How Long Is This Guy Planning to Live?

That's a tall order, Mohammed, even for a crown prince. A lot of people won't want you to live to see the day.

Mohammed bin Sultan, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, vows to return his country to "moderate Islam" once he gets his turn at the wheel.

In an interview with the Guardian, the powerful heir to the Saudi throne said the ultra-conservative state had been “not normal” for the past 30 years, blaming rigid doctrines that have governed society in a reaction to the Iranian revolution, which successive leaders “didn’t know how to deal with”.

“What happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia. What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, people wanted to copy this model in different countries, one of them is Saudi Arabia. We didn’t know how to deal with it. And the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it.”

Earlier Prince Mohammed had said: “We are simply reverting to what we followed – a moderate Islam open to the world and all religions. 70% of the Saudis are younger than 30, honestly we won’t waste 30 years of our life combating extremist thoughts, we will destroy them now and immediately.”

...

Central to the reforms has been the breaking of an alliance between hardline clerics who have long defined the national character and the House of Saud, which has run affairs of state. The changes have tackled head-on societal taboos such as the recently rescinded ban on women driving, as well as scaling back guardianship laws that restrict women’s roles and establishing an Islamic centre tasked with certifying the sayings of the prophet Muhammed.

At this point can Saudi Arabia really break from Wahhabism, the radical Sunni sect that has driven Islamist terrorist groups from al Qaeda to ISIS, al Nusra and Boko Haram?  Can this prince really purge radical Islam from his fellow princes, emirs and sheikhs of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States? Or will he end up like Anwar Sadat, gunned down by extremist assassins?

A Deal Is a Deal

Except if the deal is with Saudi Arabia

And it's a deal for weaponry

And it's the United States selling.

It seems Washington has had its fill of the Saudis and their butchery in Yemen.


The US is preparing to halt planned arms sales to Saudi Arabia because of the high death toll among civilians in the kingdom’s bombing campaign in Yemen.

Obama administration officials were quoted on Reuters, who broke the story, saying that the “systematic, endemic problems in Saudi Arabia’s targeting drove the US decision to halt a future weapons sale involving precision-guided munitions”.

“That’s obviously a direct reflection of the concerns that we have about Saudi strikes that have resulted in civilian casualties.”

 The US move would leave the UK exposed diplomatically and faced with an awkward dilemma because of the scale of its arms sales to the kingdom and the presence of UK military personnel at the Saudi headquarters from where the bombing campaign is being conducted.

Andrew Smith of the UK-based Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) said: “Like the US, the UK has licensed billions of pounds worth of arms to Saudi forces. Like their US counterparts, UK arms companies have fuelled and profited from the destruction taking place. If even the US is questioning its support for Saudi Arabia, then why is the UK government pulling out all stops to support them? Why are human rights regarded as less important than arms company profits?”

Sunni Ways, indeed.

Justin's Folly - Selling Death Wagons to a Despotic Regime Going Broke

You remember the Saudi death wagon controversy when the Trudeau regime gave the go ahead to the sale of 15-billion dollars worth of armoured fighting vehicles to Saudi Arabia.

Well, what if those death wagons fall into the hands of the very people we've been over there fighting, radical Sunni Islamists? Justie would have a little egg on his face then, wouldn't he?

For two years now reports have been coming out about the Saudi's fiscal woes. Some say the monarchy is teetering on the edge of bankrutpcy, a function of profligate spending and low, low, low world oil prices. It's the old story - too much going out, not enough coming in. Even the IMF has predicted that the Saudi regime could be bankrupt within five years.

The Saudi royal family, the House of Saud, for whom the country is named, have managed to hold onto power thanks to what had been mountains of cash. Academics suggest that a fiscal crisis could mean the end of the monarchy and trigger anarchy and violence possibly exacerbated by Russia and Iran.


The consolidation of the Shia Belt and the destabilization of Saudi Arabia will have one of two outcomes for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In the first, it will be inevitably destroyed by the Syrian army, who will be bolstered by an increase in Russian and Iranian forces in the theater. With U.S. and Western attention being drawn towards a destabilized Saudi Arabia, the Russian Federation as well as Iran will be able to increase military operations within Syria, increasing the likelihood that Assad will remain in power and both ISIS and the Free Syrian Army will be crushed.

The second scenario would be the rise of radical Salafism in a destabilized Saudi Arabia. With Wahhabism being one of the most popular forms of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia, it would seem only logical as this would be the immediate threat in the Kingdom. ISIS would undoubtedly take advantage of the destabilization of Saudi Arabia in the same manner as in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. As radical Salafism is the widely practiced form of Sunni Islam in both al-Qaeda and ISIS, it would only be a matter of time before the two powers took a more active role in the country.

Iraq and Syria have taught us what it means when al-Qaeda and ISIS take a "more active role" in a country. We can imagine what form that might take in a country where they're basically the home team.

If Our Close Allies Do It...

Surely it can't be a crime. "It" is the now infamous "double tap." The Americans like to do it with Hellfire missiles delivered from their drones. The Saudis do it with airstrikes.

It works like this. First you hit a designated target - an enemy emplacement, a wedding, a funeral, a hospital, whatever.  Then you sit back and wait for people nearby to come running to help the original victims. Just to prove that no good deed goes unpunished, not when you're around, you then drop another weapon or two to clean out the rescuers too.

Which leads us to this finding by a UN panel investigating the Saudi airstrikes on a funeral in Yemen believed to have slaughtered over a hundred mourners and their rescuers:

IHL, international humanitarian law, not sure that cuts much ice with our allies especially our really good allies, the United States, the Saudis, or the Israelis. What's the point of having all that expensive hardware if you can't slaughter civilians, including medical personnel when the opportunity arises?

"The Definition of Hypocrisy"

Canada's biggest customer for lethal military hardware also happens to be the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East with a seemingly unquenchable appetite for slaughtering civilians.

Former DND strategic analyst, Thomas Juneau, who now lectures on international affairs at Ottawa U, sums it up this way:

"We pretend that we're boy scouts, but a lot of what we do is not different from what other countries do. If that sounds like a definition of hypocrisy, well, there you are."

In fact, says Juneau, "you'd be hard-pressed to find any significant Canadian statements about the war in Yemen. Canada doesn't want to be seen to be criticizing an ally and good customer, and at the same time doesn't want to be seen as closely associated with it. The middle ground, then, is silence."

Trudeau's sock puppet foreign minister, Steffie Dion, says he's keeping an eye on those Saudis and what they do with $15-billion worth of Canadian armoured death wagons. Apparently that's being done from our embassy in Riyadh - out of sight, out of mind.  There's a rich history of what the Saudis have done with armoured fighting vehicles we already sold them but, to Steffie, let bygones be bygones.

Given that Ottawa has outsourced both Canada's foreign and military policy to Washington the inevitable hypocrisy is, well, inevitable. If America was to brand Iran a "state sponsor of terrorism" we'd be barking mad and slapping on sanctions with a near religious fervor. When a real state sponsor of terrorism, the biggest state sponsor of terrorism, comes along, we weigh their purse and look the other way.

