Bahrain, militarizing the state
15 September, 2011 – by Activist – Bahrain Youth

Bahrain, home to U.S. Fifth Fleet, is a group of islands with an area of 750 square kilometres and a population of no more than 1.3 million 55% of them are expats.

Bahrain was subjected to the British protection for more than 150 years by the exclusive conventions concluded with Britain in the years 1820, 1847, 1856, 1861, 1880, 1892, resulting in a series of obligations on the Shaikhdom. In return Britain promised to protect Bahrain against external aggression, maintain the autonomy of its entity, political and economic interests, protect the interests of its citizens in the abscess, and oversee its foreign affairs.

Those treaties took effect till 14th of August 1971 when they were ended allowing Bahrain to announce its semi-political independence, when the British military presence was replaced by the U.S.!
In 1968 Bahrain Defence Force (BDF) was founded by an Amiri Decree by Emir Isa Bin Salman Al Khalifa, where his eldest son Crown Prince Hamad, who had just graduated from The Mons Officer Cadet School, was ready to head the armed forces.

Since then, the Commander in Chief Hamad bin Isa has ensured keeping BDF loyal to the Ruling Family and pursued to keep that military force formed from close tribes and families in addition to mercenaries, where the supreme positions were monopolized by members of the Ruling Family. This intended discrimination prevented the wide majority from being recruited only because they are “Shiites”!
BDF has more than 12,000 personnel, a large number among them are naturalized Bahrainis who were not born in Bahrain.

By law, military personnel are prohibited from joining political parties or campaigns. However, they have to obey orders that direct them to vote to candidates supported by the government. It’s not a choice for them to vote freely or oppose orders.

In general, the military structure is similar to the tribal hierarchy, where orders are issued from the Supreme Commander. This structure guarantees a level of loyalty and obedience that serves the tribal mentality of dealing with people as subjects rather than citizens!
Although Bahrain has a small area, there are lots of military bases, zones, and barracks. Vast areas and most islands are classified as military zones and prohibited areas where nobody is allowed to reach.
Currently, there are 10 Military and Security bodies which are:
1.Royal Bahraini Army
2.Royal Bahraini Air Force
3.Royal Bahraini Navy
4.Royal Guard
5.National Guard
6.National Security Agency
7.Special Security Force Command
8.Public Security Forces
9.Coast Guard
10.Police Community Services

Civilian positions were also affected by military influence. The three main public hospitals are under the control of the army. Five ministers on the current cabinet have a military background; one of them is the Minister of Education:
1.Majid AlNaimi, Minister of Education
2.Basim AlHamar, Minister of Housing
3.Mohammed Bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, Minister of Military Affairs
4.Rashid Bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, Minister of Interior
5.Abdulaziz AlFadhel, Minister of Shura Council and Representative Council Affairs

Besides the King himself, two of his sons have graduated from Military Colleges, Nasser, who heads the Royal Guard and Khalid. The BDF also sends personnel to the United States for military training, where members of the Royal family are mostly sent to Sandhurst in the United Kingdom.
The government allocated around $1.6 billion annually for defense and security for the current two years 2011-2012, about 20% of current expenditures. This number is more than the allocated budget for education and health which did not exceed 18%.

Even more, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, and National Guard are excluded from being audited by the Financial Control Office regarding expenses related to national security and classified as “SECRET”!
…source

Point of information: CS gas, AKA Tear Gas comes in a variety of grades. It is not actually a “weaponized gas” but it is a “weaponized chemical” dispersed as an aerosol just as “weaponized Anthrax” would be. In its civilian grade – mildest form – it is used for dispersing crowds. In its most dangerous form – military grade – it is used as a combat weapon. The military grade CS Gas was used to clear tunnels in Vietnam and against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The military grade CS Gas is being used in the streets in Bahrain against political opposition groups. It is supplied by the US, UK and Brazil.

To aggravate matters in Bahrain, its poorly trained and unsupervised “police” are let lose in the Villages where they fire Combat Grade CS gas into home while people sleep, transforming them into “gas chambers”. The victims that die are usually infants, elderly and the disabled who can’t get out of harms way quickly enough. They often use CS gas grenades as a lethal projectile against protesters. This too has been a cause of numerous deaths – direct shots to the head and face. One of the more notable leaders, Zainab AlKhawaja, is now imprisoned with a leg injury after being shot at close range with a CS Gas grenade weeks ago during a protest. – Phlipn.

Tear gas causing death, serious injuries in Bahrain
8 August, 2012 – The Media Line Staff

Bahrain Linda Gradstein/The Media – Last year, Miriam Abdullah was looking forward to the Muslim holiday of Id al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, and had planned a festive meal for her family.

