U.S. fuels Middle East flames

Re-reporting, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett

In an area rife with conflict and misery, the U.S. pours weapons of mass destruction.

The United States, according to Free Speech Radio News, is moving ahead with a sixty-billion dollar ($60 billion) decades-long arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

The Defense Department of the Obama administration  has given notice to the U.S. Congress that it plans to push forward with an arms orgy of satellite-guided bombs, fighter jets, helicopters to this conflict-torn area of the world.

Mainstream news sources are touting this pouring on of fuel into the flaming Middle East/Persian Gulf/Southwest Asia region “the biggest arms deal in U.S. history.”

Among the cash-rich profit takers in this latest windfall moral offense to humanity are military industrial complex big-shot Washington political funders and mass media owners Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Electric.
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Combine warmongering and greed, cold cash and kickbacks and oil resources in Saudi Arabia and the greater Middle Eastern region and what you get is U.S. foreign policy at its worst. Saudi Arabia occupies roughly four-fifths of the Arabian Peninsula.

Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait border Saudi Arabia to the north
Persian Gulf, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman border to the east
Oman (part of) to the southeast
Yemen to the south and southwest
Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba to the west

East, along the Persian Gulf, are Saudi Arabia’s abundant oil fields. Since the 1960s, these oil fields “have made Saudi Arabia synonymous with petroleum wealth.”

There have been long-running border disputes with Yemen and Qatar (nearly resolved in 2000 and 2001). The border with the United Arab Emirates remains undefined. A territory of 2,200 square miles (5,700 square km) along the gulf coast was shared by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as a neutral zone until 1969, when a political boundary was agreed upon. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia each administer one-half of the territory and equally share oil production in the entire area. Though a partition in 1981 legally settled the controversy over the Saudi-Iraqi Neutral Zone, conflict between the Iraq and Saudi Arabia persists and prevents final demarcation on the ground.

The Middle East region consists of the lands around the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula and Iran and sometimes beyond.

The central part of this general area used to be called the Near East (and is today in some government contexts). This name (Near East) was given to the region by some of the first modern Western geographers and historians, who tended to divide the Orient into three regions:

Near East: the region nearest Europe extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf
Middle East: the Persian Gulf to Southeast Asia
Far East: regions facing the Pacific Ocean

The “Middle East” construct drawn after World War II is the region made up of the states or territories of Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Palestine (now Israel), Jordan, Egypt, The Sudan, Libya, and the various states of Arabia proper (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Trucial States, or Trucial Oman [now United Arab Emirates].

Subsequent events have tended, in loose usage, to enlarge the number of lands included in the definition. The three North African countries of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco are closely connected in sentiment and foreign policy with the Arab states.

In addition, geographic factors often require political leaders and others to take account of Afghanistan and Pakistan in connection with the affairs of the Middle East.

Greece is sometimes included in the compass of the Middle East because the Middle Eastern (then Near Eastern) question in its modern form first became apparent when the Greeks rose in rebellion to assert their independence of the Ottoman Empire in 1821.

Oil

Military industrial complex

Political finance

Media ownership

Endless war and conflict

Sources and notes
Free Speech Radio News, October 21, 2010, http://fsrn.org/audio/saudi-us-weapons-deal/7699
Britannica notes on Saudi Arabia

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Weekend U.S. sphere, resistance, protests abroad

Aljazeera, wire reports from
America, Middle East
Compiled and edited by Carolyn Bennett

April 25, 2010
U.S. - OCCUPIED PACIFIC
Demonstrators are afoot in Okinawa, Japan, in protest to the United States’ 47,000-troop military occupation on the island nation. Many on the island have for years complained of noise, pollution and conflicts with U.S. soldiers. Japan is unhappy with the heavy American military presence. Al Jazeera reports that today’s rally is expected to include Okinawa’s governor Hirokazu Nakaima and more than 30 town mayors. The Kadena air base close to where the rally is taking place is the largest U.S. military facility in the Asia-Pacific region.

April 23, 2010
OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
Israel accuses Syria of supplying missiles to Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Syria denies Israel’s charges. Interviewed from the Syrian embassy in Washington, spokesperson Ahmed Salkini told Al Jazeera the reports of alleged missile transfers are part of Israel’s disinformation campaign to divert the world’s attention from Israel’s actions on the ground. The representative said Israel’s charge “showed how it was evading any responsibility for building peace in the region, by pressing ahead with its occupation of Arab land. ‘Syria is calling for a comprehensive and just peace in the region whereby Israel withdraws from all occupied territories the UN and the international community have declared illegally occupied.’”

Leading on from Israel’s charge, U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Middle East Jeffrey Feltman reacted, “‘If these reports turn out to be true, we’re going to have to review the full range of tools that are available for us in order to make Syria reverse what would be an incendiary, provocative action.’” In a 34-day Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006, 1,200 mostly civilian Lebanese died and more than 160 mainly Israeli soldiers died.

April 22, 2010
Israel has deported two Palestinians to the Gaza Strip raising fears that more expulsions could follow under a controversial new Israeli military order. The action “fits into a pattern of Israel’s strategy to treat Gaza and the West Bank as separate geopolitical entities,” Al Jazeera’s Jackie Rowland reported from Jerusalem. An estimated 70,000 Palestinians could be at risk of deportation under an Israeli military order condemned by Arab politicians.