Let's take a look at modern terrorism. The US embassy bombings - a Sunni operation. The attack on the USS Cole - Sunni. The original World Trade Center bombing - Sunni. The 9/11 attacks - Sunni. The terrorist attacks on Madrid, London and Paris - Sunni. al Qaeda - Sunni. ISIS - Sunni. al Nusra - Sunni. Where is Shiite Iran in all of this? Nowhere, that's where.

Saudi Arabia introduced the same, violent strain of Sunni Islam practised by all the Islamist terrorists.  Saudi Arabia suppresses human rights without a second thought. It revels in beheading and crucifying people in the public for such crimes as sorcery. It foments this malignant form of violent Islamism by funding Madrassas, religious schools, throughout the Sunni Arab world.

The Saudis are evil incarnate and our government stands deaf, blind and mute.

The Canadian division of the US defence contractor, General Dynamics, pockets a $15-billion score and our government, the Trudeau government, turns its back as it pisses on the honour and decency of our country.

Tom Juneau is right. It's the definition of hypocrisy.

Could Syria Become the 21st Century Sarajevo?

There were plenty of proxy wars during the Cold War only back then the principals had enough sense to avoid direct clashes. That was then, this is Syria where today we find the rival superpowers circling each other inside the same phone booth.

You could search the world over and never find one place where so many players are gathered as Syria.

First up is the Alawite government of Bashar Assad.

Then there's the original rebels, Syrian Sunnis.

Then we have the Sunni Islamists - the 'moderate' al Nusra, an affiliate of al Qaeda, and the far nastier Islamic State, ISIS.

The United States and its minions have been waging a bombing campaign against ISIS, first in Iraq and later also in Syria. It's been the standard, ineffective "whack a mole" stuff.

Turkey finally got off the fence and began its own air campaign only they're less concerned about ISIS than they are at bombing Syrian Kurds.

The United States was supporting the Syrian rebels with equipment and training until it discovered the rebels were surrendering all that gear to al Nusra and al Qaeda. Can't be having that. So the United States is now supporting Syria's Kurds which is really pissing off Turkey's Erdogan.

Recently three more places have been set at the table of mass mayhem. Here sit Russia, Hezbollah and now Iranian forces all supporting Bashar Assad.  Latest word has it that Iran has not only sent in units of the Revolutionary Guard but also a contingent of warplanes. They seem to be focused mainly on the moderate Syrian rebels but they also take on the Sunni Islamists every now and then.

It's hard to keep track of how many nations are waging air wars in Syria.  There's the Syrian air force, naturally, its strength replenished by replacement aircraft from Russia. There's the US Air Force and the League of Vassals, America's aerial Foreign Legion that, naturally, includes a Canadian contingent plus strike fighters from France, Britain, Australia and other European states plus Jordan and a half-hearted effort from a few Gulf States.

We want to battle ISIS. The other side seems intent mainly on attacking Syrian opposition rebels. The Turks prefer to bomb Syrian Kurds, the very group the US is still supporting. Nobody is bombing Assad, the guy who sparked the original fighting, and, with the Russians riding shotgun, it's hard to imagine the Western coalition going after him any time soon.

Syria, which is almost the same size as the state of Washington (just over twice the size of New Brunswick), suddenly has an awful lot of warplanes buzzing overhead at cross purposes.  The Russians have also introduced their highly lethal  S-300 surface to air missile batteries. Turkey, meanwhile, is clamoring for the US and Germany to reactivate their Patriot missile batteries in support of their NATO partner. Eventually someone may fire one of those things.

The Americans have been snookered by Putin and this is bound to have geopolitical ramifications throughout the Middle East. Will the Saudis and the Egyptians tolerate Shiite Iran's military presence in Syria? Will they pile on?

Could Syria become the Sarajevo of the 21st century, the place where a proxy war becomes a shooting war between the West and Russia? Those expert in these matters warn these eyeball to eyeball confrontations are the sort of situations in which rival powers can back into direct conflicts neither one of them truly wants to initiate.

As Clear as Mud

In under 2-minutes, the BBC explains who is fighting whom in Syria. It's as clear as mud.

So What's Our Excuse?

Amnesty International is urging Britain's Cameron government to stop arms shipments to Saudi Arabia.  Amnesty claims the weapons are being used to deliberately slaughter civilians in Houthi-rebel controlled parts of Yemen.

Amnesty said it found a pattern of “appalling disregard” for civilian lives by the Saudi-led coalition in an investigation of 13 air strikes in north-eastern Saada governorate during May, June and July: these killed some 100 civilians – including 59 children and 22 women and injured a further 56, including 18 children.

Since last March coalition air strikes have hit homes, schools, markets and other civilian infrastructure, as well as miltiary objectives. Saada, a Houthi stronghold, has been badly hit. Thousands who remain in the governorate “live in constant fear of the airstrikes and dire humanitarian conditions”, Amnesty says.

Canada is also on the Saudi weapons of indiscriminate destruction/war crimes gravy train with Harper having inked a $15-billion deal for the sale of light armoured fighting vehicles (light tanks) presumably for democracy suppression patrols. The deal supposedly gags Harper from discussing (having to explain) the sale but seemingly leaves him quite free to excuse it on the basis that, if we didn't sell Saudis its instruments of carnage then some other nation would.

For the radical Sunni Muslim House of Saud, being a Shiite Muslim is enough to qualify you for live-fire target practice.  Fortunately, that exempts the devoutly Sunni al Qaeda, al Nusra and ISIS terrorists/insurgents from Saudi bloodlust. Yemen's Houthi rebels daily fight ISIS and al Qaeda forces while the Saudis, with the active support of Canada, Britain and the US, wage a ground and air war against the Houthis.

If you're interested in this curious murderous mess, check out this episode of VICE TV. The Houthi segment begins at the 17:00 minute mark. It's an eye-opener.



Keeping with the theme of "So What's Our Excuse?" let's talk bitumen and the armada of supertankers that may soon ply British Columbia's coast.  Roger Annis has written an important report, "The Canadian Election and the Global Climate Crisis," for CounterPunch that should be required reading for every British Columbian before they vote in the federal election.  The only party that's even partly standing up for this province and our incredibly fragile ecosystems is Elizabeth May's Green Party and even May is a bit wobbly on bitumen trafficking.

Which brings us to the first segment of the VICE TV episode above concerning the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico and how BP used a highly toxic chemical, Corexit, that, instead of dispersing the oil as promised simply made it far more lethal and sank it to contaminate the bottom and the marine life that is found there. Watch it. It's a genuine call to arms.

h/t Northern PoV

How America ReStructured the Balance of Power in the Middle East. Hint - Neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia Came Out on Top

It was a strategic defeat when Washington failed to impose a "secular" government on Iraq and, instead, had to back off and watch a government representative of Iraq's long marginalized and brutally suppressed majority, the Shia, ascend to power with its public support. If Bush/Cheney didn't capitulate they were in for two endless unconventional wars - one with the Sunni army who were sent packing off home with the toppling of Saddam's government, the other with the Shiite militias. And so Nouri al Maliki came to power to run roughshod over a country that has never demonstrated itself capable of functioning as a state except at gunpoint.

