Let us start first with a Thomas Friedman article-conclusion first!

If you ask “what are the real threats to our security today,” said Lester Brown of The Earth Policy Institute, “at the top of the list would be climate change, population growth, water shortages, rising food prices and the number of failing states in the world.

As that list grows, how many failed states before we have a failing global civilization, and everything begins to unravel?”

Hopefully, we won’t go there. But, then -

we should all remember that quote attributed to Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”   —- Well, you may not be interested in climate change, but climate change is interested in you.

Folks, this is not a hoax. We and the Arabs need to figure out — and fast — more ways to partner to mitigate the environmental threats where we can and to build greater resiliency against those where we can’t. Twenty years from now, this could be all that we’re talking about.

Please go to the link for a very interesting article that tells us that the Arab Spring did happen in part because of the lack of attention to climate change on the part of government officials that were racking it all in to themselves – those official rapists of their countries.

Thomas Friedman is not the only one asking why Arab Spring now, and why the Arab World has not produced any democracies like other Islamic Countries – non-Arabs – actually did. Why is there no Arab State like Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, or Bangladesh? This last version of the Question was posed by Fareed Zakaria on today’s CNN/GPS show.

Seemingly – all Arab States that are within the huge North-Africa Middle-East area of the Arab conquests in the 12th and 13th Centuries have no real Civil Society. In all these States the economy is run by the people of the ruling Monarchy or by those close to the Government.
The people as such were kept low by an alliance of the rulers with the heads of the religion and the goal of this alliance was to fight another religious group – and here comes in the military that is completely loyal to the ruling power that is also the economy’s leader. This kind of socio-economic system did neither allow for the development of a meaningful Civil Society, nor a really forward looking Middle Class.

To above obervation by Fareed Zakaria we see the add-on by Thomas Friedman:  “The Arab awakening was driven not only by political and economic stresses, but, less visibly, by environmental, population and climate stresses as well. If we focus only on the former and not the latter, we will never be able to help stabilize these societies.”

Thomas Friedman tells us of draught in Syria and North Africa and how this draught pushed the societal lid and was part of the reason for this present day upheaval.

And a Warning – 12 of the world’s 15 most water-scarce countries — Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel and Palestine — are in the Middle East, and after three decades of explosive population growth these countries are “set to dramatically worsen their predicament.

Then think also about the observatio – “Alot more mouths to feed with less water than ever. As Lester Brown, the president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of “World on the Edge,” notes, 20 years ago, using oil-drilling technology, the Saudis tapped into an aquifer far below the desert to produce irrigated wheat, making themselves self-sufficient. But now almost all that water is gone, and Saudi wheat production is, too. So the Saudis are investing in farm land in Ethiopia and Sudan, but that means they will draw more Nile water for irrigation away from Egypt, whose agriculture-rich Nile Delta is already vulnerable to any sea level rise and saltwater intrusion.

The Link to Thomas Friedman:  www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/opinion/sunday/friedman-the-other-arab-spring.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120408

by Thomas Fuchs

The Other Arab Spring.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Published in The New York Times  April 7, 2012 as an OP-ED Column.

ISN’T it interesting that the Arab awakening began in Tunisia with a fruit vendor who was harassed by police for not having a permit to sell food — just at the moment when world food prices hit record highs? And that it began in Syria with farmers in the southern village of Dara’a, who were demanding the right to buy and sell land near the border, without having to get permission from corrupt security officials? And that it was spurred on in Yemen — the first country in the world expected to run out of water — by a list of grievances against an incompetent government, among the biggest of which was that top officials were digging water wells in their own backyards at a time when the government was supposed to be preventing such water wildcatting? As Abdelsalam Razzaz, the minister of water in Yemen’s new government, told Reuters last week: “The officials themselves have traditionally been the most aggressive well diggers. Nearly every minister had a well dug in his house.”

Israel, Iran, Jordan and Turkey join forces for multimillion-dollar science project.

Each of the four countries has pledged $5 million toward the SESAME facility, which is being built near Amman.

By Asaf Shtull-Trauring, Published  15.03.2012 by HAARETZ of Israel.
 www.haaretz.com/print-edition/new…

In an extraordinary act of regional cooperation, Israel, Iran, Jordan and Turkey are to jointly provide funds for a particle accelerator as part of their commitment to a UNESCO-sponsored scientific project, it was announced on Wednesday.

Each of the four countries has pledged $5 million toward the SESAME facility, which is being built near Amman. SESAME stands for Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East.

According to the UNESCO website, the project aims to “foster scientific and technological excellence in the Middle East and neighboring countries (and prevent or reverse brain drain ) by enabling world-class research,” and to “build scientific and cultural bridges between neighboring countries.”

The project is slated to go online in 2015.

Egypt was originally meant to be one of the sponsors, but the past year’s instability there made it difficult to secure its commitment. From Wednesday’s announcement, it appears that Iran is taking Egypt’s place.

The $20 million isn’t enough to cover the accelerator project. Another $15 million is being sought from Europe and the United States. The SESAME center will ultimately cost $100 million.

“This announcement is a breakthrough in terms of the financial infrastructure,” said Prof. Eliezer Rabinovici, a physicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who has attended SESAME planning meetings.

