The Pot Give the Kettle Ultimata

The closure of the Qatar-funded broadcaster al-Jazeera is among 13 wide-ranging demands tabled by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States as the price for lifting a two-week trade and diplomatic embargo of Qatar.

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Saudi Arabia and the other nations leading the blockade – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt – have in recent days been put under pressure by the US state department to set out specific demands in an effort to help establish a mediation process.

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Donald Trump, the US president, has appeared more sympathetic towards the Saudis, in what has become the Gulf’s worst diplomatic dispute in decades.

  The Guardian

Yes, and we know why.

The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has said the demands had to be reasonable and actionable.

Shutting down the most popular news organization in the Arab world is reasonable? Oh, yeah. In dictatorships. (Also, the list includes shutting down all news outlets Qatar gives funding to.)

Qatar has become reliant on Turkey, and to a lesser extent Iran, for the supply of food since since the embargo came into force on 5 June. It has previously said it would not hold talks until the embargo was lifted.

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Qatar has been given 10 days to comply, but the ultimatum is silent on what would happen if the demands are not met.

Ten whole days? How generous.

Actually, according to this article, it gives an accounting of what would happen:

Agree to all the demands within 10 days of it being submitted to Qatar, or the list becomes invalid.

That's the 13th point on the list.

The list of demands are set out in this article.

Qatar insists it does not fund terrorists, and says the embargo is a punishment for following an independent foreign policy more sympathetic to the principles of the Arab spring.

I think that's a big factor. As far as supporting terrorists, Saudis have a lot of nerve to criticize ANYbody else on that subject.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Hoping You Wouldn't Notice

[The] administration of President Obama — whom Andrew Sullivan has repeatedly credited with “presiding over” the Arab Spring — announced on Friday that the U.S. would resume arms sales to the regime in Bahrain, a move that “has incensed opposition activists in the tiny Gulf kingdom who see the deal as a signal that the US supports Bahrain’s repression of opposition protests.” Moreover, “the resumption comes despite Bahrain doing little to sufficiently address” systematic human rights abuses against democratic protesters. But as Sullivan put it in his latest in a long line of Newsweek love letters to the Commander-in-Chief, Obama succeeded last week “the way he always does: leading from behind and playing the long game.” Given that, I’m sure there is some good explanation for how these arms sales to the regime in Bahrain proves he’s more supportive than ever of the Arab Spring and democracy, just as his failed effort to keep troops in Iraq meant He Ended The Iraq War, his unprecedented war on whistleblowers demonstrates his commitment to open government, increased anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world shows he nobly restored America’s standing in the world, and his relentless civilian-killing drone assaults prove the merit of his Nobel Peace Prize. It’s all about the long game.

  Glenn Greenwald

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile in Egypt: Arab Spring One Year On

Political and pro-democracy groups are holding anti-military demonstrations across Egypt to demand the ruling military respect a July deadline to step down.

Friday’s mass protests come amid heightened tension after 11 people were killed in clashes that broke out on Wednesday when an unidentified group attacked protesters staging a sit-in outside the ministry of defence in Cairo.

"I’m telling the military council… enough bloodshed, enough fabricated crisis, enough unleashing of thugs on the public, enough destruction…  we want them to transfer power to an independent transitional authority tomorrow,” Akrami Darwish, a protester, said on Friday.

The protests, to "protect the revolution and against bloodshed", are expected to draw people from all major political formations in Egypt, namely the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafist movement and the liberal activist movements.

  al Jazeera

Boy, those all sound like names Washington wouldn't back, so I'm guessing the Eyptian military junta has no reason to step down.

American Style Democracy

As Egyptians are still struggling to form a true democracy, Washington is getting nervous.

In a coordinated series of raids, Egyptian police accompanied by investigative judges entered the headquarters of several such groups throughout the country, seizing computers, sealing offices, and confiscating bundles of cash. According to the Associated Press, an Egyptian Interior Ministry official “said the military on Thursday found 70,000 Egyptian pounds ($11,600) in the office of one unidentified group, and seized half a million Egyptian pounds ($83,000) from the National Democratic Institute.”

The National Democratic Institute is the international arm of the US Democratic party: it receives its funding directly from Uncle Sam and a number of “private” contributors whose identities are kept under wraps. NDI chief honcho Kenneth Wollack is a former legislative director of the America-Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the US.

Also raided: the International Republican Institute – the foreign arm of the GOP – Freedom House – the historic home of right-wing Social Democrats and international busybodies – as well as the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (funded by the German government) and fourteen other foreign-funded groups.

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The nature of that line was laid out in more detail by Charles Dunne, director of Middle East and North Africa Programs at Freedom House, who said:

“It is a major escalation in the Egyptian government’s crackdown on civil society organizations, and it is unprecedented in its attack on international organizations like Freedom House, which is funded in large part by the United States government. The military council is saying we are happy to take your $1.3 billion a year, but we are not happy when you do things like defending human rights and supporting democracy.”

  Justin Raimondo

Jon Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a very typical member of the National Security priesthood, [wrote] on Friday in The New York Times [regarding the popular uprising in Egypt:]
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American interests, however, call for a different outcome, one that finds a balance — however uneasy — between the military authorities and Egypt’s new politicians.

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The fear of (and desire to stop) Arab democracy has been openly expressed for some time by many American neocons and even Benjamin Netanyahu; that it is now spilling over into America’s mainstream Foreign Policy experts is telling indeed.

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What Alterman advocates is a bulwark against the ability of the Egyptian people to free themselves of military rule, choose their own government, and decide their own fate.

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It’s what the U.S. has been doing, so disastrously, in that part of the world for decades: feigning support for democracy while working against it.

The Obama administration paid pretty lip service to the Egyptian revolution but then worked to install Mubarak’s chief torturer Omar Suleiman in power, who, for obvious reasons, is viewed with great disfavor among Egyptians. That propaganda ruse fooled one of its chief targets (the American electorate) but failed miserably among Egyptians, who knew exactly what the U.S. was up to. As a result, Egyptians now view the U.S. even more unfavorably than they did during the Bush years.

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This is exactly the behavior (along with blind support for the actions of the Israeli government) that has led to such vast anti-American sentiment (which in turns is what fuels Terrorism and support for it).

  Glenn Greenwald

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.