Our Violence Good, Their Violence Bad.

       Bahrain has been in open insurrection since 2011, with protests and molotov attacks on cops a daily occurrence. Many have been killed and hundreds of others have been injured, and thousands of people die in prison in the state where they are tortured, all supported and supplied by Western countries, while the state security forces are being trained by British cops, and backed by Saudi Arabian military.
       However, we don’t hear much about the bloody rebellion within the lands of our Saudi friends. Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media doesn’t dwell too much on the savagery of the British manufactured royalty, that governs the rich oil fields of what has become known as Saudi Arabia. After all they are very good customers of our arms industry, and they allow our financial Mafia access to that lucrative oil. So what is there not to love about this public beheading, public flogging, religious extremist regime. Of course what the Saudis are doing to the Shia in their oil rich kingdom, is what states do to any group they see as a threat to the control of their privileges, wealth and power, crush them, or do their damnedest to achieve that end.

 City of Awamiya, in Eastern Saudi Arabia.

       What is going on in Awamiya in eastern Saudi Arabia is as brutal as what is going on in Syria, perhaps on a smaller area, but the savagery is just as fierce. The might of the Western armed Saudi regime is being unleashed on its own citizens, who respond with resilience and small arms fire. However, our babbling brook of bullshit will gloss over this, but give brutal details of the violence where they portray us as the good guys, putting our lives on the line to help the peoples of that area build “democracy”, a “democracy” where we keep control of the oil rich resources, allowing our financial Mafia to milk the region, to fatten Western parasites and their puppets. 

       Our babbling brook of bullshit, are experts at highlighting the violence of those our masters call the "bad guys", while turning a blind eye to the savagery and brutality of those they deem as our "allies". It is all part of their sworn duty of spewing out the usual brainwashing propaganda, in favour of this insanity we call capitalism.  

        Since May, 2017 an ongoing insurgency has been raging in the Shia heartland town of Awamiya in eastern Saudi Arabia and it’s only thanks to the BBC being allowed to enter the area and film the destruction that the world can see how the House of Saud’s war against the Shia population of Yemen has now expanded to include the Shia population of eastern Saudi Arabia.
       The BBC World report shown on Wednesday, August 16, seemed to have come from Syria, with al-Zara, the ancient Shia capital of the Persian province of Bahrain and the rest of the town of Awamiya showing a level of devastation resembling that in Syria or to the Kurdish cities destroyed recently by Erdogan Ottoman’s Janissarris.
       Block by block destruction of the Old City with no visible signs of the Shia people who once lived here for millenia with almost 500 buildings destroyed and over 20,000 driven from their homes by Saudi airstrikes, artillery and mortar fire. 

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Our Friend Bahrain.

      Our friendly nation Bahrain, of course the fact that it is home to a vast US naval base might have something to do with that.

Post by Occupy Bahrain.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Profit Before People.

       For more than two years the people of Bahrain have been taking to the streets and dying in their attempt to end a brutal dictatorship. Meanwhile the West spouts about supporting the "Arab Spring" while selling arms to that brutal dictatorship. While the people die on the streets of Bahrain, a British arms sales team from United Kingdom Trade and Investment Defence and Security Organisation, (UKTIDSO) has been promoting weapons sales to that brutal Baharian dictatorship.  Between 2008 and 2012 the UK has sold almost £13 million worth of weapons to Bahrain and despite the country's brutal record suppressing protest, has sold them £4 million worth of small arms.

      According to ekklesia On 25 April, Prince and Royal Guard Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, visited Counter Terror Expo 2013 in London. In an official statement he stressed the importance of “new technologies to contain the detrimental repercussions of terrorism.”

     In 2012 a human rights group alleged that the prince was "personally engaged" in beating, flogging and kicking pro-democracy protestors in April 2011. Documentation describes how Sheikh Nasser, who is the president of the Bahrain Olympic Committee, launched "a punitive campaign to repress Bahraini athletes who had demonstrated their support for the peaceful pro-democracy movement." The prince denied the allegations. The UN Rapporteur on Torture has had a planned visit to Bahrain indefinitely postponed by the Bahrain government.

