The Happy Arab News Service

Saving the World, Helping America

2011-10-06T20:55:00.003+02:00

Last updated: October 6, 2011

August 4, 2007

Sean Penn was the last in a host of celebrities that descended on Venezuela recently to pay tribute to Comandante Chavez. The list of his predecessors includes actor Danny Glover, singer Harry Belafonte and Cindy Sheehan. Chavez generously invited Penn on board of his presidential Airbus jet for a short trip to werstern Venezuela in a company of other dignitaries from Canada, Poland and Burkina Faso (Chavez's 21st century socialism is extremely popular in Burkina Faso. Unfortunately, one of the poorest countries on the planet, Burkina Faso is still dragging its feet with implementation, excusing itself by the absence of oil).

Chavez has always been of a very high opinion of Penn and he had no intention to hide it, even though this could have upset other dignitaries by making them feel underappreciated.

"He's a courageous man," Chavez said as he introduced Penn to reporters and dignitaries during the flight from Caracas to western Venezuela. "He's very quiet, but he has a fire burning inside."

Sean Penn - Burning from inside

Chavez lauded Penn as "a man who is critical of his government and of imperialism". He also complimented Penn on his style of acting and concluded his laudatory session with "And he's anti-Bush!".

This is not to say that Sean Penn remained owing to the Venezuelan president or something. At the end of the trip, Chavez and Penn donned white lab coats and toured an agricultural research laboratory. Here Chavez made a revolutionary speech addressing a crowd of workers and local residents.

While Chavez made a speech, however, Penn stood at a distance alongside the audience, occasionally jotting down notes. He spoke only when Chavez asked the actor to say a few words.

"I came here looking for a great country. I found a great country," Penn told the crowd.

During the trip the guests were also taken to an area at the border with Colombia. There Chavez noted that this is "one of the most tense zones of Latin America". With a map of the region in his hand, Chavez warned his companions that "the U.S. empire has a strong presence on the Colombian side", sending shivers down the spine of Penn and other dignitaries.

Chavez found in Penn an attentive and understanding listener. At the end of a very fruitful and encouraging exchange of ideas and views between the two that touched on various subjects ranging from the situation of the world in general to internal problems of their home countries, Chavez came up with a few highly practical conclusions:

Enlivened by his conversations with Penn, the socialist president lambasted the U.S. government for "destroying the world" with war and warned of brewing economic troubles, saying Washington should do much more for its own poor.

"There could be a revolution there," Chavez said. "We'll help them. The United States must be helped because the United States is going to implode."

Source: AP via Yahoo

Some dignitaries struggled to comprehend how exactly the comandante is going to help the US. Is he going to help America by helping the revolution to happen or by helping America to prevent the revolution? Yet everybody was greatly relieved to know (Penn in particular because he lives in the US) that the comandante is aware of America's brewing economic troubles and has a clear plan of action for saving the US in case some shit happens.

God Bless America

Or, as they say in Venezuela: Socialismo O Muerte !!!

Penn and Chavez - Saving the World, Helping America

October 6, 2011

Sean Penn is burning again
Sean Penn is on fire again as the revolutionary fervor of the Arab Spring is spreading to the faraway shores of North America. Upon landing in the capital of the Libyan revolution - Benghazi, Penn told an AFP reporter

"This is my first visit to inspirational Libya. I am inspired by the Arab Spring."

Source: CBS

From Benghazi Penn flew to Tripoli where he praised the courage of the Libyan people. Penn declined to comment on exactly what his plans were during a press conference in Tripoli. But then he added, in Penn's inimitable laconic, yet cutting through, style, "I came here looking for a great country. And I found a great country."

Penn's old friend and source of inspiration, Hugo Chavez, was in shock. For a while Chavez was inclined to dismiss the whole thing as another example of how a gringo always remains a gringo. But that would be racist and Chavez, as everybody knows, is against racism. So, instead, Chavez concluded that Penn's impressionability had made him an unstable and immature individual highly susceptible to media manipulations by the US empire. Chavez made sure though to have the political ignorance of his gringo friend exposed for all revolutionary masses around the world to see.

"The Libyans are resisting the invasion and aggression. I ask God to protect the life of our brother Muammar Gaddafi. They're hunting him down to kill him," he said.

"No one knows where Gaddafi is, I think he went off to the desert ... to lead the resistance. What else can he do?"

These are hard times for the revolutionary brotherhood and the sales of low-cost household appliances and other consumer goods have plunged in Venezuela as the revolutionary masses, dismayed by a string of recent setbacks, cut short on eating and drinking and other acts of consumption, dragging the economy down. There was little Chavez could say to encourage the masses, besides reaffirming Venezuela's support for and solidarity with the embattled revolutionaries in the Middle East.

"I spoke yesterday with the president of Syria, our brother President Bashar al-Assad," Chavez said in a televised ceremony to present low-cost household appliances for Venezuelans.

"From here, we send our solidarity to the Syrian people, to President Bashar. They are resisting imperial aggression, the attacks of the Yankee empire and its European allies."

Source: Reuters

Despite the general revolutionary doom and gloom, in the wake of Chavez's address to the masses, the sales of low cost household appliances in Venezuela have indeed recovered a little bit. But with the Yankee empire and its European allies gone on rampage wrecking havoc around the world, who knows for how long...

Peace will prevail!

2011-09-29T09:21:00.011+03:00

As the new darling of all peace loving people on this planet rushed to listen to Abbas formally requesting the United Nations to grant a Palestinian state full membership, his path into the General Assembly was blocked by UN security guards (The problem was that Erdogan and his entourage were trying to storm their way into the assembly through a wrong entry). Yet, you cannot stop the man who won the admiration of leftists in Israel and elsewhere by standing up to the Israeli aggressor. Several UN security officials were badly bruised and one ended in a hospital. According to eyewitnesses, the Grand Sultan of all Turks/Caliph of the Arabs personally took part in the fight. In sharp contrast to the unrepentant Zionist warmongers during the Mavi Marmara incident, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon confessed his sins and apologized to Turkish diplomats.

The fall-out was still continuing yesterday, as representatives for UN security guards accused the Turkish delegation of bullying and expressed disappointment in the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after hearing that he had apologised to Turkish diplomats for the incident.

One of the UN security officers was reportedly taken to hospital after the two sides traded blows, and the incident continued in a second confrontation later in the afternoon.

Source: Independent

Erdogan to the General Assembly: You cannot stop peace. Peace will prevail!

Danish Cartoons Revisited

2011-07-14T20:27:00.003+03:00

14 July 2011

A suicide bomber has killed four people at a memorial service in Kandahar for the assassinated half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

President Karzai was not present at the memorial. Four of his other brothers were but escaped unharmed.

Ahmad Wali Karzai, a controversial but key figure in Nato's battle against the Taliban, was killed by his bodyguard.

Officials say the attacker was stopped at the mosque's entrance, where he blew himself up.

Witnesses, including President Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omer, said he had hidden the explosives in his turban. Provincial intelligence chief Gen Mohammad Naeem Momin told the Associated Press that early investigations supported the reports.

Among those killed was Hikmatullah Hikmat, the head of Kandahar's Ulema Council, said the ministry. The council is an influential body of clerics in charge of regulating religious issues in the province.

Source: BBC News

History is not about to repeat itself

2011-06-18T17:27:00.022+03:00

History does not repeat itself except in the minds of those who do not know history

Khalil Gibran

The Arab Spring is frequently compared to the Berlin Wall, the Prague Spring and such events in Eastern Europe. By association it's exciting expectations of a similar outcome, namely, that liberal democracy and prosperity are on the verge to triumph in the Middle East. As one who both was exposed to the anti communist dissidence in Eastern Europe and is following closely the so called Arab Spring, let me state it in the most clear terms possible: The Arab Spring resembles East European anti Communist movements only to those who either have no idea what it was like in Eastern Europe, or have no idea what the Arab Spring is about, or both.

Basically, the prospects of the Arab Spring vary from country to country. The one that holds most promise in my view is Tunisia. Egypt is already on the border of hopelessness. The rest are disasters waiting to happen. In fact, Eastern Europe has also had very different transitions from the Communist rule. Not all of them were as inspirational as the Berlin Wall. In this sense, if the general Arab Spring resembles something, it's some kind of a hybrid between Yugoslavia, Romania and Kyrgyzstan. The last one is not exactly Eastern Europe but is illustrative as a Muslim former Soviet republic. And the hybrid example is not meant to say that the Arab Spring combines the best of the afore mentioned transitions, but rather their worst parts. From now on when I say Eastern Europe, it would mean by understanding only success stories such as Poland, the Baltic states or Czechoslovakia.

The first difference between the Arab Spring and Eastern Europe lies in the fact that the most impressive East European anti Communist uprisings did not happen as an act of desperation. It's not that people in those countries did not have expectations for a better economic future, or did not pin hopes on free market economy as a way to catch up with the West. But these uprisings were not carried out by hungry people who were driven to the edge by pervasive abuse by security forces. Eastern Europe was not starved or abused into rebellion. In many places there was a genuine and long standing popular longing for a more open and liberal regime.

That's why neither Eastern Europe was chasing after its former communist rulers the style of the Middle East where revolutions often look like tribal vendettas against the elites and ruling parties. In many East European countries Communist parties have reformed and their new reincarnations became part of the political landscape. There was simply not enough bitterness and petty vengeance in Eastern Europe to unleash paranoid witch hunts and settling of scores which are rapidly becoming the staple of Arab Springs in the Middle East.

Two, these anti Communist movements were just as much anti Communist as they were pro Western. I mean they were usually both to the same degree. Whole generations of East European dissidents grew on badly jammed broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Liberty. The readiness with which Eastern Europe takes part in US military missions abroad, Poland provided the third largest contingent of forces in Iraq, goes well beyond short term alliances of convenience. It reflects the genuine sense of strategic partnership and ideological affinity many East European nations feel towards the US as the leader of the Western World. To adopt the Western political model and to be integrated into the West was the same thing for the leaders of anti Communist movements in Eastern Europe. East European revolutionaries would have been unlikely guests on the Guardian or al-Jazeera sites.

Compared to Eastern Europe, the Arab Spring is blessed with a certain schizophrenic quality. On one hand, the revolutionaries basically want to adopt democracy, a model of society that originated, matured in and is promoted by the West. On the other hand, the bulk of revolutionaries remain deeply suspicious, if not outright hostile, to the West. The Western political model is good, but the West itself is bad, neocolonialist and imperialistic.

Shortly after the Arab Spring hit Egypt, Wikileaks published a series of leaks that revealed that the US was actually constantly pressuring Mubarak behind the scenes to liberalize the political system in Egypt. In fact, it transpired from the leaks that the US was funding and training Egyptian activists. These leaks even inspired certain conspiracy theories about America orchestrating the revolution in Egypt. It's noteworthy that these leaks were ignored or downplayed by the Egyptian opposition, even though they provided a perfect opportunity for both sides to mend their relations. The simple truth is that the Egyptian opposition, even the secular one, is simply not interested in such revelations because it shares the same paranoid anti Western mindset with the rest of the population.

One reason for this state of affairs is of course the simple fact that Eastern Europe may be Eastern, but it's still Europe. Another reason is that the West has changed since Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall was facing the West of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, a very self confident and full of the sense of mission West. The Arab Spring was greeted by a very different, heavily demoralized and self hating West, which is crumbling economically and struggling to recover its sense of identity after decades of experiments with multiculturalism and other lunacies. Nevertheless, without a doubt the anti Western conspiratorial paranoia, which is an integral part of the Arab mentality in the Middle East, plays a role here as well.

Three. One thing that the whole Middle East and Libya in North Africa share with Yugoslavia and Kyrgyzia are impossible sectarian and tribal configurations and fragmentation. This makes creation of functional democratic societies in many countries impossible in principle. The Arab Spring is bound to make quite a few states disappear. Yet, it's not even this small technical detail that makes the Arab Spring so unlikely to transition to the Arab Summer. What the East European post Communist economic success stories like Poland and Estonia shared with each other was the elevated degree of enthusiasm for free markets and supply side economics. In some countries post Communist economic shock therapies were carried out with passion. There was an ideological counter reaction against Communism that in many quarters made the word socialism socially unacceptable.

The Arab Spring, on the other hand, is in part a reaction to the pains of the transition to market economy initiated by the Arab regimes during the last two decades. In some countries, the transition was obviously mismanaged and the reforms only partially implemented, but this is beyond the point. Market reforms are usually painful and it can take up to 2-3 years into the transition for the economy to finally take off. In the Arab World the transition to market economy was exacerbated by a simple demographic fact. Economically and socially the Arab World is currently reliving the peak of its demographic explosion that happened 20-30 year ago. As that generation is currently entering the labor market and searching for housing, the system frays. The pain, however, came to be habitually associated with the reforms and corruption. In the Middle East the notion of free market does not enjoy any particular popularity in revolutionary circles. But re-nationalization of already privatized industries can be quite a hit.

It's this anti capitalist and anti market populist streak of the Arab Spring that makes it so prone to turn into fiasco. The Arab World can afford no populist adventures right now because the demographic, and in some places plain Malthusian, pressures would quickly make the society explode and disintegrate. The primary reason that Tunisia is not as hopeless as the rest lies in the fact that its demographic situation is better. The number of new entrees on the labor market should soon start declining. The rest of the Arab World has at least another decade of pain to go through. No socialist shortcuts are possible here. But expectations of such shortcuts are very much what the Arab Spring is about.

To put it short, history is unlikely to repeat itself and it's not the Prague Spring which is currently on rampage around the Middle East. I am sure this should be quite a devastating piece of news for those people who were foolish enough to let themselves get hooked on the notion of history endlessly going through the same boring routines. As a gesture of good will on my part, I invite these people instead to contemplate the image attached below. It's not about the Berlin Wall coming down in Cairo, but nevertheless it's still something which is definitely trying to repeat itself.

Roses in the Desert

2011-06-06T22:32:00.003+03:00

Update: Vogue removed the infamous eulogy of Asma al-Assad from its site. No worry. Use this link.

The Closet Reformer

April 05, 2007 | Zeina Karam, Associated Press

DAMASCUS -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi challenged the White House on Middle East policy yesterday, meeting with Syria's leader and insisting "the road to Damascus is a road to peace."

Source: The Boston Globe

April 8, 2010

John Kerry: Syria is an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region... I am very committed to working on a continued effort to achieve progress in our bilateral relationship.

Source: AP via Haaretz

March 27, 2011
Interview With Bob Schieffer of CBS's Face the Nation

Hillary Clinton: There’s a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.

Source: U.S. State Department

The good old days and the good old friends - Secretary Clinton and Mutassim, one of Gaddafi's kids, otherwise Libyan National Security Adviser

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press – Tue Apr 26

BEIRUT – Gunfire reverberated Tuesday in the southern Syrian city of Daraa where the dead still lay unclaimed in the streets a day after a brutal government crackdown on the popular revolt against President Bashar Assad, residents said.

. . .

A Daraa resident said on Tuesday that "dead bodies were still in the streets because no one has been able to remove them."

"We are being subjected to a massacre," the man screamed over the telephone as gunfire crackled in the background. "Children are being killed. We have been without electricity for three days. We have no water."

Making the World a Better Place

(AP) – Mar 30, 2011

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad blamed "conspirators" Wednesday for an extraordinary wave of dissent against his authoritarian rule, but he failed to lift the country's despised emergency law or offer any concessions in his first speech since the protests began nearly two weeks ago.

Within hours of Assad's speech, residents of the port city of Latakia said troops opened fire during a protest by about 100 people — although it was not immediately clear whether they were firing in the air or at the protesters. The residents asked that their names not be published for fear of reprisals.

Assad said Wednesday that Syria is facing "a major conspiracy" that aims to weaken this country of 23 million.

Pity a dictator who is running short on excuses to keep shooting people. Fortunately, there are always well intentioned folks around who are only happy to oblige. Perfect timing, Assange!

April 18, 2011 | Gary Thomas

Citing leaked cables released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, The Washington Post newspaper reported Monday that the United States funneled at least $6 million to the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based umbrella group of Syrian exiles. The report quotes diplomatic cables as saying some of the funds went to TV Barada, a satellite TV channel also based in London that began beaming anti-government programming to Syria in 2009.

. . .

Murhaf Jouejati, a Syrian-born analyst at the Middle East Institute, says just the news of the funding will give Syrian President Bashar Assad ammunition to try to discredit the growing anti-government movement and stem the protests gripping the country.

"I think that it is significant in as far as the Syrian government is probably going to use this in order to show its people that, yes, not only is this unrest foreign-backed, but foreign-sponsored," said Jouejati.

Source: VOANews

Watching Human Rights in the Middle East
They say the IMF missed the Arab revolution with its upbeat reports about the economies of Tunisia and Egypt. But what do they have to say about this?

So What Was Human Rights Watch Up to in 2010?
Alana Goodman 01.12.2011

In 2010, HRW published 51 documents on “Israel and the Occupied Territories,” more than on any other country in the Middle East. Compare that to the organization’s research on some of the most notorious human rights abusers — it published only 44 documents on Iran, 34 on Egypt, and 33 on Saudi Arabia.

The group overlooks some of the worst human rights abuses in closed countries, like Syria and Libya and Algeria. NGO Monitor writes that “One of three major reports on Israel in 2010 consisted of 166 pages, while ten years of research on human rights violations in Syria produced a 35-page report.” (!!!)

Source: Commentary Magazine

Banner from the Human Rights Watch site

The Fool-in-Chief and the Brotherhood of Arabs

Fri Apr 8

CAMP MAREZ, Iraq (AFP) – US military action in Libya did not set a precedent for future American intervention in other Middle Eastern countries facing uprisings or unrest, Pentagon chief Robert Gates said on Friday.

"What has made Libya unique is first of all a request, which is unprecedented in my experience, of the Arab League actually asking for an intervention in the Middle East, to take on an Arab government mistreating its own people," the US defence secretary said.

Source: AFP via Yahoo News

The Arab League - The ultimate source of international legitimacy

Posted By Colum Lynch | Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Last week, ambassadors from the Arab League issued a letter supporting Damascus's bid for a seat on the Human Rights Council (HRC). The U.N.'s Asia Group had already announced in January its endorsement of Syria's candidacy for the rights council, and the group plans to push for a vote in the General Assembly next month....

"Syria's campaign for a seat on the Human Rights Council is a slap in the face to the victims of the current crackdown, and an embarrassment to those who have supported its candidacy," said Philippe Bolopion, the U.N. director for Human Rights Watch. "By supporting Syria's candidacy, the Asian Group and the Arab League risk emboldening Syria's bloody crackdown and making a mockery of the Human Rights Council."

Source: Foreign Policy

Posted By David Bosco | Thursday, April 28, 2011

Is this the same Arab League whose support of a Libya no-fly zone was treated by the Obama administration and the West generally as legitimizing international intervention there? Could it be that this regional organization was in fact not acting on high principle--or motivated by the "responbility to protect"--but was instead simply seizing an opportunity to skewer the hated Gaddafi? It's safe to say that the Arab League's brief moment of being treated as Fount of International Legitimacy and Gateway to a Security Council Resolution has ended. Now it's back to just being the Arab League.

Source: Foreign Policy

A Rose in the Desert

ANDREW RETTMAN

23.04.2011 @ 10:33 CET
EUOBSERVER / BEIRUT - . . .

. . .

"Given the level of violence, the EU should impose targeted sanctions against key figures in the regime. Visa bans, asset freezes - no more business as usual, no more glossy spreads in Vogue about Louboutin shoes," Houry said.

Source: EUobserver

Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert
by Joan Juliet Buck | photographed by James Nachtwey

Asma al-Assad, Syria’s dynamic first lady, is on a mission to create a beacon of culture and secularism in a powder-keg region—and to put a modern face on her husband’s regime.

. . .

The 35-year-old first lady’s central mission is to change the mind-set of six million Syrians under eighteen, encourage them to engage in what she calls “active citizenship.” “It’s about everyone taking shared responsibility in moving this country forward, about empowerment in a civil society. We all have a stake in this country; it will be what we make it.”

. . .

The presidential family lives surrounded by neighbors in a modern apartment in Malki. On Friday, the Muslim day of rest, Asma al-Assad opens the door herself in jeans and old suede stiletto boots, hair in a ponytail, the word happiness spelled out across the back of her T-shirt. At the bottom of the stairs stands the off-duty president in jeans—tall, long-necked, blue-eyed. A precise man who takes photographs and talks lovingly about his first computer, he says he was attracted to studying eye surgery “because it’s very precise, it’s almost never an emergency, and there is very little blood.”

The Core Issue

JANUARY 31, 2011
Interview With Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

President Assad: I am not talking here on behalf of the Tunisians or the Egyptians. I am talking on behalf of the Syrians. It is something we always adopt. We have more difficult circumstances than most of the Arab countries but in spite of that Syria is stable. Why? Because you have to be very closely linked to the beliefs of the people. This is the core issue.

Source: WSJ

In Search of the Kraken

2011-05-17T17:21:00.021+03:00

Sperm Whale Encounter from Howard Hall on Vimeo.

This post is tribute to the legendary sea monster. The legend has it that this creature is so huge that the Kraken was occasionally mistaken for an island and found its way into ancient maps only to be never seen again after a while.

Modern science believes that Kraken is a collective name for as many as eight different species. The search for the Kraken still goes on...

In Search of the Kraken

Giant Squid (Architeuthis) vs Sperm Whale

Artwork by Ryan Somma

Stop Importing Arab Oil

2011-05-16T19:15:00.008+03:00

You have to be a Yankee to continue persisting in your addiction to petroleum imports when searches like this hit google from such places as Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. Verily, the energy unintelligence of these people is without limits

The Ride of Your Life

2011-05-05T22:44:00.006+03:00

This post is tribute to the giant manta ray.

The Ghosts of the Ocean Night (Best viewed in full screen)

Giant Manta flying into the Sky

The Ride of Your Life (Best viewed in full screen)

Underwater Birds

PS

If you know good videos, post me links in the comments section. I will update the post. Also check the Deep Blue Sea label for more of this stuff

Bashar or Abdullah?

2011-04-29T18:22:00.004+03:00

Last updated: April 29, 2011

September 27, 2010

This post was inspired by my exchange with Mathan on FB and it pertains to the debate about what is the best predictor of survivability of a political leader in the Middle East, watch or binoculars, and who is the next Arab leader to be kicked out. Says Martin Kramer, the most senior proponent of the watch school:

A few years ago, I heard an officer in Israeli military intelligence say that there's nothing so comical as the sight of Bashar Asad, ophthalmologist, peering through binoculars at a military exercise. He looks so unmilitary. I didn't know exactly what that meant, but now I do. Just look at this picture, taken on Monday at a Syrian military exercise at an "undisclosed location," and released by the official Syrian press agency.

. . .

