Category Archives: GCC

GCC, Gulf states, Iran, Middle East Nuclear, Persian-American Gulf, Saudi Arabia

Iran Tries to Reassure the Neighborhood…….

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“Head of Iran Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) says the Islamic Republic is capable of exporting services related to nuclear energy to other countries……. The IAEO chief said that Iran can now produce heavy water (deuterium oxide), which is very useful for medical applications. Abbasi added that with the recently unveiled third-generation centrifuges, which perform much faster than the previous models and can considerably accelerate the enrichment process, the country can enrich uranium at level of20 percent……………” Press TV

“Iran’s Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari has expressed the country’s willingness to engage in joint military maneuvers with regional countries……. He noted that the 10-day Velayat 90 naval exercise was planned as a response to enemy threats and sanctions. Iran’s Navy launched the Velayat 90 on December 24, 2011, which covered an area stretching from east of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden…..…”

I don’t think the Iranians will have many takers this year. In the past they had some limited Qatari and Omani participation during military exercises. Qatar, which hosts the CentCom Gulf HQ, has been wary of Saudi Arabia since the late 1990s, when it thwarted a Saudi plot to overthrow the current Emir. Omanis are wary of the Salafi Wahhabis who look down on their Islamic faith which is unorthodox.
These are days of heightened sectarian tensions. The Saudi Wahhabi campaign of sowing divisiveness in the Gulf region has succeeded. Admittedly the Iranians may have lent a hand with some of their heavy-handed approaches. But there is no doubt that the all-out Saudi campaign of sectarian baiting, after Iraq and the Arab Spring, has succeeded in dividing Shi’as and Sunnis more than at any other time in many centuries. That was the goal: to divide the Arabs by sect. When even ignoramus Tea Party politicians from Texas and Georgia start talking about Sunnis and Shia’s, you know that it has succeeded.
Cheers
mhg


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Corruption, GCC, religious police, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Saudi High: Spelling Hypocrisy in Arabic (and in Latin)………….

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“Statements by a Saudi preacher, Mohamed al-Areefi, about the consumption of alcohol and drugs by international students and his calls that they be subjected to tests at the airport upon returning home stirred much controversy, especially among academics, who rejected what they regarded as a sweeping statement with no scientific basis…….. 
“With all due respect to Areefi, there are no accurate statistics that prove what he is saying,” he told Al Arabiya.
Oud added that Areefi, who posted his statements on his Facebook page and Twitter account, is a man of religion, but he cannot issue judgments on matters related to statistics and medical tests.
“He is not supposed to interfere in drug tests and propose that they be done in airports, since this is not only a medical issue, but also one related to security measures.”…….”

This prominent Saudi cleric has proposed that Saudi students be tested for alcohol and drugs upon return, when they land at the airport. The premise is that they consume alcohol and smoke pot while in the West (especially just before flying home?). And I had thought most Saudi students are supposed to get drunk, nay get high, by listening to garbled speeches by the king and senior al-Saud princes. Some of them may get high listening to Wahhabi clerics.
The cleric declined to suggest the same tests for the Saudi princes who fly in and out of the country a lot, at public expense. They are the most likely consumers of banned substances outside the kingdom and inside the kingdom (very likely within the holy cities of Mecca and Madinah). I mean alcohol in Mecca and Madinah  could be deemed almost as bad as pedophilia inside a church. Wooops, your graces, sorry about that.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Culture and Sports, GCC, Gulf states, Persian-American Gulf, Qatar, Saudi Arabia

Qataris and Saudis: is it a New Misyar Marriage? a Sober FIFA……..

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“Qatar, the wealthy Persian Gulf state that will host the 2022 World Cup and shot to prominence last year as a bankroller of the Arab Spring, is experiencing a small counterrevolution at home.
In recent weeks the government has suspended alcohol sales on the Pearl-Qatar, a man-made island close to the capital, Doha, that is popular with expatriates and boasts a string of international chain restaurants. An outdoor weekly party on the Pearl with loud music and free-flowing alcohol has also been closed down. The moves represent a small but significant challenge to one aspect of Qatar’s ambitions for the emirate, which also has drawn global attention by winning the staging rights to soccer’s World Cup and for funding and supporting the revolution in Libya. Some say the tiny Middle Eastern country must overcome huge cultural and social hurdles before it is able to successfully stage soccer’s marquee event in 10 years. Part of the vision is to turn Doha into a leading cultural, financial and sporting center to rival neighboring Dubai……………”

