Rebuild Bahrain’s Pearl Roundabout
I met my closest friend, Günther Natowitz, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 1989. He had survived Auschwitz and after the war he came to Bolivia. Sometimes he would tell tough stories of his days in Auschwitz as well as soon after when he was liberated.
One story that really made me think occurred after he was freed. He was being taken to Holland on a train and passed by a place where he remembered that there had been a little town prior to the war. It was not there anymore. He mentioned to a nun who was on the train that fact, but the nun responded: “No, there was never a little town there.” When we talked years later, Günther still insisted, ”I could not believe that she would say that. I saw that little town so clearly. Of course it was there and now it is not, but how could she say that there never was such a town?”
One of the characteristics of the Nazis, besides always assuming that they were the eternal victims, was to erase history. Anytime that I see anyone attempting to erase history, I am on guard. If history is not remembered and admitted good or bad, it is just a matter of time before the Nazis’ paradigm returns. As Walter Benjamin explained about the Nazi terror: they did not just try to kill us but they tried to kill our deaths; in other words, make it as if we never existed.
It is to avoid this that my artistic work exists. More than being great art (its essence being imagination, it is thus an antithesis to the dangerous “Socialist Realism”), it is also a testimony to my existence. If I were to be killed and become one of the disappeared, it would be impossible to erase my death because the art in my museums was made by no other than me. Thus, my art or that legacy stands as evidence that I have lived. Therefore, I have dedicated my art, my collages, to the memory of the disappeared throughout history.
Everything I have said so far should be enough to prove to anyone that one of the main things for me in life is to prevent the erasing of history. When we allow this, new generations may have doubts about whether unimaginable and indescribable horrors like the Holocaust, the Gulags, and the disappeared in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia during the military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s ever happened. Because of this I went on a solitary hunger strike against Ahmadinejad’s visit to Bolivia. How can one world leader erase the history of another country? Bolivia was one of the only countries in the Western Hemisphere that kept on giving visas to thousands of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror in Europe when other countries like the USA and Argentina would not.
This article suddenly caught my eye. On a picturesque October day, following the Navy day ball of 1993, I, a co-worker, and my date, an Irish nurse who worked in Awali, enjoyed the afternoon under the legs of the pearl. I have a picture someplace, and I intend to remember it, even the Al Khalifa family tries to wipe out its memory. I’m sure millions of others have pictures as well, so as you say, erasing its existence will be pretty close to impossible.
I know from talking to others however that the Bahrain of today is nothing like the Bahrain I lived in 18 years ago.
We remember it. Though the state televised its demolition and withdrew the coins bearing its image from circulation you cannot erase people’s memories. It has become even more of a national symbol now, with protestors leaving mini pearl monuments constructed from anything from styrofoam to balloons around the island as a gesture of defiance. We will rebuild it, when we are a free democratic country with equal rights enjoyed by all citizens, and where human rights and justice are upheld. Thank you for this article, brought tears to my eyes.
So- where was I when this was occurring? I don’t remember hearing anything about unrest in Bahrain during “Arab Spring.” While reading this story I was struck by the statement that Bolivia kept issuing visas to Jews during the Holocaust. I wondered why Bolivia would do that and looked up the leadership of that country during those years, but the wiki bio’s of the 2 leaders listed didn’t give any insight as to why Bolivia was sympathetic to Jews. It occurs to me that we know nothing of what’s going on in the rest of the world, and we know ALMOST nothing about what’s happening here at home (USA in my instance.) This article caught my eye, not because I’ve been there- I haven’t. But for some reason I was drawn to it and now am seriously bothered by the question, why didn’t we hear the Saudi’s were participating in a bloody military action in Bahrain? Do the Saudi’s always get involved in the politics and social issues of their neighbors? Do they really rule the Middle East? Have we made a pact with the devil?
The unrest in Bahrain was indeed mentioned in the media quite a few times. However, I can’t recall many stories that focussed on it exclusively. In most cases, I saw it mentioned in stories about other events, such as the uprisings in Egypt or Libya. Typically, the vast majority of the story would tell you what was happening in Tahrir Square or how the rebel offensive in Libya was going and there’d be an observation that this unrest mirrored events in other Middle Eastern countries like Yemen and Bahrain.
I think the Western media put most of their foreign affairs reporters in Libya and Egypt and few were sent to Yemen or Bahrain, therefore the bulk of the stories were about Libya and Egypt.
