Egypt’s Stasi moment 6, March 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Egypt.Tags: Egpyt files, Egypt, Egypt secret police, Stasi
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After the fall of the Berlin Wall the East German secret police headquarters was ransacked, much like is happening now in Egypt. Back then people were staggered at the levels of spying that the secret police had conducted. Something like 1 in 20 Communist Party members was an informant and I even remember people’s ‘odour’ being bottled as some kind of way to track people or for some such silly reason.
The picture below, if it is what it purports to be, carries similar overtones. Who knows what’s next? Apparently there are salacious videos of Kuwaiti Princesses in hotel rooms in Alexandria…mish kways, as they say.
KSA bans protests…guess what happened next 6, March 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Saudi Arabia.Tags: KSA, KSA protests, Qatif protests, Saudi Arabia, Saudi protests, Shia protests in Saudi Arabia
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One of the simplest but most important maxims of teaching is that consequences are critically important. Making some threat – detention, extra homework etc – only works if you have the power to enforce it. Otherwise you look like a fool threatening and not enforcing.
This is exactly the mistake that Saudi Arabia has just made. It banned protesting. Something that it has no power whatsoever to stop. So, to my mind, it just looks all the weaker when its direct command is not obeyed.
Not for one second did I doubt that protests would soon prove the folly of this absurd deceleration. Low and behold…protests. As if on cue. What a needlessly silly move.
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