princes were doing their rain dance, in vain, for a right outcome that war.
Lebanese-American relations have been in a sort of twilight zone for some years. For years U.S. secretary of state Clinton reportedly has not met with her Lebanese counterparts, the successive foreign ministers, even when she visited Lebanon. The foreign minister has been from the Hezbollah bloc. This has led to an interesting diplomatic dance by Hillary Clinton to meet some Lebanese leaders but not their foreign minister, nor their most important leader (you know who that is, don’t you?).
I suppose
this Lebanese opposition to the visits by these foreign dignitaries and international bureaucrats is somewhat fair. After all Hassan Nasrallah is probably not welcome in Washington (DC), and I don’t just mean at the AIPAC or its offshoot Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I doubt that Mr. Nasrallah is welcome at the UN either. Besides, all these gentlemen no doubt wish that the current Lebanese government would just vanish and be replaced with the pliable Saudi regime of Saad Hariri and his sidekick Fouad Saniora. They no doubt also wish that Hassan Nasrallah would also vanish, but then where would he go? Dearborn? Cheers
mhg
BFF “Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir met with top Libyan officials in the capital, Tripoli, on Saturday during his first visit to the country since rebels armed with Sudanese help ousted Moammar Gadhafi last year. The visit could herald closer ties between the two nations after years of deteriorating relations under Gadhafi. Sudan had accused Gadhafi of supporting rebels fighting the Sudanese government in the western Darfur region, and al-Bashir openly supported Libyan rebels in the 2011 uprising, giving them weapons and money. Following lunch with al-Bashir at an upscale Tripoli hotel, Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib said he considered the Sudanese leader among Libya’s friends. Some, however, pointed out the irony of a government founded by rebels who overthrew one autocrat warmly welcoming another……….”
Okay, the former late evil dictator Qaddafi was supporting the Darfur rebels against the regime in Khartoum. Now his NATO-liberated successors are feting the very same Khartoum regime.
French pop-philosopher and occasional thinkerBernard–Henri Lévy is given credit, or is taking credit, for the liberation of Libya by the West. The Liberation of Libya by the West was much easier than the liberation of Iraq by the West. He has practically promised that the New Libya will be kosher (speaking democratically). Yet one of the first leaders the new regime in Tripoli receives is a dictator wanted by the Interpol. Maybe Omar al-Bashir has made his own peace with the “international community”, aka the West, because we read nothing about trying to bring him to justice. But what is the price?
Al-Bashir, in power for over 25 years, has offered to help Libya create a new army out of the various militias.…. Oy vey, as they never say in Riyadh or Doha (not unless they convert from Wahhabism to something else). Cheers
mhg
“An arrest warrant has been issued against the Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi late Saturday for being the mastermind behind the recent bombing targeting the parliament, spokesman of Baghdad police operations said. The car bombing which took place on November 28, was an attempt to assassinate one of the members of the parliament, he added. According to the Iraqi government, evidence pointed at al-Hashimi’s embroilment in the parliament blast incident after deriving confessions from four arrested Islamic Party members……… Hashimi was the head of the Islamic Party, a political party representative of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq, in 2004, but in 2009 he announced that he is no longer a member of the party. Instead, he created the Tajdeed movement, which is considered to be one of the political parties component of the secular Iraqiya block. Meanwhile, the allegations against Hashimi came hours after the Iraqiya bloc which won most of the votes of Iraq’s disenchanted Sunni Arab minorityWalked out of parliament………..”
A serious charge: Tareq al-Hashimi doesn’t look like a master terrorist. Lucky for Iraqis, they have three vice presidents.
Iraqis couldn’t seem to wait for the last departing American soldier to cross the Kuwait border before they started at each other again. All this may give senator John McCain and Lieberman (Joe not Avigdor), and Gingrich and Romney, the excuse they need to re-invade Iraq and restore a Republican order.
