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Saudi warplanes target main TV station in Yemen

Press TV – April 30, 2015

Saudi Warplanes have reportedly targeted the bureau of a major TV station in Yemen as Riyadh’s illegal aggression continues to take its toll on civilians.

According to reports on Thursday, Saudi fighter jets targeted the office of the al-Masirah TV, a major broadcasting service run by the Ansarullah Houthi movement.

The TV channel is regarded as the main source of information on Saudi Arabia’s aggression against Yemen, providing up-to-date coverage of the attacks and concomitant fatalities across the impoverished Arab country.

Meanwhile, Saudi warplanes continued to target several cities and areas in Yemen with the latest airstrikes targeting Salif air defense camp in Hudaydah, west of Yemen.

Elsewhere, in eastern Ma’rib province, Saudi warplanes launched air raids on an anti aircraft battalion. The presidential palace in Ta’izz was also pounded.

Earlier in the day, Saudi fighter jets bombarded different regions north of the capital Sana’a, while areas in the northern province of Sa’ada also came under attack.

Riyadh launched its airstrikes against Yemen on March 26 without a United Nations mandate. Saudi Arabia aims to undermine the Houthis and restore power to fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is a staunch ally of Riyadh.

The regime’s warplanes have repeatedly targeted residential areas across the country.

On April 21, Riyadh announced the end of the first phase of its unlawful military operations, which claimed the lives of nearly 1,000 people; but airstrikes have continued with Saudi bombers targeting different areas across the country in a new phase.

Official Yemeni reports say nearly 250 women and children have been killed so far.

April 30, 2015 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

POLICE Trained by ISRAEL / Torture / Murder / Terror

April 30, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Carter Cancels Visit to Gaza, Palestinian Authority Implicated

MEMO | April 30, 2015

A well informed Palestinian source said yesterday that the Palestinian Authority (PA) had sought the cancellation of the former US President Jimmy Carter’s visit to the Gaza Strip, Quds Press reported.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz said that Carter had planned to make the visit today in an attempt to draw attention to the humanitarian situation in the war-battered territory. The trip included planned meetings with Hamas officials in the coastal enclave.

According to Quds Press, the Palestinian official said: “The PA sees that the cancellation or calling off Carter’s visit to Gaza will not give Hamas any sign of achievement. It will abort all efforts being exerted by Carter to achieve the Mecca 2 agreement.”

The official noted that aides of PA President Mahmoud Abbas fear Arab pressure being put on Abbas to force him to commit to a potential reconciliation agreement with Hamas. This would show that Abbas is the side who is hindering the reconciliation, the official said.

The official also added that Fatah committed a mistake when its official Abdullah Abdullah announced 36 hours before the official announcement that Carter had cancelled his trip to Gaza.

He said that the PA sought the cancellation of the visit and made efforts to show that the pressure came from outside in order not appear as a reason behind the cancellation.

Fatah, the official said, wants to put more pressure on Gaza and show that Hamas is diplomatically isolated and has no political scope.

April 30, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia training tribal ground force in Yemen – report

RT | April 30, 2015

In order to break the stalemate in the ongoing conflict in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has reportedly started training hundreds of Yemeni tribesmen to fight the Houthis on the ground, while Riyadh continues its bombardment campaign.

“You cannot win a war against the Houthis from the air – you need to send ground forces in, but now there’s a program to train tribal fighters on the border,” a Doha-based military source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

According to another Yemeni official source, some 300 fighters have already managed to return to Yemen after getting Saudi training. They were allegedly sent to the Sirwah district in the central Marib province to battle Houthis in the area. According to the source the newly trained unit managed to push the Houthis back.

Saudi Arabia’s coalition spokesman failed to either confirm or deny the reports.

“We always confirm that we are helping the resistance and the popular groups, the loyal army … but we cannot go into details on where, how, how much,”Brigadier Ahmed Asseri said.

The training received by the Yemeni tribesmen in Saudi Arabia allegedly includes light weapons and tactical advice knowledge. According to another Reuters source, the Kingdom plans to boost deployment of such units to fight the Houthis resistance.

Rhiayad is reportedly gathering all tribal leaders loyal to the ousted president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled to Saudi Arabia, to unite their tribal forces against those of the Houthis.

