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

Bergdahl Controversy: Profiles in Courage, Profiles in Afghan Food…….

      

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“Soldier: ‘Ludicrous’ To Lay 100 Percent Of Blame At Bergdahl’s Feet..” 


“Hillary Camp Distances… After Defending Days Ago!….” 

“Republicans Delete Digital Praise of Bowe Bergdahl Release….” 

“GOP Strategists Are Arranging Media Interviews To Attack Bowe Bergdahl…..” 

“The Hero Who Died Looking for Bowe Bergdahl…..” 

“Hillary Clinton Was Skeptical of Taliban-Bergdahl Swap…..” 

“Bergdahl was unpopular with fellow troops” (He read books about Afghanistan!)

Those were some of the headlines this week on the Bergdahl-Taliban exchange. So:
  • Many Republicans praised the deal then saw an opportunity to benefit politically……….
  • The Clintonistas, Hillary et al, praised the deal then it got warm in the kitchen. They saw a pitfall, let it know Hillary MAY have been skeptical……
  • What next? That Obama was skeptical but went along with Smiling Joe Biden?
  • Either way, Susan Rice has had her last official government job: she is the fall girl, has been since before Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi (John McCain can manage to look dignified as he whistles that tune to sound like Maria, Maria, Maria)……..

Oh courage, courage or lack thereof and the soundbite and the video clip without consent. And don’t forget the spin for 2014 and 2016. The early bird gets the spin. That is what defines American politics these years.

Now for the main event, Bowe Bergdahl: 
  • The kid was held in captivity among the cutthroat Taliban for five years! Imagine one of the sanctimonious fat senators, or Rush Limbaugh or Hannity, or a Clinton adviser being in his place. 
  • Notice that in almost every video clip we see of him in captivity he is stuffing his face (as in eating)? Do you think the Afghans may have lured him with promises of better food than the pink slime and the SRE or whatever they serve in those outposts? 
  • The guy looked skinny and starved before his captivity, but we won’t know what he looks like now until he is shown on the inevitable TV circus. It shouldn’t be long now.
Cheers
mhg

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California, Islam, U.S. Politics

New Know-Nothing Party in the Land of Fruits and Nuts: Hindu candidate to Sneak Sharia into California………

      

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“GOP gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly launched a blistering attack accusing Republican rival Neel Kashkari of associating with fundamentalist Islamic law. “BREAKING: Neel Kashkari supported the United States submitting to the Islamic, Shariah banking code in 2008 when he ran” the taxpayer-funded federal bank bailout, a Donnelly campaign associate wrote on the candidate’s Facebook page Monday. “Shariah is ‘the seditious religious-political-legal code authoritative Islam seeks to impose worldwide under a global theocracy.’ This revelation is spreading fast, as people … refer to Mr. Kashkari’s support of Shariah an ‘October Surprise.'”………..”

Kashkari oversaw the TARP program in 2008-09, under George W Bush. Imagine, warning California voters that a Hindu will sneak the Islamic Sharia as the law of the land of fruits and nuts. This is like saying the Pope and Obama are both secret Muslims.
This is only one example. In several Red States, legislatures have passed or tried to pass rules to “protect the states against Islamic Shariah”. And I believe many of them are serious about it. This strong move to Know-Nothingness was bound to happen to the Republican Party. Its roots where set in place decades ago, in 1968 when Richard Nixon opted for the Southern Strategy to get elected. It has accelerated with the intensification of the culture war and the spread of America’s Muslim Wars. Other factors, including economic, judicial, and political have contributed in recent years to move the GOP to the extreme right (extreme by American twentieth century standards, from Teddy Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter).

