Indonesian people show they care for Gaza

Indonesia's people have donated $15 million to build a hospital in Gaza.

This is real solidarity with a people forced to live in extreme misery under a savage Israeli military siege.

Compare these caring Indonesians with rich Arab states and their playboy billionaires who waste millions of dollars on parties, hosting European entertainers, exploding fireworks and doing other pompous activities.

The dictatorships will still make a show of helping Palestinians if people come to these moneybags and beg, pledge allegiance, kiss their shoulders, hands, knees and toes in abject obeisance.

Arab rulers give funds to Palestinian authorities to buy their loyalty and encourage corruption. The primary aim is not to build strong infrastructure projects. Arab officials also announce aid to Palestinians to increase their prestige in the eyes of their pro-Palestinian populations.

Next to Gaza is Egypt where the military rulers whip up anti-Palestinian sentiments. The junta need not be so hateful in enforcing the siege of Gaza but it seems such propaganda strangely increases the Pharaoh's political stock.

Israel can create concentration camp conditions in Gaza only with the connivance of Arab potentates. And when it unleashes its war machine against Palestinians it also wants to makes sure the injured will not get medial assistance and the dead will not find a place in morgues.

In this context, the project Indonesia's aid has created is worth much more than the price price tag it carries.

USA and Obama's Drone Civilization

Barack Obama's Pentagon war machine killed 17 people going to a wedding in Yemen on December 12 -- illegal and cold-blooded murders where the killers were not even face to face with their victims. The United States of America can act with impunity and at will where it wants to unleash its Drone Civilization.

Lawless, hate-filled and dangerously armed, the USA has shown how it has no peers when when it comes to abusing power, authority and technology. Today it uses drone technology with total mindlessness, tomorrow it may use far more deadlier weapons and genocidal technologies. If the US doesn't believe in any restraint or limits on its power, what's there to stop them from causing havoc anywhere in the world?

The US wiped out two Japanese cities with nuclear weapons, it devastated Vietnam with illegal warfare, it caused mayhem in Iraq and conducted a long genocidal campaign of sanctions there, its foreign politics is geared towards resource loot, it uses its intelligence apparatus to undermine democratic governments around the world, and it partners with Israel to annihilate Palestinians.

Drone murders seem to be Obama's favorite instrument to extend US hegemonic power. People can be killed while going to weddings, in schools, in homes, in markets. No due process of law is allowed. Why do American officials not give details of their operations if these can be described as legitimate (even using a gangster's logic)? Unfortunately, the US (and its warlike friends) find it easy to violate sovereignty of others by bribing or threatening pissant leaders with undeveloped minds (especially Arab potentates).

We don't hear much discussion about these things in a big section of the media owned by crooks and run by rascals.

Watch out for Israeli goods 'Made in Jordan'

A joint industrial park is to be established along the Israeli-Jordanian border, giving Israeli companies the ability to tap into Arab markets, as their products will bear the misleading label 'Made in Jordan,' reports Lebanon's Al Akhbar newspaper.

Once these Israeli goods reach other Arab markets, they can be easily re-exported to countries that have no diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.

You can be sure that Israel will try to flood Dubai with its 'Made in Jordan' products.

So we have a situation when Arab states can be used as Trojan Horses by Israel to infiltrate markets that ban Israeli goods.

Arab countries, especially the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), are deliberately dishonest about their relations with Israel.

It's important for the countries that boycott Israel to ask for specific mechanisms to bar Israeli-origin goods with deceptive Arab labels.

As Israelis face growing boycott calls over their occupation of Palestinian territories and brutal subjugation of Palestinians, they will use all sorts of deceptive schemes to enter barred markets.

Give me money, more money: Dubai's Islamic dream

Dubai has found something new to polish its rusty chain of ambitions with: Islamic finance.

How will the two mix? Islamic finance is about ethical use of money -- for example, investment in gambling, arms trade and alcohol business is prohibited.

Does this Arab emirate represent similar ethical values?

Can Dubai or the United Arab Emirates create high regulatory standards to ensure that Islamic banks and financial institutions operate in a proper environment?

In a country where the line between private and public affairs of officials is difficult to make out, only an inveterate optimist can trust its ambitious plans.

If Dubai wants to be taken seriously in the Islamic financial sector, it must avoid the temptation of doing business the way it runs its real estate sector.

