More Than 250 First Nations and Allies From Across North America Gather In Alberta To Raise Awareness
First Nations delegations from British Columbia and Ontario show growing concern and resolve against tar sands infrastructure projects across Canada.

First Nations march against tarsands
4 August, 2012 – Censored News

FORT MCMURRAY ALBERTA (August 4, 2012) – Hundreds of First Nations leaders from BC, Alberta, the NWT and Ontario along with First Nation actress Tantoo Cardinal and allies from across North America, gathered in Fort McMurray today, to walk 13-kilometres through the visceral landscape of tar sands operations to bring attention to the destructive impacts of tar sands projects and pipelines on surrounding communities and the environment.

First Nation representatives from the Heiltsuk (BC), Yinka Dene (BC), Coastal First Nations (BC), the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, Six Nations (Ontario) and Aamijiwnaang (Ontario) joined with local First Nations leaders in a traditional mixing of the waters ceremony, bringing water from their respective territories as a symbol of importance of the protection of water and the sacred connection to mother earth.

Local elders led the group in prayers along the route that was once valuable northern Boreal forest and fertile traditional hunting, fishing and gathering grounds, stopping in the four directions to lay down tobacco as an offering for healing of the land.

“We have come from all over North America to walk together through the heart of the destruction caused by the ever-expanding tar sands and offer prayers for the healing of the land and its people,” said Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus. “For more than 500 years governments have fought over our lands and resources. It’s time the provincial and federal governments sit down with the First Nations, the rightful owners of these lands and resources, to decide if and when these lands should be developed.”
The third annual healing walk was organized by Keepers of the Athabasca, a network of First Nation, Metis and allied communities along the Athabasca River that includes people whose lives have been directly impacted by tar sands operations.

“The places where we used to pick berries and find our medicines have been destroyed by rapid tar sands projects,” said Anthony Ladouceur, Councillor of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. “Our people have lived here for thousands of years, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to continue to live off the land with industry expanding all around us.”

The Alberta tar sands currently produce approximately 1.8 million barrels of oil per day; if industry and government’s expansion plans are approved that number could reach six million barrels per day. Local opposition to Shell’s two proposed open pit mine applications is growing, along with North American-wide resistance to pipeline proposals. Four pipelines are being proposed to transport tar sands oil: Enbridge Northern Gateway, Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain, Trans Canada Keystone XL, and Enbridge Line 9 reversal.

“I am deeply honoured to have the opportunity to participate in the 3rd Annual Tar Sands Healing Walk,” said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. “This sacred walk serves to remind us that we, as parents and grandparents, have the unconditional responsibility to safeguard and pass on the legacy of respecting and caretaking Mother Earth, entrusted to us by our ancestors, to our children and grandchildren.”
“This walk creates strength and unity among the people who have to live with the destructive impacts of tar sands. Together, we are more empowered to ensure a clean and healthy world for future generations,” said Roland Woodward Chair of the Keepers of the Athabasca.

The walk was not a protest, but a spiritual gathering to offer prayers for the healing of Mother Earth and all those negatively impacted by tar sands projects and associated infrastructure. Participants walked along Highway 63 past Suncor and Syncrude’s operations to help heal what has been destroyed and to give each other the spiritual strength to carry on. …more

The West and the Glorification of Terrorism By Thierry Meyssan
3 August, 2012 — Voltaire Network – crosspost on WilliamBowles.info

The U.N. Security Council met shortly after the July 18 attack that decapitated the command of the Syrian security forces. The two sessions that followed addressed the Resolution proposals submitted by the Western powers and Russia. It was incumbent upon the Council to condemn terrorist action on principle, as it does in all similar circumstances. The practice is to unanimously adopt a declaration and have it read by the sitting president of the Council, in this case the Columbian, Nestor Osorio. Protocol dictates that he present his condolences to the member state under attack.

However, the Council remained silent. The Western members refused to apply to the attack in Syria one of the most basic principles of international relations: the condemnation of terrorism. Even worse, in their respective declarations German, British, American and French leaders instead condemned the victims, making them responsible for the violence they had been the targets of and reaffirming support for the forces that perpetrated the attack. Immediately, the Western media set about defiling the memory of the victims as if their deaths were still insufficient to quench their thirst for Syrian blood.

