Classy

Wall Street Journal editorial

Political naivete is not a crime, at least not in the West. But Italian Vittorio Arrigoni, a 36-year-old pro-Palestinian activist, was not in the West when he was kidnapped by an al Qaeda offshoot and strangled to death with a plastic cord. He was in the Gaza Strip, where terrorist furies make no exceptions for Western fellow travelers.

Just to pick the most obvious point, note the equation peace activist = terrorist fellow traveller.

The neocon right reacted very differently to the murder in captivity of another Italian a few years ago, Fabrizio Quattrocchi. Can we just say that they were both brave men who shame the evil people that killed them?

This means war

Unknown but presumed Iranian hackers enter the servers of a Bahrain media conglomerate and replace maps of the, er, Gulf with one labeling it as the "Persian Gulf."

One hopes this is not the evidence that the US is now citing of Iran's involvement in Bahrain's political unrest.

Devalued Irish currency?

From the UK SAS/Foreign Office fiasco in Libya (BBC) --

Witnesses said that when the men's bags were checked they were found to contain arms, ammunition, explosives, maps and passports from at least four different nationalities.

Which other nationalities?  We're not that far after the Israel/Dubai imbroglio.

It was the terorrists wot done it

Washington Times --

Evidence outlined in a Pentagon contractor report suggests that financial subversion carried out by unknown parties, such as terrorists or hostile nations, contributed to the 2008 economic crash by covertly using vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.



The unclassified 2009 report “Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses” by financial analyst Kevin D. Freeman, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, states that “a three-phased attack was planned and is in the process against the United States economy.”   ...

Suspects include financial enemies in Middle Eastern states, Islamic terrorists, hostile members of the Chinese military, or government and organized crime groups in Russia, Venezuela or Iran. Chinese military officials publicly have suggested using economic warfare against the U.S.

It's strange the extent to which people will go not to believe in bubbles, even after we've been through a complete cycle of them.

Community organizers

AP news report --

Having successfully toppled their own autocratic rulers, Egyptian and Tunisians are rushing to the aid of their Libyan neighbors with hastily organized blood drives, field hospitals and convoys of food and medicine.


While European countries and the USA focus on getting their own nationals out. 
 
There are war crimes happening in Libya as Eurocrats busy themselves with draft communiques. 

If they're not near the mosques, we should be fine

Wall Street Journal editorial --

But oil traders are already beginning to discount for the risks if the demand for more political freedom also spreads to the Kingdom [Saudi Arabia], which produces 10% of the world's oil. Karen Elliott House's recent piece on these pages explained in persuasive detail why that is not a far-fetched scenario. We hope the Obama Administration is making contingency military plans to protect those oil fields if it comes to that.

It's rarely set out so clearly. If the Saudi people mount a struggle for more political freedom, the US should invade and seize the oil fields.

If only Libyans had feathers

Home page of the European Union Council, evening of 21 February 2011 with unknown numbers of fatalities in Libya.

Libya

Now we really do have an Arab country that needs a humanitarian military intervention.  After all, it is the Southern Neighbourhood.

Clown of the day

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini --

I am extremely concerned about the self-proclamation of the so-called Islamic Emirate of Benghazi. Would you imagine to have an Islamic emirate on the borders of Europe? This would be a really serious threat.

He delivered the quote in English at a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers.  The above video is a similar quote in Italian on the way into the meeting.

The possibilities here are that Italy gets its Libyan analysis from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and/or that the minister is an extremely gullible and excitable person.

But he's the person in the room making the decisions.  Seen in this light, Ireland's mess -- or at least the component of it due to EU decisions -- becomes easier to understand.

Bloody Friday

Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain to CNN's Nic Robertson --

What we don't want to do like in Northern Ireland is to descend into militia war or sectarianism

Godsend

The government of Iran should be under the same popular pressure as governments in the Arab states.  But all they have to do, it's increasingly clear, is to hang on long enough for it to become apparent that the guns in Bahrain will keep firing until the Shia stop complaining, and they'll have their geopolitical issue.  When we find, as seems likely, that the Bahrain operation is being pushed by Saudi Arabia, they'll be home free.   It's not inconceivable that we'll be discussing how to draw the line between an "invitation" for foreign help and an invasion.

