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Mexican Journalist Kidnapped in Veracruz State

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teleSUR | January 3, 2015

Mexican photojournalist and social activist, Moises Sanchez Cerezo, was reportedly kidnapped by an armed group at his home in the community of Medellin de Bravo in the turbulent state of Veracruz on Friday.

According to local media reports, Cerezo was taken at gunpoint along with his computer, camera and cell phone. Neighbor testimony outlined that the incident took place at 7:30 in the evening. They affirmed that three cars arrived with several armed men who entered the home of Cerezo then drove off with him in their custody.

Although the neighbors notified police, law enforcement showed up hours later.

Cerezo contributes to the local weekly La Union as well as participated in neighborhood security and watch groups to try to confront the widespread insecurity resulting from the presence of organized crime and corrupt local police officials.

Media rights watchdog groups have raised alarm over the number of journalists and media workers killed or targeted during the current administration of Enrique Peña Nieto. According to the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), 13 journalists have been killed in Mexico in the past two years.

Mexico remains one of the most dangerous places in the world to practice journalism. Nearly 100 media workers have lost their lives or gone missing since the year 2000, and most of these cases are still unsolved, insufficiently probed, and few perpetrators arrested or convicted, according to the PEN American Center.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that since 1992, 73 percent of journalists killings in Mexico involved criminal groups with 8 percent involving the military.

January 3, 2015 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Rapprochement Between the United States and Cuba and Sanctions Against Venezuela

By WILLIAM CAMACARO and FREDERICK B. MILLS | CounterPunch | January 2, 2015

In a historic address on December 17, 2014 on “Cuba policy changes” President Barack Obama declared, “our shift in policy towards Cuba comes at a moment of renewed leadership in the Americas.” This “renewed leadership,” in our view, seeks to gradually undermine socialism in Cuba, check waning U.S. influence in the region, and inhibit a growing continental Bolivarian movement towards Latin American liberation, integration, and sovereignty. To be sure, normalization of relations with Cuba and the release of Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino and Antonio Guerrero were long overdue, and the reunification of Alan Gross with his family was an important and welcome gesture. The rapprochement between the United States and Cuba and the simultaneous imposition of a new round of sanctions by the U.S. against Venezuela, however, do not signal a change in overall U.S. strategy but only a change in tactics. As President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro remarked in a letter to President Raul Castro “there is still a long road to travel in order to arrive at the point that Washington recognizes we are no longer its back yard…” (December 20, 2014).

From Embargo to Deployment of U.S. Soft Power in Cuba

The Obama gambit arguably seeks to move Cuba as far as possible towards market oriented economic reforms, help build the political community of dissidents on the island, and improve U.S. standing in the region, and indeed in the world. In a Miami Herald op-ed piece (December 22, 2014), John Kerry (Secretary of State), Penny Pritzker (Secretary of Commerce) and Jacob J. Lew (Treasury Secretary) wrote that normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba will “increase the ability of Americans to provide business training and other support for Cuba’s nascent private sector” and that this will “put American businesses on a more equal footing.” Presumably the op-ed is referring to “equal footing” with other nations that have been doing business for years with Cuba despite the embargo. The essay also indicates that the U.S. will continue its “strong support for improved human-rights conditions and democratic reforms in Cuba” by “empowering civil society and supporting the freedom of individuals to exercise their freedoms of speech and assembly.” Such a version of “empowering civil society” is probably consistent with decades of U.S. clandestine attempts to subvert the Cuban government, documented by Jon Elliston in Psy War on Cuba: The declassified history of U.S. anti-Castro propaganda (Ocean Press: 1999). It is also in line with more recent efforts, through USAID funded social media (phony Cuban Twitter) and a four year project to promote “Cuban rap music” both of which ended in 2012, designed to build dissident movements inside Cuba. In December 2014, Matt Herrick, spokesman for USAID, defended the latter unsuccessful covert program saying, “It seemed like a good idea to support civil society” and that “it’s not something we are embarrassed about in any way.” Moreover, a fact sheet on normalization published by the U.S. Department of State mentions that funding for “democracy programming” will continue and that “our efforts are aimed at promoting the independence of the Cuban people so they do not need to rely on the Cuban state” (December 17, 2014). The Cuban government, though, has a different take on the meaning of “independence of the Cuban people.” They emphasize “sovereign equality,” “national independence,” and “self determination.” In an address on normalization, Raul Castro insisted on maintaining Cuban sovereignty and stated “we have embarked on the task of updating our economic model in order to build a prosperous and sustainable Socialism” (December 17, 2014). Obviously the ideological differences between Washington and Havana will shape the course of economic and political engagement between these two nations in the months and years ahead.

Rapprochement Between the U.S. and U.S. Isolation in Latin America

Through normalization of relations with Cuba, the U.S. also seeks to end its increasing isolation in the region. Secretary of State John Kerry, in his Announcement of Cuba Policy Changes, remarked that “not only has this policy [embargo] failed to advance America’s goals, it has actually isolated the United States instead of isolating Cuba” (December 17, 2014). In October 2014, the United Nations General Assembly voted against the U.S. Cuba embargo for the 23rd year in a row, with only the U.S. and Israel voting in favor. The inclusion of Cuba in the political and, to a certain degree, economic life of Latin America, has also been part of a larger expression of Latin American solidarity that clearly repudiates regional subordination to Washington. Since the sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena (April 2012), the U.S. has been on very clear notice by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) that there will be no seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama in April without Cuba, a condition to which Washington has ceded.