But there's something even funnier. Where's his watch? His wrists are bare. Now as anyone knows, you can't last for an hour in any military, even the Syrian, without a watch.

. . .

Compare the Bashar photo to this shot of Jordan's King Abdullah, at a Special Operation Forces Exhibition held in March at a Jordanian airbase. On this basis alone, I'm betting that Abdullah outlasts Bashar.

Read Bashar Watch for the best of comparative analyses of the watch school. Now I would argue that the way a leader in question handles binoculars in general is a much better predictor of his chances for survival. Take for example Israel's defense minister during the war in Lebanon, Amir Peretz.

Here is Amir Peretrz watching military exercises after the war. He got a watch, so Kramer's theory does not apply here, but he got everything else wrong.

Amir Peretz seeing black

According to the reporter, our defense minister looked through the capped binoculars three times nodding in agreement as the new chief of stuff was explaining to him what's in view. After seeing this you are unlikely to be surprised too much by the outcome of that war or Peretz's short lived political career.

Unconvinced by either of the two leading schools on the subject? Then compare these, Peretz vs Bashar. Bashar is still there, but Peretz is already out.

This debate is getting even more fascinating when the fact is considered that when it comes to political leaders of the Arab World, the word outlast often should be taken literally. Bashar Assad knows it better than anybody else since he inherited Syria from his father.

Throughout the first years of the 1980s the Muslim Brotherhood and various other Islamist factions staged hit-and-run and bomb attacks against the government and its officials, including a nearly successful attempt to assassinate president Hafez al-Assad on June 26, 1980, during an official state reception for the president of Mali. When a machine-gun salvo missed him, al-Assad allegedly ran to kick a hand grenade aside, and his bodyguard (who survived and was later promoted to a much higher position) smothered the explosion of another one. Surviving with only light injuries, al-Assad's revenge was swift and merciless: only hours later a large number of imprisoned Islamists (most reports ranged from several hundred to approximately 1000) were ~~murdered~~ put to death in their cells in Tadmor Prison (near Palmyra), by units loyal to the president's brother Rifaat al-Assad.

Source: Wikipedia

April 29, 2011

Et tu, Bashar?

Thanks to Maysaloon for the links from his The Collector's Guide to Fine Arabic Propaganda. A new index is introduced to improve measuring the survivability of Arab leaders - the Arab propaganda index. The first video is a eulogy to the now imprisoned president Mubarak, while the second is dedicated to Gaddafi's son Khamis, though the daddy is never too far away. The videos are self explanatory as long as you remember that Hosni Mubarak was out after the first three weeks of the revolution, while two months since the beginning of the Libyan rebellion the NATO looks hopelessly stuck in Libya with its rebels struggling to advance a meter despite having Western powers as their private air force.

And here comes a propaganda clip Maysaloon picked for the man who Abu Rakun disparagingly refers to as Kitty the Younger. I don't think I need to elaborate on the point I am making here.

Libya Slapstick Novel

2011-04-17T16:35:00.017+03:00

Lat updated: April 26, 2011

April 17, 2011

Rebels in Benghazi with a huge poster: NO foreign intervention - Libyan People Can Manage It ALONE!

By ROD NORDLAND
Published: April 17, 2011

On Saturday, the chief of staff of the Free Libya Forces, as the rebels style themselves, General Abdel Fattah Younes, told Al Arabiya television that their fighters were already in Brega and expected to conclude their capture of the city by Sunday.

“We are in a not-too-bad state of preparedness and our army fighters, youths and rebels are now doing a good job — and in the morning there will be good news,” Al Arabiya quoted General Younes as saying about Brega on Saturday.

. . .

. . .

Good news on Sunday

. . .

. . .

“Where are the NATO forces?” asked Absalam Hamid, who identified himself as a rebel captain. “We don’t know why they didn’t bomb them.” Strong winds and a sandstorm lowered visibility Sunday and may have made it difficult for air support to engage targets, although Captain Hamid said NATO planes had not been active the day before either, when government forces began advancing.

He turned around his pickup truck, which like many had a mounted heavy machine gun on the back, and headed toward Benghazi, followed by a dozen other vehicles. Some had rocket pods from helicopter gunships and jet fighters mounted on the rear of their pickup beds; others sported long rocket tubes, but no rockets to use in them.

“Where is America, where is France, we need Sarkozy,” one of the men shouted. “We have no army.”

Source: The New York Times

Abu Rakun told me that if I drop my Libyan links somewhere, by this act alone I would make an excellent novel. Indeed, it's since years that I did not laugh so much. Given that Facebook is not a good method for storing links, the comments section of this post is going to become the repository of my Libyan links. You are advised to check it from time to time. You are very likely to enjoy it.

Libya Slapstick Novel

April 26, 2011

US drones enter the fray in Libya

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States launched its first Predator drone strike in Libya on Saturday, the Defense Department said in a statement.

It did not provide details on the target of the strike, saying only that it occurred in the early afternoon local time in Libya.

Source: Reuters

US drones in action: No one gives you power because all of it is yours

Maikel Nabil was sentenced Monday to three years in prison for criticizing the military

2011-04-11T18:24:00.000+03:00

April 11, 2011

Maikel Nabil was sentenced Monday to three years in prison for criticizing the military.

Egypt Sentences Blogger to 3 Years

By LIAM STACK and ETHAN BRONNER
Published: April 11, 2011

Mr. Ramadan said that a military tribunal had sentenced Mr. Nabil to serve his term in Tora Prison here. His lawyers and his family were barred from communicating with him after the sentencing.

Source: NYTimes

Here is his support group on FB: Free Maikel Nabil Sanad. Please support!

February 10, 2011

Faysal from the Thinking Lebanese on Bloomberg

The Thinking Lebanese blog was removed and they probably don't need it now anyway given that they switched to "blogging" on Bloomberg. However, the Silent is running another blog here and Faysal occasionally drops comments there too. So if you are missing the Thinking Lebanese blog, which in my view was the best Lebanese blog at the time, some bits of it are still live and kicking on the Silent's new page.

This revolution will be televised!
Sandmonkey tell his story on CNN

Sandmonkey talks to MSNBC

February 9, 2011

The Story of 2 Days I spent at the Egyptian Intelligence
Maikel Nabil asked us to share his story

February 3, 2011

Sandmonkey has been arrested and his blog closed

His last entry, via Lisa Goldman: Egypt, right now

Oh the mess

2011-03-22T17:49:00.006+02:00

Gaddafi supporters have erected human shields around Tripoli. Yet, the British have hit one of Gaddafi's compounds. I don't understand who is giving orders to bomb and what there. The impression is of some kind of anarchy. All they had to do is to tell Gaddafi to retreat some 50 miles away from Misurata and Benghazi and bomb him if he fails to comply. Instead they are bombing Tripoli while Misurata has been apparently overrun by Gaddafi forces right under their noses.

The US seems to have let itself be dragged into this for the sake of keeping alive the option of humanitarian interventions. Yet, the mission is exceeding its UN mandate so massively that everybody from the Arab League to India are distancing themselves from their mission now. The US says the UN is not to take part in fighting there, yet the French are trying to bomb a passage into Ajdabiya for the rebels. The French in particular seem to be on the loose. It's such a problematic and critical country for Europe and they are acting like amateurs. Hard to believe that this is what NATO has become.

Though I should notice that everything that preceded this operation, from the media spin about alleged Gaddafi's atrocities to the planning stage, was apparently no better. It was a mess from the beginning and it continues this way. This is likely the most mismanaged operation in NATO's history

Next in line, please

2011-03-19T20:55:00.020+02:00

This one continues my previous Next in line which became too long. Notice I don't cover everything since a while. This is a very selective coverage.

Last updated: March 20, 2011

March 2, 2011

Now bring the traitorous agent of the Jews to trial

This one is something you are not going to see reported on al-Jazeera, which is based in Qatar and basically a baby of the local emir. MEMRI says dozens of thousands liked pages calling for a revolution against the traitorous agent of the Jews and Yankees. There seems to be no media coverage of Qatar in the mainstream media either. So MEMRI is going to be your al-Jazeera for Qatar.

Though it contains no clear doctrine or specific information regarding the aims of the revolution, or the manner in which it is to be conducted, the pictures and texts posted to the page indicate fierce protest against Qatar's foreign and domestic policies under the current emir, and against the actions of his wife, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, and her involvement in the country's affairs of state. The page's profile picture shows the emir's photo with a large X on it, and bears the message, "For the sake of Qatar, bring the traitorous agent of the Jews to trial."

Source: MEMRI

Don't hold your breath, Qatar is the richest kingdom in the Gulf. Nevertheless, keep in mind that life is not without nice little surprises.

March 19, 2011

Keep Hope Alive
In general, I hate when people don't wait and push themselves into the queue. In particular, after I had everybody lined up in an orderly fashion. However, for Syria, any time and every time.

Frankly, I don't hold my breath, but maybe there are things for which even I don't dare to hope. I bet it's not for nothing that doctors always recommend to hope for better.

March 20, 2011

The watch school triumphs as the lion blinks

The protests in Syria having gone into their third day, the watch school triumphs as the lion of the Golan blinks...

An official statement said "infiltrators" claiming to be high ranking officers had been visiting security stations and asking security forces to fire at any suspicious gathering.

Citizens should report anyone suspected of trying to fool the security apparatus "into using violence and live ammunition against any suspicions gathering," the statement said.

Source: Reuters

With your kind permission, ya lion of the Julan, let me solemnly declare that from now on anybody who orders to or actually shoots at the protesters is an infiltrator. Yallah open the floodgates!

The second tsunami hits the shore. Everybody, please seek a higher ground

Shalom Pearl

2011-03-18T20:04:00.008+02:00

The most bizarre installment in my Shalom Haver sequel. Bahrain's famous landmark is gone amidst a fierce Saudi and Bahraini crackdown on a Shia rebellion that was raging on the island during the last weeks.

I have no idea what to say about this, but in this region symbols are important and we told you so. You've been WARNED!

The mad dog of the Middle East and the Chihuahuas of the West

2011-03-13T01:49:00.031+02:00

“Let’s just call a spade a spade,” Mr. Gates said. “A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses. That’s the way you do a no-fly zone. And then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down. But that’s the way it starts.”

Source: NYTimes

Therefore, a no-fly zone would begin with airstrikes on known air defense sites. But it would likely continue with sustained patrols by SEAD aircraft armed with anti-radiation missiles poised to rapidly confront any subsequent threat that pops up. Keeping those aircraft on station for an extended period of time would be necessary, along with an unknown number of strikes. It is uncertain where the radars and missiles are located, and those airstrikes would not be without error. When search radars and especially targeting radars are turned on, the response must be instantaneous, while the radar is radiating (and therefore vulnerable) and before it can engage. That means there will be no opportunity to determine whether the sites are located in residential areas or close to public facilities such as schools or hospitals.

Source: Stratfor

CROWLEY: You know what? President Reagan called Muammar Qaddafi the mad dog of the Middle East. Well, the mad dog of the Middle East just met the Chihuahua of the West in President Obama.

Source: FoxNews

From one of the Time's blogs here comes am amateur map of Libyan air defenses created using Google Earth and .. well, and just Google search. According to the blog, Pentagon officials say that the map is "a pretty good snapshot of the Libyan air-defense network".

Source: Swampland
As you probably know, during the last week the forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi have overrun the rebel-held az Zawiyah and Ras Lanuf. The rebel force between Ras Lanouf and Brega appears collapsing and at this rate Gaddafi's forces may soon start marching on Benghazi itself. Naturally, as the regime forces intensify pressure on the rebels, the controversy around the no fly zone grows more intense both internationally and domestically within the US and Europe. So here is the map of the Libyan SAM network again with a map of Libya's cities below.

What you should do is to locate the city of Ras Lanuf on both maps since this is where the rebels and regime forces are currently fighting each other. By juxtaposing the two maps, you should then find the next concentration of air defenses to the right. It basically overlaps with the city of Benghazi, currently under the control of the opposition. The next air defense bases are the cities of Darna and Tobruk, but everything to the east of Benghazi seems to be in the opposition hands. Basically you don't have air defenses anywhere near Ras Lanuf for the very simple reason that the Libyan SAM network is designed to protect big cities such as Tripoli and Benghazi. Neither to the left you have any air defenses until you reach the city of Misratah. Given that Misratah is presently under the opposition control, it's not even obvious that its SAM defenses are operational.

What's the moral of the story? There may exist many reasons why the West should try to avoid getting drawn into the business of setting up no-fly zones over Libya. However, from the purely military perspective a no-fly zone is a pretty safe business. The country is huge, but for most practical purposes Libya is no more than a highway and a string of port cities along the coast. The fighting mostly goes in two locations. The first one is a point on the Benghazi Tripoli axis where Gaddafi and rebel forces are facing each other, right now it's Brega and Ras Lanuf. The second one is a rebel enclave in Gaddafi's backyard around the city of Misratah.

Basically, the rebels are not interested in any no-fly zone over Tripoli since they don't control the capital anyway. The opposition needs only two limited no-fly zones over Ras Lanuf and Misratah. This a very small area to monitor and control. As far as Ras Lanuf is concerned there are no air defenses there at all and it's not obvious that those of Misratah are operational. From the opposition's perspective, if NATO can stop the advance of Gaddafi's forces towards Benghazi along the coast, the rebels are safe everywhere except Misratah.

Stratfor seems to have spotted a multitude of potential difficulties in Libya, but in reality it's the easiest topography for military operations one can find around. The terrain is flat and the rival forces are operating along a highway near the coast, Gadaffi's forces and their armor being totally exposed to attacks from the air.

Basically, all NATO has to do is to position a couple of US carriers opposite Misratah and Ras Lanuf at the distance of a few minutes of of flight from the shore, and wait for a call from the rebels or an alert from an AWACS system. Gaddafi fighter planes can be grounded by destroying runways on government controlled airports. Helicopters are not fast enough to get away anyway. The rebels were apparently also requesting air strikes against armor and artillery positions. It's hard to see why these should be challenging targets for NATO planes. As an extra bonus, all rebel strongholds are port cities that can be easily resupplied with food and fuel from the sea, no land access and ground troops are needed.

Of course it's none of the NATO business to assist the rebels in retaking cities. Winning the civil war is the rebels responsibility. But there is no military challenge in imposing a couple of coastal mini no-fly zones with a view of blocking Gaddafi's advances to the east and protecting Misratah. Targeting tanks and vehicles moving across an open area is an exercise for beginning pilots. Neither ground troops are required, nor a massive air campaign. It's a matter of political will only. No fear! Forward, Obamahuas!

The revolution will be tribalized

2011-03-10T01:50:00.006+02:00

France 24 - The battle of Brega

Links...

Time: Fearing God, Not Gaddafi

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the fearsome leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed in 2006, once said, "I will go to Darnah to see what is this city that is sending so many.

BBC: How Libya's rebels have held their ground

Independent: Gaddafi forces lay a textbook ambush to the rebels, decimating the force that was heading for Sirte

CNN: Morale is high and so are the troops

WSJ: Tribal Politics Underlie Libya's Rifts

Before standing up to rebel forces at Bin Jawad, members of the Hasoony tribe had a taste of what may lay in store in a post-Gadhafi Libya.

Early in the uprising, armed rebels stormed the farm of the Hasoony tribe's leader in Benghazi, Hillal Hasoony, and killed him, say tribal leaders and local officials...

...

Other senior Hasoony members have fled Benghazi, and tribe leaders couldn't be reached for comment.

Sky News - the battle of Zawiyah

Associated Press - Gadhafi Supporters Pour Into Streets

The return of the King

2011-03-01T17:51:00.011+02:00

Last updated: March 1, 2011

February 28, 2011

From the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, the Arab kings are having it tough these days. Wage and subsidy increases are wrecking budgets around the region but seem to be failing to stem rising calls for political reform that would curtail the royal wings. In Bahrain the protesters are even regularly promising to overthrow the monarchy, plainly inviting the ruling dynasty to order to shoot them again. Yet, not everything is lost for the kings. The insurgents in Libya are reported to have recently taken to waving flags of the former monarchy.

There is no telling if the Libyans indeed want their royals back, but if they do, they have the heir apparent readily available in London. It's since a while that the prince is sending signals that he would be more than happy to oblige. Things look shit for some kings as of late, but for other kings the age of kings may be not over yet.

The King of kings of Africa performs "The Return of the King" live on Libyan TV

March 1, 2011

Not all kings are created nuts
By the name of Allah I swear that I have nothing against the Shia. However, if I were the king al-Khalipha, the streets of Manama would have been running red with the blood of Shia protesters long ago. But everybody has his own responsibilities and I am running this blog while the king us running Bahrain and so the streets of Manama are running nowhere as they are packed and jammed with throngs of Shia demonstrators.

Rumors and conspiracy theories are hovering around Bahrain but the story started with the Shia, after a few days of scattered protests, having reached unobstructed the Pearl Roundabout, a famous landmark of the kingdom.

Once on the square, the crowds quickly developed a taste of chanting death slogans against the ruling dynasty, despite conciliatory noises coming from the royal quarters. That very night the security services paid a visit to the protesters peacefully sleeping on their newly liberated Tahrir (Or so they say. I did not notice they were sleeping).

One conspiracy theory circulated at the time was about an internal split within the ruling family. The crackdown was staged by the hardliners at instigation by the Saudis who were basically plotting to have the moderate king overthrown and replaced with somebody with bigger balls. Not sure about what happened to this theory, but the situation right now is pretty much the original square one with the protesters sitting on the square and promising to overthrow the dynasty while the king is busy suggesting new concessions, releasing prisoners and returning opposition leaders from exile.

Now Bahrain is an absolute black box for me and it's very possible that the king's concessions are indeed signs of weakness. However, somehow I struggle to convince myself that the king ran out of other options. The Shia may be in majority in Bahrain, but the Sunnis are many, they are not a negligible minority and the security services are in their hands. And there is that causeway connecting Bahrain to Saudi Arabia which, as some people suggest, was designed with a different purpose in mind than just shipping young Saudi trouble makers out of the country during weekends.

From my limited revolutionary experience, I would suggest that the Shia get to the negotiating table as soon as possible with a list of reasonable demands such as for example a more representational electoral system based on the principle of a country as one voting district casting ballots for party lists. It's out of my deep sympathy for the Shia and their cause that I am suggesting this. Never mind that as a natural revolutionary I am rubbing my hands with glee in anticipation to see this region put on its head. It would be sad to have another massacre in Bahrain to signal a reversal of fortunes for the revolution presently sweeping the Arab World.

And, as a matter of fact, not all kings are created nuts. Some are actually nice guys. And even those, who are not, can be often quite responsive to a few kind words and a bit of quiet. Even in the most ferocious king of kings there's hiding a shy and timid guy. Humans are complex personalities. But you'll never see the king's other side, if you don't try.

Gaddafi declines to reveal a hidden imam

2011-03-01T01:26:00.013+02:00

Links...

Time: Will the Mystery of Lebanon's Missing Imam Be Solved?

The National on democracy in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East

Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Last Updated: Feb 27, 2011

. . .

Eight years after the end of autocracy, citizens and elected officials seem to have little or no understanding of democratic institutions. Friday's "day of rage" protests, when as many as 15 were killed, showed that Iraqis have been unable to differentiate between rallying for a cause, and simply expressing frustration mixed with violence. In one example, angry protesters in the governorate of Wasit burnt the mayor's offices, a key institution of local government.

Harbouring grievances against the elected mayor, who was elected in 2008, is legitimate. But setting fire to a public building, which actually is owned by the protesters as much as anybody else, shows the lack of a distinction between the mayor and public offices in general. And protesters shouldn't be resorting to arson anyway.

Source

Young Palestinian activists have finally found a worthy cause to protest about - The Fatah Hamas split. As long as they are ready to waste time and revolutions on such nonsense, we are safe from another intifada here. On the other hand, Abbas and Fayyad may be not as unpopular in the West Bank after the Palileaks as we believe.

But many Palestinians in the West Bank seem generally satisfied with Mr. Abbas’s administration, which has restored law and order after years of chaos.

Mr. Abbas called for elections by September but Hamas immediately rejected the idea. Mr. Abbas now says that they can take place only if they can be held in the West Bank and Gaza at the same time.

Unlike some regional despots who have ruled for decades, Mr. Abbas is not an autocrat and has been the president only since 2005. He has said that he is not keen to run for another term, and he has on occasion threatened to quit.

“Abbas and Fayyad are very good for us,” said Muhammad Abu Ghazaleh, the owner of a jeans store in Ramallah. “They gave us security.”

Source The New York Times

A few days after Gaddafi has let journalists in, the Guardian says things are actually patchy and Gaddafi seems to still have many supporters in West Libya. The Guardian: Zawiyah

The Art of Middle Eastern Haiku

2011-02-27T23:43:00.001+02:00

Last updated: February 27, 2011

Hokusai, Boy on Mt. Fuji

February 16, 2010

Israeli Hitech Blues

Haiku:

Damned be Bill Gates and his "user-friendly" Windows

The last words of a Windows user

The splash of water

Free Style:

Suspended

between the Heaven and Earth

I am,

Like the blue screen of Windows

that crashed on shutdown.

Like a zombie process

of an operating system,

overwhelmed by persistent

buffer stack overflows.

Waiting

for the all powerful sysadmin

to come and press

on that fateful

Reset button.

Oh Samsara!

of my never ending

reboot reincarnations

Tanka:

The great tide of the Yangtze river

System log is swelling with kernel errors

GUI is the stillness of mount Fuji

burried under cover of winter snow

Oh Futility of the useless mouse

February 27, 2011

Summer season has arrived

Girls dress short. Militants

oil the barrels of their rocket launchers

(Originally published here)

Abu Hokusai, Boy on Jabel Fuji

My enemy is my enemy

My enemy's enemy is my enemy

I have no friends

(Originally published here)

Because it's coming, ya baby!

2011-02-27T13:21:00.009+02:00

According to the WSJ, the Palestinians in the West Bank have lost patience with negotiations and the US and are planning a new strategy that include non violent resistance against Israeli settlements and military presence.

"The message that Palestinians are getting back from the Arab revolutions is the power of nonviolence," said Mustafa Barghouti, an independent Palestinian politician who has organized recent protests and helped focus them on a demand to heal the split.

Source: WSJ

It's not clear what shape the new Palestinian uprising is going to take but I would bet on Fayyad and Abbas taking their people to settlements, roadblocks and military bases to simply lie or sit on roads to block access for supplies and troops. Basically, it should be another version of Tahrir or Pearl square, distributed in hundreds of mini versions. In the face of such a peaceful blockade, the army will have to use force to remove protesters. It goes without saying that cameramen and just regular protesters with cell phones will be present in droves and the international community will be watching this thing non stop for 24 hours via al-Jazeera's special live channel. For a detailed simulation of the approaching Palestinian campaign, check this.

