This week's Al Ahram insanity

Every week, Egypt's English-language edition of Al Ahram Weekly has a sampling of lengthy, virulently anti-Zionist articles, usually written in impeccable English.

This week's example is typical. Galal Nasser attempts to prove, with astonishingly weird logic, that Israel (and the US, of course) is behind the troubles in Yemen, as Israel apparently believes that it is in its strategic interests to use Al Qaeda to foment unrest in Yemen.

Here's but a small sample of the Nasser's intellectual ravings:

The chaos in Yemen elevated this country to a cornerstone in US and Israeli plans to dominate the southern portion of the Middle East, which were moved into high gear at the turn of the millennium when the first Bush administration unveiled its project for a "New Middle East". An easily accessible country, it overlooks the Bab Al-Mandeb, the strait linking the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. This strategic international water is extremely vital to Israel, which is why Israel has done all in its power since 1973 to secure control over it. Its efforts towards this end include:

- Expanding its naval presence in the southern portion of the Red Sea off the coast of Eritrea in order to intercept Iranian naval vessels and monitor the Sudanese coast.

- Stimulating Al-Qaeda activities in Yemen in order to hasten the dismantlement of the state and to be able to use the "war on terrorism" as an excuse to secure a military presence on Yemeni territory.

- Unleashing piracy along the Somali coast and in the vicinity of the Bab Al-Mandeb in order to justify a direct US-Israeli military engagement in the area.

THE RISE OF AL-QAEDA: Before examining this aspect of the Yemeni question, I must first register my belief that the so-called Al-Qaeda organisation was born as and remains a kind of CIA unit....A decade after it was founded, Al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center in New York, setting off a chain of events that struck the Arab and Islamic worlds harder than anywhere else. The military pursuit of Al-Qaeda beat a path of destruction through Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and, most recently, Yemen. These were the names that topped the list of countries designated for the project of the New Middle East, the map for which was captioned by its architects, "Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look". It was precisely in this spirit that former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice remarked, "This project will not succeed without great sacrifices such as a torrent of blood."

...There are other curious aspects to the Somali pirate phenomenon. One is especially struck by the fact that certain major powers seem to be controlling it and regulating its pace. The prime candidates for this role are those with a strategic vision for this region, namely the US, and Israel above all. Piracy in the Gulf of Aden near the Bab Al-Mandeb has the charm of appealing to international intervention in the area on the grounds that it threatens the security of one of the most important maritime routes in the world.

...According to the latest estimates, the pirates have raked in between $25-30 million up to now. Regardless of how they began their operations, they are no longer petty opportunists driven to maritime crime by the civil war and destitution that have ravaged their country; they are big business. It is not surprising that certain powers would seize upon the opportunity to turn the phenomenon to their advantage. Chaos on the high seas serves the schemes of the US administration and Israel to assert their control over strategically sensitive areas. The US-Israeli cordon around the Bab Al-Mandeb is now complete.

Good thing that we Elders created no less than sixteen layers of obfuscation around our real plans for world domination, and Galal has only penetrated to number two. (Kudos for making up a nice Condi Rice quote, though.)

We are amused.