White House Unveils Counter-Extremism Plan
by Dina Temple-Raston – August 3, 2011
see White House Plan HERE

The White House unveiled its strategy to counter radicalization today, ending months of speculation about how President Obama intends to tackle the problem of violent extremism in this country.

The eight-page unclassified paper, titled Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States, has been more than a year in the making and marks the first time the U.S. has laid out a comprehensive strategy to counter violent extremism. Officials say it is a three-pronged approach that includes community engagement, better training, and counternarratives that make a case for why violent extremism is a dead end.

“This strategy is not so much about how we’re changing than having us lay down what we’ve been doing on a key issue,” said National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough in a briefing to a handful of reporters Wednesday morning.

The strategy acknowledges just how much the threat against the U.S. has changed since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. When al-Qaida was sending operatives into the U.S., it made sense to rely on federal agencies to catch them at the border or arrest them as plots were discovered. But as terrorists groups have turned to American operatives who are already here, it makes sense to take the fight to the grass-roots level.

Truancy, for example, is a common indicator of kids getting mixed up with gangs. As it turns out, it is also a common indicator of kids who are falling prey to violent extremist rhetoric. The federal government can’t track missed school days very efficiently. A local high school clearly can. That’s why local communities are at the heart of the plan.

“Communities are best placed to recognize and confront the threat because violent extremists are targeting their children, families and neighbors,” the report reads. “Rather than blame particular communities, it is essential that we find ways to help them protect themselves.”

The White House envisions bringing together a roster of agencies and departments — from the Department of Education to the Labor Department and Energy Department — to provide local officials the tools they need to counter radicalization.

Traditionally, the Department of Justice or the FBI has taken the lead on outreach, and officials say they will continue to be involved. What has changed is the emphasis. Local agencies that have day-to-day interaction with at-risk communities are perfectly positioned: By addressing individual problems within the community they not only help residents, they also whittle down the list of grievances that might eventually lead to violent extremism. …more

The Obama Administration’s “Secret Law” to Spy on Americans
by Tom Burghardt – Global Research, July 31, 2011

During last spring’s run-up to the reauthorization of three expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) charged that the administration and the FBI was relying on a “secret” interpretation of law to vacuum-up exabytes of data, including cell phone location records and internet data mining that target Americans.

In March, a written statement to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security by Justice Department official Todd Hinnen confirmed that the administration had used Section 215, the so-called “business records” section of the Act “to obtain driver’s license records, hotel records, car rental records, apartment leasing records, credit card records, and the like.”

Further confirmation of Wyden’s charges came from an unlikely source: a White House nominee for a top counterterrorism position.

Last week Wired reported that Matthew Olsen, the administration’s pick to head the National Counterterrorism Center “acknowledged that ‘some of the pleadings and opinions related to the Patriot Act’ to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approves snooping warrants ‘are classified’.”

If confirmed, Olsen will replace Michael E. Leiter, the Bushist embed who told the Senate last year during hearings into 2009’s aborted plot to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day: “I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another.”

What those reasons are for wanting a terrorist to board a packed airliner were not spelled out to Senate nor were they explored by corporate media. This raises an inevitable question: what else is the administration concealing from the American people?

White House Stonewall

Back in May, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department “demanding the release of a secret legal memo used to justify FBI access to Americans’ telephone records without any legal process or oversight.”

So far, the administration has refused to release the memos.

According to the civil liberties’ watchdogs, a report last year by the DOJ’s own Inspector General “revealed how the FBI, in defending its past violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), had come up with a new legal argument to justify secret, unchecked access to private telephone records.”

“The Obama administration,” The Washington Post reports, has continued “to resist the efforts of two Democratic senators to learn more about the government’s interpretation of domestic surveillance law, stating that ‘it is not reasonably possible’ to identify the number of Americans whose communications may have been monitored under the statute.”

In a letter to Wyden and Senator Mark Udall (D-CO), Kathleen Turner, the director of legislative affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), claimed that a “joint oversight team” has not uncovered evidence “of any intentional or willful attempts to violate or circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA, which was amended in 2008.”

Turner went on to say that “with respect to FAA” [FISA Amendments Act of 2008, the statute that “legalized” Bushist surveillance programs and handed retroactive immunity to spying telecoms like AT&T], “you [Wyden] asked whether any significant interpretations of the FAA are currently classified. As you are aware, opinions of the FISA Court usually contain extensive discussions of particularly sources, methods and operations and are therefore classified.”

