U.S. forces are staying in Iraq to prevent foreign powers from meddling with the new government Gen. Ray Odierno said Sunday.
Our occupation of Iraq will continue in order to prevent foreign interference in the oil nation.
Irony is dead.
*George Orwell’s real name.
No, really:
The Syrian minister of higher education has prohibited the entrance of veiled female students into universities and colleges throughout the country, news agencies reported Sunday.
Dr. Ghitath Barakat explained that the donning of face veils, which cover everything but the woman’s eyes, “opposes the morals and values of the academy”.
Barakat’s decree followed similar ones approved by a number of European parliaments, including Belgium and France.
Obviously, while Syria is a part of both the Arab world and the Islamic world, it is in a number of ways atypical. Its rulers are Alawites, who are not considered normative Muslims by Sunni or Shia, and the government is rather stridently secularist, it is the sole remaining Ba’athist regime, but it does provide an interesting counterpoint to European bans.
Helen Thomas has resigned as a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.
In an interview, she said:
Thomas remarked in video posted to RabbiLive.com that Jews in Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go back home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.”
Thomas has never made a secret of her Lebanese-American background, and I think that anyone with a bit of skin in this game, myself included, can be a bit nuts, but the statement here is wrong on a number of levels:
Needless to say, while I respect Thomas’ contributions to journalism, I do not appreciate when anyone sounds like Meir Kahane.†
I’ll miss her at press conferences
The tragedy is that Pat Buchanan still has a job.
(on edit)
I think that a refreshing bit of perspective comes from [url=http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/06/helen-thomas-affair]Kevin Drum[/url]:
Helen Thomas is retiring. Thank God. On a substantive level, this is a good thing. Her remarks about Israel were obviously odious and she’s doing everyone a favor by stepping down. Equally important, though, maybe this means we don’t have to spend the next week listening to every windbag in the country rant on about Thomas’s remarks, using them as an excuse to grind every axe ever invented and suck media attention away from actually important stories. Of which, you might have noticed, we have quite a few these days.
Say what you will about Thomas, she really was never a part of the pundit class.
* They are generally referred to as Sephardic, but this is a misnomer, as Sephardic Jews trace their origins back to the Iberian peninsula. Jews from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, India, etc. are more accurately referred to as “oriental” Jews.
†Let me google that for you.
Jon Stewart takes the Beckster to task using MSNBC, CNN, and Univision* to demolish Beck’s claim that no one else showed the blockade conflict video in showing the Free Gaza protestors used clubs.
Brutal.
*I think that the use of Children’s Television Workshop might be a trick.
Because it does appear that stupidity is way too common in the Middle East.
Case in point: After 9 deaths, and a major propaganda victory, Hamas is refusing the supplies that the ships were trying to deliver:
Israel has attempted to deliver humanitarian aid from an international flotilla to Gaza, but Hamas — which controls the territory — has refused to accept the cargo, the Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday.
Palestinian sources confirmed that trucks that arrived from Israel at the Rafah terminal at the Israel-Gaza border were barred from delivering the aid.
Does this place make people stupid-crazy, or is it that the people who aren’t stupid-crazy simply leave?
I’m just wondering, because there has been an endemic of stupid over the past 72 hours or so.
It’s come up in the comments, and Galrahn at Information Dissemination, who is arguably one of the most knowledgeable about things Naval out there, nails the issues of maritime law when he says that, “Israeli Actions Are Stupid, But Legal.
He notes that armed stop and seize operations in international waters have always been legal, they are routine operations in US anti-drug operations, for example, and Israel had declared a blockade, and a blockade area:
Under international law, the consensus of the maritime attorney’s I have spoken to is that the boarding operation by Israel was legal. The coast of Gaza has been under maritime blockade by Israel, a blockade that was well known – indeed running the maritime blockade for political purposes was the specific intent of the protesters. It is why the press had been reporting all week that the situation was likely leading towards a confrontation. Is anyone surprised that Israel had an established maritime blockade and enforced that maritime blockade? I’m certainly not, Israel made clear all week that the flotilla would not be allowed to pass.
The maritime blockade is a result of the war between Israel and Hamas. Ones political position on that ongoing war is completely irrelevant to the reality that the maritime blockade was established. Knowledge of the maritime blockade by the protesters is also not in debate, and neither is knowledge the flotilla intended to violate the blockade – they made this clear themselves in the press. Once the flotilla made it clear in the press they intended to run the maritime blockade, according to international law, and even US law, the flotilla was considered to be in breach by attempting to violate the blockade.
