Posts from — April 2013

US calls for Bahrain dialogue
5 April, 2013 –

WASHINGTON — The United States urged Bahrain’s Sunni-led government on Thursday to promote dialogue with the Shiite opposition after two years of political upheaval in the country.

US Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Rashad Hussain met senior Bahraini government officials, political leaders, civil society activists and religious leaders in Manama earlier this week.

“He underscored US encouragement for all segments of Bahraini society to promote unity and reform through the ongoing National Dialogue,” the State Department said in a statement.

“He discussed the importance of rejecting the use of violence and promoting human rights, including religious freedom, for all Bahrainis.”

Bahrain has witnessed two years of political unrest linked to opposition demands for a constitutional monarchy, with the unrest claiming at least 80 lives, according to international rights groups. …more

Bahrain 1st Arab country to blacklist Hezbollah as terror group
by magtech – 10 April, 2013

Bahrain on Tuesday became the first Arab country to officially blacklist the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, the Al Arabiya network reported.

Bahrain based its decision on statements made by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, which the Gulf state viewed as an intervention in its internal affairs.

Bahrain’s main Shiite opposition group Al-Wefaq has recently warned of fresh protests across the Sunni-ruled kingdom unless a national dialogue with the regime leads to real reforms, namely a constitutional monarchy.

Two years ago, during the wave of “Arab Spring” riots, Bahrain declared a state of emergency, giving the military authority to quell pro-democracy protests with the backing of 2000 troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Dozens of people were killed during clashes in the capital Manama between security forces and protesters. The king referred to the events as an “attempted coup.”

Bahraini MP Adil Asoumi told Al Arabiya there is evidence that Hezbollah is instigating violence against the government, adding that the decision to blacklist the group was a “measure is to protect Bahrain’s security and stability from Hezbollah’s threats.”

According to Asoumi, intelligence has been gathered from defected Syrian soldiers, who had previously “trained Bahraini cells, with Hezbollah’s backing, to carry out terrorist operations in the country.”

According to the MP, Hezbollah is a threat not only to Bahrain, but to the rest of the Gulf region as well, so “we call on our Gulf brethren to confront the terrorist organization to secure Gulf security.”

In 2009 senior Egyptian officials called Hezbollah a “terror organizations” after cells it had operated in the country were exposed.
The issue of classifying Hezbollah as a terror organization resurfaced following the terror attack on a bus in Burgas, which killed five Israeli tourists and their Bulgarian bus driver. Sofia accused Hezbollah of being behind the attack, which took place on European Union soil.

Among the EU states, Holland is the only one that has classified Hezbollah as a terror group. Britain considers the Shiite movement’s armed wing to be a terror organization. Washington also classifies Hezbollah as a terror organization, and during his recent visit to Israel, President Barack Obama urged the EU to follow suit. …more

Bahraini forces clash with anti-regime protesters near Manama
:4 April, 2013 – PressTV

Saudi-backed Bahraini forces have clashed with demonstrators protesting against the ruling Al Khalifa regime near the capital Manama, Press TV reports.

On Thursday, regime forces fired teargas and sound grenades at the demonstrators, who shouted slogans against the government and called for its downfall.

Activists said the protest rally was held as a symbolic last day of mourning for Jaffar Jassim al-Taweel, who was killed after inhaling toxic gas fired by Bahraini forces during anti-regime protests on March 25.

On April 2, in the northwestern village of Diraz, security forces also attacked the funeral procession for Abdul Ghani al-Reis who died of psychological shock after visiting a torture chamber where his son was being kept by regime forces.

The Bahraini revolution began in mid-February 2011, when the people, inspired by the popular revolutions that toppled the dictators of Tunisia and Egypt, started holding massive demonstrations.

The Bahraini government promptly launched a brutal crackdown on the peaceful protests and called in Saudi-led Arab forces from neighboring Persian Gulf states.

Dozens of people have been killed in the crackdown, and the security forces have arrested hundreds, including doctors and nurses accused of treating injured revolutionaries.

The protesters say they will continue holding anti-regime demonstrations until their demand for the establishment of a democratically elected government is met. …more

Bahrain: Ongoing systemic repression leaves a child in critical condition
6 April, 2013 – Global Movement of Resistance

Mahmoud Kadhim a 13-year-old boy suffered from asphyxia last Tuesday night when the regime forces suppressed peaceful protest in Abu Guwa area.

