Posts from — September 2013

Saudi Court Ups Gang-Rape Victim Sentence To 200 Lashes After Her Lawyer Protests Original 90-Lash Penalty
By Jonathan Vankin, 28 September, 2013

The Saudi justice system is based on the Islamic religious legal code known as Sharia, but if a case that burst onto the international scene this week is any example, the word “justice” is a misnomer.

In 2007, A Saudi court sentenced a gang-rape victim to a 90-lash whipping for violating the ban on women having contact with men who are not their relatives.

When the woman’s defense lawyer protested the sentence, calling for some compassion for this teenager who was sexually assaulted by seven men, the Saudi General Court increased her punishment to 200 lashes and a six-month jail term.

The incident happened in 2006 in the Eastern Province city of Qatif. The “Qatif Girl,” as she has become known in Saudi Arabia — her identity has not been made public — was then 19 years old. She got into a car with a teenage boy she knew in high school, intending to retreive a picture of herself from him.

She was soon to marry someone else, and she couldn’t have this former high school flame carrying her picture around.

That was her offense. What happened next was irrelevant to the court, at least as far as the Qatif’s girl’s punishment was concerned. Seven men kidnapped the pair, assaulting and raping both the woman and her male acquaintance.

The male rape victim was also sentenced to 90 lashes. The rapists received varying sentences, the harshest being five years in prison and 1,000 lashes.

Whipping is a common sentence in Saudi Arabia for crimes ranging from consuming alcohol to homosexuality.

The court cited the fact that the woman’s lawyer went to the media as a reason that her sentence was increased. But there may be other factors. Her attorney, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, is a human rights activist who has defended critics of Saudi Arabia’s ruling royal family.

Also, the “Qatif Girl” belongs to the Shiite Muslim minority in a country dominated by Sunni Muslims.

Even the original sentence of 90 lashes was considered excessive within Saudi Arabia. The 200-lash sentence has set off international protests.

According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, this sentence “not only sends victims of sexual violence the message that they should not press charges, but in effect offers protection and impunity to the perpetrators.” …source

The New Cold War, Analysis and Opinion Round-up
by Wassim Raad – VoltaireNet.com, 29 September, 2013

LISTEN TO AUDIO HERE

The new Cold War

By Ghaleb Kandil

What happened in recent days on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly clearly illustrates the emergence of new international relations, characterized by the end of American hegemony and the emergence of new realities. These suggest the beginning of a different world than the one that has been experienced during the second half of the twentieth century Cold War.

Some analysts believe that the end of the unilateral American hegemony inevitably lead to the emergence of a multipolar world. But a closer look at what happened shows the following observation: the emerging powers, including the axis of the resistance led by Russia, with a key role to Iran, managed to impose new balances through a process of accumulation of victories, especially against Israel in Lebanon, and thanks to the strength of Syria in the universal war against it. These new realities have forced the U.S. and its British and French allies to accept the new rules, which resulted, in the Security Council, by reciprocity in the use of vetoes, which was in recent decades, the monopoly the West.

This new balance of power is characterized by the end of the great wars and invasions, but it will not prevent the continuation of political conflicts and crises. There is a vital issue for Russia: the recovery of its historic role in Slavic and Orthodox Europe, controlled by the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A multipolar world means a global change of rules and relationships within the UN. However, the administrative and political structures of the organization and its executive arm, remain totally under American hegemony. This means that the imbalance will continue until the emerging forces that dismantled the unipolar world, are able to reconstruct the institutions of the United Nations to impose a change in their operating rules, such as the integration of new permanent members to the Security Council, like Brazil, South Africa and later on Iran.

The new world order will be the fall of the unilateral hegemony of America, which has used the past three decades its military power to attack and subjugate other Nations. Throughout this period, Washington has used the UN and its institutions as if they were an extension to its diplomacy. Russia and China were in a waiting period and were satisfied, at most, to protest politically, until the victory of the resistance against Israel, in 2006, laid the foundations of great change.

Many contentious issues remain between America on one side, Russia, China, Iran and the members of Brics, on the other side. Open competition for control of energy resources and markets will continue and will continue to cause biases in the international arena. But the new realities will prevent the United States have recourse to war to impose their will.

If the Yalta conference resulted in a division of the world into two spheres of influence, on which were deployed armies of the two great powers of the time, today, there are no lines of demarcation between very specific areas of influence. Instead, the lines are tangled and no compromise is possible. According to these new rules of engagement, the contemporary cold war will take place.

The scope of Iranian victory

By Ghaleb Kandil

Iran crowned 33 years of resistance against the US-Western blockade by obliging the United States to recognize it as an independent power. Thanks to the wisdom of his leadership, Tehran has managed to wrest this recognition both in terms of form and substance.

Thus, Washington has recognized the power of Iran and is resigned to accept its entry into the club of world leaders. It also acknowledged its right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy without Iran makes any concession.

We are witnessing the beginning of the rise of Iran, which has resisted all this time to complex wars launched by implacable enemies, who used all their weapons: pressures, threats, embargoes, blockades, sanctions, state terrorism, assassinations of scientists, terrorist attacks, secret wars, economic wars, subversion etc. …

But despite the huge resources thrown into battle by the United States, Israel and their auxiliaries, they lost in front of the determination of the Iranian people and its commitment to independence.

Faced with these wars, Iran has relied on its own resources and has significantly expanded its military and technological capabilities, even managing to launch the conquest of space. In cooperation with Russia, China, Korea, Brazil, Venezuela and India, the Islamic Republic has made great strides, becoming a model for developing countries.

Iranian citizens have made huge sacrifices to save the independence of their country. Now they can finally see the realization of the objectives designed by great leaders and strategists from the beginning of the revolution: build an independent state, provide the means to defend its independence and force the colonialist West to recognize it. All plans and all efforts have been made, the last 33 years in this direction.

American recognition of Iran’s power is a consecration of the new balance in the Middle East, particularly in the Gulf. In this region, the presence and the Iranian role in the political and economic fields will be crucial.

At the strategic level, it is important to emphasize the importance of the Syrian-Iranian alliance, which has promoted and covered the Resistance. This alliance greatly helped Iran build its independence model on the world stage. If the resistance of Syria and its president offered the people of the world the chance to break the unilateral American hegemony, the alliance between Damascus and Tehran has laid the foundation for deterrence against Israel.

Today, the leader of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is entitled to the skeptics, and they are less numerous in Iran, the bet made by his country on the Resistance and Syria was winner. It was a valuable strategic asset that has helped make many achievements.

Bahrain: a Prominent Activist Naji fateel Facing 15 years in Prison
September 29th, 2013, Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights

AUDIO LISTEN HERE

Human Rights Defender Naji Fateel was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment after the decision of the criminal court on Sunday, September 29.

Naji Fateel has been subjected to severe torture during interrogation in the notorious Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID). Among the allegations are that he has received electrical shocks to his genitals, left foot, and back, and been subjected to simulated drowning, severe beatings, threats to publish photographs of his wife (taken from her camera which was confiscated when security forces raided the family home), verbal abuse using uncivilized words, hanging by his hands from the ceiling, sexual harassment and threats to rape him, standing for long hours, and sleep deprivation.

Mr.Naji Fateel: is a board member of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR) and blogger who has been active in reporting human rights violations in Bahrain.He used his account on Twitter for dissemination of human rights information. He was previously detained between Dec 2007 and April 2009, and has been reportedly tortured.His house was stormed in search for him several times last year following the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR) demands:

1.The immediate release of the prominent human rights activist Naji Fateel.
2.Drop all charges against Naji Fateel.
3.The immediate and urgent investigation in the torture allegations Naji Fateel was subjected to in the Criminal Investigation Department.
4.Bring those responsible for torture to fair trials.

For more information on the case of Naji Fateel: HERE

Additional information on the trial today:

1-The court issued a verdict on all the defendants in the case (a coalition of 14 February).

2-Number of defendants : 50 people ( Including one woman)

3-Ms. Rehana Moussaoui was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.

4- 16 people have been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

5- 4 people have been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

6- 30 people have been sentenced to 5 years in prison.

7-20 people (from total 50) has been sentenced in absentia.
…Source

While the General Assembly was discussing the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it is another matter altogether that concerned the diplomats: are the United States still the superpower they have claimed to be since the demise of the Soviet Union or has the time come to break free of their tutelage?.

The United States Feared No More.
by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 30 September, 2013.

LISTEN AUDIO

In 1991, the United States had considered that the end of their rival had freed their military budget and allowed them to develop their prosperity. President George H. Bush (the father) had, after Operation Desert Storm, begun to reduce the size of the armed forces. His successor, Bill Clinton, reinforced this trend. However, the Republican Congress elected in 1995 questioned this choice and imposed rearmament without an enemy to fight. The neo-conservatives lauched their country into world assault mode to create the first global empire.

It was only on the occasion of the attacks of September 11th, 2001 that President George W. Bush (the son) decided to invade successively Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya and Syria and Somalia and Sudan and to end with Iran before turning to China.

The military budget of the United States reached more than 40% of world military expenditures. However, this extravagance had an ending: the economic crisis forced Washington to cut back. In one year, the Pentagon has dismissed a fifth of its army and halted several of its research programs. This sharp decline is just beginning and it has already disrupted the whole system. It is clear that the United States, despite having power greater than the twenty largest countries of the world, including Russia and China, is not currently able to engage in large conventional wars.

Washington thus gave up on attacking Syria when the Russian fleet was deployed along the Mediterranean coast. The Pentagon would then have had to launch its Tomawak missiles from the Red Sea over Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Syria and its non-state allies would have answered with a regional war, plunging the United States into a conflict too big for it.

In an article published by the New York Times, President Putin opened fire. He stressed that “American exceptionalism” is an insult to the equality of humans and can only lead to catastrophy. At the podium of the United Nations, President Obama answered that no other nation, not even Russia, wanted to shoulder the burden of the United States. And if they were the police of the world, it was precisely to ensure equality of humans.

This intervention is not reassuring : the United States asserting itself as superior to the rest of the world and considering the equality of humans only as their subjects.

But the spell is broken. The President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, drew ​​applause by demanding an apology from Washington for its universal espionage, while the President of the Swiss Confederation denounced the U.S. policy of force. The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, evoqued the trying of his U.S. counterpart under international justice for crimes against humanity, while the Serbian President, Tomislav Nikolic, denounced the masquerade of international courts which prosecute only the enemies of the Empire etc. It has thus gone from criticism from a few anti-imperialist states to widespread revolt including Washington’s allies.

