BFF “Manama, Aug 3 (BNA) His Royal Highness the Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa today received a telephone call from the Saudi Second Deputy Premier and Minister of Interior Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. During the conversation both sides exchange best wishes on the occasion of the advent of the holy month of Ramadan. Moreover, both sides also reviewed historic brotherly ties existing between Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom of Bahrain along with regional and international developments……….”
I wonder wtf these tow sweethearts talked about on the phone. What “international developments” they could be interested in: global warming? deforestation of the Amazon? World disarmament? The NFL team rankings?
BFF “Bahrain, the tiny but strategically important Persian Gulf monarchy that has sought for months to suppress an Arab Spring-inspired uprising, is engaged in a heated dispute with one of the world’s foremost medical relief organizations, which has stopped working there after accusing Bahraini security forces of raiding its premises last week. The accusation by the organization, Doctors Without Borders, has been challenged by Bahrain’s Health Ministry. But the sensitivities surrounding the dispute over the July 28 raid speak to what human rights activists call a particularly odious aspect of the Bahraini protests: the government’s systematic effort to deny medical services to wounded protesters — partly by jailing or intimidating the doctors, nurses and paramedics who have tried to treat them. Many medical workers in Bahrain are often too frightened to help protesters, activists say, and the wounded themselves are often too frightened to seek help………”
Bahrain’s Ministry of Health early on became notorious for lying about the numbers and conditions of the wounded during the protests. It looks like the ministry has not changed in this respect, and in that it is in line with most other government agencies. Hospitals, especially the Salmaniya Hospital were early on targeted by the Bahrain regime, knowing that a vast number of protesters and others were wounded during the uprising. Being wounded was considered evidence of being a regime opponent, and a reason to be tortured and denied medical care. Checkpoints were used to identify anyone wounded and whisk them away for interrogation (some were beaten on the spot by security agents and foreign mercenaries). That caused many injured Bahrainis to remain at home rather than venture out, even if they were not injured at the protests. Early on, the regime focused on medical professionals, but quickly expanded its “attention” to other professions like teachers, journalists and others. Cheers
mhg
BFF “SAUDI billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has launched a project to build the world’s tallest tower at more than 1000 metres in the Red Sea city of Jeddah. The project to built a tower topping Dubai’s world’s highest building, Burj Khalifa, “will soon see the light after the signing of a $1.2 billion agreement” between Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holding Co and construction giant Bin Laden Group, the Saudi tycoon said. It will take 36 months to build the tower, said the Saudi businessman, a nephew of King Abdullah and one of the kingdom’s wealthiest men. He did not say when construction will begin. Prince Alwaleed said the tower was intended to “send a message of strength” reflecting the OPEC kingpin’s economic and political stability….The tower, which will be part of a $US20 billion ($18.29 billion) project north of Jeddah, would top Dubai’s 828-metre Burj Khalifa, which was opened last year……..“Our message is political,” he said…………..”