As to your larger point about why we often miss hearing about major events even in our own backyards, I think the media is the culprit here too. They only have limited resources so they can only afford to send reporters, camera crews, etc. to a relatively few places at a time. That means they have to be selective and pick the events that they think are most likely to interest their customers. It’s always been that way. They sometimes hire freelancers to cover stories but that can be a bit of a mixed bag. For example, did you know that the New York Herald, which is long defunct, hired Karl Marx as a war correspondent for stories about the Crimean War? Marx, however, never got within a thousand miles of Crimea. Presumably, he either wrote summaries of other reporters accounts of the events or just made things up.
The good news is that with the advent of the internet, we suddenly have thousands of new reporters, each of whom has the ability to share his reporting with the whole world, more or less instantly. One of the first news reports of the recent Bin Laden assasination was a man who lived just down the street from the Bin Laden compound and reported via Twitter. We didn’t need to rely on official statements from the White House or New York Times, we had someone on the scene with local knowledge who could tell us about these events moments after they happened.
Now, it’s mostly a matter of Googling to find stories about anything that interests you. For instance, I use Google News to constantly update the news about events that are of interest to me. I get the top international and national stories, plus stories that focus on subjects of special interest to me like technology and science. Others look for entertainment news, sports news, news about specific countries or regions, etc. etc.
In your case, you may want to use something like Google News to see stories about Saudi Arabia. I expect you’d soon gain some insight into how the Saudis manipulate the countries around them and to what ends.
Before everybody gets teary-eyed over this, just remember that many of these riots in Bahrain were started by terrorists from Iran. Iran would like nothing better than to overthrow the Gulf kingdoms and to install some sort of radical Islamist theocracy in their place. Especially since these small countries lay just opposite Iran close to the entrance of the vital Straits of Hormuz. So before we all get notalgic about the way things were in Bahrain, lets try to remeber the way things are right now in Bahrain, with Iranian al Quds forces trying to stir unrest and overthrow the government there for their own purposes, and democracy certainly is NOT one of them.
Thank you for the comments, and just these clafirications. The warning of Libertyship46 is very well taken, and the world needs to be on guard to that threat; that said, dealing with neo-Nazis with other neo-Nazis simply does not work. The thing is that sooner rather than later the world needs to know about the -impact- of what I call “the Nazi irradiation” which as early as 1943 it went all over the world; also, the people need to know that the Al Banna creation, the Muslim Brotherhood, was basically an arm of the Nazis (al Banna as well as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Al Husseini, and Ayatollah Khomenei in Iran were total admirers of Adolf Hitler!), which, as John Loftus demonstrated, were given safe haven in Saudi Arabia; yes, those Arab Nazis, were hidden there as religious education instructors -Bin Laden was one of their students, the rest being history (including 911).
As to contribute to the understanding of why many Americans may ignore world -and even- domestic history, I suggest the study of the books like, “America´s Nazi Secret” by John Loftus. If someone really wants to understand the link between Islamic terrorists (the Saudi Family, or the quasi-nuclear Ayatollahs, for instance) and Nazis, and the shamefully hidden history of the Nazis that entered the US (15 thousand that didn´t just entered but were –brought– into the US!), this book is a must. John Loftus who is also the author of “The Secret War Agaisnt the Jews,” is a former US government prosecutor and former Army intelligence officer. He is also a president of The Intelligence Summit and of the Florida Holocaust Museum. Reading that book one will also see what some of us knew but too many do ignore: how, for instance, the so “prestigious” and “progressive” New York Times is so crooked!
Muchas gracias.
Plainly, you would like to read, “UNMASKING ADMINISTRATIVE EVIL” by Adams and Balfour (1998) SAGE.
It is in the first five books for required reading at many or most of the top schools of Public Administration, it “discusses the overlooked relationship between evil and public administration, as well as other fields and professions in public life. The authors argue that the tendency toward administrative evil, as manifested in acts of dehumanization and genocide, is deeply woven into the identity of public administration, as well as other fields and professions in public life. The common characteristic of administrative evil is that ordinary people within their normal professional and administrative roles can engage in acts of evil without being aware that they are doing anything wrong. Under conditions of moral inversion, people may even view their evil activity as good. In an age when “bureaucrat bashing” is fashionable, this book seeks to move beyond such superficial critiques and lay the groundwork for a more ethical and democratic public life, one that recognizes its potential for evil and thereby creates greater possibilities for avoiding the hidden pathways that lead to state-sponsored dehumanization and destruction.
