The Quote of the Year

Last updated: November 11, 2009

July 30, 2009

There are many other instances where Prophet said something and in today's world it turns out to be scientifically correct. For example Quran says that Allah (swt) turned some Jews into monkeys and pigs. Some companion asked the Prophet that the monkeys and pigs that we see today, are they the descendants of those Jews-turned-pigs-and-monkeys? The Prophet pbuh said no and also explained that monkeys and pigs were present way before those Jews were turned into pigs and monkeys as a punishment. This turns out to be scientifically and historically correct.

Source: Prophet of Islam: A Camel Urine Drinker?

:D :D

ROFLMAO

:D :D


November 11, 2009

"It is not possible for those who belong to the Muslim faith to carry out genocide," Erdogan [Turkish prime minister] told ruling party members.

Source: Haaretz

I am wondering if in Yerevan they heard about the latest Erdogan's pearl...

:D :D

Israel's PR War

My response to David 2000 on BloggersBase...

david

You are trying again to think for other people. This is a mistake. You may think that this is what the West should think. I can think that the West should think something else. But the views prevalent in the West and in particular in Europe are very different and not favorable to us.

The last war in Gaza was a tremendous PR disaster. What's left of our PR was destroyed by Lieberman and the Bibi vs Obama settlements row. The perception in the West is that it's us who are intransigent and slapped Obama in the face and not the Palestinians. The perception in the West is that we got a coalition government packed with religious hardliners and right wingers. We got a foreign minister who is virtually a persona non grata just about everywhere. Even when it comes to the US, Bibi prefers to go there in person or send Barak but to keep Lieberman at home.

The majority of Westerners, in particular in Europe, are not interested to go into details about the settlements natural growth or to hear that some parts of the West Bank will be part of Israel anyway. What they got from Bibi's quarreling with Obama over the settlements is that we are bent on settling the West Bank. The only plausible in the eyes of the Western public explanation of why we are in the West Bank is that this was imposed on us by the Arab hostility. Now we have undermined this argument by our own hands by defying Obama on the settlements growth. Once again, you may think that the Western public should be more sensitive to the nuances of our situation, and I may even agree with you, but the Western public will never be ready to go that far to understand our predicament here. Never mind, and lets be honest about it, we have more than enough people in the current coalition who think that we are in the West Bank not as a kind of preventive measure like stopping suicide bombers but because we are indeed intending to settle it.

Meanwhile the Palestinians are about to make a brilliant move by abandoning support for the two state solution and insisting instead on a binational state. This is the ultimate PR killer. There is nothing the Western public except fundamentalist Christians would love more than this. If the Palestinians are smart enough to formulate their position correctly, they will say that there is already a binational state and it cannot be split into two. The only thing that's missing is to abolish this apartheid and grant everybody equal rights.

And if this happens, then it's just a matter of time before the international consensus will be like: You seem to love this West Bank so much that you can't even stop settling it. No problem. Just be sure to provide citizenship to all counterparties involved and you can keep this piece of wasteland to yourselves. At this point even Bibi's oratory skills may fail to stop sanctions from being put in place. And that's the situation. Deal with it!

As to Jordan, nobody is going to order the king to commit suicide in the West Bank. How do you imagine this happening? That the US tells him: Go get your Vietnam in the West Bank or we'll punish you with sanctions?

What's dead is DEAD

The opposition in Iran was demonstrating again during the celebrations of the 1979 US embassy takeover with veteran hostage-takers often leading the protests. This fact can hardly surprise people who lived through the collapse of the former Soviet Union (such as the author of this blog) as opposition movements in Moscow and other big Russian cities were densely packed with people who while opposing the system would often remain loyal to communist ideals (It was different outside Russia where opposition was usually dominated by anti Russian nationalists).

In general, several misconceptions seem to be widespread among the Western public regarding the identity of the opposition. Even among the young generation many dissenters combine deep frustration and disillusionment with the current system, with a virulent hostility and mistrust towards the West. Another thing is that many in the opposition movement don't necessarily reject the idea of Islamic republic as such. Rather they tend to stress the democratic aspects of this concept.

When it comes to guessing what may happen in a not very probable case that the opposition gets the upper hand in the near future, it's important to keep in mind that what many in the opposition want is rather similar to "socialism with a human face" with which much of the anti Soviet opposition in Russia wanted to replace the Communist system. In the Soviet case this meant avoiding capitalism and preserving the so called social achievements of Communism such as free health care, education, equality and such stuff while injecting a massive doze of democracy and basic freedoms into the system. In the Iranian case the idea is about a more open and representative system that still somehow remains Islamic and does not become just another Western like parliamentarian democracy.

History, however, has its own ways of making itself and is a big fan of paradoxes and contradictions. Shortly after the failed anti Gorbachiov coup, amidst growing lawlessness and economic collapse, the Russian government had to remove price and other controls and leave the economy to disintegrate into a free market. With the best of its intentions, the Iranian opposition is very likely to end in the same way by collapsing the system which it only wants to restore to its original purpose by means of reforms.

One of the more curious findings that emerged from some polls carried out on the eave of the elections is that while majority of Iranians don't oppose the idea of having Supreme Leader in principle, they would like to have him directly elected and not nominated by the Guardian Council. This says a lot about what a huge part of this opposition should be about. There are several reasons, however, why the opposition is very likely to find its ambitions frustrated and surprisingly one of them may be the lack of cooperation on the part of the clergy. This one touches on another misconception widespread in the West, which is that Iran is a theocratic state. Iran may be a theocratic state, but through the 30 years of its existence it managed to imprison more Shia clerics than the secularly oriented Shah who preceded it. If anything, Iran is a theocratic state usurped by a fraction of the clergy and, as far as Ahmadinejad and his Revolutionary Guard comrades go, they are no great clerics at all. Even the Supreme Leader himself is claimed to be widely despised in Qom for his lack of impressive scholarly credentials.

Basically, the Islamic nature of the republic is supposed to be guaranteed through supervision and direct intervention by the clerics, led by the Supreme Leader under the concept known as Velayat e Faqih elaborated and applied by Khomeini. The only problem with this idea is that it seems to have become unpopular even among the leading Ayatollahs of the Shia world. Even the spiritual leader of Hezbollah, Mohammad Fadlallah, does not endorse it and in Iraq it's squarely out of question. In Iran itself large chunks of clergy appear to have reverted to political quietism eschewing politics. Besides a bunch of hard liners, Iran's Grand Ayatollahs were either silent during the latest mess or openly disproved of the state's treatment of protesters. In fact, in some quarters of the high Shia clergy political apathy and indifference appear now giving place to intense hostility towards the regime.

In case the opposition wins, it may try to relegate the Supreme Leader to the background by stripping his office of much of its current authority and making him elected through popular elections. But on one hand, there is little sense in keeping the Supreme Leader in office if for all practical purposes he becomes like Israeli presidents and wields only ceremonial power. Let alone that the Guardian Council and the office of the Supreme Leader have been thoroughly discredited by the actions of Khamenei and its members. On the other hand, it's very likely that the only clerics interested in taking such an offer would be from the conservative hardcore still rallying behind Khamenei widely detested and hated among the opposition's rank and file.

The last scenario is actually a very likely one. The prestige and authority of Iran's regime was left in shambles after the elections debacle and it's a safe bet that they were lost to the Iraqi branch. In Iraq the Grand Ayatollahs, including the most prominent of them all al-Sistani, have made it known right from the beginning that they prefer spiritual guidance from outside instead of direct involvement the style of Velayat e Faqih. Iraq's next elections may be won by coalitions of secular parties and al-Sistani does not appear troubled by this prospect in any way. In case the Iranian regime disintegrates, prominent clerics untainted by support for the crackdown on the opposition are very likely to reveal themselves as followers of al-Sistani and his Iraqi branch and refuse even ceremonial posts. Some may happen uninterested even in projecting spiritual and moral guidance from outside so deep is the disillusionment with political Islam created by Khomeinism among the Shia clergy.

In short, the opposition does not seem to be in possession of means to preserve the Islamic nature of the Republic and its "Islamic republic with a human face" is very likely to end up as just another republic. Meanwhile the scandal surrounding the elections has been increasingly transformed into one about the crackdown on the opposition. The decision to throw the Baseej into the mess has triggered cascading series of abuse, torture and allegations of other atrocities with the whole thing snowballing out of the regime's control. Until now the regime was wavering and unable to deliver a crushing blow to silence the dissent which is understandable given that Iran in 2009 is very different from Iran in 1979. One of the things that seem to be gone is the ability to execute people en mass. But this wavering and indecisiveness have actually exacerbated the crisis and turned into a never ending scandal deeply embarrassing and demoralizing for the regime.

This last point is an important one since contrary to another popular misconception Iran is no al-Kaida turned a state, but a revolutionary regime rather like the same old Soviet Union. Its ultimate purpose and raison d'être is to provide inspiration to masses across the Muslim World and keep exporting its revolution. Contrary to what many Israelis seem to think, Ahmadinejad's bravado aside, this is no suicidal self destructive entity eager to find itself annihilated or badly crippled in an exchange of nuclear strikes with Israel or the USA. From its very beginning the Revolution's goal was to create a utopian society which Khomeini envisioned as a kind of hybrid between Russian Communism and his rather unorthodox interpretation of the Shia Islam. Creating this new revolutionary society and exporting it to all corners of the Muslim World is what the ideology of this regime is about. It's not about self annihilation. But these days scenes of hundreds of thousands strong demonstrations crushed through application of brutal force are unpopular even in the Muslim world. With Iran's standing even in the Shia world hitting the floor in the wake of the post election turmoil and now digging even deeper into the ground, this revolutionary project seems to have suffered an irreversible setback.

As a matter of last resort, the Revolutionary Guard may try to stage a coup and such a possibility was indeed speculated about, by Stratfor by example. In fact, one Stratfor analyst was interpreting the post election mess as a struggle between the Islamic Revolution's old guard such as Rafsanjani and others and the new and more radical generation led by Ahmadinejad and his Guard colleagues. While this is not entirely untrue, it's missing one of the most outstanding features of this revolution. Revolutions are said to devour their children, but this revolution is so young that it's apparently attempting to devour both its children and its fathers. The opposition is actually driven by a peculiar alliance of the revolution's old guard and the young generation united against Ahmadinejad and his middle generation. But regardless of who wins in the short and medium run, the Revolution and its Republic are probably dead already. Neither the hardliners can resuscitate this revolution, nor the reformists can reform this Islamic republic. What's dead is dead.