No one doubts that terrorism in Syria is being sponsored by NATO and the GCC but until now it was being carried out behind a veil of hypocrisy. Unable to bombard and raze the country because of the Russian and Chinese double veto, the Western powers and their Arab partners decided to bleed the country while setting it up for an attack by mercenaries. Then on February 12 came the call to jihad issued by Ayman al-Zawahiri. Suddenly, NATO, the GCC and al-Qaeda found themselves pursuing the same objective. Notwithstanding, Brussels took the view that the Egyptian sheik’s declarations were his alone and were therefore unworthy of comment as if to underline that NATO doesn’t revise its positions in response to such fatwas. This rationale remained unconvincing because it ignored the issue of the common objectives shared by the self-proclaimed advocates of democracy, on the one hand, and Islamism, on the other. It did allow appearances to be preserved. The masks are now off. The Western powers have acknowledged their links with terrorists.

The turning point occurred during the 3rd Conference of the “Friends” of the Syrian people in Paris on July 6. President Francois Hollande accorded a place of honor to individuals who had previously been paid in secret while taking care to deny knowing them. He elevated war criminals to the rank of heroes without eliciting the least discomfort among his foreign partners.

Without waiting for al-Qaeda to be invited to yet another conference of the “Friends” of the Syrian people, Sergei Lavrov expressed surprise at this behavior: “This signifies that [the West] will continue to support this kind of terrorist attack until the Security Council fulfills its obligations. It is a terrifying position.” He continued, “We do not know how we are to interpret this.”

Beyond the moral questions, what does this doctrinal turnaround signify in that for over a decade the Western powers have touted themselves as the champions of the “war on terrorism” while today they openly proclaim their support for terrorists?

Many authors, among them U.S. strategists such as Zbignew Brzezinski, have emphasized that the notion of a “war on terrorism” is an absurd concept. One can conduct a war on terrorists but not against their strategy. Be that as it may, the slogan has had the double advantage of placing certain states on the side of Good while justifying a “” against all others. …more

Mike Macnair examines the paradox of the rational irrationalism of US foreign policy

Imperialism, capitalism and war

2 August, 2012 – Weekly Worker 925 – Mike Macnair

For some years now the USA and its allies have been carrying out a blockade, or siege warfare, against Iran, under the euphemistic name of ‘sanctions’. In July, the sanctions siege was significantly intensified and alongside it the US and Israel have been organising semi-clandestine sabotage operations (most notably the Stuxnet computer virus) and assassinations.

Also parallel to the siege has been the running threat of direct bombardment – with its own set of euphemisms: the ‘surgical strike’ to ‘take out’ Iran’s potential nuclear capability. The level of media attention paid to this threat varies: very recently Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has given his backing to an Israeli ‘strike’, while publicity has been given to the arrival in the region of US super-bunker-buster bombs.

There is something obviously irrational about this policy. The suggestion that Iran getting the bomb threatens an immediate attack on Israel, which has 100 or more warheads and complete delivery systems, etc, is ludicrous. The arguments that president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a madman or can be analogised to Hitler are both equal nonsense, and scarily reminiscent of similar claims about Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Moreover, one might imagine that the US would be a bit more cautious, given that its budget has been tightened by the results of the 2008 crash, and it spent billions failing either to find weapons of mass destruction or to create a shining beacon of democracy in Iraq, and has equally failed to defeat the Taliban in 11 years of war in Afghanistan.

The apparent irrationality – in a certain sense real irrationality – has substantive present political implications. On the one hand, an important section of the anti-war movement has seized upon it with the aim of persuading the capitalist class, or at least sections of it, to act more rationally: it is not really in their interests to pursue such wars.

(Or perhaps the idea is that we could have capitalism without US hegemony (or any other hegemon state): the United Nations as a proto-world-state, the ‘law-governed world order’ which Peter Gowan promoted before his death. The reality is that the UN, though an entity with which the US is often partially at odds, is an agency of the US’s alliance systems; and the ‘law-governed world order’ is precisely a regime in which the security council can authorise siege warfare, bombing and invasions.)

On the other hand, an equally important section of the left argues that behind the irrational arguments are real, rational reasons for the US to act as it does – chiefly concerned with the price and control of oil and with maintaining US geopolitical dominance through surrounding Russia and China. This latter view is associated with the idea that the left and the workers’ movement has a stake not merely in the defeat of the war drive, but positively in the victory of the US’s ‘anti-imperialist’ opponents.