Although social scientists generally do not discuss “evil” in an academic setting, there is no denying that it has existed in public administration throughout history. Hundreds of millions of human beings have died as a direct or indirect consequence of state-sponsored violence. This book argues that administrative evil, or destructiveness, is part of the identity of all modern public administration (as it is part of psychoanalytic study at the individual level). Furthermore, evil has been largely suppressed or ignored despite, or perhaps because of, its profound and far-reaching implications for the field. From the Holocaust to the “white lie,” evil exists on a continuum, and the way along that continuum begins on the proverbial “slippery slope.” We prefer to think of horrible eruptions of evil, such as Adolf Hitler, as occurring at a particular historical moment and within specific extraordinary cultural contexts. Yet, we have a long history in the United States of public lynchings, syphilis/radiation/LSD experiments within our military, and police brutality in our cities while public administrators have looked on, even participated. The Holocaust was such a massive administrative undertaking, we must consider whether modern public administration may be at its most effective and efficient when it is engaged in programs of dehumanization and destruction.
Constructing a positive future for public administration requires a willingness to deal with the disturbing aspects of the field’s history, identity, and practices. Rather than viewing events such as genocide as isolated or aberrant historical events, the authors show how the forces that unleashed such events are part of modernity and are thus present in all contemporary public organizations. This book is not an exercise in bureaucrat-bashing. It goes beyond superficial critique of public affairs and lays the groundwork for building a more effective and humane profession.”.
Pratchett discussed how great evil can be done by average people, just going about their jobs, in his typical style. Maybe someone in one of his forums recalls where (he has medical problems these days, so don’t expect more books from him).
Okay, I watched your “Shouting In The DarK”—the whole 50min., saving to HD—most descriptive—eye-opening!
And yet, however all of that might appear, why did the Bahrainis go first for removal of the ruling family, and not, say, some decent semblance of right treatment of their women and children and foreigners?
Well, simply because, while potentates tend to rather easily come and go, the unfair—even ugly—ideas which are the substance of Shia law are with them as dyed in the wool, forever; and ideas are so difficult to deal with that, as appears, the people are quite content with what they style as their religion, and against which I would posit: “Just when shall there have been sufficient record of anti-social and criminal activity—the world round—to have Islam recognized in law as criminal / terrorist—assets seized, WIRETAPS, etc., the G0D damned thing stamped out, with every mosque an ash pit no less than five feet deep, and this to include that big one in Spain, . . . you know, first things first; in the ideology of what the Bahrainis were thinking of in their aborted attempt, let their society be free from state-sponsored sensuality, give the people a chance, . . . and otherwise, the children and foreigners to enjoy freedom as well, . . . when?
As one element of our own foundation for individual rights—which those Bahrainis feel so strongly about—this: “You shall have one law for the foreign born and for the home born.”, was Mosaic law, and is a large part of the basis for our Judeo-Christian system of law for Society, and not at all derivative of anything Islamic; but then—whether of Sunni or of Shia—those people, desiring absolutely nothing of The One Who Promises: “Whom the Son sets free, shall be free.”, are then fated to struggle along with the alternative which had been handed down from the false prophet, . . .
And for practical things touching everyday life, it bears mention that, Bahrain would be, about the last Moslem nation to be freed; for, as most representative of a thing held in common by all rich Moslem men, and otherwise desired by all Moslem men, “Bahrain is the city over which the eye of Allah is not.”, and so, those who can afford it—the well-monied Moslems, meaning of course, the men, bad men, all—can go to Bahrain to be satiated in any and every vice, imaginable; for, in Bahrain, Allah cannot see, and therefore, there can be no sin, . . . but, the Bahraini people are not spiritually of such intent and demeanor to git shed’a their criminal ideology which operates under an ostensible religious appearance—no, they would like to enjoy some of the benefits of religious freedom, but without ever understanding and embracing its concomitants; so, there we have it, . . . they’re a’wantin’ themselves a new leader of the same old nasty crap which makes things so difficult for the poor, the women, the children, and the foreign-born, and which makes their acceptance among the polite Society of nations, impossible, . . .