Cheers
mhg

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Conspiracy Theories, Culture, Economics, Food

New Age Conspiracies? Bilderbergers, Schmilderbergers, Cheeseburgers in Paradise………

      

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Video:  Cheeseburger in Paradise (Jimmy Buffett)

“About two thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America; one third from politics and government and the rest from other fields. The conference is a forum for informal discussions about megatrends and major issues facing the world. The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor of any participant may be revealed………..” bilderbergmeetings.org

““The Bilderbergers’ first concern… is the rise of Iran, Russia and China,” Kevin Barrett wrote in an article for the Press TV website referring to this year’s Bilderberg conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, which ended on June 1. He highlighted a significant gas deal recently signed between Russia and China and “Iran and Russia’s successful defense of Syria against NATO-led aggression” as factors having “raised grave questions about whether the Bilderberg-led West can continue its world-domination scheme.”………….” Press TV (Iran)


“The Bilderbergers ostensibly meet each year to brainstorm about the day’s great international issues. Their discussions remain off the record so that politicians and others in sensitive roles can speak candidly without risking “gotcha” exposés. Conspiracy theorists believe the Bilderbergers control the course of world events. That through crisis and uncertainty they steer society’s great developments with an ultimate goal of establishing a New World Order……………….” Forbes Magazine

At least I learned something about Bilderbergers, wtf that be, but I still prefer cheeseburgers (grilled with onions and jalapeno, summer is almost upon us). What would life be without conspiracies and paranoia? 

  • Protocols of the Elders of Zion (still going strong in the Arab world)
  • Illuminatti (it says they’ve lost influence in Washington but take a look at the back of your Greenbacks)
  • Free Masons
  • Obamacare Death Squads (alive and well in Alaska at least) 
  • Muslim Brotherhood Agents in the White House (alive and well before elections)
  • Communists in the U.S. Congress (can never get rid of those, broke old Joe’s and J Edgar’s hearts)
  • WEF- Davos (they still shy away from anointing Goldman Sachs chief as newest prophet)
  • Iranian-Mexican Cartels-FARC Alliance (greatest threat since Twinkies and Ding-Dongs)………. 

Cheers
mhg

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Afghanistan, Gitmo

Bergdahl Controversy: Profiles in Courage, Profiles in Afghan Food…….

      

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“Soldier: ‘Ludicrous’ To Lay 100 Percent Of Blame At Bergdahl’s Feet..” 


“Hillary Camp Distances… After Defending Days Ago!….” 

“Republicans Delete Digital Praise of Bowe Bergdahl Release….” 

“GOP Strategists Are Arranging Media Interviews To Attack Bowe Bergdahl…..” 

“The Hero Who Died Looking for Bowe Bergdahl…..” 

“Hillary Clinton Was Skeptical of Taliban-Bergdahl Swap…..” 

“Bergdahl was unpopular with fellow troops” (He read books about Afghanistan!)

Those were some of the headlines this week on the Bergdahl-Taliban exchange. So:
  • Many Republicans praised the deal then saw an opportunity to benefit politically……….
  • The Clintonistas, Hillary et al, praised the deal then it got warm in the kitchen. They saw a pitfall, let it know Hillary MAY have been skeptical……
  • What next? That Obama was skeptical but went along with Smiling Joe Biden?
  • Either way, Susan Rice has had her last official government job: she is the fall girl, has been since before Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi (John McCain can manage to look dignified as he whistles that tune to sound like Maria, Maria, Maria)……..

Oh courage, courage or lack thereof and the soundbite and the video clip without consent. And don’t forget the spin for 2014 and 2016. The early bird gets the spin. That is what defines American politics these years.

Now for the main event, Bowe Bergdahl: 
  • The kid was held in captivity among the cutthroat Taliban for five years! Imagine one of the sanctimonious fat senators, or Rush Limbaugh or Hannity, or a Clinton adviser being in his place. 
  • Notice that in almost every video clip we see of him in captivity he is stuffing his face (as in eating)? Do you think the Afghans may have lured him with promises of better food than the pink slime and the SRE or whatever they serve in those outposts? 
  • The guy looked skinny and starved before his captivity, but we won’t know what he looks like now until he is shown on the inevitable TV circus. It shouldn’t be long now.
Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Justice

Baathist Egypt: Beset by Demons from Hell, Talmodic Jews, Shi’a Plots, and Hanging Courts……

      

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“The judge who sentenced to death more than 720 alleged rioters on a single day in Egypt in April has justified his decision on the grounds that some of the accused were “demons” adherent to Jewish scripture.
In May judge Saeed Youssef sentenced 37 men to death for the murder of a policeman – and then in a separate trial gave preliminary death sentences to 683 others. Youssef said the first 37 were “demons who came out of the depths of hell disguised in the cloak of Islam, who aimed to seize the reins of power in Egypt, loot its wealth and enslave its people”. According to several local newspapers, Youssef then described the men as “enemies of the nation” who used mosques to promote “the commandments of their holy book, the Talmud”……………”

Even Baathist Iraq, in its worst repressive days, did not hand out hundreds of death sentences in one day like this. All this gives us an idea about the low quality of judges and courts that have been common in Egypt over the past few decades, and still are.

