DIABETES IN SAUDI ARABIA.

third draft with yet more precious advice worth $17.2 billion!

As I was driving I heard a report on NPR's Marketplace about the construction of a huge medical complex in Saudi Arabia, commensurate with the inflow of tremendous amounts of oil money into the Kingdom. One person involved in the project told the reporter that one in four among the Saudis is diabetic or pre-diabetic. (I’m nearly certain he was referring to Type II diabetes.) I’d read similar reports in the past. Since the Arabs, including the Saudis, descend from the Bedu (Bedouins) I decided to reach back to the time when capital hadn’t yet fully taken over the region. Certainly before the waves of dollar gluts had penetrated each and every corner of the world, including the Arab.

I secured three books, one to read and to re-read two. The idea was to peruse through these books while focusing on food and way of life before dollar gluts (and soon: Euro glut) and unlimited wealth.


I went through the following books:

1) Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands. (1983 edition.)

2) Michael Wolfe, ed. One Thousand Roads to Mecca. (1997)

3) Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to al-Madinah & Meccah.(1964 edition.)

Thesiger’s account is by far the most helpful. Why? In good part because his adventure (1945 to 1950) wasn’t tied to finding out about religion, limiting himself to caravans and cities. He meant to cross the Empty Quarter, and did it twice with the help of the Bedu: “The Bedu are the nomadic camel-breeding tribes of the Arabian desert.”[Thesiger, 12]. Survival mattered the most, not only in defending oneself against various hostile tribes. It was, too, about food and water in the desert. Thesiger studied the Bedu, the very forebears of the Arabs.

IS SEDENTARY LIFE WITH HIGH CALORIC INTAKE THE SURE ROAD TO DIABETES FOR THE ARABS/BEDU?

Dearth of resources and the roaming life (in search of grazing for the camels and the goats or for raiding), both of which typified the Bedu way of life, seem to be one antidote to Type II diabetes. After all, Thesiger, quite thorough, hadn’t noticed anything that smacked of Type II diabetes in his years with the Bedu. (He did notice at least three mental health conditions [108-109, 112-113, 191] , and two physical illnesses [189, 192-193] all of which remained unexplained. He, too, using his own medication, treated one eye condition and at least one case of constipation. His cure-all, by default, was cognac.)

About way of life: “For a while I had lived with the Bedu a hard and merciless life, during which I was always hungry and usually thirsty. My companions had been accustomed to this life since birth, but I had been racked by the weariness of long marches through wind-whipped dunes . .” [17]

Can you see the physical exhaustion and the lower caloric intake? How about the low overall hydration -- runs against our common wisdom.

IS VIGILANCE AN ANTIDOTE TO TYPE II DIABETES?

“There was always the fear of raiding parties to keep us alert and tense, even when we were dazed by lack of sleep. “ [Thesiger, 17] This fear wasn’t chimerical: Throughout Thesiger’s book we hear stories about raids by one tribe against another, and resulting murder. So many in the know thought Thesiger had been extremely lucky. Many tribes could’ve killed him because he was “the Christian.” And tribes could’ve murdered his companions for sheltering “the Christian.” Some of these tribes, which grazing territory the Thesiger group crossed, held deep animosity towards the Rashid who made up most of his traveling party. Thesiger did retain the services of a rabia now and then, a tribesman who could provide cover for them among tribes with whom the rabia’s tribe had peaceful relations. But the employment of a rabia didn’t really change things much: the life of Thesiger and his party had remained in the balance for as long as they had been traveling in the desert.

Can it be that vigilance is an antidote to Type II diabetes? Do some of us chose employment which requires vigilance as a way of warding off the sedentary life and its diseases? Does this mean that those of us who do–does it mean that they “enjoy” vigilance? “[...] I knew instinctively that it was the very hardness of life in the desert which drew me back there.” [Thesiger, 18]


IS FREEDOM FROM POSSESSIONS AND DESIRE AN ANTIDOTE TO DIABETES?

Buddhists need not read on. They’re there already. But to non-Buddhists:

“In the desert I have found a freedom unattainable in civilization: a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance [...] I had learnt the satisfaction which comes from hardship and the pleasure which derives from abstinence [...]” [Thesiger, 37]

That’s not to say that Thesiger wasn’t tempted by the flesh. He seemed to have fallen in love at first sight with a Saar woman [description at 206] , and his book includes a photo of her. Dazzling beauty and clothing and hairstyle that would put modern-day designers to shame. His Bedu companions could see that their Christian friend and employer was smitten and later teased him about it. But the desert’s call proved stronger than the call of romance and fleeting excitement.


IS LIFE IN A SOCIETY THAT PRIZES EQUALITY AN ANTIDOTE TO TYPE II DIABETES?

The Bedu are by nature and circumstance equality-prone: “Valuing freedom far above ease or comfort, careless of suffering, taking indeed a fierce pride in the hardship of their lives [...]” [Thesiger, 93]

Hear this illustrative story:

“I remembered asking some Rashid, who had visited Riyadh, how they had addressed the king of Saudi Arabia, and they answered in surprise, ‘We called him Abd al Aziz, how else would we call him except by his name?’ And when I said, ‘I thought you might call him Your Majesty’, they answered, ‘We are Bedu. We have no king but God.” [ Thesiger, 93]


IS CAMEL MILK AN ANTIDOTE TO TYPE II DIABETES?

(Note: Cow milk and its products -- cheese, labneh -- from what I know, likely are poison to Arabs. Avoid them at all cost. )

Note this illustrative conversation:

“I said: ‘Take, for instance, these Bait Musan [...], how long will they be able to stay here without water?’

“Al Auf answered: ‘It depends on how good the grazing is. On good grazing they could remain here from the late autumn until the spring. Of course, when the weather gets hot they will have to move back to within reach of the wells.’

“‘So they may be here for six or seven months without any water? What do they eat?’

“‘Camel’s milk is their food and drink. As long as there is plenty of milk the Bedu want nothing more.’

“‘Don’t their camels ever get thirsty?’

“[...] ‘If you looosed a camel that was dying of thirst on fresh green grazing, not only would she recover from her thirst but she would be fat within two months...”

