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The week that was in Bahrain

Categories: Middle East & North Africa, Bahrain, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Breaking News, Digital Activism, Disaster, Freedom of Speech, Human Rights, Law, Technology, War & Conflict, Women & Gender

After almost a month of continuous bombing, most of Bahrain's bloggers have strayed away from covering Lebanon and Palestine and turned their attention to home affairs – except for Sabbah [1], who continues to provide blanket coverage of the atrocities being committed against Arabs in the occupied territories.

He even posts the complete speech of Hizbulla [2]s leader Hassan Nasrulla [3], in which he doesn't mince his words and threaten to hit Tel Aviv [4] should the atrocities continue.

“If you strike Beirut, the Islamic Resistance will strike Tel Aviv and it is able to do so,” Nasrallah said.

“(If) at any time you decide to stop your campaigns on our cities, suburbs, civilians and infrastructure, we won’t strike with rockets any settlement or Israeli city …” he said.

“You can’t destroy Hizbollah … because the resistance is not a classic army or a regular state …” he said. “The resistance is a people who has the belief, the will and who loves martyrdom.

“The resistance will not be broken, the resistance will not be defeated.”

“The Israeli army is a giant machine that is blind, stupid and incapable,” he said.

“I assure (you that) whatever the results of the war, Lebanon won’t be American and Lebanon won’t be Israeli and Lebanon won’t be one of the bases for the ‘new Middle East’ which George Bush wants and which Condoleezza Rice wants,” he said.

Mahmood Al Yousif [5], meanwhile, mocks Arab countries for their lack of action (!!) regarding Lebanon [6].

“So, at last they have awoken to attend an Arab Foreign Ministerial conference in Beirut next Monday to:

It will be a high level congregation that will demonstrate to the world Arab solidarity with Lebanon and outright rejection of the Israeli aggression against it. Moreover it will repudiate the UN security council’s ineptness in effectuating a decisive ceasefire in Lebanon

Oooh, they will REPUDIATE the UN for its ineptness! That brings another idiom to mind: the pot calling the kettle black!” he writes.

Away from wars and destruction on a regional scale, Silly Bahraini Girl [7], a Bahraini blogger now in Ontario, Canada, is also back to ranting this week with two posts.
In the first she expresses her exasperation at the way foreign workers are treated in her country, where:

“our economies are still largely functioning thanks to a slavery system, which was never abolished, despite ratifying one international treaty after the other. Signing treaties and making promises and then going back on them isn't anything new, but this is another topic altogether. We pay some of those people an average $100 a month, to work day and night, night and day, sometimes without days off. They live in labour camps, sleep one on top of the other and are excluded from public life and segregated from normal everyday activities and life. Their's is a life of servitude, in which they work and toil and drop death or go up in flames. Who cares?”

This follows a fire in Bahrain, where 16 Indian labourers were killed after their ‘labour camp’ went up in flames [8], bringing the country's treatment of its expat labourers under the spotlight.

Despite the tragedy and the headlines it made over the previous days in the local Press, SBG is adamant that nothing will happen to change the fate of tens of thousands of unfortunate workers, caught in the web of slavery in the Gulf.

“But mark my words… they will be bullied into submission.. and the lives of those 16 – whom we don't even have the decency to identify and honour- would have been lost for nothing!!” she reflects.

If the way her countrymen and women treat foreign workers at home annoys SBG, check out what she has to say about Gulf nationals she has come across in Canada [9].

“This building we live in here is the most upscale expensive condominum in this part of the country. All the people who live here are professionals, mainly doctors and lawyers. Mostly doctors. So this ****** must be a doctor. I really don't know how he deals with the patients everyday. I also don't know what picture does his rudeness and obnoxious behaviour project about Arabs here,” she writes.

Speaking of doctors, our Bahraini doctor in Alaska, Dr Haitham Salman [10], is making the most of the limited summer offered in those cooler climes.
He has gone to a You Pick farm [11]instead of the local supermarket, to pick his fruit and veggies for the week!

Meanwhile, yet another Bahraini doctor [12], in Ireland this time, is also busy…spending his well-earned money [13]!

“Feels good. Quite good, actually.

Time to go and enjoy it now!” is all he offers us at this point.

While Dr Mo is busy spending his money, a Saudi woman activist is investing her time challenging the way women are treated [14] in her country, reports Mahmood [5].

“It is incidents like these that make me think that there is a future for my daughters in these countries,” he reflects.

But ‘incidents’ like this are just a drop in the ocean, as Mahmood already knows, especially after reporting the latest regulations [15] which will soon be imposed on the Internet in Bahrain.

“I can’t believe this, once again the Ministry of (dis)Information has taken it upon itself to protect our true Arabian and Muslim culture and ourselves from ourselves by insisting on blocking some Internet sites it deems offensive and “alien to our culture.”

Well who the hell put you as a chaperone for me and my thoughts? If I want to see porn, I’ll get porn, and no matter what the hell the Misery of Information or BIX does is going to stop me or anyone else from reaching the information we seek,” he writes.

But don't you worry! This week saw the birth of a new blog, which promises to chronicle the life and adventures of a Bahraini ‘superhero’ – The Boilerman [16], who may perhaps live up to his promises become our saviour at those difficult times!