It is interesting how roles have shifted in post-2003 Iraq. Early on the southern provinces were talking about ‘federalism’ while the likes of al-Anbar tribals and former Ba’athists were against it, claiming that it would lead to fragmentation. Most neighboring Arab despots were also against it: the usual Arab obsession with centralized authority. Now it is the likes of al-Anbar tribals and former Ba’athists who are calling for “federalism” with some of the neighboring Arab media cheering on. 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
The hypocrisy of some Arab opinion-ators, quasi-intellectuals, and faux-liberals (both the Wahhabi and non-Wahhabi variety) has been breathtaking. This is especially true in the Gulf region where many take their cue and their orders from absolute monarchies. Just look at how they treat events in the Arab Spring these days, and go back a few years.
Most Arab states ‘of the east’, and all the GCC Gulf states, supported the American-British invasion of Iraq in 2003. In fact they actively supported it (I supported it inactively at the time). Yet as soon as the “wrong” kind of regime emerged in Baghdad, they all turned against it, calling them “puppets”. Admittedly they are now too fundamentalist in Iraq for my taste, but then our whole region is heading that way, if only temporarily. They certainly are not nearly as sectarian or as fundamentalist in Iraq as they are in Saudi Arabia (almost nobody in the world is). Most Arab so-called ‘intellectuals’ and opinion makers still claim to be sour about Iraq, but they are not sour on their own governments for enabling it. But then we all wish sectarianism would just vanish. (Warning: maybe I’ll start my own ‘sect’ and have everyone else join me. I promise that I’ll not use witchcraft. Sorcery and magic will be seriously frowned upon).
Now to Libya. Many, possibly most, of the very same Arab opinion-ators were eager for the West, for NATO, to intervene in Libya. Their concern was admirable: to save Libyan civilians from the dictator and his henchmen. Yet Saddam had killed many more Iraqis, and others, during his rule than Qaddafi, than anyone else in modern Arab history. They accepted (actually pushed for it) American, British, and French forces to fight against Qaddafi even as they complained about American and British forces intervening in Iraq.
The hypocrisy is not confined to one party or one sect. It works for all sides. Some who are against the Syrian uprising strongly support the Bahrain uprising. Some who are strongly against the Bahrain uprising strongly support the Syrian uprising.
BFF Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz died Friday at an age of between 86-90. That leaves Prince Nayef Bin Abdulaziz as the next in line for the throne, if he makes it (he is up there in the 80s). Probably Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz, Prince of Mecca and owner of the daily Asharq Alawsat newspaper, will be next in line. I have written a few times here on the issue of Saudi succession, especially last July when the king put one of his sons in position to inherit the foreign ministry:
“…….. All this is
part of maneuverings by various branches of the vast Al-Saud clan to
position themselves for the coming death of the sons of old king
Abdulaziz (Ibn Saud). Besides the various ministries, the senior princes
have also staked out the various provinces as their personal fiefdoms.
This province system also creates the potential for an eventual “soft”
division of the country among the various branches (fukhooth “legs” and butoon
“bellies”) of the al-Saud clan. Even the armed forces, the
traditionally unified force within the Arab states, are divided into
spheres of princely influence. The Saudi system of power transfer is
inherently unstable, and is likely to become more so. The “commission of
allegiance” (Bay’a) that was supposed to select the rulers
reflects the rivalries within the family, which means it is as unstable
as the family relations and rivalries. Once the last of the Ibn Saud
sons passes away, there will be a political bloodbath (not necessarily a
real red bloodbath) over control of the Kingdom without magic and its
resources. The country may resemble China in the era of the warlords
more than a hundred years ago: it certainly has the potential for such a political fragmentation.………“
Cheers
mhg
“The scene in Egypt looks grim. More than eight months have passed since Jan. 25, when the sparks of revolution finally brought Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule to an end. Yet we have witnessed no real policy changes from the provisional Military Council. The postrevolution era is marked by as much—if not more—brutality as faced the Egyptians during Mubarak’s reign as witnessed by the dozens of Copts killed in recent clashes. The censorship of journalists, bloggers, newspapers, and other publications continues. It seems that the confiscation of journalistic work has become a defining characteristic of the postrevolution era. Worse, nothing suggests that the Military Council will surrender its authority to an elected civilian president in the near future, despite their statements to the contrary. An addiciton to power has taken hold, especially in the mind of Marshal Tantawi………..”
