Bahrain 1st-Hand: "48 Hours in Sanabis" (Al Jazeera English)

A message to Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa

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We left the house into the streets. Some stone-carrying shabab were starting to return to the main crossings in central Sanabis, standing over broken glass and spent tear gas cartridges --- all clearly marked "made in USA" --- waiting for the police to return.
 
We passed through the narrow alleyways, some barely wide enough for a car to pass through. Some parts were well lit with the bright orange glow of the street lights, others pitch black. Some areas were tight giving a sense of protection, while others were more open, leaving us completely exposed for a number of seconds when anything could happen. We could only hope as we approached the next street corner that there wouldn't be any police waiting around it, while we kept looking backwards to make sure there were none there either. Too fast and we would come upon them with no place to run, too slow and we'd get caught from behind.

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Syria, Bahrain (and Beyond) LiveBlog: A Showdown Looms?

Residents of Sanabis in Bahrain clear up the debris after security forces went through the village

See also Bahrain Video: The Police Attacks on the Women and Men of Sanabis
Wednesday's Syria, Bahrain, Yemen (and Beyond) LiveBlog: A Libyan-Style Civil War?

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2003 GMT: The leader of the transitional government in Libya, Mahmoud Jabril, will not be part of the permanent government, the formation of which will be delayed until the conflict is over:

Asked at a news conference in Tripoli about the timetable for the government's announcement, Jibril said: "I hope that soon we will free Sirte and Bani Walid to begin negotiations on the formation of the transitional government, of which I will not be a part."

1953 GMT: A source in Bahrain informs us that there were protests in 25 villages today, including Sanabis, Al Eker, Karbabad, Nabih-Saleh, Al Dair, Barbar, Bani-Jamra, North & South Sehla, Jabalat-Habashi, Saddad, Bori, A'ali, Salmabad, Nuwaidrat, Alma'ameer, Al Juffair, Tubli, and Al Mugsha. In Sitra, there were protests in Al Qarya, Al Kharjia, Wadyan, Mhaza, Sufalah, and Markkuban. Below is a map of the protests:

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The Latest from Iran (29 September): A Billion-Dollar Bank Fraud Takes Over

See also Iran Video Feature: Ahmadinejad, Arab Spring, and the Future of the Regime
Iran Propaganda Special: What's Wrong with this Photo of the Mighty Iranian Navy?
Iran Media Snapshot: Reuters Panics, "The Iranians Are Coming (to the Gulf of Mexico)!"
The Latest from Iran (28 September): And Now to the Real News....

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1655 GMT: Bank Fraud Watch. In the latest incarnation of "Don't Blame Me", Iran's Inspector General Mostafa Pourmohammadi has declared that his office knew about the $2,6 billion bank fraud and told the Central Bank. He claimed that the fraudsters failed to launch an "Aria Bank" for their embezzled funds and, with their failure, their crimes became evident.

1635 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Mohsen Armin, a former Deputy Speaker of Parliament, has been sentenced to six years in prison.

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Afghanistan Feature: Meet America's Man in Kandahar (Aikins)

Though Raziq has risen in large part through his own skills and ambition, he is also, to a considerable degree, a creation of  the American military intervention in Afghanistan. (Prior to 2001, he had worked in a shop in Pakistan.) As part of a countrywide initiative, his men have been trained by two controversial private military firms, DynCorp and Xe, formerly known as Blackwater, at a U.S.-funded center in Spin Boldak, where they are also provided with weapons, vehicles, and communications equipment. Their salaries are subsequently paid through the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan, a UN-administered international fund, to which the U.S. is the largest contributor. Raziq himself has enjoyed visits in Spin Boldak from such senior U.S. officials as Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus.

In public, American officials had until recently been careful to downplay Raziq’s alleged abuses. When I met with the State Department’s Moeling at his Kandahar City office in January, he told me, “I think there is certainly a mythology about Abdul Raziq, where there’s a degree of assumption on some of those things. But I have never seen evidence of private prisons or of extrajudicial killings directly attributable to him.”