This idea is a bastardised form of the ‘anti-imperialist united front’ of the colonial workers’ movement and the nationalists and/or pan-Islamists, which was promoted by the early Communist International. ‘Bastardised’, because in its modern form it is filtered through the diplomacy of the old USSR-led ‘socialist bloc’. The underlying idea is that the overthrow of imperialism (identified in modern practice with US-led imperialism) can precede and provide the basis for socialist revolution.

The view that the irrational explanations conceal real rational reasons of imperialist interests is associated with the ‘anti-imperialist united front’ conception, but is not essential to it. Rather, it offers supporting grounds for it: if the imperialists have a real economic or geopolitical interest at stake in creating puppet regimes in the Middle East, then the ‘resistance’ offered by nationalists can potentially actually undermine the imperialist order.

How should we judge these questions? In my view the siege warfare and bombing threats against Iran are part of a larger pattern of US policy and the nature and incidence of wars since the US defeat in Indochina in the 1970s. This US behaviour is neither simply irrational, nor, on the other hand, do the irrational explanations conceal real decisive interests which explain the war decisions.

I propose to explain, or to contribute to an explanation of, this US behaviour by three elements. The first is the political effects of the business cycle. The second is the relative decline of the United States, which partially repeats the previous experiences of older ‘leading capitalist states’. The third is the decline of capitalism as such, which is reflected in differences between the present relative decline of the US and the decline of British world hegemony in the late 19th century.
The pattern

Before the 1970s, US Middle East policy had a clear and rational character as part of the general policy of the cold war. This was an orientation involving state-to-state alliances, ‘containment’ of ‘communism’ – ie, of the USSR and its alliance system – and US-Soviet competition in development aid within the framework of managed trade and limited import-substitution industrialisation in ‘developing countries’. US military interventions and those of the US’s British side-kick were directed to supporting existing state regimes and used quite limited force. The 1967 Arab-Israeli war and 1973 Yom Kippur war were fought wholly within this strategic framework.

After Vietnam, the US gradually broke with this policy and embarked on a new orientation. Financial globalisation is the most discussed aspect of the changed orientation; but other aspects of it include the ‘human rights’ offensive; increased use of US support for guerrilla and militia operations to destabilise regimes seen as hostile to the US, with some tendency to produce ‘failed states’ (most strikingly Afghanistan after 1980); and episodic large-scale military operations that are merely destructive.

There is an apparent indirect connection to financial crises. The point at which the 1987 stock market crash began to feed through into the real economy around 1990 was followed by the first Gulf war of 1991. The point at which the economy was affected by the dot-com crash of 2000-02 (as opposed to mere financial difficulties), was followed by the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

It looks to me (I may be wrong) as though, although the sheer severity of the crash of 2008-09 has delayed the process, nonetheless this crash has already been followed by an escalation of siege and sabotage operations against Iran, while a large-scale bombing campaign against Iran appears to be in the offing. …more

History’s Greatest Terrorist: Harry Truman
By Steve Fake – August 10, 2012 – FPIP – Cross-posted from Scramble for Africa.

The motives for dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were political, the targets civilian — a textbook case of terrorism.

Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson in the lull between the storms of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson in the lull between the storms of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Terrorism, despite continual abuse, is a word like any other. It has an actual definition: violence against a civilian target undertaken to send a political message. It is not merely a slur to be affixed willy-nilly to whomever, as geopolitical needs dictate.

On August 6th 1945 Washington dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. One hundred fifty thousand civilians were incinerated or condemned to slow and terrible deaths by radiation exposure (as immortalized in the Japanese manga and animated film Barefoot Gen). On August 9th, the Truman Administration released a plutonium core atomic bomb over Nagasaki, killing an additional 75,000 people.

A justifying mythology was immediately crafted and remains firmly lodged in popular understanding — at least in the U.S. The bombs were dropped, reluctantly, to save the lives of U.S. servicemen fighting Japan. Perhaps a half million (Truman’s claim) would have died before Japan would have unconditionally surrendered had the U.S. not deployed the bombs. The story has long been debunked, but with little popularization. If fact, Japan was already prepared to surrender, having only a few (trivial next to hundreds of thousands of lives) conditions. The actual reasons the bomb was dropped, included, as Gar Alperovitz has long argued, intimidating Russia and to demonstrate U.S. power on the world stage. Any street gangster would recognize the dynamic. There was also a concern to forestall any further Soviet influence in Asia. Thus the motive was political and the target was civilian. It is a textbook case of terrorism. Perhaps the preeminent example.