A child have been taken to the ICU after inhaling lethal tear gas fired by the regime forces excessively in residential areas as they were vindictively targeting citizens to punish them for their political stances.

Mahmoud Kadhim a 13-year-old boy suffered from asphyxia last Tuesday night when the regime forces suppressed peaceful protest in Abu Guwa area. The regime forces were reported to have used excessive force against protesters , they filled the area with the clouds of death that caused many asphyxias among children and elderly people.

According to the child relatives ” Mahmoud’s health deteriorated right after he inhaled the lethal tear gas, his temperature remarkably was rising high and then he had been transferred to the hospital while he was throwing up blood” his relatives added ” we are still worried about our son’s health’s complications which might damage his lung due to inhaling of lethal tear gas”.

Many citizens of all ages have been martyred due to inhaling the lethal gasses that are indiscriminately fired by the regime force as part of their systematic collective punishment policy against areas. The regime forces have been seen for many time throwing tear gas inside houses and in overpopulated areas to cause as many damages as possible against citizens. …source

The Hijacking of Human Rights
7 April, 2013 – By Chris Hedges – truthdig

The appointment of Suzanne Nossel, a former State Department official and longtime government apparatchik, as executive director of PEN American Center is part of a campaign to turn U.S. human rights organizations into propagandists for pre-emptive war and apologists for empire. Nossel’s appointment led me to resign from PEN as well as withdraw from speaking at the PEN World Voices Festival in May. But Nossel is only symptomatic of the widespread hijacking of human rights organizations to demonize those—especially Muslims—branded by the state as the enemy, in order to cloak pre-emptive war and empire with a fictional virtue and to effectively divert attention from our own mounting human rights abuses, including torture, warrantless wiretapping and monitoring, the denial of due process and extrajudicial assassinations.

Nossel, who was deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs under Hillary Clinton in a State Department that was little more than a subsidiary of the Pentagon, is part of the new wave of “humanitarian interventionists,” such as Samantha Power, Michael Ignatieff and Susan Rice, who naively see in the U.S. military a vehicle to create a better world. They know little of the reality of war or the actual inner workings of empire. They harbor a childish belief in the innate goodness and ultimate beneficence of American power. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents, the horrendous suffering and violent terror inflicted in the name of their utopian goals in Iraq and Afghanistan, barely register on their moral calculus. This makes them at once oblivious and dangerous. “Innocence is a kind of insanity,” Graham Greene wrote in his novel “The Quiet American,” and those who destroy to build are “impregnably armored by … good intentions and … ignorance.”

There are no good wars. There are no just wars. As Erasmus wrote, “there is nothing more wicked, more disastrous, more widely destructive, more deeply tenacious, more loathsome” than war. “Whoever heard of a hundred thousand animals rushing together to butcher each other, as men do everywhere?” Erasmus asked. But war, he knew, was very useful to the power elite. War permitted the powerful, in the name of national security and by fostering a culture of fear, to effortlessly strip the citizen of his or her rights. A declaration of war ensures that “all the affairs of the State are at the mercy of the appetites of a few,” Erasmus wrote.

There are cases, and Bosnia in the 1990s was one, when force should be employed to halt an active campaign of genocide. This is the lesson of the Holocaust: When you have the capacity to stop genocide and you do not, you are culpable. For this reason, we are culpable in the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda. But the “humanitarian interventionists” have twisted this moral imperative to intercede against genocide to justify the calls for pre-emptive war and imperial expansion. Saddam Hussein did carry out campaigns of genocide against the Kurds and the Shiites, but the dirty fact is that while these campaigns were under way we provided support to Baghdad or looked the other way. It was only when Washington wanted war, and the bodies of tens of thousands of Kurds and Shiites had long decomposed in mass graves, that we suddenly began to speak in the exalted language of human rights.

These “humanitarian interventionists” studiously ignore our own acts of genocide, first unleashed against Native Americans and then exported to the Philippines and, later, nations such as Vietnam. They do not acknowledge, even in light of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our own capacity for evil. They do not discuss in their books and articles the genocides we backed in Guatemala and East Timor or the crime of pre-emptive war. They minimize the horror and suffering we have delivered to Iraqis and Afghans and exaggerate or fabricate the benefits. The long string of atrocities carried out in our name mocks the idea of the United States as a force for good with a right to impose its values on others. The ugly truth shatters their deification of U.S. power. …more

Mohamed Ali AlSari finally released after 2yrs detention for getting injured with army shots feb 2011

Hussain AlHalal stated that he was beaten by riot police after they shot him and they stole 50 BD from him. Apparently Hussain got caught up in the police shooting melee while he was on for a jog.