April 25, 2010
Jewish settlers marched in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem. Palestinian protesters and Israeli police clashed. Israeli settlers living in illegal housing units on occupied Palestinian land want Arabs’ homes demolished and Arabs removed from the area to make way for Israeli construction projects.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that if the Obama administration believes in and is committed to Israel’s security together with a peace settlement that gives a state to Palestinians, the American administration has a “duty to call for steps to reach the solution, impose the solution. [But] don’t tell me it’s a vital national strategic American interest, then not do anything.”

Having pulled out of talks with the Israelis during Israel’s 22-day [December 2008-January 2009] offensive in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians have refused to return until all settlement activity stops.

April 24, 2010
IRAQ
Iraqis are burying their dead. An estimated 69 people died Friday when a series bombs exploded in Baghdad and Sadr City. Funeral processions set off on Saturday from Sadr City, site of the deadliest attacks, for the holy city of Najaf. Since the start of 2010, April has been the bloodiest month in the country.

April 22, 2010
JORDAN
Rockets on Wednesday landed in the Jordanian port city of Aqaba one damaging an empty storage space, the other splashing into the Red Sea. Police found remains of a Katyusha rocket. They were trying to determine the source of the attack. Five years ago, three Katyusha rockets, missing two U.S. warships docked in the port, had been fired in Aqaba. In that incident, rockets hit a warehouse and crossed a border with Jerusalem. A Jordanian soldier died.

April 24, 2010
PAKISTAN
Four police officers died when gunmen opened fire torching twelve NATO oil tankers in Talagang, a town in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The gunmen escaped after police returned fire. Fighters routinely attack routes and supplies supporting the war in Afghanistan in an effort to halt resources available to NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

April 24-25, 2010
MISSISSIPPI
As estimated 10 people including children died when tornadoes hit several southeastern/Gulf states of the United States ─ Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama among them.

Crews off the coast of Louisiana delayed cleaning up an oil spill that had followed an offshore oilrig explosion causing the platform to sink earlier in the week. Storms damaged a chemical plant tank in Tallulah, Louisiana, causing a nitrogen leak. The Mississippi governor declared a state of emergency in 17 counties.

Casualty sites reporting
April 25, 2010 (accurate totals unknown, usual reporting not updated)

• Anti-war dot com casualties in Iraq starting March 19, 2003: Since January 20, 2009 inauguration: 165 dead; 31,785-100,000 wounded; 320,000 U.S. veterans with brain injuries; 18 suicides a day [April 17 update], http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count: documented civilian deaths from violence 95,965 – 104,682, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,393 U.S, 4,711 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 1,050 U.S., 1,736 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif/

CASUALTIES UPDATE
Monday April 26, 2010 update
Occupied Territories
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces destroyed a house owned by a Hamas commander’s relatives and assassinated the commander. Though an Israeli high court order has deemed the killing of Palestinian suspects not engaged in a firefight illegal, media reports indicate that the Israeli military pursues a policy of assassinating prominent Palestinian fighters. A previous alleged assassination carried out by Israeli forces was last December in Nablus in the West Bank; four members of Fatah’s military wing died. “Monday’s killing appeared likely to aggravate an already tense situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories” [“Israeli troops kill Hamas fighter,: April 26, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/201042610119512795.html].

Monday April 26, 2010 update
Gulf of Mexico – Louisiana USA
Off Louisiana’s coast 1,525 meters (5,003.2 feet or 0.9 miles) into the ocean, an oil well is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico an estimated 1,000 barrels of oil a day. Eleven workers involved in last Tuesday’s “worst oil rig disaster in almost a decade” are missing and presumed dead. In the past nine years, 69 people have died, 1,349 have sustained injuries, 858 fires and explosions have occurred in oil-rig operations off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf off Mexico [“Engineers in race to seal oil leak,” April 26, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/04/201042653915904166.html].

Monday April 26, 2010 update
Yemen
Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world and confronts serious political and administrative problems. The country today sustained its first suicide attack in a year. The attack by a suicide bomber occurred in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa near the British ambassador’s convoy. No one died or sustained injuries. In March 2009, a South Korean delegation sustained an attack while investigating a bombing that had occurred a few days earlier; four South Korean tourists died. In 2008, two suicide bombers set off a series of blasts outside the heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Sanaa. Sixteen people died [“UK diplomat escapes Yemen attack,” April 26, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/201042655759873579.html].


Sources
”Japanese rally against U.S. air base,” April 25, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/04/201042554723575134.html
“U.S. tightens pressure on Syria,” April 23, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/04/20104223206497761.html
“Palestinians deported to Gaza,” April 22, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/2010422124915701529.html
“Clashes as Israeli settlers match,” April 25, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/20104258757856525.html
“Baghdad mourns bombing victims,” April 24, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/20104247396232723.html
“Rockets land in Jordanian port city,” April 22, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/201042210215107533.html
“NATO tankers attack Pakistan,” April 24, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/04/2010424191518201134.html
“Tornadoes hit southeastern U.S.,” April 25, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/04/201042545832872872.html