Economics, Iran, Sanctions, Terrorism, Turkey, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Oh No, another Iranian-Hezbollah-Turkish-Kurdish Embassy Plot Uncovered……..

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“Intelligence units have warned that the Quds Force, a special unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, plans to send a group to Turkey to carry out a series of demonstrations that may include a bomb attack on the Embassy or Consulate General of the United States. The Turkish Security General Directorate (EGM) has warned police departments in all 81 Turkish provinces that they must be vigilant and remain alert to the existence of such a threat. The intelligence pertaining to the possibility of such an attack was delivered in a secret letter to the information department at Turkey’s General Directorate of Security. The written statement indicates that a team linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard will be sent to Turkey and that it may be planning to bomb the US embassy or consulate general in the country. The Quds Force is infamous for its role in attempting to export Iran’s revolution to other countries through the instigation of chaos and by acting as the overseas branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp.……….”

Haaretz (Israel) has also pulled a rabbit out of its hat by adding Hezbollah to the mix, claiming that Iran’s Lebanese ally was to take part in the plot. The Turkish newspaper Zaman report makes no mention of Hezbollah, but maybe some federal district judge in New York or Washington DC will implicate them, as usual. They may throw in al-Qaeda as co-conspirators for good measure (Saddam Hussein is dead). No mention of a Mexican drug cartel connection, nor anything about Mr. Adel al-Jubair or a Venezuelan hand.

Clearly Republican 2012 candidates for POTUS don’t read the Turkish press, not even Rick Perry or Newt Gingrich. Otherwise the GOP would have called for an immediate declaration of war on all Muslims, including Mr. Perry’s pals in the terrorist Turkish government.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, no doubt, will take the opportunity to declare herself ‘disturbed’ by this ‘disturbing’ report.

An attack on an embassy is a serious act, nearly as much an act of war as blockading a country and preventing its exports and imports, surrounding it with warships and fleets and military bases. And threatening to bomb it. That is why it is highly unlikely that this story is true: the Iranians are not that stupid, or are they?
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Europe, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey

On Israelis, Turks, Kurdish Rebels, Iranians, and Arab Oligarchs without Vision…………..

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“According to reports by Turkish intelligence agencies, Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operated by Israel that have been observed in Hatay and Adana provinces in recent months spied for the terrorist Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). Turkish intelligence agencies prepared a report after the detection of two Israeli Herons in Hatay and Adana roughly two months ago, claiming that the Herons are collecting intelligence on Turkish military units in order to aid PKK operations in those regions. The report asserts that the PKK’s training camps in northern Syria, near Turkey’s Hatay border “where Turkish military border posts are relatively weak” were established in those locations based on intelligence collected by the UAVs. The report also claims that Kenan Yıldızbakan, a PKK member who commanded an assault against a Turkish naval base in İskenderun in 2010, has made repeated trips into Israeli territory, reinforcing suspicions of a possible link between Israeli and the PKK………….”

This was bound to happen. Once the Turks realized how racist the European Union feels toward them and their application for membership. Once they realized that they are the last on the list of countries that would be admitted, if they are ever admitted. Once the Turks realized that their usefulness to the Europeans as an anti-Soviet base and as a source of scarce labor has expired. Once they realized that they do need need Europe as much as they had thought. They turned their attention back to the Middle East, which includes Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

The Turks are in Syria now, more or less, possibly in rivalry with Iran for influence over Damascus now that the Arab leaders are helpless and have no independent vision for dealing with the situation. So far the only Arab vision seems to be pushing for the West to “liberate” Syria from its regime, just as the West “liberated” Iraq and Libya. The Turks are also in Iraq, possibly seen by some Arabs as their last hope to limit Iranian influence, at least in the north and west of Iraq. Odd, a new Turkish-Iranian rivalry over Iraq, just like the old Ottoman-Persian rivalry over Iraq.

All that because the stagnant Arab oligarchs, mainly the Saudis, decided to give up on Iraq because they did not like the way Iraqis chose their government (or maybe because the Iraqis actually had some choice, no matter how imperfect).
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Human Right, Iran, Muslims, Salafi, Saudi Arabia, Theocracy, US Foreign Policy

Mullahs, Princes, and Islamist Potentates: Prince Turki and Fitna……….

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“Prince Turki al-Faisal, chairman of the board of the King Faisal Center for Islamic Research Studies called on Iran to stop spreading sectarian divisions (Fitna) among Gulf GCC citizens. He emphasized that these countries are not part of any dispute with the “international community” about its nuclear program. He made his statement in a speech to the Conference on National Security and Regional Security in the GCC, held in Bahrain………..”