And as the events of 2011 reveal, the age of revolutions is by no means over. The human imagination stubbornly refuses to die. And the moment any significant number of people simultaneously shake off the shackles that have been placed on that collective imagination, even our most deeply inculcated assumptions about what is and is not politically possible have been known to crumble overnight.

A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse
David Graeber – The Baffler

What is a revolution? We used to think we knew. Revolutions were seizures of power by popular forces aiming to transform the very nature of the political, social, and economic system in the country in which the revolution took place, usually according to some visionary dream of a just society. Nowadays, we live in an age when, if rebel armies do come sweeping into a city, or mass uprisings overthrow a dictator, it’s unlikely to have any such implications; when profound social transformation does occur—as with, say, the rise of feminism—it’s likely to take an entirely different form. It’s not that revolutionary dreams aren’t out there. But contemporary revolutionaries rarely think they can bring them into being by some modern-day equivalent of storming the Bastille.

At moments like this, it generally pays to go back to the history one already knows and ask: Were revolutions ever really what we thought them to be? For me, the person who has asked this most effectively is the great world historian Immanuel Wallerstein. He argues that for the last quarter millennium or so, revolutions have consisted above all of planetwide transformations of political common sense.

Already by the time of the French Revolution, Wallerstein notes, there was a single world market, and increasingly a single world political system as well, dominated by the huge colonial empires. As a result, the storming of the Bastille in Paris could well end up having effects on Denmark, or even Egypt, just as profound as on France itself—in some cases, even more so. Hence he speaks of the “world revolution of 1789,” followed by the “world revolution of 1848,” which saw revolutions break out almost simultaneously in fifty countries, from Wallachia to Brazil. In no case did the revolutionaries succeed in taking power, but afterward, institutions inspired by the French Revolution—notably, universal systems of primary education—were put in place pretty much everywhere. Similarly, the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a world revolution ultimately responsible for the New Deal and European welfare states as much as for Soviet communism. The last in the series was the world revolution of 1968—which, much like 1848, broke out almost everywhere, from China to Mexico, seized power nowhere, but nonetheless changed everything. This was a revolution against state bureaucracies, and for the inseparability of personal and political liberation, whose most lasting legacy will likely be the birth of modern feminism.

A quarter of the American population is now engaged in “guard labor”—defending property, supervising work, or otherwise keeping their fellow Americans in line.

Revolutions are thus planetary phenomena. But there is more. What they really do is transform basic assumptions about what politics is ultimately about. In the wake of a revolution, ideas that had been considered veritably lunatic fringe quickly become the accepted currency of debate. Before the French Revolution, the ideas that change is good, that government policy is the proper way to manage it, and that governments derive their authority from an entity called “the people” were considered the sorts of things one might hear from crackpots and demagogues, or at best a handful of freethinking intellectuals who spend their time debating in cafés. A generation later, even the stuffiest magistrates, priests, and headmasters had to at least pay lip service to these ideas. Before long, we had reached the situation we are in today: that it’s necessary to lay out the terms for anyone to even notice they are there. They’ve become common sense, the very grounds of political discussion.

Until 1968, most world revolutions really just introduced practical refinements: an expanded franchise, universal primary education, the welfare state. The world revolution of 1968, in contrast—whether it took the form it did in China, of a revolt by students and young cadres supporting Mao’s call for a Cultural Revolution; or in Berkeley and New York, where it marked an alliance of students, dropouts, and cultural rebels; or even in Paris, where it was an alliance of students and workers—was a rebellion against bureaucracy, conformity, or anything that fettered the human imagination, a project for the revolutionizing of not just political or economic life, but every aspect of human existence. As a result, in most cases, the rebels didn’t even try to take over the apparatus of state; they saw that apparatus as itself the problem.