Here's the thing. The Iraqis have never said they want to be Iraqi. They weren't Iraqis until Britain and France shook hands and drew some lines carving up what, until the end of WWI, had been Ottoman Empire territory. Voila, instant Iraq! It's probably fair to say the Iraqi people were simply living, breathing spoils of war. Without any voice in the matter they, Kurd/Sunni/Shiite were much akin to captives.

When Saddam was toppled, the Americans never consulted Iraq's ethnic constituencies to discover what they wanted. Judging by what has happened ever since that might have been a priceless lost opportunity.

The Kurds were upfront. They wanted an autonomous Kurdish state from Kirkuk to the Turkish border. They even had a constitution for such an independent state drawn up with the help of US foreign service staffer, Peter Galbraith, son on John Kenneth..

It's quite likely that Iraq's Sunni population would have been content with their own state nestled between the Kurds to the north and the Shia to the south and abutting Syria. That would have given them control of the as yet not well explored oilfields in the central area.

The Shia would have their own theocratic enclave in the south including Baghdad and the oilfields that generate most of Iraq's current wealth. They would have also had the backing of neighbouring Iran to guarantee they would never again succumb to Sunni domination.

I'm drawn back to Galbraith's observations in his 2008 book, "How Iraq Ends"

For the most part, Iraq's leaders are not personally stubborn or uncooperative. They find it impossible to reach agreement on the benchmarks because their constituents don't agree on any common vision for Iraq. The Shi'ites voted twice in 2005 for parties that seek to define Iraq as a Shi'ite state. By their boycotts and votes, the Sunni Arabs have almost unanimously rejected the Shi'ite vision of Iraq's future, including the new constitution. The Kurds envisage an Iraq that does not include them. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, 99% of them voted for Kurdish nationalist parties, and in the January 2005 referendum, 98% voted for an independent Kurdistan.

America's war in Iraq is lost. Of course, neither President Bush nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways.

The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning - a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes - but by the consequences of defeat. As Bush put it, "The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America."

...Iraq after a US defeat will look very much like Iraq today - a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war being fought within its Arab part. Defeat is defined by America's failure to accomplish its objective of a self-sustaining, democratic and unified Iraq. And that failure has already taken place, along with the increase of Iranian power in the region.

The Americans will never deign to admit it but their defeat in Iraq has led to a curious rapprochement between Washington and Tehran as the once low-grade civil war between Shiite and Sunni Iraqis metastasized into today's war with ISIS.

Despite the best efforts of the United States, Iran is now the co-dominant power in the Middle East. And rising. (Washington remains the other half of that "co.")

Another quick plunge into largely forgotten history: the U.S. stumbled into the post-9/11 era with two invasions that neatly eliminated Iran's key enemies on its eastern and western borders - Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. (The former is, of course, gone for good; the latter is doing better these days, though unlikely to threaten Iran for some time.) As those wars bled on without the promised victories, America's military weariness sapped the desire in the Bush administration for military strikes against Iran. Jump almost a decade ahead and Washington now quietly supports at least some of that country's military efforts in Iraq against the insurgent Islamic State. The Obama administration is seemingly at least half-resigned to looking the other way while Tehran ensures that it will have a puppet regime in Baghdad. In its serially failing strategies in Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria, Washington has all but begged the Iranians to assume a leading role in those places. They have.

And that only scratches the surface of the new Iranian ascendancy in the region. Despite the damage done by U.S.-led economic sanctions, Iran's real strength lies at home. It is probably the most stable Muslim nation in the Middle East. It has existed more or less within its current borders for thousands of years. It is almost completely ethnically, religiously, culturally, and linguistically homogeneous, with its minorities comparatively under control. While still governed in large part by its clerics, the country has nonetheless experienced a series of increasingly democratic electoral transitions since the 1979 revolution. Most significantly, unlike nearly every other nation in the Middle East, Iran's leaders do not rule in fear of an Islamic revolution. They already had one.

For all the bluster of America's Republicans, the nuclear deal with Iran could remove the last hurdle to the country's emergence as the powerhouse of the Middle East.

While diplomacy brought the United States and Iran to this point, cash is what will expand and sustain the relationship.

Iran, with the fourth-largest proven crude oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves on the planet, is ready to start selling on world markets as soon as sanctions lift. Its young people reportedly yearn for greater engagement with the West. The lifting of sanctions will allow Iranian businesses access to global capital and outside businesses access to starved Iranian commercial markets.

Since November 2014, the Chinese, for example, have already doubled their investment in Iran. European companies, including Shell and Peugeot, are now holding talks with Iranian officials. Apple is contacting Iranian distributors. Germany sent a trade delegation to Tehran. Ads for European cars and luxury goods are starting to reappear in the Iranian capital. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of foreign technology and expertise will need to be acquired if the country is to update its frayed oil and natural gas infrastructure. Many of its airliners are decades old and need replacement. Airlines in Dubai are fast adding new Iran routes to meet growing demand. The money will flow. After that, it will be very hard for the war hawks in Washington, Tel Aviv, or Riyadh to put the toothpaste back in the tube, which is why you hear such screaming and grinding of teeth now.

..No, what fundamentally worries the Israelis and the Saudis is that Iran will rejoin the community of nations as a diplomatic and trading partner of the United States, Asia, and Europe. Embarking on a diplomatic offensive in the wake of its nuclear deal, Iranian officials assured fellow Muslim countries in the region that they hoped the accord would pave the way for greater cooperation. American policy in the Persian Gulf, once reliably focused only on its own security and energy needs, may (finally) start to line up with an increasingly multifaceted Eurasian reality. A powerful Iran is indeed a threat to the status quo - hence the upset in Tel Aviv and Riyadh - just not a military one. Real power in the twenty-first century, short of total war, rests with money.

The July accord acknowledges the real-world power map of the Middle East. It does not make Iran and the United States friends. It does, however, open the door for the two biggest regional players to talk to each other and develop the kinds of financial and trade ties that will make conflict more impractical. After more than three decades of U.S.-Iranian hostility in the world's most volatile region, that is no small accomplishment.

And, so, America's defeat in Iraq was not a total loss for it became, quite unintentionally, the ice-breaker between Washington and Tehran.  As for Iraq, it will eventually have to sort itself out - probably through partition.  With Iran acting as defender of the Shiite south and America as guarantor of Kurdish independence, a new Sunni state expanding westward into Syria seems inevitable.




The Balance of Power  (TruthOut).

The Final Chapter for Bashar Assad

Things are not looking up for Syrian strongman, Bashar Assad.

His first problem is the Sunni Muslim coalition of Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia (ordinarily not the best of friends) that has materialized for the sole purpose of running Assad out of Damascus.

