Category Archives: Corruption

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Cairo, Corruption, Egypt, Gulf states, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE

Arab Absolute Monarchs Funding Democracy in Egypt? Democratic People’s Republic of (Saudi) Arabia………

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      BFF

“A mini-crisis of sorts erupted between Egypt and the United States over foreign funding. The spark was probably the congressional testimony of the new US ambassador to Cairo, Anne Patterson, in June, in which she said that the US was earmarking $40m for USAID democracy and governance spending…………..Fast forward to this month, and the question of foreign funding is changing tack. A few days ago, the Egyptian press revealed (from government sources) that several of the largest transactions to civil society organizations have come from the Gulf, not the West. The numbers are quite telling. According to these reports, over LE181m ($30m) was given to the Ansar al-Sunna association, a very conservative religious group, by Qatar’s al-Thani Foundation. Kuwaiti and Emirati religious associations also donated significant sums, ones that dward(sic) what secular human rights groups might be receiving at the moment…….…”

Last time I looked, neither the al-Thani nor the al-Nahayan were on the verge of changing their own quasi-feudal fiefdoms (Qatar and the UAE) into model democracies. Anymore than than al-Saud are about to declare a Democratic People’s Republic of (Saudi) Arabia. I mean these are the same people who tried to keep Mubarak in power, they even got pissed off at Obama for not ‘somehow’ keeping him in power (Qatar excepted in this case). Last time I looked, they were all clinging to power and inherited privilege at all costs, and I mean ALL costs. Now their Salafi allies are trying to influence the elections in Egypt, nay trying to buy the elections in Egypt.

(Come to think of it, how about a Great Jamihiriya Socialist “Emirates” Republic of Al-Nahayan?)
Cheers
mhg


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Corruption, Culture, Finance, France, Libya, U.S. Politics

Corruption in the French Political Class, or ‘what bears do in the forest’……

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      BFF

“President Nicolas Sarkozy has distanced himself from a suspected corruption scandal that has roiled the French political class after an investigating magistrate began legal action against two of his close allies. Investigators are probing whether a French defense deal in the 1990s with Pakistan involving suspected kickbacks set the stage for a Karachi car bombing in 2003 that killed 15 people – mostly French defense contractors . In a statement Thursday, Sarkozy’s office said his name is not mentioned in any documents ……….”

What else is new? Several French presidents have been implicated and investigated for corruption, the last one being Chirac and now Sarkozy. None has been punished. There have been cases of cash paid, other financial benefits, and there have been cases of diamonds and precious stones gifted by African dictators. There are occasionally French politicians who truly feel angry at being accused, perhaps because they are innocent. There was one former French Prime Minister (I met him a couple of times when he was Finance Minister) who felt upset enough about accusations against him to commit suicide about ten years ago. He was unusual in that case and I suspect he may have been innocent.
Now in American politics they have more clever ways of getting the money to the politicians. There are millions of campaign fund donations, and there are more direct benefits through highly-paid speeches to special interest groups, as well as junkets and there are probably other ways as well. Then, for those who behave themselves and mind the interests of the lobbies, there are lucrative jobs waiting after they lose elections.
Now about Sarkozy, the Hero of Libya and aspiring hero of My Gulf. Oh well, you know the common American saying about ‘what bears do in the fores’……..
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab League, Arab Politics, Corruption

Politics as a Joke: Arab Parliament, WTF Parliament, on Electing Dog-catchers……..

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      BFF

I came across this headline today: “The ‘Arab Parliament ‘calls for freezing (or suspending) the membership of Syria and Yemen.” So I did some research about this and discovered the following items:
 
“Qatari Aisha Yusuf Al Mannai on Tuesday made history by becoming the first Gulf woman to be elected deputy speaker of the Arab Parliament.” Qatari? There must be a mistake: Qatar has no parliament, yet it has this lady as deputy head of an “Arab Parliament”.