Throwing the onus back on political grifters in the House and Senate, Turner wrote: “Even though not publicly available, by law any opinion containing a significant legal interpretation is provided to the congressional intelligence committees.”

With circular logic Turner claims that because “FISA Court opinions are so closely tied to the facts of the application under review that they cannot be made public in any meaningful form without compromising the sensitive sources and methods at issue.”

At best, her statement is disingenuous. After all, it is precisely that secret interpretation of the law made by the White House Office of Legal Counsel that Wyden and others, including EFF, the Electronic Privacy Information Network (EPIC) and journalists are demanding the administration clarify.

Justice Department Shields NSA’s Private Partners

The FBI isn’t the only agency shielded by the Justice Department under cover of bogus “state secrets” assertions by the Obama administration.

On July 13, EPIC reported that a U.S. District Court Judge issued an opinion in their lawsuit (EPIC v. NSA), “and accepted the NSA’s claim” that it can “neither confirm nor deny” that the agency “had entered into a relationship with Google following the China hacking incident in January 2010.”

The privacy watchdogs sought documents under FOIA “because such an agreement could reveal that the NSA is developing technical standards that would enable greater surveillance of Internet users.”

According to EPIC, the administration’s “Glomar response” to “neither confirm nor deny” a covert relationship amongst giant media corporations such as Google and secret state agencies “is a controversial legal doctrine that allows agencies to conceal the existence of records that might otherwise be subject to public disclosure.”

This issue is hardly irrelevant to internet users. CNET News reported last week that “Google’s Street View cars collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world, a practice that raises novel privacy concerns.”

And given the government’s penchant to vacuum-up so-called “transactional data” without benefit of a warrant, would media giants such as Google, high-tech behemoths such as Apple or Microsoft, beholden to the federal government for regulatory perks, resist efforts by the feds demanding they cough-up users’ locational data?

Investigative journalist Declan McCullagh found that the cars “were supposed to collect the locations of Wi-Fi access points. But Google also recorded the street addresses and unique identifiers of computers and other devices using those wireless networks and then made the data publicly available through Google.com until a few weeks ago.”

According to CNET, “the French data protection authority, known as the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) recently contacted CNET and said its investigation confirmed that Street View cars collected these unique hardware IDs. In March, CNIL’s probe resulted in a fine of 100,000 euros, about $143,000.”

On Friday, CNET reported that Microsoft too, is in on the geolocation spy game. ..more

FBI Needs Constitutional Law 101, Not “Islam 101”
Posted by Robyn Greene, ACLU

Last week, Wired’s Spencer Ackerman reported on a FBI document released through an ACLU document request that the agency uses to train new recruits on best practices for “successful interviews/interrogations with individuals from the M.E. [Middle East].” As Ackerman concludes, the training document “presents much information that has nothing to do with crime and everything to do with constitutionally-protected religious practice and social behavior.”

The document was released to the ACLU of Northern California and the Asian Law Caucus as part of a nationwide ACLU initiative to uncover information about a new FBI “racial mapping” program. The program, which is authorized by a 2008 FBI manual, raises serious concerns about the FBI unfairly and unlawfully targeting American communities for investigation and surveillance based on race and ethnicity. We are concerned because biased FBI training can only lead to biased enforcement. And biased policing based on misinformation about race and religion violates American values and makes us less safe by drawing the focus away from credible threats.

To learn more, local ACLU affiliates filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with FBI field offices in 33 states and Washington, D.C. for information about how FBI agents around the county have been collecting and mapping racial and ethnic demographic information, the locations of ethnic-oriented businesses and facilities, and even track certain racial and ethnic “behaviors.” The FBI training document is among the hundreds of pages of documents that are beginning to be revealed through the information requests.

Unfortunately, rather than trim the overbroad authorities that allow the FBI to target intelligence collection efforts on nothing more than race, ethnicity and national origin, the FBI is trying to expand them. The FBI should refrain from monitoring people unless there is reasonable suspicion that they have committed a criminal act or are taking preparatory actions to do so. …source

Walking in the footsteps of Archbishop Romero
Web exclusive – by: James Dryburgh

David Rodriguez was a catholic priest. In the early eighties he took up arms and led guerrilla fighters during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. Today he is a member of parliament. This is his story.

