West’s damning silence over Bahrain
1 October, 2013 – By Finian Cunningham – PressTV

Obama probably felt obliged to make some mention of Bahrain in his UN address only because the human rights situation there is so dire, for him not to throw a few token words of concern would have left him open to derision, especially since the US Navy Fifth Fleet is stationed there and Washington plies the regime with millions of dollars worth of weaponry and commerce.”

Bahrain’s despotic Al Khalifa rulers have gone into a huff over US President Barack Obama’s comparison of the Persian Gulf island state with Syria.

In his address to the UN General Assembly last week, Obama made vague mention of sectarianism in Syria and Bahrain in the same sentence.

The funny thing is that the Bahraini dictatorship is right in a way, but for all the wrong reasons. Bahrain is nothing like Syria.

That’s because Bahrain represents a genuine case of a peaceful pro-democracy movement being crushed by a despised tyrant. That’s the narrative that the Western governments and their propaganda mainstream media apply erroneously to Syria; but when it comes to Bahrain, where the narrative is truly applicable, the West turns a blind eye and develops a curious speech impediment.

Obama probably felt obliged to make some mention of Bahrain in his UN address only because the human rights situation there is so dire, for him not to throw a few token words of concern would have left him open to derision, especially since the US Navy Fifth Fleet is stationed there and Washington plies the regime with millions of dollars worth of weaponry and commerce.

Nevertheless, the US president’s contemptibly few words on Bahrain, betray a disgraceful complicity of silence by Washington and the West generally towards the Khalifa regime’s crimes against its long-suffering people.

Yet, such is the arrogance of the buffoonish Bahraini autocrats they went into a huff over Obama’s pathetic paucity of criticism.

This week, Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa tried to go on the offensive, telling the UN assembly that the so-called kingdom is a society “based on cooperation, not confrontation.” Sheikh Khalid deserved a standing ovation for brazenness.

As his name indicates, the Bahraini diplomat is a royal member of the Khalifa monarchy. This family has ruled over Bahrain ever since the island gained nominal independence from Britain in 1971. The Khalifa appointed itself as a monarchy and assigned grandiose titles, such as “king” and “crown prince,” “prime minister” and “foreign minister.”

And they have held on to these baubles through hereditary cronyism, becoming super rich in the process, without any form of democratic accountability.

Bahrain is an oil-producing minnow when compared with the natural endowments of Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Iran. But the modest oil and gas wealth of Bahrain has been enough to make the Khalifa family and its hangers-on incredibly enriched. For example, the unelected prime minister since 1971, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman, also known as “Mister Fifty-Fifty” because of his notorious penchant for bribes and backhanders, is reckoned to be one of the wealthiest individuals in the world.

That is something of an achievement for a clan of imposters that the majority of indigenous Bahrainis have time and again repudiated. The Khalifas originally invaded Bahrain 230 years ago as a marauding tribe of sea pirates. They subjugated the Bahraini population and its proud Persian culture under the sword and with the brute help of the British Empire. …more

Russia Warns of More Gas Use by Syria Militants
30 September, 2013 – Shia Post

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow has serious suspicions that foreign-backed militants fighting in Syria will continue attempts to use chemical weapons in the Arab country.

“We have serious suspicions that these attempts (to use chemical weapons) will continue,” Lavrov said in an interview with the Russian Kommersant daily published on Monday.

He added that the US has not produced any evidence on the Syrian government’s role in last month’s chemical attack.

Washington had threatened to take military action against Syria over a claim that the Syrian government had been behind a deadly chemical attack near Damascus on August 21.

Syria strongly rejected the allegation, saying the attack had been carried out by the foreign-backed militants to draw in outside military intervention.

“They did not produce it to us. Meanwhile, we produced the evidence we have (received through our own channels, from Syrians and from independent sources) that prompts the conclusion that it is handiwork of the opposition.”

The top Russian diplomat, whose country is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, noted that the new UN resolution on Syria does not imply the use of force.

The UN Security Council on September 27 unanimously approved a resolution to avert a US-led military strike against Syria. The resolution condemned the use of chemical weapons in the country and called for their elimination.

The resolution came after days of intense negotiations between the United States and Russia and does not fall under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which regulates the use of military force.

“At the meeting with the UN Secretary General and with the five permanent members of the Security Council and at the Security Council session itself we stressed that the countries acting as sponsors of the opposition in the political, financial and military respects bear responsibility for it not trying to lay hands on some stocks of chemical weapons, to receive it from somewhere abroad or stage provocations within Syria to shift the blame on the government, arouse general anger and thus try to provoke an outside strike at Syria,” said Lavrov.

Lavrov said that in compliance with the new UN resolution “any abuses permitted by any side –the Syrian government or the militants — must be reported to the UN Security Council after a thorough investigation.”

“This also applies to the use of chemical weapons by, God forbid, anyone,” he added.

