The Times' photo editors must be a gang of secret spoilers, because they seem to love to subtly undermine The Chosen Narrative with their own, well, choices. This photo-and-headline pairing was on the cover of today's print edition, too. Even the accompanying slide show feels calculated to undercut its own captioning, and while I do not doubt that some Bahrainis feel oppressed and some may even demonstrate, or "clash" in Timesqueak, yet ever do I suspect these stories of simmering, boiling, braising, and broiling, for above the hiss of the pressure cooker I hear the clickety clackety of NATO's doggie nails on the hardwood, come down to beg for some scraps of the action. Whatever the verbal reportage, the scenes-in-pictures are of normalcy--and that is not to say that normalcy can't coexist with the grimmest repression. It does; it must. But these people are chatting. Returning from restaurants! They are, notably, alive. Now if you are an American official, this last bit may fail to serve some hazy imperial strategic objective, and if you are a fanciful Revolution fetishist fresh from the satisfying orgasm of Libya's rebel yell, the prospect of their deaths may serve an even hazier sense that dying--by which you mean, of course, someone other than you dying--in a hopefully distant but nevertheless glorious orgy of freedom unchained is but a small price to pay to liberate a people with whom, until the news started pimping their plight in order to get another war on, you had only the vaguest geographical acquaintance, but with whom you now feel such a stirring and complete sense of solidarity that you are literally willing to watch them die for what you think may just possibly be their cause. And you know, I don't know. It may be that Bahrain is a hell on earth, a microcosmic desert gulag, an unending horror of torture and death. But it sure doesn't look like it in the pictures; it looks, you know, like people are getting by, living their lives, sittin on the couch BSing with the fellas. Hopefully they can avoid our strategic humanitarian right to intervene to protect for a while longer yet.
48 comments:
Truly, the Times photographers are the last bastion of truth to power. And given the location of the fifth fleet, it's worth noting that nothing would please the war powers more than if we all went back to not really knowing where and what Bahrain is.
i don't know, IOZ. sitting on couches OUTSIDE? deviants. what, they never heard of collapsible sports chairs?
for above the hiss of the pressure cooker I hear the clickety clackety of NATO's doggie nails on the hardwood, come down to beg for some scraps of the action
I know we've been down this road before, but... dude, NATO isn't "begging" for shit in Bahrain. The US is already there. The Bahraini state is a trusted puppet of the US war machine; it's the roiling/boiling/what-have-you protesters who've been massacred with US and Saudi weaponry since their uprising began. You're reading your propaganda backwards.
not a very sophisticated reading of semiotics by you. this is like something you'd read at daily kos or redstate or a press release by a pr hack.
When I was in Manama some 15 years ago, it was definitely not hellish. In fact, KFC had home delivery service.
And y'know, for a guy who repeatedly - and correctly! - points out that the United States itself is an authoritarian regime, you sure are quick to dismiss the existence of oppression based on a few snapshots of people not being strung up in the street. Hey, look! Outside my window I see a guy in a lawn chair, a woman walking her dog, an old man on his way back from the store. God bless America, I guess!
I wish people who typed or spoke the word "semiotics," especially disdainfully, were given the opportunity to say it loudly at a construction site. Perhaps, disdainfully, as in, "...you are not reading the semiotics of this floor plan with appropriate sophistication," and wearing whatever attire it is that people who type or speak the word are wont to wear.
Well, the Times is shit, but isn't the choice of photo actually supporting US policy by presenting normalcy? The suppression of the Bahreini protesters was a package deal along with "our" "liberation" of "Libya."
Chris M, it is true that USG is already in Bahrain -- or at least, part of USG. Specifically, the military, which is to say, the red-state USG. Meanwhile, you and the NYT and the professors and the the rest of USG -- the blue-state USG, if you will -- are foaming at the mouth for some righteous revolution, which you are even now eagerly telegraphing your support of. Thus, the NYT stating just as clear as it can: "There’s no other choice but violence".
Just like Libya, except if you can pull this one off, you strike a blow against your most hated enemy: the red USG. Think of George W. Bush... don't you hate him? Really, really hate him? You do.
So not only is the future blood of Bahrain on your hands -- so is all the blood so far. If you could have just keep your damn mouths shut, none of those people would have died; they would not have attempted to overthrow the state. But they did pick up your broadcasts, "President Obama’s criticism of the crackdown in May", your lectures, your religion of democracy -- and we have what we have. Progressives howling for blood. So much for peace.
