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US political prisoner dies three days after being freed from 41 years of solitary confinement

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Herman Wallace was freed on Tuesday
Press TV – October 4, 2013

An American prisoner, who was released a few days ago after spending 41 years in solitary confinement, has died of liver cancer.

The 71-year-old Herman Wallace was freed on Tuesday after a US federal judge overturned his conviction for the murder of a prison guard, saying his 1974 trial had been “unconstitutional.”

His attorneys said he died at a supporter’s home in New Orleans.

“One of the final things that Herman said to us was, “I am free. I am free”,” they said.

Wallace, who was a former Black Panther and member of the “Angola 3,” and two other inmates were held in solitary confinement for years.

Wallace and Albert Woodfox, who was also convicted, have denied the killing, saying they were set up because they founded a chapter of the Black Panthers at Angola.

The inmates charged with killing the guard became known as the “Angola 3.” The third prisoner eventually became a prosecution witness.

Louisiana, where he was imprisoned, had refused to free Wallace on medical grounds over his terminal cancer.

Campaigner for Amnesty International Tessa Murphy criticized prison officials.

“The Louisiana prison authorities put this man through hell,” Murphy said. “There were longstanding concerns about the safety of his conviction and it’s some small consolation that Herman died a free man.”

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October 4, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Comments Off on US political prisoner dies three days after being freed from 41 years of solitary confinement

Ecuador: National Assembly Approves Drilling in Yasuní National Park

By Brendan O’Boyle | The Argentina Independent | October 4, 2013

The Ecuadorian National Assembly voted Thursday to permit the drilling for petroleum in two sections of the Yasuní National Park in the country’s eastern Amazon basin. The decision comes just seven weeks after President Rafael Correa announced the failure of the Yasuní-ITT initiative, a project that sought to indefinitely prohibit oil exploration in the Yasuní in exchange for international donations equal to half of the reserve’s projected income.

The approved measure, which will allow oil exploration in the park’s 31 and 49 blocks, was passed with the votes of 108 of the assembly’s 133 members. The assembly cited “national interest” as justification for its decision. Ecuador’s constitution forbids “activities for the extraction of nonrenewable natural resources” except in the case of national interest as determined by the National Assembly.

President Correa says the exploration will only affect .01% of the park. Additionally, the legislation promises the protection of indigenous communities that live in the affected areas and excludes extractive activity from the Yasuní’s “untouchable zone”, the largest section of the park, which is to be preserved in its natural state as a wildlife sanctuary. The project will be run by state-run oil company Petroamazonas.

Fifty days ago, Correa requested authorisation to begin oil exploration within the park, declared a global biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 1989. The move has intensified national debate over drilling in the Yasuní and saw the president embark on a countrywide tour to convince oppositional groups of the economic and social need to drill in the wake of the Yasuní-ITT initiative’s failure.

In support of the president’s new initiative were 30 mayors from towns in Ecuador’s Amazon basin who travelled to Quito last month to express their support for the measure. Additionally, just last Friday 180 mayors signed a statement in support of the move to drill in the Yasuní.

However, opposition from ecological and indigenous rights groups remains high. On 28th August, police were accused of firing rubber bullets against protestors who had gathered in response to Correa’s initial remarks on opening the Yasuní up to exploration.

In the past month, the opposition has called for a national referendum, a request denied by the Constitutional Court.

Humberto Cholango, head of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, told Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo that he was confused by the court’s decision. “There was a referendum over bullfighting in 2011, so why would you not consult the people on this issue of such importance, which threatens the lives of indigenous peoples as well as the reserve’s enormous biodiversity.”

Despite the rejection, the opposition pushed until the last moments before the vote.

Three community leaders from Ecuador’s Amazon region were invited to speak before the assembly on the final day of the debate. The first two spoke in favour of the government’s proposal, citing a need for economic development and a belief that the government would do its best to protect the local environment and communities.

The third speaker, a Guaraní woman named Alicia Cawiya, steered away from her prepared speech and delivered an emotional plea in an effort to change the minds of those about to vote.

“All we want is that you respect our territory, which we have preserved and cared for,” pleaded Alicia. “Leave us to live how we want. This is our only proposal.”

October 4, 2013 Posted by | Economics, Environmentalism | , , , , | Comments Off on Ecuador: National Assembly Approves Drilling in Yasuní National Park

Locking in Palestinians as Terrorists

By Dr. VACY VLAZNA | CounterPunch | October 4, 2013

What image of Palestinians would viewers, who have a smattering, or if any, knowledge of the Palestinian struggle, gain after seeing Dror Moreh’s documentary, The Gatekeepers?