The flip side of Washington’s growing “isolation” has been the critically important regional diversification of diplomatic and commercial relations between Latin America and the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and the construction of alternative development banks and currency reserves to gradually replace the historically onerous terms of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The financial powerhouse of the BRICS nations is China. Over the past year, China has sent high level delegations to visit CELAC nations and in some cases these meetings have resulted in significant commercial agreements. As a follow up, there will be a CELAC–China forum in Beijing in January 2015 whose main objective, reports Prensa Latina, “is exchange and dialogue in politics, trade, economy and culture.” These ties with BRICS and other nations are consistent with the Chavista goal that the Patria Grande ought to contribute to building a multi-polar world and resist subordination to any power block on the planet. By bringing a halt to its growing isolation, Washington would be in a better position to increase its participation in regional commerce. The terms of economic engagement with most of Latin America, however, will no longer be determined by a Washington consensus, but by a North—South consensus. The Obama gambit, though, appears to be trading one source of alienation (embargo against Cuba) for another (sanctions against Venezuela).

Obama’s Gambit: Pushing Back the Bolivarian Cause at its Front Line–Venezuela

The Obama administration’s move to normalize relations with Cuba, while a welcome change of course, can be seen as a modification in tactics to advance the neoliberal agenda as far as possible in Havana while ending a policy that only serves to further erode U.S. influence in the region. Such diplomacy is in line with what appears to be a major U.S. policy objective of ultimately rolling back the ‘pink tide’, that is, the establishment, by democratic procedures, of left and center left regimes in two thirds of Latin American nations. It is this tide that has achieved some measure of progress in liberating much of Latin America from the structural inequality, social antagonism, and subordination to transnational corporate interests intrinsic to neoliberal politics and economics. And it is the continental Bolivarian emphasis on independence, integration, and sovereignty that has fortified the social movements behind this tide.

The Obama gambit, from a hemispheric point of view, constitutes a tactical shift away from the failed U.S. attempt to isolate and bring the Cuban revolution to its knees through coercion, to an intensification of its fifteen year effort to isolate and promote regime change in Venezuela. The reason for this tactical shift is that Venezuela, as the front line in the struggle for the Bolivarian cause of an increasingly integrated and sovereign Latin America, has become the biggest obstacle to the restoration of U.S. hegemony and the rehabilitation of the neoliberal regime in the Americas.

If this interpretation of U.S. hemispheric policy is near the mark, Obama’s grand executive gesture towards Cuba is immediately related to the context of Washington’s unrelenting antagonism towards Chavismo and, in particular, to the latest imposition of sanctions against Caracas. The reason for this is quite transparent. It has been Venezuela, more than Cuba, during the past fifteen years, that has played the leading role in the change of the balance of forces in the region on the side of sovereignty for the peoples of the Americas, especially through its leadership role in ALBA, CELAC, UNASUR and MERCOSUR, associations that do not include the U.S. and Canada. Argentine sociologist Atilio Boron, in an interview with Katu Arkonada of Rebelión (June 24, 2014), points out, “It is no accident… that Venezuela in particular is in the cross hairs of the empire, and for this reason we must be clear that the battle of Venezuela is our Stalingrad. If Venezuela succumbs before the brutal counter offensive of the United States…the rest of the processes of change underway on the continent, whether very radical or very moderate, will end with the same fate.” The latest U.S. sanctions against Venezuela can be viewed as one component of this counter offensive. It is to a closer look at the sanctions bill, signed into law by the president on December 18, 2014, that we now turn.

The “Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014” (S 2142) not only targets Venezuelan officials whom U.S. authorities accuse of being linked to human rights abuses by freezing their assets and revoking their travel visas (Sec. 5 (b) (1) (A) (B)), it also promises to step up U.S. political intervention in Venezuela by continuing “to support the development of democratic political processes and independent civil society in Venezuela” (section 4 (4)) and by reviewing the effectiveness of “broadcasting, information distribution, and circumvention technology distribution in Venezuela” (section 6). One of the instruments of this support for “democratic political processes” has been the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Sociologist Kim Scipes argues that, “the NED and its institutes are not active in Venezuela to help promote democracy, as they claim, but in fact, to act against popular democracy in an effort to restore the rule of the elite, top-down democracy” (February 28 – March 2, 2014). Independent journalist Garry Leech, in his article entitled “Agents of Destabilization: Washington Seeks Regime Change in Venezuela,” (March 4, 2014) examines Wikileaks cables that indicate similar efforts have been carried out in Venezuela by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) during the past decade. Hannah Dreier (July 18, 2014), reported that “the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy, a government-funded nonprofit organization, together budgeted about $7.6 million to support Venezuelan groups last year alone, according to public documents reviewed by AP.” The sanctions bill (S 2142), then, in light of these precedents, contains provisions that suggest an imminent escalation in the use of soft power to support the political opposition to Chavismo in Venezuela, though such funding has been banned by Caracas.

The current U.S. sanctions against Caracas are consistent with fifteen years of U.S. antagonism against the Bolivarian revolution. The measures send a clear signal of increased support for a Venezuelan political opposition that has suffered division and discord in the aftermath of their failed “salida ya” (exit now) strategy of the first quarter of 2014. The sanctions also undermine any near term movement towards normalization of relations between the U.S. and Venezuela. It is no surprise that provisions of the law that targets Venezuelan officials accused of human rights violations have gotten some limited traction inside this South American nation, with the executive secretary of the Venezuelan opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), Jesús Torrealba, openly supporting this measure. This is probably not going to get the MUD a lot of votes. According to a Hinterlaces poll taken in May, a majority of Venezuelans are opposed to U.S. sanctions. There has also been a swift repudiation of sanctions by the Maduro administration and the popular sectors. On December 15, 2014, in one of the largest and most enthusiastic gatherings of Chavistas in the streets of Caracas since the death of Hugo Chavez, marchers celebrated the fifteenth year anniversary of the passage by referendum of a new constitution (December 15, 1999) and vigorously protested against U.S. intervention in their country. Even dissident Chavistas appear to be toning down their rhetoric and circling the wagons in the face of Washington’s bid to assert “renewed leadership” in the region.