I don’t know about this. No doubt the Iranian mullahs have pursued their own goals toward influence through interference in some Arab states: mainly in Iraq and Lebanon. Like all theocrats, the mullahs are no sweethearts in the pursuit of their goals. But the prince is being deliberately unfair and misleading toward the Shi’a citizens of the Gulf states. Prince Turki is hinting here that Iran is responsible for the popular uprisings in Bahrain and in Qatif. He is using the discredited al-Khalifa excuse of painting the peoples of Bahrain and Qatif as Iranian agents simply because they refuse to accept the current apartheid policies of the al-Saud and the al-Khalifa despots.
Yet no regime in the Middle East is as sectarian as the Saudi and Bahraini regimes, no regime has resorted to as much sectarian divisiveness and hatred as the Saudi Arabian. The vast semi-official Saudi media (all owned by princes and their retainers and tribal in-laws) has waged a campaign of several years spreading sectarian hatred wherever they could. No other regime in recent history has spread so much suspicion and hatred. Especially in the Gulf GCC states, but they have also tried well beyond the Gulf from Syria and Lebanon to Egypt and North Africa. All with the help of their local Salafi fifth columns and their Muslim Brotherhood tribal allies. (Most Gulf Muslim Brothers are very close to the Saudi princes, unlike those in Egypt and other places. Some like the demagogue Yusuf al-Qaradawi are close to the Qatari shaikhs, a few others are close to the UAE Abu Dhabi shaikhs).
It is the old divide-and rule policy once attributed to the British imperial power.
Cheers
mhg


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Anti-Semitism, Culture, Iran, Muslims, Religion, Saudi Arabia, Turkey

Iran Clerics Declare War on Barbie: Ugly Sara and Fat Dara and the Jewish Doll……………

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“Iran’s religious rulers first declared Barbie, made by U.S. company Mattel Inc, un-Islamic in 1996, citing its “destructive cultural and social consequences.” Despite the ban, the doll has until recently been openly on sale in Tehran shops. The new order, issued around three weeks ago, forced shopkeepers to hide the leggy, busty blonde behind other toys as a way of meeting popular demand for the dolls while avoiding being closed down by the police. A range of officially approved dolls launched in 2002 to counter demand for Barbie have not proven successful, merchants told Reuters. The dolls named Sara, a female, and Dara, a male arrived in shops wearing a variety of traditional dress, with Sara fully respecting the rule that all women in Iran must obey in public, of covering their hair and wearing loose-fitting clothes. “My daughter prefers Barbies. She says Sara and Dara are ugly and fat,”…………..”

That last one should do it, seal the deal, seal the fate of Sara and Dara.
This is not the first time Muslim clerics have had Barbie in their dour sights. Every few years some mullah or shaikh or mufti somewhere in the Middle East, especially in the Gulf region, wages a brief war on Barbie. Maybe it is time for Mattel to create a more “Islamic-looking” Barbie? The Turks and Saudis have also waged campaigns against Barbie (but not Ken) in the past:

“Saudi Arabia’s religious police have declared Barbie dolls a threat to morality, complaining that the revealing clothes of the “Jewish” toy — already banned in the kingdom — are offensive to Islam. “Jewish Barbie dolls, with their revealing clothes and shameful postures, accessories and tools are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West. Let us beware of her dangers and be careful,” said a poster on the site. ……” USA Today

“Ceylan said that “We want to protect students from the invasion of foreign culture and that is why we have ordered the technical institute for girls’ education to prepare bags and T-shirts that are decorated with images of famous Turkish citizens.” Local observers observed that Ceylan’s initiative is very similar to that launched against Barbie in Saudi Arabia at the beginning of the Nineties……….”

(I don’t think these clerics, mullahs, and shaikhs realize how old Barbie is: if they did, they’d be shocked, and their own wives would be in deep deep trouble).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab League, Arab Politics, Libya, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Congress

The Late Qaddafi on Arab Parliaments and 112th U.S. Congress………..

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“Parliament is a misrepresentation of the people, and parliamentary systems are a false solution to the problem of democracy. A parliament is originally founded to represent the people, but this in itself is undemocratic as democracy means the authority of the people and not an authority acting on their behalf. The mere existence of a parliament means the absence of the people. True democracy exists only through the direct participation of the people, and not through the activity of their representatives. Parliaments have been a legal barrier between the people and the exercise of authority, excluding the masses from meaningful politics and monopolizing sovereignty in their place. People are left with only a facade of democracy, manifested in long queues to cast their election ballots. To lay bare the character of parliaments, one has to examine their origin. They are either elected from constituencies, a party, or a coalition of parties, or are appointed. But all of these procedures are undemocratic, for dividing the population into constituencies means that one member of parliament represents thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of people, depending on the size of the population. It also means that a member keeps few popular organizational links with the electors since he, like other members, is considered a representative of the whole people. This is what the prevailing traditional democracy requires. The masses are completely isolated from the representative and he, in turn, is totally removed from them………..”