Truman’s successor continued developing the arsenal. In 1954, the federal government, in a secret test, detonated a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb — the most powerful device the country ever exploded — on the Bikini Atoll island range in the Pacific Ocean. Rongelap Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, was downwind. The people were temporarily relocated, only to be sent back a few years later to their now radioactive homelands. …more

Review: Cultures of Resistance
By Conn Hallinan – August 10, 2012 – FPIP

cultures-of-resistance-film-reviewWhen we think of “resistance,” what mostly comes to mind is guerrilla warfare: Vietnamese closing in on the besieged French at Dien Bien Phu, Angolans ambushing Portuguese troops outside of Luanda, or Salvadorans waging a war of attrition against their military oligarchy. But resistance doesn’t always involve roadside bombs or military operations. Sometimes it is sprayed on a Tehran wall or rapped in a hip-hop song in Gaza. It can be a poem in Medellin, Colombia—arguably one of the most dangerous cities in the world—or come from a guitar shaped like an AK-47. In short, there are few boundaries or strictures when it comes to the imagination and creativity that people bring to the act of defiance.

That art can be powerful stuff is the central message that Brazilian filmmaker Iara Lee brings to her award-winning documentary Cultures of Resistance. Her previous films include Synthetic Pleasures, about the impact of technology on mass culture, and Modulations, on the evolution of electronic music. Her most recent film is The Suffering Grasses, about the civil war in Syria.

Lee began Cultures in 2003, just before the Bush administration invaded Iraq, and her six-year odyssey takes her through five continents and 35 countries: Burma, Brazil, Rwanda, Iran, Burundi, Israel, Nigeria, the Congo, and Liberia, to name a few. In each case she profiles a grassroots movement that embodies the philosophy of nonviolent resistance to everything from political oppression to occupation.

Lee, a co-founder of the Cultures of Resistance Network, is a social activist in her own country, where she has aided Amazonian Indians resisting the destruction of their lands and organized against the plague of violence—from both criminals and the police—in Brazil’s slums or Favelas. She is also a member of the Greenpeace Foundation, a member of the advisory board of the National Geographic Society, and a part of the worldwide campaign to ban cluster munitions.

She was also on the MV Mavi Marmara in 2010, the Gaza-bound Turkish ship boarded by Israeli commandos. Nine human rights campaigners were killed in the confrontation, and Lee’s crew managed to smuggle out video footage of the incident. However, U.S. media outlets refused to air it. Lee’s view of the world is not the sometimes distant lens of many documentarians, but the prism of an activist. …more

Astounding hypocrisy, self-censorship, and complicity by the West regarding one of the most regressive regimes on Earth.

10 Facts about Saudi Arabia; and an Introduction to the Gulf Despots Supported by the West
Tony Cartalucci – Activist Post

The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) comprises of 6 nations, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. In principle, Kuwait and Bahrain are considered “constitutional monarchs;” in practice, all 6 are despotic autocracies with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman overtly “absolute monarchs.” Devoid of even a feigned semblance of representative governance, these regimes brutally repress not only their own subjects, but play active roles in repressing the people of other nations, both on their borders and well beyond them.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are playing an active role in crushing dissent in neighboring Bahrain – an opaque uprising obscured by a lack of Western media coverage – apparently the result of Western press houses conveniently ignoring unrest targeting governments linked to Western interests, while intentionally subverting nations opposed to Western interests.

Likewise, the collective efforts of the GCC’s regimes have torn North Africa’s nation of Libya apart, leaving it under the control of roving bands of NATO/GCC-armed and funded genocidal sectarian militants with the Tripoli government dominated by Western proxies. A similar operation is now underway in Syria, also fully funded, armed, and directed by the GCC and its Western minders.

The term “pro-democracy” has been disingenuously used to describe the militant legions that very “undemocratic” nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are underwriting. Clearly, even at face value, this is an untenable narrative. Under closer scrutiny, it unravels further, exposing a criminal, murderously violent, terroristic conspiracy of vast international proportions.

Of the GCC, perhaps the two most prominent members are Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with the House of Saud leading, and the Qataris playing a supporting role, mainly in terms of propaganda via state-owned Al Jazeera, by hosting “defectors,” and hosting the regional headquarters of Western corporate-financier funded think-tanks like the Brookings Institution’s Doha Centre.