Never before has the authority of the masters of the world been so publicly challenged – a sign that after their Syrian retreat, they are no longer to be feared. …source

Bahrain GP suitability ‘could be investigated’ says FIA candidate
By Andrew Benson Chief F1 writer, 30 September, 2013, BBC.

FIA presidential candidate David Ward would set up an investigation to establish whether Bahrain should hold a grand prix, if he is elected.

The event was cancelled in 2011 after civil unrest, but was reinstated last year by the current head of motorsport’s governing body, Jean Todt.

But Ward said Todt was guilty of “poor decision-making”.

“The important thing is to be neutral. What is merited is an investigatory visit,” he said.

“Look at things on the ground, talk to all sides as far as is possible and make a judgement based on that.”

The Bahrain GP was cancelled two years ago after the unrest led to a violent suppression of protests and accusations that authorities had engaged in torture and other human rights abuses.

Todt sent the head of the Spanish motorsport federation on a fact-finding mission to the troubled Gulf state ahead of the reinstatement of the race in 2012 but his report was widely criticised.

Ward and Todt are the only candidates to have declared so far for the 6 December FIA election.

Speaking in an interview with BBC Sport, 58-year-old Englishman Ward said: “I think he was rather badly served in that mission. I felt sorry for him, actually.”

Ward, a long-time adviser of former FIA president Max Mosley, said he would send “someone with expertise in the area” to Bahrain, citing as an example Edwin Glasgow QC, who chaired the Bloody Sunday inquiry into the actions of British security forces in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
The Bahrain Grand Prix was cancelled in 2011 after civil unrest

He said it was a mistake to run the Bahrain race in 2012 and that the FIA and F1 “crossed over a line” in their facilitation of the Bahrain authorities.

“If it looks like the situation is deteriorating or not improving, what there should be – because this could happen tomorrow in another part of the world – is a standard process to handle this, that is immune from suggestions that one place is being treated differently from another,” Ward added.

He said that if the FIA put “appropriate processes in place, it would minimise the reputational damage you can get from poor decision-making on the hoof”.

He added: “Bahrain had all the hallmarks of decision-making on the hoof right up to 24 hours before the race”.

Ward admitted Mosley is an “old friend”, but says the controversial former FIA president is not supporting his campaign. “I am doing this entirely for my own reasons,” he said.

When Mosley indicated he would not stand again, Ward backed Todt’s campaign for the FIA presidency in 2009, and wrote the Frenchman’s manifesto.

But now Ward, who worked with former Labour Party leader John Smith until his death in 1994, is standing against Todt, saying the FIA needed fundamental reform because its structure is “not fit for purpose”.
Electing a new president

Challenger David Ward and incumbent Jean Todt are the only two candidates to have declared so far in the FIA presidential election, which will take place on 6 December.

There was a report in the Times last week that former rally driver Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the president of the Automobile and Touring Club of the United Arab Emirates was considering running but he has not done so officially as yet.

Ward told BBC Sport he would welcome more candidates running.

The FIA has 183 members with a right to vote, although anyone who has not paid their membership dues within a specified time frame is barred.

The voting is by secret ballot at the FIA General Assembly in Paris and victory requires an absolute majority.

If no candidate wins 50% of the votes in the first round, the two with the highest number of votes go to a second round.

He described the FIA as “amateur, antiquated and rather archaic” and says it should appoint a paid chief executive and a special commissioner to deal with F1 on a daily basis.

Ward said he would press for the FIA to “strengthen its provisions” on corruption and bribery, by ensuring the sporting code “would be clear about the requirements we would have in terms of partners”.

This, he admitted, would “very likely” mean F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone would fall foul of that code if he is convicted of the bribery charges he is facing in Germany.

Ward said the failure to set up a tender process for the sport’s tyre supplier next year – as required by the F1 regulations – could potentially put the FIA at risk of failing in its obligations to the European Commission under competition law.

And he is critical of Todt’s decision to have only a fax vote of the FIA World Council – its legislative body – to approve the outline of a new Concorde Agreement, the document that governs F1.

He said it was “rather odd” and “quite strange” not to submit it to the discussion of a full meeting of the World Council.

Describing himself as a “terrible governance geek”, Ward said the issues on which he was campaigning “may seem intensely boring but are actually really, really important”.

He said: “The reasons I’m running is I can see failures going on in terms of governance that I think are quite serious.”

Ward added that the role of the FIA president was too wide for one person to do effectively and that the organisation needed “robust decision-making processes with separation of powers between executive and legislative and judicial”. …source

US seeking to fight terrorism at grassroots
30 September, 2013 – Saudi Gazette

NEW YORK CITY — US Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday unveiled a new drive to tackle the root causes of violent extremism, as he condemned a series of “heinous” attacks, including the Kenya mall siege.

“It is fair to say that unspeakable evil still exists in our world. We have to find a way to prevent, to preempt, to act ahead of these kinds of obscenities,” Kerry told a global forum in New York.

He denounced recent attacks including the massacre in a Nairobi mall by Somali militants and Sunday’s devastating double suicide attack on a church in northwest Pakistan which left 82 dead.

“Cowardly attacks like these cannot be allowed to change who we are, or shake our resolve to find peace and justice for all,” the top US diplomat said. He announced that the Global Counterterrorism Forum set up two years ago with other nations around the world had already mobilized some $200 million to help train people in fighting terror attacks.

Two training centers are underway, one already open in Abu Dhabi, with a second to open in Malta next year.

Kerry said the United States was planning to put an additional $30 million into the fund, and was hoping to launch a new arm of the forum specifically to tackle terrorism at grassroots level.

“From Kenya to Pakistan from Mali to Yemen the threat that we face is more diffused, centralized, geographically dispersed than ever before,” he said.

“Addressing this threat will require every tool in our arsenal, political, economical, diplomatic, military — and perhaps most importantly, the power of our ideas.”

But Kerry stressed that “getting this right is not just about taking terrorists off the street, it’s about providing more economic opportunities for marginalized youth at risk of recruitment.” “It’s about challenging the narrative of violence that is used to justify the slaughtering of innocent people.” …source

Bahrain said to sentence 50 Anti-Government Activists
29 September, 2013 – Al Jazeera America

A Bahrain court sentenced 50 people to prison Sunday after a mass trial for alleged links to a militant group blamed for bombings and other antigovernment attacks in the Gulf nation, a rights activist said.

“A group of Feb. 14 activists were sentenced to between five and 15 years in jail,” Yousif al-Muhafda of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights told Reuters.

The center said there were human-rights campaigners among those convicted “under the internationally criticized and vague terrorism law” and that the sentences added up to more than 400 years.

“This was a sham trial with a political verdict. They should be released immediately,” the center’s acting president, Maryam al-Khawaja, said in a statement.

The defendants are accused of forming an illegal group opposing the political system, “training elements to commit violence and vandalism” and “attacking security men,” according to the charge sheet.

The convictions mark the broadest blow yet to backers of the almost daily protests by the Feb. 14 movement, named after the date in 2011 when Bahrain’s Shia majority began an uprising seeking greater political rights from the country’s Sunni rulers and the deposal of the kingdom’s al-Khalifa dynasty.

Bahrain’s head of public prosecution described the Feb. 14 group as a terrorist organization.

The verdicts could stir more unrest in the nation, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

The main Shia opposition party, Al Wefaq, called it a “black day for justice.”

Mohamed al-Maskati, head of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, said 20 suspects were convicted in absentia. Charges included seeking to topple the ruling system.

Thousands of people have been arrested in Bahrain’s crackdowns.

Asked for comment, an official told Reuters a government statement on the matter was being prepared.
…source

Iran shows truth is winning out
27 Septemebr, 2013 – By Finian Cunningham – PressTV

US military power is still a dangerous force, especially at this historical juncture of economic collapse. War is therefore always a danger, and diplomacy, peace and justice are far from assured. But the people of Iran are finding a new ally – the rest of the world.

That is because the enemy is one and the same, destructive elitist system, and because the truth is winning out.”

The saying goes that a week is a long time in politics – meaning that big changes can surprisingly occur in a short period.

This week, at the 68th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations was one such watershed event.

The engine for this dramatic change was Iran’s diplomatic thrust. Iranian President Dr. Hassan Rouhani delivered a speech to the assembly that enthralled those willing to listen while leaving detractors reeling from their own inadequacy.

Rouhani’s address was a paragon of rational argument that reinforced humane values of respect and equality.

Yet he laid blame firmly on the causes and protagonists of conflict, whether in Palestine, Iraq or Syria. In sum, the Iranian president rejected militarism and warmongering as an archaic blunt and immoral instrument, and he offered a hopeful way forward from conflict based unequivocally on equality and respect.

“Militarism and the recourse to violent and military means to subjugate others are failed examples of the perpetuation of old ways in new circumstances,” said Rouhani.

The bottom-line was that he successfully conveyed Iran is a peaceful nation that threatens no one, and is willing to join with others in creating a peaceful world, including the removal of all weapons of mass destruction.

American and Israeli warmongers were left grappling vainly for detractions.

“Iran has come here to cheat the world,” said an Israeli official, whose grudging sounded paranoid and fatuous.

The trouble for these American and Israeli warmongers and hate-filled psychopath politicians is that we now live in a world of instant global communications where ordinary people can hear the words of others without them being warped and poisoned.

Even the American mainstream media had to give the Iranian leader a fair hearing because, with many alternative sources of information to serve as verification, to not give a fair hearing would expose such media as disreputable agents of disinformation. With the traditional Western media’s credibility at an all-time low among the public, they can’t afford to lose any more respect.

But it was Rouhani’s personal style of calm reason and erudition that won the day. Any one with an open mind had to be impressed by his cogent appeal for peace and a better world free of conflict.

“People all over the world are tired of war, violence and extremism. They hope for a change in the status quo,” he said, adding, “In recent years, a dominant voice has been repeatedly heard: ‘The military option is on the table.’ Against the backdrop of this illegal and ineffective contention, let me say loud and clear that ‘peace is within reach.’”

The only way to counter such reasonable politics is to resort to calumny and propaganda. But Rouhani had that covered too when he warned against those who create “imaginary enemies” and the fictitious “Iranian threat.”

The case for Iran to be treated with respect, without aggression, and to be allowed to avail of its national rights, including peaceful nuclear technology, resonates with world public opinion. People, and the American people in particular, are fed up with baseless aggression whether in the form of militarism abroad or, significantly, economic austerity at home. The significance is that people have made the structural connection between these two aberrations. People are realizing that their personal suffering is related to the way the rest of the world is suffering. It is the common condition of the bankrupt capitalist system and all its predations.

