Justin C wrote in
:

It later became the private property of Prime Minister Khalifa bin
Salman Al Khalifa and is currently off limits to ordinary
citizens.
The island has a number of palaces, gardens, a golf course, two
helipads, a mosque and several other facilities for the personal
use
of the Prime Minister.

The island is made of limestone cliffs. It is believed that
blocks
of rock cut from the island were used in the Barbar temple on
Bahrain Island.


Hey, thanks! I didn't know whos it was.

Bahrain was a very American-friendly place when I was there before all
these Israeli wars America started for them, made such enemies of us
all. There was little to no strife in the local political scene back in
the 80's I noticed, either. But, that has also changed.

I think Google Earth is still BANNED by the super shieks in Bahrain,
which happened right after Google Earth posted such high definition sat
photos of their inner sanctums for the common Bahraini to drool over.
Banning these types of websites has been done in a lot of totalitarian
countries to prevent the population from snooping around and wondering
why they can't have what "HE" has. I don't think they dropped the ban,
either. I was watching Bahrain on http://mahmood.tv/, a great blogger
with a beautiful garden he's very proud of. But, after being dogged by
the secret society many times, he suddenly told us he was going to
"retire" and "move on" to other things. I think, though he said nothing
of course, someone or something "got to him". His aggressive rhetoric
against the controlling family may have gotten him in too deep. The
website is still there but he doesn't post to it any more. The archives
are a great read about a middle-class Bahraini family. Mahmood is in
the video-TV production business. His pictures and videos are
beautiful. His Flickr website is amazing.

I lived for over 2 years in Tehran and worked for Pan Am Airlines
technical services branch for the Iranian Air Force, building it a new
electronic calibration lab at the local AFB, which was in the
SIGINT/ELINT business. I left in '79 28 days before the Shah fled, fed
up with being awakend by automatic weapons fire at all hours of the
night. Too bad our government makes them hate us. I'd go back to Iran
in a heartbeat to continue my tours of this massive country. The place
is simply HUGE! Americans were a big curiosity when you got out of the
city into the countryside. I knew just enough Farsi to make it
comfortable to get around...."taxi Farsi". My driver, who was 12 at the
time, was my teacher. He was shot by the Iraqis in the stupid war. His
mother's letter telling me was the last one I got from inside Iran.....