Just International

US-Backed Regime In Yemen Carries Out: New Slaughter Of Protesters

5 April, 2011

WSWS.org

The regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, which continues to enjoy the support of the Obama administration and other Western powers, carried out another massacre of anti-government demonstrators Monday, in the southwestern city of Taiz.

The exact number of the dead is unknown, as police reportedly removed some of the bodies in their vehicles, but the head of a makeshift hospital in the city’s center told Agence France-Presse that at least 17 people were killed and dozens wounded when police and military opened fire on tens of thousands of protesters. Other sources indicated that 30 people remained in critical condition.

Monday’s incident was the worst atrocity carried out by the Saleh regime since the murder of at least 52 demonstrators in the capital city of Sanaa on March 18.

Photographs reveal an immense crowd flooding the streets of Taiz, a city of some 460,000 near the Mandab Strait that connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. The protesters, demanding the departure of the dictator Saleh, were attacked near the provincial governor’s headquarters, as they marched toward Freedom Square.

A Washington Post reporter spoke to Yaser Alnusari, a medic in Taiz, who explained that the “first four of the protesters who were killed were shot by snipers at the governor’s office.… The protesters were in tens of thousands and were protesting on most of the main streets in Taiz. They were condemning the violent actions that took place against them yesterday.” On Sunday, security forces in Taiz killed two demonstrators and wounded several others.

The Post noted that televised images showed “police clutching guns, tear gas canisters and batons [targeting] unarmed protesters marching toward a provincial government building.”

MSNBC reported that “Witnesses described troops and gunmen, some on nearby rooftops, firing wildly on thousands of protesters who marched past the governor’s headquarters in Taiz.… Some—including elderly people—were trampled and injured as the crowds tried to flee, witnesses said.”

The MSNBC account, based on Associated Press and Reuters reports, cited the comment of Omar al-Saqqaf, who was in the crowd: “It was heavy gunfire from all directions. Some were firing from the rooftop of the governor’s building.” Al-Saqqaf “said he saw military police load the bodies of two slain protesters into a car and then speed away.”

A 47-year-old engineer, Abdul Habib al-Qadasy, told AP, “There were people dressed in both soldier uniforms and civilian clothes shooting live bullets from rooftops.”

The military has blocked entrances to the city and surrounded Freedom Square with tanks and armored vehicles, arresting anyone who tries to leave. Taiz has been the scene of continual protests and sit-ins over the past six weeks aimed at bringing down the Saleh government.

In the western Yemeni city of Hudaida on Monday, security forces also violently set on anti-Saleh demonstrators—who were marching in solidarity with Sunday’s victims in Taiz—and wounded dozens with gunshots and blows from rocks and truncheons. Some 400 other people in the country’s fourth largest city, a port on the Red Sea, had to be treated for tear gas inhalation.

An unnamed eyewitness in Hudaida told Reuters, “They [the protesters] suddenly gathered around the province’s administrative building and headed to the presidential palace, but police stopped them by firing gunshots in the air and using tear gas. I saw a lot of plain-clothes police attack them too.”

The National (Abu Dhabi) reports that a general strike was called and largely observed April 3 in Aden in southern Yemen, as well as Taiz. The newspaper commented, “Workers and students appeared to abide by calls for a general strike yesterday in Aden and in Taiz, another southern city, witnesses and media reported.… According to witnesses, several streets in Aden were blocked and dozens of shops were closed in response to the opposition’s calls to shut down the city.” Further media accounts report that residents of Sheikh Othman, Mansora, Crater, Mualla, and other districts of Aden were on strike and all public and private offices were closed.

More than 100 people have been killed by security forces and thousands wounded in the protests that began in February. However, there have been no calls from the US government and other Western regimes, which parade their supposed humanitarian concerns to justify the war against Libya, for the departure of Saleh, a critical ally in the struggle with Islamic fundamentalism and guardian of imperialist interests in the region.

The New York Times floated a story Monday suggesting that the Obama administration had “quietly shifted” its policy and now sought the ouster of Saleh. The Times observed: “The Obama administration had maintained its support of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in private and refrained from directly criticizing him in public.… This position has fueled criticism of the United States in some quarters for hypocrisy for rushing to oust a repressive autocrat in Libya but not in strategic allies like Yemen and Bahrain.”

The Times article also noted Washington’s “wary relationship of mutual dependence with Mr. Saleh.” Not so “wary” that it prevented the US from giving Saleh hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of military hardware and training. “The United States has provided weapons, and the Yemeni leader has allowed the United States military and the C.I.A. to strike at Qaeda strongholds,” wrote the newspaper.

Indeed, as a lengthy piece in the current New Yorker magazine points out, “since the unrest began, the Saleh regime has received unusually strong support from the Obama Administration. The White House has made clear it believes that in Yemen abrupt change must be avoided, even at the cost of Yemeni lives.”

At the same time, the US is deeply involved in negotiations with the Yemeni bourgeois opposition, seeking to come up with a resolution of the crisis that would possibly involve removing Saleh while preserving the repressive state and security apparatus. Whether the April 4 Times article was part of an effort by American officials to intimidate Saleh and obtain concessions from him or not, State Department spokesman Mark Toner subsequently played down the Times’s claim that US policy had shifted.

While terming the violence in Taiz and Hudaida “appalling,” Toner did not suggest that it was time for Saleh to step down. He claimed, “That’s not necessarily a decision for us to make,” although Obama officials were not so modest in demanding Muammar Gaddafi’s departure in Libya. Toner told reporters that the US was talking to the Yemeni government and opposition in the hope of achieving “a peaceful solution.”

Contrary to the Times report of a shift in US policy, MSNBC reported April 4: “A diplomat in Sanaa said on Monday the focus for now was still on talks, and that public calls [for Saleh] to stand down—which have only so far come from France—were premature.… If Washington were to call on Saleh to go, ‘I’m not sure if he [Saleh] would immediately cave in,’ he added.” The latter comment is absurd. Saleh clings to power thanks only to the US government and military.

Yemen’s official opposition, organized in the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP, or Common Forum), is a collection of Saleh’s tribal rivals and former political allies, Islamists and other largely discredited forces. Over the weekend, the JMP offered its “vision” of the political future. It proposed that Saleh hand over power to his vice president, Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi, who would then be charged with the organization of writing a new constitution and holding new elections. Student groups leading the protest rejected this proposal as merely a new lease on life for Saleh and his family.

The character of the current negotiations, and the opposition, can be gauged by this revealing comment in Britain’s Daily Mail: “Talks [between the Saleh regime and the opposition] have been off and on over the past two weeks, sometimes in the presence of the U.S. ambassador.”

The Yemeni dictator is remaining firm, as the violent repression carried out Monday reveals. On Sunday, Saleh called for “a halt to all protests and the mutiny by some units in the military.” He added that “arm-twisting will absolutely not work.

Reform in the Syrian air


 Apr 9 2011

DAMASCUS – The scale of reforms sweeping through Syria is significant, and worth watching in detail. For one month, unprecedented tension has gripped the country as demonstrators took to the streets demanding a basket of political and economic reforms.

Such demonstrations – although constitutionally guaranteed – are unheard of Syria, a country ruled since 1963 by emergency law, imposed by the Ba’ath Party. Among other things, the demonstrators have demanded the lifting of this law, the end of arbitrary arrests, greater political freedoms, a general amnesty, and a law allowing for political pluralism and ending one-party rule.

