Month: March 2009

al-Shorouk’s story on secret Sudan raids

The relatively new Egyptian newspaper al-Shorouk has been making some news yesterday, reporting that the US air force had been engaged in a series of attacks against convoys of trucks carrying arms in Eastern Sudan. The destination of the trucks, apparently, was Gaza via Sinai. Needless to say this is a huge story, not only because it would appear to confirm allegations that Hamas is obtaining Iranian-purchased arms via Sudan (and probably originally Djibouti) and that they are being smuggled through Sinai and the Rafah tunnels. It followed up on the story today alleging that US Air Force raids had claimed 300 lives.

The reason we’ve never heard about any of this, apparently, is that the US is not advertising the operations, the al-Bashir regime in Khartoum has declared a media blackout, and Egypt is respecting the blackout but keeping a close eye since this involves major arms traffic (it’s an old route, once used by the French poet Rimbaud) going through its territory. Today al-Shorouk said that an Egyptian intelligence agent visited the area to verify the issue.

I’ve been talking about this with a few people who closely follow the news yesterday and we’re all rather skeptical at this point. Some of the Egyptian press (not necessarily al-Shorouk though, as far as I know) has a bad reputation for pulling things out of thin air or basing them on unreliable disinformation websites like Debka. This would be a huge, world scoop if it turns out to be true, involving so many of the region’s hottest issues: arms trade, illegal US operations, Hamas’ supply line, Iran, Sudan and its recently indicted president. The story also assumes that a convoy of trucks carrying weapons (presumably the Grad rockets Hamas is launching against Israel) are able to make their way through Egypt, which seems impossible without the cooperation of the government or serious wasta up high. (That being said, drugs use the same route, and small arms did come from Sudan during the Islamist insurrection of the 1980s and 1990s.)

So basically, either al-Shorouk got it wrong, or it has revealed the first secret military actions of the Obama administration to control the arms smuggling to Gaza issue – as the Bush administration had promised Israel in the MOU it signed in mid-January. I’m a skeptic, but I’ll be watching how this develops.

The curse of the voodoo SMS

Ya lahwy:

CAIRO (AFP) — The Egyptian government has sought to dispel rumours that a mobile phone text message “from unknown foreign quarters” is spreading around the country and killing those who receive it.

The extraordinary move by Egypt’s health and interior ministries follows press reports that an SMS containing a special combination of numbers killed a man in the town of Mallawi south of Cairo.

“He died vomiting blood,followed by stroke, shortly after he received a message from an unknownphone number,” the Egyptian Gazette reported on Wednesday.

“The number begins with the symbol (+) and ends with (111),” it said.

An “official security source” was quoted by the official MENA news agency as denying that those who receive the SMS “get splitting headaches followed by brain haemorrhage that leads to death.”

A statement from the health ministry quoted health officials in several regions as saying that they had “received no cases with such symptoms”

“These rumours contradict all scientific facts,” the statement said.

Egypt’s interior ministry has detained three workers at an oil company for allegedly starting the rumours “and they are now being interrogated,” MENA said.

via AFP: Egypt tries to hang up on killer SMS rumours.

Obama

Is is just me, or is it still surprising to see an American president that is articulate and can handle a press conference with grace and intelligence? Maybe I don’t watch TV news often enough, but I am still taken aback every time I see Obama by how well he wears his title. Unlike his predecessor, and in many respects better than Clinton.

I like this:

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama continues to face fallout from the outrage over bonuses paid to executives at AIG, which is 80% owned by the government and has received billions in federal bailout money. Asked why he did not go public with his outrage as soon as he learned of the retention bonuses at AIG, the president snapped, “I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.”

The president hit on a new theme for his administration: Persistence. He said the election of a conservative government in Israel, with a prime minister skeptical of a Palestinian state made the prospects for peace “not easier than it was.”

But, he said, as with his domestic efforts, he will soldier on.

“That whole philosophy of persistence, by the way, is one that I’m going to be emphasizing again and again in the months and years to come, as long as I am in this office,” he concluded. “I’m a big believer in persistence.”

(That’s probably how he got Michelle to date him.)

And I say this as I disagree with some of the stuff he’s done (on the economy) and wish he would get his act together and set up a Middle East foreign policy team and plan already! It would be particularly interesting to get confirmation that Hosni Mubarak will be making his first trip stateside in five years in May, as much of the Egyptian press has assumed with the recent Gamal Mubarak and Omar Suleiman visits to DC. Will Obama make Mubarak persona non grata? Will he force issues on the agenda that will make Mubarak not want to come (his original problem with Bush). Will there be any new policy departure on the question of democracy promotion in Egypt, which in 2004-2005 was arguably the flagship for the policy in the Arab world?

Update: Muhammad Salah discusses this in al-Hayat.