Right now Libya is the main show in the region, but a cloud of potential revolutions is already mushrooming on the horizon. As Gaddafi keeps digging in and refuses to flee, he is running a huge risk to become the first Arab ruler to be not only overthrown by the mob, but lynched as well. Both Ben Ali and Mubarak have escaped such an ignominious end, even though in Egypt the protesters have basically sacrificed their entire revolution and the whole agenda on a pointless campaign to get Mubarak's head. In a region where personal vendettas are soap operas of the masses, having Gaddafi torn to pieces in front of al-Jazeera cameras is bound to leave a lasting impression for the generations to come. Once the revolution in Libya reaches its logical end, another round of the reinvigorated Arab revolution is to be expected elsewhere, including the West Bank.

The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank is presently struggling to recover from a massive fallout triggered by the publication of the Palileaks by al-Jazeera. From the leaks it appears that during the last years the PA has been basically negotiating away all sacred cows of the Palestinian cause such the right of return and Jerusalem. Amidst accusations of treason and betrayal of the Palestinian cause, launching such a mass protest campaign should be the next logical step for Abbas and co. to take in order to rehabilitate themselves. If the revolutionary potential of the Palestinian Street is not channeled against Israel, the street can easily take inspiration from the revolutions in Egypt and elsewhere and turn on the leaders themselves.

In many respects, it's a return to the first Intifadah that won the Palestinians the Oslo process and return of Arafat and his Fatah to Gaza and the cities of the West Bank. As the tide is moving their way, all the Palestinians have to do now is to take their place on the wave of history and ride it together with the rest of the region. It's hard to see how they can lose here, as long as they succeed to preserve a modicum of non violence. This time the Palestinians can rely not only on the public opinion in the West and elsewhere, but also on a reaction of the recently awakened Egyptian, Jordanian and other Arab streets who finally count for something. Given that escalations of protests usually happen after Friday prayers, the beginning of the third Intifada is likely to coincide with more protests on Tahrir squares of Egypt, Yemen and other Arab countries. In terms of the global public opinion, Israel can do little to avoid having itself nicely positioned alongside Mubarak, Ben Ali and their friends.

We should have it very clear that the current situation is the culmination of a long chain of mistakes that started almost from the day one of Israel's occupation of the West Bank. The first and single most important of these mistakes was this, but to sum it all up: It was all one big mistake! The plan to establish a Palestinian state on 50% of the West Bank, floated by Lieberman very recently, is unlikely to placate the Palestinians, but even reasonable offers are now likely to be rejected. There is little Israel can do to delay the inevitable or mitigate its effect, because it's simply too late.

It's hard to know when the third intifada is about to hit the West Bank, but it can happen as soon as this or the next Friday. It does not really matter when it's going to happen. What matters is that we recognize that it's going to happen, because... Well, because it's coming, ya baby!

:D :D

Warming up

2011-02-26T02:35:00.008+02:00

Links...

A revolution after liberation:
Protesters gather for Baghdad's 'Day of Rage'

This one seems finishing warming up before the main action:
Thousands Demand Yemen Leader's Departure - WSJ.com

Clashes in Zawiya, 30 miles west of Tripoli, Feb 24

Libya:

The young men of Benghazi pounded the dreaded military barracks in the city center with everything they could find. They threw stones and crude bombs made of tin cans stuffed with gunpowder. They drove bulldozers into its walls. All under a blaze of gunfire from troops inside that literally tore people in half.

Source: AP

The Palestinians:

Shalom Brother Leader, but the show must go on

2011-02-24T19:19:00.014+02:00

The unforgettable show this blog was promising to the readers in Libya has surpassed all expectations. In a spectacular outburst of madness Gaddafi ordered his air force and navy to bombard Libian cities. The death toll is running in thousands. Now it seems to be only a matter of time before the opposition storms Tripoli and dangles the Brother Leader from a lamp post. The opposition will have no other choice as attempting to try Gaddafi is risky of leading to hours long orations that would decimate the court and audience and overwhelm translators from Arabic assigned an impossible task.

The time has come to add another post to my Shalom Haver series where Gaddafi will join another great "son of Africa" Yoweri Museveni, George Bush and other distinguished individuals. As the time to bid Shalom is approaching, let me praise the Brother Leader by saying that he was one of those rare individuals who could either bore the living daylights out of his audience or leave you rolling on the floor laughing for hours. There seemed to be little left between these two options.

As a global entertainer, Gaddafi has left far behind the two other clowns from the holy trinity of the UN podium clowns, namely Hugo Chavez and Ahmalalah. The Brother Leader has been on the watchlist of this blog since years. I am sure that I am not the only one who is going to miss mr. The King of kings. As we are bidding farewell to the King of kings and the leader of the revolution, I would like to pay homage to the Libyan Brother Leader by linking here one of the last anthologies of his exploits compiled by this blog.

However, we should never forget that that incredible entertainment we owe not only to Gaddafi's personal talents, but to the countless politicians and diplomats, learned idiots from academies of international relations and foreign policy, and other well intentioned individuals around the globe, whose monumental effort finds its culmination in that global podium of psychos, clowns and psycho-clowns called the United Nations. As Gaddafi is steadily progressing towards that lamp post in Tripoli, I want to calm and reassure our readers that the death of Gaddafi will not make the show stop. This is because the show cannot be stopped. This is because the show must go on. This is because we have that theater of the absurd in New York as a guarantor of free global entertainment. Shalom Brother Leader, but the show will go on.

The second wave is coming

2011-02-23T20:16:00.012+02:00

It's time for a summary of the first wave of Arab revolutions. The first wave swept the region and left the regimes reeling while Tunisia was left without a functional government and in Libya the regime of Gaddafi looks like living through its last days. In Egypt the military managed to get hold of the situation but their grip on power is probably a rather tentative one.

A strange situation is developing in Bahrain which is threatening to put all our notions about the region on their head. Of course, Bahrain is one of the most developed countries in the region. Nevertheless, it still looks strange. Basically, the Shia in Bahrain seem getting their way despite the security apparatus being firmly under the Sunni control.

The Arab economic reform appears largely dead by now with the regimes reversing years of economic reforms. Everywhere food and fuel subsidies have been reinstituted or increased. Many regimes are rushing programs to boost employment in the public sector and putting on hold privatization programs. Budget and trade deficits are rising. On top of this a wave of labor unrest is sweeping the region driving up labor costs and putting more pressure on the budgets. Capital flight from the region is accelerating and this list of negative economic consequences can go on. The present defeat of the Arab economic reform at the hands of the revolution ensures another round of revolutionary turmoil in a few years from now, when the unemployment crisis escalates again amidst severe inflationary pressures and economic slowdown.

Meanwhile the second wave of revolutions appears about to hit the region soon. Maybe in a matter of days.

The second wave is coming

I would stick my head out and predict that Israel and Iran will be hit during the second wave. I elaborated a bit on this point here. I would only add that as far as Israel is concerned, if not this Friday, then the next one or at some point later, but the blockade of Gaza will crumble on the Egyptian side. As a matter of fact, the first march may well be launched not in the West Bank, but against Egyptian part of the border in Gaza. Though I am not sure about from which side. As a matter of fact, the wall may come under attack from both sides.

We should also have it very clear that once the genie is out of the bottle, means once the Arab Street is unleashed, it's probably impossible to bottle it back. The Arab Street is euphoric and intoxicated by the feeling of people power. Basically it looks like the Palestinians and Muslim Brothers across the border are about to take hostage the two peace treaties Israel has respectively with Egypt and Jordan. Large scale military operations in Gaza and the West Bank are probably no longer possible. Unless of course Israel is ready to risk seeing the weakened regimes in Egypt and Jordan swept away by another wave of popular unrest.

The first wave left Yemen thrown off balance and as the protests in Yemen are continuing, the country looks increasingly teetering on the bring of disintegration and civil war. For some reason the protests seem to be failing to take off in Algeria and Iran. Nevertheless, I am still cautiously betting on a revolution to break out in Tehran and other Iranian cities (Maybe because I want to see it so much).

I would also make two more observations. First of all, even in Tunisia the post revolution has disintegrated into a mess. As far as Libya and Yemen go, I can only see no longer a mess, but a disaster. The collapse of both countries can seriously cool down the enthusiasm for more revolutions. Neither Egypt is likely to have a very inspiring post revolution given the already mounting economic losses and labor unrest. In short, whatever revolutions the Arabs and Persians are planning there, they should be executed now before the post revolutionary mess in Libya and elsewhere hits TV screens.

Two, a year and a half ago, when the first signs of an approaching destabilization became apparent, I said that the regimes seemed to be missing quite a few of their once formidable teeth. Information coming from Libya is sketchy but it looks like the Libyan regime is an exception to the rule. Gaddafi apparently threw everything, from fighter jets to navy, into a battle against the protesters. Nevertheless, despite an old fashioned crackdown, the regime has already lost control over large chunks of the country. My understanding of the situation is that by now some revolutions are being fueled by the pure revolutionary contagion. This makes it difficult to know for certain where this thing is going to strike next. Basically any country in the region can find itself on the way of the next wave.

A king on a very big powder keg

2011-02-22T01:09:00.018+02:00

Jordan can be much more of a powder keg than generally believed. And I am saying this as one who not so long ago wrote a post titled exactly A king on a powder keg. To put it short, to say that the king is sitting on a powder keg may be a serious understatement. That the king was recently threatened with revolt by leaders of major Bedouin tribes, the traditional supporters of the monarchy, has amazed many. The letter addressed to the king by the tribal leaders was referred to by the media as another sign of the freedom revolution spreading through the region. However this particular visit of freedom to Jordan, besides a regular mix of populist social and economic demands, came accompanied by ominous sectarian undertones, the tribal chiefs revealed intense hostility to the king's liberal Palestinian wife.

The royal couple

The reason for this divergence between the king and his traditional tribal supporters lies in the sectarian context of the economic liberalization the king was promoting in Jordan in recent years. A recent article in the National is right on target regarding the sectarian dimension of the economic reform in Jordan.

Don Duncan
Last Updated: Feb 16, 2011

. . .

Figures from a recent census have been kept secret, but most people agree that Jordanians of Palestinian origin now represent a majority and may even number as much as 70 per cent of the country's estimated 6.4 million people. This demographic divide has an economic dimension.

Traditionally, East Bankers have dominated the public sector, while Palestinian Jordanians commanded the private sector. This arrangement worked well until the late 1980s, when a financial crisis brought in the International Monetary Fund, which demanded that the government privatise parts of what was then a very large public sector. Jordan began selling off its profit-making state-owned companies and reducing the workforce in its government ministries.

. . .

Source: Upheavals highlight tension

The king's traditional support base are the East Bankers who are probably already in minority but assured overrepresentation in the political system by various means including gerrymandering of voting districts. The logic of the economic reform, dictated by the IMF and just plain common sense, favors the more urban and educated Palestinians. This is not to say that majority of the Palestinians should be necessarily happy about subsidy cuts for food and fuel. However, the majority of those, who were capable enough to take advantage of the reforms, are Palestinians. On the other hand, the East Bankers were not only left behind, but also have to face massive layoffs in the state sector and privatized companies.

Given that the reforms are primarily benefiting the Palestinians, the king would have probably found it easier to be a king of the Palestinians. However, the king lives in the Middle East, where sectarian cages are nearly impossible to escape. So now the king is stuck with his backward tribal constituency which is in revolt against his economic policies. The king started paddling back hard on economic reforms to placate his Bedouins, but surrendering the economy to the mob is not without consequences.

East Bank Jordanians like Mr Snaid are a key base for the monarchy and the cabinet. They occupy most of the crucial positions in government and the security services and are therefore integral to the maintenance of stability in Jordan.

To stave off an escalation of the protests, the king has responded to their demands. Earlier this month, he fired his cabinet, replaced his pro-privatisation premier, and promised to invest US$125 million in the public sector.

Mr Rahman, the University of Jordan economist, said: "There is a lot of pressure on the government to hire more and more, at least to lessen the tension and to reduce unemployment."

But Jordan is facing a $20 billion debt. The problem for King Abdullah now is that to pay for the reforms he has promised his East Bank constituents, he will most likely have to increase the taxes that have been slashed in recent years to promote private enterprise.

Basically, Jordan stands apart among others Arab countries by the virtue of its sectarian situation. Non sectarian countries have the pain of reforms spread across the population. In Jordan, on the other hand, the reform hurts first of all the monarchy's limited support base. This is not to say that sectarian structure is always an obstacle for economic reforms. For example, in the same Bahrain it's the more urban Sunnis who are benefiting from market economy and not the marginalized Shia majority. No wonder the Sunni king has succeeded to make Bahrain the freest economy in the region. In Jordan, however, the situation is reverse and the king's traditional support base is now up in arms against his free market economic policies.

So by now the king appears unable to proceed with economic liberalization due to the opposition by a key constituency. However, any delay or reversal of the economic reform would have a negative impact on Jordan's economy. In terms of demography, Jordan is no Tunisia and both the population and the workforce are growing strong. The kingdom can't afford absorbing labor surpluses in the state sector for any prolonged period of time. Without a rapid and sustained growth of the private sector, the unemployment can only explode, setting off another round of instability and popular unrest among both Palestinians and East Bankers in a matter of years.

Theoretically, Jordan is packed with oil shale that can be tapped both for producing alternative oil and for extracting conventional oil and gas. In terms of oil shale reserves, Jordan may not be the Saudi Arabia of oil shale, but she can easily become another Kuwait or Qatar. The population is relatively small, future revenues can provide a significant boost to living standards and relieve the strained budget. However, the technology for extracting oil shale is very recent and to the best of my knowledge right now there are no joint ventures which are about to start producing in the next few years. Time, however, is critical.

From the Israeli perspective, Jordan and Egypt are Israel's two most important neighbors. Jordan is probably even more important than Egypt because both Israel and Jordan are challenged by the Palestinian nationalism and engaged in containment policy vs the West Bank. There is an ongoing effort on both sides of the West Bank to confine the Palestinian nationalism to within the West Bank. It's not for nothing that, while Jordan is reportedly stripping thousands of her own Palestinians of citizenship, Israel, according to the Palileaks, was suggesting annexation of Israeli Arabs areas to the Palestinian Authority. Israel's plans in the West Bank are heavily contingent on Jordan keeping control of her side of the border to prevent arms smuggling and infiltration. A hostile Palestinian state in Jordan is likely to complicate plans for any future Israeli withdrawal from the area and leave Israel permanently bogged down in the West Bank.

Israel is understandably rattled by the revolution in Egypt, but Jordan is not safe. In fact, Jordan's future is more uncertain than the future of Egypt and some possible scenarios are so nasty that they can make even a takeover of Egypt by Muslim Brothers pale in comparison.

Next in line, please

2011-02-20T05:55:00.035+02:00

Last updated: February 21, 2011

February 1, 2011

Yemeni opposition plans massive protests on Thursday

Southern separatists demonstrate in Aden, South Yemen

February 11, 2011

Gaddafi is ready

Gaddafi ready for Libya's "Day of Rage", reports Ashark Alawsat. The protests are to hit the streets of Libya on February 17. The old Gaddafi is crazy as hell and some estimates put Libya's unemployment at 30%. If the protesters manage to make it to the streets, this thing may become an unforgettable show.

By courtesy of MEMRI, one of Gaddafi's best performances ever

February 12, 2011

They are coming for you, ya Bouteflika
Algeria braces for anti government protests scheduled for today.

Bouteflika about to receive the famous kiss of Ahmadinejad

PS

The kiss is widely believed in the Middle East to posses magic qualities such as bestowing sanity and a sharpened ability to think rationally, as well as casting on a political leader a magic spell that makes him invulnerable to green revolutions

February 13, 2011

If tomorrow is not the day, then this is not the new Middle East as far as I am concerned

Tajrish, Tehran last night

Clashes in Bahrain last night

February 20, 2011

Clashes are reported from the center of Tripoli despite the most ferocious crackdown. If they can topple Gaddafi, the most insane and ruthless of them all, then sorry Israel, but there are no rules here anymore. You may be the next in line. Prepare to be put to test.

In the next videos Palestinians can be seen marching towards a nearby Israeli settlement chanting "Peaceful, peaceful". It's unclear whether the march happened after the collapse of the Palestinian government in the West Bank or the march preceded it.

Some witnesses say that the march was against an Israeli military roadblock and the shots were fired from a nearby hill which is hosting an illegal settler outpost. After the shooting violent clashes erupted between the soldiers and demonstrators. As the death toll keeps mounting, the US government appears increasingly unable to resist international calls to drop its objection for the internationally agreed solution, which includes Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank, to be imposed on both sides. Meanwhile the Arab League backed by other Muslim nations and some European leaders called for sanctions against Israel unless the Israeli government reigns in its security forces and stops "the massacre of unarmed protesters in the West Bank".

February 21, 2011

After Yemen and Libya, protests hit Wisconsin.

By the CNN Wire Staff
February 21, 2011

MADISON, Wisconsin (CNN) -- Wisconsin's growing demonstration over a budget bill continues Monday with guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine fame planning to play for the protesters a day after Republican Gov. Scott Walker signaled no retreat on the measure. Supporters call the bill vital, but opponents label it union-busting.

The growing crowds gathering daily in Madison, the state capital, over the issue exceeded 50,000 on Saturday, according to an official estimate, and shows no sign of abating.

Source: CNN

Last night thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Madison, battling police and setting police stations and government buildings on fire. On the other hand, hundreds of pro governor demonstrators, led by the Tea Party, were reported massing in the suburbs of the capital where they were chanting "In our spirit and our blood we will redeem you Abu Wuker". Gunshots reverberated across the city amidst street by street battles. According to unconfirmed reports, Scott Walker, better known as the Mubarak of the Midwest, has fled to Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile the protests in Yemen entered second week with the number of protesters swelling to dozens of thousands, while in Iran thousands of people answered the opposition leaders' call yesterday and demonstrated on the streets of major Iranian cities. Basically, as far as Arab protests go, the rule of thumb seems to be that once protests enter their third day, some kind of snowballing effect starts and the protests grow increasingly likely to become unstoppable. This rule does not necessarily apply to Iran where revolutions seem to take their time with protests going on and off for weeks. This difference in revolutionary patterns has probably something to do with a certain cultural gap between the Persian and Arab civilizations explained in the next video.

In short, Yemen looks increasingly as if sliding into another Arab revolution, which in Yemen's case means high probability of total breakdown and disintegration. The protests in Iran, while sporadic and failing to take off, persist. And as long as the protests persist, the Iranian regime should be worried that things can suddenly get out of control. Abu Wuker, if he is still in Wisconsin, may want to start getting worried too.

This is NOT YOUR revolution!

2011-02-18T18:56:00.015+02:00

Google executive Wael Ghonim, whose heart breaking appearance on TV reignited the protests leading to the ouster of Mubarak, is reported to have been barred from the stage in Tahrir, where hundreds of thousands have converged today to attend to the Friday sermon by a revered Islamic preacher.

Ghonim tried to take the stage in Tahrir, the epicenter of anti-regime protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, but men who appeared to be guarding influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi barred him from doing so.

Source: Al-Masry Al-Youm

Deeply frustrated, Ghonim has apparently broke out of Tahrir with his face wrapped in an Egyptian flag.

We told you this is not your revolution. Now move aside

Besides Ghonim, al-Qaradawi also sent Hosny Mubarak packing with the following words:

There is no staying longer, Mubarak, I advise you (to learn) the lesson of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali,... Go Mubarak, have mercy on this people and leave so as not to increase the destruction of Egypt.

Source: AFP

Al-Qaradawi has just returned to Egypt after a prolonged exile in Qatar. According to Reuters, today's sermon was "expected to focus on telling the faithful about the importance of their role in building a free and democratic society in the world's most populous Arab nation". Often a controversial figure in the West, al-Qaradawi, in the words of some informed Western reporters, is actually "very much in the Sunni Islamic mainstream". This is quite true.

Al-Qaradawi in his own words

Reform and Die

2011-02-18T13:07:00.026+02:00

February 18, 2011

Getting ahead of the Curve

President Obama warned America's autocratic allies in the Arab World that they cannot crush the Middle East's youthful "hunger" for change and should get ahead of the reform curve. This "reform or die" narrative does not square with the obvious fact that political and economic reforms in the Middle East don't travel together. The youthful hunger for jobs and elections and the Arab Street's general hunger for bread don't equal hunger for more of the badly needed free market reforms. An article in Spiegel points to this paradox - the very opposition groups are a hindrance to progress, at least to economic progress.

"Many of them are not market-economy-orientated. They are dependent on religious or left-wing ideologies," says Assaad. Yet, in order to improve the living standard of their populations, these countries have to make an effort to attract investors. "I don't know how the leaders of the opposition can sell that to their base," he says.

Source: No Quick Fix for Arab Youth's Economic Woes

I was making the same point occasionally before. The anger overload that's driving the unrest in the Middle East and elsewhere is in part a result of socio economic conditions created by a demographic explosion. To be more specific, most Arab countries are having right now the biggest youth cohort ever born in the history of the region making landfall on the already stressed labor markets. Many regimes around the region have spent the last two decades reforming their economies and have achieved a significant economic growth. The unemployment and related social ills, however, persist despite these achievements because workforces around the region are growing too fast.

Spengler was ridiculing Thomas Friedman's "Egyptians want to shape their own destiny" in ATimes, arguing that "Unless Egyptian intelligence has secretly mastered weather modification, Egyptians have very little say about their own destiny". In reality, Egyptians and other Arabs have very little say about their destiny because they have no say about their past. It's impossible to retroactively cancel births that happened in the last 30 years. It's this fact, and not the lack of political or economic reforms, that drives populations around the region nuts.

On top of this, the reforms hurt the population. In some countries the reforms even exacerbate unemployment and job insecurity at the beginning. This is particularly true about countries like Egypt and Syria who are moving their economies away from the legacy of the socialist past. Privatizations, trimming of bloated bureaucracies and similar measures are accompanied by massive layoffs. The population obviously does not like it, never mind subsidy cuts, and the reform fatigue accumulated over the previous years seems tremendous. The popular support for the political reform comes in part from the desire to roll back the economic reform of the last decades. The catch22 here is that rolling back the economic reform can only slow down the economic growth and drive the unemployment to new records.

Basically, the political reform, if implemented right now, can only end laying ground for another escalation and instability, even more severe than the current one. With Egypt and Tunisia sinking in a sea of labor unrest and the latter probably already teetering on the brink of economic collapse, this is no minor issue. It's a vicious circle in which many countries around are about to lock themselves when the pain exacerbates the instability and resistance to the economic reform which leads to more pain and the cycle repeats itself. Tunisia may yet escape unscathed due to the more advanced state of its demographic transition, but it's hard to see how other countries can avoid this fate.
Some countries may find themselves driven beyond a pain threshold after which the system can't but disintegrate and collapse into chaos.