It’s dark now, as I begin chatting to David outside his home in Los Marranitos, a rural village in the Department of La Paz, El Salvador. The weekly community meeting held outside David’s house, which involves community-elected leaders from 14 villages in the area, has just finished. He has had a long day, but then he generally does. Parkinson’s Disease shakes his body as he sits down.

We have a couple of hours before David gets into a battered old Nissan and heads to San Salvador for tomorrow’s parliament. Our discussions are sporadically punctuated by mangos falling from the ancient tree which during the day provides welcome shade. The house is modest. It is adorned by a portrait of David with the FMLN flag and a large poster of El Salvador’s best known face, that of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

In March this year President Obama became the first US president to visit Romero’s tomb, which lies below the cathedral in San Salvador. David believes Romero was a prophet, and that in him, Jesus Christ crossed El Salvador. In the late seventies, whilst he was Archbishop of San Salvador, Romero stood against the brutal, US-backed repression of El Salvador’s poor majority. In 1980, after the order from senior government officials, he was assassinated by a death squad whilst giving Mass. The day before his death, he had these words for his country’s government and armed forces:

‘In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise up to Heaven more urgently with each day that passes, I beseech you, I beg you, I order you to stop the repression.’

His death marked the transition from social unrest and repression to the civil war that would last for the next 12 years and claim around 80,000 lives. Romero’s death and the massacre of mourners at his funeral had a profound effect on David, who was a priest at the time. ‘Romero was four things,’ David explains. ‘A Christian, a humanist, a Salvadoran, and a revolutionary.’ The same could be said of David Rodriguez.

The priest

David grew up in the village of Caldera, in El Salvador’s volcanic zone. His parents owned a sugar cane plantation and a mill for processing the sugar. He recalls a happy atmosphere where the workers were treated as part of the family and everyone ate their meals together. David’s father was very religious and a respected community leader. There was only a primary school in the village, so David’s father arranged for David to live in the church in town, to attend high school in the morning and church teachings in the afternoon.

David later went to Madrid to study an extremely conservative teaching of canonical law. ‘I was of the right, formed of the old school. I was one of the last of the Council of Trent.’ David tells me. ‘We used to give mass in Latin with our backs to the people.’ David became a priest and was soon posted to Tecoluca Church, in San Vicente, a region of coffee and cotton plantations. This immersion in the rural realities of his country began to trouble him. He saw first-hand the ‘hunger wages’ and the abuse of peasant workers. He saw communities denied access to their rivers and land, and, when the élite offered money to his church in return for turning a blind eye, he saw how power buys silence.

This immersion in the rural realities of his country began to trouble him. He saw first-hand the ‘hunger wages’ and the abuse of peasant workers

‘I began seeing the problems without connecting the causes,’ David confesses. ‘But then I saw the aerial fumigation of the cotton fields. It killed the fish in the rivers, the domestic animals, polluted the wells and made people very sick. This was the reality.’ For David, it was this experience that created ‘an internal crisis’ between his religious conservative teaching and the realities flooding his eyes and ears.

In 1969, with this conflict in his mind, David went to a seminar with priests from all over Latin America to analyse the Vatican and discuss the theology of liberation. Suddenly he realized his crisis was the crisis of many. The priests discussed the causes and ‘began to discover reality’.

A movement began with priests meeting each month for discussions and beginning to do ‘real community work’. Traditional Mass continued, but for those who wanted to stay behind afterwards, there was a deeper analysis of the teachings of the church, known as ‘Bible Circles’.

Some priests, including David, began to denounce injustice, but soon the horror intensified. A massacre of peasants took place near Tecoluca. As David tells me that priests had to become revolutionaries, I wonder how this could be reconciled with the teachings of the Church. As if reading my thoughts, David explains, ‘I began to have a new vision of the Bible. The Bible has a lot of revolutionary chapters. I began to think that the more Christian you are, the more revolutionary you are, and vice versa.’ A few years after this realization, Romero was killed and David joined the guerrillas. ‘We priests were like sheep without a shepherd,’ he reflects.

The revolutionary

A very emotional meeting of the country’s priests took place after Romero’s funeral and caused them to split into three groups. One group, which included David’s brother, decided to leave the country. The second group decided to stay in El Salvador, but to ignore reality and simply teach from the Bible as they always had, and the third group decided to stay and support the struggle of the guerrillas.

