Obama reaches out to Muslims

“This Tuesday, we can reaffirm our own veneration and love for our country and our democracy,” he said yesterday in a radio address. “We can once again provide an example to the world.” His inauguration presents a “unique opportunity to reboot America’s image in the world and also in the Muslim world in particular”, he said in an interview.

Considering the number of Zionists Obama has named to his administration, I don't expect the good President Elect's reach to extend very far...

The "Geostrategic" Imperative of "Greater Israel"

“The process of national revival of the Jewish people is irreversible and has its internal logic. We shall have no peace as long as the whole territory of the Country of Israel will not return under Jewish control. This might sound too hard, but such is the logic of history.

The war on the Holy Land has been already fought for four thousand years and the end cannot be seen. A stable peace will come only then, when Israel will return to itself all its historical lands, and will thus control both the Suez and the Ormudz channel. The state will find at last its geostrategic completeness. We must remember that Iraqi oil fields too are located on the Jewish land. This may seem utopia to many now - but an even greater utopia seemed a hundred years ago the revival of the Jewish state...

If you want it, this will not not be a fairy tale"

---Rabbi Avrom Shmulevic

You see, its really not about the Arabs trying to "push the Jews into the sea." On the contrary, its about the Zionists trying to push the Arabs into the desert. Consider what has already happened - the only state that has been "wiped from the map" is Palestine...

EU assessment: IDF can't stop Iran alone

EU diplomatic sources who specialize in the Middle East believe that Israel cannot stop the Iranian nuclear program on its own using military means, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Teheran has effective countermeasures against air strikes, and the sources do not see Israel committing ground forces to a battle in Iran, pointing to the American experience in Iraq on that score.

In other words, Iran really can kick the "Zionist Entity's" as*...

Israeli Jews have negative view of Middle East

The world of images that the concept, “Middle East” arouses in the Israeli Jewish population is mainly negative and includes adverse opinions, perceptions and emotions.

Really? Hey, I have an idea! Why don't we just move Israel to, say, Germany?

Obama and the Fall Into Tyranny

"Obama told the Lobby that in order to protect Israel he would use all the powers of the presidency to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. As in the case of Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” the conclusion whether or not Iran is making a nuclear weapon will be determined by propaganda and not by fact. Therefore, there is no difference between Bush, McCain, Obama, and the Lobby with regard to the Middle East."

Remaking the Middle East

"U.S. policy toward Iran must accept that Iran is a rational player driven by self interest. It must deal with four fundamental questions: What does Iran intend to do in Iraq? Does Iran seek to export its Islamic revolution? Will Iran support the insurgency inside Iraq to entangle U.S. forces? Do Iran and the U.S. have common interests in Iraq?"

Interesting, the lessons Bush learned from his Zionists handlers. We've known for sometime that to criticize Israeli policies in any arena was to risk being called antisemitic. Now, we risk being called anti-American if we criticize America's policies.

Why American is both loved and hated

"Immediately after the 9/11 attacks against the United States, President George W. Bush and many other perplexed, angry and often ignorant Americans asked a question: "Why do they hate us?" Then they made a statement: "You're either with us or against us." This week, those Americans who are actually interested in answering the question and exploring the validity of the statement have a very good opportunity to grasp precisely why most people around the world admire the US but also detest many aspects of its foreign policy."

Ahead of visit, Bush talks Israel ties -- and pressure

With President Bush pressing the point on unauthorized outposts and Israel saying it will be cracking down as early as next week, will clashes like this one in 2006 at Amona between police and protesters be repeated?

"The message from the White House on the eve of President Bush's first presidential visit to Israel is that his staunch support for the Jewish state has set the stage for peace -- and given him room to exert some pressure on Jerusalem."

Very, very little pressure I'd wager ~ such as, Mr. Olmert sir, would you please consider stopping the slaughter of defenseless and innocent Palestinians, the destruction of their homes and farms, and the confiscation of their land?

What, me worry that Bush is coming?

"Recent experience suggests that we should be very worried that President George W. Bush is coming to the Middle East next week to promote peace. The last time he made such a journey, in June 2003, what ensued was an accelerated cycle of violence and ideological conflict that sees most of the Middle East today wracked by warfare, routine terrorism, and intense political confrontation, threats, and stress."

Pentagon Pushes for Middle Eastern "Marshall Plan"

"Slowly, quietly, some in the Pentagon are pushing for a Middle Eastern version of the Marshall Plan, to change the economic realities that fuel Islamic extremism."

Interesting, when Muslims strive for basic human rights, justice, and fundamental human dignity and fairness the Zionists controlled Western media call it "Islamic extremism."

Persian Gulf Officials: Israel Threatens Middle East

"Minutes after US Defense Secretary Robert Gates rejected a suggestion that a nuclear-armed Israel would be a threat to Persian Gulf countries and dismissed claims that Washington employed double standards over Iran and the Zionist regime, Senior Persian Gulf officials insisted that Tel Aviv was the threat, gulfnews.com reported."

Radioactive Ammunition Fired in Middle East May Claim More Lives Than Hiroshima and Nagasaki

"By firing radioactive ammunition, the U.S., U.K., and Israel may have triggered a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East that, over time, will prove deadlier than the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan."