“SESAME had enough money to build the building to house the accelerator, and to install its first components, which are being donated by the Germans. Now this commitment will enable the purchase of a light source for the accelerator,” he said.

Moshe Vigdor, who heads the Planning and Budgeting Committee of Israel’s Council for Higher Education, said that without this agreement the project would have collapsed.

As for Iran’s involvement, he said, “Science crosses borders and Israel participates in many international scientific forums that include Iran.”

SESAME also includes representatives from the Palestinian Authority, Pakistan, Bahrain and Cyprus.

According to Rabinovici, SESAME’s seeds were sown at a meeting that took place in Dahab, Sinai, three weeks after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. Scientists from Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Morocco, as well as Palestinian scientists, were at the meeting.

While terror attacks in the late 1990s moved the working meetings to Europe, work on the project continued, getting a major boost with the donation of a German synchrotron, which will serve as the base for the new accelerator.

Unlike accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, the synchrotron is not based on particle collisions but on the cyclic beaming of electrons within the accelerator. When the electrons are accelerated they radiate, and this radiation can be used for screening in archaeology, physics, life sciences, pharmacology and other fields.

There are 60 such synchrotrons in the world, but none in the Middle East.

=====================================================

Israeli Vice Premier Silvan Shalom says cutting Iran off from SWIFT clearinghouse will almost totally paralyze Iranian imports and exports, hours after most severe sanctions ever leveled against a sovereign country take effect in Iran • “Everything is done through international clearinghouses these days. What will they do?  Carry gold in suitcases?” says Shalom.

Shalom spoke less than a day after the most severe sanctions ever leveled against a sovereign country went into effect as Iran’s banking system was disconnected from the international SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) network – a secure electronic system used by banks all over the world to communicate money transfers and other transactions.

Officials in Jerusalem have said that the impact of this move should become apparent within a few weeks. Many officials voiced satisfaction with the move.

“This is a real ratcheting up of the pressure,” Shalom told Israel Radio on Friday. “Israel has wanted this for a long time.”

===========================================================

	Shimon Peres talking with CERN Director general Rolf Heuer at the particle accelerator in Geneva.
	Photo by: CERN

Bahrain king meets with rabbi

December 30, 2011

(JTA) — The king of Bahrain met with a visiting rabbi in his palace.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, vice president of the World Jewish Congress, met in Bahrain Wednesday with King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. Schneier is also the president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.

Schneier said that he welcomed a suggestion by King Hamad to host a gathering of Jewish and Muslim clerics in Bahrain in 2012.

“Bahrain is a role model in the Arab world for coexistence and tolerance of different faith communities, including a small Jewish community. I am deeply honored to be the first rabbi to be hosted by the King of Bahrain at his palace, and I am excited that he and his government are fully committed to building bridges between our two communities,” Schneier said in a statement.

“I am looking forward to working with King Hamad and his government to bring our two communities closer together,” he also said.

—————

Rabbi Lauds Bahrain King Despite Abuses

Marc Schneier Calls Gulf State a ‘Model’ for Dialogue

Crackdown King: Rabbi Marc Schneier meets Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The Gulf State’s ruler has been criticized for cracking down on opponents but Schneier praises him as a model of interfaith dialogue.

Das jüdische Wochenmagazin

The final US convoy prepares to leave Iraq, 12/18/11. (photo: AP)

Gandhian-style tactics still relevant in Arab Spring times.

By Reuters, Thursday, 22 December 2011, posted by Arab Business News.

The most electrifying event of the year, for me, was the Egyptian revolution. I’d long had an interest in Gandhian-style struggles. Here was a nonviolent struggle unfolding in real-time against Hosni Mubarak’s repressive regime. Tens of millions of people were gaining their freedom.

The media coverage of the events in Tahrir Square focused on the Facebook revolution. But when I went to Cairo shortly after, I discovered that the use of social media was only part of the reason why the dictator had been toppled. Behind the protests was a cadre of activists who had been trained in the techniques of nonviolent struggle. This realisation was a eureka moment. If it was possible to overthrow dictators with comparatively little bloodshed – less than a thousand died in Egypt’s revolution – many millions more elsewhere might be able to gain their freedom given proper planning and training.

2011 was a banner year for nonviolent struggle. Not only did it witness the successful Arab Spring revolutions against dictators in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen; it also saw three Arab kings – in Morocco, Jordan and Kuwait – liberalise their political systems to head off similar protests. And the brave people of Syria went out on the streets again and again, despite being arrested, tortured and killed in their thousands.

Further afield, the Burmese regime started to reach an accommodation with pro-democracy activist, Aung San Suu Kyi, after two decades of nonviolent opposition; China experienced increasing stirrings of protest, for example when citizens posted nude photos of themselves on the internet after the authorities ruled that a photo of Ai Weiwei, the dissident artist, was pornographic; and even Vladimir Putin had to face demonstrations after seemingly widespread vote-rigging in Russia’s parliamentary elections.

The techniques of nonviolent struggle have also been used for purposes other than bringing down dictatorships. A man called Anna Hazare led a successful campaign against corruption in India. Meanwhile, the West had to contend with the Indignant anti-austerity movements in Spain, Greece and Italy as well as the anti-banker Occupy movements in the United States and Britain.

