“Friends of Syria” meeting demands Assad cede power to Islamist opposition
By Alex Lantier – 13 December, 2012 – WSWS

Representatives of 130 governments, led by Washington and its European and Arab allies, attended a “Friends of Syria” meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco yesterday. Moroccan Foreign Minister Saad Eddine El Othmani said they had agreed to declare the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces the sole representative of the Syrian people.

The meeting came the day after US President Barack Obama officially recognized the National Coalition. The Islamist-dominated coalition was organized by the US State Department to represent the armed opposition groups fighting a NATO-backed proxy war against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

A draft declaration circulated at the Marrakesh meeting stated, “Participants acknowledge the National Coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people and the umbrella organization under which the Syrian opposition are gathering … Bashar al-Assad has lost legitimacy and should stand aside to allow a sustainable political transition.”

Countries that still support Assad, including Russia, China, and Iran, did not attend the meeting in Marrakech. Speaking of the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, “The United States has decided to place all its bets on an armed victory of the National Coalition.”

The meeting highlighted the criminal and reactionary character of the NATO proxy war against Syria, in which the US’ Arab allies arm Al Qaeda-linked forces in a terrorist campaign with devastating consequences for Syrian civilians.

Syrian Muslim Brotherhood deputy leader Farouq Tayfour set the tone, suggesting that National Coalition forces would extra-judicially murder Assad. He compared Assad’s fate to that of Libyan head of state Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, whose government was overthrown last year in a NATO war. Gaddafi was ultimately tortured and lynched by US-backed guerrillas after his convoy was bombed by NATO warplanes as he fled his hometown of Sirte.

Tayfour said: “Bashar is under siege. His end will be like Gaddafi’s end. Didn’t Bashar say, ‘I was born in Syria and I will die in Syria’? That is what Gaddafi said as well, and that’s it.”

Washington’s Islamist proxies criticized the State Department’s decision announced on Tuesday to designate the Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate inside the Syrian opposition, as a terrorist group. The State Department Spokeswoman charged the Al Nusra Front with having carried out nearly 600 attacks over the last year in Syria, in which “numerous innocent Syrians have been killed.” …more

Iranian Bomb Graph Appears Adapted from One on Internet
By Gareth Porter – 13 December, 2012 – IPS

WASHINGTON, Dec 13 2012 (IPS) – The suspect graph of a nuclear explosion reportedly provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as evidence of Iranian computer modeling of nuclear weapons yields appears to have been adapted from a very similar graph in a scholarly journal article published in January 2009 and available on the internet.

Graph published by the scholarly journal Nuclear Engineering and Design, Volume 239, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 80–86.

The graph, published in a Nov. 27 Associated Press story but immediately found to have a mathematical error of four orders of magnitude, closely resembles a graph accompanying a scholarly article modeling a nuclear explosion. It provides a plausible explanation for the origins of the graph leaked to AP, according to two nuclear physicists following the issue closely.

The graph in the scholarly journal article was well known to the IAEA at the time of its publication, according to a knowledgeable source.

That means that the IAEA should have been able to make the connection between the set of graphs alleged to have been used by Iran to calculate yields from nuclear explosions that the agency obtained in 2011 and the very similar graph available on the internet.

The IAEA did not identify the member countries that provided the intelligence about the alleged Iran studies. However, Israel provided most of the intelligence cited by the IAEA in its 2011 report, and Israeli intelligence has been the source of a number of leaks to the AP reporter in Vienna, George Jahn.

Graph published by the Associated Press on Nov. 27, 2012, reportedly as evidence of Iranian computer modeling of nuclear weapons yields.

The graph accompanying an article in the January 2009 issue of the journal Nuclear Engineering and Design by retired Swiss nuclear engineer Walter Seifritz displayed a curve representing power in a nuclear explosion over fractions of a second that is very close to the one shown in the graph published by AP and attributed by the officials leaking it to an Iranian scientist.

Both graphs depict a nuclear explosion as an asymmetrical bell curve in which the right side of the curve is more elongated than the left side. Although both graphs are too crudely drawn to allow precise measurement, it appears that the difference between the two sides of the curve on the two graphs is very close to the same in both graphs.

The AP graph appears to show a total energy production of 50 kilotonnes taking place over about 0.3 microseconds, whereas the Seifritz graph shows a total of roughly 18 kilotonnes produced over about 0.1 microseconds.

