All posts by Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Dr. Mohammed Haider Ghuloum: trained as an economist, been called a few other names..... الشرقية للبنين- المتنبي- ثانوية الشويخ

Saudis Tighten Speech Control: Reform? Never Heard of it?…………

     
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“All those responsible for publication are banned from publishing … anything contradicting Islamic Sharia Law; anything inciting disruption of state security or public order or anything serving foreign interests that contradict national interests,” the state news agency SPA said. Saudi Arabia follows an austere version of Sunni Islam and does not tolerate any form of dissent. It has no elected parliament and no political parties. The tighter media controls were set out in amendments to the media law issued as a royal order late on Friday. They also banned stirring up sectarianism and “anything that causes harm to the general interest of the country.”…… Clerics played a major role in banning protests by issuing a religious edict which said that demonstrations are against Islamic law. In turn, the royal order banned the “infringement of the reputation or dignity, the slander or the personal offence of the Grand Mufti or any of the country’s senior clerics or statesmen.”..……”

Now nobody can criticize the Mufti or the clergy. If the Mufti, Shaikh Abdelaziz Al Al Shaikh refuses to criticize or ban child marriages, then he (Al) is immune from criticism. Actually this is not new: the clergy have always been immune from criticism in Saudi media that are based in the country, and in most media based offshore. The difference is the Internet, where many young Saudis, whether at home or abroad, feel free to express themselves. Those at home run the risk of crossing red lines and getting arrested, those abroad risk arrest upon return home. There will be less tweeting from within the Kingdom without Magic now, less political tweeting. Oh, there will be a lot about Syria and Yemen and Libya, even maybe Iraq (Bahrain? Where is that?), but nothing about domestic politics (the only domestic politics are within the royal family and among their clergy stooges). Last year they started requiring all bloggers to get government permission to start a blog, and to register with the government. Nice reform.
As for banningstirring up sectarianism”: that is ironic, nay laughable, because the al-Saud and their media are the party most responsible for the poisonous sectarian divisions we see in our Gulf region these days. They would do the same in the wider Arab world if they could, they certainly have tried in Iraq for some years, and in Lebanon through their surrogates in the Hariri camp.
Cheers
mhg

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The Battle for Iran: the Arab Factor, La Marseillaise………….

     
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Que veut cette horde d’esclaves         What do they want this horde of slaves
De traîtres, de rois conjurés?                Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
Pour qui ces ignobles entraves              For whom these vile chains
Ces fers dès longtemps préparés?           These long-prepared irons?
Français, pour nous, ah! quel outrage        Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
Quels transports il doit exciter?                What methods must be taken?
C’est nous qu’on ose méditer                    It is us they dare plan
De rendre à l’antique esclavage!
             To return to the old slavery!……La Marseillaise

Iranian sources report that the dispute (s) between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the conservative clergy led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continues. Apparently Ahmadinejad has his supporters among some parliamentarians and within the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). Two recent developments highlight this dispute: (1) the removal of Mr. Mashaie as chief of presidential staff and (2) the removal then reinstatement of the minister of intelligence. Mr. Mashaie is a suspect among the more conservative clergy and politicians: he has been accused of pushing Iranian nationalism and culture over the Islamic identity (probably a good election position among mullah-weary urban Iranians). The minister of intelligence (Mr. Moslehi) was forced to resign by Ahmadinejad but the more powerful Khamenei has reinstated him. Some exile media report that Ahmadinejad has been boycotting cabinet meetings since the reinstatement of Moslehi.
Mr. Mashaie is almost certainly the favorite choice of Ahmadinejad to run for president in 2013 when he has to step down. He will have a hard time now if he decides to run. He may get approval from the clergy to run, but his chances depend on who, if any, is running on the reform or ‘opposition’ side. It looks like that after the Khatemi experience and the 2009 election dispute, the senior clergy may vet potential candidates more carefully. That would insure the election of a conservative president but it would also increase the pressure among young Iranians yearning for change and more freedom.
A year or two ago, silent docile Arab peoples looked at the Iranians protesting in the streets and wondered: why not, why not us? Just as they did during the Iranian revolution in 1978-79. Now the Arabs are having their revolutions, with the reactionary Arab forces led by the al-Saud and their allies trying to stop and subvert them. Now the Iranians may start wondering as they look at the Arabs: why not, why not us, again?
Cheers
mhg

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The Great Saudi Success, of Pakistanis and Salafi History………….