And don’t forget Leymah Gbowee, one of the winners of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. She helped end Liberia’s civil war in 2003.

2011 was the most successful year for nonviolent struggle since 1989 when peaceful revolutions led by the likes of Poland’s Lech Walesa and Czechoslovakia’s Vaclav Havel, who died at the weekend, swept away the old communist regimes of Eastern Europe. But nonviolent struggle hasn’t mown down everything in its path this year. The Occupy movements haven’t achieved much apart from raising consciousness. The transition to democracy in Egypt is still uncertain. Pro-democracy protests in Bahrain were snuffed out with the help of Saudi tanks. Bashar Assad is still in power in Damascus. And Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was brought down by a bloody civil war and foreign military intervention, not by unarmed protesters.

Over the past year, whenever I could tear myself away from the unfolding drama in the euro zone, I turned my attention to nonviolent struggle. How were these movements organised? Did they draw inspiration from common sources? And what were the ingredients of success?

The trail began in early January, several weeks before the Tahrir Square demonstrations. I was in Delhi meeting Kiran Bedi, a key member of Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign. I wanted to know whether Mohandas Gandhi, the leader of India’s independence struggle against the British in the first half of the 20th Century, was still relevant today. Of course, she replied, explaining that they had chosen January 30, the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination, to hold their anti-corruption demonstration.

It wasn’t until August, though, that the campaign gathered momentum. The decisive moment came when Hazare announced he would go on a public hunger strike, a classic Gandhian technique, until the government agreed to create a tough anti-corruption watchdog. This posed a dilemma for the authorities. Either they would let the 74-year-old man go on strike and they would look weak; or they wouldn’t and they would look brutal. The police chose the latter option, arresting Hazare and over a thousand of his supporters on the grounds that they were holding an illegal demonstration. Indians came out in their millions in protest. Some kids in an orphanage even staged a hunger strike in sympathy.

The so-called dilemma action was perfected by Gandhi in his salt march in 1930. At the time, salt-making was a British government monopoly. Gandhi declared he was going to march to the sea and make his own salt, daring the authorities either to arrest him or display their impotence. After weeks of dithering, the British arrested Gandhi – triggering a massive civil disobedience campaign which led to over 80,000 people being put behind bars and paved the way for the end of British rule. Today’s Indian authorities made the same mistake as their British predecessors.

But this is moving too fast. Long before Hazare’s victory, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali had fled Tunisia and Mubarak had resigned in Egypt. When I went to Cairo a month later, I met Saad Bahaar, a former engineer who had been training activists in the techniques of nonviolent struggle for six years. I was stunned. How had he learned what to do? He pointed, among other things, to the work of Gene Sharp, a frail 83-year-old Boston-based academic who has been studying and proselytising this type of warfare for about 60 years.

I’d never heard of Sharp, who runs a small think-tank called the Albert Einstein Institution. But I sought him out and devoured a clutch of his books, including his classic treatise, The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Sharp had analyzed how the pillars on which dictators’ power rests could be undermined systematically by nonviolent struggle. He also listed 198 tactics that could be used. Sharp had taken the insights of Gandhi and others and developed them into a quasi-science.

One of Sharp’s concepts – political jujitsu – is particularly powerful. This is the idea that violence inflicted by a dictatorship on peaceful protesters could boomerang on the regime and destroy it. Bystanders would abandon their neutrality; the regime’s pillars of support would become shaky; if the activists had the courage to maintain their struggle, the tyrant would ultimately collapse. But – and this was a crucial “but” – the revolutionaries had to maintain their nonviolent discipline, according to Sharp. Otherwise, they would lose the active support of the masses and, in a trial of strength, the regime would overwhelm them.

Boston is one node in a loose network of activists involved in nonviolent struggle. Another is Belgrade, home of Srdja Popovic, a 38-year-old Serb who was a founder of the resistance movement which helped bring down Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Popovic now runs Canvas, a group that trains activists around the world in nonviolent struggle. The tall angular Serb has simplified and popularised Sharp’s work, adding a huge dose of energy and humor as well as real-life experience.

Then there are academics who have helped refine the techniques of nonviolent warfare by studying past campaigns. For example, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan studied 323 liberation struggles between 1900 and 2006 in their new book Why Civil Resistance Works. They discovered that 53 percent of the nonviolent campaigns succeeded in bringing about regime change, roughly double the 26 percent success rate for violent ones. The nonviolent struggles were also faster – taking on average three years to reach their goal rather than nine. And such campaigns had a good chance of ushering in democracies whereas regime changes brought about through violence tended to lead to new dictatorships.

The overall message of these activists and academics can be boiled down to several simple points. Success comes from having a clear and powerful goal, unity among the opposition, good strategic planning, tactical innovation and nonviolent discipline.

The first point can be illustrated by comparing Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign to the less successful Occupy movements. Hazare had a precise goal that resonated with a huge swathe of Indian society. The Occupy movements and their close relations, the Indignant movements, haven’t yet articulated clear goals nor have they yet achieved anything concrete.