There is no doubt that the Maduro administration is under tremendous pressure, from left Chavistas as well as from the right wing opposition, to reform and improve public security and deal effectively with an economic crisis that is being exacerbated by falling petroleum prices. What the government of Venezuela calls an “economic war” against the country has domestic and well as international dimensions. Although there is no smoking gun at this time that exposes a conspiracy, some analysts interpret the recent fall in oil prices as part of a campaign to put severe economic pressure on Iran, Russia and Venezuela, countries whose fiscal soundness relies a great deal on petroleum revenues. For example, Venezuelan independent journalist, Jesus Silva R., in his essay entitled “The Government of Saudi Arabia is the Worst Commercial Enemy of Venezuela,” argues that the Saudis and Washington are complicit in the “economic strangulation, planned from the outside, against Venezuela” (December 22, 2014). Whatever the cause of falling petroleum prices and despite the domestic challenges facing Caracas, it will most probably be the Venezuelan electorate that decides, through upcoming legislative elections, whether to give Chavismo a vote of confidence, not outside intervention or a fresh round of guarimbas and terrorist attacks perpetrated by the ultra right. For the large majority of Venezuelans reject violence and favor constitutional means of resolving political contests.

U.S. Sanctions Against Venezuela Evoke Latin American Solidarity with Caracas

The good will generated by rapprochement between the U.S. and Cuba has already been tempered by the almost simultaneous new round of sanctions imposed by Washington against Venezuela. It is important to recall, perhaps with some irony, that it was precisely the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s establishment of fraternal ties with a formerly isolated Cuba that drew, in particular, the ire of Washington and the virulent antagonism of the right wing Venezuelan opposition. Now it is Latin American and to a significant extent, international solidarity with Venezuela that may prove to be a thorn in Washington’s side. On December 12, 2014, ALBA issued a strong statement against the Senate passage of the sanctions bill, expressing its “most energetic rejection of these interventionist actions [sanctions] against the people and government of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela.” The statement also warned “that the legislation constitutes an incitement towards the destabilization of…Venezuela and opens the doors to anticonstitutional actions against the legal government and legitimately elected President Nicolas Maduro Moros.” The communiqué also expressed solidarity with Venezuela adding that the countries of ALBA “desire to emphasize that they will not permit the use of old practices already applied to countries in the region, directed at bringing about political regime change, as has occurred in other regions of the world.” MERCOSUR issued a statement on December 17, 2014 that “the application of unilateral sanctions… violate the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of States and does not contribute to the stability, social peace and democracy in Venezuela.” On December 22, the G77 plus China countries expressed solidarity and support for the government of Venezuela in the face of “violations of international law that in no way contributes to the spirit of political and economic dialogue between the two countries.” On December 23, the Movement of Non-Aligned Nations stated that it “categorically rejects the decision of the United States Government to impose unilateral coercive measures against the Republic of Venezuela…with the purpose of weakening its sovereignty, political independence and its right to the self determination, in clear violation of International Law.” It is also important to recall that on October 16, 2014 the UN General Assembly elected Venezuela (by a vote of 181 out of 193 members) to a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council with unanimous regional support, even crossing ideological lines. This UN vote came as a grave disappointment to opponents of the Bolivarian revolution and reinforced Venezuelan standing in CELAC. In yet another diplomatic victory, as of September 2015, Venezuela will assume the presidency of the Movement of Non-Aligned Nations for a three year term. Clearly, it is Washington, not Venezuela that has already become an outlier as the Obama administration launches its “renewed leadership in the Americas.” If these immediate expressions of solidarity with the first post-Chavez Bolivarian government in Venezuela are an indicator of a persistent and growing trend, then by the time of the upcoming seventh Summit of the Americas, April 10 – 11, 2015 in Panama, President Obama can expect approbation for Washington’s opening to Havana, but he will also face a united front against U.S. intervention in Venezuela and anywhere else in the region.

Note: Translations by the authors from Spanish to English of government documents are unofficial. Where citations are not present in the text, hyperlinks provide the source.

William Camacaro MFA. is a Senior Analyst at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and a member of the Bolivarian Circle of New York “Alberto Lovera.”

Frederick B. Mills, Ph.D. is Professor of Philosophy at Bowie State University and Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

January 3, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Happy New Year Palestine: But Don’t Expect any Change in the Status Quo

By William Hanna | Dissident Voice | January 2, 2015

A stinging defeat for Abbas, but no great victory for Israel … Netanyahu persuaded Nigeria to abstain as UN Security Council rejected Palestinian statehood, but could only muster US and Australian opposition, and the French let Israel down.

— Times of Israel

Had the UN Security Council voted for Palestinian statehood it would still have made no difference because the resolution would have been vetoed by Israel’s superpower lapdog — that principled and supreme upholder of democracy and international law — the United States of America. But even before this latest amoral rejection, the Palestinian people had already been forewarned that the New Year of 2015 would herald no change in their misfortunes.