Of course, it's perfectly possible that destabilization is exactly what the region needs right now. Basically the Middle East has spent much of its recent history in a tight grip of autocratic regimes that in many places succeeded to literally stop history from marching forward. Many are the wars, civil wars and ethnic conflicts that were delayed for decades by this false stability and they are all still there waiting for their hour. The time may have come for this region to be fast forwarded through its long delayed history and the demise of the regimes is the first step in this direction. For some here, however, catching up with the curve of history should be really about getting ahead of the curve of self destruction.

The Empire strikes back

2011-02-17T17:51:00.007+02:00

February 17, 2011

The king of Bahrain had to order crackdown on the Shia protesters in the capital after their demands have nicely progressed from more political liberalization to more jobs and better housing and finally to wiping out the entire royal dynasty.

PS

After this and similar incidents I just can't but notice that it takes a rather healthy (or better unhealthy) doze of hash and cocaine to reach the conclusion that these people can have democracy.

Zionism's deadly zio zooweapons

2011-02-12T21:45:00.003+02:00

Last updated: February 12, 2011

December 9, 2010

Enraged by the WikiLeaks allegations that Russia is a virtual mafia state, white tipped sharks went on rampage in the Red Sea mauling Russian tourists (a German tourist came under attack too, probably the case of misidentification). This blog salutes the awesome predator

December 11, 2010

Whitetips in the Red Sea face mass extinction after a marine biologist confirmed that the sharks, remotely controlled by Israel via GPS devices, are native to the Red Sea. The sharks face accusations of collaborating with the Israeli Mossad in staging attacks on tourists with a view of harming Egypt's booming tourism industry. To remind our readers, a long standing tradition in the Middle East is that natives caught selling their services to the Zionist enemy should be punished by death.

January 5, 2011

Saudi General Bureau of Investigation: Vulture is not spy
Saudi General Bureau of Investigation dismissed speculations about the Israeli spy vulture as ridiculous.

"It can't be a Mossad spy. If it was it would have forged identification from a university in the UK," said the Bureau chief.

"It's the vultures and other animals without Tel Aviv University legbands, who are the real Mossad agents" added mr. Al-Majnoun

February 11, 2011

Tunisia says to have detained a heavily armed group of supporters of the ousted president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. The group is suspected of involvement in a wave of violence that engulfed Tunisia in the wake of the revolution. All members of the group were found to be remotety controled via GPS transmitters by an identified foreign intelligence agency. Some militants were also tagged with legbands bearing the name of the Department of Molecular Biology and Ecology of Plants of Tel Aviv University.

TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisian authorities said on Thursday they had detained an armed group, linked to ousted president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, which they suspected of involvement in a wave of violence.

Source

February 12, 2011

The Department of Ecology of Plants of Tel Aviv University rejected allegations that it was involved in a recent wave of violence in Tunisia. Nevertheless, Israeli scientists stressed the importance that research of the migratory patterns of militant groups has for better understanding of the ecology of plants in the area.

As radical elements move around the region, they leave a certain impact on vegetation, if only by the mere act of trampling on it. Some studies suggest that militants may be facilitating pollination of certain species of plants. Another interesting theory speculates that militants are also contributing to the regionwide conversion of national floras as they cross borders between countries of the region while transporting seeds that get stuck in their military fatigues and footwear.

Source

Sheep in Wolf's Clothing - II

2011-02-10T23:51:00.009+02:00

The Jasmine Revolution's hidden champion
Two links on Tunisia's deposed dictator.

Telegraph

By Henry Samuel, Paris 5:29PM GMT 10 Feb 2011

Leila Ben Ali's words of "encouragement" to her husband, Zine al-Abidine as he refused to board the plane to spirit him out of Tunisia and to Saudi Arabia were reported as: "Get on imbecile. All my life I've had to put up with your screw ups."

. . .

As revolt rumbled in the capital, Mr Ben Ali, who was ousted after 23 years of iron rule on January 14, stood on the tarmac in Tunis airport with a small briefcase wringing his hands, and saying: "Leave me, I don't want to go, I want to die here for my country."

. . .

During the flight, Mr Ben Ali got up and walked to the cockpit every ten minutes, asking the pilot: "My son, you are going to take me back to Tunisia afterwards, aren't you?"

"Of course, I've received instructions to do just that," replied the pilot, briefed by the military to placate Mr Ben Ali until his arrival in Jeddah.

. . .

According to Trabelsi family members and palace officials, Mr Ben Ali was totally under the thumb of his wife, a 53-year old former hairdresser.

Diminished by prostate cancer, he had expressed the desire to end his rule in 2009, but Mrs Ben Ali ruled that out, as she allegedly harboured secret plans to rule in his place.

"In her mind, the scenario was clear: she would take care of the regency until her son Mohammed (today aged six) was old enough to reign," one family member said.

. . .

Source: Tunisian deposed leader dominated by 'Lady Macbeth'

Los Angeles Times

February 2, 2011
-- Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem

. . .

A comprehensive study of the Tunisian curriculum, completed in 2009 and presented before the European parliament, found that education in Tunisia cultivates equality and is much more progressive in teaching tolerance than any other Arab country.

But it wasn't always so, says Yohanan Manor, a retired Jewish Agency official and political scientist who established the research group a decade ago. According to Manor, Tunisia began instituting educational reform in the mid-1990s, when Zine el Abidine ben Ali (who was overthrown last month) appointed a political opponent as minister of education. Mohamed Charfi, who died a few years ago, was a lawyer and longtime human rights leader in Tunisia and a fierce critic of Ben Ali, in particular concerning human rights issues.

The now-deposed president had placed Charfi in charge of the education ministry, maybe so that he could keep an eye on him but also because Ben Ali was interested in letting the rights leader implement his agenda, which was separating religion and state, Manor said, noting that the issue is a longstanding one in Tunisian history.

The first phase was to extricate the school curriculum from the influence of the clerics -- not in an action against religion, but rather from the position that democracy and Islam can work together so long as "church" and state were separated. A second phase followed later on, geared to prepare for globalization rather than resist it.

The material still takes the Palestinian side in their conflict with Israel, researchers found, but not in a way that negates Jews or Israel. Above all, the study found the educational system to have a "profound understanding of equality and democracy."

Charfi's reforms shaped the younger generation in Tunisia that ultimately rebelled. "Mohamed Charfi is the true champion of Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution," Manor said.

. . .

Source: ISRAEL: Researchers see Tunisia as a textbook revolution

Of course, if it's true then the real champion of the revolution is ... mr. Ben Ali himself. And if it does not make sense to you, I can't be bothered. I am not blogging in order to help anybody to make sense of the reality.

PS

This post borrowed its pic from another post with the same name

This Revolution is NOT about to Stop

2011-02-09T20:42:00.002+02:00

The United Nations issued a warning about a new global war about to erupt and plunge the Middle East and other parts of the world into chaos. A protracted drought in China is threatening to end in a massive crop failure and trigger a global war of food subsidies.

Since the beginning of the Arab Revolution, Arab and other governments in the third world have been increasing wages and food subsidies in order to stave off the wave of global popular unrest. Here, however, comes a giant that can easily outbid everybody on the market and send budgets around the region bust. If rains fail to materialize in China soon, a global war of prices and subsidies will erupt, a war that no government in the region can hope to win.

The New York Times
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: February 8, 2011

. . .

With $2.85 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, nearly three times that of Japan, the country with the second-largest reserves, China has ample buying power to prevent any serious food shortages.

“They can buy whatever they need to buy, and they can outbid anyone,” Mr. Zeigler said.

. . .

Source: U.N. Food Agency Issues Warning on China Drought

Those, who worried that the Arab Revolution was running out of steam, can now breath a sigh of collective relief. They should only worry that, as China starts driving the prices up, the revolution for "social justice and bread to eat" doesn't spread to their own countries.

A Revolution without End

2011-02-09T04:42:00.020+02:00

Last updated: February 9, 2011

February 7, 2011

Tunisia's Economic Meltdown

Tunisia's interim PM called for international economic aid as the country is reeling from an economic fallout in the wake of its revolution. Besides massive loses inflicted by extensive looting and arson attacks, labor unrest is causing further damage to the economy through disruptions and escalating labor costs.

Financial Times - Elieen Byrne

. . .

Mr Ghannouchi, 69, who served the dictator as finance minister before becoming prime minister in 1999, said Tunisia faced “a major economic challenge”

“The losses already registered are between $5bn and $8bn, and the needs going forward are even more significant,” he said. “Companies have suffered losses, because factories were set on fire, some employees were laid off, some goods weren’t exported, and tourists didn’t arrive.”

The government estimates that foreign tourism, which accounts for more than 6 per cent of the country’s $100bn economy, plunged by 40 per cent, in terms of both arrivals and revenue.

Public infrastructure suffered significant damage in the unrest, with police stations, national guard posts, tax offices, government employment centres and schools among the buildings burnt down.

In the weeks after Mr Ben Ali’s fall there has been a wave of labour unrest, triggered mostly by wage demands. After police went on strike on Monday and Tuesday, the interior ministry said it had raised the wages of all police, soldiers and customs officials.

. . .

Source: Tunisia appeals for aid to protect democracy

From its very beginning the Tunisian revolution was massively underreported and misreported in the Western media. In fact, at the beginning it has been barely noticed at all. The situation hardly improved since the flight of Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia. The country remains chaotic and deadly clashes persist, but the media attention has already turned to Egypt. However, if Tunisia fails, then there is no reason to believe that other Arab countries can do it better. Tunisia is probably the most Westernized and modern Arab countries. If not Tunisia, hardly anybody else in the Arab World can do it.

Basically and contrary to the often evoked image of the Berlin Wall, the Arab Revolution looks nothing like the anti Communist uprisings in Eastern Europe, with the exception of maybe Romania. Pro democracy movements in Eastern Europe were not used to demonstrations in which people were staging demo executions of their Communist rulers by hanging them in effigies, let alone after having painted them with stars of David. Looting and violence are going on for days and weeks, while the post revolution in Tunisia looks increasingly like a witch hunt against members of the Ben Ali family and just anybody associated with the regime. At one point the authorities closed a TV station run by a member of the Ben Ali family who was known for his opposition to the regime and his support for the protesters.

It's a safe bet that Tunisia's one party system forced many people to seek membership in the ruling party for considerations of promotion and career. The opposition itself was largely unable to field enough qualified people for ministerial posts in the interim government. Yet, the mob's hostility to anybody with ties to Ben Ali family or the ruling party left the process of the formation of new government paralyzed for weeks. The situation seems to have deteriorated even further with the arrival in the capital of protesters from the poor and underdeveloped periphery. The opposition leaders appeared reluctant to confront the crowds and explain the situation, fueling the confusion and paranoia. The quality of leadership provided by the opposition until now has been abysmal, though it's not obvious that the opposition has so much control over the masses anyway.

More importantly, Tunisian economy seems to have fallen victim to the revolution. Besides the GDP being wiped out by 4%-5% during the riots and looting, the food and fuel subsidy cuts were rolled back in order to placate the masses. Tunisian financial situation before the revolution was not a disaster, but neither was it brilliant. Now Tunisia's finances should be coming under real stress. If the opposition leaders don't tackle the problem head-on by calling for patience and restraint, trade unions may unleash a race of wages after prices, finishing off what has survived of the Tunisian economy.

Tunisia's economic meltdown and labor unrest are second in importance only to the beginning of the revolution itself, since they will largely determine whether the newborn democracy can stabilize or it keeps teetering on the brink of sliding into chaos. Yet, just like the beginning of the revolution, this aspect of the revolution receives little to no coverage by the global media, who in the meantime moved to celebrate the next triumph of the Arab democracy in Egypt.

It should be understood that a fiasco of the first Arab revolution in Tunisia will have a cooling effect on the enthusiasm it unleashed across the region. If the Western powers are serious about their desire to see democracy succeeding in the Middle East, they should already start readying a bailout package. Egypt is huge and its social and demographic challenges look unsurmountable, but Tunisia is a small and relatively developed country with an educated and largely secular population and a reasonable demographic profile. Transforming Tunisia into a show case for Arab democracy should not be very difficult nor expensive, while the payoff may reach geopolitical proportions. To put it short, if the West is serious about this democracy business, the time has come for a mini Marshall plan.

Looting a Ferrari of the former President of Tunisia

February 9, 2011

A Revolution without End
A Guardian reporter penned a fine piece from Kasserine, one of the hotbeds of the Tunisian revolution. When a good writer writes a good book, the book transcends the intellectual and circumstantial limitations of its author reaching levels often unaccessible to the person who wrote the book. Journalism is not very different in this respect from writing books. You don't have to rash to take the reporter's conclusions or the local talk at face value, but the article seems to capture the situation and the mood on the streets well.

From the article it appears that police force in Kasserine has largely or entirely disintegrated. This is not exactly surprising given that clashes and attacks on police stations are reported from Tunisia on a daily basis. It seems that not much of the security apparatus has been left intact and the remaining police are heavily demoralized and constantly harassed by the mob.

Kasserine, the rest of the periphery and even some coastal provinces, are evidently consumed by a wave of criminal violence with gangs having taken control of the streets. This is not unlike what was happening in Russia and some other Soviet republics shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in Tunisia the story seems to be taking the shape not of the anti Communist revolutions in Eastern Europe, but rather the Communist ones. Naturally, with the security apparatus in tatters and a massive escape of prison population, the security situation should be expected to deteriorate. In Tunisia, however, it appears that the conspiracy mindset has unleashed a witch hunt reminiscent of the Bolshevik struggle against anti revolutionary elements.

Now, it's perfectly possible that some former members of the security apparatus have by now joined the underworld. This trend was widespread in the post Communist Russia too. It's equally possible that during the first days of the revolution, security forces in many places collapsed and police turned to marauding before fleeing to their home villages or wherever they came from. Yet, it's not entirely obvious that a local governor, even a member of the now officially banned former ruling party, should be interested in hiring criminal gangs to burn schools and rob citizens. However, this is exactly what several ministers of the interim government have been repeatedly suggesting in public recently and this theory seems to be tremendously popular in Kasserine and elsewhere.

As a result, angry crowds ransacked offices of several governors precipitating collapse of the local administration. In a vicious circle the lawlessness blamed on police and local administration triggers new attacks and riots which in their turn render police and local authorities even less capable of maintaining order. In a last ditch attempt to get hold of the situation the government has called in army reserves.

Meanwhile in Kasserine the resolve to keep the revolution going is still strong. For many a revolution is never complete without jobs and expanded opportunities. Absent these, Kasserine's youth promise another uprising. Yet, even the best government in the world would struggle to effect an immediate change for the better in such a chaotic situation.

Historically, revolutions that didn't end on time tended to end in self cannibalism. This revolution increasingly looks as if it's forgetting to end.

A Domino Too Far?

2011-02-07T22:02:00.010+02:00

Links...

February 7, 2011

Zero attendance during the day of rage in Syria last Friday despite more than 16,000 who subscribed to the Facebook group.

. . .

Syrians are, generally speaking, far more fearful of their government than their Egyptian counterparts, and they have reason to be: they still live under an emergency law, enacted in 1963 and justified by Syria’s ongoing state of war with Israel, that suspends their constitutional rights. The Muslim Brotherhood, illegal but essentially tolerated in Egypt, has in Syria been effectively hounded out of existence. In Syria, membership in the brotherhood has, since 1980, been a capital offense.

I still remember how astonished I was when, visiting Egypt for the first time in the spring of 2005, I was taken to a meeting of Kefaya, a loose coalition of political groups opposing Hosni Mubarak’s presidency. The meeting, held in a large hall in the journalist’s union building in central Cairo, had attracted hundreds from across the political spectrum. I’d been living in Syria for nearly a year at that point, and I was already habituated enough to Syrian norms to be awestruck at the sight of these Egyptian activists, arguing and networking with one another in the lobby, swapping business cards and handing out pamphlets. Such a meeting would have been literally unimaginable in Syria, where all dissent is ruthlessly, and immediately, crushed.

. . .

Source: Damascus, A Domino Too Far?

Kings, Dictators and the Arab political reform

2011-02-06T21:20:00.015+02:00

It's a sure sign of a massive degradation of political culture in the West itself that so much of the analysis of the Arab revolution has degenerated into demonization of personalities and recycling of Arab home grown conspiracy theories. The most astonishing of these pseudo analyses was the theory of organized looting. Weeks after Ben Ali was locked in a remote Saudi palace, arson attacks on a synagogue and schools in Tunisia are still being routinely blamed on Ben Ali loyalists. Western media was more than happy to join the party with many analysts suggesting that the regimes staged everything from disintegration of police and other security structures to mass escapes from prisons and looting. Large chunks of Western media read these days as a typical Arab blog where Arabs are letting their conspiratorial paranoia run amok.

The euphoria surrounding the revolution in the West is in part itself a result of the demonization, since its fundamental assumption is that people in positions of power are demons in flesh who are primarily busy with plundering their countries and torturing dissenters. This assumption leads to another misguided conclusion that the revolution is going to unleash democracy and liberalism in the Middle East and elsewhere. This is despite Iran and the currently unfolding disaster in Pakistan.

To cut the story short, the reality is, as always, more complex. The Arab World has all kinds of autocrats including the second generation kings and dictators. The kings of Jordan and Morroco, and probably Mubarak's son Gamal, are part of this second generation trend. Some of these people are Western educated, spent years living in the West and they are often very reform minded. Gamal Mubarak was the driving force behind a largely successful economic reform in Egypt. The king of Jordan from the beginning stated his vision as a constitutional monarchy in Jordan and embarked upon a series of political reforms. The new king in Morocco is a serial reformer too. In short, the Arab World knew several attempts at political reform initiated from the top in a very recent past.

That these reforms failed to deepen did not happen because of the lack of motivation at the upper echelons, however much the media and analysts would like to indulge in vilification of individual agents of power. The reform stalled because the reformers quickly found themselves under siege by Islamist, sectarian and populist forces they unleashed with their reforms. In Jordan for example Islamists and rejectionists largely took control of major institutions of civil society. In Bahrain Sunni and Shia fundamentalists dominated elections with secular liberals failing to win even one single seat. During a brief experiment by Mubarak in Egypt, Ikhwan basically took all 20% of seats that went to the opposition.

What the reformers discovered was that their economic and liberal agendas simply could not make friends with democracy and political reforms. The most spectacular example of this trend was the attempt by the king of Jordan to crack down on honor killings, sabotaged by the opposition in the parliament and judges who routinely refused to issue harsh penalties for offenders. The bottom line: It's not for the failure of revolutions to happen that liberal democracy failed to triumph until now in the Middle East. The pseudo analysts and arm chair revolutionaries in the West would do well to spend a while pondering this sorry fact.

Source: Muslim Publics Divided on Hamas and Hezbollah

Burn yourself down and be happy

2011-02-05T01:05:00.004+02:00

Last updated: February 3, 2011

January 17, 2011

The mess in Tunisia is already producing spillover effects around the Middle East with the opposition in Jordan demanding from the government to resign over fuel and food price hikes. The misfortune of the "burn yourself down and be happy" revolution that befell the Arab World in Tunisia is that it's likely to enshrine the culture of rioting and delegitimize the economic reform desperately needed to deepen in many countries. I was arguing in the past that the political and economic reforms in the Arab world cannot proceed at the same time. Basically the economic reform should come and accomplish its objective first.

Tunisia may still get away with this revolution as the country is on the verge of exiting its unemployment crisis due to purely demographic factors. However, it's already obvious that the next government will find it virtually impossible to cut fuel and food subsidies, an act now permanently associated in the Middle East with the excesses of authoritarian rule. Jordan, however, may have no other option as it faces greater economic difficulties than Tunisia (of course it depends on how much of the Tunisian economy will survive looting and fires). Basically, Jordan is caught between letting the economy go down the drain and facing its own self immolation revolution.

The situation right now is such that those Arab countries who have already done away with the bulk of fuel and food subsidies and trimmed state sector payrolls should consider themselves lucky. Those on the way out of the demographic onslaught like Tunisia should simply go and borrow for infrastructure projects and spend their way through the next few years until they reach the light already visible in the end of the tunnel. But Jordan and others may find themselves in a deepening trap in which opposition is laying ambush to the economic reforms which are now in danger of becoming the symbol of despotism in the Middle East.

February 3, 2011

The Khat Revolution
Why Yemen Won’t Fall - an oped in the New York Times. The answer: Yemen won't fall because Saleh's dancing on the heads of snakes will either end in a massive crash or a massive Saudi bailout.

By VICTORIA CLARK
Published: February 4, 2011

. . .

Mr. Saleh continues to excel at the business of ruling Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, a task which he has often unflatteringly likened to “dancing on the heads of snakes.” Yet, since Tunisians sent their longtime president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, packing, Mr. Saleh has been obliged to change his dance steps and quicken his pace; he has dropped income taxes, given out food subsidies and promised to raise the salaries of soldiers and civil servants and to provide jobs to college graduates.

. . .

Abdul Ghani al-Iryani, a prominent political commentator in Sana, told me that he believes Mr. Saleh will have to keep his promises this time: “The rules of the game have changed — he cannot not honor his word this time. Tunisia and Egypt have raised the bar.” He thinks Mr. Saleh has six months to prove himself trustworthy. At the end of that time, revenues from his two main sources — Saudi aid and minor oil exports — will not be enough to foot the civil service wage bill, or the diesel and food subsidies.

Then he will not be worrying about polite opposition politicians but more likely about bread-rioters, hungry and unmanageable, exploding into violence.

Source: Why Yemen Won’t Fall

The self immolation revolution will probably have two stages. The first stage is happening right now. The second stage will unfold when those who survived the first stage and new governments, that took place of the old regimes, run out of money to maintain wage increases and food/fuel subsidies. This is of course highly conditioned on what's going to happen with food and fuel prices globally. But as China, India and other developing nations keep surging economically, the long term trend is clear.

Yemen's social crisis, exacerbated by staggering demographic and environmental challenges, merits this country the top place in the region's watchlist. And if anybody by any chance thinks that the infamous plant makes dancing on the heads of Saleh's drug addicted snakes an easy task, then he should think again. Khat can be chewed everywhere.

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 5, 2011; 12:37 AM

. . .

Back at the university, the protesters sat on the sidewalk, clutching Yemeni flags. Sharabi vowed that if Saleh didn't step down, they would protest all day, until midnight.

"We will bring our khat here and make a revolution," he said, as another protester walked toward the khat stores.

Source: Washington Post

America's stooge against America's puppet

2011-02-03T14:08:00.014+02:00

Those who are surprised by a sudden twist in Egyptian's revolution's saga should consider the following points.

