Arab and Middle East leaders get graphic, affectionate and funky.
Who dares kiss McCain?
Bridal song upsets Syrian jackass.
Censorship in the New Middle East.
Shi'a Bolsheviks and Sunni Mensheviks of Egypt.
Alcoa, power struggle and corruption in the Gulf.
Saudis uncover a major plot.

                   
Good ole boys....                                   Party crasher        Bwana 'Bush' and buddies
Drinkin' whiskey n' rye....


                                       
So what did we win?        Good grip, but can we trust him?         I'll wait for you...

                             
I like red too...                        Funky Qaddafi               This duck walks into a bar....


Oil is thicker than bratwurst, wirklich Frau Merkel:
                                                                                              
But neither of us is French! 

                 
All Angela got was eine clammy handshake.


                                                  
My friend, don't even think                             Come here often?
of kissing this old footsoldier
in the Reagan revolution.


                              
Yuck!                   He made me sick            Much better...



                             
Last call for drinks....                   La Scala in Arabia            Does he know he is a heathen?


In Vino Veritas- Jackass Divorces Wife:
Alarabiya reports that a Syrian groom divorced his wife during their wedding night.
The couple were dancing and the wife requested a popular Egyptian song titled "bahibbak ya hmar", i.e  I love you jackass. She tugged at his tie as they danced and she hummed the tunes of the hit song. Apparently the Syrian groom thought that the shoes fit, and divorced her right then and there. Told you these guys have no sense of humor.
Advice to all Arab brides: never play, sing, dance to, or mention the hit song titled "I love you, jackass" to an Arab husband, especially on the wedding night. Men are sensitive about....these things, and some of us know the old Latin saying that "In vino veritas".

Censorship:
There is a verse in the Holy Quran that ‘frowns’ on consuming alcohol, it goes something like “Thou shall not pray while drunk”. Occasionally it is used in Arabic as an example of the ease of taking things completely and outrageously out of context, as when one says “Thou shall not pray...” and stops. This reminds me of our notorious censors in the Arab region.

Sprech-ing of which: Egypt is now reported to ban books with titles that carry either of two words “Shi’a, Shi’ism”, or “Wahhabi, Wahhabism”.

The first word is banned out of some worry (fear?) that any book with such a title will somehow lead to increased Shi’a influence, perhaps of people becoming Shi’a. Sort of like Joe MacCarhty felt about The Communist Manifesto- except that book was expicit and even had phrases that kept old Joe awake at night when he was sober, phrases like, "workers of the world Unite....."
 
The second word, dubbed the W word in polite fundamentalist company, is banned in deference to Saudi sensitivities (yes they have a lot of those): it also publicly states a term about which many Egyptians are uneasy. In both cases, the title is used in lieu of actually reading the book and understanding its contents. This is typical of Arab censorship: most censors can read words, but they do not understand beyond key words.

At the root of the last ban is increased Saudi-ization of Egyptian society: Cairo now is in some ways more ‘Saudi’ than it has ever been. Women, many of them Egyptian, in Burqaa, Saudi dress, allowing the Misyar  a partial (part-time or time-sharing) marriage which is a Saudi invention and makes a mockery of the traditional marriage, increased secret service surveillance of those ‘suspected’ of being Shi’as.

Remembering how the Bolsheviks grew powerful in the twilight of Tzarist Russia by simply calling themselves the 'majority', Egypt is closely watching its tiny, miniscule, invisible Shi’a community. Mubarak's party do not want to be Mensheviks.
The country has some deep latent Shi’a roots: the last time the country was a major power of any kind was when Cairo was the capital of the Fatimid (Shi’a) Empire. Hopefully Egyptian Shi'as, if there are any, will not do a Bolshevik number by declaring themselves a 'big majority' anytime soon. The Tsar has learned his lesson, so has Kerensky.

These restrictions and Shi’a-phobia are things that were unthinkable a few years ago in Egypt, whose cities were traditionally cosmopolitan, pluralistic and accepting. Add to that the recent huge inroads of Saudi money into Egyptian media, once the dominant in the Middle East. Now Saudi princes own and dominate the Arab airwaves, and the cultural effects have not been welcome to many Egyptians. They have gotten used over the past few generations to being the leaders in politics, art, and literature in the Arab region- but that was before the sleepy Mubarak era. It is hard playing second fiddle to the Saudi royals.

A Saudi writer, usually a not bad columnist by Gulf standards, notes on alArabiya web site (March 4, 2008) that some Egyptians are acting as if Wahhabism is "more dangerous than Israel". He quotes an Egyptian literary figure who was lamenting in a university lecture the inroads made by Saudi culture in his country. Of course, to the moderate Arabs of the Neocon New Middle East, the Shi’as are also 'more dangerous than Israel' as well, to use the writer's term- at least that is how they are behaving.
The question of whether Israel is dangerous and to whom and in what way is not the issue here- maybe she is, maybe not, depending on one’s point of view, on whether one is talking about the military, the political system, the culture, or the economy.

Bahrain, Bribes, Power Struggle, and Wayward Youth:
Wall Street Journal and some Arab media report that ALBA, a Bahrain-based aluminum company, is suing Alcoa for selling it aluminum at exaggerated prices and bribing high Bahraini officials. The bribing was done over a fifteen year period, and the total paid is reported to have exceeded $2 billion, deposited for fictional front companies in Singapore, Switzerland and a UK island. It is not clear if this is part of the ongoing power struggle between Bahrain’s King Hamad and his son the Crown Prince Salman on one side and his dour uncle the long-term powerful but highly unpopular Prime Minister Shaikh Khalifa. Elaph reports that this is part of an anti-corruption by the Crown prince against 'entrenched and powerful' people. I see the prime minister's dour visage between those quote marks.

Elaph reports that Saudi security authorities are interrogating eight Bahraini young men whom they are holding. The youths claim that they had strayed into a certain area of the Kingdom that is restricted. The eight men seem to belong to Bahrain’s Shi’a majority, which probably means that they will have to be guests of the Saudi security for some time to come. Unless they have what is called the ‘truth serum’.
It is unfortunate for these young men that they 'strayed' into forbidden territory just days after Saudi authorities uncovered a huge al-Qaeda plot targeting various installations.
In this day and age of terrorism, one must use a GPS in the desert.
Cheers
mhg
m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com