I had thought that over the past couple of decades the main threat to Egypt had changed. That it is now the Shi’a threat, something that Mubarak bureaucrats, Al-Azhar, Muslim Brothers, Salafis, and Wahhabi liberals all have been warning us about, especially after the failed 2011 uprising. Now with Saudi-inspired Al Sisi replacing Saudi-inspired Mubarak, the Egyptian door is even more wide open to the Wahhabi interpretations of everything from history to culture to religion.
 
As for the Jewish threat, this should be old stuff. There are only a
few hundred Jews left in Egypt, the remnants of a once vibrant community
that was prominent in the arts, culture, and business. But they mostly left as
soon as they saw a hint of a familiar recent history: they did not
appreciate that concentration camps and mass extermination are an
exclusively European invention (they are). That the Europeans had been honing their gruesome skills at mass murder over several centuries to reach the level of efficiency of 1933-45.

Given that the Holy Quran itself borrowed heavily from the Old Testament, which is also Jewish (but probably not demonic scripture).
Cheers
mhg

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Corruption, FIFA, GCC, Qatar, Sports, World Cup

FIFA, Bribing Qataris, Bribable Sports Officials, Conspiring Arab Regimes………

      

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“Senior Fifa figures are for the first time seriously considering the ramifications of ordering a rerun of the vote for the right to stage the 2022 World Cup, in the aftermath of new corruption allegations against the hosts, Qatar.
While awaiting the results of a semi-independent inquiry into the 2018 and 2022 bidding races, senior football figures heading for the 2014 tournament in Brazil are understood to be considering their response if the report recommends a new vote in light of new claims based on hundreds of millions of leaked emails and documents. In Britain, there was a renewed outpouring of concern from politicians and former football executives after the Sunday Times alleged that Mohamed bin Hammam, a Qatari former Fifa executive committee member, paid $5m (£3m) in cash, gifts and legal fees to senior football officials ……………”

“The Qatari construction magnate Mohamed bin Hammam was in 2011 cast out from his gilded position at the commanding heights of world football’s governing body. His fall closely traces the arc of Fifa’s shattered reputation, and the melting credibility of his country’s 2022 World Cup project. Now the subject of the Sunday Times’s remarkably detailed allegations that he paid lavish bungs to Fifa officials while lobbying them to favour Qatar………………”


No doubt in my mind that millions in bribe money changed hands before the FIFA vote. But is that all new: from FIFA to the IOC to Formula One, among others? International sports bodies are rife with corruption and bribery, and they have been so long before Qatar became a household word in Paris. But as I always say: it takes at least two to tango.

There seems to be a trilateral alliance of interests seeking to wrest the FIFA World Cup games away from Qatar. In Britain, media and officials are reviving their old justifiable complaint about how the 2022 venue was chosen. The officials are still sore because London lost to Qatar (well, probably because of the bribes). Besides, British officials of the Cameron cabinet bend backward and forward to please the Saudi princes who are gloating over all this. Saudi media like Alarabiya are covering the controversy with relish, enjoying the embarrassment of their upstart Qatari rivals in the GCC. So is some Egyptian media, mindful of Qatari support of the 2011 revolt against Hosni Mubarak and its close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Other regional countries like Syria (where Qatari potentates support the rebel Jihadists) are also gloating. 
So much for brotherly, or is it sisterly, Arab and GCC relations. The Qataris don’t seem to have many regional allies nowadays. The Saudis and their Bahrain stooges are hostile because Doha thwarts Saudi attempts at hegemony over GCC foreign policy (it is also partly brotherly and sisterly jealousy among the ruling potentates). They have lost the biggest prize, Egypt, to the Saudi princes and Abu Dhabi shaikhs who now have their man Al Sisi in power and call the shots in Cairo. They may lose whatever influence they have in Libya and Tunisia. They have also antagonized Iraq and Syria and Iran.