     
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Saudi Arabia has reportedly invoked a treaty with Sunni-dominated Pakistan to secure troops to stabilize both Bahrain and its own oil-rich eastern provinces. …….. However, pressure from Saudi Arabia and the Shiite population in southern Turkey are forcing Ankara to re-evaluate its ties with Tehran……. Pakistan, of course, has often presented itself as the “sword of the Islamic world” given its nuclear weapons capability. However, its military prowess has been propelled as much by Saudi petrodollars as by American and Chinese aid. In return, Saudi Arabia has over the years relied on Pakistanis to man its own military and has a treaty agreement with Pakistan that mandates the release of up to 30,000 Pakistani troops for the defense of Saudi interests should the need arise. This treaty has reportedly now been invoked, with up to two divisions of regular Pakistani army troops on standby, ready to head for Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia……..

This growing sectarian escalation is the greatest success of the al-Saud dynasty in many years, perhaps the greatest ever. Only by dividing first the peoples of the Gulf region, then of the Arab world, then of the wider Islamic world, could the al-Saud disrupt and forestall the Arab revolutions, this sputtering Arab Spring. They did not need much work on their own people inside the Arabian Peninsula, generations of Wahhabi-influenced education has taken care of that: to some people in, say, Nejd, most residents of the Eastern Province might as well be Martians. Most of the Gulf region had been peaceful, in a sectarian way, with little tension between Shi’a and Sunnis for decades, since my childhood: even during the Iran-Iraq war when Saddam and his Ba’ath had huge following in my own home town, up to August 1990. (I was not one of this huge following).
The real sectarian tensions started escalating with the rise of the Salafi movement. Born in the realm of the al-Saud dynasty, Salafis got a lot of support from the Gulf dynasties, and for some good but short-sighted reasons. Salafi doctrine, developed in Saudi Arabia, preaches absolute loyalty to the rulers, no matter how rotten and corrupt, as long as the ruler is a good Muslim. This is, in my view, an opportunistic distortion of the Prophets teachings (the Hadith). A good Muslim to a Salafi is someone who builds a lot of mosques and teaches students along the Salafi orthodoxy, period. The latter is not always mandatory: Salafi palms can be greased as easily as other palms. The Salafis, rabidly xenophobic and especially anti-Shi’a, were adopted by various Gulf oligarchies as counterweight to other components of society. They have been a corruptible, a very touchable, counterweight. In most states they were used as a counterweight to the secular pan-Arabs, to the socialists who usually complained of corruption and despotism. In others, especially Bahrain, they were invited in, encouraged, and used to counter not only the Shi’a majority but also the traditionally strong multi-sect secular opposition.
Expanding the sectarian tensions beyond the tribal and sectarian societies of the Persian-American Gulf is quite a coup for the al-Saud dynasty. They have managed to change the subject in the Gulf from revolution and reform to sectarian fear. They would like to expand that division across the whole region. They have the money and the most massive media in the third world with a bought army of journalists and academics disseminating their propaganda.
Perhaps the growing military and political shadow of the Iranian regime helped them along. The Iranian threat is in my view quite exaggerated, given that Western military bases and fleets are crowding the Gulf and ringing Iran from all sides. Iran is a worry, no doubt, but it has been convenient for Gulf despots to exaggerate it and frighten their peoples into the arms of al-Saud dynasty. I doubt that a prominent Iranian mullah can now go for a ride or talk in his cell phone without someone in the West knowing about it.
Expanding the Shi’a-Sunni tensions to the wider Muslim world plays well into the al-Saud and Salafi hands. Ironically, I don’t believe it has as much traction in most Arab states beyond the Gulf. It is strictly a tribal Gulf thing that can have some traction in divided and Salafi-rich Pakistan, but not in places like Tunisia or even Egypt.
A successful strategy by the al-Saud, but it is a short term one. Fear and divisiveness are no substitute for reform or revolution.
Cheers
mhg




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Palace Intellectuals, Schmellectuals, Revolution, and Evolution………..

     
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I find the intelligentsia’s capacity to continue to lament public sector failings and private sector irresponsibility towards society when they continue to fail at building a relation with society’s broader public — an audacious contradiction. As long as one is a shepherd, (s)he cannot be a champion of the cause of another’s herd. Until public intellectuals realise that they commit the very failings, which they so fiercely criticise the public and private institutions for, societies will continue to view them with as much distanced alienation as they view the former two groups. What we need is an intellectual evolution of enlightenment not a political revolution against government………….

