The Pain in Spain
By V. Noah Gimbel, August 17, 2011 – FPIP

As the sun rose on August 2, Spanish authorities destroyed the tent-village that had come to symbolize what some participants have called the Spanish Revolution. The ruling Socialist Party, via the Ministry of the Interior and in conjunction with the right-wing Popular Party that controls the local government, ordered Madrid’s Puerta del Sol cleared of all remnants of the 15-M (May 15) movement as its participants, the indignados (the outraged) watched helplessly. Police boots, chainsaws, and fire hoses erased months of makeshift architecture, street art, and community – once inhabited by some 28,000 campers – from the Spanish capital’s central square.

The conglomeration of organizations that make up the 15-M movement vowed to march on the square at 7:30 that evening to protest what they called an illegal eviction. The government responded with nothing short of a call to arms, halting all metro and commuter rail access to the station at Puerta del Sol. Meanwhile, dozens of national police vans turned the square into a parking lot, and helmeted policemen set up barricades at every entrance to the square. Helicopters flew overhead as the combined forces of municipal police in riot gear and national police – hands on pistols – reinforced the barricades and patrolled the surrounding areas on foot.

Nevertheless, a fairly large showing gathered at the barricades that evening, gaining momentum as their non-violent outrage met with no response from the police. “We’ll stay until there are no more people from 15-M,” said one officer. That was around 8:30 when crowds were still rather light. …more

Shadow Warriors: Movin’ On Up
By Conn Hallinan, August 18, 2011 – FPIP

For decades the U.S. military has waged clandestine war on virtually every continent on the globe, but for the first time, high-ranking Special Operations Forces (SOF) officers are moving out of the shadows and into the command mainstream. Their emergence suggests the U.S. is embarking on a military sea change that will replace massive deployments, like Iraq and Afghanistan, with stealthy night raids, secret assassinations, and death-dealing drones. Its implications for civilian control of foreign policy promises to be profound.

Early this month, Vice Adm. Robert Harward—a former commander of the SEALs, the Navy’s elite SOF that recently killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden—was appointed deputy commander of Central Command, the military region that embraces the Middle East and Central Asia. Another SEAL commander, Vice Adm. Joseph Kernan, took over the number two spot in Southern Command, which covers Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Obama administration has been particularly enamored of SOFs, and according to reporters Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post, is in the process of doubling the number of countries where such units are active from 60 to 120. U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Col. Tim Nye told Nick Turse of Salon that SOFs would soon be deployed in 60 percent of the world’s nations: “We do a lot of traveling.”

Indeed they do. U.S. Special Operations Command (SOC) admits to having forces in virtually every country in the Middle East, Central Asia, as well as many in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. But true to its penchant for secrecy, SOC is reluctant to disclose every country to which its forces are deployed. “We’re obviously going to have some places where it’s not advantageous for us to list where we’re at,” Nye told Turse.

SOF forces have almost doubled in the past two decades, from some 37,000 to close to 60,000, and major increases are planned in the future. Their budget has jumped from $2.3 billion to $9.8 billion over the last 10 years. …more

Bahrain steps up crackdown on demos
shiapost – August 18, 2011

The Saudi-backed Bahraini forces have intensified their brutal crackdown on peaceful anti-government protesters across the Persian Gulf sheikhdom.

The Bahraini regime forces clashed with protesters in several areas late on Wednesday.

According to local sources, scores of people have been killed and hundreds arrested during the harsh government clampdown on peaceful demonstrations since mid-February.

On Tuesday, Vice President of the Bahrain Teachers Association (BTA) Jalila al-Salman was hospitalized with chest pains following a 10-day hunger strike to protest her continuing torture and ill treatment while in custody.

The Bahraini regime fired some 14 university teachers for taking part in demonstrations against the ruling Al Khalifa family on Saturday.

Since the beginning of the revolution in Bahrain, large numbers of anti-government protesters have poured into streets across the nation to demand more rights, freedom and wide-ranging political reforms. …more

BCHR Second Open Letter to Head of the Bahraini Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI)

Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni
Chair, Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry
18 August 2011

Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter dated 9 August 2011, in which you outlined the position of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI).

Whilst we, at the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR), are of course pleased that the government has demonstrated “extraordinary willingness… to listen to anything we bring to his [minister of interior] attention and act on it”, the main issue raised by our previous correspondence with you was your statement that this willingness from the minister “leads me to believe that on his part there was never a policy of excessive use of force or torture.” It was this last statement which we sought clarification about, since we did not understand how you had reached this conclusion at such an early stage. Your letter in response was noticeably silent on this point. You did note that you believed it was “premature to reach any conclusions”, which we are certainly in agreement with.

Whilst appreciating the difference between individual criminal responsibility and the responsibility of superiors, there is a wealth of evidence confirming that, at the very least, the government and the ruling establishment had knowledge and condoned the actions of the security forces.

The most notable examples of this are the speeches of Marshal General Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, Commander in Chief of the Bahrain Defence Force, and the actions and speeches of Nasser Al Khalifa, the son of the reigning monarch. Khalifa bin Ahmed threatened protesters in remarks made to BNA in May, saying, “I say to those who did not get the message, ‘If you return we will come back, stronger this time'”. In a public forum, on state television, Nasser Al Khalifa threatened retribution to all those involved in the protests regardless of their position in society and their profession. In a telling final statement, Nasser Al Khalifa noted that, as an island state, those involved in the protests in Bahrain had “nowhere to escape to”. Within a few hours of this statement, the systematic targeting of athletes involved in the protests commenced. To compound this, Nasser himself became personally involved in the torture of at least two opposition leaders, Abdulla Isa Al-Mahroos and Mohammed Habib Al-Muqdad, both of whom have provided testimonies which have been sent to the BICI.

Other witnesses have come forward to testify that they were beaten by different members of the Al-Khalifa family, such as Fatima Al-Bagali, who was tortured at West Riffa detention center on the 9th of May by the General Director of Southern Province Police, Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, because of a speech she had made at Pearl Square. Ayat Al-Qurmezi, also arrested for an anti-government poem she had read at Pearl Square, and Dr Fatima Hajji, have also claimed to have been tortured in detention by Noura Al-Khalifa.

These testimonies are, worryingly, the tip of the iceberg. In these circumstances, I hope you can appreciate that your comments to Reuters that “there was never a policy of excessive use of force or torture”, even if taken out of context, were highly prejudicial and created much anxiety and anger amongst the victims of this policy.

The actions of Bahrain’s ruling elite have consistently reinforced the message that dissent, in any form, is simply not to be tolerated in Bahrain. The targeting of individuals, both physically and economically, has been systematic. State television has pursued an agenda akin to the McCarthy witch hunts; naming and publically humiliating those involved in the recent protests. Indeed a number of state sanctioned websites have sprung up in which people are encouraged to name “traitors” to the regime. This state-sanctioned pressure has been compounded by the mass expulsion by state entities of employees who have been “tainted” through their association to the opposition.

It is in this context that it becomes difficult to believe that those in authority did not have knowledge of the persecution being effected through state apparatus. We would be happy to provide a range of evidence to confirm the assertions made in this letter and look forward to working with the BICI to achieve its stated goals and bring to light the situation in Bahrain.

Yours sincerely

Nabeel Rajab
President
Bahrain Center for Human Rights
…source