[Thesiger, 128-129]

Water in the desert was so brackish that it needed the addition of camel milk to make it palatable:

“...Bait Imani had brought us bowls of [camel] milk which Al Auf poured into a small goatskin. He said we would mix a little every day with our driking water and that this would improve its taste, a custom which enables Arabs who live in the Sands to drink from wells which would otherwise be undrinkable.” [Thesiger, 137.]

Another illustration:

Al Auf: “Sometimes we are camped on wells which are so bitter that we can only drink the water mixed with [camel] milk. We water the camels and cannot drink the water ourselves.” [Thesiger, 129.]

Yet another:

“I had bought a goat for dinner, and we fed well, with boiled rice and rich savoury soup. Then Musallim brewed coffee, and Sultan produced a bowl of frothing camel’s milk, warm from the udder...” [Thesiger, 79.]

That camel milk was an essential part of the Bedu diet is confirmed by the account of his pilgrimage in the year 1050 (nearly nine hundred years before Thesiger’s account) to Mecca by the Persian Naser-e Khorsaw:

“Among one tribe, some seventy-year-old men told me that in their whole lives they had drunk nothing but camel’s milk, since in the desert there is nothing but bitter scrub eaten by the camel. They actually imagined that the whole world was like this.” [Wolfe, 25.]


To confirm yet again: The Arabs of the desert have perceived a diet made up solely of camel milk as a cure-all for diseases which likely were associated with urbanization and too-diversified a diet. Here’s a ca. 1852 account:

“[The Arabs of the desert] have ... one great advantage... As the children of almost all the respetable citizens are brought up in the Desert, the camp becomes to them a native village. In cases of severe wounds or chronic diseases, the patient is ordered off to the Black Tents, where he lives as a Badawi [i.e., Bedu], drinking camels’ milk ... and doing nothing. This has been the practice from time immemorial in Arabia...” [Burton, 390.)

IS FREEDOM FROM MONEY AN ANTIDOTE TO TYPE II DIABETES?

“Bedu love money; even to handle it seems to give them a thrill. They talk of it incessantly. They will discuss the price of a headcloth or a cartridge belt intermittently for days. To pass the time on the march a man will put up his camel for sale, and the others, although they know that he has no intention of selling her, enter into the spirit of the game and bargain noisily for hours.” [Thesiger, 95-96]

Can you see it?

It’s only the love of a lot of money, not the actual possession of that fortune. You possess it and the group will know you skimmed it from an unnecessary arms deal or by sinking your small second country into debt so that you can fatten your sleazeball ass.

ARE COFFEE AND TEA (AND DATES) ANTIDOTES TO TYPE II DIABETES?

I can’t begin to count the times that the Bedu sit down , brew, and drink coffee and tea, and eat dates. No group I know prizes more these three staples. It could be the caffeine. Too, it could be the closeness these drinks bring about. For the Bedu sit in a circle when brewing and drinking coffee and tea. Thesiger’s is replete with lines about coffee and tea being brewed. If I had the time I’d count the times. (I may do it in a later draft.)

That coffee is an old drink in the Arabian desert is confirmed by one account by the enslaved English Joseph Pitts, ca. 1685:

“As soon as our tents were pitched, my business was to make a little fire and get a pot of coffee.” [Wolfe, 122]


IS FREEDOM FROM VITAMINS, BUT NOT SUNLIGHT (VITAMIN D), AN ANTIDOTE TO TYPE II DIABETES?

Thesiger: “This, about three pounds of flour, was our ration for the day and I reflected that there must be very few calories or vitamins in our diet. Yet no scratch festered or turned septic during the years I lived in the desert.” [Thesiger, 139]

Thesiger may have forgotten that occasionally they did drink camel milk and that, though clothed, they nonetheless were outdoors nearly all of the time, collecting and storing Vitamin D.


IS CLOSENESS TO THE GOD OF ENDURANCE AN ANTIDOTE TO TYPE II DIABETES?

Now we all know that God takes on many colors, especially when used in politics.

God spoke to George W. Bush and, as a result, five million Iraqi children lost their parent.

God spoke to right wing Jews, and an entire country that happened to be Arab has been devastated and dismantled so that their Israel would remain dominant and gobble up other people’s lands.

God speaks daily to Pat Robertson so that many of his followers, on the verge of abject insecurity and some with serious diseases , deal with life without health insurance or by paying what they can’t afford for that insurance, when they have it.

These groups and personalities use their God to invade a country that never meant our country any harm, using Israel-anchored dubious and mediocre theories. They spend trillions of dollars in defense of these theories and against a defenseless country. They spend the trillions not for basic and direly needed public policy projects at home, project which (unfortunately for the American struggling middle class now coming up against a recession) could not be justified for the defense of Israel. Not realizing that strength on the domestic front is the best strength of all.

But the God of the Bedu is different, more basic. It’s the God of Endurance:

“I also knew that Al Auf had used no figure of speech when he said that God was his companion. To these Bedu, God is a reality, and the conviction of his presence gives them the courage to endure...I have heard townsmen and villagers in the Hadhramut and the Hajaz disparage the Bedu, as being without religion. When I have protested, they have said ‘Even if they pray, their prayers are not acceptable to God, since they do not first perform the proper ablutions.’ ” [Thesiger, 141-142.]

The omnipresence of the God of Endurance can be a reflection of the tightness of the social consensus among the Bedu. If I remember my social science half decently, sociologists have known that the tighter the social consensus, the stronger the religion. And what tighter consensus could there have been but among the Bedu who relied for their very survival in the desert on a strict ethical code, requiring them among other things, to care for a traveler in trouble – albeit for a maximum of three days only.

Gossip, I suspect, has a lot to do with enforcing the ethical code:

“ Given a chance the Bedu will gossip for hours [...] and nothing is too trivial for them to recount. There is no reticence in the desert. If a man distinguishes himself he knows that his fame will be widespread; if he disgraces himself he knows that the story of his shame will inevitably be heard in every encampment. It is this fear of public opinion which enforces at all times the rigid conventions of the desert. The consciousness that they are always before and audience makes many of their actions theatrical. Glubb once told me of a Bedu Sheikh who was known as the ‘Host of the Wolves’, because whenever he heard a wolf howl round his tent he ordered his son to take a goat out in the desert, saying he would have no one call on him for dinner in vain.” [Thesiger, 170]


BAKING BREAD: IS WHEAT (WHOLE?) AN ANTIDOTE TO TYPE II DIABETES?

