Category Archives: GCC

The Fear is Gone: Bahrain Proposes Common Lists of Dissidents for the GCC……………..

   


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Tuesday Nov. 13, 2012: The following tweets by the Bahrain Ministry of Interior (responsible for: police, security, mercenaries, looting, arrests, tear gas, shootings, torture, prisons, courts) were discovered:

Ministry of Interior ‏@moi_bahrain
Our countries expose to a colonial onslaught that uses the names of human rights, freedom or democracy

Ministry of Interior ‏@moi_bahrain
We expect those who deal with us to respect our civilized values and Islamic concepts that are based on respect for human rights.

Ministry of Interior ‏@moi_bahrain
A need 4GCC National Security List of individuals, organizations &countries outline a clear &definitive security strategy 2deal with threats

Ministry of Interior ‏@moi_bahrain

GCC Interior Minister signed a security agreement to promote coordination and cooperation

Ministry of Interior ‏@moi_bahrain
GCC Interior Ministers condemned recent bombings in Bahrain that resulted in severe injuries and death to both civilians and police.

Forget the nonsense about ‘colonialism of human rights organizations’.
I found
the third tweet (from the top in red) the most disturbing. It tells me where they are heading, these potentates on my Gulf. It says: “GCC National Security List of individuals, organizations &countries”. Meaning they will create a common list of names of individuals, organizations tweepes, bloggers, etc. I suspect a majority of the people of Bahrain will be on that proposed “dangerous” list. With the twin goals of killing dissent and spreading fear in the citizenry. But, alas, the fear is mostly gone these days.

Cheers
mhg

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Iran and the West: Three Elections that may Determine War or Peace, Likud Nuts on a Persian Fire………….

   


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“The question of an attack on Iran has become the subject of intense debate over the past few months. What is puzzling about this debate is that it has not centered on Iran’s nuclear program or whether Iranians seek to obtain a nuclear bomb, but rather on whether Israel or the US (or both) will attack Iran to prevent this. The re-election of Barack Obama to a second term is important, yet the situation vis-à-vis Iran and Israel has not changed significantly. Iran still faces harsh sanctions and its economy is on the brink of collapse; nevertheless, its nuclear program continues to advance unchecked and the regime does not show signs of weakening its grip on power. Likewise, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces elections in January 2013, but is likely to win a resounding victory; Iranians will also go to the polls in 2013 to elect a new president and Majlis (parliament). The outcome of these elections will neither change the overall threat Iran’s nuclear program poses to Israel nor the military threat Israel poses to Iran. Caught between the risk of an Israeli attack on Iran or an Iranian attack against Israel is the United States, desperately trying to avoid the outbreak of an Iranian–Israeli war, the consequences of which are unpredictable…………………”

Israeli politicians sometimes go to war before elections. They did it in Gaza two years ago. Mr. Netanyahu must be tempted to drag the United States into another Middle East war, but he will hesitate. He knows the USA will intervene to help his country if its war on Iran fails, which it almost certainly will. But Mr. Obama owes Netanyahu nothing: he gambled on the American right winning the elections. Obama just may let Bibi’s nuts roast a little on the Persian fire before intervening either to join him or to stop the madness. Besides, American and Israeli interests don’t always coincide, in spite of the election year political rhetoric. And nobody knows for certain the exact consequences of an attack on Iran on Western interests and economies.
The American elections are done, with the next round coming in 2014 (Democrats will most likely regain control of the Congress). Iran will hold two separate elections in 2013: parliamentary and presidential. Israel seems heading toward new elections soon. It is a safe bet that the Israeli and Iranian elections will not change anything: the right wing will win in both countries. Especially in Iran if the reformists continue to be persecuted and their followers demoralized. Israeli elections are somewhat less predictable: they are now between the right wing AND the extreme right wing.
Then there are the Saudi and Qatari elections: it is not clear who will win the positions of King and Emir. I think I was just kidding………..

Cheers
mhg

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A Funny Iranian Report on Syria, a Strange Meeting on Syria, SAT…………

   


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The Syrian government and opposition parties will send their representatives to Tehran next week to attend a “National Dialogue” meeting, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir Abdollahian announced on Tuesday.
“Syrian government officials as well as representatives of ethnic, political, minority, and opposition groups will attend this meeting,” Amir Abdollahian told FNA Tuesday evening. On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi reiterated the necessity for the peaceful settlement of the crisis in Syria, and called for more talks between the Syrian government and opposition forces.
Salehi’s remarks were made in a meeting with KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Idris Barzani in Tehran. On Iran’s diplomacy about Syria, Salehi said that the Islamic Republic is in favor of negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition groups to create stability in the Middle Eastern country. Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes. The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad. In October 2011, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots in the hope of increasing unrests in Syria……………………




Also sprach Iran’s Fars News Agency.
My first reaction on reading this was a resounding WTF? Only it was not just the acronym I uttered. An Arab League-West-Syria conference has just ended in Doha (Qatar). Now the Iranians are holding their own meeting on Syria. It is not clear who are the Syrians who will attend, but I suspect this group will never gain power in post-Assad Syria, nor will it compete for power. They can’t be too opposed to the current regime, otherwise they wouldn’t be invited to Tehran. Just a hunch. It would be like the Qataris inviting the Ba’ath Party or Hezbollah to “their” Doha meeting, or like the Saudis sponsoring a conference for the Bahrain government and calling it the opposition. You figure that last one out: it is a teaser, like those SAT questions.

