Middle East landscape rapidly changing

[give her dixie]

Good stuff Puckoon, and sure after you watch the documentary, we can have another chat.

Peace and love bro.

[muppet]

Groucho you should delete that post. It wouldnt do to post anything which won't advance the anti "UNITED STATES OF ISRAEL" ramblings of John.

US tanks...
US Apaches.... (I thought the cavalary all but wiped them out)
US F16s....

Don't worry about mentioning at all John that the Israeli incursion was in response to Palestinian ADMITTED mortar attacks.


Emperor - put a pair of monks on at least so the small boy can stop pointing at you.

Neil, Israel invaded Gaza, and Palestinian resistance responded. What would you do Neil if someone broke into your house? Would you stand idly by?
Neil, as for the US tanks, US Apache helicopters, US F16's, and the missiles they fired, it is your tax dollars that have sent them there. Are you happy with how your dollars are at work Neil?

If only the foreign nationals here in Ireland were as patriotic as the foreign nationals in the US are to the war machine that is Uncle Sam,  then we might have a different result in the elections tomorrow.

Surely this breaks the rules of the board 
Could you possibly get any lower as an individual.. snakes belly comes to mind here!

I just want to keep this for the next time you try to hint at my identity. 

[Mike Sheehy]

Having spent 7 years in the US, I have nothing but good to say about my time there, and the friends I continue to have there. However, I am totally against the foriegn policy of the US Government who are ruled by the Zionists, and the illegal wars they rage on innocent people. That doesn't make me anti US.

GHD, what are your thoughts on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion ? Do you think there is any truth in this text...?

[Groucho]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion

The Protocols of the Elders of ZionFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is the latest accepted revision, accepted on 23 February 2011.Jump to: navigation, search

A reproduction of the 1905 Russian edition by Serge Nilus, appearing in Praemonitus Praemunitus (1920).Antisemitism


The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fraudulent antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan to achieve global domination. The text was fabricated in the Russian Empire, and was first published in 1903. The text was translated into several languages and widely disseminated in the early part of the twentieth century. Henry Ford published the text in The International Jew, and it was widely distributed in the United States. In 1921, a series of articles printed in The Times revealed that the text was a fraud, and some of the material was plagiarized from earlier works of political satire unrelated to Jews. The Protocols purports to document the minutes of a late 19th-century meeting of Jewish leaders discussing their goal of global Jewish hegemony. Their proposals to engender such include subverting the morals of the Gentile world, controlling the world's economies, and controlling the press. The Protocols is still widely available today on the Internet and in print in numerous languages.


This notion of global domination......by Muslim, Christian or Jew......is ridiculous.
The big problem that the US have in the region is that they are reliant on others (particularly Israeli) for intelligence.
Israel is the only true "friend" that they have in the region and I think that they(Israel) exploit this all the time.
I'll give an example......say Israeli intelligence claimed that Saudi Arabia had the capability to develop nuclear weapons, and that there was a good possibility that the aging King would be replaced by someone under the influence of radical Imams.....

how would the USA act?


Trying to understand the region ........it would be easier to understand women!

[Mike Sheehy]

but you can understand why someone would be suspicious when they read the constant posts harping  on about "zionists"  and their nefarious plans. You'd have to wonder about where that person is coming from.

The idea that the US government is ruled by zionists is ridiculous and is exactly the kind of rabble rousing statements that have been posted on here ad nauseum and that have gone, mostly, unchallenged. This is exactly the kind of fiction one can read in anti-semitic texts like the Elders of Zion.

There is a strong Israeli lobby , just as there is a strong NRA lobby but also a strong anti-gun lobby. Likewise the UCLA and the Unions lobby strongly for their interests. You can argue about the whole concept of lobbying but to suggest that one group dominates to the exclusion of others is BS.

[Pangurban]

Forget the Lobby and the Lobbyists Boys, follow the money

[give her dixie]

Robert Fisk: The destiny of this pageant lies in the Kingdom of Oil

Saturday, 26 February 2011

The Middle East earthquake of the past five weeks has been the most tumultuous, shattering, mind-numbing experience in the history of the region since the fall of the Ottoman empire. For once, "shock and awe" was the right description.

The docile, supine, unregenerative, cringing Arabs of Orientalism have transformed themselves into fighters for the freedom, liberty and dignity which we Westerners have always assumed it was our unique role to play in the world. One after another, our satraps are falling, and the people we paid them to control are making their own history – our right to meddle in their affairs (which we will, of course, continue to exercise) has been diminished for ever.

The tectonic plates continue to shift, with tragic, brave – even blackly humorous – results. Countless are the Arab potentates who always claimed they wanted democracy in the Middle East. King Bashar of Syria is to improve public servants' pay. King Bouteflika of Algeria has suddenly abandoned the country's state of emergency. King Hamad of Bahrain has opened the doors of his prisons. King Bashir of Sudan will not stand for president again. King Abdullah of Jordan is studying the idea of a constitutional monarchy. And al-Qa'ida are, well, rather silent.

Who would have believed that the old man in the cave would suddenly have to step outside, dazzled, blinded by the sunlight of freedom rather than the Manichean darkness to which his eyes had become accustomed. Martyrs there were aplenty across the Muslim world – but not an Islamist banner to be seen. The young men and women bringing an end to their torment of dictators were mostly Muslims, but the human spirit was greater than the desire for death. They are Believers, yes – but they got there first, toppling Mubarak while Bin Laden's henchmen still called for his overthrow on outdated videotapes.

But now a warning. It's not over. We are experiencing today that warm, slightly clammy feeling before the thunder and lightning break out. Gaddafi's final horror movie has yet to end, albeit with that terrible mix of farce and blood to which we are accustomed in the Middle East. And his impending doom is, needless to say, throwing into ever-sharper perspective the vile fawning of our own potentates. Berlusconi – who in many respects is already a ghastly mockery of Gaddafi himself – and Sarkozy, and Lord Blair of Isfahan are turning out to look even shabbier than we believed. Those faith-based eyes blessed Gaddafi the murderer. I did write at the time that Blair and Straw had forgotten the "whoops" factor, the reality that this weird light bulb was absolutely bonkers and would undoubtedly perform some other terrible act to shame our masters. And sure enough, every journalist is now going to have to add "Mr Blair's office did not return our call" to his laptop keyboard.

Everyone is now telling Egypt to follow the "Turkish model" – this seems to involve a pleasant cocktail of democracy and carefully controlled Islam. But if this is true, Egypt's army will keep an unwanted, undemocratic eye on its people for decades to come. As lawyer Ali Ezzatyar has pointed out, "Egypt's military leaders have spoken of threats to the "Egyptian way of life"... in a not so subtle reference to threats from the Muslim Brotherhood. This can be seen as a page taken from the Turkish playbook." The Turkish army turned up as kingmakers four times in modern Turkish history. And who but the Egyptian army, makers of Nasser, constructors of Sadat, got rid of the ex-army general Mubarak when the game was up?

And democracy – the real, unfettered, flawed but brilliant version which we in the West have so far lovingly (and rightly) cultivated for ourselves – is not going, in the Arab world, to rest happy with Israel's pernicious treatment of Palestinians and its land theft in the West Bank. Now no longer the "only democracy in the Middle East", Israel argued desperately – in company with Saudi Arabia, for heaven's sake – that it was necessary to maintain Mubarak's tyranny. It pressed the Muslim Brotherhood button in Washington and built up the usual Israeli lobby fear quotient to push Obama and La Clinton off the rails yet again. Faced with pro-democracy protesters in the lands of oppression, they duly went on backing the oppressors until it was too late. I love "orderly transition". The "order" bit says it all. Only Israeli journalist Gideon Levy got it right. "We should be saying 'Mabrouk Misr!'," he said. Congratulations, Egypt!

Yet in Bahrain, I had a depressing experience. King Hamad and Crown Prince Salman have been bowing to their 70 per cent (80 per cent?) Shia population, opening prison doors, promising constitutional reforms. So I asked a government official in Manama if this was really possible. Why not have an elected prime minister instead of a member of the Khalifa royal family? He clucked his tongue. "Impossible," he said. "The GCC would never permit this." For GCC – the Gulf Co-operation Council – read Saudi Arabia. And here, I am afraid, our tale grows darker.

We pay too little attention to this autocratic band of robber princes; we think they are archaic, illiterate in modern politics, wealthy (yes, "beyond the dreams of Croesus", etc), and we laughed when King Abdullah offered to make up any fall in bailouts from Washington to the Mubarak regime, and we laugh now when the old king promises $36bn to his citizens to keep their mouths shut. But this is no laughing matter. The Arab revolt which finally threw the Ottomans out of the Arab world started in the deserts of Arabia, its tribesmen trusting Lawrence and McMahon and the rest of our gang. And from Arabia came Wahabism, the deep and inebriating potion – white foam on the top of the black stuff – whose ghastly simplicity appealed to every would-be Islamist and suicide bomber in the Sunni Muslim world. The Saudis fostered Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida and the Taliban. Let us not even mention that they provided most of the 9/11 bombers. And the Saudis will now believe they are the only Muslims still in arms against the brightening world. I have an unhappy suspicion that the destiny of this pageant of Middle East history unfolding before us will be decided in the kingdom of oil, holy places and corruption. Watch out.

But a lighter note. I've been hunting for the most memorable quotations from the Arab revolution. We've had "Come back, Mr President, we were only kidding" from an anti-Mubarak demonstrator. And we've had Saif el-Islam el-Gaddafi's Goebbels-style speech: "Forget oil, forget gas – there will be civil war." My very own favourite, selfish and personal quotation came when my old friend Tom Friedman of The New York Times joined me for breakfast in Cairo with his usual disarming smile. "Fisky," he said, "this Egyptian came up to me in Tahrir Square yesterday, and asked me if I was Robert Fisk!" Now that's what I call a revolution.