If Mohammad does not go to Vietnam...

This is a kind of "If Mohammad does not go to Vietnam, then Vietnam will come to Mohammad". The Saudis came under attack by Zaidi rebels from across the border. The Saudis reportedly evacuated several border towns and moved army units and special forces into northern Yemen.


PS

This post is an update to The ticking bomb...

Blasted OPEN

Some people claim the energy crisis is OVER. In fact, they say that not only it's over, the crisis is not going to happen for at least a few next decades. We are going to be awash in natural gas and natural gas powered electricity. So we are also going to be awash in electric cars and cars running on gas. And of course the first thing that emerges in my mind when I hear such exciting news is: So what's about the Arabs? (And the Persians too)

Relearning the Middle East - Nobody fears death. People fear torture

NPR's (National Public Radio) Terry Gross in conversation with Greg Jaffe (Washington Post's Pentagon correspondent) about Obama's options in Afghanistan. At some point the interview delves into the background of leading US military officials involved and reveals a few interesting episodes from the process through which the US general John Abizaid was relearning the land of his ancestors.

GROSS: I was really interested in your descriptions of General Abizaid, who, you know, helped lead the war in Iraq in its first stage, but didn't seem to agree with the philosophy that the Army was using.

Abizaid's great-grandfather was Lebanese. Abizaid speaks fluent Arabic. He spent time in the Middle East before the war in Iraq, and it sounds like he was very skeptical of the Iraq War from the start, yet he helped lead it. He was the commander of all military forces in the region, the position that Petraeus later took over. So would you explain why he was skeptical of the invasion from the start?

Mr. JAFFE: Yeah, I mean, he does spend a lot of time in the Middle East. Now, he doesn't grow up speaking Arabic. He actually teaches himself Arabic or goes to the Defense Language Institute and then spends two years in Jordan at the University of Amman as a student. They he spends one year in Lebanon, in southern Lebanon in the mid-'80s, watching the Israelis fight a very tough insurgency with Shiite extremists, and particularly Hezbollah, which is just beginning to emerge at that period.

I think he has a sort of deep appreciation for the culture, religion and the huge role those play in the Middle East in terms of determining the fate of kind of countries and how wars unfold. So I think he was deeply skeptical. I mean, he likes to say you can't control the Middle East. If you try, it'll end up controlling you.

So I think he was deeply skeptical of these sort of grand ambitions to change places, particularly Iraq, where he also has this experience at the end of the Gulf War, an experience that's very different from the rest of the United States Army and leads him to take very different lessons from the Gulf War than most of the U.S. Army.

GROSS: So how did Abizaid's Gulf War experience shape his thinking on Iraq?

Mr. JAFFE: Well, you know, most of the Army's - for the Gulf War is the 100-hour tank battle, you know, which is this tank-on-tank fight in which the U.S. Army, you know, obliterates the Iraqi army. Abizaid has a different experience. He misses the tank battle. He's stuck in Italy, much to his chagrin and disappointment for that, but is sent in in the latter days of the war -essentially after the war - to northern Iraq on a mission to protect the Kurds.

It quickly turns to he's also protecting the Iraqi army and the Iraqi army soldiers from the Kurds, and Iraqi soldiers are running to his checkpoint. And he has this - tells this very interesting story. In the latter days of his mission there, he's walking with a Kurdish Peshmerga, a Kurdish militia fighter, and they - the Kurds have caught a couple of Iraqi soldiers who were stragglers, and they grabbed these Iraqis and they torture them and then kill them. And Abizaid, in his very typical, John Abizaid way, says hey, if you're going to kill them, anyway, why do you bother to torture them? And the Peshmerga, the militia, Kurdish militia fighter, says well, nobody fears death. People fear torture. And we have to kill them and torture them and leave them in the middle of the road as an example to the other Iraqi soldiers not to mess with us anymore.

And at that point, I think Abizaid, who already sensed this, realizes that the Iraq War might be over for the U.S. Army. It might be over for the United States of America, but it's still continuing for the Iraqi people and continues throughout the '90s, until we invade the country again in 2003.

Source: NPR

I am / was posting there . . .

October 21, 2009

My company is sending me the next week to see some overseas customers. There'll be no or little posting for the next two weeks.


Nizo

Loyal to Fatah - To The Last Drop (Redesigning the Palestinian national anthem. The draft version of the new anthem follows below)





October 2, 2009

East Med Sea Peace

the farse cry of the farsi wolf.. (Iran's nuclear bomb)


September 15, 2009

East Med Sea Peace

outside the levant.. (it should better be called "inside the middle east..")


August 30, 2009

The Traveller Within

Seeking readers contribution: A term to replace "Islamophobia"? (defining Islamophobia)

Bring in Haifa Wehbe

Last updated: October 21, 2009

August 4, 2009

A Saudi Doctor about plastic surgery taking over the kingdom, and actually the rest of the Arab world, by storm.

Ayman al-Sheikh, a Saudi doctor who spent almost 14 years in the U.S., most of them at Harvard, said demand in Saudi Arabia is in line with increased global demand. But what he sees more of in the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, is a customers for procedures that enhance the face to the point where it no longer looks natural.

Source: The New York Times

Well, I don't know about Saudi Arabia, but by the name of Allah I swear that if human development indexes were to reflect the amount of silicon Haifa Wehbe and her doubles have managed to pack into their chests, Lebanon would have been immediately propelled into the ranks of the first world.


August 12, 2009

Haifa Wehbe and the destruction of Islamic Renaissance in the Middle East

I was bored and so I went to Maysaloon to have a talk with Wassim. Enjoy

:D :D


October 21, 2009

The Haifa Effect
Haifa Wehbe's revolution continues sweeping the Arab world. No wonder the first to take a direct hit is one of the Gulf's most liberal and progressive states.

KUWAIT CITY – Kuwait's highest court granted women the right to obtain a passport without their husband's approval, the case's lawyer said Wednesday, in the latest stride for women's rights in this small oil-rich emirate.

Unlike with highly conservative neighbors like Saudi Arabia, women in Kuwait can vote, serve in parliament and drive — and now can obtain their own passports.

Source: AP

Now what's left is for the Supreme Court to grant women the right to walk, so that they can go to collect their travel passports and then fly their ass out of the kingdom.

Obama's pastors

There is one thing that Barack Obama seems incapable of ever getting right. According to Times, Obama's new pastor, Carey Cash, is Islamophobe and intense supporter of the war in Iraq. In his book published in 2004, the pastor called Islam a violent faith that "from its very birth has used the edge of the sword as a means to convert or conquer those with different religious convictions". Another pearl from the book is the pastor's belief that a wall of angels protected US troops that stormed Baghdad in 2003 (Cash was a chaplain in one of the first units to reach the city). This is of course highly ironic given that Obama was elected in part riding the wave of popular discontent with the war in Iraq.

Obama's previous pastor, Jeremiah Wright, has deeply embarrassed the president by his his bizarre anti semitic allegations. At one point Wright alleged that Jews were preventing the two from meeting each other. Obama had to disavow Wright and since then went paranoiac about choosing a new pastor, so much so that he started switching churches to avoid getting accidentally associated with another nutty pastor. When he finally dared to praise Cash and express admiration for his powerful sermons, this was quickly revealed as a mistake of colossal proportions. Times says the pastor and his family have refused to be interviewed by the Washington Post on the grounds that they were instructed by the White House to keep their mouth shut and not to talk to the newspaper.

Obama certainly could do better. For example he could easily compensate for his lack of touch for pastors by asking one of his aides to at least browse through the book before telling reporters how excellent Mr Cash is. Now this episode, if given publicity, may sweep the Arab and global Muslim media and annihilate whatever successes on the PR front Barack Obama has achieved with his Cairo and other appearances. As Obama is about to soon embark on a search for a new pastor, based on the president's previous selections and his obvious talent for doing it, I would bet that Obama's next pastor will be promptly revealed as a white supremacist.

He is Alive!

Last updated: October 18, 2009

At last! The Persians have blasted persistent rumours that Supreme Leader died by releasing pictures of him meeting Senegalese president. My feeling of tremendous relief did not last for long, however, as soon it became apparent that we've got more reasons to worry about. On a photo published by ISNA (Iranian Students News Agency) Khamenei still looks shit and struggling to hold his head up, but Abdullah Wade of Senegal looks simply as if he died half way through the meeting or something.

Source: ISNA
"The Senegalese President also expressed his satisfaction with Iran's impressive June 12 presidential election and its results," said ISNA, but it appears that on saying this Abdullah Wade has largely exhausted his energies and went zombie. Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose youthful overconfident appearances usually mitigate the impression of doom and gloom emanating from Iran's clerical gerontocracy, looks subdued and cowering in his corner. I am wondering if this may have something to do with "Iran's impressive June 12 presidential election and its results".


The good old days of yore - Khamenei, Ahmalala and Belarus president Lukashenko



PS

Breaking News... A suicide bomber killed 20 people, including five senior Revolutionary Guard commanders in Sistan-Baluchistan Province of Iran. Scores of others are reported wounded. Among the dead a deputy commander of the Guard's ground force and the Guard's chief provincial commander.

As one who went through one suicide attack and had to visit a friend in a hospital after another one (not to mention that the line I used to go to work was bombed twice), I feel really proud about my contribution to development of this impressive military technology. (Come on, guys. You have to give it to me. No weaponry can mature until tested on live targets and somebody has to do it). Congratulations and my unconditional support go to Baloch nationalists and all other peace loving minorities of the Middle East.