A political message at the cost of $ 20 billion. What is all this obsession with tall(est) towers in the Middle East these days. First there was Burj Dubai, whom they changed to Burj Khalifa after Shaikh al-Nahayan who pulled the nuts of the Dubai rulers from the fire. Then there was talk of which tower is more ‘leaning’ the Tower of Pisa or some other UAE tower. Then the Saudis built the tallest clock tower in the whole fucking wide world: an ugly travesty right over the Holy Mosque, possibly built over the destroyed remains of some ancient Islamic monument (they princes have been busy destroying houses of the Sahaba of the prophet and other ancient monuments to build their high-rise money machines). Now they are going to build this: the tallest tower in the whole wide world, relegating the Khalifs (al-Nahayan) Tower to second class status. I bet the al-Nahayan will add a few stories on top of the Burj Khalifa to make it taller by about the proverbial ‘nine inches’. It is all symbolic phallic game-playing, I suspect. Maybe there are feelings of “inadequacy” somewhere and this si just another way of trying to make up for it. (I figure a $ 20 billion makes as much sense as a $ 20 billion political statement). Cheers
mhg
BFF “GCC Secretary-General Hails HM King Hamad’s Keynote Address. Riyadh- GCC Secretary-General Dr. Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani today the keynote address of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa marking the submission of the National Consensus Dialogue results.”HM the King has affirmed that King of Bahrain would witness a new era on the road to development and construction”, he said, pointing out that the National Consensus Dialogue visions would open the door for more reforms and progress in all political, economic and social fields for Bahraini people’s aspirations and hopes to be achieved…….” Bahrain News Agency
Okay, the secretary general of the GCC is a member of a Bahrain family that is close to the al-Khalifa ruling family. In other words, a retainer of the royals who nominated him for the job. He is here praising the absolute king of Apartheid, mainly for nominating him to the even more absolute king of Saudi Arabia. Cheer
mhg
BFF “Mercenaries from Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan are being recruited by officials in Bahrain to help restore security to the country, a Saudi scholar claimed. Bahrain is under increasing scrutiny for the response by the Sunni minority leadership to a Shiite uprising in the country. Doctors without Borders claimed that Bahraini security officials were using hospitals as torture chambers as part of a crackdown. Ali al-Ahmad, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, told Radio Australia’s Contact Asia program that the royal family was recruiting mercenaries from Asia to help with its crackdown. Ahmad said there were no Shiites in the national security forces. Given the fact that Sunnis are in the minority, he said, the country has a “need to import mercenaries” from other places. He claimed “the majority of them” are coming from Pakistan, though he said he’s seen reports of some from countries such as Somalia, Malaysia and Indonesia……..” U P I News
The hired guns and killers are pouring into the Gulf region: it is a gold rush for the dogs of war, mangy or otherwise. Bahrain has been hiring foreign mercenaries for some years: Pakistani newspapers often have advertisements for interviews with Bahrain National Guard officials (some al-Khalifa or another). The ruling Bahraini clan is now expanding the field of mercenary recruitment. They used to focus on Pakistan and a few Arab countries. Now they are expanding it to Indonesia and Malaysia, more impoverished Islamic countries that already have expressed some support for the Saudi role in Bahrain in exchange for a consideration (truly a coalition of the hired and the paid). The United Arab Emirates is already forming a large mercenary force of foreigners from as far away as Colombia, South Africa, and Australia, among other places, to keep its people from thinking rebellion. All under the leadership of Blackwater veterans. I once recommended that the ruling al-Nahayan clan of Abu Dhabi ought o consider hiring their killers and thugs from among the extremely ruthless Mexican drug cartels. I was not kidding: once you have no morals, why pretend to have limits? A hired killer is a hired killer, as the al-Khalifa of Bahrain have discovered. Meanwhile, Western media report that the al-Saud are arranging for Pakistani, Malaysian, and possibly Indonesian forces to help the regime in case of a serious uprising. If this continue I may change the name of my Gulf: from the Persian-American Gulf to the Gulf of Mercenaries and Hired Thugs. Okay, these potentates should be ashamed of themselves for hiring foreign mercenaries to suppress their people, but they are not. Especially those in occupied Bahrain who use foreign money to buy foreign protection. Cheers
mhg
