Ahh.. the hypocrisy.

On one hand they censor our media, attempt to ban our alcohol, discuss arresting people for eating or possessing pork and spew ignorance at a bored national media who have no choice but to report it.  On the other hand we have the Spring of Culture, Formula One, Exhibition bloody road and god knows what else. 

Welcome to Bahrain. 

These two worlds will collide. When they do, what will happen is anyone's guess. Imagine promoting the F1 to the world, trying to convince those who care that Bahrain's race is better than the newer, shinier Abu Dhabi race. People can fly here on our possibly alcohol-free excuse for a national carrier, and they can get a visa online so they don't have to queue. But while here they may or may not be able to drink. And they may or may not be able to eat pork. They may or may not be able to access their online media of choice. And who knows what else they may or may not be able to do. But, y'know, don't worry... Exhibition road will be just as pervy and disease ridden as ever. 

And then we have the Spring of Culture. Personally, I have an issue or twelve with the festival, but it is hard to condemn. Yet perhaps we should condemn it. We should consider boycotting it. Why? Because the powers that be, those responsible for the Spring of Culture, are the same powers that have decided to take it upon themselves to police the Kingdom's morality. They are the same people who censor our internet and tell us what we are allowed to think. (Did you know that now, when trying to access links from your Facebook inbox, you get the new, shorter SITE BLOCKED nonsense. Even if the Facebook link is to google.com, or even Bahrain's very own E-Government.)

Culture and censorship do not mix- sort of like oil and water, but, y'know, more ideological. Yet here we have a situation where the big boss of culture and the censorship czar are one and the same. The persons who attempt to broaden horizons, educate and enrich are the very same villains that seek to deprive us of free speech, opinion, personal choice and whatever else they deem 'illicit' or 'immoral'. If that isn't hypocrisy, what is? 

Bahrain cannot be cosmopolitan AND conservative, progressive AND primitive, cultural AND censored. It doesn't work that way. Pick a side and stick to it. Bahrain, like many of it's people is about image. Without image we are just a dusty island in the middle of Arabia. We try to market ourselves to the world -- encouraging professionals to seek careers and invest in property, begging tourists to give us their hard-earned cash, hoping big multinational corporations pick us to be their regional base -- yet the smallest bit of press about banning alcohol, pork or free media will be remembered long after the Business Friendly Bahrain ads and talk of Golden Smiles have come and gone. Business Friendly Bahrain it might be, logic friendly it certainly isn't. 

 

Those damned lights...

The Bahrain Financial Harbour was supposed to be this great, monumental landmark that put Bahrain "Up Where We Belong" or something. Amongst the great financial cities. Kinda like Wall Street, but not. 

And there they are. The big buildings that for over a year have bastardized the skyline. The big buildings that look only remotely similar to the basic level of sophistication offered in the 'visions'-the visualisations that promised a glittering city in the sea, where the successful and cool and intellegent work, play and exist. 

Yeah, there's more to come. It can only get better. But please, please, please... will someone explain the lights? 

Those horrible disco lights... those lights that make the structure seem like a 15-year old ministry of something clamouring for attention. The lights that, to some untrained border-crossers, would appear to indicate the presence of debauchery. Only in Bahrain...

As I have hypothesised in random complaints to newspapers and such, I believe that the only reason this new, supposedly ultra-modern travesty of a landmark could look the way it does is through sheer idiocy. 

Look at the pictures of what they promised the buildings would look like. And then look at the buildings. You may probably notice that in most of the visualisations, all or most of the office lights were on. But in reality, the buildings are still not fully occupied and more importantly, people turn off their lights when work is finished. Apparently it's an energy-saving thing. Hippies. 

So they built it and then, when it got dark they were all "hey.. y'know, we cant see it. People wont even know its here". A problem to which the obvious solution was a quick phone call to the national day lighting people who thought up a monstrous colour changing debacle. Bravo.

So they've censored your internet...

Hahahaha... 

Just when you thought Bahrain's Interweb couldn't get any worse, the all-new Ministry of Information and Culture go and censor the great wide web. But, as far as I know, only if you have Batelco. 

I don't. I suffer with Zain. But at least my internet isnt censored. Yet. 

Draconian stuff this censorship. First you get people up in arms that two or three sites that no-one visits cant be accessed unless you have a smidgen of resourcefulness, and then...

They get stupid. For not only have the mighty ministry taken it upon themselves to act as society's moral compass, again. No, that wouldn't be enough. Now they've decided that in order to protect ourselves from ourselves we are no longer allowed to use Google Translate. 

Because as everyone knows, having to use an online translator is, like, totally unislamic. Or perhaps it's just too unintellectual. So what if the dedicated few have realised that Google Translate can be used to make the blocked stuff unblocked, albeit in a different language? I never realised that until they went and blocked it.

Yeah, they went and blocked some porn and some politics and some other nonsense... It's unjustifiable but understandable, at least when you try to think like a ministry muppet. 

Muppet 1: "So... Internet haram."

Muppet 2: "Yes, but what to do?"

Muppet1: "Close it?""

Muppet2: "Yimkin, but people will comblain"

Muppet1: "Okay.. then we only close it shwayaa."

Muppet2: "Ajeeeb. Yalla!"

And then they likely reeled off the lists and lists of porn sites that instantly came to mind. And by the time they asked another two of their co-workers, they had a 20something megabyte text file (it actually exists, allegedly) full of domains that are suddenly inappropriate. And just to make it suck more, they block all the proxy sites that they could think of. All the proxy sites that they likely used to bypass Batelco's pathetic oldschool firewalls. All the proxy sites that probably helped them access the porn 'n stuff they knew well enough to block. And then they block Google Translate. 

The stench of stupidity is eye watering. 

Next up is probably facebook. Why not? People can see people they know. HARAM. Hell, what about Google? Google makes it easy for people to find things, things which might be HARAM! And Dictionary.com, because we all know that you can use a dictionary to look up rude words, which obviously is HARAM. Soon Bahrain's Internet will be nothing more than a collection of e-government nonsense, Batelco.com.bh and FeedMe. What more do the dimwitted masses require?