‘I began to have a new vision of the Bible. The Bible has a lot of revolutionary chapters. I began to think that the more Christian you are, the more revolutionary you are, and vice versa’

Initially, David was providing Mass for guerrillas, marrying people and helping to hide them, but as the war grew, passivity was no longer an option. In 1981, David was named boss of a militia that had the task of trying to take a strategic barracks near the national treasury buildings in the capital, San Salvador. This was the first of many major roles for David during the 12-year war.

After the peace accords of 1992, David felt lost coming down from the mountain camps. He had no family left in the country and had lost many friends. He went to see the new archbishop, hoping to rejoin the church. He was told that if he left the country for three years, did not speak of events in El Salvador and gave a public apology and statement of regret for what he had done, he could become an unofficial helper at a church, but never again a priest. ‘But what I did, I did with consciousness and thought, and I do not regret it,’ declares David.

The politician

As part of the peace process people were offered land and grants. With the support of his friend Jose Luis, who is still his neighbour in Los Marranitos, David took a small grant to rear cows. In 1997, David ran as a parliamentary candidate for the FMLN in the La Paz region. He was elected and still holds this post today.

The Archbishop saw David entering politics as dangerous for the Church and sent an excommunication request to Rome. The request complained that David, ‘adapted the Bible to fit reality’.

Though David is technically forbidden to enter a church or celebrate Mass, he would like the Catholic Church to recognize his marriage and let him use his vocation for communicating with people again. He believes the Church has double standards, and remarks, ‘the old apostles were married and free to express themselves’.

His religious beliefs inform his political views: he argues that Christian principles are socialist in nature. ‘Sometimes the concept we have is of the Soviet Union, but these are models, and I disagree with these models. The State should not own and control everything, people have to own things.’

‘Our country is like a sick body; when it has worms in the stomach, the food is not getting to all parts of the body’

David compares humanity to the human body. If a body is healthy it distributes food to every part: even the toe nails get some nutrients, not just the heart and brain. ‘Our country is like a sick body; when it has worms in the stomach, the food is not getting to all parts of the body.’ He calls this ‘radical capitalism’ and claims that a country has to produce laws to control the distribution of wealth.

David explains his four political priorities for a healthy body. ‘We need to make State institutions work for poor people, combat corruption by organizing people to tackle it together, make complying with our constitution part of our culture and, finally, reactivate our agriculture.’

David is acutely aware of the problems facing his country, and of their complexity. Unlike many politicians, he does not lead a life sheltered from everyday people and everyday struggle.

It’s now 9.30pm and we’ve survived the falling mangos. David hugs me before getting into his car and starting the long drive back to San Salvador. He’ll drive through his beloved country that so often looks as though the war ended only yesterday.

‘If I am killed, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people,’ said Romero, just days before he was murdered. Like Romero, David has devoted and risked his life to help El Salvador’s poor, defending the message of equality and hope. The journey has lost David his pulpit, but not his passion.

James Dryburgh is a Scottish-born Tasmanian writer passionate about truth and helping the world’s muffled voices to be heard. He has lived in Scotland, Spain and Latin America and is Associate Editor of tasmaniantimes.com …source

Bahrain: MSF condemns armed raid on its offices
Doctors without Borders/MSF – Aug 03, 2011 06:00 EDT

The international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders) today condemned an armed raid on its premises in Bahrain and the subsequent detention of one of its staff members.

On 28th July, armed security personnel violently raided MSF’s premises in Manama, damaging office property and confiscating all medical and office equipment and supplies. A Bahraini MSF volunteer, Saeed Mahdi, who works with the organisation as a translator and driver, was arrested.

Since February, when demonstrations began in Bahrain, MSF has seen almost 200 injured and ill patients who did not seek care in health facilities because they feared being arrested for any involvement in the protests or for any affiliation with the protestors.

The MSF team has seen patients in villages across the country who have refused urgently needed hospitalisation due to the high risk of arrest, and others who were severely beaten in jail.
Violation of MSF facilities

“MSF has been transparent about its work and its intentions with the authorities in the country, including the Ministries of Health and Interior,” said Jerome Oberreit, MSF director of operations in Brussels. “As such, we find the violation of MSF facilities and the detention of our volunteer both unwarranted and unacceptable.”

Last week, a patient with a serious head injury arrived at the MSF premises. An MSF doctor provided first aid and an ambulance was called to transport the patient to the Salmaniya Medical Complex. It is MSF’s obligation to provide treatment regardless of a patient’s ethnicity, religion, or political affiliation.

