As the Arab World News Turns - A Soap Opera

Saudis Gain Amid Islamist Setbacks

Morsi's Ouster and Syrian Rebel Vote Strengthen Kingdom's Hand

Is it News or a News Release?

It definitely helps in today's politics to understand reportage bias before taking in any information as news fact or news release fiction, especially where the middle East is concerned. 

The Fox News programs under President Roger Ailes has proven to me about "fair and balanced" time and again, which offers a reporting standard today that many news outlets have long forgotten and woefully lost all credibility right along with readership and viewers.

The WSJ newspaper publication like all news organizations manage from the top as with the Chairman Rupert Murdoch and directions go down to be acted upon in the collection and reporting of news content. Although the above headline and byline were printed within the World News section of the venerable Wall Street Journal, it still makes sense to probe its veracity. Upon closer inspection, did you know that the House of Saud, the Saudi Arabia royal family owns voting shares of News Corp., the parent company of the Wall Street Journal and Fox News?

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns the largest chunk of News Corp. stock outside the Murdoch family. Shortly after his purchase of 5.5 percent of News Corp. voting shares in 2005, Alwaleed gave a speech that made it clear just what he had bought. As noted in The (U.K.) Guardian, Alwaleed told an audience in Dubai that it took just one phoneSaudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal & Rupert Murdoch call to Rupert Murdoch – “speaking not as a shareholder but as a viewer,” Alwaleed said – to get the Fox News crawl reporting “Muslim riots” in France changed to “civil riots.” That opening act of eliminating key information from News Corp.’s coverage of Islamic news might well have set a pattern of omission. Alwaleed’s stake today, by the way, is now 7 percent in 2013.

Here is a surprise "tit for tat" tidbit: Not only does Alwaleed own a stake in News Corp., Murdoch owns an even more substantial stake (18.97 percent) in Alwaleed’s Arabic media company Rotana.

Al Risala TV - Tele-Islamist Tareq Al-SuwaidanHere is further incest: Within the Alwaleed-Murdoch-Rotana galaxy is a 24-hour-Islamic outlet called Al Risala, which Alwaleed founded in 2006. The channel’s director and popular “tele-Islamist” is Tareq Al-Suwaidan, widely reported to be a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait. According to former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, the station’s “Supreme Advisory Committee” includes Abdullah Omar Naseef who is “a major Muslim Brotherhood figure” involved in the financing of al-Qaida.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Islamic Muslim Brotherhood terroristAnother pattern of omission in News Corp.’s coverage is of Al Jazeera Network's alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood, the global Islamic movement whose motto is, “The Quran is our law; jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Al Jazeera’s superstar TV host and ideological lodestar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a leading Muslim Brotherhood figure at the network and in Qatar – where it is against the law for journalists to criticize the Qatari government, the ruling family or Islam. Yusuf al-Qaradawi has called for Americans in Iraq and Israelis everywhere to be targeted by terrorists (“martyrs”) who would then find a place in Islamic paradise.

U.S. International Geo-Political - Religious - Business Relationships

Huma Abedin, the wife of Democratic NYC mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner worked as an assistant to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,; daughter of Saleha Abedin of the radical Muslim Sisterhood; who works with Abdullah Omar Naseef, a major leader in the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

The Saudi and the Qatar royal families both adhere to Wahabi Islam but appear are at odds. The Qatari are viewed as being too slack and deviating from Wahabi beliefs while making democratic and social reforms too quickly and allowing relatively free critical media where the Saudis are seen adopting overly rigid religious practices along with tighter reigns on critics. Appearances, though, are not so revealing here since the Saudi officials shrewdly view the Qatari acts as useful stimulus for evolutionary reform in Saudia Arabia and a counterbalance to the region's Islamic extremists. So why do the Saudis feel a need for an equilibrium to Wahbi Islamic extremists?

- Read on...

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al-Qaeda

by Yaroslav Trofimov

On November 20, 1979, worldwide attention was focused on Tehran, where the Iranian hostage crisis was entering its third week.

  That same morning—the first of a new Muslim century—hundreds of gunmen stunned the world by seizing Islam’s holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Armed with rifles that they had smuggled inside coffins, these men came from more than a dozen countries, launching the first operation of global jihad in modern times.

Led by a Saudi preacher named Juhayman al Uteybi, they believed that the Saudi royal family had become a craven servant of American infidels, and sought a return to the glory of uncompromising Islam. With nearly 100,000 worshippers trapped inside the holy compound, Mecca’s bloody siege lasted two weeks, inflaming Muslim rage against the United States and causing hundreds of deaths.

Despite U.S. assistance, the Saudi royal family proved haplessly incapable of dislodging the occupier, whose ranks included American converts to Islam. In Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini blamed the Great Satan—the United States —for defiling the shrine, prompting mobs to storm and torch American embassies in Pakistan and Libya. The desperate Saudis finally enlisted the help of French commandos led by tough-as-nails Captain Paul Barril, who prepared the final assault and supplied poison gas that knocked out the insurgents.

Though most captured gunmen were quickly beheaded, the Saudi royal family responded to this unprecedented challenge by compromising with the rebels’ supporters among the kingdom’s most senior clerics by deporting many rebels back to their countries of origin or Europe.  The Saudi royal family by these actions was helping them nurture and export Juhayman’s violent brand of Islam around the world - Wahabi Islam.

This dramatic and immensely consequential story was barely covered in the press in the pre-CNN, pre–Al Jazeera days, as Saudi Arabia imposed an information blackout and kept foreign correspondents away. Yaroslav Trofimov now penetrates this veil of silence, interviewing for the first time scores of direct participants in the siege, including former terrorists, and drawing on hundreds of documents that had been declassified on his request.

Written with the pacing, detail, and suspense of a real-life thriller, The Siege of Mecca reveals how Saudi reaction to the uprising in Mecca set free the forces that produced the attacks of 9/11, and the harrowing circumstances that surround us today.