Category Archives: Arab Revolutions

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Culture, Saudi Arabia, Women 100

Saudi Women, Saudi men: the Drive-in…..

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      BFF
“One woman’s effort to end the ban on her gender being able to drive in Saudi Arabia is catching attention around the world. And on Morning Edition today, the editor of Jeddah’s Saudi News said that Manal al-Sharif’s campaign is gaining some traction in Saudi Arabia…….” NPR News

A Saudi woman was arrested yesterday, for the second time, for driving a vehicle. Saudi Arabia is the only country that bans females, that is ‘human’ females, from driving cars (I suspect women in Qandahar can’t drive either: so you get the picture). That is not the news. The real Saudi news is that Saudi women are organizing a drive-in, and it has a chance of success. If many women join.
Success is always a matter of how many come out to defy authority. Last March there was a campaign for protests in Saudi cities to call for freedom and reform. Only one man reportedly showed up in the capital Riyadh to publicly protest and he has not been since his arrest that day. Khaled al-Jehany is unlikely to be in a mood to protest again, if he is released. Defying authority has always been a taboo in Saudi Arabia: religious fatwas and the usual instruments of a police state have been effective in keeping people from defying the authority of the princes and their Wahhabi ulema (clergy) allies under Shaikh Al Al Shaikh.

It is the numbers, stupid. The more who heed the call for protest, the more chance of success. At some point there is enough of the people out (men, women, or otherwise) that the authority has to give in: that was the lesson of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya (almost), and Bahrain (almost). The numbers defy age-old fears. On their coming drive-in day, Saudi women may come out in huge numbers and drive. They may be able to achieve what the men have failed to do: defy authority and win. That is what authority fears: that it will be forced to relent through public protests, that is why they sent tanks into Bahrain. They want any “reform” to be bestowed by the ruler, not a right taken, wrested, by the people as it should be.
I am always for anyone or group that defies any authority anywhere in the Middle East (except the Salafis who always side with repressive and corrupt authority): from Rabat through Riyadh and onto Tehran.
 
(Go for it ladies: you may be the ones who finally break that wall of fear).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Corruption, Culture, Human Right

Times a-Changing: Bob Dylan and Arab Revolutions…………

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      BFF

“Come….. Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’…….” Bob Dylan (Happy Birthday)
 
On Bob Dylan’s birthday, it is appropriate to put some of the lyrics of his song that is most relevant to the current changing times in our region. Robert Allen Zimmerman, potentially almost a good Muslim name in this ugly age of religious and sectarian strife. He said “Please heed the call” and two Arab despots have already been forced to heed the call of revolution: Mubarak and Bin Ali. Tunisia and Egypt have gone some way in their revolutions, but they still face danger and counterrevolution. Two others, Saleh of Yemen and Qaddafi of Libya seem to be on their way out, but it will take time. Assad of Syria is a mystery: it seems that the opposition is not united in any meaningful way and their public protests are disorganized compared to the others. The Far Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, and Mauretania) apparently will rise on their own schedule.
Which brings us to the toughest nut to crack: the Gulf, my Gulf. There have been protests in Oman, protests in eastern Saudi Arabia, and arrests of academics and journalists in the UAE. The real uprising has been in Bahrain: the people managed to defeat the security forces and foreign mercenaries of the ruling al-Khalifa clan on the street. They were on the verge of forcing their legitimate demands on the despots, before the al-Khalifa got outside help. Saudi tanks rolled into Bahrain (with some help from the UAE) and saved the despots, for now. The al-Saud have been the worst offenders in terms of not heeding the call: they have tried hard to abort and hijack the popular revolutions from Tunisia to the Gulf. The jury is out, but the writing is on the wall: the fear is gone from the Arab street. The fear is gone, and the times they are a-changin’ in the Middle East.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Torture, US Foreign Policy

Arabs Doubling Down after the Obama Speech………….

