“Britain’s armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran amid mounting concern about Tehran’s nuclear enrichment programme, the Guardian has learned. The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government. In anticipation of a potential attack, British military planners are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships…………”
Having liked Iraq (2003 and WMD and W and all that) the (new) British regime is doing it again. They are now being more ‘royal’ than the American king. Maybe there have been promises by the petroleum potentates of my Gulf, promises to pay the costs of war, promises to buy more useless weapons. Most oligarchies of the Persian-American Gulf would like nothing better than for the West and Israel to attack the mullahs in Iran. They would like a Saddam II (or is it III), except this will not be a retake of previous wars. There will be no UN resolution authorizing aggression against a member state that has not attacked anyone. The geriatric polygamous al-Saud absolute tribal monarchy would likes nothing better than for the West to destroy Iran (the head of the snake), making them by default the new Western “viceroy” in charge of the region.
Yet a war against Iran will have ominous consequences for some Gulf states. The danger will not be from the Iranians, it will come from the Saudis who have always been expansionist at the expense of the smaller GCC states. They have taken territory from almost all the Gulf states and Yemen. After all, the Iranians are safely on the other side, they must cross the Persian-American Gulf and plow through all the Western navies to reach the Arab side, the GCC states. As the invasion of Bahrain proved, all the Saudis need do is drive their tanks across the border. Only Bahrain can feel safe from Saudi tanks: the tanks are already in Manama. Cheers
mhg
“Israelis are almost evenly split on whether Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, with 41 percent supporting such a strike and 39 percent opposed, a new Haaretz-Dialog poll has found. The remaining 20 percent said they were undecided…………The poll follows a spate of media reports in recent days about efforts by Netanyahu and Barak to muster a majority for such a strike in the forum of eight senior ministers. These reports coincided with several major military tests and drills………”
“Israel conducts a rare ballistic missile test; the Israel Air Force reports a successful exercise in Sardinia, far from home; Iran’s chief of staff says the “likelihood is low” of an Israeli attack, but threatens that his country would respond forcefully. British sources tell The Guardian of preparations for an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites coordinated with the United States; Britain’s chief of staff makes a secret visit to Israel……….” Haarez
“A disagreement within the government over whether to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities has sparked a political catfight between two members of the “octet” forum of eight senior ministers: Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Associates of Ya’alon charge that Barak is behind the recent spate of media reports about the octet’s deliberations on Iran, while Barak’s associates charge that Ya’alon’s judgment is becoming unbalanced…………..” Haaretz
Ain’t that sweet: Israelis are split on whether or not to attack Iran, a country that has never attacked them. Sitting on occupied Palestinian territory in “Judea and Samaria”, annexing territory against international law, and debating whether to attack a country that is a thousand miles (and a few yards) away. One that has never attacked them or anyone else in a few hundred years. Or maybe it is a red herring related to the expanding settlements and UNESCO and diversions. Not only that: the cabinet is openly discussing if and when and how to launch a futile attack on Iran. If the Iranians were to publicly discuss if and when and how to attack Israeli installations, the UN would expel them and the West would attack them, armed with a UN resolution. Meanwhile the West is filling my Gulf with warships carrying more soldiers than there are people in….. Abu Dhabi. Cheers
mhg
“On October 13, 1881, a short time before moving to Palestine, Eliezer Ben Yehuda held what is thought to be the first modern conversation in Hebrew with two friends at a Paris café. That moment became the impetus for Ben Yehuda’s at times tortuous revival of the language, which for centuries had been relegated solely to the written word. Upon his arrival in Palestine later that year, Ben Yehuda began testing his belief that Hebrew formed the sole common lingual connection between Jews of all backgrounds. Indeed, although taught only as a written language, he succeeded in holding basic conversations in the long-lost language from the moment he stepped off the boat in Jaffa…….. One of the most serious obstacles to the modern revival of the language, however, continued to pose problems for the education that was being endowed on the first generation of Hebrew schoolchildren. Having been relegated to the written language of religious texts for so many centuries, Hebrew lacked many of the modern words necessary for mundane and simple conversation…………..”
