BMEWS
 
Sarah Palin knows how old the Chinese gymnasts are.

calendar   Sunday - March 24, 2013

Rumors!

Assad Shot By Bodyguard? Dead?

Difficult to track down, rumors of Bashar Assad being offed are swirling around the Middle East. Hardly getting a mention in US, EU.

Unconfirmed reports of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s shooting highlight chaos in country
Assad was supposedly shot by his Iranian bodyguard Saturday night, with at least one website saying he had been ‘assassinated.’ But other online updates by Arab and Israeli media say the report was untrue.

http://www.nydailynews.com/rumors-assad-shooting-highlights-syria-chaos-article-1.1297939
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/03/breaking-assad-shot-by-iranian-bodyguard-hospitalized-in-damascus/

I can’t find anything on the Israeli news sites either.

Maybe it’s just a pipe dream. But look what happened to Hugo ... probably dead for days before the “real” word got out.

Update: According to Arab media http://www.eltira.org , Bashar al-Assad would have been seriously wounded by gunfire last night Saturday, March 23 by his bodyguard but Iran is not dead. Il serait actuellement hospitalisé, entre la vie et la mort, à l’hôpital Shami de Damas dont les rues adjacentes ont été fermées. He is currently hospitalized, between life and death, Shami Hospital in Damascus which the streets were closed.

Information exclusive (en France) : Selon des informations publiées dans la presse arabe (puis republiées dans la presse israélienne ), des informations que les journalistes affirment avoir « vérifiées », le dictateur syrien Bachar el Assad aurait été tué ce matin par un de ses gardes du corps. Proprietary information (in France): According to reports in the Arab press (and then republished in the Israeli press ), information that journalists say they have “verified” the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was killed this morning by one of his bodyguards. Un important dispositif de sécurité a été mis en place à l’hôpital du Damas. An important safety device has been set up at the hospital in Damascus.

Maybe we can blame the French ...
http://jssnews.com/2013/03/24/bachar-el-assad-aurait-ete-tue-par-un-garde-du-corps/


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/24/2013 at 04:57 PM   
Filed Under: • Middle-East •  
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calendar   Thursday - February 28, 2013

a cat turd in the sand box

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 02/28/2013 at 08:55 AM   
Filed Under: • Middle-East •  
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calendar   Saturday - February 23, 2013

A Nice Clear Message

I met a girl who sang the Blues,
and I asked her for some happy news
She just smiled and sent this link my way


Best Picture Of The Week

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One Man Bucket*, aka Achmed bin Stinkin, shifts shit against the flow





Egypt Floods Gaza Tunnels To Quell Arms Smuggling

Floods them with raw sewage

Essam Haddad, national security adviser to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, has told Reuters that Egypt recently flooded a number of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt in order to cut the flow of arms in and out of the coastal enclave. “We don’t want to see these tunnels used for illegal ways of smuggling either people or weapons that can really harm Egyptian security,” Haddad said in the interview. Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has condemned the closure of the tunnels.

Haddad noted Egypt’s concern that heavy arms, some of which are from Libya as well as Gaza, are being seen throughout Egypt, and in particular in the Sinai. “[W]e would not like to see arms smuggled through these tunnels either in or out, because we are now seeing in Sinai and we have captured actually across Egypt heavy arms that could be used in a very dangerous way,” the Morsi adviser said. He added: “[W]hen you see there are anti-aircraft missiles inside Egypt and anti-tank weapons inside Egypt ... you will question who is doing this and why.”

According to the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), “hundreds” of high quality weaponry, including long-range rockets and advanced antitank and antiaircraft missiles, from Libya and Sudan ended up in Gaza through the Sinai in 2012.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – The Hamas rulers of Gaza and local smugglers on Tuesday accused Egypt of flooding cross-border tunnels with sewage water in order to halt a thriving smuggling trade that has propped up the local economy for the past five years.

Flooding the dozens of tunnels that run along the short Gaza-Egypt border was a rare act of tension between the Hamas government and their ideological parent, the Muslim Brotherhood, which now dominates Egypt’s government.

The Egyptian effort appears to be aimed at closing down the illegal routes to better control what is going in. It follows an Egyptian-brokered deal that eased Israeli restrictions on building material going into Gaza.
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the tunnels are also easy conduits for weapons and militants to pass in and out of Gaza and the nearby lawless Sinai desert peninsula. From Sinai, militants have launched attacks against Egyptian and Israeli forces.