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Iran Video Feature: Ahmadinejad, Arab Spring, and the Future of the Regime (Slavin and Maloney)

In my opinion, Barbara Slavin and Suzanne Maloney are two of the sharpest US-based observers of Iran. So this discussion, set up by Bloggingheads.tv, offers a lot for consideration from Slavin's first-hand account of an Ahmadinejad press conference to Maloney on the nuclear issue to --- most importantly, in my opinion --- thoughts on the effect of the Arab Spring and the internal stability of the regime.

Iran Propaganda Special: What's Wrong with this Photo of the Mighty Iranian Navy?

See also Iran Media Snapshot: Reuters Panics, "The Iranians Are Coming (to the Gulf of Mexico)!"

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Continuing this week's theme of the proclamations of the Iranian military that they will soon show the US their might, both in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Mexico --- and of the international media's willingness to spread the message --- we offer this episode where the chest-thumping propaganda did not quite go as planned....

This photo, taken by Ebrahim Norouzi for AFP and Getty, was initially used by CNN to illustrate its story yesterday, "Iran Planning to Send Ships Near US Waters". You could quibble, however, that this is a bit of distortion by CNN: the picture is not from 2011 but from February 2009, when Tehran launched the 'Jamaran', Iran's first domestically-built warship. 

But there may be a bigger reason why the photograph soon disappeared from the story, replaced by the hyperbolic video below: can you, dear reader, spot the comedy glitch in the picture? (Answer later in the day.)

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US Feature: So What is "Occupy Wall Street"? (Kilkenny)

“My home has been seized, I’m unemployed, there’s no job prospects on the horizon. I have two children and I don’t see a future for them. This is the only way I see to effect change. This isn’t a progressive issue. This is an American issue. We’re here to take our country back from the corporations,” he said, adding he fears for the future of the United States where corporations can now spend unlimited, anonymous dollars to elect the candidates of their choices. After the protest ended for the day, Matthew couldn’t occupy the park because he had to go care for his two children.

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Syria, Bahrain, Yemen (and Beyond) LiveBlog: A Libyan-Style Civil War?

2045 GMT: In Bahrain, five leading opposition parties have announced a mass rally on Friday, begining at 4:30 p.m. local time, " We Demand Democracy":

EA sources report demonstrations across the country tonight including Muhaza, Sufala, Wadian, Sanabis, Aldaih, Karbabad, Dar-Khulaib, Alhamalah, Barbar, Buri, and Al Eker. A photo from Sanabis this evening:

And video from Dar-Khulaib:

Claimed footage last night of a clash in Sufala village in Sitra:

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Bahrain Video: The Police Attacks on the Women and Men of Sanabis (France 24)

France 24, picking up on the story of the Bahrain demonstrations, offers vivid first-hand testimony and video of attacks by security forces last Friday in Sanabis, near the capital Manama. The incidents occurred as protesters were trying to reach Pearl Roundabout/Martyrs Square, the symbolic centre of the challenge to the regime from mid-February.

Both of the events --- alleged police assaults on chador-clad women and the burning of buildings in Sanabis --- have been covered here on EA, but France 24 has additional video that we have not posted, as the well as the accounts of the woman and man who claim first-hand knowledge.

The Latest from Iran (28 September): And Now to the Real News....

1910 GMT: Where's Esfandiar? The mystery over the whereabout of President Ahmadinejad's right-hand man Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai continues....

Asr-e Iran asks why Rahim-Mashai has not been seen on Ahmadinejad's return on his overseas tour, either from the US or from Mauritania, where the President stopped on his way back from New York. In a new theory, Asr-e Iran doubts Rahim-Mashai even went to America, calling him a "ghost".

1710 GMT: Oil Watch. Allegations are now coming thick and fast about the Government's misuse of oil revenues (see 1415 GMT). Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, the head of the Supreme Audit Court, has claimed that the Central Bank has not recovered billions of dollars in oil debts from India, that the Ministry of Energy owes $350 million to the private sector, that $2.9 billion in oil income has been spent on support payments for the subsidy cuts programme, and that oil revenues have been illegally transferred to foreign accounts of the National Iranian Oil Company.

Former Minister of Oil Masoud Mir Kazemi has reportedly submitted documents to the judiciary defending himself against accusations of involvement in the "disappearance" of $11.2 billion in oil revenue.

1705 GMT: Claimed footage of the strike, which began last month, by cloth vendors in the Tehran Bazaar:

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