Trying to beat the clock [Archives:2008/1130/Opinion]
Even after the American Intelligence Report that clearly requested George W. Bush to keep his pistols in his pocket, as he finishes his regrettably unfinishable eight year term, there worrisome signs that his war adventures are not yet over. All this belligerency one is hearing emanating from the Levant and from Tel Aviv indicates that the Bush Administration is looking for some kind of flare up, just so it can leave the office with either a big headache for the New Administration that takes over the White House or a continuous reminder to the world of the evil that men can wreak and leave behind.
Surely, the ugly belligerency issued by Walid Jumblatt, a leading and seemingly boisterous spokesman for the ruling elements in Lebanon threatening to “burn everything in sight ('white, green and dry')” – an Arab expression that everything 'wet and dry' will be burned, while adding the white to show emphasis in his threat was not made in haste or to express a mere 'lack of patience', as some pro ruling clique supporters put it. In fact, the statement was read from a previously worded statement to the supposedly able speaker (in the dialectical sense). This indicates clearly that Mr. Jumblatt was given every word in his statement from some overlords either in the Mossad or in the CIA. This observer is of the strong opinion, based on the very attitude that Jumblatt has shown that by a sneaky covert action, Mr. Jumblatt has been set up in an embarrassing “sting” ultimately put him under the take of the Mossad or some other intelligence agency that serves the interests of Israel or the United States (Bush Administration). This is further reinforced by the fact that Jumblatt is not speaking as one would have expected Jumblatt to speak, even if he did believe all those profound statements he has been making since the divide was instilled in Lebanese politics by the cunning CIA right after the Israeli aggression on Lebanon in the Summer of 2006.
On the other hand, the recent statements of Ehud Barack the Minister of (War) Defense in Israel, who is supposedly a member of the political party that opts for peace in the Middle East, the Labor Party, provides another reason that the region may be enticed to further bloodshed of the kind the Bush cronies crave for, where especially thousands of civilians are made victims of a senseless barrage of fireworks intended to inflict the most damage and casualties at the highest costs, just to keep the military – industrial complex in the US feeling happy and to excite the Zionist demagogues, whose entire philosophy of Zionism can only be sustained with an ongoing bloodbath that will eventually turn the Red Sea literally red soon enough.
In defense of free speech
The recent attack and vandalism of the office vehicle of the Yemenportal.net office by mysterious hooligans, who were more likely to be the bums, who undertake the regime's dirty work to suppress political views or free expression, surely point to a hypocritical stance of the regime. Last month, President Ali Abdulla Saleh went to Madrid, Spain to plead with the King of Spain for the release of Tayseer Allouny, who was sentenced to imprisonment for supposedly having ties to terrorist groups. Although, most free thinking journalist know for a fact that nothing is further than the truth and Tayseer has no terrorist link to speak of, except that his honest reporting of the bloodletting inflicted by the American invasion of Afghanistan (especially the indiscriminate bombings) was not appreciated by the Cheney War Machine. But one cannot help notice the paradoxical stance of the regime ruling in Yemen as it tries to display a strong defense of free speech by the poorly staged appeal to the Spanish king, while at the same time it uses tactics like it used against the assets of Yemenportal.net, as it seeks to scare all free speakers in Yemen, who speak out against the regime's total disregard for human rights into silence. But as Walid Al-Saqqaf, the creator of Yemenportal.net says: “Such tactics only make our case stronger and increase our adamancy to carry on our struggle for 'REAL Freedom of Speech'” and not the kind that placates gullible western ears, who seem to have forgotten that those who are constituents of regimes like the Saleh regime are in fact real people who also yearn to be free. Thank God no one was hurt by this heinous display of totalitarian rule, but nevertheless it does not do any good for the regime to show its reliance on Mafia tactics to keep the Yemeni people under outright subjugation.
Hassan Al-Haifi has been a Yemeni political economist and journalist for more than 20 years.
——
[archive-e:1130-v:15-y:2008-d:2008-02-18-p:opinion]