First of all, contrary to how it may look on TV, the number of anti Mubarak demonstrators has never been really over the top. This became particularly clear during the one million march when the protesters seemed unstoppable as police disappeared and the army promised not to interfere. Everybody could make it to the square on that day, it was safe. The number of protesters, however, was estimated at a quarter of a million. This is a lot, but it's not a million and is nothing staggering by Egyptian standards. In the past Cairo knew public attendances measured in millions and that was long before the population of the city and its surroundings started reaching to 20 million. So it's not entirely clear what the majority of Egyptians think about all this.

Two, throughout this turmoil I don't remember coming upon even one article in which interviewed Egyptians had anything good to say about ElBaradei. The impression is that ElBaradei is widely resented across Egypt as an outsider and elitist. The opposition groups might have good reasons to converge on ElBaradei as a consensual leader, but from the moment the opposition started pushing for an alternative government led by ElBaradei, many ordinary Egyptians were bound to be upset.

Three, Egyptians can be pathologically nationalist. It's a combination of wounded pride and national inferiority complex that occasionally borders on sheer insanity. The rant below is nothing out of ordinary for Egyptians. Egyptians can hallucinate about foreigners patronizing and belittling them in the most impossible situations. It's not obvious that all Egyptians should be excited by the prospect of having their president humiliated under the US pressure by expelling him to Saudi Arabia and replaced by what many Egyptians perceive as the Western sponsored ElBaradei, even if only in the temporary capacity of the head of transitional government.

“The people are so nice”: Yes they are, it’s your ignorant self that assumed they are all terrorists and fanatics. What did you think? Glad you went to Egypt and found the Egyptians nice. After all, they do have a cosmopolitan civilization of over 5,000 years, yet you reduced them to “rag heads” , “jihadists”, “ali babas”, “terrorists”, the list is endless. Imagine saying this about African Americans? Asians? Nope. Just don’t fucking say it. It’s patronizing.

Source: How Not To Say Stupid Stuff About Egypt

As a matter of fact, Mubarak is not another Ben Ali. Mubarak is a military man who fought in wars against Israel. While many Egyptians may revile his rule, they may have a certain respect for the old man. The protesters, disorganized and lacking a clear plan, may have been pushing their demands too far by denying to Mubarak a graceful exit. Combined with the US pressure and ElBaradei, this could alienate many Egyptians from the protesters. Of course, at the beginning of the mess many Egyptians were accusing America of hypocrisy. However, people are not rational beings. Once the US started supporting ElBaradei and pressing Mubarak out, other Egyptians could find this... well, too patronizing.

Finally, there can be no denying that revolutions are damaging to the economy. This revolution was accompanied by massive looting and destruction of property. At some point police seem to have disintegrated for a while. Thousands of convicted criminals escaped. Tourism, one of the pillars of Egyptian economy, collapsed as foreigners rushed to flee Egypt. It's not sure that the camel riders from the pyramids, who attacked the protesters today, were paid by the security service to do this. They may well have a reasonable issue with the protesters. After all, tourism is what they make their living off.

Why Russia/Belarus are not Egypt are not Tunisia?

2011-02-02T14:58:00.020+02:00

It's the demography, stupid.

Time

By Simon Shuster / Moscow Wednesday, Feb. 02, 2011

. . .

According to Transparency International's ranking of the most corrupt countries last year, Egypt was in the 98th place, tied with Mexico, while Russia was 154th. Economic troubles like rising food prices, unemployment, poverty and the vast gap between rich and poor are also comparable in the two countries. The latest data from the U.N. Development Program shows 16.7% of Egyptians lived below the poverty line in 2005, compared with 19.6% in Russia in 2007. The jobless rate is also about equal. In Egypt it was 9.4% at the end of 2009 and it was 9.2% in Russia at the start of 2010, according to most the recent figures in the CIA's World Factbook.

. . .

But for all their dramatic effect, comparisons between Russia and Egypt don't hold much water, as two of the opposition leaders admitted to TIME on the sidelines of Monday's rally. For one thing, the Arab world has seen a demographic boom in recent years that has made for a young and restless population. Many of the people setting fire to barricades and stoning police in Egypt are younger than 15, an age-group that makes up about 40% of the population. Russia is exactly the opposite, said Vladimir Ryzhkov, an ex-parliamentarian turned dissident. "Our people are aging and in decline," he said, looking around at the pensioners who made up the bulk of the meager crowd at Monday's event, a regular anti-Putin protest held on the 31st of the month. "Also," he added, "the high price of oil [Russia's main export] has allowed the regime a certain cushion of economic stability."

. . .

Source: Egypt Envy: Russia's Opposition Imagines Change

For the demography of slap revolutions, also check this and this.

Domino Effect

2011-02-01T05:42:00.002+02:00

Last updated: February 1, 2011

Links...

Jasmine Revolution or Slap Revolution?

“Do you really believe a woman can slap a man in front of 40 other people and no one would react?” he said.

Source: NYTimes

Domino Effect

It's not out of impossible that the first domino to be toppled by Tunisia's slap revolution will be the country's economy. The next government is very likely to find itself greeted by an avalanche of demands to raise wages and increase food and fuel subsidies. Even police, who just a few weeks ago were busy battling protesters, support democracy now.

Saturday's crowd on Avenue Bourguiba, where daily protests have been held, drew many plainclothe and uniformed police with red armbands. They sought to press demands like the creation of a labor union, better pay and — like other protests in recent days — the ousting of any members from Ben Ali's party from the government.

Officers climbed onto their official cars, blew their whistles and waved flags and signs. Some exchanged hugs to congratulate each other about their chance to protest. Many were joined by their families.

"I am not afraid to come down to the street," said Rida Barreh, 30, who has been an internal security officer for five years. "I work 12 hours a day and yet only get paid 500 dinars ($350, 250 euros) a month."

Source: Associated Press

Fossa Regia

After the Roman general Scipio defeated Hannibal in 202 B.C. outside modern-day Tunis, he dug a demarcation ditch, or fossa regia, that marked the extent of civilized territory. The fossa regia remains relevant. Still visible in places, it runs from Tabarka on Tunisia’s northwestern coast southward, and then turns directly eastward to Sfax, another Mediterranean port. The towns beyond that line have fewer Roman remains, and today tend to be poorer and less developed, with historically higher rates of unemployment.

The town of Sidi Bouzid, where the recent revolt started when a vendor of fruit and vegetables set himself on fire, lies just beyond Scipio’s line. Tunisia is less part of the connective tissue of Arab North Africa than a demographic and cultural island bordered by sea and desert, with upwardly mobile European aspirations.

Source: One Small Revolution

The next domino to fall comes in the form of a popular TV station as the revolution acquires an unmistakable aspect of a witch hunt.

Next dominoes to watch

One domino to watch is Yemen. This one can fall and soon. This is not because Yemen is very mich like Tunisia (though some people are trying hard), but because it's just falling apart.

And of course tomorrow Egypt is going to try its luck in slap revolutions.

The Day of Rage in Egypt

Here is an early demo release of Egypt's version of the slap revolution. Looks like a fucking intifadah. Enjoy

Egypt's a la Tiananmen Moment

January 27, 2011

January 28, 2011

Today should be the day of Intifada in Egypt

February 1, 2011

I stopped updating this post as, unlike Tunisia, this time the media coverage has become pretty extensive. As you probably know, the first wave of the protests swept the capital. As police disappeared from the streets, the protesters set fire to major symbols of power such as the headquarters of the ruling party. The opposition announced a million man march on Cairo for tomorrow and the army has already promised to hold fire. Mubarak looks increasingly spent force while the opposition is holding talks on formation of an alternative government.

In conclusion of this long series of updates, I would like to salute the pro democracy movement in Egypt and all freedom loving people of this planet by posting the following table from the latest Muslim public opinion poll published by Pew in December of 2010.

Source: Muslim Publics Divided on Hamas and Hezbollah

Strategy for Living: How to Make the Best Use of Your Time

2011-01-28T18:41:00.008+02:00

Last updated: January 28, 2011

August 13, 2009

How to Make the Best Use of Your Time
The Economist about the latest round of kamikaze attacks in Iraq during one of which two truck bombers have nearly erased an entire settlement near Mosul.

Over 100 civilians were killed and hundreds wounded in a four-day period this week. Two lorries packed with explosives levelled most of a settlement on the edge of Mosul in northern Iraq. Residents were sleeping on rooftops to escape the summer heat when their houses collapsed beneath them.

. . .

. . . Previously insurgents had focused on the Shia, but they are increasingly turning the other cheek. “Let them kill us,” Sheikh Khudair al-Allawi, the imam of a mosque that was bombed recently, told the New York Times. “It’s a waste of their time.” The insurgents have taken note and are switching to the Kurds. The bombed dwellings outside Mosul were under the protection of Kurdish forces.

Source: Another bloody mess

January 28, 2011

If America does not come to Muhammad...
... then Muhammad plays "Battlefield". If you've got neither Kurds nor Shia, and America does not come...

PS

If you missed the irony, this is the original Jihadi video

Spill, baby, spill!

2011-01-28T10:58:00.001+02:00

Last updated: January 28, 2011

January 7, 2011

The latest good news from the Gulf of Mexico is that the methane, that made up for 30% of the Macondo well's output, is gone as well. Researchers spent several weeks in the gulf dropping sensors to detect the presence of natural gas in the water but they found nothing. They did detect however huge pockets of depleted oxygen used by oil eating microbes who at the same breath disintegrated the bulk of the oil released during the BP disaster.

McCain: "The fish love to be around those rigs"
(Opponents of offshore drilling ridicule McCain)

As scientists quietly lowering their estimates of the environmental damage, I can tell you why I am not surprised. This is because I am addicted to watching nature documentaries of the kind I embedded in abundance in Pitch Black. Now when it comes to methane, I got one video there on the subject made right in the Gulf of Mexico. You can see for yourself that the existence of a whole unique ecosystem in the gulf is conditioned entirely on one simple thing - methane gas continuously seeping into water. The gas stops, this ecosystem goes off.

Now, I am not saying that a release of such a huge amount of oil and gas into water can't overwhlem the system for a while, but come on, guys. This is no Waldez. The Gulf of Mexico is known for its rich deposits of oil and gas. You did not think that all this bounty is sitting down there in hermetically sealed containers, did you? If the gulf's microfauna did not know how to deal with this stuff, we would have had huge amounts of oil floating on the surface at any given moment. It's probably not for nothing that large areas of the gulf's seabed are covered with natural asphalt. This asphalt by the way is sustaining another unique ecosystem. To say that fish love to hang out around oil rigs is nothing compared to the passion some ecosystems have developed towards oil, natural gas and other toxic stuff.

There is nothing mysterious about the mysterious disappearance of the BP's spill. I would not bet my house on it at the time, but it was very plausible to expect the gulf's ecosystem to be able to deal with this kind of things given that an equivalent of several BP disasters is naturally happening in the depths of the gulf every year. What is mysterious, however, is the attitude of the scientists themselves who were actively participating in and instigating the self feeding public hysteria that ended with the BP pouring many truckloads of oil dispersant into the water. The oil eating microbes did not come out of nowhere, they are living in the gulf feeding on its oil and gas. However, I have never heard about the existence of dispersant eating bacteria in the area. I won't be surprised to hear in a few years from now that a significant environmental damage was inflicted on the gulf by the dispersant.

The conduct of scientists during this non disaster raises questions. I don't suspect them of deliberate maliciousness, but it looks increasingly likely as if large chunks of the scientific community have joined the media whose primary function these days is to gratify the general public's irresistible urge to have itself constantly whipped up into hysteria. It's impossible that throughout this whole event we had no authority coming up and advising the government and BP to go easy with the dispersant, if only because the gulf's microfauna may know to do it better. If these people are just as accurate with their global warming predictions... You know, lets not talk about this as I am actually with them on this one.

Now I want to make it very clear from the beginning that I am all for tight safety regulation, environment and punishing transgressing companies with fines and the stuff. The BP paid a heavy price for its negligence and if necessary it should be made pay more. Spills on such a scale is no minor nuisance. Nevertheless, McCain may well have a point when he says that fish like oil rigs. Fishermen know this too. In fact, if this is your lucky oil rig, you may even catch a ride on the back of a friendly 10 feet long whale shark. So far so true.

What McCain does not seem to know is that what you see from above pales in comparison to what divers see around oil rigs.

Obviously there should be some explanation for the fact that oil platforms look like explosions of marine life in the midst of underwater desert. There is no more mystery here than in the mysterious disappearance of the spill. Basically, in many areas there seems to be a shortage of attachable surface, in particular, with access to the upper layers of water. This is what oil rigs are providing to scallops and other creatures. Basically, oil rigs are huge corral reefs. At the end of its productive life, an oil rig is usually hosting an entire ecosystem. Once it's there, you simply don't want it to go. Unless, of course, you are so fascinated with the concept of protecting nature that the activity of protecting matters for you more than what you are presumably protecting.

To put it short. Obviously no fish likes spills. If fish could talk, they would have been very unlikely to lavish praise on the BP and its partners. Yet, they might well have put their newly acquired vocalization abilities to good use by collectively chanting "Drill, baby, drill!" So if you thought that McCain is the idiot here, think again.

An abandoned oil rig in Benin

January 28, 2011

A new study found that dispersants injected into the depths of the Gulf of Mexico are still there. The rate of biodegradation is negligible or very slow. And, as a matter of fact, it appears that the chemicals got trapped in a plume of oil they seem to have caused themselves.

January 27, 2011
Study: Undersea Dispersant in Gulf of Mexico Lingered in Deepwater Plume

. . .

While a large portion of the oil and gas escaping from the well stayed in the dark deep -- subsequently consumed by microbes and spread thin over the Gulf's vastness -- it remains uncertain whether dispersants, or simple physics, caused this plume. And while that question remains unresolved, it is now clear that the dispersants stayed put, closely following the hydrocarbon plume's southwest tack, some 3,600 feet below the surface.

. . .

"The good news is that the dispersant stayed in the deep ocean after it was first applied," Kujawinski added in a statement. "The bad news is that it stayed in the deep ocean and did not degrade."

Source: NYTimes

Avatar RELOADED

2011-01-25T11:44:00.010+02:00

Last updated: January 25, 2011

April 13, 2010

James Cameron talks the talk and walks the walk
James Cameron is on a mission to save an Indian tribe in the Amazon. What you see below is an avatar, piloted by Cameron remotely from his office in Hollywood, leading the tribe to storm a nearby US military base.

Source: The New York Times
I just can't resist quoting a couple of paragraphs from the NYT article. Simply incredible.

“The snake kills by squeezing very slowly,” Mr. Cameron said to more than 70 indigenous people, some holding spears and bows and arrows, under a tree here along the Xingu River. “This is how the civilized world slowly, slowly pushes into the forest and takes away the world that used to be,” he added.

As if to underscore the point, seconds later a poisonous green snake fell out of a tree, just feet from where Mr. Cameron’s wife sat on a log. Screams rang out. Villagers scattered. The snake was killed. Then indigenous leaders set off on a dance of appreciation, ending at the boat that took Mr. Cameron away. All the while, Mr. Cameron danced haltingly, shaking a spear, a chief’s feathery yellow and white headdress atop his head.

I have two comments to make here. First, it's hard not to be impressed by the fact that even wild snakes can smell that something crappy is going on here. Two, when choosing between the indigenous snake and Cameron's civilized wife, I am not sure they killed the right person.

January 25, 2011

James Cameron takes Earth Day group beyond 1M tree goal
The Earth Day group claims to have exceeded its last year goal of planting one million trees around the world with the creator of Avatar, James Cameron, spearheading the group's effort in Brazil

Associated Press
JANUARY 19, 2011

WASHINGTON — The Earth Day Network says it has exceeded its goal of planting one million trees worldwide.

...

"Avatar" director James Cameron planted the first tree in April in Brazil. The effort also included planting more than 500,000 trees in Haiti... Trees were also planted in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles,...

Source

According to the Earth Day group, as a special courtesy to James Cameron, all trees are globally connected by means of a broadband network and equipped with special USB access points to allow online users in different locations to remotely swap complex mental and emotional information.

Funky Arabs

2011-01-15T01:03:00.008+02:00

Last updated: January 15, 2011

August 17, 2009

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 not considered conducive to stability. But it may become the defining one in the near future for a few countries around.

Jad Shwery - Funky Arabs

January 13, 2011

This theory is being tested right now in Tunisia where the president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, appears increasingly unable or reluctant to use overwhelming force to stop riots and protests that a few days ago reached the capital.

January 14, 2011

President Ben Ali has apparently fled the country. Prime Minister said he is taking over. The army is reportedly moving in to replace security forces. This is after Ben Ali dismissed the government earlier today and announced early elections.

January 15, 2011

The Point of Inflection
The first Twitter revolution of the Arab World seems on the way to become the first ever to succeed in modern history. I am not going to predict the outcome or the possible region wide domino effect of this surprisingly underreported and under-analyzed revolution. However, I would notice that, together with Iran's subsidy reform, this is one of the most significant and wrought with far reaching consequences developments of the last few years. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali can certainly comfort himself with the fact that some kind of historic immortality is now assured to him as the first modern Arab ruler to be overthrown by a popular revolt.

Several factors were mentioned in connection with the Tunisian Twitter revolution. Autocratic rule. Several very damning WikiLeaks in one of which the US embassy in Tunisia portrayed the country as a mafia state. Unemployment. Food price inflation. Without going into comprehensive analysis of the causes, however, I want to comment on a few economic and demographic aspects of the revolution. So here is the Tunisian population pyramid

The structure of the pyramid provides some clues as to why and why now of the revolution. First of all you can see that 20 years ago Tunisia succeeded to bend its demographics and set itself on the path to winning the battle against population growth. The generation born around this pivotal moment of Tunisia's demographic history is now in the age groups of 15-25.

Basically Tunisia is now living through the peak of its demographic explosion as the country's biggest generation ever hit the labor market. This should explain a certain paradox of how one of the better run economies of the Arab World, that experienced 5% economic growth on average in recent years, can still suffer from massive unemployment. In its last health check of the economy, the IMF reported the following:

Growth is expected to reach 3.8 percent in 2010, after slowing to 3 percent in 2009 as the global downturn took its toll. But unemployment has begun to rise, after having fallen to 12.4 percent in 2007, and at 13.3 percent, remains relatively high, particularly among the educated youth.

Source: Tunisia Weathers Crisis Well, But Unemployment Persists

Tunisia's unemployment malaise has apparently a regional aspect with the bulk of investments diverted to the North at the expense of the South. But besides regional peculiarities, the general situation is defined by the fact that Tunisia has just finished going through massive uninterrupted increase in its working age population. Basically the rate of new entrees on the labor market has just finished stabilizing and is about to start falling every year, unless here comes an unprecedented surge in female workforce participation. To put it short, Tunisia's unemployment crisis is not caused by the lack of economic growth.

In fact, from the population pyramid it appears that Ben Ali was short of just a few years to start seeing the economy exiting its high unemployment trap. Basically until now Tunisian economy was like a bycicle. The moment it stops, it starts falling. The economy could not slow down even for a year without immediately leading to increase in unemployment. Economic growth was relatively robust. However, it could not catch up with the rapidly growing workforce. The global crisis did not crash the economy, but it apparently slowed it down to the point that the unemployment started growing again. This and the globally rising food prices have become the last straw for some people in the country.

Another question is why this thing exploded only now and not before. Tunisia certainly lived through worse than this without experiencing such a massive unrest. This takes me back to my post about Iran's Green Revolution.

Source: Flashdance ReLOADED.
There exists a certain similarity between the two countries. Both have exploded when the point of inflection of the population pyramid reached the age groups of 15-25. We tend to take it for granted that when fertility hits the replacement level, the demographic crisis is over. In reality at this point the crisis is only starting to build up. Potential instability seems to be concentrated in particular age groups and at a particular point on the demographic timeline.

The generations of protesters in both countries share the same traits. They are big. In fact they are probably going to be the biggest ever born in both countries. And they have few children and probably are unmarried on a massive scale. The risk of instability seems to be defined by two factors. You need a sea of testosterone in the form of young males and you need it free, that means unburdened by big families. Naturally, this trend is at its peak when the point of inflection is in the age groups of 15-25. When the age structure is distorted in favor of these age groups, the conditions are the best for another green revolution. This means the revolution can happen 20 years after the trend to low fertility establishes itself and a whole decade after a nation joins the sub replacement fertility club. I am not saying that every nation that reaches this point in its demographic history will explode, or it can't explode at another point. Nevertheless, if you expect troubles, watch this moment.

South Sudan votes on independence

2011-01-11T15:09:00.001+02:00

As South Sudan is voting on independence here is a couple of impressive maps from BBC. First, Sudan's great climatic divide.

The great divide across Sudan is visible even from space, as this Nasa satellite image shows. The northern states are a blanket of desert, broken only by the fertile Nile corridor. Southern Sudan is covered by green swathes of grassland, swamps and tropical forest.

Source: BBC

Next, the ethnic map. The outstanding feature of this map is the landlocked and dry as a bone Arab heartland (Yellow)

The Life and Death of a Minke Whale

2011-01-10T02:28:00.012+02:00

The Minke whales are the smallest baleen whale. If you don't know what baleen is, check Wikipedia. This post is a tribute to the Minke whale.

Bryant Austin on his work as a whale photographer

A northern Minke goes on a breaching spree

A Minke takes part in a fund raising paddle boarding marathon.
At the end the surfer is awarded with a brand new paddle board.
The whale receives nothing.

Dwarf Minke whales party on the Great Barrier Reef. Humans are welcome

A curious southern Minke tries to move a boat in Antarctica

The end...

Bryant Austin - The Minke Eyes
(You'd better raise volume here)

The Great Leap Forward

2011-01-03T21:15:00.041+02:00

Special thanks to Cice for helping with this post

Muslim demographics have been getting some attention recently. Declining Arab, Persian and Turkish birth rates in the Middle East are interpreted by some as signs of modernity sweeping the region. You should be aware of two problems though. For one you have different sources reporting widely divergent data. For example, if you believe Wikipedia that relies on the US Census Bureau (USCB), the Saudi total fertility rate (TFR) should be around meager 2.35 births to woman in 2010. According to the USCB, it was 2.6 in 2008. According to the World Bank, however, in 2008 the rate was not 2.6, but 3.1. This is not a huge difference but to get from 3.1 to 2.6 can easily take a whole decade. You would like to know whether you can raise a toast to the death of Muslim demographics already or you will have to wait for another decade. The USCB is an important source and used both by Wikipedia and NationMaster. The CIA Factbook population figures apparently also come from the USCB. Google, on the other hand, is sourcing the World Bank for its charts.

Google/World Bank TFR Graph for Saudi Arabia

Two, you have big expatriate communities in Arab countries of the Persian Gulf. Naturally, Western expats or hordes of Indian workers are of little interest to you since they are not citizens, have few rights and little influence, and eventually return to their countries. The problem is that both Wikipedia and Google don't provide separate statistics for nationals and expats but instead report cumulative stats for the entire population, while you would like to know first of all how the local Arabs are doing in demographic terms.

