Musical Chairing in Bahrain, Cool General and Mean Mother………….

 


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Lt. General Bin Technocrat


“The Minister of Interior and Chairman of the board of trustees of the Royal Police Academy council Lt. General Shaikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa today chaired the ninth meeting. During the meeting the educational and training programmes provided by the academy were reviewed………..”

This Lt. General Shaikh Rashid bin Abdullah Bin Technocrat Al Khalifa is a mean mother, no doubt (just look at his visage up there, and that photo was taken on a good day). He is in charge of police, security, foreign mercenaries, village and home raids, arrests, torture, imprisonment, sexual assaults, killings, and other such traits and values that the Western world (especially David Cameron and William J Hague) cherish so dearly. IN summary: he is in charge of enforcing the policies that would keep Apartheid in Bahrain in place. He ain’t a Field Marshal yet, that honors is still confined to the commander of the Bahrain military, another Al-Khalifa chap, but as nasty as this one.
If there was justice in this world, both these gentlemen ought to be put immediately under arrest by Interpol as soon as they leave their captive island.
I don’t know about you, but I think all this shit is considered really cooooool among certain elements in our neck of the wood
s.
Cheers
mhg



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WTF- Bahrain Branch, Timothy Leary and the Despots……….

 


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“Come on, turn on, tune in, drop out, with me
Baby you need a break so lets just run away
Well I’m tired of coding perl, and I’m tired of VBA

Maggie throw your law books away
Turn on, tune in, drop out, give up, with me
………. Cracker

“Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander,
today received a cable from Deputy Premier Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al-Khalifa congratulating him on the graduation of his son Shaikh Isa bin Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa from the American University-Washington…………..
Bahrain News Agency
,
Headed by Information Affairs Authority President Shaikh Fawaz bin Mohammed Al-Khalifa.

But how come the prime minister Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Bin Technocrat Al-Khalifa didn’t congratulate his grandnephew? Was it because he himself flunked out of college some 60 years ago? Or was it because he chose to listen to Timothy Leary and “Turn on, tune in, drop out” some sixty years ago?
I shall categorize this under WTF- Bahrain Branch.

Cheers
mhg



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Syrian Fallout: South to Tripoli, North to Tripoli……

 


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Like a Tango, it takes two, or more, to do battle”
Me

For a third day in a row, the violence of Syria spilled into the northern city of Tripoli in Lebanon. The AP reports that the Alawites, who support the regime of Bashar Assad, and the Sunnis, who support the Syrian uprising, traded fire in Lebanon using assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades. Five people were killed and 100 were wounded in Lebanon’s second-largest city…………

This is not the first armed conflict in the area since the Syrian protests started. The ground had been set for trouble in Tripoli long before the Arab uprisings, since 2008 or thereabouts. The Hariri bloc has strong supporters in the predominantly Sunni city, and there are some Alawite residents in the area. Hariri himself cautioned against escalation today, presumably warning his supporters (on Twitter), but it is not clear yet if he still has as much influence. Besides, Saad Hariri is a Saudi first and he will not say or do anything that does not have the approval of Riyadh: the princes can bankrupt him if they get angry enough. Besides, Lebanese officials had complained in recent months of movements of men and weapons across the Syrian border. Besides, al-Qaeda and affiliates see a chance to merge the two ghazwas (holy battles, actually raids) of Syria and Lebanon (and maybe even Iraq in their view). Besides there has been talk of possible Saudi and Qatari weapons being supplied to the Syrian opposition militias, some of the arms no doubt remain in Lebanon. Then there are some defectors from the Syrian military who may also be armed. Besides, the local Alawites are also apparently armed now (like a Tango, it takes two, or more, to do battle).
It is all a formula for an extended conflagration, given that Hezbollah and allies are well-armed and well-trained and dominate in Beirut and the south.
The Tripoli region is now well-armed for the foreseeable future, with fundamentalist groups gaining sway. There are plenty of people on the Arabian Peninsula and in Lebanon with deep pockets who can finance these groups, possibly with the ambitious goal of eventually blocking and severing the link between Syria and Beirut and south Lebanon.
This is one thing the Israelis will not want to touch or manipulate, if’n (if’n) they are smarter now than they were in 1982 and 2006 as far as Lebanese matters are concerned.

Cheers
mhg



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Pictorial: MENA Dances, Middle East Kisses……….

 


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           SuperPowerMyAss                        Mother’s Day or Campaigning?


