In this column, I wrote on the day of elections for Iraq’s Parliament that the only guaranteed result would be the loser accusing the winner of fraud, and this is what took place. Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and his allies on the Iraqiya list claimed that ballots supporting them were ignored or destroyed, that ballot boxes were discovered discarded outside polling stations, and that 250,000 soldiers were prevented from exercising their right to vote. The Iraqi National Alliance also complained about vote fraud.

The Pakistani man complained: the weather in Britain is intolerable; clouds follow you like your shadow; winter is long and grim; cold bites; the sun is an impostor that promises to appear then vanishes like a thief; taxes are an insatiable beast; and high prices are like taxes.

It is a boring country indeed, one where TV screens are busy showing the story of a child who drowned in the river; an old woman who died alone; the persistence of gay people to acquire fully their rights; an MP who invited his wife for lunch at the expense of taxpayers.

How numerous are the Arab, Islamic, and Western countries that have ambitions in the wealth of the Gulf countries! How malicious they are! There are many people who still consider that the Gulf citizen is a ball of “stupidity” whose pockets are filled with money, that he has an oil barrel on his back, and that his utmost concern is to look for women. They spitefully believe that he does not deserve the Sahara land which generates black gold to him and to the world.

The member states in the economic and monetary union of the Euro seem to be hesitant in bailing out the member that finds itself today heavily indebted by over than 400 billion Euros, namely, Greece. But on the other hand, these countries are seeking to devise some kind of a body, perhaps in the form of a European Monetary Fund, to assist defaulting members in the future. This comes as a result of the complications caused by the terms of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which did not establish any official body that can bail out any member that becomes beleaguered by deficit.

The four Egyptian opposition parties that have formed a coalition in the face of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) might succeed at formulating a document in which they would specify their demands for constitutional reform in the country at the end of their conference today, a conference which has gone on for three days. Nevertheless, the “document” will not conceal the size of the contradiction between the four parties: the New Wafd Party, the National Progressive Unionist Party (Tagammu), the Nasserist Party and the Democratic Front Party.

It would not have been possible to imagine worse for the US’s credibility in the region than what befell it during Joe Biden’s visit this week; a comment made by Aaron Miller, a prominent member of the US team negotiating with the Israelis under the administration of Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr. And because Miller is aware of the balance of power in the American-Israeli relationship, he described it as “dancing with a bear”, where the problem becomes, as he says, that if you start dancing with it, it no longer becomes possible to let it dance alone!

In the current debate over Israeli settlement of Palestinian lands, attention is being diverted away from the reality of the Hebrew state taking possession of additional Arab lands in the occupied West Bank and dismantling the bases of the sought-after Palestinian state, and towards the discrepancy between estimations made by the administration of President Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

It is no coincidence that Mauritania is simultaneously making moves to the north, toward Morocco, and south, toward Senegal. While the foreign minister of Mauritania, Alnaha bint Oueld Meknas, traveled to Tetouan to meet the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, a military delegation headed by Senegalese Defense Minister Abdoulaye Balde was holding discussions in Nouakchott on a plan to coordinate a response to the out-of-control security situation and rein in suspicious political movements in the region.

A ceremony to honor the Israeli army was held by extremist American Jews at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, in which the keynote speaker was General Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli chief of staff who, as his name betrays, is not from our region.

The most recent monthly oil market report issued by OPEC, which happens to be the last report to be published before the convening of the organization’s ministerial meeting next Wednesday, indicates that the OPEC Reference Basket has dropped by nearly four percent last February, reaching $ 72.99/b. The organization attributed this decline to the growing concern about the economic recovery triggered by sovereign debt issues in the Euro-zone, particularly in Greece.