Smugglers said Egyptian military forces were digging water wells and pumping wastewater toward the smuggling area for the past two days.

One smuggler said he had to halt operations and rush his workers out after his tunnel filled with sewage. He declined to be named, fearing he would be identified by Egyptian forces. An Associated Press photographer at the scene saw at least 15 tunnels also flooded with wastewater.

Still, more than one hundred tunnels were operational, smugglers said.

Now there’s some foreign aid I could get behind. Can we send them a few hundred tankers full? Please?

See More Below The Fold

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 02/23/2013 at 09:09 PM   
Filed Under: • Middle-EastRoPMA •  
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calendar   Thursday - November 15, 2012

38 days and counting

Drew takes a 10 minute break to try and get at least one post up per day. Running myself ragged here. I haven’t even had breakfast yet but I’ve already put down carpet in one closet, swapped in a fancy showerhead, put a coat of paint in another closet, and decided how I’m going to modify one of the built in bookcases so that it has a power outlet and a cable TV outlet in the base and one off the front corner, mostly out of sight. Just in case someone wants to change my mind about where to put the stereo and TV later on. I’ll be gol-durned if I’m going to unmount these 7 foot tall chunks of oak from the wall ever again.  But I am making progress. Got a mess of stuff done yesterday, including getting the stove hood vent pipe opened up to the outside (idiot vinyl siding guys put up siding right over the hole, duh) and redrilled the front door deadbolt to fit the newer, larger diameter lockset. And I got the WiFi up and running, although I still haven’t figured out how to get Outlook Express functional again. Ok, on to a bit of blogging.



On the Brink of War

Armageddon, Megiddo, here we come.

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Israel moved closer to an all-out ground war with Hamas Thursday, as Israeli planes, tanks and gunboats pounded suspected militant positions in Gaza in retaliation for another day of Hamas rocket attacks that left at least three Israelis dead.

Tel Aviv residents say they heard an explosion following an air-raid alert across the city, raising fears of a Gaza rocket strike on Israel’s commercial capital.

Israeli authorities were trying to determine where the rocket may have landed on Thursday. Eli Bean, the head of Israel’s rescue service, says no injuries have been reported.

Israeli military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai says nothing landed on the ground, raising the possibility it fell in the sea.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on Thursday that Israel could no longer stand repeated attacks on its southern towns. He said that Israel has “made it clear” it won’t tolerate continued rocket fire on its civilians.

Earlier, Netanyahu had declared, “If there is a need, the military is prepared to expand the operation. We will continue to do everything to protect our citizens.”

Egypt’s Islamist president has ordered his prime minister to lead a senior delegation to Gaza in a show of support for the coastal strip’s Hamas rulers in the face of Israel’s offensive.

State television said Thursday that, on orders from President Mohammed Morsi, Hesham Kandil will go to Gaza Friday. It said the delegation will also try and meet the “urgent needs” of Gaza residents.

Earlier on Thursday, Morsi vowed to work to stop Israel’s campaign against Hamas, calling the Jewish state’s actions there “unacceptable.”

So glad that our Muslim-In-Chief helped oust that benevolent evil despot in Egypt so that he could be replaced by a bunch of terrorist jihad jackwads. Way to go Ibn Barak, way to go.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 11/15/2012 at 12:15 PM   
Filed Under: • Middle-EastTerrorists •  
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calendar   Saturday - September 15, 2012

Spell It Out In Detail

20 paragraphs to NOT say the “T word”, but to spell it out in no uncertain terms.

The Manchurian Moron is so benighted he apparently thinks he’s going to further the cause of individual liberty and equality by bringing down all the tyrants and dictators, and letting nature replace them with whatever Springs up.

Naive? No. This goes so far beyond that, it’s no longer even on the same continent. This is anarchism hiding behind juvenile altruism.

But such simple-mindedness just can’t be accepted by some, so they keep thinking. And I think that what they think they’ve deduced may also be right: that the naivete doesn’t merely hide Marxist anarchism. It is hiding a direct push for those that have been our overt enemies for more than 30 years now. And thus the “T word”, whichever one of them you prefer: treason or traitor, they both connote the same bottom line. A reversal in decades old policy done without even a single debate in Congress, or a vote, or even a public speech. And yet ...



Remember, for one second, in January 2011, before even a dozen demonstrators were killed, a small herd of camel-riding Mubarakists rode into Tahrir Square trampling some protesters underfoot, and Obama immediately flew into an apoplectic rage, gliding close to personally claiming that Mubarak was a war criminal for attacking peaceful “democratic” demonstrators.