The days when the public could be misled by a warmongering elite are rapidly waning. People can see through the self-serving lies and fabrications and are intolerant of this obnoxious mindset. The people want a totally new arrangement of doing things, to overturn an economy based on exploitation and oppression and warmongering, to be replaced by a more ethical, efficient and equitable system, one that is democratic, not despotic.

In this past week, there was a profound sense of common ground for change, where Iran’s appeal was in synchronicity with international public opinion.

The contrast between Rouhani’s speech to the UN and US President Barack Obama’s was telling. The Iranian leader’s sentiments and aspirations seemed on the crest of a wave – the wider feelings of ordinary people all over the planet – while Obama sounded like someone left behind, thrashing around in a bygone era.

Rouhani listened to the other intently; whereas Obama cleared off from the assembly hall.

Obama’s speech was full of American self-importance and self-justification. It was a subjective parody of history and conflict in which the US is always portrayed as the “good guy.” Unlike Rouhani, Obama did not present supporting facts and objective rationale. It was a propaganda stunt to cover US militarism and illegal wars with a veneer of legitimacy.

Out of Obama’s mouth came not an appeal from the heart for absolute human equality and peace, but rather hackneyed propaganda to excuse US aggression and superiority towards the rest of the world.

“We will dismantle terrorist networks that threaten our people,” said Obama with earnest fakery that is so obvious now it is pathetic.

“Wherever possible, we will build the [terrorist] capacity of our partners, [dis] respect the sovereignty of nations, and work to address [promote] the root causes of terror. But when it’s necessary to defend the United States against [imaginary] terrorist attack, we will take direct action [mass murder].” (Words/letters in brackets added.)

All that and more from Obama is so anachronistic, old school now. What American people and the rest of the world realize more than ever is that the US under its bankrupt economic system does not have international relations. It has predatory, hegemonic instincts that fuel relentless massive violence – all for the enrichment of its banking and corporate elite.

And, what’s more, people realize the inextricable link between the US elite’s aggression abroad and its economic and police-state aggression at home.

The US president declared to the UN delegates, “The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force [state terrorism], to secure our [ruling elite’s] core interests [obscene capitalist profit].” (Words/letters in brackets added.)

In the past, such American blandishments and bluster may have been possible – but not any more. People everywhere across the globe can read what’s inside the parenthesis when official America speaks now.

And the people know the latter is a twisted mouthpiece to disguise destructive interests.

The appeal for reason by Iran is very much chiming with the people of the world. The American elite and their warmongering allies in Britain, France and Israel, among others, know that they are up against a powerful wave of reason and noble sentiment. That is why Obama had to abruptly swerve from the US war plan towards Syria and why the warmonger instincts have been tempered to try the diplomatic route.

US military power is still a dangerous force, especially at this historical juncture of economic collapse. War is therefore always a danger, and diplomacy, peace and justice are far from assured. But the people of Iran are finding a new ally – the rest of the world.

That is because the enemy is one and the same, destructive elitist system, and because the truth is winning out.
…source

Sentencing takes place this Sunday, 29th September with no real prosecution and no defence having taken place. Defendants are accused of “destroying state property.”

6 of 11 defendants in this trial are:

Rihanna al Moussawi, Naji Fateel, Director of the Bahrain Youth Society of Human Rights, Hameed Abbas AlSafi, injured with teargas canister on his arrest, Mohammed Al Singace, tortured with visible wound to head and Essa Alghais, who was so tortured he told his lawyer not to file a complaint. Teacher Mohammed Altai wasn’t even interviewed on this charge initially.

In the trials on 14th September trial, at the first session on 11th July, torture claims not recorded, Naji Fateel shows weals on his back and Rihanna al Mousawi describes her treatment. She was tortured, stripped and forced to stand at an open doorway.

25th July, lawyers couldn’t get access to documents. Sept 5th Session boycotted by defendants and their lawyers, and judge didn’t turn up. Lawyers had made an application under Article 211 of the Criminal Procedure of Bahrain to get Judge Al Khalifa Al Dhahrani dismissed as biased. This application was refused.

Because these are highly politicized cases, harsh Sentences by the Bahrain Government on 29th September.

Lawyers are boycotting both the 14th February Coalition and the El Emam trial as they give a semblance of respectability to this travesty of justice. They can’t see their clients but speak to them on the phone. If they have any questions they must post them at the office and hope to get a response.

A lawyer said today there are so many political trials going on that it is impossible to look after their clients in a climate of fear, where the results are fixed at the beginning.

Bahrain proof of Obama’s cheap words
By Finian Cunningham – 25 September, 2013 – PressTV

And yet here’s an unbearable irony, in reference to possible dialogue with Iran, Obama had the cheek to say that Iranian words must be backed up with meaningful and transparent action.”

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week,

President Barack Obama delivered his usual barrage of myth and mendacity concerning the role of the US in the world.

Some commentators have since swooned at the possibility of dialogue between Iran and US and a new era of diplomacy – all because of a few positive-sounding words uttered by the American president.

So, let’s test the veracity or reliability of a few more of Obama’s words as applied to the real world.

“The hard work of forging freedom and democracy is the task of a generation. And this includes efforts to resolve sectarian tensions that continue to surface in places like Iraq, Bahrain and Syria,” he told UN delegates.

Almost every word and claim made by the American president in his entire speech can be rebutted with facts to show that he is either woefully ignorant of history or, more sinisterly, is a deluded liar. It is galling to have to listen to someone lecturing the rest of the world on the peace-making principles of the UN, and especially when that someone is the figurehead leader of the world’s biggest terrorist state.

We haven’t time to repudiate all of Obama’s grandiloquent nonsense, but let’s focus on the sample above. In every case, Iraq, Bahrain and Syria, the US has fomented, sponsored and exploded sectarian violence. That is, the opposite of what Obama claims.

No one is pretending that the Middle East does not have a history of latent sectarian tensions. But the US illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, beginning in 2003, and the overtly sectarian counterinsurgency tactics was like plunging a knife into scar tissue and twisting it open, with predictable bloodletting between Sunni and Shia, and the fleeing of thousands of Christians from an historic homeland, never to return.

Iraq has been turned into an internecine charnel house because of American “hard work”. This violence is an integral part of the US using sectarianism to destabilize Syria for the purpose of regime change there. In this “hard work”, Washington has called upon the divide-and-rule expertise of the old colonial powers, Britain and France, as well as the terrorist competence of the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Israel.

On the third location – Bahrain – where Obama proclaimed to the world that the US is trying to forge freedom and democracy and resolve sectarianism, the reality is again the diametric opposite to the American myth. Indeed, in many ways, Bahrain is a particularly clear proof of the real mendacious and destructive intent of US foreign policy.

The cause of democracy and freedom in Bahrain has been bludgeoned by the Al Khalifa monarchy precisely because of unswerving support from the US, as well as Britain and Saudi Arabia. Bahrain smashes the sugarcoated words of Obama about American idealism into blood-spattered shards.

Bahrain’s 700,000 national population is comprised of 70 per cent Shia, who demand an elected government. For decades, not just since the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, the population has been calling for this democratic right. Yet this peaceful demand has been met with slaughter and vicious repression – all within only a few miles from the US Navy Fifth Fleet base on the tiny Persian Gulf island.

Bahrain’s coterie of unelected royal rulers, who happen to be Sunni and who historically invaded the island 230 years ago with the help of the British Empire, has succeeded so far to stave off this righteous, basic democratic demand only because of the staunch support it receives from Washington and London.

This support to crush democracy, not forge it as Obama makes out, takes the form of military equipment, such as the sale of shot guns, poison gas and British-made Typhoon fighters jets as discussed last month in 10 Downing Street between UK premier David Cameron and Bahraini King Hamad. It involves diplomatic shielding of the Bahraini regime from international justice, despite the occasional disingenuous “concern” over human rights issued by Washington and London.

The Western imprimatur to bludgeon democracy and freedom in Bahrain is also seen in the repressive expertise with which the Bahraini regime fuels conflict between the Shia majority and the remaining Sunni community. In this, the Bahraini regime has benefited much from the former colonial power Britain in the use of divide-and-rule tactics. The callous turning of blind eye by Washington and London to the systematic violation of the Shia in Bahrain is a crucial approval for the regime to do its worst.

A state of emergency exists in Bahrain in all but name, after the Khalifa rubber-stamp so-called parliament instated a raft of special powers to persecute anyone deemed to criticize the regime, including the mere expression that the despotic regime should stand down and give way to democratic government. All marches and gatherings are banned, thus denying basic freedoms of speech and assembly.

Furthermore, the regime’s paramilitary police force, backed up by Saudi personnel, break into hundreds of homes every week, beating and arresting the occupants. Often these police raids are conducted by masked armed commandos in civilian clothes.

Those detained are not heard of for weeks and months, denied legal counsel and family visits. They are thrown into the Khalifa torture dungeons where they are subjected to the most horrendous physical and mental abuse, such as hanging for days from the ceiling by the wrists.

Invariably, the detainees sign confessions without even knowing what they are confessing to. Then a Khalifa judge will hand down years of imprisonment based on these torture confessions.

Take the case of Rihanna Al Musawi. This mother of three children was first arrested because she was protesting against the unfair imprisonment of political leaders and human rights activists. Rihanna had the temerity to take her peaceful protest to the Formula One Grand Prix circuit where her protest T-Shirt might have been picked up by international television cameras. That was in April. For the past six months, she has been subjected to relentless torture in prison, including being stripped naked and threatened with rape. She faces trumped up terrorism charges and a lifetime in prison.

The Bahraini regime has tried to keep its crimes secret by especially targeting journalists, photographers and bloggers. Journalist Nazeeha Saeed was hauled into custody and tortured, including electrocution and whipping on her back. This was because she reported to international news outlets the horrific killing in cold blood of civilian protester Isa Abdullah Hassan back in February 2011 during the initial protests. Hassan was killed when a policeman fired a gun at point blank to his head. When Nazeeha Saeed was brought into custody, her interrogators kept accusing her of making a false television report on the death.

Another witness to the Bahraini regime’s ruthless crackdown is photographer Hassan Matooq, who was jailed for three years. His “crime” was that of compiling images showing the injuries incurred by peaceful protesters at the hands of the state security forces.

