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Civil War is in the offing

If you’re not afraid of what and where Bahrain is going, then this clip should give you a good indication. In it, a bunch of ignoramuses are taking the mic in front of a government building in Muharraq inciting not only hatred, but openly calling for the killing of the Shia in Bahrain, and threatening that Muharraq will be the Shia graveyard. Muharraq, that lovely island we’ve always associated as being the model of tolerance, understanding and multi-cultural living seems to be now degenerating at the hands of murderers, torturers and thugs.

All this in front of a government building.

In addition to that, the nefarious convicted torturer Adel Flaifel is calling for the formation of armed gangs with the help of the Muharraq Municipal Council and the Ministry of Interior to “deal” with the Shia – whom he calls traitors – and protect Muharraq from their advance!

I don’t care for these people nor their message of intolerance. What I care about is that by virtue of them being in front of a government building, using the building’s PA system it seems, preaching hatred to the crowd and not a single person is stopping them and to date, I haven’t heart of any official condemnation of that gathering and not a single legal channel has been moved to curtail them when they are clearly breaking the law. If my memory serves, a police station is directly opposite of that location too, so why the police didn’t intervene is mind boggling too. Unless of course the police there don’t understand Arabic and the gathering was deemed authorised and legal?

Enjoy the clip, and pack your bags while you’re at it. Bahrain – with these morons openly operating in it with the full aid and knowledge of the government – is not a place that I want to spend my future in.

Disgusting.

Opposition’s Conditions for National Dialogue

Here’s a list I received detailing the opposition’s requirements to enter the national dialogue called for by the Crown Prince. I cannot vouch for them as I cannot get independent confirmation, but they look genuine and represent them here for their informational value, and hope that we can start this dialogue here too:

أهداف ثورة الغضب لشعب البحرين
التأكيد على تحقيق المطالب الشعبية:

١. إقالة الحكومة وتشكيل حكومة منتخبة من الشعب

٢. إلغاء دستور ٢٠٠٢ وكل القوانين الصادرة بمراسيم

٣. تشكيل هيئة وطنية منتخبة من عشرة أفراد ينتخبهم الشعب لوضع دستور جديد على أن تلغى فيه جميع صلاحيات الملك ليكون رمزاً للبلاد فقط وتكون السلطة التشريعية والرقابية كاملة في يد المجلس المنتخب (البرلمان).

٤. تغيير قانون الانتخابات وينتخب الشعب جميع أعضاء البرلمان على ان يمثل التشكيل الوزاري ٢٥٪ من أعضاء البرلمان

٥. إلغاء جميع الهيئات والمجالس ومنع العمل بها وتكون جميع الأجهزة التنفيذية خاضعة للحكومة المنتخبة

٦. إصلاحات شاملة للجهاز القضائي وإعادة تشكيل المجاس الأعلى للقضاء من قضاة ومحامون ينتخبهم الشعب

٧. إلغاء صلاحيات جميع المجنسين من الدخول في العملية الانتخابية او الترشح للانتخابات حتى إيجاد قانون منظم التجنيس والجنسية البحرينية

٨. يمنع دخول الجيش في العملية الانتخابية

٩. محاسبة جميع الفاسدين امام محاكمة علنية ومحاكمة الطائفيين وإعادة فتح ملف البندر ومنع أية صلاحيات للقضاء او النيابة العامة لمنع النشر في أية قضية تختص بالرأي العام

١٠. إعادة الأراضي المنهوبة والسواحل وتأميم مشاريع المدن مثل جزر أمواج والزلمة والرفاع فيوز لتكون ضمن صلاحيات وزارة الإسكان وتوزيع الثروات توزيعاً عادلاً على الشعب

١١. إحلال البحرينيين في الوظائف التي يعمل بها الأجانب وخصوصاً في وزارتي الداخلية والدفاع بدون تمييز طائفي

١٢. إقالة جميع رؤساء الهيئات والمؤسسات والدواوين الحكومية أثناء إقالة الحكومة

١٣. محاسبة جميع المفسدين قبل ٢٠٠٢

١٤. تعويض عوائل الشهداء تعويضاً عادلاً وجميع المتضررين خلال العشرين عاماً الماضية