Additionally, they have demanded a clampdown on corruption, the sacking of the Naji al-Otari cabinet (in place since 2003), firing certain governors, and solving the Kurdish problem. The government responded on March 25, via President Bashar al-Assad’s advisor Bouthaina Shaaban, who promised to deal with “all of the above”.

A committee has been established, charged with preparing a legal document for the lifting of martial law “before April 25”. Scores of political prisoners were released, including prominent woman activist Souheir al-Atasi, along with those arrested in recent events in the southern town of Daraa, where more than 80 people were killed, according to rights groups. The Otari cabinet was indeed sacked, and authorities promised a political party draft law will be online soon, open for discussion and debate among Syrians.

Once that is done, the law will be ratified by parliament, perhaps ahead of the parliamentary elections next summer, which are expected to be free and democratic – regardless of what majority they bring to the chamber. When the law comes into effect, it will challenge, and eventually drop, Article 8 of the constitution, which designates the Ba’ath as “leader of state and society”.

The pre-set quota of the Ba’ath party will be need to be lifted in both government and parliament alike, hinting that the new cabinet of prime minister-designate Adel Safar will be a caretaker one, given that its strategic posts will be held by the Ba’athists. Non-Ba’athists, after all, make up a sizeable percentage of Syria’s population, explaining why they would welcome reducing then ending the party’s role, which has dominated their lives for 48 years.

Other symbolic gestures came hand-in-hand with these reforms, like sacking the governors of Daraa and Homs, two Syrian cities that witnessed large and angry demonstrations in the past two weeks. Prominent human-rights activist Haitham al-Maleh, who was released from jail only weeks ago, was quoted at length in the Ba’ath Party newspaper al-Ba’ath on Thursday, explaining why martial law should be lifted immediately.

To think that the official organ of the Ba’ath would ever mention such a loud and high-profile critic of the regime is in itself an impressive feat. However, Syrian activists used social networking sites to call for nationwide demonstrations Friday.

The ex-Kurdish problem

The most groundbreaking of these measures was a presidential decree on April 7, granting citizenship to approximately 300,000 Kurds in the eastern Hassake governorate – defusing a problem that has dominated Syrian politics since August 1962. Then, during the pre-Ba’ath era of president Nazem al-Qudsi, 20% of Syria’s ethnic Kurds were deprived of citizenship after a controversial census took place, inflicting permanent damage on the Kurdish community.

The Qudsi government came into power when Syria had just dissolved its union with Egypt in September 1961, and was coming under daily fire from president Gamal Abdul Nasser, who accused the new leaders of Damascus of being opponents of Arab nationalism.

To prove their Arab zeal, Syria’s new leaders passed decree number 93, stripping about 120,000 Syrian Kurds of their citizenship. The argument of the authorities in 1962 was that the census was aimed at identifying “alien infiltrators” in Syria; those who had illegally crossed the border from Turkey. Kurds had to prove that they had lived in Syria at least since 1945, or lose any claim to citizenship.

Oil fields were discovered in Qarah Shuk in 1956 and in Suwaydiyah in 1959, both Kurdish districts, perhaps explaining why the government of Qudsi was worried about Kurdish influence in 1962. This explains why nearly 40% of all the confiscation of land that took place from 1960 onwards (the start of official socialism in Syria) targeted the al-Jazeera region, which is inhabited by Kurds.

The census was rigged, and led to reported Kurdish “unrest” in Syria which exploded in 2004 when bloody demonstrations rocked the town of Qamishly, leaving many dead people and hundreds behind bars.

In March 2005, Assad released 312 Kurds arrested during the disturbances of 2004, promising to grant them Syrian citizenship. Although this was again promised in the 2005 Ba’ath Party Congress, nothing serious was done about it, namely because Syria had too much on its plate, engaged in a cold war with the George W Bush administration and combating a rising anti-Syrian trend in Lebanon.

Ahmad Barakat of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party spoke then to the Christian Science Monitor, saying, “Our problem is very different from that of the Kurds in Iraq. Their aim in Iraq is to get a state of their own. But in Syria, we just want our culture and freedom as Syrian nationals.”

The Kurds, who make up 10% of Syria’s 21 million population, are not oppressed, rather they form a well-respected minority. They had one problem: citizenship. Apart from these “unregistered” Kurds, whose plight was resolved on Thursday, the Syrian Kurds are first-class citizens.

In 1920, Abdul Rahman Yusuf, a Damascene Kurd, was senior adviser to the Syrian government, while his son was governor of Damascus in 1949. Also in 1949, Syria’s first military president, Husni al-Za’im, was a Kurd, as was Adib al-Shishakli, a Kurd from Hama who ruled in 1951-54.

Two prime ministers, Husni and Muhsen al-Barazi (in 1941 and 1949), were Kurds. Khalid Bakdash, the veteran leader of the Syrian Communist Party, was also a Kurd, and he became a member of parliament in 1954 because of his Kurdish roots. It was the Kurds of Damascus, rather than the views of Karl Marx, that won him a seat in parliament. Syria’s former Grand Mufti Ahmad Kaftaro, the highest Muslim authority in Syria, who held office from 1966 until his death in 2004, was a Damascene Kurd. Assad tried sending off that message by making a visit to the Hassake region in August 2002, where Kurds are densely populated, promising them reforms and pledging to upgrade their living conditions. Assad was the first Syrian president to visit the Kurdish districts since president Husni al-Za’im (a Kurd) in 1949.

A similar visit took place by the Syrian leader in March 2011. Shortly afterwards, his advisor congratulated them on the Nowroz Kurdish holiday, amid reports that next year, Assad promised that it would become “a national holiday” for all Syrians. The holiday, for long suppressed, was allowed to happen publicly in 2011, amid high festivity, and given prime coverage on state-run Syrian TV.

Sami Moubayed is a university professor, political analyst, and Editor-in-Chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.

(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd.

 

 

Robin Hood in Reverse in the US: Seven Examples


Thursday 7 April 2011

Truthout

 

The Blackstone Hotel, Chicago.  A federal development program intended to help poor communities, the New Market Tax Credit, instead funnels up to ten billion taxpayer dollars to big corporations like JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs and Prudential to build luxury hotels, office buildings and a car museum. (Photo: Herkie)

The rich have been getting richer and the poor and the middle class have been getting poorer in the US recently. Here are seven examples that show how the US is going through “Robin Hood in Reverse.”

Between 1948 and 1979, the richest 10 percent of families in the US claimed 33 percent of average income growth. Between 2000 and 2007, the richest 10 percent claimed a full 100 percent of average income growth in the US, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Business taxes were cut from 46 to 34 percent 25 years ago, according to ProPublica. But today, 115 of the big 500 companies listed on Standard and Poor’s stock index paid federal and other taxes of less than 20 percent over the last five years, according to David Leonhardt of The New York Times.

Don’t let the forces of regression dominate the media – support brave, independent reporting today by making a contribution to Truthout.

General Electric’s tax rate for last year was seven percent, according to ProPublica.

The top five percent of US households claim 63 percent of the entire country’s wealth. The bottom 80 percent hold just 13 percent of the growth, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Last year, John Paulson, a hedge fund manager “earned” $4.9 billion, according to The New York Times. Ten years ago, it took 25 such managers to collectively earn that much. Last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers pocketed (a much better word) a total of $22 billion. It would take over 440,000 people each earning $50,000 a year to match that amount.

