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IRAQ: “The truth has been unleashed”; protest organizers arrested, disappeared, threatened

CPTnet | 13 March 2011

Police and security forces in Suleimaniya have arrested and tortured many organizers of and participants in the daily anti-corruption protests in recent days. Several organizers have also disappeared or received death threats. In a marked increase of tensions, an unknown number of additional security troops have deployed to the city, but apparently refrained from taking the protest site by force.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani threatened yesterday, 12 March to “deal” with the protests if they do not end by 21 March 2011. Rather than complying, protest organizers have announced more visible actions in the coming week.

“The truth has been unleashed,” a young protester told CPTers today (Sunday), “and cannot be silenced, not even by more soldiers.”

“Even if there are only fifteen people left at this square,” said another, “I will never leave until this corrupt, unjust government is finished.”

Additional security forces deployed to Suleimaniyah yesterday. According to one protest organizer, their intention was to take Sara Square by force overnight. The organizer said apparent foreign diplomatic intervention stopped them from doing so at the last minute. In a conversation between Jalal Talabani and U.S. vice-president Joe Biden, later that night, the latter reportedly urged Talabani not to deploy additional security forces to Sara Square.

“If these soldiers come to the square to attack us, much blood will be shed,” a protester told CPT.

In previous weeks, security forces had withdrawn from Sara/Azadi Square. Since 17 February, security forces have killed at least five protesters and wounded many dozens in confrontations. In a threat to the status quo, however, many soldiers publicly expressed their support for the protests, or at least their refusal to fire at them.

Apparently unwilling or unable to rely on regular troops from Suleimaniyah, the regime appears to have resorted to illicit actions, including anonymous threats, disappearances and attacks by unidentified thugs. CPTers spoke to one man who said that after speaking at the open microphone at the protest, he was arrested by security forces and beaten for eight hours before a number of journalists could secure his release. Last week, plainclothes individuals, whom many believe were sent by the regime, brutally attacked protesters camping in Sara Square overnight.

Protest organizers are currently on high alert, sleeping at different houses each night and moving in the constant accompaniment of volunteers to increase their safety. Overnight protests have not taken place for some days.

The protests in Sara/Azadi square are now in their fourth week.

March 13, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Bahraini ex-prisoners expose UK torture role

Press TV – March 13, 2011

Bahrain’s former political prisoners, recently released from jail, hold the UK government responsible for the repressive policies of the Bahraini regime.

Bahraini ruler King Hamad al-Khalifa freed more than 300 political prisoners, recently, in a concession to protesters who are fed up with his 40-years brutal rule in the tiny Persian Gulf island state.

Released political prisoners include academics, human rights activists, bloggers and clerics, according to Bahraini news report.

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights has affirmed the former prisoners’ claims that they have been subjected to “extreme systematic torture”.

“The British government bears a heavy responsibility for the repression in Bahrain. What we have here is an apparatus of torture that was formed and instructed by British security personnel”, said one of the released detainees, Abduljalil al-Singace, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Bahrain.

Many detainees and opposition figures believe that British personnel continue to be involved in the policies and practices of Bahrain’s secret police, the Security and Intelligence Service.

They point out that the methods of interrogation are “identical” to those used during the 1970s, 80s and 90s when the SIS was headed by Ian Henderson, a British police officer, who is believed to still reside in and act as a personal advisor to the king of Bahrain.

Bahraini opposition groups recognize the notorious Henderson, now in his late eighties, as the “torturer-in-chief”.

British parliamentarians, including Lord Avebury, George Galloway and Jeremy Corbyn have previously called on the British government to prosecute him over personal involvement in gross maltreatment of Bahraini prisoners, some of whom died in custody.

Another released prisoner, Professor al-Singace was imprisoned last August in the run-up to general elections in the country.

“We are calling on the European Court of Human Rights to hold the British government to account for the inhumane repression in Bahrain. British citizens have been involved in the most barbaric treatment of innocent civilians with the knowledge and consent of the British government”, said Professor al-Singace.

The former detainees, over and over again, invoked the name of the former head of state security, Henderson, as the ultimate author of their torturous conditions.
They were electrocuted on the genitals, while others were raped by the guards with glass bottles, as evidenced by the former prisoners. Others said they were hung by the hands and feet “like animals” and beaten with hard rubber hoses.

One Shia political activist, aged 58, who gave his name only as Mohammed, said he had personally encountered Henderson.

“The repression and torture used by the Bahraini regime is largely the work of Ian Henderson. But it wasn’t just Henderson. The entire security apparatus of this country was commanded by Henderson and British officers. The Bahraini regime inherited the torture apparatus from the British who continued to run it after independence. The people who are doing the torture now were instructed and trained by British officers and their system of torture is very much in practice today”, said Mohammed, who was detained without trial for nearly five years during the 1970s.

Henderson, who was awarded the George Cross for quashing the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya during the 1950s, was installed by the UK government as head of security in Bahrain in 1968 when the country was a British protectorate and at the same time it was challenged by a mainly Shia independence movement.