It is not
clear if this small move is part of this new return by the al-Thani to their
Wahhabi roots. Over the past few weeks the Qatari royals have
accelerated their new common-law marriage to the Saudi royals and their
Wahhabi clergy. This could be just a temporary part-time purely-for-sex “misyar”
marriage that many Saudis are so fond of. The Qataris have also named the
main state mosque in Doha after Mohammed Bin Abdulwahhab, the founder of
the Wahhabi faith and an early ally of the al-Saud. The Qatari
potentates have opined publicly and effusively on the “virtues” of Wahhabi
teachings and returning to them. Maybe it is just that the Qataris feel squeezed between the two regional theocracies: Iran and Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis are much closer and hence much more menacing.
But ruler of Qatar is probably not ready yet to unilaterally declare himself the “Servant of the Doha Wahhabi Mosque”.

Some European soccer (football) fans will complain that alcohol may not be available for the FIFA world cup games. In fact some Saudis and Kuwaitis will probably be even more disappointed about that than Europeans. On the bright side: the Qataris may be able to keep out the beer-sodden British hooligans who call themselves fans. Anything that can keep these fuckheads away from any sports tournament is a good and healthy move.

(For my new readers: Shaikh Mohammad Bin Abdulwahhab of Nejd must not be confused with the late Egyptian singer and musician and film star Mohammed Abdel Wahhab, who was not a Wahhabi nor a Salafi).


Cheers
mhg


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Europe, GCC, Humor, Nutrition, WTF

WTF: Serbia bans Alcohol in Parliament, GCC to Follow?………….

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Serb deputies drinking        They may look stoned out of their f–ing heads, but they’re stone sober.


“The Serbian parliament has banned alcohol after media reports of excessive drinking, a top official said Friday. “The ban applies to every one without exception, from bringing in alcohol, to serving or consuming it,” Veljko Odalovic, the parliament’s secretary general, told the Tanjug news agency. “Both restaurants in the parliament will no longer serve alcohol, it is absolutely forbidden,” he added. The new rules included a ban on anyone who is drunk from entering the parliament. Some health officials here estimate that one in six people in Serbia have a drinking problem.………”

Now for some Middle East legislatures to emulate these good Serbs. Especially on my Gulf. The Saudi rubber-stamp fully-appointed, anally-retentive Shoura Council should start by quitting the vast quantities of coffee and tea they imbibe at public expense. The rump Bahrain parliament (normally about 30% freely elected, now about 10% elected) can give up all that unhygienic kissing (of you know what and where). The rest of the Gulf, especially the Salafis and Muslim Brothers among them, can stop drinking any Vimto immediately. As for the Yemenis, there will always be some qat.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Iran, Lebanon, NATO, Persian-American Gulf, Syria, US Foreign Policy

Turkey and Iran and the West: Containment from the Gulf to the Mediterranean…………..

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“Iran and Turkey said Thursday they planned to double their trade volume despite having political differences on Syria and a NATO radar shield on Turkish soil. “Our annual trade volume currently stands at 15 billion dollars but we hope to double it in the near future,” Iranian Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi said in a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu in Tehran. Despite the plan to increase trade, the two sides did not seem to have settled political differences, especially on the situation in Syria. ……….”
 
“Middle East powerhouse Turkey on Wednesday warned against a sectarian cold war in the region and said rising Sunni-Shiite tensions would be “suicide” for the whole region. “Let me openly say that there are some willing to start a regional Cold War,” Foreign Minster Ahmet Davutoglu told state-run Anatolian news agency before heading to Shiite Iran. “We are determined to prevent a regional Cold War. Sectarian regional tensions would be suicide for the whole region,” Davutoglu said, adding such effects would last for decades. “Turkey is against all polarisations, in the political sense of Iran-Arab tension or in the sense of forming an apparent axis. This will be one of the crucial messages that I will take to Tehran.”…….. Davutoglu is expected to hold talks in Tehran later on Wednesday on Iran’s nuclear programme and developments in neighbouring Iraq and Syria………..”