من أجل الدخول في الحوار يجب تنفيذ ما لا يقل عن ٤ مطالب من المطالب الشعبية المذكورة

Objectives of the Revolution of Anger of the people of Bahrain

Emphasis on the achievement of popular demands:

1. Dismissal of the government and the formation of a government elected by the people

2. Cancellation of the 2002 Constitution and all laws passed by decree

3. The formation of a national body of ten elected members by the people to formulate a new constitution that abolishes all the king’s powers and that he be a symbol of the country and that legislative and regulatory powers are fully in the hands of an elected council (parliament).

4. Amend the electoral law so that the people elect all members of Parliament in which the cabinet ministers will be selected from 25% of the members of parliament

5. Cancellation of all boards and councils immediately and ensure that all executive agencies are subject to the elected govenrment

6. Comprehensive reforms of the judiciary and the restructuring of the Supreme Judicial Council which shall be constituted of judges and lawyers elected by the people

7. Abolition of the powers of all naturalized citizens to prevent them from participation in the electoral process or to stand for election until a law regulating naturalization and the Bahraini nationality is promulgated

8. Prevent the army from participating in the electoral process

9. Ensure that all corrupt persons stand public trials, as should those practicing sectarianism and re-open the Bandergate file and prevent any judicial and public prosecution powers of issuing any gag orders relating to any case concerned with public opinion

10. The return of all looted lands and coasts and the nationalization of real estate projects such as Amwaj Islands and Alzalamah and Riffa Views to be within the purview of the Ministry of Housing to equitably distribute the wealth to the citizens

11. Instating Bahraini citizens in jobs which are currently occupied by foreigners, especially those in the ministries of interior and defense without any sectarian discrimination

12. Dismissal of all heads of agencies, boards and institutions at the same time as dissolving the cabinet

13. Bring to account all those who practiced corrupt practices before 2002

14. Fairly compensate the families of martyrs and all those affected during the past twenty years

To engage in national dialogue, a minimum of four of these popular demands must implemented.

Do you think these demands reasonable? Especially the precondition to enter the national dialogue only when a minimum of four demands are met?

“It’s a snafu, honest!”

BAHRAINI authorities yesterday claimed to have blocked a number of websites and blogs by mistake.

The Information Affairs Authority (IAA) claimed a technical error resulted in blocking of several sites, but said in a statement it was fixing the problem.

[...]

She said her site www.sillybahrainigirl.blogspot.com was blocked on Tuesday after being incorrectly categorised as pornographic, but she was told during a meeting at the IAA yesterday that it would soon be accessible.

GDN

Oh yes, we believe that. What’s worse I wonder, their ignorance of how the Internet filters work after spending tens if not hundreds of thousands of Dinars on them, leaving these systems to be configured and run remotely by a foreign power, or this blatant convoluted lie they’ve thrown into the press this morning quoted within the same article above that:

“The increasing number of blogs and websites indicates freedom of expression in the country,” it said.

Huh? There are almost no bloggers left! They’ve either migrated to Facebook or Twitter or evaluated the situation far too tenuous, fickle and dangerous to continue to expose their personal thoughts especially after the apprehension and alleged torture of our dear friend Ali Abdulemam?

If they did really respect freedom of expression, Ali Abdulemam would have never been apprehended, and the thousands of sites blocked at their whimsical behest would have been unblocked. So spare us the violins, we’ve heard this broken record over and over again.

But then wait… while the Information Authority (neé Ministry of Disinformation) is “doing us a favour” and unblocking Amira’s blog, their next door neighbour (by coincidence of course!) the information intelligence agency, which is imaginatively named the Central Informatics Organisation / CIO – has come out in a press conference reported in the very same paper today assuring us that it spending BD800,000 in creating a “single login architecture” for every citizen wishing to access the various government websites and services, will be presumably secure enough too, and hopefully not require too much remote tweaking by the Singaporean vendors.

BD800,000 – that’s 2.1 million greenbacks to the uninitiated – will solve a problem which has never existed! Talk about fixing something that ain’t broke.