2007, Sistan-Baluchistan. Iran executes a Baluchi insurgent
after a previous attack on the Revolutionary Guard




October 18, 2009

Iran's president Ahmadinejad promised a swift retaliation for the attack in Balochistan, lightening up the hearts of Baluchi insurgents and certain malicious outsiders. There are millions of Baluchis scattered around the region between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Jundallah, the flagship of Baluchi resistance, is rumored to have ties with Al-Kaida. What a fertile ground for a mega Sunni Shia confrontation!!!

However, there seems to be some nuances.

Iranian officials have been reluctant to open full-scale military operations in the southeastern border zone, fearing it could become a hotspot for sectarian violence with the potential to draw in al-Qaida and Sunni militants from nearby Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Source: AP

A big disappointment it is.


Shattered dreams and broken hopes. Angry and dismayed, Baloch insurgents wasting time in their camp - no sign of the Persians coming

Trust me, guys. I can feel your pain. Inshallah, lets pray for better days to come.

What a concept!

People sometimes post comments that in two lines nail it down better than any social scientists can do. This one, for example, was posted on The Reality Moment in the New York Times. This is basically what America and actually most other democracies are about.

Blacklight: Gee, responsible, pragmatic political leaders who put their careers on the line to tell you the things that you, the electorate, don't want to hear. And the electorate responds. What a concept!

Simply brilliant!

Obama should stay course on Iraq

The Sunni insurgents in Iraq blew up a key bridge used by the US to withdraw its forces from the country.

BAGHDAD – A suicide bomber blew up a dynamite-laden truck in western Iraq on Saturday, destroying a key bridge on a highway used by the departing U.S. military, while four Iraqi soldiers were killed in a separate attack near Fallujah, police said.

There were no casualties in the Saturday morning blast that destroyed the bridge, said a police officer in the city of Ramadi, about 70 miles (125 kilometers) west of Baghdad. The highway is used heavily by the U.S. military to transport equipment out of the country.

Source: Associated Press

The attack came in the wake of a surprising decision by the Nobel committee to award Barack Obama with the 2009 Nobel peace prize. Smart observers will find here signs of a broad international consensus that the decision to end the occupation was premature.

Mr. Obama, people of the world are looking to you to hold steadfast in Iraq. If you need more encouragement, just say it. What do you want us to do? Do you want us to give you another prize or do you want us to blow up another bridge?

Russia celebrating Independence

Source: Telegraph
A mysterious cloud was spotted over Moscow as Muscovites are readying themselves for celebrations of Russia's independence day. I don't want to be a spoiler but I do feel like I have to remind to our readers how such shit usually ends...

And here we go...

This post is an update to Flashdance. You will probably have to read the original post to understand what this one is about.

Iran's parliament gives green light to Ahmadinejad's fuel subsidies reform...

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's parliament on Monday moved ahead with a bill to sharply slash energy and food subsidies, approving one article of a draft law that has the potential of stoking major unrest in a country struggling under international sanctions.

State radio said the article approved by lawmakers would gradually cut energy subsidies over five years, bringing the heavily discounted fuel prices more in line with international prices.

Officials say the cuts are needed to recoup some of the roughly $90 billion spent yearly by OPEC's second largest exporter on subsidies, and to target the funds more directly at helping poorer segments of the population as well as funding infrastructure projects.

Subsidies currently eat up about 30 percent of the government budget at a time when already high spending and the collapse of oil prices last year squeezed the country's economy.

"The plan would prevent an important part of excessive consumption (in Iranian society), as well as injustice in the redistribution of subsidies," state-run Press TV quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying in a live interview on Iranian television Sunday night.

Source: Associated Press

Among its possible consequences, the approved bill has direct bearing on the issue of punitive sanctions against Iran. It's unlikely that the US and its allies can take action to disrupt Iran's oil exports due to the adverse effect this would have on the global energy market and through this on their respective economies. Imposing some kind of embargo on gasoline imports into Iran sounds like a more plausible course of action to take. Under Ahmadinejad the Persians were investing like mad into their refining capacity and switching cars to natural gas. This effort should start paying off in the next few years, dramatically reducing the impact of possible sanctions against Iran. In fact, Iran may yet emerge as one of the leading, if not the leading, gasoline exporters of the world. The incoming reform may dramatically speed up this process if it succeeds to reign in domestic gasoline consumption. In short, while the President of presidents is brooding over his options in Iran, he may soon find that one about sanctions suddenly unavailable.


PS

This means nothing in terms of Israel's options. If it comes to trading ballistic missiles with Iran, the correct way for Israel to proceed in order to avoid creating a global energy crisis and becoming enemy of all mankind, is to target refineries and not oil fields and terminals.

To Win the Nobel

Last updated: October 12, 2009

December 23, 2006


From a conversation with a Lebanese friend:

Nobody:

one person told me that when i call myself politically incorrect this is a very gentle description (it was Abubalboola actually NB)

Friend:

well I wouldn't recommend you for the nobel peace prize

Nobody:

no ??? because that was my dream for years - to win the nobel peace prize

Friend:

mine too
do you think I stand a chance ?

. . .

. . .

Yet a few days ago another Lebanese wrote me this:

No one ever won a nobel peace prize for not offending anyone. Besides, if Henry Kissinger, Menachem Begin and Yassir Arafat can win one, you'll be just fine.

. . .

. . .

So it's not over yet . . . I still hope to be one day awarded a Nobel for promoting peace, love and understanding between Jews and Arabs.


October 10, 2009

Go Obama! Goooooo!!!
My Nobel ambitions have been frustrated again and this time by a person with the Kenyan background or something. What can be more humiliating?! However, while we are still on this Nobel prize thing, I want to say that I fully support the committee's decision. Obama's achievements in peace making are not particularly impressive, but his intentions are good and, as the Buddhist philosophy is teaching us, from the purely Karmic perspective intentions count more than actual actions. Never mind a huge amount of work that lies ahead. More troops are needed for Afghanistan. More may be needed in Iraq in the near future if something goes wrong. And of course we have Iran's nuclear reactors waiting to be bombed. With so much peace making that needs to be done, Obama certainly needs some kind of encouragement. In short, however offensive personally I find the committee's persistent ignoring of my own peace making initiatives, I support the decision and am ready to wait patiently for my turn. However, all this is only on condition that mr. Obama will do his peace work properly.

Peace... Beace... Shalom...

Inshallah, one day it will be my turn to go to pick up my Nobel.

Matisyahu - One Day



October 12, 2009

Another Nobel gone...
The Nobel oration, I promised to Nizo in the comments section, seems poised to suffer yet another delay...

As bad as they are, nukes have been instrumental in reversing the long, seemingly inexorable trend in modernity toward deadlier and deadlier conflicts. If the Nobel Committee ever wants to honor the force that has done the most over the past 60 years to end industrial-scale war, its members will award a Peace Prize to the bomb.

Source: Time

So first I was elbowed down to the end of the line by Kenyans and now I will have to wait because they will be busy showering peace Nobels on nukes and chemical bombs. It just can't get more ridiculous than this. I want my Nobel back and I want it now!

Do you wanna revolution?

This post is an update to Far larger than its leaders

According to the New York Times, Iran's Parliament started an investigation into the nation's telecom monopoly's takeover by a company affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard. This one follows a similar inquiry into a $2 billion worth deal by means of which another company affiliated with the Baseej militia has acquired in August what is reported as the largest lead and zinc mine in the Middle East. And on top of this, reports the New York Times, there are talks about transforming the Baseej into a full time force.

In the wake of the Green Revolution, some analysts have been speculating about a possible takeover of the state by some sort of a joint military clerical rule led by the Revolutionary Guard. Ahmadinejad has reportedly promoted dozens of former Guard commanders to high administrative posts and let firms affiliated with the Guard to take over key economic installations under the cover of what was supposed to be a privatization campaign. The Guard's acquisition spree that followed the collapse of the Green Revolution generally confirms this suspicion and can make fans of revolutions in general, and green revolutions in particular, somewhat disheartened at the reduced prospect of regime change by means of a popular uprising. However, while this seems to be a very reasonable and pragmatic assessment of the situation, it's not that clear that what the regime is currently trying to do makes sense in practical terms.

For starters, to let the Guard into the economy means to expose it even more to corruption and ineffectiveness that are the defining characteristics of Iran's social and economic system. Making the Guard the biggest employer may also set it on a collision course with the population given the chronic state of massive unemployment and floor level wages of Iran's economy. Clearly, the Guard is at its best as a professional fighting force acting as an outsider during political turmoils such as the last one. Transforming Iran into a police state and making the Guard part of this corrupt and messy system is a double edge sword that can destroy both the last bits of the Guard's reputation and the motivation of its rank and file members.

The thing is that Iran is a different society than it was 20 years ago and no amount of repressions can change this. Highly televised forced confessions by dozens of members of the so called opposition (the opposition seems to be packed with people who under Khomeini were the revolution's flesh and blood) could make a lot of sense a few decades ago when the regime was capable of eliminating people by thousands, but this is no smart thing to do under the present system that can't do away with accusations of torture and mistreatment even within its own media. Extracting forced confessions from so many people is no good if you then leave them around to share their horror stories with the media. Iran's standing, even in the Shia world, seems to have already taken a blow from which it can't recover and the mismanaged crackdown on the opposition is bound to wreck it even further as time goes by. In fact, it looks as if the regime is struggling to internalize the fact that neither itself, nor the country it's running, are any longer what they used to be. By its basic instinct, the regime is leaning to harsh and uncompromising methods, but it's lacking teeth to implement them thoroughly enough.

The idea of transforming the Baseej into a regular force may also prove to be self defeating in the long run. One can argue that if the Shah would have had some equivalent of the Baseej, the monarchy would have been still around today. The Baseej effectiveness stems in part from its being a kind of volunteers driven militia. During the Green Revolution regular police forces were frequently reported as vacillating or plainly sympathizing with the protesters. The Baseej moved in and their "irregularity" was revealed as a big advantage both in terms of their zeal and motivation, and the unrestrained violence they used against the protesters. The fact that many Baseej were highly motivated volunteers from inside the ordinary population should have had an added benefit of them having at times better information than professional security services. And this they have put to good use when mopping up protesters and during overnight raids on their homes. To transform the Guard into a state within a state, or to structure the Baseej as a regular force may deprive them of the very same qualities that make them so valuable for the regime.