The Tunnel at the End of the Light

by Leon Hadar - Nov 7, 2007

The recently published memoir of the late Arthur Schlesinger, the renowned American historian and former aide to U.S. presidents, recalls that whenever officials in Washington had pointed to signs of progress toward peace in the Middle East, Israeli diplomat Abba Eban would caution them that when it comes to that part of the world, one should be reminded that "There is a tunnel at the end of the light."

At a time when U.S. President George W. Bush and his top foreign policy aides are celebrating recent developments in the Middle East, from Israel/Palestine to Mesopotamia – the U.S.-sponsored summit in Annapolis, Md., scheduled for November; the drop in the number of casualties in Iraq; the continuing diplomatic pressure on Iran to end its nuclear program – as signs that the American diplomatic train is pressing toward the light at the end of the Middle East tunnel, Eban's advice can be helpful in deconstructing the spin of the administration.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has been shuttling between Middle Eastern capitals in recent weeks, trying to set up another peace conference aimed at reaching a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, has stressed that she will tire "until I have given my last ounce of energy and my last moment in office" to working for the so-called "two-state solution" – the creation of an independent Palestinian state that would live in peace with Israel.

Like so much of the foreign policy rhetoric coming out of the Bush administration, Rice's comments sound admirable but ring hollow. Many Arabs and Israelis are skeptical that the summit will help achieve any concrete results and suspect that it will end up as yet another meaningless photo opportunity.

While U.S. officials insist that they are preparing the groundwork for getting the two sides to sign an agreement, the reality is that neither Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas nor Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has the backing of the majority of their people or the political will to embrace compromises on the core existential issues that separate Israelis and Palestinians – the fate of Jerusalem and the Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

Olmert rules over a fragile coalition; Abbas does not even govern the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the Hamas movement. At the same time, it is not clear whether Saudi Arabia, which has promoted its own Arab peace plan, and Syria, which wants to hold talks with Israel over the occupied Golan Heights, will attend the conference.

Hence it is not surprising that the concern is that the Annapolis Summit, by raising expectations that cannot be fulfilled – ending with nothing more than long-winded communiqués – will only produce frustration among the Palestinians, re-igniting the Intifada against Israel and more anti-Americanism in the Middle East.

That is exactly what happened after the 2000 Camp David summit failed to deliver a peace agreement. The Israel-Palestine deadlock and the continuing stalemate on the Israel-Syria front, coupled with American efforts to isolate the regime in Damascus, could create the conditions for new military tensions in the Levant, especially if the Lebanese-Shi'ite Hezbollah guerillas, wo are backed by Iran and maintain ties to Syria, decide to join the fighting.

That could certainly happen if and when the United States and Iran head toward a military confrontation, following a possible decision by the United States and/or Israel to strike suspected Iranian nuclear military installations.

Most experts calculate that there is a probability of about 60 percent that such a scenario will take place before President Bush and Vice Pesident Dick Cheney leave office in 2008. While Rice continues to express optimism that the recent economic sanctions against Iran will force Tehran to renounce its nuclear military program, that sounds – very much like the hopes for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement – like more wishful thinking.

Rising oil prices, together with Iran's financial and trade ties with China, Russia, and other countries, allow the Iranians to overcome the effects of the U.S.-led economic sanctions.

If anything, U.S. policies in the Middle East, including the occupation of Iraq, which helped bring to power a Shi'ite government in Baghdad while increasing anti-American sentiment in the region, have played into the hands of the more radical elements in Iran's leadership. They, no doubt, will use an American attack on Iran as an opportunity to mobilize support for their cause in Iran and in other Muslim countries.

The conventional wisdom is that the Bush administration is aware of the potentially high economic and military costs of a confrontation with Iran, including massive increase in energy prices, and of the opposition in the U.S. military and Congress to direct, unilateral action against the Iranians.

Hence even a limited "surgical" strike by the Americans and/or the Israelis could bring about Iranian retaliation that could take the form of unleashing Hezbollah forces in Lebanon against Israel and encouraging Iran's allies in Iraq – which include the majority of the Shi'ite religious and political leaders and their militias – to attack U.S. forces in that country.

Indeed, the fact that the Bush administration's "allies" in Iraq are actually longtime partners of the Iranians – Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki spent more than 20 years in exile in revolutionary Iran – demonstrates the fragility of America's political and military control of Iraq.

U.S. diplomatic and military leaders have attributed the decline in the number of American casualties in Iraq to cooperation with Sunni militias and tribes that are willing to work with the Americans on an ad-hoc basis against al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni insurgent groups backed by foreign players.

But this American partnership with some Sunni groups has helped create anti-American sentiment among members of the Shi'ite militias, who fear resurgent Sunni power.

At the same time, the Americans are also being drawn into the competition and fighting among the growing number of Shi'ite militias, with their different political agendas and outside allegiances – all of which highlights the kaleidoscopic nature of Iraqi politics, where never-ending shifts in the alliances and commitments of this sect or that group make it difficult for any outside power to maintain control of the country.

Indeed, the current crisis in the U.S.-Turkey relationship over Ankara's threat to deploy its military forces into the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, as part of its pursuit of anti-Turkish terrorists belonging to the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), exposes in a very dramatic way the dilemma facing the United States as it tries to establish its hegemony in Iraq and the wider Middle East.