The out of control property sector when it went bust about four years ago destroyed the lives of countless home buyers, and the UAE banking system was able to avoid a major crisis only after the central bank provided huge bailout cash.

We know what a shady business Dubai’s property was, with unscrupulous companies cheating people by promising them non-existent assets.

Let us hope that Islamic banks and financial institutions, whose business practices won them so much respect during the Wall Street-produced global financial crisis, will never be part of speculative UAE property schemes.

Islamic finance is about community, service, promotion of honest industry and healthy commerce. No one should abuse the system for exploitation and speculation.

Dubai is used by many Wall Street and London players for their regional operations and they are notorious for breaking laws and manipulating systems to make money.

Regulators must create systems that will ensure the highest degree of compliance with a degree of openness that will not hinder good people from exposing corruption and malpractices.

In a place where the prevailing motto is money and more money, such standards will be hard to achieve.

'There is such a thing as Gulfization'

Asad Abu Khalil, a Lebanese-American professor of political science, responded to an attempt by United Arab Emirates political science professor  Abdulkhaleq Abdulla to glorify autocratic Gulf regimes and their odd deeds.

Abdulkhaleq, once thought to be 'different' in the sense that he occasionally raised his concern about the erosion of Emirati identity amid uncontrolled construction and an influx of foreigners, doesn't seem to miss an opportunity these days to echo Dubai and Abu Dhabi's official line on issues.

It was no surprise that he wrote a piece commending an article by Sultan al-Qassemi, an officially-sanctioned Emirati intellectual who comes up with meaningless arguments in false debates on Arab issues.

In his article 'Khaleeji Cities Are Present, Future', Abdulkhaleq writes: "Sultan al-Qassemi makes a compelling case in his "Gulf Cities Emerge as New Centers of Arab World" for the Arab Gulf cities of Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi as the new commercial, cultural, educational, media and diplomatic centers of the Arab world. He asserts that the traditional Arab metropolises of Beirut, Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad are fading away as centers of creativity."

Neither Abdulkhaleq Abdulla nor his fellow commentator would ever talk about the role the Gulf regimes have played in destroying Arab countries and their culture.

Their audacity to compare the Gulf cities to historic regional centers deserves scorn.

Asad Abu Khalil's response (culled from his blog) fits the bill:

[Gulfization of the Arab world: my response

So Abdulkaleq said:  "The Gulf moment indicates that the Arab Gulf states are today the net exporter of soft influence as well as hard power. This has set in motion a unique process of Gulfization/Khaleejization  (خلجنة) of the Arab world. Khaleejization simply means that at this moment the influence of the part (the Arab Gulf states) on the whole (the rest of the Arab world) is greater than the influence of the whole on the part. " 

And I say: yes, there is such an impact by Gulf potentates and their rentier culture on the Arab world, and it can be detected: 1) the promotion of the acceptance of polygamy as a modern phenomenon that does not have to be discarded; 2) the elevation of the vulgar and cheesy aesthetics of Las Vegas as the ultimate model of beauty and standards; 3) the promotion of sleaze in all manifestation of Arab culture, according to the taste of oil and gas princes and sheikhs; 4) the enforcement of various degrees of gender segregation; 5) the relegation of Asian labor to the lower part of the hiearchy; 5) the fetishism of money as the ultimate measure of success; 6) the worship of the White Man and the juridical enforcement of his superiority in contracts and in wages; 7) the propagation of themes of class obedience by the poor toward the rich; 8) the adoption of an ideology of hostility toward all manners of progressive and leftist thought; 9) the notion that politics and political representation don't matter as long as the ruling dynasties provide a generous program of social welfare; 10)  the standardization of commercialization and of sexual commodification of females; 11) the establishment of artistic and literary awards in order to ban a free culture and of the expression of views and opinions counter to the tyranny of Arab potentates; 12) the notion that problems--all problems--can be solved with money; 13) the notion that intellectuals can, and should, be bought and sponsored by an oil or gas prince to prevent the existence of free public intellectuals; 14) the export of rigid personality cults around the ruling Gulf potentates.  So in that sense, Abdulkhaleq is right.  There is such a thing as Gulfization.]

What is my problem with Arab governments?

A former Saudi-based Indian journalist replies to my tweet: "I really don't understand what is your problem with Arab governments? Why don't you focus on Muslim issues in India first?"