A federal development program intended to help poor communities, the New Market Tax Credit, instead funnels up to ten billion taxpayer dollars to big corporations like JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs and Prudential to build luxury hotels, office buildings and a car museum. Bloomberg Markets Magazine pointed to the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, which was renovated for $116 million. Prudential got $15.6 million in tax credit from the US Treasury for helping fund the project because the hotel was in a census zone that included two colleges that housed a lot of lower income students.

According to the Financial Times, there are now more people living in poverty in the US than at any time in the last 50 years. Foreclosure filings were nearly four million in 2010, up 23 percent since 2008, according to RealtyTrac.


This work by Truthout is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

 

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA.

 

 

In the afternoon of April 8, 2011, the farce that had begun thirteen weeks ago in El Paso, Texas, came to an end when terrorist Luis Posada Carriles was acquitted of all the charges pressed against him during a migration trial.

 

To all those who have been following the sinister history behind this terrorist and his links with the successive US governments, the FBI and the CIA in his dirty war against Cuba, this is an additional proof of the support and protection that the US authorities have traditionally granted to him.

 

Since the moment of his landing in Florida after traveling from Isla Mujeres in Mexico on board of the “Santrina” boat, as was timely denounced by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro, Posada Carriles has been, as he always was, under the tutelage and protection of the US government.

 

He was tried for committing perjury during a migration process, not for being a terrorist, and this is an outrage against the people of Cuba and the families that were plunged into morning by the actions committed by Posada.

 

The shameless verdict at El Paso is in full contradiction with the anti-terrorist policy that the US government is said to profess, which has even led to military interventions against other nations, taking a toll of thousands of human lives.

 

The US government is absolutely aware of Posada Carriles’ involvement in the blowing-up in mid-air of a Cubana de Aviación airliner off Barbados in 1976, the bombing spree against Cuban tourist facilities in 1997 and his plans to attempt against the life of our Commander in Chief in Panama in 2000, for which he was even convicted in that country.

 

The US government has all the evidence of the crimes committed by Posada, many of which were presented in court at El Paso.

 

We are still to see if the US government is capable of either filing a new claim against Posada Carriles on a charge of terrorism or accepting his extradition to Venezuela, as was requested more than five years ago by that country, taking into account its legal obligation derived from the international covenants it is party to and the UN Security Council Resolution 1373 of 2001, which was promoted by the US government itself.

 

As paradoxical as it may seem, while Posada Carriles is being acquitted, five  Cuban anti-terrorists remain unjustly imprisoned in the United States for collecting information about the actions perpetrated by terrorist of Cuban origin who, like Posada Carriles, are walking free and with impunity down the streets of Miami.

 

Cuba reaffirms that the US government is the chief responsible for this outcome and challenges it to take on its obligations in the struggle against terrorism, without hypocrisy or double standards.

 

Havana, April 9, 2011.

*Waiting for the Fall of Saudi Monarchy*

 

 

The current turmoil in North Africa and the Arabian region of
Asia is something that might have momentous consequences for the world that
is dependent a great deal on Arab oil. There are all sorts of analyses and
predictions regarding the unrest in the Arab lands that have remained or
forced to remain politically dormant by the local
autocrats/monarchs/dictators and their western political masters. Two things
assign a very significant position to the Middle East, oil and Islam. The
first one is badly required by most of the countries in the world to keep
their industrialized economies moving and the second one is an extremely
feared faith especially in Western Europe and the USA which believe that it
represents an opposite value-system to that of theirs and for that reason
its adherents are potential terrorists who might destroy the Western world
by means of violence. These beliefs have always been the cardinal principles
of the foreign policies of most of the Western European nations and the USA.
However, they are cunning enough to camouflage these guiding principles of
their foreign policies by employing various euphemisms such as regional
security, geopolitical considerations, respecting local culture and faith,
extending technological expertise and so on depending upon the context.
Western world, in reality, has three major objectives in relation to their
Middle East foreign policy. The first one is obviously to exploit the oil
resources of the Arab world to their advantage, the second one is to keep
militarizing Israel so that it maintains its dominant position in the region
to function as an outpost of the Western world and third is to check the
activities of the radical Islamists who might be helping terrorist
organizations such as al-Qaeda.

In order to protect their interests the Western world, in particular, the
USA have been successfully implementing a strategy for decades i.e. to keep
the Arab masses politically ignorant so that they remain the loyal subjects
of their autocratic and corrupt rulers. It is in this background we may have
to gauge the significance of Saudi Arabia, a country ruled by the most
ruthless and corrupt monarchy which is totally supported by the USA. In
reality the house of Saud and its dominance over the region considered to be
the holiest land for the Muslims, itself is the creation of the Western
world. Until the end of the World War I, almost the entire Middle East was
part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. When the Western world, Britain to be
precise, got to know about the oil deposits in the Arab land in the
beginning of the twentieth century, they adopted a strategy comprising
deceit, conspiracy, immorality and aggression to destabilize the Ottoman
Empire with an aim to grab the oil-rich deserts of the Middle East. The
clandestine activities of the British spy T E Lawrence (made popular by the
movie, Lawrence of Arabia) in the region that is roughly the area of
present-day Saudi Arabia, were part of the British conspiracy against the
Ottoman Empire.

The turn of events prior and after the First World War helped the British to
achieve their objective. Turkey joined the war on the side of Germany and
with the defeat of the Axis Powers it provided Britain and France to break
up the Ottoman Empire and divide its colonies among themselves. During the
course of war, thanks to the machinations of Lawrence, the Arabs revolted
against their Turkish masters and helped the British destroy the Turkish
fighting forces from inside. The territory of present Saudi Arabia was
consisted of three main provinces of Hejaz, Najd and Asir. The region of
Hejaz, wherein are located the two holy cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina,
was locally under the control of Sharif of Mecca who traced his lineage from
the Prophet Muhammad. The present rulers of the country were in fact outlaws
and bandits who would always be at war with the Sharif to grab control of
the province of Hejaz. The Turkish imperialists, however, had always
supported the Sharif. Consequently, the members of the house of Al Saud had
to seek shelter in the desert. When the British launched their clandestine
campaign to instigate the Arabs against their Turkish masters they made a
pact with the outlaw Saudis that on gaining victory the Saudis would be made
the rulers of the region. With the defeat of Turkey in World War I the
Armistice of Mudros was signed on October 30, 1918 according to which most
of the Arab lands were handed over to the British. The Saudis who had helped
the British during the course of the war demanded their pound of flesh and
the British rewarded them. Thus, the present country of Saudi Arabia came
into existence in 1932 with the amalgamation of the three provinces with the
house of Saud as the absolute monarchs. The first thing the usurpers of
political power did was to name the country after their family name and thus
the historical provinces of Hejaz, Najd and Asir came to be known as the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There is no parallel in the history of the world
when a megalomaniac ruler named the entire country after his family name!

The Saudi monarchy came handy for the Western Powers to retain its control
over the oil resources of the country. In the post World War II scenario,
the USA took Saudi Arabia in its firm grip to oversee the outflow of oil. In
return the unscrupulous and terribly corrupt monarchs have always been given
a free hand to treat their people like chattels. Saudi Arabian government is
the worst violator of human rights, gender justice, freedom of speech and
expression, minority rights, civil liberties and right to freedom of
religion. The Muslims in the USA demand to construct a mosque a few blocks
away from the site where the Twin Towers stood before 9/11. However, nobody
can think of constructing a ten by ten feet church in any part of Saudi
Arabia. The Saudi rulers get away with all excesses and barbarism because
the USA extends the unconditional support to the most ruthless monarchy in
the world.

