Politicians and government spokesmen have a certain manner when defusing news that disconcerts them -- a slight shrugging of the shoulders, a dismissive smile, a brief statement and then a quick disappearance from the interviewer's camera.
This is what happened yesterday when the report came through that an airplane had plunged into the Red Sea killing 148 French tourists. "Oh, it wasn't an Al Qaeda attack", was the response of several. "We have no evidence to think it was."
Really? It was only the previous day that the American CIA were publicising the fact that there had been an increase in mobile phone and Internet traffic of the sort that usually preceded Al Qaeda attacks -- and that this was the reason why they were holding up certain flights to the US.
Well, I can thoroughly understand and sympathise with the Egyptian government spokesman. Their tourist trade was severely set back by the terrorist incident at Luxor some years ago, and the latest incident will set back their tourist trade a few more years no doubt. He had to make it seem that it was just another airplane accident that could have happened anywhere.
The New York Times didn't give it a front-page headline and even the BBC website went along with what can only amount to camouflage. Last night, the following was all there was :
<<<<
An Egyptian charter plane belonging to Flash Airlines crashes into the Red Sea, killing all 141 people on board. Most of the passengers are thought to be French tourists.
3 January 2004
>>>>
There was not a word that the airplane had taken off from Sharm el-Sheik airport, and not a word that Tony Blair and family were on holiday at Sharm el-Sheik, and not a word that Tony Blair and family would be flying back to the UK any day now from the same airport.
It stretches credulity too far to imagine that the loss of the airplane was anything other than an attempted assassination on Tony Blair. (I wouldn't mind betting -- though we shall possibly never know -- that Tony Blair was, in fact, due to go on the next flight to the UK from Sharm el-Sheik, or at least soon afterwards, and that Al Qaeda got their information slightly wrong. Or perhaps it was intended as a coded warning to Blair, albeit at the expense of French lives.) (P.S. The very latest news this morning which I've heard a few minutes ago on the radio just before posting this is that Tony Blair has now magically appeared in Basra, Iraq! This is further confirmation to my mind that western governments will do and say anything to disguise what was undoubtedly an assassination attempt.)
Where does all this take us? In particular, where does it take America and the UK? It means that the invasion of Iraq has now stirred up a hornet's nest that was already active in Saudi Arabia. As long as American troops are in Iraq, Al Qaeda and the Wahhabi clerics of Saudi Arabia will be assisting their cousins, the Sunni extremists in Baghdad, in whatever way they can. And the Wahhabis and Sunnis will continue to have the support of traditionalist elements with the Saudi royal family which oppose the reformist attempts of Crown Prince Abdullah, the formal president.
Unless Crown Prince Abdullah acts very soon and puts Prince Nayef (see Posting 141) under lock and key, together with several hundred other members of the royal family (6,000 in all) who support the Wahhabi establishment then the Saudi Arabia government must be considered to be the most potentially unstable of any in the world. I imagine that a revolution or palace insurrection can be far away now.
Something went seriously awry in the world of Islam at around the 13th and 14th centuries when their clerics started to turn their backs on European science. And yet, previously, Islamic philosophers were ahead of anybody else in the whole world, even the Chinese. All the way down the west coast of north Afirca, there are ancient cities that still have libraries of beautiful Arabic manuscripts of the 10th and 11th centuries concerning mathematics and astronomy and other sciences. There are drawings in profusion of the solar system which preceded Copernicus' ideas by two centuries. (See Michael Palin's book, Sahara.)
I considered that the invasion of Iraq was a seriously irresponsible event. Nevertheless, I can't lay my hands easily on what should have been done otherwise. In Islam there is, unfortunately, a whole culture that has, since the 13th and 14th century, become set against any form of free enquiry -- and indeed basic freedom for their populations. The result is that in the Islamic countries, such as Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, there are seething masses of oppressed people, particularly excessive numbers of young people without jobs, who have nothing to do except explode in anger and frustration.
All I can suggest is that the American aircraft carriers which are situated all around the Gulf should be turned into universities, and that the tanks patrolling the streets of Baghad should be turned into mobile schoolrooms. We should not be sending soldiers to the Middle East but teachers. But this is a forlorn dream. I'm afraid that we will see nothing but increasing warfare and bloodshed in the Middle East until the Big Powers (I will leave them nameless) have secured Middle East oil and gas supplies for their use for as long as the resources will last.
Keith Hudson
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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