Neck of the woods ”The Syrian government and opposition parties will send their representatives to Tehran next week to attend a “National Dialogue” meeting, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir Abdollahian announced on Tuesday.
“Syrian government officials as well as representatives of ethnic, political, minority, and opposition groups will attend this meeting,” Amir Abdollahian told FNA Tuesday evening. On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi reiterated the necessity for the peaceful settlement of the crisis in Syria, and called for more talks between the Syrian government and opposition forces.
Salehi’s remarks were made in a meeting with KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Idris Barzani in Tehran. On Iran’s diplomacy about Syria, Salehi said that the Islamic Republic is in favor of negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition groups to create stability in the Middle Eastern country. Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes. The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad. In October 2011, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots in the hope of increasing unrests in Syria……………………”
Also sprach Iran’s Fars News Agency. My first reaction on reading this was a resounding WTF? Only it was not just the acronym I uttered. An Arab League-West-Syria conference has just ended in Doha (Qatar). Now the Iranians are holding their own meeting on Syria. It is not clear who are the Syrians who will attend, but I suspect this group will never gain power in post-Assad Syria, nor will it compete for power. They can’t be too opposed to the current regime, otherwise they wouldn’t be invited to Tehran. Just a hunch. It would be like the Qataris inviting the Ba’ath Party or Hezbollah to “their” Doha meeting, or like the Saudis sponsoring a conference for the Bahrain government and calling it the opposition. You figure that last one out: it is a teaser, like those SAT questions. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
“Barbara Starr, CNN’s Pentagon reporter (more accurately known as: the Pentagon’s reporter at CNN), has an exciting exclusive today. Exclusively relying upon “three senior officials” in the Obama administration (all anonymous, needless to say), she claims that “two Iranian Su-25 fighter jets fired on an unarmed US Air Force Predator drone in the Persian Gulf last week,” while “the drone was in international airspace east of Kuwait . . . engaged in routine maritime surveillance.” The drone was not hit, but, says CNN, “the incident raises fresh concerns within the Obama administration about Iranian military aggression in crucial Gulf oil shipping lanes.” First things first: let us pause for a moment to extend our thoughts and prayers to this US drone. Although it was not physically injured, being shot at by the Iranians – while it was doing nothing other than peacefully minding its own business – must have been a very traumatic experience……………”
Was the drone in training? Was it an expendable “intern” drone? Was it testing Iranian reaction? Was it playing a ‘game of chicken’ with the Iranian fighters? Some might say “You Betcha”. Personally I am tempted to suggest that the “Iranian” fighters and naval units ought to stop patrolling the “Persian” Gulf, straying so many thousands of miles from their homeland, harassing the natives of NATO.
Neck of the woods “Iran has been accused of torturing to death a blogger who was arrested last week for criticising the Islamic republic on Facebook. Iran’s cyber-police, known as Fata, picked up Sattar Beheshti from his home in Robat-Karim last week on suspicion of “acting against the national security” because of his online activities on social networking sites. He was then taken to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. Beheshti’s family heard no news of him until Wednesday, when they were phoned by prison officials asking them to collect his body from the Kahrizak coroner’s office. The opposition has accused Iranian officials of torturing the 35-year-old blogger to death. Beheshti’s body was washed according to Islamic rituals on Thursday in Behesht-e-Zahra’s cemetery, south of Tehran, and later buried in his home town amid a tight security presence. Only one family member was allowed to attend the ceremony, carried out by security officials..………….” Cheers
mhg