It’s fashionable nowadays to view the social movements of the late sixties as an embarrassing failure. A case can be made for that view. It’s certainly true that in the political sphere, the immediate beneficiary of any widespread change in political common sense—a prioritizing of ideals of individual liberty, imagination, and desire; a hatred of bureaucracy; and suspicions about the role of government—was the political Right. Above all, the movements of the sixties allowed for the mass revival of free market doctrines that had largely been abandoned since the nineteenth century. It’s no coincidence that the same generation who, as teenagers, made the Cultural Revolution in China was the one who, as forty-year-olds, presided over the introduction of capitalism. Since the eighties, “freedom” has come to mean “the market,” and “the market” has come to be seen as identical with capitalism—even, ironically, in places like China, which had known sophisticated markets for thousands of years, but rarely anything that could be described as capitalism. …more

Lawyer says 5 Bahrain teens sentenced up to 15 years in prison for attacking police
By The Associated Press – 4 April, 2013

MANAMA, Bahrain – A defence lawyer in Bahrain says five teenagers are among a group sentenced up to 15 years in prison for attacks on police during anti-government demonstrations.

The convictions Thursday could raise fresh objections from rights groups that have already complained about Bahrain’s failure to use more lenient juvenile laws in trying other young suspects.

The Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom has faced more than two years of unrest as majority Shiites press for a greater political voice.

Lawyer Zahra Masoud said the court sentenced three teens — 16 and 17 years old — and one 20-year-old to sentences up to 15 years for attempting to attack a police car with homemade firebombs.

Two others, aged 15 and 16, were sentenced in absentia.

Bahrain is home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.
…source

Bahrain: 21 medics cleared in closely watched case
By Emily Alpert – 28 March, 2013 – Los Angles Times

A Bahraini court on Thursday cleared 21 medics who had been convicted in connection with protests against the government, a victory for rights activists in the closely watched case.

The exonerated doctors, nurses and other medical personnel were among scores of health professionals arrested and charged during the unrest that erupted two years ago in the island monarchy.

Bahrain faced intense criticism from human rights groups and the U.S. State Department for pursuing the charges; many of the accused medics claimed they were tortured and forced to confess to charges such as “instigating hatred” and “taking part in illegal assemblies” after treating injured protesters.
Rights activists celebrated the court decision but said Bahrain must go further to ensure justice for the medics and investigate their alleged torture. “If we agree these guys are innocent, it needs to explain why it got a stack of signed confessions from them and how they were produced,” said Brian Dooley of the U.S.-based group Human Rights First.

Government spokespeople could not be reached immediately for comment by phone or email as of Thursday evening in Bahrain.

The 21 medics who were cleared Thursday were among a group of 23 medical professionals convicted of misdemeanors after the 2011 protests. Two did not appear in court to appeal; a score more were convicted of felonies in another case, though some were acquitted.

Thursday’s ruling was “the first step toward justice,” said rheumatologist Dr. Fatima Haji, who was convicted and later cleared of felony charges that included spreading misinformation about protest injuries. Now that the 21 medics are cleared, “they need to have some accountability for those who made false accusations against them.”

Haji cautioned that state prosecutors could still challenge the decision. Three medics remain imprisoned in the felony case, one of them sentenced to five years.

Unrest erupted in Bahrain two years ago as protesters challenged the Sunni Muslim monarchy, pressing for greater democracy and more of a voice for Shiite Muslims. The ensuing state crackdown was marked by beatings, torture and other abuses, an independent commission initiated by the government found.

Bahrain has since pledged reforms, retraining police and pursuing charges against officers. Government spokesmen say the state is working diligently to address the problems laid out by the commission; it recently launched a national dialogue on reform.

But local activists and rights groups abroad say change has been slow and persecution has continued. Police, frequently accused of using excessive force against demonstrators, have defended their actions as protecting officers who face deadly Molotov cocktails on the streets.

Beyond the street battles, Dooley pointed out that dissidents remain imprisoned on charges of trying to overthrow the government, convictions that rights groups say resulted from solely peaceful protest. Human rights activist Abdulhadi Khawaja, sentenced to life in prison in one such case, has been on a hunger strike for more than a week and a half along with his daughter, Zainab, who was sent to jail for three months on charges of insulting a public employee.

In an impassioned letter published by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, she wrote that she wondered what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say about the U.S. “turning a blind eye to the blood and tears being split in the quest of freedom” in Bahrain, a longtime ally seen as a strategic bulwark against Iran.

The U.S. has expressed concern about human rights in Bahrain, but activists say its words have been too muted. Last year Washington resumed some arms sales to the country, stressing that the allowed items “are not used for crowd control.” Dooley argued that the victory for the medics, whose case received more attention abroad, shows more pressure is needed. …more

Bahrain: Alkhalifa killings, torture continues in preparation for F1 race
Bahrain Freedom Movement – 5 April, 2013

As the Bahraini people continue their revolt against staging the Formula 1 race under the patronage of the Alkhalifa, the regime has intensified its crackdown against the pro-democracy activists, detaining and torturing them in revenge.

