Category Archives: Human Right

Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Corruption, ethnic cleansing, GCC, Human Right, Saudi Arabia, UAE, US Foreign Policy

Delusional Bahrain: Despots and Miscreants and a Precocious Schmuck Minister………….

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      BFF

“MOI: Groups of miscreants were out in various areas of Bahrain today in response to calls made through social media websites. Since their movements were illegal, security forces dealt with them and some of the miscreants were arrested and legal actions taken against them.
With regard to incidents at City Center, at around 4:00pm a group of miscreants and lawbreakers broke into the shopping mall to create chaos and spread terror among the public there. As a result the security forces, including women police, had to interfere and deal with them and some of them were arrested and legal actions taken against them.
The Ministry of Interior apologises to the mall management and the public for any inconvenience caused and affirms that the situation everywhere has returned to normal……….”
Ministry of Interior of Bahrain, the body in charge of police, midnight raiders, looters, imported foreign mercenary thugs, politically nationalized foreign goons (from Pakistan, Syria, Jordan, and former Iraqi Ba’athists), torturers, and all round nice guys of the al-Khalifa team. All presided over by a precociously schmuck minister of interior. The country is now a ghettoized occupation zone and these ruling schmucks talk about “normality”.

“The people of Bahrain have won a victory for democracy by their very high participation in the ‘supplementary’ elections……” Regime Spokesman

The rulers of Bahrain are holding another phony election which most of the people of Bahrain have decided to boycott.
Nobody in the whole wide world believes what the regime says on this issue except the governments of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, a couple of other GCC potrntates and some experts in the United States State Department (okay, the latter pretend they do, like the lady in bed who only “thinks of England”).
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Gulf states, Human Right, Persian-American Gulf

Civil War in Bahrain? in everything but name………….

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      BFF

“IN THE villages inhabited by Bahrain’s Shia majority on the outskirts of the capital, Manama, protesters battle with police every day. Seven months after demonstrators called for democratic reforms by Bahrain’s Sunni rulers, prompting a harsh crackdown, there is still no sign of sectarian reconciliation. A set of by-elections on September 24th for 18 of the 40 seats in the lower house of parliament is meant to convey a sense of progress but may well do the opposite. Pro-democracy campaigners, nearly all of them Shias, have called for the villagers to unite in a mass march back to Manama to reclaim Pearl roundabout, the hub of the protests until government troops routed demonstrators there in March. Since then at least 35 people have been killed. Any march back to the capital will be blocked by a large-scale security presence. Another violent confrontation is quite likely. The elections are unlikely to improve matters. The 18 seats were abandoned in February by Shias who walked out of parliament in protest at the government’s repression. Bahrain’s main opposition party, Wefaq, is boycotting the poll…………“People are not afraid any more,” says Mr Matar, who was beaten in prison and spent 45 days in solitary confinement, sometimes hearing the screams of other inmates. “They have seen the worst that the government can do and they have kept coming back.……”….”

Also sprach The Economist. The harsh crackdown by the Bahrain regime is probably seen now by some sane members of the ruling al-Khalifa clan as a big mistake. The regime threw what it thought were its best cards on the table. It threw everything in its arsenal at the people: security forces, snipers, foreign mercenaries, Saudi and Emirati troops, killings, beatings, prison, torture, sexual assault, mass firing from jobs, expelling from schools and colleges. It has not been enough: so what else can they do, other than the logical obvious they refuse to do? As the man said: people are not afraid anymore, they have seen what the despots can dish out, and they are not impressed.
What Bahrain has experienced since last February is a low level civil war, with each side using the best weapons it perceives at its disposal. The protesters are not using lethal weapons, but they are battling the well-armed regime and its local goons and foreign mercenaries and foreign occupation forces. The regime clings to its policy of apartheid and disenfranchising most of the people. The people now insist on nothing less than full rights: political and economic. It is a low level civil war that risks spreading, a direct result of the foolish policies of the Al Khalifa kleptocracy and their closest allies, nay their masters, across the Gulf.
It is a low level civil war that has no end in sight unless one of two things happen: the people give up their rights and accept despotism and apartheid or the rulers see where all this is leading their small country and give the people back their rights.
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Corruption, ethnic cleansing, GCC, Human Right, Mercenaries

The Orwellian Glory of Bahrain? Khalifa and Winston Smith and O’Brien……………….

