15 August 1965, A Day Etched in My Memory

Every year I mark it on my calendar. Tonight there's one minute left of this day to honor that day. So I do. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OLD LOVE

 Happy Birthday,

to the one I used to know.

Houbara

#HamadBinIsaAlKhalifa #Bahrain #SelfAppointedKing #KingHamad #FirstLoves #OldLove #Ownership #Peregrine

You Look Like A Rabbit Waiting for A Carrot

Seeing this photograph of you with the brilliant President Xi Jinping made me laugh. You think he's got a carrot for you?

 

https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/202212/t20221210_10988580.html

#HamadBinIsaAlKhalifa #SelfAppointedKing #KingHamad ##Bahrain #China #Petrodollar #BRI #PresidentXi #PresidentXiJinping

David Suchet, the fake Poirot mustache and yours

      I admit that I have been watching older episodes on PBS of David Suchet in the role of Agatha Christie's Hercules Poirot because he looks what I thought you would when you lost most of your hair but still dyed your fake mustache black.

     Since your mustache was never thick in all the years that I knew you, all 17 of them, I wondered if you just glued the newer, fluffy mustache above your lip or if, perhaps, you did to your mustache what Steven Seagal did to his hairline, using hair plugs from the back of his neck implanted into a widow's peak. 

     I knew him when he did that. My daughter and I made a road trip in my old little toy truck from Santa Monica up the coast of southern California and then inland over the San Marcos Pass to Los Olivos where my neighbor and great friend from London was visiting her daughter, Kelly, who was married to Steven at that time. He sat at the dinner table with a little cap on his head to cover up the unsightly plugs and spoke vulgarly to his gun-buying friend Lionel ... in front of the ladies and a little girl. Steven never had a bit of class.

     Nevermind. I digress. The last time that we met you were losing your hair and using Grecian Formula or something to dye it. I guess it must have affected you psychologically to look at yourself with gray hair and, in my view, the silly dyed and fake mustache proves it. You can't bear to look at your real self in the mirror because your personality changed. 

     Maybe watch a bit of David Suchet as Poirot. Bald on top and big brown eyes. Riveting, thinking that you could have been a kind old man instead of one lies through his teeth, who jails his political opponents, allows them to be tortured, denied proper medical care and, like Dr. Singace, even deprived possession of their own writings in your dirty jails.

     I'm think that I'm going to write another book this November. I've written five books in the last 15 years, none of them published yet. So far there have been three about you and two others about 10 years of exploration into virtual relationships which either stayed virtual or moved into real life. Of particular interest to me is the subject of pirates and fake coups, with a fake mustache thrown in for fun.

#HamadBinIsaAlKhalifa #Bahrain #DavidSuchet #HerculesPoirot #AgathaChristie #StevenSeagal #LosOlivos #SantaMonica #GrecianFormula #FakeMustaches #DrSingace

Golly, I hope this posts before January 28th birthday is over

Happy Birthday, Hamad. It's 4:14 PM here in Seattle so it might already be January 29th in Bahrain. If so, then belated wishes for your 72nd birthday yesterday. My advice for this year:

1) Get more exercise. 

2) Quit using poisonous dye to make your mustache black, especially on the parts you had implanted to make it bushy. Your mustache was never full, year after year after year. Dying beards and hair on old men looks silly. Salman doesn't dye his facial hair, so are you trying look younger than him? 

3) I recognize that you're a debt slave to killer Bonesaw and the egotistical Mohamed bin Zayed, but your support of their dirty war in Yemen to stop representative government, acquire oil, pipelines, ports and islands is going to harm you in the end. Perhaps you might consider just keeping your mouth shut instead of daily sending your reps to condemn Ansarallah for defending Yemen against the coalition committing daily war crimes. If Bahrain is still flying planes over Yemen and contribute to the war by bombing, my advice is to stop it. Retaliation is a bitch.

4) It was a stupid, thoughtless move you made to join Kushner's silly no-peace-for-Palestine plan and turn your back on the Palestinians. Most Bahrainis know it was a dirty, dirty deal that you did because neither you or the Apartheid State want representative governments in the Persian Gulf states run by Arab dictators, whether amirs or self-appointed kings like you. You had your reasons, but there's none good enough for what you did, including the acquisition of Pegasus software to spy on Bahrainis in exchange for your signature on the so-called, fancy-named Abraham Accords. That action is also going to bite you in the butt at some time, probably on the butt cheek with the big mole on it. 