In a region exploding with historical national, ethnic, and religious rivalries (Israelis versus Palestinians, Persian versus Arabs, Sunnis versus Shi'ites, Kurds versus Turks/Iranians/Arabs), where authoritarian regimes face powerful domestic opposition (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria) while others exhibit the symptoms of failed states (Iraq, Lebanon), America does not have either the power or the will to impose its preferred solution.

Instead, the United States can buy time with some temporary arrangements – say, limited Turkish military incursions into the Kurdish area – until the next crisis – say, Turkish opposition to Kurdish control of Mosul. Which explains why as the Americans get closer to what seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel, they discover that they are entering a new and darker tunnel.

A Land With People, For a People with a Plan

by LUDWIG WATZALv- Nov 5, 2007

Two rabbis, visiting Palestine in 1897, observed that the land was like a bride, "beautiful, but married to another man". By which they meant that, if a place was to be found for a Jewish "homeland" in Palestine, the indigenous inhabitants had to leave. Where should the people of Palestine go? Squaring that circle has been the essence of Israel´s dilemma ever since its establishment and the cause of the Palestinian tragedy that it led to. It has remained insoluble. Ghada Karmi's new book, Married To Another Man, Israel´s Dilemma in Palestine, (published by Pluto Press, London-Ann Arbor) shows that the major reason for this failure was the original and unresolved Zionist quandary of how to create and maintain a Jewish state in a land inhabited by another people. Zionism was never able to resolve the problem of "the other man".

There are only two ways: Either the "other man" had to be eradicated, or the Jewish state project had to be given up. Israel did not do either. It succeeded in 1948 in expelling and keeping out a large number of Palestinians, but Israel was never able to "cleanse" the land of Palestine entirely. The fundamental mistake of the Zionists was their belief that "the entire land of Palestine was Jewish and the Arab presence in it a resented foreign intrusion". All in all, the Zionists were "relatively" successful, but for the indigenous owners of the land it was a catastrophe which has been going on until today. "If Israel remains a colonialist state in its character, it will not survive. In the end the region will be stronger than Israel, in the end the indigenous people will be stronger than Israel, " as Akiva Eldar quoted the former Mazpen member Haim Hangebi in the Israeli Daily Haaretz on August 8, 2003. The author concludes: "Zionism´s ethos was not about peaceful co-existence but about colonialism and an exclusivist ideology to be imposed and maintained by force."

Ghada Karmi is a renowned commentator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a well-known figure on British radio and TV. She was born in Jerusalem, and forced to leave as a child in 1948. She grew up in Britain where she became a physician, academic and writer. Currently, Karmi is a research fellow and lecturer at the Insitute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. She has written several books, including In Search of Fatima, which was widely praised.

The Zionist dilemma was perfectly and bluntly expressed by the so-called "post-Zionist" representative and professor, Benny Morris, which led not only to an uproar in the scientific community, but also to a deep disappiontment, because Morris was considered to belong to the "new historians". In this interview with the daily Haaretz and in his article in The Guardian he presented himself as an ardent Zionist. He encapsulates all Zionism´s major elements, its inherent implausibility as a practical enterprise, its arrogance, racism and self-righteousness, and the insurmountable obstacle to it of Palestine´s original population, which refuses to go away. For his colonialist and racist view he was severely critiziced by Baruch Kimmerling and many others who could not understand his attitude.

Morris said incredible things: "A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population." According to him the Zionists made a mistake to have allowed any Palestinans to remain. "If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will because Ben-Gurion did not complete the transfer of 1948. (...) In other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves (...) in a situation of warfare (...) acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential (...) If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified." Morris concludes, Zionism is faced with two options: perpetual cruelty and repression of others, or the end of the enterprise. These alternatives give the whole enterprise an apocalyptic touch. For the time being, the Israeli security establishment has chosen the "iron wall"-concept which refers to a wall of bayonets.

Ghada Karmi shows in one of her chapters,"The Cost of Israel to the Arabs", that the price they had to pay was horrendous. She holds not only Israel but also the West, especially the United States of America, is responsible for the rejectionist attitude of the Israeli political class. They just did never consider any compromise. In this chapter the author describes the damage that Israel´s creation inflicted on the Arabs, how it has retarded their development and provoked a reactive and dangerous radicalization. The Arabs are always asked to be realistic and recognise the facts on the ground. "The Arabs were expected to make peace with Israel - and to love it as well." Under the surface Israel has made much progress towards normalisation with the Arab world. The Arab leaders have to conceal that truth from their own populations. Karmi views Western policy in Israel´s case rather strategic than ideological. The installation of the Jewish state as the local agent of Western regional self-interest was an effective way of dividing the Arabs, so as to ensure that they remained dependent and subjugated." Egypt and Jordan are the best examples.

In the Chapter "Why do Jews support Israel?" the author asks "Why did a project, which was, on the face of it, implausible in the first place and inevitably destructive of others, succeed so well? Just as importantly, why did it continue to receive support, despite a clear record of aggression and multiple breaches of international law against its neighbours that ensured its survival - not just as a state but as a disruptive force?" A number of disparate factors account for the unconditional support for Israel: the Holocaust and its associated trauma and guilts, the exigencies of Western regional policy, religious mythology, so-called common values, and Israel as the "only democracy in the Middle East" et cetera. It is difficult to find a similar phenomenon for a state in the 21st Century that gets away with vast human rights violations, colonial subjugation of another people and a disdain of international law. Not only for the American Jewish community but also for many liberal Jews "Israel had taken on a mythic quality, part-identity, part-religion, and its dissolution, as a Jewish state, became psychologically and emotionally unthinkable. The obverse of this coin was of course a paranoid suspicion and hatred of anyone who threatened Israel in the slightest way." Karmi describes the Zionist desperate attempt to prove an unbroken chain between the Jews of Palestine and those of Europe. "Put like this, the absurditiy of the idea is obvious, but that in fact was the proposition Zionists wanted people to believe in order to justify the Jewish `return` to the ´homeland`." Because the Zionist claim rested on such shaky grounds, Jewish researchers "tried to use genetics as a way of demonstrating a link between European (Ashkenazi) Jews and their supposed Middle Eastern origins by way of finding a common ancestry with Middle Eastern Jews".