Older Bahraini activists recalled that there was a sharp spike in repression and maltreatment of prisoners in the years following Henderson’s appointment – a role he held for 30 years.

In 1986 – after tens of thousands of Bahrainis had been through the prison system, many claiming horrific maltreatment – Henderson was awarded the CBE in the UK’s honors list.

“Britain imposed the al-Khalifa regime on the people of Bahrain and schooled these rulers in how to suppress our people trying to achieve democracy and freedom. The British and the monarchy here enjoyed the oil wealth of this country, while we have been treated like slaves – and to keep us like slaves, our rulers have relied on British repressive know-how. They have used British divide-and-rule sectarian policies between Shia and Sunni and they have criminalized Shia people who have simply been demanding their democratic rights for many decades”, said Mohammed.

Mohammed noted that Bahrain was just another example of how “Western governments have employed dictators throughout the Middle East to crush people”. These Westerners are now being exposed for their “criminal use of dictators”.

“Everywhere the British and American governments have been involved, we see the same torture methods, including in Northern Ireland, Bahrain, Iraq, Afghanistan,” he said. “This is the reality behind their claims of supporting democracy and human rights.”

March 13, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

The village of Awarta faces collective punishment from soldiers after attack on settlers

12 March 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

Today the village of Awarta, the Palestinian village located closest to the illegal settlement Itamar which witnessed the murder of an entire settler family this morning, was put under severe military restrictions. According to the village council, 19 people are still in custody after the Israeli military raided the village early this morning. Around 8 am the Israeli military cut off the roads to the village, preventing anyone from entering or leaving. Around 25 people were arrested in total, among them a 14-year-old boy.

When the soldiers entered the houses to arrest people they flipped over furniture, smashed windows, threw sound grenades and shot bullets in the air.

Around 3 pm the soldiers returned a second time to search houses of the families who’s sons had been arrested. They forced the families to stay outside under armed guards for an hour while about 20 soldiers with dogs entered their houses. As they had done in the morning, the soldiers turned the houses completely upside-down, destroying the electricity by cutting the cables to the fuse box, and polluting the drinking water by throwing mud in the water-tanks. Computers and phones were destroyed and money and property were stolen by the soldiers. Once again the soldiers threw sound grenades inside and outside the houses.

While the soldiers were searching the houses, the families, including women and small children, were forbidden to drink or eat.

It has been reported that an 80-year-old woman who suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure was beaten by the soldiers. She was taken to the Rafidia hospital in Nablus.

Around 6 pm the soldiers left the village, but residents of Awarta are scared that settlers will attack again during the night. No one knows if or when the army or the settlers will return to the village.

The families of the men and boys that were arrested do not know where their sons, fathers, and brothers are or when they will come home.

Even though this kind of systematic collective punishment is illegal according to International law, it is frequently used by the Israeli military all over the West Bank and in Gaza.

March 12, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Fissures in the Arab Revolts

The Counter-Revolution

By VIJAY PRASHAD | CounterPunch | March 11, 2011

There will be blood. No revolution comes in a straight line. Counter-revolution runs its steady course from Bahrain and Saudi Arabia through Egypt and into Libya. In Qatif, the Saudi National Guard opened fire on a protest, a phenomenon which has become commonplace in Bahrain. Inside Egypt, rumors fly that it is the security services that orchestrated the attacks on Copts and women (at a march on the 100th anniversary of international women’s day). Libya is in the throes of an asymmetrical civil war, with Qaddafi’s forces and the rebels running a bloody standoff somewhere near the meridian that divides the country into its eastern and western halves. Jubilation at the hasty departure of Ben Ali and Mubarak settle into a time-sequence that is less exhilarating, but nonetheless impressive. It appears as if the people are not to be content by the first flush of victory. What is wanted is more, and this is where the counter-revolution comes in.

Libya.

At one end of the Arab Revolt is Libya, where the guns are not silent, and threats of military intervention confound discussions in Brussels. The itch to invade mirrors the lead up to the Iraq war in 2003, but with the accents reversed: the French and the English are eager to thrust themselves, while the Americans and the Germans hesitate. NATO warships sail closer to the Libyan coast, and talk of “no-fly zones” intensifies. U. S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates rightly warns that any military confrontation would be seen as a declaration of war. An exhausted U. S. military machine is not capable of yet another war. And besides, the political outcomes of intervention in Libya are unclear.

Qaddafi’s hardened armies and the rebels, led as they are by ex-ministers of Qaddafi’s regime (such as Mustafa Abdul Jalil), continue to battle along the Mediterranean road, between Surt and Ras Lanuf. One day the rebels advance, and the next Qaddafi’s forces. In his dreams, Qaddafi saves nations. Awake, he razes cities. That has been the fate of some of these cities on the edge of the Gulf of Sidra. The “oil dole” and clan favoritism has enabled Qaddafi to secure support in the western part of Libya. The east is largely in the hands of the rebels. With a weak military capacity, the rebels nonetheless have Benghazi in hand and the more urbane set within Qaddafi’s troupe are loath to assume that it can be taken back militarily. It would probably be mete for the National Libyan Council (the government of the east) to declare themselves as the authentic government of Libya and wait. As oil revenue dwindle to the west and if an arms embargo holds, pressure on Qaddafi from below might set the western part of Libya aflame. The working class of Tripoli is restive. Their neighborhoods, such as Feshloon and Tejura, are on permanent lock-down. Martyrs lie on autopsy tables at Tripoli Central Hospital. The workers are not pusillanimous; they are waiting for their moment. Military intervention from NATO will only strengthen Qaddafi’s hand, allowing him to don the robes of the revolutionary against imperialist attack. The workers are also patriots. They might lose their resolve against Qaddafi if they see French and English speaking troops conducting Iraq War style raids into their homes.