I can't answer that in 140 characters on Twitter so here is my public note.

I often criticize and ridicule Arab governments for their policies, mostly it is about their foreign relations and activities but some criticism is also directed at their internal decisions that are in blatant violation of universal human rights.

To me, Arab governments and officials are not special. I also slam Israeli policies in Palestine, Zionist groups, Iranian extremism, Pentagon-backed weapons trade, European colonial tendencies, Uncle Sam's genocidal wars, etc.

During the Balkan wars, I found Slobodan Milosevic's policy of ethnic cleansing utterly disgusting. Also revolting was the hypocrisy of London and Washington on the issue of apartheid in South Africa.

I do not follow Indian politics too closely so I avoid commenting on it in social media.

There are many reasons why I talk about Arab issues and feel strongly about them: My favorite subject during Master's was "Politics in West Asia (Middle East)"; I spent 14 years in the Gulf as a journalist and know a few things about the region.

Why do I criticize Arab governments?

For their hypocrisy on matters ranging from recreation to religion, a lack of transparency on policies, control-freakism without limits, torture chambers, their investments in tools of repression.

Arab governments should not expect that their targeting of journalists and dissenters is going to endear them to people.

Not only do they carry out such things within their borders they also try to grow their repressive arms overseas.

Even minor Gulf Arab officials are so spoilt that they demand royal treatment abroad, especially when they are in Asia and Africa.

I know journalists who have been victimized by the UAE and Saudi governments.

We can all see how pitiless crackdowns on dissent are being organized by the Arab League states ever so fearful of their people.

This note will become too long if I describe my own brush with authoritarianism.

Egypt's coup masters are smiling at their lemmings

What a relief it was when Egypt got rid of Hosni Mubarak and his nasty henchmen -- Omar Suleiman, Habib Al Adly and others in 2011. M.H. Mubarak operated like a colonial administrator, dividing and exploiting Egyptians while serving his foreign benefactors.

At the same time, the dictator tried to promote the notion of Egyptian leadership of the Arab world, again exploiting the cultural, historical and religious greatness of Egypt.

He faced competition from fellow dictators Hafez Assad and Saddam Hussein who also vied for the "leadership" of the Arab world. Saddam had two major advantages -- military strength and oil money -- and didn't really take Mubarak or his Gulf buddies seriously.

Not being a confrontationist like Saddam, Mubarak was liked by the petrocrats of Arabia. The Arab League politics never ceased to be useless when Mubarak ruled Cairo. It was  occasionally entertaining though. It has become rather boring as most Arab dictatorships are grappling with people's rising expectations and anger since the 2011 uprisings.

Egypt as the most populous Arab nation (its population of 82 million is more than three times the total number of citizens in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, UAE, Qatar and Bahrain), is hugely important to the region for a number of reasons.

Al Azhar in Egypt is the most respected seat of Islamic learning, which is not in agreement with the Saudi ideology. And don't forget the 'peace treaty' under which the Egyptian military needs Israel's permission for internal movement. Egypt's reward is commensurate with how much woes it can inflict on Palestinians.

No one can afford to ignore what happens in Egypt and how Egyptians think about Arab issues. But not all those interested in Egypt are its friends. The US, Israel, Gulf petrocrats (Saudi Arabia and UAE more than others) are heavily involved in Egypt. They are so self-absorbed that no trick is too dirty to play if it serves their interest.
It helps unscrupulous people if Egyptians are subjugated by a mukhabarat police state run by ruthless men. If it can't be a pure Mubarakist dictatorship, let it be a coup-on-demand system. The next elected  government (one day!) must dismantle the repressive mukhabarat machine of the Interior Ministry and create a modern law-abiding police force.

Egypt's potential is being wasted. A dictatorship will produce misery, not manufacture exportable goods. Mubarak was great for tourism because he could invite war criminal Tony Blair to enjoy Sharm El Sheikh's beaches. No problem if there are more belly dancers -- already there is one for every 3,000 of population. No problem also if there are more jobs as managers and makeup artists for belly dancers but fewer as teachers, petrochemical engineers, doctors.

The so-called liberals in Egypt have no shame in suppressing other Egyptians as long as their Mubarak-era privileges continue.

The new coup masters in Cairo are smiling at their lemmings.