BFF
“Two years ago, Barack Obama reportedly left Benjamin Netanyahu to kick his heels in a White House anteroom, a snub delivered to show the president’s irritation over Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank. In May, the Israeli prime minister struck back, publicly scolding his purse-lipped host for the borders he proposed of a future Palestinian state. When the two men meet in Washington on Monday, Mr Obama will find his guest once more at his most combative. But this time, perhaps as never before, it is the Israeli who has the upper hand. Exuding confidence, Mr Netanyahu effectively brings with him an ultimatum, demanding that unless the president makes a firm pledge to use US military force to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb, Israel may well take matters into its own hands within months. The threat is not an idle one. According to sources close to the Israeli security establishment, military planners have concluded that never before has the timing for a unilateral military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities been so auspicious………….”
“Obama has been too harsh with Netanyahu…. He has hurt Netanyahu’s feelings…… Obama has done to Netanyahu what……….. “ Rep. Peter King (GOP Gauleiter -New York)
“Obama has disrespected Netanyahu………“ Mitt Romney, on the verge of tears.
It says: “Never before has the timing for a unilateral military strike been so auspicious.”
I say: “Auspicious my eye.”
The Likud and its right-wing surrogates are worried that Obama will get re-elected next November and that he will rightly forget the nonsense about a “military option”. They know now is their best chance to get him entangled in a war against Iran, a war that probably has little to do with nuclear weapons but has much to do with two things: (1) eliminating the only regional power that can compete with Israel. Most Arabs also see it as an attempt to deal with the last Middle East country that is not toeing the Western line; (2) Pushing the Palestinian issue way back the list of priorities, as has happened, while expanding illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu’s hand is now strong because of the election cycle in the United States. The Republican Party has effectively become a local branch of the worst elements of the Likud coalition and it is keeping Obama in line.
Cheers
mhg
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Jerusalem: Hezbollah Makes an Improbable Prediction……..
BFF
Iran’s Fars News headlines that “Hezbollah Leader Optimistic about Imminent Liberation of Occupied Quds. Secretary-General of the Lebanese Hezbollah Movement Seyed Hassan Nasrallah voiced optimism about the liberation of the Holy Quds specially after the recent developments in the regional and Muslim states. “The regional developments are happening in a way that makes us feel that the liberation of Quds is close to us more than ever,” Nasrallah said Sunday, addressing a forum titled “Declaration of Al-Quds as the capital of Palestine, the Arabs and Muslims” in Beirut……”
Imminent (al-Quds means Holy City: Jerusalem)? To which I would respond, politely, “Imminent, my eye”. The Arabs have been repeating this mantra since before 1948. Almost any Arab army, take any one of the lot, and you’ll agree with my assessment that its commanders can’t organize a piss-up in a brewery let alone a military campaign (as I have noted here in the past). As for Hezbollah: it does a good job in defending its own land, in keeping Israelis out of Lebanon. It has not been defeated; it has inflicted several defeats on the IDF. It will do an even better job in kicking the Saudi Wehrmacht out should the princes revisit their old plan of intervention (Wikileaks). But Hezbollah’s ability at offensive military campaigns is nothing to take seriously. It is about the same as the rest of the Arab armies, the same “piss-up in a brewery” rule applies.
Cheers
mhg
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Freedom of Expression in Morocco………
BFF
“A Moroccan court on Friday sentenced a man to six months in jail after he raised the Israeli flag over his home to attract the attention of local authorities and protest the disconnection of electricity and water supplies to his home, Moroccan media reported. Mohammed Jadidi, 42, had drawn the Israeli flag on a white cloth and raised it over his home in the Airport neighborhood of the northern predominantly Amazigh (Berber) town of Nador. He reportedly did so after the electricity and water were disconnected to his home, which belonged to the Auxiliary Forces and occupied by his family since the death of his father, who was part of the paramilitary forces. Morocco’s Auxiliary Forces supplement the military, gendarmerie and the police when needed. Jadidi was arrested last Monday and was charged with “sacrilege” through “undermining the national flag.”…………”
I believe that raising a flag is like raising any other sign. It is one way of expression. Punishing someone for raising a flag, be it Israeli or Saudi or Iranian or Fredonian, is stifling the freedom of expression. I even believe displaying the photos of any Arab leader or potentate, even photos of Saudi princes or Bashar Assad, is not necessarily an obscene gesture (so long as they are fully dressed, and I mean ‘fully’). It is just an expression: it can be tasteless but should not be illegal.
Cheers
mhg
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Another Saudi Killing Fatwa: on Assad and Hezbollah and Israelis and Jews…….