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      BFF    
                            
                                           Glory of the nation? 
“Even amid the crackdown, officials insist that Bahrain remains a democratic country adhering to, in the words of Abdulla al-Buainain, a judge, the “rule of law.” (E-mails to the government information office and a public relations firm hired by Bahrain went unanswered.) But the frustration of Mr. Alderazi is evident across the kingdom. The most despised government figure for Shiites, Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the king’s 75-year-old uncle and the world’s longest-serving prime minister with four decades in office, has become the center of an attempt at a personality cult; his portraits adorn intersections. “Glory of the nation,” one describes him……… Most dangerous, though, is the exacerbation of sectarian hatred in a country that has never really reconciled the narratives of the Khalifa family’s long-ago conquest. No one claims that Sunnis and Shiites ever lived in harmony here. But the country stands as a singular example of the way venerable distinctions of ethnicity, sect and history can be manipulated in the Arab world, often cynically, in the pursuit of power. Programs on state-owned television like “The Observer” and “The Last Word” baited activists as traitors and encouraged citizens to inform on one another. ………………”

This over-ripe Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa has created a bipolar society on the island of Bahrain. For many years outsiders, especially Westerners, saw only what they were ‘directed’ to see. Or they saw what they wanted to see. They saw one Bahrain: cosmopolitan, open to foreign business, pro-Western, rulers and their elite retainers speak English, yadda, yadda, yadda….
They did not see “most” of Bahrain. The Apartheid system that kept a majority of the people oppressed. They did not see the kleptocracy that stripped the land the wealth of the small country. They did not see the imported foreign mercenaries from places like Pakistan and Jordan and Syria who helped repress and torture for a fee. Many preferred not to see, especially the British expatriates many of who openly sided with the despots this year, for a price.
I recall some Europeans get nearly teary eyed talking about the last Shaikh of Bahrain (before the son promoted himself to king), how he allowed Westerners free access to the beautiful beach at one of his palaces. Only Westerners, they emphasized: no Asians, no Arabs, no Bahrainis, not even Saudis! I recall that one German, only one European some years ago, who muttered that “you should go outside Manama and see the squalid Shi’a villages”.
Now they have created an Orwellian nation of native informers, just to help the foreign mercenaries keep things under control.
Cheers
mhg


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Death Penalty, Human Right

Executions: the Islamic Kingdom of the Republic of Texas………

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“In Texas, Steven Michael Woods is slated for execution on Tuesday, despite considerable doubts about his guilt. The inmate is fighting to have his sentence commuted, but his chances are diminishing. State Governor Rick Perry is considered a champion of the death penalty. It’s a gruesome record, but Rick Perry is proud of it. “Your state has executed 234 death-row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times,” NBC’s Brian Williams told the Texas governor during this week’s presidential debate. Did he ever struggle to sleep at night, Williams continued, “with the idea that anyone of those might have been innocent”? Before Williams had finished, the auditorium erupted in cheers, even whistles, as if the spectators welcomed this killer number. ………. For one man, however, it was a bad omen: Steven Michael Woods. Woods, 31, is incarcerated in the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, which houses Texas’ death row, a four-hour drive east of the capital Austin. His execution for capital murder is set for Tuesday — one day after the next Republican debate. It would be the 19th execution this year in Texas alone……… There are indeed grave doubts about the verdict. Marcus Rhodes, Wood’s co-defendant and a former friend, has admitted to the double murder in question and already been sentenced — but to life in prison. Rhodes’ DNA was found on the weapons, but not that of Woods. Yet all courts so far have rejected Wood’s appeals………..”