The author discusses the relationship between the US and Israel and the dominant influence of the "Israel lobby", especially AIPAC which adopted an right-wing posture, both in its support for the Likud party in Israel and the political right in the US, including the Christian Zionists whose belief system goes like follows: They adhere literally to the Old Testament. Fundamental was the return of the Jews to the land of Israel, which was given them by God through the covenant with Abraham. According to this legacy all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates was granted to the Jews. The Jewish return to Palestine (Israel) was essential as a prelude to Christ´s Second Coming; in that sense, Jews were the instrument by which divine prophecy would be fulfilled. However, they were obliged to convert to Christianity and rebuild the Jewish Temple. Seven years of tribulation would follow, culminating in a holocaust or Armageddon, during which the converted Jews and other godless people would be destroyed. Only then would the Messiah return to redeem mankind and establish the Kingdom of God on earth where he would reign for a thousand years. The converted Jews, restored as God´s Chosen People, would enjoy a privileged status in the world. At the end of all this, they and all the rightous would ascend to heaven in the final `Rapture`. The Jewish role in all this meant: "Jews restored to Israel and converted, leading to the Second Advent, leading to mankind´s redemption."

In chapter four, five and six the author critizices the so-called peace process, Arafat´s destructive final role and Israel´s attempt to revive the Jordanian option. In signing the Oslo agreement, "Arafat legitimized Zionism, the very ideology that hat created and still perpetuates the Palestinian tragedy". The Israeli aim to destroy the Palestinans could not have been better described as in the words of the Israeli sociologist professor Baruch Kimmerling who wrote in his book Politicide that the process of gradual military, political and psychological attrition whose aim was to destroy the Palestinians as an independent people with a coherent political and social existence would make them vanish by their fragmentation and irrelevance. "Forty years of Israeli politicide had done its work on the Palestine question as a national cause. The Palestinians, already in an unenviable position of physical fragmentation after 1948, became politically fragmented with the Israeli occupation." In her chapter "Solving the problem Karmi argues that a two-state solution is out of reach. Consequently, she calls in chapter seven for a one-state solution. "In a single state, no Jewish settler would have to move and no Palestinian would be under occupation." The author thinks that creating a Jewish state was "crazy" at Herzl´s time and even now therefore "creating a unitary state of Israel/Palestine, far less implausible than the Zionist project ever was, should be no less successful".

Refering to Hangebi´s statement that Israel as a "colonial state" cannot survive, Karmi proposes an unthinkable idea: "The best solution to this intractable problem is to turn back the clock before there was any Jewish state and return history as from there." But at the end, she turns back to realism: "The clock will not go back and, although the Jewish state cannot be uncreated, it might be, so to speak, unmade. The reunification of Palestine´s shattered remains in a unitary state for all its inhabitants, old and new, is the only realistic, humane and durable route out of the morass. It is also the only way for the Israeli Jewish community (as opposed to the Israeli state) to survive in the Middle East."

Duff diplomacy

The US secretary of state's dash around the Middle East has failed to patch up a foreign policy in tatters.

by Simon Tisdall - Nov 5, 2007

Condoleezza Rice keeps pretty chirpy, but it was a gloomy weekend for US power and interests in the Middle East. Every way she looked during a flying visit to the region, hopes of progress turned to dust in her hands. From Pakistan to the occupied Palestinian territories, there is a sense of imminent unravelling born of misjudgment and long-term neglect.

President-General Pervez Musharraf's "second coup" was a personal rebuff for the US secretary of state. Whatever his other failings, the crisply-pressed Pakistani leader is a gentleman of the English colonial school. But good manners did not prevent him rejecting Ms Rice's latest calls for restraint - and then ignoring her frantic telephone calls.

Gen Musharraf's calculation that the White House and Pentagon will tacitly go along with his putsch is probably correct in the short term. As always his fealty, however conditional, to the "global war on terror" comes first. Ms Rice is reduced to hoping the emergency measures will be short-lived and elections will still go ahead soon.

But US and Pakistani analysts suggest the democracy-security trade-off that has kept Gen Musharraf in power since 9/11 cannot be sustained for much longer. If prolonged civil strife ensues, as some predict, the Bush administration and its British sidekicks will be blamed for not doing more, earlier, to encourage consensual, peaceful reform while it was still attainable.

Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, her power-sharing plans disrupted, may now be obliged to campaign all-out against the military regime. The ensuing confrontation could be unpredictable and bloody both for her and the general. From the US point of view, various unfolding scenarios, including Gen Musharraf's fall, point towards the same uncomfortable question: who lost Pakistan?