The word ‘terrorist’ and versions thereof – ‘terrorism’ ‘terror’ – occur over 40 times, and all, bar once, in reference to Palestinians implicitly justifying the raison d’etre for Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).

The MO of the vicious Shin Bet or Shabak is covert counter-terrorism  – based on the premise that the people of Palestine have no right to defend themselves or fight for their rightful independence enshrined in international law against the brutal illegal occupier and coloniser- the rogue State of Israel.

Meanwhile, Israel, the world’s fourth largest high-tech nuclear military force bleats its right to defend itself against Palestinian rocks and piddly homemade rockets.

The Gatekeepers presents interviews with six former Shin Bet commanders with relevant archival footage. Luke Buckmaster states, “These are men who, after consuming their toast and coffee, went to work to oversee every form of state-sanctioned violence. Manhunts. Executions. Torture. Missions that led to the death of countless innocent people… It seems highly improbable — despite unusually candid-feeling interviews — that the former top brass from the Shin Bet didn’t come to the project without an agenda in mind.” (Crikey 21-8-13)

The documentary has been hailed for presenting the human face of Shin Bet.

Dror Moreh: What shocked me was how humane they were. You have a certain image of somebody like Shalom before you meet him; he has a reputation that precedes him. And suddenly, you find yourself seated in front of Shalom and you do not see this monster, or this heartless bureaucrat, or this mastermind of espionage. You see a human being, with the same doubts and tormented thoughts that you or I have. You see a person with a conscience.

You can bet that a documentary proselytising the humanity of Gestapo heads, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolph Diels and Heinrich Muller would ignite fires of Sheol to spurt from the tongues of the Zionist Lobby.

The documentary opens with footage of a sterile ‘super clean operation’ (like the Wikileaks release of the US gunship ‘collateral murder’ video in Iraq) of the targeted killing, by remote, of so-called Palestinian ‘terrorists’ [freedom fighters], accompanied by the self-congratulatory comments of Yuval Diskin, who adds that in reflective moments he thinks it is ‘ unnatural’ to have the power to take lives in an instant. Really? Such moral musings from a man who has spent 30 years in military, Shin Bet and Mossad intelligence including Israel’s 1982 bloody war on Lebanon. Apparently ‘in no time Shin Bet controlled Lebanon’.

The sensitively airbrushed Yuval waxes lyrical about his ‘exotic encounter with olive trees’ (millions of which, along with livelihoods have been destroyed by Israel) and about his interaction with the peasants as he wandered through landscapes, refugee camps (refused right of return), visiting homes, chatting in cafes (one wonders how many of his bucolic buddies Shin Bet kidnapped and tortured) and then awakes from his fond reverie to remind himself and us of the ‘Palestinian problem’.

Right on cue the next footage, presents a newsreel on the killing of two soldiers in Al Khalil (Hebron). Mystifyingly, there is no footage of any of the hundreds of Palestinian civilians murdered there, in their own city, such as young Mohammed Ziad Awad al-Salayma who, in December 2012, was shot moments after buying a cake for his 17th birthday.

The indigenous people of Al Khalil are held hostage by a handful of settler thugs protected by the Israeli military. The once vibrant  commerce of Shuhada St has been shut down and netting covers the narrow passages of the Old City to curtail the urine, faeces and rubbish that vulgar settlers throw down on passing Palestinians.

Avraham Shalom, a feared and uncompromising bully, has an acting skill range from a frisky thrill for his job security “ luckily for us terrorism increased’, to quasi-senility in  remembering his ordering the execution of the two surviving handcuffed hijackers of Bus 300. Their heads were smashed with a rock. Shalom (ironic name) admits President Shamir had given him carte blanche on life-and-death decisions- literally – and that he coordinated his actions with Shamir, Rabin and Peres who rolled over and played ignorant under public pressure. Shalom later admits that Israel has become ‘cruel’ and is ‘similar to the Germans in WWII”. He should know.

Yakov Peri another of Moreh’s charming goons, comments on the First Intifada, “A nation rose up and tried to launch a revolution,” Why?  Wait for it –  “to kick us out”… Ah, there it is- the Israeli mantra of victimhood. Not one of these men of ‘conscience’ get that Palestinians are fighting for self-determination, for freedom from savage and systematic oppression, for their lives and shrinking country.

