“The US raised the prospect of placing sanctions on Ukraine on Wednesday after riot police moved against anti-government demonstrators, seemingly violating its pledges of restraint. Baroness Ashton, the EU’s foreign affairs representative, all but accused Victor Yanukovich, Ukrain’s president, of misleading her in negotiations in Kiev that happened just hours before riot police launched a push to retake opposition-occupied areas of the city, including City Hall and Independence Square. The crowd resisted the police onslaught in temperatures of -11C but Baroness Ashton, who was in Kiev for crisis talks on Ukraine’s rejection of a strategic pact with Europe, said the authorities had crossed the line……………….”
Ukraine has crossed “one line”, has been doing it for a week. Just attacking protesters in the square, not raiding their homes and looting and arresting and torturing them. Bahrain’s regime has crossed many lines, has been doing it for almost three years: tear gassing, shooting, arresting, torturing, and killing. Raiding and looting homes of the majority of its rebelling people at midnight. Ukraine is mild compared to Bahrain. Someone forgot to tell the U.S. government that.
“Under pressure from Congress to demonstrate that it is not easing up on sanctions on Iran’s oil sector or on its nuclear and missile programs, the Obama administration on Thursday announced an expanded list of Iranian companies and individuals that it said it would target to block their trading activities around the world. The administration’s announcement came shortly before Wendy Sherman, chief American negotiator on the Iran agreement, was scheduled to testify on the nuclear accord with Iran and the sanctions issues to the Senate Banking Committee…………….”
No profile in courage here, but then politics is not about courage, it never is. On the eve of expanded nuclear negotiations, the Obama administration tightens the blockade of Iran. Just to keep the hawkish Knesset in Washington (both Republicans and Democrats) at bay. To keep Ben Netanyahu’s groupies, his fan club, happy.
“In 1988, the Wyoming Senate candidate said economic engagement would end apartheid faster than boycotts. Conservatives used the same argument with Jim Crow—and they still don’t get it. Liz Cheney doesn’t just share her father’s neoconservative politics. As a young woman, she also shared his support for the apartheid regime in South Africa. In a 1988 editorial for her college newspaper, Cheney—now running a losing primary bid against Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY)—condemned anti-apartheid activists at Colorado College. “The real problem with divestment,” wrote Cheney, attacking a prominent strategy of apartheid opponents, “is that it won’t work. Like most moral statements, it accomplishes nothing tangible.”……………..”
The Cheneys have had an unusual mixed almost bi-polar relationship with the Al Saud princes. They loved the princes and their money even as they waged a media war on their religion. Liz Cheney particularly has a website (Keep America Safe) that for years focused on being Islamophobic even as the Cheneys remained close to the Saudis. That silly fear-mongering website, which also encouraged banning mosques, is now reportedly closed.
Of course there was and still is much hypocrisy in the right-wing position regarding apartheid South Africa. While they extolled the benefits of “engagement” in reducing Apartheid (not that they cared about it), they have also extolled the virtues of keeping the blockade against Cuba, and tightening the blockade against Iran. Apparently ‘engagement’ works with China and apartheid South Africa but not with Cuba, Iran and a few other places. Of course many Democrats are at the forefront of keeping the blockade on Cuba and tightening the blockade on Iran rather than “engaging” these countries. It all depends on upcoming elections, the Cuban exile lobby, and the potent Israeli lobby (including the Christian Zionists).
“Iran’s potential participation in the Geneva 2 discussions would be an additional indignity to those in the Syrian opposition who still seek cooperation with the United States and the West. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers told The Daily Beast that he doesn’t think Iran should be included. “I don’t believe Iran is an honest broker in Syria to any degree. They are operating Hezbollah, supporting them, giving them weapons, giving them intelligence,” he said. “That would not be a great outcome. You cannot continue to alienate our allies in the region, just to get a deal.”……………”
That is true, what Congressman Rogers said: Iran is not an honest broker in Syria because it supports one side of the civil war. Any party that supports one side can’t be an honest broker. So, can you tell me who can be an honest broker in Syria now? That means: can you tell me of a country that doesn’t support any one of the many sides of the civil war? Maybe Belize? Or perhaps Vanuatu or Fiji?