At least fifteen people were arrested on Wednesday, taken to the torture dungeons and abused. More were snatched from Duraz, Sitra and other towns as pre-emptive desperate steps to stop people exposing Alkhalifa crimes to the world during the race. The walls in several towns and villages were decorated with paintings and cartoons highlighting the people’s predicaments as the regime’s mouthpieces went into full swing to present deceptive image of a country ravaged by Revolution. “Don’t race on our blood” is the main message to the teams and drivers of the F1, with cartoons depicting Bahrain’s dictator using people’s blood as fuel to the cars.

One of the victims of the decision to hold F1 race in Bahrain is Abdul Ghani Hassan Al Rayes, 66 from Duraz Town. He was martyred on Monday night 31st March as he waited for his son to be released from the torturers hands. The son had been arrested earlier in the day together with other young boys for chanting anti-regime slogans. They were taken to Budayya’s police station where they were interrogated, tortured and abused as their families waited outside. The martyr was in agony as he heard the cries of his son being tortured. He was suffering in silence. As the cries of the victims intensified, he started feeling pain in his chest. When his other son requested his father be seated or offered water the torturers refused. He was rushed to hospital by his son but died on the way. The way he lost his wife has touched Bahrainis who are dying in silence as their anger boils inside them at the way their country is being raped by the Alkhalifa dictators and Saudi occupiers. His funeral was savagely attacked by members of the Death Squads operated by the dictator’s royal court.

Meanwhile, the Saudi regime has put one of its most famous victims on trial. Sheikh Nimr Al Nimr is accused of “spreading corruption on earth” for calling for democratic rights and an end to the Al Saudi hereditary dictatorship. On 8th July 2012 he was arrested after being seriously wounded by the regime’s forces. He was taken to hospital under military guard where he was surrounded by soldiers. He was then transferred to jail where he was abused and ill-treated. He is accused of opposing the regime and plotting to overthrow the tyrannical AlSaud dynasty. This serious development comes at a time of heightened tension in the land of Arabia as a result of regime’s intensification of repression and dictatorship. The Prosecution has called for beheading Sheikh Nimr Al Nimr, who is from the down-trodden Eastern Province and who had wholeheartedly supported the Bahraini Revolution. Scholars in several countries have issued statements warning the Saudis of dire consequences if the respected spiritual leader is executed by a regime that has always lacked popular legitimacy. The Saudis must release Sheikh Al Nimr lest they inflame the situation further. The country is facing increasing tension as the people, both Shia and Sunni, continue their calls for release of their prisoners. …more

“The ruling elite in Bahrain has always found a way to engineer means of escaping accountability”

Marc Owen Jones: Bahrain’s history of political injustice
1 April, 2013 – You Middle East – Marc Owen Jones

In Bahrain, members of the ruling Al Khalifa family, or those responsible for protecting their interests (i.e. the security forces) have historically been afforded a large degree of impunity. This is despite evidence that points to their participation in gross acts of oppression. In the recent uprising, no member of the state security forces has been found guilty of torture or murder, and no high-level government officials have been questioned for their complicity in the crackdown.

Following the ‘democratic’ reforms of 2001, Royal Decree 56 absolved any of the state security forces from being prosecuted for crimes committed during the brutal crackdown of the 1990s Intifada. Indeed the ruling elite in Bahrain has always found a way to engineer means of escaping accountability. This tradition of impunity is rooted in Bahrain’s history, yet even in excellent academic scholarship there remains the perpetuation of erroneous facts that understate the degree of impunity that the Ruling Family has enjoyed.

This is particularly true with regards to the trial of Khalid bin Ali Al Khalifa and his sons Khalid and Salman, who were found guilty of instigating and carrying out two attacks on the village of Sitra in 1923 (Khalid bin Ali was the nephew of the previous ruler, Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa). The attack left several Shia villagers dead, including women and children. The trial of the Khalids, (who are sometimes referred to as the Khawalid), recently featured in a front-page article on the Wall Street Journal:

When Shiites sought greater rights in the early 1920s, Khaled Ben Ali led the crackdown. At British prodding, he was tried for murder and jailed. The trial left wounds that festered for decades.