Peri goes on to laud Shin Bet’s ‘well-oiled’, ‘well-organized, effective’ and ‘systematic’ ‘intelligence factories’. He explains how Shin Bet learned about their territorial units ‘village by village, trail by trail’, through field trips and masses of ‘interviews’ ie interrogations about the village, the clans, number of people and its institutions. This format resembles the well-oiled, well-organized, effective and systematic Plan Dalet that mapped, for the Jewish terrorist militias, the ethnic cleansing of 531Palestinian villages in 1947-48; “These operations can be carried out in the following manner; either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up or by planting mines in their rubble)… In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state.” Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine p.82

Shin Bet then set up a tight web of informers and agents and one wonders what terrible coercions would make a Palestinian betray his community, friends and family. The atmosphere of terror, the sinister recruitment practices and informant systems in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany comes to mind.

The section Our Own Flesh and Blood  deals with the rise of settler power. Peri drops a hasbara (Lie) clanger stating that “the illegal settlements were built despite of or in opposition to government decisions”. Shortly after the settler protests in 1975, Rabin allowed the establishment of  Ma’ale Adumin and settlers have been given financial incentives and tax concession by successive Israeli governments.

Since 1967 over 541,000 settlers have colonised the West Bank and there are 100 outposts, forerunners to new settlements. Israel threatens to annex the settlements on stolen Palestinian land and since the onset of the present peace farce in July, the Netanyahu government announced plans for 800 illegal housing units. Extremist settler parties have unprecedented power in the present Knesset.

The rise of settler power only disturbs Israel when its own may suffer as with the assassination of Rabin and the deranged plot to blow up the Dome on the Rock. Moreh never refers to these fanatics as terrorists even though, after the massacre at Al Khalil’s Ibrahimi Mosque by Baruch Goldstein, the settler groups, Kach and Kahane Chai were designated terrorist organisations.

Moreh makes much of death of Rabin and its impact on the peace process but Tanya Reinhart told it straight; “Deception and lies have been a cornerstone in Israeli policy, brought to a new level of perfection since Oslo. While the world believed that Prime Minister Rabin promised to eventually end the occupation and dismantle the settlements, the number of Israeli settlers actually doubled during his rule.”

If you are not convinced The Gatekeepers is a propaganda exercise, listen to Carmi Gillon’s testimony on Shin Bet’s justification for the use of torture in interrogations which became more difficult during the Second Intifada because “ Anyone willing to sacrifice his life whether its for the virgins in  paradise or not has nothing to lose.” The belittlement of the sacrifice of suicide bombers for paradisaical virgins confirms Israel’s denial of the Palestinian political impetus for freedom and denial of the desperation of Palestinian life under the might of Israel’s control.

In 2001, Human Rights Watch asked the Danish government to reject Gillon’s appointment as ambassador to Denmark and Amnesty International, citing the UN Convention against Torture demanded he be detained.

Years after the end of the Second Intifada, “the need to use moderate physical pressure in interrogations” continues to this day. Moderate? Impunity to inflict sleep deprivation, sitting handcuffed in a painful, degrading, exhausting position, covering heads, shaking, beatings, humiliation, threats against family, medical neglect, electrocution on adults and minors is secured by Israel’s High Court and the Office of the Prime Minister.

In February 2013, Charlotte Silver’s opinion piece in Al Jazeera,  How Israel legitimises torturing Palestinians, to death, exposes how Arafat Jaradet was tortured to death during the 7 days between his arrest and death on February 23.

“The ordeal that Arafat suffered before he died at the hands of Israel’s Shin Bet is common to many Palestinians that pass through Israel’s prisons. According to the prisoners’ rights organisation Addameer, since 1967, a total of 72 Palestinians have been killed as a result of torture and 53 due to medical neglect. Less than a month before Jaradat was killed, Ashraf Abu Dhra died while in Israeli custody in a case that Addameer argues was a direct result of medical neglect… And in the first week of February, two weeks before Arafat was killed, the High Court of Justice threw out Adalah’s petition that demanded the GSS videotape and audio record all of its interrogations in order to comply with requirements of the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) to which Israel is a signatory.”

The section, Collateral Damage vividly depicts Shin Bet’s new strategy; state-sanctioned targeted killings which are outlawed under international law. In 2007, Avi Dichter, was forced to cancel a visit to the UK because of a potential arrest warrant on suspicion of war crimes for the bombing of Hamas‘ Saleh Shehade’s home killing 15 family members including 3 children. Sharon called it ‘one of  our greatest successes.’

Ami Aylon points out Israel also achieved greater security because cooperation was secured at monthly meetings between Shin Bet and the PLO security in spite of the dwindling Israeli desire to reach agreement on a Palestinian state. This is backed up by footage that features Fatah gangster, Mohammed Dahlan whose death squads took over Israel’s policing of Gaza and the West Bank. Concocting competition and conflict between Fatah and Hamas is a brilliant divide and rule strategy that deflects the Palestinian focus from self-determination.

