Category Archives: Bahrain

My Gulf Wins a Prize: the Least Charismatic Leader(s) in the Whole World………..

        
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Can the Saudi army & Abu Dhabi mercenaries crush her spirit?

The protesters’ disruption of the harbor, which was reportedly purchased by the conservative Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa for ‘one dinar’, was an important symbolic gesture by the opposition. For the United States, the intervention is a slap in the face. On Saturday, March 12, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Bahrain, where he called for real reforms to the country’s political system and criticized “baby steps,” which he said would be insufficient to defuse the crisis. The Saudis were called in within a few hours of Gates’s departure, however, showing their disdain for his efforts to reach a negotiated solution. By acting so soon after Gates’s visit, Saudi Arabia has made the United States look at best irrelevant to events in Bahrain, and from the Shiite opposition’s point of view, even complicit in the Saudi military intervention. The number of foreign troop is so far very small and should not make one iota of difference in Bahrain’s balance of power. The Bahraini military already total 30,000 troops, all of whom are Sunnis. They are under control of Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa and supposedly fully faithful to King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. Bahrain also has a similar number of police and general security forces, mainly mercenaries from Baluchistan, Yemen, and Syria, reputed to be controlled by the prime minister and his followers in the family……..”

I think, nay I know, Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman is arguably the least charismatic leader in the whole wide wonderful world, and possibly one of the most corrupt, probably got that one dinar back, and then some. But he is certainly not the least avaricious leader in the world: he got that one dinar back out of the sweat and blood of poor Bahrainis (okay, I did not say he is some kind of a leech; no sir, I’d never say that). Yet he has lasted at his job for 40 years (fortyfuckingyears!). That is almost two generations of poor Bahrainis who have to watch his visage on state TV and in the oligarchy media every single day and listen to quotations of the usual inane bland statements that only some leaders on my Gulf seem to have a knack for! Most of these sayings and statements, either in Manama or Riyadh or Shaikhwhatshisarse in Abu Dhabi, make Mu’ammar Qaddafi seem downright entertaining. I suspect some of these potentates can make Yasser Arafat and Lieberman (Avigdor not Joe) sound like fun persons by comparison.
Actually Qaddafi has been the most entertaining of Arab leaders: you can spend two hours listening to his nonsense without completely understanding what the hell he is up to. Yet you keep on listening (well, for only about two hours or so). On the other hand, some of our Gulf potentates I mentioned above can make you fall asleep in less than fifteen minutes (the average limit of their speechifying ability).
Which tells you something about the state of their, or is it our, politics.
Cheers
mhg

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What Bob Gates Did not Know, Crushing the Spirit of Bahrain……….

        
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  Can the Saudi army & Abu Dhabi mercenaries crush her spirit?
Top U.S. defense and military officials were given no indication during recent visits to the Middle East that Saudi forces would deploy to Bahrain, the Pentagon said on Monday. “We have communicated to all parties our concerns regarding actions that could be provocative or inflame sectarian tensions,” Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement. The Pentagon said neither Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was in the region last week, nor Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had no prior knowledge of the deployment by close ally Saudi Arabia…….

Okay, the US has its biggest naval base in the region in Bahrain, and the US secretary of defense visits Manama, and one day later the Saudis invade. Do you believe the US administration did not know? If you do, I still have that old lame camel that is in perfect condition for sale.
Cheers
mhg

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Qaddafi Tanks, Saudi Tanks, Ba’athist Tanks ………

        

                              Summer

 

   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter      Target of Saudi tanks in Manama
The council of ministers has confirmed that it has answered a request by Bahrain for support, Riyadh said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency……
Sounds so much like the statement aired on Baghdad Radio when Kuwait was invaded……

Gaddafi tanks reach centre of Zuwarah, west of Tripoli….. Alarabiya (Saudi)

“Saudi tanks reach Manama, capital of Bahrain…” Me (and news agencies)
Cheers
mhg

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Saudi Arabian Regime Does a Saddam! Invades Bahrain! ……..

        

                        Summer

 

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Media now confirm that Saudi National Guard forces have crossed into Bahrain. Gulf media claim the forces are from the GCC, but they are in fact Saudi forces bent on subjugating the people of Bahrain and effectively annexing their country in everything but name.


  • What is the difference between the Iraqi Ba’athist invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and this Saudi invasion of Bahrain in 2011?
  • Both invasions were acts of aggression against the peoples of the two countries. 
  • In both cases the aggressor uses force to crush any opposition by the people.
  • In both invasions the invaders are there to impose a regime against the will of the people.
  • The people of Kuwait faced the soldiers of the dynastic Ba’athist regime, and the people of Bahrain are now facing the Wahhabi troops of the absolute tribal polygamous monarchy across the Gulf. 
  • There is nothing that a regime can do that is lower than invite foreign troops to enter the country to act against its own people. The al-Khalifa have just done that.


Can we say that our cause was better than your cause, and our resistance was better than yours? That would be hypocritical.
Cheers
mhg

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On my Gulf: of an Uprising, a Vanished Fear, a Threat of Invasion……

 

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“Thousands of protesters blocked King Faisal Highway, a four-lane road leading to the financial district of the capital, Manama. Security forces dispersed about 350 by using teargas, the government said. Police moved in on Pearl Square, occupied by members of the Shiite majority calling for an elected government and equality with Sunnis. Witnesses said security forces surrounded the tents, shooting teargas and rubber bullets at activists……..”