“Saudi Arabia wants to unite tribal leaders in this meeting but the feeling is that there’s not much hope for that,” a Yemeni source in Riyadh told Reuters. Apparently the tribal delegations seem more concerned battling the jihadi elements in Yemen in addition to the Houthi opposition.

“The Saudis have decided that they are going to intensify the unstable situation by providing arms to an oppositional group, a group that has been traditionally oppositional to the Houthis,” Ajamu Baraka, Middle East expert told RT.

On the ground in Yemen, the Shiite Houthi fighting force and army units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh are in control of central and southern areas.

The fighting is ongoing on a number of major fronts. In Aden, the Houthis are engaging tribesmen who are supported by Saudi-led air forces. In Yemen’s third largest city, Taiz, Houthis are fighting the Sunni Islamist fighters. The Houthis and their allies have been also fighting both Islamists and local tribesman in Marib and in Shabwa provinces.

The forces in Yemen which Saudi Arabia is arming can turn jihadi, Baraka says, as they have some “traditional, Whabis, Islamic leanings,” which is the “main ideological, Islamic foundation for Al Qaeda.”

“The only force that is gaining as a consequence of this conflict is in fact Al-Qaeda,” he went on to stress.

Meanwhile, the airstrikes continued throughout the country on Wednesday, targeting Houthi forces in Aden, Saada, Hajja, Taiz, Ibb and Bayda.

April 30, 2015 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

‘US funding of Sunni militia groups would further partition Iraq’

RT | April 29, 2015

The US is boosting its military support for security forces fighting against Islamic State in Iraq. The Republicans have proposed a bill to directly fund militia groups operating in the country, such as the Kurdish Peshmerga and Sunni irregular forces. If the bill is passed, tribal groups could receive up to $429 million in aid from the US.

The US Republicans’ proposal to fund Peshmerga and Sunni militias in Iraq, if approved, would entrench the country which is already partitioned by war, defense analyst Ivan Eland told RT.

RT: Do you think America’s funding of tribal security forces such as the Peshmerga might encourage further sectarian tension in such a volatile region?

Ivan Eland: Definitely. I think that’s true. Of course the US during its occupation was helping out the Peshmerga, so they were kind of undermining a unified Iraq even back then. But now Iraq basically is partitioned by war and I don’t think we can put it back together again. And so the Republicans are actually facing reality, but certainly this effort to fund individual militias will hasten the effort and entrench already partitioned Iraq.

RT: The bill also requires these security forces to be an independent entity from Iraq, so they can receive the aid separately from Iraqi national forces. What implications could that have on the US-Iraq partnership?

IE: The Republicans are unhappy with the Iraqi government’s dependence on Iran for training its Shia militias, and the Shia militias have been accused of some atrocities against Sunnis. The US doesn’t like Iranian influence in Iraq and so this bill says it funds the Peshmerga and other militias which would be Sunnis, but it also says that [if] the government of Iraq doesn’t [dis]associate itself with the Shia militias; they’ll give even more funds to the Peshmerga and other Sunni militias. So it doesn’t totally go away from the Iraqi government, but it puts a lot of pressure on them to dissociate themselves from the Shia militias which the Iraqi government probably is not going to do.

RT: If the bill does recognize these tribal security forces, they will gain a large amount of aid assigned for Baghdad. How will that affect the ability of Iraqi forces to counter Islamic State’s offensive?

IE: I think the Iraqi forces are already sort of a shell; they cut and ran when the ISIS forces attacked. The Iraqi government is depending on the Shia militias to defend them and they had the greatest role in the campaign to recapture Tikrit. The US Congress – if they pass this bill – will be asking the Iraqi government to remove the only reliable military force it has. The Iraqi armed forces are not reliable. And the Shia militias are the only groups that can adequately, even have a priority, of taking on ISIS.

RT: There are also reports of Kurds recruiting former US military members to fight the terrorist group. Apparently, a dozen Americans have already joined their ranks. What do you think about that?

IE: This may be the US government giving a wink and a nod to this without officially sanctioning it because they want to shore up the Peshmerga against the ISIS fighters and the administration doesn’t really want to do this. Most probably – what the Republicans are suggesting – giving direct aid – because of course implications can lead to the breakup of Iraq officially. Iraq is already broken up on the ground but the administration probably doesn’t want to encourage officially supporting the Peshmerga. So this could be a way of winking and nodding to get more expertise and to help them fight ISIS.