Reading Thesiger one is left unclear about whether wheat was an essential Bedu staple. Thesiger stocked up on wheat, rice, sugar, dried shark meat, and what have you for his crossings of the Empty Quarter. But had wheat been a common staple earlier in the life of the Bedu -- say, 3000 years ago? Did they trade camel and goat milk for wheat from the cities?

“When we had enough water he would cook rice, but generally he made bread for our evening meal. [...] Musallim would rake some embers out of the fire to make a glowing bed, and then drop the cakes of dough on to it. [...] scooping a hollow in the sand under the embers, would bury them and spread the hot sand and embers over them. [...] we would sit in a circle and, in turn, dip pieces of this bread into a small bowl containing melted butter [ most often from camel milk and less often goat milk], or soup if we happened to have anything from which to make it [Thesiger, 61-62].

That wheat may have been around in the Arabian Peninsula, so close to the Bedu’s roaming grounds, can be seen un the fact that it was grown on that peninsula when Thesiger was there, likely earlier. Still we don’t know for how long and how common a staple it had been for the Bedu:

“On our way to the village ...we passed fields of wheat and lucerne, watered from trip-buckets.” [Thesiger, 238.]


IS EATING MEAT A SAFE BET WHEN IT COMES TO WARDING OFF TYPE II DIABETES?

This heading shows my bias as a mostly-vegan person. (“Mostly” until I’m at Costco and they’re doling out free meat. But I've mostly shed this habit.)

“In the morning Bakhit pressed us to come to his tent, saying “I will give you fat and meat’, the conventional way of saying that he would kill a camel for us.” [Thesiger, 169.]

“Bedu yearn hungrily for fats ...” (Thesiger, 177.)

“Bin Kabina urged me to let him join us, saying that he was the best shot in the tribe and that he was as good a hunter as Musallim, so that if he was with us we would feed every day on meat, for there were many ibex and gazelle in the country ahead of us.” [Thesiger, 188]

[...]Sometimes Musallim shot a gazelle or an oryx, and only then did we feed well.[61-62.]


CONCLUSION

Hunger (lower caloric intake), and the tough way of life in the outdoors (Vitamin D) stand out as the hallmarks of the Bedu life. Camel milk is equal in importance. Likely, however, the three have to chime together to act as an antidote to Type II diabetes. Of all the food staples, it seemed that camel milk was the first and last resort -- and the oldest in use -- of the Bedu in dealing with the dearth of food and water. I’m unsure about wheat. Burton and the travelers in Wolfe’s book mention wheat often, but usually either outside of the Arabian Peninsula (e.g., Cairo) or inside, but in the cities of that peninsula (Medina and Mecca.) Sugar isn’t mentioned in the early accounts, so I suspect that it was a relatively recent addition to the diet. Meat is prized. And coffee, tea, and dates are a common staple and I suspect they're as old as their date of introduction.

Still, the fact that in the 19th century Burton would report that children who became ill were dispatched to “the black tents” and made to live exclusively on camel milk strikes me as an early version of the elimination diet. In this diet, camel milk is perceived as harmless, yet nutritious, while other foods are harmful and causing of disease. It could've been a myth. But, coupled with the “harsh life” of lower caloric intake and a physical life outdoors in Vitamin D heaven -- such, I suspect, may just be the most potent antidote to the plague of Type II diabetes in Saudi Arabia– -- and likely in the Arab World.

When children at a French boys school in Beirut, in the winter, if a sunny day, the Brothers wouldn't wait for the regular recess. They'd stop classes and take us out to play in the sun. What did these Christian Brothers know? Did they then know about Vitamin D and its importnace to health -- albeit in a country where people generally were exposed to the sun much more than in northern places?

Get out there into the desert, herd something for the longest you can endure, locate a Bedu and get your camel milk from her, show her cash, and pray to the God of Endurance that the milk she sells you is in fact from a Hazmiah (female camel.) That should help you avoid monstruous medical complexes where death, not life, happens.

NATIONAL SECURITY ALERT : THE DAMASCUS ASSASSINATION. U P D A T E D.

third rough draft

TOO EARLY

It’s too early to sort out the who and what of the assassination of Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyah in Damascus. And it’s really not that important that he died in terms of of the capabilities of the group and politically. They’ll be so many who are knowledgeable and eager to replace him. If anything, this assassination should further sharpen Hizbollah’s security procedures and those of Syria. (Unless Syria had something to do with it, “an inside job,” but I highly doubt it.)

Syria is exposed from so many directions: Iraq, with countless refugees coming through, who can include operatives of the harmful idiots, Jordan and Israel; Lebanon, where there's too much smoke that the harmful idiots and France -- and likely Jordan and Israel -- have set up a security apparatus, including intelligence and (I would think) bomb-making skills, on behalf of the Saudi State in that country. (See prior post.) Not to mention Turkey, especially its generals, who for all practical purposes are no different from Israeli generals, being so close to each other.

So it doesn’t surprise me that the so-called Syrian security shield has been pierced. What surprises me is that it hasn’t more often, what with such relatively open borders.

(Direct experience.

Years ago, before the invasion of Iraq, I traveled to Jordan on a bus from Beirut. I wanted to see the Syrian “desert" -- I saw it: it's full of olive trees; the rock had the color of volcano lava; the farmers had gathered that rock and built makeshift walls -- rab3aa -- with it to delineate property and clear it for the planting--

I didn’t witness any special security procedures at the Lebanese-Syrian border. A year or two ealier, I had gone over to Damascus with a friend’s father, A., to shop at Souk al-Hamidiyyah. The Syrian customs agents knew the friend’s father well from weekly trips that he and his late wife would take to shop in Damascus for their many children. Prices in Damascus were significantly lower than those in Beirut. The Syrians stamped our passports, including my American, so fast. I, my high school friend and his wife didn’t leave the car. All I saw was A. gathering our papers and passports and heading into the customs' building, then coming out.