Then I visited this site: “Welcome to arabparliaments.org This website provides user-friendly access to a host of parliamentary development resources, such as studies, policy guidance, translated documents, and links to networks and databases. It also serves to highlight UNDP-supported parliamentary development activities, mainly the Parliamentary Development Initiative in the Arab Region……………..”
Then I read this online: “At the Arab League Summit of 2001-Amman, the Arab states agreed to create an Arab Parliament, and came up with a resolution to give the Secretary General of the Arab League the power to start and create the Parliament. In 2004, in the ordinary Arab League Summit in Algiers was the official date where all Arab League Members agreed to send their representative to the temporary Parliament sessions that took place in the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, Egypt, with each member state sending four members, until the Parliament is reassigned permanently to its under-construction office in Damascus.”

Then I found one of my own old postings on this funny parliament: “They are trying to ape the European Union, with the false trappings of a “parliament”. They have chosen Damascus as the eventual permanent home of it. So, the absolute tribal monarchs, and the absolute despots who do not allow elections, and those who do would make sure who is elected, are serious about this travesty of democracy. There are about three Arab states that have elections where the rulers do not completely rig the voting. In one of these three states, Lebanon, foreign powers intervene, with help from their local surrogates, to try and determine who wins…….. I say scrape this body that was created to act as a fig leaf for lack of democracy. Saudi Arabia does not allow any elections for anything, not even for dogcatcher (one of my most favorite American terms), student government, or the PTA; yet it has representatives in this “Arab Parliament” appointed by the royalty. The same goes for some other states……”

So all the Arab countries have representatives in the Arab parliament: even Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the rest. Saudi Arabia? These countries don’t even have individual parliaments, but they have a joint appointed body that pretends to be a parliament, where the potentates select members. To be consistent, his Arab “Parliament” should freeze or suspend membership of about 19 of its 22 members, from Syria down through Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the UAE and on to Somalia (the last one being the southernmost Arab state). They should also change its name to the “WTF Parliament”.
Alles Klar???
Cheers
mhg


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Corruption, Culture, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Arabian Peninsula: between Salafi Wahhabi Dogma and the Greed of Potentates…………..

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“However there is more at stake than a new interest in heritage or a desire to attract tourists as part of the kingdom’s bid to diversify its overwhelmingly oil-reliant economy. As elsewhere, controlling history is key to power. The House of al’Saud has only ever been able to rule its kingdom with the collaboration and support of the largely ultra-conservative clergy. Reforms can be pushed through – such as the introduction of women’s education, which provoked rioting in the towns of al-Qassem in the 1960s – but only with the consent of the majority of clerics. For religious conservatives in the kingdom, any physical traces of history, even that of the first Muslims, is a distraction from God and raises the spectre of polytheism. So for many years, all traces of early worship within the kingdom, let alone of anything that might be deemed un-Islamic, have been destroyed. Scores of shrines, religious places, cemeteries and historical sites have been razed, damaged or built over. This is true even, indeed especially, in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. There is thus religious – and therefore political – resistance to preserving anything that is left. Mammon as well as God plays a role in the new contest of the kingdom’s history. Most recently there has been a row between developers who hope to build apartments………….”

Nothing in all history has done as much damage to the monuments and artifacts of the Arabian Peninsula’s past as the expansion of Saudi rule to cover the Peninsula some eighty years ago. The theocratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has done what centuries of time could not: destroyed monuments from before Islam and especially from the early years of Islam. Ancient houses where the Prophet Mohammed and his early companions were born, lived, and prayed, have been torn down by an alliance of Salafi Wahhabi stupidity and dogma and the greed of the potentates and princes and their developer partners. In their place, high rise hotels and apartment complexes and shopping malls have risen.

Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Corruption, ethnic cleansing, GCC, Human Right, Mercenaries

The Orwellian Glory of Bahrain? Khalifa and Winston Smith and O’Brien……………….

