Category Archives: NATO

Britain, Corruption, NATO, Saudi Arabia

Tony Blair Bin Bandar Meets Borat: the Great Money Machine Moves to Kazakhstan…….

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     BFF

“Kazakhstan said Monday it has hired Britain’s ex-prime minister Tony Blair as a consultant to attract new investment to the Central Asian state, on a contract reportedly worth millions of dollars. The hire marks a major coup for strongman President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s bid to promote Kazakhstan as an economic powerhouse despite complaints from critics that the country pays little heed to Western democratic standards. The Daily Telegraph earlier said Blair had signed a one-year contract worth eight million pounds ($12.7 million) with the government of Nazarbayev, who has ruled Kazakhstan since even before the Soviet collapse. The foreign ministry refused to confirm the figure but said Blair was one of several foreign officials contracted by the Kazakh state…….. Nazarbayev’s top advisor Yermukhamet Yertysbayev said Blair would probably deal with “the question of social-economic modernization of Kazakhstan.” “He has extensive ties. He himself worked on modernisation of such a well developed country as the United Kingdom”……”

It also markes a great coup for Blair: almost makes me jealous.
They forgot to mention how Blair worked on the moderation of WMD in Iraq, the stalling of the Israeli-Palestinian talks, the Libyan-JP Morgan-Migrahi-Lockerbie deal, Central-Asian gas and oil deals, among others. Oh, I forgot his most memorable deal: killing the investigation by the British Serious Frauds Office (SFO) into the BPP 1 billion (US$ 2 billion) bribe by BAE Systems to Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan for a huge weapons deal (generally known as the al0Yamama scandal). For which he has been and still is richly rewarded. Tony also famously opined in February something to the effect that “We must manage the Egyptian uprising“.
Some people claim that all these deals Tony is making are like his own revenge, the Poodle’s Revenge.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Libya, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy

Clinton, Ahmadinejad, al-Migrahi, More Hypocrisy…….

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     BFF

I watched Hillary Clinton with Amanpour on ABC. She was asked about al-Migrahi, of the Lockerbie bombing, now that Qaddafi, the recent friend of the West has been killed and mutilated by the new rulers of Libya. She said the al-Migrahi should be returned, that “We want him back“as well. Yet the U.S. and British and possibly other governments were in on the deal to release him. After all, not only British petroleum interests were involved, but also American business interests. Tony Blair was an adviser to JP Morgan which wanted a deal to invest for the Qaddafi regime. Then there was the “settlement” for a lot of Libyan money. Now Mrs Clinton has a sudden case of selective amnesia, she who shook hands with that regime. Regardless of the merits of the case against al-Migrahi, how can a person agree to a deal then renege on it?

I also watched Fareed Zakaria (CNN) with Ahmadinejad in Tehran (well, switched between that and an NFL game). He asked the Iranian president about political prisoners in Iran. He practically denied that there are political prisoners in Iran, but was not convincing (very hard to convince people of something when they know one is lying, no?). That is almost as bad a lie as saying there are no political prisoners in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Iraq, Libya, NATO, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy

New Libya: One Last Questionable Atrocity or Two, Saddam and Muammar………

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      BFF

I watched the grisly, nay ugly, savagery in the footage of Mu’ammar Qaddafi in captivity: at first wounded but very much alive, then dead naked and being dragged about. There is no way he was shot while trying to escape, but that is alright now, everyone wants the new Libya to start with a ‘clean’ slate. Nobody wants the new Libya to start with the usual extra-judicial atrocities that the old dictatorship committed.
Which brings me to the new ‘regime’, which will be what it is until a ‘proper’ government is elected by the people. That is why most Arab regimes are ‘regimes’: unelected, possibly unelectable, and I don’t mean just the republics. Now this killing of Qaddafi also helps the National Transitional Council clean its own slate, given that many of its members served in high positions under Colonel Qaddafi. It saves a lot of embarrassing and inconvenient court testimony by Qaddafi and his lawyers and witnesses. A lot of local names to be talked about: who did what under Qaddafi. With the dictator dead, there is no need to embarrass anyone. Then there is no need to embarrass Western leaders who dealt with the dictator and helped him, for a price of course. (I wonder what Berlusconi and Sarkozy and Tony Blair and many others feel now).
Saddam Hussein was tried for three years before being executed. (I recall the media in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain thought that was extra-legal, as if their own regimes care much for legal niceties: in both these countries people vanish without legal niceties, sometimes forever). But then the new Iraqi government was mostly composed of former exiles and not composed of his former officials. Nobody to embarrass with court testimony.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Libya, NATO, U.S. Congress, US Foreign Policy

McCain and Graham Lose Lieberman, Abandon Iraq, Seek to Settle in Libya, about Grits…………

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      BFF

“The four lawmakers — John McCain of Arizona, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Marco Rubio of Florida — planned to meet with members of the National Transitional Council, which is now governing Libya after the rebels forced Qaddafi from power. Qaddafi’s whereabouts remain unknown, but the new leaders suspect he is hiding in the southern desert of the North African nation. The senators, whose brief visit was largely shrouded in secrecy, also planned to tour Martyrs’ Square and hold a news conference with reporters. They traveled from Malta, where they met with Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi on Wednesday……….”

