Category Archives: Apartheid

Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, ethnic cleansing, Gulf states, Human Right, Mercenaries, Saudi Arabia

The Battle of Bahrain, the Battle of Algiers…………

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      BFF

“It’s become a nightly duel in Bahrain: Security forces and anti-government protesters waging hit-and-run clashes in one of the simmering conflicts of the Arab Spring. So far, the skirmishes have failed to gel into another serious challenge to the Gulf nation’s Western-backed monarchy after crushing a reform rebellion months ago. But there are sudden signs that Shiite-led demonstrators could be poised to raise the stakes again on the strategic island, which is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. Hundreds of demonstrators Wednesday made their boldest attempt in months to reclaim control of a central square in the capital Manama, which was the symbolic hub of the protest movement after it began in February. Riot police used buses to block roads and flooded streets with tear gas to drive back the marchers before dawn. Hours later, mourners gathered in a Shiite village in another part of Bahrain for a 14-year-old boy they claim was killed by security forces. Clashes flared until early Thursday across the oil hub area of Sitra before the boy’s burial. “Down with the regime,” chanted some of hundreds of people…………Bahrain remains the outlier of the Arab revolts. Its Sunni rulers have managed to hold their ground – and even tighten their grip with military help from neighboring Saudi Arabia……….”

It is not exactly a Battle of Algiers, mainly because the violence is decidedly one-sided. But it is as persistent as the struggle of Algeria, understandably so given that the same principles of equality and justice and freedom are at stake. And it is bloody, involves attacks on civilians and their neighborhoods, and midnight raids, and arrests, and torture, and threats of, and actual, assault on men and women. And so it continues, until the system of Apartheid is dismantled, the original constitution is restored, the foreign mercenaries and occupation forces sent packing. It is a tall order. A tough one for an island that is now effectively a Saudi province.

Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Corruption, ethnic cleansing, Human Right

Photoshop of Facts in Bahrain: Where the Buck Does not Stop…………

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      BFF
““The situation has evolved because the king and certainly the crown prince are much more committed to the rule of law and human rights than other persons in the government and the Al-Khalifa clan,” he said in a phone interview late Thursday. “The mere fact that the king has appointed this commission and the Interior Ministry is cooperating shows me things have changed.” The investigation itself, he warned, cannot right relations between Bahrain’s rulers and its Shi’ite population, which says it is systematically denied access to land, housing and state employment on sectarian grounds. “This doesn’t address the endemic problems, doesn’t address the need for political change, for a new constitution, the economic disparities or the political division of Sunnis and Shi’a. All the underlying problems remain,” Bassiouni said. “That’s not going to solve the problems of power disparities between the Shi’ite population and the Sunni rulers, nor the feeling of injustice the Shi’a community has.”……… “What I have found so far is the extraordinary willingness of the minister to listen to anything we bring to his attention and act on it, whether it’s suspension of police officers, arrest of police officers, or release of detainees,” he said. “It leads me to believe that on his part there was never a policy of excessive use of force or torture…that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I think it was a case of people at the lower level acting ……………”

Perhaps Mr. Bassiouni is trying to goad the ruling family of Bahrain back toward serious negotiations, which would mean serious concession to the rights of the people. To do that he may be willing to “photoshop” some facts. It is a novel approach: in most other cases of abuse those at the top were, rightly, blamed. He is blaming some at the bottom, hard case to make an absolute oligarchy. Yet his “investigation” is just starting.
The fact that people were tortured, assaulted, killed is blamed on “lower level” people”. Perhaps Bassiouni can also blame it on the fact that many regime mercenaries speak no Arabic (mostly Urdu) or a different dialect of Arabic and could not properly communicate with their victims. Then he needs to explain why Bahrain’s official media, the BTV, was a bullhorn of sectarian and ethnic hatred for so long? And why so many mosques and religious structures were deliberately demolished? And did the Pakistani mercenaries accuse the protesting Arab people of Bahrain of being traitors and part of an Iranian plot? And did the foreign mercenaries invite the Saudi National Guard to invade and wreak havoc? And did the thugs (baltagiya) decide on their own to conduct organized systematic raids of people’s homes after mid-night? Does this mean we will be seeing trials of those responsible and court decisions? The toughest case will be to explain the regime’s appointment of an (alleged) former torturer to attend the failed “dialog”.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Human Right, Saudi Arabia

Congo and Darfur on the Gulf: Spitting, Urinating, Image of a Monarchy………….

