Clinton and the shameful behavior of the opposition
by Pierre Khalaf – 9 November, 2012 – By Ghaleb Kandil

No room for a third option in Syria

The consecutive American recognitions of the increasing size of the Takfiri movements and Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups within the so-called armed opposition in Syria, settled the controversy launched at the beginning of the events in favor of the Syrian national state, and exposed the Western hypocrisy which was based on the exploitation of the terrorist and Takfiri organizations and the facilitation of the entry of Al-Qaeda’s armed men and the so-called factions of international Jihad, in order to get rid of Syria’s regional strength and the repercussions of its role which is opposed to American hegemony and Israel.

Firstly, the Americans and French are presenting their project to reshape the Syrian opposition under the headline of creating a force capable of containing extremism in Syria. They are also talking about the restructuring of the so-called Free Syrian Army to achieve that same goal, thus emulating the failed Western experience in Afghanistan where the Americans and French adopted a plan to arm and support Afghan groups opposed to the Takfiri organizations such as the Taliban, and what was dubbed at the time the Arab mujahedeen who constituted the nucleus of Al-Qaeda, after they had benefited from financial and military support provided by the United States, the NATO member states, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and many other Arab countries headed by Egypt and Jordan, in partnership with the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Secondly, the key and qualitative difference between Afghanistan and Syria is that the Syrian national state is unified and strong, along with its national army, at a time when the Afghan state was destroyed, drowned in chaos and saw its military institution disbanded and scattered. This was originally the plan drawn up for Syria, but it failed despite the massive capabilities allocated to implement it in the region and around the world, by all means necessary. In the face of the global war, Syrian popular polarization is tilting in favor of the national state and its armed forces, while the national leadership represented by President Bashar al-Assad is earning wider support in the ranks of the Syrians with all their social and religious factions.

Thirdly, it is clear through the West’s attempts to gather, break down and reassemble the Syrian opposition movements at the level of their political fronts and tools on the field, that the search for a secularist fighting nerve within these oppositions’ ranks in order to deter the Takfiri movements on the ground is useless, as well as a desperate attempt whose outcome will be the slaughtering of agents working for the American intelligence apparatuses at the hands of the Takfiris and the West’s riddance of some of those whom it used to mobilize the extremists through their liquidation, as it usually happens to the American agents once their roles and tasks expire. But in any case, this enterprise is doomed to fail, because all the components of the political front which were mobilized by the West and its agents, constitute a mixture featuring the Muslim Brotherhood organization which is behind Takfir, Al-Arour’s Takfiri wing and the Bandar-affiliated Al-Qaeda wing which is funded and armed by Al-Hariri’s envoy Okab Sakr. As for the rest, they are mercenaries who do not represent any real power, while the Free Army is a mere hybrid mixture of thieves and criminals, along with fleeing officers who have turned into terrorist Takfiris and into sheikhs ordering killings and slaughters. …more

Bahraini Police Kill Teen Headed to Friday Prayers
10 November, 2012 – FARS

TEHRAN (FNA)- Authorities in Bahrain are being blamed for the death of a 16-year-old boy, as opposition supporters and human rights activists said police prevented people from attending Friday prayers by setting up checkpoints and firing tear gas at the crowds.

Ali Radhi reportedly tried to get to a mosque, and was then chased onto a highway where he was struck by a car and killed. According to activists, the boy’s family blamed the officers and the police barricades for their son’s death, RT reported.

The security measures kept many people from attending the Friday prayers of Sheik Isa Qassim, who denounced Bahrain’s move earlier this week to revoke the citizenship of 31 activists and lawyers.

“The revoking of citizenship from honorable people is aimed at punishing those who have opposition views,” he told worshippers who managed to reach his mosque in the Diraz village. The town is a district outside the capital of Manama.

According to Bahraini human rights activist Zainab al-Khawaja, worshippers prayed on the streets after they realized they won’t be able to enter the mosque. Several people attempted to scale the walls in order to avoid the security blockade.

Al-Khawaja also tweeted a photo of the young boy who was killed on the highway, as well as his family preparing for his funeral. She also wrote that police were preventing outraged Bahrainis from attending the burial.

Al-Wefaq, the largest political party in Bahrain, posted pictures of people taking to the streets to protest the death of the 16-year-old on its Twitter account.

The party also posted graphic images of a different boy, suffering from a wounded leg after being hit by a tear gas canister. An elderly man can also be seen suffering after allegedly being suffocated by tear gas.

The violence continues to mount. A Youtube video posted yesterday shows several Bahraini officers kicking, hitting, and dragging a civilian from a cemetery before forcing him into a police car.

Patrick Henningsen, a geopolitical analyst for current affairs website UK Column, said that the Bahraini leadership is now effectively tightening the screws on those who dare to speak against it.

“This is an unprecedented move by the government – the violations have been chalking up left right and center for the last year … Only last week there was a double bombing in the neighborhood, and that was blamed on pro-reformers or terrorists, according to the government, but little evidence has been presented to show it was done by these people. And what it has done, is it’s given the government carte blanche to really crack down on the pro-reform movements …”

Anti-government protesters have been holding peaceful demonstrations across Bahrain since mid-February 2011, calling for an end to the Al Khalifa dynasty’s over-40-year rule, end of discrimination, establishment of justice and a democratically-elected government as well as freedom of detained protesters.