Just as I wrote here: the military will be the supreme power, with some elected politicians suffocating underneath it. Just like in Iran where elected politicians are subservient to an unelected leader. Ayatollah Tantawi, meet Marshal Khamenei. What went wrong in Egypt is simple. The people did not finish up the ‘revolution’. They kept the old regime intact except for the top two or three men. Lenin had it right in 1917, at the beginning, by insisting on a complete overthrow of the old order, as did the Iranian Ayatollah in 1979, as did Castro in 1959. Unfortunately those three old revolutionaries failed to create free societies: they got rid of their ‘democratic’ partners and replaced the bad old orders with bad new dictatorships. Now the military junta is set to share power in Egypt: it is the Egyptian version of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). They will share power, but they will be first among ‘equals’, at best. This suits the Arab oligarchs fine, they are sighing with relief: the SCAF is now using the same divisive sectarian tactics (vis-a-vis the Christian Copts) that are used by the Saudi and Bahraini regimes in the Gulf. But the brave Egyptian people need to make another final push to be rid of the military junta. Cheers
mhg
Sorini, Samet & Associates
“In April, the AFL-CIO filed a complaint with the US Department of Labor calling on it to terminate the Bahrain-US Free Trade Agreement in light of the mass sackings of workers in Bahrain following the protests. To formulate the response to this, Bahrain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs hired the services of Sorini, Samet & Associates LLC, a government relations firm specializing in international trade legislation. The point man at the firm is Andrew Samet, who has previously served as Deputy Undersecretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration. The Bahrain government was to pay the firm an hourly fee ranging between $100 and $550 with an initial non-returnable retainer of $25,000. One would imagine these guys helped arrange the July meetings of Bahrain’s ministers of labour and industry with US officials and policy wonks in Washington DC (after Samet visited Bahrain in May)……….”
They all do it: Republican, Democrats, Vegans, Liberals, Conservatives, Vegetarians, Carnivores, etc. Nothing personal against the people or in favor of the repressive regime. As Sal Tessio told Tom Hagen (Godfather I): It was business…….<br> Cheers
mhg
“Transport and Communications Undersecretaries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states discussed here Monday the establishment of a railway authority, as well as linking Yemen with the yet-to-be-established GCC railway network. Director General of UAE’s national transport authority, Dr. Nasser Al-Mansouri, in a keynote speech to the meeting, underlined importance of the railroad project that would link the six GCC countries. He said the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has established the federation trains company and issued relevant legislations to pave way for the construction of the UAE’s railroad network. GCC Assistant Secretary General for Economic Affairs Abdullah Al-Shubaili, in remarks on sidelines of the meeting said the officials discussed feasibility study of the railroad linkage with Yemen, safe regulations of small ships and inspection on vessels…..….”
I can’t believe these F-heads seriously talked about a rail extension into Yemen. Yemen is having a popular rebellion, nay multiple rebellions, against their favorite dictator. Yemen is experiencing several civil wars on several fronts. Yemen has a serious al-Qaeda presence. Yemen faces American drone bombings from bases most likely in Saudi Arabia. Yemen will be unstable for years to come mainly because of the dictatorship. It is absurd enough that they want to invite Morocco and Jordan and Monaco and Brunei and Zimbabwe and Colombia to join. And now this. What is the matter with these watermelon dignitaries of the GCC? Cheers
mhg
“Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan, one of Saudi Arabia’s most senior clerics, said he was not consulted about King Abdullah’s decision to grant women more political rights, one of the first signs of discontent from powerful conservatives since the reform was announced. In a speech last week the Saudi monarch announced that women would vote and run in future municipal council elections and serve in the appointed Shura Council which advises the king on policy. King Abdullah said his decision was made after consultation with the country’s most senior clerics, who have extensive political and social influence……..” Apparently the absolute king has his own “kitchen clergy” also called “palace clergy” that he consults. This old chap is clearly not part of it. I suspect that the various princely factions may have their own “ulema” or cleric factions. Imagine, each senior prince has his own kitchen full of pliant clerics; it is possible. Yet this Salafi cleric also knows that 1915 is a long way off, depending on one’s age. It may be a race with time between this cleric and the absolute king. Besides it is a meaningless vote for “advisory” municipal councils. Cheers
mhg
Rattlesnake Ridge 
BFF 
