Bahrain: Member of Municipal Council shot at directly by regime forces
Shia Post – 11 September, 2012

Forces of the Bahraini regime targeted a member of the Municipal Council, Sadiq Rabea, shooting at him with birdshot gun causing serious injuries. The incident took place whilst regime forces were brutally suppressing a peaceful pro-democracy protest in Sitra Island

Shotgun pellets riddled Rabea’s back, neck and ear causing heavy bleeding. He is currently without medical treatment as hospitals refused to treat the injured Rabea despite his injuries that were deliberately caused by the regime forces.

Such attacks are a regular occurrence in Bahrain where regime forces systematically repress peaceful citizens in order to prevent them from exercising their right to protest and freely express their opinions.

The condition of Rabea is currently unknown as police forcibly arrested him from Ebin Al-Nafees Hospital, without medical treatment for his critical injuries. …source

Iran wants Iraq, Venezuela to join Syria “contact group”
11 September, 2012 – Al Akhbar

Iran on Tuesday hailed Egypt’s aims in putting together a new “contact group” on the Syrian crisis, but said it wanted to expand the initiative to include its allies Iraq and Venezuela.

Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdolahian was quoted on his ministry website after attending the first meeting of the group in Cairo on Monday that Egypt’s offer to host another session at ministerial level “is a positive step.”

He welcomed Egypt’s stated goal of trying to stop Syria’s bloodshed through “consensus” in the group, based on policies to bring about a ceasefire, to maintain Syrian sovereignty and to reject any foreign intervention.

That was “a balanced solution,” Amir Abdolahian said.

The contact group, created by Egypt’s new President Mohammed Mursi, comprises Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran.

The first three countries have all publicly called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down as a first step to quelling an 18-month conflict that is raging in his country.

Iran, though, is Assad’s staunchest ally and has said it will do everything it can to keep him in power.

Egypt said on Monday it planned to bring the foreign ministers of group’s members together in the coming days. A Turkish diplomat told AFP that meeting could happen next week.

In an apparent bid to bolster Iran’s pro-Assad position in the group, Amir Abdolahian called for “Iraq, as the current head of the Arab League, and Venezuela, as part of Non-Aligned Movement troika” to be allowed to join.

Iraq’s government and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez are allied with Iran, which currently holds the presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). …more

Cracks in the Khalifah Regime – America’s Bahrain Migraine
by THOMAS C. MOUNTAIN – Counter Punch – 11 September, 2012

The year and a half long protest movement of the majority Shi’ite people of Bahrain could be forewarning of a crippling migraine headache for the USA if it succeeds in overthrowing the western installed Al Khalifah dictatorship that has ruled Bahrain since “independence”.

The people of Bahrain know all to well that the Khalifah regime’s real godfather is the USA and it is more than likely that the end of the regime will be followed by a demand to close the American naval base located in Bahrain thus threatening US control of the strategically critical Persian Gulf.

Control of the Persian Gulf energy exports and energy reserves is essential for Pax Americana’s continued worldwide hegemony and the US navy spearheaded by the aircraft carrier task force necessary to enforce it’s domination of the Persian Gulf requires a port to operate from. If the USA is kicked out of Bahrain they have only the tiny nation of Djibouti thousands of miles away in the Horn of Africa and its small port as a fall back position.

Ordinarily the USA would give the green light for the Saudi and Emirati funded mercenary police force (hired gun thugs from Jordan, Pakistan and Yemen) occupying Bahrain to drown the potential revolution in blood as has been all to common in the regions past but the situation in Bahrain is complicated by the close historic tribal and family ties between the Shi’ites in Bahrain and the Shi’ites in eastern Saudi where almost all of the Saudi oil is located.

Every time the crackdown on the Bahraini people is intensified there has been an increase in protests by the Shi’ite of Saudi Arabia. A major bloodbath in Bahrain could well ignite an explosion amongst the Saudi Shi’ite who have long suffered from what might best be described as Arab Apartheid by the Wahabi Sunni extremist Al Saud regime that the British installed in power in Saudi Arabia many decades ago.

If the Shi’ite in Saudi Arabia rise up they could easily sabotage Saudi oil production, the worlds largest, damage if not cripple some of the biggest economies in the world and leave the USA scrambling to find a way out of an increasingly dire situation.

For the USA the Bahraini protests could become a major problem that could result in Pax Americana being seen as weak, feeble really, unable to control the Persian Gulf in the face of the growing influence of Iran in the region and calling into question the USA’s very ability to militarily punish its enemies and control one of the worlds most critical choke points, the Straits of Hormuz where the Persian Gulf meets the Indian Ocean.