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      BFF
“Bahrain has allegedly arrested and abused local journalists working for foreign news agencies in an escalation of the crackdown just days after Barack Obama, US president, called for dialogue. Local journalists have been arrested and beaten since the authorities violently cleared pro-democracy protests in mid-March, but this is the first time that journalists working for overseas outlets have been targeted in a broadening assault on the media. Mazen Mahdi, a photojournalist with the German press agency and Defense News, and Nazeeha Saeed, a reporter for France24 and Radio Monte Carlo, were detained for hours and questioned about their reporting. Both said they were abused during their detention and released late Sunday and early Monday.……… Reeling from negative media coverage, the authorities have been targeting local and foreign media amid the broader crackdown of arrests, torture, sackings and destruction of religious sites…….. Local journalists at Al-Wasat, the country’s only independent voice before changes made under government pressure last month, have also been arrested. A founder of the newspaper, businessman Kareem Fakhrawi, is one of four people who have died in detention since the clampdown began. Mansoor Aljamri, a former exile who edited the paper, is on trial for publishing false news.………”

This is one example of the reaction of Arab despots to the Obama speech last week. From Libya to Yemen to Syria to Saudi Arabia, even in Morocco, they have tightened the screws on the people.
Bahrain is only the most flagrant case, which also reflects the wish, nay the orders, of the al-Saud. Just after the Obama Middle East speech the al-Khalifa ruling clan has doubled down on their oppression of the people of Bahrain. Mr. Obama mentioned the repression, but unfortunately he also noted that the Bahrain regime “needs” to maintain order. They are betting that their al-Saud masters will take care of the West. They are betting that petroleum and weapons contracts and money are more important to Western governments than human rights, and they are most likely right about that. They have been right so far: Obama basically equated the two sides in Bahrain, Britain’s Cameron received the crown prince and the foreign minister last week (both are al-Khalifa, as are most of the cabinet), and Sarkozy would likely send forces to help put down the uprising if asked. So the Obama speech somehow emboldened the Bahraini regime: somehow they have interpreted it as a tacit green light.
Maybe Mr. Jeffrey Feltman and Mr. James Steinberg, who were in Bahrain just before the Obama speech, had reassured them that it was just a speech for media consumption.
(BHCR, Bahrain’s Human Right group reports that Mr. Fakhrawi was tortured and electrocuted to get him to ‘confess’ to ties with Hezbollah ad Iran. He died under torture.)

Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Gulf states

On My Gulf: Mercenary Nations………

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      BFF
Some governments on my Gulf seem to have a fascination with foreign mercenaries:


  • Saudi Arabia was reported several times in Western and Pakistani media as asking for a contingency plan to have Pakistani soldiers deployed on its soil in case of domestic political trouble.

  • The United Arab Emirates have relied on Jordanian security agents and interrogators for years now. Now there is the credible New York Times report that they are setting up a special mercenary army under Blackwater executives in Abu Dhabi. These foreign mercenaries reportedly come from places as far flung as North America, South America, Africa, and Asia. I once suggested here that the al-Nahayan should think of recruiting from among the Mexican drug cartels: they have some of the “most effective” interrogators around. Then there are the retirees of Mossad…..

  • When it comes to mercenaries, the al-Khalifa clan of Bahrain take the cake. They have been in that business of hiring foreign mercenaries to kill and maim their people for decades. They have hired British, Pakistani, Jordanian, Syrian, Yemeni, possibly Saudi, and God knows what else mercenaries to keep the people of Bahrain oppressed. Even now Pakistani military and other media have advertisements and news items of Bahrain recruitment delegations interviewing and hiring veterans. When their own tribal allies and their foreign mercenaries could not cope with the people, the al-Khalifa invited Saudi troops to enter the country and help crush the uprising. I can’t think of a regime that is more vile (or is it viler) than one that first hires foreign mercenaries then invites foreign invaders into its country to kill and torture its people. Governments have done one or the other, but it is rare that a regime does both.

  • Only two GCC countries seem not to have this need for, nay fascination with, mercenaries. Not yet and hopefully never.


Which makes you think: what kind of countries are these that they need to hire foreign mercenaries against their own people? They shouldn’t need to, if only they were less greedy with power and wealth. If they were more fascinated with empowering their people than with foreign mercenaries.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Culture, Saudi Arabia

A Saudi Prague Spring: a Guest of Honor and Shame………..