Qaddafi continues to insist that the NLC is the mask of al-Qaeda. The Muslim Brotherhood has certainly a long lineage in the eastern part of Libya, bordering as it does Egypt, the home of the Brotherhood. Sections of the Brotherhood morphed into much more hardened fighters after their sojourn as part of the U.S.-Saudi-Pakistani war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. They formed the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (al-Jama’a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah fi-Libya), and returned to eastern Libya to take on Qaddafi. His forces cracked down with force, largely against the main figures of the Group, but also against Salafis who were not radical (such as Muhammad al-Bashti, brutally tortured to death in 1981). The Group tried to maintain its strength, and it did benefit from the Algerian Islamist uprising. A crippling blow came in October 1997, when the Libyan forces killed the Group’s most important commander, Salah Fathi bin Salman (who was known as Abu Abd al-Rahman Hattab). Qaddafi’s early support for the U. S. led “War on Terror” earned him quick dividends. The Group’s remaining intellectual leaders were swept up in 2004, Abu Munder al-Saidi in Hong Kong and Abdullah Sadeq in Thailand: they went into the black hole of Libya’s prison system. What could have been the rump of an Islamist uprising had been fully destroyed. What is now in command in eastern Libya is not al-Qaeda aspirants, but regional forces who have long-standing grievances against Tripoli. The counter-revolution prefers to see them as Islamists, and hopes to drive the stake of fear into the heart of nearby Europe.

Emirs.

With the media concentrating on Libya, focus has shifted from the Sultans of Arabia and their crackdown. Money is the oil that lubricates their counter-revolution. The Saudi royal family hastened to provide transfer payments that total $37 billion. The Gulf Cooperation Council has decided to turn over $20 billion to the beleaguered monarchies of Bahrain and Oman. Muscat and Manama have been equally overrun by dissent. Recycled cabinets are not enough for this popular upsurge, and the bullets fired into the crowd have failed to have the required pedagogical effect. The people will not stop their obligation to democracy.

If Qaddafi’s counter-revolution takes refuge in fantasies of al-Qaeda on Europe’s doorstop, the emirs stoke the fires of the Shia Revival. The Baharnah, the indigenous Shia of Bahrain, for instance, have a political party, the al-Wifaq, that certainly speaks for the Shia working class and middle class who feel a great sense of alienation from Bahrain’s institutions. However, this alienation was not always so. In other words, it is not a sectarian alienation whose roots might be found in the 8th century. Rather, the Shia distress in Bahrain has modern roots, even if these are refracted through older lineages. It is an alienation from oil more than a theological dispute.

Bahrain’s oil was discovered in 1932, and by 1934 it was the first country to export its oil to Europe. A British protectorate against the Ottoman Empire, Bahrain provided oil and protection for the sea lanes from powers that sought to rival British dominion over the Indian Ocean. In December 1934, a group of educated Bahrainis drafted a petition to their titular ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa (who answered to Sir Charles Dalrymple Belgrave, who fashioned himself as Belgrave of Bahrain). No real reforms were forthcoming, and so in 1938, Shia and Sunni leaders (educated merchants and intellectuals) joined with the oil workers (who went on strike) to call for an elected legislature and the other trappings of democracy (including legal trade unions). They were crushed. Their leaders were sent to India. A second revolt, this time helped along by Nasserism, between 1954 and 1956 was equally beaten back (its leaders were sent to the cell in St. Helena that once housed Napoleon). There was little sectarian in these movements from below. They wanted a better share of the oil profits, and respect.

Independence from Britain in 1971 was greeted by a new struggle for constitutionalism. The al-Khalifa ruler went to visit the leading Shia cleric, Ayatollah Mohsin al-Hakim in his base in Najaf (Iraq), to urge him to moderate the Shia demands. It was in the interest of the al-Khalifas to color the demands from below as sectarian. A toothless constitutionalism was set up. Frustration with the pace of reform was heightened after the Iranian Revolution, and the older (Akhbari Shia) traditions found themselves marginalized by the more aggressive political Shi’ism that emanated from Qom (Iran). Sheikh Ali Salman, the current head of the al-Wafiq party, comes from this latter tradition, schooled in King Saud University (chemistry) and then in the famous al-Hawzah al-Arabiyyah in Qom (he was there during the first Gulf War). A renewed constitutional attempt in the early 1990s was once more crushed (and Ali Salman had to leave Bahrain). It set the stage for the King’s new constitution of 2002 that made the King truly sovereign and the various bodies purely advisory. The Shia leader of the time, Sheikh Abdul Amir al-Jamal said of it, “this is not the type of parliament we had demanded.” Al-Jamal died in 2006, leaving the field to Sheikh Isa Ahmed Qassim and his protégé, Ali Salman.