Saudi Arabia: 10 Truths Self-Censored by the West’s Media Houses

1. Saudi Arabia is so utterly autocratic it is literally named after the ruling dynasty, the House of Saud. Thus it is Arabia of the House of Saud, or “Saudi Arabia.”

2. To this day, Saudi Arabia carries out barbaric executions against both criminals and political enemies, including victims accused of “sorcery and witchcraft” in the aptly named, “Chop-Chop Square” located in the capital of Riyadh where heads are literally chopped off by hooded swordsmen.

3. Women are banned from driving in Saudi Arabia, and most likely would also be banned from voting in national elections, if such a phenomenon even occurred – which it does not – as Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy and its leaders are determined by heredity, not even the feigned pretense of elections. There are local elections, however, in which woman are not permitted to vote (perhaps in 2015?).

4. Saudi Arabia has been and to this day is the primary underwriter of the notorious international terror organization, Al Qaeda. Created along with Saudi Arabia’s long-time ally, the United States, money, weapons, and directives are laundered through the Saudis to maintain both plausible deniability for the Americans, and to maintain a degree of credibility for Al Qaeda’s sectarian extremist foot-soldiers across the Muslim World.

5. Saudi Arabia maintains an extensive “re-education” program internationally to pervert the tenets of Islam as a means of keeping Al Qaeda’s ranks full and fueling Wall Street and London’s engineered “Clash of Civilizations.”

6. Saudi Arabian corporate-financier interests (run by the royal family) are tied directly to Wall Street and London via conglomerations like the US-Saudi Arabian Business Council and representation upon the JP Morgan International Council (Khalid Al-Falih of Saudi Aramco, amongst the highest valued companies on Earth).

7. The alleged most notorious terrorist in modern history, Osama Bin Laden, was a creation of US-Saudi machinations, with the Bin Laden family to this day being a premier member of of both Saudi and Western elitist circles. The multi-billion dollar Saudi Binladin Group is an active member of the US-Saudi Arabian Business Council and plays a central role in deciding bilateral policy for the benefit of collective US-Saudi corporate-financier and corresponding geopolitical interests.

8. The autocratic House of Saud maintains Al Arabiya, along with a extensive list of unsavory investors from across the GCC and its sphere of influence, including Lebanon’s Hariri faction. It is a propaganda outlet masquerading as an objective journalistic organization, working in tandem with state-owned Al Jazeera in Qatar. Occasionally admitted to be “state media” by the West, “state media” in Saudi Arabia actually means “Saud family-owned propaganda.”

9. Saudi Arabia has played an active role in the violent destabilization of governments around the world, including most recently Libya and Syria. The use of sectarian-extremists indoctrinated at Saudi-funded faux-mosques and madrasas, armed and funded by Saudi cash, is the standard method of operation for these destabilizations.

10. Saudi Arabia’s brutally repressive internal security apparatus is a creation of US advisers and operators. Its military, both covert and conventional, is also armed through astronomically large weapons sales (including a recent sale considered the largest in US history) by its Wall Street and London allies. The atrocities committed by the despotic Saud regime are directly facilitated by US advisers, operators, and arms. Saudi Arabia also hosts the US military, a sizable force until it was spread out amongst the orbiting despotic regimes of Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.

Of course, not everyone in Saudi Arabia is a barbaric, treasonous, meddling despot. This includes people all across Saudi Arabia’s population of 28 million and even throughout its government. Many of these people have attempted to protest or reform the current state of the “kingdom,” albeit very unsuccessfully.

This failure can be in part blamed on the vast, draconian police state created for the House of Saud despots by their Western sponsors as well as a Western media complicit in censoring crackdowns on protesters, most recently unfolding in the eastern city of Qatif, and a virtual media “black hole” in regards to covering anything, good or bad, regarding Saudi Arabia.

The key to breaking this self-imposed Western media blockade is for the alternative media to conduct the research and cover developments themselves. This includes reaching out to activists and reformers within Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the other GCC autocracies and giving the people the platform denied to them by the corporate-funded Western media. …source

Embassy Row: Berating Bahrain
By James Morrison – The Washington Times – 9 August, 2012

The ambassador from Bahrain is defending her country against allegations that the Persian Gulf kingdom is still abusing its citizens, more than a year after the government crushed an uprising led by majority Shiite protesters against the minority Sunni royal family.

