Category Archives: US Foreign Policy

Iran, OPEC, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Algeria Refuses to Help Blockade of Iran, Saudis Pissed……….

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“Algeria said Thursday it will not boost crude oil exports in the event Iran suddenly cuts supplies to Europe after the EU imposed new sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear drive. “We have a programme in place that won’t be modified,” Energy Minister Youcef Yousfi told Algerian news service APS. EU foreign ministers agreed Monday on an immediate ban on oil imports and a phase-out of existing contracts up to July 1, as the West ramped up the pressure over Tehran’s nuclear activities and urged it to return to talks. However, Iran’s parliament is expected to consider next week a bill to ban oil exports to Europe much sooner, a move that could potentially raise prices………”

An article in the Saudi daily al-Hayat (owned by prince Khaled Bin Sultan) called Algeria a shumooliyya “totalitarian” state yesterday. That was the first time they call any Arab regime other than Libya and Syria by that epithet. They don’t do that unless they have a royal or princely green light, as part of state policy. I am not sure if this is related to the refusal of Algeria to join the Western blockade against Iran (unlike the Saudis). Yet it probably is: for a Saudi newspaper owned by a prince (they are all owned by princes or their retainers) to call anyone (bar none, well, maybe except North Korea) a “totalitarian” and undemocratic regime is a stretch. After all, this is the Absolute Tribal Polygamous Democratic People’s Kingdom of (Saudi) Arabia.
Cheers
mhg


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Israel, Latin America, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Florida Race Tightens: Disrespecting Obama and Motherhood before Netanyahu and Cuba……..

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The Florida Republican race is reaching the home stretch. it is desperation time for the Republican candidates. The focus shifts to the special interest groups. The talk is about Space, Israel, and Cubans longing for the days of Batista. Last debate they talked about who would hire the most “Latinos” in their administration. Then there always lurks Netanyahu:

Romney: I’d hire Netanyahu if he were not Israeli prime minister.

Sanrotum: There you go again, disrespecting Netanyahu. You should be ashamed of yourself talking like that about a great American patriot. I’d hire Netanyahu even while he is PM of Israel. Hell, I’d hire him even if he were an Iranian ayatollah.

Romney: I like patriots too. I’d never disrespect Netanyahu. It is Obama who is always disrespecting Netanyahu. I would never do that, not while running for president, for heaven’s sake. I’d rather disrespect my own mother and the intelligence of the American people than Netanyahu, at least until November 2016.

Santorum: I don’t believe you. Anyway, I’d also hire Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles (aka Bambi).
So there, you try beating that.

Gingrich: He sounds like a great Cuban-American and a good Catholic. I’d have to ask Callista first.

Ron Paul: I wouldn’t hire Netanyahu if he were the only man available for the job. Not unless he can bike for 27 miles, which he can’t because they don’t have a 27 mile stretch in that whole place over there. I’d rather send Netanyahu, along with Newt and all the rest of you pandering schmucks to that new moon base Newt and Callista are building.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, U.S. Congress, US Foreign Policy

Obama and Clinton and Hypocrisy on Democracy: Weapons of Repression to Bahrain…………

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“President Barack Obama’s administration has been delaying its planned $53 million arms sale to Bahrain due to human rights concerns and congressional opposition, but this week administration officials told several congressional offices that they will move forward with a new and different package of arms sales — without any formal notification to the public. The congressional offices that led the charge to oppose the original Bahrain arms sales package are upset that the State Department has decided to move forward with the new package. The opposition to Bahrain arms sales is led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), and also includes Senate Foreign Relations Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee chairman Robert Casey (D-PA), Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), and Marco Rubio (R-FL). Wyden and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) have each introduced a resolution in their respective chambers to prevent the U.S. government from going through with the original sale, which would have included 44 armored, high-mobility Humvees and over 300 advanced missiles. The State Department has not released details of the new sale, and Congress has not been notified through the regular process.……….”