Actually, the very fact that the Parliament is running inquiries into the Guard's latest acquisitions indicates that while the system is busy attempting to devour its disillusioned creators, it's plainly struggling to get hold of itself. So not everything is yet lost for the opposition. As a wise (crazy) man said: If you will it, it is no legend. Translated to Persian it roughly reads as: If you wanna revolution, you may eventually get one.

Burning money, cooking troubles

This post is an update to Flashdance. If you have any comments, leave them there

This chart from the last Economist gives a very good perspective on the situation of energy subsidies in Iran.

Source: The Economist

As can be seen in the table, Iran is leading the way, and by a wide margin, when compared to other countries by the sheer volume of its energy subsidies. Iran is a big country of course. However, it's also obvious from the table that Iran is still at the top when the subsidies are recalculated per capita, only Saudi Arabia spends more. It spends $786 per person in energy subsidies every year. The subsidies not only account for the lion's share of the budget, but they are also responsible for the out of control domestic petroleum consumption that, according to some, may undermine the nation's position as a leading oil exporter at some point during the next decade.

The Lessons of the Holocaust

The Jerusalem Post

Sep 30, 2009
By EVELYN GORDON

. . .

Perhaps Goldstone truly believes that since effective military action inevitably involves civilian casualties, it should be outlawed: that since multiple attempts to stop Palestinian rocket fire without war - two truces, pinpoint attacks, international pressure and blockade - failed, Israel should just have let Hamas continue firing thousands of rockets a year at its citizens. Yet few people would accept that solution were their own countrymen under fire.

Speaking in Jerusalem nine years ago, Goldstone attributed his views on war and war crimes to the Holocaust. But he clearly failed to learn the obvious lesson: What ended the Holocaust was overwhelming force. Had the Allies adopted his impossible standards, World War II would never have ended, and Hitler would have continued slaughtering Jews with impunity.

BUT GOLDSTONE also ignores one final lesson from Hitchcock: Despite far higher casualties, Europe's liberation aroused less antagonism among civilian victims than Afghanistan's has, in part because "the Normandy invasion lasted just one summer, and the people whose homes were destroyed knew that it was all over and they could start rebuilding," Bernstein quotes him saying. Afghanis have no such comfort.

. . .

Source: Goldstone's recipe for never-ending conflict

Don't Touch This!

One Syrian blogger was wandering around the Syrian blogsphere dismayed by the low quality of content he encountered everywhere when he stumbled on something that completely shattered his heart and faith in the future of his country. And that was another Syrian blogger running "a campaign to combat masturbation". Shock and awed, our blogger exploded with a tornado of rhetoric questions.

Are there no other more pressing righteous causes? How about poverty, gender discrimination, honor killings, the absence of civil liberties and the absence of freedom of expression among a long list of societal ills? Don’t these deserve more immediate attention than a practice that is the realm of the personal and affects no one else?

Source: Don't Touch This!

Well. You see, buddy... Of course, these are important and pressing issues, BUT... The first things should come first!

Anyway, our blogger did not give up and started his own campaign mocking the original one under the title of "Don't Touch This!". With the Syrian blogsphere now being torn apart (Gaddafi would have said "asunder") by pro and contra masturbation campaigns, we cannot just stand idly watching this mess from aside. It's time for us, as good and responsible neighbors (which we are), to start taking sides. After some deliberation I decided to join the "Don't Touch This" camp. Mainly, because it's in English. So here we go....


Don't Touch This!

GOLAN

Occupied since 1967

Oups! Sorry guys. I think I have just copy pasted something wrong from the sidebar of that blog. Another try...


Don't Touch This!

. . .

. . .


Yeah! This one is much better. So do you see this, guys? Well, you don't see it of course. However, I am sure you do know what I mean, right? Yes, I mean this. So don't you ever fucking touch this!


PS

I call on all peace loving bloggers of the Middle East to join our "Don't Touch This" campaign.

Britannia delenda est

Last updated: September 26, 2009

August 26, 2009

The Hitler-Economist connection

I like his "That seems a bit harsh".

:D :D


September 8, 2009

Switzerland delenda est too...

Col Muammar Gaddafi's Libya proposed a UN motion calling for the abolition of Switzerland after a dispute over the arrest of one of the president's sons, it has emerged. The Alpine country should be folded into France, Germany and Italy, according to the bizarre proposal.

Source: Telegraph

Me thinks the King of kings doesn't really like Switzerland.


September 24, 2009

Man and beast was torn asunder...
Such was the effect of an incredible last performance by the King of kings in the UN General Assembly. It lasted for almost 100 minutes instead of 15 and exceeded all expectations. This is for example what the King of kings thinks about the Taliban and Vatican.



Gaddafi was also reported to have intimated that Israel was involved in JFK assassination and that swine flu has originated in secret labs of the CIA or something like this.

He called Obama "our son" referring to Obama's African roots and suggested that Obama should be ruler-for-life of the U.S. "How can we guarantee America after Obama?" he said. Well, the colonel got the point. We can't, unless the Yankees make him their permanent president.

At some point he called the Security Council the Terror Council and seemed to try to tear the United Nations Charter on the grounds that he did not recognize the authority of the document.

By the time "the leader of the revolution, the president of the African Union, the king of kings of Africa" (this is how he was introduced to the General Assembly) finished the speech, the place was largely empty. The Great Leader retired from the scene triumphantly waving his hand in the air.


Some Arab diplomats, who reportedly spent a major part of the speech rolling on the floor laughing, claimed in private conversations that the speech was Gaddafi's vintage point that blew away even those Arabs used to his regular performances at meetings of the Arab League.

Notwithstanding, this blog hails the King of kings and dedicates the following video to his honor.




September 25, 2009

Bring them all!

After struggling to turn Khadafy’s insane ramblings at the UN into English for 75 minutes, the Libyan dictator’s personal interpreter got lost in translation.

"I just can’t take it any more," Khadafy’s interpreter shouted into the live microphone – in Arabic.

At that point, the U.N.’s Arabic section chief, Rasha Ajalyaqeen, took over and translated the final 20 minutes of the speech.

"His interpreter just collapsed – this is the first time I have seen this in 25 years," another U.N. Arabic interpreter told The Post.

Source: New York Post
(Many thanks to Bruno for the link)

Now if you have been wondering about the poor quality of translation in the video above, bear in mind that it was Gaddafi translated live by his hand picked interpreter. According to the Post, Gaddafi told the UN that regular UN interpreters don't understand a special dialect the Leader of the Revolution speaks and so he had to bring one from Libya. This created a certain confusion given that it's known that Gaddafi can speak standard Arabic. The misunderstanding was absolutely unnecessary, however, as the special dialect of Gaddafi has little to do with Arabic and its varieties but a lot with the way Gaddafi is draining sanity from those attempting to translate his verbal diarrheas. "He’s not exactly the most lucid speaker. It’s not just that what he’s saying is illogical, but the way he’s saying it is bizarre," one Arabic interpreter said.

Gaddafi's orations apparently also have a certain tendency to degenerate into incoherent ramblings presenting a particularly tough challenge for translation. "Sometimes he mumbles, sometimes he talks to himself," another interpreter said. Gaddafi's habbit to regress into unconscious states of mind and keep mumbling to himself during his speeches makes him similar to another prehistoric creature, though unlike Gaddafi that creature tended to do this while submerged in mud instead of while orating and it went extinct a while ago.

(Another explanation for Gaddafi's insistence on dragging his interpreter after him to all international forums is that, as Gaddafi is growing senile, he seems to be increasingly sinking into that conspiratorial paranoia mindset so typical of the Arabs and other Middle Easterners. He is probably mistrusting other interpreters, suspecting them of taking part in some global international conspiracy to prevent him from delivering his message to the world's masses)

Anyway, as Gaddafi was laying siege to the sanity of his audience, his own interpreter was toast half way through the speech and the U.N.’s Arabic section chief was provided with a day off the very next day after attempting to translate the last 20 minutes of Gaddafi's insanity. Some could not take it anymore even before. Such was the US president Barack Obama, who escaped the premises immediately after he finished with his own speech and before Gaddafi proceeded to tearing his interpreters and audiences asunder.

The circus definitely did not end with Gaddafi as the podium was later taken over by the likes of Chavez and Ahmadinejad. The last one has again bored the living daylights out of the audience with his peculiar Holocaust, or better anti-Holocaust, obsession. It's a shame Farouq Hosny has narrowly missed his chance to become the next head of UNESCO. He could be a valuable addition to the Middle Eastern section of a zoo they are running over there in New York. In conclusion, I would like to raise my voice to support many other sane people on this planet who argue for expanding the ranks and strengthening the authority of the UN and other international organizations. No multilateralism is complete unless every King of kings and other visionaries of the Middle East are on board. Go bring them all!


September 26, 2009

From my comment on another blog...

It’s plain obvious to any sane person that Gaddafi by now has largely lost his sanity. Gaddafi cannot be held responsible for what’s happening to him as he is out of his mind since years ago. Not that he is the only person in the world who on having reached old age experiences various cognitive problems, but in normal countries such people are usually taken care of by their families and social services. They are certainly not supposed to be a head of state.

That we are blessed with him lecturing in the General Assembly for hours is precisely because the Arab world from where he hails has not one single country that can be defined as even remotely normal and because we have this thing called the UN that provides them podium. Otherwise Gaddafi would have been promptly dispatched to some nursing facility or at least his insanity would have been confined to Libya and meetings of the Arab league. So it’s very apt that Gaddafi would come forward and call for the reform of the Security Council and such stuff because this is exactly what it’s about and Gaddafi represents well the theatre of absurd of this international multilateralism. The Arabs can at least be partially excused for this mess because until Gaddafi dies and his son takes over, they are stuck with him. But the Africans have simply elected him to head the AU this year out of their free will, when he appeared before them in his plain insanity. The global warming and sub-Saharran Africa’s "sub-replacement" IQ levels cannot make one more skeptical about the future of this continent than the fact that these clowns have elected Gaddafi to represent them.