The resemblance is so dramatic that two nuclear specialists who compared the graphs at the request of IPS consider it very plausible that the graph leaked to AP as part of an Iranian secret nuclear weapons research programme may well have been derived from the one in the journal article.

Scott Kemp, an assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told IPS he suspects the graph leaked to AP was “adapted from the open literature”. He said he believes the authors of that graph “were told they ought to look into the literature and found that paper, copied (the graph) and made their own plot from it.” …more

The United States can no longer afford to launch major wars like Korea, Vietnam or Iraq. Obama prefers to intensify secret military action. Manlio Dinucci lays out the plan.

Obama prefers to keep it hidden
Voltaire Network – 13 December, 2012 – by Manlio Dinucci

President Obama does not like war. Not because he is a Nobel Peace prize-winner, but because open aggressive action would reveal US strategy and the interests upon which it is based. So he has launched a grand plan which, as the Washington Post notes, “reflects the Obama administration’s affinity for espionage and covert action over conventional force.”

This plan is intended to restructure and reinforce the Defense Intelligence Agency, which until now has been concentrated on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, so that it can operate on a global scale as a “spy service focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units.”

The first step will be to expand the organigram of the DIA, whose personnel has been doubled over the last decade, and now numbers some 16,500 members. A “new generation of clandestine operatives” will be formed, ready to be sent overseas. They will be trained by the CIA in its centre in Virginia, known as “The Farm”, where secret agents are groomed – a number of new posts will be created for the DIA pupils, totaling about 20% of the Farm’s turnover.

The ever closer collaboration between these two agencies is born out by the fact that the DIA has adopted a few of the CIA’s internal structures, amongst others, a unit dubbed “Persia House”, which co-ordinates secret operations inside Iran.

The new DIA agents will also take a specialisation course directed by the Commander of Special Operations. Apart from training recruits to eliminate the enemy, he also teaches “non-conventional warfare” to be conducted by exterior forces who are specially trained for this purpose; “counter-insurrection”, to help allied governments to repress rebellion; and “psychological operations” intended to influence public opinion so that the population comes to support US military action.

Once their training is complete, these new DIA agents, about 1,600 at first, will be assigned by the Pentagon to missions all over the world. The State Department will provide them with false identities, introducing some of them into embassies – but since the embassies are already full of CIA agents, the DIA agents will be given other false identities, for example, as university staff or business executives.

Thanks to their military experience, the DIA agents are reputed to be more appropriate for the recruitment of informers capable of providing data of a military nature, for example, information concerning the new Chinese fighter plane. And the development of their organigram will enable the DIA to expand the range of targets for drone strikes and actions by special forces.

This is the new way of making war, preparing and accompanying open attacks by secret action intended to weaken the target country from inside, as was done in Libya, or undermine it internally, as is being attempted in Syria. This is the direction taken by the restructured DIA, launched by President Obama.

We don’t know if the candidate for Prime Minister Pier Luigi Bersani [1], who holds Obama in great esteem, has already congratulated him for this action. However, he has recently visited Libya in order to “pick up the thread of a strong Italian presence in the Mediterranean”. Meaning the thread of war against Libya, in which Italy participated under US orders, while Bersani rejoiced, exclaiming “it’s about time”.
…source

Bahrain’s crown prince demands Shiite clerics quell uprising violence
By Associated Press – 7 December, 2012 – Washington Post

MANAMA, Bahrain — Bahrain’s Shiite religious leaders must more forcefully denounce violence as a key step to ease the kingdom’s 22-month uprising, the country’s crown prince said Friday at the opening of an international security conference.

The appeal by Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa underscores the view of Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy that Shiite clerics should be held partly responsible for rising violence in the strategic Gulf nation. It also suggests authorities could increase pressure on top Shiite clergymen, whom he referred to as ‘ayatollahs’ — a term more often associated with senior religious figures in rival Iran.

“I call on all those who disagree with the government, including the ayatollahs, to condemn violence on the street unequivocally . And more, to prohibit violence,” the crown prince told policymakers and political figures gathered for the annual two-day conference known as the Manama Dialogue. “Responsible leadership is called for and I believe dialogue is the only way forward,” he added.

More than 55 people have died in the unrest since February 2011, when Bahrain’s majority Shiites escalated a long-simmering drive for a greater political voice in the Sunni-ruled country.

The monarchy has offered some concessions, including giving the elected parliament expanded powers. But it falls far short of Shiite demands to loosen the Sunni rulers’ controls over key government appointments and policies.

