…from beneath the crooked bough, witness 230 years of brutal tyranny by the al Khalifas come to an end

How to win a lost war
By Andreas Herberg-Rothe – Asia Time

In the 21st century, the overarching task of policy in a globalized, multipolar world is to manage the rise of the Global South by avoiding great wars and the cancer of mass violence.

Where a technical understanding of the military concept of “battle space” would focus solely on the application of necessary military means – which the US Department of Defense characterizes as “The environment, factors, and conditions which must be understood to successfully apply combat power, protect the force, or complete the mission” – a wider view of the concept is necessary. It must be based on a strategic narrative, which

“explains policy in the context of the proposed set of actions” in war, according to Emile Simpson, former soldier and author of War From the Ground Up.

Dan Moran, a professor at the US-Naval post-graduate school in Monterrey says all his students are discussing how to win the narrative – they understand winning the narrative as winning the war. He cautions, however, against making such an equation. Winning the war narrative is not necessarily the same as winning the war. It is the story surrounding the war, whether it was won or lost.

Germany could not pretend to have won World War II, but for a long time was able to portray ordinary Germans as people with nothing in common with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In this narrative, Germans were overthrown by a dictatorship of a few hundred national socialists. Things are different with World War I. Here too, the Germans could not pretend to have won the war. But from that experience a narrative emerged that was based on the assumption that the German Reichswehr was not defeated on the battlefield but betrayed by the Social Democrats and the communists within Germany.

This understanding of the German defeat in World War I resulted in a most influential narrative to wage a new war in an attempt to make up for defeat and the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. The characterization of the causes of the German defeat in World War I might have contributed to the terrible inner oppression in Germany in the Nazi area. If the war was lost through the betrayal of the opponents of the Reichswehr within Germany it was reasonable for the Nazis to eliminate all kind of opposition before and during the war.

The German historical experience in two world wars supports the conclusion that winning the narrative should not automatically be understood as winning the war, even in retrospect. In both cases winning the narrative was not about winning the war, but about integration of the defeat into a cultural, political and social framework – which enabled the German nation to keep its presupposed identity alive and to be recognized as equal part of the international community again.

Narratives therefore are really powerful concepts in shaping the political and social realm in retrospect. But they are not necessarily about winning the war; reasoning about the causes and circumstances of losing a war might have an even more powerful force. For instance, one could say that the Taliban lost the military campaign in 2001 in Afghanistan but won the narrative afterwards.

Let’s look to the future, but again through the prism of German history. Could there be any narrative with which the Germans would have won both world wars? In fact, a narrative could be observed in Germany after World War I that the Reichswehr could have won this war if the generals had read and understood Clausewitz rightly.

As a Clausewitz-scholar I’m a little tempted by this notion as he himself might have been. But Germany just could not win both world wars even by constructing any thinkable narrative. Of course winning the war seems to be at the heart of waging a war. In the 16th century, Prince Frederick of Saxony laid down the following proposition: “If you decide to go to war you have to decide to win.” But the question after Iraq and Afghanistan is, what does it mean to win a war?

In my view, to paraphrase Prince Frederick, the following is true: if you decide to go to war you have to decide to win the political narrative. I’m not totally sure that all wouldto agree with the proposition that winning the war is really about winning the narrative, because winning the narrative is more than about winning the war. Winning the narrative, for example, is also about the legitimacy of the threat of force. Winning the narrative in relation to the armed forces is something more than winning a war.

According to Emile Simpson, the key point is that winning the war in a military manner means winning it in relation to the enemy, but increasingly now, audiences other than the enemy matter, so the narrative is about covering what they think, as well as what the enemy and one’s own side thinks. If the strategic narrative of the battle space in the 21st century is not only about winning the war in a mere military manner, about what then can it be?

I would like to propose three different, although interconnected topics: the legitimacy of using force, the performance of the conduct of war, and the mutual recognition of the fighting communities after the war.

Before explaining this conceptualization in more detail, for purposes of clarity I would like to mention its basic ideas. This proposition stems firstly from my interpretation of Clausewitz’s trinity, which is quite different from so called trinitarian war, which is not directly a concept of Clausewitz, but an argument made by Harry Summers, Martin van Creveld and Mary Kaldor.

In my view, each war is differently composed of three aspects of applying force, the struggle or fight of the armed forces, and the fighting community to which the fighting forces belong. You may easily relate the legitimacy of using force, the performance of the conduct of war and the mutual recognition of the fighting forces after the war to these three aspects of my interpretation of Clausewitz.
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US Zionist attack dog brought to heel
4 October, 2013 – By Finian Cunningham – PressTV

Interesting times are in the offing between the US and Iran as the American government says it is now “ready for talks” with the Islamic Republic – after 34 years of hostility since the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that economic sanctions imposed on Iran could be lifted within six months.

And, interestingly, American officials seem to have resisted Israel’s latest saber rattling when Premier Benjamin Netanyahu hotfooted it to Washington earlier this week with grim warnings that Iran’s diplomatic overtures were merely a ruse.

Netanyahu repeated the tired old disreputable claims before the UN General Assembly that Iran was secretly building a nuclear bomb to destroy the Israeli state. As one mocking headline in Israeli newspaper Haaretz put it: “Netanyahu’s UN speech was enriched with Iran rhetoric, but his stockpile is low”.

In a seeming rebuff to Netanyahu days later, US top diplomat John Kerry told a press conference in Japan that the US was insisting on pursuing the diplomatic route with Iran.

US officials are now scheduled to meet with Iranian counterparts in Geneva later this month, along with other members of the P5+1 group, to explore possible diplomatic options to resolve the nuclear standoff that would allow Iran to avail of its right to peaceful nuclear development and importantly to lift the economic sanctions.

So, are we about to see an historic divergence between US and Israeli foreign policy? A divergence where Washington acts on more enlightened self-interest towards Iran and cuts the bellicose Israeli regime adrift.

This will be a test of what truly makes US foreign policy tick. Many observers aver that Washington has been for too long maligned by an inordinate Israeli influence in its stance towards Iran and the Middle East generally.

In this view, it is contended that a belligerent Israel has in effect hijacked and deformed American government relations with the wider world. The corollary of this analysis is that if somehow Washington could ditch the warping influence of Israeli politicians and the powerful Zionist lobbies then America might be able to establish more friendly foreign relations; and with Iran in particular.

The largely positive reception bestowed on Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani during his visit to the US last week might suggest such a tantalizing new beginning. The cordial meeting between John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly also bodes well. Then came the “historic” phone call from US President Barack Obama to Rouhani as the latter was departing for Iran, during which the American leader even bade farewell in Persian language.

Netanyahu’s barnstorming arrival in Washington and his tirade at the UN pouring invective on President Rouhani also suggests that there may indeed be a significant new opening in American-Iranian relations, one in which the US finally begins to act more reasonably and independently from Israeli warmongering.

To be sure, it is incumbent to give diplomacy a chance. The burden of economic sanctions on the Iranian people makes it imperative to resolve the nuclear dispute.

As President Rouhani has noted, decades of enmity going back to the US-orchestrated coup d’état in 1953 cannot be resolved overnight and certainly not merely on the basis of a few phone calls and cordial meetings.

The ignominious history of American aggression towards Iran will require some earnest practical measures to build confidence in Washington’s purported sincerity. The immediate canceling of illegal US sanctions would be a good place to start, one where the onus is firmly on Washington, not Tehran.

But here is the caveat. Can Washington really separate itself from Israeli hostility towards Iran?

Put it another way: is the Zionist regime an obnoxious appendage of Washington that could be discarded, or is it an integral part of US foreign policy? The benign view is that if the Zionist warmongering influence could be excised then the US might be able to conduct more ethical foreign relations with Iran (and other countries).

The trouble is that this benign view fails to understand the fundamental role of Israel in US foreign relations. Israel is not just an entity that Washington suffers as a result of excessive Zionist lobby groups and bribes to Congress. It is of course partly that.

But, more fundamentally, Israel serves to project American imperialist interests and power in the Middle East. The affront to international law and human rights that the Israeli regime incarnates, the conflict and wars that it fuels, all these violations are an integral part of how US imperialism asserts hegemony across the Middle East region and beyond.

The same goes for the House of Saud and the other Persian Gulf Arab dictatorships. They are all part of the anti-democratic architecture that guarantees Washington’s domination in the oil-rich Middle East. That domination depends not just on the flow of oil and massive weapons sales from conflicts, but more crucially on the flow of
petrodollars to prop up the bankrupt American Federal Reserve.

This explains, for example, why Israel and the Arab dictatorships have merged as allies in the same US camp of fomenting regime change in Syria.

Israel and the Saudi regime may owe their origin to British imperialism, but likewise they owe their ongoing criminal existence to the patronage of American imperialism.