The perils of abandoning nonviolent discipline are also shown by Italy’s Indignati and Greece’s Aganaktismenoi. In the former case, protests were hijacked by a group of anarchists called the Black Bloc; in the latter by demonstrators throwing Molotov cocktails. Almost all the media coverage focused on the fringe violent elements rather than the peaceful masses.

Colonel Gaddafi’s bloody overthrow is, of course, the supposed counter-example from 2011 to the merits of pursuing a nonviolent struggle. It seems to suggest that violence pays. As such, some members of the Syrian opposition are advocating it as a model they should follow – although the main umbrella body, the Syrian National Council, is still pushing the nonviolent approach.

But the lessons from the Libyan revolution aren’t clear-cut. For a start, it’s unknowable what would have happened if the people had pursued a nonviolent campaign: they might eventually have got their way with less bloodshed. Although estimates of the Libyan death toll vary widely, the Transitional National Council has used a number of 25,000. If the same proportion of Syria’s larger population was killed in a conflict, its death toll would be 89,000 – much higher than the 5,000 so far estimated by the United Nations.

The Libyan campaign also relied on France, Britain, America and other countries attacking Gaddafi’s forces from the air. That can’t easily be repeated in Syria. Foreign powers aren’t always willing to play the role of global policeman – and, when they are, they typically want something in return such as control of a country’s natural resources.

How the Syrian conflict plays out will determine many people’s perceptions of the value of nonviolent struggle. At the moment, it looks like there is a significant risk of it descending into civil war. But even if such a tragedy unfolds this won’t prove that Gandhian-style campaigns are worthless. 2011 has already shown the power of the technique in other countries. As more people learn the strategy and tactics of nonviolent struggle, it will become more powerful still.

(Hugo Dixon is a Reuters Breakingviews colunist.  The opinions expressed are his own.)

————————————————————————————————————————————————

Bahrain to drop 343 free-speech cases after protests Other cases involving crimes of violence and sabotage to remain pending, lawyer says

Egypt growth slows as turmoil hurts tourism, investment Arab nation’s foreign currency reserves tumble 44% in first 11 months to $20.2bn

Bahrain Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton urges Saudi, Bahrain to embrace Arab Spring.

By Bloomberg, Tuesday, 8 November 2011.
 www.arabianbusiness.com/clinton-u…

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying that the US has a role in democracy movements that continue to roil the Middle East, urged Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to embrace reform and Syria to accept protesters’ demands.

“These revolutions are not ours – they are not by us, for us, or against us, but we do have a role,” Clinton said in remarks to the National Democratic Institute, a democracy support organization based in Washington. “Fundamentally, there is a right side of history. We want to be on it. And without exception, we want our partners in the region to reform so that they are on it as well.”

—

Clinton addressed skepticism in both the Arab world and at home about US motives and commitments since the Arab Spring began with a Tunisian fruit vendor’s protest self-immolation in December 2010.

Developments in the months since then have raised the possibility of Islamic groups gaining political power in Egypt, highlighted differences in the way the US has approached protest movements in places like Bahrain and Syria and drawn questions about US opposition to unilateral Palestinian attempts to gain recognition.

While there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to democracy in the Arab world, such a movement is firmly in US interests and is a strategic necessity, Clinton declared.

—

“The greatest single source of instability in today’s Middle East is not the demand for change,” she said, “It is the refusal to change.”

Clinton said that held true for allies as well as others. She warned that, if the most powerful political force in Egypt remains a roomful of unelected officials, there will be future unrest.

She decried Iranian hypocrisy, saying that contrary to its claims to support democracy abroad, the gulf between rulers and the ruled is greater in Iran than anywhere else in the region. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and others “trying to hold back the future at the point of a gun should know their days are numbered,” Clinton said.

To the king of Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based as a bulwark against Iranian aggression in the Gulf, Clinton said that reform was in the kingdom’s interest.

Officials there have used mass arrests to counter protests by majority Shiites demanding greater rights in the Sunni-led nation. Members of Congress have demanded an inquiry into human rights abuses before a planned arms sale to the kingdom goes through.

—

The US will hold Bahrain to its commitments to allow peaceful protest and release political prisoners, Clinton said.

While reforms and equality are “in Bahrain’s interests, in the region’s interest and in ours,” Clinton said, “endless unrest benefits Iran.”

—

Palestinians also “deserve dignity, liberty and the right to decide their own future,” Clinton said. The only way to achieve that is through negotiations with Israel, Clinton said.

—

The Middle East’s protest movements may bring to power groups and parties that the US disagrees with, Clinton acknowledged. She said she is asked about this most often in the context of Islamic political parties. “The suggestion that faithful Muslims cannot thrive in a democracy is insulting, dangerous and wrong,” she said.

—

While “reasonable people can disagree on a lot,” Clinton said the crucial factor will be adherence to basic democratic principles. Parties must reject violence, abide by the rule of law and respect freedom of speech, association and assembly, as well as the rights of women and minorities, she said. “In other words, what parties call themselves is less important than what they do,” Clinton said.

The US has the resources, capabilities and expertise to support those trying to make the transition to democracy, Clinton said. Groups like National Democratic Institute can help with the nuts and bolts of democracy, teaching people how to form a political party, how to ensure women participate in government and how to foster civil society.