But in February 2012, after Assad has murdered over 10,000 Sunni mostly totally unarmed civilians by lobbing barrages of multiple rounds of artillery into Homs, why is Obama all but numbingly silent in-between his own barrages of multiple rounds of 18-hole golf? [ and now, 7 months later, what is the total?? ]

The reason: the US President Obama has artfully and silently pivoted US Middle East Policy from a Pro-Saudi, Anti-Iran paradigm to a Pro-Iran, Anti-Saudi imperative.

Look, sometimes you have to live outside the box to see and think outside the box. So follow this link to Israel and read for 10 minutes: The Obama Domino Doctrine: Pro-Iran/Anti-Saudi

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And then when you ask yourself “Where has this guy been hiding all this time?” when you notice that the article is from February ... the answer is right here: Op-Ed #CIA 721: Obama, the Pro-Iranian Nuclear Bomb President:

Vice President Joe Biden blurted out, and then doubled down on, what President Obama really thinks: Romney is “ready to go to war in Syria and Iran.”

Biden’s verbal salvo doesn’t mean that Romney wants to go to war, but only proves that Obama is not “ready to go to war with Iran” and will do nothing to stop Iran from acquiring a technologically easily built U235 Hiroshima gun-type nuclear bomb.

The Obama campaign assault proves that when Obama says “all options are on the table,” Obama means “especially the appeasement, Iran-gets-the-nuke, option!!!!”

Obama is all too happily “complicit” in appeasing Iran into building a workable nuclear weapon, after which Iran will become immune to attack just as the nuclear-capable North Korea became immune to attack once North Korea acquired a bomb.

Obama’s Iranian Nuclear “Red Line” is actually circular “logic”, specifically designed by Obama to enable Iran’s acquisition of a full nuclear arsenal. Obama’s “Red Line” goes something like this: Let’s wait to attack Iran until Iran actually builds a nuclear bomb, and then we can’t attack Iran because Iran has the nuclear bomb.

No shit, our foreign policy has become a Catch-22. And not by accident. Once again, nobody says the “T word”.

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If Obama is re-elected in November 2012, in March 2013, Iran’s puppet-state, Iraq, armed with even just the first tranche of the 18 new F16Is, and with a non-complicit US President Obama ordering USCENTCOM to deliver real-time satellite intelligence mid-air course intercepts of Israeli planes to the Iraqi Air Force, those 18 Iraqi F16s will become an impenetrable wall of death to any Israeli Air Force attack on Iran vectored through Iraq or even Saudi Arabia. For, if Israeli planes are using Saudi Arabia as their vector, Iraq and its Iranian masters will think nothing of violating Saudi Air space to intercept the Eastward vectored flying Israelis.

(See picture 7 below)

In short, Obama is much worse than a modern day Neville Chamberlain. In 1938, even Chamberlain didn’t sell Nazi Germany Great Britain’s Spitfires, and would not have let Hitler develop nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Obama has fostered, heavily-armed Iran’s Shiite-Puppet Iraq with F16s and advanced radar nodes, and generally encouraged the genocide-threatening Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

Israel won’t be Iran’s first nuclear target, the Sunni Saudi Arabians will be. Iran can use the Uranium bomb in such a way as to electronically decapitate all of Saudi Arabia’s advanced weapons, including any nuclear missiles Saudi Arabia might buy from the Chinese.

Just like with Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler, ultimately, America will pay 1000 times more in lives and treasure fighting a nuclear Iran in the future than it would if it effectively stopped Iran before it acquires a nuclear bomb.

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 09/15/2012 at 04:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Middle-EastObama, The One •  
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calendar   Friday - September 14, 2012

Around The Net And On The News

The Middle East is going up in flames ... gee, who’da thunk that??? This morning is the first time I’ve visited any blogs in nearly 2 months.  Not even Theo’s. I’ve missed that. The world is going down the toilet, Obama is completely worthless, and the media STILL covers for him. Doesn’t sound like I’ve missed a thing since JULY, does it?

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Visit Blackfive for more on the second graphic.  No stupids, it had NOTHING to do with some dingdong movie. That’s called an EXCUSE. What it did have to do with was 9/11, Osama getting offed this year, and Al Q taking a beating in the mountains and needing to show that they’re still a force to be reckoned with. And they are.

This rather reminds me of Vietnam. No matter how pacified or friendly you think a village might be, all it takes is one sympathetic granny with a grenade in her rice bowl, or one unwanted small child carrying a bag in your direction ... and the only way to be sure the village is safe is Lt. Calley’s way.



