NYPD beefs up presence near anti-Muslim posters
26 September, 2012 – Al Akhbar

A battle against anti-Islam ads in New York subway stations is heating up, as critics step up criticisms of the pro-Israel posters, prompting the New York Police Department to beef up its presence at the stations.

NYPD deployed additional troops to ten subway stations where the anti-Islam ads stand, according to a report by the New York Post Tuesday.

The newspaper also published a video to its website showing well-known Egyptian-American journalist, Mona Altahawy, apparently trying to cover one of the posters with pink spray paint. A woman named Pamela Hall mounted a camera and stood between the ad and Eltahawy. A screaming match between the two ensued, as a New York Post camera crew stood nearby filming the incident.

It is not clear how Hall, reportedly an Islamophobic blogger, along with the newspaper photographers, happened to be at the same time and place where the high-profile Eltahawy hoped to commit her protest act.

Eltahawy was arrested after police arrived at the scene of the altercation.

The posters which reads “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel, defeat Jihad”, inspired a wave of criticisms from activists in the US. A Muslim lobby group, the Council of American Islamic Relations, has called on New Yorkers to repudiate hate speech.

The advertisement, funded by the pro-Israel American Freedom Defense Initiative, was initially rejected by the city’s transportation authority.

One of the posters was torn down by a passerby just hours after it was posted. …source

The move by Washington last week is, in effect, giving full approval to the MEK’s terror and assassination campaign in Iran. It is a stark reminder of Washington’s unwavering warpath towards Iran.

US Sponsored Covert War on Iran: Washington Gives Full Approval to Terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK)
By Finian Cunningham – Global Research – 26 September, 2012

Here’s a thought experiment: imagine that there is a terrorist network in the USA that has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths over several decades.

The group declares itself dedicated to destroying the US government and has been involved in car bombing urban centres, kidnapping and murdering members of the country’s security forces, and assassinating government scientists, as well as perpetrating countless random murders on businessmen and ordinary families.

Now imagine that the Iranian government announces a new policy in which it does not consider the above clandestine group a terrorist entity. That policy means that the network is free to raise money in Iran to fund its terror campaign against US citizens and to lobby for political support among Iranian lawmakers and ambassadors.

We can safely conclude that in such a far-fetched scenario, the US government would immediately declare war on Iran and proceed to carpet bomb that country mercilessly – with the Western corporate news media blasting righteous endorsements of vengeance.

Yet this scenario of aiding and abetting terrorism is far from far-fetched when it comes to actual US policy towards Iran. Just last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially de-listed the Iranian Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK) from its official terror watch list.

That the MEK is a terror group is beyond dispute, despite the US government’s apparent change of opinion. The term “terror group” applies objectively and accurately. It is not just a pejorative propaganda label used by the Iranian government to blacken some dissident group. Since the 1980s, the MEK network itself claims that it has killed 40,000 Iranians whom it considers legitimate targets because they are “loyal” to, that is because they are citizens of, the Islamic Republic. Lower estimates of fatalities are put at around 17,000. Proportionate to its population that would give an upper equivalent of 150,000 dead Americans – a death toll suffered by Iran which is 50 times greater than that ascribed to 9/11.

The MEK, also known as MKO, has colluded with foreign powers for the stated goal of destroying the Islamic Republic of Iran. Most notably, between 1980 and 1988 when Iran was facing a US-backed war of aggression by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the MEK functioned as subversives and shock troops operating “behind enemy lines” to betray their own people.

For that reason, the group has negligible, if any, popular support within Iran. It cannot claim the slightest modicum of popular mandate that might otherwise serve to give its activities a veneer of legitimacy as an “insurgency” or “freedom struggle.” Indeed, it is more accurate to call the group a sort of terrorist cult rather than a political movement. Since 2003, the MEK has not even had a base within Iran, operating clandestinely out of Iraq.