Give more power and representation in international forums to all these Arab and African pseudo states and it will get even more hilarious. The West should get realistic about this family of nations and global community blah blah blah and start quietly sidelining the UN. Serious matters can be sorted out on Western internal forums. If necessary, BRIC nations can be invited. But the UN is a parody and to talk in serious about reforming it or its Security Council is beyond parody... Unless of course to reform means kicking out all these clowns starting from Gaddafi through Ahmadinejad to all other Kings of kings and leaders of revolutions.

Source: Mad dog at Turtle Bay

Razor-Sharp

Chaim Gans on Gideon Levy's idea of a national referendum to determine the fate of the settlements and the occupation through challenging voters with a simple and straightforward question: "Do we continue the occupation, all of the occupation, yes or no? If yes, then yes, if no, then no." Levy thinks it's razor-sharp.

Levy's question is not razor-sharp because it ignores the dispute in this country over whether our standing in the territories is that of an occupier, and because it binds together in one category both the occupation and the settlements, instead of separating the two.

Continuing the occupation could be legitimate on security grounds; the question of whether those grounds justify its continuation is one that reasonable people could disagree about. Therefore, it would be truly legitimate to decide it by democratic means.

In contrast, nobody can think that settlements within the framework of occupation could be legitimate. A state is not entitled to colonize conquered lands, neither from the point of view of international law nor that of international morality. Therefore, a democratic majority cannot legalize such settlements, just as a democratic majority of a condominium's residents cannot legalize the beating up of one of the residents.

Source: Haaretz

I had a similar argument about this here...

Nobody said...
What we should do is to break this linkage between comprehensive agreement and settlements. The settlements should go regardless of what happens with this peace process. There is very little chance of anything good happening with it anyway.

Source: east med sea peace

Gays and Vultures

The fiasco of the international pride parade in Jerusalem has precipitated a series of setbacks and debacles for the Israeli gay community that culminated in the recent shooting attack at a gay youth center in Tel Aviv. However, nothing reflects better the downfall of the gay community than the following story from Haaretz.

About ten years ago, the story goes, two young male vultures in the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo have started an intense romantic relationship than won headlines in local and international media. In line with Israel's liberal atmosphere of the time, the couple was not only allowed to form a socially acceptable same sex relationship, but enjoyed various other rights up to foster care and adoption. The two vultures were provided by the Jerusalem Zoo with an artificial egg which they incubated in turns for 45 days. Later the couple was allowed to adopt a vulture chick.

A few years ago, however, the story took an unexpected twist which in some ways parallels similar developments in the society as a whole. As Yehuda was growing increasingly disillusioned with the shallow ethical relativism of the pseudo enlightened post modernist materialism, he eventually opted out of the relationship for the sake of setting up a conventional family based on traditional values with a female vulture called Beatrix. According to Haaretz, this change of heart was no less complete than it was swift and unexpected.

"Yehuda has been living with Beatrix for a few years now, and they are a fantastic couple," Erez said. "Yehuda is more committed. He often doesn't even let Beatrix incubate the eggs and insists on doing it on his own."

The heart broken Dasnik had to be moved to the zoological research garden at Tel Aviv University, where after a prolonged and painful deliberation, he decided to mend his sinful ways by setting a nest with a female vulture. In some ways Dasnik even surpassed his former mate by stubbornly refusing to take any part in incubation, insisting instead on a strictly traditional division of family responsibilities and household chores. The end result, however, was astonishingly similar in both cases.

"This is an insane coincidence," said Michal Erez, head of the birds section at the Jerusalem zoo, "but the spouses of both Yehuda and Dashik laid an egg on the same day, the eggs hatched on the same April day, and the two chicks were exactly the same weight. Their weight can vary between 120 and 200 grams, and I've never seen two hatchlings of the exact same weight."

Source: Haaretz

As for the gay community, the message of the story is more than crystal clear - when even vultures abandon you, you're toast.

Migration

Last updated: September 15, 2009

August 31, 2009

Over the next few days this blog may become a mess as I want to migrate it to a new template. Nothing to worry about. This whole region is going to be a big mess and soon and my blog is just a part of the global trend. Meanwhile you can try to calm yourself down by reading the Economist's latest special report on Africa: The baby bonanza


September 15, 2009

nominally challenged said...

I have to say, I saw the title of this post and was hoping that you were going to write something about population migrations. Given your recent posts on demographics, I personally would be fascinated to read something about migration statistics and how that's already affecting and going to affect us all, since birth rates are only part of the entire story. So perhaps once you've finished your own personal migration, if you have a chance, and sufficient interest, I'd be very interested in hearing what you have to say ... :D

I don't know when I am going to finish my two posts about migration, but I noticed that the Economist is holding a live debate about international migration right now. You may want to see it: This house believes there is too much international migration.

What are you people doing up here all alone?

Last updated: September 5, 2009

May 4, 2009

ENTEBBE, Uganda (AFP) – Africans must travel to the moon to investigate what developed nations have been doing in outer space, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said Saturday.

"The Americans have gone to the moon. And the Russians. The Chinese and Indians will go there soon. Africans are the only ones who are stuck here," Museveni said, addressing a meeting of the Uganda Law Society in Entebbe.

"We must also go there and say: 'What are you people doing up here?'."

Museveni urged the assembly of Uganda's top lawyers to support East African integration, arguing that one of the region's goals should be to develop a space programme.

"Uganda alone cannot go to the moon. We are too small. But East Africa united can. That is what East African integration is all about," he said. "Then we can say to the Americans: 'What are you doing here all alone?'."

Source: AFP (via Yahoo)

Frankly, I used to think that East African integration was all about to avoid collectively dying from hunger. Anyway, guys, if you are going to the moon, maybe you can give a free ride to a few good friends of ours. The Palestinians and the Persians are the first to come to my mind. They have never been to the moon too.


May 5, 2009

Due to a possible departure of president Museveni to the moon, this post was placed under "Shalom Haver" label, where mr Museveni will help the gorilla to strengten the African section of my farewell letters.


May 10, 2009

The race to the moon is heating up...

Thanks Bruno



June 24, 2009

For every nation in the world there should be an Ahmadinejad

By Hyung-jin Kim, Associated Press Writer

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea threatened Wednesday to wipe the United States off the map as Washington and its allies watched for signs the regime will launch a series of missiles in the coming days.

...

...

"If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will ... wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all," the official Korean Central News Agency said.

Source

Now Obama should start thinking Amalek...


September 5, 2009

Never Alone
The Economist has joined Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni by lending support to his radical plan of dramatic expansion of the East African Community (EAC). "Why should an East African federation stop with the club’s existing member countries?" was the venerable publication wondering in its latest edition.

And why should an East African federation stop with the club’s existing member countries? If defined by the area in which the lingua franca of the Swahili language is used, the range of lorries heading out of the Kenyan port of Mombasa, and the magnet of Nairobi as a hub, east Africa spreads into Ethiopia and includes a chunk of Somalia, a swathe of east Congo, a strip of northern Mozambique and all of southern Sudan, which could become an independent country in 2011, if its people vote in a promised referendum to secede.

Source: The Economist

Indeed. The federation definitely can and should expand beyond the country's existing members. The Economist appears to be unaware, however, of the president Museveni outer space ambitions which, if come true, will lead the East African Federation to eventually spread across the whole solar system and come to include Mars, Venus and Jupiter, never mind the Moon. The United States, which has a good chance by that time to get wiped off the Earth's map by North Korea, should certainly be relieved to know that it's not going to be left up there all alone.

The Zionist Left's red lines

Rattling the Cage: The Zionist Left's red lines by Larry Derfner. Gives one a kind of insight into the thinking of the Left.

What do Sunnis intend for Alawis?

This post is an update to And this is what I call good stuff. If you have any comments leave them there

What do Sunnis intend for Alawis?
Posted on Syrian Comment in 2006. Written by an Alawi, it's a view from a very special perspective. Some parts of it are a very good example of how playing into controlled tensions with the West (and actually everybody around) has become vital for the survival of the regime. It's also a very frank and blunt account of how much the Alawis dominate Syria's power structures. So go read it: What do Sunnis intend for Alawis following Regime change?

Among others a section of the letter that deals with the structure of the Syrian army makes a very interesting read.

4. The organization of the Army and security forces was masterminded very cleverly by the late president Hafez Assad to prevent coups similar to those that rocked Syria during the three decades after Syrian independence. The Syrian forces capable of carry out a coup-d’etat (Army, Special Forces, Police Force, and Security Apparatuses) are all bulky and centralized with an extremely complicated command structure, purposefully designed to frustrate plotters. Lateral communication is absolutely forbidden between units; all communications between units must travel through a cumbersome vee, first ascending up the command structure to the top level of one unit before descending down again through the ranks of the other unit. Most importantly, the many units and departments have an interlocking command structure so that no entity is autonomous. They cannot act without several other departments knowing about it. For example, any air force unit is under the influence of aerial-security (Mukhabarat Jawiyyah), army-security (Mukhabarat Askariyyah), the morale-guidance headquarters (Idarat el Tawjih al-manawi), military police, air force headquarters, army general headquarters, the Republican Guards, and the Palace. Officers with loyalties to theses various branches of security are sprinkled liberally throughout the security forces. This command structure makes the military practically useless against foreign enemies because of its stultifying array of conflicting loyalties, but extremely effective at guaranteeing internal stability. Any attempt to rebel is quickly thwarted and can be dealt with on the spot.

Now compare it to something published by the Middle East Quarterly in 1999

Combined Arms Operations

. . .

Third, Middle Eastern rulers routinely rely on balance-of-power techniques to maintain their authority.30 They use competing organizations, duplicate agencies, and coercive structures dependent upon the ruler's whim. This makes building any form of personal power base difficult, if not impossible, and keeps the leadership apprehensive and off-balance, never secure in its careers or social position. The same applies within the military; a powerful chairman of the joint chiefs is inconceivable.