I have forgotten which country has executed more people this year: the Islamic Republic of Texas or the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Islamic Absolute Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or the ‘People’s’ Republic of China. Maybe it is Texas, the state that executes the most people in North America, in the only country in the Western hemisphere that still has the death penalty. Odd thing, the rate of murders probably keeps ahead in Texas compared to other large states. Apparently they need a body after each homicide, anybody, doesn’t always have to be the guilty party. At least in Texas they don’t do it in public, unlike Saudi Arabia and Iran.
(Steven Michael Woods was a drug dealer and he was apparently no sweetheart. He was executed this evening, But the show ain’t over: three more are slated to be executed in Texas within the next two weeks).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Human Right, Libya, North Africa

OFMQ: Old Friends of Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi…………

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“Khalid Saad worked for years as a loyal cog in Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s propaganda machine, arranging transportation to ferry foreign journalists to staged rallies, ensuring that they never left their hotels without official escorts and raising his own voice to cheer the Libyan leader. The day that rebels took Tripoli, Mr. Saad immediately switched sides. Now he works for the rebels’ provisional government, coordinating transportation for its officials and insisting that his previous support for Colonel Qaddafi was just business. “My uncle and my son were soldiers for the revolution,” he said in an interview. “Everyone will be happy now. Everything is changed now. Everyone is free.” As the curtain falls on Colonel Qaddafi’s Tripoli, many of its supporting actors are rushing to pick up new roles with the rebels……….”

Old friends of Ma’ammar Qaddafi (OFMQ) are braying for his blood, as are old foes. His former best pal Silvio Berlusconi, former admirer Nicolas Sarkozy, law-bending-for-money British politicians, assorted Europeans, Hillary Clinton, etc, etc. Only some of the Latins and some Africans seem to have not jumped off his Libyan ship. Interesting how the most murderous dictators and despots are tolerated and accepted by the “international community”, meaning Western governments, while in power, but are quickly set upon by their friends when they topple. As long as they play by the rules of the “international community”, they can continue their murderous rule, provided they can keep it quiet. From Batista to Papa Doc to Noriega to Saddam Hussein to Qaddafi and the absolute monarchies: play by the rules as set by the “international community” and you can do wtf you please inside your domain, as long as you keep a lid on things.
Cheers
mhg


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Arabian Peninsula, Corruption, Finance, Gulf states, Human Right, Persian-American Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Wikileaks

Saudi Arabia: Where God is Great but Greed is at least Good………………

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“Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.….” Ivan Boesky at UC Berkeley Commencement Ceremony in 1986, months before he went to prison.

“Oil revenue is said primarily to enrich the Al Saud. The embassy explains that Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Finance distributes a portion of the country’s oil proceeds to each Saudi royal family member in the form of monthly stipends. At the time the secret cable was issued, every royal reportedly received a monthly allowance from birth, on a sliding pay scale of US$ 800 (for distant royals) to US$ 270,000 (for sons and daughters of King Abd Al-Aziz). The embassy calculated these stipends to total more than US$ 2 billion of the Saudi government’s US$ 40 billion annual budget. For this and other reasons, the embassy concludes that “getting a grip on royal family excesses is at the top” of priorities for Saudi Arabia. In addition to the state-budgeted stipend, the cable reports, a royal may obtain a bonus of as much as US$ 3 million, as reward for getting married or building a palace. The existing stipend-and-bonus system provides Saudi royals with a significant incentive to procreate, particularly since stipend distributions begin at birth. It was stated that the central life aspiration of one Saudi prince was to have more children, so as to increase his monthly allowance. According to the cable, some members of the Al Saud resort to “royal rakeoffs” in order to supplement their already-substantial income. Such schemes may include confiscating land from commoners and reselling it to the government for a substantial profit; borrowing from the banks and defaulting on these loans; and acting as “sponsors” to “sometimes hundreds” of expatriate workers who are permitted to work locally as long as they pay monthly fees to the royals (this latter arrangement reportedly earns a single royal sponsor an average of US$ 10,000 per month from 100 ex-pats). Al Saud land and asset grabs are said to have caused resentment among the populace. In one instance, Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abd Al-Aziz allegedly ordered Mecca officials to transfer to him a plot of land that had belonged to one family for centuries………” Wi…Wiki…..Wikileaks

