Tunisian Ex-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has fled the country
Good luck to Tunisia and Tunisians over the critical coming few weeks and months. Keep your head, for goodness sake and don’t turn it into a North African Iraq. You have an unbelievable chance to make things better and inculcate popular modern democracy. Don’t fall into the theocracy trap, it won’t do you good. One Iraq and one Iran is enough for our world.
Bonne chance Tunisie.
I attended another excellent seminar yesterday organised by the Entrepreneurs Organisation’s Bahrain Chapter in which I am a current member, this time by Cambridge Emmanuel College’s Professor Jack Lang, a successful angel investor and serial entrepreneur, who talked about one of the entrepreneur’s dilemmas: how to exit a company.
I couldn’t give the presentation any justice by attempting to recall the wealth information imparted, but let me leave you with this excellent podcast of an interview by Personal Life Media. Make the time to listen to it if you’re interested in entrepreneurship, I can promise you that you won’t regret the time spent.
You might have heard that there is a trial taking place in Bahrain in which 25 Bahrainis are accused of crimes against the state, everything from sedition through to terrorism and incitement against the regime, all of which carry rather heavy sentences.
You might have also heard that a gag order has been imposed on the media, guaranteeing the absence of transparency and making for the fertile grounds of continued suppositions and incorrect allegations by the public, who have a right to know the truth of what’s happening.
The gag order notwithstanding, the press continue to report around the case, detailing at least the happenings in court rather than expound on and investigate the substance of the accusations; thus, providing a glimpse of what’s happening in the court, a-la soap opera style.
But what has happened over the last few weeks transpired to be better than expected and excellent fodder for a soap opera! The original defence team resigned in toto citing their legitimate demands for investigations of allegations of torture against the detainees by police elements since apprehension and the screening of the defendants by independent medical personnel to determine such receipt of abuse were summarily rejected by the court. The resignation put the court in a quandary, as the Bahraini constitution specifically states that a defendant has a constitutional right to accept or refuse a court appointed lawyer to try his case, defendants rejected the court appointed lawyers; hence, the court-appointed lawyers withdrew from the case. The court saw the resignation as an act of contempt and referred them to the minister of justice requesting disciplinary action taken against them.
Onwards the court proceeded and now assigned a new batch of lawyers to the accused; however, this time, rather than assigning individual lawyers representing individual defendants, the ministry of justice stipulated that a batch of lawyers could and shall represent a batch of defendants in an individual or group manner; hence, should a defendant reject a lawyer, others in the group automatically shall take over representation.
But even then, the court’s trouble did not end. In yesterday’s proceedings, five lawyers withdrew from the case citing unconstitutionality of representing defendants who reject them; another five requested an immediate audience with the justice minister to tell him face-to-face why they cannot proceed with the trial as they have been rejected by their assigned clients and all lawyers demanding the rule of the Constitutional Court as to the applicability of lawyers being forced to represented clients, while only one – Awadh Fouda – interpreted the constitutional article inapplicable as “the constitutional right to consent to the lawyers is inapplicable as the defendants have abused that right” and thus opted to proceed with both the representation and the trial.
The defendants were again unanimous in their rejection of the third wave of legal representation when directly asked by the judge, demanding the restoration of the original defence team.
The five lawyers who withdrew from the case were referred to the disciplinary committee for contempt of court, the defendants were carted off to their prison cells and the trial was once again delayed for a week awaiting the assignment of even more lawyers to take the place of those who withdrew.
At this rate, I think the government should seriously consider the immediate importation of more lawyers from other sympathetic Arab countries, naturalise them and get them to stand in the carousel to fill in the void created by withdrawing lawyers.
I’m not a lawyer and never want to be one, but my simple intellect tells me that (a) this trial has all the hallmarks of being political, (b) the government has lost this one and (c) there is a serious series of flaws surrounding it and therefore should be immediately declared a mistrial and let the defendants go free.
Unless of course, the sham is required to continue for no good reason.
A terror trial against 25 men accused of plotting attacks against Bahrain was adjourned yesterday for another week after five members of the second defence team appointed recently withdrew from the case.
The lawyers stated that the suspects refused to be represented by them. “According to the Constitutional Law, an accused has the right to refuse or accept his lawyer and we have found out that our clients do not want us to defend them,” one of the lawyers stated.
The five lawyers are Ali Al Oraibi, Shahnaz Ali, Taymoor Karimi, Nabeela Al Majid and Loay Qarooni.Justifying their decision, they said that they cannot go against the Constitutional Law as its articles take precedence over legal articles.
Get this: The GDN publisher Anwar Abdulrahman objects to Jackson Diehl article in the Washington Post published on 3 Jan 2011. Rich? Of course!
