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UK Foreign Office minister refuses to publish Saudi agreements or condemn executions

Reprieve – January 5, 2015

A UK Government minister was this evening repeatedly asked by Members of Parliament to condemn the execution of protesters last weekend in Saudi Arabia, and to publish secret agreements signed between the UK and Saudi governments, but refused to do either.

Foreign Office (FCO) minister Tobias Ellwood was taking questions from MPs on British relations with the Kingdom in the wake of last weekend’s mass execution of 47 people, including at least four sentenced to death over their involvement in protests calling for reform in 2012.

Hilary Benn, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, and Lib Dem Leader Tim Farron both asked Mr Ellwood whether the Government would publish Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) between the UK’s Home Office (HO) and Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and their Saudi counterparts, concerning cooperation in their respective areas. However, Mr Ellwood failed to answer to either of their questions.

While Mr Ellwood expressed “concern” over the executions, he also refused requests from several MPs – including Mr Farron and the Greens’ Caroline Lucas – to condemn them.

MPs – including the Conservatives’ Mike Wood and the SNP’s Margaret Ferrier – raised specific concerns over the cases of three juveniles sentenced to death as children over their involvement in protests: Ali al Nimr, Dawoud al Marhoon, and Abdullah al Zaher – who continue to be at risk of execution at any time. Mr Ellwood responded that the UK had raised their cases with the Saudi authorities and did not expect them to be executed.

Commenting, Maya Foa, Director of the death penalty team at international human rights organisation Reprieve said: “The UK Government’s continuing secrecy over its dealings with Saudi Arabia is unacceptable. If the Home Office or Ministry of Justice are using public resources to support a state which is carrying out appalling human rights abuses, the British public deserves to know. It is also disturbing that the Government is continuing to refuse to condemn the execution by the Saudi Government of protesters calling for political reform. The Minister claims that ‘foghorn diplomacy’ doesn’t work, but given the bloodbath last weekend it is hard to see how the UK’s softly-softly approach is doing any good.”

January 5, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Israeli official calls for occupying Damascus

MEMO – January 4, 2016

A senior Israeli official called on Saturday night for the occupation of the Syrian capital Damascus based on the teachings of the Jewish holy book the Torah, Felesteen newspaper reported.

During a TV show on the Israel’s Channel 2, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset Bezalel Smotrich said that Israeli borders are beyond the current borders and Jerusalem’s borders reach Damascus based on the Torah.

Smotrich, member of the extremist Israeli party Jewish Home, suggested that Israel temporarily accept the current borders, which include the Golan Heights and the occupied West Bank, stressing that it has to work to achieve what was dictated by the Torah.

Meanwhile, the MK reiterated that the extremist Israeli settlers who burnt the home of the Palestinian Dawabsheh family were not terrorists. He said such acts are only considered a kind of terror when they are carried out by the “enemies of the Jewish people who are Arabs”.

He also called for the settlers’ leaders to control all the lands of the occupied West Bank, considering it Israeli land.

In addition, he stressed that anyone who does not accept Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank “must be expelled from this land,” adding that there are 20 Arab countries which can be their destination.

He went on to stress the importance of building a Jewish temple in place of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

January 5, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Deceit and Obfuscation: How The NY Times Shields Israel

By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | January 4, 2016

As scores of Palestinians have died at the hands of Israeli forces over the past three months, The New York Times has endeavored to hide the full story of this bloodbath, emphasizing Israeli losses, ignoring the majority of Palestinian deaths, and promoting a narrative that shields trigger-happy troops and obscures facts to the point of deceit.

Thus, a recent story about deadly attacks in Tel Aviv tells us that “at least 20” Israelis have been killed since Oct. 1 and about 130 Palestinians, “up to two-thirds of them while carrying out attacks, or attempting to attack Israelis, according to the police. Others have been killed in clashes with the Israeli security forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and along Israel’s border with Gaza.”

In other words, the Times is saying that Israeli troops were justified in these killings because they were trying to repel deadly attacks or responding to “clashes” with the army or police. This is the message we are to hear, and readers are unlikely to notice that its source is none other than those responsible for a significant number of Palestinian deaths—the Israeli police.

The Times betrays its claim of neutrality by ignoring other sources. Nothing is said of reports by alternative media and human rights groups that accuse Israeli forces of carrying out extrajudicial executions and killing Palestinians who pose no possible threat to security forces or civilians. Likewise, nothing is said of those victims who were taking no part in demonstrations but were merely bystanders or passers-by when they were killed.