Davutoglu, with the talk of “Sunni-Shiite tensions”, seems to be jabbing the Saudis and their allies who have been stoking sectarian hatred for a few years now, especially along the Gulf. For a while there was talk, mostly in some Arab oligarchy media, of an Iranian-Turkish-Qatari-Syrian alliance. The Turkish role was exaggerated: after all Turkey is an old NATO member and a longtime friend of Israel. The Qatari role was also exaggerated: Qatar shares a huge offshore gas field with Iran and is also wary of Saudi attempts at hegemony over the GCC states. A Saudi-sponsored coup attempt against the Emir was thwarted in the late 1990s, with several high Saudi security officials arrested and jailed in Doha (they were released last year). Saudi media and the Wahhabi faux-liberal media on the Gulf were full of condemnation of a mythical Qatari-Iranian-Syrian-Iraqi-Hezbollah axis. It was supposed to be an “axis of evil” as opposed to the “axis of goodness and democracy” of Saudi Arabia-Bahrain-UAE-Taliban-Mubarak-Wahhabi shaikhs.
Now the Turks and Iranians are on opposite sides in Syria. Now the Saudis and the Turks and the Qataris are on the same side in Syria (almost on the same side: the Salafis and Wahhabiized Muslim Brothers of Syria are not exactly what the Turks like). The Turks are now seen by some Arabs as a counterweight to Iran, a NATO and a Muslim counterweight in Syria. There may be some complications: the Syrians and the Arabs have always claimed that the Turkish region of Iskandaruna (Alexandretta) is part of Syria and that it is occupied territory, just like the West Bank. That is another issue to ponder as the Turks and some Arabs get close enough to each other to start disliking each other again (all that stuff about familiarity breeding contempt). The West probably sees a two–pronged approach to contain Iran:

(1) The Persian-American Gulf to be “defended” by the Western forces, mainly the US Navy, that are clogging it now. Of course Iran has not attacked anyone in the Gulf yet, nor does it have any intention of attacking anyone “first”, Saudi and Salafi propaganda and fear-mongering by the Bahrain satraps notwithstanding.
(2) The Eastern Mediterranean to be “defended” by NATO, with the Turks as the main player. Lebanon is probably considered, wisely, very iffy: a majority of the people want no Western military forces, certainly no Israeli forces or outside Arab forces either. Lebanon was tackled with Western “intelligence” operations and Saudi money (a lot of Saudi money for such a small country). So far it has failed: Saudi princes are not exactly lovable, charismatic, or principled creatures. They can never buy love with money (not that kind of love), nobody can. This is not to say that the Iranian mullahs, or other Arab leaders, are very lovable either. Many are barely more lovable than Netanyahu or Lieberman (Avigdor not Joe).
 
Breaking Syria away from its Iranian alliance is the main prerequisite for success in the Eastern Mediterranean now. The pro-Saudi Syrian opposition (the Salafis, Muslim Brothers, some former military officers, even others, now seem to want Western (NATO) intervention against the regime. They want to be liberated by the West just as Iraq was liberated in 2003 and Libya was liberated in 2011.
After that, the Saudi camp hopes their Israeli allies will be able to soften Hezbollah and Lebanon.
More on this later……
Cheers
mhg


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GCC, Saudi Arabia, UAE

Freudian Arabian Size Insecurity? Duel of the Gulf Towers……..

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Prince al-Waleed Bin Talal al-Saud claims that his new tower, Kingdom Tower, will be cheaper than the Burj Dubai (aka Burj Khalifa) by about US$ 270 million. The tower will also be bigger than the Dubai one, the biggest in the world. The Kingdom Tower will have a Four Seasons hotel, serviced apartments, luxury condominiums and offices, encompassing about half a million square meters.
The project is being constructed by the Bin Laden company, yep that very same guy. Which makes me wonder: wtf is going on here between these potentates of our Gulf? All this comparison of tower sizes, and trying to outdo the others. Remember the Mecca clock tower that the Saudis want to surpass Big Ben? Is all this a subconscious attempt to make up for other more serious short-comings among some of these potentates? Is it an Arabian Freudian thing?
Cheers
mhg


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GCC, Human Right, Saudi Arabia, Slavery

The New African Slave Trade, Arab Spring in Nejd…………..

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“The recruitment of housemaids from African countries is proceeding at a very slow pace as Saudi families still prefer workers from south Asian countries, according to the chairman of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (JCCI) recruitment committee. “Ethiopia is the most popular African country for Saudi families to import housemaids from, but the large number of requests and routine procedures in Ethiopia often delay the recruitment process,” Yahya Hassan Al-Maqbool told Arab News on Monday. Al-Maqbool said the decision of Indonesia to stop sending housemaids to Saudi Arabia was still in effect. He said Saudis show very little interest in recruiting maids from Kenya, especially in the western provinces, but said there was a small demand for them in the eastern and central parts of the country. Al-Maqbool played down warnings issued by the Kenyan government to their women citizens not to go work in Saudi Arabia and said the media usually blow up even the smallest of issues. He said compared to other countries, the number of Kenyan housemaids in the Kingdom is very small. A number of websites on Sunday published clips of a Kenyan documentary film on the working conditions of housemaids in Saudi Arabia. Warnings in Kenya against sending housemaids to the Kingdom increased following the recent murder of a Kenyan housemaid in Jeddah…….……..”