BFF “Senior U.S. diplomats have been dropping by the royal palace in Amman almost every week this spring to convince Jordanian King Abdullah II that democratic reform is the best way to quell the protests against his rule. But another powerful ally also has been lobbying Abdullah — and wants him to ignore the Americans. Saudi Arabia is urging the Hashemite kingdom to stick to the kind of autocratic traditions that have kept the House of Saud secure for centuries, and Riyadh has been piling up gifts at Abdullah’s door to sell its point of view…….The quiet contest for Jordan is one sign of the rivalry that has erupted across the Middle East this year between Saudi Arabia and the United States, longtime allies that have been put on a collision course by the popular uprisings that have swept the region……..” The King of Jordan may have no choice than to move toward a constitutional monarchy. The Arab Spring has touched Jordan, but not as much as many other Arab states. As I commented a few months ago: Jordan differs from, say, Syria in that it (Jordan) is a police state that does not look like a police state (Syria is a police state that does look like one). The Saudis will have to fully integrate Jordan into the GCC, allowing Jordanians full free access to Gulf employment, something that would greatly reduce economic and political pressure on the regime. But that may create problems with other source countries of labor: Pakistan, India, Egypt, etc. Besides, Gulf potentates usually prefer non-Arab labor because the Asians are not interested in regional politics. (Unemployment among native citizens is extremely high by any standards in several GCC countries including Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain: all double digit). The truth is that Riyadh depends, will continue to depend, heavily on the USA, on American power and, especially, American weapons in its attempt to contain Iranian influence. Saudi hegemony in the GCC region is at least partly based on the sophisticated American weapons to which the massive Iranian military has no access. Instead, the Iranians rely heavily on their own arms industry. Cheers
mhg
BFF “Note that these villages are not engaging in any criminal activities. They are unarmed civilians who are being wantonly attacked by state security forces simply on the basis that the people are Shia and therefore deemed by the Sunni elite rulers to be supportive of anti-government (pro-democracy) movement, which in itself is not illegal and is supposedly a right that is permitted by Bahrain’s signatory to international laws, that is, the right to have political opinions. Note also that, according to my contacts, the security personnel are mainly Saudi or from Yemen, Syria, Jordan. These personnel are predominantly Sunni and loyal to the regime. That is why they have been recruited by the regime. The police and army personnel are extremely hostile to Shia people out of deep sectarian phobia. This is especially true of the Saudis who are typically Wahhabis, the kind of extreme Islamism that Saudi rulers and Al Qaeda espouses. Wahhabis see it almost as a religious duty to crush Shias. We saw the same phobia in Iraq where Shia mosques were mostly attacked by bombers. The effective consent that the West has given the Bahraini rulers to crackdown on their people means the West is colluding with some of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East to crush pro-democracy people in Bahrain……”
Salafis have been the strongest supporters of the campaign to crush the uprising for equality and democracy in Bahrain. They are strong supporters of any campaign by regimes in the Gulf GCC, or other countries, against any true democratic movement that supports free speech. Even as they themselves are often used by their Saudi paymasters to disrupt other regimes in their home Gulf countries, like in my own hometown, under the pretense of demanding more democracy. Salafis never ever believe in democracy and free speech: sometimes they use the others’ demands for freedom but only to serve their and their masters’ purposes. Salafis all across the Gulf and indeed across the Middle East, are coreligionists and ideological mates of al-Qaeda. They consider the al-Qaeda people basically ‘kosher’ homeys who may have erred and gone astray against the ruling al-Saud dynasty (apparently no too astray: they still get all the money they need for their terrorist activities). Some of these Salafis in the Gulf, including in my hometown, have penned articles beseeching Bin Laden to return to the fold, come in from the cold, enjoy the joys of the absolute tribal monarchy which spawned him and his movement. That was before Abbottabad (for some reason Abbottabad always reminds me of Lou Costello). Cheers
mhg
BFF “Built by Gulf Finance House, a listed investment company run by Bahraini businessman Esam Janahi, the towers have also come to embody the ruling al-Khalifa family’s fight to preserve its power and protect the vast wealth of the country’s economic elite. Land in the Gulf Arab region is largely controlled by a small number of ruling families who use it as a kind of currency, doling out plots to favored families and developers to forge political relationships and make money. For it to work, the system depends on businessmen like Janahi, merchants who ostensibly operate independently from the state but whose success rests, at least in part, on political connections………. Documents obtained by Reuters show that GFH, which has teetered on the brink of collapse for several months, also sometimes shifted investor money from one project to plug holes in another…….. In Bahrain, where the ruling family has been involved in several property developments over the past decade, it’s become a symbol to ordinary people — especially the poor Shiite majority — angry about a system that shuts them out and widens already gaping inequalities….…..”