Despite only assisting MSF and a patient by calling an ambulance, Saeed Mahdi remains detained. Repeated requests by MSF, his family, and his lawyer to have access to him have been denied. MSF has also not been able to obtain any information about the original patient, even after visiting Salmaniya to inquire about him.
Neutral medical humanitarian organisation

Though MSF had been open about its work in the kingdom over the past several months, these events constitute a breach of the sanctity of an office maintained by a neutral medical humanitarian organisation, and a violation of the rights of a patient to receive medical care. MSF has a raised its concerns following these incidences in a letter to the Bahrain Ministry of the Interior.

In March, MSF proposed establishing an emergency medical response in Bahrain, whereby MSF teams would provide first aid and accompany patients to health facilities to ensure that care is not obstructed or used as bait, that patients regain trust in health services, and that health workers are again able to conduct their duties impartially and without fear of reprisal. To this day, however, MSF has not been able to secure guarantees that patients would not be targeted.

It now appears that in Bahrain today, acting within the common boundaries of the duty of care principle – in this case, providing first aid and calling an ambulance for a critically ill person – is no longer possible without negative repercussions on MSF’s ability to work in the country

MSF calls on the Bahraini authorities to respect the integrity, security, and privacy of its premises and personnel, and to allow the lawyer and family of its detained staff immediate access to him. …source

Amnesty International: Bahrain: Imprisoned activists on hunger strike
3 August 2011

Two Bahraini women activists detained for their involvement in pro-reform protests have begun a hunger strike to demand their freedom.

Roula al-Saffar, head of the Bahrain Nursing Society, and Jalila al-Salman, vice-president of the Bahrain Teacher’s Association (BTA), have been held for several months near the capital Manama. Both women allege they were tortured in detention.

“Jalila al-Salman and Roula al-Saffar’s decision to go on hunger strike is a desperate attempt to protest against their imprisonment and the way they have been treated,” said Philip Luther, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

“Amnesty International is concerned that they are being held solely because they took part in protests, in which case they would both be prisoners of conscience who should be released immediately and unconditionally.”

They are the only two women in Bahrain awaiting trial in connection with the protests who remain in prison. They currently share a cell at a detention centre in ‘Issa Town, south of Manama. Other women protesters are also awaiting trial, but have been released on bail.

Jalila al-Salman was among several board members of the BTA arrested in Manama after the group called for a teachers’ strike amid wide-scale pro-reform protests in March.

Roula al-Saffar was among a group of health professionals accused of committing felonies during the protests, including theft of medicines. The group strongly denies the accusation.

Jalila al-Salman was allegedly beaten during the first days of detention while Roula al-Saffar has said she was subjected to beatings, electric shocks and verbal abuse during the first 11 days of her detention.

“The Bahraini authorities must fully investigate these reports of torture without further delay, particularly because they appear to be part of a disturbingly widespread pattern of ill-treatment against protesters in detention,” said Philip Luther.

Jalila al-Salman faces trial on charges that include “inciting hatred against the regime” and “calling to overthrow and change the regime by force”.

Amnesty International has been told that the two women have gone on hunger strike to protest about the fact that they still remain in prison, while others have been released on bail, as well as the torture they say they were subjected to in detention.

At least 500 people have been detained in Bahrain since pro-reform protests began in February and four have died in suspicious circumstances in detention. Almost 2,000 people have been dismissed or suspended from work.

Scores of detainees, including medical professionals and prominent opposition activists, were brought before military courts for leading the protests and in some cases calling for a change of government.

…source

Bahrain probes abuse after tear gas kills man
The Bahraini government starts investigations after a 60 year-old citizen from Sitra, Bahrain dies from the inhalation of tear gas – Reuters , Tuesday 2 Aug 2011

A Bahraini man died this week from tear gas inhaled during security operations in a Shi’ite Muslim village, rights activists said on Tuesday, and the government said some police were under investigation for “exceeding their authority”.

Small scale protests and clashes with security forces take place on an almost daily basis in areas where the majority Shi’ite population live after the Sunni-dominated government crushed a pro-democracy movement earlier this year.

Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, said Isa al-Taweel, 60, died on Sunday after two weeks in hospital from the effects of tear gas fired by security forces in the town of Sitra. He told Reuters that Taweel, who was buried on Monday, had been inside his home at the time.

An Interior Ministry spokesman was not available for comment.