Ms Rice's weekend firefighting expedition to Istanbul was similarly uninspired. The part aim was to furnish Turkey with a good, publicly acceptable reason not to invade northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) militants - something Ankara has been demanding from Washington for at least two years.

The talks preceded today's "showdown" meeting - as Turkish media portray it - between Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and President Bush in Washington.

In the event Ms Rice appears to have tabled little of substance beyond enhanced intelligence-sharing. Asked what, if any, effective action was planned, including mooted US military moves against the PKK, she neatly explained Washington's dilemma while avoiding giving an answer.

"Effective action means you're actually trying to deal with the infrastructure of terrorism. But you want to do this in a way that doesn't compromise our other major goal, a unified, secure and stable Iraq," Ms Rice said. That suggested little would change. The Turks were predictably unimpressed - and may take matters into their own hands. "It has been a meeting with no resolution," a Turkish diplomat said. "There have been no tangible steps offered to us."

Ms Rice's Israel stop-over on Saturday was unproductive, too, casting further doubt on the usefulness of the US-promoted peace conference, vaguely scheduled for Annapolis, Maryland, either this month or next.

Ms Rice said the parties - principally, Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas - were still working on "ideas". No agreement has been reached, no final document has been completed and no invitations have yet been issued. Discouraged by this last-minute scramble and lack of a substantive agenda, leading Arab states such as Saudi Arabia warn they may not attend.

"I suspect this will not be the last effort that I will have to make to prepare the meeting ... this is a very delicate time," said a cheerful Ms Rice, whose frequent flier miles are beginning to rival Warren Christopher. "They [the parties] are coming to the realisation ... that Annapolis is an event but it's not the only event. There has to be a day after."

This rather obvious effort to downplay expectations suggested the Bush administration, after largely ignoring the Palestinian issue for six years, was losing confidence in its own project.

As if this display of duff diplomacy were not enough, Ms Rice also found time for a row with Walid al-Moallem, Syria's foreign minister, on the Istanbul sidelines. The US, she said, would not tolerate outside interference in Lebanon's delayed presidential election.

Neither would Syria, Mr al-Moallem waspishly retorted. "Condoleezza Rice speaks about Lebanon as if it is an American state," said Syria's state-run Tishrin newspaper.

Virtually lost amid all the blather and blunder was the original purpose of Ms Rice's visit: a discussion with Iraq's neighbours on how best to support Baghdad's weak, divided but ostensibly democratic government.

The meeting duly went ahead. But like the rest of Ms Rice's long weekend in the Middle East, its concrete achievements do not take long to list ...

A Case for Arab Dignity

by Ramzy Baroud - Nov 3, 2007

The ongoing socio-economic and political ills that mar potential progress in Middle Eastern countries can largely be attributed to the ill-defined foreign policy of the United States. Utterly desperate situations have arisen whereby US clients rule with an iron fist, making prospects for a meaningful democracy sit at an all-time low. However it would be nothing less than self-deception to elucidate Arab social, economic and political ailments exclusively on US-Israeli military and political belligerency; there needs to be an element of self-reflection and responsibility to make viable any pragmatic steps towards improvement and justice.

The Arab Human Development Reports list political and economic regressions, rampant corruption, utter inequality, oppression of women, and indeed men, lack of cohesion, planning, and forward thinking as significant problems in Arab countries. The 2005 report laboured to put a positive spin on negative situations, choosing to focus on the empowerment of Arab women, who, in some Arab societies are denied access to schools, economic independence and political representation.

The oil boom of the 1970’s, and the wave of neo-liberalism in the 1990’s has turned most Arab countries into class societies, either creating new disparities or deepening already existing ones. But there is little class ‘conflict’ to speak of today; the poor are , in many cases, literally struggling to survive on day-to-day basis, while the rich have surpassed, in arrogance and attitude, the positions assumed by the elites of Central America. Their access to political power, economic wealth, and total control over most media channels has significantly deepened the divide. Many of Morocco’s poor are braving the tumultuous Mediterranean waters to make it to Europe, to secure meagre jobs with meagre pay, and an uncountable number of Egyptians are in constant hunt for opportunities elsewhere. The situation everywhere is getting more dire, opening the doors for even greater corruption and nepotism to permeate.

The media cannot be counted on to represent the reality on the ground. Al Jazeera and Al-Arabiya remain the exception, but they too are receptive to political and economic pulls. And even without these, it takes more than couple of TV stations to cater to the local and national needs of hundreds of millions of people whose cultures, immediate realities and economic and political challenges are too varied to be encapsulated in a few news bulletins, erratic TV debates and passing slogans.

Saddest of all is the fact that Arab masses lack the ability to even vent their frustrations, having lived under a tight grip for decades and crushed mercilessly whenever they dared to march for their rights.

While the ruling elites lavishly spend to set themselves apart from those at the bottom, the latter are forced to learn the language of power, to cater to the elites’ every whim. No wonder many turn to the most immediate ways of escaping such reality. The Internet is thriving in major Arab cities, not so much as a tool of meaningful communication, but mostly for purposes of chatting and pornography. Both of these create alternate realities. Chatting could also represent the start of new opportunities, that of premeditated ‘love’, or, just maybe, a green card or its equivalent in some European country.