Ben Yehuda was what we might call a ‘Salafi’ in the Middle East (perhaps a little stretch here). A Salafi is someone who goes back to precedents and predecessors and follows what he (never she) believes they would have done. That is a true puritan Salafi, a Salafi on paper, unlike the Salafis we have around the Gulf region who are extremely opportunistic. They wouldn’t be able to revive anything, let alone a dormant language. The modern Salafis often refer to Jews as “descendants of pigs and monkeys”, which tells us what they truly think of the old Prophets (all of them except one). They also come close to worshiping tribal polygamous princes, but that is okay, they also like the polygamy part (well, one aspect of it) and they like the funding. Ben Yehuda was a bright Jewish “Salafi”, what we have in our region are mostly dumb and bigoted and primitive Salafis who have nothing useful to contribute. They do cause a lot of harm. I suspect that the late Imam Mohammed Bin Abdulwahhab (of Nejd) was probably the last truly Salafi cleric, although no doubt he was also as bigoted as the more recent version. He also gave us Wahhabism and this whole “effing” Salafi movement that is much more harmful than, say, the Ba’athists. (I am not going to repeat my old info about distinguishing the Arabian Imam Mohammed Abdulwahhab from the late great Egyptian singer and musician Mohammed Abdel Wahab who as not a Salafi, probably didn’t know wtf the term meant). Cheers
mhg
“The Palestinian leadership yesterday accused the US Congress of inflicting “collective punishment” upon its people by holding up almost $200m in aid earmarked for the West Bank and Gaza by the Obama administration. The freeze on funds earlier allocated for the financial year which ends today is the first concrete Congressional reprisal against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to come to light since he angered US legislators by pursuing his application for full UN membership last week. The unpublicised block has been in force since August and was imposed in response to the then planned UN recognition bid,………”
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is often accused by its opponents of doing the bidding of the United States government and the Israeli Likud government. Apparently the PA felt that its authority over Palestinians was slipping, it had to do something to slow this trend. In a desperate move it applied for UN recognition. It did this just at the beginning of the U.S. electoral cycle and in a year when extreme right-wing Republicans control the U.S. Congress, with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a well-known right-winger and avid Likudnik, as head of the Foreign Affairs Committee. They might as well have elected Bibi Netanyahu as chairman of the committee.This is not a time when most politicians in Washington show any courage for peace, if ever. Cheers
mhg
“Israeli officials: Palestinians routed, about to fold” YNet News (Israel)
“French president Sarkozy says UN will not vote on Palestinian state this year, promises a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli impasse within a year” Reports
Yesterday italmost looked like the Palestinian “authority”, never known for its backbone, had surrendered again. Reports quoted American and French officials that ‘negotiations’ will resume to reach a solution within one year. Sounds familiar? Remember 2009, when the new and “extremely naïve” Obama administration started negotiations with Israelis and Palestinians with a solemn promise that they will solve everything within one year. At that time I wrote here “forgetaboutit”. One year? It is too short a time to reach never. The Jewish people have a mantra that they repeated during their long Diaspora , especially at every Passover Seder: “Next year in Jerusalem”. It kept them focused on the promise and the goal, which they eventually achieved. Now the Palestinians will have to adopt a new mantra “Next year in New York” or maybe just “Next year at the UN”. Except it won’t be next year, or the year after, or any other year after, as long as the Likud and its right-wing allies rule the roost. Cheers
mhg
“Lebanese Army General Mohammad Fahmy, chairman of the Lebanese Mine Action Center, knows by heart the names and types of cluster bombs and landmines scattered across southern Lebanon. They have killed over 3000 Lebanese. Since Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon, Fahmy has realized that the road to clearing the country from these weapons is a going to be a long and winding one………. Even though we have not yet achieved what we aspire to, we have made much progress in the past five years. At the very least, we are now able to give an approximate date for the completion of land clearance. We have worked for years to identify contaminated areas and have drawn up a comprehensive technical survey. We have divided the land into 1,277 sectors, of which 815 have been cleared so far. We prioritized areas of social and economic value for obvious reasons. The estimated number of landmines is 400,000. …………”
They were dropped over ‘select’ parts of Lebanon, mainly in the south, and over ‘select’ parts of Beirut, mainly the Southern Suburb. They were clearly aimed at the Shi’a (Shi’ite) population centers exclusively, with a couple of forays into other areas just as warnings. The goal was to keep the Hariri and Phalange base content, as well as some of the Arab oligarchs (al Saud, Mubarak) who openly sided against the Lebanese. That was when Condi Rice stated that the explosions and screams were the “birth pangs of the New Middle East”. Of course she was wrong, and if there is a new Middle East it will not be created with cluster bombs. A new Middle East is in the process of being created now, with the people in the streets taking back their usurped rights from the despots, be they dictators or absolute kings. Cheers
mhg