I don’t know what all this fuss is about. We, on my Gulf, do not need Wikileaks cables to tell us all about these royal robberies, and more. People know everything that is happening: who stole which land and when and how. Legends, true legends, are handed down now, about shady deals, “midnight” deals, and expropriation of lands by potentates and their retainers. It is the same story all over my Gulf region, but perhaps to different degrees. God is Great, but to some another great deity looms, an all-consuming deity that is at least considered good if not openly greater.
Cheers
mhg


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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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“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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Arabian Peninsula, Corruption, Death Penalty, Human Right, Saudi Arabia, Slavery

Middle East Executions: Twenty Three Maids Waiting in a Row……….

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“And the storybook comes to a close.
Gone are the ribbons and bows.
Things to remember, places to go,
Pretty maids all in a row………..” The Eagles

Media report that twenty three Asian (Indonesian) women are awaiting the executioner’s sword on death row in Saudi Arabia. Several others, imported housemaids, already had their head chopped off. Remember Sakineh Ashtiani of Iran and all the fuss made by the Saudi-owned Arab “intellectuals” and Western media, especially the extremely righteous French media (and rightly so)? Everybody was indignant, so was I, and rightly so, until her gruesome death sentence was changed by the regime in Tehran.
Where are they now? Everybody is so silent about the plight of these numerous women, imported housemaids trapped into horrible situations in a grim society, waiting to have their heads chopped off in the Kingdom without Magic. Yet the kingdom cannot live without these millions of housemaids, and fierce bargaining goes on with the Asian government officials about their wages, work conditions, etc. They are even advertised in the newspapers for sale or “transfer” from one “owner” to another, just as they used to do in Old Virginia when a new shipment of slaves arrived from West Africa. Even Bernard Henri Levy, who was at the forefront of the Ashtiani campaign (and the Libyan campaign), is silent. Amnesty International comments but says they have “no presence” in Saudi Arabia. Of course not, Amnesty and human rights have no presence.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Corruption, Economics, Human Right, Libya, Saudi Arabia

Common Arab Epitaph: Brother Leader, Very Rich but Very Cheap…………

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“His name of choice was the Brother Leader, though his nearly 42 years of rule were rarely brotherly, and his leadership left a country with plentiful oil in shambles……… Given Colonel Qaddafi’s noted flamboyance, the residences of the House of Qaddafi were not quite as grand as people might have supposed. They lacked the faux grandeur of Saddam Hussein’s marbled palaces. There are no columns that bear the colonel’s initials, or fists cast to resemble his hands or river-fed moats with voracious carp. But in Baghdad and Tripoli, the physical remains of the leader’s rule still projected the distance between power and powerlessness. As rebels and residents started to pick through the detritus of the Qaddafis’ lives in recent days, there was a sense of laying claim to a country commandeered by the Arab world’s longest-ruling leader…………“For somebody who’s very rich, he was very cheap,”……..”

“For somebody who’s very rich, he was very cheap”, he said: one can say that about others: the Bin Ali, Mubarak, the al-Assad, al-Khalifa and other potentates not yet faced with the moment of truth.
Of course, many Arab “brother leaders” or “their majesties” are so rich mainly for the same reason that most of their people are poor: they need more of the resources for themselves, their extended families, and their cronies. I mean, for example if everybody in, say, Saudi Arabia was above poverty level then someone like Prince al-Waleed would be unlikely to be on the Forbes list of the richest billionaires. When there are so many thousands of princes and their supporting retainers and sycophants, well, there will be less for the rest.
(FYI: Forbes Magazine every year lists the source of the prince’s wealth as “Self-Made”. You’d think he flipped burgers are the DQ or started in the royal mail room).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Culture, Egypt, GCC, Gulf states, Human Right, Humor, Jordan, Libya, Persian-American Gulf

On Gulf Intellectuals, Tribal Liberals and Arab Uprisings, the Edifying Hashtag, Oxymoronic Humor………..

