Archive: bahrain

14th January 2012
By: Brian Whitaker
Alarmed by negative media coverage of its bloody repression, the government of Bahrain embarked on an Israeli-style hasbaracampaign earlier this year, hiring – at great expense – an assortment of western public relations firms, "reputation management" consultants, etc, to whitewash its image. I… Read more
22nd December 2011
By: Brian Whitaker
I have written before about Matt Lauer of Qorvis, the American PR firm with a $40,000-a-month contract to spruce up the Bahraini government's tarnished image. Mr Lauer was on Twitter yesterday, complaining about excessive use of exclamation marks by bloggers. What a pity he doesn't feel the same… Read more
10th December 2011
By: Brian Whitaker
I have written here before about the American public relations firm, Qorvis, and its shameful $40,000-a-month contract with the government of Bahrain to spruce up the kingdom's tarnished image. Now, though, a document filed by Qorvis under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (as required by US law… Read more
21st November 2011
By: Brian Whitaker
The Ennahda (al-Nahda) party, which won the largest number of seats in the recent Tunisian election, has declared its support for the counter-revolutionary forces in Bahrain, according to the official Bahrain News Agency. A report from the agency says the party's political bureau "reiterated that… Read more
20th November 2011
By: Brian Whitaker
Foreign Policy Blogs boasts that it is "the largest network of global affairs blogs online", staffed "by scores of professional contributors from the worlds of journalism, academia, business, non-profits and think tanks". Plus the occasional public relations man working for a repressive government… Read more
5th November 2011
By: Brian Whitaker
It's not every day that the President's Office of the Bahrain Information Affairs Authority of goes to the trouble of sending me an email informing me that one of the kingdom's more elderly citizens has died of a heart attack – but it happened yesterday. Ali Hassan Al-Daihi, aged 78, "had… Read more
30th October 2011
By: Brian Whitaker
The Bahrain-based Gulf Daily News has finally got around toreporting the arrest of a businessman in Britain, in connection with a $6m bribery case involving Bahrain's government-controlled aluminium company, Alba. The Gulf Daily News says the alleged recipient of the bribes "cannot be named for… Read more
23rd October 2011
By: Brian Whitaker
What on earth is going on at Huffington Post? Hot on the heels ofTom Squitieri's articles presenting a sympathetic view of Bahrain's repressive regime (September 21, October 2 and October 5), we now have Rob Sobhani scaremongering about Iranian designs on Bahrain. "The end result of hesitation in… Read more
17th October 2011
By: Brian Whitaker
The government of Bahrain is desperately seeking international support for its repressive policies – so desperately, in fact, that if the support doesn't exist it's happy to invent it. In April, it claimed that Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, had expressed support for Bahrain's "security… Read more
9th October 2011
By: Brian Whitaker
In an article for Huffington Post on September 21, Tom Squitieri began: "The rubber stamp storyline out of Bahrain is that it is the latest chapter of the people rising against the evil rulers in the 2011 drama of the Arab Spring. Spend a few days and nights away from the hotels and international… Read more