[EN.ZAMANALWSL.NET] While hosting the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Washington and at Camp David this week, President Barack Obama If you like your coverage you can keep it... faces a hard sell: assuring the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates... and Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... that the United States has an Iran policy that encompasses their security needs. He must also encourage the six countries to work together for their own collective security, but in a way that dovetails with American strategic goals.
But doing so won't be easy. Only three of the six GCC nations are sending heads of state. The leaders of Oman and the United Arab Emirates pleaded health issues as their excuses to stay home; Saudi Arabia says its ruler, King Salman ...either the largest species of Pacific salmon or the current Sheikh of the Burnin' Sands, Cutodian of the Two Holy Mosquesand Lord of Most of the Arabians.... , won't be traveling due to humanitarian commitments to Yemen. The Saudi snub in particular reflects the concern, among America's Sunni Arab allies, that the United States isn't taking a hard enough stance toward Iran and its proxies.
The Saudis' commitment to ensuring that the United States is ready to oppose Iranian-proxy forces even as rapprochement moves forward is clearly seen in Yemen. After tamping down the Arab Spring in Sana'a and easing a sympathetic government into power with Saudi support, America militarized Yemen. This approach was intended to be a model for a new "small footprint" strategy, where a compliant local government would be paired with drones and Special Forces to conduct joint strikes against Islamic holy warriors fueled by intelligence from the United States. Obama cited Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... as a successful example of this strategy as recently as September 2014. Yet the dissolution of that country, and the chaos that followed a tail-between-the-legs evacuation of American diplomats and Special Forces, instead planted an Iranian-supported rebellion on Saudi Arabia's border.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2015 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Saudi Arabia
#1
Iff Anti-US US OWG Globalist POTUS Obama is helping Iran to nuclearize + lead the "New Middle East", THEN BY GOD HE'S DOING A VERY GOOD JOB.
AFAIC the Bammer can't be labeled a Coward or a Poor/Incompetent US Leader iff he is DELIBERATELY OR INTENTIONALLY FOLLOWING HIS GLOBIE AGENDA, I.E. DOING WHAT I BELIEVE HE HAS BEEN RAISED-N-GROOMED, ETC. SINCE CHILDHOOD TO DO.
* See also PRAVDA > JOHN KERRY ON RUSSIA: US IS LOSING EURASIA.
* DRUDGEREPORT > [The Observer] MARCO RUBIO SAYS AMERICA'S PHYSICAL STRENGTH HAS DETERIORATED UNDER OBAMA.
* RUSSIA TODAY > MOSCOW, CHINA WILL SEEK TO RECONSTRUCT CURRENT WORLD ORDER TOGETHER - DEPUTY DM [Russ Gen. Anatoly Antonov].
* RELATED GROONG > [Sputnik News] NO STRINGS ATTACHED: RUSSIA, CHINA FORGE TIES BUT NO [formal?]MILITARY ALLIANCE.
* GMA NEWS > SECURITY EXPERT: [US-China]CONFLICT IN SOUTH CHINA SEA COULD CHANGE GLOBAL STATUS QUO
[Global Order = Balance of Power]. SOUTH CHINA
SEA IS WORLD'S MOST IMPORTANT OR DANGEROUS HOTSPOT[Crisis Point].
#5
Why would Arab countries be excited about Obama giving Iran a nuclear weapon capability in their own backyards in view of all the Mideast instability? Obumble is hubris personified.
[FrontPage] In the Cold War days, the KGB relied on an extensive network of Communists and leftist fellow travelers for espionage and propaganda. As the motherland of socialism, the USSR could draw on allegiances from foreign leftists too in love with all the infrastructure projects to care about the prisoners building them.
But the easy ideological solidarity was faltering even during the Cold War. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the temporary anti-war line demanded of Western Communists and fellow travelers put a bigger strain on the relationship than the assorted trials and executions of domestic Communists had. Khrushchev’s exposure of Stalin drove away the Stalinists and left the apologists. The USSR lost its radical edge and those seeking it turned to Communist regimes in Asia and Third World terrorists.
Putin has tried to rebuild a non-ideological Soviet Union leaving him with few ideological allies, but he has always excelled at turning disadvantages into advantages by focusing on a single resource. The new Russian propaganda network draws not on sympathy, but on opposition. Outside of Russian nationalists, there wouldn’t be much sympathy for his desire to carve out a chunk of Ukraine to stay in power.
But the leftovers of the KGB running the country understood that reframing the issue as hostility to Western “imperialists” in NATO and the EU would win over allies who otherwise would not care about the issue one way or another. On one side are the farthest fringes of the far left, the kind who argued, that the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks in Iraq were the work of a resistance movement, who are obsessed with ‘Globalization’ and the heroism of Latin American Maoist terrorists.
[SultanKnish] The great paradox of the War on Terror is that we are fighting an enemy that doesn't exist. We are told incessantly that there is no such thing as a Muslim terrorist.
There may be a tiny minority of violent extremists, but they are only a tiny minority of no importance whatsoever. And yet we've been at war with this same infinitesimally tiny minority for decades.
This tiny minority has killed thousands of Americans. It has the support of entire governments in tiny countries like Pakistan (182 million), Iran (77 million) and Syria (22 million). We are told that this tiny minority is no way representative of the world's billion Muslims, and yet it's hard to find a Muslim country that doesn't support or harbor a terrorist group.
We were told that the problems was their governments, but the Arab Spring showed us that democratic elections lead to governments that are even more supportive of tiny minority of extremists who are somehow taking over entire countries. The real enemy are not Muslims---they're just predatory vermin who has to be taught, again, that we are not prey. The real enemy are Tranzis with their fundamental transformation ambitions.
