Arab Counterrevoltion, GCC, Gulf states, Salafi, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy

Funny GCC Confederation : a Salafi Fifth Column, Princes Playing Saddam……..

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“King Abdullah said on Monday the security of Saudi Arabia and its Arab neighbors was being targeted, in an apparent reference to regional rival Iran, and he called for Gulf Arab states to close ranks in a “single entity.” “No doubt you all know that we are targeted in our safety and security. That is why we have to take responsibility,” he said, addressing the opening session of a meeting of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in the Saudi capital Riyadh………… A Saudi official confirmed to Reuters that the idea of moving the six-nation GCC towards a sort of confederacy had been discussed given its concerns about the regional situation, but only informally, and said that it was an idea for the future. “It is possible,” said Jamal Khashoggi, a former Saudi newspaper editor with strong connections to the royal family. “Each country has a different system and it would require political will,” he added, suggesting that a possible model was the United Arab Emirates, a GCC member and confederacy where seven sheikhdoms maintain their own internal political systems but have a joint foreign and economic policy……….”

Saudi fifth columnists in some of the Gulf media, especially the Salafis and some of the local Ikhwan, have been calling for a confederation of the GCC for some time. They mean a Saudi takeover of the smaller Gulf states. Something Saddam wanted to do even before 1990. The parts of the Arabian Peninsula that old King Ibn Saud could not conquer in the last century for fear of the British are now being tempted by his weaker corrupt sons; tempted with fear of some “Iranian threat”. The Saudis already have Bahrain in their grasp. As soon as the Saudi king’s usually garbled speech came out, the Salafi fifth column in my hometown were out supporting it in statements.
It will not work, of course. Other rulers don’t want to give up their power to the fellow kelptocrats of the al-Saud princes (the al-Khalifa of Bahrain may be the only exception). The peoples of the other countries certainly don’t want to be ruled by these decrepit regressive princes or their Wahhabi palace shaikhs. With the exception of the Salafis who often act as Saudi agents and some of the local Ikhwan Muslim Brothers.
Ain’t gonna happen. The Kingdom without Magic is not exactly France or Germany or Holland. Its neighbors realize, silently, that its rulers are probably more dangerous than the Iranian mullahs are supposed to be.
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Espionage, Middle East Nuclear

Iranian Illusions and an Alleged American Spy………..

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“U.S. sought to prevent Iran from being a model in Mideast……. “The U.S. intended to bankrupt Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) through gaining control over Iraq’s oil wells and to do something so that oil would be traded only in dollars and that the U.S. power would be greater than that of China and Russia. One of the reasons behind the U.S. military presence in Iraq was to have presence in the Middle East and to infiltrate Muslim people through infiltrating into Islamic groups and cause deviation (in them). Another objective of the U.S. was to keep a rein on the Middle East(ern) (countries), including Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, and even Tunisia to prevent the Islamic Republic from becoming a model for these countries…….……“

The part about “U.S. sought to prevent Iran from being a model in Mideast” makes little sense to me. The Iranian ruling mullahs often did their best to keep their country from becoming a model theocracy for the region. There was no need to the Americans to do much, even though they probably did what they could. The repressive policies of the Iranian regime itself and the fierce sectarian campaign by the vast Saudi propaganda machine together did an excellent job in repelling many Arabs from wanting an Iranian model regime.
Much of what this young man said in his ‘confession’ fits in with the usual Iranian media claims and propaganda. It sounds suspicious to me, whether this man was an American spy or not. It sounds almost as suspicious as some ridiculous American claims of an Iranian- al Qaeda- Hezbollah-Colombian-Mexican-Texan-West African plot to take over the Middle East then the whole wide world.
Cheers
mhg


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CIA, Espionage, Iran, War on Iran

Iranian American Tit for Tat Continues………….

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“Iran’s state TV broadcast video of a young man Sunday it claimed was a CIA spy who sought to infiltrate Iran’s secret services. The TV identified the man, apparently in his late 20s, as Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, an American-Iranian who received special training and served at U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading to Iran for his alleged intelligence mission. “Their (US intelligence) plan was to initially burn some valuable information, to give it free so that (Iran’s) Intelligence Ministry would see the good things and then would contact me,” said in a part of the confession that was broadcast. The voice of an unnamed announcer on the video said U.S. intelligence was certain that Iran’s secret services would not ignore the data. Therefore, they provided a mix of correct and false information to mislead Iran’s intelligence but tempt it at the same time..……..”

Whether this young man was truly a CIA agent or just a feint to confuse the Iranians or just an innocent visitor to his homeland, he is now part of an ongoing Iranian-American war. It is a war that is intensifying and getting weirder by the day. It may culminate in the whole field of GOP candidates storming the Iranian border, along with Netanyahu.
Now if Messrs Gingrich and Romney and Santorum take my advice and take a hike along the Iraq-Iran border…..
Cheers
mhg


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Islamophobia, Muslims, Racism, U.S. Politics

The Brain and the Ass: a Republican Fear that America will turn Atheist and Muslim Fundamentalist……

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““I have two grandchildren: Maggie is 11; Robert is 9,” Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American ………..”

