And the winner is Iran ... and Muqtada

And the winner is Iran ... and Muqtada
By Pepe Escobar

http://echkelon.blogspot.com/2009/05/moqtada-al-sadr-new-cia-ayatollah.html

Iraqi Premier Nuri al-Maliki hit Tehran this Monday. He was duly received by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and talked extensively to President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, still beaming after his rock-star tour of Lebanon last week....

Maliki visited the holy city of Qom, described Iran-Iraq relations as "strategic" and called for even deeper Iran-Iraq cooperation. A good time was had by all - but certainly not the Armageddon-warning brigade in Washington.

Now let's shine some light over the broader context. Take this antiwar.com headline; "White House demands Maliki oust [Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-]Sadr from coalition." Anyone repressing uncontrollable rolls of laughter wins a sheesh kebab.

All through these interminable seven months since the Iraq elections on March 7, the Barack Obama administration said it would "not interfere" in internal Iraqi politics. Even the ghosts of the whores of Babylon knew Washington wanted its own favored, slightly pro-Western "coalition" in power - a Maliki-Iyad Allawi "cohabitation", as the French put it, with that Arab version of Tony Soprano, former Central Intelligence Agency asset and former "butcher of Fallujah" Allawi as prime minister. (See The new Saddam, without a moustache Asia Times Online, July 16, 2004.)
Now it turns out Washington is involved in - guess what? - a whole lot of interfering. Maliki is set to actually remain in power - thanks to support by the Sadrist bloc. Allawi's Iraqiya List had slightly more seats (91) than Maliki's list (89), but not enough to form a government. At the same time, the Sadrists became predominant over the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council and the Iraqi National Alliance (10% of the 325 contested seats). Even said ghosts of the whores of Babylon also knew that after the elections the real kingmaker in Iraq would continue to be Muqtada AlSadr, the new CIA Ayatollah ....

http://www.barcelonanews.net/story/698705

http://www.brecorder.com/section/81/1/1114744:pakistan-offers-russia-to-set-up-kalabagh-steel-mill.html

http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.php?pageid=International&articleid=a1287502381

Checkmate....

Oh, those were the days when "firebrand" Muqtada was the Pentagon's top bogeyman - even bigger than Osama bin Laden, routinely described as "the most dangerous man in Iraq". It was so much easier to try to take him out than to deal with his nationalist appeal.

Today, only armchair "strategists" in Washington can actually believe that Maliki will tremble in his brogues and show Muqtada the door; for in that case Maliki would literally kiss his majority coalition goodbye.

As much as the Obama administration wanted a Maliki-Allawi cohabitation, Tehran wanted a Maliki-Muqtada cohabitation. Guess who's the winner - again; not only the regime in Tehran, but also the Shi'ite clerics in Iraq. With an important point to be considered; just because Muqtada himself is studying in Qom to become an ayatollah, that does not mean that Baghdad will be ruled from Tehran.

Western media have often spun that Iran masterminded a sort of coup d'etat in Baghdad. It's much more subtle than that.

Tehran abundantly knew the many reasons why Muqtada would not ally the Sadrists with Maliki. So they set in motion a very skillful diplomatic chess game operating first via religious channels.

Ayatollah Kazem al-Haeri, Muqtada's spiritual adviser, asked him to give Maliki a try. Then last month, Maliki sent his chief of staff to Qom along with Abdul Halim al-Zuhairi from his Da'wa party to talk in person to Muqtada.

Hezbollah's Mohamed Kawtharani came from Beirut, and they were all joined by General Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the al-Quds Brigades of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Then Ahmadinejad met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on his way to the United Nations in New York - Ahmadinejad did a tour de force to convince Assad that Maliki was OK.

To top it all, Supreme Leader Khamenei - not to mention eminent Qom elders - and Hezbollah's secretary general Hassan Nasrallah gave their final imprimatur to the Muqtada-Maliki cohabitation.

No wonder an outmaneuvered Washington is now on overdrive warning once again of a "Shi'ite crescent" - that figment of the imagination of those wildly democratic

heavens such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait. As for the Allawi camp, its spin mantra - very popular in US corporate media - is that Iran is taking over Iraq. In a late September interview to German weekly Der Spiegel, Allawi insisted fear prevailed everywhere and war could soon break out all across the Middle East.

Obama may have declared the end of the Iraqi war to all those gullible enough to swallow it - but the fact remains that thousands of US troops will continue to be in Iraq even after the December 2011 withdrawal deadline, which in itself will be fought one Bradley vehicle at a time by the Pentagon. No one will know for quite a while what sort of military agreement will be struck by the - still - US occupiers and a theoretically sovereign Iraqi government. Needless to say that the Pentagon - religiously following the "full-spectrum dominance" doctrine - will pull out all stops to keep at least a handful of military bases inside Iraq.

These latest developments anyway seem to be producing three unalterable facts.

Number one. Baghdad will have a Tehran-friendly and Shi'ite-friendly government, with intertwined strategic interests. But that does not mean it will be ruled by Tehran. Sunnis will have to included; otherwise civil war will be back (not that it ever left; what General David "counter-insurgency or bust" Petraeus managed to do was to sell to a gullible US public opinion a "surge" as a fake victory).

Number two. All that oil. Iraq's proven oil reserves now stand at 143.1 billion barrels, up from 115 billion barrels. That makes them the third-largest in the world, above Iran, according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Oil exports account for 95% of Baghdad's revenue. And most of the new oil will be exploited by Chinese, Russian and Asian companies, not US Big Oil. So much for the neo-conservative dream of a US-controlled Iraq as "the new OPEC".

Number three. The final nail in the coffin of the neo-conservative fantasy of a Greater Middle East as an American lake. And to believe that these people still have a shot at being back at the helm of the US government by November 2012. Uncle Marx, we miss you so much; history does prefer to repeat itself as farce....


On IRAN, Islam, Wahhabism and the Western/Israeli Islamophobia.....

I have seen too many "secret" reports in my life not to be aware of all the bullshit they so often contain. Then, they also often reflect the *career-promoting* slogans of their authors, or the naive belief in the official propaganda. We have just seen that with the recent Wikileaks/CIA/DOD about Afghanistan which claim that the Iranians help the Taliban, which is, of course, utter garbage as anybody who knows anything about the relations between these two groups will tell you.

Then, look who you quote: US intelligence, US media and US courts. Three true bastions of Zionist propaganda. The same sources who blamed Hezbollah and/or Iran for the attacks on Jewish centers in Buenos-Aires. Bottom line, this entire idea of Wahhabis/Salafis/Takfiris.... working with Shia is utter and total bullshit, a crude propaganda invention to create this illusion of an "Islamic Coalition" against the West. Absolute hogwash. At the very most, you will see instances of Shia and Wahhabis acting in the same geographical area (Bosnia) and I could imagine that some hard core realpolitik type on both sides trying to annoy or degrade a common enemy perceived as far more immediate or threatening. But actually working together towards a shared objective? Hell no!

You don't actually think the Iranians are dumb enough to what the Wahhabi crazies in power in Chechnya or creating some kind of murderous Wahhabi "Islamic Emirate" in the Caucasus?! The Iranians are not Americans, they are not dumb enough to do what the Yanks did when they brought down the Taliban and Saddam only to make Iran the number one regional power.... Do you really think that anybody in Tehran wants Hattab, Zakaev, Dudaev, Maskhadov, Iadarbiev, Baraev or any other crazed Chechen nutcase or thug turning himself into an "Emir" and spreading Wahhabism in the Caucasus?

I suggest you stop feeding at the Western anti-Islamic propaganda outlets and look into the reality of the Islamic world....

Iran, Israel and Zionist Saudi Arabia

Iranian Nuclear weapons by themselves are not the issue.... The issue is the geopolitical relationship between two powers.... The number of weapons may affect budgetary considerations and theoretical targeting metrics, but the danger of nuclear war does not derive from the number of weapons but from the political relationship between nations....

This example is from the real world; I am speaking of Britain and France....

There are no treaties between them regulating nuclear weapons in spite of the fact that each has enough to devastate the other. This is because the possession of nuclear weapons is not the issue. The political relationship between Britain and France is the issue and, therefore, the careful calibration of the Franco-British nuclear balance is irrelevant and unnecessary....

Following his script from Langley, Obama re-launches the Contras against Nicaragua...and the LF CIA Proxy militia of a criminal thug in Lebanon.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6480.shtml

October , 2010 -- Following his script from Langley, Obama re-launches the Contras against Nicaragua...and the LF CIA Proxy militia of a criminal thug in Lebanon.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama practicing Reagan policies in Central America. Civil war looms in Nicaragua....

In an almost carbon copy of Ronald Reagan's covert policies in Latin America, President Obama has not only authorized CIA-planned coups in Honduras and Ecuador, but has, according to our sources in Costa Rica, re-launched a new generation of Contras to destabilize the Sandinista government of President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.

As in the 1980s, the Contras are operating from Honduras, which, after the CIA's and Mossad's ouster of President Manuel Zelaya, is now a safe operating base for the Nicaraguan rightists, and Costa Rica, which is now governed by a right-wing administration, including a pro-Israeli Vice President, Luis Lieberman Ginsburg, who has authorized the Costa Rican Intelligence and Security Directorate (DIS) to work with Mossad to wiretap phone lines, emails, and web sites to ensure the success of the Contra activities being directed against Ortega.

The pro-U.S. docile governments of Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, Honduran President Porfirio Lobo, and Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli are reportedly supporting the CIA and Mossad operations in Nicaragua. Martinelli is one of Israel's few allies in Latin America and he condemned the UN's Goldstone Report on Israel's invasion and genocide in Gaza. Under Martinelli, Israeli training programs for the Panamanian National Police have increased.