The situation is particularly dismal for Palestinians caught between a brutal Israeli occupation and their own corrupt elites. While many live under various regimes with an almost impossible legal status as stateless people, rich Palestinians in the Gulf (and elsewhere) seem blissfully far-removed; the immense Palestinian wealth abroad is yet to benefit the 1.4 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, 80% of whom are dependent on international aid for their survival.

The US and various European countries are contributing to the chaos, compounding neoliberalism with neo-imperialism, controlling the former colonial outposts via economic dependency in the form of aid, political and military posturing, and NGOs. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID are two prominent examples. NED, funded mostly by a Congressional annual allocation, was founded in 1983 to serve US foreign policy. It claims to be “guided by the belief that freedom is a universal human aspiration that can be realized through the development of democratic institutions, procedures, and values.” Considering NED’s role in the coup against Venezuelan democracy in April 2002 and other instances of soft intervention, one cannot help but question the organization’s democratic values.

The Arab peoples are in a situation that warrants little envy. In countries like Iraq, a functioning socioeconomic and political structure – despite its shortcomings – was simply written off in May 2003, with the signature of L. Paul Bremer, the first US ruler of Iraq. The disbanding of the army was followed by the country’s de-Baathification (undermining Sunnis for merely being the favored sect of Saddam), showing utter disregard for the welfare of the Iraqi people.

The Iraq scenario has set a dreadful precedent. Those not content by their current rulers were forced to rethink their priorities when they saw the US-induced chaos in Iraq in action. Those who giddily capitalized on the democracy window were mercilessly crushed. Palestinians were subdued and democracy was snatched away from its proper owners, the majority of the people, and was handed back to the corrupt few. In Egypt, coercion and corruption during elections has managed to maintain the status quo.

There are no easy answers here, no snappy recommendations or full-proof solutions. The task is truly overwhelming. But it is clear that the true interests of the Arab peoples can only be served by Arabs themselves; reforms can not be imposed, true, but that is impossible to achieve under the current power relations - rulers setting themselves up as unquestionably superior to their people, TV channels promoting rampant consumerism and providing endless distraction, and uncountable multitudes seeking deliverance, escapism and, often, falling prey to extremism. For Arab countries to have some hope of a meaningful future (and indeed present), grassroots work must replace intellectual detachment, wealth must be invested in building self-sustained societies, and, most importantly, the dignity of Arab women and men must be preserved above all else.

US troops will be in the Middle East for next 50 years, says Abazaid

Associated Press - November 1, 2007

US troops could be in the Middle East for another 50 years, according to the longest serving commander of the Qatar-based US Central Command.

General John Abazaid, who retired in May, said the "strategic situation" in the region - the rise of extremism and the global dependence on oil - would necessitate a long-term presence.

"Over time, we will have to shift the burden of the military fight from our forces directly to regional forces, and we will have to play an indirect role.

"But we shouldn't assume for even a minute that in the next 25 to 50 years the American military might be able to come home, relax and take it easy."

Gen Abazaid, who delivered the comments yesterday at Carnegie Mellon University, said the US would also need to reduced its dependence on imported energy.

"I'm not saying this is a war for oil, but I am saying that oil fuels an awful lot of geopolitical moves that political powers may have there.

"And it is absolutely essential that we in the United States of America figure out how, in the long run, to lessen our dependency on foreign energy."

He reiterated comments made in September that the US needs to do a better job of coordinating economic, political and diplomatic means so the conflict can move from a military to a political issue.

"I would characterise what we're doing now as 80% military, 20% diplomatic, economic, political, educational, informational, intelligence, etc.

"You've got to take that equation and change it. Make it 80% those other things."

Gulf Arabs could drop dollar pegs in unison

A customer counts U.S. banknotes at a money changer in a file photo. Gulf Arab oil producers, torn between rising inflation and exchange rates fixed to a sliding dollar, could consider switching together to a currency basket to buy time for a troubled monetary union project.

by Daliah Merzaban - Nov 1, 2007

Gulf Arab oil producers, torn between rising inflation and exchange rates fixed to a sliding dollar, could consider switching together to a currency basket to buy time for a troubled monetary union project.

A region-wide shift could catch investors unawares after months of market speculation that the United Arab Emirates or Qatar would break ranks with their neighbors and unshackle their currencies from the dollar as Kuwait did this year.

So far, most bets on currency appreciation have focused on signs that Gulf states are drifting apart after Oman chose not to join monetary union by 2010, Kuwait switched to a currency basket in May and a U.S. rate cut divided central banks in the world's top oil-exporting region.

But signals from the banks and growing pressure on Saudi Arabia to tackle inflation suggest markets waiting for one country to revalue may be barking up the wrong tree.

"I think they will stick to multilateralism," said Marios Maratheftis, regional head of research at Standard Chartered Bank.

"They have been hinting at a more flexible option to the dollar peg. The debate is on, at a multilateral level," he said.

That is not the view of most analysts. Thirteen of the 17 economists polled by Reuters last month tipped the UAE as the top candidate for a unilaterally change in currency policy, with 11 saying a revaluation was likely by the end of 2008. For poll summary click on (ID:nL12723561: Quote, Profile, Research)

CLOSING RANKS

Yet UAE Central Bank Governor Sultan Nasser al-Suweidi has always said he would not act alone, even while calling for a regional review of exchange rates in January. "We have to decide on a pan-Gulf basis," he told .Commerce magazine this month.

Suweidi and his counterparts have closed ranks since Kuwait threw plans for monetary union into disarray by abandoning a dollar peg the six states had agreed would stay in place until they created single currency in 2010.

