Filling the Void: Saudi Diplomacy in a Realigned Middle East

As the Bush administration moves towards disengagement in the Middle East from those regarded as extremist — including Syria, Iran, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine, and Hezbollah in Lebanon — the result has been a vacuum of power left from the absence of traditional diplomatic channels. In the post Cold War era, this meant typically working with, and in the least, involving the United States. But in recent months as American policy becomes more rigid and inflexible, Middle Eastern diplomatic channels have rerouted outside of Washington and back into the Middle East proper. In this capacity, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the new bridge where the forces of moderation can work within the framework of Middle East reality — a reality where extremists unfortunately are popular and united — and work on successful compromises.

The Saud’s have also acted as the defacto go between for Iran and the West as issues continue to flair revolving supposed Iranian involvement in the Iraqi civil war, the pursuit of nuclear technology, and of the funding and support for Shiite proxy groups. Stated by the Washington Post:

Saudi diplomats, including former ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar bin Sultan, are also deeply engaged in talks with Iran. The contacts began with a visit to Saudi Arabia by Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s national security council. Prince Bandar subsequently visited Tehran and, according to a report in the New York Times, King Abdullah received leaders of Hezbollah. Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran back opposite sides in the escalating sectarian conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon, but the talks show that both governments are interested in tamping them down. Though there have been no breakthroughs, the diplomacy seems to have succeeded, at least, in cooling the situation in Lebanon, where a Hezbollah campaign against the Saudi-supported, pro-Western government led to several days of violence last month.

The continuation of this was seen in early February in talks initially balked at by Condoleezza Rice but brokered by the Saud’s between the almost-at-civil-war Hamas and Fatah Palestinian political groups. Instead of direct mediation by the Bush administration, the middle ground is reinvented by the parties involved:

America is holding back from serious involvement while it sees what else Saudi Arabia can do. King Abdullah and his energetic security adviser, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former long-time Washington ambassador, may try to stick another feather in their caps at next month’s Arab League summit. They want to revive and perhaps refine the Arab League’s 2002 proposal for all Arab states to normalise relations with Israel if Israel withdraws from all the territories it occupied in 1967, both Palestinian and Syrian.

…So was the Fatah-Hamas deal in vain? And why did Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, fly all the way to Jerusalem to see Mr Abbas and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and on to Jordan to see America’s other Arab allies, to tell them something she could have fitted into an SMS text message?

While it is important that America acts against those committed to reckless ideology, it is increasingly important in the context of prolonged American involvement in Iraq and NATO involvement in Afghanistan that hostility does not boil over to conflict before it has the chance for diplomatic resolution. The ramifications of a sectarian Middle East become more visceral, the role of Saudi Arabia will grow as the leading voice as both a moderate country and the largest Sunni country.

Sources

Saudi Arabia’s Diplomacy, Washington Post.

Banking on the Saudis, Economist.

Decisions Deferred in Mideast Talks, Council on Foreign Relations.

Arab states watch Iraq with dread, BBC News.

A holy but puzzling alliance, Economist.

Posted on PubliusPundit and Ablogistan.

You like it, you love it, YOU NEED IT!

I NEED THIS SHIRT.

“N”-Word Banned in NYC

It’s a sad day for many of us here at PBH as we learn that today, New York City, has banned the use of one of my and many of my associates favorite words: The “N”-word. I’ll spell it out in case you haven’t heard this particular euphemism: nigger. I’ll define from the urban dictionary below:

A word that everyone else is afraid to define except in utter seriousness, for fear of being branded a rascist[sic], in total ignorance of the colloquial usage of the word, its characterization in popular culture, and the populations of people it is used most by.

Urban Dictionary: Nigger

This ruling is actually quite interesting for two reasons..

1. This is probably the first time in history that a WORD has been outlawed.
2. There’s no actual penalty for using the word, thus, the rule is pointless. But I’m sure our astute readers already figured that out

Anyway, since the “N”-word has apparently been banned for casual conduct, We’ve got a great plan here. Since this was announced today, we’ll mark each and every March 1st as Nigger Day! Kool-Aid and Watermelon for all!!!

Racial Slur Banned in New York

[UPDATE] It turns out that we’ve just finished Black History month… Nigger Day! What a great way to finish that one off and get onto real biz!

Who’s going to pay my monthly rape bill?

Courtesy of Girl Farts (which I can only assume is a site run by an Asian man whose fetish is to stick his nose into a women’s buttcrack after a hearty meal of barbecue and semen), it’s been reported that “rape victims in Missouri are billed for their rape kits“. Now, you see, some people may misconstrue this as some horrible measure in a podunk, antiquated state. But in reality, this is a continuation of the Thomas Jefferson business policies (TJ biz-nass for all you ebonics linguists), for it is the secret clause in the US Constitution that reads “Thou shalt do ladies against thy will, and when thee pregnancy emerges, they shalt be the one to pay for it. When thy is confronted with said charges, please ignorance, heavily and mightily, and when unsurmountable evidence falls out of your favor, publicly state “She asked for it”. Thus, thou shalt be ridden of thy burden”. America people, learn to love it.

What if you gave a blowjob party but nobody came?