Joint commands are paper constructs that have little actual function. Leaders look at joint commands, joint exercises, combined arms, and integrated staffs very cautiously for all Arab armies are a double-edged sword. One edge points toward the external enemy and the other toward the capital. The land forces are at once a regime-maintenance force and threat at the same time. No Arab ruler will allow combined operations or training to become routine; the usual excuse is financial expense, but that is unconvincing given their frequent purchase of hardware whose maintenance costs they cannot afford. In fact, combined arms exercises and joint staffs create familiarity, soften rivalries, erase suspicions, and eliminate the fragmented, competing organizations that enable rulers to play off rivals against one another. This situation is most clearly seen in Saudi Arabia, where the land forces and aviation are under the minister of defense, Prince Sultan, while the National Guard is under Prince Abdullah, the deputy prime minister and crown prince. In Egypt, the Central Security Forces balance the army. In Iraq and Syria, the Republican Guard does the balancing.

Politicians actually create obstacles to maintain fragmentation. For example, obtaining aircraft from the air force for army airborne training, whether it is a joint exercise or a simple administrative request for support of training, must generally be coordinated by the heads of services at the ministry of defense; if a large number of aircraft are involved, this probably requires presidential approval. Military coups may be out of style, but the fear of them remains strong. Any large-scale exercise of land forces is a matter of concern to the government and is closely observed, particularly if live ammunition is being used. In Saudi Arabia a complex system of clearances required from area military commanders and provincial governors, all of whom have differing command channels to secure road convoy permission, obtaining ammunition, and conducting exercises, means that in order for a coup to work, it would require a massive amount of loyal conspirators. Arab regimes have learned how to be coup-proof.

Source: Why Arabs Lose Wars

Shias all around

The New York Times on what "has long been viewed as a rare liberalizing, modernizing Islamic state" "in a region dominated by uncompromising examples of state control, like Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt."

Since a major bombing of downtown hotels and shopping areas by Islamic radicals in 2003, and a thwarted attempt at another bombing campaign in 2007, there has been a major and continuing crackdown on those suspected of being extremists here.

In 2003, anyone with a long beard was likely to be arrested. Even now, nearly 1,000 prisoners considered to be Islamic radicals remain in Moroccan jails. Six Islamist politicians (and a reporter from the Hezbollah television station, Al Manar) were jailed recently, accused of complicity in a major terrorist plot. The case was full of irregularities and based mainly on circumstantial evidence, according to a defense lawyer, Abelaziz Nouaydi, and Human Rights Watch.

What they actually expect a defense lawyer to say? That the state is going out of its way to make the work easy for him? And HRW does need an introduction.

In a rare interview, Yassine Mansouri, Morocco’s chief of intelligence, said that the arrested politicians “used their political activities as a cover for terrorist activities.”

“It was not our aim to stop a political party,” he said. “There is a law to be followed.”

Morocco is threatened, Mr. Mansouri said, by two extremes — the conservative Wahhabism spread by Saudi Arabia and the Shiism spread by Iran. “We consider them both aggressive,” Mr. Mansouri said. “Radical Islam has the wind in its sail, and it remains a threat.”

Source: The New York Times

Frankly I no longer know if I am very naive or these people are just very paranoiac. Can it be that everything around is teeming with Shias and we just don't see them?

The king of Morocco on a horse

Jihadis Turn their Eyes to Syria

August 20, 2009
By: Murad Batal Al-shishani

In what might be described as Syria from a jihadist perspective, an article entitled “Al-Qaeda al-Sulbah” (the Solid Base) was posted to the jihadi website al-Faloja.com on July 21 by active al-Faloja contributor Abu Fadil al-Madi. The article urges Salafi-Jihadis to reconsider the importance of the political and strategic changes in Syria. The title of al-Madi’s posting is borrowed from a 1988 article by Palestinian jihad ideologue Abdullah Azzam. [1]

Al-Madi claims there was a kind of agreement between the jihadis and the Syrian regime, an “unannounced agreement to stop mutual hostilities,” but the situation has changed since the latter part of 2005. It was then that the regime launched a campaign against “all the components of the Sunnis in Syria; the traditional religious groups (al-Khaznawi Naqshbandiya [a Sufi order] and al-Qubeisyat for example), the Shari’ia institutions (al-Fatah Institute and Abu Nur Institute, in particular), and even against those who were considered to be close allies of the regime, working with all their strength as a trumpet [of the regime] (Muhammad Habash, as an example).[2] As well, there is the fierce security campaign against the Salafi-Jihadi movement, which has escalated since [Fall 2005].”

Al-Madi’s post asserts that there is an alliance between the Syrian Alawite regime and Ja’afri-dominated Iran. [3] This alliance, based on the religious links of these two branches of Shi’ism (though not all Shiites recognize the Alawis as Shi’a), created the division in the Middle East between “the Shi’a crescent” and the “moderate axis.” Despite these ties, the article claims the Syrian regime is pragmatic in terms of its relations with the United States, especially when it comes to coordination against jihadis. Washington’s extradition to Syria of jihadi ideologue Abu Mus’ab al-Suri is an indication of the degree of this cooperation, claims the writer.

Having concluded that the Syrian regime is working hard against Sunnis in general, the writer asks, “What is the Salafi-Jihadi movement’s strategic vision for Syria?… Will it remain a potential passage for supplies [to Iraq] or has the time come - or close to it - for a radical strategic change?”

Al-Madi’s post states that the jihadi movement has concentrated its efforts on the Iraqi front since 2003 and “developed its political-strategic project by proclaiming the Islamic State of Iraq.” However, the geographically sensitive location of Iraq and the international and regional strategic conflict over resources such as oil have pushed both the states of the moderate axis and the Shi’a crescent to try to contain the jihadi movement, penetrate its apparatus and “adapt” it by all means, “each in its own way.” Accordingly, the Awakening councils (al-Sahawat) of Iraq were created by exploiting tribal relations with Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The councils also had connections to Syria, benefitting from the latter’s close ties with some Iraqi Ba’athist elements. Al-Madi believes that such policies wasted the efforts of the jihadis since 2007 in a battle of attrition instead of a final battle with “the Crusaders and their supporters in Iraq.”

Al-Madi continued by saying that “the fall of the Syrian regime or its collapse into chaos will have a direct impact on the neighboring Sunnis in Iraq and Lebanon, and they will liberate themselves from the constraints on their movement and will find in Syria, a free, important space for movement and supply.” In such a scenario the writer thinks that the “fall of Syria” will cut off land transport of Iranian land supplies to Hezbollah in Lebanon. This will equalize the strength of the Lebanese Sunnis with Lebanon’s Shi’a community. According to the author, Syria will serve as a backyard to support the fight against Americans in Iraq. “More importantly, the jihadi project will be in direct contact with Israel in an area which is ideal for guerrilla warfare, namely the occupied Golan Heights, without having to fight a costly battle to overcome the Shiite strongholds in southern Lebanon”.

. . .

. . .

Source: The Jamestown Foundation

The King of kings and His Kingdom

The Economist on what Libya has become under the leadership of the King of kings. A good introduction to the Kingdom of all kingdoms for those who are interested...

Tripoli, Libya’s capital, is sprouting fancy new hotels, as well as a new airport, to welcome an influx of would-be investors and tourists. Literacy is now nearly universal among schoolchildren. Life expectancy has gone up by 20 years, and infant mortality has fallen to less than a tenth of the level it was at the time of the revolution.

Yet such gains ought to be unremarkable for a country that exports nearly as much oil, per head, as Saudi Arabia: a total of $46 billion-worth last year, divided among just 6m people. In fact, Libya trails far behind other oil-rich states by many measures, and not just in the contrast between Tripoli’s garbage-strewn thoroughfares and the gleaming Miami-scapes of the Gulf. As any Libyan who recalls the days before Mr Qaddafi’s revolution can attest, this is a country where something has gone very wrong.

Source: The Economist

And this is what I call good stuff

Last updated: August 28, 2009

August 21, 2009

Envy Syrian Economic Minister. This man is smoking some really good stuff. Addressing the conference for tourism investment and real-estate development, Abdullah Al-Dardari has promised his audience a tsunami of investment that by 2015 will lift Syrian economy out of a hole it's currently in, boosting living standards and reducing unemployment.

DAMASCUS -- Syria is expected to witness "a wave of considerable investments" in the near future despite fallouts of the global financial crisis, Minister of Economic Affairs Abdullah Al-Dardari said on Wednesday.

. . .

He estimated the forecast investments in the country by 2015 at USD 132 billion, including USD 55 billion to be spent in the infrastructure.

The national economic growth is forecast to rise eight percent in 2015, Al-Dardari said, adding that unemployment would drop four percent.

Source: Zawya

I was rubbing my eyes when reading this. 132 billion USD by 2015! Not 132 million USD. 132 billion!!! How is this poverty stricken Syria going to attract so much investment?

It's not hard to guess where this astonishing number is coming from. Syria needs to attract annually billions of USD just to keep its head above the water. About 40% of Syrian population are under the age of 15. This means that within the next 15 years the workforce is set to double. For comparison, only about 20% of Iranians are in the same age group. Iran may be struggling with its current double digit unemployment but the situation should improve by the middle of the next decade. Unlike Iran, there is no light for Syria in the end of its decades long unemployment tunnel.

Demographics is only one of Syria's many troubles. This year Syria turned into a net oil importer which is a no small thing for a country used to rely on oil revenues to provide for a lion's share of its budget. No wonder the Syrian budget deficit was reported to balloon to 10% of the GDP this year. On top of this several years of uninterrupted droughts have devastated the agriculture. Agriculture accounts roughly for about 20%-25% of the Syrian GDP and employment and the devastation wrecked by the global warming in Syrian northeast has left the slums around Syrian cities swelling with thousands of climate refugees.

Finally for decades Syria was exporting its unemployment headache to the Persian Gulf region and remittances from Syrian workers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf countries came to constitute an important part of Syrian economy. This year thousands of Syrians were reported returning home as the global crisis was hammering on the Persian Gulf economies. A more permanent threat is the next round of the Saudi jobs nationalization campaign that aims at replacing thousands of foreign workers, many of which are Syrians, with Saudis.