Newt Gingrich probably meant “what it once meant to be a white American”. So the “brain” of the GOP worries that the USA will turn into an atheist society that will be controlled by radical Muslims. Some people claim that he is, essentially, the “brain” of the new regional Republican Party. If that is the logic used by the “brain” of the GOP, I shudder to think what utterances its “ass” can makes. I am not talking about Beck and Limbaugh and the usual right-wing media gasbags. I mean mostly the others in the Republican race.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Cairo, Egypt, Libya, NATO, Salafi, Syria

Western Liberation of Arabs from Iraq to Libya to Syria: Allenby back in Egypt?………….

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The West and Arab liberation:

  • Having “liberated” the Arabs (only briefly) from the Ottoman Turks in 1918 with help from the Hashemites of Hijaz (the al-Saud were an unknown clan in their tribal corner of remote Nejd),
  • Having recently liberated Iraq and Libya from their dictators, with Arab cooperation,
  • Being already poised to liberate Syria from its dictator, with eager encouragement from some Syrian “opposition” leaders who forget their own country’s history with the Western ‘liberators’,
  • (WTF moment): even the fucking Salafis of  the Persian-American Gulf, who hate the West probably more than they hate other creatures like Shi’as and Jews and Christians and secularists, are calling for Western liberation of Syria
  • Will the West (as in NATO) be ready to liberate Egypt and Yemen and Bahrain now?
  • The regime in Egypt has gone back to the mass killing business in earnest. Scores were killed at Maspiro, then tens this past weekend, and many in between, Then there are the arrests and the use of near-lethal crowd control. Egypt is going back to killings on the level of Syria. In Bahrain the rulers and their al-Saud masters have been killing people, arresting and sentencing others, even as they try to fool the international media with talk of reform and reconciliation. The same goes on in Yemen even with the funny GCC deal.
  • Will “Allenby” come back, marching into Cairo and other places like he did before?

Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, GCC, Saudi Arabia, Yemen

Funny Saudi Diplomacy: What Doesn’t Happen in Yemen Never Stays in Yemen……..

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Then there is Yemen: the GCC have succeeded and failed at the same time. They have succeeded in keeping the rotten old order in Yemen. Ali is not head of state, but he and his cronies call the shots. The “opposition” that got some of the power are not the same people that sacrificed in Sana’a and Ta’az and ‘Aden. But it is not what most people would call an “opposition”, it is a new GCC-type opposition. The GCC plan was rejected by the peoples of Yemen but accepted by the traditional powers in the country. It succeeded for the existing power structure, succeeded for the GCC oligarchs, but it failed the people of Yemen.
 
The Saudi record of reconciling Arabs and Muslims is pretty bad, although their media tries to make it sound like a resounding success. They failed to settle among the Lebanese more than once, they failed to settle the Kuwait-Iraq dispute before the invasion in 1990, they failed to settle among the Palestinians (Hamas-Fatah), they failed to settle among the warring Afghans several times. They even tried, with miserable results, to invite Iraqis to Riyadh to discuss their internal problems, and the Saudis do not even have an embassy in Iraq. They offer money to the warring factions and hope for the best. Or maybe they are foolish enough to believe that all these people flocking to Riyadh respect and/or love them.
Cheers
mhg


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Egypt, GCC, Gulf states, Qatar, Religion, Salafi

Shaikh Abdulwahhab of Nejd, Bon Vivant Abdelwahab of Cairo, Shaikh of Qatar, Sectarian Princes…………..

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His Highness Emir of Qatar has opined that the Islamic umma (nation) needs to be inspired by the Wahhabi message. Most likely a message of ‘reconciliation’ to his scowling next-door neighbor. Apparently more than two hundred years have not been enough for the Wahhabi message from Nejd to inspire the ‘umma’.

  • Apparently the inspiration had to wait for the petro-money flowing to places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq (with terror bombs), Egypt, Indonesia, Somalia, and many other places that have been blessed with the Wahhabi touch. A magic touch from the Kingdom without Magic.
  • Apparently the inspiration had to wait for the princes to assume control of Arab media and airwaves, something they have achieved with the likes of Alarabiya (son of King Fahd). Asharq Alawsat (Prince Salman and his son). al-Hayat (Prince Khaled bin Sultan), LBC, MBC, and many others (but not aljazeera, not yet). Oh, I forgot the Fox News partnership with Prince al-Waleed.
  • Apparently the inspiration had to wait for a further intensification of the barrage of fierce poisonous divisive sectarian ill-winds that have been blowing for some years now from the Kingdom of Wahhabism, with some help from satellites on the Persian-American Gulf, notably the now totally poisoned well of occupied Bahrain and its truly Goebbels-ian media.