The writer of the article, Charles Levinson, may have been a little over zealous in his assertion that the jailing of the Khalids left a festering wound that lasted decades. In actual fact, Khalid bin Ali was never jailed. He was fined and his property confiscated. It was his sons Ali and Salman who were exiled to India. However, before they could be deported, Ali and Salman escaped to mainland Arabia. …more

Angelina Jolie: Bimbo and the Beast
Finian Cunningham – 31 March, 2013 – Strategic Culture Foundation

Angelina Jolie, the American screen idol and one of the highest paid actors ever, is famous for her sultry looks and a femme fatale presence. She’s a dangerous woman, the embodiment of smoldering, mercurial menace.

Which, when you think about it, sounds a lot like her real life role as UN Special Envoy on human rights. In her latest «starring role», she is cast alongside British Foreign Minister William Hague. The «location»’ is the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both travelled to the war-ravaged Central African country this week to highlight the harrowing crime of rape against women as a result of conflicts.

This is not the first time that the unlikely pair has teamed up for this purpose. Previously, actress Jolie and Britain’s most senior diplomat have collaborated to ‘focus public attention’ on violence against women in Libya, Mali and Syria, among other international war zones.

Speaking to the Guardian newspaper while onboard a RAF aircraft courtesy of Mr Hague, the Hollywood star said: “There were hundreds of thousands of women raped during the Rwandan genocide. There are hundreds of thousands of people being raped in the Congo. Tens of thousands of women raped in Bosnia. God knows how many people raped in Syria».

Asked what she wanted to achieve by working with the British government to champion this appeal, the action-movie siren replied: “An end to impunity».

At which point Angelina Jolie, if she really understood the causes of these conflicts and the violence against women, should have reached over to slap handcuffs on the British foreign secretary and make a citizen’s arrest of a top war criminal.

In every instance of war that the actress cited, the British government has had a hand in either fomenting or fuelling. William Hague, in particular, has personally overseen British-sponsored terrorism in Libya, Mali and Syria.

It was Hague’s British regime that led the NATO blitzkrieg during 2011 in Libya to topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi. For seven months, British Typhoon fighter bombers engaged in over 10,000 sorties along with other NATO forces, to demolish that North African country. As many as 50,000 people were killed during the aerial bombardment. Countless numbers among Libya’s six-million nation were turned into refugees and now live under an anarchic regime of extremists and deprivation that NATO installed.

The same brand of Al Qaeda bandits and cut-throats that NATO warplanes paved the way for in Libya is being armed, trained, funded and directed in Syria by Britain and its allies.

As with Libya, Britain has taken a lead role in Syria along with France in arming a terror network – that the Western media euphemistically call «rebels» – to overthrow the sovereign government of Bashar Al Assad. British Special Forces have long-established training camps in Jordan from where graduated death squads can then ply their terror trade across the border in Syria.

Up to five million people have been displaced in the violence unleashed over the past two years in Syria by Britain and its NATO allies, the US and France, and their proxies, Turkey and the Gulf Arab dictatorships. In fleeing British-sponsored death squads and car bombers, up to a million Syrian civilians now reside in tents along the borders with Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. Rape, of course, has been used as a weapon of terror by the militants in Syria to sow fear and dislodge popular support for the Damascus government. …more

As two more Afghan children are liberated (from their lives) by NATO this weekend, a new film examines the effects of endless US aggression

The message sent by America’s invisible victims
Glenn Greenwald – 29 March, 2013

Yesterday I had the privilege to watch Dirty Wars, an upcoming film directed by Richard Rowley that chronicles the investigations of journalist Jeremy Scahill into America’s global covert war under President Obama and specifically his ever-growing kill lists. I will write comprehensively about this film closer to the date when it and the book by the same name will be released. For now, it will suffice to say that the film is one of the most important I’ve seen in years: gripping and emotionally affecting in the extreme, with remarkable, news-breaking revelations even for those of us who have intensely followed these issues. The film won awards at Sundance and rave reviews in unlikely places such as Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. But for now, I want to focus on just one small aspect of what makes the film so crucial.

The most propagandistic aspect of the US War on Terror has been, and remains, that its victims are rendered invisible and voiceless. They are almost never named by newspapers. They and their surviving family members are virtually never heard from on television. The Bush and Obama DOJs have collaborated with federal judges to ensure that even those who everyone admits are completely innocent have no access to American courts and thus no means of having their stories heard or their rights vindicated. Radical secrecy theories and escalating attacks on whistleblowers push these victims further into the dark.