UNSCvote_DVThey would continue to be faceless, voiceless, and unrecognised by a Zionist blackmailed, bribed, bullied, and sadly spineless international community; continue to be stateless prisoner refugees on their own land and in adjoining Arab states; continue to be subject to air, sea, and land blockades that prevent free trade — the import of essential foods, medical supplies, and rebuilding materials — and freedom of their own movement; continue to exist under the constant threat of another barbaric military assault in keeping with Zionism’s rationale that Palestinian existence denies and challenges Israel’s insatiable territorial claims which can only be satisfied by annihilating the Palestinian people; continue to be subject to arbitrary arrest, beatings, torture, and indefinite imprisonment without charges or due process — for up to ten or more years in some cases without knowledge of when or if they will ever be released — under Israel’s Administrative Detention Orders; continue seeing their children being systematically detained by the military and police who subject them to violent physical and verbal abuse, humiliation, painful restraints, hooding of the head and face in a sack, threats with death, physical violence, and sexual assault against themselves or members of their family, and denial of access to food, water, and toilet facilities; continue to be subject to attacks against themselves and their property — including the burning of their olive groves which are the only means of livelihood for many — by deranged savages from illegal Israeli settlements; continue to have their property demolished, their resources including water stolen, and their land expropriated by “God’s chosen people” from the “only democracy in the Middle east”; and finally, they would continue to be aghast at how the world could stand idly by and do nothing while Israel barbarically violated every article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which incidentally both warmongering criminal states of the U.S. and Israel had ratified.

So despite recent encouraging recognitions of a “Palestinian state” by some European parliaments, forewarnings that the status quo for the Palestinian people would remain unchanged came from various sources including the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron. Cameron, who during a visit to Israel in march 2014 had taken obsequious Knesset-grovelling to new heights by confirming that very determined and insidious “friends of Israel” lobby groups corrupt and exert influence over the Western leaders irrespective of what the the people themselves may want as was the case in the lead-up to the Iraq War:

I will always stand up for the right of Israel to defend its citizens, a right enshrined in international law, in natural justice and fundamental morality [which is not applicable to the Palestinian people because their lobby is nowhere near as powerful as yours], and in decades of common endeavour between Israel and her [bought and paid for political] allies. When I was in opposition, I spoke out when – because of the law on universal jurisdiction – senior Israelis could not safely come to my country without fear of ideologically motivated court cases and legal stunts; when I became Prime Minister, I legislated to change it. My country is open to you and you are welcome [as are your shiny shekels] to visit any time.

Despite Israel’s flagrant crimes against humanity during last summer’s Operation Protective Edge and following Israel’s Jewish nation-state bill which affirmed “the personal rights of all [Israel’s] citizens according to law,” but reserved communal rights for Jews only — which meant that while individual Arabs would be equal in the eyes of the law, their communal rights would not be recognised — the following exchange took place in parliament between an unabashed Cameron and the high-principled Jewish Sir Gerald Kaufman:

Sir Gerald Kaufman: “Will the Prime Minister condemn the new Israeli Government Bill that removes what are defined as national rights from all Israeli citizens who are not Jews, makes Hebrew the only national language and has been denounced by the Israeli Attorney-General as causing a ‘deterioration of the democratic characteristic of the state’? Will he make it clear that the statutory, repressive removal of citizenship rights on the basis of religion will turn Israel into an apartheid state?”

Prime Minister David Cameron: “One of the reasons I am such a strong supporter of Israel is that it is a country that has given rights and democracy to its people, and it is very important that that continues. When we look across the region and at the indexes of freedom, we see that Israel is one of the few countries that tick the boxes for freedom, and it is very important that it continues to do so.”

Furthermore, as a consequence of last year’s increased public sympathy for the Palestinian people, Israel has ramped-up its propaganda through Zionism’s reliable army of selfish, self-serving, sleazy, sewer-scavenging, slime ball supporters — time to abandon political correctness and unjustified respect — whose leading light is Tony Blair the war criminal “Middle East Peace Envoy.” Such lowlife paid for recruits contaminate not only politics, but also the mainstream media that plants the seeds of support for Israel by expurgating the news we hear, read, and watch. While speaking at a conference in Jerusalem last month, Danny Cohen the director of the Israeli-biased BBC Television said: “I’ve never felt so uncomfortable being a Jew in the UK as in the last 12 months,” and that rising anti-Semitism has made him question the long-term future for Jews in the UK.

It would be an insult to morons to refer to Mr. Cohen as such, but it has obviously escaped his Zionist mentality that what he refers to as anti-Semitism in Britain, may in fact be the British people’s exasperation with continually seeing images of Israel’s barbarity against a defenceless people who only want to be left alone to enjoy their inalienable human rights in an unoccupied Palestinian state. How can Mr. Cohen and others of his heartless ilk be made to understand that the general public’s revulsion and condemnation resulting from seeing [WARNING: images very graphic!] images of Palestinian children burnt to a crisp with limbs blown off, is not in any way anti-Semitic but simply empathy for fellow human beings whose savage persecution has been ongoing for more than 60 years.

Unmitigated Zionist arrogance — with its inherent Ariel Sharon belief that “Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial” — presumes to tell the rest of us “unchosen” goyim what we can and cannot do; presumes to condemn the European parliaments that finally took a moral stand and voted to recognise a Palestinian state; presumes —after the Palestinians signed up to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) — to issue the threat that Israel would take “steps in response and defend Israel’s soldiers”; presumes that it has a right to special trade agreements and dispensations whose conditions it routinely violates; presumes that it can take what it wants without giving anything in return; and presumes in accordance with its self nomination as “God’s chosen people” that it has a supremacist entitlement to treat all non-Jews as contemptible individuals to be used and exploited.

Further proof of an unchanged Palestinian status quo in 2015 came after the first step was taken to join the ICC with the U.S. state department — an Israeli mouthpiece — releasing a statement condemning what it called “an escalatory step” on the part of the Palestinians and that negotiations between the two sides were the only “realistic path towards peace … today’s action is entirely counter-productive and does nothing to further the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a sovereign and independent state.”

It is hard to comprehend how after decades of “peace talks” anyone can still believe that peace is achievable through negotiations. The Israeli position of insisting that only through negotiations can an agreement be reached is a ploy that always includes the deliberate Israeli intent to sabotage such negotiations so as to prolong the status quo and thereby enable Israel to continue with its illegal settlement building and gradual expropriation of more Palestinian land by means of ethnic cleansing. Israel does not want peace. Peace would mean an end to Israel’s gratuitous persecution of the Palestinian people and the larcenous plunder of Palestinian land and resources.