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OUR WEAPON - GLOBAL SOLIDARITY.

      Across the globe state's do their damnedest to repress any attempt by the people to organise to protect themselves against the onslaught of corporate greed. The state's function is to act as population controller to allow the corporate greed machine to plunder and pillage the earth in the name of profit. Corporatism is global, we need our solidarity to be global.

This from Labourstart:

Last week, a court in Bahrain upheld the convictions of trade union leaders, sentencing Mahdi Abu Dheeb and Jalila al-Salman to five years and six months respectively.

 

Mahdi and Jalila, president and vice president of the Bahraini Teachers’ Association were arrested in 2011 after supporting calls for reform in Bahrain. Whilst in detention they were subjected to torture and forced to sign “confessions”.

 

In September 2011, a military court convicted them of attempting to overthrow the ruling system by force and inciting hatred of the regime. The report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry last year found that the authorities had grossly exaggerated, if not manufactured, many claims brought against thousands of ordinary people who had been caught up in the February 2011 protests. Mahdi and Jalila’s only “crime” was to have the temerity to promote respect for the values of solidarity, equality and democracy.

 

The Education International has issued a call for a large online campaign demanding the release of both Mahdi and Jalila.

Please take a moment to send off your message here.

 

And then please spread the word to your fellow trade union members.

 

In additon, please take a moment to learn more about the case of Kenyan trade union leader Francis Atwoli who was recently fined about £3,000 because he refused to call off a strike (two years earlier!) defending jobs in the Kenyan tea industry from mechanisation. Trade unions outside Kenya are trying to help raise the money to cover this fine and his legal costs.  Learn more here.

 

Thanks -- and please forward on this email!

 

Eric Lee

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TORTURERS IN TOWN.

 

              Athletes a part, we all know that the Olympics will be the gathering of all the pompous, arrogant, parasites, such as heads of state, dictators, monarchs, princes, etc. from all shades of the authoritarian spectrum, some worse than others. Though on the whole, the entire ratbag should be classed the same, but it does no harm to single out one who might stink a bit more than the others.

This appeal from AVAAZ

Dear friends across the UK and the Middle East,

         The British government is about to reward a torturer with a luxury hotel and chauffeur-driven BMW at the London Olympics -- unless we demand they stop this outrage.
        Prince Nasser bin Hamad Al-Khalifa is a chief architect of Bahrain’s brutal suppression of the Arab Spring, accused of personally torturing protesters, and persecuting athletes who have stood up against his father’s dictatorship. Gifted the presidency of the Bahrain Olympic Committee, Nasser now stands to receive VIP treatment at the London games. British Foreign Secretary William Hague has said that Nasser will be “closely assessed”, but hasn’t yet committed to keep out this human rights abuser. If enough of us raise our voices, we can ensure Nasser is kept away from the London games.
         Avaaz members in the UK and Bahrain have come together to start a campaign to force Secretary Hague to keep this torturer away from the Olympics, but they need our support. Sign the petition now -- when we reach 30,000 signatures, we’ll work with Bahraini activists to deliver the message to Secretary Hague and PM David Cameron in London:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_torturers_at_the_olympics/?vl