I guess as the new new National Authentication Framework – aka, NAF (seriously? did they even look up this unfortunate acronym up?)’s going to:

“The whole purpose of this project is to unify e-services by providing a single authentication profile for users,” Cabinet Affairs Minister Shaikh Ahmed bin Ateyatala Al Khalifa told a Press conference at the Mšvenpick Hotel yesterday.

I thought we had the much vaulted CPR number for that, didn’t we? Or is that old hat now and requires some re-engineering, maybe put in yet another uber-spy-chip to make us feel even more secure? What’s wrong with us using our CPR numbers to access those so called services? Didn’t they spend a humengous amount with yet another foreign firm to bring out these new chipped CPR cards which were supposedly going to be the be-all and end-all for personal transactional processing, even – listen to this – using the card to log in to services using the very same chip introduced?

Whatever.

We’ll probably see these schemes mentioned in next year’s Audit Report… along with yet another brand new unneeded scheme dreamt up by the CIO (or a good salesman maybe) to the tune of hundreds of thousands of Dinars.

“Cleaner than a white dress”

Is a bastardisation of the translation of an Arabic idiom which is better transcribed in English as “Cleaner than a white thobe” at least – thobe being the Arabian traditional male garment – which might have taken away the derogatory insinuation given by the use of the word “dress”. This Arabic proverb is akin to the English idiom “pure as the driven snow”, but for reasons not apparent to me, the GDN decided in its own lack of wisdom to translate it as such in relation to the Bahraini minister bin Rajab’s declaration of innocence. My suspicion is that they are taking sides, we do not see the same skew in reporting when they talk about the other minister under investigation by parliament.

Not that it would make any difference whatsoever of course; parliament itself is skewed in its current make up, which is sectarian to the core. Am I at all surprised then that Attiyatallah himself was declared innocent of misleading the country by a committee whose members already amply declared their position, even before he was greeted and led to his plush seat in the investigation committee by beaming members of the investigation panel? Of course not. This is a foregone conclusion.

As is the matter of convicting bin Rajab for his financial and administrative irregularities. In that committee, Al-Wefaq’s has the numbers.

The downside for the future of this country is once again the affirmation of the cloud of sectarianism; one in which a person votes for his tribe and sect regardless of the guilt and culpability of the person or issue in question.

Shamlawi contesting electoral districts

Lawyer Abdulla Al-Shamlawi suing the government for the iniquitous electoral boundariesLawyer Abdulla Al-Shamlawi suing the government for the iniquitous electoral boundariesOne of the main grievances people of Bahrain have is the iniquitous distribution of the electoral districts. We find that in the 2006 elections for instance, the Northern Governate contains a total of 91,874 voters electing nine members of parliament; while in the Southern Governate, the voters there number only 16,571 but they get to elect six members of parliament. This means that while members of parliament in the Northern Governate average one MP for every 10,802 votes, we find that in the Southern Governate the average is one MP for every 2,761 votes!

This means that one vote in the Southern Governate equals two and a half of those in the Northern Governate. Iniquitous by any standard, but when you consider that this results in direct representation in an elected parliament, one cannot help but think of clear discrimination on the part of the government against a large swathe of the country’s population. Comparing numbers in other districts affirms this clear and unadulterated prejudice.

One person is taking the government to task about these issues where it counts; lawyer Abdulla Al-Shamlawi is suing the government in its own courts [Arabic] for this iniquitous distribution of electoral districts on behalf of a citizen in District 1 in the Northern Governate, a Mr. Mattar Ibrahim Al-Mattar.

Al-Shamlawi’s battle is a winning one logically and he is driving the Legal Department – representing the government – into a spiral of self destruction as he is taking every illogical single point they throw to the fore, deconstucts it and replies with facts and solid logic, especially when you consider that they are trying to defend the indefensible.

Apart form the various seminars and workshops and demonstrations which are almost a weekly occurrence since they drew the illogical and completely illegal electoral boundaries, this, I feel is the cherry on the cake and the most effective method to get this iniquitous situation corrected.

Well done Mr. Al-Shamlawi. Much respect and admiration and God’s speed.