The ruling al-Khalifa clan in Bahrain have been masters of deception. For years they managed to cultivate the image of a cosmopolitan liberal monarchy, even as they applied a system of discriminatory apartheid against a majority of their people. They were aided in that by some bought and paid-for European expatriates (especially Brits) as well and slick public relations campaigns. All this was exposed in recent years as the people rose demanding their rights. The whole façade finally fell apart last spring when the regime and its imported mercenaries failed to crush the people’s uprising. It had to invite an invasion by foreign (Saudi) forces to help repress the protests. They are still repressing and killing people, even as they fill Western media with talk of reform.

The Obama administration has also learned to master deception and double standards. While they talk of freedom and democracy in, say, Iran and Libya and Syria, they turned their back on the people of Bahrain. They have been deathly silent about Saudi Arabia, the absolutely most repressive regime in the Middle East, possibly in the world after North Korea. It should not have been surprising that the Obama administration planned to sell weapons to the al-Khalifa clan to help them crush the newly resurgent protests. There was some opposition in Congress, from legislators in both parties. That is how the Obama administration hit upon this trick for selling the same weapons of repression to Bahrain, but in several smaller packages that can bypass congressional approval. A masterful piece of trickery, almost Clintonian, something the al-Khalifa would do, and have done.
Change? As far as the Middle East is concerned, the change Mr. Obama once claimed is nothing new, certainly nothing Arabs and Muslims can believe in. Unless they are repressive absolute tribal dynasties with deep pockets.
Cheers
mhg


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GCC, Iran, OPEC, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Iran Feels the Oil Blockade Heat but Denies it: Back to 1980-88 in the Gulf?……….

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“Ahmadinejad said during a speech at a gathering of the personnel of Sarcheshmeh Copper Complex in the city of Sarcheshmeh, the southeastern province of Kerman, on Thursday. The European Union formally imposed an oil embargo on Iran and agreed to a freeze on the assets of the Central Bank of Iran on Monday, but existing contracts will be honored until July 1. “The West must be aware that the Iranian nation… does not need them. You impose embargo on Iran’s oil but do not see that the United States has not bought oil from us for 30 years, but nothing happened, and Iran followed its path with dignity,” Ahmadinejad said, addressing European countries. He stated that the sanctions are futile……….” Mehr News

Yet this next news item seems to contradict Ahmadinejad’s assertion that the sanctions will not hurt. He is right in one respect: the sanctions are unlikely to hurt the regime. They always hurt the people:

“A top Iranian diplomat has expressed Tehran’s displeasure over an announcement by certain Persian Gulf Arab states to replace Iran’s oil exports, saying Iran will consider such a move as “unfriendly”. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iranian deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, made the remarks during a meeting with the undersecretary of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Khalid Al-Jarallah, in Kuwait City on Thursday. Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi last week said that his country will make up for any shortfall in world oil supply caused by sanctions against Iran. ………” Mehr News

The Iranians must have a sense of having been here before, a sense of déjà vu (all over again). During the utterly senseless and futile 1980-99 war, their petroleum facilities were bombed and they were under an American economic siege. Not only did the Saudis pick up the slack and expanded their market share, other Gulf states also sold their own oil for Ba’athist Iraq’s account (Saddam’s exports were severely curtailed).
The Iranians resorted to the “tankers war’ to punish other Gulf exporters, which led to some naval skirmishes with the U.S. navy. The Iranians did not do well in those skirmishes, had some of their speedboats and offshore oil platforms destroyed. The lowest point came on July 3rd 1988, when the USS Vincennes shot down a civilian Iranian airliner (Iran Air 655) over the Gulf, killing nearly 300 civilians. The ceasefire was declared in August.
Had those passengers been Westerners (like the Pan Am 103), and had the guilty party been Libya (like the Pan Am 103), the Iranian victims would have received more than a billion dollars from Qaddafi (just like the Pan Am 103 victims). All posthumously of course (just like the Pan Am 103 victims).
Cheers
mhg


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Israel, Middle East, Palestine, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Romney and Gingrich and GOPP: Kissing Netanyahu’s Ring, Kissing History Goodbye………

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Quotes from Republican candidates at the Florida debate last night:

“ROMNEY: Well, the reason that there’s not peace between the Palestinians and Israel is because there is in the leadership of the Palestinian people are Hamas and others who think like Hamas who have as their intent the elimination of Israel. And whether it’s in schoolbooks that teach how to kill Jews, or whether it’s in the political discourse that is spoken either from Fatah or from Hamas, there is a belief that the Jewish people do not have a right to have a Jewish state. …… I think he (Obama) disrespected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu……..”
 
