Wednesday 18th April The 2012 Bahrain Formula 1 Grand Prix continues to generate controversy. There are three basic positions on the race, to which I’ll add a fourth: The race is good for Bahrain, bringing in money and uniting the country The race legitimises a repressive regime that has lost legitimacy in the eyes of … Continue reading
Mahmood Al Yousif reports worsening civil strife in his blog: http://mahmood.tv/2012/04/11/hmmm-i-smell-even-worse-civil-strife-coming-up/ Last night baying sectarian mobs of so-called “loyalists” damaged Shia-owned cars and shops, chanting sectarian slogans while the police stand by: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBrC8K5z79w&feature=player_embedded These slogans include calling the Shia “rawafi9′” (refusers), ibna2 l-muta3a” (children of pleasure-marriage). Later, Shia-owned shops were ransacked: I see disturbing echoes of … Continue reading
An open letter to King Hamad signed by Lord Avebury, British MPs, human rights organisations, and academics with expertise in the Middle East, including myself. This will be handed in to the Bahrain embassy in London at the end of the working day on Tuesday 10th April. Anyone wishing to add a signature can do … Continue reading
“It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.” Jean Buardrillard. Jean Baudrillard in 2006, a year before his death aged 77 The “Arab Spring” that never happened? Bahrain’s “revolution of dignity”, March 2012: youths revel in the fresh air of liberation, the question of identity is … Continue reading
The following 25th January article by John Lubbock and Nabeel Rajab has be reinstated after it was taken down from The Guardian’s Comment Is Free site when The Guardian was threatened with libel by a London PR agency working for the Bahrain International Circuit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/30/bahrain-grand-prix?CMP=twt_gu In it, Lubbock and Rajab say: Last year, the head … Continue reading
My thoughts and prayers are with all those mourning a loved one lost in the Egyptian soccer tragedy. Part of the problem is the toxic legacy of dictatorship-style policing: “Some people say the police force perhaps has not been trained to deal with violence, except in the way they were trained during Mubarak, which was … Continue reading