Also sprach the late colonel Mu’ammar Qaddafi in his Green Book. For a moment I thought Colonel Qaddafi was referring to the 112th United States Congress. Amid all the gibberish, there are some possible nuggets in there. Oddly, though, his assertion that: “Parliament is a misrepresentation of the people, and parliamentary systems are a false solution to the problem of democracy….” is not uncommon in some Arab states, especially among the ruling oligarchs.
No doubt his Salafi foes strongly agree with his disdain for electoral democracy. No doubt his other foes, the top Saudi princes, believe in what Qaddafi said in the excerpted quote. In fact some of them have said exactly the very same thing in the past, as have columnists in their semi-official media. Other Arab leaders also believe what the colonel said, otherwise they wouldn’t go out of their way to either prevent the election of a parliament or subvert it to a rubber-stamp assembly.
They all try to get the parliaments, whenever they exist, closer to the people either by appointing members directly by the rulers (Saudi Arabia, UAE, most of Bahrain’s) or by helping along in deciding who gets elected. Maybe the late Colonel Qaddafi was, after all, speaking for the Arab League.
Cheers
mhg


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Humor, Iran, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Beast of Kandahar: Iranian Mullahs Have a Drone Sense of Humor……….

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“Iran says it will send the U.S. government a toy model of the CIA drone the Islamic Republic captured last month. The announcement, made via state media, comes in response to the White House’s request for the return of the unmanned aircraft. The U.S. drone, a RQ-170 Sentinel dubbed “the Beast of Kandahar,” is one of the most technologically advanced surveillance crafts in the world. The toy model, the Associated Press reports, will be one-eighteenth the size and retail for the equivalent of $4 in Iranian toy stores. There’s still no conclusive explanation for how the drone got into Iranian hands in the first place………..”

So who said the mullahs don’t have a sense of humor? I always knew they were funnier than, say, the king of Jordan or prime minister of Bahrain. They seem funnier than even Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry. As for Mitt Romney, oh well…………
Cheers
mhg


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GCC, Gulf states, Iran, Oman, OPEC, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

The Next War: Saudis Succeed in Aligning Gulf States with the American-Israeli Position……..

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“Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has advised Saudi officials against making injudicious remarks about boosting oil production amid European countries’ efforts to impose oil sanctions on the Islamic republic. “We expect the countries in the Persian Gulf region, particularly Saudi Arabia, with which we have always called for the best relations, to avoid injudicious discourses,” Salehi said on Tuesday in response to Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, who has said that his country will make up for any shortfall in world oil supply caused by sanctions against Iran. “If Saudi officials’ recent remarks are to be regarded as their official view, we advise them to respond more thoughtfully and sensibly to regional issues,” Salehi added. Al-Naimi told CNN on Monday that his country could increase production by two million barrels “almost immediately” if sanctions are imposed on Iran’s oil industry. Iran exports roughly 2.5 million barrels per day. The Saudi minister also expressed his doubts that Iran could successfully close the Strait of Hormuz..……..” Mehr News Agency (Iran)

It looks like the Saudis have succeeded in pushing any hesitant Gulf state toward the American-Israeli position on Iran. With the likely exception of Oman which usually marches to its own music. The Saudis are taking an openly harder line now: the minister said his country is willing to produce about the same amount of crude that Iran would lose in exports. Even more telling, he opined that Iran can’t close the Strait of Hormuz. It sounds like he was inviting the West to go ahead and march toward the destructive regional war that some Gulf oligarchs want the Americans to wage again. The Saudi king and the UAE rulers may get the wish they have expressed in the past (Wikileaks). And there is no doubt that it would be a regional war this time around.
All this is reminiscent of the 1980s, when most GCC Gulf states sided with Saddam Hussein after he invaded Iran. Not only did they supply Saddam with financing and weapons, some of them also sold their own crude oil on behalf of Iraq. Once Iranian’s ability to sell oil was cut, they started the tankers war in the Gulf. That led to confrontations with the U.S navy in the Gulf (of course the Iranians didn’t do well in those confrontations). After that war ended Saddam turned his brotherly neighborly guns south toward the GCC. History may be about to be repeated, but on a larger more destructive scale.
Of course the GCC states have the right to sell as much oil as they want and to whomever they want to. Even to poached former customers of Iran. Still all perfectly legal, more legal than the expected new war that the West may wage in the Gulf. But in time of war and desperation this type of logic is meaningless in reality, and is thrown out the window. The Iranians will correctly see it as an attempt to help the Anglo-American-Israeli war effort against them. The oil embargo is not sanctioned by the United Nations, but is purely American, with Israeli instigation.
From the Iranians’ point of view, they will see the same neighbors again siding with an ‘aggressor’, this time without the convenience of the aggressor being an “Arab” side.
Cheers
mhg


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Anti-Semitism, Europe, France, Muslims, NATO, Turkey, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Texas Governor Talking Turkey: Muslims and Terrorism and NATO and Republican Turkeys and Old Hickory…….