Mindful of the economic roots of the unrest, the Obama administration is also promoting trade, investment and regional integration, Clinton said.

“With so much that can go wrong and so much that can go right, support for emerging Arab democracies is an investment we can’t afford not to make,” she said.

From Alex Wilk of www.Avaaz.com:

Red Bull has built a reputation as a sporty, fun drink — but by this Friday, it and other leading F1 teams may become better known for endorsing government torture and murder. Formula One has 24 hours to decide whether to hold its already-delayed race in Bahrain, site of one of the most brutal crackdowns in the Middle East.

If Red Bull refuses to race in Bahrain, other teams will pull back as well — and the Formula One race could be taken off the schedule, sending shock waves through Bahrain’s brutal government and sending an unmistakeable message that the world will not ignore state brutality. Sports boycotts have piled pressure on other regimes such as apartheid South Africa — we can do it again.

Red Bull will only act if enough of us join together to make clear that its brand, its very reputation, is on the line. Let’s raise a cry that Bahrain’s government thugs can’t silence, and call on Red Bull to say it won’t race in Bahrain this year. If 300,000 of us sign the petition, Avaaz will run hard-hitting adverts carrying our messages to Red Bull executives. Just one day remains — sign now and pass this message along:

www.avaaz.org/en/no_f1_in_brutal_bahrain/?vl

The Bahraini government has booted out the world’s media — even torturing a female journalist working for a French TV channel. Under cover of this blackout it is claiming that all is calm and orderly. That’s a blatant lie. Early one morning last week tear gas bombs were shot through a window of a leading human rights activist. He only just rescued his brother, wife and daughter, who were close to suffocation. He now appeals to Avaaz “to do whatever you can to stop the government from attacking me and my family”.

Bahrain has even sacked and abused a quarter of the workers at its F1 race track. One badly bruised track worker says that a policeman “put my head between his legs, flipped me on to the floor – and then the beatings really began”. Many people are still missing — such as a student who was injured during attack on university of Bahrain. Doctors, journalists and others have given harrowing accounts of torture and abuse at the hands of the police.

Earlier this year – before other uprisings pushed Bahrain off our front pages – the Bahrain race was postponed. But now Formula 1′s boss wants to go ahead with it. He says it isn’t his business to play politics, but knows that racing in Bahrain in front of the world’s cameras would play into the the blood-soaked government’s hands. Let’s stand up for the Bahraini nurses, students and others who’ve been felled and injured by telling Red Bull to say no to F1 in brutal Bahrain. If Red Bull agrees, other teams will follow. Sign the petition now and send to everyone:

www.avaaz.org/en/no_f1_in_brutal_bahrain/?vl

The sports we play and watch can uplift us, but can also be used as pawns in political games. Together we can show that people standing for human rights everywhere, trump money and brutality anywhere.

With hope and determination,

Alex, Sam, Ricken, Mia, Pascal and the whole Avaaz team

—————————————————————————
MORE INFORMATION

Bahrain doctors to be tried for helping protesters
arabnews.com/middleeast/article380678.ece

F1 boss hopes to reinstate Bahrain
uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/26052011/66/ecclestone-hopes-fia-reinstates-bahrain.html

Bahraini female doctors recount detention ‘horror’
www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jojcZ8GM-0J_0gTLt5KsY12IiiJQ?docId=CNG.ccc3b0204b5da8e7cce5b8854b144bdf.611

France 24 correspondent tortured for covering pro-democracy demonstrations
en.rsf.org/bahrain-france-24-correspondent-tortured-30-05-2011,40374.html

Letter to Federation Internationale de l’Automobile and Formula One Teams Association Regarding Bahrain Event
www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/05/26/letter-federation-internationale-de-lautomobile-and-formula-one-teams-association-re

Citizens’ videos of Bahrain clampdown
revolutionreports.avaaz.org/tagged/bahrain

Bahrain races to restore normality
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ad623440-856e-11e0-ae32-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1NRshjj3t

Uri Avnery

Tel Aviv, May 7, 2011

                                             “Rejoice Not…”

“REJOICE NOT when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth, / Lest the Lord see [it], and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him.”.

This is one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible (Proverbs 24:17-18), and indeed in the Hebrew language. It is beautiful in other languages , too, though no translation comes close to the beauty of the original.

Of course, it is natural to be glad when one’s enemy is defeated, and the thirst for revenge is a human trait. But gloating – schadenfreude – is something different altogether. An ugly thing.

Ancient Hebrew legend has it that God got very angry when the Children of Israel rejoiced as their Egyptian pursuers drowned in the Red Sea. “My creatures are drowning in the sea,” God admonished them, “And you are singing?”

These thoughts crossed my mind when I saw the TV shots of jubilant crowds of young Americans shouting and dancing in the street. Natural, but unseemly. The contorted faces and the aggressive body language were no different from those of crowds in Sudan or Somalia. The ugly sides of human nature seem to be the same everywhere.

THE REJOICING may be premature. Most probably, al-Qaeda did not die with Osama bin-Laden. The effect may be entirely different.