Shiite religious leaders, including the most senior cleric Sheik Isa Qassim, have never publicly endorsed violence, but have encouraged peaceful anti-government protests to challenge authorities. Breakaway groups during demonstrations often clash with riot police.

The conference includes high-level envoys from Bahrain’s Western allies, which have so far stood behind the kingdom’s leadership but are increasingly troubled by rising violence and continued crackdowns on the opposition. The U.S. delegation is led by Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and includes Arizona Sen. John McCain.

The crown prince thanked a host of nations for assistance during the crisis, but noticeably did not refer to the U.S. in his remarks — an omission that underlined the two countries’ increasingly strained ties. He criticized nations that “selectively” criticize Bahrain’s leadership, without citing specific countries.

Washington has called for dialogue in Bahrain, but sharply condemned its leaders’ decision late last month to ban political rallies. The country hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, the Pentagon’s main hub against Iran’s rising military profile in the Gulf.

Earlier, the leaders of Bahrain’s main opposition group urged participants at the summit to press Bahraini officials to open wide-ranging talks.

Sheik Ali Salman told thousands of supporters that the international envoys should push Bahrain’s rulers to recognize the “demands of the people” and open negotiations. …source

Bahrain tensions a trigger for Gulf turmoil
By Jeremy Bowen – 12 December, 2012 – BBC

The contest for power between Shia and Sunni Muslims is manifesting itself across the region

The chant that has been part of the soundtrack of the uprisings in the Middle East since the beginning of 2011 is a rhythmic rendition of the words in Arabic that mean: “The people want the fall of the regime.”

On a dark, drizzly night in Bahrain they echoed back off the scruffy, peeling walls of Muhazza, a village just outside the capital, Manama.

A few hundred Muhazza residents had gathered, defying the ban on public demonstrations that was imposed in October.

They waited for the police to arrive, alternating the chant about the fall of the regime with: “Down with Hamad” – in reference to Bahrain’s King Hamad al-Khalifah.

The protesters were Shia Muslims, the majority sect in Bahrain. The Khalifahs, like most of Bahrain’s establishment, are Sunni.
‘Second-class citizens’

The trouble in Muhazza – and other Shia villages in Bahrain – is more than a little local difficulty.

Bahrain is caught up in the big forces that are reshaping the Middle East. They include the pressure for change and the desires and ambitions of major powers.

Bahrain is much poorer than its rich neighbours in the UAE and Qatar, and there are long-established economic grievances, particularly to do with unemployment and poor housing.

It is also the home port for the US Fifth Fleet, whose jobs include keeping the oil export routes open and reminding Iran of what the Americans could do to them if they so wished.

But the most significant single cause of unrest and outright violence in the new Middle East is religious sectarianism.

Bahrain lies between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and the Shias of Iran, and has a long history of sectarian tension, between the Shia majority and the Sunni minority.

The Sunnis control most of the money and power. Some Shia families have done well out of the system, and have senior positions. But most have been treated like second-class citizens.

Shias and Sunnis are the equivalent of the Protestants and Catholics in the Christian world, often happy to intermarry and live peacefully alongside each other. But at times of tension, and sometimes because they have been inflamed by radical preachers, they can turn on each other.
Whiff of tear gas

It did not take long for the police to break up the demonstration in Muhazza.

The children seemed to sense them before they could see them, running for cover a few seconds before the police announced themselves with a stun grenade and a whiff of tear gas.

The adults scattered, running into shops and houses. The police made no attempt to pursue them, though locals said that in the previous few weeks there had been repeated violent raids in the early hours of the morning.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Bahrain’s justice minister, Khaled al Khalifa

We want to bring back unity in a way that heals the earlier error”

Khaled al-Khalifah Bahraini Justice Minister

Ten minutes later, the police had moved on to another emergency call, and the street filled with defiant residents who began chanting again.

Women produced trays of food. The people of Muhazza started to enjoy themselves.

When protesters in Bahrain tried to emulate the revolution in Egypt by starting mass demonstrations in February 2011, the first slogans called for reform, not for the overthrow of the ruling family.

The security forces responded to what became an uprising with great brutality.

The first protesters also included a fair proportion of Sunnis, who were fed up with the way the country has been run.

But since the crackdown, the confrontation has increasingly been on sectarian lines.

In a moment of unusual openness for a Middle Eastern ruling family, the king commissioned and accepted the findings of an independent report into what happened, which confirmed that the security forces had killed and tortured protesters.