Spoken like a true spokesman for the rulers. I say intellectual schmellectual. We don’t have many intellectuals left in our region anyway: most those opinionators are “palace journalists”. I say revolution over the ruling despots first. You can’t build over the same old corrupt foundations.
Cheers
mhg

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Saudis Facing a Vegetable Crusade………….

     
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                                                             BFF                           Veggie Crusade


This right-wing site reports that some Saudis are in an uproar because they think they see Christian crosses in the wooden pillars of some open market in Taif. The people who run the vegetable and fruit businesses and other fundamentalists are urging the authorities to quickly remove these crosses (picture above) before their fruits and vegetables convert to Christianity (a Christian tomato is no more welcome in Saudi Arabia than a Christian zucchini or kussa). As for a Jewish tomato or zucchini, well, as the al-Saud would say: oy vey!
According to Saudi law, no signs of any other religion are allowed.
FYI: all Saudi ‘fruits’ and all Saudi ‘vegetables’ are Muslims, the overwhelming majority of them Muslims of the true Wahhbai faith. Most Saudis who are not ‘vegetables’ have been thrown in prison or gone into exile.
For first time readers of my blog, I love to summarize this: Wahhabism is an uber-fundamentalist sect named after Mohammed Bin Abdulwahhab, an old time shaikh from Nejd in Central Arabia. He was an ally to the al-Saud as are his descendants: they even ‘fraternized’ closely if you know what I mean (if you don’t know what I mean, then you are hopeless). He is not to be confused with the late great Egyptian Mohammed Abdelwahab the musician and singer who was not a fundamentalist, not a Salafi, had probably never heard the word ‘Salafi’ in his life.
(Regular readers need not have read that last paragraph, although I do change it every time, often improving it).
Cheers
mhg

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Shirin Ebadi on Obama and Bahrain……….

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“The Obama administration is making a major misstep by “closing its eyes” to the violent government crackdown on protesters in Bahrain and leaving the door open for Iran to influence the small oil-producing nation and U.S. ally, Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi said Friday. “In the absence of the West in Bahrain, the government of Iran can of course influence and exploit the revolution,” Ebadi, the Iranian-born human rights activist, author and former judge who has been living in exile since 2009, said in an interview at The Washington Post. Ebadi highlighted Sunni-led Bahrain, which is a majority-Shiite nation like Iran that has used violence to stop recent protests…….

I bet not a single media outlet in the Persian-American Gulf will ever carry this news item. They always headline Shirin Ebadi’s comments against the Iranian regime, and rightly so. Not single newspaper “anywhere” on the Gulf will carry this news item.
Cheers
mhg

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UAE: Al-Nahayan Cracking Down………..

     
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Human Rights Watch said on Friday that the United Arab Emirates has dissolved a civil society group after it arrested three prominent activists. The rights group urged the UAE to reverse its decision, which it said was a crackdown on peaceful dissent. The Jurist Association was one of three non-governmental organizations that joined hundreds of citizens in signing a petition this month calling for a greater voice in government and legislative powers for the quasi-parliament, the Federal National Council (FNC). Three prominent activists who made similar calls for political reform have been arrested in the last few weeks. UAE officials were not available for comment……….

The al-Nahayan, owners of Abu Dhabi, also ruling family of the UAE, are applying the Saudi and Bahraini method of dealing with any scent of dissent or independent thinking. These ruling families have many people in their vast media, including hired Arab propagandists, called “palace intellectuals” whose job is to pretend ‘liberalism’ while praising the absolute tribal oligarchs. These brownnosers write as if the rulers of these states are managing a utopia.
The despots try to appeal to world opinion through opening funny branches of elite Western universities, but then throw their professors (and possibly students) in prison or deport them at the first sign of independent thinking. Once in awhile someone decides to show a streak of independence and some honesty and decency: that is when the truth of these despots comes out. The rulers of the UAE have shown that they can be as ruthless as the al-Saud. They both can be as ruthless as Qaddafi or Saleh or Assad: in fact they can be even worse if they face an uprising. The Saudis have shown that cruel ruthlessness in their own country and in Occupied Bahrain
.