Cheers
mhg

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Saving the Syrian Opposition, Meeting Where Predatory Princes Roam………..

   


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“Syrian opposition leaders struck a hard-won deal on Sunday under intense international pressure to form a broad, new coalition to prepare for the fall of President Bashar al-Assad. Delegates, who had struggled for days in the Qatari capital Doha to find the unity their Western and Arab backers have long urged, said the new body would ensure a voice for religious and ethnic minorities and for the rebels fighting on the ground, who have complained of being overlooked by exiled dissident groups. Some details remain outstanding, including who will head the new Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces and the final assent of some leaders not present in Doha. Diplomats and officials from the United States and Qatar, the tiny Gulf emirate whose oil and gas wealth has helped fund the 20-month-old uprising, have particularly been pressing the Syrian National Council (SNC), whose leaders mostly live abroad, to drop fierce objections to joining a wider body. “An initial deal has been signed. A final formulation has been agreed and signed,” Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni, a delegate for the Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, told reporters…..……….”

Western powers, Arab potentates and assorted despots, and Syrian opposition groups are meeting to “save” the Syrian opposition, basically saving it from itself. Which is something that is sorely needed. And where are they meeting? In Doha, Qatar, where not even dog-catchers (as Americans would say) are elected, where not even sheep-herders are elected (as the Mufti should say but won’t). They meet in an absolute unaccountable monarchy, aided and abetted by such great supporters of freedom, self-determination, and democracy as the Al-Saud and Al-Khalifa.
While they are at it, why not discuss repression in nearby places. Like a stone’s throw across the Persian Gulf waters in Bahrain, or just across the border in the Arabian Peninsula where the wild and avaricious and predatory princes roam and plunder?

Cheers
mhg

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GCC: Francophone or Hindi-Phone Qatar, South Asian Gulf, Le Dauphin Salman, Le Roi Hamad WTF……………

   


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“There was a time when most French couldn’t place Qatar on a map. Now, Qatar – a small Gulf state with marginal ties to French culture – is a member of an international Francophone organization. Some have raised eyebrows at Qatar’s new Francophone identity since it has just expelled the director of a secular French lycée from its borders………….. Qatar became a Francophone country with a blink of an eye. Without fulfilling any of the conditions to become part of the organization, the IOF gladly obliged the emir’s request and officially inducted Qatar as a full “member-state” last month. This caused quite an uproar within the IOF and the French media, especially in light of the fact that Qatar was immediately accepted as member-state, without having to go through the “observer” stage that many of the new inductees had to go through. Some news sources reported that Qatar “created a pressure group within the IOF – particularly among some African countries – to support its membership bid.” Meanwhile, frustrated IOF officials pointed out that Qatar was not even a Francophone country to begin with to deserve directly becoming a member-state.…………..”

I believe that the languages spoken by an overwhelming majority of people in Qatar are Hindi and Urdu and Bengali (with some Tagalog and Persian and Pashtu). That is because some 80% or so of the people in Qatar are foreigners and a majority of these are Asians who are not speakers of Arabic (or French for that matter). Clearly the Qataris, who are focusing on investments in France, have bought themselves an undeserved but quick membership in the Francophone group. I wouldn’t b surprised to see the Al-Nahayan brothers who own and rule the United Arab Emirates (UAE) decide to join the Francophone group: they also have an overwhelming majority of Asians who do not speak Arabic. And they also have deep pockets.
Come to think of it: an overwhelming majority of people who live on the southwestern shores of the Persian Gulf are not Arabic speakers. How does the Indian Gulf sound to you? How does the United South Asian Emirates sound to you? How does the South Asian Gulf Cooperation Council sound to you?
Question: will we soon have French-ified names and titles for our Gulf potentates? Will Qatar be rule by L’Emir Hamad 1er? Will Bahrain be ruled by Le Roi Hamad WTF? Will Abu Dhabi be ruled be Les Frères Al-Nahayan? Better yet, will Saudi Arabia be ruled by Le Roi Abdullah et Le Dauphin Salman?
Finally: how does one say WTF en Français?

Cheers
mhg


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Clarification of the Gruntgrunt Tribe (With No Flag) of the Gulf……….