But that celebration never happened. Her 14-year-old son Ali was on his way home from the mosque when he encountered a demonstration calling for “freedom and dignity,” she said.

“The youth were not doing anything and the police fired on them from very close-range,” she told The Media Line. “Ali was hit in the head with a tear gas canister and he became a martyr.”

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights say that 35 people have been killed either by being hit with tear gas or from respiratory complications from the tear gas. They also say that dozens of people have lost an eye after being hit by a tear gas canister.

“Mohammed (not his real name) attended a peaceful protest in al-Juffair, a Shi’ite village, very close to where the US Fifth Fleet is housed,” Said Yousef of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights told The Media Line. “The police came and fired from a short distance and he lost his eye.”

Almost every night, the acrid smell of tear gas hangs in the air all over the tiny Gulf state of Bahrain. The country’s Sunni minority is using tear gas to tamp down protests by the Shi’ite majority, especially in villages around the capital of Manama.

“We don’t call it tear gas, we call it toxic gas,” Dr. Taha al-Derazi told The Media Line. “This gas can cause abdominal pain, vomiting, nausea, muscle cramps and seizures,”

The Sunni rulers of Bahrain have cracked down hard on the pro-democracy protests that have come to be called the Arab Spring. Human rights groups say that the way they are using tear gas violates human rights.

“They do not use it to disperse protestors but like a gun,” Said Yousef, of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) told The Media Line. “They shoot it directly at people’s heads.”

Dr. Terazi said that police also yank open windows of people’s homes and cars and shoot tear gas directly inside. Tear gas is meant to be fired in the open air and to quickly disperse. It can be lethal when fired at short-range.

Some Bahrainis are even moving to be away from neighborhoods with frequent demonstrations and frequent tear gas.

“I moved from Budaiya Road, where I was living, to a safer area when I was in my last trimester of pregnancy,” Amira Hussein, a journalist wrote The Media Line in an email. “I also don’t go out on weekend because that is when the tear gas bonanza kicks off.”

Now Physicians for Human Rights has unleashed a new report on the use of tear gas by Bahraini authorities.

“So-called tear gas, often considered a crowd control method with no lasting harmful effects, can cause permanent injuries, miscarriages and even fatalities as used by Bahrain’s security forces,” the report warns. “Those tactics include firing tear gas canisters directly at civilians or into their cars, houses or other closed spaces where toxic effects are greatly exaggerated.”

The report documents a number of examples based on interviews with more than 100 Bahrainis. In one case, a 27 year old bystander suffered a fractured skull and intracranial bleeding when struck in the head with a tear gas canister. In another, an asthmatic man routinely exposed to tear gas died of respiratory failure.

Said Yousef of the BCHR said the tear gas comes from the United States, France and Holland. He urged these countries to stop selling tear gas to the government.

The US has hesitated to be critical of the Bahraini government. Bahrain is home to the Fifth Fleet, which keeps an eye on Iran just 120 miles across the Persian Gulf. The US considers Bahrain an important strategic ally and has provided the government with $20 million dollars annually in aid.

Human rights groups want the US to pressure the government of Bahrain to stop using tear gas. …source

Sitra, Bahrain – August 2012 – Protesters under attack with Chemical Gas as Youths of the February 14 Coalition came out in military-style parade. Riot police and members of the security forces later broke up the rally.

Venezuela Rejects the False and Defamatory Content of the “Country Reports on Terrorism 2011″
8 August, 2012

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela rejects most firmly and categorically the false and defamatory content of the “Country Reports on Terrorism 2011″ published by the State Department of the United States of America on July 31, 2012.

The government of the United States, once again, presents these unilateral and interventionist reports which express a tendentious and distorted opinion of the policies of other countries, on a matter such as terrorism about which, moreover, that country has no moral ground on which to make pronouncements.

It is precisely the government of that country and its double morality which has been widely denounced by Venezuela at the United Nations for giving shelter and protection to recognized international terrorists, as is the case with Luís Posada Carriles, sought by Venezuelan justice for placing a bomb on flight 455 of Cubana de Aviación, which cost the lives of 73 people in 1976; and the case of Raúl Díaz Peña, a terrorist sentenced under Venezuelan law for having placed explosives in the diplomatic missions of Spain and Colombia in Caracas in 2003. Both are protected by the hypocritical anti-terrorist policy of the U.S. government.