          Nasser is the son of Bahrain’s ruling King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa, one of the Arab World’s most brutal dictators. Intimately involved in the crackdown on the Arab Spring pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain, Nasser has used his platform as head of the country’s Olympic Committee to ensure that athletes in particular have been punished if they dissent.
        He installed himself as head of a committee that targeted 150 athletes and sports officials for their democratic views, including a disabled athlete, personally ensuring that two of Bahrain's national football team star players were also arrested and imprisoned. When Mohammed, capped 52 times for Bahrain, was sentenced to 2 years in prison, Nasser tweeted, “If it was up to me, I’d give them all life.” Several of the protesters have also claimed that they were personally tortured by Nasser after their arrests for peaceful demonstrations.
        Foreign Secretary Hague and PM Cameron have the power to block Nasser’s entry into the UK, but right now, they stand set to reward him with publicly-funded VIP treatment for the duration of the London games. Let’s stand with Bahraini athletes and protesters to demand that Hague and Cameron prevent Nasser’s attendance at the games. Sign the petition:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_torturers_at_the_olympics/?vl

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STATE REPRESSION.

          Not all Arab Springs lead to sunshine, while the media mainly focuses on Egypt, we should not forget that all across the Arab world there has been people rising up against authority and in most cases this is being met with brutal repression. Messages of solidarity can let those being violently intimidated know that we in other countries are aware of their struggles and will raise our vioces in their support. They are not alone, an injury to one is an injury to all.

  

From LabourStart.

Last spring, while Tunisians and Egyptians celebrated the fall of authoritarian regimes, the people of Bahrain also staged a series of peaceful protests.

They were met by fierce repression. Leaders of the teachers' union were arrested and sentenced to long jail terms.

This weekend, their appeal comes before the courts. The Education International, representing some thirty million unionized teachers around the world, has called for a major online campaign to press the Bahraini government to drop the charges.

You can learn more and send off your message here.
Thanks very much - and please spread the word.

Eric Lee

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LISTEN TO WHAT I SAY - DON'T LOOK AT WHAT I DO!!!

        As usual the American government is speaking in its customary duplicitous manner. Its mouthpiece Obama, spouts crap regarding the various and many dictators in the Middle East condemning their repression of peaceful protests, calling for restraint, while selling them the arms and equipment to carry out that repression. At this moment in time the state of Bahrain, with the aid of Saudi troops, is trying to crush any protesters that have the courage to criticise the corrupt and brutal regime. So what does our freedom, peace loving Obama administration do? Well naturally, it does what it always does, it wags its finger with a tut-tut-tut and the proceeds to sell them the necessary equipment to crush the protester. While protesters die on the streets of Bahrain, the US Department of Defence is now preparing to sell $53 million worth of armoured Humvees and missiles to the brutal dictatorship of Bahrain. Well in capitalism, business is business and people are dispensable.

        We know we can't take the words that come from the mouths of those nasty dictators in those strange foreign lands that the West is always trying to bomb into democracy, but is there any statement that we can take at face value when it drips out the mouth of any one of those Western corporate stooges that we call the political class?

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WHAT IS NATO DOING IN LYBIA?

       As the Western take over of Lybia continues with more than 6,000 NATO attacks on Tripoli so far, and the Western imperialists keep mouthing noises about doing it to protect civilians, we have to ask questions. Why not Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia etc. where civilians are being killed on a daily basis? Why did the West support this particular uprising? The information coming out of Libya doesn't show them as a democratic group. There are reports of them moving into towns and villages and  "cleansing" them of "black" Libyans. These are Libyans who found themselves there because of Libya's previous connection with the slave trade. There have also been reports of looting as they enter towns and villages. Hardly the actions of a movement driven by the desire for true democracy.

The following extract is taken from The Commune and the full article can be read HERE.

       Joe Thorne looks at the evidence, and draws some conclusions.

Libyan Proverb "The calamity of a people is beneficial to others"

             The NATO powers are not intervening in Syria or Bahrain, where pro-democracy movements are also subject to brutal suppression. They did not intervene in Gaza during Cast Lead, or in Tamil Eelam during the offensive which wiped out thousands of Tamils. While millions of dollars are spent on cruise missiles and aerial bombing, UNICEF, the same powers in their guise as protectors of children, say they are worried that because of insufficient resources to deal with famine “65,000 children in Kenya alone are at acute risk of dying.” Indeed, “Britain trained and equipped some of the Libyan special forces who inflicted such horrors on cities like Misrata. Western states continue to train Saudi forces, and this may well have much the same effect.”