A. was the best facilitator I had ever met. Only India has better facilitators at government agencies; these, according to a colleague, even serve you tea or coffee while facilitating. -- A. was so good that the police by the souk, all similarly-minted skinny and slender bedouin boys, allowed us to park illegally.

Wonder how much the facilitating cost A. both at the border and for parking. Just as A. can pay, so can others.)

NASRALLAH’S SPEECH AND ISRAEL’S INFLUENCE IN WASHINGTON

There’s no question that Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah in his speech focused almost exclusively on the Israelis. Why? Because --

(1) The Israelis are the more likely suspect; and

(2) even if they weren’t the ones who did the assassination, it helps his cause to focus on them since that would assist Hezbollah in further appealiing to the Arab Street and countering the ideology pushed along by some among the harmful idiots, the Saudis and the Jordanians to further the rift between the Arab Sunni and Arab Shia.

Now , why would he Israelis do it? They should know that so many, competent as they come, trained in Iran, and with a track record to recommend them, are able and willing to replace Mughniyah. And they should know , too, that Syria’s borders are pourous -- that it’s not much of an achievement to have pierced that so-called Syrian security shield. My friend's father could pierce it, so to speak, with some payment. So could others, with more payment. And even if it were an achievement, a doubtful proposition, what difference does that make?


KEEP UP THE SYMPATHETIC NETWORK IN THE COUNTRY OF THE HARMFUL IDIOTS.

I think the assassination was meant for US consumption more than for anything else. The Israelis in the end want to prove their usefulness to the harmful idiots as my friends' cats catch birds and mice, kill them, and leave them at the door step. The message: see, O dear American public, your government agencies can’t get Bin Laden, and we can get Mughniyyah.

More to the point: it’s absolutely important to a protectorate which has tied both its fate and its global status to the influence it possesses within the country of the harmful idiots that it be adored in that country and deemed so necessary. Not only by that country's people. More importantly: by wings within that country's foreign policy and defense bureaucracy, and by the concentric circles of associated elite. Operation such as the Mughniyah assassination are meant to impress those who are predisposed to believe that operations of the kind do make a difference, and assure that arguments on Israel’s behalf are made at each and every relevant meeting and in articles. Israel’s influence in the US has been at stake, especially after its disastrous under-achievement (defeat, really) in its war with Hizbollah in July of 2006, and the disastrous failure of the Jewish Right in Washington, which had played such a pivotal role in the horrendous decision to invade and dismantle Arab Iraq. Defeats and failures change courses for countries, including the United States. Without solid influence in Washington, Israel risks losing the Turkish generals, Russia, Sarkozi, and so many other countries and leaders who see it as able to achieve so much for them in the capital of the harmful idiots. Consider, for heaven’s sake if nothing else, that even prominent Saudi princes had sat in Israel’s lap to assure the harmful idiots’ support of their candidacy to become Crown Prince and King! (See prior posts.)

Nasrallah didn’t have on his mind Israel’s influence in the country of the harmful idiots when he made his speech. Instead likely he believed the superficial thesis that the Israelis did it either to impair Hizbollah’s ability to conduct military operations or as revenge for lending that party's hand to Palestinian Islamic nationalists. (I'm not singling out Hamas because I'm smelling (!) some tension between it on the one hand and, on the other, Iran and those fringe factions which Iran supports more directly.) With that in mind, he assured the Israelis that there will be continuity. Mughniyah, he said, “had accomplished with his brothers all his work and, as he leaves us today, as martyr, he doesn’t leave behind but little which needs to be done.” (My translation from Arabic.)

US and other foreign security agencies understood Nasrallah’s message correctly when it came to his promise to abandon “the rules” (unspoken) of engagement with Israel. That, as Israel had taken the war outside of Lebanon, so shall Hizbollah. Where will it strike? In Israel, most Arab observers believe. But that may not be so easy at a time of heightened vigilance. Talking probabilities, I think the more likely place for escalating away would be first Iraq, then Lebanon. (It could be anywhere, such as Argentina, where Hizbollah on March 17, 1992, about one month after Israel had assassinated its Secretary-General, Abbas al-Musawi, exploded a car bomb against the Israeli embassy in Argentina's capital, killing 29 and wounding tens of others.)


LINKAGE: U.S. PLANES AND COPTERS IN IRAQ

This newsletter has in the past stressed the issue of linkage: that, as part of the tarwidh (this term came later -- conditioning/taming) of the harmful idiots, Iran and Syria will not consider an Israeli transgression as independently planned and executed. They would link it to the harmful idiots. With linkage in mind, I believe US troops in Iraq would be the prime and most convenient target for retaliation for the Mughniyah assassination. These therefore should be on alert for retaliatory attacks. In particular, US copters and planes. Why? As part of the policy of tarwidh, the Iranians might inject a missile or two to relay to the harmful idiots the message that they could not afford escalating -- and that Mughniyah’s assassination was exactly that. It would matter little that Israel likely was the one who killed Mughniyyah in part to obtain results of this very kind: retaliation in Iraq that would (the Israelis would hope) bring about a larger American military retaliation against Iran -- a full-scale war. Which would bring along the draft and the full militarization of American society, a la Israel. That's the Israeli hope.

LINKAGE: U.S. CITIZENS, THE OPERATIVES OF THE HARMFUL IDIOTS, AND THOSE OF THE SAUDI STATE (see prior post) IN LEBANON.

While I do accept Nasrallah’s words and fully believe that Hizbollah will never jeopardize Lebanon’s unity as an Arab country, I wouldn’t put it past Hizbollah to launch a campaign to empty Lebanon of any and all US influence. Out of an abundance of caution, US citizens in Lebanon should be on the lookout. This is especially true for those who aren’t of Lebanese descent or, if they are, cannot back this up with fluency in Arabic. Why? Because indications are that we’re heading back to the scary 1980s, to a war among intelligence services, one where Iranian and Syrian intelligence might decide yet again to empty Lebanon of any and all U.S. influence.

Why return to the 1980s?