It is lamentable that for those countries such as ours that are truly committed to the anti-terrorist struggle on an international level, that countries like the United States maintain the practice of issuing reports that have no validity because they contain no verified information, and, therefore, are obviously political instruments for defamation. An example of their malicious lies is the list of “State Sponsors of International Terrorism,” which is unilaterally and arbitrarily includes the Republic of Cuba, a country that complies with periodically presenting true and exact information to the pertinent mechanisms of the United Nations for matters relating to confronting terrorism.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela considers the publication of this defamatory document an unfriendly act and rejects it in its totality, while reiterating its complaint against the United States for continuing to allow its territory to serve as a refuge for international terrorists sought by Venezuelan justice.

Caracas, August 2, 2012

Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
1099 30th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20007
(202) 342-2214
…source

Resistance axis more potent against enemy: Nasrallah
shiapost – 8 August, 2012

Hezbollah’s Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah says the resistance front in the region will counter the US and Israeli plots more forcefully as it has successfully weathered their previous schemes.

“At the current juncture when nations have awakened and taken a stand against the American and Zionist (Israeli) plots, the resistance axis will, with popular support, react more forcefully in confronting the enemy,” said Nasrallah in a Tuesday meeting with visiting General Secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of National Security Saeed Jalili in Beirut.

Reiterating that Hezbollah has all along been aware of the “American and Zionist conspiracies” against the resistance front, the Hezbollah secretary general added, “We have already experienced such crises and been able to overcome them with resistance and endurance.”

Nasrallah further voiced gratitude for the unwavering support and position of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei as well as the Iranian nation and government “against Western and Zionist schemes” and emphasized the significance of the role the Islamic Republic can play during the current sensitive circumstance in the region.

Jalili in turn described Iran’s support for “the oppressed nations in the region against ploys by the global hegemony and international Zionism” as an underlying principle of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and said, “Just as we have supported the oppressed Palestinian people despite all difficulties regarding the Palestine issue, we will extend our support to regional nations amid the Islamic Awakening trend and the revolution against the global hegemony.”

The senior Iranian national security official also described the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance against Israeli aggressions as “an honor for the Arab world,” adding that the ongoing Islamic Awakening movements are among the accomplishments of such resistance.

Referring to the situation in Syria, Jalili said, “The Syrian nation and authorities are the ones that must make the decision for the fate and future of their country and democracy is the only solution to the Syrian troubles.”

During their meeting Jalili and Nasrallah reviewed the recent regional developments, particularly the renewed Western plots against the resistance front, specifically targeting Lebanon and Syria. …more

The slogan “Bashar must go!” was supposed to be chanted by crowds of protesters in Damascus and Aleppo. In the absence of such demonstrations, it has been taken over by Western leaders themselves even though it goes against all the conventional rules of diplomacy. Why?

Western leaders slip back into their childhood
by Thierry Meyssan – Voltaire Network – 8 August 2012

In 1985, a social scientist, Gene Sharp, published a study commissioned by NATO on Making Europe Unconquerable. He pointed out that ultimately a government only exists because people agree to obey it. The USSR could never control Western Europe if people refused to obey Communist governments.

A few years later, in 1989, Sharp was tasked by the CIA with conducting the practical application of his theoretical research in China. The United States wanted to topple Deng Xiaoping in favor of Zhao Ziyang. The intention was to stage a coup with a veneer of legitimacy by organizing street protests, in much the same way as the CIA had given a popular facade to the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh by hiring Tehran demonstrators (Operation Ajax, 1953). The difference here is that Gene Sharp had to rely on a mix of pro-Zhao and pro-US youth to make the coup look like a revolution. But Deng had Sharp arrested in Tiananmen Square and expelled from the country. The coup failed, but not before the CIA spurred the youth groups into a vain attack to discredit Deng through the crackdown that followed. The failure of the operation was attributed to the difficulties of mobilizing young activists in the desired direction.

Ever since the work of French sociologist Gustave Le Bon in the late nineteenth century, we know that adults behave like children when they are in the throes of collective emotion. They become susceptible, even if for just a critical fleeting moment, to the suggestions of a leader-of-men who for them embodies a father figure. In 1990, Sharp got close to Colonel Reuven Gal, then chief psychologist of the Israeli Army (he later became deputy national security adviser to Ariel Sharon and now runs operations designed to manipulate young Israeli non-Jews). Combining the discoveries of Le Bon and Sigmund Freud, Gal reached the conclusion that it was also possible to exploit the “Oedipus complex” in adolescents and steer a crowd of young people to oppose a head of state, as a symbolic father figure.