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      BFF
“At Book World Prague 2011, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the “guest of honour”. But guest, in this context, actually means high-paying client: an oppressive regime hoping to buy itself some cultural legitimacy with its petrodollars. And honour? Given the dismal Saudi Arabian record on freedom of speech and other human rights, honour basically means shame. Under the soft rainbow colours of an arching art nouveau roof, the Saudis have erected a huge and lavish stand, in the form of a turreted (and carpeted) mock fortress, replete with scale models of Mecca and Medina, children’s play area, some blonde women in Saudi costumes, and plenty of individually plastic-wrapped dates for all. There are even a few books, presumably as a concession to this being a book fair – and one or two of them are literary titles. But where are the Saudi writers?………”

Like the almost-proverbial guys said, or could have said: “You pays your money and you does your thing….”
The al-Saud are such known book lovers, as are their Salafi mutawa’een of the Commission for the Propagation of Vice (religious police). Normally they love to ban books from the country but, barring that, they also love to burn books. Writers can go to prison for writing the “wrong” stuff; they can get flogged for writing the truly ‘wrong” stuff. To prove their love and devotion to books, only a few weeks ago they published and distributed 1.5 million copies of the religious fatwas banning protests against Arab regimes (edited by none other than Shilk A Al Al Shaikh). That was the second printing: the initial printing was half a million copies.

(No need for me to state, again, that the Mufti shaikh A Al Al Shaikh is a direct descendant of Imam Mohammed Bin abdulwahhab and that he is to bedistinguished from the late great Egyptian musician and singer Mohammed Abdelwahhab who was not a Salafi Wahhabi. There are a passel of Al Al Shaikh progeny in high positions in Saudi Arabia).
Cheers
mhg


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Ali Khamenei, Arab Revolutions, Iran

Iran: Khamenei and the Club of Worried Leaders………

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      BFF
“Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei and a large number of Iranian elites in a meeting here on Tuesday discussed prevalence of justice in the society as among the tenets of the Islamic-Iranian paradigm of progress. At the second meeting of ‘Strategic Thoughts’ here in Tehran on Tuesday, the Supreme Leader called for maximizing prevalence of justice in the society, and said despite the massive efforts made to prevail justice in the Iranian society after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the country still has a long way to go, “since the Islamic ruling system is after maximized justice and full materialization of justice as an absolute value”. During the 4-hour meeting, the Leader said the holy Quran describes justice as the main goal of all divine religions, and said, “Religions have developed social systems in pursuit of justice, and justice has been the main goal for man’s move within the framework of religion.”. He further reminded that such a justice-oriented view cannot be found in any of the schools of thought presented by man. Ayatollah Khamenei stressed the need for serious efforts and consultations among intellectuals and thinkers to prevail the Islamic theory and view of justice in the country. ……”The use of two concepts of ‘Islamic’ and ‘Iranian’ is never meant to reject achievements and rightful experiences of others,” the Leader went on to say……..” Fars News (Iran)

Also sprach Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to a meeting of “elites”, presumably properly revolutionary “elites”.

WTF: I have to admit that I could not figure this one out, not yet. I know he is gingerly tackling the sensitive issue that is not necessarily a dichotomy: “Iranian” and “Islamic” identities. He called it a paradigm. That is a tough one: Turkey has solved it by being as Turkish as ever, but slightly more Islamic. I know Khamenei is pushing the fundamentalist theocratic line, but there is more. I discern a certain amount of worry, uncertainty even as he speaks with the seeming certainty of a theocrat.
That is a good sign: when a leader in our region worries it is always a good sign for the people. They ought to start a Club of Worried Leaders, one that goes beyond the GCC and Jordan and Morocco (I think Libya and Yemen and Syria and Bahrain are beyond the mere worried, I hope I am right). Keep on worrying, y’all.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, ethnic cleansing, Human Right, Saudi Arabia

Bahrain Hearings: State Department is AWOL, the New Deciders of America……..

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      BFF
“Yesterday, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission — an entity within Congress chaired by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) charged with investigating human rights abuses — held a hearing titled “Human Rights in Bahrain,” designed to probe abuses against pro-democracy activists in the Arab monarchy. Noticeably absent among the witnesses testifying were any representatives from the U.S. government, which has been closely allied with Bahrain throughout the uprising and resulting humanitarian crisis. On the hearing’s website, you can see that both witnesses called from the State Department, William J. Burns and Jeffrey D. Feltman, declined to appear….. McClatchy reports that “scheduling conflicts” are the reason that the two officials did not appear, although no explanation is given why the State Department did not send replacements. “I was expecting at least one, possibly two witnesses from the State Department to testify,” said a disappointed McGovern. At the hearing, Human Right’s Watch’s Joe Stork stressed the need for a more forceful response from the United States, which has been very mute in reaction to the abuses in the country……..”