Because the alliance of the harmful idiots and the Israelis, with its silent Arab reactionary partners, continues to hit walls, especially after the summer of 2006. After that summer it had become abundantly clear that Israel had disappointed its harmful idiot sponsors and all the powers of Arab reaction. (The Saudi State in Lebanon had been rooting for Israel in that summer; but it learned better.) So the Israelis and their sponsors (likely) now want to try the Hizbollah-like route -- assassinations and what have you. It’ll become a war staged by intelligence services. Can the harmful idiots really match the masters at undercover warfare? Do they have suicide bombers of their own? Aren’t they bogged down and exposed in Iraq? And isn’t it that few believe them any longer or trust their judgement?

The Israelis likely want to dare the Iranians -- another attempt at entrapment -- to force a change in the discourse of the American presidential campaign. The Israelis are concerned that Obama will not sway their way against Iran. Even Clinton, a pro-Israel candidate who voted to grant George Bush the authority to invade, thus pleasing the Israelis and their fans, may be too hesitant to escalate with Iran. Israel is aware that both of these candidates had dispatched emissaries to Damascus.

But the Israelis, in assassinating Mughniyah, are hoping for too much from this assassination. Where things stand, the tax base has had it and wouldn't care the least about what the Israelis are doing. The matter is no longer in the hands of the concentric circles of elite who adore Israel and treat it as a privileged partner. Economic disturbances, intimately connected to the printing of currency associated with the Iraq Project, for which the Israelis and the Jewish Right are in part accountable, now supercede the importance of the Mughniyahs of this world. The masters at present no longer care about the mice in the field which the cats bring back dead. These "mice," after all, focus their unconventional warfare mostly on the Israelis in a conflict that's percieved as endless and asinine. As things stand, the politicians’ failure to tax, including for a hugely expensive war, the Federal Reserve’s continued lowering of interest rates, and the aversion to regulating runaway capitalism, have resulted in such financial turbulence that we should be buried in domestic crisis for the foreseeable future.

The cats and the mice can perform their acrobatics ad infinitum. But the Israelis and the Jewish Right shouldn't expect the harmful idiots to be able to mobilize the tax base for yet another hugely expensive war. Iran knows that. Hence its reluctance to do anything to help out the Israelis. Get it?



LINKAGE: THE PERSONALITIES OF THE SAUDI STATE IN LEBANON

Another target, though not an easy one, are the personalities of the Saudi State in Lebanon:

– Saad Hariri : I’m in the black so that Lebanon would be in the red; I AM the state, since my dad played such a pivotal role in bankrupting the de jure state, so that we can become billionaires, seventeen times over, and have the country of the harmful idiots and France protect my dad's legacy of pathological greed. (Hey, Nizbollah and Amal did equal harm by placing every Shia in Lebanon on the social security payroll. But Nasrallah didn't pocket a penny.)


-- Samir Geagea: I did massacre so many people, including Christians, but I did make so much money, and now the harmful idiots are adding to my wealth, training my men there and in France -- not to mention likely Israel and Jordan. True, I'm hated by most of the Lebanese, and certainly 70% of the Christians. But what does that matter when it comes to obtaining support from the harmful idiots to engage Hizbollah's rear lines and divert its guns away from Israel? And

--Walid Jumblatt: I too had murdered innocent Christians, but now I love them, since I have only 12 Druze left in Lebanon, so I need the Christians of the Shouf, but lucky for me, Saudi King Abdallah meets with me regularly and I return to Lebanon with millions of cheap dollars and solid Euros to build influence, just like my late dad had journeyed to Libya to do the same. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

What to watch for is that the Iranian-Syrian State in Lebanon might want to send the message louder and clearer to the harmful idiots, the backers of the Saudi State in Lebanon, that the Iranian-Syrian State can afford escalating in Lebanon, especially if Lebanon proves to be the place where the Mughniyah assassination had been hatched. Can the Saudi State? Or is that state once again counting on Israel and its promise to disturb things enough for the Saudi State to take over? Hope does spring eternal, doesn't it?

It’s really unclear who can and who cannot afford escalating. Likely, neither can. But should the Syrians and the Iranians determine that the operation in Damascus had been hatched in Lebanon -- I frankly don’t think they could afford not to retaliate in Lebanon. If they do so determine, then expect a flurry of assassinations of on-the-street operatives of the Saudi State, especially those trained abroad.

Iraq is another place where the assassination may have been hatched by the Israelis or the harmful idiots . Jordan is yet another possibility. But the Syrians might have to bite the bullet when it comes to Jordan until after the Arab summit. (See below.)


INTIMIDATE ARAB HEADS OF STATE

The harmful idiots and (or via) their Israelis could also have meant the assassination in Damascus to intimidate Arab heads of state and discourage them from attending the upcoming summit in that city, scheduled for next month. Especially that there’s disgruntlement by the Arab dependencies against the harmful idiots. These are placing so much pressure on them to line up against Iran and no pressure whatsoever on the apple of their eye to ease up on Gaza. Consider, for instance, Egyptian President Mubarak’s recent statements that the US troops in Iraq attract terrorism and threaten regional stability. What’s that all about? It reminds me of the “illegal occupation” statement by Saudi King Abdallah which had preceded Cheney’s visit to the Gulf in May 2007 -- blackmail, a threat against the United States that unless it fixed things up in Iraq, the Gulf would diversify its sources of security to include Russia and others.

(Note:

Saudi King Abdallah's blackmail had worked. The harmful idiots drew closer to the Sunni of Iraq. They're now arming them and paying them. But it didn’t have to work. Cheney and Bush could’ve set off US intelligence against the Gulf Arab leaders to subdue them. But the Cheney/Bush team had been so disillusioned with the Jewish Right about Iraq, the “thinking” crowd around them, who had promised them a cake walk, that they were ready to go back to their oil roots. Not to mention that the Pentagon just wasn’t crazy about getting into another Vietnam and forgo attention to parts of the world other than the Middle East.

