Subject: Interview
with Atheel Nujaifi, the governor of Mosul, who fled the ISIS
takeover (plus)
Note: This has interesting stuff you're not likely to see on TV. But if you remember precisely what I said last night in bold I think that unless you are a Zionist or have Middle Eastern ancestry you might be good with no more information about the Middle East and hopefully can focus your mind on other things. I am afraid I might not be able to help myself from peeking through my fingers as the U.S. military is unable to hold itself back from going back and trying to "salvage" something, from all its past warring in Iraq, supporting the wrong guy again. I hope that does not happen even though there already some U.S. fighters there in Iraq, so I heard this morning.
The subject line article is from Al-Monitor, a Washington DC based web-only publication with news affiliates in the Middle East. (Wikipedia link) (Al-Monitor "about" page link) The site happened to turn up in a web search. One Al-Monitor critic I saw at another site alleged a slant in favor of Hezbollah, Syrian (the government), and Iranian slant, or at least a willingness to publish authors from those places. So ok, look for yourself.
What the recently exiled (or escaped) governor of Mosul says in the above interview is most interesting. It is also consistent with what I said last night about the different sectarian forces.
One thing these articles do is to highlight one of the things I mentioned last night, the involvement of the Royal House of Saud (Wikipedia link) in everything, including its support for the seriously scary Wahabbis, of which many of the foreign --to Iraq and I think also to Syria--ISIS members are a part.
From what I have read repeatedly, the part that militias in and from Saudi Arabia play in this does not get mentioned in the mainstream news because of the need to maintain the image of Saudi Arabia being a tight U.S. ally. Talking about Saudi Arabia in a bad way might be bad for business, and of course the U.S. is significantly dependent on Saudi Arabia as we all know. I think the Sauds along with the Israeli government have been pushing really hard for years now for a big bombing attack on Iran, which 1) has been acting rather independent, 2) is officially Shiite Islamist and 3) has oil supplies besides. The idea of the U.S. having Iran as a potential ally in Iraq now must bite some people, I'm just thinking.
"How has Isis grown so powerful and who will stop it? – Q&A," by Mark Tran, The Guardian, June 16, 2014;
"Iraq crisis: Sunni caliphate has been bankrolled by Saudi Arabia," by Robert Fisk, Belfast Telegraph, June 13, 2014;
and a very interested contribution and set of resources in the comments under the Mark Tran article linked above.
Larry
--
You don’t have to be tough to be brave.--Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
Note: This has interesting stuff you're not likely to see on TV. But if you remember precisely what I said last night in bold I think that unless you are a Zionist or have Middle Eastern ancestry you might be good with no more information about the Middle East and hopefully can focus your mind on other things. I am afraid I might not be able to help myself from peeking through my fingers as the U.S. military is unable to hold itself back from going back and trying to "salvage" something, from all its past warring in Iraq, supporting the wrong guy again. I hope that does not happen even though there already some U.S. fighters there in Iraq, so I heard this morning.
The subject line article is from Al-Monitor, a Washington DC based web-only publication with news affiliates in the Middle East. (Wikipedia link) (Al-Monitor "about" page link) The site happened to turn up in a web search. One Al-Monitor critic I saw at another site alleged a slant in favor of Hezbollah, Syrian (the government), and Iranian slant, or at least a willingness to publish authors from those places. So ok, look for yourself.
What the recently exiled (or escaped) governor of Mosul says in the above interview is most interesting. It is also consistent with what I said last night about the different sectarian forces.
One thing these articles do is to highlight one of the things I mentioned last night, the involvement of the Royal House of Saud (Wikipedia link) in everything, including its support for the seriously scary Wahabbis, of which many of the foreign --to Iraq and I think also to Syria--ISIS members are a part.
From what I have read repeatedly, the part that militias in and from Saudi Arabia play in this does not get mentioned in the mainstream news because of the need to maintain the image of Saudi Arabia being a tight U.S. ally. Talking about Saudi Arabia in a bad way might be bad for business, and of course the U.S. is significantly dependent on Saudi Arabia as we all know. I think the Sauds along with the Israeli government have been pushing really hard for years now for a big bombing attack on Iran, which 1) has been acting rather independent, 2) is officially Shiite Islamist and 3) has oil supplies besides. The idea of the U.S. having Iran as a potential ally in Iraq now must bite some people, I'm just thinking.
"How has Isis grown so powerful and who will stop it? – Q&A," by Mark Tran, The Guardian, June 16, 2014;
"Iraq crisis: Sunni caliphate has been bankrolled by Saudi Arabia," by Robert Fisk, Belfast Telegraph, June 13, 2014;
and a very interested contribution and set of resources in the comments under the Mark Tran article linked above.
Larry
--
You don’t have to be tough to be brave.--Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