The advances are not only a sign of the Assad regime's weakness, said Mario Abou Zeid, a research analyst with the Carnegie Middle East Centre, but also indicative of the strength of the new alliance between the three Sunni power brokers.

Their desire to force a shift in the balance on the ground in Syria before further negotiations about the country's future are held to have finally over-ridden long-held regional differences, he said.

"This regional group has forced those opposition groups and various factions fighting on the ground to fight under one umbrella," he said.

"By creating this 'Army of Conquest' and by supporting it, having the Nusra Front as its main pillar and surrounded by the remnants of the Free Syrian Army as well as groups such as Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam and others, this type of cooperation … has been a tremendous success."

The model is now being copied in areas such as the Qalamoun – the mountain ranges between Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and Syria – where opposition forces this week began a fierce battle against the Islamic State, Syrian regime forces and the Hezbollah militants fighting alongside them. This is a three-sided conflict - on one side are the Nusra Front and its allies backed by Qatar,Turkey and Saudi Arabia, on the second side are Hezbollah, the Syrian regime and Iran and on the third side is the so-called Islamic State.
Assad also faces the threat of a coup.  The president has already arrested his spy chief, Ali Mamlouk.

Mr Assad is struggling to keep together the regime's "inner circle", who are increasingly turning on each other, sources inside the presidential palace said.

Even before Mr Mamlouk's arrest, the web of intelligence agencies with which the regime has enforced its authority for four decades was in turmoil, with two other leaders killed or removed.

Last month, Rustum Ghazaleh, the head of the political security directorate, died in hospital after he was attacked by men loyal to General Rafiq Shehadeh, his opposite number in military intelligence, who was in turn sacked.
Worst of all, Der Spiegal reports that Assad is running out of troops and has been forced to recruit mercenaries, now mainly from Afghanistan.

In order to prevent the collapse of Syrian government forces, experienced units from the Lebanese militia Hezbollah began fighting for Assad as early as 2012. Later, they were joined by Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Yemenis -- Shiites from all over, on which the regime is increasingly dependent. But the longer the war continues without victory, the more difficult it has become for Assad's allies to justify the growing body count. In 2013, for example, Hezbollah lost 130 fighters as it captured the city of Qusair and has lost many more than that trying to hold on to it. Indeed, Hezbollah has begun writing "traffic accident" as the cause of death on death certificates of its fighters who fall in Syria.

The Iraqis have almost all returned home. Rather than fighting themselves, they largely control the operations from the background. The Iraqi militia Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, for example, organizes the deployment of Pakistani volunteers in Syria. But no ethnic group is represented on all of the regime's fronts to the degree that the Afghan Hazara are. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but some 700 of them are thought to have lost their lives in Aleppo and Daraa alone. What's worse, most of them don't come completely on their own free will.

It's hard to ever count a guy like Assad out but his regime does appear to be unraveling even as his opposition coalesces into something far more effective. Will this coalition dissolve once Syria is sorted out or will they continue to reduce ISIS in the field?

Canada Advances to Top Tier Warmongering. Congratulations All.

Also Available in Green

Did you hear the news?  Pakistan has inked a deal to buy eight modern Chinese submarines.  Pakistan, yeah.  And the Pakistan navy is looking at developing nuclear warheads for the torpedoes and cruise missiles those subs carry.  What do you think of that?  Does it evoke any sort of visceral reaction in you? I wouldn't bet on it.

Those familiar with this blog know that I devote some time monitoring arms races underway in many corners of the world but especially in the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia and, of course, Russia and Eastern Europe.  They're all little beehives of martial adventurism and incipient mass mayhem.

Interesting piece in today's Guardian about how the West's mega-billion dollar annual arms sales to our 'Middle Eastern allies' (snicker, snicker) is destabilizing the region.  On this score even Canada gets special mention.


The Middle East is plunging deeper into an arms race, with an estimated $18bn expected to be spent on weapons this year, a development that experts warn is fuelling serious tension and conflict in the region.

Given the unprecedented levels of weapons sales by the west (including the US, Canada and the UK) to the mainly Sunni Gulf states, Vladimir Putin’s decision last week to allow the controversial delivery of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran – voluntarily blocked by Russia since 2010 – seems likely to further accelerate the proliferation.

That will see agreed arms sales to the top five purchasers in the region - Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Egypt and Iraq – surge this year to more than $18bn, up from $12bn last year. Among the systems being purchased are jet fighters, missiles, armoured vehicles, drones and helicopters.

...“It’s crazy,” says Ben Moores, author of IHS Jane’s annual report on arms buying trends. “The one Canadian deal alone – to supply Saudi Arabia with light armoured vehicles – will account for 20% of the military vehicles sold globally in years covered by the contract. And this is just the thin edge of the wedge. Saudi has booked enough arms imports in 24 months for them to be worth $10bn a year.”

...as Tobias Borck of the Royal United Services Institute points out, states in the Middle East are now more prepared to use the weapons they are buying.

“[The] Saudi-led military operations in Yemen [are] the latest manifestation of Arab interventionism, a trend that has been gaining momentum in the Middle East since the uprisings of the Arab spring,” he says. “Middle Eastern countries appear to be increasingly willing to use their armed forces to protect and pursue their interests in crisis zones across the region.”

Referring to the inconsistent approach by key security council members towards arms control in the region, he adds: “There are a lot of different streams feeding into this arms race.

“On Syria’s chemical weapons and the Iranian nuclear programme the two issues were ringfenced as pure arms control questions. When it comes to how we perceive our arms sales – whether they are British or US or whatever – it tends to be seen as a domestic economic issue – protecting our factories.

“That neglects the regional political dimensions, with arms sales taking place with a lack of regard for that context and without long-term strategic awareness.”

...Omar Ashour, an expert on Middle East security issues at Exeter University, adds another caution, this time over the intentions of the new Saudi-led Arab coalition, warning that its interventions are unlikely to contribute to stability.

...Speaking to the Guardian last week, he added: “On top of that, the increases in arms sales are bound to be extremely destabilising. At the moment most of the interventions have been against softer targets – Saudi Arabia targeting guerrillas in Yemen; Egypt against Bedouin in Sinai; or strikes against ragtag armies in Libya.

“But if the ‘soft’ keeps being hit hard they won’t remain soft. They will find their own patrons and proxies and hit back and it will lead to a vicious cycle.”

Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at Sipri, which maintains a database tracking arms contracts, raises another concern. “Something that doesn’t get mentioned is the complete lack of interest in arms control among the countries in region. It is not in the minds of leaders and decision-makers except for the need to arm to defeat any potential opponent.

“There is already instability in the region on several levels. You have instability in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. There is instability between Iran and the Gulf states. What is important now is how the massive expansion of the armed forces of Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar will be seen as posing a clear threat to Iran.”

Borck adds a final warning: “If you are going for an ever-bigger hammer, then the more desperate you are to make every problem a nail.”