On this basis, Sharp and Gal set up training programs for young activists with the objective of organizing coups. After a few successes in Russia and the Baltics, it was in 1998 that Gene Sharp perfected the method of “color revolutions” with the overthrow of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. …more

Backfire in Bahrain
By Editorial Board – 7 august, 2012 – Washington Post

WHEN THE Obama administration resumed military sales to the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain in 2012, it explained the decision as an effort to bolster moderate elements in the monarchy, whose Sunni ruling family has resisted demands for greater democracy from the mostly Shiite population. In particular, the aim was to strengthen Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, who was visiting Washington at the time and who had led an abortive effort to negotiate a settlement with opposition leaders.

Three months later, it’s worth asking whether the concession to a regime that has been a close U.S. ally paid off. Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding “no.” Bahrain remains locked in a standoff between a largely intransigent government and a slowly radicalizing opposition — and the regime has failed to fulfill its repeated pledges to end repression of peaceful dissent and undertake meaningful reforms.

As Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reported in testimony to Congress’s Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission last week, the Bahraini government has continued to prosecute 20 leading political activists; “despite assurances to the contrary,” it obtained the conviction of nine medical professionals who treated opposition activists during demonstrations last year. The country’s best-known human rights activist, Nabeel Rajab, is serving prison time for a tweet that called for the resignation of the hard-line prime minister.

Security forces continue to employ harsh tactics to put down demonstrations in Shiite villages, including what a new report by Physicians for Human Rights calls the “indiscriminate use of tear gas as a weapon.” It said police regularly fire tear gas canisters “directly at civilians or into their cars, houses or other closed spaces” in an effort “not just to disperse crowds but to harm, harass, and intimidate the largely Shia neighborhoods that are home to many protesters.”

Bahrain’s repression doesn’t approach the murderous violence used by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad against its opponents. But many in the Middle East understandably wonder why the United States demands the removal of Mr. Assad, an ally of Iran whose Alawite sect is close to Shiism, while continuing to back a Sunni regime that represses its Shiite opposition. The administration’s answer is that it is not, like Bahrain’s neighbor Saudi Arabia, pursuing a sectarian agenda, but attempting to steer its ally toward peaceful reform. …more

Protesters across Bahrain demand release of women prisoners
8 August, 2012 – ABNA

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) – Bahraini people have staged protest rallies across the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom in a show of solidarity with female political prisoners.

On Monday night, Bahraini protesters took to the streets in more than 21 districts across the country, and condemned the Al Khalifa regime’s crackdown on peaceful protests.

Shouting slogans in support of political prisoners, they demanded an immediate and unconditional release of women protesters held in jail, including senior human rights activist Zainab al-Khawaja.

They also condemned Bahrain’s Supreme Council for Women for its silence for the continued detention of female activists and the violation of their rights.

The demonstrators blocked main streets by burning tires and called for unity among the Bahraini nation. Our might lies in our solidarity, they chanted.

Bahraini security forces rushed to disperse the protests by firing teargas, rubber bullets and birdshot pellets at the demonstrators.

The Saudi-backed regime forces also attacked civilian houses.

A large number of demonstrators were injured in the attacks. Opposition activists published photos of the protesters who were injured on social networking websites.

Anti-regime protests in Bahrain continue despite the heavy-handed crackdown by the Western-backed monarchy.

Scores of people have been killed and many others injured or arrested in the suppression of popular protests since they erupted in February 2011 in demand of the Al Khalifa regime’s downfall.

The anti-regime demonstrators hold King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa responsible for the deaths of the protesters during the popular uprising. …more

Bahrain: Verdict Expected for 57 Opposition Activists and Pro-democracy Demonstrators
8 August, 2012 – Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights

The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights expresses its deep concern regarding the verdicts are expected in 12-14 August of Court of Appeal against the prominent activists, political leaders and pro-democracy demonstrators.

The Court of Appeal will issue its final ruling against the 57 convicted among them Mr. Nabeel Rajab (director of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights, and president of the Bahrain Center for Human rights) …source

Russian general denies report he died in Syria
8 August, 2012 – Reuters – The Daily Star

MOSCOW: A Russian general met reporters at the Defence Ministry in Moscow on Wednesday to deny reports that he had been killed by rebel forces in Syria and was shown on television looking well.

“I want to confirm that I am alive and well. I am in good health and I’m living in Moscow,” Vladimir Petrovich Kuzheyev, a reserve general, was quoted as saying by Itar-Tass news agency.

Russian television briefly showed footage of Kuzheyev, in a blue shirt and no tie, at the Defence Ministry.

A Syrian rebel group said it had killed a Russian general working as an adviser to Syria’s defence ministry in an operation in the western Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus.