Fundamentalism in Israel’s army

It’s been a while since I agreed with Christopher Hitchens on anything else than the theory of evolution:

“Peering over the horrible pile of Palestinian civilian casualties that has immediately resulted, it’s fairly easy to see where this is going in the medium-to-longer term. The zealot settlers and their clerical accomplices are establishing an army within the army so that one day, if it is ever decided to disband or evacuate the colonial settlements, there will be enough officers and soldiers, stiffened by enough rabbis and enough extremist sermons, to refuse to obey the order. Torah verses will also be found that make it permissible to murder secular Jews as well as Arabs. The dress rehearsals for this have already taken place, with the religious excuses given for Baruch Goldstein’s rampage and the Talmudic evasions concerning the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Once considered highly extreme, such biblical exegeses are moving ever closer to the mainstream. It’s high time the United States cut off any financial support for Israel that can be used even indirectly for settler activity, not just because such colonization constitutes a theft of another people’s land but also because our Constitution absolutely forbids us to spend public money on the establishment of any religion.”

Hat tip: Mango Girl.

A message from the Israeli tourist board

I can’t resist interjecting some facts for prospective tourists for Israel who are lured by this video that’s lately been aired in the US:

Actually, if you visit Israel, there is a good chance that YOU WILL DIE.

It’s not just the suicide bombings, stray rockets, crazed bulldozer operators and various types of assassins. It’s also the head-fucked IDF soldiers, rabidly anti-gentile Jewish fundamentalists, settlers and crazy Russian mob types. Even if they don’t kill you, they are generally rather unpleasant: just look at the customer service at those electronics stores in New York City. You know this is the place where Armageddon Hill is located, and where the Messiah is set to fight the undead armies of the Anti-Christ. Why take the chance when the Bahamas are sunnier, France has better food and Morocco more oriental exotica than you could possibly ever need?

And on top of it there’s a chance you’ll be given a full-body cavity search at the airport. No really, that does happen. Frequently. That doesn’t happen in Mayorca, does it? Or Buenos Aires.

“No one belongs here more than you” they say at the end of the ad. Well, why not let millions of ethnically cleansed Palestinians have a go first, and come back when they’ve sorted that out.

P.S. I remember the old ad, “Have a ball… in Israel” was a much better jingle, especially to the tune of “Hava Nagila”. Great song, that.

Qatar

I’ve long been fascinated with Qatar’s foreign policy in recent years, which appears to be driven by a need to hedge its bets (hosting a US military base, good relations with Iran, funding al-Jazeera, pissing off the Saudis every now and then…) and the personalities of its emir and his cousin the foreign minister. Here are some recent articles that highlight how perilous the acrobatic acts from Doha are starting to look like, particularly as we see a major Egyptian-Saudi push for “Arab unity” at the upcoming Doha summit (unity, that is, behind the Egyptian initiative to reconcile Hamas and Fatah, with the latter having the upper hand.) All this as gas prices plummet and sovereign funds pause to take stock of the global financial crisis…

That last article points out Qatar is still set to see high GDP growth and is secure as the world’s first supplier of liquified natural gas. Still, if European demand significantly weakens, and the infant world LNG market hits its first glut.

One thing that’s still not clear to me is the answer to the question — beyond remaining secure from Saudi influence – what does Qatar want?

Not just a slogan on a T-shirt

Lawrence of Cyberia goes through those hilarious Israeli army T-shirts and matches them with the war crime behind them:

Abu Dhabi’s investment in manufacturing

Interesting take in the FT on Abu Dhabi’s goals in investing in major manufacturing companies:

“But what makes Abu Dhabi unlike not just its sister and competitor emirates but pretty much everywhere in the Arab world is its peculiar devotion to manufacturing.

Much of its oil wealth is being used to start industries from scratch: in cars and aerospace, components and chips. As well as Daimler, it has invested in companies such as GE, Rolls-Royce, EADS and Advanced Micro Devices. This may look quixotic, yet invariably these stakes come with local training and manufacturing commitments.

Along with reform of local education, the goal is to use manufacturing to create skills and a culture of innovation – much more than to establish new branches of old industries. This at least tries to offer an alternative to the usual model in the Gulf – where the public sector employs the bulk of nationals – or the trading company model common in most other Arab countries.

Some 40 years ago, the Syrian philosopher Sadek al-Azm wrote a famous critique of the mind-set underlying serial Arab defeats. Arabs, he said, have become removed from the social and economic processes that make innovation and scientific breakthroughs possible. Abu Dhabi, it seems, wants to create, not just consume.”

If you have the cash and a taste for risk, this is a great time to mop up depressed stocks in companies that are fundamentally sound or have a great body of unique know-how. I’m still curious to see exactly how Abu Dhabi is convincing these companies to set up manufacturing centers in the emirates, and whether that makes sense (in trade logistics terms, it just might…)

That crazy Israeli sense of humor

Links for March 21st

Links from my del.icio.us account for March 21st: