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Posts Tagged ‘middle east’

Analyst: U.S. To Lose In Yemen As In Afghanistan, Iraq

February 13, 2011 Comments off

US focused on non-actual danger in Yemen

Yevgeny Satanovsky, President of the Institute of the Middle East:

The modern idea of US security structures is that it is not Osama bin Laden who is the number one danger but a man from Yemen with his al-Qaeda department. The danger from this man to Saudi Arabia and Bab-el-Mandeb – every ship crossing the Suez Canal sails through Bab-el-Mandeb between Yemen and Somalia – is much bigger than from al-Qaeda groups in Yemen.

The current situation may provide for a division of Yemen into two states – the Shafi south and the Zaidi-style north. Especially now that civil war is about to break out and Saudi Arabian influence in Yemen is minimal.

Al-Qaeda in Yemen is no more than an instrument which President Saleh uses to persuade the US administration that he is their strategic partner in need of financial and military support, especially amid present-day conditions.

In this situation, the US came to realize that old plans, which are absolutely irrelevant today, were focused on a non-actual danger. This means that America will lose here as well, just as it happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ahmadinejad calls for Mideast without Israel and US

February 12, 2011 Comments off

Print Edition TEHRAN – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Egypt’s popular uprising shows a new Middle East is emerging, one that will have no signs of Israel and US “interference.”

The Iranian president spoke as the country marked the 32nd anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. His remarks came hours after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down, angering hundreds of thousands of Egyptians who have been demanding he relinquish his three-decade grip on power.

Ahmadinejad says Egyptians have the right to live in freedom and choose their own government.

Iran crushed opposition protests against Ahmadinejad’s disputed 2009 re-election and on Thursday, Iranian opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi was placed under house arrest because of calls for a rally in support of Egyptian protesters.

On Thursday, Iranian opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi announced via his website, Sahamnews.org, that he has been placed under house arrest, because he called for a rally in support of anti-government demonstrations in Egypt.

Karroubi petitioned the government for permission to hold a rally, but State Prosecutor Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi rejected the request, warning of repercussions should a demonstration take place.

Hosni Mubarak gives authority to VP Omar Suleiman

February 10, 2011 Comments off

Egyptian Presidential Palace

On October 14, 1981 Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak assumed the Presidency of Egypt following the assassination of President Anwar El Sadat. He is the longest-serving Egyptian ruler since Muhammad Ali Pasha.  He announced today that he will not resign but will handover power to Vice President Omar Suleiman ,however, he will no longer run for office.

He quotes “Will work for a peaceful transition of power; says he wants honesty and transparency…I will not run for next presidential election; wants smooth transfer of power…Praises youth and sacrifices; says he will punish those responsible for attacks”

On Feb 4, 2011 there was a failed assassination attempt on Egypt’s vice president left two of his bodyguards dead.

Since January 25, 2011, for a total of 17 days, a popular uprising from the people of Egypt called for his resignation as president of Egypt due to corruptness and illegal activities that the government was associated with.  Because of inflation, many Egyptians are currently struggling to feed themselves as the country’s food crisis is beginning to spiral out of control utilizing anywhere between 40 to 60 percent of their wages going to food.

With this announcement brings many questions to mind. Who will lead Egypt?  What will the future of Egypt bring to the world?  How will this affect the relationship with Israel and the United States?  Is this just a preview of what is to come in other Middle East/ North Africa countries whom are in an eerily similar format?  What will happen with crude oil prices?  As of now all we can do is watch and see history unfold before our eyes.  September awaits…

WikiLeaks cables: Saudi Arabia is quickly running out of oil

February 9, 2011 Comments off

US diplomat convinced by Saudi expert that reserves of world’s biggest oil exporter have been overstated by nearly 40%

Aerial View of Oil Refinery
Saudi oil refinery. WikiLeaks cables suggest the amount of oil that can be retrieved has been overestimated. Photograph: George Steinmetz/Corbis

The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.

The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom’s crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.

The revelation comes as the oil price has soared in recent weeks to more than $100 a barrel on global demand and tensions in the Middle East. Many analysts expect that the Saudis and their Opec cartel partners would pump more oil if rising prices threatened to Read more…

Israel’s Chief of Staff urges readiness for all-out war

February 9, 2011 Comments off

Israel’s Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi
The Israeli army chief has urged Tel Aviv to make preparations for an all-out war over the recent developments across the Middle East, a report says.

Israel’s Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi has said that given the recent revolution protests across Middle East, Israel must prepare for a battle in several theaters, Ynetnews quoted him as saying on Monday.

The outgoing military chief also said, “The connection between the different players requires us to contend with more than one theater.”

Ashkenazi warned of the transpiration of a “radical camp” in the Middle East, adding that “the moderate camp among the traditional Arab leadership is weakening.”

“Because of this spectrum, we must prepare for a conventional war…it would be a mistake to prepare for non-conventional war or limited conflicts and then expect that overnight the forces will operate in an all-out war,” he went on to say.

In December 2010, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom threatened Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with a new war, saying that Tel Aviv would have to “respond and respond with all our force” if the Palestinian resistance fighters did not stop firing their home-made rockets into Israel.

In late December 2008, Israel launched a devastating war against the coastal Palestinian territory where more than 1,400 Palestinians — mostly civilians — were killed in three weeks of relentless Israeli land, sea and air strikes.

Einstein was right – honey bee collapse threatens global food security

February 8, 2011 Comments off

The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN’s index of food prices hits an all time-high, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee risks further exhausting our food security.

Almost a third of global farm output depends on animal pollination, largely by honey bees.
These foods provide 35pc of our calories, most of our minerals, vitamins, and anti-oxidants, and the foundations of gastronomy. Yet the bees are dying – or being killed – at a disturbing pace.
The story of “colony collapse disorder” (CCD) is already well-known to readers of The Daily Telegraph.
Some keep hives at home and have experienced this mystery plague, and doubtless have strong views on whether it is caused by parasites, or a virus, or use of pesticides that play havoc with the nervous system of young bees, or a synergy of destructive forces coming together.
The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN’s index of food prices hits an all time-high in real terms (not just nominal) and grain shortages trigger revolutions in the Middle East, it is becoming urgent to know whether the Read more…

Mubarak could be worth $40 billion to $70 billion

February 6, 2011 Comments off

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his half-Welsh wife Suzanne

Embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak could have amassed huge sums of money as much as 70 billion dollars during the decades that he has been a top official.

According to analysis by Middle East experts, Mubarak has taken much of the gains overseas and deposited much of his wealth in secret bank accounts in British and Swiss banks, The Guardian reported on Friday.

Observers say the Mubaraks have also invested in real estate in Read more…

Soros says Israel is “main stumbling block” in Mideast

February 6, 2011 Comments off
As we all watch the unrest in Egypt and other Mideast countries, a very disconcerting political reality is beginning to settle in.
The Arab liberation revolution will fundamentally change the Middle East. The acceleration of the West’s decline will change the world. One outcome will be a surge toward China, Russia and regional powers like Brazil, Turkey and Iran. Another will be a series of international flare-ups stemming from the West’s lost deterrence. But the overall outcome will be the collapse of North Atlantic political hegemony not in decades, but in years. When the United States and Europe bury Mubarak now, they are also burying the powers they once were. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the age of Western hegemony is fading away.
The likely successor government in Egypt, should the current leadership step down, is the Muslim Brotherhood.
This should be frightening to most Americans, but it’s a welcomed event to billionaire Marxist George Soros.
Egypt is more complex and, ultimately, more influential, which is why it is so important to get it right. The protesters are very diverse, including highly educated and Read more…

The Youth Unemployment Bomb

February 6, 2011 Comments off

From Cairo to London to Brooklyn, too many young people are jobless and disaffected. Inside the global effort to put the next generation to work

https://i0.wp.com/images.businessweek.com//mz/11/07/600/1107_mz_58youth1.jpg

Cairo, Egypt: A cloud of tear gas drives back antigovernment protesters on Jan. 28 Jorge Dirkx/Reporters/Redux

By Peter Coy

In Tunisia, the young people who helped bring down a dictator are called hittistes—French-Arabic slang for those who lean against the wall. Their counterparts in Egypt, who on Feb. 1 forced President Hosni Mubarak to say he won’t seek reelection, are the shabab atileen, unemployed youths. The hittistes and shabab have brothers and sisters across the globe. In Britain, they are NEETs—”not in education, employment, or training.” In Japan, they are freeters: an amalgam of the English word freelance and the German word Arbeiter, or worker. Spaniards call them mileuristas, meaning they earn no more than 1,000 euros a month. In the U.S., they’re “boomerang” kids who move back home after college because they can’t find work. Even fast-growing China, where labor shortages are more common than surpluses, has its “ant tribe”—recent college graduates who crowd together in cheap flats on the fringes of big cities because they can’t find well-paying work.

In each of these nations, an economy that can’t generate enough jobs to absorb its young people has created a Read more…

Egypt is Just the Beginning for Gold’s Next Move

February 6, 2011 Comments off

Watching CNN, its easy to be lulled into the sense that the cute little third world African country that is home to Cleopatra, mummies and pyramids is having a little revolution to get rid of a tired old tyrant. That the old goat is putting up such resistance to the national message is to be expected, and might be forgiven. Unleashing bands of paid thugs under the guise of ‘supporters’ reveals true brutality and illuminates the character of the man, Hosni Mubarak – a sociopath.

This phenomenon, originated in Tunisia, a nation of 10 million, and now raging in Egypt, of 85 million has spread to Yemen, population 25 million and Jordan, population 6 million is no mere regional political shift: this is the beginning of America’s loss of control over the region.

That the democratic process even got a foothold in the tribal and historically despotically governed middle east is due to a series of historical power plays, and not so much to a nascent and organic inclination towards the idea of democracy. When oil emerged to become the most strategic substance on earth after the second world war, the United States, armed with the economic windfall from the war machine, set about toppling governments and seeding insurrection through the offices of the C.I.A., bolstering governments that were ‘incentivized’ to protect U.S. interests, and destroying those that were not.

Back then, before the light-sped connected world, the C.I.A. could operate with Read more…