I like how he almost always starts by a historical reference to probably demonstrate his intellectual superiority. This time, he invokes the ghost of Lord Northcliffe‘s rather insipid quote of “the power of the press is very great” – he might as well have invoked Fred Flintstone’s “yabba dabba doo” for all the difference it would make to his “column”. The latter quote might have even been more appropriate as it would be uttered just before indulging in his favour pastime of resolute brown-nosing.
Typical of the man, he leaves the essence of Deihl’s piece an engages in a hatchet job against the man himself:
It is important here to explain to readers a little about this man.
Jackson Diehl is a recognised and vehement Zionist supporter who strongly opposes President Obama’s rejection of Israeli settlements expansion.
In fact, The Zionist Organisation of America recently praised his “powerful opinion pieces”.
His track record on Iraq is equally questionable, for Diehl’s columns as the Post’s foreign affairs ‘guru’ were wrong on just about every key issue.
He didn’t seem to consider that serious problems might arise in the aftermath of invasion. When they did, he not once acknowledged that his own analysis had been totally flawed, but instead blamed poor execution by the administration for everything he failed to foresee.
Having explained something of this journalist’s background, based on solid information obtained from the most reliable sources, I ask the Post’s key executives how they have allowed their respectable newspaper to sink into such a quagmire?
and then he doesn’t stop there, he runs to the principal to tell and to:
In fact, I also implore the American Embassy to protect the reputation of its Press by vigorously pursuing this matter with Washington Post top brass, who should root out such lying and irresponsible journalists.
Maybe the outgoing US Ambassador or his Press Attaché would come over and comment on this request. Not speaking in their name for a second, I would rather think that it’s not in their mandate to monitor nor to pursue matters such as these with a paper’s top brass. Regardless of how vigorous their pursuit might be, I would hazard an educated guess that they would be chased and hounded out of any press offices in the States if they even dared suggest such a thing. They probably would rather be nailed to a cross in the middle of Times Square rather than suffer such a fate. But our interesting learned gentleman forgets that the press in the States is generally not available for sale and corrupt practices like his very own publications are.
He continues with this choice insult:
It is universally known that an average American’s knowledge of the outside world is limited – and that includes its intelligentsia – but for one of the country’s top newspapers to display such ignorance of global events is unacceptable.
I feel very sad at the base standards of such American reporting, which is even reflected to some extent in Newsweek magazine, where a cartoon was published depicting the general political awareness of Americans.
I should think that rather than the US Embassy and the Press answering to his first fervent request to curtail the press, they would take more umbrage with the above ridiculous statements. What they will do about it remains to be seen.
Remember what I said before about the value of good press in a country? Well, Mr. Abdulrahman’s article copiously demonstrates what’s wrong with our press and how we will never progress sufficiently with crap like this being spewed about in it. Just keep in mind as you read his comment, please, what journalistic ethics he employed to come up with that tripe.
It’s 11.1.11! I wish you the best of the best of the best on this auspicious day my friends. Yes, we Bahrainis ARE numbers mad. Or just mad. Whichever makes you happy.
In that stream, here’s some hilarity for you, courtesy of the doyen of journalism and the protector of the National Honour™
PARENTS in Bahrain could soon be banned from giving their newborns names that are deemed unacceptable by the government.
The aim is to prevent children being ridiculed for having an “improper” name, which MPs believe could cause psychological strain.
Members of the Shura Council voted in favour of the proposal yesterday as they debated a draft law to protect the rights of children.
The vote means that all newborns’ names will have to be registered with the government, which would issue a birth certificate stating that the child’s name had been accepted.
Shura Councillors approved the relevant article in the child protection law, but did not discuss punishments for parents who choose “improper” names – or whether children will be able to take against their parents if they are unhappy with their name.
The article states that parents will not be able to select names that contradict religions or are likely to cause psychological problems for children.
ALL TOGETHER NOW… READY?
No matter, let’s play a game – as this is 11.1.11 – and name a few names that you have come across in Bahrain that you think the government will think inappropriate.
While we’re at it, let’s consider the following respected Bahraini citizens and vote on the possibility of their names being sanctioned had they been born in this great country:
Khathlan Dabh Jalood Rowaili - خثلان ذبح جلود رويلي
and
Abed Ajham Anfoos Anfoos - عبد اجهم عنفوص عنفوص
For the record, my serious position on this is that this is a germane individual freedom issue and the government has no right to interfere in it. I hardly think that any person would name their child improperly, but if they do, then allowing the child to change that name to anything else s/he wishes should be made significantly easier. I know at least one person who change his name from “Sameer”, which he found frivolous and “light” to “Ahmed”. I rather like Sameer actually, much more than the plain Ahmed. But that’s me. I’m sure you came across many who changed their names for one reason or another too. Having the government poke their nose into this as well, is, well, improper.