Nicaragua is seeing a surge in "civil society" activity, most notably operated by the CIA-connected US Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its components, and George Soros's various non-governmental organization (NGO) contrivances, including the Movement for Nicaragua. Our Costa Rica sources point to two USAID-linked contractors being involved in the covert activities in Costa Rica, Tetra Tech International, which has a substantial historical link to the CIA, particularly in the Middle East..., and DPK Consulting, which is not only active in Costa Rica but also in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

Ortega, who is barred from running for re-election next year, is now being faced with the same CIA, Mossad, and NGO construct that forced Zelaya from office in Honduras. Last month, Ortega reinstated a 1987 constitutional provision, known as Law 201, that permits judges and other government officials to stay in office beyond their terms until replacements can be appointed. The U.S.-backed opposition is now crying foul in a manner similar to the proposed constitutional referendum that was used to force Zelaya from office in Honduras.

U.S. ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens is the key player in providing support to the neo-Contras and to ensure that the Honduran resistance movement to the Lobo regime does not receive assistance from the Ortega government across the border in Nicaragua and vice versa. Lloren's role is similar to that of John Negroponte during the Reagan administration, or the infamous Jeffrey CIA FELTMAN in Lebanon between 2004 and 2009..., complete with CIA-backed death squads in Lebanon and Honduras resuming assassinations of politicians, student and labor leaders, as well as journalists.

U.S. covert activities in Honduras and Nicaragua are staged out of the Palmerola airbase in Honduras and are coordinated largely by Col. Robert W. Swisher, the US Defense Attaché at the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa. Williams Brands is the USAID coordinator who provides U.S. funds from the Office of Transition Initiatives to NGOs acting always on behalf of U.S. intelligence. Silvia Eiriz, the political officer, is also reportedly the CIA station chief who coordinates the anti-Ortega activity with her counterpart in Managua. The anti-Ortega operation in Nicaragua is primarily the responsibility of U.S. ambassador Robert Callahan, an old CIA hand who goes back to assisting Negroponte with the running of the death squads in Tegucigalpa in the 1980s....

The Nicaraguan opposition is now engaged in "false flag" street violence using bogus Sandinistas in classic "false flag" action carried out on behalf of the CIA and Mossad stations in Managua.... The Sandinista movement has also been split, thanks to CIA and NGO interference, into pro-Ortega and anti-Ortega factions. Similar activities on the Colombian-Venezuelan border have been carried out against civilian targets in Colombia and then blamed on Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) working with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. In fact, the attacks are carried out by Israeli and British commandos dressed in FARC uniforms, according to our Latin American sources. The operation is designed to force Chavez from office by tying him to terrorists.... The Venezuelan Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP) has tied the phony FARC attacks in Colombia to media propaganda operations orchestrated by Venezuela's Jewish community leaders working closely with opposition-controlled media in Venezuela, as well as media in the United States and Europe.

The CIA and Mossad are funding their neo-Contras with proceeds from the growing drug trade in Honduras and Costa Rica. As a result, drug-related murders are increasing on both sides of the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican and Nicaraguan-Honduran borders.When he was in power in Honduras, Zelaya reduced the drug trade.

In Honduras and Costa Rica, customs officials now look the other way as Israeli private security personnel, mostly ex-Israeli commandos, guard half length trucks without license plates that are moving drugs and weapons from Honduras and Costa Rica into Nicaragua to support the new Contras gearing up to fight the Sandinistas prior to next year's election...exactly as what they are doing in Lebanon with Samir Geagea's proxy CIA militias of the infamous LF of Geagea...and the Al-CIAda in Tripoli, north Lebanon....

Key border crossing points for the Israelis are in the Peñas Blancas National Park of Costa Rica and Cardenas, Nicaragua on Lake Nicaragua. The Penas Blancas area was a hotbed of Contra activity during the Reagan administration's secret war against Nicaragua.

On the Nicaraguan-Honduran border, an ex-Contra named "Comandante Jahob" is planning to start an armed conflict against Nicaragua if Ortega does not leave office next year. Commandante Jahob, whose real name is José Gabriel Garmendia, is reportedly acting along with CIA and Mossad commandos in Honduras and with the knowledge of the Honduran regime imposed by the Obama administration last year. Old CIA bases in Honduras that once supported the Contras in the 1980s, are reportedly being reactivated.

Costa Rican police and DIS personnel are allegedly involved in the cross-border trafficking. Currently, a Colombian bank is being used to buy up land along the Costa Rican-Nicaraguan border ostensibly for "tourist" purposes but the $2 billion project is designed to establish staging areas for renewed Contra warfare in Nicaragua if the Sandinistas remain in power beyond the 2011 election. The US private military contractor DynCorp is also involved in providing assistance to the Contras using the cover of "humanitarian assistance...." as always a perfect CIA/MOSSAD front....

On July 6, 2010, We reported: "After conducting its successful coup d'état in Honduras against President Manuel Zelaya, the imperialistic Barack Obama administration is now bent on ousting Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega by massing a huge U.S. Coast Guard and Marine Corps presence in neighboring Costa Rica, a base of operations for Reagan administration-backed CIA operations in the 1980s in support of the Nicaraguan contras.

Costa Rican government officials, including President Laura Chinchilla, Vice President Luis Lieberman Ginsburg, Security Minister Jose Maria Tijerino, counter-narcotics commissioner Mauricio Boraschi, and the Costa Rican Congress agreed to Operation Joint Patrol, which will see 7,000 US Marines, 46 mainly U.S. Coast Guard vessels, and 200 helicopters and 10 combat aircraft descend on Costa Rica, which does not have a military force, from July 1 to December 31."

President Mahmoud AHMADINEJAD and the political awakening....NAJAD is always Welcome in Lebanon.

http://www.raceforiran.com/irans-%E2%80%9Csoft-power%E2%80%9D-increasingly-checks-u-s-power

President Mahmoud AHMADINEJAD and the political awakening....NAJAD is always Welcome in Lebanon.

"... Firstly, let us put to one side the nonsense: The President of Iran’s visit was not about embedding Lebanon as a part of the Iranian state, nor was it about paving the way for any Hezbollah ‘take-over’ of Lebanon; and nor can the visit be described as a ‘provocation’. It was of course self-evidently intended to express defiance towards Israeli military hegemony and to assert a stand of counter-deterrence to any Israeli military threat, but that it is very different from an ‘act of provocation’ deliberately intended to draw an Israeli response. All these claims for the purpose of the visit are just a part of the psychological warfare mounted against Iran, and can be ignored.

The visit was, in fact, a State visit. The Iranian President was formally invited by the Maronite Christian President of Lebanon some while ago. Iran is a prominent regional state, just as Turkey is – whose Prime Minister happens to be visiting Beirut today.

Iran’s popularity on the streets should not surprise anyone. It is real, and it is heartfelt – and extends beyond the Shi’i of the south of Beirut. Having been present here in Beirut throughout the war of 2006, I experienced the almost universal shock at how leaders and so-called ‘friends of Lebanon’ such as Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice tried to fend-off and delay a ceasefire – in order to allow Israel more time to ‘finish the job’, i.e. to destroy more bridges, more infrastructure and impose civilian casualties – as our ‘price’ to be paid for Hizbullah’s seizure of Israeli soldiers. Feelings here are still raw on this point, and all sectors of opinion know that the only real support for Lebanon in those dark hours came from Syria and Iran. Unsurprisingly, there was a direct element of gratitude in expression to Iran in recent days both for the support then, and its subsequent economic assistance to repair the damage.

But this does not constitute the deeper significance of the welcome extended to the representative of Iran in Lebanon – Lebanon, the bellweather of the wider politics of the Middle East. It goes beyond a belated ‘thank-you’.

In May this year, Zbignew Brezezinski gave a brief talk at the Council for Foreign Relations (CFR) in Montreal. He told his audience that there were two factors shaping global politics in the world today. The first, he said was that “for the first time in all of human history, mankind is politically awakened and stirring”, adding that “all over the world people were aware of what was happening politically and are “consciously aware of global inequities, inequalities, lack of respect, and of exploitation”.

His second point was that the élites that rule us are less united and more diversified than before (he gave the transition of the G8 into the G20 as example); the élite is both less homogeneous and less restrained by adherence to traditional values and culture; the consequence of this is a more surveilled, and a more controlled society, Brzezinski has written....

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hassan Nasrallah quote Imam Ali (the son-in-law of The Prophet)’s dictum that Muslims should be the ‘friend of the oppressed; and enemies of the oppressor’, or speak of western ‘double-standards’, New York Times sophisticates may sneer at this talk as ‘all hat and no cattle’; but they simply miss the point.

Simplistic to some, perhaps – Islamist movements and Iranian leaders do harp continuously on just those global inequities, inequalities, lack of respect and of exploitation to which Brzezinski attributes the unprecedented political ‘awakening’. The tables are turned: as the values of ‘the market’ and the secular liberal world order appear increasingly hollow to those who see in it only privilege, disparity of wealth and self-enriching self-interest, the language of resistance and defiance of western political and business élites, who style themselves as ‘the international community’ of course resonates deeply in a Middle East that is ‘awakening politically’ and ‘stirring’.

This, it should be understood, is the underlying dynamic to the shift in the strategic balance of the Middle East and to the emergence of an ‘resistance axis’ to that very that very élite dominated ‘world order’ and its systems of control imposed upon societies. The élites fear this awakening; and are determined to ensure its failure.