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      BFF    
                            
                                           Glory of the nation? 
“Even amid the crackdown, officials insist that Bahrain remains a democratic country adhering to, in the words of Abdulla al-Buainain, a judge, the “rule of law.” (E-mails to the government information office and a public relations firm hired by Bahrain went unanswered.) But the frustration of Mr. Alderazi is evident across the kingdom. The most despised government figure for Shiites, Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the king’s 75-year-old uncle and the world’s longest-serving prime minister with four decades in office, has become the center of an attempt at a personality cult; his portraits adorn intersections. “Glory of the nation,” one describes him……… Most dangerous, though, is the exacerbation of sectarian hatred in a country that has never really reconciled the narratives of the Khalifa family’s long-ago conquest. No one claims that Sunnis and Shiites ever lived in harmony here. But the country stands as a singular example of the way venerable distinctions of ethnicity, sect and history can be manipulated in the Arab world, often cynically, in the pursuit of power. Programs on state-owned television like “The Observer” and “The Last Word” baited activists as traitors and encouraged citizens to inform on one another. ………………”

This over-ripe Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa has created a bipolar society on the island of Bahrain. For many years outsiders, especially Westerners, saw only what they were ‘directed’ to see. Or they saw what they wanted to see. They saw one Bahrain: cosmopolitan, open to foreign business, pro-Western, rulers and their elite retainers speak English, yadda, yadda, yadda….
They did not see “most” of Bahrain. The Apartheid system that kept a majority of the people oppressed. They did not see the kleptocracy that stripped the land the wealth of the small country. They did not see the imported foreign mercenaries from places like Pakistan and Jordan and Syria who helped repress and torture for a fee. Many preferred not to see, especially the British expatriates many of who openly sided with the despots this year, for a price.
I recall some Europeans get nearly teary eyed talking about the last Shaikh of Bahrain (before the son promoted himself to king), how he allowed Westerners free access to the beautiful beach at one of his palaces. Only Westerners, they emphasized: no Asians, no Arabs, no Bahrainis, not even Saudis! I recall that one German, only one European some years ago, who muttered that “you should go outside Manama and see the squalid Shi’a villages”.
Now they have created an Orwellian nation of native informers, just to help the foreign mercenaries keep things under control.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Britain, Corruption, Mercenaries, Weapons deals

Gulf Arms Race: the Best Armed Foreign Mercenaries, it is the Commission, Stupid!………

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“At the Defence Security and Equipment International arms fair in London’s Excel Centre, there is no shortage of options for dishing out bad days, weeks, months and whole lifetimes. The Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, addressed the delegates yesterday morning, extending a warm welcome to the various invitees, among them military procurement officers from Angola, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The 65 national delegations asked to buy weapons in London include 14 regimes defined as “authoritarian” by human rights groups, who have highlighted the use of British arms in suppressing opposition movements in the Middle East……….. Saudi Arabia is by far the biggest buyer of British weapons and also the largest importer of arms globally. Saudi contracts earned the UK about £300m last year, according to arms trade analysts the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute……………”

So, all this means that the citizen of the UAE and Saudi Arabia is the best armed citizen anywhere in the whole wide world. Funny, they don’t look it: I suppose I should correct and say that the UAE foreign mercenary is the best armed foreign mercenary anywhere in the world.
According to SIPRI, it now looks like Saudi Arabia is the biggest arms importer in the world. The United Arab Emirates was the biggest Arab arms importer and the second largest arms importer in the world for several years, but no more. The UAE has less than one million citizens (plus a few million temporary foreign laborers) while Saudi Arabia probably has some 15 million citizens (plus millions of temporary foreign laborers). Now the potentates in Abu Dhabi will try harder to surpass the potentates in Riyadh. They certainly can afford it more than Riyadh can. That also means that some Saudi prince(s) will collect billions in commissions (called bribes in impolite and crude company, but I won’t stoop to that), much more than their Emirati (Abu Dhabi) potentates who will collect less in arms commissions (also called bribes in impolite and crude company, but I won’t stoop to that either).
Now we will have a race: the UAE potentates will seek to regain their position in weapons imports and, not incidentally, in the size of commissions their potentates receive. These fat bribes commissions are paid by the oh-so-generous Western arms exporters, who will then add the cost to the export price. Almost like money laundering: well, it is a way to launder the public money of these Gulf states back to the potentates with the help of the exporting companies. Remember the British BAE Systems and the scandal of the US $2 billion weapons deal bribe to Prince Bandar Bin Sultan (allegedly)? That was the investigation by the Serious Frauds office (SFO) that Tony Blair killed. It was called the al-Yamama deal. A lot of laundering there, more than the proverbial but real Chinese laundry in my neighborhood.

