After Executing Regime Critic, Saudi Arabia Fires Up American PR Machine

After Executing Regime Critic, Saudi Arabia Fires Up American PR Machine

    Tuesday, January 05, 2016   No comments

Saudi Arabia’s well-funded public relations apparatus moved quickly after Saturday’s explosive execution of Shiite political dissident Nimr al-Nimr to shape how the news is covered in the United States.

The execution led protestors in Shiite-run Iran to set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, precipitating a major diplomatic crisis between the two major powers already fighting proxy wars across the Middle East.

The Saudi side of the story is getting a particularly effective boost in the American media through pundits who are quoted justifying the execution, in many cases without mention of their funding or close affiliation with the Saudi Arabian government.

Meanwhile, social media accounts affiliated with Saudi Arabia’s American lobbyists have pushed English-language infographics, tweets, and online videos to promote a narrative that reflects the interests of the Saudi regime.

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Turkey’s silence on Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric

Turkey’s silence on Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric

    Tuesday, January 05, 2016   No comments

by MEHMET Y. YILMAZ

The Middle East has gone even deeper into turmoil since “our ally” Saudi Arabia, with which we recently established a “high-level strategic council,” executed a prominent Shiite cleric.

You will remember that Turkey and Qatar also signed a military deal a short while ago, and we will construct a military base in Qatar against the “common enemy.”

Considering the 3,600 km distance between Turkey and Qatar, I recently asked who could be this “common enemy.” It is not too difficult to find the answer. The only power that Qatar is afraid of is Iran.

Now, our “high-level strategic partner” Saudi Arabia is on the verge of war with Iran. They have cut diplomatic ties; harsh statements are flying in the air.

It would not be surprising to see Qatar getting involved in this verbal fight. Indeed, Bahrain cut its relations with Tehran yesterday.

Turkey is now in the midst of a conflict that should be of no interest. Turkey is in no position to either intervene to decrease the tension or to stand aside.

That is where we have ended up thanks to the Erdoğan-Davutoğlu duo’s foreign policy. We will all pay the price for them resorting to cheap campaign propaganda whenever critics warned “let’s not slide into Middle Eastern swamp.”

What is the reason behind the silence?

Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, the cleric who was executed in Saudi Arabia, had nothing to do with violence. In fact, he condemned violence and he was against all dictators in the Islamic world - including Bashar al–Assad.

In an interview with the BBC in 2011 he said he preferred “the roar of the word against authorities to weapons.”

“The weapon of the word is stronger than bullets, because the authorities profit from a battle with weapons,” he said.

Now, the execution of this cleric who preached peace could set off a period where only guns do the talking.

What I find strange is the fact that Turkey has remained silent up to now. It is silent about the killing of a cleric who has stood up to tyrants.

There is no word from a government that says it stands with all the oppressed, regardless of their identity. The Foreign Ministry is silent.

Isn’t this silence of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which reacted so harshly against death sentences that were not even carried out in Egypt, perplexing?

If a Muslim cleric was executed in a Buddhist country, would they have stayed silent like this?

Why this silence? Is it because the killers this time are the Saudis? Or is it because the cleric is Shiite?  source

Riyadh 'In Serious Trouble': Saudi Aggression Stems From Global Isolation

Riyadh 'In Serious Trouble': Saudi Aggression Stems From Global Isolation

    Monday, January 04, 2016   No comments

Saudi Arabia’s decision to execute a prominent Shiite cleric over the weekend caused a firestorm. While the move seemed reckless to many, a new analysis by the Eurasia Group shows that Riyadh’s actions may be the inevitable result of its waning influence.

2015 was a bloody year for Saudi Arabia. Continuing a violent pattern, Riyadh executed over 150 people last year. On the second day of the New Year, the Kingdom killed nearly a third of that annual total in a single day, executing 47 people. One those killed was prominent Shiite Cleric Sheikh al-Nimr.

In response to protests in Iran, the Saudi government has severed diplomatic ties with Tehran, making the first weekend of 2016 unpredictably eventful in terms of Middle Eastern politics.

But according to a new analysis by Eurasia Group of the world’s top risks of the coming year, Riyadh’s aggression is the result of its own internal strife and shaky political future. Source

Saudi Arabia beheads 43 and fusillades 4 in one day including Shia cleric

Saudi Arabia beheads 43 and fusillades 4 in one day including Shia cleric

    Saturday, January 02, 2016   No comments

Saudi Arabia beheads 43

Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shi'ite Muslim cleric and dozens of al Qaeda members on Saturday, signalling it would not tolerate attacks by either sunni jihadists or minority shi'ites seeking equality, but stirring sectarian anger across the region.

Scores of Shi'ite Muslims marched through the Qatif district of Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province in protest at the execution of cleric Nimr al-Nimra, an eyewitness said. They chanted "down with the Al Saud", the name of the ruling Saudi royal family.