Neck of the woods “After former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni disclosed personal details of her former career in Mossad, Rabbi Ari Shvat, one of the most famous rabbis of Israel, allowed Israeli women to have sex with the enemy in exchange for information, but Iran’s Grand Rabbi Mashallah Golestaninejad described adultery as forbidden in Judaism, and stressed that Shvat should be stoned to death. In an interview given 14 years ago but published in full for the first time last Friday in a pro-Livni newspaper and then cited by the British Sunday Times weekly, she described working undercover for Bayonet, Mossad’s elite hit squad, where she answered the question if she had ever had sex to get information. “If I’d been asked to do it, I don’t know what I’d have said. In the office (Mossad’s term for itself) there is a job tailored for everyone.” After the release of Livni’s remarks, Rabbi Ari Shvat, one of the most famous rabbis of Israel, allowed Israeli women to have sex with the enemy in exchange for important information, claiming that Jewish law permits this type of action. His remarks created chaos in the Jewish world and the Rabbis from different parts of the world reacted to Shvat’s comments. “The sources of Judaism have not allowed such a deed at all and it (adultery) is forbidden in our religion and based on the explicit instruction of the Ten Commandments, no one can embark on adultery at all,” Iranian Grand Rabbi Mashallah Golestaninejad said……………”
Iran’s Chief Rabbi is named Golestan-Nejad: Golestan means some kind of flower garden in Persian. Gol or Gul also means flower in Persian and Urdu and Turkish (Turkey’s President Gul is Mr. Flower). But the Rabbi is presumably no relation of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad. Although the semi-official Saudi Alarabiya network has tried for some years to spread in the Arab world the story that the Iranian president is a converted Jew. The idea is to “discredit” him by their standards. Most Iranians and Arabs don’t pay any attention to these Anti-Semitic stories; it only excites the Wahhabi clerics and their Salafi base. Frankly Ahmadinejad doesn’t look THAT smart, although he is smarter than the folks at Alarabiya. No doubt. Cheers
mhg
Re. my earlier post on Anthropology and the stone-age weapons trade between Europe and the Persian Gulf. I just want to emphasize that this was just fanciful speculation. There is no such tribe as the Gruntgrunt tribe in the Gulf region, not that I know of. It is a generic “tribe” name that does not refer to any existing tribe that I know of, not necessarily. I apologize if I stepped over any tribal sensibilities (or on any tribal senselessness or insensibility, which is probably more likely). FYI: the largest tribe in the Gulf region is not on the Arabian Peninsula. It is the Bakhtiari tribe in Iran that numbers more than a million. This is true, although Iran is not a ‘tribal’ society, except for the ruling Mullah tribe. I was not referring to them either with the Gruntgrunt thingy. Cheers mhg
“Wednesday was “not a good morning for Netanyahu,” as one of his deputies Eli Yishai of the religious Shas Party said, when results showed that Bibi’s friend Mitt Romney had lost the presidential race. Netanyahu had at times confronted Obama or even tried to undermine him by making direct relations with the Republican-dominated, Israel-friendly Congress and during the election campaigning, had driven Obama into a tight corner by challenging his positions about Iran’s nuclear energy program and the recent developments in the Arab world. On Wednesday, however, the primer invited the US ambassador to Tel Aviv to his office to give his painful congratulations…………..” Press TV (Iran).
Press TV is an official Iranian English-language television news network that is banned in Britain (and possibly some other European countries). Interesting take: they seem to be gloating over this. Yet it is true: Netanyahu worked as hard as Fox News, nay harder than Fox News, to undermine and defeat Barack Obama. He went around him to deal with his friends in the right-wing controlled Knesset Congress for policy coordination (extremists like Ros-Lehtinen, Kantor, and Goh-mert, among others). The Israeli right has developed a certain hubris in its relations with the USA, no doubt fed by right-wing leaders of some Jewish-American organizations that do not represent the political views of their constituency. Obama got about 70% of the Jewish vote, which shows how “popular” Netanyahu is in the United States. Cheers mhg [email protected]
“According to the results of a Gallup poll released Monday, the overwhelming majority of rural white Americans said they would rather vote for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than U.S. president Barack Obama. “I like him better,” said West Virginia resident Dale Swiderski, who, along with 77 percent of rural Caucasian voters, confirmed he would much rather go to a baseball game or have a beer with Ahmadinejad, a man who has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and has had numerous political prisoners executed, than spend time with Obama. “He takes national defense seriously, and he’d never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does.” According to the same Gallup poll, 60 percent of rural whites said they at least respected that Ahmadinejad doesn’t try to hide the fact that he’s Muslim………….”