King Hamad has “undertaken an expansive program of political and economic reform unprecedented for the region in which we live,” Ambassador Houda Nonoo said in testimony prepared for a recent congressional hearing on Bahrain.

Mrs. Nonoo, who noted that she was not invited to the hearing before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission last week, explained that the king is implementing nearly all of the recommendations of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, which he established to investigate the police crackdown on mostly peaceful protests that were marred by some violent demonstrators.

The protests by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in February and March 2011 “remain painful for all Bahrainis,” she said.

“In the government’s efforts to restore law and order after the outbreak of violent protests, many mistakes were made. We particularly regret the unfortunate loss of life of all Bahrainis who mobilized to take advantage of their right to free speech and free expressions,” Mrs. Nonoo said.

The United States and many human rights organizations criticized the Bahraini government, which also imposed martial law at the beginning of the protests.

“Many of these accusations were based in truth, but many were hypersensationalized and false,” the ambassador said.

Mrs. Nonoo said the government has adopted most of the commission’s recommendations, including stripping the National Security Agency of arrest powers and restricting it to intelligence gathering only, strengthening anti-torture laws, dropping charges against protesters for shouting anti-government slogans, reinstating government workers who were fired for protesting, and establishing a victims’ compensation fund.

At the congressional hearing, a member of the Bahraini opposition dismissed the government’s claims of reform.

“After 16 months since the imposition of martial law … more violations were committed and not fewer,” said Matar Ebrahim Matar, who resigned his seat in parliament last year to protest the crackdown on the demonstrators.

He called the king’s government an “authoritarian regime” and denounced Hamid as an “absolute monarch.”

Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, complained that the “root causes of the severe unrest” in Bahrain “remain unaddressed and unresolved.”

“The government is continuing to arrest and imprison Bahraini citizens for expressing political views the government doesn’t agree with,” he said.

Mr. Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance subcommittee on international trade, suggested applying pressure on Bahrain to meet labor union commitments under a free-trade agreement with the United States.

A State Department official told the commission that Washington sees improvements in Bahrain and noted its strategic value to the United States as home to the U.S. 5th Fleet, which allows the Navy to project U.S. power in the Persian Gulf and confront Iranian threats to the region.

“In a number of ways, Bahrain today is more stable than it was a year ago,” said Michael H. Posner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor.

However, he added, the country is still a “deeply divided nation struggling to regain its equilibrium.”

Tom Malinowski, director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch, said much of the tension in Bahrain comes from its position “right on the fault line between the Sunni and Shiite Muslim worlds.”

The Sunni minority, aligned with Saudi Arabia, is fearful that the rival Shiite majority has links to Iran.

Mr. Malinowski said the official media have “convinced many Sunni supporters of the monarchy that opposition calls for democracy are an Iranian plot to impose a Shiite theocracy on Bahrain.”
…source

No real surprise since the hype of Iran’s Nuclear Program is simply “smoke and mirrors” used to justify Western and Israeli aggression in their strategy of containment and the West imposes it hegemonic designs on MENA, while Israel moves forward with its own expansionist agenda. – Phlipn

US: Iran not on verge of nuclear weapon
10 August, 2012 – Al Akhbar

The United States still believes that Iran is not on the verge of having a nuclear weapon and that Tehran has not made a decision to pursue one, US officials said on Thursday.

Their comments came after Israeli media reports claimed US President Barack Obama had received a new National Intelligence Estimate saying Iran had made significant and surprising progress toward military nuclear capability.

Later, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak suggested that the new US report, which he acknowledged might be something other than a National Intelligence Estimate, “transforms the Iranian situation into an even more urgent one.”

But a White House National Security Council spokesman disputed the Israeli reports, saying the US intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear activities had not changed since intelligence officials delivered testimony to Congress on the issue earlier this year.

“We believe that there is time and space to continue to pursue a diplomatic path, backed by growing international pressure on the Iranian government,” the spokesman said. “We continue to assess that Iran is not on the verge of achieving a nuclear weapon.”

US officials would not directly comment on whether there was a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which is a compilation of views of the various US intelligence agencies.

The last formal NIE on Iran in 2007, partially made public by the administration of President George W. Bush, became highly controversial because it said Tehran had halted nuclear weaponization work in 2003, although other aspects of the overall program continued.