Cheers
mhg

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The Economics of Saudi Housewives and Princes………

     
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Household Economics 101: referring to my last post. The reason Saudi families need so many housemaids is not necessarily that they are lazy. The wife often works, mostly teaching in girls schools, in order to make ends meet. They also need someone to drive the wife to work and back because women are not allowed drive in Saudi Arabia, even women who threaten to breastfeed their Asian drivers (actually those in the news were upper middle class ones). They can’t take public taxis driven by strange men, besides it probably is not safe in the kingdom of many frustrations. They don’t all live in the style of the al-Saud and their retainers. Most middle class families have to borrow even in order to travel for a vacation, most don’t own homes. There are people who are dirt poor under that ocean of petroleum and not far from those princely palaces: that is how the thousands of princes can afford to amass billions.
A report in Arab News today confirms what I and others have written: that overall unemployment is in double digits and that it is about 40% for young adults (20-24). That is a (pre)revolutionary rate of unemployment for young people. Fortyfucking percent unemployment! And only Khaled al-Johani showed up to protest in Riyadh last month and nobody knows what happened to him! Enough to drive anyone from the Arabia Peninsula, whose last name is not al-Saud, to despair.
I shall have more on this point in a coming posting soon: you have been forewarned.
Cheers
mhg




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Revolutionary Housemaids of Arabia…………

     
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There are many reports of housemaids being abused or beaten, and occasionally even murdered. However, there is another side to the story. The large number of housemaids running away from their employers is causing untold problems, including social embarrassments and additional financial burdens for many Saudi families. “It costs a lot to recruit a housemaid, with fees that go up to SR15,000. This includes recruitment fees, plane ticket and visa,” said Abu Faisal, a recruitment office manager in Jeddah. “If the maid runs away, the employer loses all the money he spent hiring her.” Maids run away for several reasons, but they are mostly greedy and search for jobs in other households to make more money, according to Abu Faisal. “Many maids run away from their sponsors as soon as they land in the Kingdom, knowing that they will find a job no matter what, for people are always looking for maids,” he said……..”

Maybe the housemaids will start protesting in Riyadh; there probably are as many of them as Saudis. That will be the Saudi revolution, since the natives are either too afraid or too brainwashed by the shaikhs or too worried about clan or tribe feelings. After all, how can you protest against the ruling family if some neighbor of your best friend’s brother in law has a distant niece who is married to one of the al-Saud drivers? Makes it tough, don’t it? The best hope for a revolution is with the Asian and African housemaids, and God knows they probably have good reasons to protest. The other alternative is for people to lose so many of their housemaids that they rise in revolution out of despair. Despair is what drove Tunisians and Egyptians and Libyans and Bahrainis and Syrians to revolution. In India the rising price of onions can lead to political protests and change elections, maybe in Saudi Arabia the rising ‘price’ of housemaids will do the job.
Cheers
mhg




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A Pledge of Heil Hamad? A Dangerous Game on my Gulf…………..

     
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Manama, April 19 (BNA) — It was a simple message a group of Bahraini’s wanted to send across to the masses- “reflect their loyalty to the leadership.” In what started last week as signing an allegiance pledge and Loyalty swords campaign is now turned into a movement of masses from all spectrums, turning up in numbers signing their initials supporting the wise leadership. Books were opened at the National Stadium in Isa Town for citizens to show allegiance to the Kingdom and its leaders…………..

I have read reports that the emir’s (sorry king’s) half-witted son Nasser is behind this drive. He is head of some kind of military or security unit(s). They say the Saudis prefer him to the crown prince Salman, probably on account of his half-wittedness (or is it half-wittiness). So they are starting to force all Bahrainis to sign the pledge of allegiance to this traitorous despotic family who could not control the people with imported mercenaries and had to import Saudi troops to occupy their country. Why not let the people vote on this Mothercare King?
It is going to be like this: no pledge to the despot no job no food no medicine no education. It is like in the days of the Ba’ath in Iraq when people had to join the party to advance: but in Iraq people still got treated and educated if they did not join. In Nazi Germany people had to join the party to advance. This is not to compare the ruling family of Bahrain to Germans, even the Nazis who had some warped perverted ideas of nationalism. The al-Khalifa have no such nationalist ideas, not even warped ones. They are in it for themselves, pure and simple. No different from the al-Saud next door or the less significant al-Nahayan.
This whole thing is like a farce, this family and the other I mentioned. Yet they are playing a dangerous game, probably pushed by their Saudi masters. A dangerous farce played with two absolute ruling clans who have some really dangerous Western weapons at their disposal. They could push our region into another war that would certainly drag in the United States and the West. Is that what these funny ruling tribal polygamous clans, the al-Saud and the al-Nahayan, have in mind? Or are they just pawns of someone else who is moving the pieces? Opinions on my Gulf differ.
(Have you ever heard of King Mothercare?)
Cheers
mhg

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