5) As always, my best advice is for you to stay out of helicopters. You know why.

#Bahrain #HamadBinIsaAlkhalifa #KingHamad #Birthday #Yemen #MohamedBinZayed #UAE #Bonesaw #SaudiArabia #Ansarallah #Ansarollah #PersianGulf #ApartheidState #Kushner #Israel #Pegasus #AbrahamAccords #Helicopters

Snow, roundabouts, driving with Farouk, barastis

 

     It's snowing in the Seattle night right now. The snow is visible on the ground, the walkways, on top of cars and roofs but the snowflake size is only visible in the streetlight. It's early yet, maybe an inch or thereabouts on the small roundabout at the corner with several inches expected overnight. In the morning, the Second Impeachment of Donald Trump will either continue or wrap up, depending on whether witnesses will be called in light on the newest revelation. I will enjoy my morning coffee looking out the window at the snow and listening to the lawyers in the Capitol.

     Just letting my mind wander while looking at the light bounce off the falling snow, I thought of the roundabout in front of what the family called the Guest Palace and New Palace, just up the road a little bit from the house where we lived, the one Delong Hersent rented from Mr. Bastaki, the businessman and hotelier. I'm sure that you remember that house since you were in it many times. After all, I lived there. (You can certainly remember the garage where your car had to be parked from prying eyes since the license plate identified it.)

     Thinking about that roundabout in Bahrain reminded me that when I was learning to drive while we were living on the island, Mother was out of an afternoon with one of her friends. She'd left the keys to her brown Mercedes on the key rack and I sensed an opportunity for a little driving practice. I took the car out of the garage and drove down to the roundabout, went round and round it several times and then ...

whaddyaknow. Your good friend Farouk Algosaibi drove by and saw me driving round and round and motioned me to get back home. He was, shall we say, a bit cross that I was out driving by myself, without permission, and specifically because he was acting as driving instructor and I was not licensed to drive by myself. I promised never to do it again after my painful comeuppance and we resumed lessons shortly thereafter, in a day or two, and without my mother being informed of my activity.

        Farouk was driving his dark green Austin-Healey convertible with the top down and drove us out to what he called "the villages" so he could teach me how to use the stick shift and clutch away from the main streets. I was very bad at the clutch release for awhile and thinking back, I remember scattering chickens on the dirt sand road, more of a path really, and seeing children and families and critters in what I now know as Shia' Bahrainis living in poverty on the same small island where you lived in one palace and played in another. I asked Farouk about their houses, those things made out of sticks and straw that I could see. He told me they were called barastis and changed the subject to "pay attention to your driving."

      (Good thing it didn't snow in Bahrain.)

       I remember asking you about the barastis many years later when I learned what they actually were. Remember what you said? I do.

Where Sorting Papers May Lead, 1972 to 2021

 

I've been helping with the care of my 92 year-old friend who was released from the hospital a few days ago after she fell and cracked her skull. I usually bake bread or make some cookies for her every week and, until a few months ago, I would ride to the grocery store with her. She'd caught pneumonia and cannot drive again until she recovers. Her fisherman son is now staying home, taking full-time care of her. The whole neighborhood loves her and is helping, all of us taking precautions because of COVID-19.

Anyway, I was just wondering about what else I could do to help her besides the normal things and remembered she's got a huge pile of correspondence and bills and so forth, and her son has asked her to sort and file them. 

I'm going to volunteer to do the sorting and filing, just the same as I did for you after your graduation from Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth! Remember?

At that time I had an excellent photographic memory, so while I was readying your papers for your return to Bahrain, of course I read many of them. I was not surprised that the teaching staff used prior military campaigns both big and small. It was the fictional military operations such as carrying out coups and countercoups which interested me the most. 

It won't be nearly as much fun sorting an old lady's stack of papers, but while I do, I will be re-thinking a certain fictional terrorist operation you carried out in 1981 and how the U.S. military helped it along. Most people don't know there were two 1981 coup attempts.