The winds of revolt that are blowing in the Middle East are no doubt long
over due and a healthy sign of people’s aspirations to participate in the
affairs of their nations. However, it is difficult to say that these revolts
will necessarily lead to the establishment of democracy in the region. The
two major stumbling blocks are the USA and Saudi Arabia. While the former
enjoys the military and diplomatic supremacy in world politics the latter
exploits the religious sentiments of the Muslim world. The USA could not
directly intervene in the uprisings of Tunisia and Egypt because the
autocrats of the two countries had outlived as the protectors of American
interests in the region. In Libya the USA and its NATO allies are directly
taking military action because they want to get rid of Gaddafi who is
putting up a stiff resistance against the revolutionaries. In Bahrain, a
tiny country comprising 70 % Shia population the USA and the Saudi Arabia
support a brutal Sunni monarch because it serves their purpose to contain
Iran’s political ambitions. For public consumption the Obama administration
did express its displeasure over Saudi move to send its troops to Bahrain to
kill and torture the protestors. Nevertheless, the Saudi action had the
clandestine approval of Washington.

The turmoil in the Middle East is certainly the expression of democratic
aspirations of the people of the region who have been suffering under
barbaric monarchies and autocracies for long. These rebellions can reach to
their logical conclusion only if the USA refrains from interfering directly
or indirectly in the affairs of the region and most importantly the people
of Saudi Arabia who are politically leading a life of slavery rise against
the tyrannical rule of the House of Saud..Unless the Saudi monarchy is
overthrown the region would never become truly democratic.

___________________________________________________________________________­___
The writer is a political commentator and heads the Centre for Promotion of
Democracy and Secularism.



Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

–The Buddha


Patrick Cockburn: Libya’s parallels with Iraq under Saddam are truly ominous

Independent.co.uk


Opposition leaders hope that time is on their side. Possibly they are right. But Iraqi opponents of Saddam Hussein thought much the same 20 years ago

Wednesday, 13 April 2011

The conflict between pro and anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya could, according to Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister, who has fled to Britain, turn the country into another Somalia. The ingredients are certainly there for a prolonged conflict. Claims that Muammar Gaddafi is about to fall sound unnervingly similar to predictions in 1991 that Saddam Hussein was going to lose power in Iraq after his calamitous defeat in Kuwait and uprisings by Shia and Kurds that he brutally crushed.

In fact, Saddam survived for another 12 years and was finally only overthrown by an American and British invasion that plunged the country deeper than ever into violence from which it has still not recovered. Could the same thing happen with Gaddafi? It no longer seems likely, as it did during the first few weeks of the Libyan uprising, that he will soon be fleeing for his life from Tripoli or will be the victim of a coup by his own lieutenants.

Instead Gaddafi appears to be stabilising his authority and may be there for months or even years. On the ground there is a military stalemate. Small forces from both sides have captured and recaptured the town of Ajdabiya over several weeks, but neither has been able to land a knock-out blow. At times there are more journalists than fighters on the frontline: forays to-and-fro by a few pick-ups with machine guns in the back are reported as if they were German and British divisions fighting in the same area 70 years ago.

Gaddafi has proved that he is the most powerful player in Libya. Air strikes by the US, France and Britain aimed at stopping Gaddafi’s tanks and troops taking Benghazi have had success. The burnt-out carcasses of armoured vehicles litter the sides of the road between Benghazi and Ajdabiya. But the situation has not changed since this early success. It is still only the threat of Nato air strikes that is preventing Gaddafi’s men capturing Benghazi today just as they almost did a few weeks ago.

The opposition leaders comfort themselves with the belief that Tripoli and the east of this vast country is bubbling with unrest that will ultimately boil over and force out Gaddafi and his family. It might happen that way, but there is little sign of it. The regime in Tripoli appears to have recovered its nerve and has the forces to crush any fresh local uprising. For the moment Libya is effectively partitioned with the dividing line running along the old frontier between the historic provinces of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania. Gaddafi’s troops may not be able to advance in the face of air strikes, but they also have not retreated pell-mell after heavy losses. They have adapted to the air threat by driving around in dirt-covered pick-ups which look exactly the same as those driven by rebels and civilians.

Libyans are new to war; casualties have as yet not been heavy compared to the numbers killed and wounded in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. In Benghazi, petrol is still cheap and the electricity supply almost constant, aside from a three-hour-a-day black-out. But there is also a deep fear that if Gaddafi did take the city his troops, denounced as being largely mercenaries by the rebel leadership, would, as one Benghazi resident put it, “kill all the men and rape all the women”.

The strength of the Transitional National Council is its international political and military support. It is less good at organising a functioning government. As with other Arab uprisings, the opposition is particularly effective at mobilising demonstrations and winning the sympathy of the international media. Benghazi’s old town hall, from the balcony of which Mussolini, Rommel and King Idris addressed crowds in the square below at different times, is now, very appropriately, occupied by the immensely influential satellite television channel al-Jazeera.

When an African Union delegation visited here this week to propose ceasefire terms, which did not include the departure of Gaddafi, the crowd of hostile demonstrators outside the hotel where the meeting was taking place, seemed better organised than the rebel leaders inside. Banners in Arabic, English and French demanded that the dictator should go and asserted that Libya would not be partitioned. Protesters denied there would be any civil war in Libya because the struggle was between the Libyan people on one side and a hated dictator on the other.

Unfortunately, the situation is not so clear cut. Against the odds, Gaddafi and his family are still in business and are unlikely to go away. Libya is effectively divided into two halves. Gaddafi has a core of supporters fighting for him and they cannot all be dismissed as foreign mercenaries. The longer the conflict goes on, and Libyans are forced to take sides, the more it becomes a civil war. The outcome of this conflict, moreover, will be decided by foreign powers, potentially enabling Gaddafi to present himself as a Libyan nationalist defending his country against imperial control.

It would take a long time to reduce Libya to the level of Somalia, but civil conflicts and the hatreds they induce build up their own momentum once the shooting has begun. The headlong flights of rebel militiamen at Ajdabiya after a few shells have landed are much derided by the foreign media. But one of the good things about Libya is that so many young men – unlike Afghans and Iraqis of a similar age – do not know how to use a gun. This will not last.

The opposition leaders in Benghazi hope that time is on their side and that the increasingly isolated regime will crumble from within as it faces irresistible pressure from abroad. Possibly they are right. But Iraqi opponents of Saddam Hussein thought much the same 20 years ago. And conflicts before and after his fall inspired hatreds that wrecked their country beyond repair.

When this Libyan war started I was struck by the parallels with foreign intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, at close range, I find the similarities even more ominous. We have joined somebody else’s civil war, and it is a war in which Britain, France and the US must inevitably play a leading role. Without our support, the local partner would be defeated within 24 hours.

 

 

The other day, the almighty General Security Service (Shabak, formerly Shin Bet) needed a new boss. It is a hugely important job, because no minister ever dares to contradict the advice of the Shabak chief in cabinet meetings.

There was an obvious candidate, known only as J. But at the last moment, the settlers’ lobby was mobilized. As director of the “Jewish department” J. had put some Jewish terrorists in prison. So his candidature was rejected and Yoram Cohen, a kippah-wearing darling of the settlers was appointed instead.

That happened last month. Just before that, The National Security Council also needed a new chief. Under pressure from the settlers, General Yaakov Amidror, formerly the highest kippah-wearing officer in the army, a man of openly ultra-ultra nationalist views, got the job.