Romney doesn’t give a fig about Netanyahu, He probably recognizes him for the political hustler and serial liar that he is; he probably admires him, if at all, for these qualities more than his being a statesman (he is not). What Romney meant to say was that Obama disrespects the New York and New Jersey and other northeast retirees in Florida. He is appealing to all the Jewish elderly retirees in south Florida, normally a strong Democrat bloc of voters.

“GINGRICH: It was technically an invention of the late 1970s, and it was clearly so. Prior to that, they were Arabs. Many of them were either Syrian, Lebanese, or Egyptian, or Jordanian……… ……..”

Funny, when I was a kid at school, many of my teachers were Palestinians: that is what everybody called them. Well before 1970. Gingrich supposedly studied history, so presumably he knows that he is lying here (as do most of his listeners, possibly even a few of the Republicans in the audience).
GOPP: Grand Old Pandering Party.
Cheers
mhg


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Britain, Iran, Israel, Middle East Nuclear, Mossad, nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Short Western Memories: Khomeini, the Chemical West, and the Bomb………………

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“The Israeli President warns us now that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. Heaven preserve us. Yet we reporters do not mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said exactly the same thing in 1996. That was 16 years ago. And we do not recall that the current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999. That would be 13 years ago. Same old story. In fact, we don’t know that Iran really is building a nuclear weapon. And after Iraq, it’s amazing that the old weapons of mass destruction details are popping with the same frequency as all the poppycock about Saddam’s titanic arsenal. Not to mention the date problem. When did all this start? The Shah. The old boy wanted nuclear power. He even said he wanted a bomb because “the US and the Soviet Union had nuclear bombs” and no one objected. Europeans rushed to supply the dictator’s wish. Siemens – not Russia – built the Bushehr nuclear facility. And when Ayatollah Khomeini, Scourge of the West, Apostle of Shia Revolution, etc, took over Iran in 1979, he ordered the entire nuclear project to be closed down because it was “the work of the Devil“. Only when Saddam invaded Iran – with our Western encouragement – and started using poison gas against the Iranians (chemical components arriving from the West, of course) was Khomeini persuaded to reopen it………………”

Even within the short span of the past year we have heard and read several different conflicting assessments of the Iranian nuclear program:

  • It is military. No, it is civilian. No, it is both.
  • They are zeroing on the nuclear bomb. They have not decided yet.
  • They already have everything the need for a bomb.
  • They will have a bomb this year. They will not have a bomb until at least next year.
  • They won’t be able to before 2014, or is it 2015.
  • The IAEA says they have suspicions, but no proof, that it is possible that the Iranians may be thinking of perhaps maybe looking into the possibility of  staring to think of the probability of the degree of feasibity and applicability of the likely scenario of …………..
  • Dagan of Mossad says they have not started the bomb yet.
  • Netanyahu says they will have a bomb soon and that Ahmadienjad is worse than Hitler, will continue to be worse than Hitler even after his term expires and he leaves office in 2013.
  • Ehud Barak says war is closer unless the Iranians relent. Ehud Barak says war is months away. When asked about it, Ehud Barak responded “what war?”
  • They want to be able to build a bomb whenever they want.
  • But Ahmadinejad said they don’t want a nuclear bomb.
  • The Saudi princes, who never ever lie, are convinced they are building a bomb. So are their Salafi muftis.
  • The shaikh (sorry, king) al-Khalifa of Bahrain is certain they are building a bomb. Foreign minister al-Khalifa of Bahrain (aka Bon Vivant) is taunting us, saying “are you going to take that from the mullahs?” WTF that be. Several other al-Khalifa potantates seem to concur with the two already mentioned.
  • Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid of Dubai says he does not believe the Iranians are building a bomb. He thinks they have no reason to. Besides, he says “Even if they did, who gives a fuck”?
  • The al-Nahayan brothers of Abu Dhabi who own the UAE want the United States to attack the Iranian, and be quick about it.
  • The ayatollah has issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.
  • Obama, since he is only secretly a Muslim, can’t openly abide by the Khamenei fatwa.
  • Newt Gingrich says their goal is to attack the United States.
  • Rick Santorum insists he had a vision that their aim is to establish a Persian Caliphate in all the Blue States, before sweeping through Georgia.
  • Ron Paul thinks everybody this side of the Atlantic (and some on the other side) are out of their minds. He is most likely right.