As American Vice President Joe Biden let slip this week at the Washington conference of the Jewish lobby group J Street: “If there was not an Israel, we would have to invent one, to make sure US interests were preserved [in the Middle East].” Biden could easily have said the exact same thing about Saudi Arabia.

The point is that Washington’s hostility towards Iran is not borne out of a policy that is misguided and warped by the rogue state of Israel (or Saudi Arabia). Washington’s hostility towards Iran is borne out of American imperialism, in the service of US-dominated global capitalism. And American imperialism is hostile to any nation that pursues a path of independent economic and political development. Iran is top of that list.

The difference between the US and Israel towards Iran is therefore one of tactics, not strategy. Where Israel is incapable of thinking in any way beyond militarism, the US has enough sophistication to engage in an alternative tactic of diplomacy and politics.

There are telltale signs that the US still retains its fundamental hostility towards Iran despite the latest diplomatic overtures. One such sign was Obama’s White House meeting with Netanyahu this week in which the president reiterated that the US would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons and that “all options, including the military option, were on still on the table”. The bets are Obama did not say that in his “chatty” phone call with President Rouhani.

This is not a case of the Zionist tail wagging the American dog.

Rather it is the imperialist master bringing its Zionist attack dog to heel… for now. …source

West’s damning silence over Bahrain
1 October, 2013 – By Finian Cunningham – PressTV

Obama probably felt obliged to make some mention of Bahrain in his UN address only because the human rights situation there is so dire, for him not to throw a few token words of concern would have left him open to derision, especially since the US Navy Fifth Fleet is stationed there and Washington plies the regime with millions of dollars worth of weaponry and commerce.”

Bahrain’s despotic Al Khalifa rulers have gone into a huff over US President Barack Obama’s comparison of the Persian Gulf island state with Syria.

In his address to the UN General Assembly last week, Obama made vague mention of sectarianism in Syria and Bahrain in the same sentence.

The funny thing is that the Bahraini dictatorship is right in a way, but for all the wrong reasons. Bahrain is nothing like Syria.

That’s because Bahrain represents a genuine case of a peaceful pro-democracy movement being crushed by a despised tyrant. That’s the narrative that the Western governments and their propaganda mainstream media apply erroneously to Syria; but when it comes to Bahrain, where the narrative is truly applicable, the West turns a blind eye and develops a curious speech impediment.

Obama probably felt obliged to make some mention of Bahrain in his UN address only because the human rights situation there is so dire, for him not to throw a few token words of concern would have left him open to derision, especially since the US Navy Fifth Fleet is stationed there and Washington plies the regime with millions of dollars worth of weaponry and commerce.

Nevertheless, the US president’s contemptibly few words on Bahrain, betray a disgraceful complicity of silence by Washington and the West generally towards the Khalifa regime’s crimes against its long-suffering people.

Yet, such is the arrogance of the buffoonish Bahraini autocrats they went into a huff over Obama’s pathetic paucity of criticism.

This week, Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa tried to go on the offensive, telling the UN assembly that the so-called kingdom is a society “based on cooperation, not confrontation.” Sheikh Khalid deserved a standing ovation for brazenness.

As his name indicates, the Bahraini diplomat is a royal member of the Khalifa monarchy. This family has ruled over Bahrain ever since the island gained nominal independence from Britain in 1971. The Khalifa appointed itself as a monarchy and assigned grandiose titles, such as “king” and “crown prince,” “prime minister” and “foreign minister.”

And they have held on to these baubles through hereditary cronyism, becoming super rich in the process, without any form of democratic accountability.

Bahrain is an oil-producing minnow when compared with the natural endowments of Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Iran. But the modest oil and gas wealth of Bahrain has been enough to make the Khalifa family and its hangers-on incredibly enriched. For example, the unelected prime minister since 1971, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman, also known as “Mister Fifty-Fifty” because of his notorious penchant for bribes and backhanders, is reckoned to be one of the wealthiest individuals in the world.

That is something of an achievement for a clan of imposters that the majority of indigenous Bahrainis have time and again repudiated. The Khalifas originally invaded Bahrain 230 years ago as a marauding tribe of sea pirates. They subjugated the Bahraini population and its proud Persian culture under the sword and with the brute help of the British Empire. …more

Russia Warns of More Gas Use by Syria Militants
30 September, 2013 – Shia Post

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow has serious suspicions that foreign-backed militants fighting in Syria will continue attempts to use chemical weapons in the Arab country.

“We have serious suspicions that these attempts (to use chemical weapons) will continue,” Lavrov said in an interview with the Russian Kommersant daily published on Monday.

He added that the US has not produced any evidence on the Syrian government’s role in last month’s chemical attack.

Washington had threatened to take military action against Syria over a claim that the Syrian government had been behind a deadly chemical attack near Damascus on August 21.

Syria strongly rejected the allegation, saying the attack had been carried out by the foreign-backed militants to draw in outside military intervention.

“They did not produce it to us. Meanwhile, we produced the evidence we have (received through our own channels, from Syrians and from independent sources) that prompts the conclusion that it is handiwork of the opposition.”

The top Russian diplomat, whose country is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, noted that the new UN resolution on Syria does not imply the use of force.

The UN Security Council on September 27 unanimously approved a resolution to avert a US-led military strike against Syria. The resolution condemned the use of chemical weapons in the country and called for their elimination.

The resolution came after days of intense negotiations between the United States and Russia and does not fall under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which regulates the use of military force.

“At the meeting with the UN Secretary General and with the five permanent members of the Security Council and at the Security Council session itself we stressed that the countries acting as sponsors of the opposition in the political, financial and military respects bear responsibility for it not trying to lay hands on some stocks of chemical weapons, to receive it from somewhere abroad or stage provocations within Syria to shift the blame on the government, arouse general anger and thus try to provoke an outside strike at Syria,” said Lavrov.

Lavrov said that in compliance with the new UN resolution “any abuses permitted by any side –the Syrian government or the militants — must be reported to the UN Security Council after a thorough investigation.”

“This also applies to the use of chemical weapons by, God forbid, anyone,” he added.

Lavrov further said that Moscow is glad that despite initial resistance from western states, the new resolution includes the approval of Geneva Communiqué, which calls for an end to the Syrian crisis through negotiations.

Foreign-sponsored militancy has gripped Syria for over two years and the turmoil has taken its toll on the lives of many people across the country. …source

Time to turn table on West warmongers
By Finian Cunningham – 29 September, 2013 – PressTV

Notable is the reiterated inclusion of members of the present government. This provision scotches, at least legally speaking, the Western agenda of regime change through covert terrorism. It pours egg on the face of the likes of John Kerry, William Hague and Laurent Fabius who have been harping on about Assad standing down and “having no place on this earth.””

US President Barack Obama described the latest Security Council resolution on Syrian chemical weapons as “a huge victory for the world”. It certainly was a huge victory for diplomacy over war, to the relief of the world’s people.

But for Obama to seek credit in the passing of this resolution is contemptible. It was a defeat for warmongers led by the likes of Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry, who were clamoring for unilateral missile strikes on Syria.

Also among those defeated are the American warmonger puppets of Britain and France, David Cameron and Francois Hollande. Nursing wounded egos are those other cheerleaders of American imperialism, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Recall that only a few weeks ago, these protagonists and proxies were on the cusp of launching an all-out criminal war of aggression on the Syrian Arab Republic.

Some of these warmongers seem to still retain residual fantasies of a military attack. President Obama hasm since the signing of the UN Security Council resolution last Friday, warned that Syria’s government will “face consequences” if it does not comply with the disarmament of its chemical weapons stockpile.

The Israeli minister of military affairs Moshe Yaalon went even further, reportedly telling media “after dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons, the regime in Damascus must be changed”.

The truth is that the UN resolution successfully de-fangs the warmongers. They now sound like sore losers whose diminishing threats are impotent attempts at flexing muscle. In this regard, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has safely steered the American war machine off the road.

In the wording of the resolution, which is binding to all parties, there is no mention of the use of military force. Use of force was precisely what Washington and its puppets and cheerleaders were threatening. Now there is a legal framework in place where such threats have been excluded.

Admittedly, in the final provision of the resolution, number 21, it is stated “in the event of non-compliance with this resolution, including unauthorized transfer of chemical weapons, or any use of chemical weapons by anyone in the Syrian Arab Republic, [permits] to impose measures under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter”.

The ominous Chapter VII may, in theory, lead to military force. But that eventuality would require another unanimous resolution, which Russia and China will veto.

This is no guarantee that the warmongers will not persist at some stage in the future with their plans of aggression and regime change in Syria. After all there are countless laws and charters already in existence for many decades that prohibit illegal violence, but which have not deterred American, British, French or Israeli terrorism.

Nevertheless, Resolution 2118 on Syria is an important impediment to the illicit war agenda and raises the political price for parties that might try to embark on a belligerent path. This is in the crucial context of worldwide public opposition to the warpath. No less important is that the American and European public is trenchantly against any such bellicose adventurism by rogue leaders.

In that way, the resolution is not so much a framework that puts Syria’s chemical weapons under international control but rather it puts American lawlessness and recourse to unilateral aggression, or state terrorism, under international control.

There are more positive aspects. For a start, if we accept the assumption that the Syrian government did not use or has no intention of using chemical weapons and that it has signed up in good faith to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, then there will be no such contingency as “non-compliance”.

The Syrian government has therefore found a legal way to safely dispose of a dangerous liability in the form of its chemical munitions stockpile. Maintaining this arsenal imposes unnecessary financial costs on the Syrian government. In an analogous way to Iran’s argument that nuclear weapons are an obsolete instrument at this point in history, so too it can be said about chemical weapons. To get rid of them is thus a relief from a burden.

The beauty is that this seeming concession is actually a gain, while the West’s concession of disposing its war plans is obviously a double gain for Syria. …more

Bahrain FM openly calls for assassinating Hezbollah Chief Nasrallah
29 September, 2013 – Shia Post

Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, urged on his Twitter account the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, calling it “a national and religious duty.”

According to the Tweet inconsistent with all international norms, Al-Khalifa’s minister said that Sayyed Nasrallah “is terrorist and declares war on his nation,” the official Bahrain News Agency reported.

The minister’s statements followed Sayyed Nasrallah’s latest speech in which he touched on several topics, mainly the situation in Syria and Bahrain.

Observers believe that the Bahraini authorities should settle its internal problems and meet the demands of the protesters, rather than marketing problems and accusations to others, especially Hezbollah, the Lebanese party of Resistance which constitute the spearhead in facing the Zionist occupation. …source

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks to the United Nations Security Council after it unanimously voted in favor of a resolution eradicating Syria’s chemical arsenal during a Security Council meeting at the 68th United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 27, 2013

Russia says to push for Mideast free of mass-destruction weapons
By Steve Gutterman – Reuters – 29 September, 2013

Russia wants to revive plans for a conference on ridding the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction now that Syria has pledged to abandon its chemical arms, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in comments published on Monday.

Such a move could put Moscow at odds with Washington which announced the conference would be delayed last year. Analysts said it feared the event would be used to criticize its ally Israel, believed to be the region’s only nuclear-armed state.

Russia has been pushing to extend its influence in the Middle East. It initiated a U.N. deal to get Syria to abandon its chemical arms after Washington threatened military strikes to punish Damascus for a sarin gas attack on rebel areas.

“We will seek to have this conference take place,” Lavrov said in an interview with the Russian daily Kommersant.

Lavrov said Syria’s agreement to destroy its chemical weapons by next June should trigger a broader effort.

“In the current situation, it is particularly important to make the … non-possession of weapons of mass destruction universal in this explosive region,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Syria’s government always viewed its long-undeclared chemical arsenal as a counterweight to the nuclear arms Israel is believed to possess. Israel has never acknowledged having atomic weapons.

DIVIDED POWERS

A plan for a meeting to lay the groundwork for the possible creation of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction was agreed in 2010, co-sponsored by Russia, the United States and Britain.

But Washington said the meeting would be delayed just before it was due to start at the end of last year. No new date has been announced.

“Our American partners baulked and sidestepped this,” Lavrov said in the interview, published the same day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to meet U.S. President Barack Obama.

The United States also rejected a Russian proposal to include a line in a U.N. Security Council resolution saying that Syria’s plan to scrap chemical weapons was an important step toward a WMD-free Middle East, Lavrov told Kommersant.

Russia has been Syria’s biggest diplomatic ally during the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad that has killed more than 100,000 people.

Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem called for the creation of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction but said it was “unachievable without the accession of Israel”.

Arab states such as Egypt and Bahrain have made similar calls in speeches at the General Assembly.

But U.S. and Israeli officials see Iran’s nuclear activity as the main proliferation threat in the Middle East.

They have said a nuclear-free zone could not be a reality until there was broad Arab-Israeli peace and Tehran curbed its nuclear program, which they fear is aimed at developing nuclear weapons capability.

Washington remained committed to working toward a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems, the U.S. envoy to the U.N. nuclear agency said earlier this month. …source

Mission Accomplished? Syria, the Anti-War Movement, and the Spirit of Internationalism
30 September, 2013 – Huffington Post

The American peace movement has been celebrating what it sees as its victory on Syria. “The U.S. is not bombing Syria, as we certainly would have been if not for a huge mobilization of anti-war pressure on the president and especially on Congress,” writes Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). This represents “an extraordinary, unforeseen victory for the global anti-war movement,” she goes on, one that “we should be savoring.” Robert Naiman of the organization Just Foreign Policy vaunts “How We Stopped the U.S. Bombing of Syria”.

This turn of events is “something extraordinary – even historic,” writes my good friend Stephen Kinzer, coming from a different but overlapping perspective. “Never in modern history have Americans been so doubtful about the wisdom of bombing, invading or occupying another country,” writes the author of the classic Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. “This is an exciting moment,” he rhapsodizes, “the start of a new, more realistic approach to foreign policy.”

The tireless progressive journalist David Sirota, whom I admire a lot, extols “How the Antiwar Majority Stopped Obama.” The opposition of “angry Americans” to the administration’s push for a military strike, he contends, proved “absolutely critical” and is “why there now seems to be a possibility of avoiding yet another war in the Middle East.”

I completely understand this jubilance. And yet it leaves me feeling uneasy.

Let me be clear: I too was against the Obama administration’s proposed military strike on Syria. I thought it strange that after two and a half years of doing essentially nothing about the deepening crisis in Syria, the White House suddenly decided to act with such a sense of urgency that it was unwilling to wait for the United Nations inspection team to complete its job. As if the world should just trust American claims about weapons of mass destruction. That went really well last time.

I also thought chemical weapons were exactly the wrong issue. To paraphrase Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center, why draw a “red line” at the use of chemical weapons but not at 100,000 dead? Or at two and a half years of crimes against humanity? The vast majority of the civilians killed since the Syrian uprising began in March of 2011 have died by means of conventional, not chemical weapons.

I agreed wholeheartedly with the International Crisis Group that the Obama administration’s case for action was based on “reasons largely divorced from the interests of the Syrian people,” who “have suffered from far deadlier mass atrocities during the course of the conflict without this prompting much collective action in their defence.”

Hinging its case on chemical weapons turned out to be a huge strategic mistake as well. Russia cleverly short-circuited the Obama administration, taking advantage of the thinness of its case. So Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles will be removed from the equation – then what? The Assad killing machine, which was overwhelmingly non-chemical to begin with, can continue unfettered on its rampage. Chemical weapons issue – solved. The killing fields of Syria – no end in sight. …more

Saudi Court Ups Gang-Rape Victim Sentence To 200 Lashes After Her Lawyer Protests Original 90-Lash Penalty
By Jonathan Vankin, 28 September, 2013

The Saudi justice system is based on the Islamic religious legal code known as Sharia, but if a case that burst onto the international scene this week is any example, the word “justice” is a misnomer.

In 2007, A Saudi court sentenced a gang-rape victim to a 90-lash whipping for violating the ban on women having contact with men who are not their relatives.

When the woman’s defense lawyer protested the sentence, calling for some compassion for this teenager who was sexually assaulted by seven men, the Saudi General Court increased her punishment to 200 lashes and a six-month jail term.

The incident happened in 2006 in the Eastern Province city of Qatif. The “Qatif Girl,” as she has become known in Saudi Arabia — her identity has not been made public — was then 19 years old. She got into a car with a teenage boy she knew in high school, intending to retreive a picture of herself from him.

She was soon to marry someone else, and she couldn’t have this former high school flame carrying her picture around.

That was her offense. What happened next was irrelevant to the court, at least as far as the Qatif’s girl’s punishment was concerned. Seven men kidnapped the pair, assaulting and raping both the woman and her male acquaintance.

The male rape victim was also sentenced to 90 lashes. The rapists received varying sentences, the harshest being five years in prison and 1,000 lashes.

Whipping is a common sentence in Saudi Arabia for crimes ranging from consuming alcohol to homosexuality.

The court cited the fact that the woman’s lawyer went to the media as a reason that her sentence was increased. But there may be other factors. Her attorney, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, is a human rights activist who has defended critics of Saudi Arabia’s ruling royal family.

Also, the “Qatif Girl” belongs to the Shiite Muslim minority in a country dominated by Sunni Muslims.

Even the original sentence of 90 lashes was considered excessive within Saudi Arabia. The 200-lash sentence has set off international protests.

According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, this sentence “not only sends victims of sexual violence the message that they should not press charges, but in effect offers protection and impunity to the perpetrators.” …source

The New Cold War, Analysis and Opinion Round-up
by Wassim Raad – VoltaireNet.com, 29 September, 2013

LISTEN TO AUDIO HERE

The new Cold War

By Ghaleb Kandil

What happened in recent days on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly clearly illustrates the emergence of new international relations, characterized by the end of American hegemony and the emergence of new realities. These suggest the beginning of a different world than the one that has been experienced during the second half of the twentieth century Cold War.

Some analysts believe that the end of the unilateral American hegemony inevitably lead to the emergence of a multipolar world. But a closer look at what happened shows the following observation: the emerging powers, including the axis of the resistance led by Russia, with a key role to Iran, managed to impose new balances through a process of accumulation of victories, especially against Israel in Lebanon, and thanks to the strength of Syria in the universal war against it. These new realities have forced the U.S. and its British and French allies to accept the new rules, which resulted, in the Security Council, by reciprocity in the use of vetoes, which was in recent decades, the monopoly the West.

This new balance of power is characterized by the end of the great wars and invasions, but it will not prevent the continuation of political conflicts and crises. There is a vital issue for Russia: the recovery of its historic role in Slavic and Orthodox Europe, controlled by the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A multipolar world means a global change of rules and relationships within the UN. However, the administrative and political structures of the organization and its executive arm, remain totally under American hegemony. This means that the imbalance will continue until the emerging forces that dismantled the unipolar world, are able to reconstruct the institutions of the United Nations to impose a change in their operating rules, such as the integration of new permanent members to the Security Council, like Brazil, South Africa and later on Iran.

The new world order will be the fall of the unilateral hegemony of America, which has used the past three decades its military power to attack and subjugate other Nations. Throughout this period, Washington has used the UN and its institutions as if they were an extension to its diplomacy. Russia and China were in a waiting period and were satisfied, at most, to protest politically, until the victory of the resistance against Israel, in 2006, laid the foundations of great change.

Many contentious issues remain between America on one side, Russia, China, Iran and the members of Brics, on the other side. Open competition for control of energy resources and markets will continue and will continue to cause biases in the international arena. But the new realities will prevent the United States have recourse to war to impose their will.

If the Yalta conference resulted in a division of the world into two spheres of influence, on which were deployed armies of the two great powers of the time, today, there are no lines of demarcation between very specific areas of influence. Instead, the lines are tangled and no compromise is possible. According to these new rules of engagement, the contemporary cold war will take place.

The scope of Iranian victory

By Ghaleb Kandil

Iran crowned 33 years of resistance against the US-Western blockade by obliging the United States to recognize it as an independent power. Thanks to the wisdom of his leadership, Tehran has managed to wrest this recognition both in terms of form and substance.

Thus, Washington has recognized the power of Iran and is resigned to accept its entry into the club of world leaders. It also acknowledged its right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy without Iran makes any concession.

We are witnessing the beginning of the rise of Iran, which has resisted all this time to complex wars launched by implacable enemies, who used all their weapons: pressures, threats, embargoes, blockades, sanctions, state terrorism, assassinations of scientists, terrorist attacks, secret wars, economic wars, subversion etc. …

But despite the huge resources thrown into battle by the United States, Israel and their auxiliaries, they lost in front of the determination of the Iranian people and its commitment to independence.

Faced with these wars, Iran has relied on its own resources and has significantly expanded its military and technological capabilities, even managing to launch the conquest of space. In cooperation with Russia, China, Korea, Brazil, Venezuela and India, the Islamic Republic has made great strides, becoming a model for developing countries.

Iranian citizens have made huge sacrifices to save the independence of their country. Now they can finally see the realization of the objectives designed by great leaders and strategists from the beginning of the revolution: build an independent state, provide the means to defend its independence and force the colonialist West to recognize it. All plans and all efforts have been made, the last 33 years in this direction.

American recognition of Iran’s power is a consecration of the new balance in the Middle East, particularly in the Gulf. In this region, the presence and the Iranian role in the political and economic fields will be crucial.

At the strategic level, it is important to emphasize the importance of the Syrian-Iranian alliance, which has promoted and covered the Resistance. This alliance greatly helped Iran build its independence model on the world stage. If the resistance of Syria and its president offered the people of the world the chance to break the unilateral American hegemony, the alliance between Damascus and Tehran has laid the foundation for deterrence against Israel.

Today, the leader of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is entitled to the skeptics, and they are less numerous in Iran, the bet made by his country on the Resistance and Syria was winner. It was a valuable strategic asset that has helped make many achievements.

Bahrain: a Prominent Activist Naji fateel Facing 15 years in Prison
September 29th, 2013, Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights

AUDIO LISTEN HERE

Human Rights Defender Naji Fateel was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment after the decision of the criminal court on Sunday, September 29.

Naji Fateel has been subjected to severe torture during interrogation in the notorious Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID). Among the allegations are that he has received electrical shocks to his genitals, left foot, and back, and been subjected to simulated drowning, severe beatings, threats to publish photographs of his wife (taken from her camera which was confiscated when security forces raided the family home), verbal abuse using uncivilized words, hanging by his hands from the ceiling, sexual harassment and threats to rape him, standing for long hours, and sleep deprivation.

Mr.Naji Fateel: is a board member of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR) and blogger who has been active in reporting human rights violations in Bahrain.He used his account on Twitter for dissemination of human rights information. He was previously detained between Dec 2007 and April 2009, and has been reportedly tortured.His house was stormed in search for him several times last year following the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR) demands:

1.The immediate release of the prominent human rights activist Naji Fateel.
2.Drop all charges against Naji Fateel.
3.The immediate and urgent investigation in the torture allegations Naji Fateel was subjected to in the Criminal Investigation Department.
4.Bring those responsible for torture to fair trials.

For more information on the case of Naji Fateel: HERE

Additional information on the trial today:

1-The court issued a verdict on all the defendants in the case (a coalition of 14 February).

2-Number of defendants : 50 people ( Including one woman)

3-Ms. Rehana Moussaoui was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.

4- 16 people have been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

5- 4 people have been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

6- 30 people have been sentenced to 5 years in prison.

7-20 people (from total 50) has been sentenced in absentia.
…Source

While the General Assembly was discussing the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it is another matter altogether that concerned the diplomats: are the United States still the superpower they have claimed to be since the demise of the Soviet Union or has the time come to break free of their tutelage?.

The United States Feared No More.
by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 30 September, 2013.

LISTEN AUDIO

In 1991, the United States had considered that the end of their rival had freed their military budget and allowed them to develop their prosperity. President George H. Bush (the father) had, after Operation Desert Storm, begun to reduce the size of the armed forces. His successor, Bill Clinton, reinforced this trend. However, the Republican Congress elected in 1995 questioned this choice and imposed rearmament without an enemy to fight. The neo-conservatives lauched their country into world assault mode to create the first global empire.

It was only on the occasion of the attacks of September 11th, 2001 that President George W. Bush (the son) decided to invade successively Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya and Syria and Somalia and Sudan and to end with Iran before turning to China.

The military budget of the United States reached more than 40% of world military expenditures. However, this extravagance had an ending: the economic crisis forced Washington to cut back. In one year, the Pentagon has dismissed a fifth of its army and halted several of its research programs. This sharp decline is just beginning and it has already disrupted the whole system. It is clear that the United States, despite having power greater than the twenty largest countries of the world, including Russia and China, is not currently able to engage in large conventional wars.

Washington thus gave up on attacking Syria when the Russian fleet was deployed along the Mediterranean coast. The Pentagon would then have had to launch its Tomawak missiles from the Red Sea over Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Syria and its non-state allies would have answered with a regional war, plunging the United States into a conflict too big for it.

In an article published by the New York Times, President Putin opened fire. He stressed that “American exceptionalism” is an insult to the equality of humans and can only lead to catastrophy. At the podium of the United Nations, President Obama answered that no other nation, not even Russia, wanted to shoulder the burden of the United States. And if they were the police of the world, it was precisely to ensure equality of humans.

This intervention is not reassuring : the United States asserting itself as superior to the rest of the world and considering the equality of humans only as their subjects.

But the spell is broken. The President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, drew ​​applause by demanding an apology from Washington for its universal espionage, while the President of the Swiss Confederation denounced the U.S. policy of force. The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, evoqued the trying of his U.S. counterpart under international justice for crimes against humanity, while the Serbian President, Tomislav Nikolic, denounced the masquerade of international courts which prosecute only the enemies of the Empire etc. It has thus gone from criticism from a few anti-imperialist states to widespread revolt including Washington’s allies.

Never before has the authority of the masters of the world been so publicly challenged – a sign that after their Syrian retreat, they are no longer to be feared. …source

Bahrain GP suitability ‘could be investigated’ says FIA candidate
By Andrew Benson Chief F1 writer, 30 September, 2013, BBC.

FIA presidential candidate David Ward would set up an investigation to establish whether Bahrain should hold a grand prix, if he is elected.

The event was cancelled in 2011 after civil unrest, but was reinstated last year by the current head of motorsport’s governing body, Jean Todt.

But Ward said Todt was guilty of “poor decision-making”.

“The important thing is to be neutral. What is merited is an investigatory visit,” he said.

“Look at things on the ground, talk to all sides as far as is possible and make a judgement based on that.”

The Bahrain GP was cancelled two years ago after the unrest led to a violent suppression of protests and accusations that authorities had engaged in torture and other human rights abuses.

Todt sent the head of the Spanish motorsport federation on a fact-finding mission to the troubled Gulf state ahead of the reinstatement of the race in 2012 but his report was widely criticised.

Ward and Todt are the only candidates to have declared so far for the 6 December FIA election.

Speaking in an interview with BBC Sport, 58-year-old Englishman Ward said: “I think he was rather badly served in that mission. I felt sorry for him, actually.”

Ward, a long-time adviser of former FIA president Max Mosley, said he would send “someone with expertise in the area” to Bahrain, citing as an example Edwin Glasgow QC, who chaired the Bloody Sunday inquiry into the actions of British security forces in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
The Bahrain Grand Prix was cancelled in 2011 after civil unrest

He said it was a mistake to run the Bahrain race in 2012 and that the FIA and F1 “crossed over a line” in their facilitation of the Bahrain authorities.

“If it looks like the situation is deteriorating or not improving, what there should be – because this could happen tomorrow in another part of the world – is a standard process to handle this, that is immune from suggestions that one place is being treated differently from another,” Ward added.

He said that if the FIA put “appropriate processes in place, it would minimise the reputational damage you can get from poor decision-making on the hoof”.

He added: “Bahrain had all the hallmarks of decision-making on the hoof right up to 24 hours before the race”.

Ward admitted Mosley is an “old friend”, but says the controversial former FIA president is not supporting his campaign. “I am doing this entirely for my own reasons,” he said.

When Mosley indicated he would not stand again, Ward backed Todt’s campaign for the FIA presidency in 2009, and wrote the Frenchman’s manifesto.

But now Ward, who worked with former Labour Party leader John Smith until his death in 1994, is standing against Todt, saying the FIA needed fundamental reform because its structure is “not fit for purpose”.
Electing a new president

Challenger David Ward and incumbent Jean Todt are the only two candidates to have declared so far in the FIA presidential election, which will take place on 6 December.

There was a report in the Times last week that former rally driver Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the president of the Automobile and Touring Club of the United Arab Emirates was considering running but he has not done so officially as yet.

Ward told BBC Sport he would welcome more candidates running.

The FIA has 183 members with a right to vote, although anyone who has not paid their membership dues within a specified time frame is barred.

The voting is by secret ballot at the FIA General Assembly in Paris and victory requires an absolute majority.

If no candidate wins 50% of the votes in the first round, the two with the highest number of votes go to a second round.

He described the FIA as “amateur, antiquated and rather archaic” and says it should appoint a paid chief executive and a special commissioner to deal with F1 on a daily basis.

Ward said he would press for the FIA to “strengthen its provisions” on corruption and bribery, by ensuring the sporting code “would be clear about the requirements we would have in terms of partners”.

This, he admitted, would “very likely” mean F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone would fall foul of that code if he is convicted of the bribery charges he is facing in Germany.

Ward said the failure to set up a tender process for the sport’s tyre supplier next year – as required by the F1 regulations – could potentially put the FIA at risk of failing in its obligations to the European Commission under competition law.

And he is critical of Todt’s decision to have only a fax vote of the FIA World Council – its legislative body – to approve the outline of a new Concorde Agreement, the document that governs F1.

He said it was “rather odd” and “quite strange” not to submit it to the discussion of a full meeting of the World Council.

Describing himself as a “terrible governance geek”, Ward said the issues on which he was campaigning “may seem intensely boring but are actually really, really important”.

He said: “The reasons I’m running is I can see failures going on in terms of governance that I think are quite serious.”

Ward added that the role of the FIA president was too wide for one person to do effectively and that the organisation needed “robust decision-making processes with separation of powers between executive and legislative and judicial”. …source

US seeking to fight terrorism at grassroots
30 September, 2013 – Saudi Gazette

NEW YORK CITY — US Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday unveiled a new drive to tackle the root causes of violent extremism, as he condemned a series of “heinous” attacks, including the Kenya mall siege.

“It is fair to say that unspeakable evil still exists in our world. We have to find a way to prevent, to preempt, to act ahead of these kinds of obscenities,” Kerry told a global forum in New York.

He denounced recent attacks including the massacre in a Nairobi mall by Somali militants and Sunday’s devastating double suicide attack on a church in northwest Pakistan which left 82 dead.

“Cowardly attacks like these cannot be allowed to change who we are, or shake our resolve to find peace and justice for all,” the top US diplomat said. He announced that the Global Counterterrorism Forum set up two years ago with other nations around the world had already mobilized some $200 million to help train people in fighting terror attacks.

Two training centers are underway, one already open in Abu Dhabi, with a second to open in Malta next year.

Kerry said the United States was planning to put an additional $30 million into the fund, and was hoping to launch a new arm of the forum specifically to tackle terrorism at grassroots level.

“From Kenya to Pakistan from Mali to Yemen the threat that we face is more diffused, centralized, geographically dispersed than ever before,” he said.

“Addressing this threat will require every tool in our arsenal, political, economical, diplomatic, military — and perhaps most importantly, the power of our ideas.”

But Kerry stressed that “getting this right is not just about taking terrorists off the street, it’s about providing more economic opportunities for marginalized youth at risk of recruitment.” “It’s about challenging the narrative of violence that is used to justify the slaughtering of innocent people.” …source

Bahrain said to sentence 50 Anti-Government Activists
29 September, 2013 – Al Jazeera America

A Bahrain court sentenced 50 people to prison Sunday after a mass trial for alleged links to a militant group blamed for bombings and other antigovernment attacks in the Gulf nation, a rights activist said.

“A group of Feb. 14 activists were sentenced to between five and 15 years in jail,” Yousif al-Muhafda of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights told Reuters.

The center said there were human-rights campaigners among those convicted “under the internationally criticized and vague terrorism law” and that the sentences added up to more than 400 years.

“This was a sham trial with a political verdict. They should be released immediately,” the center’s acting president, Maryam al-Khawaja, said in a statement.

The defendants are accused of forming an illegal group opposing the political system, “training elements to commit violence and vandalism” and “attacking security men,” according to the charge sheet.

The convictions mark the broadest blow yet to backers of the almost daily protests by the Feb. 14 movement, named after the date in 2011 when Bahrain’s Shia majority began an uprising seeking greater political rights from the country’s Sunni rulers and the deposal of the kingdom’s al-Khalifa dynasty.

Bahrain’s head of public prosecution described the Feb. 14 group as a terrorist organization.

The verdicts could stir more unrest in the nation, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

The main Shia opposition party, Al Wefaq, called it a “black day for justice.”

Mohamed al-Maskati, head of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, said 20 suspects were convicted in absentia. Charges included seeking to topple the ruling system.

Thousands of people have been arrested in Bahrain’s crackdowns.

Asked for comment, an official told Reuters a government statement on the matter was being prepared.
…source

Iran shows truth is winning out
27 Septemebr, 2013 – By Finian Cunningham – PressTV

US military power is still a dangerous force, especially at this historical juncture of economic collapse. War is therefore always a danger, and diplomacy, peace and justice are far from assured. But the people of Iran are finding a new ally – the rest of the world.

That is because the enemy is one and the same, destructive elitist system, and because the truth is winning out.”

The saying goes that a week is a long time in politics – meaning that big changes can surprisingly occur in a short period.

This week, at the 68th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations was one such watershed event.

The engine for this dramatic change was Iran’s diplomatic thrust. Iranian President Dr. Hassan Rouhani delivered a speech to the assembly that enthralled those willing to listen while leaving detractors reeling from their own inadequacy.

Rouhani’s address was a paragon of rational argument that reinforced humane values of respect and equality.

Yet he laid blame firmly on the causes and protagonists of conflict, whether in Palestine, Iraq or Syria. In sum, the Iranian president rejected militarism and warmongering as an archaic blunt and immoral instrument, and he offered a hopeful way forward from conflict based unequivocally on equality and respect.

“Militarism and the recourse to violent and military means to subjugate others are failed examples of the perpetuation of old ways in new circumstances,” said Rouhani.

The bottom-line was that he successfully conveyed Iran is a peaceful nation that threatens no one, and is willing to join with others in creating a peaceful world, including the removal of all weapons of mass destruction.

American and Israeli warmongers were left grappling vainly for detractions.

“Iran has come here to cheat the world,” said an Israeli official, whose grudging sounded paranoid and fatuous.

The trouble for these American and Israeli warmongers and hate-filled psychopath politicians is that we now live in a world of instant global communications where ordinary people can hear the words of others without them being warped and poisoned.

Even the American mainstream media had to give the Iranian leader a fair hearing because, with many alternative sources of information to serve as verification, to not give a fair hearing would expose such media as disreputable agents of disinformation. With the traditional Western media’s credibility at an all-time low among the public, they can’t afford to lose any more respect.

But it was Rouhani’s personal style of calm reason and erudition that won the day. Any one with an open mind had to be impressed by his cogent appeal for peace and a better world free of conflict.

“People all over the world are tired of war, violence and extremism. They hope for a change in the status quo,” he said, adding, “In recent years, a dominant voice has been repeatedly heard: ‘The military option is on the table.’ Against the backdrop of this illegal and ineffective contention, let me say loud and clear that ‘peace is within reach.’”

The only way to counter such reasonable politics is to resort to calumny and propaganda. But Rouhani had that covered too when he warned against those who create “imaginary enemies” and the fictitious “Iranian threat.”

The case for Iran to be treated with respect, without aggression, and to be allowed to avail of its national rights, including peaceful nuclear technology, resonates with world public opinion. People, and the American people in particular, are fed up with baseless aggression whether in the form of militarism abroad or, significantly, economic austerity at home. The significance is that people have made the structural connection between these two aberrations. People are realizing that their personal suffering is related to the way the rest of the world is suffering. It is the common condition of the bankrupt capitalist system and all its predations.

The days when the public could be misled by a warmongering elite are rapidly waning. People can see through the self-serving lies and fabrications and are intolerant of this obnoxious mindset. The people want a totally new arrangement of doing things, to overturn an economy based on exploitation and oppression and warmongering, to be replaced by a more ethical, efficient and equitable system, one that is democratic, not despotic.

In this past week, there was a profound sense of common ground for change, where Iran’s appeal was in synchronicity with international public opinion.

The contrast between Rouhani’s speech to the UN and US President Barack Obama’s was telling. The Iranian leader’s sentiments and aspirations seemed on the crest of a wave – the wider feelings of ordinary people all over the planet – while Obama sounded like someone left behind, thrashing around in a bygone era.

Rouhani listened to the other intently; whereas Obama cleared off from the assembly hall.

Obama’s speech was full of American self-importance and self-justification. It was a subjective parody of history and conflict in which the US is always portrayed as the “good guy.” Unlike Rouhani, Obama did not present supporting facts and objective rationale. It was a propaganda stunt to cover US militarism and illegal wars with a veneer of legitimacy.

Out of Obama’s mouth came not an appeal from the heart for absolute human equality and peace, but rather hackneyed propaganda to excuse US aggression and superiority towards the rest of the world.

“We will dismantle terrorist networks that threaten our people,” said Obama with earnest fakery that is so obvious now it is pathetic.

“Wherever possible, we will build the [terrorist] capacity of our partners, [dis] respect the sovereignty of nations, and work to address [promote] the root causes of terror. But when it’s necessary to defend the United States against [imaginary] terrorist attack, we will take direct action [mass murder].” (Words/letters in brackets added.)

All that and more from Obama is so anachronistic, old school now. What American people and the rest of the world realize more than ever is that the US under its bankrupt economic system does not have international relations. It has predatory, hegemonic instincts that fuel relentless massive violence – all for the enrichment of its banking and corporate elite.

And, what’s more, people realize the inextricable link between the US elite’s aggression abroad and its economic and police-state aggression at home.

The US president declared to the UN delegates, “The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force [state terrorism], to secure our [ruling elite’s] core interests [obscene capitalist profit].” (Words/letters in brackets added.)

In the past, such American blandishments and bluster may have been possible – but not any more. People everywhere across the globe can read what’s inside the parenthesis when official America speaks now.

And the people know the latter is a twisted mouthpiece to disguise destructive interests.

The appeal for reason by Iran is very much chiming with the people of the world. The American elite and their warmongering allies in Britain, France and Israel, among others, know that they are up against a powerful wave of reason and noble sentiment. That is why Obama had to abruptly swerve from the US war plan towards Syria and why the warmonger instincts have been tempered to try the diplomatic route.

US military power is still a dangerous force, especially at this historical juncture of economic collapse. War is therefore always a danger, and diplomacy, peace and justice are far from assured. But the people of Iran are finding a new ally – the rest of the world.

That is because the enemy is one and the same, destructive elitist system, and because the truth is winning out.
…source

Bahrain proof of Obama’s cheap words
By Finian Cunningham – 25 September, 2013 – PressTV

And yet here’s an unbearable irony, in reference to possible dialogue with Iran, Obama had the cheek to say that Iranian words must be backed up with meaningful and transparent action.”

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week,

President Barack Obama delivered his usual barrage of myth and mendacity concerning the role of the US in the world.

Some commentators have since swooned at the possibility of dialogue between Iran and US and a new era of diplomacy – all because of a few positive-sounding words uttered by the American president.

So, let’s test the veracity or reliability of a few more of Obama’s words as applied to the real world.

“The hard work of forging freedom and democracy is the task of a generation. And this includes efforts to resolve sectarian tensions that continue to surface in places like Iraq, Bahrain and Syria,” he told UN delegates.

Almost every word and claim made by the American president in his entire speech can be rebutted with facts to show that he is either woefully ignorant of history or, more sinisterly, is a deluded liar. It is galling to have to listen to someone lecturing the rest of the world on the peace-making principles of the UN, and especially when that someone is the figurehead leader of the world’s biggest terrorist state.

We haven’t time to repudiate all of Obama’s grandiloquent nonsense, but let’s focus on the sample above. In every case, Iraq, Bahrain and Syria, the US has fomented, sponsored and exploded sectarian violence. That is, the opposite of what Obama claims.

No one is pretending that the Middle East does not have a history of latent sectarian tensions. But the US illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, beginning in 2003, and the overtly sectarian counterinsurgency tactics was like plunging a knife into scar tissue and twisting it open, with predictable bloodletting between Sunni and Shia, and the fleeing of thousands of Christians from an historic homeland, never to return.

Iraq has been turned into an internecine charnel house because of American “hard work”. This violence is an integral part of the US using sectarianism to destabilize Syria for the purpose of regime change there. In this “hard work”, Washington has called upon the divide-and-rule expertise of the old colonial powers, Britain and France, as well as the terrorist competence of the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Israel.

On the third location – Bahrain – where Obama proclaimed to the world that the US is trying to forge freedom and democracy and resolve sectarianism, the reality is again the diametric opposite to the American myth. Indeed, in many ways, Bahrain is a particularly clear proof of the real mendacious and destructive intent of US foreign policy.

The cause of democracy and freedom in Bahrain has been bludgeoned by the Al Khalifa monarchy precisely because of unswerving support from the US, as well as Britain and Saudi Arabia. Bahrain smashes the sugarcoated words of Obama about American idealism into blood-spattered shards.

Bahrain’s 700,000 national population is comprised of 70 per cent Shia, who demand an elected government. For decades, not just since the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, the population has been calling for this democratic right. Yet this peaceful demand has been met with slaughter and vicious repression – all within only a few miles from the US Navy Fifth Fleet base on the tiny Persian Gulf island.

Bahrain’s coterie of unelected royal rulers, who happen to be Sunni and who historically invaded the island 230 years ago with the help of the British Empire, has succeeded so far to stave off this righteous, basic democratic demand only because of the staunch support it receives from Washington and London.

This support to crush democracy, not forge it as Obama makes out, takes the form of military equipment, such as the sale of shot guns, poison gas and British-made Typhoon fighters jets as discussed last month in 10 Downing Street between UK premier David Cameron and Bahraini King Hamad. It involves diplomatic shielding of the Bahraini regime from international justice, despite the occasional disingenuous “concern” over human rights issued by Washington and London.

The Western imprimatur to bludgeon democracy and freedom in Bahrain is also seen in the repressive expertise with which the Bahraini regime fuels conflict between the Shia majority and the remaining Sunni community. In this, the Bahraini regime has benefited much from the former colonial power Britain in the use of divide-and-rule tactics. The callous turning of blind eye by Washington and London to the systematic violation of the Shia in Bahrain is a crucial approval for the regime to do its worst.

A state of emergency exists in Bahrain in all but name, after the Khalifa rubber-stamp so-called parliament instated a raft of special powers to persecute anyone deemed to criticize the regime, including the mere expression that the despotic regime should stand down and give way to democratic government. All marches and gatherings are banned, thus denying basic freedoms of speech and assembly.

Furthermore, the regime’s paramilitary police force, backed up by Saudi personnel, break into hundreds of homes every week, beating and arresting the occupants. Often these police raids are conducted by masked armed commandos in civilian clothes.

Those detained are not heard of for weeks and months, denied legal counsel and family visits. They are thrown into the Khalifa torture dungeons where they are subjected to the most horrendous physical and mental abuse, such as hanging for days from the ceiling by the wrists.

Invariably, the detainees sign confessions without even knowing what they are confessing to. Then a Khalifa judge will hand down years of imprisonment based on these torture confessions.

Take the case of Rihanna Al Musawi. This mother of three children was first arrested because she was protesting against the unfair imprisonment of political leaders and human rights activists. Rihanna had the temerity to take her peaceful protest to the Formula One Grand Prix circuit where her protest T-Shirt might have been picked up by international television cameras. That was in April. For the past six months, she has been subjected to relentless torture in prison, including being stripped naked and threatened with rape. She faces trumped up terrorism charges and a lifetime in prison.

The Bahraini regime has tried to keep its crimes secret by especially targeting journalists, photographers and bloggers. Journalist Nazeeha Saeed was hauled into custody and tortured, including electrocution and whipping on her back. This was because she reported to international news outlets the horrific killing in cold blood of civilian protester Isa Abdullah Hassan back in February 2011 during the initial protests. Hassan was killed when a policeman fired a gun at point blank to his head. When Nazeeha Saeed was brought into custody, her interrogators kept accusing her of making a false television report on the death.

Another witness to the Bahraini regime’s ruthless crackdown is photographer Hassan Matooq, who was jailed for three years. His “crime” was that of compiling images showing the injuries incurred by peaceful protesters at the hands of the state security forces.

Dozens of other Bahraini journalists and photographers have been targeted by the Khalifa regime, including Mohammed Hassan and award-winners Ahmed Humaidan and Hussain Hubail. As with thousands of other Bahrainis, these individuals have undergone the barbaric Khalifa torture apparatus inflicted with scientific efficiency – techniques that the Americans and British torturers learnt in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Kenya and Northern Ireland. Bahraini sources verify that British personnel are present at these torture sessions.

The reports and images of activists and journalists depicting the daily onslaught of repression in Bahraini villages have earned them particular venom for their powerful testimony. Their persecution is the regime’s way of trying to rob the voiceless of any voice whatsoever.

This is American and British-sponsored sectarianism and repression, as practiced in Bahrain. It is deliberately aimed at terrorizing the constituency for democratic change in Bahrain – the Shia population. For the US and Britain, the last thing these governments want to see in the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East more generally, is democracy and peaceful coexistence between Shia, Sunni, Muslim and Christian, or anyone else.

That’s why Obama’s grandiloquent words at the UN need to be tested against the real world. They are cheap and meaningless when measured against the suffering that US policies actually inflict in practice. Bahrain is proof that President Barack Obama’s lofty claims of forging democracy and freedom and resolving sectarianism are but a sick joke.

Just remember when you finish reading this, the torture of those Bahrainis mentioned above will continue for the rest of today, tomorrow and for years to come, all because of American and British “support”.

And yet here’s an unbearable irony, in reference to possible dialogue with Iran, Obama had the cheek to say that Iranian words must be backed up with meaningful and transparent action. …source

Syria’s Assad says his agreement to give up chemical arsenal is unconditional

18 September, 2013 By Hannah Allam — McClatchy

WASHINGTON — Syrian President Bashar Assad said Wednesday that he is committed to relinquishing Syria’s chemical arsenal without conditions and as quickly as possible in a Fox News Channel interview that is the latest installment in a charm offensive intended to counter portrayals of him as a bloodthirsty dictator.

Responding to questions for an hour, Assad appeared as a mild-mannered bureaucrat explaining in fluent English why he’s waging an unfortunate but necessary war against al Qaida extremists, the same ones who fought U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He bristled at calling the rebel forces fighting to topple him as “opposition” and claimed that 80 to 90 percent are al Qaida-linked terrorists. He played down the high death toll of the war, claiming that most of those killed were terrorists.

“Opposition doesn’t mean to carry weapons and kill people, innocents, and to destroy schools, destroy infrastructure,” Assad said. Later in the segment, he added, “This is war. You don’t have clean war.”

He didn’t dispute U.N. findings that sarin gas was used in a deadly Aug. 21 attack, but he blamed it on the rebel forces, which he said are made up of jihadists who’ve streamed into Syria from more than 80 countries. He derided sarin as a “kitchen gas,” saying it can be made at home, and blamed its use on fighters that are “supported by governments,” a veiled reference to Persian Gulf rebel financiers such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The wide-ranging interview was conducted by the network’s senior foreign affairs correspondent, Greg Palkot, and former Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich, who’s a commentator for the network and has met Assad on previous occasions. Last week, Assad granted an interview to Charlie Rose of CBS and PBS, but canceled an interview he’d arranged with George Stephanopoulos of ABC.

Analysts say the strategy behind Assad’s media blitz goes beyond simply avoiding a U.S. strike in retaliation for deadly chemical attacks. The broader mission is to convince the West that no matter how brutal his regime appears to outsiders, the alternative is worse.

At every opportunity, Assad drove home the fact that the rebel movement is dominated by Islamist militants who’ve carried out beheadings, car bombings and other terrorist acts the regime knows will strike a chord with an American audience. Assad, as he did in the earlier CBS interview, pointedly mentioned an incident where a rebel leader was captured on video cutting an organ from a dead Syrian soldier’s body and taking a bite from it.

At another point in the Fox interview, Assad referred to the United States as “the greatest country in the world.”

“He’s saying, ‘I’m Westernized, I’m quiet spoken, I’m not screaming jihad, and I’m the devil you can work with,’” said Lawrence Pintak, dean of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University and a former CBS News correspondent in the Middle East. “And that’s what American foreign policy has been about for decades – working with the devil you can to keep out the ones you don’t want.”

Pintak, who’s interviewed the late Saddam Hussein, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and several other dictators, said Assad’s understated persona and background as an eye doctor who was educated in England are benefits to his media campaign. His clean-shaven, business-suited image makes for a stark juxtaposition with bearded, gun-toting rebels waving the black flag of militant Islamists.

“It’s public diplomacy at its best,” Pintak said. “It’s fascinating to watch someone who operates in a completely controlled media environment being so deft at managing his own image in the West.”
…more

Hezbollah urges Bahrain to end crackdown on Shia Majority
September 20, 2013 – JafriaNews

JNN 20 Sept 2013 Beirut : Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement has urged Bahraini government to immediately end public crackdown.

“Over the past one and half year, Bahraini officials have assaulted the majority of people and crossed the red lines,” the Islamic Movement said in a statement released on Thursday.

Bahraini security forces razed Mosques, insulted the sanctities and detained men and women including the elderlies, it was said in part of the statement, according to Al-Alam news channel.

According to Hezbollah, the monarchy also plans to invalidate the nationality of some Bahraini citizens and had shut down the Shura Council.

“Bahraini people are paying the price only for demanding a greater voice by holding free and fair election and seeking their own legitimate and rights,” the statement read.

The Islamic Movement has condemned such policies adopted by the regime who violates basic rights of the people, calling on the ruling Al Khalifa family to give in to the legitimate demands of the oppositions and stop the cruelties which continued since one and half year ago.

Hezbollah also blasted the international community’s silence against the atrocity of those who claim to favor international justice, saying that the Bahraini government deserves harsher reaction than just condemnation.

So, the use of political force on Bahraini government is the least, at the juncture in order for the regime to respect the dignity and the human rights of the nation, the statement added.

The statement by Hezbollah comes as the monarchy has refused so far to ease political pressures on people and giving back the rights they stood for since the beginning of the uprising some two years ago.

At least 80 people have been killed since Arab Spring-inspired protests erupted in Bahrain in early 2011, according to the International Federation for Human Rights.

Earlier this month, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights has issued condemnation for these continued attacks on the families of political dissidents and their children. …more

Kissinger and Chile: In an Age of Vigilantes, There Is Cause for Optimism
19 September, 2013 – By John Pilger – Truthout

The most important anniversary of the year was the 40th anniversary of September 11, 1973 – the crushing of the democratic government of Chile by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and Henry Kissinger, then US secretary of state. The National Security Archive in Washington has posted new documents that reveal much about Kissinger’s role in an atrocity that cost thousands of lives.

In declassified tapes, Kissinger is heard planning with President Richard Nixon the overthrow of President Salvador Allende. They sound like Mafiosi thugs. Kissinger warns that the “model effect” of Allende’s reformist democracy “can be insidious.” He tells CIA director Richard Helms, “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” to which Helms replies, “I am with you.” With the slaughter under way, Kissinger dismisses a warning by his senior officials of the scale of the repression. Secretly, he tells Pinochet, “You did a great service to the West.”

I have known many of Pinochet’s and Kissinger’s victims. Sara De Witt, a student at the time, showed me the place where she was beaten, assaulted and electrocuted. On a wintry day in the suburbs of Santiago, we walked through a former torture centre known as Villa Grimaldi, where hundreds like her suffered terribly and were murdered or “disappeared.”

Understanding Kissinger’s criminality is vital when trying to fathom what the US calls its “foreign policy.” Kissinger remains an influential voice in Washington, admired and consulted by Barack Obama. When Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain commit crimes with US collusion and weapons, their impunity and Obama’s hypocrisy are pure Kissinger. Syria must not have chemical weapons, but Israel can have them and use them. Iran must not have a nuclear program, but Israel can have more nuclear weapons than Britain. This is known as “realism” or realpolitik by Anglo-American academics and think-tanks that claim expertise in “counterterrorism” and “national security,” which are Orwellian terms meaning the opposite.

In recent weeks, the New Statesman has published articles by John Bew, an academic at the Kings College war studies department, which the cold warrior Laurence Freedman made famous. Bew laments the parliamentary vote that stopped David Cameron joining Obama in lawlessly attacking Syria and the hostility of most British people to bombing other nations. A note at the end of his articles says he will “take up the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations” in Washington. If this is not a black joke, it a profanity on those like Sara de Witt and Kissinger’s countless other victims, not least those who died in the holocaust of his and Nixon’s secret, illegal bombing of Cambodia.

This doctrine of “realism” was invented in the US following the second world war and sponsored by the Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations, the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) and the Council on Foreign relations. In the great universities, students were taught to regard people in terms of their usefulness or expendability: in other words, their threat to “us.” This narcissism served to justify the Cold War, its moralizing myths and cataclysmic risks and, when that was over, the “war on terror.” Such a “transatlantic consensus” often found its clearest echo in Britain, with the British elite’s enduring nostalgia for empire. Tony Blair used it to commit and justify his war crimes until his lies got the better of him. The violent death of more than 1,000 people in Iraq every month is his legacy; yet his views are still courted, and his chief collaborator, Alastair Campbell, is a jolly after-dinner speaker and the subject of obsequious interviews. All the blood, it seems, has been washed away.

Syria is the current project. Outflanked by Russia and public opinion, Obama has now embraced the “path of diplomacy.” Has he? As Russian and US negotiators arrived in Geneva on September 12, 2013, the US increased its support for the Al Qaeda-affiliated militias with weapons sent clandestinely through Turkey, Eastern Europe and the Gulf. The Godfather has no intention of deserting his proxies in Syria. Al Qaeda was all but created by the CIA’s Operation Cyclone, which armed the mujahedin in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Since then, jihadists have been used to divide Arab societies and in eliminating the threat of pan-Arab nationalism to Western “interests” and Israel’s lawless colonial expansion. This is Kissinger-style “realism.”

In 2006, I interviewed Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, who ran the CIA in Latin America in the 1980s. Here was a true “realist.” Like Kissinger and Nixon on the tapes, he spoke his mind. He referred to Salvador Allende as “whatshisname in Chile” and said “he had to go because it was in our national interests.” When I asked what gave him the right to overthrow governments, he said, “Like it or lump it, we’ll do what we like. So just get used to it, world.”

The world is no longer getting used to it. In a continent ravaged by those whom Nixon called “our bastards,” Latin American governments have defied the likes of Clarridge and implemented much of Allende’s dream of social democracy – which was Kissinger’s fear. Today, most of Latin America is independent of US foreign policy and free of its vigilantism. Poverty has been cut almost by half; children live beyond the age of 5; the elderly learn to read and write. These remarkable advances are invariably reported in bad faith in the West and ignored by the “realists.” That must never lessen their value as a source of optimism and inspiration for all of us. …source

Bahrain Opposition Defies Ban on Meeting Diplomats
20 September, 2013 – ABC News

Bahrain’s main Shiite opposition group is defying a ban by the island’s Sunni government to have direct contacts with foreign diplomats.

Al Wefaq’s secretary-general, Sheik Ali Salman, met Norwegian political affairs envoy Hakon Smedsvig on Thursday in the Bahraini capital, Manama.

Bahrain’s Western-backed monarchy earlier this month banned all diplomatic contacts by political groups unless they receive official permission. The move was sharply criticized by Western governments, including the U.S.

This week, authorities detained a top Al Wefaq official on allegations of inciting violence. In return, the group announced a boycott of reconciliation talks with the government.

The strategic Gulf nation has been gripped by unrest since an uprising launched in early 2011 by majority seeking a greater political voice.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf said in a statement that in the last two years the Bahraini government and oppositions groups have been involved in important dialogue but that recent developments have hindered the process.

“The Government of Bahrain has recently issued decrees restricting the rights and abilities of political groups to assemble, associate, and express themselves freely, including by regulating their communications with foreign governments and international organizations,” the statement said. …more

Bahrain: Senior Doctor Facing Trial on September 23 on Charges of Insulting the King
20 September, 2013 – Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights

Dr. Saeed Al-Samahiji – Ophthalmologist – facing trial on September 23, 2013 on charges of insulting the king.

Dr. Al-Samahiji been summoned by the Criminal Investigation on Wednesday, September 18.

On September 19, he was questioned by the public prosecutor and criminal investigations. He was released later.

The Public Prosecution accused him of delivered a public speech on September 1, 2013.

The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights demands:

1-Guarantee freedom of opinion and expression.
2-Dropping the charges relating to freedom of expression.

Background:

April 2011: Dr. Saeed Al-Samahiji was arrested after the authorities suppressed Bahraini protesters in the Pearl Roundabout.

September 29, 2011: The court sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment.

June 14, 2012: Court of Appeal reduced the verdict against him to one year imprisonment.

October 1, 2012: The Court of Cassation upheld the previous court’s conviction and sentence against him.

April 23, 2013: The Bahraini authorities released him after serving a one-year imprisonment. …more

Turkey shuts Syria crossing following raid by militants
20 September, 2013 – Arab News

ANKARA/BEIRUT: Turkey closed a border crossing to Syria after an Al-Qaeda-linked group stormed a nearby town and expelled opposition fighters from an Arab and Western-backed unit, officials said on Thursday.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on Wednesday killed at least five members of the Northern Storm Brigade, a rebel unit that controls the border, highlighting the deep opposition divisions.

The confrontation in the town of Azaz was one of the most serious clashes between the Al-Qaeda affiliate, made up mostly of foreign fighters, and the more ideologically moderate home-grown rebels trying to topple President Bashar Assad.
Their struggle, however, is less about ideology and more about a fight for territory, resources and the spoils of war — with armed ISIL fighters positioned to defend the town and a nearby rebel brigade trying to broker a cease-fire.

A Turkish official told Reuters the Oncupinar border gate — about 5 km (3 miles) from Azaz and opposite the Syrian Bab Al-Salameh gate — had been closed for “security reasons.”

“There is still confusion about what is happening on the Syrian side. All humanitarian assistance that normally goes through the gate has ceased,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Crossings such as Azaz have been a lifeline for rebel-held territories in Syria’s north, allowing in humanitarian aid, building materials and food as well as giving refugees a route out of Syria.

While Turkey says it normally operates an open door policy, from time to time it temporarily closes its border crossings following clashes near the frontier.

The crossing fell into opposition hands last year when rebels launched an offensive to take the northern business hub of Aleppo.

Ankara has been one of the strongest backers of the rebels in the 2-1/2-year uprising against Assad. While it denies arming them, fighters including militants have been able to cross its volatile border into Syria.

At the same time, many activists and Kurdish forces accuse Turkey of allowing radical groups to go through its territory to launch attacks on its other foe — Kurdish militias, who are now operating on the frontier in northeastern Syria. Turkey denies those charges.

Syrian activists said the fighting in Azaz had subsided by Thursday and there were no rebel preparations under way to take the town back from ISIL by force.

ISIL fighters were now spread throughout Azaz and had positioned snipers on rooftops, activists said.

Northern Storm fighters were stationed at the border crossing, where they were joined by fighters from the powerful Tawheed Brigade who came from Aleppo to try to broker a truce. Tawheed has a large presence in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, about 30 km south of Azaz.

“Reinforcements from the Tawheed Brigade were sent to impose a cease-fire on the two sides,” said Abu Obeida, a Tawheed spokesman. “There is still no cease-fire yet … There are negotiations under way.”

The clashes were a stark illustration of the relative strength of the Al-Qaeda-linked fighters compared to Syria’s larger but less experienced moderate forces. It also highlights the divisions that have plagued the opposition.

Both dilemmas have left Western powers hesitant to supply the rebels with advanced weapons.

ISIL declared an offensive last week against two other rebel factions, accusing them of attacking its forces and suggesting they may have collaborated with the government.

“What is worrying are the clashes themselves,” a second Turkish official said, referring to rebel infighting generally.

“What we want is to see the various coalition groups put their house in order and focus on the struggle with the regime, because that is the real issue — the violence inflicted by the regime on the Syrian people.”

An activist from Azaz who identified himself as Mohamed Al-Azizi said he expected more violence before the confrontation was over.
“These people are very dangerous for Syria,” he said via Skype, referring to the ISIL fighters. “They say they’re Islamists but they have nothing to do with religion.” …source