In summary, Stephen Harper just inked a massive deal to perpetuate the Middle East conflicts and ensure that the region remains destabilized for years, possibly decades to come.  Yet, at the very same time, we're over there bombing one bunch of bad actors in order to restore stability to the region.  Neat trick, eh? What do we have in mind for a third act?  It should be pretty exciting for laid back Canada.

While I'm on the topic of warmongering and this insane global arms bazaar, I thought I'd share with you an investment analysis that arrived in my inbox yesterday concerning industry giant, Lockheed Martin.  The title speaks volumes:

"Lockheed Martin: Well-Positioned To Take Advantage Of Global Destabilization"

You can't make this stuff up:

With the huge ramp up in geopolitical tensions and global conflict, the international markets are becoming much more relevant for Lockheed Martin. As such, Lockheed Martin's decision to put increasing emphasis on international expansion is extremely smart. The company even plans to have its international segment account for at least one-quarter of its total sales. Given how much worse geopolitical tensions and conflicts have gotten in the last few quarters, Lockheed Martin will very likely be able to follow through on its international ambitions.

The Middle East, in particular, represents huge opportunities for Lockheed Martin. With conflicts in the Middle East escalating, the company's sales to the region will surely constitute a huge portion of its international business segment. Just recently, another Middle Eastern conflict emerged in the form of a rapidly destabilizing Yemem. The Yemen situation has gotten so bad that Saudi Arabia is now basically in a proxy war against Iran. Given Lockheed Martin's somewhat close relationship with Saudi Arabia, this conflict should present the company with plenty of new opportunities. In fact, CEO Marillyn Hewson met with several senior Saudi Arabian leaders to discuss new business opportunities.

The Middle East is just one of many promising international markets for Lockheed Martin. From increasing missile defense system sales in conflict zones such as Eastern Europe (e.g. MEADs sales to Ukraine) to jet deals in the APAC region(e.g. F-35 sales to South Korea), Lockheed Martin is building a formidable international presence. As international tensions/conflicts are only getting worse, Lockheed Martin has an opportune chance to cement its global presence.

Maybe Harper should dispatch Old Leatherback, Joe Oliver, over to the ME as Canada's ambassador for warmongering.  This is just getting started and there's countless billions to be had with the race going to the quickest.

Deliver Us From Evil

Why do we tolerate Saudi Arabia when the kingdom, and its Sunni state allies, seems determined to deliver Yemen into the control of ISIS and al Qaeda?

Gwynne Dyer writes that, while we wage an air war against ISIS, the Saudis are undermining our effort with their war on the Yemeni Houthi.

They’ve all shown up for this war. Saudi Arabia and the other monarchies of the Arab world (Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and even Morocco) have all committed aircraft to bombing Yemen. Egypt, Jordan, Sudan and Pakistan have offered to send ground troops. And the United States (which just pulled the last American troops out of Yemen) promises to provide “logistical and intelligence support.”

In practice, however, this coalition of Sunni Arabs and Americans is unlikely to commit large numbers of ground troops to Yemen: the country has been the graveyard of foreign armies from the Romans to the Ottomans. But if they don’t do that, the (entirely unintended) result of their bombing may be to facilitate the take-over of most of Yemen by al-Qaeda and/or ISIS

Sunni paranoia about the rise of Shia power has its roots in the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. So long as the Sunni minority ruled Iraq, it limited the influence of Iran, the paramount Shia power, in the Arab world. With the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the destruction of Sunni supremacy in Iraq, Iran’s power automatically soared – and so did its influence in Shia parts of the Arab world.

Iran didn’t have to do anything particularly aggressive for paranoia to take off in the Sunni countries of the Gulf. Of the 140 million citizens of countries that border on the Persian/Arabian Gulf, about two-thirds are Shias. With a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Sunni Arab monarchies felt terribly exposed and began to see Shia plots everywhere.

...The “coalition” is now bombing the Houthis all over the country. How intensively and how accurately remains to be seen, but if they really succeed in breaking the Houthi grip on central and southern Yemen, they will create a power vacuum that will NOT be filled by the “legitimate” president of Yemen, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, whom they are allegedly trying to restore to power.

Hadi’s forces have utterly disintegrated, and Houthi fighters now occupy the temporary capital that he established in his home city, Aden. (The real capital, Sanaa, has been in Houthi hands since September.) Hadi left Aden by boat on Tuesday, which suggests that he has left the country entirely – unless he plans to create another provisional capital on, say, the island of Socotra.

So if the coalition bombs the Houthis out of Aden, but does not commit ground troops of its own, the real winners will be the al-Qaeda forces that wait just outside the city. Much the same goes for Taiz, the third city, and even for Sanaa itself: it is al-Qaeda or ISIS jihadis who stand to profit most from a Houthi retreat.

Perfect, Mr. Harper.  Just what in hell have you gotten us stuck into?  One thing is sure, if you really do intend to "defeat ISIS" as your supposed defence minister claims, you're going to need a lot more than a sixpack of CF-18s.  And don't forget to bring your chequebook.

That Burnt Smell, That Hissing Sound? That's the Fuze.

Ready to Rumble

\Well, if nothing else, Stephen Harper might just have earned Canada a ringside seat to the outbreak of a Middle East regional war.  The way the International Crisis Group sees it, the Saudi air war on Shiite Yemeni rebels might just be the burning fuze that explodes the Sunni-Shia powder keg.

Obama and the Euros are trying to calm the situation, urging a negotiated peace between Yemen's Sunni government and the Houthi rebels but, according to the ICG, the mixed up gaggle of players aren't in the mood for talking.

No major party seems truly to want to halt what threatens to become a regional war. The slim chance to salvage a political process requires that regional actors immediately cease military action and help the domestic parties agree on a broadly acceptable president or presidential council. Only then can Yemenis return to the political negotiating table to address other outstanding issues.

The Huthi-Hadi divide is the most explosive, but it is not the only conflict. Tensions are also unsettling the recent marriage of convenience between the Huthis and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who, after being deposed in 2011, has taken advantage of popular dissatisfaction and tacitly allied himself with the Huthis against their common enemies to stage a political comeback through his party, the General People’s Congress (GPC), and possibly his son, Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh. Divisions in the south, which was an independent state prior to its 1990 union with the north, are rampant as well. Southern separatists are internally split and suspicious of Hadi, a southerner who supports continued unity with the north. Then there are al-Qaeda and a nascent Islamic State (IS) movement, both determined to fight the Huthis and take advantage of the state’s collapse to claim territory.

...GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council - the Sunni Arab states] countries have lost faith as well and are increasingly committed to reversing Huthi gains at virtually any cost. Saudi Arabia considers the Huthis Iranian proxies, a stance that pushes them closer to Tehran. Throwing their weight behind Hadi, the Saudis moved their embassy to Aden and reportedly bankroll anti-Huthi tribal mobilisation in the central governorate of Marib and the south. They lead efforts to isolate the Huthis diplomatically, strangle them economically and, now, weaken them militarily. In turn, the Huthis denounce Hadi as illegitimate and offer $100,000 for his capture. They have conducted military exercises on the Saudi border and likely will harden their position in response to Saudi military intervention. They are less dependent on Tehran than Hadi and his allies are on Riyadh, but on today’s trajectory, their relative self-sufficiency will not last long. They are already soliciting Iranian financial and political support.