The Times, omitting contrary evidence, thus leaves readers with the impression that all of the Palestinian dead were killed as they participated in acts of violence.

At the same time the Times has been quick to name Israeli casualties but has provided identities for only a fraction of the Palestinians. Virtually every Israeli victim has been identified in stories by Times reporters, while only some 34 Palestinians out of more than 130 were mentioned by name. (Some, however, may have been identified in wire services reports that appear briefly online.)

This tally was based on a search of Times stories out of its Jerusalem bureau, using a published list of those killed since Oct. 1. It shows a grossly lopsided preference for Israeli victims over Palestinians, with the names of more than 100 victims omitted from news reports.

Moreover, in the single instance when an Israeli victim was unnamed, the Times apologized, saying the man “was not immediately identified” but was said to be 45 years old and the father of seven.

By contrast, the Times often failed to report Palestinian deaths or it mentioned them almost as afterthoughts, as in this paragraph tucked into a story about dampened Christmas celebrations in the West Bank: “On Thursday, Israeli forces killed three young Palestinian men who they said were trying to carry out attacks. In one episode, a Palestinian tried to ram his vehicle into soldiers near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, lightly wounding a man before he was shot dead.”

The man who was said to have “tried to ram his vehicle into soldiers” had a name. It was Wisam Abu Ghweila; he was from Qalandiya refugee camp, and according to the International Middle East Media Center, there is much more to his story than appeared in the Times.

Abu Ghweila drove his car “too close to a roadblock,” IMEMC reported, and lightly struck a soldier in the process. “Instead of addressing the situation as if it were an accident,” the story continues, “Israeli troops immediately began to empty their guns at the suspect, wounding him severely.”

Eyewitnesses told IMEMC that soldiers shot more than 30 rounds at Abu Ghweila’s car and allowed the injured soldier to receive medical care but left Abu Ghweila unattended as he lay dying in his car.

B’Tselem, an Israeli monitoring group, has reported on other cases in which troops have denied medical care to wounded Palestinians, and alternative media often give accounts of ambulances and medics being denied access to injured victims. The Times, however, makes no mention of these charges, even though some are backed by video evidence.

Israeli media have also reported killings that never appear in the Times. One of these involved a teenage girl who was shot as she sat in the back seat of her family car. The story in Haaretz was titled “The Face of Collateral Damage” and carried this subhead: “Samah Abdallah, 18, from a little-known Palestinian village in the West Bank, was shot dead, either on purpose or by accident—but most assuredly without legitimate reason.”

The Times made no mention of this incident, which took place near Nablus, nor did it report on the death of a mother of four, an inexperienced driver, who was killed in a hail of bullets when she drove slowly through a checkpoint and failed to stop in time. Haaretz, however, told her story under this headline: “A Palestinian Mother of Four, Shot 17 Times for Being a Bad Driver.”

This unfortunate woman, Mahdia Hammad, appears in the Times merely as one of the “about 130” Palestinian killed in the past three months. As in dozens of other cases, the fact of her death at the hands of Israeli security forces received no notice at all, not even a brief paragraph citing officials’ claims that they had “neutralized” a would-be attacker.

These incidents expose the deception inherent in the Times’ claim that Palestinian casualties have occurred only during attacks on Israelis or during “clashes” with security forces.

This self-serving narrative, however, is what Israeli officials want us to believe, and the Times is a willing co-conspirator, showing an appalling indifference to the mounting death toll among Palestinians. It gives credence only to the official reports of police and army spokespersons, the groups most responsible for the bloodshed, turning its back on respected sources and betraying its readers and its own stated values of journalistic ethics.

Follow @TimesWarp on Twitter

January 5, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Journalist sentenced to 3 years imprisonment in Egypt

Mada Masr | January 3, 2015

Journalist Mohamed Abdel Moneim was sentenced to three years imprisonment on Sunday, after a court found him guilty of partaking in an unauthorized protest dating back to April 24, 2015. However, Abdel Moneim’s coworkers at the Tahya Masr news portal insist he was arrested while covering this protest, not participating in it.

Convening at the Police Academy, Cairo Criminal Court ruled that Abdel Moneim had breached the Protest Law by taking part in an unauthorized street protest. The court also ruled that the 22-year-old journalist was guilty of possessing weapons, Molotov cocktails, obstructing traffic, endangering the lives of civilians, as well as damaging both public and private properties.

The privately owned Al-Shorouk newspaper reported that the court had issued an identical sentence against two other defendants on Sunday: a 19-year-old student Essam Abdel Hakim, and 15-year-old student Abdel Rahman Sayyed.

