Earlier this week, several Arab nations blockaded and embargoed Qatar following accusations that Qatar and its State Media (al-Jazeera) were supporting terrorist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood.
Trump rushed to the forefront to take credit for the action:
Trump rushed to the forefront to take credit for the action:
During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding...— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
As we now know, Russian hackers planted fake stories about the Qataris in order to sew chaos in the Middle East and thus raise oil prices. From The Independent:...extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
It's interesting that British media has no fear of Saudi backlash. You'd never see something like this in the American Press. Continuing on:The Qatar crisis proves two things: the continued infantilisation of the Arab states, and the total collapse of the Sunni Muslim unity supposedly created by Donald Trump’s preposterous attendance at the Saudi summit two weeks ago.After promising to fight to the death against Shia Iranian “terror,” Saudi Arabia and its closest chums have now ganged up on one of the wealthiest of their neighbours, Qatar, for being a fountainhead of “terror”. Only Shakespeare’s plays could come close to describing such treachery. Shakespeare’s comedies, of course.For, truly, there is something vastly fantastical about this charade. Qatar’s citizens have certainly contributed to Isis. But so have Saudi Arabia’s citizens.No Qataris flew the 9/11 planes into New York and Washington. All but four of the 19 killers were Saudi. Bin Laden was not a Qatari. He was a Saudi.But Bin Laden favoured Qatar’s al-Jazeera channel with his personal broadcasts, and it was al-Jazeera who tried to give spurious morality to the al-Qaeda/Jabhat al-Nusrah desperadoes of Syria by allowing their leader hours of free airtime to explain what a moderate, peace-loving group they all were.
And now that we know the hacking was Russian in origin, it's time to lay off Qatar right? Secretary of Exxon-Mobil, Rex Tillerson, called for an easement of the blockade today. It's too bad his boss disagreed. TPM reports:All this started – so we are supposed to believe – with an alleged hacking of the Qatar News Agency, which produced some uncomplimentary but distressingly truthful remarks by Qatar’s Emir about the need to maintain a relationship with Iran.Qatar denied the veracity of the story. The Saudis decided it was true and broadcast the contents on their own normally staid (and immensely boring) state television network. The upstart Emir, so went the message, had gone too far this time. The Saudis decided policy in the Gulf, not miniscule Qatar. Wasn’t that what Donald Trump’s visit proved?
So I guess Trump speaks for Tillerson now. Something tells me we won't see Rexxon complaining about that one.Trump, on the other hand, took the side of the four gulf states implementing the blockade over Qatar’s alleged funding of terrorist groups. Tillerson was sitting in the front row of the crowd gathered in the White House Rose Garden for Trump’s joint press conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, according to NBC News’ Hallie Jackson.“The nation of Qatar, unfortunately has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level,” he said, before referencing his meeting with the Arab-Islamic American Summit on May 21, in Saudi Arabia. “And in the wake of that conference, nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior. So we had a decision to make. Do we take the easy road or do we finally take a hard but necessary action? We have to stop the funding of terrorism.”He added: “I decided along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, our great generals and military people, the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding. They have to end that funding.”
He wasn't snoring. He was just immitating a buzz saw with his eyes closed. |
Catch you on the side.
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