April 30, 2015 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Civil Liberty Violations Seen in NYPD Interrogations of Demonstrators

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | April 30, 2015

The New York City Police Department is back to doing something it was told by the courts decades ago to stop: interrogating demonstrators about their political behavior.

At least a dozen people protesting the decision not to prosecute the police who killed Eric Garner were detained by the NYPD. They later told The New York Times that they were questioned about their political associations and other matters related to their involvement in street protests.

The interrogations could have a chilling effect on Americans lawfully exercising their right to protest and may also put the department in violation of a 1985 consent decree that came out of a federal court case, Handschu v. Special Services Division (pdf), which was supposed to end investigations of political activity.

The recent NYPD actions aren’t the first time it has skirted the legalities of the Handschu settlement. In 2003, the department was rebuked after its Intelligence Division detectives collected information from antiwar protestors such as their school, their membership in organizations and their involvement in past protests.

The Times’ Colin Moynihan wrote that “some civil liberties lawyers say the recent questioning appeared to be substantially similar to the questioning in 2003,” with detectives focusing on political involvement, not criminal behavior.

“When the police investigate political affiliations and political activities, that poses a serious threat to First Amendment rights,” Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told the Times. “The NYPD should stop this immediately.”

To Learn More:

Questioning of Garner Protesters in New York Renews Concerns about Police Practices (by Colin Moynihan, New York Times )

Chicago Police Accused of Running Secret Interrogation Center (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov )

Supreme Court Rules a Suspect’s Silence during Police Interrogation Can be Used against Him (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman, AllGov )

April 30, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Leaked Document Published by WaPo Suggesting Freddie Gray Killed Himself Disputed by Baltimore TV Reporter

By Carlos Miller | PINAC | April 30, 2015

More than two weeks after Baltimore police arrested Freddie Gray, they leaked a document to the Washington Post suggesting that the 25-year-old man killed himself, basing that speculation on statements from an unnamed inmate who was also in the van with Gray, but sitting handcuffed on the other side of the van, separated by a metal partition that does not allow visibility.

But the report was quickly disputed by investigative reporter Jayne Miller from WBAL-TV, who has been reporting on this story from the beginning.

And it is being doubted by hundreds of readers leaving comments on Peter Hermann’s article in the Washington Post, which stated the following.

A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.

The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court. The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.

The document, written by a Baltimore police investigator, offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van. It is not clear whether any additional evidence backs up the prisoner’s version, which is just one piece of a much larger probe.

Miller was interviewed on MSNBC shortly after the article was posted, saying that her station was aware of this document, but never reported on it because it did not correlate with the timeline they had compiled. She also pointed out that Police Commissioner Anthony Batts had previously stated that Gray was already unresponsive when the second suspect was placed into the van.

But the story that Gray was responsible for his own death is something that has been making the rounds on social media, including from a Baltimore police detective named Avi Tasher who made the claim on Facebook last weekend, only to shut down his page after backlash from critics as we reported here.

Tasher, whose nickname within the department is Taser because he is so quick to use it on suspects, and who might be the “police investigator” described in the Washington Post’s story, stated the following on Facebook Saturday night:

Avi Tasher

 

Then there was Henry Mack III, both a Baltimore Ravens cheerleader as well as a Baltimore police cheerleader, who tweeted the following to the Baltimore Sun a few days earlier:

Henry Mack III

 

 

So it’s obvious police have been trying to push this narrative for a while, only for it to be ignored by the Baltimore media.

But somehow they got the Washington Post to bite.

The van driver stopped three times while transporting Gray to a booking center, the first to put him in leg irons. Batts said the officer driving the van described Gray as “irate.” The search warrant application says Gray “continued to be combative in the police wagon.”

The driver made a second stop, five minutes later, and asked an officer to help check on Gray. At that stop, police have said the van driver found Gray on the floor of the van and put him back on the seat, still without restraints. Police said Gray asked for medical help at that point.