Cheers
mhg


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Middle East, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(4) Ron Paul in the Middle East………..

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If Ron Paul ever makes it to the White House, he’ll probably be assassinated quickly (unless he gets an infarct first, not that I wish him any ill, he is the most decent of the two GOP candidates who have some decency). There are just too many private interests and little public empires that he endangers. The list of enemies starts with the defense industry, the neocon foreign policy establishment, the foreign services and security contractors, wild evangelicals, Rapture freaks, and his own putative vice president (wtf that be). Ron Paul doesn’t do any Muslim-baiting. He is the only GOP candidate who does not pander to anyone, American or foreign. He is also the only one not waiting in line to kiss Netanyahu’s a… er,…….. ring.

Paul is an isolationist in the old Republican tradition. His idea of drastically cutting the bases in Europe and Asia is a sensible one (Germany and Japan do not need them, nor does the cash-strapped USA). The United States does not need hundreds of bases in Europe and East Asia. The United States can do with a limited number of bases in friendly Middle East and Gulf countries and with the Fifth and Sixth Fleets to cover the Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean. More important, Paul believes that the United States does not need to be dragged into an unnecessary destructive war in the Middle East, pushed by the Likud and its allies in Israel and by some potentates and the Salafis on the Gulf.
I have deliberately not mentioned Ron Paul’s domestic economic and regulatory policies with most of which I strongly disagree.
Cheers
mhg


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Israel, Middle East, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(3) Mitt Romney and the Middle East……….

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Mitt Romney hasn’t expressed any solid core position on foreign policy regarding the Middle East. Nothing that diverts much from the usual republican positions. That can be good or it can be bad. He has many former GOP ‘experts’ on his advisory staff but only one of them is from an Arab (non-Muslim) background. He has expressed the usual mandatory love and admiration and adoration for Benjamin Netanyahu. But that is now a necessary thing for all GOP candidates, actually for all Democrat politicians as well. Kissing Netanyahu’s ring has become bigger than kissing the ring of the German veteran who sits in Rome, in the Fisherman’s shoes. He has, however promised that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon as long as he is president. That is the closest thing to a definite policy he has expressed. (Oh, and he has refused to promise to re-invade Iraq, which means McCain and Lieberman will have to do it solo).
Cheers
mhg


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Islamophobia, Muslims, Religion, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(2) Rick Santorum & the Middle East: “Mein Kampf gegen die Muslime und Araber”………

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“Santorum believes “it is the duty of each and every American citizen who abhors terrorism and supports freedom to stand up and say, ‘I support Israel.'” He has attacked Obama for putting “Israel’s very existence in more peril” and says Palestine’s statehood bid at the United Nations is a sign that the Palestinians “feel weakness — they feel it, they see it, they know it — and they’re going to exploit it.“………”

Like I said earlier: (Congressmen don’t get much in-depth foreign policy experience unless that sit on certain specialized committee or subcommittee. Just look at poor Rick Santorum, the subject of my next brief posting).