Dozens of other Bahraini journalists and photographers have been targeted by the Khalifa regime, including Mohammed Hassan and award-winners Ahmed Humaidan and Hussain Hubail. As with thousands of other Bahrainis, these individuals have undergone the barbaric Khalifa torture apparatus inflicted with scientific efficiency – techniques that the Americans and British torturers learnt in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Kenya and Northern Ireland. Bahraini sources verify that British personnel are present at these torture sessions.

The reports and images of activists and journalists depicting the daily onslaught of repression in Bahraini villages have earned them particular venom for their powerful testimony. Their persecution is the regime’s way of trying to rob the voiceless of any voice whatsoever.

This is American and British-sponsored sectarianism and repression, as practiced in Bahrain. It is deliberately aimed at terrorizing the constituency for democratic change in Bahrain – the Shia population. For the US and Britain, the last thing these governments want to see in the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East more generally, is democracy and peaceful coexistence between Shia, Sunni, Muslim and Christian, or anyone else.

That’s why Obama’s grandiloquent words at the UN need to be tested against the real world. They are cheap and meaningless when measured against the suffering that US policies actually inflict in practice. Bahrain is proof that President Barack Obama’s lofty claims of forging democracy and freedom and resolving sectarianism are but a sick joke.

Just remember when you finish reading this, the torture of those Bahrainis mentioned above will continue for the rest of today, tomorrow and for years to come, all because of American and British “support”.

And yet here’s an unbearable irony, in reference to possible dialogue with Iran, Obama had the cheek to say that Iranian words must be backed up with meaningful and transparent action. …source

Please write or Call you Congress-person or MP to help advert another victim of Bahrain’s Courts of Injustice

Dr Saeed attended court today(23 September, 2013) with his lawyer Mr Shamlawi. He has denied all charges of insulting the king after being interrogated by the police on 18th September. However, he is recorded as having said at the funeral of young Sadiq Sabt, the 50th young person killed by police:

“the boy was killed by criminals, mercenaries and sinners on the orders of the King, who is responsible for the deaths of over 50 people. He says the ruling family has occupied Bahrain for years, and god willing, they will leave Bahrain to any other place in this world and to hell, god willing.” It seems King Hamad find this insulting! Bahrain’s latest Decree of Injustice, 28 July, 2013 created new laws precisely for punish those who would “insult” the King.

Saeed was one of the 24 doctors cleared after felony charges were dropped. Two are still in prison, Ali al Ekri and Ebrahim Demestani. A further 28 were indicted on misdemeanours. He spent one year in prison having been initially sentenced to 10 years. He came out in April 2013. He had a stroke in prison & lost his license to practice.

Video of Dr. Saeed impassioned speech:

Saeed’s speech was during funeral of a young boy, attended by tens of thousands, who died after getting run over “with full intention” while he was trying to block the road. Shiite funerals are emotive and I guess Saeed said things in the heat of the moment. Can you make this an urgent request and ask people to contact their M.P.s or congressmen – he’s not well enough to go back to prison.

Syria’s Assad says his agreement to give up chemical arsenal is unconditional

18 September, 2013 By Hannah Allam — McClatchy

WASHINGTON — Syrian President Bashar Assad said Wednesday that he is committed to relinquishing Syria’s chemical arsenal without conditions and as quickly as possible in a Fox News Channel interview that is the latest installment in a charm offensive intended to counter portrayals of him as a bloodthirsty dictator.

Responding to questions for an hour, Assad appeared as a mild-mannered bureaucrat explaining in fluent English why he’s waging an unfortunate but necessary war against al Qaida extremists, the same ones who fought U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He bristled at calling the rebel forces fighting to topple him as “opposition” and claimed that 80 to 90 percent are al Qaida-linked terrorists. He played down the high death toll of the war, claiming that most of those killed were terrorists.

“Opposition doesn’t mean to carry weapons and kill people, innocents, and to destroy schools, destroy infrastructure,” Assad said. Later in the segment, he added, “This is war. You don’t have clean war.”

He didn’t dispute U.N. findings that sarin gas was used in a deadly Aug. 21 attack, but he blamed it on the rebel forces, which he said are made up of jihadists who’ve streamed into Syria from more than 80 countries. He derided sarin as a “kitchen gas,” saying it can be made at home, and blamed its use on fighters that are “supported by governments,” a veiled reference to Persian Gulf rebel financiers such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The wide-ranging interview was conducted by the network’s senior foreign affairs correspondent, Greg Palkot, and former Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich, who’s a commentator for the network and has met Assad on previous occasions. Last week, Assad granted an interview to Charlie Rose of CBS and PBS, but canceled an interview he’d arranged with George Stephanopoulos of ABC.

Analysts say the strategy behind Assad’s media blitz goes beyond simply avoiding a U.S. strike in retaliation for deadly chemical attacks. The broader mission is to convince the West that no matter how brutal his regime appears to outsiders, the alternative is worse.

At every opportunity, Assad drove home the fact that the rebel movement is dominated by Islamist militants who’ve carried out beheadings, car bombings and other terrorist acts the regime knows will strike a chord with an American audience. Assad, as he did in the earlier CBS interview, pointedly mentioned an incident where a rebel leader was captured on video cutting an organ from a dead Syrian soldier’s body and taking a bite from it.

At another point in the Fox interview, Assad referred to the United States as “the greatest country in the world.”

“He’s saying, ‘I’m Westernized, I’m quiet spoken, I’m not screaming jihad, and I’m the devil you can work with,’” said Lawrence Pintak, dean of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University and a former CBS News correspondent in the Middle East. “And that’s what American foreign policy has been about for decades – working with the devil you can to keep out the ones you don’t want.”

Pintak, who’s interviewed the late Saddam Hussein, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and several other dictators, said Assad’s understated persona and background as an eye doctor who was educated in England are benefits to his media campaign. His clean-shaven, business-suited image makes for a stark juxtaposition with bearded, gun-toting rebels waving the black flag of militant Islamists.

“It’s public diplomacy at its best,” Pintak said. “It’s fascinating to watch someone who operates in a completely controlled media environment being so deft at managing his own image in the West.”
…more

Hezbollah urges Bahrain to end crackdown on Shia Majority
September 20, 2013 – JafriaNews

JNN 20 Sept 2013 Beirut : Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement has urged Bahraini government to immediately end public crackdown.

“Over the past one and half year, Bahraini officials have assaulted the majority of people and crossed the red lines,” the Islamic Movement said in a statement released on Thursday.

Bahraini security forces razed Mosques, insulted the sanctities and detained men and women including the elderlies, it was said in part of the statement, according to Al-Alam news channel.

According to Hezbollah, the monarchy also plans to invalidate the nationality of some Bahraini citizens and had shut down the Shura Council.

“Bahraini people are paying the price only for demanding a greater voice by holding free and fair election and seeking their own legitimate and rights,” the statement read.

The Islamic Movement has condemned such policies adopted by the regime who violates basic rights of the people, calling on the ruling Al Khalifa family to give in to the legitimate demands of the oppositions and stop the cruelties which continued since one and half year ago.

Hezbollah also blasted the international community’s silence against the atrocity of those who claim to favor international justice, saying that the Bahraini government deserves harsher reaction than just condemnation.

So, the use of political force on Bahraini government is the least, at the juncture in order for the regime to respect the dignity and the human rights of the nation, the statement added.

The statement by Hezbollah comes as the monarchy has refused so far to ease political pressures on people and giving back the rights they stood for since the beginning of the uprising some two years ago.

At least 80 people have been killed since Arab Spring-inspired protests erupted in Bahrain in early 2011, according to the International Federation for Human Rights.

Earlier this month, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights has issued condemnation for these continued attacks on the families of political dissidents and their children. …more

Kissinger and Chile: In an Age of Vigilantes, There Is Cause for Optimism
19 September, 2013 – By John Pilger – Truthout

The most important anniversary of the year was the 40th anniversary of September 11, 1973 – the crushing of the democratic government of Chile by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and Henry Kissinger, then US secretary of state. The National Security Archive in Washington has posted new documents that reveal much about Kissinger’s role in an atrocity that cost thousands of lives.

In declassified tapes, Kissinger is heard planning with President Richard Nixon the overthrow of President Salvador Allende. They sound like Mafiosi thugs. Kissinger warns that the “model effect” of Allende’s reformist democracy “can be insidious.” He tells CIA director Richard Helms, “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” to which Helms replies, “I am with you.” With the slaughter under way, Kissinger dismisses a warning by his senior officials of the scale of the repression. Secretly, he tells Pinochet, “You did a great service to the West.”

I have known many of Pinochet’s and Kissinger’s victims. Sara De Witt, a student at the time, showed me the place where she was beaten, assaulted and electrocuted. On a wintry day in the suburbs of Santiago, we walked through a former torture centre known as Villa Grimaldi, where hundreds like her suffered terribly and were murdered or “disappeared.”

Understanding Kissinger’s criminality is vital when trying to fathom what the US calls its “foreign policy.” Kissinger remains an influential voice in Washington, admired and consulted by Barack Obama. When Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain commit crimes with US collusion and weapons, their impunity and Obama’s hypocrisy are pure Kissinger. Syria must not have chemical weapons, but Israel can have them and use them. Iran must not have a nuclear program, but Israel can have more nuclear weapons than Britain. This is known as “realism” or realpolitik by Anglo-American academics and think-tanks that claim expertise in “counterterrorism” and “national security,” which are Orwellian terms meaning the opposite.

In recent weeks, the New Statesman has published articles by John Bew, an academic at the Kings College war studies department, which the cold warrior Laurence Freedman made famous. Bew laments the parliamentary vote that stopped David Cameron joining Obama in lawlessly attacking Syria and the hostility of most British people to bombing other nations. A note at the end of his articles says he will “take up the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations” in Washington. If this is not a black joke, it a profanity on those like Sara de Witt and Kissinger’s countless other victims, not least those who died in the holocaust of his and Nixon’s secret, illegal bombing of Cambodia.

This doctrine of “realism” was invented in the US following the second world war and sponsored by the Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations, the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) and the Council on Foreign relations. In the great universities, students were taught to regard people in terms of their usefulness or expendability: in other words, their threat to “us.” This narcissism served to justify the Cold War, its moralizing myths and cataclysmic risks and, when that was over, the “war on terror.” Such a “transatlantic consensus” often found its clearest echo in Britain, with the British elite’s enduring nostalgia for empire. Tony Blair used it to commit and justify his war crimes until his lies got the better of him. The violent death of more than 1,000 people in Iraq every month is his legacy; yet his views are still courted, and his chief collaborator, Alastair Campbell, is a jolly after-dinner speaker and the subject of obsequious interviews. All the blood, it seems, has been washed away.