...Without minimum consensus within and beyond its borders, Yemen is headed for protracted violence on multiple fronts. This combination of proxy wars, sectarian violence, state collapse and militia rule has become sadly familiar in the region. Nobody is likely to win such a fight, which will only benefit those who prosper in the chaos of war, such as al-Qaeda and IS. But great human suffering would be certain. An alternative exists, but only if Yemenis and their neighbours choose it.

This is a perfect example of what's being called "new war."  It's a furball of state and non-state actors.  Governments, including outside nations, rebels, insurgents, militias, terrorists and criminal organizations.  It's a very fluid type of warfare that commonly features shifting alliances among the parties and widely differing and at times irreconcilable political and territorial objectives.  In the context of a negotiated peace, it really is the equivalent of herding cats.

We're not built for this stuff.  We like our combat "old war" style.  Good guys versus bad guys; winners and losers; war and peace.  We don't know what to do when peace is not a realistic option, certainly not an outcome we can dictate. That's when we do what we Westerners have been doing since Algeria and Viet Nam.  It's what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq and it's partially responsible for the hot mess that is the Middle East today.  We go into a place, toss it over, hang around for a decade or so and then leave.  We cannot accept, despite our persistent lack of success, that we're on a path to near certain failure.  It's right there in the user guide - our side gets to win.  End of story.  What, can't these people read?

UPDATE - The United Nations has thrown in the towel, pulling all UN personnel out of Yemen, a measure that's seen as dashing all hopes of a negotiated deal of any sort.

One other thought.  If this business in Yemen is the opening salvo in a grand, Sunni versus Shiite regional war, let's hope Harper has plans to get our people out of the Middle East on short notice.  If this thing blow up, everyone might start looking like the enemy.

It's a Muslim Religious Civil War and We're Going In Blind.

When we see one of our closest Arab allies, Saudi Arabia, go after a Shiite bunch engaged in combat with ISIS and al Qaeda forces, the same groups we're supposedly fighting, then it should be obvious that all is not as it seems. Suddenly this entire anti-ISIS coalition smells off.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar are up to their arses in modern strike fighters, over 800 among them, and they're within easy flying range of ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria.  Stationing a penny packet of 6 CF-18s in that territory is literally sending coals to Newcastle.

I assume Obama has any number of geo-political reasons for delivering yet another Western air armada to fight ISIS but c'mon it's the tail wagging the dog as usual. We, however, seem to be there because somebody blew the "coalition" dog whistle.  That's life in America's Aerial Foreign Legion.

Harper is utterly Pavlovian about these gigs.  It's the equivalent of yelling "squirrel" to a setter.



We get in, not knowing what we're going to achieve or how or what we're going to do when things go sideways which is often the result of going into these things in such a half-arsed manner.

Whacking Iran - Maybe Sooner Than You Think - The Warmonger Digest, vol. 2

It's reported that the Saudis have given Israel a green light to overfly Saudi Arabia should Netanyahu decide to launch an attack on Iran.

Jerusalem and Riyadh do not have diplomatic ties, but unconfirmed reports have swirled for years of coordination between them against the common enemy of Iran, a partnership that may ramp up should the world powers reach a reportedly emerging deal that would allow Tehran to continue enriching some uranium.

There's some suggestion that NATO tacitly approves of an Israeli air war on Iran.

Saudi Arabia and Israel may be given the green light to attack Iran on behalf of NATO powers if NATO feels it could not sell a direct war in Iran to their populations back home. Regime change in Syria is a prerequisite before an overt attack on Iran can take place however, as Damascus is an important Iranian ally in the Middle East. If a military assault on Iran occurs it would be difficult for the arena of conflict to be contained to the Middle East, as it has the potential to rapidly escalate into a wider conflict involving Russia and China.

Western nations have been engaged in attempting to covertly overthrow the present Iranian regime for decades, a country that has been placed under sanctions by an assortment of nations for years. Regime change in Iran has been a dream of Western foreign policy strategists for decades, with Iran pinpointed in a strategic paper written in 2000 by the neoconservative thinktank, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), alongside countries such as Iraq, Libya and Syria. Retired US four star general and former NATO commander, Wesley Clark, also revealed a plan circulating around the Pentagon in 2001 to attack 7 countries in 5 years, with Iran named as one of the seven.

I wonder if Israel will be able to wait until it gets those F-35s.

What Are We Doing Flooding this Place With Arms?

Saudi Arabia has now displaced India to become the largest armaments importer in the world.  Saudi imports are reported to have shot up an alarming 54% over just the past year.

Among the beneficiaries of the House of Saud's largesse is Canada, having inked a contract to sell nearly $15-billion worth of light armoured fighting vehicles to the fanatical Sunni Muslim kingdom.

Saudi Arabia overtook India to become the world's biggest weapons importer in 2014, a year when global defence trade rose for the sixth straight year to a record $64.4 billion, research company IHS said on Sunday.

The growth in supplies was due to expanding demand from emerging economies for military aircraft and rising tensions in the Middle East and Asia Pacific, IHS, a provider of global market and economic information, said.

The United States remained the top defence exporter in 2014, ahead of Russia, France, Britain and Germany, a top-five ranking unchanged from 2013, IHS said in an annual defence trade report.

"Growth in Saudi Arabia has been dramatic and, based on previous orders, these numbers are not going to slow down,” an IHS statement quoted its senior defence analyst Ben Moores as saying.

Saudi imports rose 54 percent between 2013 and 2014, and based on planned deliveries imports will grow 52 percent to $9.8 billion in 2015, IHS said, without stating the 2014 sales.

This raises many questions.  Exactly what do the Saudi Princes have in mind for all this deathware?  Presumably they didn't order the stuff without some idea for how they would use it.  The Saudi army's only significant operations since Saddam was driven out of Kuwait was democracy suppression in the Gulf States and they can easily stamp out nascent democracy threats with the stuff they already have to hand.

My guess?  They're preparing for an all-out religious war on Iran, a Sunni v. Shiite death match.  If that sounds preposterous, it shouldn't.  It's the very thing that Saudi prince Bandar bin Sultan described to former MI6 chief, Sir Richard Dearlove. 

Some time before 9/11, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing and ominous conversation with the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Prince Bandar told him: "The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally 'God help the Shia'. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them."

The article from The Independent is vital to understanding what is really going on beneath the surface in the Middle East and Persia.  Our national narrative, at least in Canada and the US, holds Iran to be the evil one, the state sponsor of terrorism while, in reality, it's Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf States that made the attacks of 9/11, the US embassy bombings, the bombing of the USS Cole, not to mention al Qaeda and ISIS possible.  It's these same people we're arming to the teeth with the latest in high-tech deathware.

It's more than passing curious how readily we denounce Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and plaster it with sanctions but never utter a peep or raise an accusatory finger to the ultimate state sponsor of terrorism, Saudi Arabia. 

