We Sure Are on the Map!

Remember the Bahraini terror cell? The ones arrested and released and re-arrested and re-released in 2003/2004? Remember how there was no news in the local papers about them, after the MISinformation Ministry banned papers from covering their story while the rest of the world ranted and raved about the Salafi wave of terrorism? Remember how one Bahraini paper was even taken to court for breaking the ban and annoucing that the terror suspects have been released?

Well, this isn't a history lesson for I am no historian. I am just a silly observer whose blood boils everytime the name of my country is tarnished and reflected in a bad light internationally. Locally, we have the right to speak out about injustice, nag and condemn the stupidity which governs us day in, day out.. but when our dirty underwear is visible for all to see, this is when I draw the line and take a more reserved stand, for I am a Bahraini at heart, and Bahrainis, like ostriches, bury their heads in the sand when the going gets tough.

Again, this isn't a rant about me or the other normal Bahrainis. This is a rant about a cancer which has plagued our societies and which we and those in charge have not shown any serious signs yet of a willingness to deal with it and root it out from our simple lives. This disease is called religion extremism, which I believe should be dealt using extreme measures. Call me an extremist, but those plotting to terrorise innocents just because they wrongly believe they are the apostles of God on Earth; those who have appointed themselves as the gate-keepers of Heaven while making life a living hell for everyone around them; and those who are blindly following fundamentalist doctrines without stopping and asking themselves why and to what end would the gory killing of others do to their faith, should be met with their own medicine and burned in a huge incinerator - a very relica of the Jahanam inferno they so willingly warn everyone who doesn't share their zeal for backwardness, polygamy, abuse of women and children, anarchy and cave-dwelling fixation with.

Why am I so incensed with those hardliners, who are today very much amongst the movers and shakers of society, in a Bahrain, which is apparantly moderate and forward-thinking, when and only when, compared to its neighbours?

Read this and you will see why. A new book just published links the so-called Bahrain terror cell to a plot to attack New York's subways with poison gas.

Service Provider

This is how Bahrain is introduced in the book:

The King Fahd Causeway, connecting the countries of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, is seen by many Saudis--both religious and not--as an illicit passage.
It is steel and concrete as metaphor--tied, on one shoreline, to a truce struck between the Saudi ruling family and religious traditionalists in the kingdom. The Sauds get virtually limitless wealth, a healthy chunk of which they share with their dour clerical partners and their Wahhabist accountants. In exchange, the royals receive a stamp of religious approval, as the true protectors of the Holy Sites of Mecca and Medina, as well as an understanding that 25,000 or so members of the royal family can do, more or less, anything they please, while the country's 27 million citizens live under strict religious laws mandating traditional dress, shrouding of women, prohibitions against the consumption of alcohol or premarital sex. Adultery carries a death sentence.
For such indulgences, and countless others, you cross the bridge to the island principality of Bahrain--a country of almost 700,000, with high-rise hotels, a playboy king, a base for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, and significant cash flow from its role as a discreet "service provider" for Saudi Arabia. The lives of Saudis, and Bahrainis, are thoroughly framed by this arrangement, and its attendant hypocrisies. And both suffer the presence of its by-product: groups of stealthy, violent religious purists, graced with many opportunities to feel self-righteous.

Terrorism and Honey:

One such group was traveling across the King Fahd bridge toward Bahrain on Feb. 13, 2003, when they were picked up by Bahraini police. The United States, specifically the CIA, was behind the arrest. The NSA had picked up calls and e-mails from a cluster of Bahrainis that were troubling--boastful talk of what should be done to infidels, and some problem phrases, such as picking up "honey pots." "Honey" is often terrorist code for destructive items.
The Bahraini group consisted of five men: two gunrunners of a traditional criminal stripe, and three men with strong jihadist credentials. All were put through the basics of law enforcement procedure that are not necessarily common in their part of the world. Their belongings--cars, cell phones, wallets--were held in a secure place, used to glean further leads, and their apartments were searched.
One of the jihadists, Bassam Bokhowa, an educated fiftyish professional, with computer skills, had visited an apartment in Saudi Arabia. And there, a joint Saudi-U.S. counterterrorist unit, formed after the meeting with Bandar in his study, found a computer. The contents were dumped onto a separate hard drive, which was sent to the United States for imaging--a way to suck out digitalia, encrypted or not.

Al Mubtakar: A Holy Grail for Terrorists:

That's where they found it: plans for construction of a device called a mubtakkar. It is a fearful thing, and quite real.
Precisely, the mubtakkar is a delivery system for a widely available combination of chemicals--sodium cyanide, which is used as rat poison and metal cleanser, and hydrogen, which is everywhere. The combination of the two creates hydrogen cyanide, a colorless, highly volatile liquid that is soluble and stable in water. It has a faint odor, like peach kernels or bitter almonds. When it is turned into gas and inhaled, it is lethal. For years, figuring out how to deliver this combination of chemicals as a gas has been something of a holy grail for terrorists.

Dan Brown Vs Ron Suskind
Da Vinci Vs Bin Laden

Had the previous excerpts been from Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, I would have continued reading while sipping my Chai. But reading Ron Suskind's Bin Laden Code, was a different beast altogether because the incidents, people and locations are too close to my home turf for comfort. While Bahrain is home, New York is just a stone throw away for me and the Big Apple has always been dear to my heart, with lots of friends, colleagues and great memories. While I rarely use the subway because I am mildly claustrophobic, my prayers are with the millions who have no other choice but to put their lives at the whim of fanatics whose only glory lies in mayhem and the suffering and heartaches of innocents, everytime they ride the trains to return home after a hard day's work.

The questions which need immediate answers now are as follows:
1. How true are the allegations made in this new book?
2. What is the link of the alledged Bahrain terror cell to the New York subway plot?
3. What will the Bahrain government do to diffuse the connection and the negative publicity such allegations bring to the kingdom and all the other peace-loving Bahrainis?
4. Will the Bahraini public be informed of what is happening in their own country or will the Press be once again oppressed, gagged and barred from carrying out its sacred duty?
5. If the Bahrain terror cell was indeed involved in the Mubtakkar development, why were they set loose on the streets again? Who are the officials involved in interrogating them? What action will be taken against them, considering that the people they let go weren't only a danger to themselves and society, but also involved in international terror plots?
6. If technology and know how of developing such unimaginable weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are readily available to terrorists, how immune are we from their attacks at home?
7. What contingency plans are there, if any, to protect innocents in a place as small as Bahrain from such terror schemes?
8. Is the government serious in its effort to monitor and curb religious fanatism or is the national security apparatus only mission to thwart dissidence among its unruly Shia population and confronting demonstrations and public gatherings with an iron fist while turning a blind eye to growing Sunni extremism and international terrorism?

Canada Drives Silly Around the Bend

Wicked Weekends

The wonders and woes of weekends can give me enough ammunition to fill books. Nah. Writing a book isn't a good idea, not for someone whose relatively NEW laptop crashes every other day.

For those who wonder why have I been quiet lately, I blame technology, viruses and my doctor husband and his compupter-geek-friend, who made it their chore to 'fix' my computer when it first showed signs of fatigue and an invasion of new strains of viruses and spam, which its feeble anti-biotic-virus wasn't able to cure.

To cut the long story short, I have had to reboot (reformat?? don't know what the correct term is and frankly I don't care) a few times, everytime losing all the material, pictures, downloads, links and programs I have amassed in this wonderful creation which I have never been able to live without and which (ironically) have never appreciated nor acknowledged its impact on my life at the same time. haha. Isn't it the same with everything else in life? We take almost all things beautiful in our lives for granted until they are there no more.. and then.. just then.. we wonder.. what did really go wrong?

Back to weekends and my fixation with them in the ebb and flow of life. When I was young..really young..I loved weekends. Being in Bahrain, the public holiday was on Friday. Being in a convent school, the school holiday was on Sunday, so while all the other children in different schools had ONE day off, I enjoyed two! Friday was the wasted day with the family and Sunday was MY day, where I did my own stuff.. like dunno.. I probably used to cross-stitch, knit and paint in that pre-Internet era :)

When I was older, the other schools started giving their students two days off! Now they had their days off on Thursday and Friday while I was still on the Friday and Sunday off schedule. This meant they got to enjoy a longish weekend, while mine was broken with a day at school on Saturday.

This is where my ingenuity came to play. I had to make the best of both worlds and so my sicknesses fell miraculously on Thursdays and Saturdays, every other week, giving me three-day weekends, and a one up on everyone else!

But things don't remain the same in the cycle of life and with the late teens, days and nights fused into a big haze and all days were treated like weekends! Don't ask me what I did for I don't remember and this amnesia continued for almost a good 10 years (!!!!), punctuated only by the times I had to attend classes in university or report to work! Yeah. I remember completing a degree (with honours - ehem) and starting work during this time. The rest, as they say, is history.

And now I am at the borrrrrrrrring weekends phase.. where once again all days are the same..but with a different twist to them. They aren't in the distant past. They are real and I can see the minutes passing and the clock tick tocking and the sun rising and setting and the seasons changing and the flowers blooming and drooping and I don't know what to do. People are undecided when they are five, 15 and maybe, if they are boys, 25. But at my age.. well.. how long do I have to sulk for? How long will I continue not knowing what I want to do..what I really want from life?

Damn weekends and the silly questions they make you come up with.

I hate Batelco too!

In a united front, people in Bahrain are expressing their annoyance with Batelco's latest fradulant dealings in a way never witnessed in the island demockratic kingdom ever before (for details check www.boycottbatelco.com).

Yesterday, the deal was that anyone who could live without his Batelco services, should boycott them for a day. I don't really know how successful that initiative was for I, for one, recieved several phone calls from Batelco users. Sadly, they were all unaware about the day.

Personally, I would like to see more such intiatives. I know for a fact that newspapers would not promote the drive to boycott Batelco's services and people running the boycott Batelco campaign should look into other means to spread the word about such public demonstrations of disgust against a parasitical company, which has literally sucked the blood out of each and every single person in Bahrain.

Here's to more Boycott Batelco days! Cheers!