Arab spring ends at coaling station

Al Jazeera notes that the force occupying Bahrain consists of Saudi-led troops, though can’t quite bring itself to say that some of the led are from Qatar.

None of this in itself invalidates the reporting that AJ has been doing elsewhere. There may be a lesson for China here. It’s supposed to be spending eight hundred million dollars building its English language media capacity, but the point about building soft power is that you mainly hire journalists to do what they do, not what you want them to do – apart from a few fifth fleet related red lines.

Comments

[Alex]

Oh, if there was some way of referring to what they actually published!

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani, the Qatari prime minister and foreign minister, told Al Jazeera: "There are common responsibilities and obligations within the GCC countries. The arrival of Saudi and UAE troops in Bahrain is in line with a GCC defence agreement that calls for all members to oblige when needed and to fully co-operate. We are committed to adhering to the GCC agreement. At the moment we have peacekeeping troops. We don't have a full force there, but this is up for discussion."

So they only quoted the Qatari prime minister stating explicitly that there were Qatari troops there.

[jamie]

Quote preamble:

"The United Arab Emirates also sent about 500 police to Bahrain, according to Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the Emirati foreign minister. Qatar, meanwhile, did not rule out the possibility of its troops joining the force."

The quote and the setup is to the effect that the Qatari troops are part of some separate mission unconnected to today's occupation. This isn't true. They came with the Saudis and the rest and for the same purpose.

[ejh]

This takes us off-topic, but I was wondering what they were thinking about this in Prague and while I was searching, I found this and this. What is going on there?

[Richard J]

The Czech constitutional courts tend to, in my limited experience, take this sort of procedural thing very seriously. They struck down the whole of the social security contribution legislation a few years back as it hadn't been correctly implemented. (Net impact was nothing, as the government quickly moved to implement retrospectively correct laws properly, but it was an interesting month or two.)