Whatever their temperament, the Wafiq Party led by Ali Salman is not in a position to create the vilayat-e faqih, the guardianship of the clerics. In collaboration with six other parties, it has recently made a reasonable demand, that the current government resign and that a new transition government “whose hands have not been stained with the blood of the martyrs” help “pave the way for the transition to real reforms.” They point to housing and income, to corruption and monarchical excess as their spurs. Also here is the talk of discrimination, and the “exclusion of competent national talent.”

About half of the population of Bahrain comes from South Asia: their needs are not on the table for this revolution. This is a pity. It shows the limits of their demands. The distressed migrants from Egypt and South Asia fleeing from Libya and stranded in Tunisia should give us a sense of the social ecology of the oil industry. These unregistered people produce the world’s wealth but are themselves utterly disposable in a time of crisis (only the stalwart agencies of the UN are at hand, and their miserable resources can only do so much). It is unclear to me why the new revolutionary forces in Egypt have not insisted that the border between Libya and Egypt be opened up to welcome their co-nationals homes.

The counter-revolution counts on sectarianism to tear apart the Arabian resistance. During Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006 and the Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq, the establishment Sunni clerics in Saudi Arabia went on an anti-Shia rampage. Clerics such as Safar al-Hawali and Nasir al-‘Umar preached exclusively through an anti-Shia lens. ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Barrak produced a fatwa in December 2006 that declared the Shia to be takfir, enemies of the Sunnis. In the last months of 2006, Toby Jones notes, the security forces “arrested Shi’is from Qatif and the surrounding areas, reportedly for supporting Hezbollah.” Ten years before, in Bahrain, the minister for justice and Islamic Affairs, Sheikh Abd Allah bin Khalid al-Khalifa, threatened “some Islamic movements” for “taking an extremist path,” and so allowed his security agencies to take the violent path against them, mainly Shia. It was a convenient way to pollute the waters of grievance.

In 1845, a British official watched unrest take hold in Bahrain. He wrote, “Numbers of the principal and most wealthy inhabitants, to avoid the effects of increased anarchy and confusion, fled upon the commencement of actual hostilities to Koweit on the Arabian and to Lingah and other places on the Persian Coast, where they have since temporarily located themselves, in order to watch the course of events, and return with the first signs of peace and established government, and consequent security to life and property.” The counter-revolution in 2011, similarly, watches and waits for its agents to do its work for it. It too wants to preserve life and property, but not those of the masses; only its own life and its own property. It counts on its allies in the North to bring the cavalry if things turn dire. Intervention might yet come in Libya, but it has already come to the Arabian Peninsula. Last year, the U. S. government inked a $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The kit includes UH-60 Blackhawk and MH-6 Little Bird helicopters, very useful in counter-insurgency. When the Peninsula’s political temperature rises, those helicopters will be the “first signs of peace and established government” in the region.

~

Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His most recent book, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009. The Swedish and French editions are just out. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu

March 11, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

General Strike: Because Wisconsin Needs More than a Recall

By Billy Wharton / Dissident Voice / March 11th, 2011

As the old phrase states: Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.  These are indeed extraordinary times in Wisconsin.  The Budget Repair Bill that was passed by Governor Scott Walker and State Republicans will strip public employees of the right to collectively bargain and threaten the very existence of unions in the state.

Despite the severity of these measures, Democrats and sections of the Trade Union leadership have chosen to pour resources and direct energy into a campaign to recall Walker and other Republicans.  Easy call, since the Democrats seem sure to cash-in on Republican overreach and win any recall election.  Yet, a recall falls short of the extraordinary measure quotient – workers are ready to move now in Wisconsin and a general strike is the best tactic to respond to Walker’s assault on democratic rights.

Stripping workers of collective bargaining rights rolls back the historical clock to a time when there was no legal guarantee of getting a union contract.  At the turn of the 20th century, American Employers denied, repressed and ignored claims pressed forward by workers.  The question was one of force – could working people force their bosses to concede to demands for justice or would the bosses be able to exert more power?

And the critical weapon in this struggle was the strike.  Well before the now famous Sit Down Strikes that led to the organizing of the car plants in Michigan, workers carried out mass strikes.  The greatest tool in their possession was the general strike.  The best example of the power of such a total shut down of labor came in Seattle in 1919.

Here, shipyard workers made a strike to defend the gains in pay and benefits they had made during World War I.  At first, the strike was limited to the shipyard workers.  But then, more than 110 other unions realized that their fate was dependent on the victory of the shipyard workers.  They struck, the city was shut down and for five glorious days the city of Seattle was run by the General Strike Committee.

Though the business friendly national labor leadership bent to the will of the bosses and forced the strike to end, the point was made clear.  Not only could labor strike back against attempts to take back gains, but working people held the capacity to run society themselves.  Those who created the wealth were also able to administer it.