The Deputy Chief of Staff of the army is a kippah-wearing officer dear to the settlers, a former head of Central Command, which includes the West Bank.

Some weeks ago I wrote that the problem may not be the annexation of the West Bank by Israel, but the annexation of Israel by the West Bank settlers.

Some readers reacted with a chuckle. It looked like a humorous aside.

It was not.

The time has come to examine this process seriously: Is Israel falling victim to a hostile takeover by the settlers?
 
FIRST OF all, the term “settlers” itself must be examined.

Formally, there is no question. The settlers are Israelis living beyond the 1967 border, the Green Line. (“Green” in this case has no ideological connotation. This just happened to be the color chosen to distinguish the line on the maps.

Numbers are inflated or deflated according to propaganda needs. But it is can be assumed that there are about 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, and an additional 200,000 or so in East Jerusalem. Israelis usually don’t call the Jerusalemites “settlers”, putting them into a different category. But of course, settlers they are.

But when we speak of Settlers in the political context, we speak of a much bigger community.

True, not all settlers are Settlers. Many people in the West Bank settlements went there without any ideological motive, just because they could build their dream villas for practically nothing, with a picturesque view of Arab minarets to boot. It is these the Settler Council chairman, Danny Dayan, meant, when, in a (recently leaked) secret conversation with a US diplomat, he conceded that they could easily be persuaded to return to Israel if the money was right.

However, all these people have an interest in the status quo, and therefore will support the real Settlers in the political fight. As the Jewish proverb goes, if you start fulfilling a commandment for the wrong reasons, you will end up fulfilling it for the right ones.
 
BUT THE camp of the “settlers” is much, much bigger.

The entire so-called “national religious” movement is in total support of the settlers, their ideology and their aims. And no wonder – the settlement enterprise sprung from its loins.

This must be explained. The “national religious” were originally a tiny splinter of religious Jewry. The big Orthodox camp saw in Zionism an aberration and heinous sin. Since God had exiled the Jews from His land because of their sins, only He – through His Messiah – had the right to bring them back. The Zionists thus position themselves above God and prevent the coming of the Messiah. For the Orthodox, the Zionist idea of a secular Jewish “nation” still is an abomination.

However, a few religious Jews did join the nascent Zionist movement. They remained a curiosity. The Zionists held the Jewish religion in contempt, like everything else belonging to the Jewish Diaspora (“Galut” – exile, a derogatory term in Zionist parlance). Children who (like myself) were brought up in Zionist schools in Palestine before the Holocaust were taught to look down with pity on people who were “still” religious.

This also colored our attitude towards the religious Zionists. The real work of building our future “Hebrew State” (we never spoke about a “Jewish State”) was done by socialist atheists. The kibbutzim and moshavim, communal and cooperative villages, as well as the “pioneer” youth movements, which were the foundation of the whole enterprise, were mostly Tolstoyan socialist, some of them even Marxist. The few that were religious were considered marginal.

At that time, in the 30s and 40s, few young people wore a kippah in public. I don’t remember a single member of the Irgun, the clandestine military (“terrorist”) organization to which I belonged, wearing a kippah – though there were quite a number of religious members. They preferred a less conspicuous cap or beret.

The national-religious party (originally called Mizrahi – Eastern) played a minor role in Zionist politics. It was decidedly moderate in national affairs. In the historic confrontations between the “activist” David Ben-Gurion and the “moderate” Moshe Sharett in the 50s, they almost always sided with Sharett, driving Ben Gurion up the wall.

Nobody paid much attention, however, to what was happening under the surface – in the national-religious youth movement, Bnei Akiva, and their Yeshivot. There, out of sight of the general public, a dangerous cocktail of ultra-nationalist Zionism and an aggressive tribal “messianic” religion was being brewed.
 
THE ASTOUNDING victory of the Israeli army in the 1967 Six-day War, after three weeks of extreme anxiety, marked a turning point for this movement.

Here was everything they had dreamed of: a God-given miracle, the heartland of historical Eretz Israel (alias the West Bank) occupied, “The Temple Mount Is In Our Hands!” as a one general breathlessly reported.

As if somebody had drawn a cork, the national-religious youth movement escaped its bottle and became a national force. They created Gush Emunim (“Bloc of the Faithful”), the center of the dynamic settlement enterprise in the newly “liberated territories”.

This must be well understood: for the national-religious camp, 1967 was also a moment of liberation within the Zionist camp. As the Bible (Psalm 117) prophesied: “The stone the builders despised has become the cornerstone”. The despised national-religious youth movement and kibbutzim suddenly jumped to center stage.

While the old socialist kibbutz movement was dying of ideological exhaustion, its members becoming rich by selling agricultural land to real estate sharks, the national religious sprang up in full ideological vigor, imbued with spiritual and national fervor, preaching a pagan Jewish creed of holy places, holy stones and holy tombs, mixed with the conviction that the whole country belongs to the Jews and that “foreigners” (meaning the Palestinians, who have lived here for at least 1300, if not 5000 years) should be kicked out.
 
MOST OF today’s Israelis were born or have immigrated after 1967. The occupation-state is the only reality they know. The settlers’ creed looks to them like self-evident truth. Polls show a growing number of young Israelis for whom democracy and human rights are empty phrases. A Jewish State means a state that belongs to the Jews and to the Jews only, nobody else has any business to be here.

This climate has created a political scene dominated by a set of right-wing parties, from Avigdor Lieberman’s racists to the outright fascist followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane – all of them totally subservient to the settlers.

If it is true that the US Congress is controlled by the Israel lobby, then this lobby is controlled by the Israeli government, which is controlled by the settlers. (Like the joke about the dictator who said: The world is afraid of our country, the country is afraid of me, I am afraid of my wife, my wife is afraid of a mouse. So who rules the world?)

So the settlers can do whatever they want: build new settlements and enlarge existing ones, ignore the Supreme Court, give orders to the Knesset and the government, attack their “neighbors” whenever they like, kill Arab children who throw stones, uproot olive groves, burn mosques. And their power is growing by leaps and bounds.
 
THE TAKEOVER of a civilized country by hardier border fighters is by no means extraordinary. On the contrary, it is a frequent historical phenomenon. The historian Arnold Toynbee provided a long list.

Germany was for a long time dominated by the Ostmark (“Eastern marches”), which became Austria. The culturally advanced German heartland fell under the sway of the more primitive but hardier Prussians, whose homeland was not a part of Germany at all. The Russian Empire was formed by Moscow, originally a primitive town on the fringes.

The rule seems to be that when the people of a civilized country become spoiled by culture and riches, a hardier, less pampered and more primitive race on the fringes takes over, as Greece was taken over by the Romans, and Rome by the barbarians.

This can happen to us. But it need not. Israeli secular democracy still has a lot of strength in it. The settlements can still be removed. (In a future article, I shall try to show how.) The religious right can still be repulsed. The occupation, which is the mother of all evil, can still be terminated.

But for that we have to recognize the danger – and do something about it.

 

US blocks UN torture investigator from seeing Bradley Manning


The US government has blocked the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture from visiting Army Private Bradley Manning, who has been held in solitary confinement at Quantico Marine base since July.

Manning has yet to appear in court. The 23-year-old faces 34 charges of leaking classified material to the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks, including evidence of numerous US war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the charges is that of “aiding the enemy,” which carries a sentence of life in prison or execution.

