MER EDITORIAL:
J O R D A N I A N R E A L I T I E S and H U S S E I N ' S L E G A C Y
MER - WASHINGTON - 5 Feb: Jordan is a country that never should have been but which has
endured. At quite a price however. For the young Winston Churchill and the British Empire
it was supposed to be a temporary arrangement made on behalf of the defeated Hashemite
clan from Arabia, one designed to stabilize British control of the region against the
French. For the fledgling Zionist movement the Hashemite dynasty quickly became the secret
conspiratorial connection which they brilliantly manipulated to achieve their goal of
"Jewish" independence while vanquishing to subservience the mutual
Zionist/Hashemite enemy, the Palestinians.
King Hussein was a teenager who "ascended" the Amman throne after being at
the side of his fallen grandfather, assassinated by Palestinians for his treachery in the
heart of Jerusalem. No betting man in the 1950s would have thought the boy-king would have
survived to die a natural death in 1999.
The West's chicanery in the early years of this century in carving out Transjordan from
Palestine, Kuwait from Iraq, Lebanon from Syria has succeeded in keeping the Arab world
twisted and disfigured, weak and humbled, disjointed and despairing. Western dissection
has succeeded in preventing the "Arab world" from uniting to build their own
"United" region and make good use of their own resources and potential power.
The cost to the peoples of the Arab world has been enormous -- in blood, in treasure, in
history.
Underlying the geographical concerns were of course commercial andmilitary ones. And
here too the control of and looting of "the prize",black gold, has also been
achieved by the West. Just consider this single reality: Americans buy a gallon of gas --
pumped from the Arabian desert, transported half-way around the world, refinied into oil
and gasoline products, and then distributed to their local gas stations -- cheaper than
the price of a gallon of bottled water at their local supermarkets!
And beyond this, even the petrodollars paid for the oil are squandered by the Arab
"client regimes" whose life-styles are obnoxious, who recycle most of the loot
to Western banks for foreign investments, and who purchase vast quantities of Western
products, especially Western arms. All of this of course only further enriches the West
while further impoverishing the "Mid-East" -- itself a British colonial term
that stuck.
It also deserves to be mentioned that in recent years these same "client
regimes" have also started using a small bit of their petro-dollars (and in some
cases USA/CIA funds) to buy-up the media, both at home and abroad, trying to make sure
they control what can easily be said and heard about all the goings on, as well as about
the history that preceeded it all.
Just two weeks ago the amazing Hussein was deceiving his rather gullible and emotional
people one final time in this extended storyof Hashemite lies and deceptions,
collaboration and intrique, plot and survival that goes back to the time of Lawrence
"of Arabia". The King returned to his Kingdom "flying" his own plane
and pronouncing himself "totally cured", intent on doing the final deed urged on
him by his American wife; as well as by the Americans and the Israelis who have replaced
Britain as protector andguarantor of this last remaining Hashemite throne.
Despite all the propaganda otherwise, despite all American and British efforts
otherwise, the "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" is tettering -- not at the top but
rather at its foundations. Fully 30% of Jordanians are unemployed. The Muhabarat, the
secret police, are omnipresent; repressession and intrique everywhere. The small and
incestuous Jordanian elite that surrounds the monarchy has drained the country into their
own foreign bank accounts, decimated the once growing middle class, and today presides
over a growing majority population that is both impoverished and Palestinian. It is for
these reasons Hussein of Amman found himself "supporting" Saddam of Baghdad just
a few years ago, lest a popular torrent sweep Amman as happened in Baghdad during
Hussein's first Kingly years, the Hashemites there dragged through the streets
dismembered.
The betting man of the 1990s needs to think long and hard about the reign of Abdullah
II, the great grandchild of the Abdullah, son of the original Hussein of Mecca, who
cannivingly traded a throne in the desert for the area west of the Jordan now known as
Israel; and who then fell to an assassins bullet in the very Jerusalem his heir, now
departing the scene after an amazing reign, was to himself lose for the Arabs. MAB This
MER Editorial is ready for easy printing or faxing at: http://www.MiddleEast.Org/newsletter13.htm
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For previous articles published by MER about the realities of Jordan: http://www.MiddleEast.Org/jordan.htm