While Wisconsin 2011 is quite a different place from Seattle 1919, Walker and the Republicans seem intent to roll back the clock.  Working people might take a cue from them and reach back for a weapon that can be used defensively and offensively – the general strike.

An argument must be won before this can be accomplished.  Focusing solely on the Recall Walker and the Republicans campaign will take energy away from the effort to organize a militant response from working people.  The old Democratic Party line of “wait for the next election” just won’t do anymore, even if that next election comes sooner rather than later.  The time for waiting is over – the very existence of unions is on the line here.

Wisconsin can draw on a long history of socialist and other radical organizing and become the place where a new left-wing movement for the 21st century is born.  The time to act is now!

~

Billy Wharton is a writer, activist and the editor of the Socialist WebZine. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the NYC Indypendent, Spectrezine and the Monthly Review Zine. He can be reached at: whartonbilly@gmail.com.

March 11, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

When is It Time for a General Strike?

Standing Up to a Power Grab

By LAURA FLANDERS | CounterPunch | March 11, 2011

Sometimes things fall apart and sometime they flow together.

As the Wisconsin State Senate rammed through their union-busting bill Wednesday night, people in the capitol chanted “General strike!” And I heard an echo. Not of 1934, the last time there was a general strike in the US, but earlier.

It was 1909, in the crowded Great Hall at New York’s Cooper Union; a big union boss was talking about talks and a 16-year-old girl shouted out from the back: “WALK OUT.”

More than 30,000 shirtwaist factory workers walked off their jobs after that. This week’s International Women’s Day celebrates the anniversary of that strike, by mostly young, immigrant women like 16 year old Clara Lemlich. 700 women were arrested, many more beaten and spat on for being “On strike against God.”

They struck for eleven weeks. It was the first successful uprising of women workers in this country–but their success didn’t go far enough.

Had, it, the 1911 Triangle Factory fire that killed 146 of these workers two years later might never have happened. A documentary about the fire is available now from PBS’s website, another one’s coming from HBO. At the March 25 centennial commemoration, the names of all the dead will be read.

But fewer Americans remember the demands these women and girls made… Not just for wage increases, but for the ability to have a say in the conditions of their workplace–the workplace that killed them. Those are the rights that will be taken from American workers if the Republicans’ power grab is allowed to stand.

Imagine, a century ago, if the rest of New York had stood with the women of the factories. Imagine if instead of 20,000, it had been 2 million workers marching. Or if it were to be today.

~

Laura Flanders is the host of GRITtv, which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. More…9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, public television and online at GRITv.org.

March 11, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Bahrain police open fire on protesters

Press TV – March 11, 2011
Bahraini police preventing anti-government protesters from marching towards the royal palace.

Bahraini police have opened fire on anti-government protesters marching towards the royal palace in the capital, injuring at least 150 people.

There are also reports suggesting that security forces and pro-government vigilantes armed with clubs, swords and metal pipes are beating protesters near the royal complex.

Witnesses say at least ten ambulances were rushed to the area.

The violence came as nearly 50,000 demonstrators tried to stage a protest rally near the royal palace in the Refaa area of Manama on Friday, demanding political reforms.

Thousands of women have also joined the protest rally demanding an end to King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa’s rule. Protesters are also calling for the ouster of the government and want a new constitution.

Bahraini authorities, however, claim that security forces fired tear gas on anti-government protesters to stop them from heading toward a square near the royal palace, where hundreds of armed pro-regime loyalists were waiting for them.

Bahraini security officials had earlier warned against demonstrations near the palace, saying they would deal with the issue as a national security threat.

“The march that some people are trying to hold today to the Reffa area threatens security and social peace,” an interior ministry statement said on Friday.

“The interior ministry holds the organizers and participants of this march responsible for the consequences and reiterates the need to avert any confrontation among the residents that could result in unnecessary loss of life,” the statement added.

“Under these conditions…the interior ministry confirms that forces to defend public order will be present to prevent any clash that may occur between the residents.”

All roads leading to the palace were blocked since early in the morning, forcing protesters to walk long distances to reach the area where members of the Sunni royal family live.

March 11, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

‘Yemen referendum call dubious act’

Walid Al-Saqaf: Yemeni people’s demand to end dictatorship is irreversible

Press TV – March 10, 2011

Yemeni opposition groups are taking to the streets, demanding the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh who has been in power for 30 years.

Press TV interviewed journalist Sarah Marusek regarding the popular uprising in Yemen.

Press TV: Do you think it’s too late for Saleh announce a referendum on constitution? If he thinks that a new constitution and new parliamentary system is the right decision, why hasn’t he made it before and he’s making it now while facing these protests. Do you think it’s not going to work?