Arab analysts have it wrong when they think that Cheney wants war with Iran and Rice wants negotiations -- and the threat of war -- with Iran. Neither pathetic failure really matters that much any longer. Truly: both have become eminently insignificant. At this stage the generals have the say, not anyone else. And the generals likely percieve a lack of comprehensive strategy towards the entire region of the Middle East -- other than the Jewish Right's Greater Middle East initiative or the National Security Queen's New Middle East. In the absence of such comprehencive strategy -- which would include a Palestinan state and Israeli withdrawal from all Arab occupied territory, it'd be unlikely to expect anything more than stop-gap measures from the Pentagon.)

Mubarak may have intended his statement (almost certainly coordinated with the Saudis) as a message to the harmful idiots: you rein in the apple of your eye in Gaza (and have it stop such sophomoric acts as cutting the communication cables north of Alexandria), or else we will withdraw our support for your stay in Iraq and draw closer to Iran. The Israelis are running around (Olmert to Germany and Barak to Turkey) to get approval for invading Gaza -- a bleak prospect for the Arab dependencies since their populace is certain to go berserk at such occurrence. That, these dependencies know, should make Iran yet more popular among the Arab Street.

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT OR THE US?

first rough draft

A college friend, now a professor at an Arab university, e-mailed me about the dilemma she and her husband are facing. Should they send their son to the American University of Beirut, which they prefer, or to an American university? Would it be safe to send him to Beirut?


On balance, I answered, the US would be safer, provided their son stays out of certain neighborhoods and avoids to the extent possible contact with the police, at times an uncontrollable force in the US. In Lebanon, I explained, there are two states, not one: the Saudi State sponsored by the harmful idiots, and the Syrian state sponsored by Iran.

THE SAUDI STATE

Years ago, at the end of the civil war, the late Rafiq Hariri, with the help of the Saudi royal family, conned the Israel-anchored harmful idiots into believing that if Prime Minister he would sign a peace treaty with their beloved Israel. That’s the word on the streets of Lebanon. He didn’t. But he did empty the national treasury, amassing as Prime Minister an estimated $17 billion fortune. Since he was a Saudi import, the man forgot he wasn’t a prince in Saudi Arabia where skimming $17 billion over a few years would be small potatoes. (Consider a very, very small example: the two billion dollar skimming allegation against Bandar bin Sultan in the Yamama arms deal between the UK and Saudi Arabia -- the investigation of which Tony Blair had scuttled.) Hariri amassed the fortune as Prime Minister by launching construction projects a la Roman Empire. A friend, a city planner, always reminds me that the easiest way for politicians to pillage is to launch ambitious construction projects.

Mr. Hariri did exactly that. He was the House of Saud’s gift to Lebanon.

According to Lebanese friends, not only did the man amass a fortune from his construction projects, which he launched as Prime Minister; he too had a couple of his banks, likely owned with the Saudi royals, lend the money to the bankrupt Lebanese state. Joy of joys: Not only did he pillage once, in the grandest of fashions, he, even after his death, had set up the institutions for continued pillaging through the state’s payment of interest to his banks (“debt servicing”) ad nauseam.


(Net result: The harmful idiots in Lebanon in good part are now by necessity the protectors of the Saudi and Hariri grand theft (“investments”) , as they are the mercenaries in Iraq for the Israelis against the Iranians. We are the whore of reactionary forces the Middle East over.)

Hariri is a typical sample of a harmful idiots’ assets. These Israel-obsessed harmful idiots have a knack for picking assets who pillage their countries blind. The harmful idiots back them all the way. So long as an asset dogs the apple of their eye, he/she can pillage to the outermost limits of their pathological greed.

THE MIDDLE EAST DOES HAVE HONEST POLITICIANS: CONSIDER FUAD CHEHAB, CHARLES HELOU, ELIAS SARKIS, SAEB SALAM, SALIM AL-HOSS, AND RACHID KARAMI.

In contrast, starting around 1958 until the early seventies, Lebanon had three presidents who lived modestly and never stole a penny: Fuad Chehab, Charles Helou, and Elias Sarkis. Chehab lived on $3 a day, with his wife. Helou never ever skimmed a penny from the national treasury. And Elias Sarkis, the aged bachelor, is said to have hosted women at the Presidential Palace (girlfriends) but never ever gave them a penny from the national treasury.

Amin Gemayyel was the harmful idiots’ first asset to become President of Lebanon. (His brother Bashir was actually the first, but he never made it. The Syrians.) Amin started it so to speak. Then Hariri took pillaging to stratospheric heights.

Saeb Salam, Rachid Karami, Salim al-Hoss (still alive) -- household names as Sunni Prime Ministers -- never stole money either. Salam’s only sin was that he smoked cigars and polluted each and every cabinet meeting, forcing Fuad Chehab to beg him to leave the meeting and smoke outside. Karami existed one step away from the life of a monk. No one, absolutely no one, ever doubted the integrity (and intelligence) of Salim al-Hoss. I mention the honest Presidents and Prime Ministers, the non-thieves, to rebut any attempt by the harmful idiots to stereotype Middle Easterners as corrupt. To justify their support of egregiously corrupt and pathologically greedy assets. The harmful idiots, if anything, encourage corruption. Consider the book of a couple of years ago: Economic Hitman.


More trouble is brewing for Lebanon. There’s way too much smoke that Israel and Jordan, on behalf of the Israel-adoring harmful idiot, have been training operatives for the Saudi State in Lebanon. These operatives are to balance the Iranian-Syrian state’s ability, through Hezbollah, to intimidate the Saudi State via assassinations. You see: the Iranian/Syrian state doesn’t have the money of the Saudi State; so it has to resort to force since it can never match the corrupting influence of the Saudis' money. Not to mention the open checkbook of the harmful idiots. (See prior post.)


The Saudi State floats on tons and tons of money, endless streams of that stuff. The Hariri family, by pocketing $17 billion of the Lebanese people’s money, has become a state within a state -- way more powerful than the visible state is or could be within any foreseeable future. The Hariri family, too, has the backing of the Saudi royal family, and of an unlimited supply of money from that country’s intelligence service. Accordingly, the Saudi state buys all those it can buy in Lebanon and outside. For instance, I’m a firm believer that Saudi/Hariri money was responsible for Russia not using its veto at the UN Security Council to block the establishment of the tribunal to investigate the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, and to prosecute the Syrian officials behind it. I was listening to the author of a recent book (Comrade J) on NPR who spoke about the extreme corruption of Putin and the circle of decision in Russia. I’m therefore confident that Saad Hariri and the Saudis deposited a couple hundred million dollars in a Swiss bank account for Putin and his men to not veto the formation of the tribunal.