The difference between the cumulative stats and data for nationals can be huge. For example, this summer the National reported a 50% drop in the UAE birth rate between 1990-2007, almost to the replacement level, and quoted an "expert" who warned about the approaching decline in the number of UAE nationals. However, a blog post by a Western expat in the UAE I stumbled upon a few days ago, disputes the number. Without sourcing national statistical databases, the guy drops a bunch of links to other articles who seem to be better informed than the National (which on other occasions is not bad at all). The links point to a wide fertility gap between the expat population of the UAE and the UAE nationals who account for only 20% of the entire population.

From the links it appears that in 2005 the TFR for nationals was standing at 4.6 which is quite high even by the standards of the Middle East. The World Bank, sourced by the Google chart, reports TFR of 2.2 for the same year. This is obviously due to the fact that the World Bank data comes for the entire UAE population including the huge community of expats. So the TFR of the entire UAE population, as reported by the World Bank, is less than a half of the TFR of local Arabs. Obviously the local Emiratees still have quite a few years to go before we can declare them an endangered species.

This Google/World Bank Graph is of little use, if you want to know how the UAE nationals are doing

Now, what's indeed the true demographic situation of Saudi Arabia, by far the most important Arab country in the Gulf? Given that the World's Bank provides only cumulative stats for the Gulf countries, you would like to see a detailed breakdown of fertility data by nationality. The Saudi Central Department of Statistics indeed provides such information in "Indicators of fertility by nationality in 2004 to 2009" here. The Saudi data for 2004-2009 looks like this.

You can see that the national TFR (TFR for nationals) is not that different from the TFR for the total population and is coming down. You can also see that the World Bank's data matches the Saudi data for the total population in 2008 (though it increasingly does not for the previous years). On the other hand, I have no idea where the USCB takes its numbers from, but they seem to be just guessing or don't care for accuracy at all. This is rather unfortunate given how many rely on the USCB for data.

Interestingly enough, I recalculated the Saudi national TFR manually using the data from the Saudi Demographic Research Bulletin (tables 2 and 24) and got a bit lower figure of 3.28 for 2007. However, this is a minor difference. The Saudis should be expected to know to count themselves better than anybody else and the difference is probably due to their access to finer data that they use for calculating TFR.

Now why there is no major gap between the Saudi national indicators and the stats for entire population? This is because in Saudi Arabia expats account only for something like 20% of the entire population. 20% of expats are simply not enough to distort the statistics to such a spectacular degree and create such a confusion as in the case of the UAE. So you can rely on total statistics for Arab countries where expat population is around 20%. As far as I know another such country in the Gulf is Oman and here is the Google graph. You don't need a breakdown by nationality to know where Oman stands in demographic terms. The World Bank is enough (if they got the fertility rate just as accurately for 2008 as Saudi Arabia).

This Google/World Bank TFR Graph for Oman should be pretty close to the native Omani TFR, probably something like 3.2 for 2008

Finally what about the data itself? What about the TFR of 3.x for this flagship of Sunni fundamentalism in the Middle East and in fact the entire Muslim World, which is Saudi Arabia? The truth is that Islam does not have the "multiply and procreate" commandment. It's a Judeo Christian thing. So it's hard to know how much of the recent passion for birth control simply reflects the region's unemployment disaster. After all, the most aggressive family planning campaign in the Middle East is run by the Ayatollahs in Iran.

There are certain signs of stirring under the surface in Saudi Arabia, but otherwise the country still strikes one as exceptionally conservative. Recently no other else but the director of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Makkah Region, the boss of the moral police in the area (the guys who patrol streets to enforce gender segregation and proper Islamic attire), came under attack as a closet liberal himself, prompting intellectuals to write open letters in defense of the the daring sheikh. When chiefs of the moral police in your kingdom are the most progressive sector of the society, you have a good reason to start suspecting that you are not exactly a bastion of progress. And when your king is rumored to be spending sleepless nights on designing a whole new country within a country, where he can at last desegregate the sexes and shelter the more liberal section of the population from the clerics and their suicide bombers, it's a reasonable bet that the overall mood in the society does not bode well for the reformers.

However, if you believe that demography is destiny, you can certainly find some encouragement in the current data. Saudi Arabia is a big country. Its Wahhabi ideology has left the whole region, and even countries beyond, steadily drowning in a sea of suicide bombers. It's a very important Arab country and as of late its demographic transition appears to be quickly progressing towards completion. Even if this demographic transition is not driven by a genuine cultural shift, it may be already creating one as a byproduct. If you believe that demography is destiny in the Middle East too, then the Arab world may well be just about to shake off the shackles of its past and plunge into modernity. The stage appears all set for the Great Arab Leap Forward.

Energy Unintelligence

2011-01-01T16:44:00.037+02:00

Last updated: January 3, 2011

January 1, 2011

I stumbled by chance upon a certain Mark P. Mills who posted an absurd critique of Thomas Friedman's latest rant against America's addiction to oil. There is almost nothing in the post that I can agree with, but I would like to comment only on a few points because these seem to be very common misconceptions held by many people and not only MPM.

First, regarding U.S. dependence on Saudi Arabia: about 5 percent of what we burn, and thus about 10 percent of what we import, comes from the Saudis. America’s number one (and rising) source of imported oil is Canada – over double the amount we get from Saudi Arabia. It’s hard to sustain a good rant about depending on Canada. (Although it is true that Canadians do rant about depending on the American entertainment industry, but that’s another story.) America could stop importing every drop of oil from the Saudis without much difficulty, by ramping up imports from elsewhere (or even ramping domestic production, if we really wanted to). It’s not the U.S. that is particularly dependent on the Saudis per se, but the world. To the extent that we make the world’s problems ours, well then so be it. But facts are facts.

Source: Energy Intelligence

Now I am pretty much sure that TF knows that the bulk of the US petroleum imports does not come from the Middle East. Yet, I am also sure that TF is also perfectly aware of the fact that the price of oil is set globally. Basically America can substitute the Saudi oil with any other oil and maybe even stop buying oil from the Middle East completely, but this is unlikely to have any major effect on the global price of oil. However, the global oil market is constantly observed slumping to any sign of gasoline glut in the US and this is what Thomas Friedman is ranting about all the time.

Basically, the thrust of TF's argument on energy comes in two points. One, America's dependence on petroleum imports leaves it bogged down up to the neck in the Middle East. Two, by cutting its petroleum consumption America can crash the global market making Iran's and other nuts' oil revenues evaporate into the thin air. As a matter of fact, half way through his post MPM agrees with the second point himself. So what's the point of arguing about this really?

In fact, it's immaterial whether Americans replace gasoline and other petroleum products with more expensive alternatives or would just consume less, MPM got this one wrong too. It's really all about how much of the US petroleum demand is leaking to, or better sweeping clean, the global market and right now the US accounts for between 20%-25% of the global demand. TF does not claim that the US depends on the Middle East because it buys its oil from the Middle East, but because, as long as America keeps importing such huge volumes of foreign petroleum, it needs the Middle East to continue pumping the global market with Arab and Persian oil to keep the prices at bay. In this sense the US is more than dependent on Saudi Arabia.

To put it short, for the US to extricate itself from the Middle East and stop funding, directly or indirectly, the Arabs, Persians, Russians and Hugo Chavez, the US should indeed stop its petroleum addiction, or, at the very least, to contain this addiction within its borders. It does matter how this addiction is defined because ridding oneself of an addiction to imports can be achieved by substituting imports with locally extracted petroleum. This will be just as effective geopolitically, even though it would hardly amount to ridding America of the oil addiction as such.

To be sure, there should be some factors that can mitigate the impact of a decline in the US oil consumption on the Middle East. Venezuela, which accounts for close to 10% of the US imports, may fail to find enough refineries capable of processing its low quality oil outside the US. This may limit Venezuela's ability to divert its supplies elsewhere. Basically this part of the impact is very likely to be very concentrated in Venezuela with few escape routes for Chavez to ship the pain out of the country to other oil exporters. In practical terms it changes little since Chavez has long ago transformed his regime into the greatest destabilizing factor in Latin America and globally by bankrolling the narcogeurillas in Colombia, Fidel Castro in Cuba and other nuts. When TF talks about petro-dictators, he certainly holds Chavez to be one of them.

Another factor pertains to the fact that by far the biggest US petroleum supplier is Canada which accounts for 20% of the total imports. Much of the Canadian oil is an alternative oil the Canadians squeeze out of tar sands. Not that Canada should have a major problem to diversify its consumer base and divert its supplies to other parts of the global market, but this is an expensive oil to produce. Canada's tar sand industry is very likely to be the first to go out of business if the price of oil sustains a protracted and deep decline. At this point, other exporters will certainly see their revenues drop but Canada, who operates on thinner profit margins, will probably absorb the brunt of the pain shock. After such a decline the global market may stabilize for a while with the supply harmonized against the demand by the disappearance of an important producer. But, Canada aside, a short look at a graph at the end of the post should be enough for most people to figure out what a devastation can the US wreck with the global oil market by cutting on imports.

When it comes to practical suggestions, MPM seems to be unduly obsessed with the lack of cheaper alternatives. But who said energy should be cheap in the first place? THE CHEAP IS THE ENEMY OF THE SUSTAINABLE. The US would have never had to import oil from overseas or grow corn for ethanol, if it cared to fix a floor for the price of gas at, say, $3/gallon 50 years ago. So how about replacing cheap oil with one alternative, that for an extra price preserves all technical advantages of the oil itself? Namely, how about replacing cheap oil with a more expensive oil? The US imports more than a half of its petroleum, It also consumes twice as much oil per unit of GDP than Europe. What's the reason for such a dramatic difference in per unit consumption that accounts for the lion's share of the US petroleum imports? You don't really have to sweat very hard in order to figure it out - gas taxes in the US are only a fraction of what they are in Europe. This is not about making Americans pay more taxes, but about the fact that Americans are paying taxes in all the wrong places. Shift taxes to where they are due and you get that energy independence that right now appears so out of reach to MPM and others.

Top global petroleum consumers (red) and Producers (blue) in barrels per day.

PS

I stole this graph from here. It dates by 2008 and is really not meant to illustrate anything. It's included here only in order to keep you happy.

January 3, 2011

Fear the Boom and Low Prices

The place you should study isn't the bust
It's the boom that should make you feel leery

Now, to pass a judgment on the controversy between the two giants of modern economic theory is a bit out of my league. I can only say that my intuition is that both of them can be perfectly right at the same time and wrong at the same time. Certainly, most economists seemed to be in agreement during the crisis that some kind of stimulus was absolutely necessary to stop the economy from tanking. On the other hand, Hayek's idea of the bust as malinvestments driven by low interest rates should ring and ring and ring to a lot of people. The fact is that the two were concentrating on different stages of the cycle, but it's precisely here where I see a certain parallel between Hayek's focus on the boom part of the cycle and the energy market.

Hayek - Fear the Boom

Unlike food and cloths, the bulk of petroleum consumption does not happen because consumers are interested in drinking petroleum per se. The demand is conditioned by consumption of other durable goods such as cars and housing. Naturally, it makes the demand inelastic since, once a person purchases an SUV and builds a house in a suburb, he usually has no easy way to wind down his demand for transportation fuels. This makes consumption of such durable goods a bet on the long term performance of energy market. In this sense low energy prices, let alone subsidized prices, are not that different from low interest rates. This is just another factor that can easily confuse the market and trick consumers into overstretching themselves through malinvestments in these goods.

The oil market is neither very elastic on the supply side. The only cushion that this market normally has is the spare capacity of Saudi Arabia of which there's been left not so much recently. The Saudi manipulation of the oil market is basically an attempt to trade stability for the price, to moderately overcharge in exchange for a stable price secured through standby fields that Saudi can activate on-demand. It's hard to say that the Saudis were very successful in stabilizing the market recently. To sum it up, the lack of elasticity on both sides of the market, combined with frequent warnings about the approaching end of the age of cheap oil, should make any government think twice if it wants to have its citizens to continue growing petroleum addicted. The oil market has become too unreliable during the last few decades. You simply don't want to grow dependent on such a market, when you know that you may have no easy way to go back, when that proverbial thing hits the fan again.

In practical terms it means that governments should not worry so much about high oil prices. It's the boom part of the cycle that should make them feel leery. When the price is low, when people buy SUVs and other gas guzzlers, when the suburban sprawl is growing. This is because the trap of energy intensive economy is very easy to fall into. However, without a major technological breakthrough we are all still waiting for to happen, this trap can become very difficult to get out, if and when the oil market resumes exploring the world that lies beyond $100/barrel.

PS

Despite Keynes and Hayek representing two mutually hostile lines of economic thought, at least as far as Hayek is concerned, and there is a plenty of interviews with Hayek available on YouTube, there seems to have been no personal hostility between the two. In fact, it appears they were good buddies. That's why it's appropriate to end this post with a tribute to Keynes.

Accountability

2010-12-28T01:14:00.004+02:00

Last updated: December 28, 2010

August 24, 2006

Several years ago in the face of mounting suicide attacks the government finally gave up and began constructing the security fence. I have my own misgivings about the way it was done. In particular, I find plainly stupid the way Sharon has provoked the anger of the international community which could have been easily avoided, were the fence constructed along the 1967 border.

Nevertheless the fence without doubt was and is a great life saver. Has its construction been started earlier, hundreds of funerals could have been prevented.

I well remember politicians, from both right and left, dismissing the idea of the fence and claiming that the fence can not stop the terror, but only iron fist/settlements or negotiations/territorial compromises can.

The Channel One once interviewed Efraim Sneh from Avoda when he went to see one of the first stretches of the fence under construction. After having skeptically examined the fence he announced - This is not a solution of course. It can't stop the attacks.

Now it's hard to know how many attacks were prevented by the fence and how many people owe their lives to the fence. I hold many politicians directly responsible for the delay in its construction, the delay that happened to be fatal for many Israelis. I would like to see politicians like Sneh persecuted for criminal neglect of their duties towards the security of co-patriots. If not persecuted, then at least permanently expelled from the politics.

I can't remember one single politician from those who opposed the fence to appear later and admit that they were wrong. Actually I suspect that many of them had the security value of the fence very clear from the beginning and were opposing it for purely political and ideological reasons.

The right was opposing it because it looked as a de-facto recognition of the Palestinian state. Many in the left were opposing the very idea of the feance because at the time many leftists were still stuck with the idea of the new Middle East and opposed anything they perceived as isolationist policies on the part of Israel.

The 'Fence for Life' movement was campaigning for its construction for quite a while but it's only when the rate of suicide attacks reached 2-3 per day that the political elite was left with no other choice but to start fencing Israel off the West Bank. And, of course, as always they messed the whole thing by running the fence deep into the Palestinian territory, splitting many villages in two. It doesn't take a very big brain to figure out that if you are daily accused of being a semi apartheid neo-colonial entity, you should better keep a low profile and avoid bringing more troubles on your head. And so when Israel was dragged to the international court it came as no big surprise. Surprising was rather the disbelief and indignation displayed by Sharon and others at such a turn of the events.

It says a lot about the Israeli society that ordinary citizens never demanded accountability from their politicians and explanations why the construction of the fence was delayed for so long. I would have expected an investigation started from the moment it became obvious what an enormous price in terms of human lives the Israelis were made to pay by their politicians, left and right, for their political and ideological agendas.

The story of the fence was replayed before and during the last war in Lebanon. There was no intelligence missing about Hezbollah stockpiling thousands of short range Katyusha rockets over the last years. The increasing use and growing sophistication of Kassam rockets fired from Gaza was also obvious.

Nevertheless during the war there have been more than enough politicians and experts interviewed on all channels that claimed that no adequate protection against short range missiles exists and that this problem has only a political solution. Which basically means that if short range missiles reach the hands of Hamas or Hezbollah the only solution we have is to start a political dialog with them, ignoring the fact that the both groups are firmly committed to our destruction by the virtue of their very ideology.

These arguments are no more valid than were those dismissing the value of the fence as a shield against suicide bombers. The political and military establishment simply preferred to ignore the missile threat. To put it bluntly it's a lie.

To start with, Israel and US have been developing such an anti Katyusha system for years and during preliminary tests the system showed a lot of promise. The system, code-named Nautilus, was not only capable of intercepting short range katyusha rockets but it was also destroying mortars and artillery shells, shot both in single rounds and salvos.

Yet the Israeli government soon started cutting funding for the project until the US pulled out over disagreements about who pays how much of the costs. But the so called experts would be wasting their time, if they think that they can persuade anybody in this country that the project was stopped because its laser based implementation proved to be technically impossible. The Northrop Grumman that participated in the project on the US side, has been pursuing it later on its own and released a fully operational system this year.

Moreover, it was reported that the company later approached Israel's government offering the system as a protection for Israeli towns against Kassam and Katyusha attacks. I want to draw the attention of anyone reading these lines to the fact that the SkyGuard has apparently become available shortly before the war, but it never occurred to Halutz and Olmert to urgently airlift a few such systems to, at least, protect some of our most sensitive spots like Haifa's chemical industry. And the reason is probably the same one why it never occurred to them to do something about thousands of people trapped in shelters in Kiryat Shmone, Naharia and other towns across the north. But whatever was their reason, one thing is clear and it's that some people in this country should go to jail.

The bottom line is that the political and military elite should not be allowed to get away with bearing full responsibility this time. We can forgive them the delay with the fence as a one time blunder. But the threat of short range missiles, mortars and similar weapons coming from Gaza and South Lebanon has become too obvious recently to justify the mismanagement of the Nautilus project and the absence of any other attempt to address the issue of the Kassam and Katyusha rockets.

It's not only Nasrallah whom we should hold responsible for hundreds of homes damaged and destroyed and dozens of civilians killed and wounded. There are some people on our side too who should be held even more responsible for what happened. If only for the reason that they are living in the same country as we do and we vote for them and pay them our taxes not because we want to see these imbeciles later producing lame excuses for their ineptness, unprofessionalism and plain stupidity.

December 28, 2010

Four years later...

Jan 11, 2010

"We cannot create the illusion that tomorrow morning there will be full protection for the Gaza periphery or the North, or elsewhere," Barak said at the Defense Ministry on Monday.

"It will take years before we are fully equipped. But in the coming years, Iron Dome will doubtlessly become part of the IDF's defense mechanisms for the citizens and civilians on the home front, as well as for military sites."

Source: JPost

Dec 1, 2010

Active rocket protection systems, such as the Iron Dome and Arrow, are designed to protect IDF offensive capabilities, and not necessarily civilians, Northern Command Chief Major-General Gadi Eizenkot said Tuesday.

Eizenkot stressed that "the residents of Israel shouldn't be under the illusion that someone will open an umbrella over their heads."

During a speech at the University of Haifa the military official said that "the systems are designed to protect military bases, even if this means that citizens suffer discomfort during the first days of battle."

Source: JPost

No comment.

Ehud Barak - Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense

A king on a powder keg

2010-12-23T01:57:00.016+02:00

The latest and much referenced on the web report on public opinion in the Mislim World claims that the extremist duo of Hamas and Hezbollah, otherwise known as H&H, enjoys mixed ratings in the Muslim World while the Muslim public overwhelmingly rejects the Al-Qaida (AQ). The poll is poorly structured and confused and accompanied by an even worse analysis. Those interested can read it here. The poll's analysis doesn't merit to be taken seriously and some of the data, never mind the conclusions, look outright fishy. However, I would still like to comment on the poll's Jordan findings.

The poll reveals staggering levels of support for the H&H and the AQ. Far from rejecting the AQ, whopping 34% profess a favorable view of the AQ. This finding is the most significant given the attacks the AQ staged on civilian targets in the kingdom and the fact that Jordan borders on Iraq and is hosting a significant community of Iraqi refugees. Such a massive rooting for the AQ certainly does not come from ignorance which can serve an explanation for elevated levels of support for the AQ in other Muslim countries such as Indonesia or Nigeria which are far from the Middle East. Only today Christian communities in Iraq were reported to have been canceling Christmas festivities in the face of threats and attacks from the Iraqi department of the AQ and amidst an escalating Christian flight out of the Arab controlled areas of Iraq.

Equally impressive are the ratings for the H&H, which are higher than in any other Muslim country in the poll. The poll does not provide cumulative data for all supporters of at least one of the extremist groups. Otherwise, I suspect that the poll's claim of mixed ratings for extremist groups would have been revealed in Jordan as the public opinion being mostly mixed of extreme and very extreme. While no data seems be available on how the support for radical Islamists is shared between the three, I think it's nothing far fetched to suggest that out of the 60% who hold a favorable view of the Hamas, there should be at least 5%-10% of very traditional Muslim Brothers who see their alliance with the heretics from the Iran/Syria/Hezbollah axis as an alliance of convenience only. And out of the 34% of AQ sympathizers, 5%-10% should be hardcore Salafis who want to have nothing to do with none of the two Hs. Altogether, you get staggering 75%-80% for enthusiasts of at least one of the three radical Islamic groups. To put it short, this king is literally sitting on a powder keg.

King Abdullah II of Jordan

Extra Search Tags: Pew Global Attitudes Project, Pew Research Center

Machiavelli in Reverse

2010-12-12T03:55:00.016+02:00

The secrecy that WikiLeaks despises is vital to all organisations, including government—and especially in the realm of international relations.

The Economist: Read cables and red faces

Now I don't have any comprehensive or ground breaking analysis to offer on the subject, but I can't agree more on secrecy with the Economist. Secrecy is vital to all human relations. I can assure anybody that if I could tape all conversations of that person for a year and then air the records to all his colleagues, bosses, relatives and friends that person was in touch during the year, this thing would have gone way beyond embarrassment. This person would have been very likely to find himself sacked from his job, divorced by his wife and renounced by most of his family and abandoned by at least half of his friends. The expectations many people have from diplomacy or politics are absolutely unreasonable. People should compare these expectations to how they manage their personal lives and relationships.

Many smart people have already pointed out that the leaks hardly contain anything radically new. The paranoia and sleepless nights the Arab governments in the Middle East have from Iran's nuclear program did not come exactly as something unexpected. And many Russians could only yawn at what the cables had to say about their leaders. Russians are a skeptical and suspicious bunch and are used to suspecting their government of even worse misdeeds than running a mafia state. A very popular theory in Moscow at the time used to be that Russian government was behind the bombing of apartment buildings in Russia's big cities on the eve of the second Chechen war.

Yet, the fact that the leaks contained nothing new according to some smart people, does not mean that they are totally inconsequential. Ahmadinejad did not reject the leaks as fabrications for nothing. Neither did the Turkish Islamists when they were insinuating that the leaks were an Israeli conspiracy. China started blocking the site of the WikiLeaks almost from the day one and the list goes on. Not that everything in the cables is about hard facts. A lot of the information gathering carried out by the US embassies abroad goes about recycling gossips circulated in the opposition circles of a given country that nobody can confirm or disprove for sure. These are not hard facts, but obviously the leaks embarrassed quite a few governments in the world and not necessarily only the US and its allies. The leaks may have mostly leaked out something already known or widely suspected, but this does not cancel that fundamental truth that celebrating naked kings is highly conditioned on keeping children away from your parades. Some of this stuff has never been intended to capture the headlines of leading media outlets.

