THE WAY THINGS ARE

s e c o n d ruffdraft

Friend: 1. A. : one attached to another by affection or esteem b: ACQUAINTANCE 2 a : one that is not hostile b : one that is of the same nation, party, or group ...Webster’s

OUT OF IRAQ

S: So, where are we?

SPC: Iran rules the roost and that’s not bad. The new balance of power is such that the patsy Arab governments now have a chance to see some results on the Palestinian front. All thanks to Iran and Syria. In other words, Iran’s prominence–the defeat of the U.S. in Iraq and of Israel in south Lebanon–has injected a new realism into the thinking of the harmful idiots and the apple of their eye.


S. : Will this lead to a peaceful settlement in Palestine?

SPC: It’ll probably lead to a period of detente, so long as the harmful idiots are talking to the Iranians and cargo is flowing to the Palestinians. The Iranians now are engaged in taming the harmful idiots as a zoo keeper tames an enraged wild beast. And the harmful idiots have no choice but to be tamed. Iran’s got them by the balls in Iraq.

Zein: And Syria?

SPC: Shrewd as they come. Syria now is the uncontested leader of the Arabs. It doesn’t have the money of the Saudis. But it has that superb army called Hizbollah, and a new outlook on how to take the war inside Israel and wreak it psychologically. Syria has learned from experience that it cannot trust the harmful idiots. The harmful idiots will turn on it as soon as convenient or possible. It has learned that the harmful idiots want all to go through Israel to reach them. Not an easy test for an independent nation. It has learned, as should've the Saudis, that there was a time in America when Israel carried weight mostly within the Democratic Party. But now, Israel carries lots of weight within the Republican Party, too. Arabs and Muslims need not apply, except Arab and Arab-American patsies.

Even Lebanon’s Christians, probably the most reliable pro-Western people in the Middle East, have learned that Israel and the harmful idiots will harm them. Not only had the harmful idiots and their Jordanians started the Lebanon war, and destroyed the country, all based on harmfully idiotic miscalculations (or is it calculations?), and all to avoid the formation of a Palestinian state. The harmful idiots and the Israelis allowed Syrian troops and tanks to enter Mount Lebanon as a quid pro quo for Syria’s assistance in the liberation of Kuwait. The recent electoral defeat in the Metn region of the harmful idiots’ man, Amin Gemayyel, in spite of the terrific sympathy vote he had for the loss of his son, and the amazing amounts of money (originally from the public purse but now in Hariri’s possession) by Hariri–speaks directly to the fact that the Christians of Lebanon will trust the harmful idiots and the Israelis to their peril. They’ll have to be really dumb. Once again, people learn from their experience. Only idiots don’t.


S: But doesn’t the encirclement of Hamas on Gaza weaken Syria’s cards?

SPC: It does, for now. But we still don’t know how able Hamas is on the West Bank. There were some mild tumults within the ranks of university students, but that fire was put out fast, with little violence. I think Hamas will wait until Mahmoud Abbas obtains as much cargo as possible from the Israelis and the harmful idiots and then–and only then–test its machine on the West Bank. If Hamas is choked beyond a certain point, U.S. troops will pay the price in Iraq. To the Arab Street–especially the younger generations-- there’s really no difference between U.S. troops and Israeli troops. I’ve talked about this linkage a long time ago. Because of the prominence of the Jewish Right within their ranks, and because the Jewish liberals aid and abet anytime the Jewish Right orphans other people’s children, the harmful idiots can’t see that they’ve made U.S. troops one and the same as Israel’s.

S: I guess the harmful idiots are paving their way out of Iraq by seeking the help of the United Nations.

SPC: Yes. Finally. But it’ll take a good while for the U.N. to get in. Here again, the U.N. will need the approval of Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Not to mention the Sunni resistance, divided though it may be. It took one major explosion to get the U.N. out. Another like explosion can be repeated relatively easy.


IRAN AND THE GULF ARABS

S: Is Iran a threat to the Gulf Arabs?