Marusek: That is a very good question. I think whether or not, Western interests have a role in this most recent decision. Certainly it has been very unfortunate that a lot of attention has not been focused on Yemen over the last several weeks because these protests have continued regularly. The weapons that the Yemenis are using against their own people are often supplied by the UK and the United States. I think this is incredibly worrying and I’ve been very upset that I haven’t seen more attention being paid. All eyes are focused on Libya and perhaps that is strategic from Washington and London’s perspective. I think there are a lot of questions that need to be asked from both governments. Why they are continuing to support such an autocratic government that uses violence regularly. This is not just over the protests. It has been over the past several years. They have been using British weapons to attack their own citizens, particularly in some of the areas that are trying to obtain some autonomy. So I think that this raises a lot of questions. Now all of a sudden the president is willing to create a new constitution. There have been efforts for many years in Yemen to try and alter the system. So I would really look upon this with a lot of skepticism and whether or not it’s going to achieve anything and at this point whether the critical mass have proven in Yemen that it’s time for Saleh to step down.

Press TV: The stance was raised in some comments that may be taken by Yemen’s neighboring countries or its allies including Saudi Arabia which is facing its own protests. Do you think the likes of Saudi Arabia or the governments in Bahrain are closely watching the events in Yemen, and how do you think they will be taking a stance? What stance would you think they would be taking considering the way President Saleh is facing these demonstrations?

Marusek: I certainly think they are watching very carefully. I believe Bahrain obviously has its own situation that is really reaching critical mass as well. We are starting to see some protests in Saudi Arabia, and I think that not only are they watching what is happening in Yemen with their eyes, but they are also calling Washington probably hourly trying to press the United States to put pressure on Saleh to handle things correctly, and to look for ways of framing the situation so this empowers the dictatorships in the region because they certainly do not want to step down; any of them. In my opinion, one of the really heinous ways they are doing this and this is not something new; it’s something that has been happening for a while now. But we see it happening more and more now in Libya and Yemen. It’s the so-called threat of al-Qaeda that is being thrown out there. It’s being used to justify mass violations of human rights and violence. It’s often used to generate support from Western publics to continue this repression of populations. I think that Saudi Arabia is guilty of these things and I think that Yemen is guilty and certainly Gaddafi is going crazy with accusing al-Qaeda for everything, which is quite interesting. He usually blames al-Qaeda for atrocities that his own militias are performing on the Libyan people.

Press TV: Is the Yemeni government prepared to end the discrimination against the people in Yemen? If he is going to stay in power until 2013 while the people have been calling for the entire regime to go along with him; to let go of the three decades of power he has been clinging to; do you think that these moves are going to appease the protesters or do you think we are going to see these protests carry on and this new constitution and national unity government proposal not be accepted with President Saleh in the middle of it?

Marusek: That is a very good question and I think we all have to just wait and watch. I would think that looking at the history of oppression against the organized opposition — the political opposition that’s been attempting to gain some sort of say in the government in Yemen for the last several years, and the continued oppression against them is one thing. We know that the system right now excludes them. It has excluded them from elections. It has excluded them from decision making. Then the other part of this equation is that many of the protesters actually started off and their youth are not organized. They are not part of the formal opposition and political opposition movement. So you have two different blocks who only have recently joined together to demand (in some sort of union) the same thing. So whether or not this decision by Saleh is going to divide the people on the streets right now, that is a really good question. My hunch is that it won’t and people will demand more than what he is offering, and just be incredibly skeptical that he will be able to carry through and offer anything to people he’s been marginalizing and oppressing for so many years now.

H/T SilverLining

March 10, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Video | Leave a comment

US Gov’t Attorneys: Providing Detailed Charges to Those on Terror Lists ‘Extremely Burdensome’

Activist Post | March 9, 2011

Defense lawyers for organizations on the U.S. government’s “terror list” are frustrated fighting the designation, and seizure of assets in many cases, because the government claims it is too tedious to give an explanation of the charges. “It would be extremely burdensome to give a list of charges,” said the government’s attorney, Douglas Letter, the Associated Press reported today:

Attorneys for the U.S. government told a federal appeals court Wednesday that informing each person and organization listed as a global terrorist of the reasons they are so designated would be too much work.

They made the argument in a case involving the government’s seizure of assets belonging to the U.S. chapter of Al Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc., a Saudi Arabia-based charity. The case is being heard by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Al Haramain attorney David Cole said outside court that representatives of Al Haramain were left in the dark after the organization was put on the global terrorist list. They continued to fight the designation without knowing what was driving it.

Cole said he and other attorneys could have provided a much more effective defense for the organization if they knew the reasons for the charges.

Organizations that are arbitrarily placed on the terror list who have their assets frozen are finding the burden of proof to be on them.  Yet, they don’t even know what they are supposed to prove given the lack of detailed charges.

In a previous case, U.S. Judge, Gary Karr, ruled that freezing the assets of organizations suspected of terrorist ties has been done without due process by the Treasury Department.  However, he also ruled that the “Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control needed only a reasonable belief that the charity was a component of a larger organization that funds terrorism” to take action.

This erosion of due process and reversal of burden of proof, along with Obama’s recent Executive Order to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely, are troubling signs for the “Land of the Free.”

March 9, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia | Leave a comment

Why is Hillary Not Defending the Rights of Saudis to Protest?