In addition to living in solitary confinement 23 hours a day in a small, empty cell, Manning has been subjected to forced nudity, deprived of personal possessions including his glasses, denied the ability to exercise or sleep during the day in his cell, and is continually harassed and intimidated by military guards. The soldier issued a letter through his lawyer last month detailing his abuse.

The severity of his charges and the hellish conditions to which he is being subjected make clear that Manning is being held as a political prisoner by the Obama administration.

The UN envoy, Juan Mendez, said Monday, “I am deeply disappointed and frustrated by the prevarication of the US government with regard to my attempts to visit Mr. Manning.” The US “has not been receptive to a confidential meeting with Mr. Manning,” Mendez said in a statement. Military officials stated that the meeting could proceed only with a guard present, meaning that its content could be used against Manning in his court-martial trial.

Mendez issued a reprimand against the US—a measure only rarely undertaken by the UN, and usually in response to the conduct of small, dictatorial regimes—after being repeatedly stonewalled and denied entrance to the Virginia military base by the Obama administration since December.

Commenting to news agency Reuters, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan insisted that only lawyers were allowed unmonitored meetings with Quantico prisoners. Lapan added that there was “considerable misinformation” about Manning’s treatment, dismissing charges of cruelty and abuse. “There is no such thing at Quantico. … These facts are simply not true.”

Manning’s treatment has drawn condemnations from human rights groups and legal experts around the world. The British government, facing a mounting outcry over the mistreatment of the soldier, whose mother is Welsh, last week announced it would press US officials to moderate Manning’s conditions. (See, “British government presses US over treatment of Bradley Manning”)

On Sunday, the New York Review of Books published an open letter from prominent legal scholars to President Barack Obama describing the young soldier’s confinement as “degrading and inhumane conditions that are illegal and immoral.”

The open letter, written by law professors Bruce Ackerman of Yale and Yochai Benkler of Harvard and published under the headline “Private Manning’s Humiliation,” states that the conditions in which Manning is being held are a violation of both the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution prohibiting cruel and unusual treatment and the Fifth Amendment protection against punishment without trial.

“If continued,” the letter states, Manning’s treatment “may well amount to a violation of the criminal statute against torture, defined as, among other things, ‘the administration or application … of … procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.’…

“The administration has provided no evidence that Manning’s treatment reflects a concern for his own safety or that of other inmates,” the letter states. “Unless and until it does so, there is only one reasonable inference: this pattern of degrading treatment aims either to deter future whistleblowers, or to force Manning to implicate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a conspiracy, or both.”

Nearly 300 lawyers, professors, and authors have signed the letter, including Harvard professor Laurence Tribe, who taught constitutional law to Obama and served as an advisor on legal access issues at the Justice Department until three months ago.

Tribe told the British Guardian that Manning’s detention was “not only shameful but unconstitutional … in the way it violates his person and his liberty without due process of law and in the way it administers cruel and unusual punishment of a sort that cannot be constitutionally inflicted even upon someone convicted of terrible offenses, not to mention someone merely accused of such offenses.”

When asked during a press conference last month about Manning’s abuse, Obama asserted that he knew nothing directly about the case but that the soldier was being treated well. “With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are.”

Obama also absurdly presented Manning’s strip-downs and other indignities as matters of personal protection. “I can’t go into details about some of their concerns,” he stated, “but some of this has to do with Private Manning’s safety as well.”

After coming to power in part on the basis of pledges to reverse some of the worst abuses of democratic rights by the Bush administration, the Obama administration has overseen an expansion of these illegal policies, including the recent resumption of military tribunals for Guantánamo detainees. The White House has been particularly cut-throat in its pursuit of whistleblowers inside the government and military.


13 April 2011

WSWS.org

Alternatives To Free-Market Capitalism

14 April, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Americans have been exposed to so much propaganda about free-market capitalism that few ever think there is any other way of running an economy. However, if they were to examine this system, they would see that its focus is on economic growth and the maximization of profit. In theory, this system would create enough wealth so that everyone would benefit. However, during the last 30 years or so, we have seen changes in the rules that guarantee most of the increases in wealth go to those at the top. During this time, there has been little-to-no concern about the resulting harmful effects of this system on society.

Free-market devotees often quote Adam Smith on the seemingly all-knowing ‘invisible hand’ as justification for their free-market theology. Somehow these advocates ignore Smith’s warning about the invisible hand. For example, in an 1993 article Noam Chomsky wrote: “The invisible hand, he [Smith] wrote, will destroy the possibility of a decent human existence “unless government takes pains to prevent” this outcome, as must be assured in “every improved and civilized society.” It will destroy community, the environment and human values generally — and even the masters themselves, which is why the business classes have regularly called for state intervention to protect them from market forces.” Unfortunately, as the 2008 crisis and the recent attacks on collective bargaining have confirmed, Smith’s concern was well placed.

Results of the Poorly Regulated U.S. Approach to Capitalism

The economy has yet to recover from the 2008 disaster although Wall Street and the too-big-to-fail banks are continuing to make out like bandits (apologies to bandits). As a result of our political/economic system, the U.S. now is faced with:

* almost 44 million (one in seven) people living in poverty;

* over 25 million (one in six) workers unemployed or underemployed;

* almost 51 million (one in six) people without health insurance;

* about 2.9 million homes that were foreclosed on in 2010, a slight increase over the 2.8 million in 2009;

* 1% of people receiving about 21% of the total U.S. income in 2008; and
* inequality between the rich and the rest of the U.S. population being among the greatest among Western industrialized nations.

 

Shouldn’t our economic approach deliver better results in this, the richest country in the world?

Strong Regulatory Approach, Strong Unions and Sense of Community

Western European nations have different economic approaches than the U.S. although Britain began the process of moving towards the U.S. model in 1980 under Margaret Thatcher. Western European nations differ slightly in their specific economic approaches, but they have a common theme of creating a humane economy that meets the needs of the people. Western European nations pursue the goal of providing socioeconomic security for their populations while, simultaneously, making economic progress.

Specifically, Western European nations have tighter regulations on corporations. In addition to having strong regulations, many of these nations use a mixture of socialism and capitalism. These nations also have strong labor unions. The combination of these factors has enabled the provision of social benefits to the public, although these benefits are under attack by free marketers today.

In the U.S., the experience with regulation has not worked nearly as well. Despite some impressive early successes, the long-term trend has been toward the corporate takeover of the regulatory agencies. Unless we are able to remove the power of big money from our political system, our regulatory system will become even more impotent.

Cooperatives — Voluntary, Jointly Owned and Democratically Controlled

According to the International Alliance of Cooperatives, a co-op is an autonomous, voluntary association meeting common economic, social and cultural needs through a jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise. Many people may be familiar with local ventures such as housing co-ops, credit unions, or co-op groceries, but there are much larger co-ops including Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, REI outdoor stores and Land O’Lakes dairy products. There are over 30,000 co-ops operating in over 73,000 locations in this country and many, many more operating around the world.

One famous example of what is possible through the use of co-ops is the Mondragon Corporation in Spain. It started in 1956 and was founded on a form of humanism based on solidarity and participation in harmony with Catholic social teaching. Today Mondragon has over 85,000 workers and works worldwide.

The wonderful 1973 book, “Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered” by E.F. Schumacher, provides other ideas about alternatives to the free-market approach. If we believe that people matter, we will open our mind to other approaches. Otherwise we will continue the race to the bottom.

 

 

Police State Terror In Bahrain

 

Last summer sporadic protests began. By mid-February, major ones erupted. Demonstrators held firm against King Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa’s regime. Repression and several deaths were reported from live fire.