I hope the senators had a good chat with Mr. Gonzi in Malta (I wonder wtf happened to old Mr. Mintoff?). Glad to see them lose Lieberman and pick up a couple of new sidekicks. I never cared for that weasel Joe, but that’s okay, he did enough damage. Now it is McCain and Graham who seek bases in the Arab world, almost insist on it. McCain probably travels to the Middle East more than he travel to Arizona except at election time and the same applies to Graham. Which tells you something about the quality of the Arizona Tex-Mex cuisine and the grits in these two states. South Carolina did have good grits when I was a freshman there, at least the university dorm did, but that was probably not in Senator Graham’s hometown.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Libya, NATO

Is the Libyan Insurgency becoming the Libyan War?…………..

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      BFF

“With armed loyalists of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the fallen Libyan leader, still ensconced in his hometown and a few other redoubts as the seven-month-old Libyan conflict winds down, NATO announced a three-month extension of its bombing campaign on Wednesday. “We are determined to continue our mission for as long as necessary, but ready to terminate the operation as soon as possible,” the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in a statement from the alliance’s Brussels headquarters. It is the second 90-day extension, and it was approved less than a week before the campaign was set to end…… As if to answer him, Britain’s Defense Ministry announced Wednesday that its warplane contingent in the NATO Libya operation had attacked loyalists’ military deployments in three areas. Tornado GR4’s hit targets in Colonel Qaddafi’s hometown, Surt; in the loyalist desert enclave of Bani Walid; and in the north-central town of Hun………..”

Now, is the formerly “Libyan insurgency” becoming the “Libyan War”, with NATO and a faction of the NATO-baked former rebels facing a new insurgency by Qaddafi loyalists? If Colonel Qaddafi and his Qaddafistas linger and regroup and the new Tripoli regime proves incapable of handling them, rooting them out. If, as the verse says. Libya covers a lot of ground, borders six countries and the sea. Yes it can, yes it can, but let’s hope not.
(I also wonder how they pronounce the middle name of Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Libya)
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, France, Iraq, Libya, NATO, US Foreign Policy

A Tale of Two Arab Despots, a Tale of Two Invasions, a Tale of Two NATO Elections………

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“Obama Praises Libya’s Post-Qaddafi Leaders at U.N. President Obama on Tuesday extended to Libya’s transitional leader a diplomatic honor never offered his predecessor, meeting formally with Mustafa Abdel-Jalil at the United Nations and heralding the victory of Libyan rebels who brought an end to the 42-year reign of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi……..”

“Qaddafi Calls New Libya Government a Propped-Up ‘Charade’. As world leaders at the United Nations were embracing the rebels who overthrew him, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi broke nearly two weeks of silence on Tuesday, denouncing Libya’s new interim government and predicting its quick demise once NATO warplanes end their attacks on his forces…….”

Qaddafi is just being Qaddafi: he couldn’t resist crashing the Obama party in New York. He still thinks he can prevail as soon as NATO gets tired and leaves. It is an interesting contrast between two Arab despots that were overthrown by Western forces. Saddam Hussein’s old Iraqi army deserted en masse in 2003, with hardly a bullet being fired against the “Coalition” forces. Saddam himself was found only months later in a hole. On the other hand the Iraqi people did not raise a hand either against or for the invasion.
In contrast the Libyans have had a short civil war which hopefully will not stretch and expand into a West African-style mess. The Qaddafi forces could not actually shoot at NATO forces, since the attacks came from the air, but they did shoot at somebody.
The Iraq invasion probably helped get Bush reelected one year later in 2004. He was reelected because one year was not enough for the American people to realize the costs of that war and the body bags had not started arriving in large numbers. Can the Libyan invasion help reelect Nicolas (Le Weasel) Sarkozy? Yes it can, unfortunately. In recent decades, the French voters have become notorious for talking a good talk and then turning around and electing the worst candidate available. They did that the last time. I suspect they will do so again in 2012.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Jihadis, Libya, NATO

Of Libyan Islamist Factions and the American Tea Party………….