The video, sent to Reuters, showed what the rebels said was a copy of the general’s ID, as issued by the Syrian military, and named him as Vladimir Petrovich Kochyev.
…more

Jordan king fears breakup of Syria
Reuters – 8 August, 2012 – by Tom Perry

(Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad could seek to establish an enclave for his Alawite sect if he cannot keep control of the whole of war-torn Syria, an outcome that would be the “worst case scenario” for its neighbors, King Abdullah of Jordan has said.

Any such move could prompt decades of further problems for the region, King Abdullah told U.S. broadcaster CBS.

“I have a feeling that if he can’t rule greater Syria then maybe an Alawi enclave is plan B,” King Abdullah said in an interview published on the channel’s website on Tuesday.

“That would be, I think for us, the worst case scenario because that means then the breakup of greater Syria, and that means that everybody starts land grabbing, which makes no sense to me. If Syria then implodes on itself that would create problems that would take us decades to come back from,” he said.

The rebellion against Assad’s rule is predominantly made up of Sunni Muslims who form the majority of Syria’s population. The Alawites are a minority sect whose beliefs are an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

King Abdullah, whose mainly Sunni Muslim kingdom borders Syria to the south, forecast that Assad would not give ground. His administration has deployed military force in an effort to crush the uprising, drawing on air power and heavy artillery.

“I think that in his mentality he is going to stick to his guns. He believes that he is in the right. I think that the regime feels that it has no alternative but to continue,” Abdullah said.

He added: “I don’t think it’s just Bashar, it’s not the individual, it’s the system of the regime. So if Bashar was to exit under whatever circumstances, does whoever replaces him have the ability to reach out and transform Syria politically?

“So for Bashar at the moment, if I am reading the way he is thinking, he is going to do what he is going to do indefinitely.”

US accused of “anti-British bias” over Standard Chartered
8 August, 2012 – Al Akhbar

A threat by a New York regulator to strip Standard Chartered Plc of its state banking license and its description of the British bank as a “rogue institution” that hid $250 billion in Iranian transactions, has touched a nerve with some in London.

Several of the bank’s top shareholders and a leading opposition lawmaker have questioned whether US authorities are seeking to undermine London as a global financial center.

They note Standard Chartered is the third British bank to be ensnared in US law enforcement probes in recent weeks. The New York state’s Department of Financial Services said the bank hid the transactions that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in fees over nearly a decade.

The accusation comes after Barclays Plc agreed in June to pay $453 million to settle US and British probes that it rigged Libor, a global lending benchmark.

A month later, a US Senate panel issued a scathing report that criticized HSBC Holding’s efforts to police suspect transactions. It said HSBC did regular business in countries tied to drug cartels, terrorist funding and tax cheats.

“I think it’s a concerted effort that’s been organized at the top of the US government. I think this is Washington trying to win a commercial battle to have trading from London shifted to New York,” said John Mann, a member of parliament’s finance committee who also called for a parliamentary inquiry.

Mann, from the center-left Labour party, has become a public scourge of London bankers’ greed and immorality during the financial crisis. But he told Reuters he saw “anti-British bias” behind “disproportionate publicity that’s given to British banking problems, as opposed to American banking problems”.

“This is a political onslaught,” he said.

However, there are signs that US regulators themselves are not in lockstep.

Sources told Reuters that US federal regulators feel angry and blindsided by the way the New York banking regulator took action against Standard Chartered, including the publication of embarrassing communications from senior executives of the bank.

The US Treasury Department declined to comment on the views from London. A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in London also declined to comment on Mann’s remarks.

But a number of British fund managers holding shares in Standard Chartered also expressed consternation about the New York broadside and questioned what it might mean.

A British executive at an institution, which ranks among the top 25 shareholders in Standard Chartered, saw a politically motivated move by US officials irked by the major role London plays in the global financial industry.

“Are we starting to see an anti-London bias in US regulatory activities?” the executive asked. “Oh yes. Is there any subtle form of banking sector protectionism going on? Yes.”

Another British investment official at a top 20 shareholder in the bank suggested US politics might be an element in the threat by the New York regulator to pull Standard Chartered’s state banking license.

“I wonder if this has more to do with the point we are at in the U.S. election cycle or if this is just an accident of the U.S. legislative system in terms of timing,” the investor said.

Skepticism in Britain of US motives was not universal, however. An executive at a top 10 investor in Standard Chartered said he was reviewing his shareholding and that the depth of the issues needed to be acknowledged by the City of London.

“London is looking like a pretty disreputable place at the moment,” he said. “Rather than fall into the British them-versus-us-mindset, let’s really bang our chests and figure out just how dirty London really is as a place to do business.” …source