The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    New way to fight a foreign enemy of the state if you're a royal family

    By artappraiser on Sat, 02/19/2011 - 4:02pm |

    Comments

    Among the catalog of despotic entrepreneurs, I suppose it is a minor quibble, but what the fuck are we, who first of all people threw off hereditary monarchy, doing having any truck whatsoever with a family that has "ruled Bahrain for 200 years?"  That would just about make their first accession contemporaneous with our revolution! Likewise the rulers of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, etc. ad nauseum.

    Reasons of state, indeed.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 02/19/2011 - 4:39pm

    As long as the royal family opposes the forces of Kristof, we'll be with them through every trial. 

    CRUSH NICK!


    by quinn esq on Sun, 02/20/2011 - 10:51am

    It's apropos that you bring  up the "off with their heads" thing, as, interestingly, it's beginning to look like the Bahrain uprising is not so much about "give me liberty or give me death." Rather than the vision espoused by the Egyptian protester who told Christiane Amanpour "we want what you have," many protesting in Bahrain may just want what Saudi Arabia and The UAE has:

    How a broken social contract sparked Bahrain protests

    By Raymond Barrett, Christian Science Monitor, February 21, 2011

    The Bahrain protests go beyond the sectarian prism of Sunni versus Shiite. The ruling Al Khalifa family has been unable to provide Bahrainis the kind of interest-free loans and medical care that some of their neighbors have enjoyed.

    ....the current protests in Bahrain indicate that, in the eyes of much of the population, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa has failed to keep his side of the unwritten social contract that binds the Gulf Cooperation Council's six sheikhdoms of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates....

    People hoping teh democracy thing spreads to other oil rich gulf states are maybe hoping too much. We'll see.  In Saudi Arabia, it's always been my impression that the majority populace is far more conservative than the ruling members of the royal family. Nothing that I have read to date has changed my mind on that--I'd love to learn different, continue as always to look for any evidence, but don't find it.

    And related in Morocco--so far it appears that the secular youth yearning for more democracry are having a hard time getting other segments in society interested in taking a lot of power away from the monarchy.

    P.S. the quote from
    Anthony Quinn as Auda abu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia:

    I carry twenty-three great wounds, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I killed with my own hands in battle. I scatter, I burn my enemies' tents. I take away their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor! Because *I* am a river to my people!


    by artappraiser on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 3:55pm

    Yeah, but Anthony Quinn was *cool...show me his equal among the pretend monarchs of the 21st century

     

    *(fathering his last child at  81...a mark for all of us to shoot at)


    by jollyroger on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 4:47pm

     I take away their flocks and herds

    But what about the lamentations of their women?  Flocks and herds are as nothing without women lamenting...

     


    by jollyroger on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 4:52pm

    Saudi King Abdullah method:

    $36 billion immediate in pay rises, unemployment benefits and affordable housing. to18 million lower and middle income citizens, along with a pledge of $400 billion by 2014 for improvements to education, health care and infrastructure.

    In Jordan, King Abdullah II appears to have to try to balance between a Hashemite rock and a Palestinian hard place. Sounds like he's one that could threaten that civil war will break out if he's deposed and many citizens might actually believe it.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 3:16am