Lavrov further said that Moscow is glad that despite initial resistance from western states, the new resolution includes the approval of Geneva Communiqué, which calls for an end to the Syrian crisis through negotiations.

Foreign-sponsored militancy has gripped Syria for over two years and the turmoil has taken its toll on the lives of many people across the country. …source

Time to turn table on West warmongers
By Finian Cunningham – 29 September, 2013 – PressTV

Notable is the reiterated inclusion of members of the present government. This provision scotches, at least legally speaking, the Western agenda of regime change through covert terrorism. It pours egg on the face of the likes of John Kerry, William Hague and Laurent Fabius who have been harping on about Assad standing down and “having no place on this earth.””

US President Barack Obama described the latest Security Council resolution on Syrian chemical weapons as “a huge victory for the world”. It certainly was a huge victory for diplomacy over war, to the relief of the world’s people.

But for Obama to seek credit in the passing of this resolution is contemptible. It was a defeat for warmongers led by the likes of Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry, who were clamoring for unilateral missile strikes on Syria.

Also among those defeated are the American warmonger puppets of Britain and France, David Cameron and Francois Hollande. Nursing wounded egos are those other cheerleaders of American imperialism, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Recall that only a few weeks ago, these protagonists and proxies were on the cusp of launching an all-out criminal war of aggression on the Syrian Arab Republic.

Some of these warmongers seem to still retain residual fantasies of a military attack. President Obama hasm since the signing of the UN Security Council resolution last Friday, warned that Syria’s government will “face consequences” if it does not comply with the disarmament of its chemical weapons stockpile.

The Israeli minister of military affairs Moshe Yaalon went even further, reportedly telling media “after dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons, the regime in Damascus must be changed”.

The truth is that the UN resolution successfully de-fangs the warmongers. They now sound like sore losers whose diminishing threats are impotent attempts at flexing muscle. In this regard, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has safely steered the American war machine off the road.

In the wording of the resolution, which is binding to all parties, there is no mention of the use of military force. Use of force was precisely what Washington and its puppets and cheerleaders were threatening. Now there is a legal framework in place where such threats have been excluded.

Admittedly, in the final provision of the resolution, number 21, it is stated “in the event of non-compliance with this resolution, including unauthorized transfer of chemical weapons, or any use of chemical weapons by anyone in the Syrian Arab Republic, [permits] to impose measures under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter”.

The ominous Chapter VII may, in theory, lead to military force. But that eventuality would require another unanimous resolution, which Russia and China will veto.

This is no guarantee that the warmongers will not persist at some stage in the future with their plans of aggression and regime change in Syria. After all there are countless laws and charters already in existence for many decades that prohibit illegal violence, but which have not deterred American, British, French or Israeli terrorism.

Nevertheless, Resolution 2118 on Syria is an important impediment to the illicit war agenda and raises the political price for parties that might try to embark on a belligerent path. This is in the crucial context of worldwide public opposition to the warpath. No less important is that the American and European public is trenchantly against any such bellicose adventurism by rogue leaders.

In that way, the resolution is not so much a framework that puts Syria’s chemical weapons under international control but rather it puts American lawlessness and recourse to unilateral aggression, or state terrorism, under international control.

There are more positive aspects. For a start, if we accept the assumption that the Syrian government did not use or has no intention of using chemical weapons and that it has signed up in good faith to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, then there will be no such contingency as “non-compliance”.

The Syrian government has therefore found a legal way to safely dispose of a dangerous liability in the form of its chemical munitions stockpile. Maintaining this arsenal imposes unnecessary financial costs on the Syrian government. In an analogous way to Iran’s argument that nuclear weapons are an obsolete instrument at this point in history, so too it can be said about chemical weapons. To get rid of them is thus a relief from a burden.

The beauty is that this seeming concession is actually a gain, while the West’s concession of disposing its war plans is obviously a double gain for Syria. …more

Bahrain FM openly calls for assassinating Hezbollah Chief Nasrallah
29 September, 2013 – Shia Post

Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, urged on his Twitter account the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, calling it “a national and religious duty.”

According to the Tweet inconsistent with all international norms, Al-Khalifa’s minister said that Sayyed Nasrallah “is terrorist and declares war on his nation,” the official Bahrain News Agency reported.

The minister’s statements followed Sayyed Nasrallah’s latest speech in which he touched on several topics, mainly the situation in Syria and Bahrain.

Observers believe that the Bahraini authorities should settle its internal problems and meet the demands of the protesters, rather than marketing problems and accusations to others, especially Hezbollah, the Lebanese party of Resistance which constitute the spearhead in facing the Zionist occupation. …source

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks to the United Nations Security Council after it unanimously voted in favor of a resolution eradicating Syria’s chemical arsenal during a Security Council meeting at the 68th United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 27, 2013

Russia says to push for Mideast free of mass-destruction weapons
By Steve Gutterman – Reuters – 29 September, 2013

Russia wants to revive plans for a conference on ridding the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction now that Syria has pledged to abandon its chemical arms, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in comments published on Monday.