In 1942 the British killed Abraham Stern, whom they called a terrorist. Stern, whose nom de guerre was Ya’ir, was hiding in a cupboard in an apartment in Tel Aviv. In his case too, it was the movements of his courier that gave him away. After making sure that he was the right man, the British police officer in command shot him dead.

That was not the end of his group – rather, a new beginning. It became the bane of British rule in Palestine. Known as the “Stern Gang” (its real name was “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”), it carried out the most daring attacks on British installations and played a significant role in persuading the colonial power to leave the country.   

Hamas did not die when the Israeli air force killed Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the paralyzed founder, ideologue and symbol of Hamas. As a martyr he was far more effective than as a living leader. His martyrdom attracted many new fighters to the cause. Killing a person does not kill an idea. The Christians even took the cross as their symbol.

WHAT WAS the idea that turned Osama bin Laden into a world figure?

He preached the restoration of the Caliphate of the early Muslim centuries, which was not only a huge empire, but also a center of the sciences and the arts, poetry and literature, when Europe was still a barbaric, medieval continent. Every Arab child learns about these glories, and cannot but contrast them with the sorry Muslim present.

(In a way, these longings parallel the Zionist romantics’ dreams of a resurrected kingdom of David and Solomon.)

A new Caliphate in the 21^st century is as unlikely as the wildest creation of the imagination. It would have been diametrically opposed to the Zeitgeist, were it not for its opponents – the Americans. They needed this dream – or nightmare – more than the Muslims themselves.

The American Empire always needs an antagonist to keep it together and to focus its energies. This has to be a worldwide enemy, a sinister advocate of an evil philosophy.

Such were the Nazis and Imperial Japan, but they did not last long. Fortunately, there was then the Communist Empire, which filled the role admirably.

There were Communists everywhere. All of them were plotting the downfall of freedom, democracy and the United States of America. They were even lurking inside the US, as
J. Edgar Hoover and  Senator Joe McCarthy so convincingly demonstrated.

For decades, the US flourished in the fight against the Red Menace; its forces spread all over the world, its spaceships reached the moon, its best minds engaged in a titanic battle of ideas, the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness.   

And then – suddenly – the whole thing collapsed. Soviet power vanished as if it had never existed. The American spy agencies, with their tremendous capabilities, were flabbergasted. Apparently, they had no idea how ramshackle the Soviet structure actually was. How could they see, blinded as they were by their own ideological preconceptions?

The disappearance of the Communist Threat left a gaping void in the American psyche, which cried out to be filled. Osama Bin Laden kindly offered his services.

It needed, of course, a world-shaking event to lend credibility to such a hare-brained utopia. The 9/11 outrage was just such an event. It produced many changes in the American way of life. And a new global enemy.

Overnight, medieval anti-Islamic prejudices are dusted-off for display. Islam the terrible, the murderous, the fanatical. Islam the anti-democratic, the anti-freedom, anti-all-our-values. . . Suicide bombers, 72 virgins, jihad.

The US springs to life again. Soldiers, spies and special forces fan out across the globe to fight terrorism. Bin Laden is everywhere. The War Against Terrorism is an apocalyptic struggle with Satan.

American freedoms have to be restricted, the US military machine grows by leaps and bounds. Power-hungry Intellectuals babble about the Clash of Civilizations and sell their souls for instant celebrity.

To produce the lurid paint for such a twisted picture of reality, religious Islamic groups are all thrown into the  same pot – the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Ayatollahs in Iran, Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Indonesian separatists, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere, whoever. All become al-Qaeda, despite the fact that each has a totally different agenda, focused on its own country, while bin Laden aims to abolish all Muslim states and create one Holy Islamic Empire. . . Details, details.

The Holy War against the Jihad finds warriors everywhere. Ambitious demagogues, for whom this promises an easy way to inflame the masses, spring up in many countries, from France to Finland, from Holland to Italy. The hysteria of Islamophobia displaces good old anti-Semitism, using almost the same language. Tyrannical regimes present themselves as bulwarks against al-Qaeda, as they had once presented themselves as bulwarks against Communism. And, of course, our own Binyamin Netanyahu milks the situation for all it is worth,  traveling from capital to capital peddling his wares of anti-Islamism.

Bin Laden had good reason to be proud, and probably was.

WHEN I saw his picture for the first time, I joked that he was not a real person, but an actor straight from Hollywood’s Central Casting. He looked too good to be true – exactly as he would appear in a Hollywood movie – a handsome man, with a long black beard, posing with a Kalashnikov. His appearances on TV were carefully staged.

Actually, he was a very incompetent  terrorist, a real amateur. No genuine terrorist would have lived in a conspicuous villa, which stood out in the landscape like a sore thumb. Stern was hiding in a small roof apartment in a squalid quarter of Tel Aviv. Menachem Begin lived with his wife and son in a very modest ground floor apartment, playing the role of a reclusive rabbi.

Bin Laden’s villa was bound to attract the attention of neighbors and other people. They would have been curious about this mysterious stranger in their midst. Actually, he should have been discovered long  ago. He was unarmed and did not put up a fight. The decision to kill him on the spot and dump his body into [or “in”] the sea was evidently taken long before.