By Eric Blair |Activist Post | March 8, 2011

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been exhaustively in front of cameras promoting the right for people to protest in Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, and Libya.  She’s been touting the freedom to use social networking sites as a way for Arab people to organize against their oppressive regimes.  Now, the Administration is even considering arming the opposition in Libya.

Clinton’s perpetual propaganda efforts exposed her blatant hypocrisy when a silent peaceful protester was violently removed from one of her recent speeches on the very subject. However, the hypocrisy now seems to go much deeper in her deafening silence over the prospect for protests in Saudi Arabia.

After Human Rights Watch revealed that a nationwide “Day of Rage” protest had been planned in Saudi Arabia for this week, March 11th, Bloomberg reported that the Saudi government claims that demonstrations and marches are “strictly” prohibited by law.  A Saudi Interior Ministry official said protests “contradict Islamic values” and “They harm public interest, infringe on the rights of others, spread chaos and lead to bloodshed.”

This prohibition of popular dissent proves beyond a shadow of doubt that Saudi Arabia is indeed the most tyrannical authoritarian regime in the Arab world.  Yet, U.S. Administration officials have been strangely silent about supporting the people’s uprising there. Perhaps they think the protests won’t be large enough to warrant a response.  Well, that certainly didn’t stop their best propaganda push to stoke the puny protests in Iran, so the size or ferocity of unrest shouldn’t matter to their exploits of supposedly backing human freedom.  And one would think that given what has happened to oil prices due to the unrest in Libya and Egypt, even a minor protest in the largest oil-producing dictatorship in the world would draw more public response from the White House.

Or perhaps the Administration believes that the hastily-crafted $35 billion social aid package ordered by King Abdullah will be enough to tamp down escalating tensions in Saudi Arabia.  So far, there have only been reports of small Shiite protests in Saudi Arabia, mostly demanding the release of political prisoners held by the Sunni monarchy.

These protests would seem to be very minor in comparison to the sea of people revolting in Cairo. However, the revolutionary whispers must clearly be getting louder as the Saudi stock market plummeted 11% in just two days of wild trading to its 7-year low on fears of civil unrest.  It’s noteworthy that the plunge was reportedly led by large banks and insurers.

If Clinton is to stand by her new-found rhetoric, certainly she’ll call for restraint on the part of the Saudi government should a protest erupt, right?  And surely she’ll demand that the kings of Internet censorship in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia, will open communication channels so the people can freely unite, right?  And if push comes to shove in Saudi Arabia, she’ll definitely support arming the people’s opposition to the royal family, right?  Eh hum . . . don’t count on it.

Regardless, many analysts believe the Saudi regime is the next to fall with or without the prodding of the U.S.

March 8, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Internet Lovers! Know Your Enemy: Cass Sunstein

By C.J. Maloney | Lew Rockwell | March 2, 2011

Truth is the foundation on which the power of the press stands and falls, and our only demand of the press, also the foreign press, is that they report the truth about Germany.

~ Otto Dietrich, Reich Press Chief, 1934

Democracy is under assault! To the bulwarks! Quick, load the catapult with our freedom of speech and shoot it over at the enemy; it’s our only hope! So says Harvard professor Cass Sunstein in his On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done. More an 88-page gab session than a structured book, On Rumors makes me wonder if this is how Professor Sunstein sounds at the chalkboard…placid, scattershot and above all, repetitive. The villain of his piece is the Internet – a fertile breeding ground for “false” rumors – and his knight in shining armor the government censor.

The book starts off with, ends, and endlessly repeats a trumpet blast sure to grab the modern American ear – democracy is in peril. (Sunstein, 3, 10, 65, 85, etc.) The culprit? Free speech – a protective shield for the “false” rumors so hated by the author, all running amok and unfettered via the Internet highway, a regulatory void with no political infringements whatsoever. The Internet is, to the author, a dagger pointed at the very heart of democracy.

Sunstein puts forth two goals of his effort. First, to study how and why rumors spread, where he attempts to use social cascades and group polarization to paint the obvious with an intellectual varnish, a collegiate effort to erect something as earthy as “telegraph, telephone, tell a friend” into a three-month long lecture that costs $17,000 to hear at Harvard.

His second goal is the book’s main course – and the part of most interest to those in power itching for any excuse to regulate the Internet – where he grants some helpful suggestions as to “what we can do to protect ourselves against the harmful effects of false rumors.” (Sunstein, 4-5) His answer? Not censorship (heavens, no!) but the imposition of a “chilling effect” on such rumors; just the “false” ones, mind you.

Sunstein insists this is necessary as “False rumors…can threaten careers, policies, public officials, and sometimes even democracy itself.” (Sunstein, 3) Of course, no warning would be complete for post-9-11 America without pointing out how the Internet is “crucial in the process of radicalization.” (Sunstein, 41) He plays to the reader’s self-interest, as “rumors can harm the economy” (Sunstein, 3) and “fuel speculative bubbles, greatly inflating prices” (Sunstein, 8) as well as his self-conceit, since “all of us are potential victims of rumors, including false and vicious ones.” (Sunstein, 3)

A large concern of the author is the protection of the political elite, since with the spread of “false” rumors “people might lose faith…in their government itself.” (Sunstein, 10) Though he warns that “many rumors spread conspiracy theories” (Sunstein, 7) I’d advise him to read a copy of The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by his fellow Harvard professor Bernard Bailyn, who helpfully points out that our Founders were rabid “conspiracy theorists” and, even more to the point, urge Sunstein to look at history and the innumerable times when “conspiracy” theories proved themselves to be absolutely true.