Even before the UN Security Council vote Israel considered the resolution to be a diplomatic declaration of war with Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz calling for drastic measures if the Palestinians indeed do make the move. “A vote at the UN is expected on the aggressive, hostile and one-sided resolution regarding a Palestinian state. We must not let it pass quietly,” Steinitz declared. “In my opinion, if such a resolution is accepted by the UNSC we will have to seriously consider the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority … in my opinion, if such a resolution is accepted by the UNSC we will have to seriously consider the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority.”

It is time for decent people everywhere to face two inescapable realities: the first is to recognise and accept what Israel is — a Zionist Apartheid warmongering state bent on driving out the indigenous Palestinian people so as to grab their land irrespective of cost or consequences, and the second is that Western political leaders cannot be relied upon on to unconditionally insist on justice for the Palestinian people including Israel’s withdrawal to the 1967 borders thereby allowing for a Palestinian state.

So what can decent people do? They can resort to the only peaceful and proven alternative which successfully ended Apartheid in South Africa and simply involved an all out boycott. The current global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS Movement) has to be supported and expanded to such an extent that Israelis will have no option other than to accept that even as a God chosen people they still have the responsibility of respecting international law and the rest of humanity.

William Hanna is a freelance writer with a recently published book the Hiramic Brotherhood of the Third Temple. He can be reached at: w194hanna@gmail.com.

January 3, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces shoot 3 Palestinian shepherds near Nablus

Ma’an – 03/01/2015

90059_345x230NABLUS – Three Palestinian shepherds were injured on Saturday after Israeli forces and private security guards at a Jewish settlement opened fire on a crowd near Nablus.

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors settlement activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an that several Israeli settlers attacked a group of shepherds in the area of Khirbet Yanun near the village of Aqraba and opened live fire at them after the group entered the area.

Israeli soldiers later entered the area and opened fire as well, hitting three men.

The injured were identified as Falah Youssef Bani Jaber, hit in the hand, Ahmad Bani Jaber, also hit in the hand, and Judeh Bani Jaber, who was hit with a rubber-coated steel bullet in his stomach.

An Israeli military spokeswoman told Ma’an that the Palestinian shepherds gathered near the Gidonim outpost of the Itamar settlement north of Aqraba, claiming that their herds had been stolen.

Israeli residents of the settlement then called army forces, she said, and the local security guards and the army forces “fired in the air to disperse the riot.”

She said that the herds were subsequently found and that they had not been “stolen,” as the Palestinians had claimed. However, she refused to comment on whether the herds had been found inside the settlement or not.

She added that the military was looking into reports that Palestinians had been injured in the incident.

The villages south of Nablus are frequent sites of settler violence and Palestinian clashes with Israeli forces as they are located beside the notoriously violent Israeli settlements of Yitzhar, Bracha, and Itamar.

Settlers frequently attack a number of local villages and prevent farmers from reaching their lands, according to UNOCHA, in addition to attacks on local olive trees themselves.

Settler violence against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank is systematic and ignored by Israeli authorities, who rarely intervene in the violent attacks or prosecute the perpetrators.

In 2014, there were at least 329 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

January 3, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Abuse, neglect killed more than 100 Egyptian detainees in 2014: Report

Mada Masr | January 2, 2015

More than 100 people died while detained in Egyptian prisons in 2014, according to a year-end report produced by Al-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence.

The report included a timeline of documented cases of torture in prisons, which showed that torture occurred almost daily in the past year. The timeline was accompanied by prisoners’ testimonials, which revealed the inhumane conditions for detainees.

In the report’s introduction, Al-Nadeem claimed that the cases detailed therein represented only a fraction of the violations committed against many more unknown detainees. Torture is a crime, the center declared, whether it’s practiced against a political detainee, a murderer or a terrorist.

Most deaths that occurred in police stations or prisons were caused by torture, untreated health conditions or the brutal conditions in which the detainees were held, according to the report.

Al-Nadeem lambasted the government for shirking its legal responsibility to safeguard the health and lives of anyone detained in Egyptian facilities.

“You are responsible for all of them — whether they died from electric shocks or brutal beatings; or died from hunger as a result of a hunger strike that you ignored; or died of suffocation because of overcrowding; or of diseases that you delayed treatment for, or because you refused to transfer them to hospitals,” the report said.

“In all cases, their deaths are premeditated murder in your prisons,” the center concluded, “and you will be held accountable for it sooner or later.”

January 3, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | | Leave a comment

BDS National Committee condemns Gaza orphans trip to Israel

MEMO | January 2, 2015

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee condemned a planned trip organised for 37 Palestinian orphans, who lost their parents during the recent Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, to Israel.

In a statement, the committee said the “suspicious trip” included visits to several Israeli settlements around Gaza and described it as nothing but a failed public relations stunt aimed at covering up Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. The trip was cancelled after Hamas stopped the orphans from leaving the Strip.

The visit was organised by Yoel Marshak of the Kibbutz Movement, a versed Zionist organisation which has long been involved in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and uprooting them from their land, the statement said.

The committee condemned Candle for Peace and Brotherhood, a Palestinian organisation believed to have ties to the right-wing Likud Party.

The statement concluded by calling to stop all normalisation of formal and informal ties with Israel and to support the Palestinian people in the besieged Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, the Negev and Galilee as well as inside Israel.

January 2, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Jewish settlers attack Palestinians south of Jenin

Palestine Information Center – January 2, 2015

settlersattackJENIN – A group of Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian vehicles traveling on Jenin-Nablus road near the junction of Jaba village south of Jenin at dawn Friday.