A year after the report, known as the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), the ruling family is being accused of not doing enough to implement its findings, by its friends in the West as well as human rights groups and its critics inside Bahrain. …more

Julian Assange: Nabeel Rajab is a prisoner of conscience and he must be released
12 December, 2012 – Bahrain Center for Human Rights

Julian Assange released a statement today calling for the immediate release of BCHR President Nabeel Rajab.
Statement from Julian Assange on Nabeel Rajab:

“I last saw Nabeel Rajab, the President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, in March 2012. Nabeel flew to the United Kingdom, where I interviewed him for my television programme The World Tomorrow. While he had been on the plane, his house had been surrounded by armed police.

I asked him what he was going to do now. Wasn’t he fearful about returning home? He was adamant. He would return to Bahrain.

“[T]his is the struggle, this is the freedom, this is democracy that we are fighting for. It has a cost and we have to pay the cost, and the cost might be very expensive as we have paid a high cost in Bahrain, and we are willing to pay that for the changes that we are fighting for.”

Once he was back in Bahrain, a campaign of judicial harassment began. He was charged with illegal assembly and insulting the Prime Minister on Twitter. He was sentenced to three years in jail, for daring to claim his right to freedom of expression and association.

On December 11, after a long campaign of resistance, his sentence was reduced to two years.

This is not enough.

Nabeel Rajab is a prisoner of conscience. He should not be in jail at all. He should never have been put in jail. He must be released.

Immediately before his imprisonment, Nabeel Rajab was the leading voice of the Bahrain Spring. He has carried the banner, raised around the Islamic world in 2011, which cried out for ‘Huriyyah, Adalah Ijtima’iyah, Karamah’ – for Freedom, Social Justice, Dignity. What we know as the Arab Spring is, in Arabic, the ‘Thawraat l-Karamah’ – the ‘Revolutions of Dignity.’

Nabeel’s commitment to the moral importance of this movement cannot be doubted. Along with many other Bahrainis, he has given over his life and freedom for the reform of his country. Together, they have given everything. It is the regime that must now give ground.

The Bahraini regime has repeatedly promised reform, even commissioning a report on its own human rights abuses which found it guilty of practicing torture and the excessive use of force. It has failed to implement all but the most superficial of this report’s recommendations.

In particular, Recommendation 1722 (h) of this report called on the government, “To review convictions and commute sentences of all persons charged with offences involving political expression, not consisting of advocacy of violence, or, as the case may be, to drop outstanding charges against them.”

The regime has instead continued to imprison activists like Nabeel, for crimes solely related to their freedom of expression and assembly. Thirteen leading activists and opposition leaders remain in jail, despite international recognition of their status as political prisoners.

Originally slow to comment, even the President of the United States has asserted that “The only real way forward is for the government and opposition to engage in a dialogue, and you can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail.”

Words do not match actions, however. Neither the US, which has a large military base in Bahrain, or the UK have applied any real pressure for the release of political prisoners, despite acknowledging this to be central to the reform process.

This is not a sophisticated issue. Our obligations are clear. The political prisoners of Bahrain must be freed as a necessary step towards peaceful reform. There will be no dignity in Bahrain until Nabeel Rajab is released.” …source

The U.S. is maneuvering to stem the revolutionary tide around the Middle East.

Washington’s plan to derail the Arab Spring
13 December, 2012 – SocialistWorker.org

BEHIND BARACK Obama’s rhetoric about democracy and freedom, the U.S. government is maneuvering to install a new generation of strongmen to roll back the Arab revolutions and reassert U.S. dominance in the Middle East.

In the latest two examples, the U.S. backed the power grab of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it has tried to install ex-regime officials at the head of Syria’s newly reorganized opposition. Thus, Washington hopes to divert two massive social uprisings into supportive governments that will remain allied to Western interests rather than reflect the popular will.

The stakes for the U.S. government are high. The invasion and occupation of Iraq–once considered by the arrogant hawks around George W. Bush to be the stepping stone to “regime change” from one end of the Arab world to the other–ultimately succeeded in turning the country into an ally of Iran, the main U.S. nemesis in the Middle East.

Last year’s Arab Spring–by overturning long-time dictators in a few countries and forcing governments in others to be more responsive to their populations–threatened to take even more nations out of their close U.S. orbit.

That, in turn, exposed the contradictions of U.S. reliance on Israel to dominate the region. Israel’s latest war on the Palestinian territory of Gaza not only failed to crush the Hamas government there, but also propelled the cause of Palestinian liberation to a level of prominence in Arab and Muslim countries unseen in decades.