Maybe there are good honest reasons for amassing and storing all these weapons in desert warehouses. Maybe it is the fear of the scowling Iranian mullahs across the Gulf, maybe it is some mistrust of the resolve of the Western allies whose fleets fill my Gulf. In at least two cases it is the fear of the people, which explains the foreign mercenaries. Yet somehow I can’t shake off this nagging feeling that “It is the commissions, stupid!”
Cheers
mhg


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Arabian Peninsula, Corruption, Finance, Gulf states, Human Right, Persian-American Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Wikileaks

Saudi Arabia: Where God is Great but Greed is at least Good………………

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“Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.….” Ivan Boesky at UC Berkeley Commencement Ceremony in 1986, months before he went to prison.

“Oil revenue is said primarily to enrich the Al Saud. The embassy explains that Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Finance distributes a portion of the country’s oil proceeds to each Saudi royal family member in the form of monthly stipends. At the time the secret cable was issued, every royal reportedly received a monthly allowance from birth, on a sliding pay scale of US$ 800 (for distant royals) to US$ 270,000 (for sons and daughters of King Abd Al-Aziz). The embassy calculated these stipends to total more than US$ 2 billion of the Saudi government’s US$ 40 billion annual budget. For this and other reasons, the embassy concludes that “getting a grip on royal family excesses is at the top” of priorities for Saudi Arabia. In addition to the state-budgeted stipend, the cable reports, a royal may obtain a bonus of as much as US$ 3 million, as reward for getting married or building a palace. The existing stipend-and-bonus system provides Saudi royals with a significant incentive to procreate, particularly since stipend distributions begin at birth. It was stated that the central life aspiration of one Saudi prince was to have more children, so as to increase his monthly allowance. According to the cable, some members of the Al Saud resort to “royal rakeoffs” in order to supplement their already-substantial income. Such schemes may include confiscating land from commoners and reselling it to the government for a substantial profit; borrowing from the banks and defaulting on these loans; and acting as “sponsors” to “sometimes hundreds” of expatriate workers who are permitted to work locally as long as they pay monthly fees to the royals (this latter arrangement reportedly earns a single royal sponsor an average of US$ 10,000 per month from 100 ex-pats). Al Saud land and asset grabs are said to have caused resentment among the populace. In one instance, Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abd Al-Aziz allegedly ordered Mecca officials to transfer to him a plot of land that had belonged to one family for centuries………” Wi…Wiki…..Wikileaks

I don’t know what all this fuss is about. We, on my Gulf, do not need Wikileaks cables to tell us all about these royal robberies, and more. People know everything that is happening: who stole which land and when and how. Legends, true legends, are handed down now, about shady deals, “midnight” deals, and expropriation of lands by potentates and their retainers. It is the same story all over my Gulf region, but perhaps to different degrees. God is Great, but to some another great deity looms, an all-consuming deity that is at least considered good if not openly greater.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, Britain, Corruption, Libya

In Libya: “New” Labor and the Fog of Deceit, about Ahmadinejad…..