We don’t need to labour the point: the NATO powers are not ‘humanitarians’, their motives are not ‘humanitarian’, and what they do has nothing to do with the defence of human life. Could it be the case that their malign motives are a given, but the objective outcome of their policy may nonetheless be welcome? It was not the case in Kosovo or Iraq. The point of reminding ourselves of NATO’s hypocrisy is not just that they are hypocrites: it is to understand how the specific, very much non-humanitarian, objectives of the NATO powers will play out in their actual policy in the coming weeks, months, and years.

ann arky's home.

SYRIA - TAKING SIDES vs IMPERIALIST INTERVENTION.

         An extract from an interesting article from The International Centre, it is well worth reading the whole article as it does throw some light on the very complex situation in the Middle East and the even more complex and seemingly contradictory attitude of the West.

         U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ declared on March 25, 2011 – that there are 3 repressive regimes in the Middle East that must be condemned – Syria, Libya and Iran. Why is the U.S. targeting these particular countries? The progressive political movement must avoid being just an echo and a justification of Pentagon war policy, especially whenever any developing country is in the cross hairs of a U.S. attack.

        Consider: isn't Israel a criminally repressive regime against the Palestinian population? Aren't Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan repressive regimes, military dictatorships and/or corrupt monarchies? All of these brutally repressive regimes have killed of thousands of their own population and could not survive one day with out decades of U.S. military, economic, diplomatic and political support. Is the U.S., with the largest prison population in the world and more weapons than the rest of the world put together, a repressive regime? It is the source of repression, destabilization, dictatorships and wars.

 

         It is within this context that progressives must view the demonstrations that have been taking place for two months against the Bashir Assad government in Syria. The regime has both acknowledged that reforms are essential and responded with force. The actual character and the social forces involved in these demonstrations remains unclear, as does the political direction of the Syrian opposition.

          The events in Syria are connected to the social explosion shaking the Arab world. Washington and all the old regimes tied to it in the region are trying desperately to manage and contain this still unfolding mass upheaval into channels that do not threaten their domination of the region.

ann arky's home.

IT'S ALL FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!!!!

STOP THE BOMBING OF LIBYA NOW: PROTEST 19 APRIL

        Britain France and the US have now come clean. The article signed by Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama, and published today in Washington, Paris and London, makes clear the war on Libya is not about protecting civilians but about regime change. Having ignored peace moves from the African Union, NATO is now set on escalating the bombing.

The humanitarian spin they are putting on the operation is exposed by the fact that the Western governments continue to support brutal regimes in Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where severe repression against democracy activists continues virtually uncriticised.

        Meanwhile as predicted the bombing is claiming many civilian casualties and helping to deepen the division in the country. In response to the continued bombing and this open and illegal statement of intent, Stop the War has called a protest at Downing Street next Tuesday 19 April at 5pm.

IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD.

Please attend if you can and spread the word as widely as possible. http://stopwar.org.uk/



PROTEST: STOP THE BOMBING OF LIBYA NOW
TUESDAY 19 APRIL, 5PM
DOWNING STREET, LONDON

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THE HAND OF HYPOCRISY.

     

      As Western Cruise missiles blast holes in Libya's infrastructure, killing Libyans to save Libyans, and possibly laying the ground work for a civil war, nobody is saying where they go from here. How long will the no-fly zone last, don't know. What do we do if the Libyans killing Libyans drags on in a long stalemate, do we send in the Western cavalry to take sides and give one side a wee push, more or less guaranteeing a prolonged civil war and possible occupation. Just to keep the peace mind you. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the moral policemen are up to the necks in shit. The idea that this will be a nice clean surgical operation with all of Libya being ever thankful to the West is an illusion. We have been “policing” Iraq since 1991 and Afghanistan since 2001. When does our involvement in Libya end and at what cost? Not counting the Libyan deaths and injured, there is already one American plane down with one pilot missing, and we have just started.