Syria is the current project. Outflanked by Russia and public opinion, Obama has now embraced the “path of diplomacy.” Has he? As Russian and US negotiators arrived in Geneva on September 12, 2013, the US increased its support for the Al Qaeda-affiliated militias with weapons sent clandestinely through Turkey, Eastern Europe and the Gulf. The Godfather has no intention of deserting his proxies in Syria. Al Qaeda was all but created by the CIA’s Operation Cyclone, which armed the mujahedin in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Since then, jihadists have been used to divide Arab societies and in eliminating the threat of pan-Arab nationalism to Western “interests” and Israel’s lawless colonial expansion. This is Kissinger-style “realism.”

In 2006, I interviewed Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, who ran the CIA in Latin America in the 1980s. Here was a true “realist.” Like Kissinger and Nixon on the tapes, he spoke his mind. He referred to Salvador Allende as “whatshisname in Chile” and said “he had to go because it was in our national interests.” When I asked what gave him the right to overthrow governments, he said, “Like it or lump it, we’ll do what we like. So just get used to it, world.”

The world is no longer getting used to it. In a continent ravaged by those whom Nixon called “our bastards,” Latin American governments have defied the likes of Clarridge and implemented much of Allende’s dream of social democracy – which was Kissinger’s fear. Today, most of Latin America is independent of US foreign policy and free of its vigilantism. Poverty has been cut almost by half; children live beyond the age of 5; the elderly learn to read and write. These remarkable advances are invariably reported in bad faith in the West and ignored by the “realists.” That must never lessen their value as a source of optimism and inspiration for all of us. …source

Bahrain Opposition Defies Ban on Meeting Diplomats
20 September, 2013 – ABC News

Bahrain’s main Shiite opposition group is defying a ban by the island’s Sunni government to have direct contacts with foreign diplomats.

Al Wefaq’s secretary-general, Sheik Ali Salman, met Norwegian political affairs envoy Hakon Smedsvig on Thursday in the Bahraini capital, Manama.

Bahrain’s Western-backed monarchy earlier this month banned all diplomatic contacts by political groups unless they receive official permission. The move was sharply criticized by Western governments, including the U.S.

This week, authorities detained a top Al Wefaq official on allegations of inciting violence. In return, the group announced a boycott of reconciliation talks with the government.

The strategic Gulf nation has been gripped by unrest since an uprising launched in early 2011 by majority seeking a greater political voice.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf said in a statement that in the last two years the Bahraini government and oppositions groups have been involved in important dialogue but that recent developments have hindered the process.

“The Government of Bahrain has recently issued decrees restricting the rights and abilities of political groups to assemble, associate, and express themselves freely, including by regulating their communications with foreign governments and international organizations,” the statement said. …more

Bahrain: Senior Doctor Facing Trial on September 23 on Charges of Insulting the King
20 September, 2013 – Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights

Dr. Saeed Al-Samahiji – Ophthalmologist – facing trial on September 23, 2013 on charges of insulting the king.

Dr. Al-Samahiji been summoned by the Criminal Investigation on Wednesday, September 18.

On September 19, he was questioned by the public prosecutor and criminal investigations. He was released later.

The Public Prosecution accused him of delivered a public speech on September 1, 2013.

The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights demands:

1-Guarantee freedom of opinion and expression.
2-Dropping the charges relating to freedom of expression.

Background:

April 2011: Dr. Saeed Al-Samahiji was arrested after the authorities suppressed Bahraini protesters in the Pearl Roundabout.

September 29, 2011: The court sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment.

June 14, 2012: Court of Appeal reduced the verdict against him to one year imprisonment.

October 1, 2012: The Court of Cassation upheld the previous court’s conviction and sentence against him.

April 23, 2013: The Bahraini authorities released him after serving a one-year imprisonment. …more

Turkey shuts Syria crossing following raid by militants
20 September, 2013 – Arab News

ANKARA/BEIRUT: Turkey closed a border crossing to Syria after an Al-Qaeda-linked group stormed a nearby town and expelled opposition fighters from an Arab and Western-backed unit, officials said on Thursday.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on Wednesday killed at least five members of the Northern Storm Brigade, a rebel unit that controls the border, highlighting the deep opposition divisions.

The confrontation in the town of Azaz was one of the most serious clashes between the Al-Qaeda affiliate, made up mostly of foreign fighters, and the more ideologically moderate home-grown rebels trying to topple President Bashar Assad.
Their struggle, however, is less about ideology and more about a fight for territory, resources and the spoils of war — with armed ISIL fighters positioned to defend the town and a nearby rebel brigade trying to broker a cease-fire.

A Turkish official told Reuters the Oncupinar border gate — about 5 km (3 miles) from Azaz and opposite the Syrian Bab Al-Salameh gate — had been closed for “security reasons.”

“There is still confusion about what is happening on the Syrian side. All humanitarian assistance that normally goes through the gate has ceased,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Crossings such as Azaz have been a lifeline for rebel-held territories in Syria’s north, allowing in humanitarian aid, building materials and food as well as giving refugees a route out of Syria.

While Turkey says it normally operates an open door policy, from time to time it temporarily closes its border crossings following clashes near the frontier.

The crossing fell into opposition hands last year when rebels launched an offensive to take the northern business hub of Aleppo.

Ankara has been one of the strongest backers of the rebels in the 2-1/2-year uprising against Assad. While it denies arming them, fighters including militants have been able to cross its volatile border into Syria.

At the same time, many activists and Kurdish forces accuse Turkey of allowing radical groups to go through its territory to launch attacks on its other foe — Kurdish militias, who are now operating on the frontier in northeastern Syria. Turkey denies those charges.

Syrian activists said the fighting in Azaz had subsided by Thursday and there were no rebel preparations under way to take the town back from ISIL by force.

ISIL fighters were now spread throughout Azaz and had positioned snipers on rooftops, activists said.

Northern Storm fighters were stationed at the border crossing, where they were joined by fighters from the powerful Tawheed Brigade who came from Aleppo to try to broker a truce. Tawheed has a large presence in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, about 30 km south of Azaz.

“Reinforcements from the Tawheed Brigade were sent to impose a cease-fire on the two sides,” said Abu Obeida, a Tawheed spokesman. “There is still no cease-fire yet … There are negotiations under way.”

The clashes were a stark illustration of the relative strength of the Al-Qaeda-linked fighters compared to Syria’s larger but less experienced moderate forces. It also highlights the divisions that have plagued the opposition.

Both dilemmas have left Western powers hesitant to supply the rebels with advanced weapons.

ISIL declared an offensive last week against two other rebel factions, accusing them of attacking its forces and suggesting they may have collaborated with the government.

“What is worrying are the clashes themselves,” a second Turkish official said, referring to rebel infighting generally.

“What we want is to see the various coalition groups put their house in order and focus on the struggle with the regime, because that is the real issue — the violence inflicted by the regime on the Syrian people.”

An activist from Azaz who identified himself as Mohamed Al-Azizi said he expected more violence before the confrontation was over.
“These people are very dangerous for Syria,” he said via Skype, referring to the ISIL fighters. “They say they’re Islamists but they have nothing to do with religion.” …source

One year to destroy Syria’s chemical arms: Assad
19 September, 2013 – Agence France Presse

DAMASCUS/BEIRUT: President Bashar Al-Assad has said it will take at least a year and $1 billion for Syria to surrender its chemical weapons, as Al-Qaeda-linked fighters tightened their grip Thursday on a border town.

In a confident interview with US network Fox News, Assad insisted Syria was not gripped by civil war but was the victim of infiltration by foreign-backed Al-Qaeda fighters.

His latest appearance came as UN envoys debated a draft resolution that would enshrine a joint US-Russian plan to secure and neutralise his banned weapons in international law.

The plan is to be discussed at a meeting in The Hague on Friday by the world’s chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Assad insisted in the television interview that his forces had not been behind an August 21 gas attack on the Damascus suburbs that killed hundreds of civilians, but vowed nevertheless to hand over his deadly arsenal.

It was his second interview this month with US television, and one of a series of meetings with Western journalists to counter mounting political pressure from Western capitals.

After last month’s barrage of sarin-loaded rockets, which the West says was clearly launched by the regime, US President Barack Obama called for US-led punitive military strikes.

But with US lawmakers and the Western public not sold on the virtues of another Middle East military adventure, Assad’s ally Russia seized the opportunity to propose a diplomatic solution.

Pushed by President Vladimir Putin, the White House agreed to hold fire while Russia and the international community — with Assad’s agreement — draws up a disarmament plan.

Assad reiterated his pledge to cooperate, but insisted he had not been forced to do so by US threats of US action.

“I think it’s a very complicated operation, technically. And it needs a lot of money, about a billion,” he told Fox.

“So it depends, you have to ask the experts what they mean by quickly. It has a certain schedule. It needs a year, or maybe a little bit more.”

Asked why he had used force to repress a popular uprising and triggered a two-and-a-half year war that has claimed 110,000 lives, Assad insisted Syria was a victim of terrorism.

“What we have is not civil war. What we have is war. It’s a new kind of war,” he said, alleging that Islamist guerrillas from more than 80 countries had joined the fight.

“We know that we have tens of thousands of jihadists… we are on the ground, we live in this country,” he said, disputing an expert report that suggested 30,000 out of around 100,000 rebels were hardliners.

“What I can tell you is that… 80 to 90 percent of the underground terrorists are Al-Qaeda and their offshoots.”

Meanwhile, the situation on the ground became still more complex and dangerous, when — according to residents — an Al-Qaeda front group overran a Syrian border town on Wednesday.

“The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has seized complete control of Azaz. They are in control of the town’s entrances,” said Abu Ahmad, an activist inside the town.

The fighting in Azaz began when ISIS fighters tried to kidnap a German doctor working there, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which also said he is now in a safe location.

“The situation in Azaz is unchanged (Thursday),” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

“There are attempts to mediate between the factions. Azaz is home to many people who fled (the nearby city of) Aleppo,” he added.

“They want to live in a safe place, not one where anything that moves gets sniped.”

Elsewhere, roadside bombs targeting a convoy of minibuses in the central province of Homs killed at least 14 members of Assad’s Alawite minority, Abdel Rahman said.

The blast targeted two buses near the Alawite village of Jabourin, 13 km north of Homs city, he said.

While Assad pursued his media counterattack, the five UN Security Council powers held new talks on a resolution backing the Russia-US plan to destroy the chemical weapons.

Western nations, which said they are not looking for an immediate threat of force against Assad, could seek a Security Council vote this weekend if Russia agrees.