In short Islam – particularly Shi’i Islam – is taking over the clothes of the European early Renaissance (before the Enlightenment); Islam stands, for many Muslims, for a humanism and a respect for justice, human dignity and defiance of tyranny that Europe once espoused. Of course, few in the West will see it in these terms: they have been too busy creating an inverted mirror image of what they perceive still to be western ‘virtues’ – and call it Iranian ‘theocracy’.

The significance of President Ahmadinejad’s visit was the popular articulation of this awakening, and the profound struggle ahead that it portends – more than just a signal of gratitude to an Iranian President...."

The United States is clearing out and leaving its Sunni Arab allies in a lurch....

The United States is trying to get back into a position where the natural Arab-Persian divide in the region balances itself out.....LOL...Hence all the desperate attempts of CIA/MOSSAD of igniting a generalized FITNA....[ sectarian proxy wars...]

All GCC states are far from warriors.... In spite of all the state-of-the-art equipment the United States floods into countries like Zionist Saudi Arabia, the Saudi military severely lacks the leadership, ethos, training and doctrine to proficiently and coherently employ any of these systems...., even the systems severely downgraded on purpose by USA's ZOG.... The Persian Gulf states’ dependence on Washington is what allows the United States to militarily and stealthily...entrench itself in the region's armies and intelligence services for decades.....

Western Decadence through and through....

"Last month I had a terrifying experience as journalism betrayed me for the first time in my four years of working as a fixer. When I first met freelance journalist Ruthie Ackerman in a cafe in Beirut in early September, I realized that she did not know anything about Lebanon. Ms. Ackerman had arrived in Beirut to do a story on social networking, but it quickly became apparent that this reporter had not done her homework. Ms. Ackerman did not know who Hassan Nassrallah was. Ms. Ackerman did not know that Saad Hariri was the name of the prime minister of the country who’s coffee she was then sipping. When, later, I took her to see a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut she asked, “Where are the tents?” Ruthie Ackerman’s ignorance of even the current status of a country she planned to write about was, in short, shameful. Though taken by surprise at this, I considered that perhaps her interest in social networking meant her cultural and historical background knowledge could afford to be less than someone writing a more political piece. I was wrong. Ms. Ackerman did not end up writing a piece on social networking in Lebanon, but rather chose to cover the visit of the Iranian president Ahmadinejad to Lebanon. She published these in the Atlantic, and Slate here:

Would it surprise you to learn that Ms. Ackerman did not even know that Ahmadinejad was visiting Lebanon until the very day before, when I (most regrettably) told her? Ruthie emailed me saying, “I had no idea he was coming or I would have planned to be back for it!!” Keep in mind that this visit had been the talk of news agencies around the world (including the USA) for the full two months preceding. Is it any surprise, then, that Ms. Ackerman’s articles fit into a steady stream of ill-informed and orientalist media propounded by journalists in the West and around the world? That her articles promote misinformation, perpetuate cultural stereotypes, and propagate racist caricatures of the Middle East? Does Ruth Ackerman realize how her irresponsible ‘war tourist’ journalism compounds the problems faced by the people of the Middle East in light of the way ‘the West’ views and treats us? In my job as a fixer, I provide foreign journalists with the necessary contacts for a story. I arrange, facilitate, and translate all sorts of social interactions, including interviews with everyone from shoe-shine boys to top governmental figures. As the journalist’s local eyes and ears I am oftentimes the one to provide a foreign journalist with the story—‘the scoop’—itself. In Beirut, where I live and work foreign journalists come to town usually in need of a fixer and I am one such fixer. If a journalist comes to me and wants the perspective of a Palestinian refugee, I can take them to him. If they want a translation of an interview with a Hezbollah politician, I can get it for them. If they want me to take them to the dirty and impoverished parts of Tripoli, I can do that too. Being a fixer means keeping up-to-date on the Lebanese political and security scene. Being a fixer means establishing and maintaining contacts with all types of people, from top politicians to the guy on the corner shining shoes. Being a fixer means being freelance and not knowing when you might next get paid. Being a fixer means using a social toolkit that is not taught at any university. I stick with this job because I believe in it fundamentally, and not for the great pay or the low hours, or the great retirement package....I am writing this because I am sick and tired of the stereotypes and narrow angles taken by ignorant and prejudiced foreign observers. Ackerman writes “Camels… had been sacrificed, their long, graceful necks slit open. The men who slaughtered them held their butcher knives and the camels' heads as they smiled for pictures.” Could Ackerman not have spared us one more out-of-context reference that reduces a celebrating crowd to a bunch of stupidly-grinning camel butchers? I mean, who is this person to jump into deep cultural traditions and compare them to western values and cultures? What she fails to explain is why they are out killing camels for the guest. Rather she hopes to exaggerate the apparent “savagery” of such an act, and give it a deep political metaphorical meaning that seems beyond her understanding of Lebanese history. She does not hesitate to paint a whole group of people with her ignorant one sided brush. She spoke about the people welcoming Ahmadinajed as if she knew them and was one of them (lest we forget she didn’t know he was coming in the first place). No, she was not one of them, and she did not know anything about them. Ackerman’s observations reveal the blatantly skin-deep level at which she works. She writes that, “...old women ululated. One tiny baby had her fingernails painted green—the color of Islam. Many held up their fingers in what to my naive eye looked like a peace sign but turned out to be a V for victory. Victory against Israel, that is.” And there it is, one more portrayal of Arabs as Islamic warmongers. What Ms. Ackerman fails to mention is that in 2006, Lebanon was being bombarded by Israel with the south of the country—where much of Lebanon’s support for Iran comes from—receiving the worst damage. Thirty three days of war left many people homeless and the nation in paralysis. Iran, like many other countries, donated money to build homes for the families from southern Lebanon, made refugees by Israeli bombardment, to shelter in. The fact that people cheered Ahmadinejad’s arrival meant so much more than her naïve eyes could see and her uninformed pen could write. But of course, these might be irrelevant details to a journalist like Ackerman, especially considering that she had arrived in Lebanon without knowledge of the 2006 war either...Today, I’ve changed my tools from fixer to writer and attempted to use my own pen to battle ignorance and utter misinformation....."

Who Will Replace Saudi Arabia’s Crypto-Zionist Elderly Leaders?

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/21/bandar_is_back

Tarissez la pompe et le turban ne sera plus aussi blanc...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/20/AR2010102006518.html

U.S. gives details of Saudi arms deal

How to safeguard US Jobs with Arab Funds, desperately needed for development and Jobs in the Arab World....? Keep buying US Arms which we don't even know how to use properly....that's Saudi Zion Arabia.....

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4944175&c=AME&s=AIR

Who Will Replace Saudi Arabia’s Crypto-Zionist Elderly Leaders?

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197008-Secret-Team-sets-up-meetings-between-Saudi-king-CIA-director-and-Russian-equivalent-to-exchange-pleasantries-and-discuss-their-dirty-war-against-the-people-of-Yemen

Virtually everyone in line for the throne in Saudi Arabia is over 80, utterly corrupt to the core and completely ignorant of the world around them.... Experts believe that these “elders” will only be able to control the country for a few more years. It is unclear who will rule after 2020.....and if there will be one country left to rule....since it is a candidate for being dismembered too by CIA/MOSSAD killers/assassins.....

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2010/10/14/yemen_on_the_brink_99230.html

It is possible that Islamists who support bin Laden will take power. Meanwhile, no issue affecting the international community’s relations with the Arab Muslim world can be managed without Saudi Arabia’s involvement. A great deal depends on who is at the country’s helm....

Pravda.Ru’s correspondent asked Sergei Demidenko, an expert at the Institute of Strategic Studies and Analysis, to comment on the situation.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia plays a key role in the Arab Muslim world,” he said. “Egypt, the challenger for leadership of the region, clearly falls short of Saudi Arabia in terms of its economy. The Kingdom is the leader of OPEC and one of the world’s main oil producing countries. Only Pakistan with its nuclear bomb and Turkey have a comparable degree of influence, and not even they match up. Then too, the most important Muslim shrines are located in Saudi Arabia, at Mecca and Medina.”

— Saudi Arabia has often been accused of supporting Western Intelligence agencies' Islamists....and Al-CIAda....Fateh Al-Islam and the Sunni Resistance in IRAQ...... If so, why doesn’t the international community react...? [Because the so-called International community are a bunch of cowards obviously, why don't they ask for reciprocity in building Churches in Arabia for decades now....?]

— Saudi Arabia often plays a destructive role by sending Islamic militants to other parts of the world, and it also provides funding for radical organizations outside its borders. Of course, it does this indirectly to avoid irritating the Americans, through a system of special funds. The goal is to protect itself against the volatile Islamist masses and channel their activities towards, for example, Lebanon, Fath Al-Islam...etc,Iraq, Balkans, Chechnya, Pakistan, or Afghanistan. And the international community does nothing because, first of all, everyone knows about it and is worried by Saudi Arabia’s influence in the Muslim world, and second, they’re afraid of losing lucrative Saudi arms and oil contracts.

— Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy. With that system of government can it modernize?

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/21/bandar_is_back

— Right now we’re seeing only a few glimmers of change, limited to minor concessions in domestic politics. For example, women are being given a more active role, including the right to vote. These changes aren’t revolutionary at all and are more indicative of the games being played within the ruling clans of the Saudi Crypto-Zionist royal family.

They’re simply making no effort to modernize the country. That’s partly due to the extreme age of the members of the ruling dynasty. In fact, virtually everyone in line for the throne is over 80. That includes the Crown Prince (83), who may succeed the current King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud. We can assume that they’ll be able to control the country for another 10 years. It’s difficult to predict who will replace them.