………
The truly scary part is that under international laws governing maritime blockades, Israel could have outright sank the ship instead of board it as an alternative enforcement of the maritime blockade, and Israel still been within their rights under international law. Such an action could have led to war with Turkey, but even if the ship would have been sunk, Turkey would still be on the wrong end of international law in this situation. Turkey will likely find plenty of populist political support in NATO countries over these events, but if they attempt to escalate they may find that support is fleeting among their NATO allies.
(emphasis mine)
It is that last paragraph that makes it clear just how f%$#ed up everything is.
You can argue over whether the blockade is an illegal mass punishment of the population (illegal), or an attempt to deny war materiel to Hamas (legal), but the execution of a stop/search/seize order in a declared blockade zone even if that zone includes international waters, is clearly legal.
The Israeli Defense Forces have intercepted a convoy of ships intending to run the Israeli blockade on Gaza, and at least 9 deaths have been reported.
Considering that at least one of the passengers in the convoy was a Nobel Peace Prize winner, it looks like this an absolute disaster for Israel, and a victory for the “Free Gaza Movement”.
My first thought is that, on the part of Israel, “It is worse than a crime: it is a mistake,”* because there will be significant negative repercussions for years on Israel’s foreign policy and public diplomacy.
It’s particularly problematic because the ship was Turkish flagged, and many of the passengers and crew were Turkish, which will serve to further worsen relations with the only majority-Islamic nation which has warm diplomatic relations with Israel.
If there is something that people on both sides of the Israel/Palestinian issue can agree on, it is that Benyamin Netanyahu’s fascination with “looking tough” for his personal political advantage has always resulted in serious damage to the interests of Israel.
The “Free Gaza Movement” is not friend of Israel, nor would I expect them to be, and I think that a significant portion of their leadership has little interest in any potential de-escalation. If this were a significant interest of theirs, they would not have refused to bring letters and a package to Giliad Shalit, but realistically, work toward de-escalation is not really a big consideration for any of the 3rd party non-state actors who choose to involve themselves in the politics of this matter. (AIPAC can go Cheney themselves)
Still, I wonder how much the old saying, “luck is a residue of design,”† might figure in the events of this morning in terms of the planning of this convoy.
Certainly, if the report that the boarding party was sent in carrying just pistols and paint ball guns‡ is true, there are any number of people involved in this operation who should be fired by the IDF forthwith.
On a related note, I have had a back and forth on by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS, regarding whether the interception itself was illegal, since it took place in international water, and I have concluded that with a formally announced blockade, it probably was.
The interdiction of shipping with armed boarding parties in international waters is routine for both drug smuggling and human trafficking.
Still, it’s a stupid thing, and the deaths are senseless.
*Joseph Fouché
†Branch Rickey
‡And the source (Debka) is a thoroughly unreliable one.
It appears that after a few years of being the government in Gaza, Hamas is getting complaints that they have sold out:
Hamas, the Palestinian faction viewed by many in the West as a nest of terrorists and Islamic hard-liners, is battling a curious new epithet: moderate.
Fifteen months after a punishing Israeli offensive failed to dislodge Hamas from power in the Gaza Strip, rival resistance groups and some former supporters say the organization has become too political, too secular and too soft.
“People in the street say Hamas has changed,” said Abu Ahmed, spokesman for the military wing of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian armed group in Gaza that complained recently that Hamas had arrested four of its militants as they tried to attack Israeli soldiers near the border. “They’re paying a price for that. People need to know that Hamas is still committed to the resistance.”
You know, when I was in college, I had a number of friends who loved obscure rock bands.
If the band released a record, and it achieved any success, these folks would immediately condemn the band as having “sold out”.
I guess that they were upset because it meant that the band was no longer their secret.
I find this amusing, because this seems to be a very similar phenomenon: success, in this case defined as running the Gaza strip, is “selling out”.
It’s nice to see that some stupidities are universal.
It appears that Israel is claiming that Syria transferred Scud missiles to Hezbollah.
This would not make sense. While the Scud is mobile, and hard to detect when it is deployed, it is a liquid fueled missile that uses caustic fuels and oxidizers (Kerosene or UDMH as fuel and RFNA as an oxidizer) that requires a significant amount of infrastructure to maintain and keep at ready status.