““I totally understand the frustrations the Palestinians have. We are all frustrated in this situation. We want to see progress toward peace, toward the two-state solution,” Blair told Reuters Insider in an interview marking the 10th anniversary of the September 11 al Qaeda attacks on U.S. cities. “The problem is you have always got to say, well what happens the day after (a bid for U.N. recognition)?'” the former British prime minister said. “Any gestures that are done by way of unilateral declaration, they are expressions of frustration and they may be understandable for that reason but they don’t deliver a Palestinian state,” he said………”
Tony Blair is consistent in his approach to the Israeli-Palestinian peace. He believes in a four track policy to achieving that peace: (1) keep him as the special envoy (btw: whose envoy is he?), (2) stop attempts at UN to declare a Palestinian State, (3) resume negotiations, and (4) start a war against the Iranian mullahs (wtf). I am not sure how another Western war in the Middle East will help the peace process, but Tony is strongly for it and often mentions it. Maybe because it pleases his Middle Eastern benefactors and friends, or maybe he has always had a love-hate, poodle-banshee relationship with George W. Bush and the American neoconservatives. Maybe it is a New Labor thing. Tony has now joined the Western campaign to stop a United Nation action on a Palestinian state, although he doesn’t say at whose behest. I suspect Tony is also angling for a Nobel Prize (in Peace not in WMD). If the Palestinians, all of them, and the Israelis, all of them, reach a real peace deal, not a half-assed one like in the past two decades. Why, Tony will finally step out from the shadows of W, finally become his own poodle, so to speak. But he won’t get it, even in the highly unlikely event of a peace deal between the Jewish fundamentalists of Likud and the Muslim fundamentalists of Palestine. (I bet some of you did not know that the PA of Fatah is on its way out, to be replaced with more Hamas types. It is an unfortunate byproduct of the current Arab turmoil. Not that I’ll miss the corrupt schmucks of Fatah anymore than I like the fundamentalist quasi-theocrats of Hams). Cheers
mhg
BFF “Such sweet deals are no longer to be had in a world where all worker bees, even those wearing medals and epaulettes, with secret police at their disposal, get discarded like used tissue paper after their cost-benefit balance tips to the former. Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega languished in an American prison on trumped-up drug charges for 20 years before being extradited to France; Saddam got dropped down a trap door to the howling jeers of his rivals. One can easily imagine a call from North Korean tyrant Kim Jung-Il to Libya’s Colonel Gadhafi a few years back: “Don’t disarm, Muammar. Just you wait! The second you give up your nukes the Americans will take you out. Saddam disarmed in 1991; now he’s in a tacky grave in Tikrit. What did Milosevic get for attending the Dayton peace conference? A war crimes trial. Look at me. I don’t cooperate. I don’t give in. Sure, they hate me. But I’m holding tight. Living large. Cooperation with the Americans is a mug’s game!“…………..”
Raises a good point, n’est-ce pas. Saddam gave up his weapons of WMD, and where is he now? So did Qaddafi, and he is gone somewhere. Meanwhile Kim Jong-Il, Pakistan, Israel, India, etc have nuclear weapons and nobody is touching them. Is there a message in here somewhere for the Iranians? (Okay, Israel doesn’t count here, since Israel is a “white” power). Cheers
mhg
“Qatar has acquired a reputation for sharp, quick responses to crises in the Arab world and for modern and unorthodox thinking. It is undeserved. Qatari diplomatic activity is designed to advance the interests of the tiny country and of its ruling family. Its adoption of the Libyan opposition, for example, is not based on any principle (such as liberty, democracy, or free elections), for the Qatari government and its TV station, Al Jazeera, have been notably silent about the crisis in Bahrain. There, they have backed the royal family and the Saudi-led GCC armed presence………Backing the royal family in Bahrain, supporting Hamas but then giving some money to the PA, and financing the rebels in Libya shows Qatari flexibility, but not courageous leadership. What does Qatar seek, beyond influence? Influence for what?……………..”
Abrams sounds truly pissed at the Qatari oligarchy, but he is right overall about the hypocrisy. I have to agree with him on this one, although it is the Palestinian statehood thing that riles him up the most. Abrams asks: “Influence for what?” He forgets all about Rome. Long ago, in this galaxy, a small farming community around the upstart town of Rome gained influence and power gradually as it beat regional rivals. Within a couple of centuries, the Roman upstarts defeated Carthage in three (Punic) wars and became undisputed masters of the Mediterranean and half the known world (from Spain to the Euphrates River). Is it possible the Qatari dynasty is seeking to take over the (Persian-American) Gulf? Or maybe they just want to merge with Bahrain (minus al-Khalifa and the Saudi occupation forces, of course). Is it possible they want to conquer the known world? Ich weiss nicht. Cheers
mhg
BFF Haaretz reports that about 300,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv, 20,000 participated in Jerusalem, 3,000 in Kiryat Shmona, 5,000 in Modi’in,1,000 in Hod Hasharon and 1,000 in Eilat. However, those close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the media had inflated the numbers of participants in the protests. Mr Netanyahu claimed that the numbers are vastly exaggerated, that perhaps only 290,000 were involved in Tel Aviv instead of 300,000. This is sort of a reverse Tea Party: in the United States it is noted that only the extreme right-wing can mobilize huge numbers these days, mostly from among the Tea Party foot soldiers (also known as political cannon fodder). Now we await a new verdict from the Saudi clerics who earlier condemned Arab protests (outside Libya) as anti-Islamic. They did not specifically ban Jews from protesting. Yet they can use this as proof that world Jewry are behind the popular Arab uprisings against oppression and corruption of their rulers. Just as they used to advise that Communism (remember communism?) was part of a Jewish plot to misguide the faithful and take over the whole world. Cheers
mhg
Rattlesnake Ridge 
BFF