Syrian Activists and Saudi media on WMD: “If at First You don’t succeed, try again and……….”
“Opposition activists again accused President Bashar al-Assad’s forces of using poison gas in Syria’s civil war on Thursday, and said victims had been discovered with swollen limbs and foaming at the mouth. The activists told Reuters two shells loaded with gas hit a rebel-held area in the town of Nabak, 68 km northeast of Damascus, on a major highway in the Qalamoun region. They reported seven casualties……….. They reported seven casualties. Separately, the Syrian Revolution Coordinators Union also accused Assad’s forces of using poison gas..………….”
After which Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Al-Yamama, leader of the Syrian opposition and putative future viceroy for Syria, will also declare refutable evidence of Syrian regime use of poisoned gas. The Islamic Heritage Revival Society, Jabhat Al-Nusra, the Saudi Religious Police, the Prime Minister of Bahrain, and the Ringling Brothers (and Barnum & Bailey) will also confirm the use of WMD in Syria. Alarabiya and Asharq Alawsat and Mad Magazine will now headline the gruesome incident. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich), head of the House Intelligence (this did not use to be an oxymoron) is considering a demand for action. The French and British governments will offer to confirm the use of poison gas.
Qalamoun is the site of an ongoing battle that will very likely lead to the ejection of the opposition groups from another strategic area. Remember, the claims of the use of WMD got louder and accelerated after regime forces defeated the opposition in Qusayr earlier this year.
“Israeli intelligence has assassinated Hassan al-Laqqis. A deadly breach has taken out one of the leading minds of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon. The executioners snuck under cover of darkness and struck a blow to Hezbollah deep inside its stronghold. The five bullets did not penetrate the head of Hassan al-Laqqis alone but also the heart of the Resistance itself. The assailants followed Laqqis, snuck in, and struck down the head of Hezbollah’s air defense division, and one of the Resistance’s most important “electronic minds.” The perpetrators fired five shots – one of which missed – killing Laqqis after several botched assassination attempts in the past. There is no doubt that this is a Mossad operation, no matter who carried it out directly – whether takfiri groups or collaborators…………..” Once upon a time, Arab regimes and Arab media blamed Israel for almost every political assassination and sabotage. Even for many of the killings that were perpetrated by other Arabs. Take the Sabra-Shatilla refugee camp massacre of 1982 (somewhere between 750 to 2,000 unprotected unarmed Palestinian civilians were murdered). It is true that Israeli occupation forces stood by and let “the Lebanese” killers into the camps, but those who shot, stabbed, and raped the unarmed refugees were Lebanese. The killers are now mainly part of the March 14 pro-Saudi political bloc led by Saad Hariri and the Gemayyel clan and others. Yet for decades Arab media mostly blamed the Israelis without pointing the finger at the actual killers. That day is past, gone. Most official Arabs now blame other Arabs (of other sects or other parties) and occasionally they blame Iran. Even if Israel is the guilty party. In this case Israel is almost certainly the guilty party, perhaps along with some Lebanese collaborators, who can be from the March 14 and their Salafi allies or just paid agents.
“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.
“Stephen Nderitu, a donkey cart operator in Nanyuki town, has been in the business for the last ten years. He has never dared bring a female donkey to town. You see, in 1949, the town’s colonial Urban Council imposed a by-law banning female donkeys. It was then a major hub for European colonial settlers. The Council was provoked by the “disgusting” mating habits of the beast of burden outside the Settler’s Store in heart of town. “Some rogue operators from farms and ranches on the outskirts of the town have been sneaking their female donkeys to do business in the town,” Nderitu said last week. “It is still illegal.”………….. However, another operator Peter Karigwi who has been in the business since 1997, said he has learnt to operate females without courting trouble. He argued that the solution to the problem is to “castrate all the male donkeys and the females will operate in peace without interference.”………..”
Maybe that last solution works for Kenyan donkeys, but not feasible for other asses.
“Deputy Secretary General of MWM Allama Deedar Ali Jalbani and his guard were killed by unidentified gunmen in a drive-by shooting near NED university in the eastern neighbourhood of Gulshan-e-Iqbal, two days after two Shia youths were killed by sniper fire in central Karachi. “Gunmen riding a motorbike opened fire on the vehicle of Allama Deedar Ali Jalbani, killing him and his guard,” senior local police official Pir Muhammad Shah told news agency AFP. He said the latest attacks were part of targeted killings aimed at fuelling sectarian violence. An MWM official, Nasir Hussaini, also confirmed the incident. Later, three Sunni Muslim preachers were shot dead outside a mosque in the North Nazimabad area of Karachi. “Four gunmen came on two motorcycles and sprayed bullets on the members of an Islamic preaching group outside a mosque. Three people were killed in the incident and the attackers escaped,” Aamir Farooqi, a senior police official, told AFP. Farooqi said that two men among the deceased were of Moroccon extraction………..”