Around 30 people were killed during the protests and ensuing crackdown, including four policeman and four detainees who were in police custody.

Saudi and United Arab Emirates troops helped Bahrain stamp out protests it says were driven by Shi’ite sectarian motivations and instigated with non-Arab Shi’ite power Iran. Opposition groups deny this.

A commission of international experts has been tasked by the government to investigate the violence and charges of rights abuses during over two months of martial law that ended in May.

The government says torture is not systematic and action will be taken against anyone guilty of abuses.

An Interior Ministry statement carried by the official BNA news agency on Tuesday said some policemen were under investigation for what appeared to be potential rights abuses.

“An officer and a number of general security personnel at Budaya police station have been transferred for questioning for going beyond the authority granted them by the law,” it said. “Security forces adhere to the law and abide by human rights and good behaviour with all citizens.”

Rajab said the announcement arose out of a visit by the rights commission to Budaya police station earlier this week where teenagers were being held in detention.

“It’s not that the government changed its attitude, it’s that they were caught red-handed,” he said. The commission is due to present its findings to King Hamad in October. …source

Russia reaches out to Iran
By M K Bhadrakumar – Asia Times- 4 August, 2011

A recurring feature of the Russian-Iranian relationship is that it mostly languishes on the horizon but can be trusted to move to the center stage whenever there is a criticality in the Middle East situation. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi made a point recently in an interview with the Russian media when he described Iran as the “most significant neighbor” of Russia, which stands in the way of the Western strategy to encircle Russia.

The message was unmistakable: “You need us more than we need you.’ To be sure, Russian-Iranian relationship is tiptoeing to the center stage. The steady erosion of the “reset” in the ties between the United States and Russia provides the big backdrop.

Meanwhile, the US-Iran standoff has aggravated lately, calibrated largely by the Jewish lobby in America, which exploits the overall
drift in the Barack Obama administration. Other templates are also appearing which draw Moscow and Tehran together – the US’s missile defense program, the Turkish question, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Against this backdrop, Moscow has hurriedly scheduled an intensive strategic dialogue with Tehran during the coming fortnight. Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev is heading for Tehran next weekend and immediately thereafter Salehi is paying an official visit to Moscow.

It appears that ignoring the US-Israeli protestations, Tehran and Moscow are finally going ahead with the formal commissioning of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran built by Russia, drawing to a close a 13-year saga dripping with the geopolitics of the Middle East.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has confirmed that the agenda of the consultations with Patrushev will include the Iran nuclear issue. Tehran has lately warmed to the Russian proposal for a “phased” approach to resolve the impasse over the nuclear impasse whereby there could be an easing of sanctions in a staged schedule in lieu of steps by Iran to address the international concerns and the unresolved issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Russians are moving on this front on the basis of prior consultations with Washington.

The expectation seems to be that if positive impulses can be generated during Patrushev’s consultations in Tehran, follow-up talks during Salehi’s visit to Moscow could generate momentum for breaking the deadlock on the nuclear issue. Significantly, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad will be attending the United Nations general assembly session in September in New York.

The Israeli propaganda of a schism within the Iranian regime stands exposed. Tehran’s decision to engage Russia on the nuclear issue carries the imprimatur of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. (So indeed, Ahmadinejad’s choice of the former Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Rostam Qasemi as Iran’s new oil minister.) …more

FBI/CIA Tried to Get American Lawyer to Betray Arab and Muslim Clients
Contributed by blackandred on Mon, 2011/08/01 – 10:50am
By Sherwood Ross; August 01, 2011 – Znet

Federal agents from the FBI and CIA/FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force tried to get a distinguished international lawyer to inform on his Arab and Muslim clients in violation of their Constitutional rights to attorney-client privilege, this reporter has learned. When the lawyer refused, he said the FBI placed him on a “terrorist watch list.”

Law professor Francis Boyle gave a chilling account of how, in the summer of 2004, two agents showed up at his office (at the University of Illinois-Champaign) “unannounced, misrepresented who they were and what they were about to my secretary, gained access to my office, interrogated me for about one hour, and repeatedly tried to get me to become their informant on my Arab and Muslim clients.”

“This would have violated their (clients) Constitutional rights and my ethical obligations as an Attorney,” Boyle explained. “I refused. So they put me on all of the United States government’s ‘terrorist watch’ lists.”