[seafoid]

but you can understand why someone would be suspicious when they read the constant posts harping  on about "zionists"  and their nefarious plans. You'd have to wonder about where that person is coming from.

The idea that the US government is ruled by zionists is ridiculous and is exactly the kind of rabble rousing statements that have been posted on here ad nauseum and that have gone, mostly, unchallenged. This is exactly the kind of fiction one can read in anti-semitic texts like the Elders of Zion.

There is a strong Israeli lobby , just as there is a strong NRA lobby but also a strong anti-gun lobby. Likewise the UCLA and the Unions lobby strongly for their interests. You can argue about the whole concept of lobbying but to suggest that one group dominates to the exclusion of others is BS.

AIPAC is the reason why the US vetoed the UN reolution on illegal Jewish settlelments, Mike. AIPAC has the Us sewn up on the Middle East. There is a Jewish lobby and it is allied to a fundamentalist Christian lobby and they put Israel before America.
Israelis get healthcare and free college and Yanks don't. That is the lobby.

Israel is going down and the lobby won't be able to stop it.

[Minder]

Six SAS captured by the Libyans, allegedly.

Maybe this isn't a cool cause anymore.

[muppet]

Six SAS captured by the Libyans, allegedly.

Maybe this isn't a cool cause anymore.

By which side?

[theskull1]

The rebels

[Groucho]

The rebels

Those Cork ones are everywhere

[DuffleKing]

Its very interesting watching the Libya story develop and the use of language to manipulate perceptions. I've no idea what's going on inside Libya - i simply don't trust any of the media outlets i've seen covering it - but the different terms applied to each side is intrigueing. I note now that the army that follow orders are mercenaries and those that do not remain the army. The usual freedom movement and freedom fighters are in place.

Is the capture of an SAS unit inside Libya surprising? The stench of oil in the air is heady.

[lawnseed]

Six SAS captured by the Libyans, allegedly.

Maybe this isn't a cool cause anymore.

yup! they're at it again messing in stuff, six heavily armed sas soldiers and a british 'diplomat' captured by anti gadaffi troops. according to the bbc ( ) they were searched on their way to a meeting with opposition leaders and were found to be armed to the teeth and in possession of high explosives for all we know this may have been an assassination squad sent to kill opposition leaders probably because gadaffi has decided to play ball with the brits by fading away but putting someone useful in his place.

[Groucho]

UK seizes ship carrying $160M of Libyan currency
By RAPHAEL G. SATTER | AP

Published: Mar 4, 2011 20:53 Updated: Mar 4, 2011 20:53

LONDON: A ship carrying about $160 million worth of Libyan currency has been impounded after turning back from a planned trip to Libya, a British government official said Friday.

The official said the ship — whose nationality and ownership she refused to identify — returned to Britain after its captain decided not to dock at Tripoli harbor because of the unrest there. The vessel returned to the port of Harwich in eastern England on Wednesday under escort by a Border Agency cutter, she said.

A number of containers full of currency were moved from the ship to a secure location.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak on the record.

She declined to comment on the precise timing of the events leading up to the second currency seizure this week, but said that the ship left for Libya before the imposition of international sanctions. She also declined to comment on where the currency came from, although Britain is home to international printer De La Rue PLC, which produces over 150 national currencies. De La Rue declined comment Friday.

Britain has banned the export of Libyan bank notes in line with UN sanctions, and earlier this week the government announced the seizure of around $1.5 billion worth of Libyan currency which had yet to leave the country.

Meanwhile, the UK is also expanding its asset-freezing program to include an additional 20 senior members of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi's entourage — mainly top brass and spymasters — the government official said.

The total number of Qaddafi associates subject to British asset freezing orders now stands at 26, while the amount of money frozen in the UK — including the seized currency — has risen to approximately $3.3 billion, she said.

But in an illustration of how tricky asset-freezing campaigns can be, the London-based British Arab Commercial Bank PLC, which is mostly Libyan-owned and largely funded by the Libyan government, announced Friday that it has been given the official go-ahead to continue operating internationally.

The bank is about 83 percent owned by the Libya's central bank and about three-quarters of its funding comes from Libyan governmental or quasi-governmental sources, according to Fitch Ratings. The bank, which provides short-term loans and other services to wholesale customers across the Middle East and North Africa, had about 3.3 billion pounds ($5.36 billion) in assets in 2009.

The British official declined to answer questions about why the bank hadn't been blocked, while other Libyan government-associated funds such as the Libyan Investment Authority had seen their assets frozen.

But she said that, in general, government freezing orders are structured in such a way so as to avoid harming "innocent UK financial casualties." She noted that assets belonging to people on the British Treasury's blacklist would be frozen regardless of where they were held.