In any event, modernization is virtually impossible in an absolute monarchy, especially one as rigid as Saudi Arabia. The current regime actually preserves the existing feudal system, and it’s kept stable by revenues from oil sales. And what can you expect from a country which officially abolished slavery only in 1962?

How would you assess the state of relations between Russia and Saudi Arabia?

— They’ve never been especially warm. During Soviet times, we supported Saudi Arabia’s enemies, like Nasser’s Egypt or Hussein’s Iraq. On the other hand, Western countries had strong positions there. Especially the United States and Great Britain.

It’s quite obvious now that closer relations between Russia and Saudi Arabia would be in our strategic interest for shaping the dialogue with the Arab world. But Riyadh has no particular need of that. An abrupt warming of relations with Moscow would mean a deterioration in relations with its old strategic partner, Washington.

One reason for the lack of serious cooperation between our countries is that we have nothing to offer in terms of oil development that the Saudis find worthwhile. Everything there has long since been parceled out, and nobody wants to give up his share of that rich market.

— How about military-technical cooperation?

— In fact, we have nothing to offer Saudi Arabia except weapons. There have been several reports over the last two years that the Kingdom intends to buy billions of dollars worth of weapons from us. However, there’s nothing behind it. I don’t doubt that Riyadh says it’s prepared to buy weapons from us only to spook Washington and make the Americans more compliant on some issues. Including military-technical cooperation. The United States recently refused to sell Saudi Arabia some of its latest weapon systems, which irritated the King.

I think it’s possible that we may sell them something. After all, for a country that spends billions of dollars on defense, a few Russian weapons wouldn’t break the bank. But it wouldn’t change anything fundamentally. The Americans don’t intend to give up Saudi Arabia to anyone and withdraw from this strategically important region. And with Iran getting stronger, Riyadh has a vital need for American bases on its territory as a guarantee against attack. So our prospects for the Saudi market are cloudy.

— How stable is the Saudi regime and what does the future hold for the country?

Members of the royal family today don’t see Iran as their only major threat; they’re also worried about homegrown Islamists. That means they’re separated from their own people by a powerful security system. True, the Islamists have a very limited base within the country. After all, Saudi Arabia is essentially a fundamentalist Wahhabi state.

The only thing that radicals can reproach the king for is “selling out to the Americans.” But that can only appeal to a limited number of people. It clearly isn’t enough to cause the well-fed Saudis to rebel, and they make up the overwhelming majority of the country’s population.

However, ethnic and religious factors may cause problems for Riyadh. The main oil producing areas are in Shiite regions, and it’s common knowledge that Iran is supporting the Shiites. Therefore, it’s possible that under certain circumstances they could oppose the regime.

We should also remember that millions of non-Arabs live in the country. They include descendents of African slaves and immigrants from South Asia (Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, etc.). Considering that the Saudi Arabs have largely forgotten how to work and people from other countries do it for them, a conflict along social and ethnic lines could develop.

Still, the Saudi royal regime has a quite large safety margin due primarily to its enormous oil reserves and the low extraction costs: two to three dollars per barrel. And even if the price of crude oil drops to $20 per barrel, Saudi Arabia would still feel on top of the world. At least for the near future.

— And what does the future hold?

— The total dependence on oil sales could create problems in the future. The “black gold” could eventually dry up, or a substitute for it could be found. And then everything will change dramatically. Yemen is a typical example; its oil reserves weren’t as great as many had thought. The result has been economic decline, chaos and a permanent state of civil war.

Of course, Saudi Arabia has a powerful safety cushion—significant bank deposits from oil revenues. However, it’ll be difficult for the country to live on the interest, considering its enormous population growth rate (up to half a million people per year....

Bluntly, the all-is-well tune Riyadh is now playing for its oil customers may well, in the not-too-distant future, sound a lot more like whistling past the graveyard...."

"...Saudi Arabia has long been the home and educator of many who today inspire and lead worldwide Islamist militancy (not least, Osama bin Laden). The country’s leaders nevertheless strive to show the world they are ‘modernizing’ and subduing domestic militancy—anything required to keep the country stable and oil production dependable.... foreigners should be wary of the smoke and mirrors game being played in the kingdom..... they also have the advantage of addressing an oil-buying clientele of nation states that want to believe the kingdom is stable. And while this hungry-for-good-news audience includes all Saudi-oil customers, it’s hard to imagine any being as hopeful that all’s well as Asia’s big economic powers: China, Japan, South Korea and India..... long-term Saudi domestic stability is essential for continued economic expansion.

And today, on the surface, all really does seem well...

Yet, while the Saudis have had some stability-protecting successes, there are straws in the wind to suggest importers of Saudi and Arab Peninsula oil shouldn’t take stability for granted.

Last month, for example, Saudi Second Deputy Premier and Minister of Interior Prince Naif claimed his ministry had stopped 230 of 240 planned terrorist attacks in the kingdom. Naif quickly passed over the startling incident total, and said citizens should be proud (but not complacent) about the record....

Naif’s mild warning isn’t unlike those issued by Western leaders. But the fact is that the Saudis’ on-the-ground reality is more threatening than in most non-Muslim countries. After all, Prince Naif’s son, the deputy interior minister, has been the target of four unsuccessful assassination attempts. And despite the much-praised Saudi re-education system, recidivism exists at a time when the kingdom’s educational system is still mostly in the hands of strict Islamists. Riyadh’s ongoing weeding out of militant teachers has so far moved 2000 teachers to administrative positions since 2008 ‘for teaching radical views to students…(and) turning the mission of teaching into a tool for spreading radical and erroneous (religious) thought.’ Riyadh has also jailed 1,400 teachers found to be ‘sympathetic to al-Qaeda.....’ prior to being manipulated into joining the all powerful Al-CIAda.....

That’s not all. The Saudi regime is also having trouble reducing the militancy of its large clerical community. Indeed, in June, a major Saudi-controlled daily said that ‘the consecutive successes scored by the security apparatus have not hidden the fact that (the Saudi regime’s) intellectual work has failed in its war against the terrorist organization [al-Qaeda].’ Another paper later said that in an ‘intellectual confrontation’ with militant Saudi scholars, the regime’s chance of prevailing is ‘nearly nonexistent.’

Although the kingdom has a 20-member senior religious council—the Senior Scholars Authority—that’s charged with guiding the country’s religious life, Saudi universities have produced large numbers of qualified Islamist scholars over the past three decades, men whose militant words and writings now drive and justify jihadi activities in the kingdom and worldwide.

Adding to the problem, the Saudi regime has sent many such scholars overseas to be imams (leaders) and teachers at Islamic schools and mosques in Europe, Africa, North America and the Muslim and partially Muslim states of Asia, especially Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. They are, of course, inculcating militancy in their congregations....

the king’s decree signals the regime’s desperation. Trained Islamic scholars are viewed and respected by Muslims as the heirs of the Prophet Muhammad—their job is to make sure Muslim rulers implement only God’s law, and to defy them if they don’t. King Abdullah has upended this hallowed tradition by putting all religious authority in the hands of scholars he controls. He has, in essence, disenfranchised—theologically speaking—an enormous number of the Prophet’s heirs. By doing so, he has assured more, not less, scholarly opposition to al-Saud rule and has worsened the problem by driving the militant and now antagonized scholars underground... the Saudi regime is also confronting its failure to eradicate al-Qaeda’s presence in the kingdom, notwithstanding success in pre-empting attacks and jailing ‘several thousand’ of the group’s fighters and other Saudis involved in culling money and Internet operations for al-Qaeda.

Saudi officials, journalists and professors admit al-Qaeda’s appeal in the kingdom is strong and may be growing, citing their special concern that al-Qaeda is succeeding with plans to recruit Saudi females....

The threat to Riyadh, though, isn’t just from inside—al-CIAda and its anti-Saudi allies have made substantial progress in ‘surrounding’ Saudi Arabia and its oil-producing neighbors. Before the inside Job of 9/11, al-CIAda operatives had difficulty entering the kingdom from abroad, as well as in exiting after attacks. Indeed, much of Riyadh’s 2003-06 success in capturing large numbers of militants was due to its control of most entry and exit points.

But this is no longer the case. Al-CIAda could still try to move fighters into the kingdom via official entry points, but there’s little reason to take the chance now. The post-9/11 growth of safe havens for al-CIAda and other Sunni Islamists in Yemen, Somalia and Iraq ensures that entry to the kingdom can be made safely on the Saudi-Iraq border, the Yemen-Saudi border and across the Red Sea from Somalia. And the reverse is also true—if al-CIAda is hard-pressed by Saudi security in the kingdom, it’s relatively quick and easy to retreat to secure safe havens in Iraq, Yemen and Somalia.

Ultimately, this means that states that depend on secure Saudi oil production should take Riyadh’s well-publicized successes in stopping terror plots, jailing militants, ‘re-educating’ radicals and ‘controlling’ its community of militant scholars with a pinch of salt. In fact, the claims seem more the sign of a growing and intractable problem than a signal the security services have turned the tide in the regime’s favor.

Countries counting on secure, long-term access to Saudi oil would do well to mull the words of Abd-al-Rahman al-Rashid, editor of the London-based, Saudi-controlled newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat. In June, al-Rashid warned that:"…This terrorist organization’s ability to infiltrate the closed society of Saudi women and its infiltration of the centre of Saudi provinces reveals that despite the arrests and hunts for hundreds of al-Qaeda elements, the organization is still active and is spreading like cancer.'

To put it more bluntly, the all-is-well tune Riyadh is now playing for its oil customers may well, in the not-too-distant future, sound a lot more like whistling past the graveyard....."

Saudi Arabia with its petrodollars disseminates obscurantist Wahabi ideology around the world , which keeps Muslims backwards and ignorant .It has led to fatal attacks not only on Ahmedias and Kadianis ,even mainline Shias and Mohajirs in Pakistan .So Tehran retaliates by supporting Shias in Pakistan . Unless the Washington -Saud Dynasty-Wahabi Al-CIAda Axis is undone , Muslims will remain divided and backward , which suits the three members .US provides guarantee to Saudi Dynasty, which allows a free run to Wahabis and Al-CIAda in and outside Saudi Arabia..... , while Washington exploits Arab oil resources for its benefit....

La Secte Wahhabite

Parmi les sectes étranges égarées, il en est une qui a mystérieusement émergé de la région du Najd en Arabie. Celle-ci dénonce tous ses rivaux Musulmans comme Mushrikūn (c.à.d. un peuple qui a blasphémé contre l’Unicité de Dieu), et continue à déclarer obligatoire de tuer tous ses rivaux. Les membres de cette secte Najdi Wahhabite ont créé une alliance avec le clan des Saoud en vue de contrôler le Najd, puis la terre Arabe du cœur de l’Islam qu’est le Hedjaz. Ils ont cherché à gagner le contrôle de la plaine du Hedjaz dans le but de la purifier de ce qu’ils considèrent comme du Chirk, et donc de restaurer l’Islam authentique. Lorsqu’ils ont réussi à gagner ce contrôle, ils ont procédé au massacre de milliers de Musulmans innocents.

La raison d’être de l’émergence de cette mystérieuse alliance Saoudo-Wahhabite a été clairement dévoilée au moment où le clan Saoudien et la secte Wahhabite ont conspiré pour créer un état client Anglo-Américano-Saoudien en Arabie qu’ils ont audacieusement nommé Arabie Saoudite. Par ce procédé de création d’Etat client, ils ont détruit Dar al Islam (la terre d’Islam) et le Califat (c.à.d. l’état Khilafah) que le Prophète béni avait lui-même établi. Ils ont été dupé par le Dajjal dès lors que leur trahison envers l’Islam avait ouvert le chemin aux Gog et Magog vers l’accomplissement de leur rôle étrange décrit dans le Coran (al-Anbiyah’:95-96). L’alliance Saoudo-Wahhabite a aussi rejoint celle des Judéo-chrétiens d’Europe, les préférant ainsi à la solidarité fraternelle avec ceux qui ont proclamé leur foi en l’Islam.

La consommation formelle et finale de ce marché mémorable avec le cœur même de l’Islam fut d’une importance critique telle pour l’alliance Judéo-chrétienne, qu’un président Américain avait voyagé lui-même à bord d’un navire de guerre pour rencontrer le Roi Saoudien. L’USS Murphy avait embarqué secrètement le Roi Abdul Aziz Ibn Saoud du port Arabe de Djeddah, pour l’emmener au Grand Lac Amer dans le Canal de Suez, où l’USS Quincy l’attendait avec à bord le Président des USA Roosevelt. Les deux dirigeants se sont rencontrés le 14 Février 1945 pour sceller leur alliance. Les Saoudo-Wahhabites récoltèrent les fruits amers de leur alliance à peine trois années plus tard, lorsque l’Etat d’Israël vit le jour et quand les USA furent fièrement le premier Etat à le reconnaitre.

Le fait que l’alliance Américano-Saoudienne n’ait pas seulement survécu, mais aussi prospéré depuis cet événement cataclysmique de 1948 indique clairement que la secte Wahhabite est complice de la trahison de l’Islam.

Aussi longtemps que l’alliance Saoudo-Wahhabite maintenait ses relations avec l’alliance Européenne Judéo-chrétienne qui dirigeait le monde ; il était impossible pour les Musulmans rassemblés ou non, de les déloger du contrôle sur le Hedjaz, les Haramayn ainsi que sur le Hajj. Le résultat prévisible fut que cette secte parvenue, clamant représenter la véritable religion de l’Islam avait effectivement joué un rôle crucial en livrant à l’alliance Judéo-chrétienne la capacité de diriger le monde de l’Islam tout entier. (Voir « Le Califat, le Hedjaz et l’Etat-Nation Saoudo-Wahhabite », http://www.imranhosein.org).

Le Prophète Mohammad SWS avait clairement anticipé cette trahison lorsqu’il déclara à propos du Najd, dans un Hadith rapporté dans le Sahih de Boukhari, qu’il en émergerait des séismes, tentations et tribulations, ainsi que le « Qarn (époque ou siècle) de Satan » (le clan Saoudien ainsi que la tête de la secte Wahhabite sont tous deux apparus du Najd). Il y a eu tellement de débats au début de l’époque Islamique concernant la localisation géographique du Najd. Certains ont prétendu qu’il était situé en Irak plutôt qu’en Arabie. Cependant, assez de temps s’est aujourd’hui écoulé pour que l’on puisse affirmer sur la base de preuves que la prédiction du Prophète béni a déjà été accomplie. Les courageux combattants d’Irak ont lancé une magnifique lutte armée pour libérer ce territoire de l’occupation Américano-israélienne tandis que les gouvernants politiques et religieux (originaires du Najd) d’Arabie Saoudite ont servilement et religieusement préservé leur «alliance satanique» avec ces oppresseurs.

Une caractéristique curieuse de la pensée religieuse Wahhabite à l’ère moderne est son insistance sur une interprétation littérale des versets du Coran ainsi que des hadiths qui traitent du sujet des «Signes de la Dernière Heure». En conséquence, les savants Wahhabites (à quelques exceptions près) restent handicapés par une méthodologie qui les rend incapables de pénétrer et d’interpréter correctement les allégories religieuses, et donc la réalité du Dajjal, ainsi que des Gog et Magog à l’époque moderne. D’autre part, les savants religieux Chiites ont l’air d’avoir d’avantage la volonté d’interpréter les allégories du Coran et des Hadiths, nous espérons donc les trouver plus réceptifs que les autres aux interprétations qu’ils trouveront dans ce livre....

مشكلة كبيرة مع عودته الى السعودية.باحث سعودي: عودة بندر بن سلطان تنذر بخطر كبير

اعتبر باحث سعودي ان عودة الامير بندر بن سلطان مؤشر خطير على ان هناك مؤامرات تدبر ضد دول المنطقة، مؤكدا ان مراسم الاستقبال له في السعودية كان مبرمجا ومدبرا من قبل.

وقال محمد المسعري الباحث في الشؤون السعودية في تصريح خاص لقناة العالم الاخبارية الاثنين : ان عودة الامير بندر تدل على ضعف آل سعود وقوة الادارة الاميركية داخل الاسرة الحاكمة، مؤكدا انها مؤشر خطر على السعودية بشكل خاص والمنطقة بشكل عام.

واضاف: ان هذه العودة تظهر ان كبار الامراء السعوديين والملك عبدالله نفسه في درجة من الضعف انهم لا يستطيعون فرض هيبة الدولة على اوساط الامراء الصغار امثال بندر.

واعتبر المسعري ان بندر رجل الصهيونية العالمية ورجل المحافظين الجدد ورجوعه خطر مميت ليس على السعودية والبلاد العربية والاسلامية فحسب بل على آل سعود انفسهم.

واضاف: في الحقيقه هو صهيوني يهودي خالص ولعله كان متورطا بعملية الانقلاب ضد عمه بمشاركة وتوجيه اميركي لكن واشنطن لم تعرف انه لا يستطيع القيام بالمهام الذي تريد ان يقوم بها بندر في المنطقة.

كما اعتبر الباحث السعودي ان مراسم الاستقبال لبندر في السعودية كان مبرمجا ومدبرا وقال: ان تمثيلية الاستقبال في المطار اجريت بدقة واحكام حتى لا يكشف انه كان معتقلا او متخفيا في سوريا، مشيرا الى غياب كبار الامراء عن هذا المراسم.

ناشط سعودي: الامير بندر عاد ليلعب دورا خططت له واشنطن

اعتبر ناشط سعودي ان الامير بندر بن سلطان عاد بعد فترة غياب ليلعب دورا بطلب من الادارة الاميركية في المرحلة القادمة، مؤكدا ان ذلك يشكل خطرا على الهدوء والاستقرار في المنطقة.

وقال الباحث والكاتب السياسي السعودي فؤاد ابراهيم في تصريح خاص لقناة العالم الاخبارية الاثنين : ان الامير بندر شخصية عادية واعلامية بشكل عام لكنه شخصية ذهبية من الناحية الاميركية لانه مارس اكبر الادوار اهمية في الشرق الاوسط والعالم خلال 3 عقود الماضية.

واوضح ابراهيم ان غياب وعودة بندر بن سلطان ليس عاديا لانه ارتبط بصفقة مقاتلات الافاكس في عام 1980 وبقضية ايران كونترا في اميركا اللاتينية عام 1986 ومحاولة اغتيال القيادات الدينية بما فيها المرجع الراحل السيد محمد حسين فضل الله وحرب الخليج الفارسي الاولى والثانية وقضية جماعة فتح الاسلام في لبنان وتنظيم القاعدة في العراق وغيرها من القضايا.

واشار الى عدم اصدار بيان رسمي حول غيابه وقال: كان غياب الامير بندر يتطلب اصدار بيان رسمي من جانب الاسرة السعودية الحاكمة او مجلس الامن الوطني بشان مرضه المحتمل ونفي الاتهامات بمحاولته الانقلاب ضد عمه خصوصا وان آل سعود يصدر في العادة بيانات بشان امراض امراءه.

واعتبر ان عدم اصدار البيان يوضح ان غياب الامير بندر كان بسبب حدوث مشكلة كبيرة داخل الاسرة الحاكمة وعودته توحي بان ثمة مشكلة كبيرة سوف تقع في المرحلة القادمة، مؤكدا ان الروايات المنتشرة حول غياب الامير بندر تسبب اهتزازا لصورة آل سعود على المستوى الدولي.

وحول الروايات التي تنتشر حول غياب الامير بندر اوضح ابراهيم ان اشهرها انه كان ضالعا في محاولة انقلاب ضد عمه الملك عبدالله ما ادى الى اعتقاله واخضاعه للاقامة الجبرية في الرياض ومنعه من السفر.

كما اشار الى ان بندر يعاني من الادمان على الكحول وقد خضع للعلاج في فترات محددة.

وقال كما يقال ان الامير بندر بقي خارج السعودية بين المغرب وفرنسا بعد فشل محاولة الانقلاب وذلك حسب اتفاق بين الملك عبدالله والامير سلطان.

The United States is clearing out and leaving its Sunni Arab allies in a lurch....

The United States is trying to get back into a position where the natural Arab-Persian divide in the region balances itself out.....LOL...Hence all the desperate attempts of CIA/MOSSAD of igniting a generalized FITNA....[ sectarian proxy wars...]

All GCC states are far from warriors.... In spite of all the state-of-the-art equipment the United States floods into countries like Zionist Saudi Arabia, the Saudi military severely lacks the leadership, ethos, training and doctrine to proficiently and coherently employ any of these systems...., even the systems severely downgraded on purpose by USA's ZOG.... The Persian Gulf states’ dependence on Washington is what allows the United States to militarily and stealthily...entrench itself in the region's armies and intelligence services for decades.....

Saudi Resistance fighters to be......LOL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqJDuZIcQ34&feature=player_embedded

A Zionist Saudi Air Force F-15 Eagle fighter aircraft

Summary

Despite a new $60 billion arms package, fundamental challenges for the Saudi military remain. Before Saudi Arabia undertakes significant reforms of its military training and doctrine and tackles manpower issues, it will be unable to use any of he new hardware effectively.....LOL....

Analysis

The U.S. government formally notified Congress on Oct. 20 of a $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia. The package, which includes both combat aircraft and military helicopters, is considerable and will provide the Saudis with even more of some of the most modern fighter jets in the entire region. Militarily, however, Riyadh’s challenge is not a matter of hardware: Saudi Arabia already fields a broad spectrum of some of the highest-end and most modern military equipment in the region. Instead, its challenge is fielding that hardware. With deliveries years away, the new deal will do little to balance the resurgent Iranian regime in the near-term, and prolongs Saudi Arabia’s heavy dependence on U.S. defense support.

The new package, which will reinforce the quality and quantity of Saudi military hardware over the course of the next two decades, will include:

• 84 new-build and more modern variants of the F-15S combat fighter aircraft.
• The upgrade of 70 existing Saudi F-15S to this new standard.
• 70 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.
• 72 UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters.
• 36 AH-6i light attack-reconnaissance helicopters.
• 12 light training helicopters.
• Associated armaments, including air-to-air and air-to-ground ordnance (including 1,000 “bunker-buster” bombs designed to penetrate hardened and deeply buried facilities).

The Boeing Co. in particular along with Sikorsky stand to benefit significantly from the deal in the next two decades. Past Saudi defense purchases have not simply added newer and newer defense equipment to an already-modern military, they have also created significant training, maintenance and doctrinal issues for which the Saudis are ill-equipped to handle.

Like many Gulf Arab states, the Saudi regime has long feared its own military more than any external threat. The Saudis have relied upon the United States to deter and defend against external threats. As such, while military interests receive generous allotments of money and modern defense hardware, they have lacked the organization and leadership to employ that equipment effectively. In many cases, they have been kept deliberately weak doctrinally and institutionally to prevent them from becoming capable of mounting a coup.

This means that when the British agreed to sell Saudi Arabia 72 Eurofighter Typhoon combat aircraft, the Saudis were buying more jet fighters the Royal Saudi Air Force could not employ effectively. They were adding an enormous additional burden in terms of the training, maintenance and doctrinal work required to integrate the Typhoons into an air force with too many aircraft and too few pilots and commanders.

Ultimately, with or without this latest deal, the issue for Riyadh is whether there will be any concurrent shift in leadership, manpower, training and institutional organization to begin to craft a cadre of military professionals capable of wielding existing and new defense hardware competently. The immaturity of Saudi training and doctrine and underlying issues with manpower are pervasive. Such issues can take a generation to even begin to resolve. Without the simultaneous reform of the Saudi military itself, this sale will continue to provide Riyadh with an impressive array of hardware it will have difficulty employing anything effectively.

Unlike before, however, Riyadh’s Zionist perspective on reform has begun to change significantly as a result of the Saudi military’s challenges in managing cross-border issues with Yemen’s al-Houthi rebels. The Saudi government continues to worry that the insurgency and al-CIAda....run by MOSSAD in Yemen....with DOZENS of COVERT Israeli NAVY Commandos roaming YEMEN....many of Jewish Yemeni origin.... in the Arabian Peninsula will spill across the border in greater numbers. This is not a fight that requires the latest F-15, but it is one that requires the Saudi military to function professionally. After the Saudi military’s underwhelming/Pathetic.... performance against the al-Houthi rebels, a push for meaningful reform has gained strength.

Similarly, without a strong Iraq likely to emerge any time soon, the United States is in need of a counterbalance to a resurgent Iran. While Saudi Arabia is not in a position to play that role, comprehensive military reform and an effective military could significantly alter the military balance in the region. Unfortunately for both Washington and Riyadh, even if done exceptionally well, this is a generational process — so meaningful improvement is years away at best. Still, if the new hardware purchase is accompanied with serious reform, then in the years ahead, the Saudi military might become a significant force. Until then, for all its military hardware, Saudi Arabia will remain utterly weak in terms of defense.....

Origins of the Israeli-Saudi Alliance.....

....This is from an unpublished (unclassified) American government study of the subject. It states: "An actual Israeli support of the Saudi-Imamate causes probably began prior to any direct meetings between representatives of the two governments and the Yemeni Royalist movement...This study has been able to trace at least two locations of direct Saudi-Israeli meetings which began at two distinct phases in the Yemeni civil war. The first traceable set of meetings began in March of 1963 in India. Indian sources reported that an official of the Saudi Embassy in India, Ahmad Allalah Al-Qadi, began frequenting the Israeli consulate in Bombay.... According to Arab (Egyptian) sources, Crown Prince Faisal ordered the Saudi official's meetings in reaction to the two Arab nationalist coups in Baghdad and Damascus in February and March 1963 that removed anti-Nasser governments from power in each state...The focus of the Israeli-Saudi talks were the prospects for Israel dropping arms for the Royalist tribal forces as well as Israel providing military intelligence regarding Egyptian army movements and capabilities to both the Saudis and Yemenis. Israeli and Yemeni representatives met directly, either upon their own initiative, or under Saudi auspices, during this period. An Imamate delegate visited Israel in March 1963 at the same time that the Saudi embassy official began visiting the Israeli consulate in Bombay...However, other Israeli sources disclosed that unmarked Israeli planes made over a dozen and perhaps as many as twenty flights from Djibouti to drop arms over Royalist areas in late 1962 and most of 1963. The second confirmed set of Saudi-Israeli meetings occurred in Europe and began in 1965. In a highly unusual manner, former Israeli ambassador to Great Britain (1965-1970) Aharon Remez, made mention of his, and other high Israeli officials, continuous contacts with "Arab leaders from Saudi Arabia and Jordan" in a 1983 newspaper interview. In neither the original Kol Ha'ir (August 12, 1983) newspaper article nor subsequent interview did the former ambassador reveal the contents of the meetings, except to say that "not much came out of these, but they were very eye opening." In all subsequent interviews Remez stated that he feared that it was still early early to talk about the meetings. However, other (military) sources, claim that AMAN, the Saudi Defense Ministry and the security branches of Iran, including SAVAK as well as the Iranian Ministry of Defense, were in constant contact with one another even following the Israeli victory in June 1967. One source asserts that Moshe Dayan was the key intermediary with the Saudi defense establishment who soon shifted their focus of concern toward other areas of the Arabian Peninsula, such as the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen..." (pp. 23-25 from the unpublished, unclassified secret US government study).

You may read on the subject from a published source in Clive Jones, Britain and the Yemen Civil War....

Betting and bluffing in the new Great Game...

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers41/paper4092.html

[The realization of American/Israeli/British/French/German/Canada ulterior motivations for overlooking the opium culture of Afghanistan will compel Russia to set its own anti-narcotics agenda in Afghanistan and the region... The falling apart of the Obama/CIA/DIA strategy in Afghanistan will unravel many things, possibly even Russian cooperation in the Northern Distribution Network strategy. The simultaneous collapse of the pipeline strategy (focused on the Nabucco and other pipelines....) and the project to dismantle Pakistan on the other end of "pipelineistan," will cause the outbreak of new wars, perhaps even major wars, as Russia uses its military might to reinforce its own positions throughout the former USSR...? The war calculus of Bush, Sharon, Blair and Cheney, now compounded by the logarithmic corrections made by Obushma..., were always pushing for wars all over Eurasia and the Middle East, but the plan was to keep their timing under American control. The failure of the war theories of Bush, Cheney and Obama, especially in Lebanon in 2006... has unleashed a cycle of new tensions and new wars that will be under no one's control. It may be that our best hope right now is praying that these wars do not go nuclear. It is to this end that we concentrate our own efforts on the sub-continent...and the Middle East..., hoping to help Lebanon, and both Pakistan and India avoid the great war that has been planned for them....