More recently, Syria and Hezbollah did a volte face on backing Michel Suleiman to become President of Lebanon. A claim has been made that Suleiman had visited secretly the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He did or not doesn’t matter much. I’m on record with my father telling him that whoever becomes President, or is considered a serious candidate, will have an agent of the Saudi State in Lebanon approach her people to inform them about the $30 million deposited for them in Switzerland.


THE IRANIAN/SYRIAN STATE

As things have evolved, Iran had developed allies who are eminently not corrupt: Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. (That’s not to exculpate Hezbollah as a tool of terror -- non-conventional warfare -- for Iranian intelligence, but that’s a different topic.) Both Hezbollah and Hamas -- and likely any and all Islamist movements that will see the light of day -- built (and will build) their popularity not only on resistance. They built it on non-corruption and the provision of essential services. For instance, Mahmud al-Zahar, the Hamas leader, already has lost two children as martyrs to Israel’s guns. He lives modestly. Mahmoud Abbas’s son, in contrast, is said to be involved in a shady business deal with a cellular/communication company. So much so that some in the non-Saudi controlled Arab press -- a minute part of the Arab press -- refer to Mahmoud Abbas not as Abu Mazin, his non-de-guerre, but as Abu Business -- using the English word.

Abu Business is an asset of the Israel-loving harmful idiots. It befuddles me how the powers of reaction in the Arab World are so able to enroll the services of the Israel-cherishing harmful idiots on behalf of their uncontrollable and pathological greed. Mind you, the Soviet Union is no more and there’s no reason whatsoever to use our power on behalf of petty and disgusting greed. The case can easily and convincingly be made that we can fight terror by being progressive and dumping these one-dimensional money-hungry reactionary assets. But I guess we’re just as reactionary ourselves. Birds of a feather...

To describe the Iran-Syria state I should start by saying that Syria likely packs a decent amount of mistrust of Russia, particularly after Russia had failed to veto the Security Council Resolution to establish the international tribunal. The Syrians aren’t simpletons. They likely reached the same conclusion I did: that the Saudis and Hariri had made secret deposits for Putin and his crew in Switzerland in exchange for Russia not using the veto for the tribunal.

But Syria mistrusts the harmful idiots and their European and Arab proxies even more. Syria thinks strategically. One zillion Arab media personalities criticize Syria, daily. These work for the media empire owned by the princes of Saudi Arabia. Saudi intelligence channels the money through the princes to run that empire. The princes typically keep a part of that money (how much money do these people need? And for what? Can’t they see that the spread of diabetes among their ranks and the ranks of their people is directly related to their love of money?) The Saudi-owned media empire (most recent addition the Arabiya satellite television) are so fond of criticizing Syria for aligning with Iran. (I love to make friends feel uncomfortable about selling out for money and security.)

Hello? Who’s Syria to align with? Saudi Arabia? And what army does that country have? What missiles does it manufacture? Syria has a Joulan to retrieve from the colonialists next door, and an Arab mission (yes, Arab mission, the Saudi empire’s self-serving allegations notwithstanding) to protect now that the harmful idiots had eliminated the very center of secular pan-Arab power, dismantling it to smithereens on behalf of their dear Israelis and their equally dear Jewish Right. Should Syria follow the advice of the prolific Raghida Dergham (al-Hayat) and do what she does, which is kiss ass with the Saudis? (Ms. Dergham does it the sophisticated way, under the allure of balance-of-power theory.) How would that return the Joulan?

(Note: Thanking God for the internet, and the Pentagon -- not -- which developed it, I at times use Google Languages and discover yet more Arab sites. I recently discovered a Syrian one, quite sophisticated. I’m telling you: it’s refreshing to read that site. While the Saudis have to bite the bullet when it comes to the fact that they have and will have zero influence in the US -- even after they make the payments to useless though extremely harmful GW and Cheney after they leave office -- the fact is that Israel has checked any and all significant potential political sources of influence for the Saudis. Israel has even made superb inroads into the ranks of self-appointed Arab-American leaders. ( I told you I like to get on the nerves of friends who sold out for security.) And that’s why the Syrian site is liberating. It doesn’t have a Raghida Dergham to skirt this and that issue when it comes to the powerless providers of her paycheck. The Syrian site talks about US policies as Israeli policies. Period. Amazing. It’s aware of ruses and traps the Israel-ululating harmful idiots set up for it, either directly or through their European proxies. Seriously, I’m impressed, especially that I live in the politically correct culture where even old friends stop contacting you when they ogle your use of the words “Jewish Right.” Oh my God, my career, they scream!)

Syria cannot let go of Lebanon, we all know it. Hezbollah is its army. Syria isn’t by definition anti-US; it really isn’t. A Lebanese friend, a businessman who travels across the Arab World, including Syria and Europe, would remind me that the Syrian governing elite adores the US, but it sees the US in the hands of Israel and its proxies. By the way, this friend is not biased; if anything he hated the Syrians for obvious Lebanese Christian reasons and because the Syrians had imprisoned him during the civil war -- which forced him into self-exile for nearly two decades.) Syria just cannot assess strategically any hope of achieving the liberation of its territory from the Israelis by relying on the Saudi “brothers.” Yes, these can deposit a few hundred millions in secret bank accounts for Bashar Asad and his coterie. So? You make the money, then what? You become a Abdel-Halim Khaddam, that little man who tormented Lebanon, and now lives in exile in a Saudi-funded palace in Paris. (The little dwarf must feel quite insignificant, maybe even treasonous, being on the same side as the colonialists who occupy his country.)