Hey look! Obama actually told the truth for once. He went off script and got away from his handlers and his teleprompter ... and out came the Biden-esque remark that Egypt really isn’t an ally. Yeah, well NO SHIT.  They aren’t even much of a trading partner, nor are they any kind of friend. Just another Turd Word cesspit we’ve kept the lid on for generations by direct and indirect bribery. And now the controllable tyrant there is gone. So of course the MEDIA have to go into full spin mode along with the State Department (two groups I think we could do without, thank you).

White House clarifies Obama’s statement that Egypt is not an ‘ally’

President Barack Obama didn’t intend to signal any change in the U.S.-Egypt relationship last night when he said Egypt is not an “ally,” the White House told The Cable today.

In an interview with Telemundo Wednesday night, Obama said that the U.S. relationship with the new Egyptian government was a “work in progress,” and emphasized that the United States is counting on the government of Egypt to better protect the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, which was attacked by protesters on Sept. 11.

“I don’t think that we would consider them an ally, but we don’t consider them an enemy,” Obama said. “They’re a new government that is trying to find its way. They were democratically elected. I think that we are going to have to see how they respond to this incident.”

That comment had Egypt watchers scratching their heads, especially since technically, Egypt was designated as a Major Non-NATO Ally in 1989 when Congress first passed the law creating that status, which gives them special privileges in cooperating with the United States, especially in the security and technology arenas.

Hey, technically Obama is a shit-brainer of a president too ... who has NO experience as a diplomat or statesman ... and thus doesn’t quite know how to play the Game of Lies. Because the practical, day to day TRUTH is ... that EGYPT IS NOT REALLY AN ALLY. Not quite an enemy, but certainly no friend.

So I’ll give the jackass one little prop, for speaking the truth even if it was because he didn’t know any better.

The State Department, cutting through the confusion over President Obama’s claim that Egypt is not a U.S. ally, contradicted his characterization Thursday.

For the record, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, Egypt is considered a major non-NATO ally.


Oh STFU State. Maybe the only people who believe your lies are your own people. The average butt-crusty Achmed in Cairo HATES the USA. He is not our friend. He is not our ally. He is our ENEMY. And he is PROUD OF IT.  Hey State, maybe it’s time you woke the fuck up? Oh wait, if you did, then you’d have to explain how BILLIONS get sent to our ENEMIES LIKE EGYPT every year. Smells like TREASON, doesn’t it??


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 09/14/2012 at 08:12 AM   
Filed Under: • Middle-East •  
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calendar   Friday - July 27, 2012

too troo

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So I guess I’m hoping that they kill each other off to almost the last man standing, and that he be one of Assad’s people? Not really sure. Maybe the Turks will invade. Who knows? It gets darker and stranger over there every day. 

And yeah, those are Saddam’s WMDs, and you and I both know it. Hey, why aren’t the lefties crying “no evidence” today? If Saddam never had any, then he couldn’t have shipped them to Assad by special truck convoy numbering in the hundreds. Therefore Assad’s WMDs are just an empty rumor as well. After all, Saddam actually used some of his on his own people. I don’t think Assad has gassed or poisoned anybody yet. So that’s even less “no evidence” isn’t it???


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 07/27/2012 at 01:36 PM   
Filed Under: • Middle-East •  
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calendar   Sunday - July 15, 2012

Protest Like An Egyptian

US Secretary Of State Gets No Respect In Egypt

CAIRO (Reuters) - Protesters threw tomatoes and shoes at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s motorcade on Sunday during her first visit to Egypt since the election of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.

A tomato struck an Egyptian official in the face, and shoes and a water bottle landed near the armored cars carrying Clinton’s delegation in the port city of Alexandria.

A senior state department official said that neither Clinton nor her vehicle, which were around the corner from the incident, were struck by any of the projectiles.

Protesters chanted: “Monica, Monica”, a reference to Former President Bill Clinton’s extra-marital affair. Some chanted: “leave, Clinton”, Egyptian security officials said.

It was not clear who the protesters were or what political affiliations they had.

Hey, maybe they’re all Romney supporters.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 07/15/2012 at 05:45 PM   
Filed Under: • Middle-EastNews-Briefs •  
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calendar   Wednesday - July 04, 2012

Psychotic Fiends

Garbage Piles Full Of Chopped Off Body Parts

Payback is a bitch for those who sheltered rebels in Syria

Government Death Squads roam the streets, exacting retribution with machetes



Trail of carnage in trash bins of Damascus suburb

Syrians in the ghost city of Douma have recovered mutilated corpses and sifted through trash for body parts hacked off by death squads who swept through anti-government districts after the army drove out rebel fighters, activists said on Wednesday.