Then we assume that Iran, under this enormous existential threat from the Saudis, is seeking a nuclear weapon to attack Israel.  As Gwynne Dyer points out, when Iran has been actively working on enriching uranium, it has been when it felt threatened by Saddam's nuclear weapon programme or Pakistan's.  In other words, Tehran's interest in nuclear weapons has been primarily defensive.  They act when they perceive an existential threat - to Iran, to themselves.  And now, as we're flooding the country that has vowed to eliminate Shiite Islam with weapons that, by their numbers, defy any other explanation than war against Iran, we insist that Iran give up the means to defend itself.  

The 28-Pages that Could Condemn the House of Saud and Liberate the West.

The Gulf princes and sheikhs, especially the House of Saud, have been very successful in ducking scrutiny over their role in launching, funding and covering for every Sunni terrorist group from al Qaeda to ISIS to whatever bunch is now being organized to carry on their Islamic civil war pitting Sunni versus Shiite.

It's long been believed that 28-pages of the 9/11 Commission report were redacted by the White House because they finger the Saudi royals.  Pressure is now building for their release.

If those pages ever see the light of day, much of the credit will have to go to Zacarias Moussaoui, a former al Qaeda operative now serving a life sentence at a federal super-max prison in Colorado.

Moussaoui recently testified that he served as a courier for bin Laden, delivering the al Qaeda chief's letters directly to top Saudi princes, including the newly crowned king, Salman.

The Saudis have rushed to denounce Moussaoui as a mad man, claiming his evidence is delusional, unreliable.   The CBC's Neil Macdonald doesn't see it that way.

The Saudi embassy in Washington says ZacariasMoussaoui is a deranged criminal.

He may well be; the so-called "20th hijacker" is certainly a criminal, confined to the most secure federal prison in America, and certainly portrayed himself as crazy during his 9/11 trial, 10 years ago in Virginia.

I covered it, and his courtroom rants were either delusional or meant to be perceived as such. (It didn't work; the presiding judge pronounced him competent to stand trial and "extremely intelligent.")

But his most recent testimony, given at the super-max penitentiary in Colorado last year and made public this week, reads like what it is: a detailed accounting by a man who holds a master's degree from a British university.

And what a remarkable account it is.

Moussaoui states that the 9/11 hijackers were supported not only by Saudi Arabian charities, but by Saudi princes and diplomats.

He reels off names he says were in an al-Qaeda database of moneyed donors, making it clear the jihadists couldn't really have accomplished much without them.

Macdonald says relations between Washington and Riyadh are becoming very strained, even tenuous.

Obama, having endorsed the Arab Spring as a wonderful expression of the people's will, also had to look the other way in 2011 when the Saudis sent troops across the causeway into Bahrain to violently crush Shia crowds protesting their treatment by the emirate's Sunni rulers.

Saudi's minority Shias have met with similar treatment; a respected Shia cleric was sentenced to death recently for criticizing the government.

The Saudis, who fund the building of mosques in America and around the world, strictly prohibit the presence of any religion but Islam on their soil, and America, the champion of religious freedom, says nothing.

The Saudis also openly scorned Obama for not being quick enough or generous enough in funding Syria's rebel forces. (As it turned out, of course, much of the Saudi funding ended up being channeled to ISIS and its cohort, but never mind.)

But the American public's willingness to tolerate the hypocrisy around Saudi Arabia is wearing thin. According to reports in U.S. media, Obama was unwilling or unable to form any sort of real friendship with Abdullah, the recently deceased king.

Increasingly, Saudi Arabia is being discussed in the U.S. media with the same tone accorded Pakistan, another official ally with at least informal links to al-Qaeda.

Canada is, of course, caught up in this same schizophrenia.  We're over in Iraq bombing ISIS while we're selling $15-billion worth of armoured democracy-suppressing fighting vehicles to the same buggers who funded ISIS in the first place.

This is more than just settling scores.  These Gulf princes and sheikhs unleash these monsters (al Qaeda, Isis and the like) and then turn to the West to waste our lives and treasure cleaning up their messes when they go rogue.  They're not giving up their not-so-covert war against Shia Islam either which almost guarantees we'll be over there fighting the next bunch and the one after that and the one after that.

If you need to kill a snake, you cut off the head.  We've been wasting our time and our soldiers' lives banging away at the tail.

The Hypocrisy is Blinding

One of these people is Not Happy to Be Here

Barack Obama cuts short his state visit to India, but not before lecturing his hosts on tolerance and women's rights, so that he can kiss the slippers of the new Saudi king, Salman.

So, Barack, how do you explain that one?  “Sometimes we need to balance our need to speak to them about human rights issues with immediate concerns we have in terms of counter-terrorism or dealing with regional stability.”

Okay, I get it.  The state that has had its sticky fingers in every major terrorist outfit from al Qaeda to ISIS, whose citizens crewed the 9/11 planes that launched the West into a 15-year fiasco of hapless (and potentially endless) wars in the Middle East and South Asia, is vital to counter-terrorism and regional stability so we'll just look the other way at their lethal religious intolerance and their oppression of their women folk.

(For a little eye-opening look into King Salman's shady past, go here.)

Of course in Harperland we're falling over ourselves to deliver $15-billion worth of armoured democracy-suppression combat vehicles to the same herd of swine. Who knows, maybe we can win the contract to sharpen their headsman's swords.

But this Gal is All Smiles

Obama's Saudi ass-kissing was a full bore effort.

Obama arrived in Riyadh at the head of a large delegation, which included senior officials from past and present administrations, members of the U.S. Congress – both Republican and Democrat – and top U.S. security officials, signaling the strong ties between the two states.

Joining Obama in paying respects over the death of King Abdullah was Secretary of State John Kerry, who arrived on a separate flight from Germany, as well as Republican statesmen James Baker, who served as secretary of state in the George H.W. Bush administration, and Condoleezza Rice, who served as secretary of state for President George W. Bush.

CIA Director John Brennan, Lisa Monaco, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser and Susan Rice, the U.S. National Security adviser.

Former security officials Stephen Hadley, a former U.S. National Security adviser, and Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush were also listed as part of the delegation.

Members from both ends of the U.S. political spectrum also took part in the visit, including Democrat Minority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Republican Senator John McCain, who is often critical of Obama’s foreign policy.

What, no Dick Cheney?  C'mon fellas.  

Update:

From Bloomberg.

The new king shook hands with President Obama at the Erga Palace but didn’t acknowledge the first lady during a brief meeting at the funeral for King Abdullah. Barack and Michelle Obama cut short their trip to India to attend the funeral.

Several videos posted on Saudis' Facebook pages obscured Michelle Obama's face. They were removed shortly after they were posted. I captured a screenshot of one such video before it was taken down. The Arab news service Mashahead posted on YouTube a video allegedly taken from the Saudi government television broadcast showing the blurred spot.

Saudi television officials are denying they blurred images of Michelle Obama from their broadcasts.  You be the judge.