They never learn, these potentates. This is the same old Arab story, especially in Bahrain, but with a new twist this year. People rise demanding their rights to democracy and equality and justice; the rulers refuse and crack down; with time the protesters lose heart and go home. It happened several times in Bahrain over the past couple of decades.
This time there is one big difference, a decisive difference: there is no fear! The people are not afraid anymore, and this is why they have been threatening the people with foreign intervention: it worked before, but it will not work this time around. This may explain the “rumor” that they spread today about Saudi military intervention. A possible trial balloon? The oligarchs are reminding the people of Bahrain that they, the rulers, have fellow despots across the bridge with well-armed troops, and that these foreign troops may not be as “merciful”. But the problem the al-Khalifa face is what all Arab despots have been facing in this beautiful year of Arab revolutions: there is no fear! The fear that the despots relied on so much is gone from the Bahraini hearts, just it is gone from most Arab hearts.

Cheers
mhg

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GCC Support Libya No-fly Zone: now about a Gulf Exclusion Zone for Bahrain……..

        

                        Summer

 

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ABU DHABI // The Gulf states last night threw their weight behind the idea of a no-fly zone over Libya, as they took a tougher line against what they termed human rights violations by Col Muammar Qaddafi’s regime. “The ministerial council demands that the Security Council take the steps necessary to protect civilians, including a no-fly zone in Libya,” the Gulf’s foreign ministers said in a joint statement late last night after a meeting at the Emirates Palace hotel. Calls for the imposition of a no-fly zone to protect rebels from bombing raids by Col Qaddafi’s military have been gathering pace in recent days. Gulf officials expressed growing frustration with Col Qaddafi’s violent repression of rebels calling for an end to his four decades of rule, saying Libyan authorities have rejected humanitarian aid from the Gulf and refused to distribute it to its citizens…….

That is a good precedent. A no-fly zone may be just what the doctor ordered for Eastern Libya. But what about a similar zone for our Gulf? Like a zone of exclusion where no military forces can cross, like across the bridge-to-Bahrain zone? That would keep certain foreign troops from entering Bahrain to help shoot down its people, if it comes to that again. There have been some reliable reports that Saudi forces helped the al-Khalifa put down the protests of the 1990s. There have also been some reports that Saudi ‘assets’ tried to help during the current uprising. Hopefully it won’t come to that. But would the potentates of the Gulf agree to that kind of ‘zone of exclusion’? Would Western powers agree to it?
Cheers
mhg

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Robert Gates for President of Bahrain, Feltman of Beirut………..

     

    Summer

 

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Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived Friday on an unannounced visit to offer American support to the royal family and prod the king and the crown prince toward talks with protesters ……. Here in this tiny Persian Gulf kingdom, security forces firing what protesters said were rubber bullets and pro-government Sunni vigilantes wielding sticks and swords beat back a rump group of several hundred protesters who were among the tens of thousands of Shiite demonstrators who were planning to march toward a particularly sensitive area: the Royal Court in Riffa, the preferred residential neighborhood for the ruling family and the Sunni Muslim elite. Its manicured lawns and wide streets contrast sharply with the narrow alleyways and raw cinder-block houses where many of the majority Shiite Muslims live…….In his Friday sermon, Sheik Isa Qassim, the most senior Shiite cleric, said the king was falsely depicting the demand for basic rights as a rift between sects. “Our demands are political ones, and have nothing to do with demands for a sect or segment of society,” he said at Friday Prayer, “We are demanding democracy.” ……..

One protester, a teacher who identified himself only as Nabil, says he is not interested in any dialogue with the royal family. “Our grandfathers tried them in [the] 20s and 50s and 60s and 70s, we had a problem with them. And in 80s, 90s and now as well. They say, ‘OK, let’s sit at a table and see what you want.’ And we believe them every time. And every time they lie. So no trust for this family now,” said Nabil…….

“And we believe them every time. And every time they lie….” This is about right. This succinctly (succinctly: I have loved this term since graduate school days) tells the story of the people of Bahrain with their rulers. It is a tough problem for Mr. Gates to solve, which means it is an even tougher problem for Jeffrey Feltman to solve. Besides, Mr. Feltman is busy elsewhere: most Lebanese believe that he is already the shadow prime minister of Lebanon, no matter which side is ‘officially’ in power. Most Arabs believe that as well. Actually the daily al-Akhbar (Beirut), admittedly no friend of Mr. Feltman, claims that he is running the Hariri (the right-wing March 14) political operation.
Cheers
mhg



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On Foreign Influences in Bahrain: Hired Gulf Media Mudslingers………….

     

    Summer

 

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This Gulf columnist is fast becoming one of the most boring newspaper writers on my Persian-American Gulf. Only one of them: there are many others. Perhaps one of the most boring in the whole Arab world (although that would be a tough prize to win: too much competition). A few of his colleagues may give him a run for the money. He now writes regularly for the Saudi semi-official Asharq Alawsat (owned by Prince Salman). Here he is, again, insinuating that the movement by the people of Bahrain for equality, freedom, and democracy is ‘foreign instigated’. He means Iran, of course. By doing so he is insulting the majority of the people of Bahrain, while pleasing the autocrats and their patrons on the mainland. This is part of the ‘narrative’ being pushed by the Saudi, Abu Dhabi, and the Bahrain rulers to discredit the protesters, the people.

So, by the logic of this media gunslinger and others of his ilk, if you oppose the apartheid regime in Bahrain you are a foreign agent. If you call for true elections you are a foreign agent. If you call for an end to forty years of corrupt government headed by the same man you are a foreign agent. But wait: most of the people of Bahrain oppose the apartheid regime and want true democracy and want a new government. Does that make them all “foreign” agents? And do they need advice from a “foreign” writer for a ‘foreign” newspaper on how to run their own country? And who is now meddling in the internal affairs of another country?
(Speaking of ‘foreign’ influnces: Secretary Gates flew into Bahrain this weak, right after Mr. Feltman spent three days sunning there).
Cheers
mhg

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