It is tempting togo to a ridiculous extreme and suggest Israel as ‘honest’ broker since they dislike all sides of the Syrian war and all sides hate them, and they probably have something to lose no matter what the outcome. It all depends on their assessment of which side is ‘preferable’ as the lesser evil in the long term. I bet some of the impotent Arab potentates would love this last suggestion even as they scowl at it with feigned indignation.
“An enthusiastic crowd all but crushed chief negotiator Mohammad Zarif upon his return to Tehran, after a deal had been reached with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany. The foreign minister deserved a gold medal for his diplomatic skills, the Iranian newspaper Arman Daily wrote enthusiastically, noting that the world had come a step closer to global peace “without Iran having to abandon its principles.” The deal evoked a completely different reaction in Saudi Arabia and Israel. Abdullah al-Askar, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the influential Shura Council, spoke darkly of what he called Iran’s “evil agenda.”………………”
Chairman of the ‘Foreign affairs Committee’ indeed! I’d say this was a joke, if Wahhabis had a sense of humor. Der Spiegel calls it “influential”. Nobody would seriously say this appointed advisory council, the Shura, is influential. It was appointed to rubber stamp some limited bureaucratic decisions of the princes. Der Spiegel would never call such an appointed impotent group influential if it were in another country. Influential? In Arabic they say it is a “صفر على الشمال: a zero on the left side of a number”, meaning it is meaningless, null and void.
“Donkeys turn binmen as Gaza fuel crisis bites…. On a sweltering November afternoon, 10-year-old Alaa skips barefoot along a road in Gaza City picking up festering bags of rubbish and throwing them onto his father’s donkey-drawn cart. ………. People like Abu Jabal, who own a donkey and cart, are being increasingly relied on by Gaza’s Islamist Hamas government as the fuel crisis worsens. “In the past few days there’s been more pressure on us and more rubbish collecting work,” he told AFP. “At first we were tasked with picking up the rubbish outside the hospital, but now we’ve had to take collections from outside people’s homes as well.”……………….”
Now I know why the Israelis included donkeys, jackasses, and asses among items they had banned from being imported into Gaza. I had speculated about that in a posting a couple of years ago here. Too late for Hamas, of course, since they are ensconced inside Gaza and in power, just as the extreme right-wing is securely in power inside Israel. Speaking of donkeys and asses and the right-wing, I wonder how the boys in Ramallah are faring these days. Also speaking of Hamas and Fatah (PA) and Israel and jackasses: these three four groups have so much in common, I am surprised they can’t reach a quick deal. Then again, maybe it is this common regional affinity to asses and jackasses that encouraged US Secretary of State John Kerry to launch his latest futile peace initiative.
This is what Saudi Prince Bandar wants the West to think of the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran.
P.S.: he was apparently incognito (no, not that one: in disguise) when he wrote this piece for Foreign Policy. Or so I think. He even threatens that his family, the Al Saud, will go nuclear if a deal is finalized, meaning he will be a nuclear bomb from somewhere (Pakistan, North Korea, UmmAl-Quwain, Jordan, WTF……..). But that is also exactly what the Al Saud and their vast media mouthpieces had threatened to do if there was NO deal in Geneva.
On the other hand, that is also what Ben Netanyahu has been saying for two decades, that he will go nuclear, even more nuclear than he has been for some four decades. Could he be the writer in disguise?
“UNESCO has suspended the voting rights of the United States and Israel, two years after both countries stopped paying dues to the U.N.’s cultural arm in protest over its granting full membership to the Palestinians. The U.S. decision to cancel its funding in October 2011 was blamed on U.S. laws that prohibit funding to any U.N. agency that implies recognition of the Palestinians’ demands for their own state. Israel also pulled its funding, objecting to what it called unilateral attempts by the Palestinians to gain recognition of statehood…………….”
Ref. my Saturday posting on Saudi Arabia.