More Belgitude

Qatar News Agency --

HH the Emir Receives Flemish PM

HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani received at his Emiri Diwan office Thursday morning HE Prime Minister of the Flemish Government and Flemish Minister for Economy, Foreign Policy and Agriculture Kris Peeters and his accompanying delegation on the occasion of their visit to the country. During the meeting, they reviewed ties of cooperation between the two countries and ways of developing them in various areas.

That sounds like a country!

They never learn

Neocon Catholic pundit George Weigel --

While the current upheaval in Egypt cannot be traced to recent assaults on the Copts there, the safety of this ancient Christian community, which played a major role in the country’s cultural life centuries before Islam (and almost two millennia before Mohammad el-Baradei), would be one important test of whether post-Mubarak Egypt has moved beyond one of the little-remarked but nonetheless odious aspects of Mubarak’s rule: namely, his appeasement of those Muslims who insist that there is no room in their country’s culture or public life for Coptic Christianity or indeed any other form of Christianity.

George Weigel in 2006 --

The Holy See’s opposition to the use of force in Iraq in March 2003 is well known. Perhaps less well known is the widespread conviction in the Vatican today that a precipitous American withdrawal from Iraq would be the worst possible option from every point of view, including that of morality. Senior officials of the Holy See with whom I discussed the issue in May share the view of American analysts who are convinced that a premature American disengagement from Iraq would lead to genocidal violence, Iraq’s collapse into a failed state, chaos throughout the Middle East, and a new haven for international terrorists. That all of this would make life intolerable for Iraq’s remaining Christians is pluperfectly obvious.

Note: Weigel was a strident advocate of the Iraq invasion, from a moral perspective, in 2002-03.

How's that approach of getting rid of the undesirable Arab strongman first and worrying about the Christians later working out in Iraq?

Bonus observation: Wall Street Journal news story ($) --
Coptic Christians Worry About Future Without Mubarak.

Attention Dubai Valentine's Day revellers

The National newspaper --

In accordance, Valentine's Day this year, which falls on Monday, February 14, and coincides with the Prophet's birthday, has been declared a dry night according to circulars sent from the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce and the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority to hotels across the country.  From sundown on Monday until sundown on Tuesday, no alcohol will be served.

The suntan is still free.

Helping themselves

Middle East expert Fouad "Bush of Arabia" Ajami, who has ceaselessly bashed Barack Obama since he came into office, writing in December 2010 --

At the remove of a brief interlude, we can now unequivocally admit that the forces of Arab autocracy have turned back the challenge to their dominion. True, they had been unable to overthrow this chaotic new democracy in Iraq. The Arab brigades had not converged on Baghdad, from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Syria. American power had provided a shield for this new Iraqi order. And the Iraqis were to develop a surprising attachment to this new experiment with liberty.



There was blood in the streets, and there was chaos, but the Iraqis were to discover deep within them a taste for elections, and for a political life beyond despotic rule. For their part, the Arab autocrats nearby had waited out the appeal of Iraq’s liberty. They had proven effective, it has to be granted them, at frightening their own populations with the violence that was playing out in Iraq.

What issued in the Arab world was a standoff: Iraq had not provided the subversive democratic example that the established regimes had feared. The rulers in Damascus, Amman, Cairo, Riyadh, and far-off Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers had ridden out the storm. No ruling regime had fallen, or had bent to the will of the opposition. ... 
 
In the oddest of twists, the triumph of the Democratic Party, and its standard-bearer Barack Obama, was a boon for the Arab autocracies. No sooner had he come to power had President Obama sent forth the word that his predecessor’s diplomacy of freedom would be abandoned.
 
Can we say safely at this point that promoting freedom in the Arab world might be less to do with invasions and Churchillian appeals to freedom, and more about shutting the f*** up while actual Arab people come up with their own mode of unlocking their sclerotic countries?  
 
Incidentally, Ajami's article displays a syndrome common to conservative critiques of Obama's Lebanon policy, namely that it ignores the debilitating effects on the country's politics of the Israeli invasion of 2006.