Around 12 vehicles carrying settlers stormed the evacuated settlement of Tarsleh and blocked Jenin-Nablus road today under military protection.

The settlers spread among nearby olive trees and began attacking and stoning passing Palestinian cars in the presence of Israeli soldiers, eyewitnesses said.

During the attack, the settlers chanted racist slurs against the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Israeli media sources claimed that three Molotov cocktails were thrown at a home appropriated by settlers in Ras Amoud neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem overnight. The sources said that Palestinian young men threw three Molotov cocktails at the house, with no reported injuries.

The Israeli police launched a wide manhunt following the incident.

January 2, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinians Need Less Negotiations, Not More

samantha-power-2

By Matt Peppe | Just the Facts | January 1, 2015

When the U.N. Security Council resolution to end the Israeli military occupation of the occupied territories and establish a Palestinian state by 2017 was defeated, not a single human with a pulse was surprised. The resolution received eight votes in favor, with the United States and Australia against and five countries abstaining. Even though the measure was one vote shy of adoption, the United States decided to exercise its veto power anyway just to make its rejectionist stance abundantly clear. But the bill would not have lead to a fair settlement anyway. If it led to a settlement at all it would have been an unjust one for Palestinians. A just settlement would mean assuming the goals of the resolution as a starting point, not as an end point.

Explaining why she put a kibosh on the resolution, United States Ambassador Samantha Power said the bill was “imbalanced” and addressed “only one side.” It did address only one side – Israel’s. It was imbalanced because it sought legal rights already due to Palestinians since 1967 as its objective while ignoring other Palestinian rights like the right of return and equal rights inside the 1948 borders. And it rewarded Israel for 47 years of atrocious criminality – ethnic cleansing, land and water theft, destruction of thousands of homes and olive trees – without any consequences.

The insistence on maintaining the status quo was explained by Power saying that “we firmly believe the status quo between Israelis and Palestinians is unsustainable.”

Power also made multiple references to negotiations between the parties. “The United States every day searches for new ways to take constructive steps to support the parties in making progress toward achieving a negotiated settlement,” she said. By this, she apparently meant that the United States searches for ways to force Palestinians to negotiate how many of their rights they are willing to forfeit, while Israel demands that it doesn’t have to give up anything.

The only acceptable outcome for Israel is maintaining control of all of Mandate Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Sea, by de facto annexation. The United States knows this and has enabled them to do so, by giving them $3 billion per year in aid and vetoing 43 resolutions meant to hold them accountable since 1972, among other things.

If Power was not being dishonest and deceitful, the only other explanation for her statement is that she is clinically insane. The definition of insanity is “a mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality.” The idea that Israel has ever for one second been interested in a negotiated settlement since its foundation in 1948 is more of a fantasy than Game of Thrones. And to think the U.S. has done anything other than aid and abet Israel’s conquest of Palestine through ideological, financial and diplomatic support would require an unfathomable level of historical amnesia.

If Israel was interested in an actual settlement they would have to admit that they cannot bargain with what does not belong to them – namely any land beyond the Green Line. Palestinians don’t need another resolution to clarify that Israel needs to remove its military occupation from the lands that were conquered in the 1967 war. This has already been the law for 47 years.

UN Security Council Resolution 242 declared that “the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East … should include” the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” and “termination for all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area.”

This was reiterated six years later with the demands in Resolution 338 to implement 242 “in all of its parts” and that “negotiations shall start between the parties concerned under appropriate auspices aimed at establishing a just and durable peace.”

By proposing a new resolution that would achieve at best what is already guaranteed by Resolutions 242 and 338, Palestinians would be forced to surrender the rest of their rights – namely the right of return of the 1948 refugees and their descendents displaced during the Nakba, and the end to discrimination of Palestinians within Israel who are second-class citizens in the Jewish State.

Israel could not practically dismantle all the illegal settlements they have built in the West Bank and move 500,000 settlers back inside the Green Line, much less absorb possibly millions of refugees, many who still hold the keys to their ancestral homes inside Israel. There is no possibility of a two state solution. It is as much as a fantasy as Ambassdor Power’s claim that the U.S. doesn’t believe in the status quo.

Once this two-state scam is exposed for what it is, the only possibility left is a binational state where Palestinians enjoy equal rights with Jews. It is the reason that Ali Abunimah, writing in the Electronic Intifada, said last month he hoped for the U.S. to veto the U.N.’s “terrible resolution.”

“It insists that the entire question of Palestine be reduced to the question of the 1967 occupation and that merely ending this occupation would effectively end all Palestinian claims,” Abunimah writes.

When the question of the occupation has already been resolved in existing law in favor of the Palestinians, why would they want to give away willingly the rest of what was stolen from them? Since Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, Palestinian leadership has demonstrated their willingness to surrender the rights of the people they represent to placate Israel and the United States and be left with scraps.

With incredible foresight Edward Said called the Oslo Accords, with “so many unilateral concessions to Israel,” the “Palestinian Versailles.” Then, as now, Israel was not willing to give an inch toward recognition of Palestinian self-determination. Pretending that Palestinians can lure Israel into accepting a settlement if they just concede a little bit more is even more absurd now than it was 21 years ago in Oslo.

A news census shows that Palestinians will outnumber Jews in Greater Israel by 2016. Palestinians in the occupied territories and within the ’48 borders are expected to equal Jews with a population of 6.42 million before surpassing them. By the end of the decade, the census bureau estimates Palestinians will reach 7.4 million to 6.87 million Jews. This does not even include the estimated 5 million Palestinians living in the diaspora and prohibited by Israel’s Prevention of Infiltration Law from returning.