UN envoys from the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China held two hours of talks at the US mission.

“There is no accord yet, there will be more negotiations,” said one UN diplomat.

The disarmament plan will face its first big test on Saturday, the one-week deadline announced by Moscow and the United States for Assad to provide a list of his chemical facilities.

Assad said in his interview that he could provide a list “tomorrow”, and Moscow said it had received assurances that he would cooperate.

…source

Western lies, criminality unraveling in Syria

19 September, 2013 – By Finian Cunningham – PressTV

What is clear is that Western governments are shamelessly contriving partial and unsubstantiated data to fit political objectives.”

The US has accused Russia of “swimming against the tide” in persisting with its claims that foreign-backed militants in Syria committed the chemical weapons attacks, not the Syrian armed forces, as the Western governments have asserted.

In a sense, the US is correct. Russia is indeed swimming against a tide – a powerful tide of fabrication and propaganda promulgated by Washington, its Western allies and their dutiful news media.

But that tide is now subsiding, by the day, as more facts emerge about what really happened in Syria with regard to the use of chemical weapons. If Russia was swimming against a tide, the position of the US and its allies is now sinking from lies and criminality.

As each day passes, it becomes clear that Western states tried to railroad a guilty verdict on the Syrian government and thereby trigger a desired military aggression.

The Western propaganda operation went into full speed on Monday following the release of the report by the United Nations chemical weapons team, led by Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom. No sooner had that report been published than the US, British and French governments were crowing that it provided “conclusive proof” of their allegations that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had committed the mass killings on 21 August near the capital, Damascus.

The UN team did not actually state who perpetrated the chemical gas attack, but its inferences allowed others to point the finger of accusation at the Syrian army. So too did the tone of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon who called for sanctions against those who commit such crimes “against your own people”.

So, they all lined up in familiar choreography to denounce the Syrian government. The US, British and French said they were justified in calling for military strikes and that they intended incorporating such action in the recent chemical decommissioning deal worked out by Washington and Moscow. For a day or two, it seemed that the Western governments had gained the psychological upper hand.

But it is increasingly clear that the Western “certainty” over Syrian chemical weapons is an edifice built on sand. The initial Western claims were never supported by verifiable evidence, only “secret intelligence”. Now it turns out that the UN inspectors’ report upon which the Western governments have rested their case is fatally flawed.

By its own admission, the UN study was carried out hurriedly under duress and in circumstances tampered with by the Western-backed anti-government militants. In a word, its putative evidence is unreliable.

More damning is the new disclosure by the Syrian government purporting to show that the culpable party for the gas attack near Damascus is the insurgents. Syria shared this “factual evidence” with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who was in Damascus this week. Syria and Russia are to submit this information to the UN.

What is disturbing is that this latest evidence, which includes ballistic charts and chemical analysis data, was already presented to the UN team led by Sellstrom. Russia has also said that other evidence and information presented to the UN team during the investigation was ignored in its final report. That suggests that the UN team was compromised to accommodate Western political interests.

Another disclosure this week is that Moscow confirmed that it never supplied Syria with sarin gas, not even during the years of the former Soviet Union. The significance of this is that Western governments flagged up the finding in the Sellstrom report that the inspectors had recovered remains of unusual rockets with Cyrillic (Russian) lettering. The inference was that Russia supplied Syria with chemical weapons, which the Syrian army had used.

But the Kremlin denied that it has ever delivered such munitions to Syria. It said that Soviet-era rockets with Cyrillic markings of the type cited in the Sellstrom report were supplied in the past to Libya. Given that Libya is a major arms supply conduit to the Western-backed so-called rebels in Syria, this again lends credibility to the Russian and Syrian claims that the chemical gas attacks near Damascus were carried out by these groups in a provocation to elicit Western military intervention.

There are many other unanswered perturbing questions about the chemical weapons attack near Damascus last month. Who were those dead children in the videos that the West has based so much of its emotive claims on? Why were they dressed in day clothes if they were supposedly killed in the middle of the night when they should have been in their beds? Why were their corpses arranged in such an orderly way, suggesting the scene was organized for an anticipated video recording? Why are there so few adult female victims in the apparent gas attack? Where are the grieving mothers and fathers of the little ones whose bodies are stacked up in death shrouds?

More chilling is a study led by Syrian Christian figure, Mother Agnes Mariam, which cites relatives of the dead who claim that the children were abducted by militants during earlier attacks in the northwest Latakia area. In that case, the children may have been poisoned, not by rockets filled with sarin, but by premeditated murder, with the purpose of fabricating a chemical gas attack.

What this demonstrates is that the exact circumstances of the atrocity near Damascus are far from known. But what is clear is that Western governments are shamelessly contriving partial and unsubstantiated data to fit political objectives.

The rush to railroad a guilty verdict on the Syrian government shows once again that the Western objective is regime change. That objective is criminal and the means to achieve it – fabricating lies and fomenting acts of war – gravely compound the criminality. …source

Attempts to blame Assad for chemical attack are baseless, Russia says
18 September, 2013 – Shia Post

Russia says certain Western states are making baseless efforts to blame the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a chemical weapons attack that allegedly killed hundreds of people in the suburbs of Damascus last month.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich made the remarks in a statement on Tuesday, a day after the United Nations issued a report by UN investigators which said sarin nerve agent was used in the Damascus suburbs attack, without indicating who launched the attack.

Lukashevich said that the Western attempts to blame the Assad government for the attack are “simplistic and groundless”.

Earlier in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the report on the August 21 chemical weapons attack had produced no evidence that Syrian troops carried out the attack and that Russia believed foreign-backed militants were behind it.

Lavrov made the statement during a joint news conference with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius in Moscow.

The Russian foreign minister stated that the UN report proved that chemical weapons had been used, but it failed to answer a number of questions Moscow had asked such as whether the weapons were produced in a factory or they were homemade.

“We have very serious grounds to believe that this was a provocation,” Lavrov said.

He said that there had been “many provocations” by the militants fighting against the Syrian government and people. “They were all aimed, over the last two years, at provoking foreign intervention.”

Lavrov added, “We want the events of August 21 to be investigated dispassionately, objectively and professionally.”

The United States, France, Britain and the foreign-sponsored militants blamed the Syrian government for the attack near Damascus.

The Assad government has vehemently denied the accusations, saying the attack was carried out by the militants themselves as a false-flag operation.

On September 10, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said Damascus is ready to implement a Russian proposal to place its chemical weapons arsenal under international control.

The Russian government proposed the initiative during a meeting between Lavrov and Muallem in Moscow on September 9.

“We want to join the convention on the prohibition of chemical weapons. We are ready to observe our obligations in accordance with that convention, including providing all information about these weapons,” Muallem said.

In response, US President Barack Obama asked Congress to delay a vote on authorizing military action against Syria in order to give the Russian proposal a chance to play out. …source

Russia Blasts UN Inspectors for Ignoring Evidence on Syria Chemical Attacks
19 September, 2013 – FARS

TEHRAN (FNA)- UN inspectors ignored evidence on chemical weapons use in Syria secretly passed to them by Damascus, said Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister.

That is why the UN report is biased and needs reinvestigation, he said in an exclusive interview to RT.

“The Syrian authorities have conducted their own sampling and investigation, analysis in terms of possible evidence of the rebels being responsible for the tragic episodes both on August 21, but beyond that also on August 22, 23 and 24,” Sergey Ryabkov told RT’s Maria Finoshina, who caught up with him during his visit to Damascus to discuss these allegations.

Ryabkov revealed that there were actually several chemical attacks in Syria in August and that the UN inspectors, headed by Swedish scientist Dr Ake Salstrom, were informed about this, but ignored the information in their report.

“This material was discreetly handed over to Ake Salstrom, the head of the UN mission of experts here (in Syria) which came to investigate the Ghouta incidents. Salstrom was asked to look into it and eventually factor this new evidence into the final report. It never happened in fact,” Ryabkov said. “This is one of the reasons why we criticize the speed with which the report was released… and also an incomplete content of this report,” he said.

Moscow wants the UN inspectors to return to Syria and continue investigating in order to determine who was responsible for the chemical attack.

“We expect the UN Secretariat to both send Salstrom and his people back to Syria to continue investigation of the three remaining incidents, and also to write a full and comprehensive report against the background of all information they have received,” Ryabkov stressed.

He warned against the evidence provided by the Syrian and Russian sides being “simply nullified and disregarded”.

So far, Rybkov said, “one of the few areas” where the UN mission “kept its word” is that it only announced that chemical weapons were used without specifying who deployed them.

Ryabkov called on the UN inspectors to follow the approach of the Russian expert analysis of the chemical attack that took place in Syria on March 19, which was professional and contained chemical, biological and medical analysis of the incident.

The Russian deputy FM maintained that during his two-day visit to Damascus a great job has been done as Syrian authorities are firmly set to fully fulfill all the obligations, and first of all to provide information about the complete list of chemical weapons they possess by the end of this week. …more

Revolution, civil war and imperialist intervention

Statement on Syria by Marea Socialista

Wednesday 18 September 2013

This statement on Syria was issued by the Venezuelan revolutionary organization Marea Socialista (“Socialist Tide”) on 8 September 2013. Active since the beginning within the Chavista movement and the Bolivarian process, Marea Socialista is a current organized within the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela), founded by Hugo Chavez. It advocates deepening the popular process in Venezuela and mobilizes against the bureaucratization of this process. It is interesting, in this respect, to know its analysis and its positioning concerning events in Syria. Its call for the internationalist and democratic radical Left to make itself heard in a coordinated manner is also important.

Since August 21, Syria has been on the front pages of the world’s press. The killing of more than 1,400 people with chemical weapons provided the excuse for Obama to launch a criminal threat of intervention by the United States against this already martyred Middle Eastern country. A threat in which he has got himself bogged down and which for that reason is even more dangerous.

A hundred thousand dead, half a million injured and maimed, more than a million (if you count only minors less than 18 years old) refugees; that is the balance sheet of the victims caused by the dictatorship of Bashar Al-Assad since March 2011. This makes the Syrian conflict one of the most tragic of the first years of the twenty-first century. These figures are those of the reports of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and so far nobody has challenged them.

The military intervention of the United States will only add to this tragedy with a very large dose of barbarism and the definite probability of a regional explosion with incalculable consequences.

For we who look at these things from the outside, without feeling in our own flesh the anguish and the daily violence, the pain and hatred due to the daily loss of relatives, friends or companions, the desolation and destruction of a country once known as “the land of cinnamon”, the debate nevertheless unleashes raging passions and evokes a feeling of urgency faced with the dangers for humanity that an imperialist aggression represents.