SPC: Not really, and certainly not now. From a balance of conventional power perspective, the harmful idiots have no choice but to defend these. So, from a conventional military perspective, these are alright regardless. The harmful idiots have faced resistance in mobilizing these in an anti-Iran front, with the hope of adding Israel. But the harmful idiots have so linked their fate to that of Israel that any such front, even without Israel, can easily be portrayed as an Israeli-led front. Linkage again. The harmful idiots have failed to provoke Iran into committing an act that would scare the Gulfies. Iran is too shrewd to fall for the sophomoric schemes of the harmful idiots. One underestimates one’s opponent’s ability to learn from experience to one’s peril. Iran knows by now that it shouldn’t fight the U.S. conventionally. Iran knows not to fall in traps set up for it by the harmful idiots, Kuwaiti intelligence, and the Kurds, as Iraq did. Iran knows it needs to keep the Arab Street mobilized. And, should that Street change directions, Iran will keep the Arab Shia mobilized.

The scheme by the harmful idiots, Saudi intelligence, and Jordanian intelligence to create a Sunni front to face off with Iran has failed miserably.

S: In Lebanon?


SPC: Yes. The battles between the Sunni Islamists at Nahr el-Bared and the Lebanese army have foiled the Saudi-Hariri-harmful idiots attempt to create a Palestinian counterpart to Hizbollah. I’d read here and there that Fateh–Mahmoud Abbas’s–has dispatched three hundred fighters to Nahr el-Bared to help the Lebanese army. Then I’d read that Fateh had killed three members of Fateh al-Islam at Nahr el-Bared. But these were passing stories. In essence, the ones dying are Lebanese troops. Abbas’s Fateh, the hope of Hariri and Bandar bin Sultan, is nowhere to be found.

What I’m saying is that Syria owns the 410,000 Palestinians in Lebanon, and its hold over them should tighten the more Mahmoud Abbas draws closer to the Israelis. Syria is now organizing a conference on the Right of Return. What’s Hariri to do? The harmful idiots had brought his father (may God have mercy on his soul) over to Lebanon (from Saudi Arabia) in the hope that he would sign a peace treaty with Israel. Instead, until he amassed a $17 billion fortune, and put Lebanon in double that amount in debt--much of it to banks owned by him and the Saudis-- he did that while he partnered with the Syrian ocupation forces. And both pillaged the Lebanese public purse. The harmful idiots, who only care about Israel, didn’t lift a finger to address this absolute corruption. He was the harmful idiots's man. How could the Hariri family or the Saudis own the Sunni Street while Syria is championing the Right of Return and fighting for Arab honor via Hizbollah? What is it that they do to draw the allegiance of the Arabs, the Sunni in particular? The Mecca Accord was a brillant idea by the Saudis, But the harmmful idiots torpedoed it, and now are having the Saudi princes running scared.

S: Will Hariri be kicked out of Lebanon?

SPC: No. Iran and Syria are using Lebanon to train the Saudis and the harmful idiots into accepting to cooperate with them. Hizbollah and Syria can kick Hariri out of Lebanon in a blink of an eye. But they don’t’ want to do it. All they want is for the Saudis to accept them as they are and stop aligning themselves with the Israelis and harmful idiots against their own, to reverse their gains.

S: Can these gains be reversed?

SPC: No. The invasion of Iraq has put an end to anything akin to stopping Iran’s influence. It’s over. Iran and Syria are so f—ing shrewd. They’ve defeated the Jewish Right and the hooraying liberals. That’s no small achievement. The fact that the Saudis cannot reverse the gains by Iran and Syria at a time when the Saudis are floating on huge surpluses of money tells me that they will not be able to do it, period. In good part this is due to the fact that the focus by the harmful idiots on Iran’s nuclear program helps Iran remain vigilant in defending itself . Part of its defense is the Arab Street. It’ll need to keep it mobilized.

S: But what if Mahmoud Abbas is able to strike a deal for a Palestinian state? Wouldn’t that take away Iran’s ability to mobilize the Arab Street?

SPC: Don’t make me laugh. The Palestinians will get rid of Mahmoud Abbas if he fails to open up to Hamas. I suspect he’s secretly doing that, but that’s only a suspicion. They’re just giving him time to bring in cargo, that’s all. They don’t like him. The Palestinian nationalist press is all pro-Hamas. Even al-Quds al-Arabi, an Arab/Islamic Palestinian nationalist newspaper, which never ever had liked Syria, is now writing about Syria as the true representative of the Arabs. Which Syria is, no question about it, now that Iraq is gone. And the Israelis have this stupid colonialist way of thinking: Oh, this is our chance to take over Jerusalem, and do a transfer of the 1948 Palestinian population, but we’ll call this European supremacist, racist, and ghetto-like transfer–we’ll call it--a Palestinian state. Do they really believe for a moment that the Palestinian people will fall for this, or that it will let Abbas sign on anything of the kind? Put differently, the Israelis themselves will fail Abbas.


