Category Archives: Apartheid

Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Occupied Bahrain, US Foreign Policy

Bahrain Website Reports on American-Khalifa Contacts………..

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A new Bahrain news site (Miraat al-Bahrain) reports from diplomatic sources that the Bahraini government knew two days in advance what President Obama was going to say about Bahrain. It reports that the US State Department notified the al-Khalifa regime of the contents. The report says the delegation led by Deputy Sec of State James Steinberg reached four points of agreement, and four points of disagreement, with Bahrain. It says the points of agreement included the right of the regime to enforce “stability” and to call in Saudi forces, and to agree that Iran has a hand in the unrest. That means the US administration summarized the demands of Bahrainis largely into an Iranian plot.
The main point of disagreement was about who are the opposition. The US saw the opposition as all the various political parties and civil organizations, many of whose members are in prison. The al-Khalifa regime saw the “opposition” as its own toadies (Salafis, Muslim Brothers, and others) who are now left as the only members of the ‘parliament’. The regime now defines its own supporters as the opposition. The regime wants negotiations done inside and through its own parliament while the US wants negotiations done on a round table. There was also disagreement on why all those (Shi’a) mosques were vandalized and destroyed.
I did speculate here last week that the American visit just two days before the speech was to reassure the al-Khalifa regime. I also speculated that Mr. Jeffrey Feltman has been in Manama so often that he may qualify to form his own pro-regime mercenary militia. I was barely kidding.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Corruption, ethnic cleansing, Occupied Bahrain

Île du Diable: Healthcare in a Gulf Penal Colony……….

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"The light that fills my lonely cell,
Is blocked out by the key,
That locks the door to this hell,
The place they wanted me.
Time's racing like the wind,
Execution's near,
Oh lord, I wait for death,
And, yes, I have no fear......"  Megadeth (DFevils Island)

“Q: Why are medical personnel being detained?
A: They helped the injured and they are witnesses. If the government wants to destroy all the evidence, it’s one answer — you accuse medical staff because the main witness of what happened in Salmaniya Hospital, the number of figures of the injured and what kind of weapons were used at that time, was the medical staff. The medical staff know everything.

Q: Have you spoken with any of the medical personnel?
A: We did not speak with them but we spoke with some people who were with them. They said the police, they were tortured. We talked with the ones who were released.

Q: How many people did you speak with?
A: More than 30. Six talked about the doctors.

Q: Were the doctors treated differently than other detainees?
A: Yes, they get more torture. Some doctors, a very famous doctor, we don’t want to announce his name, they forced him to dance to music and they filmed.

Q: Was that meant to shame him?……...”

Doesn’t exactly sound like something out of House, does it? But then Bahrain is not a normal country. The ruling clan and the Saudi occupiers and the imported mercenaries are turning the island into nearly a penal colony.
He asked: “Was that meant to shame him?” Arab despots are shameless, and none of them more so than the rulers of Bahrain. Yet what is even more shameless are our palace self-styled “thinkers”, royal “intellectuals” and opinion makers on my Gulf. Most have been either completely silent or shamefully cheer leading the absolute tribal polygamous monarchies committing genocide on their people. A few, a very few, have spoken against this, and those few are mostly in my own hometown. The rest of the Gulf has gone deathly, cowardly silent when not joining the Salafis in cheering the despots.
Cheers
mhg


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

The Jews of Manama? Drowning the revolution in Shia blood………

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“Bahrain is trying to drown the protests in Shia blood. “Let us drown the revolution in Jewish blood” was the slogan of the tsars when they orchestrated pogroms against Jews across Russia in the years before the First World War. The battle-cry of the al-Khalifa monarchy in Bahrain ever since they started to crush the pro-democracy protests in the island kingdom two months ago might well be “to drown the revolution in Shia blood”. Just as the tsars once used Cossacks to kill and torture Jews and burn their synagogues, so Bahrain’s minority Sunni regime sends out its black-masked security forces night after night to terrorise the majority Shia population for demanding equal political and civil rights. Usually troops and police make their raids on Shia districts between 1am and 4am, dragging people from their beds and beating them in front of their families. Those detained face mistreatment and torture in prison. One pro-democracy activist, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, brought before a military court last week with severe facial injuries, said he had suffered four fractures to the left side of his face, including a broken jaw that needed four hours’ surgery……..It soon became clear that the government is engaged in a savage onslaught on the entire Shia community – some 70 per cent of the population……..”