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      BFF

“Those who keep denouncing the Libyan Revolution as somehow not indigenous (?) because it got Western help should remember that behind the scenes the revolutionary governments of Egypt and Tunisia were very much working against Qaddafi, who, if he had remained in power, would have attempted to undermine their experiments in democratic governance. That is, regional and Muslim forces also supported the Libyan revolution. Meanwhile, military commander of Tripoli Abdul Hakim Belhadj gave an interview in al-Sharq al-Awsat that has been translated by the USG Open Source Center. He denied that faction-fighting is going on in Tripoli, said security is fairly good there, and played down alleged conflicts between Muslim fundamentalist and more secular forces…………..”

As I opined earlier here, Libya is going Islamist, much more Islamist. I don’t know yet how much more. The same will go for Egypt, and for Syria when (or if) Assad’s Baath regime falls.
Yes, Abdul Hakim Belhadj denied that there is factional infighting in Tripoli. At the same time, the American (beer drinking) Tea Party denied it was trying to derail the Obama policies. Rep John Boehner, Head, or rather captive, of the Tea Party categorically denied that any rift exists in Washington. One of the Koch brother, allegedly the billionaire masterminds of the Tea Party, responded to a query: ”We ain’t no fucking Libyans….”
Cheers
mhg


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Anti-Semitism, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Cairo, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Middle East, Muslims, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, US Foreign Policy

The Turks are Coming: Erdogan as a Softer Gentler Ahmadinejad?…………..

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      BFF

“Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday fired his visit to post-revolution Tunisia with the kind of trademark warning to Israel that has earned him hero status on his “Arab Spring tour.” After a rapturous welcome in Cairo confirmed the Turkish strongman’s soaring regional popularity, Erdogan came to Tunisia where the wave of pro-democracy revolts sweeping the Arab world all began. He said that Israel could not do whatever it wanted in the eastern Mediterranean and that Turkish warships could be there at any moment. “Israel cannot do whatever it wants in the eastern Mediterranean. They will see what our decisions will be on this subject. Our navy attack ships can be there at any moment,” Erdogan told a news conference shortly after arriving in Tunis………“Relations with Israel cannot normalize if Israel does not apologize over the flotilla raid, compensate the martyrs’ families and lift the blockade of Gaza,” Erdogan said. Ankara said it was prepared to escort any future Gaza-bound ship with naval ships……..”

Interesting how the popularity of the non-Arab neighbor leaders soars with the tempo of their anti-Israeli rhetoric. Long ago, there were the Soviets, (although it is hard imagining anyone, even Arabs, getting excited about an old fart like Brezhnev or the dour Kosygin). Then along came Ahmadinejad who went beyond his Iranian predecessors and adopted the old Arab and anti-Semitic theme of Holocaust-baiting. He became wildly popular on the Arab street until the vast semi-official Saudi media, which dominates Arab airwaves and owns most Arab TV screens, started working on him and on their favorite theme of sectarian divisiveness. Ahmadinejad’s other problem is that he represents a theocratic system of governance that most Arabs, be they Sunni or Shi’a or Episcopalian, reject (just as most Arabs reject a system of absolute tribal repressive monarchy). Few Arabs, and probably few Iranians, like the idea of supreme clerical rule.
So now there is a persistent vacuum of leadership in the Arab world, the type of vacuum Ahmadinejad himself had talked about in the past. The Al Saud have tried to fill that vacuum of leadership, to inherit the old regional mantle of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt that nobody could claim. The Saudis have failed even more than the Iranian mullahs, and for the same reason: they both represent regressive regimes, anomalies in this day and age. Iran is a repressive theocracy with quasi-democratic elements; Saudi Arabia is an even more repressive absolute one family dynasty where they pretend that the Quran is their ‘constitution’ while in fact it is the whims and greed of the ruling family that is the ‘constitution’.
Into the vacuum steps Turkey, newly reinvigorated both politically and economically. The Turks have long thought that they belonged in Europe; that their prosperity depended on being part of Europe. Events since the establishment of the Euro Zone indicate that the Turks can do fine without Europe, tyvm. Besides, the agnostic Europeans have a hard time shedding their ethnocentric ‘religious’ and racist prejudices and all the fears of the Siege of Vienna.
Having been rejected by Europe, the Turks have rediscovered their old domain, the Arab World, now the “sick man of the world”. They have also discovered that certain tweaks of their relationship with Israel can be wildly popular on the Arab street, if not in Arab palaces. The Turks are mindful of the growing new rivalry with their old Iranian rivals for places like Iraq and Syria (and possibly the Gulf). The Turks have an even better card: they have a democratic system of government that only two Arab states come even near to matching. And they know when to raise the rhetoric against Israel and when to tone it down, with the help of the Israeli right wing.
Then there is NATO………..
Cheers
mhg
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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Britain, France, Libya, NATO, North Africa

NATO and the Arab World: Are Happy Days Here Again? When Potentates are Divine and Groveling is Hip…….