#1
The trick is, up 'til now, we have let the commies take over and then start "transforming" their own into fertilizer. We need to be making that transformation immediately without the commie takeover phase...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/14/2015 7:42 Comments ||
Top||
#2
The core of the Big Lie being propagated about Islam, FTA
Islamic terrorism does not exist independently of the Western observer. It is not a Jihad with deep historical and theological roots within Islam, but [merely] a reaction to our interactions with Muslims.
#3
While Schroedinger's Jihad analysis is an interesting analysis about Islam (it may apply to other groups as well), I'm content to call my enemy my enemy and let it go at that.
[DAWN] IT is the vibrancy and plurality of Pakistain that the bully boyz wish to destroy.
In targeting Ismailis in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... , the bully boyz have grotesquely reiterated their message to the country: no one -- absolutely no one -- who exists outside the narrow, distorted version of Islam that the bully boyz propagate is safe in Pakistain.
The Aga Khan has spoken of "a senseless act of violence against a peaceful community". In their hour of desolation, it is only right that the Shia Ismaili community's supreme leader has taken a dignified line and sought to comfort what will surely be a deeply anxious community.
There is though clear sense recognisable in the attack. As the Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. school massacre delivered a devastating psychological blow to the country, so will the Karachi attack prove to be an immensely demoralising episode.
And as the Peshawar school massacre forever altered the basic school-day routine of tens of millions of Paks, so yesterday's attack will tighten the already suffocating blanket of fear over various Moslem sects and non-Moslems. The darkness continues to engulf this country.
The brutal attack against the Ismaili community also raises some very specific questions in the context of Karachi and the security policy being pursued in the bustling provincial capital.
Clearly, whatever the state has done over the last 18 months in Karachi, there is no rational expectation that no more terrorist attacks will occur or that all terrorist attacks will be foiled. But there is a sense that the militarised strategy being pursued in Karachi is the wrong one -- and that the focus of that militarised strategy, ie the MQM's Lion of Islam elements -- is too narrow.
There are still areas -- several ethnic ghettoes -- in Karachi that remain effectively cut off from the rest of the city and where law-enforcement personnel only enter on occasion.
A strategy based on raids, arrests and, if necessary, killings can never rescue such neighbourhoods from the Lion of Islams. Then, there has been virtually no discernible action against the myrmidon mosque-madressah-social welfare network that serves as an indoctrination and recruitment nexus for Lion of Islams.
Simply breaking up existing cells of bully boyz does little to ensure the next generation of Lion of Islam cells and groups are not being created.
In addition, what of the capacity of an intelligence apparatus that has to keep track of a wide spectrum of threats in Karachi?
Surely, that is a task too far for the military-run intelligence agencies alone. There are occasional noises about the civilian-run intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus being part of the operational and strategic loop, but few believe that to be the case anymore.
Finally, for all the problems with a military-dominated security policy in Karachi, why has the Sindh government allowed itself to become near irrelevant?
The civilian side of the state needs to be more influential and assertive in the security domain, but in Sindh it appears that the government has nil interest in such an endeavour.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2015 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
There is one leader in the world who has taken courageous steps across religious boundaries to help Middle Eastern Christians in their hour of need, breaking precedent and in many cases offending adherents of his own religion.
Of course, I am not talking about Pope Francis, but about Egyptian President Fatah al-Sisi, a devout Muslim who appeared last Christmas at the cathedral of his country's Coptic Christians, the first Egyptian leader to do so. The Cops are a persecuted minority who comprise about a tenth of the Egyptian population. The Coptic language derives from ancient Egyptian, and the Copts are the remnant of old Egypt, conquered by Alexander the Great and Christianized by Constantine, before the Arab invasion of the 7th century C.E. Standing next to the Coptic Pope Tawadros II, al-Sisi declared, "We cannot say anything but: we, the Egyptians."
President al-Sisi is locked in a life-and-death battle against the terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood, allied to elements of al-Qaeda. During the Muslim Brotherhood's less than year-long reign as Egypt's government during 2012-2013, forty Coptic churches were burned to the ground, 23 were damaged, and hundreds of Coptic Christians murdered. For the moment the Copts are secure, but we are witness to "the twilight of Middle Eastern Christianity" in the Levant, as Hisham Melham wrote 28 February in al-Arabiya.
While the government of Egypt stands siege against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Palestine branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, namely Hamas, got a boost from the Vatican May 13 when the Vatican announced that it would recognize a Palestinian State. Although the titular president of the Palestine Authority Mahmoud Abbas sat in the Vatican garden with Pope Francis for the announcement, Hamas has a margin of support over Abbas' feckless Fatah party of 2:1 by most estimates. Abbas is in the eleventh year of a five-year term, and cannot call elections because Hamas would win. He holds office because the Israeli Army props him up in power against the radical majority.
...Judging from the opinion polls, a Stste of Palestine today would have a Hamas majority of about two-thirds, with substantial representation from elements of ISIS. Why would the Vatican wish this plague upon itself? If a Palestnian State rules the Old City of Jerusalem, the Christian holy sites will be razed by Muslim radicals, just as they were in Iraq. Christianity survives in Judea and Samaria because Jews are willing to die for Jerusalem. How many Christians are willing to die for Jerusalem? The Vatican should ponder this question.
[AmericanInterest] What does the revelation about Syria cheating on its chemical weapons commitments tell us about the Iran negotiations? Plenty—and it isn’t pretty.
Posted by: Elmerert Hupens2660 ||
05/14/2015 07:41 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[EN.ZAMANALWSL.NET] While hosting the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Washington and at Camp David this week, President 