Bahrain is just one example: it is the same story all along the shores of my Gulf. They steal the land, especially the choice beachfront property and convert it from public to their own private property. The ruling clans and their retainers and minions. The al-Saud do it, as do the Emirati rulers, and others, in the GCC. They add insult to injury by selling public tracts of land back to the public sector, then they add more insult by establishing new townships named after the robber princes. Even the streets are named after them. It is like the rest of the people are just tenants on the land, with the potentates being the landlords. If I were rude and crude, I would re-interpret the GCC as the Gulf C——–n Council. But I am neither rude or crude, so I won’t say it. Cheers
mhg
BFF “Pakistan today stressed the importance of re-enforcing trade and defense relations with Bahrain, as well as in labor and work fields. The Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari held talks with the commander of the national guard in Bahrain Shaikh Mohammed Bin Issa Bin Salman Al Khalifa in which they discussed regional developments and cooperation in defense and regional matters…….…”
Pakistan is effectively a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, GCC. The Pakistani military, retired or on active duty, have for years operated the armed forces of some Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Pakistani military and police personnel have been important in the repression of the people of Bahrain. Bahraini officials fly regularly to Pakistan to hire more ‘security’ agents even as they deny security jobs to most Bahraini citizens. Top Saudi princes like Bandar Bin Sultan Bin al-Yamama Bin BAE Systems Bin Commission is reported to have flown to Pakistan to make deals on stationing or preparing Pakistani forces to defend the regime if and when needed. Reports also indicate the same can be said of Malaysia: its government officials recently expressed willingness to send forces to defend the regime in Bahrain. Now on the Arab side, the GCC has sought to form alliances with the monarchies of Jordan and Morocco. The last GCC summit made a surprise announcement of welcoming membership for Jordan and Morocco. Now we have the nucleus of a new group of states: the GCC, Jordan, Morocco, Malaysia, and Pakistan. That means the rich GCC states and three or four poor relations that are far away enough (Morocco, Malaysia, Pakistan) or small enough (Jordan) to be manageable. Clearly the potentates of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and others, are looking for cheap bodies, impoverished mercenaries willing to do what it takes. The UAE is ahead of the game: the al-Nahayan are forming foreign legion of Latin Americans, Australians, disgruntled white Africans and others to keep the people at bay. I was going to suggest that the GCC look at closer countries, like Iraq which is a Gulf country, and perhaps Yemen which is close enough ad has had deeper cultural, ethnic, and other ties (as does Iraq). Then there are Turkey and Iran, both closer than Malaysia and Pakistan and Burma or WTF. What about Egypt? Then I remembered: with none of these excluded countries can the al-Saud rule the roost. They would be dominated rather than dominate. Cheers
mhg
BFF I have been wondering, nay worrying, what is behind this large mercenary force being gathered in the UAE? The al-Nahayan autocrats surely don’t expect these Colombians, South Africans, Europeans, Americans, Israelis (possibly) and others to just sit in the desert. They must have a goal for them. Is it as reported to keep the peace by putting down popular uprisings in the UAE and possibly other Gulf areas? Then what is the Peninsula Shield doing in Bahrain (actually it is the Saudis doing it all in Bahrain)?
I suspect that the reason for gathering this mercenary force in the UAE has to do with Saudi Arabia. The al-Nahayan have at best cool relations with their fellow despots in Riyadh. There have been cases of friction in the past few years, and there are still pending border territorial issues that their media tries not to report. The UAE has sparse native population, and has to import foreign labor for almost everything that needs to be done. About 85% or so of the people are temporary imported foreigners (mostly housemaids and laborers, but professionals as well). They can’t form any substantial military force out of that. Even the natives eschew military service in the harsh climate in favor of government jobs. Hence the idea of forming a Foreign-Legion style mercenary force. That would save the al-Nahayan from having to depend on the al-Saud. Apparently (at least to me) they do not like what they have seen in Bahrain and have concluded that if anyone will have to commit atrocities in their country it better be a force under their own command. Hence this large mercenary force. Cheers
mhg
Rattlesnake Ridge 
BFF