   


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Re. my earlier post on Anthropology and the stone-age weapons trade between Europe and the Persian Gulf. I just want to emphasize that this was just fanciful speculation. There is no such tribe as the Gruntgrunt tribe in the Gulf region, not that I know of. It is a generic “tribe” name that does not refer to any existing tribe that I know of, not necessarily. I apologize if I stepped over any tribal sensibilities (or on any tribal senselessness or insensibility, which is probably more likely).
FYI: the largest tribe in the Gulf region is not on the Arabian Peninsula. It is the Bakhtiari tribe in Iran that numbers more than a million. This is true, although Iran is not a ‘tribal’ society, except for the ruling Mullah tribe. I was not referring to them either with the Gruntgrunt thingy.
Cheers
mhg


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GCC Politics and Economics: the Visionary and the Petty and the Corrupt, the ‘Nahasa’ Mindset………….

   


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“Indications of Qatar’s influence continued to surface after the fall of the regime. In March 2011, Khairat al-Shater—then the Muslim Brotherhood’s nominee for president—visited Qatar for several days to discuss “coordination between the Brotherhood, the Freedom and Justice Party, and Qatar in the upcoming period,” according to the Egyptian Independent, implying that Doha had vested interests in the outcome of Egypt’s democratic elections. Additionally, a popular Al Jazeera television host—Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Qatari national of Egyptian origin—is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood……….. In Tunisia, too—the birthplace of the Arab Awakening—many have attributed the Islamist Ennahda party’s success to an infusion of Qatari petro-dollars. The fact that Prime Minister Rashid al-Ghannouchi’s first post-election international visit was to Qatar—and that his son-in-law, formerly a researcher for Al Jazeera in Doha, became his Foreign Minister—has further stoked suspicions about ties between the Gulf emirate and the Ennahda party. The speculation has even led to protests in Tunisia against Qatari interference in Tunisia’s affairs. By contrast, Ghannouchi is not even allowed in Saudi Arabia………..”

The Qatari rulers can finance all the Muslim Brotherhood movements they want: they have a lot of money and only a few hundred thousand people who never question them. Financially, Qatar is the super-power on the Arab side of the Gulf now.

Qatar is like Kuwait used to promise to be a few decades ago, but never delivered. Except much more so. The Kuwaiti elite (both the political elite and economic elite, both private and public sectors) were always “small” and “petty” and have always thought small and petty. They were never generous with ideas, never bold and never visionary and were stingy with development projects. The local term for this ubiquitous “smallness and pettiness” is “Nahasa“. The political classes are still short on vision and boldness: in fact it may be worse now than decades ago. To this day Kuwait City, my birthplace, is full of huge vacant tracts of undeveloped land and hardly anyone lives in the center. Unfortunate for a country with financial resources and a large educated class.

Saudi Arabia has the size and the population but Qatar has a huge money advantage over Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are hard pressed to meet the needs of their 14-15 million citizens (the rest of the 24 million are temporary expatriates). The Saudis have too many princes, thousands of them, who have first call on the country’s resources, whether oil revenues or land. There is little left to save for the post-oil era and to satisfy the people’s needs and satisfy the greed of the many princes. (Do I need to refer you to my post on the example of the fortune left by the late Prince Sultan Bin Self-Made?). Hence the Saudi hands in spending money abroad are restricted by their fear of domestic unrest. They need to spend more on the people and less on the princes, but who is brave enough to propose that to the elderly king? Who will “bell the cat”? Personne! They keep spending on the increasing number of princes and princesses and they keep spending on their Salafi outposts in the Middle East and around the world.
At some point things will boil over, the people will explode. There are already signs of rebellion, and not just in the Eastern Province (Qatif, Awamiya). It is a matter of time: the fear is receding in the Arabian Peninsula. People will feel free to speak  again, just as Arabs were for thousands of years in the Peninsula before this theocratic monarchy took over less than a century ago.

Both the Qataris and Emiratis are claimed by some Arab autocrats have one “advantage” over a place like Kuwait (it is also a disadvantage): the Saudi king and the Qatari Emir are truly absolute monarchs. They can decide whatever they please. They can vote on their own projects and approve them. They can also screw up royally and steal (which they do) without anyone questioning them. Nice racket, no?
Cheers
mhg

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Regime Change on the Persian Gulf? Repressive Yesterday, More Repressive Today ……..