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“Well, obviously when you have a country (Turkey) that is being ruled by, what
many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that
type of activity against their own citizens, then yes. Not only is it
time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to
be in NATO, but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their
foreign aid, to go to zero with it.And you go to zero with
foreign aid for all of those countries. And it doesn’t make any
difference who they are. You go to zero with that foreign aid and then
you have the conversation about, do they have America’s best interest in
mind?………..”

That was Texas governor Rick Perry talking Turkey, addressing a hall apparently full of cheering turkeys. Turks would be surprised to hear that their government is Islamic terrorist.
I wrote here once that the Hitler comparison should be banned by a United Nations resolution, and I was half serious. Now I expect Rick Santorum (and fellow right-wingers at AIPAC) to pick up the slack now and call Turkish prime minister Erdogan a new Hitler, thus joining Nasser and Saddam Hussein and Ahmadinejad in the pantheon.
Funny how Hitler was an Austro-German beer-drinking European from a Catholic background, yet Arab and Muslim leaders have the privilege of being exclusively compared to Hitler in the West. Someone like Andrew Jackson (Old Hickory himself) might object, feeling left out, his Trail of (Indian) Tears demeaned. Many Southern (post-Reconstruction) leaders, governors and “famous” U.S. senators, might feel left out as well. With Hitler’s charred remains still warm in Moscow, the French government of newly American-liberated France massacred thousands of Muslim Algerians who wanted either full equality with the white settlers on their land or independence. Europe of the EU is now full of new little leaders that might be carelessly called would be Hitlers, some of them partners in government (Netherlands and that very same Austria). They also aim their fear-mongering and venom toward people that are mostly Semitic. Again.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Terrorism, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Rick Perry and Afghanistan and the Yellow Rain of Texas…………..

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“GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry is accusing the Obama administration of “over-the-top rhetoric” and “disdain for the military” in its condemnation of a video that purportedly shows Marines urinating on dead bodies in Afghanistan. No one has been charged in the case, but officials in the U.S. and abroad have called for swift punishment of the four Marines. A military criminal investigation and an internal Marine Corps review are under way. The Geneva Conventions forbid the desecration of the dead…………”

Spoken like a true pandering Republican candidate in 2012.
What Texas governor Perry doesn’t understand is that American soldiers normally don’t urinate on “dead” corpses, not even on enemy corpses. He doesn’t realize there aren’t enough American soldiers who urinate on dead corpses every day, not nearly enough to justify his pandering. The very few imbeciles who might do so are not the type that would vote, especially not in a South Carolina primary. Not even in Texas. Besides, as an aspiring, hopeless, candidate for POTUS, doesn’t he worry about the impact of all this inside and outside the USA? Doesn’t he realize that he insults a couple of million of normal U.S. soldiers who would never think of urinating on another human being?
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Iranian Paranoia, American Paranoia, a World to Conquer…………

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Official Iranian views about the West, especially about the United States, are reciprocated by the other side. There are many plots and conspiracies on each side against the other. Iranian officials and their media are full of foreign plots against their country and the Middle East. American media and especially the (not so hallowed these days) halls of Congress are full of Iranian plots to obliterate Israel and to take over not only the Arab side of the Persian-American Gulf , but the whole Middle East, and also to conquer Latin America. Here are some samples from Iranian news agencies today:

“Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast has said that there is evidence that certain international inspectors, who have travelled to Iran to inspect (nuclear) facilities, have provided terrorist groups with Iranian nuclear scientists’ particulars.”
Mehmanparast means “guest worshiper, or worshiper of the guest in Persian. I suppose it implies unusual hospitality.

“The commander of the Iranian Navy says Iran has always had naval supremacy over the Strait of Hormuz and will not allow the arrogant powers and the Zionist regime to create tension in the region.”

“U.S. President Barack Obama recently announced that his government will soon unveil a new military strategy that switches focus to the Asia-Pacific region. The new focus shows that the United States fears the rise of China, which has enjoyed considerable economic growth over the past ten years.”

“The movements of Western countries’ warships and aircraft carriers in the region are part of the psychological warfare being waged against Iran, a military official said on Sunday.”

“Through sanctions against Iran the United States is seeking to eliminate its economic rivals, particularly China and India, an Iranian Foreign Ministry official argues.”

The above quotes show the degree of Iranian paranoia and suspicion about the West, especially the United States. These are not any wilder than Western (American) suspicions and paranoia and all the recent wild allegations of absurd Iranian plots.
Cheers
mhg


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Multidisciplinary: Middle East, North Africa, Gulf, GCC, World, Cosmos…..