Video shot by opponents of President Bashar al-Assad in the city about 15 km (10 miles) north of Damascus on Tuesday displayed gory horror scenes in homes they said had been overrun by pro-government “shabbiha” paramilitary gangs, after army shelling over the weekend forced rebel fighters to retreat.
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Given obstacles to independent media coverage in Syria, there was no way of verifying the authenticity of the activist video or the information conveyed. One resident named Ziad told Reuters by telephone that 90 percent of Douma citizens had fled the city of around 110,000 inhabitants.

SANA published photographs of well-dressed officials touring tidy streets. Activist video, by contrast, was horrific, showing what it said was the aftermath of carnage by feared militiamen.

“These are pieces of our children we’re pulling out of dumpsters ... We found these body parts and we are still looking for more. These are burned human body parts,” said a man picking through an overturned garbage bin.

“These are male reproductive organs,” he said.

Video clips showed rotting corpses lying in dried pools of blood in dark hallways, their faces covered with flies. One showed a woman and her child prone in a living room. The activist narrating the video said they had been stabbed.

A third video displayed pieces of charred flesh which activists said were severed genitals.

“There was more here yesterday,” said a man wearing plastic gloves. “But the dogs were taking them.”

So much for the the kindness and brotherhood of jizzlam. The civil war in Syria is largely along sectarian lines; one flavor of islam against another. It’s also about the city boys versus their country cousins; those who get the government handouts versus those who pay for them. Assad’s Baath party is almost exclusively Shiite, and most of those are from the Alawite sub-sect. The rest of the country’s muslims are Sunni. All of the rebels are, and they’re supported by the Muslim Brotherhood.

This is nothing new. One of the main points about terrorism that is almost completely lost in the West is that most of it is sectarian; one muslim radical against another muslim (radical or not). And they don’t have an ounce of mercy amongst them.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 07/04/2012 at 11:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Middle-EastRoPMAWar On Terror •  
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calendar   Saturday - June 30, 2012

Change of Subject

Oh HELL YEAH!


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And don’t forget to sweep the land clean with a bayonet before resuming control.

IMO, the natural borders of Israel should be the Suez Canal in the south, the eastern foot of the mountains east of the Dead Sea from Aqaba to Amman and Damascus, and in the north to the suburbs of Beirut.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/30/2012 at 09:00 AM   
Filed Under: • IsraelMiddle-East •  
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calendar   Friday - June 29, 2012

the arab spring has sprung and resembles camel dung

A soon as I saw this today I knew it had to be shared with our readers.

It isn’t that it will be new to folks here. In fact, although my source is the Daily Mail, I should by rights give a tip of the hat to Drew who I recall wrote something sarcastic and questioning, and as I recall Vilmar wrote something scathing as well. In fact, I believe most if not all conservative bloggers were highly skeptical.  Our regulars here made similar comments as soon as the media started banging the drum for what was called, the Arab Spring.  None of you bought it.
Even after Libya, some of you were still making the odd comment here and there about the much vaunted springtime for arabs.
Well, congratulations.  Apparently, some in the mainstream media are catching up to you.

This is a fairly long piece so I am only giving a brief sample but am sure you’ll find it interesting.  Even if you already knew it, it’s nice to be vindicated.

Still championed by over-excited, ill-informed pundits in the West, and kept alive on the ground by a gaggle of equally naive, out-of-touch and mostly English-speaking local activists, the bitter truth is that the so-called Arab Spring has proved a dismal failure on every level.

As hated leaders are replaced by even more brutally oppressive regimes across the Middle East, the Arab Spring has become a sick joke
By JOHN BRADLEY

Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s deposed dictator, is reportedly still in a coma after being handed a life sentence earlier this month for complicity in the deaths of almost 1,000 protesters during last year’s mass uprising against his tyrannical rule.

He is a man utterly lacking in charisma, who has only ever been interested in enriching his family and the corrupt tycoons who surrounded him. Few will shed any tears when he dies.

However, while Mubarak was no better known for his political acumen than for his benevolent rule, he has been proven right about one thing at least.

A few days before he was forced to step down in February last year, he warned that sudden, dramatic change in the land of the pharaohs would lead only to anarchy, followed by a takeover by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood party and the imposition of strict Islamic law.