Accept defeat and the loss of the Joulan? And what about the Palestinian state, a pillar of Arab nationalism for the Syrian government, as it had been for the Iraqi pre-invasion? Will Raghida Dergham’s employers, who have no armies of significance, and who have zero influence with the Israel-anchored country, regain the Joulan for them and see to the establishment of a Palestinian state on all the pre-1967 territory? Shouldn’t the Saudis appreciate the fact that the only influence left for them -- other than making secret payments -- is one borne out of the effective equilibrium in power that Iran has established with Israel? In other words, what influence they have is very much a structural fluke, and they should be thanking Iran/Syria for it -- and, of course, GW for eliminating the balancer of Iranian power -- Arab Iraq?

Besides, the thinking of the actual majority in Lebanon is quite practical. (The so-called majority the Saudi State in Lebanon claims to have is due to a ruse the Hariris used where Hezbollah lent them its support in the Baabda electoral district in exchange for their promise not to try to disarm it. Then they did a volte face under pressure from the harmful idiots.) The thinking of the actual majority is: haven’t the Saudi Hariris made enough money from that poor country called Lebanon? Do they really need to keep it as their plantation forever and ever? Hey, not that they couldn’t have once, when they had been allied to the Syrians. The late Rafiq Hariri had been a close friend of Syria’s and he had fed that country’s occupying elite quite a lot from Lebanon’s treasury, with abandon my Lebanese friends would say. And the Syrians would’ve let him pillage the country forever as long as he fed them by sinking his little farm (Lebanon) deeper into debt, and having his banks lend the money to the peons, and have the slaves sweat payments to service the debt.


But Rafiq Hariri made the mistake of believing the harmful idiots -- that these intended (and, more importantly, would be able) on pushing the Syrians out of Lebanon. Anyone with a modicum ability to analyze would’ve concluded otherwise. (Hariri needed to hire one of these shrewd Syrian strategists, not the CIA (Lebanese) men he had around him.) He didn’t understand that even the CIA becomes an idiot when it’s ordered to execute the policy of harmful idiots. When the CIA is ordered to push a policy, however harmful and idiotic, it pushes it. The CIA called in their chips with Hariri: it was time for the late Rafiq Hariri to fit into the American Jewish Right’s Greater Middle East initiative, to pay back for the $17 billion they allowed him to pillage as Prime Minister. He didn’t have independent analysts around him. He paid the price for that. He paid it with his life.

To reiterate: Syria cannot afford to make mistakes in Lebanon, lest the international tribunal becomes effective. Lucky for it, it now has a majority of the Lebanese Christians on its side, reluctantly, but they have no choice. They have seen the harmful idiots and their Israelis sell them down the drain, allowing Syrian tanks and armored troops to conquer Mount Lebanon -- all to have Syria give an “Arab cover”to Bush father’s liberation of Kuwait. Which itself was a shameless set up by the harmful idiots and Kuwaiti intelligence who entrapped Saddam Hussein into invading. Rira bien qui rira le dernier, says the French proverb. Now we’re the ones entrapped.

Hey, lest you forget: the harmful idiots had earlier destroyed Lebanon by miscalculating when they, and their Jordanians, on behalf of their dear Israelis, manufactured the Lebanese civil war. They meant to rein in the Palestinian resistance to avoid the formation of a Palestinian state, so that the apple of their eye could lord over the victims of its colonialist schemes. So, in effect, the harmful idiots have screwed their natural allies -- the Arab Christians of Lebanon -- twice, with disastrous results. And they screwed them a third time when they brought in Rafiq Hariri to pillage the country the Arab Christians of Lebanon, and the Arab Sunni of West Beirut, had built together.

But things don’t end here. The Lebanese Christians are on their way to becoming Arab nationalists. Why? They’ve lost secular Iraq. They’re witnesses to the mass exodus of the Iraqi Christians who now see no future for themselves in Iraq. The Lebanese Christians, especially the Maronites, by far the most pro-Western community in the Middle East, which connections to the West go back a few centuries, aren’t about to accept the same fate as their Iraqi counterparts. They now refer to their new awakening as “kay Nabqa” (“So that we Remain” [in Lebanon and as a community].) It’s a struggle for existence after having lost nearly everything fighting wars on behalf of Israel.

Not that the Lebanese Christians don’t appreciate Saudi Arabia. Even at the height of criminal mass murder by Bashir Gemayyel of innocent Sunni Muslims (e.g., Black Saturday), there wasn’t a single retaliatory act by Saudi Arabia or any other Arab country against a Lebanese or any Arab Christian. To all Arabs, the Lebanese were brothers who had gone mad.

And there was a lot of truth to this. My late mother would often tell the story about the late Saeb Salam, a Sunni leader and many-time Prime Minister. Mr. Salam had headed the Maqasid Sunni Muslim charity in Beirut. When once he was examining the ledger of families receiving Maqasid help, he was said to have commented to his aides : “there are more Christian families on this ledger than Muslim.” “Yes,” his aides were said to have replied, adding, “We eat together or we starve together.”

But no one in his right mind thinks Saudi Arabia or the harmful idiots can protect anyone. Syria, on the other hand, can. The very Walid Jumblatt, the mouthy member of the Saudi State in Lebanon, who now meets with King Abdallah regularly, as if he headed a million-man-army, once made use of Syria’s strength to humiliate the Christians. There’s hardly any Druze community left in Lebanon. Yet, fear not. The Tailors’ Corps of the Syrian armed forces went to work. It copied and put out hundreds if not thousands of Jumblatt’s Lebanese Socialist Party militia uniforms. Syrian intelligence then dressed their Palestinian and Syrian men as fighters of that militia. These men defeated the Israel-backed Christian Lebanese Forces, more than once. Worse: these very men committed two gruesome massacres against innocent Christian civilians: Damour and Bhamdoun. Now the Christians have engineered a rapprochement with Syria. Isn’t that which is good for the goose -- isn’t it good for the gander?

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT

No one wants a civil war in Lebanon. The politicians know that a civil war would mean the end of Lebanon’s banking system. Hezbollah is aware that a lot of the money in that banking system, if not most, belongs to Shia from West Africa. It’s not about to see the banking system disintegrate. Nor is Hariri and the Saudi State. After all they own so much of that banking system!

So, I emailed my friend telling her that Lebanon isn’t that dangerous. But, on balance, the US is safer. She agreed.