Some would say that Hillary Clinton and her boss Barack Obama were afraid to offend the moneybags of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. So, they have sacrificed the people of Bahrain and some in Saudi Arabia, as well as what they ‘used’ to profess to be their own principles.
I knew when Obama bowed so low in front of the absolute tribal polygamous king of Saudi Arabia that it was the beginning of something special. Before Obama the US was in the position of strength vis-a-vis Arab despots. It was always on the side of the despots, but it was the “decider”, as Bush liked to say. Now the Arab despots, the ones with money in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, are in the driver’s seat. Now Riyadh is the decider of US policy about the Gulf (the Persian-American Gulf), just as Tel Aviv is the decider of US policy about the Israeli-Palestinian-Lebanese issue.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Human Right, Occupied Bahrain, Saudi Arabia

The Assault on the King of Bahrain……….

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      BFF
The al-Khalifa regime and their Saudi occupation masters have now borrowed from the rape playbook of others in Bosnia and the Congo. They are using rape and the threat of it against the men and women in their custody. Here are afew tweets on the latest:

“NickKristof 
Our close ally, #Bahrain, has a consistent record of using sexual abuse of male and female detainees as a form of torture.”

“maryamalkhawaja
My father, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, was told that they were going to find me and rape me. #bahrain #Feb14”

“kristenchick Kristen Chick
Another defendant, Mohamed Hassan Jawad, tried to show marks of torture on legs during hearing today, was silenced, say witnesses “

“kristenchick Kristen Chick
“Abdul Hadi Al Khawaja’s wife crying on the phone as she recounted her husband’s story of attempted rape in #Bahrain govt custody”

“kristenchick Kristen Chick
Khadija Mossawi, wife of Abdul Hadi Al Khawaja, just told me how 4 men attempted to rape her husband in govt custody friday “

“maryamalkhawaja 
3. Court was adjourned until the 22nd of May and alkhawaja is supposed to get a head scan for possible injuries #bahrain”

“maryamalkhawaja Maryam Alkhawaja
2. They were 4 men and it was in a diff room than were they tried to force him to apologize #bahrain…”

“maryamalkhawaja 1. Corrections to former tweets: alkhawaja banged his head against the floor, he was taken out of the court when he tried to s #bahrain…..”

“maryamalkhawaja 
5. When he tried to tell the judge about this in court hearing today, he was silenced. #Bahrain…..”

“maryamalkhawaja 
4. They began to take off his pants; he was handcuffed & couldnt resist. He began banging his head against the wall until he was unconscious..”

“maryamalkhawaja 
3. He said show me what I have done wrong, and I will apologize. At that point the men took of their pants, he said, as if to rape him cont..”

One of the tweeters is the daughter of one of the threatened victims, which makes it quite agonizing for her to recount all this. Which makes me wonder if there is something ‘Freudian’ in this: if anyone ever raped or threatened to rape the shaikh (king) of Bahrain and his uncle Khalifa bin Salman (the prime minister).
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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      BFF

"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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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Culture, GCC, Gulf states, Jordan

GCC Women, Moroccan Beauties, Jordanian Humor….

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      BFF
“Gulf women fear Jordan, Morocco entry into GCC. Say their men might turn to women from those two countries after joining GCC. A bid by Jordan and Morocco to join a Gulf Arab alliance has already triggered fears among women in the oil-rich region that local men could turn to those two countries for wives. Many women from Saudi Arabia and other members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) called a prominent Saudi social and religious adviser to express their fears about the entry of Jordan and Morocco into the 30-year-old GCC. At summit talks in Riyadh last week, GCC leaders welcomed a request by the two Arab nations to join the GCC and instructed their foreign ministers to follow up their issue…….”

This is another fallout of the erratic decision by the Saudi King and his sweet brothers to invite Jordan and Morocco to join the Gulf GCC. Apparently some Gulf women would like their shaikhs, the clergy, to issue fatwas restricting marriage to Moroccan and Jordanian women. Some GCC states, especially UAE and Saudi Arabia, already have rules banning or restricting marriage to foreigners (at least requiring regime permission). This is illogical. Besides, what make them think women of Jordan and Morocco are interested in Gulf men?
I am from the Gulf and sometimes I wonder why Gulf women are interested in many of the Gulf men. Having said that, I must add that if Jordanian women are anything like Jordanian men, then they have about as much a sense of humor as most of my fellow Gulf men. Which is nada, zilch, rien. My best friend BFF (see photo up there) has a better canine sense of humor than that. So what is the attraction? As for the women of Morocco, I haven’t known many, well, not enough, but from what I discern………o boy. That may be a worry.
Cheers
mhg


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