   


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“In the sweltering reaches of the petroleous Persian Gulf, where Britain maintains some of the last outposts of Empire, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser has waged a long, hot campaign of intrigue and propaganda to get the “imperialists” out—and himself in. Last week the British inflicted two significant defeats on their foe. The first setback for Nasser came in Bahrein, a tiny cluster of Persian Gulf islands where Sheik Isa bin Sulman al Khalifa unconditionally reaffirmed all existing agreements under which Whitehall uses his prosperous kingdom as a military and diplomatic pied-a-terre……….. For all his benevolence, however, the plump, diminutive Sheik is an unabashed autocrat …………..Consequently, many Bahreinis listen approvingly to broadcasts from Cairo and Baghdad denouncing Sheik Isa as a feudalist and a British stooge. Their chief source of resentment is the Sheik’s 800-man British-officered police force. When oil workers went on strike last March, the Sheik’s tough cops cracked down hard, killing twelve and wounding 50, repressed Nasser-inspired student riots last month with equal severity. Opponents of Sheik Isa often end up in a mystery-shrouded prison on desolate Jidah Island……………”

That was in 1965. Yet things have not improved in Bahrain in terms of freedom and equality and justice. They have gotten worse in the past decade.


No doubt
there is one solution left untried in Bahrain. It is the same that was started in Tunisia and Libya and Egypt. The same solution that will most likely be in place in Syria sometime in the future. The same solution the American Colonists tried when all; else failed so long ago.
It seems that this corrupt regime of this sectarian tribal clan must go if there is to be a reconciliation between the people and the rulers. When a majority of the people can’t get their rights under a system, then it is time for change. When a small ruling elite insists on keeping in place a system of apartheid against the majority, then it is time for the South African solution. Time to depose the apartheid regime, just as it was time to change the other Arab regimes, the other dinosaurs.
(That may require some changes in the Arabian Peninsula itself, to liberate its peoples from their own corrupt repressive ruling tribal clan).

Cheers
mhg

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King of Hearts, King of Heartless, King of Apartheid in Bahrain………….

   


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Maryam Alkhawaja ‏@MARYAMALKHAWAJA: 
Tomorrow zainab alkhawaja will receive a verdict on the charge of ripping a picture of hamad, cud b sentenced up to 3 yrs #Bahrain

Bahrain Human Rights ‏@BahrainRights:  Activist Zainab Alkhawaja @angryarabiya Sentenced to two months in prison #Bahrain for ripping king’s photo.

Bahrain Human Rights ‏@BahrainRights: 
Tomorrow another hearing session in the appeal of imprisoned human rights defender Nabeel Rajab

Nabeel Rajab, is head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. He was sentenced to three years in prison for a tweet. Imagine: one tweet criticizing someone (I’m not sure it was the lousy king; I think it was his lousy uncle and prime minister of 42 years). The Alkhawaja family has been targeted for special treatment by the Al-Khalifa regime in its attempts to silence the people. Abdulhadi Alkhawaja was beaten, arrested, and reportedly tortured by the regime and its imported mercenaries last year. He is serving a life prison sentence passed by a military court. One of his daughters is facing sentencing tomorrow for ripping a photo of the shaikh king Saddam Hamad of Bahrain. I believe his son in law is also in prison. One of his daughters is wisely in exile campaigning.
Here are some photos of the king.

      
Dancing…….                                  Man in Red                        His Paliamentary speaker: al-Saidi

            
                                                         Sorry, Joe                      King Tight Pants?
           
Sorry, a nobody, just one of the many victims                     Educating the people

His paid fan club calls him King of Heart. Others call him King of Clubs or King of Spade. Yet others, many of his detractors, a majority of his people would call him other epithets: king of Apartheid, King of Heartless, King Saddam,Tr– d- c–?
God only knows what all his imported foreign mercenaries call him, the ones he imports from Jordan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, New York, London, and a few other places.

Cheers
mhg

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Archdukes of Austria, Washington, and ArchPrinces of the Gulf………….

   


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Did u know that they still have Archdukes in Austria? And now they have an Archduchess in DC (no, she is white as in Anglo)? Now if that don’t beat the Arch of St Louis. And I had though the last Austrian Archduke was offed by a Serb in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914.
I don’t recall personally meeting (as in shaking
hands with) an Archduke before: just a viscount or two, a few sirs (lots of these around: a dime a dozen), one nearly plebeian queen and her consort once (there could have been an Archduke lurking around), a prince and his sad doomed beautiful bride once. No archdukes that I know of so far, but unlikely to run into any in this neck of the woods.

Maybe we ought to start having Archdukes, or maybe just Arches, in our Gulf. Imagine the elegance of having to pronounce: ArchShaikh Khalifa Bin Kleptocrat of Bahrain, ArchMufti Al Shaikh of Riyadh, ArchMullah ShamsUlSomethingOrOther of Tehran, ArchEmir Shaikh Taiss Bin Haiss (or maybe Haiss Bin Taiss) of the Salafis, ArchShaikh Ras Bin Ghlais Bin Shaiboob of WTF. Has a certain ring to it, nicht war?

It would be fine so long as these Arches don’t start slapping each other on the face with limp white gloves and demand satisfaction with a duel at dawn somewhere. Using slingshots (what we call nabbata) of course.

Cheers
mhg

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