Cheers
mhg

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Egypt, Elections, GCC

La Vache Qui Rit 2.0: Egypt Leaps Forward to the Past………

      

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                                          Les Vaches Qui Rient


Even before Hosni Mubarak took over in 1981, many Arabs had started calling him “La Vache Qui Rit”, the Laughing Cow, after a popular French cheese spread that advertised a lot on Arab television.
The idea was that when he was vice president under Anwar Sadat, all he did was grin during cabinet meetings. Grin and nod approval at whatever Sadat said. That was the plausible claim.
Enter Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi. Now Al Sisi also grins and nods a lot, but mainly in the presence of Saudi princes and Gulf potentates. I fully expect him to be considered the newest version of the old one. La Vache Qui Rit 2.0.


As for military-appointed interim president Adly Mansour Al Zombie, it is back to the cellars for him. Back to the dusty judicial bureaucracy from whence he was plucked to play pretend president.


Cheers
mhg

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Cyber Security, Cyber Wars, Internet, Iran, U.S. Foreign Policy

John Bolton’s Gift to Iran: the Chickenhawk and the Cyber Mullahs………

      

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“In Iran’s intelligence war against America, the regime has a new weapon: “John R. Bolton.” No, Iran has not turned President Bush’s former ambassador to the United Nations into a sleeper agent. Instead, hackers believed to be connected to the Tehran government are posing as Bolton on social media platforms in a scheme to get human rights activists and national security wonks to hand over their passwords and user names. The fake Bolton LinkedIn account provides a window into how Iran’s hackers are trying to penetrate the policy networks of their government’s adversaries. Most experts say Iran lacks the sophistication to launch the kinds of advanced cyber attacks it has suffered at the hands of the West, such as the Stuxnet worm……………..”

John Bolton is so far out to the extreme that the Republican-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee rejected him when Bush (W) nominated him for U.N. ambassador. He was appointed for one year during a congressional recess, bypassing the Senate vote. 

He has been advocating more Muslim wars for some years now, from Iran to Syria and to other places. He has never met a Muslim war he has not loved, as long as he did not have to do the fighting (sort of like his stand on Vietnam?). A classic chickenhawk position. Now apparently the Iranian hackers have found a way to use this implacable enemy of their country. And possibly pay back for the cyber attacks their systems suffered from all the malware Western intelligence (and other) services invaded it with.

Cheers
mhg

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Culture, Kuwait

Back On the Gulf: Foreign Negative Phenomena, Local Negative Phenomena ……..

      

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Kuwait News Agency reports from an assembly member who is head of the Committee for Negative Phenomena  (لجنة الظواهر السلبية) that they discussed and approved a proposal to ban ‘nudity’ in all swimming pools and in hotel lobbies and hallways. The committee also approved a proposal to establish a ‘center’ for Foreign Negative Phenomena in Kuwait just of the kind they have in other Gulf GCC states

I did not know that we had people running around naked in hotel lobbies back home. I had never seen one naked person, male or female, in a hotel lobby. Not back home on the Gulf anyway. But then again, ‘naked’ is in the eye of the beholder: it depends on what the definition of ‘naked’ is. Showing a woman’s bare toes might excite the imagination of a Wahhabi Salafi and hence be considered a form of nakedness (naked toes?). Showing any part of the face other than the eyes might be considered “nakedness” to some tribal worthies.

Perhaps the Committee could have suggested a new law (or even a constitutional amendment) declaring that we are a fully-dressed society. Which we certainly are, possibly more than we think, but possibly less.

While at it, they might add most of the Assembly members to the list of “negative phenomena”. The way most of them are always elected is absolutely negative: tribal first and sectarian second. Besides the nonsensical stuff many of them propose………..

Cheers
mhg

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Egypt

Photographic Tale of Two Polling Stations: Voting in Cairo, Voting in Beirut, Voting in Riyadh……

      

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Pictorial tale of elections: Compare the two polling stations in the photos below. One is of Syrian exiles and refugees in voting in their elections in Beirut Lebanon. The other one is of a lonely Egyptian polling station in the heart of Cairo:




  

Syrian Refugees voting in Beirut                             Nobody voting in Cairo
 
Prince Chuck Bin Windsor voting in Riyadh


Saudi prince and his, er, ahem, voters


Cheers
mhg

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