KissingAsses in Bahrain                                         Kissing in Kuwait

 
Prelude to a kiss: Blair & Qaddafi dancing           Its kosher: he’s anti-Zionist

          
Will u still love me after the fall?           
Close you eyes and I’ll kiss you, tomorrow I’ll miss you



Cheers
mhg



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The Saudi Regime Dodged a Bullet: Nasser’s Missed Great Chance…………

 


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“In 1958 he wrote a proposed constitution for Saudi Arabia which would have created a constitutional monarchy and expanded civil rights. He began to assemble an elected advisory committee, but his ideas were rejected by the king, and religious leaders in Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa declaring his constitution to be contrary to Islamic law. In 1961 the kingdom revoked his passport and attempted to silence him, but he expatriated to Egypt and declared himself a socialist. There, influenced by Gamal Abdel Nasser, Talal continued to push for reform and criticise the leadership of the Kingdom. In 1964 Talal agreed to temper his criticisms in exchange for permission to reenter Saudi Arabia. He is now a successful businessman and prominent philanthropist. Though a senior member of Al Saud, his past political forays may have diluted any hopes of a future claim for the throne, though he denies it. Prince Talal resumed his push for reform in Saudi Arabia in September 2007, when he announced his desire to form a political party (illegal in Saudi Arabia) to advance his goal of liberalizing the country……………..”

The Egyptian media in the Nasserist era called them the “free princes”, a name similar to the Free Officers who overthrew the Egyptian monarchy in July of 1952. Talal and his supporters escaped to Egyptian exile for a few years, under the protection of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Of all the Arab regimes of the 1950s, the Saudi regime was the least endangered by the Nasserist tide. The secret was in the ‘people’: the Saudi people at that time were easily among the least educated and least open Arabs (possibly less than Oman or Yemen but it was a toss-up). They were also shackled then, as they are now, by the ideology of the Wahhabi sect which warns that disobedience to the ruler, no matter how corrupt he is, is a sacrilege and would send you to the “other” hell beyond the current Wahhabi hell. Maybe Nasser got too busy and did not try hard enough to overthrow the al-Saud dynasty. His involvement in Syria and Yemen probably distracted him. That was a pity: overthrowing the Saudi clan would certainly have been Nasser’s greatest gift to Arabs and Muslims.

As it happened, the plots and counter-plots continued in the House of Saud. In 1964 crown Prince Faisal plotted and succeeded in overthrowing his brother King Saud, who also went on to spend some time in Egyptian exile. The story does not end there: in 1975 King Faisal himself was shot and killed by one of his nephews. That nephew wanted to avenge the death of his father who had been killed during a previous uprising against the al-Saud regime. You can bet the farm that there are many plots and counter-plots these days among the princes of the ruling regime. There are fights over turf, eventual power, and money that rightfully belongs to the people.
Talal bin Abdelaziz is still a little bit of a rebel among the tight al-Saud princes. That is partly because he knows he has been passed for top jobs like Minister of Defense or Interior and that he has no chance of ever becoming crown prince or king. Yet being a prince, he is not doing too shabbily, nor is his son al-Waleed. With these people, liberalism goes only so far, they can mouth rhetoric about openness and moderation but they are as corrupt as the rest of them, and as despotic.
Cheers
mhg



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Al-Qaeda Terrorism in Syria, Yoda and the Salafis…………

 


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“Two suicide bombs exploded in Damascus yesterday, killing at least 55 people and wounding hundreds more in the single worst atrocity since the start of the Syrian uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule last year. The massive rush-hour car bombings, which targeted a notorious branch of the Syrian secret police, sparked a round of claims and counter-claims, with the government blaming “terrorists”………..”

“William Hague condemned suicide bombings that killed at least 55 and injured 300 in the Syrian capital Damascus today and urged the regime to implement a full ceasefire. The Foreign Secretary said civilians continued to pay the price for its failure to end repression and violence despite agreeing to a United Nations peace plan. In the deadliest such terror attacks since the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s government 14 months ago, two explosions tore the front off a military intelligence building. The government and opposition blamed each other for the bloodshed but there were growing concerns that it was a sign that al Qaida-inspired terror groups were beginning to exploit the chaos…………….”

Would anybody commit suicide for the sake of keeping Bashar al-Assad or the Baath Party in power? The answer is clearly a resounding “nyet, nien, non, nope, na, la wa kalla”. On the other hand, Wahhabi Salafi youth, backed by the right fatwas of hate and financed by suspicious sources of money, and aspiring for rivers of wine and renewable energizer-bunny virgins, would go for it. Just as they did and still do in Iraq and before that in New York City.
This is something that others had warned about, as I did, over the past months. This is what happens when the Wahhabi princes and their money and their clerics get involved. The Syrian opposition started with legitimate grievances, they still have legitimate grievances, but once they handed their fate to the fundamentalists backed by Saudi and Qatari money, the die was cast.
William J Hague, pal and enabler of the butchers of Bahrain, is wrong here. Yoda is wrong. Whether the Assad regime stays or goes is now beside the point. Al-Qaeda will be around, terrorizing the towns and cities for as long as it can. The American withdrawal from Iraq has not stopped them, the fall of the Assad regime will not end their terrorism. The so-called Syrian opposition is so fragmented
and uncontrollable, that this campaign of terror will escalate and continue no matter who rules in Damascus.
Cheers
mhg



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WTF UAE: Shaikhs Bin Technocrat and Manchester City Club, from King to Wali……..