Indonesia stopped sending housemaids to Saudi Arabia because some of them have been beheaded over there and there are many others on death row waiting for their heads to be chopped off. There have also been cases of foreign housemaids being tortured and killed by their employees. Apparently the Saudis can’t do without foreign housemaids, even though local unemployment is in the double digits (and over 30% for young adults). The government is heavily involved in “regulating” the work conditions and the wages, in the sense of negotiating with exporting countries for lower wages and a continuation of inhumane work conditions.  Their national motto seems to be borrowed from an old American campaign slogan: “Two cars and two maids in every house“.
I predict that if all foreign countries refuse to send housemaids to Saudi Arabia to be abused, then the country will truly revolt. Only then will the Arab Spring reach the heartland of Nejd. So, the fate of the Saudi regime is in the hands of Indonesia, India, Philippines, and Sri Lanka.
Cheers
mhg


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Corruption, GCC, Muslims, religious police, Salafi, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Congress, US Foreign Policy

ANHRI: Saudi Religious Police Celebrate New Year’s, Santa Claus at Large…….

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“ANHRI condemns the ongoing severe deterioration of freedoms in Saudi Arabia, as well as the arbitrary detentions of citizens and expatriates. Most recently, the Saudi Morality Police detained an expatriate in Riyadh in the New Year’s Eve as he was walking on a street holding balloons on which it was written “happy new year 2012″. It is forbidden to celebrate this holiday in Saudi Arabia, and thus the Morality Police arrested him and handed him over to the competent authorities for investigation. The balloons have been seized. Severe restraints are imposed on freedoms in Saudi Arabia, as international organizations say that the authorities continue to detain dozens of people without a charge or trial. Torture and other forms of ill-treatment while in custody are widespread. Non-Muslims are still not allowed to practice their rituals publicly. Shiites are continuously suffering from discrimination. Expatriate workers and their families are deprived of their most basic rights. “Saudi Arabia is on top of the list of countries hostile to freedoms which use repression in the name of religion. The policy Saudi Arabia pursues is nothing but a desperate apparatus that will not work out, the same way it did not with other despotic regimes in the Arab world when the winds of change and freedom crossed over them. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia apparently has not learned the lesson” said ANHRI……………”

You’d think New Year’s or Christmas are Shi’a (Shiite) religious holidays, the way the Wahhabi Salafi religious police crack down on them. Yet these are the main holidays of the allies of the Saudi princes, the ones with whom they share such cherished (at least by me if not by the current U.S. Congress) American values as freedom and justice and equality. I suspect if
Prince Whatishisface were not a Wahhabi Muslim, he’d be given a standing
ovation in the U.S. Congress for sharing American values. I mean after a
hustler and serial bull-shitter like Bibi Netanyahu was granted the
honor last year, who is left?
That is not all: the baboons have also regularly raided private homes where “the wrong” people celebrate these occasions privately. “Wrong people” means people of little or no means and influence in the Kingdom without Magic (you can get beheaded for having anything to do with magic or maybe even Disney). Yet the religious cops of the Commission for the Propagation of Vice (affectionately called the Haia by the princes) turn a blind eye to “not-so-private” parties by the potentates where alcohol flows like water does outside the Arabian Peninsula, where alcohol is not the only thing flowing freely.
In December, the country’s top Muslim cleric and mufti Shaikh Abdel-Aziz bin Abdullah Al Al Shaikh, aka Al, fatwad that all celebrations of the New Year, birthdays and marriage anniversary are un-Islamic (aka un-Wahhabi). He did not, however, fatwa against observing the King.s anniversary.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, GCC, Gulf states, Persian-American Gulf, Religion, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Urge to Merge the GCC: pan-Tribal pan-Dynastic Union, a Mufti to the Rescue ………..