This policy of apartheid has been going on in Bahrain since the ruling al-Khalifa clan reneged on its promise at independence to hold free elections. That was in 1975 when they dissolved the first and last freely elected legislature. Like in most Arab despots they managed to keep the people at bay through fear, prison, and exile. The difference is that now in Bahrain, like in other Arab states, the fear is gone. Now the al-Khalifa clan and their Saudi Wahhabi masters and their Pakistani and Jordanian mercenaries are trying to restore that old fear into the hearts of the Bahraini people. They are trying the old method of unbridled violence.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain

The Thrilla of Apartheid in Manama……

     
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“MANAMA, Bahrain — Hassan Mohamed ran his finger over bumps of birdshot beneath his skin. He is nearly blind in his left eye, but is scared to go to the emergency room. The wounds would betray him as a protester. His sister arranged to sneak him into a hospital to visit a doctor she trusts. Mohamed was worried. “The police are watching,” he said. “I don’t want them to take me.” Helicopters hover over this island kingdom as doctors are rounded up, university students expelled, teachers fired, houses bombed, mosques destroyed and political opponents silenced. What began as a crackdown on a Shiite Muslim population that rose in protest against the Sunni royal family two months ago has become something more pervasive and sinister….. Much of the strategy is driven by Bahrain’s dominant ally, Saudi Arabia, which fears pro-democracy movements will upset the balance of power in the Persian Gulf……….. “It’s apartheid,” said Mansoor Jamri, who was forced to resign as editor of the independent Al Wasat newspaper. “They’ve made a decision that half the population is not wanted and they want to instill fear in this population and dehumanize them.”………..”

These al-Khalifa are acting like a band of thugs rather than the ruling family of a state. That is the image I get, and I believe it is the right image. What they are doing is an organized state-executed pogrom against most of the people of Bahrain, with the goal of enforcing acceptance of their Apartheid policy. Today the Washington Post wrote an editorial urging US military action to “take out” Gaddafi. Maybe Obama ought to send the Navy Seals to get that despotic thrilla of Manama, aka Khalifa al-Khalifa.
Cheers
mhg

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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain

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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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, US Foreign Policy

Gulf Cat that Got Clinton’s Tongue………….

     
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“Allies of Saudi Arabia have not publicly protested these serious and systematic violations. The European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said on April 18 that she had been “very pleased” with her two-day visit to Riyadh and made no public comments about the political prisoners. Neither Tom Donilon nor Robert Gates publicly commented on the kingdom’s human rights violations. “The EU’s silence on the brazen arrest of a peaceful dissident on the first day of its chief foreign policy representative’s visit looks like a pat on the back for an authoritarian state,” said Christoph Wilcke, senior Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Silence when more than 160 peaceful dissidents are locked up should not be an option for Brussels or Washington.”………. In 2009, Saudi Arabia acceded to the Arab Charter for Human Rights, which guarantees in article 32 the right to freedom of opinion and expression. The kingdom is one of few countries that have not yet signed the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights. “As the list of Saudi political prisoners grows longer, the silence of the US and the EU becomes more deafening,”…..”

Susan Rice today brazenly, and rightly, condemned human rights abuses in Syria and Libya and a few other Middle East countries. She waxed indignant. What was most noticeable were the countries she did not mention. Two of these countries are the worst abusers of human rights now: Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Even as Rice was speaking, these two regimes were rounding up people in both countries and torturing them in Bahrain. Not only do they suppress freedoms and dissent, they also practice a form of apartheid discrimination, in the Saudi case against anybody of a different sect or faith, in the Bahrain case against the majority of the people (a la South Africa). Rice did not say boo about them. Nor did Secretary Clinton recently when she lambasted other governments this week. The Saudi pussycat has got all their tongue. No profiles of courage when elected American and European officials are terrified of offending offensive tribal absolute serial-polygamous monarchs.
I knew that deep bow Mr. Obama made in from of King Abdullah in 2009 was the beginning of something.
Cheers
mhg

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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, US Foreign Policy

Saudi Pussycat that Got Clinton’s Tongue………….

     
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“Allies of Saudi Arabia have not publicly protested these serious and systematic violations. The European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said on April 18 that she had been “very pleased” with her two-day visit to Riyadh and made no public comments about the political prisoners. Neither Tom Donilon nor Robert Gates publicly commented on the kingdom’s human rights violations. “The EU’s silence on the brazen arrest of a peaceful dissident on the first day of its chief foreign policy representative’s visit looks like a pat on the back for an authoritarian state,” said Christoph Wilcke, senior Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Silence when more than 160 peaceful dissidents are locked up should not be an option for Brussels or Washington.”………. In 2009, Saudi Arabia acceded to the Arab Charter for Human Rights, which guarantees in article 32 the right to freedom of opinion and expression. The kingdom is one of few countries that have not yet signed the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights. “As the list of Saudi political prisoners grows longer, the silence of the US and the EU becomes more deafening,”…..”