Gradual political reform, in other words, was preferable to revolutionary upheaval that had no agenda other than ousting the current leader.

That advice, at the time mocked as the self-serving twaddle it partly was, now seems strikingly prescient. Indeed, Mubarak could have been talking about the consequences of revolutionary chaos not just for Egypt, but the Arab region as a whole.

On Monday, Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, warned that the mayhem caused by the so-called Arab Spring has resulted in the creation of new Al Qaeda training camps throughout the Middle East, especially in Syria and Libya, where British jihadis are receiving training in terrorist tactics. They are intent, he added, on returning to Britain to launch attacks here.

The terrifying reality is indeed that Islamists of various factions are taking advantage of the febrile volatility in the regime to flex their muscles.

Egypt’s new president has just been announced. He is Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. His victory ends a year of political transition in the country during which the Muslim Brotherhood have thrashed their liberal opponents in every election that’s been held.

On Sunday, Morsi called for national unity. That will be a tall order. Like other so-called ‘moderate’ Islamist leaders throughout the region, he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

( methinks Mr. Bradley read Drew on Morsi only last week)

The truth is that the Muslim Brotherhood will now set about implementing their real agenda: imposing Sharia law and encouraging the growth of extreme Islam.

Nothing good has come of it at all, if judged by the classic Western values of liberty, freedom of expression and democratic accountability.

From Egypt to Tunisia, Yemen to Libya, shockingly high crime rates, economies in free-fall and decimated tourism industries are the terrifying new realities Arabs must now confront.

And in each of those countries, radical Islamists have moved quickly to fill the social and political vacuum. They have used a simple strategy: relying on gaining a majority from the minority who vote, and blatantly disregarding rules that ban foreign campaign donations from neighbouring states, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, looking to extend their influence in the region.

Both these countries, although Western allies, also subscribe to Wahhabism — the strictest and most austere interpretation of Islam that even bans contact between unrelated men and women. They also consider it their God-given duty to promote this ‘pure’ version of Islam whenever the opportunity arises, thus their attempts to exploit the Middle East’s disarray.

LOTS MORE HERE


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 06/29/2012 at 05:09 AM   
Filed Under: • Middle-Eastmuslims •  
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calendar   Monday - June 25, 2012

ARAB SPRING OR IS IT WINTER?

Drew has already said it well and so too has Michael Burleigh, writing today in the Daily Mail.

It’s highly doubtful that any of our regulars here at BMEWS are surprised.  But isn’t this what the west wanted when they deserted Mubarak?  Democracy and free elections.  Actually, I’m not clear on what they all wanted except for peace with Israel in their area of control.  I doubt there’s going to be much in the way of democracy.

Anyway, the two tearful ladies here are surely not pleased with the election result.  Might be lots of women in Egypt at this very moment are worried and also not pleased. And who can blame them?


Is Arab spring turning into Arab winter?

By MICHAEL BURLEIGH

This is a victory which will send shock waves throughout the Middle East, emboldening Islamic radicals from Bahrain to Syria to persist in their efforts to topple their regimes, and confirming the Israeli view that the Arab Spring has become an Arab Winter.

Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s new president, is the Arab world’s first elected Islamist head of state. He now rules a nation of 81million people. While there is rejoicing among hardline Hamas supporters in Gaza tonight, Egyptian liberals and secularists will be bitterly disappointed, especially since it was they, rather than the Muslim Brotherhood, who toppled Hosni Mubarak.

The wealthy cosmopolitan middle-classes will be shuddering inside their villas in Cairo’s rich Heliopolis suburb.
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Although optimists hope that Egypt will evolve along the lines of Turkey, which has a moderate Islamic government, the reality is that it is likely to see protracted strife between a still-powerful military – which has until now held all the power – and a strong Islamist movement that will make it more like strife-torn Pakistan.

The army have a lot to lose, while the Brotherhood has everything to gain.

Morsi’s background is typical of the middle class, academic professionals who dominate the Brotherhood’s leadership. He has a doctorate in engineering from the University of Southern California, and worked at Egypt’s Zagazig University. But he is leader in name only, which is why he is known as the ‘spare tyre’. He only ran for president after the ruling Supreme Council of the Army disqualified 62-year-old businessman Khariat Al Shater, the real strategic mind within the Brotherhood.