Today’s headache could quickly turn into tomorrows migraine for the USA as the Bahraini people are faced with the choice of continuing the one sided violence they are suffering or taking up arms in self defense. …more

Very interesting idea. Maybe a ‘push app’ report gas or other attacks on Protesters and villages in Bahrain? How to keep those reporting from becoming targets? Phlipn – hmmm.

Apple shoots down drone strike tracking iPhone app
by Staff Writers – San Francisco (AFP) – 30 August, 2012

The maker of an application that would alert iPhone users to US military drone strikes said Thursday that Apple has repeatedly shot down his efforts to get it into the App Store.

“I just wanted to make a simple app that would send a push notification every time there is a drone strike,” Begley told AFP.

“I was thinking about how hidden the drone war is and about ways to play with what happens in the pockets of smartphone users,” the New York University graduate student continued.

Begley hunkered down and made his first iPhone app, Drones+, which tracks drone strikes by aggregating information from a Bureau of Investigative Journalism database.

Reports of drone strikes prompt iPhone notifications that arrive with pop-up text messages; Google maps showing locations, and the option of more detail.

Begley said that Drones+ was rejected twice by Apple on technical grounds since he first submitted it to the Cupertino, California-based maker of iPhones, iPads, iPods and Macintosh computers in July.

A third rejection came this week, according to Begley, with Apple informing him that Drones+ would not be allowed in the App Store because many people were likely to find the content objectionable.

The 27-year-old interactive communications student expressed dismay that an application crafted to aggregate news reports could be deemed objectionable.

“I didn’t really expect anyone to download the app if it was in the App Store,” Begley said. “That was the point; I don’t think people want to know when a drone strikes.”

He is considering going to work on a version of Drones+ for smartphones powered by Google-backed Android software.

“I would like for it to exist somewhere,” Begley said.” …source

US, Mexican Officials Brokering Deals with Drug “Cartels,” WikiLeaks Documents Show.
By Bill Conroy – The Narco News Bulletin – 20 August, 2012

A high-ranking Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization member’s claim that US officials have struck a deal with the leadership of the Mexican “cartel” appears to be corroborated in large part by the statements of a Mexican diplomat in email correspondence made public recently by the nonprofit media group WikiLeaks.

The Mexican diplomat’s assessment of the US and Mexican strategy in the war on drugs, as revealed by the email trail, paints a picture of a “simulated war” in which the Mexican and US governments are willing to show favor to a dominant narco-trafficking organization in order to minimize the violence and business disruption in the major drug plazas, or markets.

A similar quid-pro-quo arrangement is precisely what indicted narco-trafficker Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, who is slated to stand trial in Chicago this fall, alleges was agreed to by the US government and the leaders of the Sinaloa “Cartel” — the dominate narco-trafficking organization in Mexico. The US government, however, denies that any such arrangement exists.

Mexican soldiers arrested Zambada Niebla in late March 2009 after he met with DEA agents in a posh Mexico City hotel, a meeting arranged by a US government informant who also is a close confident of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia (Zambada Niebla’s father) and Chapo Guzman — both top leaders of the Sinaloa drug organization. The US informant, Mexican attorney Humberto Loya Castro, by the US government’s own admission in court pleadings in the Zambada Niebla criminal case, served as an intermediary between the Sinaloa Cartel leadership and US government agencies seeking to obtain information on rival narco-trafficking organizations.

According to Zambada Niebla, he and the rest of the Sinaloa leadership, through the US informant Loya Castro, negotiated an immunity deal with the US government in which they were guaranteed protection from prosecution in exchange for providing US law enforcers and intelligence agencies with information that could be used to compromise rival Mexican cartels and their operations.

“The United States government considered the arrangements with the Sinaloa Cartel an acceptable price to pay, because the principal objective was the destruction and dismantling of rival cartels by using the assistance of the Sinaloa Cartel — without regard for the fact that tons of illicit drugs continued to be smuggled into Chicago and other parts of the United States and consumption continued virtually unabated,” Zambada Niebla’s attorneys argue in pleadings in his case. …source

Turkey Ramps Up War Threats Against Syria
Contributed by blackandred – By Chris Marsden; 11 September 2012 – WSWS

Turkey has dramatically escalated its war-rhetoric against Syria, placing itself at the forefront of any military intervention to depose the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

On September 4, at a meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described Syria as a “terrorist state.”

He complained that the “massacres in Syria” had gained strength “from the international community’s indifference… The regime in Syria has now become a terrorist state. We do not have the luxury to be indifferent to what is happening there.”