BFF
The prominent Saudi cleric Shaikh ‘Aayidh al-Qarni has issued a fatwa that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad should be killed. He is quoted that killing Assad now has priority over “killing Israelis” under current circumstances. (Netanyahu may feel comforted by that small favor). He fatwad that obeying Assad is like disobeying the creator (God, Allah, Yahweh). He did not say it in so many words but his silence implied that obeying the absolute al-Saud princes is like obeying the creator (God, Allah, Yahweh) and that obeying the rapacious shaikhs of Bahrain is the next best thing to obeying the creator (God, Allah, Yahweh). …. … Shaikh al-Qarni added that Hassan Nasrallah (of Hezbollah) is a heretic sinner and that his testimony in defense of the Syrian regime is as worthless as the testimony of a Jew. The shaikh is quoted to address Assad “Aren’t you ashamed? Even Jews didn’t do as much to Syrians as you have done”.
Media Wahhabi faux-liberals and Salafis along the Persian-American Gulf are all excited, going orgasmic, over this Wahhabi masterpiece of bigoted fatwa (is there any other kind?).
Cheers
mhg
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Khamenei on Nuclear Sinning in Iran and other Places……….
BFF
“As U.S. and Israeli officials talk publicly about the prospect of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program, one fact is often overlooked: U.S. intelligence agencies don’t believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb. A highly classified U.S. intelligence assessment circulated to policymakers early last year largely affirms that view, originally made in 2007. Both reports, known as national intelligence estimates, conclude that Tehran halted efforts to develop and build a nuclear warhead in 2003. The most recent report, which represents the consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, indicates that Iran is pursuing research that could put it in a position to build a weapon, but that it has not sought to do so………. An IAEA report in November cited “serious concerns” about “possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program,” but did not reach hard conclusions. Another IAEA report is imminent. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, insisted Wednesday that Tehran had no intention of producing nuclear weapons. In remarks broadcast on state television, he said that “owning a nuclear weapon is a big sin.”……….”
Ayatollah Khamenei just called nuclear countries sinners. Which confirms what I have been writing here, and what others have written: that they may acquire the technology but they will not actually produce a nuclear bomb. The mullahs don’t like sinning, I think. That is not to say there are no sections of the diverse Iranian regime that would like to sin, to develop nuclear weapons. In the end it is Ali Khamenei who is supposed to have the final say, provided that he knows exactly what is going on. I mean he can be calling nuclear weapons a sin, but some branch of his government may be tempted to try a bit of sinning (the flesh is weak after all). All this is contrary to all the whining by Israeli officials and Saudi princes, egging the United States toward another futile war in our region.
(The Israelis don’t really want a war, they just want to divert attention away from the West bank and their expanding settlements. The Saudi princes and their Salafi proxies, on the other hand, would love a war fought by Americans, or any other ‘heathens’, on their behalf).
Cheers
mhg
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New Delhi Attack: Mossad Mujahideen or Iranian Agents?…………
BFF
“A week after the terror attack in New Delhi, which seriously wounded Tal Yehoshua-Koren, the wife of an Israeli diplomat, the Indian government is still trying to brush over the accumulating evidence that the attack was part of a wider Iranian effort to orchestrate multiple attacks on Israeli targets in different countries. To date, no Indian official has referred to Iran’s involvement. Sources in New Delhi explain that the government is concerned that its close relationships with both Israel and Iran are becoming incompatible……….”
The Israeli media propaganda claims “accumulating evidence” of Iranian involvement. There is no such accumulating evidence, mostly speculation. Meanwhile the Israelis “brag’ about their role in terrorist killings of civilians on the streets of Tehran.
The Indians and Thais have not pointed the finger yet. If there are any Iranians involved, they are as likely to be Mujahideen Khalq agents of the Israeli Mossad as being agents of the Iranian regime. It is the Indians and Thais who are investigating the incident, yet Israeli and Western media have already decided what that evidence is. Either one can be responsible, but I am betting on the MEK and the Mossad as the most likely culprits. Helping the Mossad may be the price for getting the MEK Mujahideen off the U.S. terrorist list.
Cheers
mhg
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Kipling on My Gulf: Native Rights, White Man Rights, Muslim Rights, NATO Rights…………
BFF
“Take up the White Man’s burden
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
Take up the White Man’s burden
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror……..” Rudyard Kipling (White Man’s Burden)
When Israelis threaten Iran with a preemptive attack, unprovoked, the West takes it for granted: oh well, boys will be boys, as long as they are white boys. Western media like CNN immediately spin it as self-defense.
When Iran “threatens” to defend herself, the West acts shocked, calling for more sanctions, choking off the economy, leaving “all options” on the table until after the 2012 elections (after the American November elections not after the Iranian March elections; definitely not after the Saudi elections for that would be just after hell freezes over which would be no time for a war).
Western (and Saudi media) continue to call the Iranian presence in our region a “threat”. Iranian warships in their own neighborhood in the Gulf are called a danger, while “foreign” Western warships from ten thousand kilometers away, practically clogging the Gulf, are not a “danger”. Now, where else can the Iranian navy go? After all it is the “Persian” Gulf according to the UN resolutions (okay, Persian-American Gulf now). It is jointly “owned” solely by Iranians and Arabs and by nobody else. Yet Israeli and Western leaders and assorted political climbers continue to threaten to bomb Iran for just ‘being there’, or for looking sideways at Netantyahu.