Anti-government protesters occupied Manama’s Pearl Roundabout, Bahrain’s equivalent of Cairo’s Tahrir Square. They demanded democratic elections, ending sectarian discrimination favoring Sunnis over Shias, equitable distribution of the country’s oil wealth, and resignation of the king’s uncle, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, prime minister since 1971. They also want political prisoners released and state terror ended.

For weeks, many thousands defied government demands, braving police attacks with tear gas, beatings, rubber bullets, live fire, arrests, torture, and disappearances.

On February 14, Canada’s National Post writer Peter Goodspeed headlined, “Trouble in tiny Bahrain (population 1.2 million) carries big implications,” saying:

If Bahrain becomes democratic, people throughout the region will be inspired to demand it. As a result, “the ramifications for US foreign policy could be severe. Bahrain is home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet,” the Pentagon “station(ing) 15 warships, including an aircraft battle group, in the very heart of the Persian Gulf.”

“The island state off the coast of Saudi Arabia provides Washington with a perfect base from which it can protect the (region’s) flow of oil, keep an eye on Iran and support pro-Western monarchies against potential threats.”

On March 14, fearing uprisings against their own regimes, over 1,500 Saudi Arabia-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) military and police security forces invaded Bahrain guns blazing. They attacked peaceful protesters, arrested opposition leaders and activists, occupied the country, denied wounded men and women medical treatment, and imposed police state control in support of the hated monarchy.

The Obama administration was very instrumental in their coming, to prevent the possibility of emerging democracy in Bahrain or elsewhere in the region.

News of the intervention, however, brought larger crowds to the streets. They occupied the Pearl Roundabout, set up barricades against vicious attacks, and persisted against fierce repression.

On April 1, Bahrain’s al-Wefaq party, its largest anti-government opposition, claimed security forces arrested over 300 protesters since mid-March, dozens still missing. Prominent blogger, Mahmoud al-Youssef, was among the disappeared, taken into custody on March 30.

Tanks were positioned at prominent sites. Police checkpoints were set up throughout the country. Unidentified gangs, believed to be plainclothes security forces, conducted nighttime raids on homes in poor Shiite neighborhoods. Residents reported assaults and confiscations of their property.

In short order, Pearl Roundabout protesters were violently routed. Since mid-February, perhaps dozens were killed, hundreds injured, and many more arrested, tortured, and disappeared.

Bahrain Human Rights Center (BHRC) head Nabeel Rajab said several dozen masked men raided his home in mid-March, “threaten(ing) to rape me and one man was touching my body. They hit me with shoes and punched me with fists. They were insulting me, saying things like, ‘You’re Shiite so go back to Iran.’ “

Blindfolded and arrested, he was beaten for two hours, then released. Another gang returned a few days later, threatening him and journalists present at the time. Extreme repression quelled protests and strikes, but anti-regime opposition persists. One man fired from his teaching job said:

“We cannot stop. We might go quiet for a bit to mourn the dead and treat the injured and see those in jail, but then we will rise up again.”

Journalists were also threatened, including the country’s only opposition newspaper, Al-Wasat, shut down in late March to silence it. The Bahrain News Agency called its coverage “unethical” for reporting accurately on government repression. Its editor and co-owner, Mansoor al-Jamri, said it was an attempt to suppress independent news, explaining:

“There is now no other voice but that of the state. The news blackout is so intense.” Its print and online editions are now closed to prevent vital information from being published.

Bahraini state terror got so extreme even The New York Times took note in its “Bahrain News – The Protests (2011)” section. On April 7, it said:

“Bahrain has taken on the likeness of a police state. There have been mass arrests, mass firings of government workers, reports of torture and the forced resignation of the top editor of the nation’s one independent newspaper.”

Moreover, emergency law provisions let security forces search buildings and homes with no warrant, as well as “dissolve any organization, including legal political parties, deemed a danger to the state.”

On April 6, writer Clifford Krauss headlined, “Bahrain’s Rulers Tighten Their Grip on Battered Opposition,” saying:

“The intensity of the repression is pushing some toward militancy, while others are holding back, at least for now.” Earlier mass demonstrations dwindled to smaller ones and marches, many outside Manama in villages like Saar and Shahrakkan.

Two released political prisoners said detainees are being tortured with electric shocks, beatings, sexual abuse, and other indignities. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher Dan Williams:

“They are leaving no oppressive stone unturned. They enter homes of people already detained and ransack (them). They are keeping people in detention with limited (or no) access to their lawyers and families.”

On April 12, Krauss headlined, “Hospital Is Drawn Into Bahrain Strife,” saying:

Masked soldiers “guard the front gate of Salmaniya Medical Complex. Inside clinics are virtually empty of patients, many of whom, doctors say, have been hauled away for detention after participating in protests.”

Doctors, nurses, and other medical staff have also been arrested, officials calling Salmaniya (Bahrain’s largest public hospital) and local clinics hotbeds of “radical Shiite conspirators trying to destabilize the country.”

Doctors, however, say Salmaniya and other medical facilities have been targeted by state terror. As a result, sick and injured Bahrainis have nowhere to go for treatment.

The Obama administration steadfastly supports the Al-Khalifa regime and other regional despots, saying practically nothing about their abuses, no matter how extreme, while pretending to support democratic change in Libya.

On April 11, a Washington Post editorial expressed concern headlining, “The US silence on Bahrain’s crackdown,” saying:

While condemning human rights abuses in Libya and bloody crackdowns in Syria, “the president and his administration remain mostly silent about another ugly campaign of repression underway in the Arab world, in the Persian Gulf emirate of Bahrain.”

However, instead of denouncing it, WP called it “counterproductive (and) likely to foment the very problem that its advocates seek to prevent: a sectarian uprising in the region that could be exploited by Iran.”

“Worse, Defense Secretary (Gates) appeared to bolster the (Saudi intervention) during a visit last week to Riyadh, saying that ‘we already have evidence that the Iranians are trying to exploit the situation in Bahrain.’ “

At the same time, the Bahrain News Agency (BNA) said US CENTCOM head General James Mattis and US deputy chief of mission Stephanie Williams met with Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, Bahrain’s crown prince and deputy supreme commander.

According to BNA, Al-Khalifa “hailed (Washington’s) support for Bahrain’s security and stability which epitomizes strong ties bonding the two friendly countries. He also stressed the kingdom’s keenness to further promote bilateral relations and cooperation mainly in the military and defense field….Both sides also reviewed regional developments and the need to safeguard regional security and stability.”

On April 11, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint program of the International Federation for Human Rights and World Organization Against Torture, expressed grave concern for Bahraini human rights defenders following stepped up crackdowns.

On April 9, masked police arrested and severely beat Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, former Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) president, and two of his sons-in-law, Wafi Almajid and Hussein Ahmed, at his daughter’s home.

Mohammad Al-Maskati, another son-in-law, as well as president of the Bahrain Society for Human Rights, was present, severely beaten, but not arrested.

On April 10, BCHR reported over 600 arrests and disappearances, including 30 women and children, one aged 12. No information is available on their whereabouts, status or condition. Those detained include dissidents, activists, journalists, bloggers, students, teachers, doctors, lawyers, poets, artists, sculptors, photographers, political society members, and anyone for democratic change.

On April 12, BCHR and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned Zakariya Rashid Hassan’s death in detention, six days after he was charged with inciting hatred, disseminating false news, promoting sectarian violence, and calling for regime change. His family rejected the interior ministry’s claim that he died from sickle cell anemia complications. His body showed clear signs of abuse.