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“Signs of revolt simmering just beneath the surface are everywhere in the island kingdom of Bahrain, five months after protesters first demanded reform. Inspired by the Arab awakening, thousands of demonstrators took over Pearl Square in the centre of Manama, the capital. A month later, on 15 March, government security forces, backed by a military contingent from Saudi Arabia, drove out the protesters, bulldozed the square and launched a pogrom of extraordinary ferocity against the majority Shia community, which had supported the protests. Bahrainis, both Shia and Sunni, are still traumatised. “I was expecting the government to thank us for treating so many people during the crisis,” recalls one doctor of previously moderate political views, who instead found himself subjected to beatings and sleep deprivation. A 64-year-old man, active in defence of human rights, named Mohammed Hassan Jawad, who is still in jail, gave details to his family about how interrogators had tortured him with electric shocks to his genitals, legs, ears and hands. They made him bow down before a picture of the Bahraini King, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, and told him to open his mouth so they could spit in it, adding that “unless you swallow the spit we will urinate in your mouth instead“…………..”

One thing stands out about the Bahraini rulers and their security thugs: they have operated on a very primitive level this year. Something very nasty and especially “tribal” about it, reminders of the Congo and Darfur and other afflicted places, albeit on a smaller scale. So have behaved their imported mercenaries and invading forces. Somehow bodily functions, especially bodily waste both liquid and solid, have great significance for the regime and its enforcers and its interrogators, both local and imported. That explains their seeming obsession with involving their victims in these bizarre rituals that have to do with human waste: threatening people with urine and feces, using urine and feces on the detainees, using toilet brushes, using spittle, using threat of (and possibly actual) rectal rape against the male prisoners (as well as the threat of rape against the women). This makes the favorite torture method of the Cheneys, water-boarding, seem clean and wholesome, doesn’t it?
All allegedly, of course.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Gulf states

Gulf King also Hailed by Current GCC Secretary and Former Retainer…….

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“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


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, ethnic cleansing, Torture

On My Gulf: a Small State of Thuggery and Fake Terrorism……..

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“Bahrain has sentenced eight leading political activists to life in prison on charges of conspiring to overthrow the Government in a move likely to intensify unrest and discredit a proposal by the king for a national dialogue. One of the 21 defendants – dressed in grey prison uniforms as they faced a military court – shouted: “We will continue our peaceful struggle,” while others shook their fists and cried: “Peaceful, peaceful.” They were forced out of the courtroom by police. Crowds blocked roads with heaps of sand and urged marches as news spread of the convictions of the group, which includes some of the island kingdom’s most popular leaders…….”

Media and human rights activists report that Matar Matar, a resigned Bahraini opposition parliamentarian, was beaten up severely today inside the courtroom while there to talk to his lawyer and family. A cyber-activist was also sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison for “cyber-activity”. Opposition and human rights leaders were sentenced yesterday to life in prison for calling for a constitutional monarchy, others were sentenced to death. Everybody who objects is arrested, most are tortured. Doctors, nurses, and teachers are arrested, beaten up, threatened with rape or raped, many are fired from their jobs. The regime is using al-Saud petroleum money to hire more mercenary thugs and goons from as far away as Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Jordan, and Syria. It is like a small state of thuggery being run by the al-Khalifa clan and their al-Saud masters and protectors. Sometimes I wonder who is calling the shots in Manama: is it the fucking king his fucking hardline relatives, or his fucking Saudi masters.
Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) leader Nabeel Rajab says that expressing one’s opinion is now considered an act of terrorism on the island.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, ethnic cleansing, Human Right

Bahrain Kangaroo Court Passes Saudi Sentences on the Opposition………

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“Bahrain sentenced 10 Shi’ite prominent activists and opposition leaders to life in prison on Wednesday on charges of plotting a coup during protests that rocked the Sunni-ruled Gulf island kingdom earlier this year. The sentencing could inflame already simmering tensions in the tiny Gulf Arab state, where small protests have erupted daily since emergency law was lifted on June 1 and may threaten a national dialogue planned to start next month. Among those who received life sentences were Shi’ite dissident Hassan Mushaimaa, leader of hardline opposition group Haq. His group joined two others in calling for the overthrow of Bahrain’s monarchy during mass protests in February and March. Ibrahim Sharif, the Sunni leader of the secular leftist Waad party, was sentenced to five years in prison. Waad and Bahrain’s largest Shi’ite opposition group Wefaq had called for a reform of the kingdom’s monarchy. The defendants were defiant after the verdict, vowing to continue “peaceful” opposition to the royal family……….”

First they arrested them en masse, looting their homes in the process, then they tortured them, then they sentenced some to death. Now the al-Khalifa military Kangaroo court has passed its life sentences against opposition leaders. It is as if they, and their al-Saud masters, want to completely destroy the opposition.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Human Right, Occupied Bahrain

1984 in Occupied Bahrain: a Ministry of Human Rights? Expatriates and Lackeys and Abe Lincoln and Bob Marley…………

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      BFF
“You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time….” Abe Lincoln

“You can fool some people sometimes,

But you can’t fool all the people all the time.