Such threats are considered a right, an entitlement of the “white” man, something God-given. Even Ban-Ki Moon (Mooney) agrees with that, although not in so many words. Moony does want to be re-elected for another term and he knows the history of Butrus Ghali (Egypt) and Kofi Annan (Ghana).
Even the Wahhabi Salafis agree on that last point, the one of going to war against Iran for looking sideways at Benjamin Netabyahu. They also agree with Rick Santorum and the other GOP clowns about the necessity of another war in the Gulf. As long as they don’t have to fight it (with three or four wives, one has no time for war). They pray for it to some Salafi God of their own, as their royal princes pray for rain, even as they curse the Gods of their “heathen” benefactors whom they want to wage war “on their behalf”.
Who would have thunk life would get so complicated in our region in just a few years.
Cheers
mhg
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The Game of Preemption: Israelis Tough as Nail, Iranians Soft as Pussycats, Americans Lost……….
BFF
“Growing tensions over Iran’s disputed nuclear program have provoked speculation that Israel may be contemplating a military strike against nuclear facilities, which Iran says are for peaceful purposes, but which the West suspects are inching toward the capability to produce nuclear weapons. Without mentioning Israel directly, Mohammad Hejazi, the deputy armed forces head, said Tuesday, “Our strategy now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran’s national interests, and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions.” Divisions in Iran’s leadership make it difficult to interpret the government’s intentions, but the statement showed a new level of aggressiveness……………”
The Iranians are just trying to make a point, show the absurdity of this Western and Israeli sense of being exclusively ‘entitled’ to bomb a country as a preemption. Everybody else seems to be getting into the “preemption” game these days, so why not the Iranians? Nobody has a “right” that others don’t have to threaten “preemption”.
Compared to what Israelis and American Republicans candidates mouth everyday, this Iranian statement is soft, squishy soft, pussycat stuff. McCain and Lieberman (Joe not Avigdor) would call it appeasement; Mitt Romney would declare a preemptive war before he has even lost the election; Rick Santorum would invoke a mean-spirited God of his own imagination, Newt Gingrich would remind everyone of his Plan B to go to the moon with Callista.
Cheers
mhg
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The Tony Blair Israeli-Palestinian Barbershop Quartet……….
BFF
“Yet another deadline passed late last month in the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process,” this time over the initial exchange of proposals on border and security issues. Palestinian negotiators were (and remain) under pressure on a number of fronts. The Quartet still holds to a resumption of talks under the current guise and a recent visit from Ban Ki-Moon called for “a gesture of goodwill by both sides” in order to create a positive atmosphere for continuing negotiations……….”
This looks like just a way to keep Tony Blair doing something other than making a lot of money serving various Middle East potentates and Central Asian petroleum dictators. He is right here: it is time for Tony should to form a new quartet, a barbershop Quartet of Persian Gulf potentates and Central Asian dictators. (I don’t think Tony is on the payroll of J P Morgan anymore; that was during ‘the deal’ with Qaddafi). Then he, and they, can sing their hearts out away from the media. Then we won’t have to see his deceptive sanctimonious face and his asinine statements and platitudes about world affairs.
Moony at the UN should declare the Quarter dead and done with because in fact it is deader than a doornail.
Cheers
mhg
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Slow Diplomatic Genocide: American Election Choreography and Iranian Agonies ……….
Rattlesnake Ridge
BFF
“The crisis has taken a toll on medical care, affecting the middle class as well as the poor. Because of the ever-tighter pressure on any kind of trade with Iran, the black market price of Herceptin, a breast cancer drug, has nearly doubled in the past year, said Lian, a young nurse who works in the cancer ward of one of Tehran’s major hospitals (the government regulates the mainstream supply of such drugs, but supplies are very limited). The sanctions have also affected medical technology, because radiology machines fall under the “dual use” provisions of laws aimed at keeping nuclear technology out of Iran. At Shohada Hospital, one of the country’s premier institutions, about 1,200 cancer patients a year go without radiological treatment, because the radiology equipment is no longer working and replacement parts cannot be brought into Iran, said Pejman Razavi, a doctor at the hospital. Many Iranians are also skeptical about the Western preoccupation with Iran’s nuclear program. “The economic pressure will not push Iran to a nuclear settlement,” said Kayhan Barzegar, the director of the Institute for Middle East Strategic Studies, who has taught in the United States. “The nuclear file is a nationalistic issue; it’s too late for Iran to backtrack. Domestic politics will react negatively to any negotiation — candidates in the elections will say: you sold the nuclear program!”………….”
Almost everything is choreographed for maximum public effect: from Susan Rice’s hissy fit and selective “disgusting” remark at the UN to Hillary Clinton’s selective “I am deeply troubled” comments. In This Election Year of Our Lord of 2012.
Cheers
mhg
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