It is the ultimate tactic of Othering: concealing their humanity, enabling their dehumanization, by simply relegating them to nonexistence. As Ashleigh Banfield put it her 2003 speech denouncing US media coverage of the Iraq war just months before she was demoted and then fired by MSNBC: US media reports systematically exclude both the perspectives of “the other side” and the victims of American violence. Media outlets in predominantly Muslim countries certainly report on their plight, but US media outlets simply do not, which is one major reason for the disparity in worldviews between the two populations. They know what the US does in their part of the world, but Americans are kept deliberately ignorant of it.

What makes Dirty Wars so important is that it viscerally conveys the effects of US militarism on these invisible victims: by letting them speak for themselves. Scahill and his crew travel to the places most US journalists are unwilling or unable to go: to remote and dangerous provinces in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia, all to give voice to the victims of US aggression. We hear from the Afghans whose family members (including two pregnant women) were slaughtered by US Special Forces in 2010 in the Paktia Province, despite being part of the Afghan Police, only for NATO to outright lie and claim the women were already dead from “honor killings” by the time they arrived (lies uncritically repeated, of course, by leading US media outlets).

Scahill interviews the still-traumatized survivors of the US cruise missile and cluster bomb attack in Southern Yemen that killed 35 women and children just weeks after Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. We see the widespread anger in Yemen over the fact that the Yemeni journalist who first exposed US responsibility for that attack, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, was not only arrested by the US puppet regime but, as Scahill first reported, has been kept imprisoned to this very day at the direct insistence of President Obama. We hear from the grandfather of 16-year-old American teenager Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (he is also the father of US cleric Anwar al-Awlaki) – both before and after a CIA drone killed his son and then (two weeks later) his teenaged grandson who everyone acknowledges had nothing to do with terrorism. We hear boastful tales of summary executions from US-funded-and-directed Somali warlords.

There is an unmistakable and singular message sent by these disparate groups and events. It’s one particularly worth thinking about with news reports this morning that two more Afghan children have been killed by a NATO air attack.

The message is that the US is viewed as the greatest threat and that it is US aggression and violence far more than any other cause that motivates support for al-Qaida and anti-American sentiment. The son of the slain Afghan police commander (who is the husband of one of the killed pregnant woman and brother of the other) says that villagers refer to US Special Forces as the “American Taliban” and that he refrained from putting on a suicide belt and attacking US soldiers with it only because of the pleas of his grieving siblings. An influential Southern Yemeni cleric explains that he never heard of al-Qaida sympathizers in his country until that 2009 cruise missile attack and subsequent drone killings, including the one that ended the life of Abdulrahman (a claim supported by all sorts of data). The brutal Somali warlord explains that the Americans are the “masters of war” who taught him everything he knows and who fuel ongoing conflict. Anwar Awlaki’s transformation from moderate and peace-preaching American cleric to angry critic of the US is shown to have begun with the US attack on Iraq and then rapidly intensifying with Obama’s drone attacks and kill lists. Meanwhile, US military officials and officers interviewed by Scahill exhibit a sociopathic indifference to their victims, while Awlaki’s increasingly angry sermons in defense of jihad are juxtaposed with the very similar-sounding justifications of endless war from Obama. …more

Security Forces Abduct, Severely Beat and Verbally Assault 5 Citizens, Including 3 Minors
31 March, 2013 – Bahrain Center for Human Rights

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) expresses its grave concern over the security forces’ continuation in the practice of abducting and beating of citizens, including minors.
The BCHR’s Head of Monitoring and Documentation Unit, Said Yousif Al-Muhafdha, documented disturbing incidents that took place in different areas within the same week which involved abducting civilians from the street or private homes, subjecting them to severe beatings and verbal assaults, including attacks on their sect and religious beliefs.

Three minors under the age of 14 informed Al-Muhafdha that they were abducted on the 28th of March 2013 at around 11 pm. They stated that there was a protest in the village and security forces started collectively punishing the village by shooting excessive teargas. This caused them to suffocate and therefore seek shelter in one of the houses nearby. Police forces noticed them and raided the house, abducted them and they were reportedly severely beaten inside the police vehicle with batons and gun butts while being verbally assaulted by the security forces by insulting their religious sect. One of the abducted showed cigarette burn marks on his arm stating that it was done by security forces. …more