Next time, Michelle, bring your Happy Face when you're meeting the Lizard King.

Is Harper Collaborating With the Saudi Princes to Crush Their Shiite Minority?

Stephen Harper is beginning to catch a bit of flack over the sale of 15-billion dollars worth of Canadian-built light armoured fighting vehicles to Saudi Arabia.

At first blush it's hard to understand what Saudi Arabia, that already has a significant armoured force but shows no inclination to use it except to suppress pro-democracy dissidents in places like Bahrain, wants with those LAVs.  Maybe it's got something to do with this, the simmering religious conflict between the Sunni House of Saud and Shiite Iran.  Could the Saudis be gearing up to crush their own Shiite minority?

Last October, Saudi Arabia’s Special Criminal Court sentenced Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr — a popular Shi’ite cleric and outspoken political dissident — to death.

This was not an ordinary criminal trial, even considering Saudi Arabia’s liberal use of capital punishment. Among other charges, the prosecutor sought to convict al-Nimr of “waging war on God” and “aiding terrorists,” even calling for the cleric to be publicly executed by “crucifixion.” In Saudi Arabia, this rare method of execution entails beheading the individual before publicly displaying his decapitated body.

The widely revered Shi’ite cleric was ultimately convicted of “disobeying” the king, waging violence against the state, inviting “foreign meddling” in the kingdom, inciting vandalism and sectarian violence, and insulting the Prophet Muhammad’s relatives. However, al-Nimr’s family and supportersclaim that the ruling was politically driven and insist that the cleric led a non-violent movement committed to promoting Shi’ite rights, women’s rights, and democratic reform in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabian Shi’ites have long complained of state-sponsored discrimination and human rights abuses by conservative Sunni authorities.According to Human Rights Watch, Saudi Arabian Shi’ites “face systematic discrimination in religion, education, justice, and employment.”

In early 2011, anti-government protests erupted in the Qatif district of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, which is home to nearly all of Saudi Arabia’s 3 million Shi’ite citizens and nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. Throughout 2011 and 2012, al-Nimr was a leader in these protests, in which activists demanded the release of the “forgotten prisoners” — a reference to nine political prisoners who had been detained then for some 16 years.

After Saudi Arabian, Emirati, and Kuwaiti forces entered Bahrain to help quell a non-violent Shi’ite uprising in the tiny island kingdom, Saudi Shi’ites expressed solidarity with their Bahraini counterparts. This prompted officials in Riyadh to fear that growing Shi’ite dissent could trigger a crisis in the strategically vital Eastern Province, which borders several other countries with sizeable Shi’ite populations. So between March 2011 and August 2012, the Saudi government waged a harsh crackdown on Shi’ite protestors, killing over 20, injuring several dozen, and detaining over 1,000 others, including 24 children.

Abdullah, the one with the beard, died today, age 90.

When you supply 15-billion dollars worth of armoured fighting vehicles to a gang of double-dealing cutthroats like the House of Saud, you're complicit in whatever they do with them.  Prominent Saudis like Prince Bandar bin Sultan have openly stated that the Saudis are gearing up to exterminate Shia Islam.

Some time before 9/11, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing and ominous conversation with the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Prince Bandar told him: "The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally 'God help the Shia'. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them."

More here, here and here.

Our Schizophrenic War on Terror

Ah, yeah, right.

It's tough to win a war when you have to ally yourselves with both sides.  That injects an element of schizophrenia in your policies and planning.  It results in a fatal lack of coherence, a narrative that is hopelessly confused.  And that is what confronts us in our struggle with radical, extremist, murderous Sunni Islam.

But it's unfair to blame the West for this incoherence when the major Arab players gave rise to it and were first afflicted.  They still are and they're dragging us down with them.

We associate our by now familiar enemies - al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and similar groups - with radical Islam often known as Wahabbism.  That's fair enough.  Yet the monied branch of Wahabbism that funds the operational, murderous branch, is our ally.

On Thursday, The Middle East Monitor, ran an op-ed, "If terrorist groups are to be defeated, Saudi Arabia must stop funding those it favours."

...Perhaps contradictorily, the country is blamed widely for the rise of ISIS. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the government in Riyadh has been funding Islamist groups fighting to overthrow President Bashar Al-Assad. It was these groups that gave birth to ISIS.

Saudi Arabia has a long and complicated relationship with Sunni terrorist groups. On the one hand, the kingdom, which denies outright that it funds terrorism, is engaged in a regional cold war with Iran, a Shia state, and as such seeks to strengthen opposition to Shia leaders in the Middle East. As Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6 has said, Saudi Arabia is "deeply attracted to any militancy which can effectively challenge Shiadom." The country practices and is run according to Wahabbism, an extreme interpretation of Islam that many Sunni militant groups also follow. On the other hand, Riyadh's rulers feel personally threatened by the ascendancy of groups such as Al-Qaeda in the early 2000s, or ISIS today. This is because they fear that these groups might seek to replace the Saud family with even more extreme Wahabbi leaders. Saudi Arabia is home to Islam's two holiest sites in Makkah and Madinah and as such is always a potential target for fundamentalist groups, which might seek to take over the cities. ISIS propaganda, for instance, vows "to liberate the 'Land of the Two Holy Mosques'."

As a strictly controlled police state with a wealthy state apparatus and an all-powerful monarchy, Saudi Arabia is far better equipped to tackle the internal terrorist threat than most of its neighbours are. However, the root problem will not disappear until Riyadh stops funding, encouraging and nurturing militant groups overseas whenever it suits Saudi interests to do so.

If you can't believe that the Saudis and their Gulf state cousins are playing both sides of this struggle and losing badly at both, you should read this eye-opener published by The Independent in mid-July, 2014.

Thanks to Wikileaks blowing the cover on Hillary Clinton's messages it's obvious that Washington has known since 2009 that the Saudis have been funding the worst terrorism the Middle East has seen.

Petro-states tend to breed incompetent, indulged leaders who sometimes sit upon vast wealth and wonder what to do with it.  Combine that sort of wealth and idleness with fundamentalist religious extremism and it breeds a succession of Islamist extremist terror movements such as al Qaeda and, more recently, ISIS.

The Gulf princes are like Dr. Frankenstein.  They unleash monsters to attack their perceived rivals but when those creations instead also turn on them well then it's time to call in the cavalry, the West.  In the result we'll battle al Qaeda for 15, 20, maybe 50 years, ISIS for who knows how long, and, if we do manage to knock them down, we'll be drawn in to tackle the next terrorist organization our allies, the Gulf oil princes, decide to fund.

So long as we dutifully collaborate with Sunni extremists like the House of Saud, we may never get out of this.  We keep boasting how we have no time for "state sponsored terrorism" and yet we keep showing that is simply untrue.  We know the very worst terrorism sponsoring states and we actually consider them our allies even as they spawn murderous gangs that would be only too happy to attack us.

You don't like monsters?  Then take out Dr. Frankenstein - all the Dr. Frankensteins.  If you don't, your war on terror is nothing more than pissing into the wind.