The third stop was to put the other prisoner — a 38-year-old man accused of violating a protective order — into the van. The van was then driven six blocks to the Western District station. Gray was taken from there to a hospital, where he died April 19.

The prisoner, who is in jail, could not be reached for comment. No one answered the phone at his house, and an attorney was not listed in court records.

Batts has said officers violated policy by failing to properly restrain Gray. But the president of the Baltimore police union noted that the policy mandating seat belts took effect April 3 and was e-mailed to officers as part of a package of five policy changes on April 9, three days before Gray was arrested.

Gene Ryan, the police union president, said many officers aren’t reading the new policies – updated to meet new national standards – because they think they’re the same rules they already know, with only cosmetic changes. The updates are supposed to be read out during pre-shift meetings.

The previous policy was written in 1997, when the department used smaller, boxier wagons that officers called “ice cream trucks.” They originally had a metal bar that prisoners had to hold during the ride. Seat belts were added later, but the policy left their use discretionary.

There are many questions that arise from the claims by police, but here are just a few. I’m sure more will be asked in the comments section.

  • If it it were true that Gray was responsible for his own death, then why not just say that from the beginning?
  • Why haven’t doctors mentioned injuries consistent with “smashing his head into the wall repeatedly,” instead of just saying he died of a severed spine and crushed voice box, the latter which is more consistent with a knee to the neck?
  • Wouldn’t those injuries be visible during an open-casket funeral?
  • Did police intimidate or offer a deal to the inmate to write those words on the document?

April 30, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

Fire near Chernobyl site alarming, ‘radiation respects no boundaries’

RT | April 29, 2015

A forest fire near Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear site may cause problems for communities a long way from the area as the dispersal plumes can transport radiation further to the north, nuclear safety expert John Large told RT.

RT: How dangerous is the situation in your opinion? Do you agree with ecologists who say the smoke will spread the radiation?

John Large: I spent some time in Ukraine in 2006 and I assessed the Chernobyl situation interviewing about 30 scientists and engineers who were working on the aftercare of Chernobyl. Brush fires and forest fires were the greatest concern in terms of the means by which you can disperse a secondary radiological impact from the original dissipation that occurred in 1986… What you have in Chernobyl in the exclusion zone and the further way you have an area that has been abandoned for farming, abandoned for management. That means you’ve got lots of brush and young wood growing out of control. Let me assess that – a big fuel load to have a fire. That means that the biological load is very high, so the radiation particles can be dispersed. Take down the chemistry as well. The chemistry is the way in which the strontium and cesium from the radioactive strontium and cesium from the reactor are bound here, and of course the elevated temperature of the fire and plus all the plume and aerial dispersion – means that could transport it hundreds of kilometers, particularly to the north, to Belarus. So there are more problems here for communities that are long way away from the site. What I had hoped was that the Ukrainian officials would have had in place firefighting capacity greater than they normally would have at any other area of Ukraine, because it certainly needs to be protected not just now but in the longer term as well.

We know that Ukraine is cash-strapped. There was a responsibility for its neighbors, Russia, the EU, not Belarus as much because it’s in an even worse financial situation, but there was a general responsibility to protect this area from another bout of radioactive dispersion.

RT: What lessons can be learned from this particular incident then to make sure that the brush and the forest doesn’t catch light again, or if it does, to make sure that site is secured?

JL: It is not the reactor, it is not the location of the reactor that is the problem – it is the dispersal plumes from the original accident – that is the problem. If there are radioactive materials on the ground now and then it’s engulfed by forest fire maybe 40-50 km away from the reactor. But that deposited radioactivity is re-suspended into gas, blown high into the atmosphere by the heat of the flames, and then of course it settles somewhere else. And it may be those communities to the north that are not prepared to have this new radiation plume and deposition and fallout come down on their communities.

RT: Do you think there should be a common international strategy and response for situations like this?

JL: We’ve seen recently with Chernobyl, with Windscale in the 1950’s in the UK, and particularly now with Fukushima that the radiation doesn’t respect any international boundaries. So an international effort is required for this type of catastrophe, all potential catastrophes. I would have thought that the EU or Russia would have healed their scars over this and got together and put some efforts and resources into controlling this and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

April 30, 2015 Posted by | Environmentalism, Nuclear Power | , , , , , , | Leave a comment