The Qatari jefe said opined on the occasion of naming the main state mosque after Shaikh Mohammed Bin Abdulewahhab of Nejd, a close ideological and tribal and, yes, carnal (by marriages) ally to the al-Saud clan. Many of the Al Al-Shaikh (call me Al) descendants hold high positions at the Saudi court and bureaucracy. As I have repeated here, the shaikh is not to be confused with the late great Egyptian musician, singer, and occasional actor from the golden (pre-Sadat-Mubarak) days of Egyptian art and culture Mohammed Abdelwahab who was no Salafi, nor Wahhabi, nor any kind of fundamentalist but an avid bon vivant in his own right.
Cheers
mhg


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Espionage, Iran, Israel, Terrorism

Prisoners in Foreign Lands: Alireza Asgari and Tony Blair……

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“The director of the armed forces’ Bureau for Strategic Studies says that former Iranian deputy defense minister Alireza Asgari is still alive in a Mossad prison in Israel and strongly enduring its appalling conditions. In fact, after the Zionists kidnapped the Iranian official, they tried to create the impression that figures like Asgari, who are ready to die for Islam, are not loyal to the Islamic Revolution any longer, but the truth is entirely different, Shamkhani told reporters on Thursday. Shamkhani, defense minister during the Khatami administration, said Asgari will never seek asylum in Israel because he is not such a personality, and if anyone doubts the fact, his is somehow linked with Mossad. He went on to say that Asgari, who was definitely kidnapped by the Zionist regime with the help of arrogant powers, is strongly resisting against the pressure and will not succumb because he is not a person to betray his country……..”

Mr. Asgari very likely has caused the Israelis some grief in the past, or so they think. Or maybe they are just trying to milk him for all the information he has, about Iran and Lebanon.


Interesting terms the Iranians use: “arrogant powers”. But they may be right in this case, the term may apply. There have been reports from within Israel corroborating that Ali Asgari has been held a prisoner without charges or conviction. Almost certainly the former Iranian deputy minister is being held in Israel against his will. Otherwise why not show him in public? If there has been no international case against Asgari and no international warrant for him, holding him is an act of piracy and against international law. It is the same as holding, say, Tony Blair a prisoner (there are no warrants for his arrest either, although I am not sure why).

No doubt in my mind that if the Iranians were holding a former high Israeli official, the UN Security Council would have met to take action against Iran.

Cheers
mhg


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Ali Khamenei, Iran, OPEC, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

A Saudi Iranian Kiss? No Frenching Fundamentalists there………

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“Oil policy was often divorced from the wider politics of the region, analysts said, with one observing that “the Iranians have been trying very hard to please the Saudis right now”. Iran appears eager not to further antagonise Saudi Arabia at a time when Tehran is coming under increasing international pressure over its nuclear programme. Tehran’s main concern appears to be to discourage Riyadh from facilitating an expected European oil embargo by promising to make up for lost production. The Islamic republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, earlier this week sent Heydar Moslehi, the intelligence chief, to Saudi Arabia for a rare meeting with its interior minister, Prince Nayef……..”

They can kiss all they want, the Iranians and the Saudis, but it will never develop into a deep tongue-twisting body-tingling French kiss. Not of the kind they have with their respective allies. Not of the kind George W. Bush used to have with King Abdullah.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, Lebanon, Libya, NATO

Lebanon and Iraq in Libya: NATO and the Warlords……….

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“The unfreezing of £100bn in Libyan assets by the UN this weekend has fired the starting gun for a fierce battle for influence being waged by the country’s militias, in which the frontline is set to be Tripoli’s international airport. The glittering prize immediately in prospect is a consignment of several billion dinars, printed in Germany, which is due to be flown into Libya on board five cargo planes. Whoever controls the airport when the cash arrives will be able to levy a hefty security fee for delivering it to the country’s central bank. But the fight to control the airport is part of a far wider battle for political and economic dominance in the new Libya; one that pits the various factions who united to overthrow the Gaddafi regime against each other, as well as remnants of the dictator’s defeated military………….”

Libyans have just been liberated by NATO warplanes and special forces: just as Iraqis were liberated by the West a few years ago, just as the Syrians might be soon. Instead of getting on with the job of rebuilding the country, the militias are fighting, essentially, over the carrion left by the dictator. There have been more of these violent rivalries in the past weeks, with casualties.
It is possible that soon every Libyan militia will be identified by the Arab regime that supports and finances and arms it. There will be a Saudi militia, a Qatari militia, a UAE militia, and possibly even an Iranian militia. An Egyptian as well. It will be like Lebanon in the old days, like Lebanon these days. Except that the Lebanese militias kept within certain bounds and followed certain rules, especially when they were not massacring helpless Palestinian refugees (Sabra & Shatila) and other Lebanese.
The Libyans have their own money, but some will have much more of it than others, hence the foreign financing. But then, the Libyan may surprise me and put their house in order.
Cheers
mhg


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