Boyle said his own lawyer found “there are about five or six different terrorist watch lists, and as far as he could determine, I am on all of them.” Despite a legal appeal to get his name removed, Boyle said, “I will remain on all of these terrorist watch lists for the rest of my life or until the two Agencies who put me on their remove my name, which is highly unlikely.”

“Whatever people might think about lawyers, we are the canary-birds of democracy. When the government goes after your lawyer, soon they will be going after you,” Boyle warned. “Indeed,” he added, “the government goes after your lawyer in order to get to you, which is what happened to me. This is what the so-called ‘war against terrorism’ is really all about. It is a war against the United States Constitution.”

Boyle is a leading American professor and practitioner of international law. He holds doctorates in both law (cum laude) and Political Science from Harvard and has more than two decades of experience representing pacifist anti-war resisters, suspects in the so-called “War on Terror” and foreign governments such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is the author of numerous books, including Protesting Power, (Rowman & Littlefield), Biowarfare and Terrorism,(Clarity) and Destroying World Order (Clarity). …more

Bahrain reform proposals fail to win over opposition
28-July, 2011 – World Bulletin

Bahrain published details on Thursday of proposals for the Gulf monarchy’s parliament to have a greater say in decision-making.

Proposals for a stronger lower house of parliament in Bahrain after the suppression of pro-democracy unrest give it more powers of scrutiny but not to pass legislation, preserving the dominance of an upper house appointed by the royal elite.

Bahrain’s National Dialogue, a state body appointed to address grievances after martial law was rescinded in May, published details on Thursday of proposals for the Gulf monarchy’s parliament to have a greater say in decision-making.

But opposition figures voiced dissatisfaction with the results and critics said they would carry little weight because the country’s largest Shi’ite opposition group, Wefaq, walked out of the process last week.

The official BNA news agency said earlier this week that the final session of the dialogue had proposed expanding the powers of the elected parliament but gave no information on greater legislative and monitoring powers sought by the opposition.

The details show agreement on a greater degree of oversight of government by the elected body but no progress towards resolving the key dispute over balance of power.

“They did not agree on whether the Shura Council (upper house) should be granted the same powers as the parliament, and whether the responsibility for lawmaking and oversight should be restricted to the elected chamber,” the summary sent to Reuters by the National Dialogue body said.

“Delegates did not reach consensus on a number of further suggestions, such as limiting the term for ministers and head of government or a fixed quota for women in parliament.”

The appointed upper house has just as many seats as the elected lower house and dominates the legislative process.

“Impasse over upper house’s dominance”

Wefaq spokesman Khalil al-Marzouq said he expected the proposals would be approved by the king later on Thursday amid media fanfare even though they failed to address most Bahrainis desire for a parliament not hamstrung by the upper assembly.

“The reason we pulled out is because of this. The upper house should only be there for consultation,” he said.

Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman, in his post for 40 years, is regarded as a leading hawk within the ruling family who opposes concessions to the opposition.

The summary said the prime minister, appointed by King Hamad bin Isa, would have to secure the approval of parliament for members of his government.

“If MPs disapprove they can vote to reject the entire government. Parliament will also have the power to reject the government’s four-year work plan,” it said. “These reforms guarantee that the government’s composition and work plan will reflect the will of the people.”

It also said cabinet ministers would have to attend some parliament sessions and face questioning in the open chamber rather than within the framework of committees.

“Overall, these decisions reinforce the parliament’s powers of scrutiny over the activities of the government,” it said.

The proposals would create a similar system to Kuwait, where the cabinet is formed by a premier appointed by the emir of the ruling Al Sabah family rather than the elected parliament. Kuwait’s parliament often makes use of its right to call ministers for questioning, frequently paralysing the assembly. Kuwait’s parliament is not hamstrung by an appointed chamber.

The summary said the dialogue had agreed there are problems with Bahrain’s electoral system but did not agree on how to solve it. Opposition groups say constituencies are designed to water down Shi’ite demographic strength.

“The debate centred on equal representation of the population. Critics of the current system argued that the geographical distribution of constituencies did not reflect the demographics of Bahrain,” it said.

“Others defended the current arrangement, noting that smaller constituencies allow MPs better familiarity with their community. They feared that reducing the number of constituencies would create sectarian quotas in parliament, leading to political crisis.”

Bahrain has tried to address international criticism, including from its long-time ally the United States, of a harsh security crackdown that followed the breakup of the protests. …source

Reuters