While I don't exactly share Leonard's reading of the institutional players here, I obviously agree with the broad outlines. Oh, we sided with a Bahraini faction? Oh yes, that is definitely a guarantor of our future disposition. Just ask this Ghaddafi here! He'll tell ya.
How can hinting at a hope for revolution - and it's not clear that Christopher actually did that - get blood on one's hands, Leonard?
Is there a grammatical magic at work, here, which transmutes bits and bytes organized as letter shapes into human blood?
Monsieur, how can you say that Bahrain is a fucking paradise? Oh you see a picture of someone sitting on a couch outside and you think there isn't a bunch of torture going on? You fucking putz! VIVA LA REVOLUTION, as they say it in Arabian.
If there's one thing America is not, that's a double crosser! How dare you! Anything promised to Gudoffee was done with with fingers crossed behind our backs. Didn't you read the Wikileaks cables? "All embassy personnel will interact with their Libyan counterparts while maintaining their middle finger crossing over their index finger."
The reversal is interesting in this particular case, I think-obviously reversals in general proliferate; Saddam, the Taliban of course Gaddafi. But unless the Times editors mixed up the party line there it is.
I have often wondered if the power of the finger crossing overcomes the power of the pinky swear.
Hell, Leo, I ain't embarrassed to use the word - I'm talkin' about ethics.
Wait... Am I supposed to be indifferent to Bahrain's people lest I be accused of favoring an invasion in ostensible support of them? I can't remember what's fashionable this week.
Here--lest I be misunderstood, I want to be clear.
I hope that the sands of Arabia are one day as saturated with the blood of the aristocrat as they are now with oil. There. My feelings of hostility toward how we've "fixed" the Arab world are in no way compatible with support of further "fixing."
The Saudis have already told America to fuck off when it comes to Bahrain, and I don't think we're quite ready to do Saudi Arabia.
And I'm sensing some very ugly anti-semiotic tendencies on this thread.
reminds me of an NYTimes magazine cover article from about a year ago, about how desperately unstable yemen was becoming. the cover photo was a beautiful dusk shot of a yemeni city, ancient and modern structures existing side by side in visual harmony. you want instability? go to bushwick.
those dudes on the couch are def. not talking Mondy Night Football, ergo, they are among The Oppressed.
also, you fuckheads, saint obama signed the biggest arms deal in world history w/Saudi A. partially *so the Saudis could deal w/Bahrain.* don't let your minds get too blown when the NYT starts touting the humanitarian intervention of the Saudis into Bahrain. they already do it w/yemen.
didnt the beach boys write a hit song about bahrain?
Anxiously awaiting your coverage of the Adbusters revolution, guddamit.
Why would there be any intervention in Bahrain? It is a most cooperative Autocratic police state. The GCC.is NATO as the US.government is Zionist. The aims are cocurrent, the goals synonymous. You have a tiny Sunni mobarchy oppressing a largely Shia poulation, not that the opposition is at all sectarian, it is not. This little arragement was installed by British imperialism and serves Anglo-American imperialism just fine. Manama is home of the Red Sea Fleet. It aint just a coaling station. But fuck you never know what goes on in the command posts of these maniacs.
Leonard, you nitwit, the US/Saudi crushing of a Bahraini revolt is of a piece with the US/NATO "liberation"/takeover of Libya. The goal of the hegemon is to maintain hegemony; the US does so however it can - in this case, by both crushing liberation movements outright, as in Bahrain, and by hijacking them in the name of a NATO/CIA takeover, as in Libya.
That I have to spell this out for Leo isn't surprising, but IOZ, you're not usually this dense. The state is the state, and I'm happy to see people topple their governments wherever and whenever they can. That includes the Bahrainis, the Yemenis, the Palestinians, the Egyptians, and whoever the fuck else. Equating a desire to see people free themselves with cruise missile liberalism - the attempt to murder and enslave others while passing it off as liberation - just means you've swallowed the liberals' propaganda.
@ Monsieur and the gang
E pluribus unum.
Love y'all.
Capt'n Obvious
PS. Don't mind me guys, I'm inebriated on Friday afternoon.
"A desire to see people free themselves." You know, I think this sort of comment is hilarious. I am not sure if it should be called moral pornography or pornographic morality.
Crow, you want the mechanism? You want grammatical magic? Well, let me spell it out.