Syria's situation now is similar to that of a bicycle. If it stops moving forward fast, it will fall to the ground. The economy needs to grow by 6%-7% every year just to keep the country's economic and social woes from getting worse. Failure to maintain such an elevated rate of economic growth would mean going back in terms of unemployment and living standards. The World Bank said Syrian economy would grow only half this rate this and next year because of the impact of the global crisis. So two years are already lost. In fact, they are not lost. Syria will have to do something to make up for the missed growth targets.

Some would say this is too much for one single country to cope with. This is true. Among Arab countries Yemen is considered the most shaky with many analysts expecting its collapse within years. In terms of wretchedness Yemen may be out of competition, but the next very respectable second place plainly belongs to Syria. This country is literally hanging off a cliff. However, as Al-Dardari's comments demonstrate, as long as one has access to good stuff to smoke, nothing looks totally hopeless.

Some people, impressed by Al-Dardari's unhealthy optimism, may want to know where else in the region people have stuff good enough to get themselves so high. Well, in Israel of course. How do we know this? This country has spent decades debating the option of peace with Syria and yet no one has ever asked this simple question: After the Golan Heights are transferred to Syria, how can we be sure that Syria itself continues to exist?

This question is a no idle one since Syria's economic and demographic troubles are layered upon an ethnic structure that is one of the most problematic in the whole region. This country is simply begging to be ripped to pieces. The outstanding feature of Syria's ethnic-sectarian composition is an Alawi minority (should be roughly 10% of the population) ruling a Sunni Arab majority with an iron fist. The Alawi political domination is cemented by Alawis dominating security services and the upper echelons of the Syrian army.

Now a peculiar detail about the Alawis and their rule in Syria is that the Alawis are not exactly Muslims. In fact, a certain confusion exists about this religion since the Alawis keep their sacred books secret. A lonely apostate that once volunteered to shed some light on the Alawi religion has been promptly assassinated. From what is known about this religion it appears as an offshoot of Shiism that's gone astray and ended by incorporating elements of Islam, Christianity and sheer paganism altogether.

Naturally, when a non Muslim minority is ruling a Muslim majority, it should expect troubles. The Syrian regime knows this better than anybody else as it was once almost overthrown by a massive uprising launched by the Syrian department of Muslim Brotherhood. The Alawis tackled this issue in several ways. For one they were actively promoting other Syrian minorities like Ismaili Shias, Druze and Christians. This indeed has extended their support base but hardly made them more palatable for the Sunni Arab majority.

Another thing that the Alawis tried was to get themselves recognized as Muslims. The Alawis are known to have been courting at some point several leading Sunni clerics, but to no avail. Finally they have struck a deal with the leader of the Lebanese Shias, Musa al-Sadr, who recognized them as Twelver Shias, the leading branch of Shia Islam in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain. There was one little problem with this recognition, however. Many Sunni Arabs view Shias as heretics and when one heretic recognizes another heretic as a true Muslim this cannot be expected to leave a lasting impression on Sunni Arabs.

The matters are not helped by the fact that the Alawis are known to have occasionally practiced Taqiyya by dissimulating themselves as Sunni Muslims or pretending to follow other religions. Naturally this can only make the Sunnis ever more suspicious about them. Those interested in this stuff can read this piece by Martin Kramer about how the Alawis tried to get themselves confirmed as Muslims, but to put it short - it has never really worked. And because it has never really worked the Alawis were left with only one option: militant pan Arabism. This ideology downplays religious and sectarian antagonisms and stresses the importance of a united Arab front, regardless of whether these are Muslim Arabs, Christians or whoever, against the onslaught of Western colonialist imperialism. In some sense ever since their takeover of Syria, the Alawis have always tried to be more Arabs than the Arabs themselves and transform Syria into the spearhead of Arab nationalism and anti Western resistance.

Basically, this pan Arabist ideology requires two things: a massive propaganda machine and an external enemy. In terms of propaganda the regime has spent decades indoctrinating the living daylights out of the population. After several decades of uninterrupted brainwashing under the Alawi near totalitarian regime, the results are for all to see: Many Israelis who have experience of communicating with Arab bloggers or Arab commenters on forums could notice that Syrians are some of the most close minded and hostile of them all. In terms of external enemies, any visit by the American military to Iraq or Somalia is very welcome of course, but if nobody comes for a visit to the region, the Zionist crusader entity, an outpost of Western colonialism in the Middle East, serves this function just as well.

Basically, after having taken over Syria, the Alawi propaganda machine and pan Arabist ideology have transformed the whole society into a kind of monster which is very likely to devour its creator the very moment the creator fails to live up to the monster's expectations. Active role in the Israeli Arab conflict is one of these expectations the Alawi propaganda machine has made part and parcel of the Syrian national mindset. So, the Israeli Arab conflict has become the very foundation on which the regime in Syria stands. Remove this piece from the puzzle and it will all come down to pieces exposing the Syrian regime for what it is - a coalition of minorities led by the Alawis dominating a heavily oppressed and impoverished Sunni Arab majority. Without the Israeli Arab conflict, Syria, in its current configuration, can hardly survive as a nation.

It's hard to imagine tomorrow after Syria goes, but it may look like this: Amidst anarchy and sectarian strife, the Syrian Kurds establish a semi state similar to one they have now in Iraq. The Alawis barricade themselves in Latakia, a Syrian province where the majority of them are concentrated, cutting the rest of the country from the Mediterranean. It's not clear what other Syrian groups can do, but in this scenario the Sunni Arab heartland is very likely to be taken over by Muslim Brothers, Al Kaida style organizations and their likes in a process similar to what Iraqi Sunni provinces used to be a year ago. I leave it to the readers to guess as to who of these is more likely to take over the Golan Heights in case peace is already in place by the time it happens.

In practical terms it all comes down to this. The tremendous economic and social challenges facing Syria make the survival of the current regime, and actually of the whole country, a very tentative proposition. But without certainty about the future of Syria, trading the Golan Heights in exchange for peace becomes one of the most risky, some would say unwise, experiments in peace making Israel has ever tried. Neither Syria is very likely to be interested in genuine peace with Israel for the very simple reason of the anti Western resistance card providing the regime with the only glue that can keep the country together. Finally, even if by any miracle somebody succeeds to entice Syria into genuine normalization with Israel and the West, such a peace may quickly become the cause of Syria's undoing since it will deprive the regime of its raison d'être, the Israeli Arab conflict, which is the primary tool, besides Syria's ruthless security agencies, with which the Alawi regime imposes a semblance of unity on the country.

Really, it requires a lot of effort to ignore such obvious facts and some people may now start wondering after reading this as to why these issues almost never come up when Israeli politicians or media debate the Syrian option. The last two decades in Israel have seen many public debates regarding the Syrian option. These debates have been occasionally paralleled by always unsuccessful attempts to engage the regime. It's very telling that during these debates real questions were almost never asked.

One of these real questions should be this: What is the point of trying to trade land for peace with a country whose future is so uncertain as the future of Syria is? Another one: Why should we believe that the other side is interested in normalization when we know how central the Israeli Arab conflict is to the ideology of this regime? Yet another one: What is the point of dragging to negotiations a regime that may disintegrate and be devoured by its population the very moment it stops waving the flag of anti Israel and anti Western resistance?

There may be many fancy explanations for the absence of these questions, but my favorite one is that Syrian Economics Minister is not the only person in the region who is high on something. Al-Dardari may fancy himself with the idea that he smokes good stuff, but he should know that his colleagues on the other side of the border may be smoking something even better.


PS

I briefly touch on Syrian demographics in this post. Those interested in the Alawi religion may find a brief and succinct account of this religion here. Some would dismiss it because it's written by Christian missionaries. However, my impression is that it's actually better than anything else I read until now because it's written with a very practical purpose in mind - to assist missionaries who proselytize is Syria and North Africa. These people can't afford to entertain themselves with fancy notions about the Alawi religion, they should know the stuff they are working with. So such accounts usually tend to be technical, precise and free of usual PC and other claptrap.


August 28, 2009

What do Sunnis intend for Alawis?
Posted on Syrian Comment in 2006. Written by an Alawi, it's a view from a very special perspective. Some parts of it are a very good example of how playing into controlled tensions with the West (and actually everybody around) has become vital for the survival of the regime. It's also a very frank and blunt account of how much the Alawis dominate Syria's power structures. So go read it: What do Sunnis intend for Alawis following Regime change?

Among others a section of the letter that deals with the structure of the Syrian army makes a very interesting read.

4. The organization of the Army and security forces was masterminded very cleverly by the late president Hafez Assad to prevent coups similar to those that rocked Syria during the three decades after Syrian independence. The Syrian forces capable of carry out a coup-d’etat (Army, Special Forces, Police Force, and Security Apparatuses) are all bulky and centralized with an extremely complicated command structure, purposefully designed to frustrate plotters. Lateral communication is absolutely forbidden between units; all communications between units must travel through a cumbersome vee, first ascending up the command structure to the top level of one unit before descending down again through the ranks of the other unit. Most importantly, the many units and departments have an interlocking command structure so that no entity is autonomous. They cannot act without several other departments knowing about it. For example, any air force unit is under the influence of aerial-security (Mukhabarat Jawiyyah), army-security (Mukhabarat Askariyyah), the morale-guidance headquarters (Idarat el Tawjih al-manawi), military police, air force headquarters, army general headquarters, the Republican Guards, and the Palace. Officers with loyalties to theses various branches of security are sprinkled liberally throughout the security forces. This command structure makes the military practically useless against foreign enemies because of its stultifying array of conflicting loyalties, but extremely effective at guaranteeing internal stability. Any attempt to rebel is quickly thwarted and can be dealt with on the spot.

Now compare it to something published by the Middle East Quarterly in 1999

Combined Arms Operations

. . .

Third, Middle Eastern rulers routinely rely on balance-of-power techniques to maintain their authority.30 They use competing organizations, duplicate agencies, and coercive structures dependent upon the ruler's whim. This makes building any form of personal power base difficult, if not impossible, and keeps the leadership apprehensive and off-balance, never secure in its careers or social position. The same applies within the military; a powerful chairman of the joint chiefs is inconceivable.