Hedging their bets

Press release from official news agency of United Arab Emirates --

National Security Adviser, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Sports Council H.H. Sheikh Haza bin Zayed Al Nahyan has received Manchester United Club delegation, and representatives of Reem Investments Company, who inked a deal to expand Man United football schools for juniors in Abu Dhabi and other emirates.


Wait a minute ... Abu Dhabi and Manchester United?  Shouldn't it be Manchester City?

Manchester City Football Club is owned 100% by His Highness Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

The two Sheikhs are presumably half brothers.  So both clubs would need to be on guard against thinking of themselves as having the inside track.  Anyway, in another news report about the MoneyChest Utd engagement --

Gill [Man Utd CEO] did not rule out the possibility of their first team playing in Abu Dhabi in the future although their current schedule only allows for a tour in July to prepare for the season ahead.



“Abu Dhabi is an interesting footballing area. We played in Saudi Arabia three years ago. What we don’t have in England at the moment is a winter break unfortunately. Most of the Premier League clubs would like one so that there will be some training programme here. But there is nothing in the calendar at moment but we don’t rule it out in the future,” said Gill who acknowledged the importance of the region with 2022 World Cup decision.


Note: he says the English clubs would like a winter break in the club season, because it would open (unsaid: potentially lucrative) tours of the Gulf.

It looks getting this 2022 World Cup moved to winter may not be as hard as people fear.

Like he never left

Hillary and Bill Clinton meet Saudi King Abdullah recuperating from surgery at an apartment in New York City.

Photo: Saudi Press Agency

Put that man in charge of a central bank

Gulf News (Dubai) --

A blacksmith denied in court yesterday that he had the magic powers to make $25 million fall from the sky by dealing with genies.  Prosecutors accused the 30-year-old Chadian blacksmith of dealing in sorcery and claiming that he had magical powers that could make $25 million (Dh92 million) fall from the sky.


He was additionally charged with possessing $34,000 in counterfeit currency for trading purposes.  "I am not guilty… I did not possess any counterfeit currency or claim any magical powers," argued I.O. when he defended himself before the Dubai Court of First Instance.

FIFA claims Qatar is only hot country in Gulf

Swiss bureaucrat Sepp Blatter in an interview with L'Equipe --

Le président de la FIFA n'exclut pas que «des rencontres aient lieu dans des pays proches» du Qatar.


Neighbouring countries could host matches, something that was not mentioned in Qatar's bid.  Unfortunately, a cursory look at a weather map shows that all the countries near Qatar share its weather, although you could probably find some cooler parts in Iran or northern Iraq, which is presumably not what anyone who voted for the bid had in mind. 
 
As the Wikileaks document dump shows in another context, it's important to consider the possibility that there is no deep or hidden explanation for the strange outcomes of international relations.  It's just that there's a lot of stupid and superficial people at the top of these organizations.  Sepp Blatter really thinks that 45C weather is just a minor detail in his credential of the first Arab-Muslim World Cup.

The first South Asian World Cup

Congratulations to Qatar on getting the 2022 World Cup.  Irish people of a certain age may understand why we'd propose calling it the Sally O'Brien World Cup.  It beats contemplating the alternative universe where the Celtic Tiger hadn't crashed and we'd be today seeing a Fianna Fail celebration of having won the 2018 World Cup with the final to be held in Ryanair Field at Ahern Stadium.

Anyway, if Sepp Blatter can claim with a straight face (as we think he did during the announcement) that Zurich is the international capital of world football, then Doha can certainly claim that by 2022 they'll have some outdoor air-conditioning model figured out.  But here's our free advice to Qatar.  As the picture above from the Qatar News Agency shows, the local "celebrations" apparently consisted of government officials heading to the souks with Pakistani and Indian stores (owners and customers) and handing out Qatari flags. 

Since in all likelihood, at least 80 percent of the population will still be expatriate in 2022, it might be worth treating them as part of the target audience for the event and -- even more of a dream for sure -- hope that some country from South Asia actually qualifies for the tournament.  With all the money sloshing around to finance the preparations, how hard could a little investment in a South Asian fan base and a South Asian team be?  The former is already in Qatar.