How can we help stop the massacre in this country? What can we do to prevent the imperialist intervention which will cause a great new leap in the spiral of violence that strikes primarily the Syrian people and those of the region? What can we do to help ensure that this people which rose up against decades of oppression manages to achieve its objective? The answers to these questions, as to so many others, cut across the bitter debates that are develop in the so-called “Left” on a world scale.

The crisis of the capitalist system of domination, open from the 2007 financial crisis onwards, has initiated a new period of rebellion. A period of struggles and protests that have in their turn triggered revolutionary processes against governments and regimes in different countries of the world and challenged the traditional political organizations and institutions of capitalist governance. But they have also triggered counter-revolutions and wars whose purpose is to crush the rise of this new process of struggle of the peoples and their desire and determination for change.

In this new stage on a world level, the Arab Spring , that is to say, the process of democratic and anti-capitalist revolutions which has liquidated the old status quo that had lasted for more than five decades in the Near and Middle East, is the first regional laboratory for the confrontation between revolution and counter-revolution. The cost in human lives of the barbarism caused by dictators, by monarchs, by the fascist state of Israel and the leaders of world imperialism would be all for nothing if we do not learn the bitter lessons that these processes themselves provide us with.

In our opinion, we are in the presence of a long-term process, whose development will consist of advances and retreats. A process which, with its peculiarities, different rhythms and distinct time scales, will continue to spread steadily. That is why the direct military intervention that U.S. imperialism is preparing for Syria is intended, among other objectives, to strike at a regional revolutionary process of which we must seek the origin in the structural crisis of capitalism, which has been open and visible since 2007.

Identify the root causes of the present conflict; identify the sectors in conflict and the role of each driving force; understand the internal dynamics of the forces, build an active solidarity in order to support the revolutionaries who are fighting over there: all this is so much raw material for the debate we must conduct so as to dispel the darkness caused by the big imperialist propaganda media and those of the Syrian hereditary dictatorship and its allies. At the risk of being unilateral, the contribution to the debate that we want to make with this text must be seen in relation to our position in Bolivarian Venezuela and our struggle in defence of the conquests of the revolutionary process in our country.

Syria: A chapter of the Arab revolution

The outbreak of the first popular protests in Syria in March 2011 followed, with its own peculiarities, the model and the goals of the rebellions in Tunisia and Egypt. Popular mobilizations which became transformed into massive rebellions demanding freedom, social justice and dignity.

At that point, the expansive wave of what was called the Arab Spring included several countries in the region: Yemen, Morocco, Bahrain, Libya, in addition to the two countries already mentioned, Tunisia and Egypt. Nobody dared to talk then, in the Syrian case, of foreign intervention, except for the participation of Russia, which has from the beginning provided military support to the regime in Damascus. After a month of protests, the repression unleashed by the Syrian government had already left a balance sheet of 3,000 fatalities among protesters.

The semi-legal opposition, tolerated by the government of the Assad clan, rushed to his aid and concocted, in concert with the regime, a relative and manipulative policy of opening, embodied in a new constitution designed to give the regime a democratic facade. This did not prevent increasingly cruel and disproportionate repression, which accumulated victims by the hundreds each week, nor did it stop the protests that took shape and grew in number and combativeness. As events unfolded, even the so-called reforms granted with this pusillanimous opposition were considered unnecessary by Assad, with the cynical argument that the Syrian people had not asked for them.

The criminal NATO intervention in Libya, the brutal absorption of the process in Yemen, the cosmetic reforms in Morocco, the crushing of the revolt in Bahrain by forces from Saudi Arabia, the cruel crescendo of violence in Syria, the coup d’état in Egypt; all this has not so far put a stop to the wave of revolts that toppled Ben Ali and Mubarak, and has not “stabilized” the region.

Quite the contrary: in a few months, this process has liquidated the old status quo laboriously built up by the United States in the region with its Western allies, Israel and the monarchies and dictatorships that have ruled the region over the past fifty years. A status quo that was, from its inception, backed by the USSR, which no longer exists. A status quo that was first shaken by the Iranian revolution against the Shah and that Bush Jr. tried to restore with the occupation of Iraq, which is now an obvious failure. Between January and June, 2011, in scarcely six months, this chessboard, shaky but supported for decades by the United States in order to ensure their control of a region that is strategic because of its natural resources and its geographical location, vanished.

This is the framework in which the Syrian revolution became a civil war, or an armed conflict, and then became the terrain of tragic intervention by global and regional powers. In the first place, and from the beginning of the revolution, there was support in weapons and equipment provided by Russia to a Syrian government that was supposedly “legitimate” in the eyes of “international law”, but had demonstrated over the last thirty years, for those who had eyes to see, its character as a bloodstained regime. Since then, the spiral of horror has been completed with the present U.S. threat of massive destruction.

An atypical civil war

The civil war in the United States in the late nineteenth century, the one in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution and the Spanish Civil War between Republicans and Nationalists, to mention only a few examples, were characterized on both sides by relatively concentrated political and military command centres. This is not the case of the rebel camp in the civil war in Syria.

The evolution of the Syrian revolution followed the “model” of the Arab Spring: mass mobilizations that extended to the rest of the country from the cities where the rebellion began. The peaceful nature of the demonstrations was defended by the Local Coordination Committees until the repression had gone from the use of snipers and assassinations in the street to the direct intervention of the armed forces of the regime, acting as an army of occupation in their own country and using all the weapons that one of the best equipped armies in the region had at its disposal. The peaceful protests gave way to armed defence on the part of the population, which tried and is still trying to resist inside the country. But this armed defence is atomized, local and extremely defensive.

A rejection of the first massacres caused desertions from the armed forces of the regime and a military centre of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was installed in Turkey and began to try to organize a defence force of the revolution. But the FSA brigades operating within the country do so on the basis of local criteria and needs, without answering to a general plan and a single command, which moreover does not really exist.

Without a single national centre of the rebellion in the country, with a political leadership abroad paralyzed by insurmountable political and tactical differences, with its military forces acting without connection and without central control; such a situation favoured the intervention of sectarian and extremist foreign militias who answer to those who finance and arm them and conduct a political and ideological struggle that corresponds only to their own interests. These takfiri extremist forces, funded by Qatar and Saudi Arabia , just like the militias linked to Al Qaeda, act in the interests of these monarchies and try to direct the war in agreement with them, but their objectives and conceptions are rejected by the Syrian people.

So, without being able to build a unified political leadership or a single military command, the revolutionary Syrian people has been driven to exchange the peaceful nature of its engagement for armed defence of the revolution in order to confront the regime’s brutality. Much more than a conventional civil war, we are confronted with the armed defence of a revolution attacked in a ferocious manner by all the destructive force of the state apparatus.

We reject imperialist intervention because it goes against the revolution

Contrary to what Assad claims, the main objective of the military intervention planned by the U.S. is not the overthrow of the Syrian regime. Obama says his aim is to lead a punitive action against Damascus, but we cannot really believe that. Instead, Assad’s fall could be considered by imperialism as collateral damage if it happened as a result of its military intervention.

The main concern of this old and weakened imperialism, still dominant in the world, is the uncertainty affecting this region and the participation of a large number of forces that have their own interests: Russia, China, Iran, Israel, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda, etc. According to the North American logic, none of these forces, with the exception of Israel, should impose itself on the others, at the risk of challenging the Yankee world domination.

On the other hand, as the main counter-revolutionary force, the United States cannot allow the process of regional rebellion to develop. It is for this reason that it justifies and treats in a friendly way the government resulting from the military coup in Egypt, it goes along with the various currents of political Islam that are subordinated to capital, as in the case of Tunisia or previously, of Morsi in Egypt. It facilitated the repression in Yemen and encouraged Saudi Arabia to intervene militarily in Bahrain.

It is certainly not the alleged “anti- imperialism” of the dictatorship in Damascus that worries Obama. Nor is it the false socialism of the state party that governs Syria, a country that, before the conflict, had 40 per cent of its population living below the poverty line. Nor is it a plan for gradual domination of the region. It is on the contrary the conviction that the extension of the rebellion that began in Tunisia in late 2010, and which has spread in this historically volatile region of the world, can put an end to the puppet totalitarian regimes that oppress these peoples and lead to the questioning of the very existence of the criminal state of Israel.

That is why we support these peoples and this revolutionary process, which Obama also wants to strike with his intervention against the rebellious, heroic, martyred Syrian people, and this is why we emphatically reject imperialist intervention.

The erroneous argumentation of comrades who support Bashar al-Assad

For comrades who only see the bloody imperialism of the United States, the world is something simple and predictable and history repeats itself like an endless wheel. They see the international reality as a black and white photograph between on the one hand the intentions, hopes and policies of Obama – or any Yankee president – and the rest of humanity on the other. They do not seem to have learned yet of the death of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, or the restoration of capitalism in Russia and China, or the global crisis that erupted in 2007 and is the most serious crisis of the last hundred years. They close their eyes to a process of regional rebellion that has lasted two and a half years. And when they talk about it, they describe it as a plan meticulously designed by the United States, which they present as omniscient and omnipotent, thus despising the popular revolts.

The arguments of these sectors rely fundamentally on the denial of facts and reality. For them, there is no real civil war in Syria, but they publish in abundance photographs of “rebels killing Syrian soldiers.” There was no use of chemical weapons, but at the same time they assert that “only the rebels have used them.” They characterize as identical the foreign fundamentalist brigades and forces which oppress and act against the objectives of the revolution, and the rebel Syrian people, thus justifying Assad’s repression against this people.

They say that if we do not defend Assad, we are necessarily in the camp of the imperialist intervention. They argue that there is not a massive sector of the Syrian people who reject the regime and as proof of this, they say that Assad is still in power. But they overlook the fact that the regime maintains itself by conducting a massacre against a poorly armed people and by the destruction of much of the country.

They do not speak of the figures advanced by UN bodies such as UNHCR, which estimate the number of victims at more than 100,000 dead , two million refugees and half a million wounded. But they demand that the UN publishes the report of its inspectors on chemical weapons and that it finds a political solution to the conflict. A conflict whose nature, besides, they deny.

And those who have no problem denying the dictatorial nature of the regime of this hereditary republic justify its defence in the name of the “lesser evil.”

This superficial and conspiratorial view of history is at the same time intolerant with those who, though in the camp of the opposition to imperialist intervention, think differently and do not accept to defend the Assad clan. And when their arguments fall short, they spend their time discrediting, making groundless accusations against and criminalizing those who have different opinions.

