Media Blackout, Arming Rights Trampling Regimes, Dictators not Democracy is US Policy

The Story of Bahrain
By As’ad AbuKhalil – 22 July, 2013 – Angry Corner – Al Akhbar

It is a story NOT of a democracy: but of a dictatorship that is headed by a ruling dynasty installed by the British colonial powers and then supported and sponsored by the US, the inheritor in the Middle East of British and French colonialism. The King has NOT been pressured or criticized, and there were NO calls for his dismissal or resignation. Obama and his secretary of state did NOT call on the King to step down. They NEVER said that the King “has to go.” Western government did NOT call on the Bahraini tyrant to heed the calls of his people. Unlike Syria, Bahrain is – we are told – “complicated.” Complicated is a word that is often invoked by Western governments and Western human rights organizations when they wish to cover up occupation, repression, and massacres by allies and clients of the West.

But the people of Bahrain were NEVER passive. They have a history of courageous opposition to the House of Khalifah. People of Bahrain were at the forefront of political activism and they produced diverse political movements over the decades: Arab nationalist and leftist causes were popular, and labor unionism had an exemplary history.

But Bahrain hosts the Fifth Fleet, which immediately gives Bahrain’s ranking in the politically bogus classification of Freedom House an elevated status. If Bahrain were to host another US fleet, or if it were to open a big base for US forces, like Qatar did, then Bahrain would have been declared a Free country. If Jeffrey Feltman famously declared back in 2011 that Egypt was not Tunisia, in order to reassure Zionists that Hosni Mubarak was safe and sound, then Bahrain is NOT Syria for sure.

The people of Bahrain have NO friends in the West or in any other country. There is no organization that calls itself “Friends of Bahrain.” That is not a sexy cause. The people of Bahrain have no friends at all, not even in the Arab world. The majority of the people in Bahrain are NOT Sunnis, which automatically places them in the enemy camp according to standards of the West and dominant Saudi-Qatari leadership of the Arab counter-revolution. The hundreds of thousands of people of Bahrain do NOT amount to “a revolution” in the language of Western media. They are NOT a people. This is a movement that just can NOT be called an uprising. They have to be referred to as Shia to implicate them with ties to the Iranian mullahs. This makes it easier for Western readers to understand.

There were NO panels, workshops, and conferences devoted to Bahrain. Western academics did NOT offer long articles about how to best arm and supply the Bahraini protesters. There were NO arms lists provided to Western governments, and Western foreign ministers did NOT feign concern and compassion about the people of Bahrain. There were NO debates held in Western media and on college campuses on how to best serve the people of Bahrain.

Western media did NOT strive to smuggle correspondents into Bahrain, and the few articles on Bahrain did NOT carry disclaimers about how the Bahraini tyrant did NOT allow journalists to freely roam the country to report on its affairs. Western correspondents based in Beirut did NOT obtain names of dissidents and activists in Bahrain to Skype with and to form the basis of long reports about the bravery and righteousness of a mass political movement. NEITHER Qatar NOR Saudi Arabia funded the Bahraini Observatory for Human Rights to provide the Western media with daily reports about the repression and brutality of the regime.

Western media do NOT report about the blatant sectarian propaganda, schemes and policies of the King of Bahrain. Instead, the mere sectarian affiliation of the majority of the Bahraini population is used as evidence of sectarian culpability and machinations. The Saudi military intervention in Bahrain is NOT categorized as the foreign intervention that bothers Western governments and media in Syria, but only when on the side of the regime. The bogus Western media narrative of Arab uprising would NOT refrain from including the Saudi sectarian-military intervention in Bahrain in the democracy tale in which Lawrences of Arabia get – yet again – the full credit, while supplying tyrants with advanced weaponry. …more