Bahrain's Appeal National Safety Court on May 22 unanimously upheld death sentences for two men convicted of killing police officers during anti-government protests in March. The court reduced the death sentences of two others to life in prison. The four men were tried in the special appeals security court set up by Royal Decree in March, under emergency law, during the Shiite-led protests in Bahrain. The special court and other measure implemented under emergency law have been heavily criticized by various human rights groups. Nabeel Rajab, leader of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights criticized the ruling, expressing his concern that the cases are politically motivated and an attempt for the government to stop protests. The date for the two executions has not yet been disclosed but would first require the approval of Bahrain's king. The death penalty is rarely used in Bahrain and typically not used against the country's citizens.

Belarus's Minsk City Court last week sentenced former presidential candidate Andrey Sannikau to a five-year maximum security prison term for organizing protests following the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko in December 2010. Lukashenko reportedly won 80% of the vote, while Sannikau was second with a distant 2.5%. Currently, four other presidential candidates are awaiting trial, while one was released in January, and another has fled Belarus to seek asylum in the Czech Republic.

We just noted how Barack Obama's celebrated speech on the Middle East two days ago was actually driven by the imperative to control the political trajectory of the Arab Spring. Now, not surprisingly, al-Qaeda attempts to do the same thing—which indicates again that imperialism and the jihad alike have been relegated to playing catch-up as the Arab masses themselves have seized the initiative. CNN informs us that an unnamed "jihadist website" posted an audio message purportedly from Ayman al-Zawahiri, presumed successor to Osama bin Laden, in which he hails the "winds of changes" in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen—but also warns of that "crusader enemies" led by the United States are attempting to colonize Libya: "NATO is not a goodwill organization—it is an aide to the hegemonic powers in this world. They aim to end the corrupt Qaddafi regime, but then install their own ideals. They want to steal Libya's resources and relics because of their greed and politics."

Tens of thousands of protesters have filled the main squares of Spain's cities for the past week to protest government austerity measures—in defiance of a government ban imposed ahead of municipal and regional elections. Madrid's central square has been occupied for days by some 30,000 protesters, who have been dubbed "los indignados" (the indignant). Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero admitted he may not enforce the ban. "I have a great respect for the people protesting, which they are doing in a peaceful manner, and I understand it is driven by economic crisis and young people's hopes for employment," Zapatero said during a radio interview. (BBC News, May 21; Reuters, May 20)

The voluminous media commentary dedicated to President Barack Obama's May 19 speech on the Middle East has overwhelmingly focused on his extremely modest and reasonable demand that a peace settlement must be based on Israel's 1967 (that is to say, legal) borders—and the scandalized Israeli reaction. Nearly lost in all this noise is the first three-quarters of the speech, which speak to why the White House has for the first time in history embraced this minimal demand. The imperative to control the political trajectory of the Arab Spring—which is, as we have argued, what is really driving the Libya intervention—can be detected in every syllable of the transcript...

Thousands took to the streets in towns and cities across Syria for Friday protests May 20, and security forces again responded with tear gas and live ammunition, leaving at least 32 people dead. The killings were reported in the southern region of Deraa, the Damascus suburb of Daraya, the seaport of Latakia, the central city of Homs, and a village near the north-central town of Idlib (see map). Among the dead in Homs were two boys, aged 16 and 11. Protesters in many places shouted "azadi," which means freedom in Kurdish. Organizers had dubbed the 20th as Azadi Day, in solidarity with Kurdish protesters and to reflect the failure of policies aimed at getting Kurdish Syrians on the government's side with promises of recognizing their civil rights. (DPA, AlJazeera, May 20)

Extreme weather events—such as the heavy rains that have flooded towns along the Mississippi River and the tornadoes that ripped through an unprecendented 300-mile swath in Alabama—are extremely likely to occur more frequently in the future, according to climatologists. Urban planners and the insurance industry are among those that took part in a telephone press conference held May 19 by the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Climate change is about more than warming. What we're really seeing is global ‘weirding,'" said climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University. "It is altering the character and conditions of the places we know and love. For many places around the world, what we are likely to see could be feast or famine—more frequency of weather at the extremes, from intense storms to prolonged droughts. We can't attribute any one event to climate change, but we do know that every event that happens is already superimposed on very different background conditions than we had 50 years ago."

Ethiopia's Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels issued a statement May 19 charging that the army has opened an offensive that is targetting civilians in the ethnically Somali region in the country's east (see map). ONLF spokesman Abdirahman Mahdi accused Ethiopian security forces of attacking villages near oil exploration sites in the Ogaden, which borders Somalia and has been the scene of a low-level insurgency since the early 1990s. "It is a random killing aimed at terrorizing the public," Mahdi said from his office in London. "This is the first time security forces turned up in villages, rounded up villagers and killed them in brutal manners." The statement called the attacks, centered around the towns of Nogob (Fik, by its official Ethiopian designation) and Jarar (Degahbur), a "pogrom," with at least 100 dead in recent days, and demanded an immediate UN investigation. Mohamed Gure, information minister for the Somali state government, called the claims "baseless propaganda." (AP, Ogaden Online, May 19)