        Setting aside the human horror of what is happening in Libya and casting a glance at the financial side, there must be questions. Each time a Tornado jet runs a sortie it takes approximately £30,000 of fuel. How many have we run so far? If a Tornado is brought down there is the £50 million cost of a replacement. Each cruise missile that is fired cost £500,000. There have been more than 110 cruise missiles fired so far. A quick calculation comes up with £55 million already up in smoke and misery from cruise missiles alone, with the arms industry rubbing its hands at the thought of all those being replaced. I don't know what proportion of those cruise missiles were fire by the UK but I reckon that we would fire our fair share. Then of course we have our submarines out there in the Med. and I have no doubt our boys wanted a shot at firing their gear off, I wonder what it cost to send a sub to the Med. and then fire off a few £500,000 missiles? While this little pygmy war is being played out in Libya, let's not forget our long running and on going £4 billion a year affair in Afghanistan.

       I know you can't put a price on human life but at a time when we in the UK are being faced with draconian cuts to every fibre of the social structure of our society, wage cuts and mass unemployment, is this the right policy. Can we in the UK really afford to strut around the world bombing democracy into other countries? When we look at the figures of death and misery resulting from our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan can Libya be justified?

       Meanwhile in nearby Yemen and Bahrain protesters are being brutally crushed but no call for a no-fly zone. Well Bahrain is really a US naval base, which is very handy to have so near all that oil, and Bahrain is also on best buddy terms with that other autocratic despot regime, Saudi Arabia. So we don't want to upset that little power structure do we? Then of course no call for a no-fly zone over Israel while it carried out its policy of genocide in Gaza 2008/09

 

      It's all hypocrisy and is really about oil, resources and power, the Western powers have proved often enough that when it comes to the people of the Middle East and Africa, they don't give a shit.

ann arky's home.

PLAYING FAVOURITES!!!

    The absolute monarch of Bahrain, King Hamad, violently crushes peaceful protesters, in the process dozens are killed and he claims that a foreign plot has been crushed. Across the way, Qaddafi claims that the protesters are a foreign plot and starts to crush them violently. In the first case the West nods approvingly, and in the second, it starts to bomb the shit out of the country. Could it be that the Western imperialist powers are playing favourites? To the Western powers are the protesters in Libya worth more than the protesters in Bahrain? We can stand by and watch one group being brutally crushed but must run in and save the second group. Though the saving may leave their country torn asunder and could lead to civil war for some years to come. Of course that would be fine by the West, it could set up a puppet government and take control of the oil, just like Iraq. Am I being a little too cynical?

ann arky's home.

SO THE ARAB LEAGUE VOTED FOR INTERVENTION???

       Smoke and mirrors sums up the West response to the Libyan situation. Once again the wonderful ethical West goes marching into another Arab country. More blood on the sand, more preaching about saving the Libyan people, while supporting other vicious dictators across the world. The Libyan regime has been repressing the people of that country for years but we could do business with the dictator, just as we do business with the other dictators in the region, from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia and anywhere else we can make a buck. It is working class blood that will be shed on both sides, but the gains will be to the big corporate bodies in oil, construction and armaments.

ARAB LEAGUE "VOTE" FRAUD

        Not only a demonization campaign against the Libyan leader, but every form of fraud and propaganda is being used to push for this intervention, including a supposed "vote" by the Arab League supporting the latest U.N. resolution. Left unsaid is the fact that only 11 of the 22 members of the League even attended the meeting, which was held behind closed doors. Two of these 11 attending members, Syria and Algeria, made clear that they were completely opposed to military intervention in Libya.

          Meanwhile the corporate media has ignored a resolution by the African Union, representing 53 countries, which adamantly rejected a no-fly zone or other intervention.

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