But most of the 47 executed in the kingdom's biggest mass execution for decades were Sunnis convicted of al Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia a decade ago. Four, including Nimr, were Shi'ites accused of shooting policemen.

Saudi rulers beheaded 43, shot 4 in one day

The executions took place in 12 cities in Saudi Arabia, four prisons using firing squads and the others beheading. In December, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula threatened to retaliate against Saudi Arabia for any execution of its members.

Riyadh's main regional rival Iran and its Shi'ite allies immediately reacted with vigorous condemnation of the execution of Nimr, and Saudi police raised security in a district where the sect is a majority in case of protests, residents said.

However, the executions seemed mostly aimed at discouraging Saudis from jihadism after bombings and shootings by Sunni militants in Saudi Arabia over the past year killed dozens and Islamic State called on followers there to stage attacks.

Saudi Arabia's ruling Al Saud family has grown increasingly nervous in recent years as turmoil across the Middle East, especially Syria and Iraq, has empowered Sunni jihadist groups that seek to bring it down and given opportunities to Shi'ite Iran to spread its influence.

The simultaneous execution of 47 people - 45 saudis, one Egytian and a man from Chad - was the biggest mass execution for security offences in Saudi Arabia since the 1980 killing of 63 jihadist rebels who seized Mecca's Grand Mosque in 1979. 

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-security-idUKKBN0UG03E20160102

Turkey's Erdogan says Hitler's Germany exemplifies effective presidential system

Turkey's Erdogan says Hitler's Germany exemplifies effective presidential system

    Friday, January 01, 2016   No comments

 Asked on his return from a visit to Saudi Arabia late on Thursday whether an executive presidency was possible in Turkey while maintaining the unitary structure of the state, Erdogan said: "There are already examples in the world. You can see it when you look at Hitler's Germany.

"There are later examples in various other countries," he told reporters, according to a recording broadcast by the Dogan news agency.

Erdogan wants to change the Turkish constitution to turn the ceremonial role of president into that of a chief executive, a Turkish version of the system in the United States, France or Russia.

...

The ruling AK Party, founded by Erdogan, has put a new constitution at the heart of its agenda after winning back a majority in a November parliamentary election. source

U.S. Should Stop Supporting Likely Saudi War Crimes

U.S. Should Stop Supporting Likely Saudi War Crimes

    Friday, January 01, 2016   No comments

Crime & punishment in Saudi Arabia

By Ivan Eland

The United Nations top official on human rights recently told the U.N. Security Council that the U.S.-supported, Saudi Arabian-led coalition of Sunni nations fighting Shi’ite Houthi rebels in Yemen bore a disproportionate responsibility for attacks on civilians. Since the civil war in Yemen began in March 2015, more than 2,700 civilians have been killed and dozens of hospitals and schools have been attacked, leading the United Nations to warn of violations of international law.

The problem is that the United States is supporting the Saudi-led coalition’s air strikes by providing intelligence for targeting and also by refueling coalition’s war planes, thus extending the range of their bombing. Domestically, Saudi Arabia has a horrendous record on human rights that it is exporting to Yemen via bombing civilians there. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein exacerbated the Sunni-Shi’ite division throughout the Islamic world, and the war in Yemen is actually a joust for influence in the Persian Gulf between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran, which are bitter regional rivals. Saudi Arabia does have substantial interests at stake in Yemen, which borders the autocratic kingdom, but the United States does not and should cease providing weapons and the aforementioned support, which is tainting the U.S. with support for a country that very well may be committing war crimes.

Yemen is a small, poor, and insignificant (from the perspective of U.S. vital interests) country just South of Saudi Arabia. It doesn’t even produce much oil; but of course Saudi Arabia does—and that’s why the Saudis are getting so much U.S. support, despite Saudi Arabia’s despicable foreign and domestic policies. The U.S. government ousts dictators in Iraq and Libya and loudly criticizes Iran’s bad human rights policies; in contrast, the United States mutes its criticism of Saudi Arabia’s atrocious human rights record, sweeps under the under the rug that the 9/11 attackers were mostly Saudi nationals, and ignores that Saudi Arabia is the biggest exporter of militant Sunni Islamism by its support for radical schools around the Islamic world. Why does the world’s only superpower tolerate a major ally supporting potential U.S. enemies (the U.S. has the same toleration for Pakistan doing a similar thing)?

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State Department: US Has Concerns About Jaish al-Islam, but...

State Department: US Has Concerns About Jaish al-Islam, but...

    Thursday, December 31, 2015   No comments

ISR: comment: U.S. administration is willing to work with a rebel group that is determined to "purge Syria from Alawites, Shia, Asians..." and impose the Ummayyad system, a genocidal regime from the 8th century, but not Assad's government that is fighting such a group. No comment!
__________
 
The U.S. has “significant concerns” about a Syrian rebel group whose leader was killed in a Christmas Day airstrike but was troubled by the decision to target someone who had committed himself to efforts to negotiate an end to the civil war, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Tuesday.