So by virtue of merely existing Palestinians will put an end to Israel’s hollow claims of being a democracy. Of course this is no small feat. Palestinians have been struggling for seven decades to maintain their existence in spite of dispossession, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and slow-motion genocide. How else to honor this heroic resistance than to prove definitively that Israel’s claims to being a democracy and Jewish state have never been anything more than a myth?

By demanding their rights outside of negotiations with Israel, as they did when they signed the Rome Statute this week, Palestinians are able to apply pressure unilaterally. With world opinion turning in favor of the Palestinian plight, it has become clear that isolation of Israel and forcing them to be accountable for their crimes is the only way for Palestinians to attain their rights.

Joseph Massad writes that “Palestinians must insist that those in solidarity with them adopt BDS [Boycott, Divest, and Sanction] as a strategy and not as a goal, in order to bring about an end to Israel’s racism and colonialism in all its forms inside and outside the 1948 boundaries.

It is worth remembering that the only reason Israel exists at all is precisely because the colonial powers who created it acted against all concepts of democracy and human rights. If the newly formed World Court would have heard the case of Palestinians in 1948, when they owned nearly 90% of the land and consisted of about 66% of the population, they never would have permitted granting the country to a minority to rule over it.

No amount of negotiations will be able to force Israel to give up its racism and colonialism willingly – just as no negotiations were able to force the South African apartheid regime to do so. The only way for Palestinians to achieving peace will be in spite of Israel and the United States, who will continue as they have for decades to do everything they can to prevent Palestinian self-determination. Palestinians must expose Israel and the U.S.’s  hypocrisy on democracy and human rights, not let them hide from it.

January 2, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

86 Israeli Attacks on Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in 2014

IMEMC News & Agencies | January 2, 2015

Al Aqsa Association for Waqf and Heritage has reported that Israelis carried out some 86 assaults and violations of Islamic and Christian Palestinian holy sites in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem in 2014.

In a report published Wednesday, the association stated that about 30 cases of assault on mosques, 21 cases of assault on graveyards, six cases of attacks on Christian holy sites, and other sporadic attacks, including preventing the call for prayer in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque hundreds of times — amounting to dozens a month — were documented.

To the previous list, the association added the complete destruction of 73 mosques, the partial vandalism of 197 mosques, and damage of one church during this past summer’s war on Gaza.

Al-Aqsa Association recorded five cases of burning mosques or parts of them, including the burning of Ali bin Abi Talib mosque in the village of Deir Estia, in Salfit, spraying of racist slogans on a shrine in Anata town near Jerusalem, Abu Bakr mosqe in Umm al-Fahm, and Abu Bakr mosque in the town of Aqraba, south of Nablus, and the Great Western mosque al-Mughayir village in Ramallah.

Other incidents were recorded such as the attacks on two mosques and Islamic shrines with racist writings and Talmudic words. The report also documented the demolishing of five mosques in Nablus, Jerusalem and Naqab.

Meanwhile, six cases of assault on Christian holy sites were also recorded by the association. In April, “price tag” groups vandalized a monastery in Rafat, to the west of Jerusalem, while an extremist Israeli threatened a priest in Nazareth. Another incident happened in the same month, when price tag groups sprayed racist comments near the Roman church in Jerusalem.

In May, Israeli extremists sprayed offensive comments about Jesus Christ near a church in Beersheba. Meanwhile, other Israelis wrote offensive comments about the prophet Mohammad and Jesus, an incident which coincided with the Holy See’s visit to Palestine.

The report also recorded 18 attacks against mosques in Hebron and Bethlehem, while other attacks which were documented targeted Muslim’s graveyards, such as smashing gravestones, stealing monuments, spraying racist comments, confiscating yards and selling the land to build commercial malls.

According to the report, in 2014, Israeli forces and settler efforts increased to take control over Waqf land to turn it into Jewish shrines; among these attempts were putting up fake gravestones and raiding the sites.

As for the Ibrahimi Mosque, which is targeted on daily basis, the call for prayer was prevented more than 250 times under the pretext that it annoys Israeli settlers. The violations include preventing worshipers from entering the mosque to pray.

In the Gaza Strip, the Ministry of Waqf and Religious Affairs said the Israeli army destroyed 73 mosques completely, 197 partially, and one church partially. It added that six Zakat offices were completely damaged, a waqf school was bombarded and 11 graveyards were destroyed.

January 1, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Whistleblower Cop Calls Out Corruption in Her Department, Naturally She’s Being Fired for It

By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | December 31, 2014

Louisville, KY — A New Albany police officer of 19-years is being fired after she blew the whistle on her department.

In May, Officer Laura Schook made several claims against her department including corruption, padded overtime and discrimination.

“My supervisors [were] padding their overtime, stealing time from the city, also doing other jobs while they were at work, essentially being paid for two jobs at one time,” Schook said in an interview.

After the allegations were made, Chief Sherri Knight and Assistant Chief Greg Pennell both resigned and asked to be reassigned within the police force.

WDRB’s Valerie Chinn asked Schook if the requests were related or coincidental.

“Coincidental, yet corroborating at the same time,” Schook said. “I mean, that’s the way I would look at it. I believe that it corroborates what I said. There has to be some truth to what I said or they wouldn’t be scrambling around like they are.”

After an “investigation” was launched into Schook’s allegations, Floyd County prosecutor Keith Henderson decided not to bring criminal charges against anyone in the Department and the Merit Commission voted to terminate Schook from the department.

New Albany Police Chief Todd Bailey sent a statement to WDRB Monday night, which read:

The Merit Commission voted unanimously to terminate Schook pending the results of an upcoming hearing. I’m making no additional statement this evening due to the matter being an employee disciplinary action.

Laura Landenwich, Schook’s attorney says her client is being disciplined for being a whistleblower and that during the hearing they will present this evidence.

