Category Archives: Arab Revolutions

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Human Right, UAE, Weapons deals

Disgruntled Bins of a Feather: UAE in the Footsteps of Bahrain?………….

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
         BFF   

“But it has tolerated little dissent during the regional upheaval, trying and sentencing at least five pro-reform activists and stripping the citizenship of another seven last year on charges that they represent a threat to state security. It also disbanded the elected boards of two of the UAE’s most prominent civil society groups, Human Rights Watch said. “Unfortunately, we saw last year that the United Arab Emirates decided to suppress freedom of expression in the country by harassing and trying a number of activists, and by attempting to limit freedom of association in the country,” HRW’S deputy Middle East head Nadim Houry told the conference. Subsequently a group of men dressed in traditional Emirati clothing burst into the conference and demanded it end because Human Rights Watch did not have a permit to host such an event. Attendees heard the men identify themselves as officials of the Ministry of Economy. They flashed an identification card, HRW researcher Samer Muscati, one of the conference’s organizers, told Reuters, but they could not see it long enough to determine who had issued it. “We speculate that these guys are not who they claim to be. They seem to be state security, not from the Ministry of Economy,” he said. Officials of the UAE Interior Ministry and the Dubai government’s press office declined to comment on the identity of the men…………..”

They are all the same, really. If they feel threatened by dissent, the Bin Technocrat Bin Zayed al-Nahayan act no different from the slimy Bin Technocrat al-Khalifa potentates of Bahrain. No different from the Bin Technocrat al-Saud princes. They crack down and arrest and gas and imprison and torture and, if they have to, they kill.
Why else do you think they are buying all these American JDAM bunker-busters? Did you thing it was to attack China or Iran or North Korea? No, it is to bunker-bust the shopping malls if they are ever taken over by irate citizens. Correct that: there are only about 12% or so in the UAE who are citizens” They can’t possibly fill a shopping mall. Only the citizens are entitled to feel disgruntled, if done silently. Citizens are allowed to be disgruntled silently only, but the almost 88% who are temporary foreign laborers are not allowed to be disgruntled even silently.
It is not clear how they monitor and prevent silent disgruntlement. They can’t just send their flunkies with ID’s to stop it. These security goons aren’t smart enough to tell who is disgruntled and who is not, especially when nobody is supposed to smile in public anyway.
Maybe the potentates have purchased some new equipment from the helpful Western government (possibly the eager British) or North Korea for that.
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Media, Arab Revolutions, censorship, Egypt

Funny RSF Watermelon Press Freedom Report: Saudi Arabia Richer and Freer than Egypt?…………..

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
         BFF   

This new report for 2011-12 by Reporters without Borders has some odd results for the Arab States:

1- Finland           45- Comoros           47- United States of America    
78- Kuwait            93- Lebanon          112- United Arab Emirates          114- Qatar    
117- Oman            122- Algeria            128- Jordan            134- Tunisia     
138- Morocco        152- Iraq                       153- Palestinian Territories      154- Libya
158- Saudi Arabia       159- Djibouti         164- Somalia  
166- Egypt         170- Sudan        171- Yemen    
173- Bahrain                176- Syria 

  • Saudi Arabia (158) is rated better than Egypt (166) for press freedom. So is Somalia. Can anyone fucking believe that (other than the Saudi princes)? In Egypt, even with SCAF military council, the media can criticize the politicians and the rulers more freely than most Arab states. In Saudi Arabia, any negative reference to the king and princes can get one fired and land them in prison. I submit that Saudi press (inside Saudi Arabia, not the offshore-based) is the least free in the Middle East, less free than Iran and Bahrain and Syria.
  • Then Jordan and the UAE are rated higher than Iraq: the media can and does criticize al-Maliki openly in Baghdad, but can they criticize the rulers of the UAE or the king of Jordan as freely?
  • The UAE (112) and Jordan (128) are listed as freer than India (131) and Tunisia (134). Now if you so much as look sideways at an al-Nahayan shaikh you’d be charged with terrorism in Abu Dhabi, yet it is rated higher than democratic India!
  • Frankly, no Arab country should be listed as freer than India (with the possible exception of Lebanon and Iraq and Tunisia).
  • I have had issues with the RSF reports in recent years. There is something fishy, they read like the kind of watermelon reports we have in the Gulf region.

Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Human Right, Muslims, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, WTF

Middle East Worst Four for Freedom and Civil Liberties: Saudi Arabia, Syria, Somalia, and Sudan……….

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
         BFF   

“A total of 26 countries registered net declines in 2011, and only 12 showed overall improvement, marking the sixth consecutive year in which countries with declines outnumbered those with improvements. While the Middle East and North Africa experienced the most significant gains—concentrated largely in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya—it also suffered the most declines, with a list of worsening countries that includes Bahrain, Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Syria and Saudi Arabia, two countries at the forefront of the violent reaction to the Arab Spring, fell from already low positions to the survey’s worst-possible ratings…….Worst of the Worst: Of the 48 countries designated as Not Free, nine have been given the survey’s lowest possible rating of 7 for both political rights and civil liberties: Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan………”

Always the majority of the worst in Freedom House ratings are Arab and/or Muslim countries. The worst declines were in the Middle East. Of the last ones up there, the worst of the worst, seven of the nine are Muslim states, and four of those worst are Arab states (Saudi Arabia, Syria, Somalia, and Sudan). We all knew that most these states were not sweethearts, but the worst of the worst? The Worst-est? Way down there with North Korea? And they all start with S? Which deserves a resounding: WTF!
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Human Right, Libya, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, WTF

Colonel Qaddafi on Free Speech and Insanity: Green Book and the U.S. Supreme Court………

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
         BFF   

The Late Mua’mmar Qaddafi: “An individual has the right to express himself or herself even if he or she behaves irrationally to demonstrate his or her insanity. Corporate bodies too have the right to express their corporate identity. The former represent only themselves and the latter represent those who share their corporate identity………”

Mitt Romney: “Corporations are people too, my friend.”(Romney being warm and fuzzy in a way on a Republican politician knows how).

I was intrigued by Qaddafi’s assertion about a ‘corporation’ having the right to express itself. The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court must have read the Colonel’s Green Book before they ruled the very same thing exactly two years ago. The Supremes referred to the First Amendment to hand the 2010 U.S. midterm elections to corporate money and to the Tea Party wing of the GOP.
As for the part about ‘freedom to express’ one’s insanity: that also makes me wonder if most of these Republican presidential candidates have read Qaddafi’s Green Book on this very topic. I mean some of them talk during their debates as if they are no saner than Colonel Qaddafi was. Yet the colonel was much more amusing than, say Gingrich or Romney. Perhaps not as amusing as Rick Santorum, but close, whose name may be misinterpreted by the ignorant to mean that he is too sane for his own good..

Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Europe, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey

On Israelis, Turks, Kurdish Rebels, Iranians, and Arab Oligarchs without Vision…………..

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
         BFF   

 

“According to reports by Turkish intelligence agencies, Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operated by Israel that have been observed in Hatay and Adana provinces in recent months spied for the terrorist Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). Turkish intelligence agencies prepared a report after the detection of two Israeli Herons in Hatay and Adana roughly two months ago, claiming that the Herons are collecting intelligence on Turkish military units in order to aid PKK operations in those regions. The report asserts that the PKK’s training camps in northern Syria, near Turkey’s Hatay border “where Turkish military border posts are relatively weak” were established in those locations based on intelligence collected by the UAVs. The report also claims that Kenan Yıldızbakan, a PKK member who commanded an assault against a Turkish naval base in İskenderun in 2010, has made repeated trips into Israeli territory, reinforcing suspicions of a possible link between Israeli and the PKK………….”

This was bound to happen. Once the Turks realized how racist the European Union feels toward them and their application for membership. Once they realized that they are the last on the list of countries that would be admitted, if they are ever admitted. Once the Turks realized that their usefulness to the Europeans as an anti-Soviet base and as a source of scarce labor has expired. Once they realized that they do need need Europe as much as they had thought. They turned their attention back to the Middle East, which includes Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

The Turks are in Syria now, more or less, possibly in rivalry with Iran for influence over Damascus now that the Arab leaders are helpless and have no independent vision for dealing with the situation. So far the only Arab vision seems to be pushing for the West to “liberate” Syria from its regime, just as the West “liberated” Iraq and Libya. The Turks are also in Iraq, possibly seen by some Arabs as their last hope to limit Iranian influence, at least in the north and west of Iraq. Odd, a new Turkish-Iranian rivalry over Iraq, just like the old Ottoman-Persian rivalry over Iraq.