Violence against the defenseless people escalated after a Saudi-led conglomerate of police, security and military forces from the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) member states – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar – were dispatched to the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom on March 13, 2011, to help Manama crack down on peaceful protestors.

So far, tens of people have been killed, hundreds have gone missing and thousands of others have been injured. …source

Dirty tricks, repression signal desperate Bahraini regime
10 November, 2012 – PressTV – by Finian Cunningham

The US-backed Bahraini regime is becoming increasingly desperate to suppress the pro-democracy movement and to cling on to power. We know this because it is stepping up repression and dirty tricks.

More than 20 months of continuous demonstrations across the Persian Gulf island state have not been deterred by state terrorism and repression. The mainly Shia population keeps coming out on to the streets, in even greater numbers, demanding the downfall of the unelected Sunni monarchy – despite systematic, gratuitous murder, imprisonment and torture by Western and Saudi-backed regime forces.

That is why the Al Khalifa dictatorship is now ratcheting up the repression. It is running out of options. The escalation in repression is a last-gasp bid to crush the peaceful pro-democracy movement – a movement that came alive on February 14, 2011 and which simply refuses to bow to a self-styled king and his corrupt cronies.

Just this weekend, Bahraini military police attacked hundreds of Shia worshippers trying to attend Friday prayers at a mosque in the village of Diraz. A 16-year-old boy was killed when regime forces drove a vehicle over him, leaving his mangled body along the roadside; others had to abandon their cars as police fired toxic gas canisters through their windscreens.

This is a regime that has lost all legitimacy and is quickly degenerating. The veneer of constitutional monarchy has been stripped away, revealing a brutal dictatorship that knows no bounds to its barbarity, as it tries to desperately staunch its power ebbing away. But the Al Khalifa rulers are finding that they no longer have any power over the people.

For decades, the British-imposed autocrats ruled with an iron rod and subjected the people to fear. However, there is a new, more powerful awakening in Bahrain now. The people en masse are no longer afraid of the tyrant; they are no longer malleable to his malicious desires.

Yes, the regime has tanks and guns and still has evil hands willing to do its nefarious work. It also has an American Navy Fifth Fleet moored on the island and British securocrats running its torture apparatus. But none of this can save a venal, pathetic elite that is corrupted to its very core and which has been evacuated of all moral decency in the eyes of the people. Paradoxically, every death, injury and crime committed by this regime only further diminishes its residual power.

The surge in state terrorism over the past weeks is accompanied by more dirty tricks and propaganda stunts. Last month saw an alleged terrorist explosion in the village of Eker which allegedly killed a policeman. (A previous column by this author showed that the incident was most likely a fabrication by the regime.)

That incident was followed by a week-long siege on the village during which residents were terrorized by house raids and massive deployment of toxic gas by pro-government thugs who were allowed to run amok.

A week after that war crime of collective punishment, the regime announced that all political demonstrations were to be henceforth banned “in the interests of safeguarding public order”. All public gatherings of more than 20 persons were prohibited anyway, but due to mounting pressure over the past year the regime had been under pressure to grant licenses to some rallies (which would routinely be harassed and attacked by riot police.) Now even those tightly controlled demonstrations are no longer officially tolerated – although, in typically defiant fashion, the people are disobeying the latest royal decree and continuing their street protests.

Over the past year, the Bahraini rulers had been assiduously trying to coax sections of the political opposition into a dialogue process. The dialogue was fervently endorsed by the regime’s political patrons in Washington and London. However, despite the inveiglements, the people have remained steadfast in not buying the offer of dialogue, which they rightly see as just another attempt by the Al Khalifa rulers to procrastinate and revamp the corrupt status quo.

Down through the decades, the Bahraini people have been promised democratic reforms by the rulers and every time these promises have not materialized. The people have grown tired of the charade; they just want this regime to finally get off their backs and give way to the demand for democracy; the people don’t want dialogue with criminals and torturers, they want an elected government that will represent the needs of the people, not enrich a pampered elite.

It is precisely because the mass of Bahrainis refuse to accept anything less than the abolition of the Al Khalifa royal racket and the institution of democratically elected government that the defensive regime and its backers are now resorting to last-ditch repression. The regime has no more cards to play. Its disingenuous offer of dialogue and compromise has been rumbled and snubbed definitively. So, out of petulance and desperation, the regime is baring its knuckles. It is on the ropes and fighting for its very life.

What we can expect to see is more repression and more dirty tricks to justify this repression. This is the background that best explains a series of five explosions that allegedly took place last Monday in the capital, Manama. The alleged “improvised explosive devices” reportedly killed two Asian expatriate workers and injured a third, all of whom were named in the local media.

Within 24 hours, the regime claimed that it had arrested four people in connection to the alleged blasts and immediately attributed blame for the “terror attacks” on Lebanese Shia resistance group Hezbollah. Using flimsy logic, the Bahraini state media asserted: “Their terrorist practices prove that they have been trained outside the kingdom. The hallmarks of Hezbollah are crystal clear.”

This is like adding two and two and making fifteen. The only people to whom such a clunky conclusion is clear are those who had the pre-conceived notion of its clunkiness.
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