A later update to that report retained that central assessment, sources have previously said.

James Clapper, US director of national intelligence, said in congressional testimony in January: “We assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons, in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”

Another US official said the United States regularly exchanges intelligence reporting with its allies, which would include Israel.

The United States has been concerned that Israel may conduct a unilateral strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, adding to turmoil in the Middle East.

Israel – the only nuclear power in the Middle East – sees an atomic armed Iran as a threat to its regional supremacy and there is persistent speculation over whether it will launch a preemptive military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Tehran denies it is trying to build nuclear bombs, saying it is enriching uranium only for peaceful purposes. …more

Charge or release Saudi cleric: Amnesty
10 August, 2012 – Al Akhbar

A leading Saudi cleric must be either charged or released after a being detained for over a month without charge, Amnesty International said on Friday.

Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric, was violently arrested on July 8 after leading a number of pro-reform protests in the restive Qatif region.

Nimr was attacked by police and a photo after the arrest appeared to show he had been shot, sparking protests in the country’s fractious Eastern Province in which at least two people were shot dead.

He has since been detained for a month without formal charge and Amnesty demanded he be released.

“It has been a month since his arrest and Amnesty International is not aware of any charges being brought against him,” Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Middle East and North Africa Program Director at Amnesty International said.

“Amnesty calls on the Saudi Arabian authorities to either charge him with a recognizably criminal offense or release him,” he added.

The Ministry of Interior announced Sheikh Nimr had been arrested as an “instigator of sedition” and was shot at as “he and those with him resisted security forces at a check-point, opened fire at security forces and crashed into a car belonging to security forces as he sought to escape.”

But they have provided no evidence for the claim that he resisted arrest, while his family said he was not armed, did not own a gun and was on his own at the time of his arrest.

His family also told Amnesty International they had been worried about him following his arrest and that they were not allowed by security officials to see him or talk to him in hospital until mid-July, when they were permitted just 15 minutes. …more

Ms Clinton’s schizophrenic discourse on Syria
Voltaire Network – 9 August 2012

On 7 August 2012, following a meeting with the Foreign Minister of South Africa, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, Hillary Clinton who was asked about the situation in Syria had this to say: “I do think we can begin talking about and planning for what happens next, the day after the regime does fall. I’m not going to put a timeline on it. I can’t possibly predict it, but I know it’s going to happen, as does most observers around the world. So we have to make sure that the state’s institutions stay intact. We have to make sure that we send very clear expectations about avoiding sectarian warfare. Those who are attempting to exploit the misery of the Syrian people, either by sending in proxies or sending in terrorist fighters, must recognize that that will not be tolerated, first and foremost by the Syrian people.”

Clearly stated,

– The U.S. Secretary of State rebuffs any involvement by intermediaries, yet she is preparing to cadminister a country that does not belong to her.

– Clinton condemns terrorism, even though she hailed the July 18 attack in Damascus which decapitated the Syrian military command, and her President, Barack Obama, signed a secret directive to practice terrorism in Syria. …source

UK opens probe into EADS unit Saudi defence deal
9 August, 2012 – Reuters

PARIS, Aug 9 (Reuters) – Britain’s Serious Fraud Office has formally launched a criminal probe into allegations that European defence group EADS bribed Saudi Arabian officials to win a communications contract.

The allegations involve a $3.3 billion contract awarded to the EADS unit, GPT Special Project Management, to provide communications and intranet services for the Saudi National Guard, which protects the Kingdom’s royal family.

Serious Fraud Office spokesman David Jones on Thursday confirmed a single-sentence statement on the UK prosecutors’ website that the investigation was underway but declined to elaborate.

“The Director of the Serious Fraud Office has decided to open a criminal investigation into allegations concerning GPT and aspects of the conduct of their business in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” a statement on the website said.

An EADS spokesman in the UK did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment about the probe being launched.

The investigation’s existence was first reported in May 2011, but the U.K’s Telegraph newspaper reported in October that it had been halted while the British government considered the political implications.

The allegations surfaced in employment tribunal proceedings and were made by a former GPT employee who claimed Saudi officials were given luxury cars, jewellery and large sums of cash from London accounts through intermediaries, a source previously told Reuters.

The SFO in 2006 halted an investigation into alleged bribes paid by BAE Systems in connection with a huge arms deal with Saudi Arabia amid fears that it would threaten UK national security. …more