Joint commands are paper constructs that have little actual function. Leaders look at joint commands, joint exercises, combined arms, and integrated staffs very cautiously for all Arab armies are a double-edged sword. One edge points toward the external enemy and the other toward the capital. The land forces are at once a regime-maintenance force and threat at the same time. No Arab ruler will allow combined operations or training to become routine; the usual excuse is financial expense, but that is unconvincing given their frequent purchase of hardware whose maintenance costs they cannot afford. In fact, combined arms exercises and joint staffs create familiarity, soften rivalries, erase suspicions, and eliminate the fragmented, competing organizations that enable rulers to play off rivals against one another. This situation is most clearly seen in Saudi Arabia, where the land forces and aviation are under the minister of defense, Prince Sultan, while the National Guard is under Prince Abdullah, the deputy prime minister and crown prince. In Egypt, the Central Security Forces balance the army. In Iraq and Syria, the Republican Guard does the balancing.

Politicians actually create obstacles to maintain fragmentation. For example, obtaining aircraft from the air force for army airborne training, whether it is a joint exercise or a simple administrative request for support of training, must generally be coordinated by the heads of services at the ministry of defense; if a large number of aircraft are involved, this probably requires presidential approval. Military coups may be out of style, but the fear of them remains strong. Any large-scale exercise of land forces is a matter of concern to the government and is closely observed, particularly if live ammunition is being used. In Saudi Arabia a complex system of clearances required from area military commanders and provincial governors, all of whom have differing command channels to secure road convoy permission, obtaining ammunition, and conducting exercises, means that in order for a coup to work, it would require a massive amount of loyal conspirators. Arab regimes have learned how to be coup-proof.

Source: Why Arabs Lose Wars

This is what I call suicide bombing

Within three minutes two truck bombers killed and wounded hundreds in Baghdad. The initial toll is 700 dead and wounded but it may well surpass one thousand as the authorities continue to identify victims. Whatever we have seen during the second Intifada is peanuts compared to this. May Allah have mercy on these people... and make them have mercy on themselves.

Funky Arabs

Those who followed the latest mess in Iran have sure noticed that something was very wrong and did not make sense in the story. A regime, that was once eliminating dissidents by thousands, was plainly struggling this time to demonstrate how tough and determined it is. Not only the regime has failed to silence the opposition leaders, even the death toll was remarkably limited. What followed next was even more bizarre. One scandal followed another one with the authorities admitting and promising to investigate police abuses. Finally there came demands to kick the Supreme Leader out accusing him of being a dictator, a thing absolutely unthinkable in the past. What's really happening here? And what's really happening in this region in general? Say what's happening with the Arabs?

Saddam Hussein with his gas warfare against the Shias and Kurds does not need any introduction. The same goes about the Black September in Jordan when Palestinian militants were running across mine fields to surrender themselves to Israeli soldiers, whatever only to avoid facing the king's tanks and his mukhabarat. On one sunny day the late father of Bashar Asad has got so upset with a failed assassination attempt against him that within hours he has emptied Syrian jails by rounding up and executing just about every single member of Muslim Brotherhood held there. And there were hundreds if not thousands.

Another famous episode happened when Syrian army flattened within a week a whole town with some estimates putting the death toll at 30 thousand. According to Thomas Friedman, the dictator was not only in no rash to rebuild the city but the place was actually left wide open for all to come and see to get the idea of what awaits those who dare to challenge the Baath rule.

The questions some would like to ask these days are these: If Muslim Brothers stage another uprising in Syria, will the dictator dare again to order his air force to bomb out corridors across Syrian cities to facilitate movement of armour? Or say if the Palestinians in Jordan rise up in defiance, will the king be bold enough to order his tanks to storm Palestinian camps and neighborhoods? The answer may vary depending on who you ask, but some Israeli Arabs I could talk to vehemently denied that anything like this is possible these days. And the reason given most often? The silly TV and other media!

It's very possible that over the last years some regimes around have lost quite a few of their once formidable teeth. But having done this, they can hardly find any consolation in the fact that they are now facing a population, some sections of which may have got very funky recently, but the majority of which has simply got very angry without getting any funky. This combination of weakened regimes and increasingly restless populations is generally is not considered conducive to stability. But it may become the defining one in the near future for a couple of countries around.

Jad Shwery - Funky Arabs

The ticking bomb...

Last updated: November 6, 2009: If Mohammad does not go to Vietnam...

August 6, 2009

|3run0 said...

Interesting... For more scares, you should also get Yemen's pyramid.

Source: Flashdance RELOADED (comments section)

I have just noticed that Aslak from Demography Matters has a post about Yemen. Enjoy: The ticking population bomb




August 11, 2009

And the bomb keeps ticking...
The New York Times reports that Yemen's bloodiest insurgency, that of the Shiites around Saada, is exploding again while the unrest by separatists in the South is now supplemented by regular ambushes against police. The combined death toll runs in dozens. On top of this, a powerful tribal leader is now openly challenging president Saleh to step down.

Last week, in an interview on Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network, a member of one of Yemen’s most powerful families surprised the country’s political establishment by calling for Mr. Saleh to step down. The man, Hamid al-Ahmar, whose father was one of Mr. Saleh’s most important allies, brazenly said he could speak out against the president — something scarcely anyone dares to do — because his tribal confederation would protect him.

Source

Whether the bomb is finally going off is hard to know, but anybody who has ears can notice that it's ticking louder than before.


August 14, 2009

The Last Jew
The JPost says the last Yemen's Jews, about 250 all in all, are about to leave the country with the majority heading for Israel. You know, it's said that when they are fleeing a sinking ship, this is a sign... Oups sorry. I mean it's said that when Jews are emigrating, this means that things are not good.

Meanwhile the fighting around Saada is reported to be escalating with the city coming under aerial attacks. Al-Arabiya TV showed images of several government tanks allegedly destroyed by Zaidi rebels who cut off a strategic highway to Saudi Arabia. As a matter of fact, Yemen Post says that the rebels are now in control of all Saada.

And on a bit different note. An article in Yemen Times complains about young Yemenis having not a notion about such things as global warming and climate change.

SANA'A, Aug. 12 — Although Yemen is one of the countries most devastated by global warming, the majority of young people in Yemen are not aware of the meaning of the words ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming,’ say experts.

Source: Yemen Times

I agree, it sucks to be destroyed by something when you don't know even how to call it.


August 15, 2009

This Vietnam is a very big Vietnam
If the situation in Yemen starts strongly resembling the nearby Somalia, Saudi Arabia may consider in serious to intervene. The Saudis and other Gulf Arabs have many reasons to do something about Yemen, if only to prevent creation of a new mega-Somalia saddling both sides of the Gulf of Aden.


The Saudis also have very valid reasons to want to stay at home and concentrate on building more fences. This Vietnam is a big one. At least in terms of its population, it's almost of the size of Saudi Arabia itself (never mind Aslak's cheerful predictions that Yemen's population may exceed 50 million by 2050).


Al-Jazeera - Fierce battles waged in Yemen




PS

Wikipedia has the following to say about the released cleric mentioned in the video.

Mohammed Ali Hassan Al-Moayad (Arabic: محمد علي حسن المؤيد‎) is a Yemeni cleric who was convicted on federal charges of financing Hamas, Al Qaeda, and other Islamic terror organizations with tens of millions of dollars. He was also a leading member of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform and the imam of the biggest mosque in Sana'a.

In view of this Al-Jazeera's video should be probably better titled as: In a rare display of unity Yemenis find some common ground by welcoming another factor of stability into their country.

:D :D


August 17, 2009

Who the fuck are Zaidis?
I was asked by a couple of people who read this blog about the identity of the rebels of Saada. Very frankly I don't know as I am no expert on Islam. However, from those bits of information I do know, for all practical puproses Zaidis (Zaydis?) are a kind of Sunnis who decided that they are Shias and should follow the fifth Shia Imam. Other than following this Imam there seems to be very little that makes them Shias.

When I say very little it means that they are not in the business of mutilating themselves in solidarity with Hussein or whoever was that guy the Sunnis martyred near Karballah. They don't believe in the hidden Imam and occultation and such stuff usually associated with the Twelver Shias. Given that they are followers of the fifth Imam, I guess that they have simply split too early, before the mainstream Shia doctrines came into being.

Now, the thing that once deeply impressed me about Islam is the nature of all those splits and ramifications. Basically most of them came out of rivalries for the political legacy and authority of Muhammad. Islam is a very young religion and so the issue of who is the true heir was and remains a very serious business. Contrary to what many Israelis would expect from their experience with Judaism, in Islam they first quarelled for power and only then split and invented divergent theological doctrines to cement their rivalries. At least as far as the Shias are concerned all this diversity came out of disputes about which brother should be considered the true inheritor of this or that particular Imam. At the time of the split itself there was usually very little or no difference in philosophy and theology between the two camps. So it worked in reverse in Islam. Power struggles were often driving the theology and not the other way round.

Using an example from European history, it's as if the Protestants and Catholics would have first fought their wars and then each gone to his corner to sit down and look for explanations of why they were actually doing this. The same Oman sitting next to Yemen belongs to another branch of Islam, neither Sunni nor Shia, that sprang from a political dispute the nature of which even with my best intentions I can't comprehend. I admit that some may see this as a very biased interpretation of the history of Islam. This may well be the case, but this will remain my understanding of the matter until I know better.

Anyway, when it comes to Zaidis it's enough to know that unlike other Shias they don't have to wait for any hidden Imam to suddenly pop up. Neither they need any Khomeini to come up with a clever explanation of how an Islamic State can be set up without any Mahdi in sight. The Zaidis don't suffer from such complications and can have their Imamat right here and now. In fact, they used to have one and probably much of this insurgency is driven by aspiration to get another one. This is probably the most important thing you should know about Zaidis. If you think that my introduction to Zaidis suck and is inaccurate, you are welcome to post a better one in the comments section.


November 6, 2009

If Mohammad does not go to Vietnam...
This is a kind of "If Mohammad does not go to Vietnam, then Vietnam will come to Mohammad". The Saudis came under attack by Zaidi rebels from across the border. The Saudis reportedly evacuated several border towns and moved army units and special forces into northern Yemen.