You’d think besotted Pakistan has enough of its own sectarian Salafi preachers, Wahhabi terrorists, and suicide bombers. You’d think that after decades of Wahhabi petro-money and their shaikhs brainwashing two whole generations in their (misnamed) madrassas that it has enough talent among the local yokels. You’ think they don’t need to import any Frenchified dudes all the way from Morocco. You’d be wrong, apparently. Cheers
mhg
“The UN mission in Democratic Republic of Congo has started to deploy unarmed surveillance drones to monitor rebel activity near the forested borders with Rwanda and Uganda. This is the first time any UN mission has deployed drones. The first two were launched from the eastern city of Goma, which was last year briefly occupied by M23 rebels………..”
Like the Hitler-created Volks Wagen (People’s Car in German), the drone is fast becoming a favorite machine for both rich and poor countries. Everybody seems to want them now. Even the United Nations. Some local law enforcement agencies in the USA are seeking to acquire and use drones: the local police already often resemble battle groups in a war zone. Will it be long before the Saudi Commission for the Propagation of Vice (Religious Cops) starts using drones to catch witches and sorcerers, female drivers, and to chaperone married couples? Probably not.
Once upon a time the USA had a monopoly on these drones (at least I think so). But that was then. Now the Iranians mass produce them, as do the Israelis and many others. Hezbollah launches them against the Israelis (who no doubt have been doing the same from the day they launched their first drone). Those who can’t produce their own drones are now at the bottom of the technology pile. Technology-challenged Arab regimes are scrambling to buy them. The potentates of at least one Persian Gulf country are seeking to relocate whole Western plants that produce them, along with their staffs. The Americans now rely on sophisticated drones to win the no-longer-named-so War on Terror: the old name evokes other failed wars like the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty (no, there is no War on Christmas: that was a creation of Fox News hotheads). The assumption is that decapitating the terrorist organizations with drone attacks will weaken them. This decapitation policy is debatable: so far chopping off one big head has led to the growth of several smaller heads. Al-Qaeda no longer has a brass plaque, a corporate address in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen or Saudi Arabia. It now has franchises that stretch from AfPak through Al-Anbar (Iraq) to once-secular Syria (courtesy of Persian Gulf Salafis and Wahhabi princes) and all the way cross North Africa to the Sahel region.
Here are some links to older posts on this very interesting topic:
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?
“An imam from a tiny hamlet on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast has run into trouble with the country’s powerful religious authorities — for his other life as a rock musician. Ahmet Muhsin Tuzer told AFP he is being investigated by the Diyanet, the state body in charge of the country’s mosques, over his activities. “I’m waiting for the results of the investigation but whatever happens I’m going to continue making music,” he said in a telephone interview from Pinarkoy, a tiny community near the Mediterranean beach resort of Kas. The Diyanet is looking to determine whether his form of music is compatible with Islam and whether his work as a musician conflicts with his role as imam, a government-funded post…………..”
Why not? Turkey is supposed to be a ‘free’ country. Allegedly. Cheers
mhg
“The Corruption Perceptions Index 2013 serves as a reminder that the abuse of power, secret dealings and bribery continue to ravage societies around the world. The Index scores 177 countries and territories on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). No country has a perfect score, and two-thirds of countries score below 50. This indicates a serious, worldwide corruption problem. Hover on the map above to see how your country fares…………….”
According to the index, Saudi Arabia is less corrupt than Italy, Greece, Brazil, Argentina and a good chunk of the rest of Europe. All countries with popularly elected governments, beaten by a medieval absolute tribal monarchy owned by one family. Listed as the least corrupt in the Middle East and North Africa (except for Tunisia and Israel), the least corrupt between Japan and the Atlantic Ocean. I must have been underestimating the honesty of all these few thousand of Saudi princes. All these other countries must have more corrupt potentates. These princes and their retainers OWN the whole country, it is even named after their family. How much more corrupt can one get? North Korea is listed as near the bottom, among the most corrupt: it is, but they haven’t yet named the country after the ruling family. Not yet: King Kim would sound comic, more so than King Kong. It is true: corruption on a small average-person level as well as money laundering is seriously frowned-upon in places like Saudi Arabia. Small bribery is punished, but spectacular bribery is welcomed for those who can afford to pay it. Corruption on a truly large scale, in terms of millions and billions (so where is Bandar these days?), is halal and kosher if one can swing it. Unfortunately not everybody can. Dommage.
“French investigators have concluded in a report that Yasser Arafat died of natural causes and ruled out the possibility that he was poisoned, a source told Al Jazeera. “The analysis cannot lead us to affirm that Arafat died of polonium 210 poisoning,” reads the report, according to the source, who has seen it. The report comes to the same conclusion the French reached in 2004 – that Arafat died of a brain hemorrhage and an intestinal infection. According to the forensic report presented in Paris to Suha Arafat, the widow of the late Palestinian leader, and her lawyer, Saad Djabbar, French investigators found traces of the radioactive element polonium 210, but concluded that Arafat died of natural causes. The French tests, conducted independently and in secret as part of a murder investigation, appear to contradict Swiss findings …………..”
Confusing, n’est-ce pas? I know, it is possible to ‘buy’ test results, especially in Europe. Still, if I have to choose in this case, I would tend to believe the Swiss institutions over the French institutions (and government officials for that matter). Some misguided people suspect that corruption, like interesting sex, was a French invention.
I shall file this under category: WTF.