My source tells me that The Onion is sticking by its story, in spite of the controversy and some ridicule by Democrat lefties and even a few Republican righties. My source also reiterates that Iran’s Fars News Agency sticks by its “seconding” this item, although they have withdrawn it from their website. Mr. Ahmadinejad for his part, has discreetly asked the Swiss Embassy in Washington to investigate if they serve any O’Dool’s or St Puali Girl brew in the rural parts of Red State America. Meanwhile, there is one report of the formation of a “Rednecks for Chugalugging with Ahmadinejad” (affectionately called “A-Jad”). There is also a report of a “Rednecks for Pub-Crawling with Ahmadinejad” being formed in rural Tennessee.
“Members of Congress and supporters of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran(MEK) are to press the Obama administration to recognise it as the “legitimate opposition” to the Iranian government after the group is removed from the US list of banned terrorist organisations in the coming days.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, delisted the MEK as a terrorist group on Friday following a well funded campaign to change the image of the group – which was banned in 1997 because of a history of killing Americans, assassinating Iranian politicians and violent support for Saddam Hussein – and portray it as Washington’s ally in confronting Tehran.
The state department said it is not overlooking “the MEK’s past acts of terrorism” and that it has “serious concerns about the MEK as an organisation, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members”. But the group’s renunciation of violence and “the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism by the MEK for more than a decade” had led to it being unbanned…………..”
The US Senate passed an unusual resolution, effectively declaring war on Iran last week. I correctly called it the U.S. Knesset, because it was acting as an AIPAC agent when it voted nearly unanimously (with one dissenting vote). Even the real Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem would not vote unanimously on waging such a war of aggression. Now the Congress, its members flush with money from Mujahideen Khalq (MEK, MKO) and its financial supporters, are pushing to recognize this arm of the Israeli Mossad as a legitimate Iranian opposition movement. As I mentioned once before, this group has less chance of ever ruling Iran as the late shah’s son. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
“Canadian and US authorities have busted a cross-border cheese smuggling ring that brought Can$200,000 worth of mozzarella into Canada undeclared and without paying duties. Four men, including two Canadian policemen, were foiled in the caper to also distribute the dairy products — as well as chicken wings and pickles — to pizzerias and other restaurants in southern Ontario for an estimated profit of Can$165,000, Niagara Regional Police said. They each face several charges including conspiracy, smuggling and breach of trust. A conviction carries fines and possible jail time. Constable Derek Watson told AFP: “Most people have been chuckling about the arrests (in online postings), but the (police) chief is taking these crimes very seriously.”………..”
I have been told that it was Bibi Netantyahu who turned them onto Iran as the possible culprit, the possible mastermind behind this. Bibi, as usual, shot from the hip, before aiming. It was a Hail Mary aimed at Ahmadinejad and it was caught: a lucky Hail Mary thrown by a Jew toward a Muslim. It was all logic, he told the Americans and the Canadians. The Iranians have been behind so many plots, so many disasters, that this one must be of their making. Anyone who hires Mexican drug cartels and a troubled Texas car salesman to blow up a crowded Georgetown restaurant just to kill one unimportant Saudi ambassador would stoop to anything. Bad food, Bibi intoned to Canada’s Stephen Harper, is no justification for murder and terrorism. Harper nodded emphatic agreement as his eyes scanned the photo of his wife on his desk, and Bibi immediately uttered a hearty “I hear, ya“. Relations between the two right-wing leaders, Bibi and “Steve”, have been quite cozy ever since earlier this year Harper called Iran the greatest threat to peace ever, in world history. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
Neck of the woods Bibi and the gang…………. Show me the 90% again………….
The cartoon speech Mr. Netanyahu gave at the UN General Assembly, to the adulation of the anchorwomen of Fox, MSNBC, and CNN, and Piers Morgan, still reverberates. I hear from an unreliable IAEA source that Yukia Amano, chief of the UN nuclear watchdog, will suggest to his board that the IAEA henceforth use the Bibi method. All reference to the Iranian nuclear program will henceforth be expressed in colorful images of the Road Runner and Wile E Coyote and Elmer Fudd, et al. Yukiya added that “it humanizes our reports“. Early Saturday morning now. I plan to turn on my television onto a channel that plays Looney Tunes (I assume they still do on Saturday morning). After breakfast, before hiking, before college football. I hope to see Bibi and the Bomb and Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig and Wile E Coyote duking it out. Oh, and Ahmadinejad, of course. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
Multidisciplinary: Middle East, North Africa, Gulf, GCC, World, Cosmos…..