USG (via its information organs, in particular the unofficial/deniable NYT, but sometimes via State) hints at its own hopes for a revolution in Bumfuckistan. There are social elements in Bumfuckistan that are attuned to USG/NYT. These are those who read English, typically because they were educated here (or maybe, in England). These men listen to what USG/NYT says, and it inspires hope in them. The USG/NYT line is: democracy is the only legitimate government form. All other forms, lacking the "will of the people", may be legitimately opposed with as much violence as necessary. They will be swept away sooner or later; and, right now, in Bumfuckistan, maybe it is sooner!
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you and your friends can take over the state, and if you can convincingly enough pretend to (or even actually) set up democracy, that USG will support you. And indeed: you, the Eastern Ivy-educated intellectual, will have to help any new regime, right? You speak English! You might even end up in some high ministry! Well, power is sweet. You think it might be worth the risk just now. So you take to the streets and start demanding "reform". If the local regime acquiesces, great. Repeat until you have power. If they balk, well then: "There’s no other choice but violence". The NYT says so!
P.S.: on preview, I see Chris M. surely is doing more than hinting about his hopes for revolution. I can see that, because the cant he uses makes the origin of his ideology crystal clear. Bog standard progressivism.
Chris M, I do not dispute that USG is a "hegemon". But: if the (only) "goal of the hegemon is to maintain hegemony", you cannot explain any revolution in a friendly client regime. For example, you cannot explain Egypt. And for that matter, you cannot explain why the NYT and Obama are so thirsty for revolution in Bahrain.
As I said earlier, this hegemon is complex. It has hegemony. It does so because its military might eclipses that of any other nation, excepting Russia and China. However, it also has your ideology, and therefore it is opposed to many of its own client states' regimes. Thus it turn on them on a dime, as it did on Mubarak.
Under your theory of hegemony, USG would support all client states already within its sphere -- and so the red-state USG does. The detestable Bush, for example, only attacked members of the handful of weak nations outside of USG hegemony ("the Axis of Evil"). But Obama and blue USG won't take yes for an answer. Poor old Mubarak thought we were his friends. Same for Khaddafy -- he thought we had buried the hatchet. In both cases, USG deposed the ruler in spite of our own best interests. Because bored progs need war roughly the same way bored teenage boys need pornography.
That's not a mechanism, Leonard. That's you looking at the chasm, and reasonably recognizing that you can't leap it. But, you're standing there already, right? So the least you can do is see if your voice will echo off the canyon walls...
You want actual gears, I take it?
Well then, in that case Chris's bloody hands are quite clean. He did not personally attack a cop or throw a molotov or snipe at a soldier.
All he did was hint that, if someone else did that stuff, it would be OK with him. And by "him" I mean, of course, that he is thinking of USG. "A desire to see people free themselves." Indeed.
See, that's the difference between me yelling in a chasm, and Chris M. Neither of us can personally, ourselves, wind up actual gears and jump it. However: Chris M.'s religion rules the world. Me, I'm just a nobody atheist. When Chris M. yells, rocks shake loose and rain down from the heavens on the people below. When I yell, I don't even get a fucking echo.
So, Chris does not in fact have any Bahraini blood on his hands?
Metaphors are airplanes. Literally, Joe Biden, over your head.
I wish people who typed or spoke the word "transmutes," were given the opportunity to say it loudly at a construction site. Perhaps, disdainfully, as in, "...you are not reading the transmutation of this floor plan with appropriate sophistication," and wearing whatever attire it is that people who type or speak the word are wont to wear.
eat a bowl of dicks lightweight. is that "authentic" enough?
---
i saw a picture from africa of a giant lake full of fresh water how can there be drought and famine there?
It does weary a man to read The Crowbar trying to be clever.
Mighty weary, I am. The self-impression of The Crowbar is huger than gargantua.
Preparing a dish? Boils under the lid?
Is this as close as we get to Foodie Friday?
If IOZ will not observe his own traditions, who will?
If not now, when?
C'mon Karlo, "authentic" is your calling card. Why the sockpuppet act?
*
So, Chris doesn't have blood on his hands, figuratively or literally, Leonard? What's the point of blaming him for Bahraini deaths which haven't yet occurred, then?
IOZ, I'm a long-time fan of the blog, but this article is a miss. The Saudi monarchy is brutally shoring up the island's monarchy and NATO very much wants to look the other way.