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      BFF

“NATO planes are still in the air and bombing targets over Libya, and Moammar Gadhafi is still on the loose. Nonetheless, NATO is taking something of a victory lap in the wake of an operation that broke new ground for the military alliance……….. Throughout the conflict, NATO has insisted that its actions are limited to supporting the U.N. resolution that calls for protecting civilians and enforcing an arms embargo. But NATO certainly pushed the boundaries, and critics say NATO ended up providing close air support for anti-Gadhafi rebels. To most observers, NATO was clearly taking the rebel side in a civil war and backing efforts to oust Gadhafi. Those critics worry that NATO risks becoming an armed service provider for the U.N. and other allies. That job description is a long way from what NATO still insists is its core, founding mission: to protect its members’ territory and population…….”

A few decades after the last European imperialists departed the Arab world, militarily speaking, they are back. The major, the only imperialist powers that ruled the Arabs for decades are back to their old turf. That would be the British and the French. Interesting that the British leader (a minority leader) comes from the Conservative (Tory) Party of Winston Churchill but he is hardly Churchill-esqu, and the French president du jour comes from the conservative ranks as well, but he is hardly de Gaulle-esque. But they are here in Libya and looking speculatively toward Syria (while completely ignoring Yemen and Bahrain).
 
Mr. Cameron is doing an Allenby, or is it a Kitchener? While the strutting Sarkozy is more ambitious, if more delusional, and is apparently going for a Bonaparte. Maybe Berlusconi is also dreaming of the old Roman Province of Africa but he is a bit late. Now we can say that NATO, or various parts of it, control the skies and the seas and the land of almost the whole Arab World, save for a sliver in Gaza and a very iffy Syria that is also teetering, and parts of Lebanon. Now NATO also controls all of the Middle East, save for these mentioned parts and theocratic Iran (remember that Turkey is part of NATO and Israel is practically an honorary member).

All that because the corrupt Arab system, and not just the League of Arab States, has failed the Arab peoples for decades. There was a time, decades ago, when Arabs were hopeful and had expectations of something better. Maybe they were delusional, but they had optimism and hope. In recent years, they have been reduced to bowing to potentates and absolute monarchs and dictators. It is now cool, nay it is hip, in much of the Arab world to bow and grovel to the potentates. One, or perhaps two, of these potentates are increasingly assuming the air of something beyond statesmanship, more like quasi-divinity, egged on by their all pervasive vast dynastic media that control the Arab skies and waves and the squads of thugs and mercenaries.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, France, Libya, NATO, North Africa

Sarkozy and his Celebrity Philosopher Have a Good War, Hit the Shores of Tripoli………

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“NICOLAS SARKOZY has had a good war. The armed campaign in Libya was the French president’s biggest gamble, the moment he put his reputation, judgment and leadership on the line. France, along with Britain, carried out the bulk of the air strikes. Unlike President Barack Obama, Mr Sarkozy enjoyed cross-party support for the campaign and popular backing at home. The fall of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi ought therefore to yield some domestic reward. Yet Mr Sarkozy’s poll numbers remain grim, and, little more than six months before France’s presidential vote, his chances of re-election do not, on paper, look good. The Libyan air strikes were not Mr Sarkozy’s first armed campaign. He sent French soldiers into hostile territory in the name of democracy in both Afghanistan and Côte d’Ivoire. But his investment in the Libyan campaign was the most intensely personal. Before anybody else, and unbeknown at the time even to his foreign minister, he stuck his neck out and gave diplomatic recognition to the Libyan rebels, whose leaders he met at the Elysée palace at the urging of Bernard-Henri Lévy, a celebrity philosopher…………..”

Now Sarkozy has his own favorite American-Style “celebrity” philosopher. Bernard-Henri Lévy as a Gallic Dr. Phil, or Deepak Chopra, or Jerry Springer, or Howard Stern, et al. I would advise Sarko not to strut in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner yet. Wait for the dust in the Libyan desert to settle, wait for the Sahara dust to settle. Remember: your old pal Rommel thought he was heading to Alexandria (then Cairo) when in fact he didn’t get beyond El-Alamein.

The French
 are notorious for being skeptic about their leaders, at least they think they are, yet they keep electing snake-oil vendors who almost always have to be investigated for corruption as soon as they leave office. De Gaulle excepted. Maybe they do that so they can quickly get back to their “French” norm and be skeptic about them.
Cheers
mhg


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