"Credibility is quite serious for central bankers," said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at SABB bank, the Saudi affiliate of HSBC. "The likelihood of moving in unison is greater than the likelihood of moving alone."

Kuwait said the dollar's slide to record lows was driving up inflation by making imports more expensive. It also cited delays to monetary union as reason for scrapping the dollar peg.

With all six countries agreeing the 2010 deadline is difficult, if not impossible to meet, investors have been waiting for one or more of Kuwait's neighbors to follow its lead.

But markets watching for a widening rift over currency policy got nothing from a weekend meeting of finance ministers and central bankers.

"There was agreement that there is no need to change the current foreign exchange policy with consensus of all member states," Saudi Governor Hamad Saud al-Sayyari said after the talks.

The central bankers have not put up a united front on interest rates, one of six criteria agreed for currency union.

Unlike their neighbors, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain ignored a U.S. Federal Reserve rate cut on September 18, choosing to ride out pressure on their currencies to appreciate rather than risk stoking inflation.

The news fired market speculation of a revaluation that took the Saudi riyal to a 21-year high, but IMF official Mohsin Khan said talk of divergence was overdone.

"Even though there were slight gestures to lowering interest rates in the Gulf, most countries did not lower interest rates," said Khan, IMF director for the Middle East and Central Asia.

Kuwait and Qatar left their benchmarks unchanged, cutting other interest rates instead. The UAE, which does not have a benchmark rate, reduced three key rates by as much as 25 basis points after the Fed cut by 50 basis points.

RIYADH'S POLICY

More importantly statements from Saudi Arabia, the country tipped as least likely to revalue in the Reuters poll, have begun to more closely reflect those coming from the UAE.

"There is no change at the present time," Sayyari said of exchange rate after a September central bankers meeting, one of a series of remarks that allude to an eventual change in policy.

Signals from Saudi Arabia, the biggest Gulf economy, are crucial to understanding the Gulf debate on currency reform.

"If Saudi Arabia moves alone then the others will probably move all together," said Sfakianakis, who said he does not expect the Saudi central bank to change policy "in the short term".

Pressure on Riyadh's policy has rarely been greater.

Inflation hit a seven-year high of 4.4 percent in August and is becoming a political issue in Saudi Arabia, unlike in Qatar or the UAE which have smaller, wealthier populations consisting primarily of expatriates.

As the king summons officials to explain rising prices and his advisory council calls for a national wage hike, the Saudi central bank is running out of options.

Another 25 basis point Fed cut, which economists expect this year, would take the interest rate gap between the Saudi riyal and dollar to one percentage point for the first time since 2002.

"Introducing flexibility is going to become a stronger debate by the end of the year with the possibility of more rate cuts," Maratheftis said.

Something to consider before attacking Iran

by Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star -Oct 27, 2007

The main Middle Eastern issue being discussed in the US these days is not Iraq, Arab-Israeli peacemaking, or Turkish-Kurdish-Iraqi tensions, but rather what to do about Iran and its perceived threat to the region, the US and the world. The Bush administration sets a shrill and aggressive tone on this and is taking action, including this week's new sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, its Quds Force, and several banks.

Possible American moves against Iran should be considered in light of the 2001-2007 lessons of US-led wars to change regimes and remake national governance systems in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more indirectly in Palestine and Lebanon. This is not just a Bush-Cheney problem, but an all-American one, since most presidential candidates in both parties do not stray far from the administration's aggressive policy options.

The post-2001 experience suggests that American military attacks against Iran would probably result in more turmoil in the Middle East and Asia, and greater anti-American sentiments and actions around the world. The American-led wars and aggressive diplomatic stances vis-a-vis Iran, Hamas, Hizbullah and Syria have already generated two specific phenomena: widespread criticism of the US in public opinion around the entire world (see the recent BBC and Pew polls); and, a determination by many Middle Eastern actors to actively resist and defy the US, and militarily fight it (or its Arab and Israeli proxies) when such an opportunity arises in Lebanon and Iraq, rather than to react with the expected acquiescence and compliance.

The six-year-old US-led "global war on terror" has expanded terror networks and their threats, hastened weapons of mass destruction proliferation by assorted regimes, bolstered Arab-Asian dictators, weakened indigenous democracy movements, mangled nascent rule of law traditions, badly isolated and weakened the US diplomatically, and virtually nullified the deterrent power of American-Israeli military might. Attacking Iran will only exacerbate these trends in the short term.

Americans should grasp precisely why a US-led war on global terror has backfired, and isolated the US as much as the terrorists. The main reason, simply, is that every single aspect of Washington's "global war on terror" is perceived by the majority of people in the Arab-Asian region as reviving, reaffirming, expanding and accelerating all the negative Western policies that have devastated the people of the Middle East for nearly a century. Here is a quick summary list of these issues:

* From the days of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt two centuries ago to the birth of the modern Middle East state system at Euro-colonial hands a century ago, a steady stream of Western armies that invade, occupy and seek to remake the Middle East to suit Western strategic aims;

* European and now American policies that blatantly favor Israel at the expense of Arab rights, and turn a blind eye to Israel's continued colonization of Palestinian land;

* Persistent marginalization of Palestinian rights, and collusion in barbaric Israeli policies against the Palestinians, such as this week's Israeli move to cut electricity supplies to civilians in Gaza;

