Happy and Merry whatever it is......

Cabin Fever notes: Snowed in at home, worried about cabin fever, took a walk around our frozen Yellow Lake, one day after leaving my car on an icy and steep city side street, two days after going through a nighttime blizzard in the mountain pass. Still snowing. What else is there to do but talk, read, eat, imbibe, and rant here, among other things.

Year of the crash:

The Arab world, as well as the rest of the region, was hit with a triple whammy of a financial crisis.

• The international financial markets crashed, causing hundreds of billions of dollars of Arab losses. I once guesstimated the losses of Arab oil producers at over $500 billion. I need to revise upward, closer to $600 billion.

• The price of crude petroleum (oil, Texas Tea) crashed during the second half of 2008 to less than one third of its highs only months before.

• The domestic stock markets crashed even more severely than world markets. Domestic companies were exposed to severe losses in Western investments as well as to reduced oil revenues that move the local economies. Gulf GCC governments came under intense political pressure (they don’t have to be elected to come under intense political pressure). The sovereign funds scrambled to form special funds aimed at purchasing domestic shares and ‘artificially’ supporting prices. Except that the sovereign funds have incurred huge losses from their American investments (and other investments) and domestic investors know that. Share markets in the Gulf have not stabilized yet- maybe because the state investment arms are as slow as the rest of the bureaucracy. The bureaucrats at the sovereign funds state publicly that they will invest in ‘viable companies’, but that is B.S. (caca de toro, if you will) of course, something Arab bureaucrats are good at disseminating.
  

Year of the ass:

If Arabs were Chinese, which they are not, 2008 would be the “year of the ass” (as in jackass, donkey, asinus). The Arab ass was the most prominent animal in the Middle East, and appropriately so. It was celebrated in songs, especially a popular ‘love’ song, it led to several divorces in Arab countries, and it ignited bloody and murderous tribal warfare in at least one county (that was Yemen, of course). That is not to say that asses in other Arab countries are not armed and dangerous: they have their strong asinine side as well. They are armed, dangerous, powerful, rich, and incompetent as well. If Arabs were Chinese, perhaps every year would be the “year of the ass.” We are talking about the leadership here, the oligarchs, NOT the people who are largely good but naturally have their fair share of asses, just like Americans, Germans, French, Chinese, etc.

 

Year of the shoe:

The most prominent item of clothing, (need I say it?) was the smelly pair of shoes of an Iraqi television (al-Iraqiya) journalist. He did something that some may suspect Helen Thomas was itching to do for the past eight years, but was afraid to do. The shoes became prominent not only because they framed the last page of George W. Bush’s personal Iraq story. They also showed how quick Mr. Bush was, how good his reflexes are when faced with a UFO, an unfriendly flying object.

Now if the shoes were aimed at some other leader, say someone not from such a far place, say someone from countries that are closer, much closer to Iraq, say someone from the “hood”, say someone more deserving like….. The choices are overwhelming, and all more deserving than any foreign leader. And it would be a more challenging target and a more appropriate target.

In order to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent, I shall say no more on this. Dommage.

 

Year of the same old, same old:

Every Arab leader notched another year in power, and almost every Arab people notched another year in captivity.

The only leader who had a “bad” year was an elected one: the elected president of the Northwestern African country of Mauritania (it is a member of the Arab League) was overthrown by a military coup. That change was in line with the general official Arab move toward subverting democracy, many of them by pretending to encourage it, by instituting a fake form of it, a Potemkin democracy.

Otherwise, if you want to see how democracy fares in the Arab world, just look at the names, the family names, of the leaders during 2008. Then look at the names, family names during past years, say twenty years ago. See any difference? I didn’t think so.

 

Year of the desired war that did not flare:

Iran continued to defy the United States and the other major powers by continuing a nuclear program that many fear will lead to nuclear weapons. American Neocons in the Bush administration and in their “think tanks” seemed set on a war against Iran, a risky thing that the US intelligence community quickly quashed with its public reports on Iranian nuclear progress.

 

Right-wing Arab politicians and their wholly-owned media on the Gulf were for a while licking their chops at the prospect of yet another bloody war being fought on their behalf by America’s brave sons and daughters. They had developed a sense of entitlement, these Arab oligarchs: an entitlement to American blood being shed on their behalf. They tried to shift American policy toward their own agenda, just as they felt the Bush administration was using them for its agenda.

 

Iran accommodated all that with its own risky and erratic policies, as expounded by a fundamentalist and embarrassing president who could not open his mouth without putting his foot in it, and by its rigid theocratic mullahs.

Both sides dodged a bullet this past year.

 

Still, the war camp in the Gulf region is putting its hopes now on an Israeli strike under a possible Netanyahu government. The problem with right-wing Likud governments is that they quickly get enmeshed in personal financial scandals. Remember, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert were both Likud leaders before they formed Kadima, and both faced financial scandals. So did Ezer Weizman. Mr. Netanyahu may be a walking scandal ready to erupt.

 

A new Arab crisis of confidence, one of a never-ending series of crises, has been reinforced by recent events. This one involves Arab media speculation about a deal between the Obama administration and Iran, whereby the Iranians give on the nuclear issue and get an even stronger role in regional security affairs. Mohammed el-Barade’i, the Egyptian head of the IAEA, has warned this week of the Arabs being left out of any security arrangement for the Middle East.

 

Year of real Shock and Awe:

For the Middle East, as for the rest of the world, 2008 was a year of the real American shock and awe: this time delivered by the voters this past November. Throughout the year and throughout the moderate polygamous tribal and sectarian New Middle East: the pundits, intellectuals, media experts, politicians, sidekicks, and other minions of the ruling oligarchies all watched an impossible US political campaign.

The election results were not only a repudiation of the bankrupt policies of American conservatism. They turned the world of the regional oligarchs upside down. It raised a question that is loaded in the Arab world: why not?

A bizarre wedding?

Kuwaiti daily al-Rai al-‘Aam reports that two women appeared before a judge outside Kuwait City asking to be wed. When he asked which one was the groom, one of them replied in a very feminine voice “I am”. Her papers indicated she was a man, and the judge asked for the usual witnesses, and the groom called them in, in a very feminine voice. The judge asked for the father, and he was brought and asked by the judge "Who is your son?", and he pointed to one of the girls "She is".

To the shock of everyone, the judge performed the marriage ceremony.

Now that is shock, and maybe even awe. Is change coming to the Middle East too??

Cheers

mhg

m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com