Al Shater has been in prison four times. He and Morsi represent the conservative strain of the Brotherhood, and rule out women and Christians ever standing as president. They want Egypt to be run along the lines of Saudi Arabia, where women are covered from head to toe and banned from driving, alcohol is forbidden and sharia law is commonplace. The wives of these two men wear the niqab, which covers the face and is unusual in Egypt – except in areas where the Brotherhood’s huge charitable involvement acts like a chill draught in a room.

The military, which thanks to its vast grants from the US still retains considerable power in Egypt, has made a deal with the Brotherhood drastically reducing the new president’s untested powers.

In a sense both sides have been engaged in a game of chicken. The Brotherhood has been using its supporters to flood Tahrir Square and threatening to unleash its trades unions to paralyse an Egyptian economy already limping along because of the collapse of mass tourism.

The generals – who could always fill the streets with troops – have issued a decree which restricts what president Morsi can do.

Morsi has no power over budgets, internal affairs or the army, in a country where the defence budget is 40 per cent of revenue. He may chair a new National Defence Council, but 11 of its 16 members will be serving generals.

But while the army holds many cards, the military’s commercial and industrial interests make it highly vulnerable to charges of institutional corruption of the sort that saw the ousting of Mubarak, himself a former air force general.

Since Mubarak went, relations with Israel have become far chillier. Morsi is a fervent supporter of Israel’s enemy Hamas, the Egyptians have cut off deliveries of natural gas to Israel, and they’ve opened the Sinai border to waves of African migrants who are causing serious law and order problems for the citizens of Tel Aviv.

The world can only watch and wait to see if Israel reacts – and how this uneasy partnership between the generals and the Brotherhood plays out. Many will be fearful, however, if in time the Islamists gain the upper hand.

BURLEIGH


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 06/25/2012 at 11:14 AM   
Filed Under: • Middle-East •  
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Arab Spring My Arse

image

puppet and strawman at the same time?

Muslim Brotherhood Wins Egyptian Presidency

Gee, who saw this one coming? Totally unexpected!!

Muslim Brotherhood candidate and president-elect in victory speech vows to unite the country and stand up for democracy. [as my BS-meter pegs at 11]

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi has officially won Egypt’s presidential election and will be the country’s next president, the electoral commission has announced.

Morsi picked up 13.2 million votes out of just over 26 million, giving him about 51 per cent of the vote. His competitor, Ahmed Shafik, the final prime minister under Hosni Mubarak, received 12.3 million. More than 800,000 ballots were invalidated.

How about that? They threw out just enough ballots to make their guy win. Totally unexpected!!

Morsi’s victory caps off more than a week of behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Brotherhood and the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). He claimed victory just hours after last week’s runoff election, based on unofficial numbers tallied by the Brotherhood, but the commission delayed its official announcement until Sunday.

In the intervening days, Khairat al-Shater, the Brotherhood’s political boss, met generals from SCAF at least once. Sources say they were negotiating exactly what powers the president will have.

So wait ... this means that the army is still in charge, doesn’t it? Negotiate to see what powers the president will have? Sounds like a puppet figurehead to me.  Totally unexpected!!

Yeah, and in theory this guy has quit the Muslim Brotherhood and given up his membership in several of their more extreme (!!!) sub-groups. Right. And the Copts are just super happy to have him in charge, I’m sure.

Bishop Pachomius, the caretaker pope of Egypt’s Coptic Church, issued a short statement congratulating Morsi. The Coptic community makes up about 10 per cent of Egypt’s population, and some were worried by Morsi’s candidacy, fearing that his government would restrict their personal freedoms.


Nahh. Not to worry. As long as they remain proper dhimmis, they’ll have as many freedoms as any other third class citizens, like women and arthritic donkeys. Just so long as they don’t step out of line, like by objecting to having their churches burned and their priests murdered.

Gosh, I hope I didn’t make my lowered expectations about this election too blatant. After all, this son-of-a-terrorist-group is all about supporting democracy, as long as the army allows him to. Welcome to the New Spring!


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/25/2012 at 08:08 AM   
Filed Under: • Middle-EastRoPMA •  
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calendar   Sunday - April 15, 2012

Smells Worse Than Last Week’s Fish

384 Escape In Taliban Prison Break

3 Or 4 Guards Injured In Hours Long Attack



Dozens of Islamist militants stormed a prison in Pakistan in the dead of night early on Sunday and freed nearly 400 inmates, including one on death row for trying to assassinate former President Pervez Musharraf, police officials said.

Pakistan’s Taliban movement, which is close to al Qaeda, said it was behind the brazen assault by militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles.