So now we see the light,

We gonna stand up for our rights!…...” Bob Marley

“His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa today issued
decree 60 for 2011 renaming the Social Development Ministry as Human Rights and
Social Development Ministry. The Social Development Minister will also be known
as Human Rights and Social Development Minister. Under the same decree, the
ministry has been restructured to include an undersecretary for human rights, an
undersecretary for social affairs developments, a public and international
relations directorate and other affiliated departments. HM King Hamad also
issued decree 61 for 2011 appointing Osama Abdulla Al-Absi as Labour Market
Regulatory Authority Chief Executive Officer for a three-year term……” Bahrain “News” Agency

King of Bahrain has now changed the name of one ministry to a “Ministry of Human Rights”. This is like Hitler establishing a ministry for Jewish Welfare, or Stalin establishing a ministry for prisoner rights. Or the American Republican Tea Party advocating for labor unions. Some slick, but not smart enough, publicists/lobbyists in Britain or the United States must be behind this desperate attempt at a face-lift for the al-Khalifa ruling clan. Transparently Orwellian.
It started with a call for a so-called “national dialog” to be headed by al-Dhahrani, a semi-educated Salafi-connected head of the mostly appointed legislature, and an al-Khalifa lackey. Then they called to include the “expatriate”, largely South Asian laborers and housemaids, community in the national dialog. On the face of it an admirable call, but a publicity window dressing aimed partly at watering down the majority of the Bahrainis. If they cared for the expatriate community they would allow them access to public education and other benefits, which they do not.
Bahrain’s rulers had become masters at deceiving the West, especially willing American officials, with their public relations stunts, including fake and meaningless elections and a few very public appointments (including one ambassadorial). This time the Arab Spring has caught up with them.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Osama Bin Laden, Religion, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Salafis of the Gulf: Saudi Paymasters, and a Kosher Homey in Abbottabad……..

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“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


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Gulf states

Gulf: Shield from Revolution? Shield of Autocracy? STD Shield?………..

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“The GCC said bolstering the ranks of this shared army would help the countries that belong to it — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar —defend themselves from “external” threats. Like what? Terrorists. Pirates, maybe? How about its own people? Will a larger shared military be used to more effectively douse popular uprisings like the one that took place in Bahrain in March? Just as a protest movement In Bahrain was gaining the kind of momentum that toppled Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak the month before, the Gulf Cooperation Council issued a mandate to send almost 2,000 troops into the tiny little country to protect institutions belonging to Bahrain’s government. It was a show of force that made its point clearly — The Bahraini people marching in the streets were up against something much larger than its own government……..”

The Bahraini, al-Khalifa-connected, secretary general of the GCC opined that “The GCC has also made much progress in giving better life to their nationals compared to other countries”. That “better life” does not cover a majority of Bahrainis, who had face a policy of Apartheid for decades, and now face ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the regime and its Saudi protectors.
I shouldn’t say it, but this ‘shield’ idea reminds me of certain brand names: Trojan, Durex, Naturalamb They are all ‘shields’. But perhaps this one is not as effective as its STD namesakes.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Economics, ethnic cleansing, GCC

The Power of Boycott: Business Facing a Dark Future in Bahrain ………

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      BFF

Economic boycotts are becoming part of the Bahrain revolutionary scene. This is how they started:


  • Some regime     partisans in Bahrain pushed many Sunnis to start the boycott frenzy by advertizing a boycott of some prominent Shi’a businesses that supported the protests (e.g. Jawad Enterprises). Naturally Sunnis have much more buying power per person, but their numbers are small. They may get others to join, like Pakistanis, Saudis, Syrians, Jordanians (basically some of the imported mercenaries). Some of the targeted businesses were also trashed. Yet that was a big mistake as my next paragraph explains.




  • Shi’as, taking a page form their Sunni neighbors, started thinking of boycotts. They have suddenly realized the true power they have: just like American blacks in Alabama did in the 1950s, and others did in India so long ago. They are now advertizing to boycott businesses that support the repression (usually Sunni or some foreign businesses). Many of these businesses went along with the regime and fired many of their Shi’a employees (there are reports that they are hiring in the Indian Subcontinent to replace the fired natives). The firings have added the effect of reduced purchasing power to the anger the Shi’as already felt toward them. Shi’as are a big majority in Bahrain: al-Wefaq, the main Shi’a opposition group won about 64% of the popular vote in the last election. That is not counting other parties and those who boycotted (like al-Haq). They can really harm some major businesses if they boycott them. It looks like they will. Many businesses and shopping malls are owned by al-Khalifa clan members, partnerships, and their retainers and henchmen.




  • Bahrain businesses, through the chamber of commerce, have now frozen relations with businesses organizations in, and now talk of boycotting: Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon (all three states have a majority or plurality of Shi’as, like Bahrain). Typical of the al-Khalifa clan to try to extend their own domestic policy of sectarian Apartheid and ethnic cleansing to the region in order to get out of the mess they created. They want everyone to join in their sectarian game, but that will not solve the serious problem many Bahraini businesses will now face because most of the people will boycott them.


The business outlook in Bahrain looks bleak, much bleaker than the al-Khalifa clan had anticipated.
Cheers
mhg


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