“She is being disciplined for bringing those allegations to light,” Landenwich said.

Unfortunately this response from Schook’s department seems to be standard operating procedure for departments across the country when it comes to rogue officers calling out corruption in their departments.

Last month, also in Kentucky, a sheriff’s deputy was fired for “insubordination” after pointing out that the sheriff had planted drugs in another deputy’s car. Even though the sheriff was indicted, the deputy was still fired.

Earlier this month we broke the story of a cop in Buffalo, NY who was beaten and fired after she stopped a fellow cop from nearly killing a handcuffed man. She is still fighting for her pension.

In September we exposed the Baltimore police department’s attempt to intimidate a whistleblower officer. Detective Joe Crystal became a target of intimidation for his entire department after testifying against other officers in a misconduct case.  Following his testimony, he received threats from other officers, and even found a dead rat on his car one day.

January 1, 2015 Posted by | Corruption | | Leave a comment

Glimpse into 2014 struggles draws image of upcoming year

By Roqayah Chamseddine | Al-Akhbar | December 31, 2014

This year was a powerful amalgamation of torment, dissent, and small victories – a mixture of struggles, oftentimes intersecting, which will shape the new year.

Resistance across Egypt, against the torrent of brutal authoritarianism, is ongoing, and the battle that is being waged against the Sisi regime, which is still netting protesters and attempting to expand its security forces, has not dimmed. This week, 24 protesters, including Yara Sallam, Transitional Justice Officer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), were sentenced to two years imprisonment after being charged under Egypt’s restrictive assembly law. This signifies not a deviation from the Mubarak-era suppression but a sustained follow-through, and arguably at times the actions of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s illegitimate government have outdone even Mubarak’s. Under the current regime a more brazenly Zionist Egypt has taken center stage, making life for Palestinians in Gaza, many of whom are internally displaced, a living nightmare as they watch another Arab regime collude with the occupier, preventing them from having access to education, healthcare and going as far as to plan the demolition of 1,000 homes in order to expand the Rafah border, forcing many, who are still healing from the latest Gaza war, deeper into the throes of despair.

The displacement of the Palestinians converges with another cruelty – the displacement of the Syrian people. Syrians have been forced into refugee tents by unwavering violence, not only from inside and above but from host countries who are preventing them from having access to proper medical care, work and housing. Lebanon, which is now home to the largest Syrian refugee presence, over 1.1 million according to UNHCR, has unleashed its own brutality against the Syrian people; from the sexual abuse of Syrian women, violence against Syrian workers, to incomprehensible living arrangements by greedy landlords who are looking to profit off misery. To make matters worse, Syrians are also facing ISIS, which threatens to destroy any viable resolution to the conflict, and seeks to expand a violent pseudo-state by indiscriminately targeting anyone deemed a threat, as ISIS is composed of equal opportunity destroyers.

In Bahrain the long shadow of despotism reaches far into the streets, generously filling the jail cells with people like women’s rights activist Zainab al-Khawaja, recently sentenced to three years in prison after she ripped up a photo of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, and Ghada Jamsheer, head of the Women’s Petition Committee, who has been under house arrest since December 19, facing at least 12 charges. Al-Khawaja and Jamsheer are not the only women in the region facing an all-encompassing totalitarian state. In Saudi Arabia, 25-year-old Loujain al-Hathloul, who called for women to join the October 26 movement to end, among other things, the absurd restrictions on driving by taking to the roads, was arrested for doing just that. Al-Hathloul and 33-year-old Maysa al-Amoudi were arrested November 30, al-Hathloul for attempting to drive from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia and al-Amoudi after she arrived to support her.

At the forefront of the greater campaign for women’s rights are organizations in the region that challenge patriarchy, heteronormativity, and imperialism such as Beirut-based Nasawiya and Lebanon’s secular Lebanese civil society organization KAFA (Enough). Nasawiya, working alongside other local groups, have been involved in the fight against Lebanon’s nationality laws, sectarianism, and domestic violence. A domestic violence law, the first of its kind in Lebanon, passed by Lebanon’s parliament on April 1, after a strong, year-long campaign lead by KAFA. KAFA, which works tirelessly to not only provide domestic abuse victims and abusers with counseling, but child protection services, has criticized legislators for not focusing more on women, though despite the laws shortcomings many are calling this a step forward and women’s right activists in Lebanon are promising to continue the fight so as to bring about even more impactful, long-lasting change.

Nasawiya and KAFA have long challenged local discourse regarding not only Lebanese women but migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, and provide migrants with social and legal counseling. A recent publication by KAFA, “If Not For The System,” reveals the stories of women migrant workers in Lebanon, in both English and Arabic, and the exploitation they face as they navigate the oftentimes racist and abusive landscape. Lebanon’s migrant workers, who already face physical abuse at the hands of those they work for, are now struggling even harder to make a living if they are found to be Syrian, as many Syrians are now facing the obstacle of a war being waged against their identities, as they are being senselessly blamed for violent extremism in the country. In Qatar we also see the horrific crimes being committed against migrant workers. In a report released in May the Qatari government admitted to some 1,000 migrant deaths, at least one a day, in the last two years alone. Six months after this report was published, and after promising to reform its abominable system, “only a handful of the limited measures announced in May have even been partially implemented,” according to Sherif Elsayid-Ali, Amnesty International’s head of refugee and migrant rights.

It is difficult to read into the future, despite the imprints left behind this year, like a constellation of stains on the inside of a coffee cup. But one can hope that the minor victories for rights that were attained this year – despite the major setbacks – can set the tone for the coming years and forge a more auspicious new year for all.

Roqayah Chamseddine is a Sydney based Lebanese-American journalist and commentator. She tweets @roqchams and writes ‘Letters From the Underground.‘

January 1, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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