Tuesday, May 08, 2007

The Arab Toothpaste Plan for the Iraq, Price of Saudi Marital Intimacy

The Saudi-owned media, dominating Arab print and airwaves with its huge overseas outlets (alhayat, asharq alawsat, alarabiya TV, etc...) is again calling for a military-led regime in Iraq, in order to, as they claim, restore order and prepare for a 'more balanced' political system. The editor-in-chief of a major Saudi paper published in London came out openly today for a restored Iraqi army, presumably without its Halabja-era arsenal of chemicals and poison gas, to take over. Does he know that he is proposing to push the Iraqi toothpaste back into its old tube...an impossible task now? Not even the best-paid writers in London can achieve that.

Saudi-owned columnists in the Gulf and across the Arab World are again repeating the same message, which is almost a mantra now.
The main thrust of these arguments is asserting control by a central government, which incidentally will be less Shi'a and less Kurdish.....especially less Shi'a, which would make it more in line with other Arab regimes. Sort of like, dare I say, our erstwhile brothers, our old buddies of the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party.

Should this new regime be un-elected, then this would make it even more in line with all the Arab despots, absolute monarchs, and presiedents-for-life. All brothers in....despotism.
Nobody has mentioned anything about the fate of autonomous Kurdistan in this desired re-centralized system...it is the almost-independent elephant in the room that no one mentions.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Sunni political parties have been hinting at withdrawal from the government and perhaps from the political process. Vice President al-Hashimi the other day mentioned May 15 as a target date for some serious work on the constitution, or else.

This is apparently part of a coordinated drive to put some pressure on the al-Maliki government. But the real target is the Bush administration, which is even more susceptible to pressure here, since it is terrified of any appearance of a weakening of the Iraqi political process.

The good news is that the sensible Biden-Gelb idea of a union of autonomous regions is gaining support in the Senate.

Love and Marriage in Arabia:
Alarabiya website reports (May 8) on a strange phenomenon in Saudi Arabia: husbands who refuse to ‘get intimate’ with their wives, and wives who have to pay their husbands for intercourse.
One husband demanded 1000 rials from his wife in exchange for his ‘services’- the site did not report what the going rate is for escorts over there. The wife borrowed the money from her brother and paid her husband in order to have intimacy with him. When she lost after the Saudi stock market crashed and could not repay the money, her brother sued her.

The network reports that this has become more common, and is a major cause for divorce or law suits to force the husbands to perform their ‘roles’ in bed. One wife, who is also a businesswoman complains that she has to pay her husband for each time she needs his ‘services’.

Now, where do you suppose these husbands go for their……fun? Unless there is a national need for ED medication.

Saudi religious police in Jeddah roughed up some people and ejected three Canadian women from an exhibition on 'Education in the Middle East'. This parallel police is called 'The OAuthority for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Sin'. They are dedicated to the prevention of any kind of fun that is not related to eating and drinking soda pop. And no, they do not have their headquarters in Washington D.C.

Cheers
Mohammed

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