The most impressive revelation of the leaks, and many people are plainly dishonest in denying or ignoring it, is about the US itself. The leaks have obviously thrown the US diplomacy into disarray and inflicted a massive operational damage on its information gathering network, but otherwise the leaks contained no more than minor embarrassments for the US. Yes, it's not nice to spy after the UN officials, but this is no reason to avoid doing this. No vicious plot to dominate the world and enslave nations have transpired from the leaked cables. The cables rather reveal a very complex picture of the global patrolman and the West's biggest democracy navigating its way across a landscape dominated by the weak and fragmented Europe, oriental despots, the neo Ottomans from Turkey, the mafia tsardom of consumed by her habitual anti Western paranoia Russia and the secretive post Communists of China.

A brilliant report by Burns on Chechnya seems to be rather typical of the US approach to diplomacy and foreign policy. The report explores ways in which America can help Russia to consolidate her control over the Caucasus, despite Russia's best effort to harm herself and her endless suspicions of the West's intentions. The report was not written by a cynical person who did not believe in democracy, human rights and other usual Washington's blah blah blah. To the contrary, the most shocking aspect of the leaks is how much the US diplomats and policy makers do actually believe their own propaganda. If anything, that's the biggest surprise of the leaks.

The Pitch Black

2010-12-04T22:07:00.034+02:00

Pitch Black is a scifi movie. A spaceship makes and emergency landing on a barren planet. The planet is one big desert, no vegetation, absolutely nothing. Then a long night descends on the planet, everything disappears in pitch black and the planet suddenly comes alive and boy does it come alive. The pitch black night is swarming with dangerous alien life.

I love that "It's a way to see... with sound." I had to include this part too. This is just it. He got it right. Other aspects of the fauna don't make sense. It's impossible that they got only predators there. Somebody has to do photosynthesis or extract energy from any other source. But echolocation in pitch black darkness, they got it just right.

Anyway, what am I trying to say here? Deep down a few thousands feet below the ocean used to be uninhabitable. There are several reasons for this sorry state of affairs, but the first one is the absence of sunlight. The deep ocean is pitch black, no sunlight penetrates there and, as most people already know, life on earth is based on sunlight - photosynthesis.

Other than that, a handful of species, that managed to adapt to scavenging on remains of dead marine animals occasionally reaching these depths, have to survive freezing temperatures and crashing pressures that only the most modern of modern submersibles can withstand.

In 1977 one such submersible descended 8000 feet into the darkness to study hydrothermal vents, a geological feature that enlivens this harsh environment by pumping it with tons of highly toxic minerals and water boiling at 400 °C. When the scientists started processing video recordings brought back by the submarine, they were shocked. Amidst the otherwise barren Abyssal Plane, the vents were surrounded by clouds of alien life. The Pitch Black was swarming with life.

Think about the fact that scientists now believe that the biomass of only the bacterium populating the deep sea, is several times more than the entire mass of all living creatures living in the air, on the ground and in the top layers of the ocean. The Pitch Black is doing just fine. It's the surface of the planet which is uninhabitable and not the other way round as science used to think.

The Pitch Black is home to even more bizarre geological features than hydrothermal vents. Thousands meters under water the Alvin submersible hits an underwater lake and sets a wave in motion across the lake.

Amazed by the underwater lake? Now go back to the previous video and ask yourself when was the last time you've seen clouds of smoke under water. Yet, this is what that thing is officially called - the black smoker.

David Attenborough on the biology of hydrothermal vents and underwater lakes.

So far we have explored only 1% of the deep ocean floor. Who knows what's still out there to be discovered?"

David Attenborough

Indeed. In recent years it was found that large areas of the Gulf of Mexico at depths of 3,000 meters are paved with a thick layer of asphalt made of viscous oil. And, yet, this is no BP disaster. Life is swarming on the asphalt.

When watching this movie, one should keep two things in mind. First, This is also part of the pitch black world. It's illuminated by the lights of the submersible. Otherwise, total darkness rules there. This is another ecosystem that does not care if the sun goes out tomorrow. It extracts its energy from oil.

Two, many people are bound to be surprised by the presence of so much oil on the seabed. The truth is that just as oil is extracted from the depths of the ocean, it's seeping into the water all the time. There is no way so much oil can be hidden under the seabed without some of it making way into the ocean. Oil is part of nature and part of the ocean. It's a natural thing and obviously life in the ocean is adapted to it.

The Pitch Black beats the surface of this planet not only by the sheer biomass of alien life lurking down there. Its economic potential surpasses the surface by orders of magnitude and it has never been really tapped. We'll be running out of resources on this planet only for as long as we keep insisting that this planet consists only of its surface. Remember the underwater lake?

Why does it all matter? For one very simple reason. 1,000 meters under water and below lies an entire world in total darkness. People think about that place as a motionless darkness devoid of life. Yet, we now know that it's a superactive place. The seabed is created mostly by volcanic eruptions. There are dozens of volcanoes erupting there at this very moment.

The Pitch Black may be mostly an inhabitable desert, but its oasis are teeming with alien life, parallel ecosystems that don't need energy of the sun to thrive. We used to think that it's an unihabitable place. Yet, we now know that measured by the sheer mass of creatures living down there, it's the surface of this planet that's subsisting on scarce energy of the sun that reaches the Earth. The world below sustains itself by tapping directly into the energy of the Earth which it has no shortage of.

People are dreaming about space exploration and intergalatic space travels. Yet we have another planet right here. We know more about the surface of the Mars than we know of the Pitch Black. This is for one simple reason. We can watch the Mars through telescope but it's pointless to peer into the Pitch Black from above. We need to send there submersibles that can hardly illuminate even their immediate surroundings and we have barely started doing this.

Yet, the planet below may be the origin of life on Earth. The Pitch Black is teeming with a kind of alien life that we should expect to find on other planets of the Solar System if they got a biosphere. The Pitch Black is packed with natural resources that can sustain this civilization for generations after oil and other stuff run out on the surface. Now compare this to huge distances between the planets of the solar system, never mind other stars, and ask yourself: where should humanity go next?

The Pitch Black - The mankind's next frontier

And the last but not the least. Our chances to reach another star system in the near future are pretty much zero. As a matter of fact humanity may never learn to travel for distances of light years to reach another star system. Inter star journeys may remain in the domain of science fiction for as long as humanity exists, a wishful copy paste from the age of great oceanic travels that will never materialize. But across the solar system there are planets on which there are oceans of water under the sheet of ice with underwater volcanoes and hydrothermal vents going on. This is at least what science believes right now.

There should be ideal conditions for life there. No sunlight. Crashing pressure of thousands of atmospheres. Sharp contrast between freezing temperatures of the depth and the boiling water of deep sea geizers. Huge amounts of highly poisonous and toxic stuff being constantly pumped into the water. Everything that life needs to thrive which we know because we got the same stuff down there. What we have around hydrothermal vents is the closest approximation to extraterrestrial life that we may found on other planets of the solar system. If you ever wanted to see what an alien life may look like, here you have it. Take it as a basis and use your imagination for the rest.

Extra Search Tags: Hydrogen Sulfides, Robert Ballard, The Chronicles of Riddick, Cold Seeps, Methane Hydrates, Deep-Sea Brine Pools, Titanic, Jupiter's Moons, Europe, NASA

The Best of WikiLeaks until Now

2010-11-30T01:48:00.015+02:00

One of the best leaks on Russia, America and the Caucasus - "Chechnya, the once and future war" from the author of the superb "Chechnya's ruler, a three-day wedding and a golden gun". This Burns should start writing books. American literature got a new great writer.

PS

I decided to discontinue this post because the leaks have turned into a flood. Maybe I will be updating this post now and then, but basically this post is finished. Here is a new leak and I decided to move to the top one of the previous since for me they seem to be connected.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emissaries also learn of a special "Iran observer" in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku who reports on a dispute that played out during a meeting of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. An enraged Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari allegedly got into a heated argument with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and... and slapped him in the face because... because the generally conservative president had, surprisingly, advocated freedom of the press.

Source

An unidentified Iranian businessman in Istanbul, Turkey, told U.S. diplomatic officials in August that election fraud was being led by "six or seven" Revolutionary Guard generals who were afraid they'd lose their power and privileges if Mousavi won.

Source

Israel responsible for WikiLeaks in anti-Turkish plot, AKP member says (:D :D NB)

Source

He made clear he was not amused by a US diplomat's description of him as "Batman" and President Dmitry Medvedev as "Robin". (Loool! NB)

Source

Israel to Egypt and Abbas: We are going into Gaza to trash Hamas a bit. What about you guys to follow and take control over the strip from these Islamists?

Egypt/Abbas: No. Thank you

Israel: So we just go in to teach these monkeys a lesson and then get out?

Egypt/Abbas: Yes, please do

Source

Saudi King Abdullah told U.S. officials that Pakistan's President Zardari was incapable of reforming his country. "When the head is rotten it affects the whole body," the Saudi monarch said, according to a cable.

Source

Turkey’s main opposition party is “no more than a bunch of elitist ankle-biters,” U.S. diplomats in Ankara said in one of the documents leaked late Sunday by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks

Source

Turkey’s foreign policy has “Rolls Royce ambitions, but Rover resources” and Turks “can’t compete on equal terms” with either global or regional powers, former Ambassador to Ankara James Jeffrey said in a separate confidential document.

Source

The metaphor most commonly deployed by Jordanian officials when discussing Iran is of an octopus whose tentacles reach out insidiously to manipulate, foment, and undermine...

Source

-- HBJ characterized Qatar,s relationship with Iran as one in which "they lie to us, and we lie to them".

Source

A solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict would be a great achievement, the [Saudi] King said, but Iran would find other ways to cause trouble. "Iran's goal is to cause problems," he continued, "There is no doubt something unstable about them." He described Iran as "adventurous in the negative sense," and declared "May God prevent us from falling victim to their evil."

Source

The Lead Goose

2010-11-29T10:44:00.002+02:00

Guardian: Saudi Arabia has repeatedly urged the US to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear installations (my intuition was basically correct)

A special report by the Economist on Japan's demographic implosion. The links to all articles of the report are inside the article on the right side.

Western Europe’s working-age population is already shrinking, though not as fast as Japan’s. East Asia, too, will watch Japan intently. Its industrial-growth model has closely resembled Japan’s in its post-war boom, rising on the same tide of an expanding workforce and export-led productivity gains. Japan has been called the lead goose in that V-formation. For now, as Florian Coulmas, a population expert at Tokyo’s German Institute for Japanese Studies, puts it, Japan is “the oldest goose”. But South Korea’s and China’s working-age populations too will soon start to shrink.

Source: Into the unknown

Sky's the Limit

2010-11-24T15:18:00.004+02:00

This post has been replicated from my Whales page where you can watch full sized videos of my nature posts.

Underwater Birds

Giant Manta flying into the sky

The first commandment of the flying fish: Be airborne and multiply

A flying fish in a record breaking 45 seconds long flight

The Future of the Fish Flight

The future of Japan

2010-11-19T08:43:00.008+02:00

The Economist: The Japan syndrome

Given that I am a bit short on posts recently, I decided to resume posting here stuff I originally intended for my marine life blog. If you are not interested in underwater thingies, then just ignore it. And here we go with undersea volcanoes

Submarine ring of fire

Climate Change hits the Middle East

2010-11-17T13:06:00.009+02:00

The latest links by Reuters on the impact of global warming on the Arab World. After demography this is probably the second most important factor to determine the future of this region. People can dwell on intricacies of the Israeli Palestinian negotiations or dream about a new prosperous and united Middle East to emerge as much as they want, but it's not clear how much of the present Middle East will survive the next two decades intact.

Arab world among most vulnerable to climate change

Yemenis abandon farms, seek food security in city

Climate change worsens plight of Iraqi farmers

Environmental disaster hits eastern Syria

Inside the Senate’s battle over climate change

2010-10-11T18:23:00.007+02:00

Links

The Economist says biofuel revolution is about to begin.

The Economist: The post-alcohol world

Haaretz: Vietnam vs Yom Kippur

Bloomberg: King’s Battle With Clerics Dictates Fate of Saudi’s Oil Economy

Foreign Policy: Think Again: Global Aging (H/T to Idit for the link)

A staggering insight into the inner workings of political process in the US. Basically, there are no workings. The damn thing just does not work.

The New Yorker: Inside the Senate’s battle over climate change

The New York Times: U.S. Military Orders Less Dependence on Fossil Fuels

Brussels is developing a new integration model for the rest of the EU to follow:

Even francophone politicians, usually staunch supporters of Belgian union, have begun to evoke the possibility of a divorce, as a Socialist leader warned early last month that French speakers should "get ready for the break-up of Belgium."

Source: Associated Press

Troubles in U.S. Navy Fleet's Mideast Home

2010-09-29T19:37:00.004+02:00

Links...

Global currency war has broken out. Global trade war may soon follow too

MercoPress: Brazil claims “global currency war” has broken out

FP: China Won't Revalue the Yuan

China's export sector, moreover, is far less robust than it appears. Authorities conducted extensive "stress tests" on more than 1,000 export companies in the first quarter of this year to determine the effects of any significant yuan appreciation. The vast majority of firms were making do on profit margins of 2 to 4 percent. The results revealed that for every 1 percent rise in the yuan against the dollar, the profit margin of the labor-intensive exporters would decline by around 1 percent.

AP: China targeted in bill on currency manipulation

WASHINGTON — The House has approved legislation that would allow the U.S. to seek trade sanctions against China and other nations for manipulating their currency to gain trade advantages.

The New York Times: Pakistan's army may have to move in to pick up the pieces after yet another experiment with democracy in the Muslim World gone wrong

The Economist on South Sudan: Are they heading for a crash?

I decided to move all my posting on whales to a separate blog

Sunni Shia strife in Bahrain

The National: Bahrain revokes citizenship of Shiite cleric

Here is a hilarious account of the King Hamad trying to attack this problem from another angle.

The National Goal of the Highest Importance

2010-09-22T01:43:00.002+02:00

PM on Monday:

. . .

Today, we will discuss another item that is important to the security of Israel, to its economic security, and which will, in the long term, also affect our geo-political status. In the coming decade, the state of Israel will invest almost NIS 2 billion in developing alternative fuels for transportation. I spoke about this at the beginning of my tenure as Prime Minister and I asked National Economic Council Chairman Prof. Eugene Kandel and the relevant ministers to coordinate and look for a framework in which we might be able to meet the need for alternatives to petroleum - alternative fuels for motor vehicles.

. . .

I view this as a national goal of the highest importance because the addiction to oil has led to the Western world being dependent on the oil-producing countries and harms the standing and security of the State of Israel. Of course, it significantly harms the environment as well. 40% of emitted greenhouse gases originate in the use of oil; therefore, there are many aspects and advantages here in finding good alternatives for transportation fuel. Today, we are, in effect, launching the first discussion so that we will be able to make practical decisions to advance this important research.

I would like to thank the National Economic Council, its Chairman, Prof. Eugene Kandel, the inter-ministerial team, and the various ministers and their aides. We will need to work together in order to resolve several items. There are still various opinions on how to organize this activity and I intend to solve these problems and advance this project, which is so important for the security and the economy of the State of Israel.

. . .

Source: Cabinet communique

The Muslim World in 10 seconds

2010-09-19T21:17:00.032+02:00

Hamed Abdel-Samad makes a rather good point in his two part essay about the impending collapse of the Muslim World. Personally I prefer some moderation against reaching such dramatic conclusions. Nevertheless, the essay is well written and certainly worth reading. Here are the links to both parts of the essay with my commentary below.

In the western world, an astounding number of people believe that Islam is overpowering and on the rise. Demographic trends, along with bloody attacks and shrill tones of Islamist fundamentalists, seem to confirm that notion.

In reality, however, it is the Islamic world which feels on the defensive and determined to protest vehemently against what it perceives as a western, aggressive style of power politics, including in the economic sphere.

. . .

Source: Globalization and the Pending Collapse of the Islamic World

Comparing the Muslim world of today with the Titanic just before its sinking, some powerful parallels come to mind — sadly so.

That ship was all alone in the ocean, was considered invincible by its proud makers and yet suddenly became irredeemably tarnished in its oversized ambitions. Within a few seconds, it moved in its self-perception from world dominator to sailing helplessly in the icy ocean of modernity, without any concept of where a rescue crew could come from.

The passengers in the third-class cabins remained asleep, effectively imprisoned, clueless about the looming catastrophe. The rich, meanwhile, managed to rescue themselves in the few lifeboats that were available, while the traveling clergy excelled with heartfelt but empty appeals to those caught in between not to give up fighting.

. . .

Source: The Muslim World and the Titanic

Now my two cents on the subject. First of all, South East Asia (Indonesia/Malaysia) and Turkey aside, it's obvious that most Muslim nations are facing massive challenges that include the aftermath of the demographic explosion, overpopulation and the climate change. In particular the bulk of the Arab World is affected simultaneously and gravely by all three, but other Muslim nations such as Afghanistan and Pakistan may be doing only marginally better, if at all. The growing scarcity of resources against the backdrop of a rapid population increase is one issue. Another trend is a tremendous pressure on labor markets as a result of the same population increase exacerbated by droughts that turned thousands of farmers across the Middle East into climate refugees.

Now, it's no secret that fertility rates have been rapidly normalizing across the Middle East and North Africa with some nations having slipped below the replacement level. However, it's important to understand why this fact does not really matter right now. For one, the Middle East as a whole may be already overpopulated to the breaking point. Some nations may be no longer capable of sustaining even a moderate population growth. Never mind that we still have some countries around exploding demographically and exporting their demographics to the rest of the region. Two, the population growth remains high, though it's decelerating, because the population structure is dominated by age groups associated with child bearing. Three, the current decline in population growth provides little relief to the economy and in particular unemployment which are conditioned by demographic events that happened 20 years ago. For a more detailed explanation of this process, check this post.

The bottom line is that with or without a genuine democratic transformation and Islamic reformation, parts of the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim World may well collapse by the end of this decade for purely technical reasons. It's perfectly possible. This Titanic looks rather massive because it's loaded with the end product of several decades of uninterrupted demographic explosion in the Middle East and elsewhere. But it's precisely for this reason, that the ship is increasingly prone to suddenly sinking without early warning. What is perceived by some in the West as the Muslim World's greatest strength, namely its demographics, is in fact the Muslim World's Achilles' heel and, with a little help from the global warming, may easily become the cause of its untimely undoing.

And the last one. There exists a very common misconception in the West that the crux of the problem with the Muslim World lies in its lack of democracy. The Middle East in particular has spent the entire post WWII period in chains of authoritarian regimes set up by kings and dictators. Remove the chain, this school of thought reasons, and one hundred flowers will immediately bloom. Regardless of the root cause of the extreme persistence of this lunacy, it has very little to do with reality and is not supported by recent experiments in democracy in the Middle East and Pakistan that ended in astonishingly brutal civil wars.

While it's true that the kings and dictators have contributed tremendously to creating this problem, they are the only ones who can clear the mess. What the Middle East and Pakistan need is not democracy, but technocracy and modernization which can be provided only by reform minded autocratic regimes. It all boils down to this: Only the dictators themselves can reform their countries and take them into modernity. And if they don't want to do it, then it's not going to happen because nobody else can. There are several reasons for this situation, but the most immediate one is that too many countries in the Middle East and other parts of the Muslim World feature impossible ethno-sectarian configurations that make creation of functional democratic systems impossible in principle.

One thing that indirectly follows from the Titanic part of the essay is that both the West, namely Europe, and the Muslim World are basically traveling on the same Titanic. Europe's inability to control migration inflows has made the continent hostage to the situation in the Middle East and sub Saharan Africa. This is a good enough reason for the West to start exercising caution with the idea of how the magic wand of democracy is going to cure the Middle East, Pakistan, or whatever Islamic nation for this matter, of their ills. Otherwise the West can easily find itself with no Musharrafs around to help it to keep the tsunami at bay. All advise and pleading on this issue from the intellectual circles of the Middle East and elsewhere should be dismissed and ignored, if only because in the past the very same intellectuals were all too often instrumental in bringing the regimes to power and spreading virulent anti Western propaganda among the population.

To put it short, breaking chains may look all fun at the first glance but engaging in this activity in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim World for any prolonged period of time is very likely to have a surprisingly unhappy ending for all parties involved and first of all the Muslim World itself. Muslim intellectuals should be the first to keep this point in mind. The West should be the second.

Religion, Demography and Politics in the 21st Century

2010-09-15T19:17:00.016+02:00

Links...

The Financial Times: Israel: A not very secular shift (If you don't have subscription, google for the article by its title. FT is open for google searches)

Eric Kaufmann - Religion, Demography and Politics in the 21st Century (H/T to Cice for the link)

The Wall Street Journal: Unfreezing Arctic Assets (One more article pondering the climate change and humanity's Arctic future)

My Comment on Kishukushim

2010-09-14T23:42:00.000+02:00

This conspiracy thing is such a common place that I occasionally saw it mentioned even in the Guardian. I have two FB Greek friends one of whom called Greece the Christian Middle East precisely for this reason and another one once wrote me a page long comment to explain the historical background of the conspiracy mindset.

As to Tali, I invited her to the blog with a permission. I can't know who on Kishkushim can grant such a permission and who can't. Neither Tali could know this. Anyway, she came to explain herself. How is it called in your liberal jargon? She came to have a dialog. :D :D

And I think that was nice. There was no reason why she should have been ignored. She is not a Nazi or something. And she is no bureaucrat. She is an archaeologist who is doing a lot of field work. Really, her coming here was a very nice, very human event. The best thing about having Internet. I see no reason why she should be repeatedly called "bureaucrat".

I really think people should go slow about rooting for minorities. It consumes so much human energy that it leaves some people with nothing to share with other people from the non minority population.

Source: Peace

Syria is committed to peace

2010-09-13T17:36:00.013+02:00

Last updated: September 13, 2010

April 8, 2010

John Kerry thinks Syria is committed to peace and is essential to the process.

United States Senator John Kerry said Thursday that Syria is committed to achieving peace in the Middle East and is essential to the process.

"Syria is an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region," Kerry said.

Speaking from the headquarters of major militant groups of the region that also acts as a transit point for weapons and Jihadists heading for Iraq, John Kerry was musing that Syria can enhance its contribution to the peace process even further by doing something about its arms supplies to Hezbollah. For some reason Kerry is less concerned about Syria and its allies involvement with other resistance groups reaching as far away from Syria as Yemen.

