Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Soldiers assault a twelve-year-old Palestinian while settlers invade family rooftop in Hebron

International Solidarity Movement | August 3, 2013

Hebron, Occupied Palestine – Saturday August 3rd was not a peaceful Saturday for the Palestinians in Hebron. At approximately 16.30 two settlers invaded the roof of the Abu Shamsiya family in Tel Rumeida, whilst three soldiers attacked a twelve year old boy in the street nearby.

When the settlers on the roof were approached by internationals and told that they were on private property and therefore had to leave, they refused and said they came there every week. The fact that they had entered a private home without consent of the family did not concern them, on the contrary they expressed that they felt it was their right. When asked to leave the settlers behaved aggressively by yelling and continuously refusing to do so. After having argued with internationals one of the settlers threatened to lie to the soldiers and say that they had been hit by the internationals. He argued that even though it was not true, the soldiers would believe him over the international activists.

As seen in the video below, in the meantime three Israeli soldiers assaulted three young boys just down the street. The soldiers started by harshly pushing one boy, afterwards they grabbed a second boy, Islam by the hair and kicked him. Thereafter a third boy ran to his house chased by the soldiers. When internationals asked why the military was chasing the boy, they lied and said the boys had been throwing stones. The boy said that he had simply ran because he was scared after having seen his twelve-year-old friend, Islam being brutally attacked by soldiers for no apparent reason.

These are not unusual events. The Abu Shamsiya family is often victim of settler and military harassment, the family’s roof is on street level and settlers often go there to throw stones, harass the family and break their property. Saturdays are particularly violent in Hebron, only last week both Abu Shamsiya and his son Muhammed were attacked by settlers whilst the military was watching, with Abu Shamsiya then being arrested on false charges while the settlers were freed without charges.

Hebron has large settlements in the middle of the city housing approximately 500 settlers some of whom are extremely aggressive and violent. Additionally there are 2500 Israeli occupation soldiers stationed in the city.

Related articles

August 3, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Congressional Oversight? Dianne Feinstein Says She’s ‘Not A High-Tech Techie’ But Knows NSA Can’t Abuse Surveillance

By Mike Masnick | TechDirt | August 2, 2013

As the NSA and defenders of NSA surveillance are trying to minimize the damage from the latest leak, which revealed the details of the XKeyscore program, they’re bending over backwards to insist that this program is both limited and immune from abuse. We’ve already mentioned that the claims that it can’t be abused are laughable since there’s already a well-documented history of abuse. However, even more bizarre is the following quote from Senate Intelligence Committee boss, Senator Dianne Feinstein (a staunch defender of the surveillance programs):

Feinstein said, “I am not a high-tech techie, but I have been told that is not possible.”

Note that among Feinstein’s jobs is oversight of this program. Yet, what kind of “oversight” is it when she admits that she’s not qualified to understand the technology but “has been told” that such abuses are not possible? That doesn’t seem like oversight. That seems like asking the NSA “can this system be abused?” and the NSA saying “oh, no no no, not at all.” That’s not exactly oversight, now is it?

August 3, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Congressional Oversight? Dianne Feinstein Says She’s ‘Not A High-Tech Techie’ But Knows NSA Can’t Abuse Surveillance

Our Dystopian Present

By TIM TOLKA | August 2, 2013

Behind the gleaming armor of his speeches, the emperor’s new clothes of Obama leave him naked. We are to believe that the persecution of the press is protection of national security, secrecy is transparency, debt servitude is opportunity, imprisoning the poor is correction, assassination is public relations, a militarized police state is public service, and protecting the interests of the 1% is the common good. When nonviolent civil disobedience is treated as terrorism and dissent as treason; when the censor lives in our minds, naked totalitarianism has emerged. Yet, despite all, I still reject the contention that we are beyond the point of no return.

As Michael Hastings observed before his patently unbelievable accident, Obama has enshrined in his foreign policy the two most radical principles of the Bush doctrine, torture and extraordinary rendition, and has made targeted assassination and spying on journalists major tenets of the national security state. Despite Obama’s assurance that the CIA will move away from paramilitary tactics, the intelligence community anticipates a sinister future, and the Pentagon is pushing for the US to aggressively reassert dominance devoid of moral leadership and enforce dictatorship without hegemony, domestically and in the international arena.

Power now circulates through the information and obedience we unwittingly provide to the national security prism and the commerce panopticon, which are a fusion of private power and public authority used to monitor and record our license plates, our shopping habits, our personal correspondences, and our very thoughts. If, as Robert Reich supposed in his recent piece in the Huffington Post, a group of wealthy Americans is systematically dismembering government, disenfranchising the minority, spreading PR campaigns of lies, and buying off the media, that is a form of treason worse than terrorism, and it must be stopped.

However, I would argue that the social safety net, which we depend on for services and the protection of economic and social rights, is being dismantled, while the national security state, which should respect our rights during peacetime or repress them in times of national emergency, is being massively expanded and the state-of-emergency is now permanent.

In order to counteract the undemocratic substitution of national security in place of human security, we must:

(1) Fight mental censorship and reject influence of the defense and intelligence community in our society. Put NSA watch words in every mundane email. Find innovative ways to fool them. If ‘they’ have a blacklist, then every American should endeavor to be included by speaking out. We can influence the spies of the national security state and the directors of their agencies by flooding their press offices with calls to tell them that the violation of American citizens’ civil rights is unjustifiable and unpatriotic.

(2) Demand that the foolish, wasteful, and failed wars on drugs and terror end. I call congressmen everyday, and if you want change, you should, too. The war on terror has greatly outlived its usefulness for the resources we spend on it, which are now being directed towards the repression of dissent. When we quit wasting valuable resources on crimes that have few or no victims, i.e. hacking, whistleblowing, drugs, and terror, we can begin focusing on rapists, murderers, and corrupt elected officials, the true enemies of the state.

(3) Demand accountability from the justice system. Judges, prosecutors, and police not infrequently exhibit racism, gender bias, partiality, and even collusion in corruption, occasionally verging on mobster-style organized crime. Unfortunately, corruption convictions are rare, considering that there are half a million elected officials in the U.S., and light punishments and window-dressing are unacceptably common. Qualified immunity is the enemy of justice and we must abolish it.

(4) Reclaim the terms that have been wrenched away from us by the 1%, their political cronies, and the phony media. Orwellian doublespeak tells us that people in favor of women’s rights are “radical feminists;” those who point out probable or obvious connections between phenomena are “conspiracy theorists;” online activists are “hackers” or “cyber terrorists;” the rich are “job creators,” changing wealth inequality that would make robber barons blush is “socialism,” etc. Don’t believe anything the mainstream media says about activists, because the media is the piehole of the 1%.

(5) Join forces, despite race, gender, social class, or party affiliation against the warmongers, Wall Street plutocrats, and neoconservatives who conspire to maintain the status quo. Class warfare needs to make a comeback, because “the blob” and the permanent war economy has reached a place where it must be exposed and dismantled.

(6) Practice civil disobedience. Support Anonymous and Occupy, which continue to evolve, even today, despite false reports, myths and lies surrounding them. MLK said we have a moral obligation to break unjust laws even as we have a moral responsibility to obey just ones. When you allow your outrage fuel your courage to fight for social justice, your fear and apathy will melt away.

Protest. Period.

Source

Related article

August 3, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Comments Off on Our Dystopian Present