Having something like this, as opposed to smaller solid fueled rockets that can be stored and maintained without a fixed base and fueling location, is akin to painting a big target on whatever facilities are used to maintain the missiles.
Honestly, I think that this something ginned up by Netanyahyu for either domestic political consumption, or as a way to push back against Obama on the housing units in Jerusalem.
Of course, I could be wrong, as I was on the Syrian nuclear facility.
I would note that the entire Jerusalem problem is one of Netanyahu’s own making. He has a history of doing this to Democratic presidents, so I do not buy that the timing of the construction permit announcement was just a “bureaucratic oversight” either.
The military coup as an instrument of politics has been a fixture in Turkey, with coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980, as well as a de facto coup in 1997.
In any case, about 40 people were arrested:
Police in Turkey today detained more than 40 high-ranking military commanders for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Islamic-rooted government.
The arrests highlighted the ongoing struggle between the secular establishment and the government and leaves question marks over the traditional role of the military as the pillar of the secular state.
The detention of several senior military officers – including members of the elite class known as Pashas, a title of respect harking back to Ottoman times – underlines that such officials are no longer untouchable.
What is interesting is that this appears to be driven by the judiciary, specifically the prosecutor’s office, and not from Turkish PM Recep Erdogan, whose very public religiousity has been viewed with no small amount of distrust by the military, which sees itself as the defender of Attaturk’s secular initiatives.
On the other hand, this:
In total prosecutors have charged more than 400 people, including soldiers, academics, journalists and politicians. No one has yet been convicted.
Is concerning.
I can see the military and politicians colluding on a coup, but the academics and journalists makes me wonder if this might not just be an attempt by Erdogan to secure his political power.
Well, when I wrote about the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a major actor in the military wing of Hamas in Syria, I suggested that it was not a result of is day job, where he worked in textiles, and gave the three alternatives as the Mossad, a dispute internal to Hamas, and the consequence of some sort of kinky sex.
Well, I think that we can rule out the last two:
Dubai police released names and photographs of 11 suspects they say took part in the murder of a senior Hamas official there last month, and separately detained two Palestinians in connection with the killing.
The suspects, who entered the emirate from a number of European Union countries, carried out the assassination, Dubai Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim said at a press conference today. The suspects included six British passport holders, three Irish, one German and one French, Tamim said. Dubai will submit their names to Interpol for arrest warrants, he said.
Hamas would not have used so many people under different passports.
It’s odd though that Hamas was so caught off guard by this.
Steve Clemons notes the following discussion that he had with a Chinese official some years back:
Several years ago, I met with the Deputy Director of the Policy Planning staff of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I asked him what he was working on — and what China’s grand strategy was.
His reply: “We are trying to figure out how to keep you Americans distracted in small Middle Eastern countries.”
It’s pretty memorable when one can joke and be truthful at the same time.………
Yes, it’s funny, but I’m not sure if it’s funny “ha ha”, or funny “strange”.
Could it be ………… the Mossad?Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was one of the founders of Hamas’ Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, and was believed to be a major conduit of weapons to Gaza.
On January 19, he was found dead in his hotel room, and authorities in Dubai are saying that he was done by a hit squad with “European passports”, and these people were already out of the country before the body was discovered.
Among other oddities: His bodyguard was not with him because the plane was full, which is kind of a “WTF” thing.
Additionally, the cause of death is unclear, with reports, according to the Wiki, of suffocation, electrocution (unlikely, it’s a stupid way to off someone), and, “a heart-attack inducing drug”.
What is interesting (quoting the Wiki) is just how much Hamas is not on the same page about this:
Hamas officials made diverse and conflicting statements regarding the circumstances of their leader’s death. On the day of the incident, Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, announced that he died of terminal cancer in a hospital in the United Arab Emirates.
On 29 January, top Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar said that it was possible that members of the entourage of Israeli infrastructure minister Uzi Landau were involved in Mabhuh’s death. Landau was visiting the United Arab Emirates at the time for a renewable energy conference. Landau dismissed the claim, stating that his delegation was in Abu Dhabi, some 120 km from Dubai, and was escorted by 8-man UAE security team at all times.
Also on 29 January, Hamas’ deputy politburo chief Moussa Abu Marzouk said, “Mossad agents are those who assassinated al-Mabhouh”.