In interviews, Moreh insists these Shin Bet sadists in sheep’s clothing agreed to be interviewed because of their concern for the diminishing window for a two-state solution that is propelling Israel toward a catastrophe. Ayalon is a vocal supporter the two state solution but without the right of return; a right of all peoples. A Jew anywhere in the world  has the right to ‘return’ to Israel but Palestinians are denied their legal right to return to their own country and lands even though international law guarantees, “no territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal”.

Moreh’s urgent pragmatic push for a two state solution must include the corrupt Abbas, and Moreh, in an interview on Huffpost, condemns Netanyahu calling Abbas irrelevant and a terrorist. Of course Abbas, Erekat et al are the dream team because they’ve agreed to a Palestinian state on 18% of the remaining area within the 1967 borders, illegal land swaps that will contain the settlements in a vastly expanded Israeli state, no right of return, and demilitarisation. That is to say the status quo. Israel couldn’t get a better two-state deal.

Perhaps a future Palestinian leader of integrity and /or a one state outcome is the catastrophe Moreh is frantic to evade.

Moreh is honest in declaring, “I feel they came because they are really concerned about the future of the state of Israel.” (clearly there is no evidence they have any concern for Palestinians past, present or future) and Israel’s self-interest is definitely the prime agenda. Israel’s reputation is rancid internationally and it is desperately trying to sweeten it with honeytraps like The Gatekeepers that seemingly appear to criticise Israel, throw in a few moral and philosophical after-thoughts, then stamp the terrorist label onto suffering Palestinians.

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001. 

October 4, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Locking in Palestinians as Terrorists

Israel seeks 2nd seat in the UN Security Council

MEMO | October 4, 2013

On Thursday, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, said that his country plans to compete for one of the non-permanent seats on the Security Council for 2019-20. According to Prosor, Israel is trying hard to win this. “It should have happened a long time ago,” he claimed.

To win a seat in the Security Council, Israel must win a two-thirds majority in the UN General Assembly, which has 193 members. The five regional groups nominate the candidates, but they are elected by the General Assembly.

Prosor said that Israel would compete against Germany and Belgium for the two seats reserved for Western European and other countries. Israel should be in the group with Asian and Pacific Ocean countries, along with the other countries in the Middle East, but Muslim-majority countries prevented its inclusion. In 2000, Israel agreed to join the West European and other countries group temporarily. The group includes the United States and in 2004 Israel’s membership was made permanent.

UN diplomats said that it will not be easy for Israel to win the seat as most of the UN member states are part of the Non-Aligned Movement and are either lukewarm or openly hostile towards it.

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October 4, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Comments Off on Israel seeks 2nd seat in the UN Security Council

Hillary Clinton Laughs Like a Pig when Subject of Iran War Comes Up


Excerpts:

Baker: At the end of the day. if we do not get it done the way the administration is working on it now, which we totally agree with, we ought to take em out.

Clinton: [Laugh] … We are working hard. [Laugh]

All options are on the table…

October 4, 2013 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | Comments Off on Hillary Clinton Laughs Like a Pig when Subject of Iran War Comes Up

Zionist Troops Violate Blue Line in Mount Hermon, Lebanon Files complaint to UN

Al-Manar | October 3, 2013

The Lebanese army filed a complaint Thursday to the United Nations to protest the violation by four Zionist soldiers of the Blue Line in the southern Shebaa Heights in Mount Hermon, a security source revealed to Al-Manar website.

“The troops moved for a distance of 300 meters inside the Lebanese territories while they were chasing a Lebanese herder Wednesday afternoon,” the source added.

The Wednesday violation took place near the Zionist Radar checkpoint on the border with Occupied Palestine.

Soldiers from the Indian operating force of UNIFIL have filed a report for their leadership in Naqoura about their observations of the Zionist breach. The Joint Verification Commission – consisting of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL – inspected the area Thursday where they verified the breach and filed the complaint.

The Al-Manar website correspondent also reported Thursday that fifteen Zionist soldiers violated the technical fence in the southern region of Wazzani and moved to a distance of ten meters away from the Lebanese river, adjacent to the parks without violating the Blue Line.

In the meantime, Zionist drones carried out intensive false raids over Lebanon hovering over the southern towns of the country at low altitude on Thursday.

The Zionist army has recently paved a new route at the border with Lebanon in an attempt to terrorize citizens and spread panic among them.

Since the 2006 July war on Lebanon, the Zionist entity has spared no chance to violate the Lebanese sovereignty in flagrant breaching of the UN resolution 1701.

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October 4, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Comments Off on Zionist Troops Violate Blue Line in Mount Hermon, Lebanon Files complaint to UN