Oh well, Santorum was a one-term senator. He is a rust-belt gun-slinging (shoot the duck, shoot the duck) Catholic who talks the evangelical omni-phobic Bible-belt talk, and walks the unique Bible-belt walk. He too is betting the Middle East farm on the Rapture and mass conversion when the “moment is right”.
He’s got the Bible (Old and New Testaments) and his own wild fascist ideas. I’d offer him a copy of the Quran as well, in English, except he might charge me with harassment or of being some kind of Islamo-terrorist Jihadist Salafi motha.
He hasn’t yet published “Mein Kampf gegen die Muslime und Araber”. I doubt that he ever will: remember earlier this week I posted here quoting someone who likened his campaign to a person who is dead but he doesn’t know it, although everybody else does.
Cheers
mhg


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Iraq, Islamophobia, Israel, Middle East, Muslims, Palestine, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(1) Newt Gingrich and the Middle East: Calculated Muslim-Baiting…….

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“Gingrich’s faltering presidential campaign was completely resuscitated by a 5 million donation from Las Vegas casino king and super-Zionist Sheldon Adelson. (According to Wikipedia, Adelson is currently the 8th wealthiest American and 16th wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $23.3 billion.) Rising from the ashes, Gingrich now has won the South Carolina primary and has a decent chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee…… Adelson and his Israeli-born wife, Miriam, have spent time and money lobbying for a bill to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Gingrich has promised that his first executive order as president would be the embassy move. Adelson is an ardent Zionist. Since 2007 the Adelson Family Foundation has made contributions totaling $100 million to Birthright Israel, which finances Jewish youth trips to Israel, Adelson is such a hard-line Zionist that he even stopped supporting AIPAC when it appeared to support a 2007 peace initiative championed by Olmert, President Bush, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In 2009, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which is a hard-line Zionist group that wants Israel to retain the occupied territories and expand the Jewish settlements, presented Adelson its most distinguished and historic award, the Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion for outstanding achievement in Zionism. His wife received the Louis D. Brandeis Award. The couple now have their names on one of ZOA’s major awards, the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award. Adelson is intimately involved in Israeli politics………..”

Newt Gingrich has promised to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. That is a standard promise for most presidential candidates in the United States, and reneging on the promise afterwards is also standard procedure. The idea of where the embassy is located has no strategic implications, and I suspect that most Arab regimes will just do some posturing and then accept it. Unless it is moved to East Jerusalem.

Gingrich does not seem to believe that the Palestinians deserve their own state(-let) on the West Bank (and Gaza?). This may seem like a strongly pro-Israeli policy, but it is not necessarily so in the long-term. It means he prefers Israel to annex territory covering anywhere between 2 to 3 million more Palestinian Arabs (in addition to Arab Israelis who are less than 24% of the population). Yet what would they do with all these Arabs? Citizenship and voting rights mean a huge, nay a seismic, political shift. An apartheid-type policy is not an option in this day and age (even the Bahrain regime on the Gulf is having trouble keeping its apartheid policy intact). Besides, it would truly upset and turn off most Jewish-Americans who would not condone such policy (in comparison Jewish-Russians probably wouldn’t give a fig about it, nor would the “Christian” right).
Gingrich has also done some of the usual Republican Muslim-baiting. He made some appropriate (to the right wingers) noises about the dangers the Shri’a law presents to the United States. He knows there is no such danger because it won’t happen. He also was slated to share the speaking stage with Dutch Neo-Nazi politician and rabble-rouser Geert Wilders at an anti-Muslim rally a couple of years ago in New York, but he was smart enough to go AWOL on that day. His Muslim-baiting is calculated, unlike that of some other republicans: that only means he is smarter than his colleagues in the Party.

I have not posted anything recently about my earlier suggestion that Newt Gingrich take a hike, literally, on the Iraq-Iran border. That was meant to shore up his foreign policy credentials.  But that hike may be impossible now, given that overt American military presence in Iraq is limited to John McCain and Joe Lieberman camping in Falluja. (Congressmen don’t get much in-depth foreign policy experience unless that sit on certain specialized committee or subcommittee. Just look at poor Rick Santorum, the subject of my next brief posting).
Cheers
mhg


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