BCHR and RSF also expressed concern for Nabeel Rajab, BCHR head, accused of fabricating photo evidence of injuries to Ali Isa Saqer, another detainee who died in custody, clearly from abuse.

On March 28, general decree Decision No. 5 of 2011 prohibited publication of any information relating to ongoing state investigations on national security grounds. The measure reinforces others used to silence dissent and truth, especially about human rights violations.

As a result, on April 3, charges were filed against three Al-Wasat journalists for allegedly “fabricating” news detrimental to Bahrain’s international image and reputation. Those affected include editor Mansour Al-Jamari, managing editor Walid Nouihid, and local news editor Aqil Mirza. On the same day, two Al-Wasat Iraqi journalists since 2005 were summarily deported.

Earlier, BCHR reported children being abducted, detained, and abused, saying security crackdowns arrested 76, about one-fifth of the 355 known total at the time. It noted that “special forces attack people randomly, especially children who are at risk of excessive use of force, rubber bullets and tear gas.”

As a result, many sustained serious injuries. Moreover, BCHR received many complaints from families of victims. One case, typical of others, involved Ali Abbas Radhi, aged 14. Running an errand for his father, he returned bloodstained, his clothes dusty, his head wounded, his body showing clear signs of abuse, including a fractured leg.

He told BCHR that:

“Riot police asked me to stop so I obeyed their orders, but a group of them pointed their weapons toward me which made me panic and try to flee in fear of getting killed. The riot police chased me until they caught me, and they assaulted me by beating me and kicking me with their boots or with the butts of their guns to my head and all over my body as well as cursing and insulting members of my family with dirty words.”

Numerous other random attacks against men, women and children were and continue to be similar, many resulting in arrests, detention, torture, disappearances, and an unknown number of deaths, believed to be dozens.

Since state crackdowns began last summer, many children as well as adults have been arrested and abused. Lucky ones were released far from home in their underwear, or in some cases naked.

More recently, under a state of emergency, severe crackdowns continue to terrorize government opponents, subjecting anyone to arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and disappearance any time for any reason, or none based on bogus suspicions.

A Final Comment

On April 12, 19 human rights organizations condemned Bahraini state terror, their joint press release saying:

The undersigned “severely condemn the authorities’ crackdown on prominent human rights defenders….We are gravely concerned for (their) safety and well-being….”

“Human rights organizations estimate that over 600 individuals (including human rights activists and political opponents) remain in Bahraini prisons at high risk of torture and ill-treatment. It is a particularly alarming situation given that torture is a virtually systematic practice that has been used against activists increasingly since last year.”

In this context, we firmly believe that Bahrain’s membership in the UN Human Rights Council (should) be suspended….Furthermore, the undersigned organizations (condemn the) complicity and lack of political will from international actors, particularly the US and EU (for) turn(ing) a blind eye (to) massive and systematic human rights violations in this region of the world.”

Signed:

Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies

Arab Organization for Human Rights, Syria

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Egypt

Bahrain Center for Human Rights

Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights

Center for Trade Unions and Workers’ Services, Egypt

Committees for the Defense of Democracy, Freedom and Human Rights, Syria

Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies

Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement

Hisham Mubarak Law Center, Egypt

Human Rights First Society, Saudi Arabia

Human Rights Organization in Syria, MAF

Iraqi Human Rights Association in Denmark

Kurdish Committee for Human Rights in Syria al-Rased

Kurdish Organization for the Defense of Human Rights and Public Freedoms in Syria, DAD

National Organization for Human Rights in Syria

New Woman Research Center, Egypt

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

Yemeni Organization for Defending Rights and Democratic Freedoms

 

Other human rights groups, around 1,500 NGOs, and the International Trade Union Confederation (and its 301 affiliated members in 151 countries) also denounced Bahraini state terror.

Appealing to the international community, they called for those responsible to be held accountable. So far, daily crackdowns continue, Bahrainis still terrorized by US-backed militarized repression.


14 April, 2011

Countercurrents.org

lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

 http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

 

 

Goldstone Commission Members Affirm Study Findings

 

A previous article addressed chairman Richard Goldstone’s fall from grace, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/04/richard-goldstones-fall-from-grace.html

It discussed his shameless retraction of irrefutable evidence he and other commission members found – namely, that Israel willfully committed crimes of war and against humanity by attacking Gazan civilians and non-military targets in clear violation of international law. Moreover, it was done disproportionately to cause mass deaths, injuries and destruction.

Shockingly, however, Goldstone accepted Israel’s internal investigation findings, knowing facts were suppressed and distorted to justify policies. For whatever reasons, he capitulated, selling his soul at the expense of his honor, character, dignity, and high-mindedness, erased in his April 1 Washington Post op-ed too late to retract.

Responding on April 14 in the London Guardian, Commission members Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin and Desmond Travers headlined, “Goldstone report: Statement issued by members of UN mission on Gaza war,” saying without mentioning Goldstone by name:

Recent articles and comments on the Commission’s work “have misrepresented facts in an attempt to delegitimize the findings of (its) report and to cast doubts on its credibility.”

The four-member Commission’s report “is now an official UN document and all actions taken pursuant to its findings and recommendations fall solely within the purview of the United Nations general assembly which, along with the human rights council, reviewed and endorsed it at the end of 2009.”

“Aspersions cast on the findings (however) cannot be left unchallenged.” Jilani, Chinkin and Travers dispute efforts to claim “any part of the mission’s report unsubstantiated, erroneous or inaccurate.”

As a result, no reevaluation will be reconsidered, nor is there any UN procedure or precedent to do so. The Commission’s conclusions were “made after diligent, independent and objective consideration of the information,” carefully obtained. The Commission endorses “its reliability and credibility. We firmly stand by these conclusions.”

Further, over 18 months after publication, no contrary facts have been determined. We “have yet to establish a convincing basis for any claims that contradict the findings of the mission’s report.”

In addition, the UN Human Rights Council “appointed a committee of independent experts to monitor the independence, effectiveness and genuineness of any domestic proceedings carried out to investigate crimes and violations of international law” discovered.

Observers claiming that follow-up committee members Judge Mary McGowan Davis and Judge Lennart Aspergren contradicted the Commission’s conclusions “are completely misplaced, and a clear distortion of their findings.”

Moreover, the committee said there was “no indication that Israel has opened (legitimate, independent) investigations into the actions of those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw Operation Cast Lead.”

In other words, “one of the most serious allegations about the conduct of Israel’s military operations remains completely unaddressed.”

The Commission dismisses “calls to reconsider or even retract the report, as well as attempts (to misrepresent) its nature and purpose, (saying they) disregard the right of victims….to truth and justice. They also ignore the responsibility of the relevant parties under international law to conduct prompt, thorough, effective and independent investigations.”

Commission members resent pressure exerted to undermine their credibility and integrity. To give in “would be doing a serious injustice to the hundreds of innocent civilians killed during the Gaza conflict, the thousands injured, and the hundreds of thousands whose lives continue to be deeply affected by the conflict and the blockade.”

The process the report initiated will continue “until justice is done and respect for international human rights and humanitarian law by everyone is ensured.”

Hila Jilani is a Pakistani human rights lawyer. Christine Chinkin is London School of Economics Professor of International Law, and Desmond Travers is a former Irish peacekeeper, knowledgeable about international law.

lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.


14 April, 2011

Countercurrents.org