The Article: Are You There God? It’s Me, Monica (How nice girls got so casual about oral sex) by Caitlin Flanagan of the Atlantic.

Choice Bits (and I’ve never heard Jewish oral sex discussed so deeply):

The first time I heard a mother of girls talk about the teenage oral-sex craze, I made her cry. The story she told me—about a bar mitzvah dinner dance on the North Shore of Chicago, where the girls serviced all the boys on the chartered bus from the temple to the reception hall—was so preposterous that I burst out laughing. The thought of thirteen-year-old girls in party dresses performing a sex act once considered the province of prostitutes (we are talking here about the on-your-knees variety given to a series of near strangers) was so ludicrous that all I could do was giggle.

The moms in my set are convinced—they’re certain; they know for a fact—that all over the city, in the very best schools, in the nicest families, in the leafiest neighborhoods, twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls are performing oral sex on as many boys as they can. They’re ducking into janitors’ closets between classes to do it; they’re doing it on school buses, and in bathrooms, libraries, and stairwells. They’re making bar mitzvah presents of the act, and performing it at “train parties”: boys lined up on one side of the room, girls working their way down the row. The circle jerk of old—shivering Boy Scouts huddled together in the forest primeval, desperately trying to spank out the first few drops of their own manhood—has apparently moved indoors, and now (death knell of the Eagle Scout?) there’s a bevy of willing girls to do the work.
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When I first began hearing these stories, I was convinced that we were in the grips of a nationwide urban legend, and the prevalence of stories centered on bar mitzvahs seemed to me suspicious, possibly even anti-Semitic in origin. But sure enough, in 2003 a feminist Jewish quarterly called Lilith addressed the story—not to debunk it but to come to terms with it as a recognized problem within the Jewish community: “No one is suggesting, even for a moment, that Jewish teens are leading the oral sex revolution. But they may have earlier and more frequent opportunities for sexual contact in a supercharged social milieu than their non-Jewish peers.” The authors observe that the oral sex is “almost always unilateral (girls on boys).”

… Somehow these girls have developed the indifferent attitude toward performing oral sex that one would associate with bitter, long-married women or streetwalkers. But they think of themselves as normal teenagers, version 2005. For a while, whenever I passed groups of young girls, I looked at them anew. Were these nice kids—the ones playing AYSO soccer and doing their homework and shopping with their moms—behaving like little whores whenever they got the chance? It was like some weird search for communists—was the sweet, well-spoken daughter of a friend actually a blowjobber? I looked at the small girls in my children’s schoolyard—as cosseted and protected and beloved a group of children as you will find anywhere on the planet—and tried to convince myself that in a matter of five or six years they would be performing oral sex on virtual strangers.

he Rainbow Party, an offering from Simon Pulse, a young-adult division of Simon & Schuster, takes place on a single day, in which a tough little sophomore named Gin issues invitations to a party at which she and five of her friends will perform oral sex on the lucky guests, a group of popular boys. The girls will each wear a different color of lipstick, so that when a boy has completed the circuit, his penis will bear the colors of the rainbow. The party is to take place after school, to last about an hour and a half—including time for chitchat—and to conclude before Gin’s father returns home from work.

In addition to the predictable, outraged criticism that this vile book has received, there is a question of veracity: as many readers have noted, wouldn’t the different colors of lipstick smear together, destroying the desired rainbow effect? Not once, however, has another question been posed: How many boys could successfully receive seven blowjobs in an hour? Surely even the adolescent male at the peak of his sexual prime needs at least a few minutes to reload. One would assume that the first transaction would be completed at light speed, that the second might take a bit longer—and that by the fourth or fifth even the horniest tenth-grader might display some real staying power. But asking questions like these will automatically preclude you from entering the current oral-sex hysteria, which presupposes not only that a limitless number of young American girls have taken on the sexual practices of porn queens but also that American boys are capable of having an infinite number of sexual experiences in rapid succession. It requires believing that a boy could be serviced at the school-bus train party—receiving oral sex from ten or fifteen girls, one after another—and then zip his fly and head off to homeroom, first stopping in the stairwell for a quickie to tide him over until math.

Why it’s important: If you weren’t lucky enough to be bestowed with “back in my day, a liver pie cost 5 cents and you’d still have enough change afterwards to sleep with a fat prostitute in Harlem”, here’s your chance. Nothing says old or out of touch then an old and out of touch person writing about generational differences. *GASP!* Younger people think about subjects and act in different ways (*GASP!*) including sex then their elders do! To the Batmobile, Sherlock Fucking Holmes.

Analysis: Thank god for this article and the reasoning behind it. It makes my day when I can peruse one of my favorite periodicals to hear the logical fallacy behind rainbow parties: “How many boys could successfully receive seven blowjobs in an hour? Surely even the adolescent male at the peak of his sexual prime needs at least a few minutes to reload.” I suggest to Ms. Flanagan the ever popular bukkake film, which will show her first hand the idea that ‘sharing is caring’. And by caring, I mean smearing a male humans protein strands all over a females face. Mmm mmm mmm, love at first sight. The point and summary is simple: blowjobs rule, blowjobs make you popular, and every girl between 13 and 18 are giving them out for free. I’ll see you, dear reader, at the nearest high school parking lot.