S: You mean their idea of exchanging lands with the Palestinian Authority: We take lands around Jerusalem, where already we have extensive colonial settlements, and give you Israeli lands where 1948 Palestinians now reside?

SPC: Yep.

S: And the Saudis?

SPC: If your read the two posts in the blog about the threats...The Saudis got scared and caved to the threats by the harmful idiots–and now they’re sort of aligning their foreign policy (reluctantly) once again more closely with that of the harmful idiots–in Iraq, in Palestine.

S: Why?

SPC: The harmful idiots can harm them. The ruling princes are corrupt and the harmful idiots likely have tons of dirt on them. Besides, by now, unless the harmful idiots are totally and absolutely incapable of learning, being allied to corrupt elements the world over is a prescription for being hated. If the Saudi princes play difficult with the harmful idiots, these will start a string of revelations. In other words, revisiting my earlier analysis, I don’t think the threats of, one, canceling the arms deal with the Kingdom is what made the Saudis cave. I don’t think it’s the unleashing of the Israel-can-do-no-wrong Congress against the Saudis that did it. And I don’t even think it’s the possibility that the harmful idiots will draw closer to Iran. In the end, I think the Saudis caved because the ruling princes shit in their pants any time the harmful idiots wave the stick of waging a campaign the world over that reveals their corruption. The Saudis should really line up a new queue of princes to lead the country–princes who the harmful idiots don’t possess so much dirt about. But, no one willingly gives up power and multi-billion-dollar corrupt perks and commissions.

The Saudis are dealing with these threats not only by appeasing the harmful idiots. They are, too, directing their people’s attention away from themselves (e.g., the recent allegations of absolute corruption about Bandar bin Sultan–which logically inculpates Crown Prince Sultan himself–the father) and onto the Shia. A recent statement by the Saudi cabinet talked about a rejection of the Saudi people of any change in the social structure and make-up of the Kingdom that comes from outside. A week or so afterwards, the religious police attacked and beat a bunch of Iraqi Shia in Mecca there for religious reasons.

This is a dangerous game the Saudis are playing. Very dangerous. I’ll explain some other time.

S: Lost cause for a decent Arab front?


SPC: The Saudis are key to that, for many reasons, not the least of which is money. But they need to diversify their princes’ foreign points of reference to diminish the ability of the harmful idiots to push them about, especially to disallow them from playing a supportive role in the quest by the Palestinians for an independent state on all pre-1967 territory, and for historic reparations to Lebanon and to all the refugees who are willing to accept it.

S: Like?

SPC: Look, for as long as U.S. politicians refuse to raise taxes, and/or the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates relatively low, U.S. dollars will continue to flow all over, cause economic booms the world over, and enrich the opponents of the United States. This eventually will come to an end, but for now the end isn’t near, not yet. Accordingly, countries like Russia and China now are rich and carry a lot of weight in world affairs. Saudi intelligence, stupid and incompetent though it likely is, likely having to rely on cooperation with Israeli intelligence, sooner or later will instruct a few princes to draw closer to Russia and be counted as Russia’s wing within the ruling family. Ditto for Japan; for China; for India; for France. What have you. This should relieve the pressure on the royal family which now is at the mercy of an administration(any U.S. administration, Democratic and Republican), a country (the U.S.), and the two political parties in that country--allof whom are so Israel-centric that no Saudi government could be comfortable about. Remember: in the end, the rulers of Saudi Arabia are Najdi. Though wealthy and forever running scared of the harmful idiots, the Najdi in the end are of the core of what defines Arab and Muslim. You can push them about to kiss Israel’s ass. They’ll kiss it for a while. But, in the end, deep, they’re Arab and Muslim, not Thomas Friedman’s students.

And I doubt that any of them has forgotten that Kissinger, the Defense Policy Board, and Kissinger's children in the Jewish Right wanted to break the kingdom into mini-states, on their way to orphan thousands of other people’s children–all to make the so-called realm safe for Israel. If they have forgotten that, then they’re f----ing dumber that I can explain.