Russian leaders see all of this unfolding before their own eyes. How can they avoid the great wars that America has planned for them....? We live in very interesting times, economics are devastated.... and international security is jeopardized by the usual Western suspects again..... to say the least....]

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/62150


GORDON DUFF: WHEN “STUPID” BECOMES DANGEROUS

The agenda is clear. Fear and hopelessness are meant to push the public to seeking “strong leaders.” However, the same controlled media also controls the message and defines which leaders are “strong” and which leaders are “weak.” Thus, “strong” is defined as favoring continual war, eliminating constitutional rights in the name of “national security” and supporting total deregulation of financial markets, creating a “pirate” class of “banksters, scamsters and manipulators” who systematically restructure the alignment of national assets. By assets, we we mean your retirement funds, the value of your home and even your job.

http://centralasianewswire.com/Security/Russian-led-security-organization-may-be-ready-tonbspflex-its-muscle/viewstory.aspx?id=2113

Betting and bluffing in the new Great Game....
By Pepe Escobar

Future historians may well agree that the 21st century Silk Road first opened for business on December 14, 2009. That was the day a crucial stretch of pipeline officially went into operation, linking the fabulously energy-rich state of Turkmenistan (via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) to Xinjiang province in China's far west. Hyperbole did not deter the spectacularly named Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan's president, from bragging: "This project has not only commercial or economic value. It is also political. China, through its wise and farsighted policy, has become one of the key guarantors of global security."

The bottom line is that, by 2013, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong will be cruising to ever more dizzying economic heights courtesy of natural gas supplied by the 1,833-kilometer Central Asian pipeline, then projected to be operating at full capacity. And to think that, in a few more years, China's big cities will undoubtedly also be getting a taste of Iraq's fabulous, barely tapped oil reserves: conservatively estimated at 115 billion barrels, but possibly closer to 143 billion barrels – which would put it ahead of Iran. When the George W Bush administration's armchair generals launched their "war on terror", this was not exactly what they had in mind.....

China's economy is thirsty, and so it's drinking deeply and planning more deeply yet. It craves Iraq's oil and Turkmenistan's natural gas, as well as oil from Kazakhstan. Yet instead of spending more than a trillion dollars on an illegal war in Iraq or setting up military bases all over the greater Middle East and Central Asia, China used its state oil companies to get some of the energy it needed simply by bidding for it in a perfectly legal Iraqi oil auction.

Meanwhile, in the new Great Game in Eurasia, China had the good sense not to send a soldier anywhere or get bogged down in an infinite quagmire in Afghanistan. Instead, the Chinese simply made a direct commercial deal with Turkmenistan and, profiting from that country's disagreements with Moscow, built itself a pipeline that will provide much of the natural gas it needs.

No wonder the Barack Obama administration's Eurasian energy czar, Richard Morningstar, was forced to admit at a congressional hearing that the US simply cannot compete with China when it comes to Central Asia's energy wealth. If only he had delivered the same message to the Pentagon.

That Iranian equation
In Beijing, they take the matter of diversifying oil supplies very, very seriously. When oil reached US$150 a barrel in 2008 - before the US-unleashed global financial meltdown hit - Chinese state media had taken to calling foreign Big Oil "international petroleum crocodiles", with the implication that the West's hidden agenda was ultimately to stop China's relentless development dead in its tracks.

More than a quarter of what's left of the world's proven oil reserves are in the Arab world. China could easily gobble it all up. Few may know that China itself is actually the world's fifth-largest oil producer, at 3.7 million barrels per day (bpd), just below Iran and slightly above Mexico. In 1980, China consumed only 3% of the world's oil. Now, its take is around 10%, making it the planet's second largest consumer.

It has already surpassed Japan in that category, even if it's still way behind the US, which eats up 27% of global oil each year....But, NEW data suggests that China has already surpassed the USA in energy consumption.... According to the International Energy Agency, China will account for over 40% of the increase in global oil demand until 2030. And that's assuming China will grow at "only" a 6% annual rate which, based on present growth, seems unlikely.

Saudi Arabia controls 13% of world oil production. At the moment, it is the only swing producer - one, that is, that can move the amount of oil being pumped up or down at will - capable of substantially increasing output. It's no accident, then, that, pumping 10.9 million barrels per day (bpd), it has become one of Beijing's major oil suppliers.

The top three, according to China's Ministry of Commerce, are Saudi Arabia, Iran and Angola. By 2013-2014, if all goes well, the Chinese expect to add Iraq to that list in a big way, but first that troubled country's oil production needs to start cranking up. In the meantime, it's the Iranian part of the Eurasian energy equation that's really nerve-racking for China's leaders.

Chinese companies have invested a staggering $120 billion in Iran's energy sector over the past five years. Already, Iran is China's number two oil supplier, accounting for up to 14% of its imports, and the Chinese energy giant Sinopec has committed an additional $6.5 billion to building oil refineries there.

Due to harsh United Nations-imposed American sanctions and years of economic mismanagement, however, the country lacks the high-tech know-how to provide for itself, and its industrial structure is in a shambles. The head of the National Iranian Oil Company, Ahmad Ghalebani, has publicly admitted that machinery and parts used in Iran's oil production still have to be imported from China.

Sanctions can be a killer, slowing investment, increasing the cost of trade by over 20%, and severely constricting Tehran's ability to borrow in global markets. Nonetheless, trade between China and Iran grew by 35% in 2009 to $27 billion. So while the West has been slamming Iran with sanctions, embargoes, and blockades, Iran has been slowly evolving as a crucial trade corridor for China - as well as Russia and energy-poor India.

Unlike the West, they are all investing like crazy there because it's easy to get concessions from the government; it's easy and relatively cheap to build infrastructure; and being on the inside when it comes to Iranian energy reserves is a necessity for any country that wants to be a crucial player in Pipelineistan, that contested chessboard of crucial energy pipelines over which much of the new great game in Eurasia takes place. Undoubtedly, the leaders of all three countries are offering thanks to whatever gods they care to worship that Washington continues to make it so easy (and lucrative) for them.

Few in the US may know that last year Saudi Arabia - now (re)arming to the teeth, courtesy of Washington, and little short of paranoid about the Iranian nuclear program - offered to supply the Chinese with the same amount of oil the country currently imports from Iran at a much cheaper price. But Beijing, for whom Iran is a key, long-term strategic ally, scotched the deal.

As if Iran's structural problems weren't enough, the country has done little to diversify its economy beyond oil and natural-gas exports in the past 30 years: inflation's running at more than 20%; unemployment at more than 20%; and young, well-educated people are fleeing abroad, a major brain drain for that embattled land. And don't think that's the end of its litany of problems.

It would like to be a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) - the multi-layered economic/military cooperation union that is a sort of Asian response to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - but is only an official SCO observer because the group does not admit any country under UN sanctions.

Tehran, in other words, would like some great-power protection against the possibility of an attack from the US or Israel. As much as Iran may be on the verge of becoming a far more influential player in the Central Asian energy game thanks to Russian and Chinese investment, it's extremely unlikely that either of those countries would actually risk war against the US to "save" the Iranian regime.

The great escape
From Beijing's point of view, the title of the movie version of the intractable US v Iran conflict and a simmering US v China strategic competition in Pipelineistan could be: "Escape from Hormuz and Malacca."

The Strait of Hormuz is the definition of a potential strategic bottleneck. It is, after all, the only entryway to the Persian Gulf and through it now flow roughly 20% of China's oil imports. At its narrowest, it is only 36 kilometers wide, with Iran to the north and Oman to the south. China's leaders fret about the constant presence of US aircraft-carrier battle groups on station and patrolling nearby.

With Singapore to the north and Indonesia to the south, the Strait of Malacca is another potential bottleneck if ever there was one - and through it flow as much as 80% of China's oil imports. At its narrowest, it is only 54 kilometers wide and like the Strait of Hormuz, its security is also of the made-in-USA variety. In a future face-off with Washington, both straits could quickly be closed or controlled by the US Navy.

Hence, China's increasing emphasis on developing a land-based Central Asian energy strategy could be summed up as: Bye-bye, Hormuz! Bye-bye, Malacca! And a hearty welcome to a pipeline-driven new Silk Road from the Caspian Sea to China's far west in Xinjiang.

Kazakhstan has 3% of the world's proven oil reserves, but its largest oil fields are not far from the Chinese border. China sees that country as a key alternative oil supplier via future pipelines that would link the Kazakh oil fields to Chinese oil refineries in its far west. In fact, China's first transnational Pipelineistan adventure is already in place: the 2005 China-Kazakhstan oil project, financed by Chinese energy giant CNPC.

Much more is to come, and Chinese leaders expect energy-rich Russia to play a significant part in China's escape-hatch planning as well. Strategically, this represents a crucial step in regional energy integration, tightening the Russia/China partnership inside the SCO as well as at the UN Security Council.

When it comes to oil, the name of the game is the immense Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline. Last August, a 4,000-kilometer-long Russian section from Taishet in eastern Siberia to Nakhodka, still inside Russian territory, was begun. Russian Premier Vladimir Putin hailed ESPO as "a really comprehensive project that has strengthened our energy cooperation." And in late September, the Russians and the Chinese inaugurated a 999-kilometer pipeline from Skovorodino in Russia's Amur region to the petrochemical hub Daqing in northeast China.

Russia is currently delivering up to 130 million tons of Russian oil a year to Europe. Soon, no less than 50 million tons may be heading to China and the Pacific region as well.