On 2 February, Hamas representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan said that Palestinian Authority security forces might have been involved in the death. He stated that “The Palestinian Authority security forces are pursuing [our] fighters and they have killed dozens of them since 1994.” The same day, Haaretz reported that a Hamas investigation suggested Mabhuh was assassinated by agents of an Arab government, and that al-Mabhouh was wanted by Egypt and Jordan.
Seeing as how his “day job” was running a textile firm, I see only four possibilities, the Mossad, some sort of internecine warfare amongst members of Hamas, some sort of natural death while in a sexually compromised position (which would explain the absence of body guards as well as the confusion from Hamas), or the textile industry in Syria is more cut-throat than I previously understood.
My money is on the Mossad.
That whole “silk merchant gone bad” thing ……… not so much.
It appears that Yemen, under US pressure is looking to arrest Anwar al Awlaki, the Imam tied to both the Fort Hood shooter and the Underoos bomber.
The problem here is that, absent any information that he’s actually involved with al Qaeda, he’s just someone who speaks in support of them.
That makes him a bad person, but we are in the process of making him a martyr, and the counter-terrorism forces will use his sermons, convincing Muslims even more thoroughly that this is a war on Islam.
Really, I think that anyone involved in counter-terrorism should read Wasp by Eric Frank Russell, or at least the first chapter:
The title of Wasp comes from the idea that the main character’s actions and central purpose mimic that particular insect; just as something as small as a wasp can terrorize a much larger creature in control of a car to the point of causing a crash and killing the occupants, so the defeat of an enemy may be wrought via psychological and guerrilla warfare by a small, but deadly, protagonist in their midst.
The point is, pedants arguing about anaphylaxis notwithstanding, is that the wasp cannot kill us, it can only induce us to kill ourselves.
It appears that Dubai just had its first foreclosure:
Dubai’s housing rout sent prices down 52 percent in the past year, prompting some homeowners to abandon their cars and mortgage payments and flee the country. Not one received a foreclosure notice.
Until now.
Barclays Plc won the sheikdom’s first foreclosure cases in court, clearing the way for lenders holding about $16 billion of Dubai home loans to take action when borrowers don’t pay. Islamic lender Tamweel PJSC, the emirate’s biggest mortgage bank, has several of its own foreclosure claims pending and estimates about 3 percent of its mortgages are in default.
People have been driving their cars to the airport and fleeing, they’ve been throwing people in Debtors’ Prisons, and they just had their 1st foreclosure?
Any relationship between Dubai, and by extension the UAE, and perhaps most of the petro-Kleptocracies to a modern financial or court system is purely coincidental.
I’d also note that any lender that claims that only 3% of its mortgages in Dubai are in default is lying.
Because, whether the President is a Democrat or a Republican, having an “invade anywhere anytime” military is like giving a loaded revolver and amphetamines to a toddler:
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, (I-Conn) a renowned hawk and one of the foremost champions of the invasion of Iraq, warned on Sunday that the United States faced “danger” unless it pre-emptively acts to curb the rise of terrorism in Yemen.
“Somebody in our government said to me in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday’s war. Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war,” Lieberman said, during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday”. “That’s the danger we face.”
(emphasis mine)
The problem with having a military that is able to invade anywhere, anytime, for any reason, is that there are people, including Joe Lieberman and whoever, “Somebody in our government,” is with small brains, and even smaller penises, who will use military power with all the forethought of the aforementioned child on speed.
If you build the military, they will use it recklessly, to the detriment of both the nation and to the military itself.
The current “seabasing” concept being developed in the Pentagon is just the sort of “invasion in a box” that will make this even easier to do, and hence more likely.
The capabilities that we implement actually increase the military death toll, because they encourage insane strategies by the civilian and senior military leadership.
What’s more, they starve our economy, it will be costing in excess of $1 million a year per soldier in Afghanistan, and they starve the social safety net, killing our own citizens through lack of healthcare, and over the longer term, through a lack of investment in infrastructure and education.
H/t Attackerman.
It’s Nothing Personal, It’s Just BusinessSo, yet another Gulf emirate has gotten done like a drunk date in prom night.
In this case, it’s Abu Dhabi, who agreed to buy shares of Citi at $31.83, under the terms of a 2 year ole deal, even though the shares are currently trading at $4.10.
It’s nothing personal, and Citi and its ilk have been doing this to the US public, and the US taxpayer for decades now.
2009
H/t Wall St. Jackass
You know, that entire implosion of Dubai World thing over the past week.