OF "FRIENDS" AND SNOOPING

S: On this note, any more harassment on the job or threatening intimidation outside by the Israelis and their people?

SPC: Things had quieted down, thankfully. I thought that once they had perfected my file, they’d leave me alone. But a friend, you know her, .........., had warned me that the perfection of my file was an ongoing matter for intelligence purposes. She was right. Recently it had become obvious to me that they were using a friend who I hadn’t cut off.

S: A Jewish friend?

SPC: Yes, a colleague. And pretty right wing himself, but too wise to get into this stuff. Anyway, there were three encounters, instances really, which piled up to show that they were still trying to mind me, so to speak, and using him to do that. I think he fell for it not knowing that their first snitch by treachery had been monitoring me online for months and their second snitch had also by treachery obtained my fingerprints and likely my DNA profile.

In one instance, after I had spoken highly in the blog about Zbignew Brzezinski for educating the American public on colonialism and the Iraq affair, and damning Henry Kissinger and the Jewish Right’s Defense Policy Board for Iraq and for having wanted to break apart yet another Arab country–Saudi Arabia–he came to me with information to discredit Zbignew Brzezinski. What the fuck, I thought, after he had left. One, what are these people telling their Israeli handlers? That they have an in with me? What cloud do these people live on? Are they trying to portray my newsletter as their own, stealing my hundreds if not thousands of hours of work? While I toil away representing poor people and sweating each dollar? These fucking cheap assholes! They’ve already hurt me pretty bad: Their first snitch spied online on me for months–the asshole was eavesdropping on me for that long. Then another right wing asshole, also Jewish, faked the need for my help on a French legal document to obtain not only my fingerprints but likely my DNA profile. He appealed to my tendency to want to help to stab me in the back! Not to mention that their first snitch probably was taping my phone conversations with him and likely f---ing doctoring the tapes. Not to mention the synchronization of chance encounters with two people who are Israeli agents! What am I supposed to do? Go to the police? What the hell! How much harassment can one take?

And now they’re using a trusted friend!

S: Man you’re angry.

SPC: I gave it some thought. I think that the Israelis are trading intelligence about me to the stupid Saudis. The Israelis are in that business–trading intelligence. I recalled the Saudis trying to get information from and on me way early in the life of the newsletter through a Jordanian guy who worked at the Jordanian embassy. Before the newsletter, I had helped this guy–a humble employee at the Jordanian embassy who walks with his shoulders down–I had helped him by writing his letters to various U.N. agencies in search of a job. When he tried to get information, I cut him off. No big deal. He wasn’t exactly a dazzling personality. Then Saudi so-called students started writing to me, calling me professor Khater, blah blah blah. Then all stopped. Saudi intelligence decided: Hey, he’s a lawyer. That profession is full of right wing Jews who’d be glad to snitch for the glory of Israel. Contact Israeli intelligence. Sure. We’ve got him surrounded.

I cut them off, then their first snitch sent me the Trojan virus, then I cleaned it up and now I dread making any travel plans on my computer. And now, they're using a friend. What part of stay the fuck away from me don’t these people understand?

Be mindful, S--, that the Saudis consider newsletters about them and about Arab affairs as a potential threat. Only recently, Reuters published an interview with a Saudi media personality [“Interview–Saudi media empire tries to counter opposition,” August 9, 2007] which revealed that they were yet dumping more money and energy into reining in any and all media outlets that deal with Arab and Saudi affairs.

The sad part is that this friend had accepted to do it. I can’t tell you how saddened I was by this because, unlike their first snitch (an asshole) and their second (an idiots' idiot)-- I think this guy is quality.

S: Are you gonna cut him off?

SPC: I don’t know. I think he made a mistake. Let's see if and how he'll make up for it. “Wa in anta lam tashrab miraran 3ala-l-Qaza, Zami’ta Wa’ayyu-l nasi tasfu Masharibuh?"

(A poetry verse: “And if you don’t drink dirty water repeatedly [in the desert], you’ll go thirsty--For what human being, after all, is made up [solely] of pure water?)

They want to tell the Saudis that they have an in with me. That they have a minder for me at all time. They want to push the illusion that they own my blog, an ownership done on the cheap. And if this friend doesn’t do the right thing, I guess I’d steer away. You’ll be my only friend, S--

Zein: F--- off, I’m married. My adorable wife is my only friend.