Susan Rice today brazenly, and rightly, condemned human rights abuses in Syria and Libya and a few other Middle East countries. She waxed indignant. What was most noticeable were the countries she did not mention. Two of these countries are the worst abusers of human rights now: Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Even as Rice was speaking, these two regimes were rounding up people in both countries and torturing them in Bahrain. Not only do they suppress freedoms and dissent, they also practice a form of apartheid discrimination, in the Saudi case against anybody of a different sect or faith, in the Bahrain case against the majority of the people (a la South Africa). Rice did not say boo about them. Nor did Secretary Clinton recently when she lambasted other governments this week. The Saudi pussycat has got all their tongue. No profiles of courage when elected American and European officials are terrified of offending offensive tribal absolute serial-polygamous monarchs.
I knew that deep bow Mr. Obama made in from of King Abdullah in 2009 was the beginning of something.
Cheers
mhg

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Afghanistan, Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Religion, Saudi Arabia

American-Saudi Ties: Poisoning the Gulf, Trapping Washington………..

     
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“Saudi Arabia is pursuing a combination of domestic and regional policies that risk destabilizing
the Persian Gulf and that risk undermining the United States interests there. Amid calls for political change, Saudi Arabia is failing to address pressing concerns about its political system and the need for political reform. Instead of responding favorably to calls for more political openness, the Kingdom is pursuing a risky domestic agenda, which ignores the social, economic, and political grievances that might fuel popular mobilization. Saudi Arabia’s military intervention into Bahrain has escalated sectarian tensions in the Gulf. The crackdown in Bahrain is not only provoking Iran and creating the conditions for a regional crisis, but it is also creating new opportunities for Iran to expand its sphere of influence. The United States has reasons to maintain a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia. It also has the leverage to encourage the Kingdom to refrain from escalating tensions in the Gulf and further inflaming sectarian anxieties………” USIP

It is true: the al-Saud brothers, like the al-Khalifa clan, have used sectarian divisions effectively. They have created a poisonous atmosphere of divisions on the Gulf unseen in modern times. In that task they have had help from their Salafi followers. That is how despots and absolute tribal Arab monarchs stay in power, by dividing the people: Sunni vs. Shi’a, Muslim vs. Christian (not many Jews left in the region). They have even managed to carry their sectarian poison to Lebanon where there are actually Salafis allied with their man Saad Hariri around Tripoli. They are still trying disruptions in Iraq.
They are also trapping the United States into an odd position: there are many people now in the Gulf region who believe that the U.S government is behind the divisive sectarian campaign of the al-Saud and al-Khalifa.
Cheers
mhg

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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Religion, US Foreign Policy

Rafdhi Prophets and Revolutionaries, State Department Wahhabis, Jesus and Lenin ………

     
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“Stick and stones may break my bones……
But words will never hurt me………” An Americanism


When Mr. Feltman stops of in Riyadh to brief the al-Saudi brothers, he may be forced, out of politeness, to agree that there may also be an Iranian angle to the Fukushima disaster as well. In the new State Department spirit of accommodation, Feltman may go beyond the Shi’a Crescent and show off his new mastery of Wahhabi vernacular: he may start talking Rafdhis (or Rwafidh) with the aging al-Saud brothers. The Shi’a Crescent is a term King Abdul of Jordan, resplendent in his Captain Kirk space suit pajamas, coined a few years ago. It was in the spirit of George W Bush’s “Axis of Evil” sound bite. Surprising to King Abdul and his online-hip wife, it caught on.
But that Shi’a Crescent is passé, it doesn’t impress the Wahhabi brothers sitting on their vast lakes of petroleum keeping watch on their vast desert gulag. Hence, adoption of the immortal Wahhabi term, straight out of the bowels of Najd: Rafdhi (s), or Rwafidh (pl). No doubt Jeffrey Feltman grew up like most American kids, briefly believing, or pretending to believe, in that old untruth: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”. But he is old enough to know better now. Besides, those words come with weapons and tear gas and electric prods and a whole horn of plenty that puts some teeth in the term “Rafdhi”. In fact the Rafdhis who are most of the people of Bahrain are now feeling all of the above.
FYI: Rafdhi is a Wahhabi term for a Shi’a, It comes from the Arabic word for “reject or refuse”. It refers to the Shi’a for refusing to accept some orthodoxy. It is a term used exclusively by Salafis and their ilk and mainly around the Gulf. It is supposed to be derogatory, but I don’t think it is. Anyone who rejects any orthodoxy anywhere should be proud, always. The Prophets Moses and Jesus and Mohammed were all against the orthodoxy, they were all Rafdhis (or Rwafidh). America’s Founding Fathers, Lenin, and Jean Paul Sartre were also Rafdhis. So were the people of Tunisia and Egypt and Libya this year, so are the people of Bahrain now. So are those Iranians and Saudis who are in prison for their beliefs. We should all be Rafdhis, better yet, we should all be Rwafidh.
Cheers
mhg