Erdogan’s comments target Russia and China, which oppose measures against Syria they correctly understand to be aimed at weakening their influence in the oil-rich region and consolidating US hegemony by isolating Iran. But he has also made clear his frustration with the Obama administration in the United States, which has expressed reluctance to support Turkey’s demand for a “no-fly” or “buffer” zone on the Syrian side of the Turkish border.

Justified as a means of both protecting and stemming the tide of refugees fleeing Syria, such a move would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

Turkey has said that should the number of refugees, now estimated at 80,000, top 100,000, this could be a tipping point for action against Syria. Turkey has also accused both Syria and Iran of allowing border areas to be used as a base for separatist forces allied to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to attack its troops in the southeast.

Erdogan called the PKK and Syria’s Democratic Union Party (PYD), an affiliated group, a “sub-contractor organization”, “directly supported abroad by enemy countries.”

“In the north, [the Assad regime] has allotted five provinces to the Kurds, to the terrorist organization,” he told a Turkish television station in July.

“It’s known that the PKK works arm in arm with Syria’s intelligence organisation,” said Huseyin Celik, the deputy chairman of the AKP.

Turkish tanks conducted attack-drill exercises along the border with Syria on Wednesday last week. The next day, September 6, Reuters reported that more than 2,000 Turkish soldiers, together with fighter jets and helicopters, attacked PKK positions in both southeast Turkey and northern Iraq.

After having stated that Assad is not a real Muslim, Erdogan last weekend provocatively compared what is happening in Syria with the battle of Karbala–which has central significance for Shi’ites, who regard those killed by Caliph Yazid I as martyrs. “What happened in Karbala 1,332 years ago is what happens in Syria today,” Erdogan said at a conference in Istanbul.

It was in this context that Erdogan complained to Christiane Amanpour on CNN September 5 that US reluctance to back a no-fly zone was probably “because of the pre-election situation,” given the deep unpopularity in the US of any open move to war against Syria. …more

Further evidence of western technology being used by Arab regimes to spy on activists. FinFisher, the makers of the spyware, were identified by Owni & WikiLeaks last year as part of the global surveillance arms trade.

Western Spy Tech Linked to Bahrain Regime
by Jean Marc Manach On September 10, 2012

In spring of this year a Bahraini exile in London, a British economist in Bahrain and a naturalised American living in Alabama, all received the same short email, apparently sent by an Al-Jazeera journalist.

The email mentioned a report written by Zainab al-Khawaja, a human rights activist in Bahrain, about the torture of imprisoned fellow activist Nabeel Rajab, followed by this statement.

A few days later the trio received more emails. Some made reference to the arrest of opposition figures in Bahrain, and others to the agenda of the king of Bahrain. Every email was accompanied by a compressed file attachment, raising suspicions that they might contain computer viruses.

The emails were forwarded to Vernon Silver, a Bloomberg journalist who has been closely following instances of western surveillance technology being used by Arab dictatorships. Silver had the emails analysed by two researchers associated with the Citizen Lab, a Canadian research laboratory that specialises in studying political surveillance technology.

Morgan Marquis-Boire, a computer security engineer working at Google, is an expert (pdf) in the type of spyware that was used by Libyan and Syrian thugs to hack cyber-dissidents’ computers. Bill Marczak, a doctoral student in computer science at Berkeley, is a member of Bahrain Watch, a group which promotes transparency in Bahrain. Bahrain Watch documents the protesters and civilians killed by Bahraini authorities, the weapons (buckshot, grenades and tear gas) purchased from western companies, and the western public relations firms employed by the regime at handsome rates.

The two researchers discovered a particularly sophisticated piece of spyware, employing “myriad techniques designed to evade detection and frustrate analysis“. By analysing the spyware’s coding, the researchers uncovered mentions of FinSpy, the British company Gamma International, and the names of several of its directors.

According to this contract proposal found in March 2011 in an Egyptian security service building after the fall of the Mubarak regime, the FinSpy spyware retails at about €300,000. It’s one of the flagship products in the range of “offensive cyber-war” tools marketed by FinFisher, a subsidiary of Gamma, which specialises in surveillance and telecommunications interception systems. Owni reported on this product range last year; we even put together this video montage of promotional clips explaining how the software operates.

As part of the SpyFiles operation, WikiLeaks and Privacy International revealed that FinFisher was one of five digital surveillance arms dealers, specialising in ‘trojans’. This type of spyware presents itself as a legitimate file, before infecting a computer in order to remotely activate microphones and cameras, to record every keyboard stroke (including of course passwords) or Skype conversations, instant messages, emails etc.. Then, in an encrypted and undetectable manner, the spyware sends back the intercepted data via servers located in various countries abroad.