A police official said most of the escapees from the jail in the northwestern town of Bannu were militants.

So they are back to being “militants” now? What a crock.

Authorities in northern Pakistan were looking for 384 inmates who escaped from a prison early Sunday morning after hundreds of Taliban militants raided the facility. The attack took place in the city of Bannu in northwest Pakistan, an area known for a heavy militant presence.

Four prison officials were wounded in the attack, which lasted more than two hours, said Iftikhar Khan, a senior police official in the city. Of the 944 prisoners the facility held, 384 escaped, officials said. Among them were 21 high-profile militants, said Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, where Bannu is located.

The attackers apparently were aiming to free a senior Taliban commander, he said, but prison records were destroyed in the attack, and officials were still working to verify the names and crimes of those who escaped.

“This is beyond terrorism. Such an attack challenges the writ of the state,” Hussain said.

Two of the inmates who escaped had been awaiting execution. One, Adnan Rashid, had been found guilty in the attempted murder of former President Pervez Musharraf in 2003. The other, Safi Ullah, was convicted of several bombings in northern Pakistan in recent years, officials said.



If it truly was an attack by hundreds of Talies, then they must have come into the city in a convoy of dozens of trucks. Dozens more to hold the escapees as well? And nobody noticed? And in all the shooting, which included blowing the gates and walls open with RPGs, only a tiny handful of guards were wounded, and we don’t know how light their wounds are or how they came about. Like, maybe they were punched in the nose and then ran away? And not even a jeep full of soldiers or cops showed up to help quell the attack. Not one. This really, really stinks. Especially given the long, long history of prison breaks done by AQ groups all across the Middle East.

It’s news to me that Pakistan has such a long term death row policy as well. I would have figured that anyone sentenced to execution in a heavily Sharia influenced country would get the old Hassan Chop right away. Unless they were being kept alive for political reasons?

Man this stinks. Inside job? Payoffs? Are any of these prisons actually for real, or are they just winter headquarters for terrorists? A place where they can rest and get fat at US taxpayer supported government expense, only to be broken out when it’s time for the next spring offensive? Makes me wonder, especially since that spring offensive is apparently now in full swing ...

Afghanistan attackers launch coordinated attacks

Attackers in Afghanistan took over a central Kabul hotel close to the presidential palace, United Nations office and many foreign embassies, a local police official said Sunday, amid what seemed to be a wave of coordinated attacks around the country.

Four suicide bombers tried to attack the Jalalabad airfield where United States troops are based, the airfield commander said. One of the attackers blew himself up, while police intercepted the other three, commander Jahan Ngir said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks in a text message to CNN and on Twitter.

“Several suicide bombers launched attacks around different parts of Kabul, including ISAF/NATO headquarters, Afghan Parliament building, and the whole of the diplomatic quarter. The fighting is still ongoing and so far there has been a large loss of the enemy,” the Islamist militia said.
Attacks in Afghanistan

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force confirmed “multiple attacks across Kabul” in up to seven locations, but said there were no reports of casualties.

CNN journalists heard gunfire, explosions and rocket-propelled grenade fire lasting more than an hour in central Kabul on Sunday morning.

The heavily guarded area is frequented by foreigners and is rarely the scene of violence.

At least in Iraq our troops had a Green Zone. Some area that they knew they controlled. Pacified. That does not appear to be the case in Afghanistan. How is it that, after more than a decade of fighting and occupation, such attacks can happen so close to the heart of things? A block away from the US and several foreign embassies? Come on.

You know the answer as well as I do. The “war” in Afghanistan is not being fought. Not to win. Not even to draw. And every week we lose more soldiers. Cannon fodder to their political masters. And that barely even makes the news, especially with Obama at the helm. Do the networks still do their nightly “honor the fallen” reports that they did under Bush, as a backhanded slap against the whole Global War On Terror? Not that we’re allowed to us the words “war” or “terror” anymore. Especially not since more of our guys have been killed under 3 years of Obama than under 8 years of Bush. A 500% or greater casualty rate increase. And not a word from Cindy Shitcan or Code Stink.

I just don’t see the point. And I’m beyond tired of our children’s lives being wasted for no real reason. Get our troops out, nuke the whole place until it glows, and call it done. And if the whole “uncontrolled tribal zone” in Pok-i-stahn gets obliterated by accident, too friggin’ bad. Oopsie.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 04/15/2012 at 07:50 AM   
Filed Under: • Middle-EastWar On Terror •  
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