There are, however, hidden tensions between the Russians and the Chinese when it comes to energy matters. The Russian leadership is understandably wary of China's startling strides in Central Asia, the former Soviet Union's former "near abroad." After all – as the Chinese have been doing in Africa in their search for energy – in Central Asia the Chinese are building railways and introducing high-tech trains, among other modern wonders, in exchange for oil and gas concessions.

Despite the simmering tensions between China, Russia, and the US, it's too early to be sure just who is likely to emerge as the victor in the new Great Game in Central Asia, but one thing is clear enough. The Central Asian "stans" are becoming ever more powerful poker players in their own right as Russia tries not to lose its hegemony there, Washington places all its chips on pipelines meant to bypass Russia (including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that pumps oil from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia) and China antes up big time for its Central Asian future. Whoever loses, this is a game that the "stans" cannot but profit from.

Recently, our man Gurbanguly, the Turkmen leader, chose China as his go-to country for an extra $4.18 billion loan for the development of South Yolotan, his country's largest gas field. (The Chinese had already shelled out $3 billion to help develop it.) Energy bureaucrats in Brussels were devastated. With estimated reserves of up to 14 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, the field has the potential to flood the energy-starved European Union with gas for more than 20 years. Goodbye to all that?

In 2009, Turkmenistan's proven gas reserves were estimated at a staggering 8.1 trillion cubic meters, fourth largest in the world after Russia, Iran, and Qatar. Not surprisingly, from the point of view of Ashgabat, the country's capital, it invariably seems to be raining gas. Nonetheless, experts doubt that the landlocked, idiosyncratic Central Asian republic actually has enough blue gold to supply Russia (which absorbed 70% of Turkmenistan's supply before the pipeline to China opened), China, Western Europe and Iran, all at the same time.

Currently, Turkmenistan sells its gas to: China via the world's largest gas pipeline, 7,000 kilometers long and designed for a capacity of 40 billion cubic meters per year; Russia (10 billion cubic meters per year, down from 30 billion per year until 2008); and Iran (14 billion cubic meters per year). Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad always gets a red-carpet welcome from Gurbanguly, and the Russian energy giant Gazprom, thanks to an improved pricing policy, is treated as a preferred customer.

At present, however, the Chinese are atop the heap, and more generally, whatever happens, there can be little question that Central Asia will be China's major foreign supplier of natural gas. On the other hand, the fact that Turkmenistan has, in practice, committed all of its future gas exports to China, Russia, and Iran means the virtual death of various trans-Caspian Sea pipeline plans long favored by Washington and the European Union.

IPI vs TAPI all over again
On the oil front, even if all the "stans" sold China every barrel of oil they currently pump, less than half of China's daily import needs would be met. Ultimately, only the Middle East can quench China's thirst for oil. According to the International Energy Agency, China's overall oil needs will rise to 11.3 million barrels per day by 2015, even with domestic production peaking at 4 million bpd. Compare that to what some of China's alternative suppliers are now producing: Angola, 1.4 million bpd; Kazakhstan, 1.4 million as well; and Sudan, 400,000.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia produces 10.9 million bpd, Iran around 4 million, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) 3 million, Kuwait 2.7 million - and then there's Iraq, presently at 2.5 million and likely to reach at least 4 million by 2015. Still, Beijing has yet to be fully convinced that this is a safe supply, especially given all those US "forward operating sites" in the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, plus those roaming naval battle groups in the Persian Gulf.

On the gas front, China definitely counts on a South Asian game changer. Beijing has already spent $200 million on the first phase in the construction of a deepwater port at Gwadar in Pakistan's Balochistan province. It wanted, and got from Islamabad, "sovereign guarantees to the port's facilities." Gwadar is only 400 kilometers from Hormuz. With Gwadar, the Chinese Navy would have a homeport that would easily allow it to monitor traffic in the strait and someday perhaps even thwart the US Navy's expansionist designs in the Indian Ocean.

But Gwadar has another infinitely juicier future role. It could prove the pivot in a competition between two long-discussed pipelines: TAPI and IPI. TAPI stands for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline, which can never be built as long as US and NATO occupation forces are fighting the resistance umbrella conveniently labeled "Taliban" in Afghanistan. IPI, however, is the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline" (which would make TAPI the "war pipeline"). To Washington's immeasurable distress, last June, Iran and Pakistan finally closed the deal to build the "IP" part of IPI, with Pakistan assuring Iran that either India or China could later be brought into the project.

Whether it's IP, IPI or IPC, Gwadar will be a key node. If, under pressure from Washington, which treats Tehran like the plague, India is forced to pull out of the project, China already has made it clear that it wants in. The Chinese would then build a Pipelineistan link from Gwadar along the Karakorum highway in Pakistan to China via the Khunjerab Pass - another overland corridor that would prove immune to US interference. It would have the added benefit of radically cutting down the 20,000-kilometer tanker route around the southern rim of Asia.

Arguably, for the Indians it would be a strategically sound move to align with IPI, trumping a deep suspicion that the Chinese will move to outflank them in the search for foreign energy with a "string of pearls" strategy: the setting up of a series of "home ports" along its key oil supply routes from Pakistan to Myanmar. In that case, Gwadar would no longer simply be a "Chinese" port.

As for Washington, it still believes that if TAPI is built, it will help keep India from fully breaking the US-enforced embargo on Iran. Energy-starved Pakistan obviously prefers its "all-weather" ally China, which might commit itself to building all sorts of energy infrastructure within that flood-devastated country. In a nutshell, if the unprecedented energy cooperation between Iran, Pakistan, and China goes forward, it will signal a major defeat for Washington in the new Great Game in Eurasia, with enormous geopolitical and geo-economic repercussions.

For the moment, Beijing's strategic priority has been to carefully develop a remarkably diverse set of energy suppliers - a flow of energy that covers Russia, the South China Sea, Central Asia, the East China Sea, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. (China's forays into Africa and South America will be dealt with in a future installment of our tour of the globe's energy hotspots.) If China has so far proven masterly in the way it has played its cards in its Pipelineistan "war," the US hand - bypass Russia, elbow out China, isolate Iran - may soon be called for what it is: a bluff....

Russian TV has shown a statement of Foreign Minister Lavrov who declared that Russia opposes any type of military intervention in the Libyan conflict. The Eltsin years are over and I don't think that Russia will back down from this. So no UNSC resolution authorizing any US/NATO military intervention will be passed.

Sadly, it turns out that I was wrong, very wrong.... Yesterday evening the Russian representative at the UNSC, Vitalii Churkin made some excellent comments about the proposed resolution only to then proceed to abstain thereby letting the resolution pass!

It is absolutely mind boggling that Russia would revert to exactly the kind of spineless surrenders which used to characterize its foreign policy in the Eltsin years. Does the Kremlin really want another Bosnia only this time in the Maghreb?

The first worrying sign was Russia's betrayal of Iran at the UNSC followed by a reneging on the commitment to deliver S-300 air defense systems to Iran. The betrayal of Libya is arguably even worse, both in moral terms and in the severity of the consequences resulting from it:

a) The US and NATO have now a de-facto free reign to do whatever the hell they want not only over Libya, but also in Libya. The UNSC resolution speaks of "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. We know what that means - anything the Pentagon wants it to mean.

b) Given that the US and NATO have now an open-ended and unrestricted authority to do whatever they want, it is clear that whatever regime replaces Gaddafi will be vetted and approved by the USraelian Empire.

c) Just as in Bosnia, the Empire is now supporting the party which is loosing the conflict. No, not out of a deep sense of compassion, but because it is easy to make this party into a proxy for the Empire. In other words, what this resolution does is make the anti-Gaddafi forces fully dependent on the Empire.

d) This resolution will make very little difference on the ground, at least in its no-fly zone aspect. If the Empire is serious about regime change in Libya - and it is - it will have to wave the "all necessary measures" part to intervene militarily. Russia will then condemn and complain.

It is hard to imagine a more hypocritical stance than Russia's. It would have been more honest to openly support the resolution. Needless to say, Russia's credibility as an ally will suffer even further from this cowardly abstention.

You might ask 'well, what about China?" To this I will answer that at least China does not lecture the US Empire like Russia does, neither does China pretend to be in any way an 'alternative global power'. China's stance has always been the same: oppose intervention on principle, keep a low profile on international issues, and deal with economic issues. That is, I think, far more honest and dignified than Russia's disgraceful grandstanding.

The resolution itself is phenomenally hypocritical. The Kaddafi regime is blamed for using military force against its own people while Bahrain has been invaded by a an international gang of Wahabi stormtroopers who immediately proceeded to engage in an orgy of atrocities against the Bahraini people. But, of course, Bahrain is an Imperial colony so a bloodbath there does not matter to the UN. I won't even mention the slow-motion genocide of the Palestinian people by the "Jewish state of Israel". Only Libyan victims matter to the UNSC.

What is particularly appalling is that in the bad old days, the USSR and Libya had very close ties. Yes, the Soviet regime was in many ways loathsome, and so was Kaddafi's Jamahiriya - but in spite of that many Russians and Libyans forged close ties and real friendships. Now that the Soviet regime is gone and Kaddafi is on his way out, I would have hoped that Russia would do the right thing and care for the Libyan people. Instead - Russia simply handed them over the Empire....instead of fully helping/arming the rebels....

To say that I am utterly disgusted would be an understatement.

UPDATE: According to RT, "Russia warns of "full-scale military action" following Security Council vote on Libya". Oh yeah?! Then why the hell did you not veto this resolution Mr. Churkin?! How utterly disgusting....