Another computer security researcher has subsequently managed to identify the servers used to control FinSpy, and thus spy on computers in Estonia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Latvia, Mongolia, Qatar, the Czech Republic, the USA, Australia and Dubai.

In a second post, published in late August, CitizenLab revealed that they had identified two more servers: one in Bahrain, the other controlled by the Ministry of Telecommunications in Turkmenistan, considered one of the most repressive regimes in the world.

The two researchers also detail how FinSpy Mobile operates. The system allows the user to infect iPhones and Android, Symbian, Blackberry and Windows mobile phones, in order to spy on SMS, emails and telecommunications, extract contacts and other data, geolocate the phone, and even remotely activate the phone without the user being aware of the slightest manipulation. …more

Bahrain’s Thorns Stuck In Obama’s Side
10 September, 2012 – The Trench

Two weeks ago Sumaya Rajab, the wife of imprisoned Bahraini activist Nabeel Rajab, posted an open letter to U.S. President Barack Obama. Sentenced to three years in prison for “inciting” and participating in “illegal gatherings,” Nabeel would appear before the court as a beacon of freedom and justice, a man who can beaten physically but not mentally. Sumaya would appeal to Obama with these very virtues: “Victimized people of Bahrain are calling upon the universal values and principles that United States is embracing.”

The response: sit back and watch Rajab’s cruel and unusual punishment.

Despite a continual rise in Bahrain’s hostilities from February 2011’s initial democratic outbreak, both sides of Washington still doubt that they have much to gain from embracing the island’s opposition. Confronting Iran and protecting Israel, shipping routes and oil supplies plays better than supporting a relatively small opposition in a foreign land. The Obama administration has downplayed Bahrain throughout the Arab revolutions, with considerable success at home, but the opposition universally agrees that U.S. policy is negatively affecting their struggle for human rights and political representation. Most GOP presidential candidates, sadly, would offer even less words of support and back them with the consent of force.

A month after Rajab was jailed on July 9th and held at the notorious Jaww prison, Washington could only muster a letter of support signed by two Senators and 17 Representatives – apparently leaving the other 98 and 418 on King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa’s side.

The White House has been equally unhelpful throughout Rajab’s numerous arrests and his campaign to raise awareness in Bahrain. By the time he arranged a series of media appearances to kick off the summer, Rajab had come to accept the immovability of U.S. policy after previously hoping that America’s Fifth Fleet would loosen Washington’s security bond with Manama. The head of Bahrain’s Center For Human Rights (BCHR) had just watched Crown Prince Salman mingle with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta as he languished in a jail cell. Rajab and his family have also been subjected to abuses at home, including night raids and tear gas assaults. When he was rearrested in July, the State Department waited two days before expressing “concern” – at the prompting of inquiring reporters – and refused to explicitly call for his immediate release.

The State Department then claimed that it had done so “from the beginning” after Rajab’s sentencing, although no follow up can be found in the Department’s own database. No further statements have been issued.

These isolated defenses are designed to float in a sea of silence, maintaining an obligatory level of interest to ward off criticism of inaction. Accordingly, Sumaya observes that the State Department “already expressed ‘Worries’ and ‘Concerns’ about Nabeel’s imprisonment but the government of Bahrain ignored all such ‘Concerns.'” Her letter is almost too reasonable and inviting, given the situation of her family, but Sumaya wisely attempts to relate her cause to Obama and the founding ideals of America. With nowhere left to turn in Washington, she requests “your kind intervention to explicitly call for Nabeel Rajab’s immediate and unconditional ‘release from prison’ because Nabeel is a prisoner of conscience.” However Obama has yet issue any personal reaction to Rajab’s imprisonment or the abuse that Bahrain’s government is subjecting him to, both before and after his sentencing. …more

Hundreds of Saudi Shia protesters demand release of political detainees
ABNA – 11 September, 2012

Activists and the family members of political prisoners in Saudi Arabia have held a protest rally in the capital, Riyadh, to renew their calls for the release of the political detainees in the Arab kingdom.

Hundreds of Saudi Shia protesters demand release of political detainees
(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) – Activists and the family members of political prisoners in Saudi Arabia have held a protest rally in the capital, Riyadh, to renew their calls for the release of the political detainees in the Arab kingdom.

In a gathering outside the Attorney General’s office in the capital on Monday, they also demanded the release of political activists held in Saudi jails without trial.

