Archive: bahrain
28th July 2016
For several weeks now there has been growing evidence that Twitter is being used for a covert and highly organised propaganda operation which disparages Shia Muslims while supporting the Sunni Muslim governments of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
The tactic is to deluge Twitter with multiple copies of… Read more
18th July 2016
Bahrain stepped up its suppression of critics yesterday by dissolving the kingdom's main opposition party, al-Wefaq, and confiscating its funds. An announcement by the government news agency said the party, which was founded in 2001, had "provided an environment" that embraced terrorism, extremism… Read more
9th July 2016
A British MP who recently went on two trips to Bahrain paid for by the repressive Gulf kingdom's rulers is due to return the favour next week by hosting a reception in the House of Commons "celebrating" 200 years of Bahraini-British relations.
Last October, Bahrain's foreign ministry splashed out… Read more
29th June 2016
The dissemination of hate speech on Twitter is an obvious cause for concern. Until recently it seems to have relied mainly on the efforts of bigoted individuals and – although there is a lot of it – the need for manual posting has set some limits on how many offensive tweets there might be.
But now… Read more
23rd June 2016
A few months ago I began to feel that something odd was happening whenever I posted a tweet about Bahrain. My tweets, usually critical of Bahrain's government, rapidly disappeared from view – pushed down the #bahrain live Twitter feed by lots of newer tweets, mostly supporting the Bahraini… Read more
22nd June 2016
Twitter announced yesterday that it has suspended hundreds of apparently fake accounts that have been posting sectarian tweets directed against Shia Muslims.
Marc Owen Jones, who lectures in Gulf politics at Tübingen University in Germany, began investigating when he noticed a series of identical… Read more
16th May 2016
Today Queen Elizabeth will deliver her annual speech to the British parliament setting out the government's programme for the next 12 months. High on the list of proposals is a renewed effort to combat "extremism", and one idea is to establish a register of "extremists" – similar to the register of… Read more
4th April 2016
The headline on the story Gulf News published and then removed
A headline on the Emirati website, Gulf News, caught my eye yesterday. It said: "British House of Commons praises human rights in UAE".
Reading the story below the headline it became clear that the "praise" – if that's what it really… Read more
30th September 2015
Bahrain's latest PR offensive, which involved sending a 200-strong delegation to the United States under the banner "This is Bahrain", has ended in a rather comical fiasco.
Earlier this week, the delegation – from the pro-government Bahrain Federation of Expatriate Associations (BFEA) – claimed to… Read more
28th September 2015
A campaign to polish up Bahrain's tarnished image in the United States is reported to have enlisted help from the Israeli propaganda outfit, MEMRI.
A 200-strong delegation from the pro-government Bahrain Federation of Expatriate Associations (BFEA) is currently in the US promoting "This is Bahrain… Read more
ARAB ART ONLINE: Susan Hefuna: Al Sabr Gamil (Patience is Beautiful) 2007. Ink stained on wood 140 x 170 cm. More information | Click to enlarge