* Supporting autocratic Arab regimes and police states, and showing chronic disdain for the democratic aspirations of Arab citizens;

* Promoting the ethnic and sectarian division of the region in order to enhance American hegemony and Israeli control (why is the US today the only source of apparently serious proposals to divide Iraq into three smaller units?);

* Demonizing Islam and Islamic values, to the point where 75 percent of Arabs and Muslims surveyed recently express an astounding fear that the US actually wants to dominate or destroy Islam itself;

* Attacking any Arab or Islamic power or mass popular force that rises in the region, such as Nasser's Egypt, Baathist Iraq, Iran, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others;

* Dictating economic, political, social, educational, and religious norms and values that should define Arab-Asian societies, and trying to enforce those values through military power and political force;

* Pursuing blatant double standards in implementing UN resolutions and international law, such as relating to Israeli occupation and colonization of Arab land, Iran's nuclear industry, recognizing or rejecting democratic elections, and other issues;

* Exploiting local leaders and movements to suit Western policies, then dropping these erstwhile allies and friends when they are no longer needed;

* Maintaining control of Arab-Asian natural resources, such as oil, gas and strategic geography.

This is what ordinary Arabs, Iranians and other Middle Easterners see when they hear about American plans possibly to attack Iran. This is not because people in the Middle East have fertile imaginations, but rather because this is the actual history that they have experienced for the past century at the hands of once colonial masters who have now turned into post-colonial and neo-colonial nightmares. They see America's "global war on terror" as a frightening renewal and continuation of foreign threats and predatory intrusions at the hands of powerful Western armies and political demagogues.

Oil Briefly Rises Above $92 a Barrel on Mideast Tensions, Supply Worries

by Pablo Gorondi, Associated Press - Oct 26, 2007

Crude oil prices spiked above $92 a barrel Friday on tensions in the Middle East and renewed concerns about supply.

The United States announced new sanctions against Iran on Thursday, targeting the elite Revolutionary Guards, which Washington accuses backing Shiite militants in Iraq. A confrontation between the world's largest oil consumer and its fourth largest oil producer could upend markets.

Parallel to fears of a broader conflict in the Middle East were new oil supply concerns.

Light, sweet crude for December delivery rose 88 cents to $91.34 a barrel in electronic trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange by early afternoon in Europe. It briefly rose to a new trading record of $92.22 during Asian trading.

The Nymex crude contract jumped $3.36 to settle at $90.46 a barrel Thursday in the U.S., closing above $90 a barrel for the first time.

"With oil taking the $90 hurdle, a price of $100 seems more and more likely, if only for speculative reasons," Commerzbank commodity analyst Eugen Weinberg told Dow Jones Newswires.

December Brent crude rose 97 cents to $88.45 a barrel on the ICE futures exchange in London, down from an earlier high of $89.30.

"The market is really quite worried about supply," said Tetsu Emori, commodity markets fund manager at ASTMAX Futures Co. in Tokyo. "Oil is quite imbalanced. It is quite tight."

The combination of supply worries and geopolitical concerns has pushed crude oil prices up more than 7 percent since Tuesday.

Prices first jumped sharply Wednesday after the Energy Information Administration reported that oil inventories fell 5.3 million barrels last week when analysts had expected them to grow 300,000 barrels.

That report reversed a three-day downward price trend, and put energy traders back in a bullish mood, analysts said.

On Thursday, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Secretary General Abdalla el-Badri told The Wall Street Journal Asia the cartel is not in discussions to boost production by 500,000 barrels. The comments counter rumors that Saudi Arabia is pushing for another production increase after pressuring the group into one of similar size that goes into effect Nov. 1.

While U.S. crude stocks fell to a nine-month low last week, Dow Jones reported that Oil Movements, a company that tracks oil tanker traffic, said the extra crude shipments from OPEC members next month will grow more slowly than anticipated.

Energy traders also remain concerned a threatened incursion by Turkish armed forces into Iraq in search of Kurdish rebels would cut oil supplies out of northern Iraq. Turkey has warned it will decide whether to cross into Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish guerrillas regardless of U.S. objections, and U.S.-made Turkish fighter jets patrol the skies near the Iraqi border.

Turkish artillery has been periodically firing across the border, and Turkish television showed video of smoke rising from three villages in northern Iraq that were purportedly hit by shells Thursday.

Lebanese troops fired on Israeli warplanes Thursday, and while a conflict between Israel and Lebanon would not directly affect oil supplies, traders worry that any hostilities in the Middle East would draw in oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

On Friday, gunmen in speedboats attacked an oil vessel off the coast of Nigeria at dawn and kidnapped six workers, Italian energy giant Eni SpA said.

Traders were also watching storms form near the Gulf of Mexico, where there are major oil operations.

"In this edgy market, we would still point to a tropical disturbance over the Virgin Islands which has ... some potential to become a Tropical Depression and could veer toward the (Gulf)," said Olivier Jakob from Switzerland's Petromatrix. "We would not qualify it yet as a threat to oil assets but ... we will pay attention to any upgrade on that disturbance."

Nymex heating oil futures rose 1.36 cents to $2.4220 a gallon (3.8 liters) while gasoline prices added 0.72 cents to $2.2430 a gallon. November natural gas futures fell 1.6 cents to $7.172 per 1,000 cubic feet.