 


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“She said: Kings, when they enter a land, they ruin it, and make its noble people its meanest, thus do they behave…….”  Holy Quran (Saurat al-Naml: The Ants)
 
“Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed (Bin Technocrat) al-Nahayan, Head of State, congratulated Shaikh Mansour Bin Zayed (Bin Technocrat) al-Nahayan on the occasion of the victory of Manchester City Club in the English Premier League. His highness also congratulated all managers of the team and the technical staff as well as the players as the players………….

Wow! Verstehen?


I can’t think of anything else the people of the UAE, the 15% of them who are native citizens and the 85% them who are foreign laborers and housemaids, needed to boost their morale better than this. They didn’t even need all their bought JDAM Bunker Busters or high-tech fighter
jets or their Blackwater-led foreign mercenary brigade from Colombia and Australia and other faraway places to achieve it.

Now

I imagine the GCC summit  in Riyadh tomorrow will take time to congratulate Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Bin Technocrat al-Nahayan, on this victory. That will come after they congratulate the current king (former shaikh and future satrap or wali) of Bahrain on giving his countgry to the al-Saud princes without the consent of most of his people.
Cheers
mhg



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Iraq: Ali Sistani’s Successor, Iranian Mullahs, and the Saudi King in Bahrain………

 


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As the top spiritual leader in the Shiite Muslim world, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has instructed his followers on what to eat and how to wash, how to marry and to bury their dead. As a temporal guide, he has championed Iraqi democracy, insisting on direct elections from the earliest days of the occupation, and warned against Iranian-style clerical rule………… Frail at 81, he still greets visitors each morning at his home on a narrow and sooty side street here, only steps from the glimmering gold dome of the Imam Ali Shrine. But the jockeying to succeed him has quietly begun, and Iran is positioning its own candidate for the post, a hard-line cleric who would give Tehran a direct line of influence over the Iraqi people, heightening fears that Iran’s long-term goal is to transplant its Islamic Revolution to Iraq………..”

This is truly nonsense, and shows complete Western ignorance of the degree of independence the Shi’a Hawza has of any government. Even the intrusive Baathist regime could not meddle directly in its affairs. Even Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can’t intervene in the selection of Iranian religious leaders, let alone the Hawza in Iraq. The Najaf Hawza selects its own top Marj’e, the top Shi’a theologian, based on his scholarship, seniority, and how other clerics judge him. It is completely independent of any regime. This is not like the Saudi king appointing and firing his own palace Mufti at will or appointing the members of the Ulema (senior clerics) Council.
 
FYI- speaking of the Saudi king: soon he may be able to appoint the king of his new province of Bahr
ain and fire him at will.
Cheers
mhg



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GCC Summit: a Salafi Tribal Dream Team, Taqiyya and a Real Existential Threat……

 


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“Some in the al Khalifa elite appear to be willing to be subsumed into such a union and this is a startling reflection of their heightened concerns. Given the lack of oil and gas resources in Bahrain, the exodus of European banks seriously damaging confidence in this key industry, the profound socio-economic problems that lie mostly unacknowledged at the root of Bahrain’s political troubles, and the hardening political crisis, there are concerns as to Bahrain’s longer term viability as an independent economic entity. Saudi Arabia already gives Bahrain’s elite huge subsidies and support and there is no sign that this could be reversed soon. From the al Khalifa perspective, therefore, if those in Riyadh are not willing to simply continue the economic support without deeper political concessions, with no end in sight to the political and economic crisis, securing guaranteed long-term backing from Riyadh to maintain the status quo may seem sensible. Overall, while Saudi Arabia taking on Bahrain as a loss-making, politically unstable appendage with a majority Shiite population may seem to be unattractive, it is preferable to the alternative. They could conversely see the slow implosion of a fellow Sunni monarchy and the potential ascendance to power of the Shiites next door to Saudi’s Eastern province, which contains not only a majority-Shiite Saudi population but also most of the kingdom’s oil fields and facilities……….”