For all his learned sounding discourse, Sunstein freely admits he has no idea what exactly a rumor is, as “there is no settled definition of rumors, and I will not attempt to offer one here.” (Sunstein, 5) He has the mind of your standard American activist, her “progressives,” always on the look out for a social ill to cure via the application of political power. All he needs, in this case, is to assault the freedom of speech so he may stop something he can’t quite define but knows for certain is there.

The Censorship That Dares Not Speak Its Name

These points should not be taken as a plea for any kind of censorship…

~ Cass Sunstein, On Rumors, 2009

Most grating on the reader’s ear (and insulting to his intelligence) is Sunstein’s habit of softening every statement in an attempt to appear thoughtful and levelheaded about what he is proposing. This leads him to write in the same manner as an insecure teenage girl speaks, every sentence reads as if it should end with a question mark, as when “(the problem) seems to be increasing” (Sunstein, 10) and “rumors are nearly as old as human history.” (Sunstein, 3) Eventually his constant use of softeners make him appear not reasonable, but weak-kneed. This book lacks the courage of the author’s convictions.

Even his outright call for censorship arrives on stage with a timid limp – Sunstein is loath to come out and say what he means. He claims that “while old style censorship is out of the question” (Sunstein, 12) and “a chilling effect can be exceedingly harmful…let’s be careful about undue emphasis on the underlying risk…we should be able to agree that on occasion, the chilling effect is a very good thing.” (Sunstein, 72) As always with Sunstein, it comes back to the Internet. “It is not obvious that the current regulatory system for free speech – the current setting of chill – is the one that we would or should choose for the Internet Era.” (Sunstein, 78)

From back to the land crazes to imperialist designs on foreign lands to the atomic bomb, much bloodshed, misery, and inhumanity have flowed from America’s university system. Still I submit there is neither reason nor right to censure our universities and their free flow of ideas because much greatness, too, has come out of them. To obtain the good, we must put up with the bad. And, I suggest to Professor Sunstein, the Internet deserves the same consideration.

In this book’s most pertinent passage (for its author) Sunstein writes “Over the course of our lives, it is nearly inevitable that all of us will make or have made statements…that will seem to some members of the public a kind of smoking gun – proof of poor judgment.” (Sunstein, 64) On Rumors is indeed that, 88 pages of irrefutable proof of Sunstein’s exceptionally shoddy logic, intellectual arrogance and child-like trust in power.

For but one example of that last, while he points out (correctly) that “we lack direct or personal knowledge about the facts that underlie most of our judgments” (Sunstein, 5) he exempts whatever political gatekeepers he’d empower to enforce his “chilling” of “false” rumors from this shortcoming. Sunstein assumes that those in power will not only know what is true or false, but will use their power to “chill” what they claim to be false in a completely honest, benevolent manner. He has a trust in power, a trust in the political class, which neither human nature nor recorded history allows to any rational man.

It is best we remember J.S. Mill’s take on freedom of speech when he warned “the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course, deny its truth; but they are not infallible.” (Mill, 16)

And neither is Cass Sunstein; and On Rumors, a poorly written, blatant assault on our freedom of speech, proves my point.

Sources Cited

Mill, J.S. On Liberty. (Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., Indianapolis, IN, 1978)

Sunstein, Cass R. On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done. (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, New York, 2009)

~

CJ Maloney [send him mail] lives and works in New York City.

March 7, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | Leave a comment

Egyptian protesters brutally attacked

Press TV – March 6, 2011

Plainclothes forces have attacked hundreds of Egyptian demonstrators with knives and rocks outside the State Security Agency headquarters in Cairo.

Around 500 protesters, demanding the closure of the secret police headquarters, were met with violence by security forces wearing civilian clothing on Sunday, AFP reported.

To stop protesters from storming the building — where documents were reportedly being destroyed that proved human rights violations — the army fired warning shots and used batons to disperse the crowd, witnesses said.

Earlier, in a similar incident, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the headquarters of the State Security Agency in Alexandria to protest human rights abuses, which stemmed from ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s nearly three decades of state of emergency rule.

The gathering also turned violent when security forces opened fire on protesters, injuring at least three.

State security agents have been blamed for the violence during massive protests in Liberation Square to overthrow Mubarak.

On Saturday, former interior minister in charge of the secret services under Mubarak — General Habib al-Adly — was summoned to court and charged with money-laundering and corruption. He has denied all the charges.

Egypt’s former Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmy has also been summoned to court over accusations of selling gas to Israel and six European states for prices lower than international ones.

Fahmy claims he only carried out the orders made by Mubarak.

March 6, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

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