Pro-government Bahrain marchers target opposition group offices
DUBAI – Dec 10, 2011

(Reuters) – Dozens of pro-government demonstrators marched to the offices of a Bahraini opposition party on Saturday and daubed the building with graffiti against majority Shi’ites and Iran, residents said.

They said “Down with Iran” and “Shi’ites get out” were among the slogans written on the offices of Waad, a secular party aligned with the largest Shi’ite opposition group Wefaq which was at the forefront of protests against the Sunni-led government this year.

U.S.-allied Bahrain has accused Shi’ite power Iran of instigating unrest among Shi’ites in the Gulf Arab kingdom, an allegation Tehran denies.

“Police stopped them from entering. They dispersed after leaving pictures of King Hamad and the prime minister outside the Waad headquarters,” a resident said.

“This building had been burned down twice, and we had just repaired it. So we were afraid that may be repeated. But police were there and nothing happened,” Radhi al-Musawi, Waad’s deputy secretary-general, told Reuters by telephone.

Inspired by “Arab Spring” revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, thousands of mainly Shi’ite Bahrainis took to the streets in February and March demanding curbs on the power of the ruling Sunni Muslim Al-Khalifa family.

The protest wave was suppressed with the help of military forces brought in from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Bahrain hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

A government-appointed commission of international jurists found evidence of systematic abuses against detained protesters.

Bahrain has hired U.S. and British police chiefs to lead the reform of security agencies.

There has been no progress in talks between the government and opposition groups on political reform and the Gulf Arab island state remains tense, with daily clashes between riot police and Shi’ite protesters. …source

Gassing the Revolution: The US Origins of Tahrir’s Tears
By Ahmed Feteha, Michael Gunn – Ahramonline, 24-11-2011

The liberal use of US-manufactured tear gas on protesters in recent days has raised questions about its public health effects – and who is actually ordering its use.

Egyptian security forces are digging deeper into their budget with each volley of increasingly fatal US-made tear gas they launch at demonstrators.
The human cost of the violent crackdown in central Cairo is increasingly clear — among the 39 fatalities reported to date, several are said to have died of asphyxiation caused by tear gas.
But the financial background to the use of crowd control weapons raises questions about the extent of Washington’s financial assistance to Egypt’s military and how this might filter down to the ministry of interior.

The USA is the biggest arms supplier to Egypt, providing an average of US$1.3 billion in military and law equipment every year since 2000.
Records from the US Department of State show the US supplied $1.7 million of “toxicological agents” — “including tear gases and riot control agents” — to Egypt in 2010.

This was the largest dispatch of such agents in at least 10 years.
In 2009, the US supplied 33,000 units of ‘tear gas and riot control agents’ worth $460,000. It did not supply in 2007 nor 2008, but gave 17,000 units worth $240,000 in 2006, documents show.

This assistance, however, was granted to the military, and it is not clear whether it was then channelled to the ministry of interior.
The Central Security Forces (CSF), Egypt’s riot control machine, is a division within the Ministry of Interior, but is closely tied to the armed forces, as its troops are conscripted through the military then transferred to CSF.

“The military’s arming includes tear gas and riot control weapons. The ministry of interior supposedly buys its own weaponry through other channels,” Mahmoud Kotri, a retired brigadier general who wrote a book suggesting radical police reforms, told Ahram Online.

Kotri confirmed that when the current minister of interior, Mansour El-Essawy, was appointed in March he issued explicit instructions to CSF not to carry live ammunition when confronting protesters.

This directive apparently included a ban on shotguns. Kotra explained these weapons were formerly used to fire tear gas canisters via an ad-hoc launcher. El-Essawy’s instructions probably forced CSF to acquire new types of gas bombs and new ways of launching them, says Kotri.

Nevertheless, doctors on Tahrir Square treating the injured say they have seen many protesters hit by live ammunition, including shotgun wounds.
Kotri believes that a third party might be involved in the shootings
“No MOI official in his right mind would order the use of live ammunition. Not after what happened in January and the former security leadership currently on trial for killing protesters — it just doesn’t add up,” he says.
Protesters and medical staff in Cairo have also expressed concern about the kind of gas being deployed by security forces.

Speaking to Ahram Online at the field hospital in Qasr El-Dobara church behind Tahrir Square on Monday night, volunteer doctor Lilian Sobhy said their improvised clinic had seen 290 patients in 24 hours, the majority with breathing problems.

“Some in contact with the gas are suffering from a severe burning sensation in the lungs,” Sobhy said. “This is not normal gas and these are not normal symptoms.”
Others, however, claim the symptoms — serious though they are — are no different from those caused by extreme exposure to CS gas in the past.

A former police officer told Ahram Online a colleague of his in the CSF was exposed to tear gas used by Egyptian border guards on Palestinians who broke through Rafah crossing in 2008. …more

US Presidential Candidate: Palestinians are Invented People
by Local Editor – moqawama.org

US Presidetial Candiidate, Newt Gingrich poured his discriminating adjectives on Palestinian people.

In an attempt to gain Zionist Lobby support for his campaign, Gingrich described the Palestinians as an “invented people.”

He also mocked US President Barack Obama’s “effort to be a fair broker of Middle East peace.”

“If I’m even-handed between a civilian democracy that obeys the rule of law and a group of terrorists that are firing missiles every day, that’s not even-handed, that’s favoring the terrorists,” said Gingrich.

In his interview with the “Jewish Channel”, he added that “the Jewish people have the right to a state,” and cast doubt on “the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations for a state of their own.”

“We’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places. And for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against “Israel” now since the 1940’s, and I think it’s tragic,” he claimed.

Gingrich also added that “his world view was pretty close to that of “Israeli” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” vowing to take “a much more tougher-minded, and much more honest approach to the Middle East if elected.

“It was delusional to consider stalled “Israeli”-Palestinian talks a true peace process,” he concluded.
…source