The Gulf GCC leaders are scheduled to meet in Riyadh next week. The Saudis and their supporters are trying to market the half-baked idea of a GCC “confederation”. They have been at it for months, ever since the al-Saud realized that inviting Jordan and Morocco into the GCC was a stupid idea (from their point of view not mine: I knew it won’t get anywhere). Morocco and Jordan have been toying with more democracy, something the Saudi princes could not allow (an elected government would release prisoners and pack some of the princes to prison). Saudi-paid journalists and affiliated tribes and Salafis in some Gulf states are encouraging the idea of closer ties to the Wahhabi kingdom. The Salafis especially, being advocates of the Saudi royals, are pushing for it. The pressure is being applied, but they won’t get anywhere.

In Kuwait

, for example, the Salafis claim they want more freedom from the (divided) ruling family, but that is a phoney argument, a Salafi-tribal taqiyya or deception. The Salafis and local Muslim Brothers and their tribal supporters, now a majority in the assembly, are advocating for the Saudi regime, the most repressive Arab regime in modern times. It is an oddity of the Gulf Salafis that they admire both the al-Saud princes and they admire the al-Qaeda terrorists. Their Dream Team would be to rejoin the two Wahhabi sides (al-Saud and al-Qaeda) and live happily ever-after. But Kuwait still has some sort of civil society and the people, most of them (at least the city folks) will not accept getting too close to their former Wahhabi invaders. The only invasions of Kuwait in modern times have come from Saudi Arabia and from Iraq (both in the 20th century). People don’t forget where they were invaded from.

Bahrain

was a shaikhdom not long ago. It became a kingdom a little over a decade ago. Now it is a full-fledged state of rebellion, has been so for some time. The rulers of Bahrain have tricked the people several times: at independence when they voted for a “constitutional” monarchy, then again over a decade ago when they voted again for a weaker version of the same system. The rulers are trying to do the same again, promise reform while they tighten the screws some more. In Bahrain, the al-Khalifa and their small core of supporters would do anything to keep the old corrupt prime minister in power and to keep their ill-gotten privileges, even at the cost of handing the once-progressive island to the repressive Wahhabi princes.

The Qataris

have been bitten before by their “current” Saudi allies. There was a Saudi coup attempt against the current Shaikh of Qatar in 1998. It failed, but several high-ranking Saudi intelligence officers spent ten years in a Qatari prison and some border-straddling tribes were implicated.

Oman

is suspicious of Wahhabi ideology which does not look kindly on the religion of most of its people. Besides, the Omanis have always preferred to face the sea (Gulf of Oman, Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea): less trouble from those directions in recent years.

The UAE has had border disputes with the Saudis since the days before independence from Britain (before there was a UAE). The al-Nahayan are highly unlikely to hand over any iota of their independence to the “sisterly” neighbors they have never fully trusted. The UAE has a dispute with the Iranians over Abu Musa and Tunb in the Gulf, but the real “existential” danger to all the smaller Gulf GCC states does not come from across the Gulf, not from beyond the Western fleets, it comes from across the land border. The rulers realize his, as do most of the people.

In the end

, they will all pay lip service to the idea of an “eventual” move to closer cooperation or coordination or whatever. With all the usual committees, commissions, councils, etc. My guess is they will form a body or a council for foreign policy that will be meaningless, an advisory council to the existing council of foreign ministers.

Cheers
mhg



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Saudi Election Debates, Wild Women Drivers, the Mufti and a Catholic Riyal…….

 


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Egypt held its first ever presidential debate this week. I watched part of it on the internet. Many Arabs watched, fascinated by this very first election debate in any Arab state. The excitement was so widespread that many Saudis wished they could have their leaders debate before they take whatever office they inherit.
The so-called “liberal” wing of the al-Saud dynasty were also excited. So-called “liberal” because they think that eventually women should be able to drive cars, as soon as the king and the mufti agree that: (a) they have enough brains to handle it (I know women in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf region have more or better brains than men: that is why university requirements are much lower for men), and (b) that they have enough sense not to have intercourse with the first driver who blows his horn at them on the road, they all hasten to add.
Meanwhile it is possible that the princes are discussing borrowing the Egyptian experience by having them debate each other to decide who gets what job (king, first prime minister, second prime minister, minister of defense, interior, etc etc). The idea is that the princes would debate each other behind closed doors, that ordinary mortal folks will not get to watch their betters vie for the jobs they were born to get. If no one is voted to have won a debate, rival princes being rival princes, they would flip a riyal coin (head or tail) to decide the winner. The Mufti (Shaikh Al Al Shaikh) would flip the coin according to Wahhabi tradition, just to make it all legit and kosher.

(The Mufti Al probably hasn’t a clue as to the infidel origins of the Riyal. He probably doesn’t know that the “Riyal”, as well as the “Rial” come from the Spanish “Real” meaning “Royal”. He probably rather not know that the coin of the Wahhabi realm bears a Catholic name, that it refers to one or two of their Most Catholic Majesties of Spain (could even be Fernando y Ysabel).
Cheers
mhg



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