As'ad abu Khalil, one of the better sources out there on the arab world (and an anarchist comrade of ours not coincidentally) considers this a trade-off to ease Saudi paranoia over the rest of the Arab Spring since NATO (after considerable delay) began posing as revolutionary, that is, acting deceitfully as though it had always wanted the tyrants of North Africa gone.
Bahrain is different-- and even if it wasn't, NATO wouldn't be trying to stir things up; recall that it was desperately trying to keep the Mubarak regime in place until virtually the last minute. But Bahrain is quite close to Iran, which being Shia and theocratic could stand to gain from a Shia revolution on the island, which is, let's not forget, situated next to the world's busiest shipping lanes for the post/industrial world's most essential commodity. NATO wants stability. I'm sure even the Pentagon is wary about blowing too much of their budget; besides, Bahrain is loyal to our side already.
Sure they suffer from bloodlust, but like all such monsters, they know how to choose a time and place.
And by article I meant post, or whatever.
[R]ecall that it was desperately trying to keep the Mubarak regime in place until virtually the last minute.
I am interested in the after the until. Anyway, I mean, Mubarak was on our side. Gaddafi was on our side. Ben-Ali was on our side. Saddam was on our side. If you look at Iraq and Afghanistan from a certain perspective, Iran is on our side, and if you look at the Taliban at an earlier point in history, the Taliban were on our side. Bashar al-Asad is sort of on our side. In each instance we support them right until we don't, and this article or blog post or whatever is not meant to poop on the possibility of a Bahraini rebellion but rather to poke fun at the pornographic desire to situate ourselves to get the best view of the action, especially if it involves Ameribombs. The idea that the US is somehow held hostage by the Saudis has always struck me as wholly laughable; the House of Saud are ours, not vice versa. Much of what you say about Bahrain is true, but none of it is germane to the issue of intervention. Our support of these rebellions is just as problematic as our suppression of them; more so, even, since we've got the smart bombs.
Our Man in Manama.
Y'know, IOZ, you always do this. There's nothing wrong with being wrong - it's the fact that you're obviously wrong and you won't stop digging that pisses people off.
You call Christopher M a "moral pornographer" or whatever for wanting to see people free themselves? Oh, fuck you, you fucking phony! I guess all the true anarchists are sitting at home, genteely reading poetry and listening to opera whilst tut-tutting at the masses for getting uppity?
Stupidity re Bahrain/Libya is what sent IOZ huffing off to pout for a couple months. You'd think he would've figured out by now which country was which.
You + Mad ^ bro = ?
While I agree US "support of these rebellions is just as problematic as our suppression of them," (perhaps moreso, actually) I don't see any indication that the US is moving to support rupture in Bahrain. Quite the contrary & for obvious geopolitical reasons. Not, that is, to obey the Saudi potentates; you're right that the West has much more leverage in that relationship-- but the point is moot because currently US and Saudi interests are *aligned*.
All I see is an NYT article. As thoroughly as that newspaper is in the hands of the warmaking rentier class, again here we don't disagree, it's not worth reading foreign policy into it. Really, why would the US go out of its way here? What is to be gained, given that a loyal strongman is already in charge? Meanwhile there is the good faith of the Saudis to lose, not to mention money.
If the revolt on the island progressed and became inevitable, as in Egypt and elsewhere, of COURSE the US would immediately switch to pretending ignobly that this-was-our-hope-all-along. If this NYT article does anything it just leaves the door in the "popular discourse" (this too a joke-- Americans really can't begin to care about Bahrain) open to that eventuality. But even then to assume that it is doing so consciously would be giving them too much credit.
Let our title- and badge-bearing enemies be paranoid, ya IOZ; it is their characteristic weakness and for us it does no good. Better to focus on showing why Western capital is a poseur-revolutionary, and what such a mask intends to cover.
That's fair enough.
well y'know, the picture of placidity is aimed to undermine the story. and given Saudi media interests in the U.S., i don't think we're going to see America/NATO coming to the Shia's rescue anytime soon. Blackwater - rebranded as "Xe" - has set up shop in that part of the world, no? if thing's start looking grim for Saud & Co INC, they will likely be functioning as part of the Wahhabi fist ..
But, if the strongman isn't strong enough, or in some other way does not represent the optimum, what better moment than NOW to topple him and reshape the situation to more of plutocracy's liking?
No major power conflict, all major powers solvent, truly the moment is now, not a decade from now, isn't it?
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