So there is no grave, no holy tomb. But for millions of Muslims, and especially Arabs, he was and remains a source of pride, an Arab hero, the ”[]“lion of lions” as a preacher in Jerusalem called him. Almost no one dared to come out and say so openly, for fear of the Americans, but even those who thought his ideas impractical and his actions harmful respected him in their heart.

Does that mean that al-Qaeda has a future? I don’t think so. It belongs to the past – not because bin Laden has been killed, but because his central idea is obsolete.

The Arab Spring embodies a new set of ideals, a new enthusiasm, one that does not glorify and hanker after a distant past but looks boldly to the future. The young men and women of Tahrir Square, with their longing for freedom, have consigned bin Laden to history, months before his physical death. His philosophy has a future only if the Arab Awakening fails completely and leaves behind a profound sense of disappointment and despair.

In the Western world, few will mourn him, but God forbid that anyone should gloat.

===================

Arabian Business website reports – Five days after the killing of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda confirms bin Laden death, vows to continue attacks, and quotes them by saying:

“In a historic day the Islamic nation … the mujahid (holy warrior) Sheikh Abu Abdullah, Osama bin Mohammed bin Laden, God have mercy on him, was killed on the path taken by those before him and will be taken by those after him.”

“Congratulations to the Islamic umma (community) for the martyrdom of its son Osama.”

www.arabianbusiness.com/al-qaeda-confirms-death-of-osama-bin-laden-398262.html

———————-

But ArabianBusiness.com also carried:

www.arabianbusiness.com/arab-revolts-turn-bin-laden-death-into-bloody-footnote-397609.html

Arab revolts turn bin Laden death into bloody footnote.

Osama bin Laden, slain by US forces in Pakistan on Sunday, seems curiously irrelevant in an Arab world fired by popular revolt against oppressive leaders.

“Bin Laden is just a bad memory,” said Nadim Houry, of Human Rights Watch, in Beirut. “The region has moved way beyond that, with massive broad-based upheavals that are game-changers.”

The al Qaeda leader’s bloody attacks, especially those of September 11, 2001, once resonated among some Arabs who saw them as grim vengeance for perceived indignities heaped upon them by the United States, Israel and their own American-backed leaders.

Bin Laden had dreamed that his global Islamist jihad would inspire Muslims to overthrow pro-Western governments, notably in Saudi Arabia, the homeland which revoked his citizenship.

He espoused jihad largely in anger at what he viewed as the occupation of Muslim lands by foreign “infidel” forces — the Russians in Afghanistan, the Americans in Saudi Arabia in the 1990 Gulf crisis, or the Israelis in Palestine.

But al Qaeda’s indiscriminate violence never galvanised Arab masses, while his networks came under severe pressure from Arab governments helping Western counter-terrorism efforts.

“Bin Laden’s brand of defiance in the early days probably excited some imaginations, but the senseless acts of violence destroyed any appeal he had,” Houry said.

Nowhere was this change of heart more marked than in Iraq, where anger at Muslim casualties inflicted by al Qaeda suicide bombings – and the Shi’ite sectarian backlash they provoked –  eventually drove Sunni tribesmen to ally with the Americans.

Popular sympathy for al Qaeda also evaporated in Saudi Arabia after a series of indiscriminate attacks in 2003-06.

If the ideological appeal of bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, who advocated the restoration of an Islamic caliphate, was already fading, the pro-democracy uprisings across the Arab world have further diminished it.

“At some stage Arab public opinion looked on bin Laden as a hope to end this kind of discrimination, the West’s way of dealing with Muslim and Arab nations, but now these nations are saying, we will do the change ourselves, we don’t need anyone to speak on our behalf,” said Mahjoob Zweiri, of Qatar University.

He said bin Laden’s killing would affect only a few who still believe in his path of maximising pain on the West.

“The majority of Muslim and Arab nations have their own choice. They are moving towards modern civil societies,” Zweiri argued. “People believe in gradual change, civil change, they don’t want violence, even against the leaders who crushed them.”

Peaceful Arab protests have already toppled autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia and are threatening the leaders of Yemen and Syria, while a popular revolt against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi has turned into a civil war with Western military intervention.

These dramas appear to have shocked al Qaeda almost into silence. Even its most active branch, the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has mounted no big attacks during months of popular unrest against President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Martin Indyk, a former US assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, described bin Laden’s death as “a body blow” to al Qaeda at a time when its ideology was already being undercut by the popular revolutions in the Arab world.

“Their narrative is that violence and terrorism is the way to redeem Arab dignity and rights. What the people in the streets across the Arab world are doing is redeeming their rights and their dignity through peaceful, non-violent protests – the exact opposite of what al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have been preaching,” said Indyk, now at the Brookings Institution.

“He hasn’t managed to overthrow any government, and they are overthrowing one after the other. I would say that the combination of the two puts al Qaeda in real crisis.”

Bin Laden may have become a marginal figure in the Arab world, but the discontent he tapped into still exists.

“The underlying reasons why people turn to these kinds of violent, criminal, terroristic movements are still there,” said Beirut-based commentator Rami Khouri, alluding to the “anger and humiliation of people who feel that Western countries, their own Arab leaders or Israel treat them with disdain”.