Such is the organisation’s fringe status, that even Iranian political opponents of the government in Tehran deprecated the US government move to officially de-list it as a terror group. That indicates how extreme the network is viewed by the Iranian population.

The Western mainstream media claim that Washington’s clearance of the MEK was given because the group “has renounced violence.” That renunciation was officially made 10 years ago. That is also allegedly why the European Union and the British government removed the network from their terror lists in 2009 and 2008.

How these Western governments can maintain this charade with a straight face is rather astounding. The MEK and other Iranian terror gangs, such as the al-Qaeda-linked Jundallah, have been actively plying violence unabated against the citizenry over the past decade. Even Washington officials admit it. Following the murder of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan on 11 January earlier this year with a magnetic bomb attached to his car in northern Tehran, anonymous US officials disclosed to American mainstream media that the killing was the work of the MEK in collusion with Israel’s Mossad.

Since 2007, five Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated. The MEK and Mossad are strongly implicated in all these murders and much worse.

Why US officials should have authoritative knowledge of such MEK activities is quite simple. It is because the US government and its military intelligence support these very terrorist activities, along with Mossad and Britain’s MI6. During the George W Bush presidency, congressional leaders secretly approved a budget of $400 million to arm and fund the MEK and Jundallah. According to investigative American journalist Seymour Hersh, US Joint Special Operations Command trained members of the MEK at a secret site in Nevada between 2005 and 2009. Training included use of weapons and explosives in the black arts of sabotage, or, in short, terrorism. During the American illegal occupation of Iraq following 2003, the MEK was given protection and immunity at a dedicated facility, known as Camp Ashraf, in Iraq from where they would launch operations into Iran. The camp has since been closed down following the large-scale American troop withdrawal from the country. …more

Saudi frees Shiite cleric held in restive east
26 September, 2012 – Lebanon News

Saudi authorities released a Shiite cleric in Eastern Province, home to the kingdom’s minority Shiites and scene of sporadic anti-government protests, 24 hours after he was held, activists said Wednesday.

The cleric’s website alradhy.com also reported that “scholar Sheikh Hussein Radhy was released,” without giving further details.

Activists, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, said that police had arrested Sheikh Radhy at his home in the eastern town of Amran on Monday night.

They said he was likely to have been detained for taking part in protests last week against the anti-Islam film “Innocence of Muslims” that sparked a wave of violent demonstrations throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

Interior Ministry spokesperson Mansur al-Turki had told AFP he was “not aware” of the arrest, but added the cleric may have been brought in “just for questioning.”

Sheikh Radhy is one of about 70 Saudi Shiite clerics who released a statement addressed to “decision-makers in the Muslim world” demanding they take a clear stance on the anti-Islam film.

Hundreds of Saudis took to the streets in the Shiite-populated east last week in protest over the film, despite a long-standing ban on demonstrations in the kingdom.

Since early 2011, several towns and cities in the east have seen sporadic protests and confrontations between police and Shiites, who allege they are marginalized and number about two million.

Unrest erupted after an outbreak of violence between Shiite pilgrims and religious police in the Muslim holy city of Medina in February 2011.

The protests escalated when the kingdom led a force of Gulf troops into neighboring Bahrain the following month to help crush a Shiite-led uprising against the Sunni monarchy there.

…more

Freedom on the Net 2012 – Bahrain
by Freedom House – 25 September, 2012

Introduction

Bahrain has been connected to the internet since 1995 and currently has one of the highest internet penetration rates in the Middle East. However, as more people have gained access to new technologies, the government has increasingly attempted to curtail their use for obtaining and disseminating politically sensitive information. In 1997, an internet user was arrested for the first time for sending information to an opposition group outside the country,[1] and over the last three years, more internet users have been arrested for online activity.[2]