I think that it is clear that Dubai was created with a lot of other people’s money. (see pics)
What’s more, these people got pretty good returns for their investments.
The fact that everyone is shocked that high return investments are risky is to ignore a basic fact of investment.
Tobin Harshaw of the New York times thinks that this indicates that this points to greater fragility in the world financial markets than was previously believed, which I file under, “After Lehman, I thought we knew that it was all a house of cards.”
Felix Salmon also notes that once again, investors were surprised when a broke creditor admitted it, because, after all it looks bad:
I remember the days when investors felt that in the world of emerging markets, publicly-traded bonds were implicitly senior to bank loans. But those days came to an end in the late 1990s with bond defaults in Pakistan, Ukraine, and Ecuador — and they’ve never returned. And it’s not even obvious at this point that restructuring loans is easier than restructuring bonds.
It was nuts then, and it’s nuts now. If you are getting a lot of interest it is because you are lending to a poor credit risk.
I would also note that in this case, “broke” does not mean illiquid, but insolvent, meaning that a short respite to get cash flow back does not work, and it has been clear for some time that Dubai has borrowed well in excess of any assets that it possesses.
One of the more interesting developments here is that many of these debts are neither bank loans nor bonds, but rather the rather arcane, though nominally publicly traded, Islamic financial instrument called the sukuk (Arabic: صكوك), and I have no clue as to the jurisprudence of the default of such an instrument….I don’t think that anyone has a clue as to how this will play out, at least not on such a grand scale.
I think that the repercussions in Islamic finance, both in how resolution is handled, and the willingness of investors to buy those instruments, will play out for decades.
In terms of a bail out, it appears that the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates is going to help make lenders whole, but the government of Dubai is saying that it will not guarantee Dubai World’s debt, so things are still rather fluid, to put it mildly.
In my earlier post on the Taliban severing ties to al Qaeda, I said the following:
Al Qaeda was never particularly popular in Afghanistan, where the people are, after all not Arabs, and they have about as much love for rich Arabs as we in the United States do.
Bin Laden was there because the Taliban wanted his money, not him.
When they were in control of Afghanistan, not only were they not fierce protectors of him, but they were trying to find a way for help the US make him dead in a way that gave them some plausible deniability.
As Sortition notes (In the comments of the previous post. BTW, read his blog, Pro Bono Statistics), this could be construed as an endorsement of bigotry against Arabs. This is not my intent.
To the degree that some people in Afghanistan or the West dislike “Arabs”, it is an indictment of those people, who are exhibiting bigotry toward Arabs.
Arabs are people like everyone else, and they love their families, just like everyone else, and while there are shortcomings in the governance of most Arab states, these are issues of complaints against the ruling elites.
So, a criticism of the House of Saud (or Mubarak in Egypt, or Qaddafi in Libya, or the Al-Sabah’s of Kuwait, or the Zayed’s of the UAE, the Assads of Syria, al Bashir in Sudan, King Mohammed of Morocco, etc.), or its policies is no more a criticism of the Arab people than criticism of the rulers of America, Goldman Sachs, would be a criticism of the American people.
Because I was in the back yard, preparing Maghmūma With Asparagus, it’s a sort of an Arab pot pie called a “covered dish” from the book From Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens, translated by Nawal Nasrallah. It dates from the 1400s or so.
I was doing it in the fire-pit of my smoker, because I was checking out the recipe for “Trial by Fire”, a medieval cooking competition that is conducted under camping conditions, which means that I was preparing Arab food outside, which means that the FBI was surveilling me.
I know what you are saying: This guy has gone completely around the bend. Totally paranoid. The FBI isn’t profiling people because they eat Middle Eastern cuisine.
You know, what you are saying right now sounds right, but unfortunately, the FBI IS profiling people because they eat Middle Eastern cuisine:
Hoping that spikes in falafel and tahini purchases in the Bay Area would blaze a trail to Iranian secret agents, in 2005 and 2006, the FBI mined grocery store records for Middle Eastern food sales in the South San Francisco-San Jose area. According to Congressional Quarterly, the project didn’t last long and didn’t lead to any falafel-related prosecutions.
Not only is this morally wrong and unbelievably f$#@ing stupid, but it actually happened.
This is why civil rights and limits on law enforcement matter: because without these limits, law enforcement can, and will engage in the most abusive dumb-ass behavior imaginable.
BTW, the Maghmūma turned out very well, as did the crust, though next time, I’ll crack the coriander seeds.