Such a move could put Moscow at odds with Washington which announced the conference would be delayed last year. Analysts said it feared the event would be used to criticize its ally Israel, believed to be the region’s only nuclear-armed state.

Russia has been pushing to extend its influence in the Middle East. It initiated a U.N. deal to get Syria to abandon its chemical arms after Washington threatened military strikes to punish Damascus for a sarin gas attack on rebel areas.

“We will seek to have this conference take place,” Lavrov said in an interview with the Russian daily Kommersant.

Lavrov said Syria’s agreement to destroy its chemical weapons by next June should trigger a broader effort.

“In the current situation, it is particularly important to make the … non-possession of weapons of mass destruction universal in this explosive region,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Syria’s government always viewed its long-undeclared chemical arsenal as a counterweight to the nuclear arms Israel is believed to possess. Israel has never acknowledged having atomic weapons.

DIVIDED POWERS

A plan for a meeting to lay the groundwork for the possible creation of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction was agreed in 2010, co-sponsored by Russia, the United States and Britain.

But Washington said the meeting would be delayed just before it was due to start at the end of last year. No new date has been announced.

“Our American partners baulked and sidestepped this,” Lavrov said in the interview, published the same day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to meet U.S. President Barack Obama.

The United States also rejected a Russian proposal to include a line in a U.N. Security Council resolution saying that Syria’s plan to scrap chemical weapons was an important step toward a WMD-free Middle East, Lavrov told Kommersant.

Russia has been Syria’s biggest diplomatic ally during the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad that has killed more than 100,000 people.

Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem called for the creation of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction but said it was “unachievable without the accession of Israel”.

Arab states such as Egypt and Bahrain have made similar calls in speeches at the General Assembly.

But U.S. and Israeli officials see Iran’s nuclear activity as the main proliferation threat in the Middle East.

They have said a nuclear-free zone could not be a reality until there was broad Arab-Israeli peace and Tehran curbed its nuclear program, which they fear is aimed at developing nuclear weapons capability.

Washington remained committed to working toward a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems, the U.S. envoy to the U.N. nuclear agency said earlier this month. …source

Mission Accomplished? Syria, the Anti-War Movement, and the Spirit of Internationalism
30 September, 2013 – Huffington Post

The American peace movement has been celebrating what it sees as its victory on Syria. “The U.S. is not bombing Syria, as we certainly would have been if not for a huge mobilization of anti-war pressure on the president and especially on Congress,” writes Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). This represents “an extraordinary, unforeseen victory for the global anti-war movement,” she goes on, one that “we should be savoring.” Robert Naiman of the organization Just Foreign Policy vaunts “How We Stopped the U.S. Bombing of Syria”.

This turn of events is “something extraordinary – even historic,” writes my good friend Stephen Kinzer, coming from a different but overlapping perspective. “Never in modern history have Americans been so doubtful about the wisdom of bombing, invading or occupying another country,” writes the author of the classic Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. “This is an exciting moment,” he rhapsodizes, “the start of a new, more realistic approach to foreign policy.”

The tireless progressive journalist David Sirota, whom I admire a lot, extols “How the Antiwar Majority Stopped Obama.” The opposition of “angry Americans” to the administration’s push for a military strike, he contends, proved “absolutely critical” and is “why there now seems to be a possibility of avoiding yet another war in the Middle East.”

I completely understand this jubilance. And yet it leaves me feeling uneasy.

Let me be clear: I too was against the Obama administration’s proposed military strike on Syria. I thought it strange that after two and a half years of doing essentially nothing about the deepening crisis in Syria, the White House suddenly decided to act with such a sense of urgency that it was unwilling to wait for the United Nations inspection team to complete its job. As if the world should just trust American claims about weapons of mass destruction. That went really well last time.

I also thought chemical weapons were exactly the wrong issue. To paraphrase Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center, why draw a “red line” at the use of chemical weapons but not at 100,000 dead? Or at two and a half years of crimes against humanity? The vast majority of the civilians killed since the Syrian uprising began in March of 2011 have died by means of conventional, not chemical weapons.

I agreed wholeheartedly with the International Crisis Group that the Obama administration’s case for action was based on “reasons largely divorced from the interests of the Syrian people,” who “have suffered from far deadlier mass atrocities during the course of the conflict without this prompting much collective action in their defence.”

Hinging its case on chemical weapons turned out to be a huge strategic mistake as well. Russia cleverly short-circuited the Obama administration, taking advantage of the thinness of its case. So Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles will be removed from the equation – then what? The Assad killing machine, which was overwhelmingly non-chemical to begin with, can continue unfettered on its rampage. Chemical weapons issue – solved. The killing fields of Syria – no end in sight. …more