All that because the stagnant Arab oligarchs, mainly the Saudis, decided to give up on Iraq because they did not like the way Iraqis chose their government (or maybe because the Iraqis actually had some choice, no matter how imperfect).
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Human Right, Iran, Muslims, Salafi, Saudi Arabia, Theocracy, US Foreign Policy

Mullahs, Princes, and Islamist Potentates: Prince Turki and Fitna……….

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
         BFF   
“Prince Turki al-Faisal, chairman of the board of the King Faisal Center for Islamic Research Studies called on Iran to stop spreading sectarian divisions (Fitna) among Gulf GCC citizens. He emphasized that these countries are not part of any dispute with the “international community” about its nuclear program. He made his statement in a speech to the Conference on National Security and Regional Security in the GCC, held in Bahrain………..”

I don’t know about this. No doubt the Iranian mullahs have pursued their own goals toward influence through interference in some Arab states: mainly in Iraq and Lebanon. Like all theocrats, the mullahs are no sweethearts in the pursuit of their goals. But the prince is being deliberately unfair and misleading toward the Shi’a citizens of the Gulf states. Prince Turki is hinting here that Iran is responsible for the popular uprisings in Bahrain and in Qatif. He is using the discredited al-Khalifa excuse of painting the peoples of Bahrain and Qatif as Iranian agents simply because they refuse to accept the current apartheid policies of the al-Saud and the al-Khalifa despots.
Yet no regime in the Middle East is as sectarian as the Saudi and Bahraini regimes, no regime has resorted to as much sectarian divisiveness and hatred as the Saudi Arabian. The vast semi-official Saudi media (all owned by princes and their retainers and tribal in-laws) has waged a campaign of several years spreading sectarian hatred wherever they could. No other regime in recent history has spread so much suspicion and hatred. Especially in the Gulf GCC states, but they have also tried well beyond the Gulf from Syria and Lebanon to Egypt and North Africa. All with the help of their local Salafi fifth columns and their Muslim Brotherhood tribal allies. (Most Gulf Muslim Brothers are very close to the Saudi princes, unlike those in Egypt and other places. Some like the demagogue Yusuf al-Qaradawi are close to the Qatari shaikhs, a few others are close to the UAE Abu Dhabi shaikhs).
It is the old divide-and rule policy once attributed to the British imperial power.
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Britain, GCC, Persian-American Gulf, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy

A Gulf Love Affair: Mr. Cameron the Democratic Traveling Salesman……

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF   
“The Foreign Office currently warns all Britons travelling to Saudi Arabia to exercise vigilance: “Any increase in regional tension might affect travel advice,” its website says. It is a warning that David Cameron could do well to heed when he flies to the kingdom today. Saudi Arabia might seem an ideal customer to a British prime minister keen to win contracts. If Barack Obama can sell the kingdom nearly $30bn of F-15 fighter jets, Britain can surely flog its armoured personnel carriers, sniper rifles, small arms ammunition and weapon sights………. However, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are fast learning to play another role in the region. The kingdom is branding itself as a bulwark not just against the Revolutionary Guards in Iran and despots in Syria, but against the Arab spring itself……… Internally, the most authoritarian regime in the Arab world has much to fear from demonstrations – which are illegal…………”

The Conservative (Tory) British prime minister likes to claim his coalition government’s love of democracy and spreading it around the world. His government participated in the NATO bombing and ground campaign for the liberation of Libya from Mu’ammar Qaddafi. Colonel Qaddafi was formerly a dear and near friend of Britain and the U.S. government in the last decade. They liberated Libya, just as they helped in the liberation of Iraq eight years ago. Just as they might help in the ‘liberation’ of Syria if the absolute ruling oligarchies on my Gulf, and their Salafis and the Wahhabi faux-liberals have their way.
The British government, like the United States government, like the Iranian government, like the French and Saudi governments, doesn’t give blanket support to all movements for freedom and dignity. If it truly believed in democracy before self-interest it would not do the following, and more:

  • The Crown Prince of Bahrain invited to visit the UK and was feted at No. 10 Downing St and other places.
  • The King of Bahrain to UK invite to visit the UK, where he was feted even as his mercenary forces were, are, busy gassing and killing and arresting protesters. Even as his local and imported Jordanian torturers are busy in the cells.
  • Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex last week visited Bahrain where they reportedly received gifts of jewellery and watches. Gifts usurped by the ruling al-Khalifa clan from the poor people of Bahrain.
  • Now Mr. Cameron is visiting the most repressive regime in the Middle East, which also makes it the second most repressive regime in the whole world (thank God for North Korea). That would be the Democratic People’s Kingdom of (Saudi) Arabia, which is dangling the prospect of fat contracts in return for turning a blind eye, nay two blind eyes.
  • British governments since the days of Tony Blair have become good at the two-faced game. Pushing democracy while pushing weapons that repress democracy. Pushing transparency in other countries while suppressing investigations at home of massive bribery to Saudi princes like Bandar Bin Sultan (as in BAE Systems and Saudi al-Yamama and Tony Blair and British SFO).
  • Just before the Riyadh visit, Mr. Cameron loudly and noisily sent a new British warship to the Persian-American Gulf. The goal was likely to show the al-Saud princes who their true friends are; that it is not only the Obama administrations, and whoever follows it into the White House.

Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, France, Iran, NATO, Persian-American Gulf, Syria, US Foreign Policy

BHL d’Arabie: the Liberation of Syria and the Gulf………

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF   

Speaking of the liberation of Syria, whatever happened to Bernard-Henri Lévy? The French pop-philosopher and liberator of Libya has not yet landed in Latakia to rally the opposition against the al-Assad regime. Actually Tartus would be a better spot for him than Latakia. He might be waiting for the opposition to establish their own ‘beachhead’, their own Tripoli (Libyan Tripoli not the Lebanese Salafi-Muslim-Brother Tripoli). Then he can sweep ashore, a la Douglas MacArthur. BHL d’Arabie, Lévy of Arabia!
Or maybe he has a more ambitious target in mind, maybe he is waiting or an opportunity to sweep the shores of the Persian-American (not yet French) Gulf. The liberation of Iran from the mullahs may be his next ambition: to bring down the theocracy and raise the flag or freedom, modernism, Wahhabism, and international oil companies. To drive the last Western nails, figuratively speaking, in the coffins of Mossadegh (nationalizer of oil) and Ayatollah Khomeini. For that goal, he can count on a small army of our Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood cheerleaders (only cheerleading, no fighting, not even puffy pompoms).
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab League, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, NATO, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, US Foreign Policy

Shaikh of Qatar and the Liberation of Syria: about a Piss-Up in a Brewery….………..

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF   

Media report that the Emir of Qatar has called for an Arab force to intervene in Syria. Arab forces do not have a good history of intervention in other Arab states, unless they are led by a Western general (or colonel or major). Remember, Europeans (T.E. Lawrence and others higher above him) actually led the “temporary” liberation of Jerusalem and Damascus in WWI. Commanders of regular Arab armies, like Arab leaders in general, can’t organize the proverbial-American ‘piss-up in a brewery’ as far as war is concerned. What they can organize is repression of their peoples, and occasionally of other Arab peoples (as the Saudi princes are doing in Bahrain). If Desert Storm were Arab-led (as some Saudi regime journalists occasionally try to claim), Iraqi Ba’athist forces would still be sitting in Khafji, and most likely beyond.

No, an Arab force in Syria would have as much success as the Arab League observers have had. Not only will both the Syrian regime and the ‘opposition’ run rings around them: it would also be a bloody fiasco. As one example: the Saudi military, armed with the best American weapons that petro-money can buy, could not subdue a small group of Yemeni clans (the Huthis) armed with primitive guns just a couple of years ago. They had to leave in defeat. Imagine what the well-armed Syrians can do to these same forces, led by the same inept princes.

I suspect that some of the Arab oligarchs of the Gulf look toward an eventual Western intervention and “liberation” of Syria. Just as the West liberated Iraq and Libya. That is probably their goal, something they have in common with many leaders of the fractured Syrian ‘opposition’. The people who excoriated the West for ‘liberating’ Iraq, after helping it ‘liberate’ Iraq, now want more of the same. Assuming they will end up in control, a tough thing.
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Libya, NATO

New Liberated Libya Receives Absolute Wanted Dictator of Sudan, about Bernard-Henri Lévy…….…

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      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 thinker Bernard–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


[email protected]