 The U.S. has “significant concerns” about a Syrian rebel group whose leader was killed in a Christmas Day airstrike but was troubled by the decision to target someone who had committed himself to efforts to negotiate an end to the civil war, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Tuesday.

Toner told a daily press briefing the death of Zahran Alloush, the leader of the Islamist rebel group Jaish al-Islam, complicates efforts to bring rebel and regime representatives to the negotiating table. Under an initiative of the so-called International Syria Support Group (ISSG), talks are scheduled to begin in Geneva on January 25.


It remains unclear whether the Assad regime or its Russian ally was responsible for the airstrike that killed Alloush in the eastern suburbs of Damascus, but Toner said Secretary of State John Kerry had brought up the matter with his Russian counterpart.

He said Kerry in a phone conversation with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “highlighted our concern that the killing of Jaish al-Islam leader Zahran Alloush – who, as I said, was a leader of a group that supported a political process to end the conflict – complicates our efforts to bring about a meaningful political negotiated settlement as well as a nationwide ceasefire.”

Jaish al-Islam took part in a recent meeting of opposition groups hosted by the Saudi government in Riyadh – an initiative backed by the Obama administration in preparation for the talks in Geneva.



sources: CNSnews & Reuters

Seymour Hersh report on Syria: White House knew US was arming Islamic State

Seymour Hersh report on Syria: White House knew US was arming Islamic State

    Monday, December 28, 2015   No comments

 Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reports that the administration of President Barack Obama, in particular the CIA, has knowingly armed militant Islamists in Syria, including the Islamic State.

"Barack Obama's repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office -- and that there are 'moderate' rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him -- has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon's Joint Staff," Hersh writes in the London Review of Books. "Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration's fixation on Assad's primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn't adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington's anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped."

Hersh writes that a highly classified 2013 Defense Intelligence Agency/Joint Chiefs of Staff report on Syria forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to "chaos" and possibly to Islamist extremists taking over Syria.

Hersh reports that Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, told him that his agency sent a "constant stream" of warnings to the "civilian leadership" about the dire consequences of ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

source

Bizarre news: Erdoğan talks man out of suicide on Bosporus bridge

Bizarre news: Erdoğan talks man out of suicide on Bosporus bridge

    Friday, December 25, 2015   No comments

[This is just a must see to believe, and the thing is: It was all coincidences: the president on his iPhone being driven to work, knew that the man is going to jump, and with the media and camera people present to take shots from every angle... This guy can do it all!]

 President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's convoy coincidentally bumped into a man who was about to attempt suicide on the Bosporus bridge in İstanbul on Friday, and after talking to the man, who wanted to jump off the bridge, the president persuaded him not to kill himself.

Footage from the private Doğan news agency shows the man, whom presidential sources said was from the southeastern province of Siirt and was having problems with his wife, talking to Erdoğan, who remained seated in the back seat of his car.

The man kissed Erdoğan's hand and left the area after talking to himfor a while. The president was seen holding his mobile phone to his ear during the conversation with him.

source

Rights group: Nigerian soldiers kill hundreds of Shiites

Rights group: Nigerian soldiers kill hundreds of Shiites

    Thursday, December 24, 2015   No comments

Hundreds of Shiite Muslims were killed by Nigerian soldiers and buried in mass graves in an "unjustified" attack earlier this month, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

Nigerian soldiers killed "at least 300" members of the radical Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) earlier in December when they fired "without any provocation," said the New York-based rights watchdog in a statement.

Witnesses said that the soldiers of Africa's biggest economy disposed of hundreds of bodies by throwing them in mass graves, making it difficult to establish an accurate death toll, according to HRW.

The violence erupted on December 12 when members of the minority Shiite group erected a makeshift road block during a religious procession, blocking the path of a Nigerian army chief.

"It is almost impossible to see how a roadblock by angry young men could justify the killings of hundreds of people," said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at HRW.

"At best it was a brutal overreaction and at worst it was a planned attack on the minority Shiite group."

The Nigerian army, which has not released an official death toll, denied HRW's charges.

"The allegations are not true," said Nigerian army spokesman Sani Usman to AFP.

"It is therefore presumptuous and clearly out of context for anyone to make such unsubstantiated allegations or comments," said Usman.

"The incident between the Nigerian army and the Islamic Movement of Nigeria has been reported to the appropriate agencies who are investigating the issue."

Last week, the Nigerian government set up a judicial commission to investigate the deaths.

The Nigerian army had accused the Iran-backed sect of "a deliberate attempt to assassinate" army chief of staff Tukur Buratai, releasing footage of the crowd hurling stones at his military convoy.

- Fears of new threat -

The allegations come amid fears that the violent clashes between the Shiite group and Nigeria's army will unleash a new Islamic threat in a country still battling Boko Haram militants.

IMN leader Ibrahim Zakzaky, the charismatic founder of the group, was seriously wounded and remains in police custody, while his deputy was killed in the army crack down.

source