I pointed to my Saudi source that her government is not unique in that respect, in getting upset and walking out screaming when it doesn’t get its way. I suggested the Al Saud may have learned this from Western governments in recent years. I reminded her of past threats to stop funding the UN and the decision to stop funding UNESCO if it upsets Israel and hence AIPAC, which it apparently did when it granted the Palestinians member status. I especially reminded her of the UNESCO episode and how the Obama administration now regrets losing its vote and influence in that organization after withdrawing funding (which they now realize means Israel losing its influence as Susan Rice hinted).
I also reminded her of Western media and thinkers and pundits complaining that sometime the international organizations seem to take into account the rest of the world, all 5-6 billion of it, more than the Western governments that represent about 600 million. I reminded her of the famous French pop-philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy who said earlier this year that a “bunch of gangsters control the UN Security Council”, that was when China and Russia and others refused to vote for military action in Syria. She agreed with me that it is likely the princes have learned a lesson from that on how to have an international tantrum when they don’t get their way.
I forgot to tell her that the Obama administration withdrew its funding of UNESCO in 2011, only about one year before the 2012 general elections (elections in the USA not in Israel). At that time, it seemed like a good idea,electorally if not from a principled point of view.
“Nearly two thirds of Israeli Jews oppose a deal being reached between world powers and Iran on Tehran’s controversial nuclear program, the results of a survey published on Friday said. The survey also showed 52.4 percent supported an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in the event of a “bad deal” and if Tehran pursued its nuclear ambitions, while 26.8 percent said they would oppose such an attack. A strong majority of 68.8 percent said they believed the Israeli military was capable of going it alone in a strike on Iran. When asked: “Should Israel support or oppose the nuclear agreement being discussed with Iran?” 65.5 percent said they were against it………………..”
Israelis are supposed to be allegedly apparently the most educated people in the Middle East. Yet they are overwhelmingly against a potential nuclear deal that they know nothing about, yet. Except what their right-wing ‘leader’ tells them, and he doesn’t know much about it either. Which is not necessarily a sign of superior intelligence (self-claimed or otherwise), not necessarily.
Obviously a majority would support a war of aggression because they believe they can win it (which is also not necessarily a sign of superior intelligence either). On the other hand, why shouldn’t they? They have won every one of their wars against the Arabs, except the two against Lebanon and Hezbollah. Those two defeats (2000 and 2006) still rankle but, hey, it is not fun winning all the time. An occasional defeat can make things interesting. Or maybe they know that Uncle Sam will intervene to help them once Ben Netanyahu starts his war of aggression and gets bogged down, big time. They know there are many in Washington who seem to have a strange proclivity for intervention and warring in Muslim lands. It is almost certain that many in the US Congress, possibly both Likud-nik houses, will assume these polls reflect their own American constituencies and vote for war. They almost have already.
“Thursday, Nov. 14, Israel sent the White House in Washington a confidential document outlining blow by blow how and when Iran will attain a nuclear weapon if the Obama-Kerry strategy for dealing with the issue goes through. The document was addressed to the National Security Council headed by Susan Rice, debkafile reports. Communications between the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem and the State Department have almost petered out since exchanges between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State John Kerry sharpened in tone. Our Washington sources report that Rice and the NSC have taken a critical stand against the State Department’s policies – not just on the Iranian nuclear question……… It confines itself to a dry account, step by step, of how the Iranian nuclear bomb program will continue to unfold if the administration’s secret proposition is accepted…………….”
If we are to believe this Israeli media story, Ben Netanyahu’s Looney Tunes nuclear cartoons that traced Iran’s nuclear path at the UN General Assembly last year are back in circulation. They are now at the White House, in the hands of Susan Rice, allegedly known as more strongly pro-Israel than others. She is apparently a true believer in their veracity, possibly adding her own embellishments, possibly in colorful crayons. Possibly shoving the carrot into Bugs Bunny’s hand. No doubt the reception of this Looney Tunes document in Washington is much warmer than the hilarity of world-wide reaction last year after their UN debut.