“My brother told me he was taken to court last year but it was a secret trial and they didn’t let him choose his own lawyer. It’s been over a year and we still don’t have the result of the trial. In my opinion, this trial is nothing but a show,” said a protester.

Saudi Arabia has been under fire for its human rights record especially for the detention of many anti-government protesters since the onset of a popular uprising last year.

Rights activists say hundreds of political prisoners remain locked up in Saudi jails under harsh conditions and without access to a lawyer.

People are randomly arrested by the Saudi police just for looking suspicious, and are held behind bars for years before they are even charged.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Saudi regime ”routinely represses expression critical of the government.”

The oil-rich Eastern Province has been the focal point of the anti-regime protests in Saudi Arabia. …source

Unadulterated Hypocrisy: ‘UK forces oversee Bahrain repression’
11 September, 2012 – Hardons Blog

British and American military and security advisors are overseeing training to Bahraini forces involved in the crackdown on revolutionaries, a leader of Bahrain’s Amal Movement says.

Hisham al-Sabbagh told Al-Alam news network that the al-Khalifa regime in Bahrain is also receiving military hardware including tanks from a number of western countries and some members of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council.

Al-Sabbagh’s comments come only weeks after Bahraini ruler Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to step up cooperation during Hamad’s visit to London in late August.

Hamad did point to security cooperation between the two sides after the meeting but disguised it as an attempt to “improve security and combat the spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.”

Cameron and Hamad also ironically called for cooperation to boost human rights and democracy while Bahraini forces continue to crush anti-regime protests.

The British government has been repeatedly blasted by human rights, anti-war and anti-arms trade activists for arming repressive regimes including Bahrain despite clear evidence of bloody suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations there.

Over the past months the British MPs have also joined the critics.

The MPs said in their 2012 Scrutiny of Arms Exports that the government’s arms exports decisions have been clearly flawed as known repressive regimes such as Bahrain were armed regardless.

The MPs also said the government paradoxically considers some of the countries on its own list of human right abusers as “priority markets” for arms sales. …source

Bahrain? Never Heard of It
by Kelley B. Vlahos – 11 September, 2012 -AntiWar

News that a civilian appeals court in Bahrain upheld the harsh prison terms —including several life sentences — of 13 “Arab Spring” activists last week, drew rapid fire from the human rights community. Their “crimes” — organizing largely peaceful protests to demand social and economic reforms from the ruling monarchy in 2011 — had branded them convicted traitors and terrorists, the kind of appalling injustice that American patriots had fought against more than 200 years ago.
Bahraini security forces during the 2011 uprising.

“Today’s court decision is yet another blow to justice and shows once more that the Bahraini authorities are not on the path of reform but seem rather driven by vindictiveness,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program.

Bahrain’s Shia population took to the streets in February 2011 amid the wave of social and political uprisings across the Arab World. Unlike Egypt, Tunisia or even Libya, however, the Sunni Al Khalifa royal family — which has ruled the oil rich country (and the Shia majority) for two centuries — has managed to emerge unscathed. Instead, Bahrain has thwarted and suppressed its popular movement without fully engaging in the reforms it’s promised. Making it worse, the major mainstream coverage of the Bahraini story — including the brutal crackdown against protesters, their arrests, alleged torture in prison, the “disappearing” of activists and even doctors who have helped the wounded, the nighttime raids in Shiite neighborhoods — has been sporadic at best to non-existent.

You’ve got to wonder why. This week, a pair of stories by Glenn Greenwald (here and here) have re-engaged a debate about how western financial interests coupled with so-called “smart power” strategy in the region, has left the reform movement in Bahrain far behind. This only reinforces the longstanding accusation of American hypocrisy — preaching the goals of liberty for all humans, but only when it suits.

Feeble American Response

In his acceptance speech before the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, President Obama had very little to say about foreign policy, and even less to say about global human rights. He did make one sweeping nod to the people-driven freedom movements that have marked the last two years of his presidency:

“The historic change sweeping across the Arab World must be defined not by the iron fist of a dictator or the hate of extremists, but by the hopes and aspirations of ordinary people who are reaching for the same rights that we celebrate today.”

It’s no surprise he didn’t say more about the Arab Spring — his administration has not taken a clear approach to any of it. Rather it has offered a patchwork of official responses, ranging from full-on military assistance for anti-government forces in Libya, to a more tolerant, wait-and-see position with others, particularly in Egypt. There, U.S. officials condemned the violence against the protesters in Tahrir Square, and supported reforms in spirit, but were forced to contemplate a future relationship without their reliable dictator-friend, Hosni Mubarak, and with an Islamist party that says it won’t kowtow to U.S. influence. …more