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                               BFF                                                  Saudi mufti

There is something urgent about this new Saudi search for a GCC merger. This is something that does not fit with the al-Saud history. Throughout the period when pan-Arabism was ascendant during the 1950s through the early 1970s, the Saudi princes spent fortunes to oppose it. Their main nemesis was Gamal Abdel-Nasser of Egypt who actually came so close to toppling their dynasty. Unfortunately for the Arabs, Nasser and the movement he inspired failed, and the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula and our region have been paying the price since.
Of course, Nasser did not have the kind of money the al-Saud usually spend on buying people and on subversion: people followed Nasser mostly because he inspired them. The Saudi dynasty does not inspire anyone, anymore than the al-Nahayan or the al-Khalifa dynasties can inspire anyone, anyone with any wits. They buy politicians and journalists with their pocket change (especially many Lebanese ones for some odd reason, and a few on the Gulf). Just like they buy Western lobbyists and former officials.
This spring their king mumbled a proposal for GCC expansion to Jordan and Morocco, and they quickly backtracked on that one. Now they are pushing for a GCC confederation, to the excitement of their Salafi surrogates in the Gulf. There is nothing Nasser-like about this medieval Saudi urge to merge with the other Gulf states. It is not pan-Arab: it is pan-Tribal pan-Dynastic pan-Medieval. There is no pan-Arab motive behind it: it is a pure attempt at hegemony as well as at preserving their dynasty. It is more Qaddafi-like: the late Libyan dictator also sought to merge with various countries, from Egypt to Tunisia to Chad, among others.
All Saudi proposals for integration within the GCC have failed. They failed mainly because people saw them for what they are: raw attempts at asserting the hegemony of their tribal polygamous dynasty. I shall here propose one form of merger that may finally succeed:

It is a feasible proposal: a proposal to unify all the GCC fatwas. Urge their muftis to merge (and no this is not what it sounds like at first reading). Maybe they will propose their own mufti Shaikh Abdulaziz Al Al Al Shaikh (Triple-Al) as the common Wahhabi Mufti who will issue all fatwas on behalf of all GCC states. Somehow I feel that even that modest and useless proposal may also fail, but it is worth a try. It is something, no?

About the Mufti (for new readers): the Al Al  Al-Shaikh (call me Al) are descendants of Shaikh Mohammad Bin Abdulwahhab, after whom the Wahhabi sect is named. They all hold high positions at the Saudi court and bureaucracy. As I have repeated here, the shaikh is not to be confused with Mohammed Abdelwahab, the late great Egyptian musician, singer, and occasional actor from the golden (pre-Sadat-Mubarak) days of Egyptian art and culture who was no Salafi, Wahhabi, nor any kind of fundamentalist but a bon vivant in his own right).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arabian Peninsula, Economics, Finance, GCC, Gulf states, Jordan, Persian-American Gulf, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Leadership of GCC: Three Major Failures, Three Strikes but not Out, not yet……..

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The GCC summit of the Gulf states this week again proved the failure of the shaky type of leadership the Saudis have tried to impose. This last summit marks three major “projects” that have failed.

  1. The GCC leaders gave the usual lip service to the ‘latest’ Saudi proposal that they should work toward some form of a political union. Gulf Salafis and Saudi media had been calling for a “confederation” since Bahrain joined the Arab revolutions in February. The leaders decided to start discussions and talks about that in the future, which is the usual way to kill any proposal.

  2. With this Saudi suggestion for a confederation dead on arrival (DOA), the leaders turned their attention briefly to killing another earlier strange Saudi proposal. They quickly killed the earlier Saudi proposal to allow Jordan and Morocco to join the GCC. They agreed to allow some form of limited “partnership” for Jordan and Morocco (I hate to say I told you so, but these people don’t listen to me anymore: that is what I predicted here, more than once). The potentates also voted US$ 5 billion in aid for the two countries to ease any disappointment after raising their hopes with the ill-advised Saudi membership proposal that was a product of fear. That will not exactly entertain the notoriously humorless Jordanians but it should keep the scowls moderate. Besides, Bahrain, and probably the UAE, will continue to import security agents and interrogators (know as torturers in less genteel parlance) from Jordan.

  3. Long before all that, before the Arab uprisings, the GCC quietly shelved the unified currency proposal, although they keep pretending they are still working on it.This is something they have been working on for almost three decades. I knew it would fail simply because they had not done the necessary preliminary work for it. And they do not need it: they tried it at the whim of some ignoramus potentate (you know who I mean).

  • That is three strikes for the Saudis, or three downs and short of a first down (three failures in American-ese).
  • Let’s see what other gems of proposals they will come up with next. Maybe the Saudis’ next proposal should be more modest, something within the capabilities of their bureaucrats. I shall post more on this sometime later.

  • I strongly suspect that any Saudi proposal about anything would not succeed unless they throw a lot of money at it.  Even then the money is no guarantee of success. They are trying feat, but I doubt it will succeed. Fear of Saudi domination, close up and right next door, may be stronger than fear of the Iranian mullahs who are far across the Persian-American Gulf and beyond the American navy.


Cheers
mhg


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