INTEL REPORT: Energy News from the Middle East
ENERGY NEWS
MBS-Egypt TV talk show host Amru Adeeb, in his show al-hakayya (the story) aired on MBS- Egypt on 15 June, reported that Egypt is becoming an “energy hub for Europe as well as Africa.”
In this context he noted that Egypt has signed a deal to deliver natural gas to Europe, and plans are underway to export electricity directly to Europe. This project will entail laying underwater cables from Egypt to Cyprus, from Cyprus to Crete, and Crete to Greece from where the energy could be fed to all of Europe.
On the same program, the Egyptian talk show host also reported on friction developing between France, Greece, and Cyprus on one side, and Turkey on the other side, over natural gas wells in Cypriot waters. France has a deal with Cyprus allowing it to drill for natural as in Cypriot waters (which Greece also supports, as “Big Brother” to Cyprus). However, as reported previously, Turkey has also started drilling in Cypriot water, and this without permission from the Cypriot government. France then, recently ordered Turkey to withdraw from Cypriot water.
On 16 June, Erdogan, in a speech to supporters, indicated that the entire Eastern Mediterranean was Turkish territorial waters. Erdogan then belittled Cyprus as being inconsequential and threatened to use military force to ensure “Turkish rights.”
COMMENT: Meanwhile, not only is the U.S. completely AWOL on this issue, but it still lusts to sell this #1 state sponsor of terrorism powerful F-35 jets!
Make no mistake about it, Turkey’s annexation of chunks of N.W. Syria and occupation of chunks of N.W. Iraq (all reported earlier), while the U.S. whimpers its approval and the rest of the world looks the other way, has only whetted the appetite of this fascist state to make ever more encroachments on its neighbors’ territories and rights in the same way that Europe’s acquiescence to Hitler’s early belligerence led to WWII.
Turkey’s current ongoing harassments against Greece and its little brother Cyprus needs to be seen in that light, and if the West does not come down hard on Turkey for this, we’ll all be sorry later.
On another matter, on 16 June, Amru Adeeb commented on the UAE’s minister of foreign affairs visiting Egypt to meet with President as-Sisi so as to obtain reassurance on Egypt’s commitment to the defense of the Gulf states. Adeeb was dismissive of that saying that as-Sisi’s position has always been clear: “Egypt is totally committed to the defense of its Gulf Allies. The security of the Gulf states is Egypt’s security.”
COMMENT: The visit of the UAE FM at this time to obtain Egyptian reassurance should be seen in the context of the rising tensions in the Gulf due to Iran’s increasingly belligerent behavior.
Also, on 16 June, Adeeb commented on a report aired on rival al-jazeera where an Egyptian professor cast dispersion on the four rashideen (the first four Caliphs, called the “rightly guided ones by Muslims). According to this professor, these four “rashideen” were not the “rightly guided ones” tradition claims, but were in fact spies for the Quraish which the Quraish had embedded into Muhammad’s entourage.
The MBS-Egypt talk show host Adeeb, who is usually rather animated anyway, really went ballistic over this saying it was going to cause fitna (stark disturbances) all throughout the entire Islamic world. Then he went on the castigate Qatar (which hosts and supports al-jazeera) of not only causing fitna, but of supporting terrorism.
COMMENT: The so-called “four rightly guided Caliphs” are Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and ‘Ali. The real problem that Muslims have with these four rashideen is not so much that the four rashideen might have been spies for the Quraish, but that they never existed.
These four Caliphs, according to Islamic mythology, are the ones who engineered the expansion of the early Caliphate after Muhammad’s death, giving the Arab/Islamic empire control over all of the Levant, Egypt, most of North Africa, and most of what was once the Persian empire.
If that were true, one would expect that the contemporary histories of all of those literate countries would have made some mention of this. After all, we have Egyptian Coptic writings of that era in our museums as well as Syriac-Aramaic histories, Greek-Byzantine histories, Persian histories . . . and yet none of these sources speak a single word of any of these four “rightly-guided ones.” Oh, they do talk about the Arab and “Saracen” conquests of their lands, but nary a word about these supposedly great historical figures.
That is because they never existed! The entire “history” of the origin of Islam and its early expansion was back-written decades later, in the very late 7th and early 8th centuries . . . and it is all, or mostly all, fiction.
Therefore, I submit that this interview on al-jazeera by this Egyptian intellectual is exactly the sort of thing needed by the entire Islamic community. Causing such a ruckus as it did, it might actually lead to increasing numbers of Muslims to begin to question other assumptions “tradition” has foisted upon them. And, these questionings and discussions are exactly what are needed to begin the process of veering towards a reformation/restructuring of Islam–without which Western Civilization will go the way of the Byzantine and Persian empires.
Also, I think that we need to give Egypt’s President as-Sisi some credit, despite his heavy-handedness against the Muslim Brotherhood and other political opposition, for creating an atmosphere where issues of this sort can be broached by intellectuals and public figures without fear of legal repercussions from the state (though such individuals still have to fear assassination from the Brotherhood’s thugs.