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“What is interesting is that many (Gulf) clerics and shaikhs played the sectarian game, and did not try to distinguish the political issue from the sectarian issue. I was surprised at this huge amount of hatred among some of these people, and these hatreds were reflected in their positions and their statements and their relations with ‘others’. It is sad to say that the Arab Spring has deteriorated to civil war and strife in places like Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Syria……… Unfortunately the ‘intellectual’ in the Gulf region could not break away from what has been ordained for him, just as he can’t break away from his sector or tribe or personal interest. In Saudi Arabia, I have not seen any brave position from the Islamist or ‘liberal’ intellectuals regarding the events in Bahrain, these Islamist and ‘liberal’ intellectuals were open and shameful reflections of the mouthpieces of the regimes…………..”

Professor al-Rasheed is well-acquainted with the history and ‘cultural’ life, such as it is, of Saudi Arabia (especially) and the Gulf region. She is right about most of the GCC so-called ”intellectuals”:


  • Most Gulf Islamists, especially the Salafis, essentially nurse from the Saudi teats. Most of the time I suspect they are basically a ‘fifth column’ for the Wahhabi state, wittingly or unwittingly. (I do have moments when I feel more gracious toward them).

  • Many Gulf ‘intellectuals’, but not all, be they Islamist or otherwise, are palace ‘intellectuals’, sycophants of one faction or another of the palace. Often, they are sycophants of the Saudi palace, either directly or through the tribe or through other affiliations. I once called them “tribal liberals” last spring.

  • I suspect some Gulf intellectuals think they are “liberals” if they carry a laptop around, sprinkle their speech with a few English terms (they/we especially love the term “hashtag”, it is so edifying) and believe women should ‘eventually’ have the right to drive but in due time. All in due time. Let the princes decide: they know best.

  • All Gulf ‘intellectuals’, shy away from criticizing public beheadings in the streets of Riyadh, maybe because those who are beheaded are mostly poor foreign migrant workers (men and women), but most likely because they shy from upsetting the potentates.

  • Most, but not all, Gulf ‘intellectuals’ also believe that people in places like Syria and Libya should revolt against their oppressors but not people in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Yemen. They take their cue from their regimes, or from the Saudi regime.

  • Most Gulf ‘intellectuals’ were cool and tepid toward the uprisings in Tunisia and especially in Egypt, until the palace accepted the change. Then they were suddenly all for the people’s uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, after the fact.

  • Most Gulf ‘intellectuals’ were quiet about Syria, until the “palace” and princes started opining, and they all fell in line.

  • Most Gulf ‘intellectuals’ were always for the regime and against the people in Bahrain, because the “palace” was clearly on the side of the despots: it put troops on the ground to prove it. In this case, they are unfortunately divided by sector.
  • Most ‘intellectuals’ on my Gulf fiercely support the right of people to self determination and free elections in places like Iran, Syria, Libya, Gaza (but not the West Bank), but they don’t think any other peoples in the Middle East need to vote in free elections or talk freely against their rulers.

  • There are real free-thinking ‘intellectuals’ on my Gulf: I have known some of them and I read for some of them. And no, it is not an oxymoron to say ‘Gulf intellectual’, anymore than it is to say ‘Egyptian intellectual’ or ‘Jordanian intellectual’ or ‘Iranian intellectual’ or ‘French intellectual’. It is not even nearly as oxymoronic as saying “Jordanian humor”. More on this last point in another post.

Cheers
mhg


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