Mae West's Good Advice

Mae West, famous American actress from Hollywood's Golden Age, wrote:

          "Keep your diaries when you're young and they'll keep you when you're old."

I kept my diaries. I kept the letters. I kept the photographs. 

I kept my promise for more than 40 years to keep these things out of the tabloids and gutter press. 

You failed to keep every promise that you made to me. 

I remind you of one important thing. I never signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Fake Coups, Phony Coups and Fictional Terrorist Operations

Past references have been made to the so-called 1981 Coup in Bahrain by many, including by newspapers, magazines and published scholars. Wikipedia has an entry. All that I have read paint the blame on Iran, which became the boogeyman after the 1979 revolution proved that a government in the Persian Gulf could be changed by the will of its people.

Of course, as you and the good Major are aware, I had and have an entirely different view from that which has prevailed in the public discourse. I discussed the event -- shortly after it occurred -- with the Major in a personal conversation at a famous and favored Chinese restaurant in Mayfair. He was rather surprised that I was aware of it, as the details of the event were, shall we say, reiterated? Those details had been closely held by those involved. Surprise!

I've been calling it the Fake Coup or the Phony Coup, here and elsewhere in public, for a good number of years while busy with daily life far away from what had been planned for me. The Fake Coup been a mere footnote in my written and unpublished work until last November. Now I'm dealing with a housing emergency and have to delay for a month or so finishing that lengthy project for publication.

However, today Google provided a translation of an important Saudi blogger's post which caught my eye and inspired this post. The translation is much more accurate and picturesque than "Fake Coup" or "Phony Coup" could ever be. Since the Interior Ministries of many countries in the world include the both police and all sorts of internal security services, it is typically Interior Ministry personnel who carry out fictional terrorist operations. The example cited today was such an operation in Tunisia carried out by the Interior Ministry, supported by Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., to justify repression during the so-called Arab Spring and deposing of Ben Ali.

Isn't that a beautiful term? "Fictional Terrorist Operations." I could just say it again and again. It better describes a fake and phony coup. If I could write a poem or song in Arabic, which I can't, but if I could, I would write one repeating that word and finding lovely rhymes to accentuate the irony.

It would be no surprise that the family ruling a small island country like Bahrain would use the services of both Interior and Defense ministries in 1981, along with a wee bit of help from some special friends, to carry out a fictional terrorist operation. The surprise is that a detailed and well-wrought cover-up worked, so far, but apparently you were unaware of the identities of all the special friends.