Rattlesnake Ridge      

 
      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



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