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Apartheid, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Iran, Saudi Arabia

Fifth Columns in the Gulf: Iranian Threat, Saudi Threat……….

     
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For some years now, it has been perceived by many that the only threat to the Gulf states, the GCC, came from Iran. Iran is a large strong country that is quite militarized and it has been expanding its sphere of influence well beyond the Gulf and the Shatt al-Arab in recent years. It also has an ancient history of domination of the region up to the Mediterranean Sea and into Egypt. Political changes in Iraq after the fall of the Ba’ath regime amplified the notion of a modern Iranian threat. The defeat of the Israeli invasions of Lebanon by Hezbollah in 2000 and 2006 also amplified this Iranian threat around the Gulf, given that Hezbollah depends on Iranian money and weapons.
The Saudi government has focused on the Iranian threat since at least 2005. By that time the Saudis had acquired and built the largest media empire anywhere in Europe and the Middle East: newspapers, satellite television channels, magazines, and general entertainment outlets, Only Aljazeera stood as the competition to Saudi domination of Arab media. Alarabiya, Asharq Alawsat, al-Hayat, ART, LBC, MBC, Rotana, etc, etc: these are all Saudi owned, either by princes or their relatives, and hence they are all official or semi-official media.

In the past few years the vast Saudi media started to amplify the “Iranian threat”. So far so good: that is fair enough among governments and nations. It also started to do some serious sectarian “Shi’a-baiting”, slowly at first but gathering speed after 2006. Soon they were all but accusing the local native Shi’as of their Eastern Province of being a fifth column (in their own native territory that preceded the arrival of the Saudi invaders from Najd). They were joined in that by allies from among the Arab despots such as Mubarak and King Abdul of Jordan. Mubarak’s state security started to uncover “Shi’a cells” dedicated to converting Egyptians. King Abdul of Jordan reportedly established a special branch of his security services dedicated to hunting down Shi’as bent on spreading their “faith”. I suspect all this was to keep the al-Saud and their Wahhabi clerics happy.
Not that the Iranians could not have been a threat. A huge militarized country like Iran can always pose a threat to its smaller “neighbors” under certain circumstances. If one chooses to disregard the huge American navy and other Western forces controlling the Gulf.

Then came the Arab revolutions which spread eastward and into Bahrain, an island that practices its own version of Apartheid. Before Bahrain, the al-Saud and their fundamentalist Salafi agents have been for some years trying to disrupt and sabotage the political process in another member country of the GCC. There is no political process in Saudi Arabia. The Bahrain uprising and the Saudi incursion divided the Gulf region deeper along sectarian lines, and much of the blame for that goes to the Saudi and official Bahraini media and their agents in another Gulf state. The goal has been to scare people and throw them into the lap of the Saudis: an old game often played by nations. And to kill the Arab Spring on the shores of the Gulf, in the bloodied streets of Manama and the villages of Bahrain.

Now a combination of seeing the tanks rolling easily into Bahrain and calls by Saudi Salafi surrogates for a Gulf “confederation” under Saudi control is giving some Gulf people second thoughts. Some people, hopefully enough people. The tanks rolled into Bahrain, and I don’t expect them to leave any time soon, if ever. These two factors have also reminded some people of just how the Arabian Peninsula came to be named after a family, Saudi Arabia. Old Ibn Saud started by re-entering Najd, in central Arabia, with money from a smaller Gulf state in the north, took Riyadh, then continued to conquer Hijaz and al-Hasa and Aseer, etc, etc. They even tried at one point to conquer the country that provided them with seed money to start with, using the Ikhan “militia”.

These recent events and the not too distant history have awakened some Gulf people to one important fact: it is much easier and faster for a land neighbor to send in the tanks than for a force to cross the Gulf. It has also made others aware of another likely fact: if there is a Gulf fifth column with divided loyalties, it is most likely not the Shi’as looking toward Iran, but the Salafis and their “allies” looking back toward Saudi Arabia. Maybe the al-Saud have overplayed their hand again.
Cheers
mhg

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