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“The startling extent to which Labour misled the world over the controversial release of the Lockerbie bomber is exposed today in top-secret documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday. In public, senior Ministers from the last Labour Government and the Scottish First Minister have repeatedly insisted that terminally ill Abdelbaset Al Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds in a decision taken by Scottish Ministers alone. But the confidential papers show that Westminster buckled under pressure from Colonel Gaddafi, who threatened to ignite a ‘holy war’ if Megrahi died in his Scottish cell. And despite repeated denials, the Labour Government worked frantically behind the scenes to appease Gaddafi’s ‘unpredictable nature’. As recently as last month, a spokesman for Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond was insisting: ‘The decision was taken on the basis of Scots law and was not influenced by economic, political or diplomatic factors.’ Equally damaging, the documents also suggest that as well as sharing intelligence-gathering techniques, Britain gave Libya hundreds of suggested questions for Islamic militants detained in Libya in 2004. This will inevitably cause widespread dismay because of the regime’s systematic use of >torture during interrogation………..”

Now why can’t the Iranians use the same system of blackmail to get their way? They have more oil and a hell of a lot more natural gas. They say Tony Blair “helped” Qaddafi’s son get a PhD from the London School of Economics. Hell, Tony Blair may even help Mahmoud Ahmadinejad get a second PhD, this time in “statecraft” instead of Science. Or better yet: a PhD on how to behave after leaving office.
(The Libyan NTC is doing the right thing in refusing hypocritical demands of some Western, mainly American, politicians that al-Megrahi be send back to Britain. A deal is a deal: you guys shook on it).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, Britain, Corruption, Libya

Qaddafi and his Friends, the Rendition of Tony Blair…….

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“Many of the papers demonstrate the warmth of the relationship between Britain and Libya and, in particular, the extraordinarily close links between the Blair Government and the Gaddafi regime…
• Tony Blair helped Colonel Gaddafi’s playboy son Saif with his ‘dodgy’ PhD thesis while he was Prime Minister.
• British Special Forces were offered to train the Khamis Brigade, Gaddafi’s most vicious military unit.
• MI6 was apparently willing to trace phone numbers for Libyan intelligence.
• Gordon Brown wrote warmly to Gaddafi in 2007 expressing the hope that the dictator would be able to meet Prince Andrew when he visited Tripoli.
• Britain’s intelligence services forged close links with Gaddafi’s brutal security units.
Megrahi was released two years ago and transferred back to Libya. ………”

They ought to rendition Tony Blair somewhere, perhaps to Cheney’s spread in Wyoming(?) or the Halliburton compound in the UAE, where he can be water-boarded into telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help him Gordon Brown. Speaking of the PhD of Sais al-Islam Qaddafi, many Western leaders deserve PhDs in deceit.
Cheers
mhg


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Arabian Peninsula, Corruption, Death Penalty, Human Right, Saudi Arabia, Slavery

Middle East Executions: Twenty Three Maids Waiting in a Row……….

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“And the storybook comes to a close.
Gone are the ribbons and bows.
Things to remember, places to go,
Pretty maids all in a row………..” The Eagles

Media report that twenty three Asian (Indonesian) women are awaiting the executioner’s sword on death row in Saudi Arabia. Several others, imported housemaids, already had their head chopped off. Remember Sakineh Ashtiani of Iran and all the fuss made by the Saudi-owned Arab “intellectuals” and Western media, especially the extremely righteous French media (and rightly so)? Everybody was indignant, so was I, and rightly so, until her gruesome death sentence was changed by the regime in Tehran.
Where are they now? Everybody is so silent about the plight of these numerous women, imported housemaids trapped into horrible situations in a grim society, waiting to have their heads chopped off in the Kingdom without Magic. Yet the kingdom cannot live without these millions of housemaids, and fierce bargaining goes on with the Asian government officials about their wages, work conditions, etc. They are even advertised in the newspapers for sale or “transfer” from one “owner” to another, just as they used to do in Old Virginia when a new shipment of slaves arrived from West Africa. Even Bernard Henri Levy, who was at the forefront of the Ashtiani campaign (and the Libyan campaign), is silent. Amnesty International comments but says they have “no presence” in Saudi Arabia. Of course not, Amnesty and human rights have no presence.
Cheers
mhg


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