Bahrain: The great news blackout

I had another chat with my local friendly pom who works in Bahrain for a large multi-national corporation the other day.

I asked what the latest situation was as we seemed to have very little information here in the UK.

“That’ll be the news blackout that the US and UK security services have negotiated then” he replied confidently with the air of someone who knows what he’s talking about.

To paraphrase what he told me: due to the west’s interests in the country, the Intelligence services from USA, UK and Saudi are now, at the Kings’ request, advising the country how to deal with the current “situation” and those governments have agreed to suppress the reporting of events in their respective media.

We have heard that martial law is soon due to be lifted on June 1st – this is because all the main instigators of protest have been ‘taken out of circulation’. His exact words. He gave a specific example of where at his children’s’ school in the Kingdom, teachers were taken away at gunpoint from the classroom and have not been seen since. We had a report or two about Doctors disappearing but that seemed to be it.

He went on to say that when the initial risings happened the Bahraini Government didn’t know how to deal with it and so did the usual Arab overreaction, shot a few people and let the press report it. All that has changed since the ‘advisors’ have come in from friendly western countries. All because of oil and a USA Navy base…and a few business issues.

And the reason……. as I reported on an earlier blog, the West wants the Sunni minority to rule to prevent the pro-Iranian majority getting in under this odd concept of democracy which apparently won’t be a very good thing according to western morals.

When will we ever learn?

Meanwhile, Libyans and Syrians are being killed too, but that’s ok because it’s getting reported and it’s for democracy.

My friend shrugged his shoulders and said he’ll carry on doing business out there as long as his company wants him to, but he has now evacuated his family back to Blighty.

So to protect democracy, we prevent it. Go figure. Hmmm.

Makes you proud to be a Westerner. Not.

And dear charioteers, I don’t have a solution or an alternative….. I just wish we’d stop interfering elsewhere and sort our own troubles out first! Naive, I know! 😀