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| But Sheikhy respects women. |
Afscme Local 444, retired
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed is very popular in certain US circles. He’s the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and has a lot of money. He's worth about $20 billion and so he should be, he’s the head of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and controls 6% of the world’s oil, Abu Dhabi is the UAE capital. He is quite naturally a misogynist, hates unions an absolute monarch and one of Lockheed Martin’s best customers. The UAE is the fourth biggest (mostly US) arms importer in the world; it is little larger than South Carolina.
Before its decline as a world power, the defense of these
little feudal colonies around the Arabian Penninsula that make up the UAE was
in the hands of British colonialism, as was the Iranian oil industry. The CIA orchestrated the coup that overthrew
the government of Iran in 1953 at the urging of British colonialism after Iran
decided it wanted to own its own oil industry.
Sheikh Mohamed does not believe in those American values,
democracy, freedom, liberty etc. that we are always reminded about when the US
bombs countries, but that’s OK. He does believe in money and ensuring his family
has much of it while sharing the rest with his friends in the US.
“The UAE has
essentially avoided the ‘Arab Spring’", the CIA Factbook states and US
arms and western supplied security will ensure that there’s no people’s
uprising there. “Abu Dhabi and its sister emirate, Dubai are the places where investors
go to escape the deadly politics of the Middle East and focus on making money”
Bloomberg Business Week adds.
That this money making and the huge disparity in income and the
inequality gap between the likes of the Sheikh and the other few million people
that live in the region is the cause of the “deadly
politics” in the Middle East is not mentioned.
Like the Bahrainian monarchial dictatorship that suppressed
a democratic movement recently attacking peaceful protesters and even
imprisoning doctors who treated the wounded, the good Sheikh is a willing
servant of US imperialism so Washington turns a blind eye to the Emirates human
rights abuses. The Saudis too, perhaps the
world leaders when it comes to beheadings and public lashings of women who dare
to leave the house without a male relative to accompany them, get the same
breaks. The US has no problem supporting
murderers and terrorists when there’s money in it.
The Bahraini royal family butchered people as 15,000 US
troops stood and watched, the Saudi’s are bombing the smithereens out of Yemen
with US support and our good Sheikh has joined them. It doesn’t hurt relations
with their colleagues in the US though, like the Saudi royal family, “Sheikh Mohamed had a strong relationship
with President George W. Bush.”, Bloomberg BW reports. Relationships like
that are not reserved for people that are not willing to share the loot and the
region’s resources with US imperialism.
Just this month, after “suffering
dozens of casualties” through its US backed war on Yemen, Sheikh Mohamed
has been doing the rounds kissing the wounded in hospitals and the like. A day
of remembrance has even been added to the UAE calendar conveniently “wedged” between holy days and the Dubai
Shopping Festival that will no doubt be attended by billionaires and the rich
from around the world.
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| Cameron and the Sheikh |
And while we are talking about the shopping, there’s one
group of folks in Dubai that won’t be attending and that’s the thousands of
imported laborers that build the infrastructure.
All those glitzy buildings and malls have to be built and
Dubai is famous for its abuse of workers. Just think Henry V111 of England or
Tsar Nicholas of Russia and you’ll get some idea of the level of contempt the
Crown Prince Mohamed has for working people.
The Emirates do not allow political parties or elections.
There is no freedom of the press and of course the country is governed by
Sharia law so flogging and stoning is acceptable punishment and many migrant
workers, most from South Asia, places like Bangladesh and Pakistan, are the
recipients of it. Eighty lashes is the standard, for alcohol consumption for
example, but you can get up to 200. Kissing in public is illegal but, like most
of the ruling classes in this part of the world, they can go to Europe or LA
where expensive call girls and liquor are easily available.
NYU professor Andrew Ross was barred from entering Abu Dhabi
after he published research about the migrant worker abuse. NYU was having a campus built there. He talks
about this here.
Glen Garrick of the Guardian also visited Abu Dhabi where as
well as NYU, the Louvre and the Guggenheim are building new premises for the global
elite. Garrick describes what a workers community is like:
“In this workers’
camp, men put up sheets around the toilet for privacy, and cook in squalid
kitchens. In the bedrooms, 43 Bangladeshi men bunk together, 10 to each
windowless room. They earn $245 a month painting the New York University
campus, working long hours, six days a week. All were too afraid to speak on
camera. Many said they wanted to return home but were trapped by the thousands
of dollars they owed to recruitment companies in Bangladesh.”
There have been numerous disappearances of poor migrant
workers as well as complaints of torture. According
to the Indian consulate, in 2006 as many as 109 migrant workers committed
suicide. They are unable to return to their country of origin as their
passports and identification are held from them by the recruiters. They are forced to work until they pay off
the debt they owe for their transportation there.
These backward rulers, all propped up and armed to the teeth
by the US taxpayer, are hated by the millions of poor Arabs throughout the
region. Being Muslim doesn’t mean a thing when it comes to exploitation and
abuse just like being Christian doesn’t when the US 1% savages living standards
at home. Class unity trumps them all,
gender, race, religion.
When you add this anger from below at US arms and money
supporting the most ruthless Arab regimes, as well as the Zionists in Israel,
an Apartheid state, to the twenty years of bombing and savagery the US has
inflicted on Iraq eradicating it as a state basically, we have here the root of
anti-American feeling and Islamic fanaticism. The US and the Western colonial
powers have created the present vacuum that religious fanatics have filled. The
political forces including the workers’ movement that formerly fought for
secular states and self-determination have been weakened or entirely wiped out
through support of these regimes and direct US intervention.
Here are some good articles about the present situation in
the Middle East and what led us to this point.
Robert Fisk: In a borderless world, the days when we could fight foreign wars and be safe at home may be long gone
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