THAT’S THE common thread in Washington’s seemingly contradictory policies since the revolutionary wave began in Tunisia two years ago. First, the U.S. supported Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali until a mass uprising and general strike forced him out, all in a matter of a month’s time. Washington followed the same script in Egypt, sticking with Hosni Mubarak–one of the linchpins of U.S. policy in the Arab world–until the last minute.

In Bahrain–the base of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet–Washington green-lighted savage counterrevolutionary repression against a peaceful pro-democracy movement. In Yemen, the U.S. eased out a despised authoritarian, in the hopes of shoring up a military-dominated government.

Only in Libya–where the U.S. and European powers armed rebels opposed to Muammar el-Qaddafi and carried out a punishing aerial assault under the guise of humanitarian aims–did the U.S. seem to unreservedly back the ouster of the old regime. But as Independent journalist Patrick Cockburn anticipated, the fall of Qaddafi’s regime was “primarily won by NATO, and not popular revolution.”

Over the two decades before his downfall, Qaddafi had been welcomed back into the good graces of the West on the basis of oil deals, but he was still considered too unreliable and isolated–and therefore expendable. So the Western powers channeled the revolution into a pliable government in which CIA assets and ex-Qaddafi officials played a key role.

The same method is at play in the U.S. policy toward Syria.

Barack Obama has voiced U.S. recognition of Syria’s opposition himself, signaling a more interventionist approach. But what’s remarkable about the U.S. attitude to the Bashar al-Assad regime is just how long the U.S. has held back from funding and arming the Syrian rebels. …source

David Petraeus May Have Committed Much Worse Crimes In Afghanistan
Michael Kelley – 14 November, 2012 – Business Insider

While ousted CIA Director David Petraeus eats dirt for his extra-marital affair, some people would like him to answer for much more serious crimes.

There is evidence that Petraeus, when he commanded US forces in Afghanistan, oversaw the intentional bombing of funerals and civilian rescuers with drones, which constitutes a war crime according to The International Criminal Court.

For years the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) has reported on the use of the double tap—a strategy used by terrorists that involves bombing a strike site multiple times in relatively quick succession to maximize devastation—and there are documented instances that Petraeus employed this tactic as CIA director.

In September the NYU and Standford law schools released a report detailing how double taps affect the Pakistani population, noting that several international law professors have said that “intentional strikes on first responders may constitute war crimes.”

The CIA used the tactic in Pakistan and Afghanistan In May and June of this year, and the killing of a Red Cross worker in Yemen—the first overt example of “explicit intelligence posthumously proving” that an innocent civilian has been killed—is a prime example of an extrajudicial execution.

But will Petraeus really go on trial for drone tactics? Like allegations of torture overseen by the Bush administration, it’s not likely.

Nevertheless the retired four-star general could face a court-martial if he began the affair with Paula Broadwell while on active duty in the army, since adultery is formally barred under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

Petraeus, 60, says the affair began a couple of months after he became CIA director in September 2011 after relinquishing command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan in July 2011 and retiring from the U.S. Army the following month. But his story is challenged by the timeline of their interactions: Petraeus met Broadwell in the spring of 2006, began being studied by her in 2008, was visited by her six times over the course of the year after he took over allied troops in Afghanistan on June 30, 2010, and according to Michael Hastings, took Broadwell along with him on a government-funded trip to Paris in July 2011.

But we don’t expect the court martial to happen either, since the U.S. Army would have to reinstate Petraeus to active duty before the trial and consequently add to the shame being heaped on the highest tier of the U.S. military.
…source

The NYU Student Tweeting Every Reported US Drone Strike Has Revealed A Disturbing Trend
Michael Kelley – 12 December, 2012 – Business Insider

NYU student Josh Begley is tweeting every reported U.S. drone strike since 2002, and the feed highlights a disturbing tactic employed by the U.S. that is widely considered a war crime. FOLLOW Begley HERE

Known as the “double tap,” the tactic involves bombing a target multiple times in relatively quick succession, meaning that the second strike often hits first responders.

A 2007 report by the Homeland Security Institute called double taps a “favorite tactic of Hamas” and the FBI considers it a tactic employed by terrorists.

UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Christof Heyns said that if there are “secondary drone strikes on rescuers who are helping (the injured) after an initial drone attack, those further attacks are a war crime.”

The U.S. refuses to discuss the merits of its overtly covert drone program, but the reports featured on @dronestream clearly document that U.S. …source