The need to make the voice of the radical Left heard

We do not take it upon ourselves – and we think it would be a mistake and a lack of respect for those who are struggling in the region – to enter into tactical discussions. We believe that we must respect the views of those who, in the ongoing popular processes, defend revolutionary objectives. That is why we call for this statement signed by organizations from different countries in the region, and among them Syria, [1] to be made known widely.

However, we cannot limit ourselves to expressing our rejection of imperialist intervention and solidarity with the Syrian people in their struggle. There are many of us in the world who have, since the beginning of the Arab Spring, supported unconditionally these revolts. But we have so far done so in isolation from each other, each in our own countries, where we live. For we who struggle against capital, the recovery of the internationalist tradition is a fundamental task in order to confront the new times that are emerging today. A first step in reviving this tradition is the need to create spaces for discussion and for joint action and solidarity that has an international impact.

If we do not act, the position of those sectors of the Left in the world who support the Syrian regime will represent a debt that the mass movement will make all those who situate themselves on the left pay, without distinction.

It is necessary for the voice of the radical Left to be heard on the level of its real power. So that the peoples who are struggling in the world can see that there is a different Left; plural, democratic, anticapitalist, genuinely committed against imperialist brutality and against all forms of barbarism.

Behind the toxic clouds that cover today the daily life and death of the rebel Syrian people, our duty is to take steps forward, towards an international coming together of the radical Left, which acts as an amplifier of the cry for freedom and the dignity that comes from deep within the collective memory of the peoples who are struggling .

A necessary clarification concerning the attacks against Santiago Alba Rico

It is unfortunate that from within our Bolivarian process voices have been raised, attacking Santiago Alba Rico. By distorting his positions, they use them to discredit him and present them as purported evidence of a pro-imperialist posture. These are the same people who, short of arguments, discredit those who think otherwise and want to cast doubt on his political and intellectual honesty, almost accusing him of being an imperialist agent.

Santiago Alba Rico lives in Tunisia: he is a writer, a philosopher and an activist of the Arab Spring. A friend of the Bolivarian Revolution, he was invited to Venezuela on several occasions by the government of President Chavez to participate in the jury of the Libertador Prize for Critical Thinking. He was part of the organizing committee of the last Forum against the Debt of the Countries of the Mediterranean, held in Tunis. He is a member of the Freedom Flotilla in Solidarity with Palestine. He is a friend of the Cuban Revolution and of the processes that are opposed to neoliberalism in Latin America. In a recent article, Atilio Borón, winner of the Libertador Prize for Critical Thinking in 2013, defended his integrity as a left-wing activist, although he does not share his position.

Marea Socialista, which includes Santiago among its friends on the international level, wants to express here its solidarity. We also reject any kind of accusatory insults in the debate over ideas, as well as the intention of suppressing critical internationalism and the aim of imposing a single thought based on dogmatic illusions and not on the facts of reality, honestly analyzed and verified.

Carlos Carcione, Stalin Pérez, Juan García, Zuleika Matamoros, Gonzalo Gómez, Alexander Marin

Caracas, September 8, 2013 …source

Bahrain’s rebellion continues in spite of domestic and regional pressures
14 September, 2013 – Anna Jacobs – Morocco World News

Charlottesville, Virginia – Arab League names Bahrain as destination for the Pan-Arab Human Rights Court in the midst of increasing limitations to freedom of assembly and on-going talks between the Saudi supported government and Shia opposition forces over political reform

As the debate over diplomatic solutions and possible military intervention in Syria continues, developments in other countries have taken a second place in international news. However, one event struck me as particularly interesting and especially nonexistent in the US media: Bahrain has been chosen to host a pan-Arab human rights court. This choice was made at an Arab League meeting in Cairo and announced by the official Bahrain News Agency at the beginning of September.

Aljazeera English cited the Bahrain foreign minister as saying that “The initiative to establish the court stems from the King’s firm belief in the importance of human rights and basic human liberties,” which was naturally met with much criticism from human rights activists in the country, as well as internationally, after King Hamad Al-Khalifa went to the Gulf Council Cooperation (GCC) to seek help in smothering Bahrain’s political uprisings in 2011. Protests broke out in the country’s capital Manama, in Pearl Square, during the early months of the Arab Spring, calling for greater political freedoms and an end to the royal family’s absolute power. As a response to the King’s request at the GCC, both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sent troops in to suppress the peaceful protestors.

The US and Gulf countries; a marriage of convenience

The subsequent crackdown on human rights defenders, as well as medical professionals that treated the protestors, has become infamous and a stain on the country’s reputation. However, as Maryam AlKhawaja, the acting head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, argued, the lack of criticism from major western governments is nothing new.

“The Gulf states are not held accountable for their human rights abuses. No one will take this seriously. For them to have a court such as this is a slap in the face to those who have documented abuses in Bahrain, for which there have been no consequences.” She was quoted as saying by Aljazeera English. In other words, the choice of Bahrain as the locale for the pan-Arab Human Rights Courts and the lack of debate over this choice among both Arab and western governments represents a status-quo event of hypocritical hype—which all too often characterizes western relations with Gulf countries, epitomized by the US-Saudi alliance.

As the Shia majority called for political change against a Saudi allied Sunni monarchy, the United States found itself attempting to formulate a “diplomatic” response to the widespread violence, arrest and imprisonment of activists and doctors, and the Saudi led military crackdown in the country. The monument in the Pearl Square was also torn down, in an attempt to emphasize the royal family’s iron fist backed by a legion of supporting GCC-sanctioned tanks.

Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa claimed that the demolition of the monument, signifying the nation’s history as a location of pearl diving and a symbol of Arab Spring revolutionary fervor against autocracy, was an exercise in “restoring law and order” in typical despotic fashion.

US reaction to the crackdown was especially dismissal, even compared to the reactionary positions taken by officials as dictators were taken down in both Tunisia and Egypt. “Stunned” US officials advised Bahrain to show “restraint” after a particularly violent suppression of protests in April 2011. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed the government to quickly initiate a reform process that “advances the rights and aspirations of all the citizens of Bahrain.” Yet the US government never recalled its ambassador or mentioned the threat of sanctions, and this was at the height of the Arab Spring’s revolutionary zeal. In the over two years since this bloody event, the US has remained more or less silent on the subject of oppression in the island kingdom. The reason for this, of course, relates to the government’s general relationship with Gulf countries as a regional supplier of oil, an ally against hostile governments such as Iran and Syria’s Al-Assad, and the strategic significance of Bahrain in particular, as the location of the United States Fifth Naval Fleet.

The Tamarod Bahrain Movement

Mobilization against the Bahrain government has nonetheless continued in various forms for the last two and a half years, and the country’s own Tamarod movement was begun by activists on August 14th of this year. The government’s response to this initiative was a series of draconian laws restricting the freedom of assembly, to such a point that it was essentially a fiction, while also threatening to remove citizenship rights and apply severe sentences to opposition party members.

In reaction to these oppressive security measures, Tamarod Bahrain Movement leader Hussein Youssef told the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir that “Aug. 14 marked the launch of a political project that will endure no matter how complicated the security situation becomes, because our reliance is on the strategy of popular street action, which does not end even if the movement’s leadership is arrested.”

Regional influences on government-opposition talks

After a two month break in talks between the Bahraini opposition and government officials, they were reignited again on August 28, with a mind to both the domestic and regional situation. The sectarian nature of the Syrian conflict, especially the intensified Sunni Shia dichotomy, has strong implications on talks between the government and the opposition in Bahrain. A former Bahraini opposition member of Parliament, Abdulhadi Khalaf, who was also stripped of his citizenship by Bahrain’s King this year, described this dynamic to al-Monitor:

“The longer the Syrian crisis goes on, the bigger its implications for Bahrain. Inciting against the Alawites in Syria goes hand-in-hand with demonizing the Shiites in Bahrain….Before the Arab Spring, no one in Bahrain, no matter how arrogant, would have dared to call the opposition apostates. But that is normal today. The incitement campaigns aimed at raising funds or recruiting militants to fight in Syria have catalyzed and hardened the discourse of sectarian confrontation. Resolving the crisis in Syria through a regional and international agreement (Geneva II, for example) would make it easier to propose the same mechanism to resolve the crisis in Bahrain.” …more

Bahrain opposition leader arrested, charged with inciting terrorism
By Mohammed Jamjoom and Samira Said – CNN 18 Septemebr, 2013

(CNN) — A leading opposition figure in Bahrain has been jailed after being charged with “inciting and advocating terrorism,” Bahrain’s Public Prosecution Office said. Activists in the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom, however, insist the charges against Khalil Al Marzooq are politically motivated and accuse the country’s leadership of attempting to stifle dissent.

Al Marzooq, secretary general of Al-Wefaq, the main Shia opposition party, was arrested Tuesday after being interrogated about a speech he delivered last week. According to BNA, Bahrain’s official news agency, he was summoned to a police station, questioned and then referred to the Public Prosecution Office.

In a statement, the office accused Al Marzooq of being “affiliated with the terrorist organization” and added that he had been “speaking at many forums, inciting and promoting terrorist acts, advocating principles which incite such acts, supporting violence committed by the terrorist coalition, and legally justifying criminal activities.”

Taher Al-Mosawi, the head of Al-Wefaq’s media center, says that Al Marzooq did not incite violence and that Bahrain opposition parties are suspending participation in national dialogue.

Al-Wefaq called the government’s actions in regard to Al Marzooq “reckless” and “a clear targeting of political action in Bahrain.” The party added in a statement that it believes his detention is, in part, a reaction to a European Parliament resolution passed last week regarding the human rights situation in Bahrain.

On a mission: Oppression in Bahrain

That resolution called for “the respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Bahrain” and urged Bahraini authorities “to immediately end all acts of repression, release all prisoners of conscience, and respect the rights of juveniles.”

European Parliament member Marietje Schaake told CNN that “the lack of progress in terms of dialogue and reforms towards the rule of law and respect for human rights in Bahrain continue to be of great concern to the European Parliament.”

Schaake spearheaded the effort to get the resolution passed. “For the sake of the well-being of all people in Bahrain,” she said, “and for the future of the country, the crackdown on peaceful demonstrations must end. The blanket ban on assembly in Manama is not helping reconciliation, either.”

Bahraini opposition activists say that Al Marzooq’s arrest is just the latest in a country where many prominent dissidents have been jailed in the past two years and that it only underscores how tense the situation remains in Bahrain. …more