Just in the nick of time. The eleventh hour. As the fuse was being lit….The bottom line is send cash. Lots of it. The propensity of regimes like Jordan to always be reduced to begging status, to fabricate fantastic plots that they have miraculously uncovered, just appears to reinforce all the Orientalist tropes. Reduced to parasitism that elevates the colonialist mentality to an art form, they become wholly dependent, read addicted to Western aid. A few crumbs might touch the earth, but basically it goes to increasing the hardware and human maintenance programs of the security apparatus, paying off debts, or subsidizing something that can be profitably imported. The cycle of violence and the push for reforms that drip from Hilary Clinton’s lips like a Buddhist manta are self-serving homilies more inspired by American interventionism that characteristics intrinsic to the Arab world. …
(see link at end)…AMMAN, Jordan — Jordanian officials said Sunday that they had foiled a major terrorist plot, arresting 11 people who they said had been planning since June to attack shopping malls and diplomatic targets in the country….
—If Mr. Obama’s soft touch is popular in the region, however, it may not be in America’s best interest, argued Shadi Hamid, research director of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar.
“There is a widespread sense in the region that Obama is a weak, somewhat feckless leader,” Mr. Hamid said, citing Mr. Obama’s acquiescence in confrontations with Israeli leaders over settlements and with Egypt’s generals over the prosecution of American-backed nonprofit groups.
“People think that if you are in a standoff with Obama and you hold your ground, he will eventually back down,” Mr. Hamid said.—Read More:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/politics/benghazi-and-arab-spring-rear-up-in-us-campaign.html image:http://www.thesnipenews.com/the-latest/jerusalem-graphic-novel-review-guy-delisle/
…Samih Maayta, the Jordanian minister for media and communication, said in an interview that the group had been staking out locations for months and planning to use car bombs, machine guns and other heavy weapons in an attack that could have killed hundreds of citizens and foreigners. The group, apparently made up of Jordanians, called itself 11-9 the Second, referring to a string of hotel bombings in Amman that killed 60 people on Nov. 9, 2005.
Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate “had all their activities under surveillance,” Mr. Maayta said. “The group’s experiments concentrated on creating explosives that would do the maximum damage and cause the highest losses.”
Jordan is an important ally of the United States and has a peace treaty with Israel, its neighbor. A spokesman for the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel declined to comment on Sunday evening about whether Israeli intelligence had assisted the Jordanian authorities in the case.
—“The president made a decision to side with democratic change,” said Benjamin Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, “and we made it clear that it is not our place to dictate the outcomes in any given country.”
Mr. Romney has emphasized the risks of uprisings. Eliot A. Cohen, a foreign policy adviser to his campaign, said he questioned the concept of an Arab Spring altogether. “It is not clear to me what is germinating,” he said.—Read More:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/politics/benghazi-and-arab-spring-rear-up-in-us-campaign.html image:v
Mr. Maayta said that the group had traveled to Syria and was planning to take advantage of the chaos there to obtain weapons, including TNT, which they planned to add to existing explosives to increase their power. He said the group had taken “counsel from Al Qaeda in Iraq via the terrorist sites on the Internet,” and had posted their plans online “to enable others to be able to create the same explosives.”
Most of the targets of the plot were said to be in the affluent Abdoun neighborhood in the southern part of Amman, home to several upscale nightclubs that are popular with young Jordanians and tourists. The plans apparently included suicide bombers, exploding cars, machine-gun fire and tossed grenades….Read More:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/world/middleeast/jordan-arrests-group-in-amman-attack-plot.html?ref=middleeast&_r=0
—I’m not sure if
ng been to Jerusalem aids in the enjoyment and depth of Delisle’s account of the Holy City but I’d still recommend it to anyone curious about Israel or the Middle East in general as I think there’s a tone that runs through the region that is incomprehensible to most outsiders.—Read More:http://www.somisguided.com/weblog/comments/book-review-jerusalem-chronicles-from-the-holy-city-by-guy-delisle/
COMMENTS