However, the Democratic senator, who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters after a three-hour meeting with Syiran President Bashar Assad in Damascus that Washington is concerned about the flow of weapons from Syria to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

"That is something that must stop in order to promote regional stability and security," Kerry said about the weapons.

Source: AP via Haaretz

In the wake of this exciting news, the leader of the M14 coalition Saad Hariri was reported to have resumed practicing crawling on all four in preparation for a visit to Damascus. You thought Walid Jumblat has gone nuts recently out of habit or something? You dupe, the old fox can sniff a shitstorm approaching from a thousand miles away.

On the bright side, it's worth mentioning that the West has a rich history of selling and reselling Lebanon to Syria while crawling is practiced in Lebanon with so much passion that it can be considered a national sport and martial art. With Damascus regularly holding crawling tournaments for Lebanese politicians, it's about time for Saad Hariri to visit Damascus to show to Bashar Assad how he can outcrawl Walid Jumblat and Michel Aoun.

John Kerry - the man of peace

September 13, 2010

I was wrong so many times... I quit
That was Saad Hariri, the leader of what's left of the M14 coalition after defections, in an interview to Asharq al-Awsat.

"At a certain stage we made mistakes and accused Syria of assassinating the martyred premier. This was a political accusation, and this political accusation has finished."

After years of accusing Syria in assassinating his late father, mr. Hariri "admitted" that the charge was politically motivated. Verily it's said that in Lebanon they can sell their mothers in time of need, an impressively pragmatic and business oriented nation.

And if Walid Jumblat is still deluding himself, he should better remember that, unlike him, Saad Hariri still has his mother around. The Lebanese PM is yet to use his trump card. The crawling contest is far from over.

HONEY, I shrunk the Chinese!

2010-09-10T18:34:00.012+03:00

Some links on culture and demography in East Asia

New America Media: Confucius Says, 'Be Frugal,' But the Global Slump Says, 'Spend' (Confucius and the cultural predisposition to oversaving and underconsumption)

The Malaysian Insider: HONEY, I shrunk the Chinese! (Chinese demographics in South East Asia)

The Washington Post: Opening Their Wallets, Emptying Their Savings (Cultural shift in South Korea)

The next link is basically about the controversy around Sarazzin and Muslim immigration in Germany. However, Muslim immigrants are contrasted with the immigration from the Far East to make the point. The obsession with education, evident in other links above, is present here too. For those who don't know, Vietnam used to be firmly within the sphere of influence of the Chinese civilization. Throughout much of its history and until quite recently the Vietnamese used the Chinese writing system and the vocabulary is heavily dominated by words derived from Chinese.

Spiegel: You Should Stop Whitewashing the World

PS

The links are a bit old, but they are remarkable nevertheless

Russia Burning

2010-08-08T08:00:00.030+03:00

Links of the week

BBC: Reading Arabic 'hard for brain' (reading Arabic requires a different brain configuration than other languages)

Ecclectica: One more reason to default (Present day debt as a tax on future generations)

BBC: Syrian four-year drought triggers rural exodus

The World Food Programme (WFP) has started to distribute food to more than 200,000 people and the Red Cross has funded water deliveries.

The UN estimates around 800,000 people have left their homes.

The New York Times: Does Your Language Shape How You Think? This article quite shocked me by the connection between language and sense of direction.

Sublime Oblivion: on Middle East Geopolitics, Afghanistan and Iran & the Bomb (I am commenting as NB)

Distressed Volatility: The Age of Gas Begins in Earnest

Major new energy issues are about to transform still further the strategic balance of the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, with foreseeable consequences for the global energy market over the coming decade. Soon-to-be-evident new wealth in the Red Sea/Horn of Africa region will transform the intensity of conflict there, which in turn will affect not only the region, but the world’s most important trading route: the Red Sea/Suez sea line of communication (SLOC).

Much of the anticipated change is developing around the flood of new discoveries and exploitation of natural gas fields in the Indian Ocean region, particularly extending through Ethiopia, Egypt, and other countries of the Red Sea region. Apart from the impending influx of new energy wealth into the region, facilitating new levels of confidence and capability in the security environment, the boom of the “Gas Age” also seems set to promise — within a decade — an oversupply of gas to the world market, almost certainly precipitating a collapse in price for gas and petroleum.

Martin Wolf: The political genius of supply-side economics

In this way, the Republicans were transformed from a balanced-budget party to a tax-cutting party. This innovative stance proved highly politically effective, consistently putting the Democrats at a political disadvantage. It also made the Republicans de facto Keynesians in a de facto Keynesian nation. Whatever the rhetoric, I have long considered the US the advanced world’s most Keynesian nation – the one in which government (including the Federal Reserve) is most expected to generate healthy demand at all times, largely because jobs are, in the US, the only safety net for those of working age.

The link above can be also titled "Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" or even better "Sheep in Wolf's Clothing". Since what passes these days for conservatism in America shares very little with the tough and austere attitudes usually associated with free market oriented conservative movements. It's indeed some kind of supply side Keynesianism. Here is my own take on the same subject.

Thomas Friedman: Steal This Movie

These people are not in majority, but they are a sizable minority and their influence in political and cultural circles of the developed nations exceeds their numbers. Israelis who are interested in squaring themselves with the sane part of their support base in the West, should read this piece and pay attention. You don't have to agree, but this is as lucid exposition of what these people think about us as you can get.

Sublime Oblivion: Russia Burning: not Apocalypse, but its Prelude

LA Times: Yemen smolders amid Houthi insurgency and Al Qaeda attacks

"In that area war is a way of life," said Abdul-Ghani Iryani, a political analyst. "It's not a breakdown of the system, it is the system."

The Afghan Girl 2010

2010-08-03T19:45:00.005+03:00

Well, I bet I am one of the million of bloggers who've been all doing the same post these days, but hard to resist. This is Sharbat Gula - the famous Afghan Girl featured on National Geographic cover in 1985.

And this is Time's Afghan Girl 2010.

The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's house. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn't run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Aisha's brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose.

This didn't happen 10 years ago, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. It happened last year.

Source: Time

Really, what kind of mental disorder is afflicting these people?

Stratfor issues new security alert

2010-07-30T00:22:00.002+03:00

Links of the week:

Stratfor issues new security alert: Escalating Violence From the Animal Liberation Front

PIMCO: Privates Eye

FT: Sow the seeds of long-term growth (by Jeffrey Sachs)

PIMCO's Bill Gross says that old fashioned Keynesian stimulus programs are bound to produce dwindling results as they are running into "the headwinds of a structural demographic downwave". The demographic winter steadily worsening across the developed world is eroding the consumer base. This basically piles over another trend recently debated by the Economist's panel of big firms and banks oversaving and hoarding cash.

In the US the fed has been on a money printing spree since the beginning of the crisis. Yet, this failed to produce any surge in inflation with persistent worries about a possible deflationary spiral and the whole thing increasingly looking like Japan's lost decades.

If the Bank of Japan says, “We're going to go for an inflation target,” then something has changed dramatically, because everybody knows that the Bank of Japan has no tools to achieve an inflation target with the monetary multiplier zero negative.

. . .

We actually tried all of this back in 2001 to 2006, right? And we increased to 30 trillion yen the reserves—that's 6 times the legal reserve requirement. So that means the money supply should have increased by 500 percent and we should have had a 500 percent inflation rate. And absolutely none of that happened.

And we see the same thing in the UK today, the same thing in the US today, a massive increase in liquidity which [Bank of England Governor] Mervyn King once said, “We’re not like the Japanese. We’ll do it quickly and in massive amounts and we’re going to get the money supply going.” But he's not saying that anymore. He's realized that it doesn't work.

Source: Who Controls Bank of Japan?

If Gross is right, then pumping consumers with cash is not going to do the trick just as QE has failed to do so through banks and companies. Instead, Gross argues, governments should move in and do the spending and investment by themselves. Here he calls on Sachs among others (You can google for Sachs article by cope pasting the title into Google if you don't have FT subscription. FT is open for searches from Google), who suggests an alternative to the current fiscal stimulus in the form of a long term investment recovery plan driven by the government's spending. Regardless of what one may think about the whole approach, it's obvious that these days even Keynesians have to consider the implications of a rapid descent into sub replacement fertility now spreading from the rich world into developing nations.

2010-07-25T14:18:00.005+03:00

Last updated: July 25, 2010

February 24, 2007

First we take Manhattan...

First we take Manhattan...
then we take Kirkuk

Source: Iraki Kurds National Anthem

As the referendum on the future of Kirkuk is approaching the tensions are rising all around with Turkey rumored to be considering an invasion of the Iraqi Kurdistan. But if until now the Turks may have been deluding themselves about the potential impact of this decision they were quickly brought back to their senses when a local Kurdish politician Hilmi Aydogdu, leader of the Democratic Society Party's branch in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, threatened Turkey with consequences in no mean terms. AP reports:

"The two sides in this war would be Turkey and the Kurds in Iraq. There are some 20 million Kurds in Turkey, and the 20 million Kurds would regard such a war as an attack against them," newspapers quoted Aydogdu as saying.

"Any attack on Kirkuk would be considered an attack on Diyarbakir...

The oil rich Kirkuk was ethnic cleansed from Kurds under Saddam and resettled with Shia and Sunni Arabs. Now its Arab and Turkoman population is dwindling as the Kurds came back to retake the city. For the Sunni Arabs Kirkuk may prove to be of special importance as the Sunni provinces have little or no oil. Ethnic cleansed from Baghdad and Kirkuk and cut off from major Iraqi oil fields the Sunni Arabs may soon find themselves facing an uncertain future after having been jammed back into this landlocked strip of land devoid of any valuable natural resources which is the Sunni heartland.

The all three Kurdish provinces in Iraq are booming. The construction boom is reported to be in full swing all across the land. It's an indication to how well the things are going for the Iraqi Kurds that dozens of thousands of Arabs work as gastarbeiters on construction sites in Kurdistan. While Arab academics are assassinated or flee the country the number of students and universities in Kurdistan has doubled and tripled. And while in Mosul and elsewhere the Sunni insurgents destroy statues considering them unislamic, in Kurdish cities statues of national poets and historical figures are erected on main squares.

The rise of the Iraqi Kurdistan is all the more surprising given that all around them the Sunni insurgents laid waste to power grid and oil pipelines and transportation is under constant sabotage. One can only try to figure out the proportions the economic miracle of the Iraqi Kurdistan could take were the Sunni insurgents and Shia militiamen not to destroy the rest of the country. The Iraqi Kurdistan is a living reminder of the historic chance of gigantic proportions the Arab world missed after the US removed Saddam. Billions of dollars assigned by the congress for reconstruction projects coupled with the American technical expertise and Iraqi oil resources could have easily made the country the true gem of the Middle East.

On checkpoints across the land Peshmerga militiamen are checking entering cars. Only Arab families with children are allowed in. Single Arab males need work permits and a Kurdish sponsor to enter, a precaution against suicide bombers (Israelis, sounds familiar? NB). The Iraqi Kurds know how to protect themselves from the violent instability raging all around them. It's a moment of sweet revenge for the Kurds in Iraq and elsewhere to watch Arab gastarbeiters struggling with the Kurdish language (the Kurds were persecuted to the point that their language was occasionally outlawed). Any additional strengthening of the Iraqi Kurds de-facto independent state is worrying the Turks.

Turkish leaders are concerned that Iraq's Kurds want Kirkuk's oil revenues to fund a bid for independence that could encourage separatist Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey who have been fighting for autonomy since 1984. The conflict has claimed the lives of 37,000 people.

Turkey has not ruled out military incursions into Iraq to hunt separatist Kurds, despite warnings from the U.S., which fears that such moves could lead to tensions with the Iraqi Kurdish groups allied with Washington.

Source

What neither the PKK nor the Turks themselves seem to notice is that Turkey has started developing lots of soft underbelly recently. And it's not only in the form of a flourishing tourist industry - an easy target for preying militants. The Turkey's hands are tied by all kinds of signed and implied understandings with the EU whose membership Turkey has been seeking for decades. As the country keeps modernizing and growing prosperous, its population should be expected to grow more violence averse and less ready to bear costs of attrition wars against violent insurgencies. Tough issues like the genocide of the Armenians at the hands of the Turks at 1915 are raised to public consciousness threatening to soon undermine the morale of the Turkish public and its opposition to the self determination struggle of its minorities.

Turkish civil rights groups in protest over the assassination of a prominent Turkish Armenian journalist who compared Armenian massacres by Turks in 1915 to genocide.

(photo by Reuters)
While the Turks clearly prefer to fight the Kurdish separatism in Iraq rather than in Turkey itself, they are likely to discover that the things actually work all the way round and a Turkish intervention mission in Kirkuk may lead to confrontations deep inside the Turkish Kurdistan. This confrontation may not necessarily take the form of a violent insurgency but rather of a massive civil disobedience campaign. Yet under present circumstances it is precisely this kind of 'soft' insurgency that Turkey may find surprisingly difficult to fight back.

As the referendum on the future of Kirkuk is approaching the rulers from Syria to Turkey to Iran grow tense as they should do. This is because the Kurdish militancy is on the rise around the region. This is because in Kirkuk the Kurds are proving that they are not people who give up readily on what was taken from them.

July 25, 2010

Towards the beginning of the end

But now a growing number of Turks are questioning the merits of cohabiting with the country’s estimated 14m Kurds. Never mind that Istanbul is the world’s largest Kurdish city, or that few of the provinces claimed by the Kurds are ethnically homogenous. In television debates and across the blogosphere support for the idea that the Kurds should go their own way is growing. Onur Sahin, who heads the Chamber of Agriculture in the Black Sea province of Ordu, says his fellow producers no longer want seasonal migrant Kurds to harvest their hazelnut crops.

Source: Turkey and its rebel Kurds: An endless war | The Economist

If they can openly discuss splitting the country, then Turkey has evolved beyond a Middle Eastern country. It's a fact that probably even Erdogan can no longer change.

PS

"The Uncontainable Kurds" linked by Charles is no longer fully available on the New York Times. Those interested can read it in full here.

Links of the Week

2010-07-17T20:49:00.001+03:00

The current edition of the Economist is packed with the Middle East. Some links:

For good or ill, change is coming to Egypt and Saudi Arabia soon. Thank you and goodbye.

When kings and princes grow old. The Saudi succession.

After Mubarak. This is the concluding article of their special report on Egypt. Links to all its articles are on the right side.

The Economist on the future of Europe

Now even the project’s greatest cheerleaders talk of a continent facing a “Bermuda triangle” of debt, demographic decline and lower growth.

As well as those chronic problems, the EU faces an acute crisis in its economic core, the 16 countries that use the single currency. Markets have lost faith that the euro zone’s economies, weaker or stronger, will one day converge thanks to the discipline of sharing a single currency, which denies uncompetitive stragglers the quick fix of devaluation.

Source: Staring into the abyss

Europe's demographic winter

Ecclectica: Dictatorship of the dying

The story of the Supreme Leader by IWPR
IWPR: The Cleric Who Changed

Robert Fisk on Israel and Armenian genocide
The Independent: Israel can no longer ignore the existence of the first Holocaust

The rich world and its debt bubble.

Stagnate, default, inflate—they all seem equally grim. The best solution for rich countries is to work off their debts through economic growth. That may be harder for some than for others, given that many countries’ workforces are set to level out or shrink as their populations age. It will be all the more important for such countries to pursue structural reforms that will increase productivity.

But outgrowing debt is not easy: the McKinsey study found that, out of 32 cases of deleveraging following a financial crisis that it examined, only one was driven by growth. America, which has a younger workforce than Europe or Japan, might still manage it. But for many other countries the hole they have dug for themselves may already be too deep.

The Economist: A special report on debt. This is a special report with more links to all its articles on the right side of the fourth paragraph. It's a must read.

Goblin Shark. Just when you thought you've seen them all...

Why are we here??!!

2010-07-16T12:22:00.006+03:00

George Carlin with some ideas on why we are here

From an interview with an entomologist by the New York Times this week:

Q. SO BIG BRAINS ARE NOT ALWAYS AN ADVANTAGE?

A. Bigger is better if you want to produce enormously complicated behavior. But in evolution, brains evolve by selection. There always is pressure on animals to produce behaviors for as little energy as possible. And that means for many animals, smaller brains are better because they won’t waste energy.

You know, there’s this pervasive idea in biology that I think is wrong. It goes: we humans are at the pinnacle of the evolutionary tree, and as you get up that tree, brain size must get bigger. But a fly is just as evolved as a human. It’s just evolved to a different niche.

In fact, in evolution there’s no drive towards bigger brains. It’s perfectly possible that under the right circumstances, you could get animals evolving small brains. Indeed, on some islands, where there’s reduced flora and fauna, you’ll see smaller versions of mainland species. I would argue that their brain size has been reduced because it saves energy, which permits them to survive in situations of scarcity. They also might not need big brains because they don’t have natural predators on the islands—and don’t have to be as smart because there’s nothing to avoid.

Q. SPEAKING OF ISLANDS, WHEN AN APELIKE FOSSIL WAS DISCOVERED ON THE INDONESIAN ISLAND OF FLORES IN 2003, A GREAT CONTROVERSY BROKE OUT AMONG ANTHROPOLOGISTS. SOME SAID THIS THREE-FOOT TALL SMALL- BRAINED CREATURE WAS A NEW SPECIES OF HOMINID — A HUMANLIKE PRIMATE. OTHERS CLAIMED IT WAS AN EARLY HUMAN WITH A BRAIN DEFORMITY. WHY DID YOU JUMP INTO THE FRAY?

A. Because I thought it was a hominid. This thing about its being a human ancestor with a diseased brain never made much sense. The people who insisted it was a deformed early human couldn’t believe that it was possible to have such a huge reduction in brain size in any hominid. Yet, it’s possible to get a reduction in brain size of island animals as long as the selection pressure is there. There’s nothing to stop this from happening, even among hominids.

Q. SO WHY WERE OTHER SCIENTISTS INSISTING THAT FLORES MAN WAS A DEFORMED HUMAN?

A. Because there’s this idea that nature moves inexorably towards bigger brains and some people find it very difficult to imagine why if you evolved a big brain — as ancient hominids had — why you would ever go back to a smaller one. But evolution doesn’t really care. This smaller brain could have helped this species survive better than an energy-consuming bigger one. The insects have shown us this.

Source: Insects as Model Animals

As a matter of fact, I suspect strong evolutionary pressures are still at work on our species to downsize our brains. For example, not a week goes by without me stumbling on some individuals who astonish me with how energy efficient they are. Anyway guys, if you thought that you are here to grow big brains, then you were wrong. The insects have shown us this.

Suckers

2010-07-16T11:11:00.002+03:00

The ultimate proof that the Yankees are stupid...

U.S., Russia Swap Agents

In the final chapter of a saga worthy of a spy novel, the U.S. and Russia apparently began one of the biggest prisoner swaps between the countries since the Cold War.

A U.S. flight believed to be carrying 10 deported Russian agents and a Russian plane believed to have four prisoners aboard landed in Vienna Friday, the Associated Press reported.

. . .

Source: Wall Street Journal

Anna Chapman was deported back to Russia on July 8, 2010

If these Yankees had some sense they would have been trading American agents for more Anna-Chapmans and not the other way round. Suckers!

Discovering Islam

2010-07-10T10:52:00.005+03:00

The New York Times reporter from Yemen...

Beneath the familiar Arab iconography, like pictures of the president that hang in every shop, there is a wildness about the place, a feeling that things might come apart at any moment. A narcotic haze descends on Yemen every afternoon, as men stuff their mouths with glossy khat leaves until their cheeks bulge and their eyes glaze over. Police officers sit down and ignore their posts, a green dribble running down their chins. Taxi drivers get lost and drive in circles, babbling into their cellphones. But if not for the opiate of khat, some say, all of Yemen - not just those areas of the south and north already smoldering with discontent - would explode into rebellion.

. . .

Last year I expected to see at least a few government soldiers when I visited the ancient city of Shibam in Hadramawt, the vast eastern province where Osama bin Laden's father was born. A few months earlier, four South Korean tourists were blown up by a suicide bomber as they admired the view of Shibam from across the valley. I was a little nervous. "Don't worry," my guide said, patting my shoulder as we walked up to the ridge where the Koreans died. "Ever since the bombing they have put this place on high security." But when we got to the top of the ridge there was not a single soldier or policeman to be seen. We gazed out over the valley in silence. A sign stood nearby, showing a pair of binoculars and the words in English "Discover Islam." As we began to leave, my guide smiled broadly and gestured at the sign. "The Koreans - they discovered Islam," he said, giggling at his joke.

. . .

Source: Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan?

ROFL

:D :D

Children say: This life has turned us into grownups

2010-07-04T14:33:00.002+03:00

Since 1984, the Basij have run military training for middle and high school pupils, aged 11 upwards. Girls as well as boys are taught how to use Kalashnikov rifles.

Officially, the Basij recruiting drive in Iranian schools is to help build a 20-million-strong army, an idea conceived by the late Ayatollah Khomeini in the early years of the war with Iraq.

Twenty years after the end of the war, Basij and Revolutionay Guards commanders are still carrying out that order. But in reality, the Basij’s raison d’etre has shifted from external to domestic security, nurturing a generation of young people loyal to the regime, devoted to defending it, and equipped with all the skills they need to do so.

. . .

The term “soft threat” was coined by Supreme Leader Khamenei to describe what he saw as corrosive western influences designed to undermine the politics and Islamic culture of Iran.

IRGC commander Brigadier-General Mohammad Ali Jafari has made it clear that Khamenei has entrusted the Basij with the task of combating “soft threats” and “confronting those who would strike at the strong relationship between the Supreme Leader and the people”.

As part of this virtual war, the Basij has designed its own politically correct computer games.

“Devil Den”, launched in July 2009 by the Basij’s then overall commander Hossein Taeb, is based around a scenario where Iranian students on a pilgrimage to Karbala in Iraq are captured by American soldiers. The Americans turn them over to Israel, which plans to perform experiments on them so that they will mutate into Israeli soldiers. An escape attempt results in a pitched battle with Israeli soldiers, which the Iranians win before returning home.

. . .

The “One Way to Heaven” camp scheme is designed for underprivileged schoolchildren. Last year, 20,000 attended these camps and were taken to visit the holy city of Mashhad.

Source: Iran's teenage paramilitaries

The latest national report on population and education in Syria for 2008 showed the number of dropouts increasing and affecting girls more than boys. The proportion of children below 15 who do not attend school was around 22 per cent.

“The phenomenon of girls dropping out of school is alarming,” Sabah al-Hallak, a social worker and primary school teacher, said.

Hallak said one reason was that many poor families were marrying off their daughters at an early age to men from the Gulf.

Source: Syrian Schoolgirl Dropouts Rise

Say what you say, but children of the Persian Syrian axis mature really fast...