Nevertheless, he predicted a continued slide in al Qaeda’s fortunes, particularly as US troop withdrawals from Iraq and later from Afghanistan remove potent sources of resentment.

“The Arab spring is certainly a sign that the overwhelming majority of Arabs, as we have known all along, repudiated bin Laden,” Khouri said. “He and Zawahri tried desperately to get traction among the Arab masses, but it just never worked.

“People who followed him would be those who would form little secret cells and go off to Afghanistan, but the vast majority of people rejected his message.

“What Arabs want is what they are fighting for now, which is more human rights, dignity and democratic government.”

The Independent of London came out with an article about Bahrain´s ways of clinging to power:

The Qatif region of Eastern Saudi Arabia is only half an hour from the Bahrain small island State. Bahrain has a Shiia majority under a Sunni monarch. Qatif has a Shiia regional majority within the larger Sunni Wahabi Monarchy.

In Bahrain there is clear rebelion and the Saudi regime sent its military to help the Bahraini rulers. In Katif, young Shiia organize in nightly protests and we know of the first two casualties from their side.

Saudi official school books treat Shiia as deviants and as not true to Islam. Children are warned not to eat food from Shiia because they spit in the food or even poison it.

The Shiia get their news from Arab speakers on the Iranian radio. Being born in Qatif is a give-away for young Saudis who are Shiia, and thus targets for descrimination. They will never be accepted into the police or the military and can only dream of government positions.

Reports from the  week-end nights of  protests by young Qatif Shiia, dressed in black and hidden behind black face masks, show the rebelion of underdogs in a system that has not heard of democracy as a whole. Qatif is the main oil-region of the Saudis and what happens in Qatif will have global ramifications as the price of oil has global implications. king Abdullah of Saudi arabia wants to answer the rebeling youth by establishing a comittee to deal with their complaints – but today, with the Arab world in turmoil this will not do. The Shiia youth will not retreat by commission but want to see direct action which they understand as democratization.

Will the US and the UK allow any acts against the safety of those Bahrain and Sadi Arabia – which they equate to the safety of regimes that deliver the oil and help create a regional security base? Is this corner of the Gulf to be kept out of the string of turmoil?

{the original title is as follows, but the article shows signs of much higher complexity !}

Poland to use 1989 revolution as lesson for Arab countries.

As presented by ANDREW RETTMAN

March 16, 2011, euobserver.com/9/31997/?rk=1
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Poland is to use lessons learned from its 1989 revolution against Communism to help spread democracy in the Arab world during its upcoming EU presidency.

Warsaw had originally aimed to concentrate on political reform in the EU’s post-Soviet neighbours in the east.

But a new draft programme for its six months at the EU helm adopted by the government on Tuesday (15 March) and seen by EUobserver notes that events in north Africa and the Middle East are forcing it to change priorities.

“Thanks to the rich experience of its own, successful political and economic transformation, Poland can bring a lot to this debate and furnish practical help for the new governments in north African countries,” the paper says.

In one example, Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski is re-working plans to create a new EU foundation to help dissidents in countries such as Belarus. An international conference in December on the Sikorski project will now be devoted to “supporting transformational processes” in north Africa instead.

The Polish government is also keen to craft a long-term “complex strategy” for EU relations with the Arab world, containing “mechanisms to support persecuted minorities, including Christians.”

With deadly violence in Bahrain on Tuesday opening a new front in the Gulf states, a Polish diplomat noted that the programme is likely to see more changes in the next three months.

“We are only half-way through the Hungarian presidency. We will know the final Polish priorities when the government presents them to the EU Council and the European Parliament in July,” he said.

The provisional Polish calendar still leans toward the east rather than the south despite the political preamble.

Poland aims to hold a summit (date to be confirmed) and a foreign-minister-level meeting (in December) with the six post-Soviet countries covered by the EU’s Eastern Partnership policy. Six other high-level meetings in Warsaw and Krakow will look to EU-Eastern Partner integration in tourism, phytosanitary standards, statistical reporting, infrastructure, the economy and migration.

On Russia, Poland “hopes” to make some progress on signing a new EU-Russia treaty, but makes no mention of concluding the pact.

On the Balkans, it aims to sign the accession treaty with Croatia and to hold an EU home affairs ministers meeting in Ohrid, Macedonia, in September. Rising ethnic tensions in the country are threatening to undo the Ohrid Agreement peace treaty of 2001.

Poland’s other top priorities will be energy security and the EU economy, with little mention of previous plans on EU military integration.

The paper states that: “If Europe is to become competitive on the global scale, it cannot focus only on paying back debts, it must also act decisively on growth.”

It predicts that average EU economic growth in 2011 will be 2 percent but that some member states will stay in recession while others get richer. It adds that: “Our societies are ageing and the current model of the welfare state must change.”

One pet Polish project will be to help the European Commission set up a “28th” legal regime for online transactions to stand alongside the 27 member states’ existing laws in the area.

“A classic example [of existing problems] is the inability of Polish citizens to … buy products on iTunes. In the opinion of the Polish presidency liquidating barriers in online trade could – by the year 2020 – generate an extra four percent for the EU’s GDP.”

The first EU summit on the Polish watch is to take place in Brussels on 14 September. The last one will be in the EU capital on 9 December.