On February 14, 2011, Bahrainis joined the wave of revolutions sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa, taking to the streets in Manama to call for greater political freedom and protest against the monarchy of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. Similar to the other Arab Spring countries, online activism played a vital role in Bahrain’s demonstrations. In response, the National Safety Status (emergency law) was initiated in March 2011 for two and a half months, leading to an intensive punitive campaign against bloggers and internet users (among others) that was characterized by mass arrests, incommunicado detention, torture, military trials, harsh imprisonment sentences, and dismissal from work and study based on online posts or mobile content. An online activist died in custody under torture in April 2011.[3]

Censorship of online media is implemented under the 2002 Press Law and was extended to mobile telephones in 2010.[4] The use of BlackBerry services to disseminate news is banned. In 2002, the Ministry of Information made its first official attempt to block websites containing content critical of the government, and today over 1,000 websites are blocked, including individual pages on certain social-networking sites.[5] Surveillance of online activity and phone calls is widely practiced, and officers at road security checkpoints actively search mobile content.[6]

Obstacles to Access

According to the United Nations’ e-Government Readiness report of 2010, Bahrain ranks first on the telecommunications infrastructure index in the Middle East,[7] and the number of internet users has risen rapidly, from a penetration rate of 28 percent in 2006 to 77 percent in 2011.[8] In 2011, there were approximately 290,000 internet subscriptions, of which 19 percent were ADSL, 37 percent were wireless, and 44 percent were mobile broadband.[9] Dial-up connections are almost non-existent, and ADSL use has declined with the increased use of wireless internet. Broadband prices have fallen by nearly 40 percent between 2010 and 2011, but it remains significantly more expensive than the average among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),[10] and restrictions on speeds and download limits still exist. Nevertheless, internet access is widely available at schools, universities, shopping malls and coffee shops, where Bahrainis often gather for work and study.

Bahrain has one of the highest mobile phone penetration rates in the region, with nearly 1.7 million mobile subscribers and a mobile penetration rate of 128 percent in 2011.[11] The latest generation of mobile phones such as Apple’s iPhone is widely available in the country, but they are still very expensive. Although BlackBerry phones are popular among young people and the business community, in April 2010 the authorities banned BlackBerry users from sending news bulletins through text messages, threatening those who violated the ban with legal action.[12] …more

Bahrain activist Zainab al-Khawaja given jail sentence
26 September, 2012 – BBC

Zainab al-Khawaja is still facing eight other charges related to participating in protests.

A court in Bahrain has sentenced the prominent pro-democracy activist, Zainab al-Khawaja, to two months in prison.

A judicial source said she had been found guilty of destroying government property, which her lawyer said related to her ripping up a picture of the king.

The court also reportedly adjourned until October two cases – taking part in an illegal demonstration and entering a prohibited area.

Ms Khawaja has been detained several times in the past nine months.

She has been on trial several times for taking part in illegal gatherings and insulting officials, and was sentenced to a month in prison in May.

Her father, Abdulhadi, is among eight activists and opposition figures sentenced to life for allegedly plotting to overthrow the state. Earlier this month, they lost an appeal against their convictions by a military tribunal.

‘Harsh sentence’

Following Wednesday’s court ruling in Manama, Ms Khawaja’s lawyer, Mohammed al-Jishi, said he hoped she might be released soon because she had been remanded in custody since 2 August while awaiting trial. There was no immediate word from officials.

Mr Jishi also said the custodial sentence was harsh because the punishment for tearing up a picture of the king was typically a fine.

Ms Khawaja was still facing eight more charges related to participating in protests, he added. Three separate trials are currently under way.

The first trial is an appeal hearing relating to a charge of insulting an officer at a military hospital. She was acquitted in May, but prosecutors appealed against the verdict.

The second is examining charges of attending an illegal gathering and “inciting hatred against the regime”, and the third, obstructing traffic.

Bahrain has been wracked by unrest since demonstrations in February 2011, demanding more democracy and an end to discrimination against the majority Shia Muslim community by the Sunni royal family.

At least 60 people, including several police officers, have been killed, hundreds have been injured and thousands jailed. …more