The three-year sentence against the journalist was issued despite the in-court testimony of Tahya Masr’s administrative chief who, according to Al-Shorouk, confirmed that Abdel Moneim was his employee, and had been covering the street protest in question. Abdel Moneim’s boss added that the young journalist was objective in his coverage of protests, siding neither with the current administration, nor with the ousted regime of the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to state-owned Al-Ahram, the court did not recognize that Abdel Moneim was a journalist, as he is not an officially registered member of the Journalists’ Syndicate. However, there are several thousand journalists said to be operating in Egypt who are unable to enter this syndicate due its restrictive preconditions for membership.

As of last month, the Liberties Committee of the Journalists’ Syndicate announced that there are at least 32 journalists in detention across Egypt, from which at least 18 were arrested while reporting in public spaces.

The Liberties Committee has organized several petitions calling for the release of detained journalists and media staffers, along with several legal appeals, protests, and marches along with campaigns for improved treatment of jailed journalists.

According to the chief of the Liberties Committee, Khaled al-Balshy, at least 350 cases of assaults against journalists have been documented over the past two years.

January 5, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

How Obama Enables Atrocities

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | January 4, 2016

As the New Year dawns, the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks remain firmly in control of Official Washington’s storylines – on Syria, Russia and elsewhere – even as their policies continue to wreak havoc across the Mideast and threaten the stability of Europe and indeed the future of civilization.

The latest proof of this dangerous reality came when Saudi Arabia’s repressive Sunni monarchy executed prominent Shiite political leader Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr for criticizing the nation’s kings and princes. Before the killing, the Obama administration held its tongue in public so as not to antagonize the Saudi royals. (Nimr’s nephew awaits Saudi “crucifixion” for his role as a teenager in Arab Spring protests.)

After the Nimr execution, the State Department issued a mild protest toward the Saudis while blurring the guilt by twinning it with criticism of Iran where outraged protesters damaged the Saudi embassy, which led to Saudi Arabia’s retaliatory breaking of relations with Iran.

“We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said meekly on Sunday, while some senior U.S. officials reportedly seethed in private over the latest Saudi provocation.

“This is a dangerous game they are playing,” one official told The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung while insisting on anonymity to discuss U.S.-Saudi relations.

But the fact that the Obama administration could not voice its revulsion over the Saudi mass head-chopping (along with some firing squads) for 47 men, including Nimr, over the weekend speaks volumes. President Barack Obama and other insiders continue to tip-toe around the unsavory U.S. “alliances” in the Mideast.

Over the past several years, Saudi Arabia sealed its impervious protection from U.S. government criticism by forming an undeclared alliance with Israel around their mutual hatred of Shiite-ruled Iran and its Shiite allies, a cause picked up by American neocons and shared by the career-oriented liberal interventionists.

Some more “realist-oriented” U.S. officials, reportedly including Obama and some national security aides, recognize the havoc that neocon/liberal-hawk strategies continue to wreak across the region and now spreading into Europe, but they act powerless to do anything bold to stop it.

With Israel’s lobby siding with the Sunni states in their bloody rivalry with Shiite states, most U.S. politicians and pundits have scrambled to defend each recurring outrage by the Saudis, Qataris and Turks by trying to flip the script and somehow put the blame on Iran, Syria and Russia.

Getting a Pass

Thus, the Saudis, Qataris and Turks get mostly a pass for arming and enabling radical jihadists, including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Israel also provides assistance to Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front along the Golan Heights and bombs allies of the Syrian government and, of course, faces no official U.S. criticism.

In 2014, when Vice President Joe Biden blurted out the truth about Saudi support for Islamic terrorism inside Syria, he was the one who had to apologize. [Quote at 53:20 of clip.] In 2015, when Saudi Arabia invaded and bombed Yemen after hyping Iran’s support for Houthi rebels, the Obama administration sided with the Saudis even as their wanton attacks on poverty-stricken Yemen killed thousands of civilians and created a humanitarian crisis.

For more than a year after President Obama announced his air war against the Islamic State in summer 2014, Turkey continued to let the terror group run an industrial-style oil smuggling operation from Syria and Iraq through Turkey. Only when Russia entered the conflict last fall was the U.S. government shamed into joining in bombing raids to destroy the truck convoys. Yet, Obama still defended Turkey and bought its promises about finally trying to seal a 100-kilometer gap in its border.

Then, when Turkey retaliated against the Russian anti-terrorist bombing raids inside Syria by willfully shooting down a Russian Su-24 plane whose pilot was murdered after bailing out, Obama again sided with the Turks even though their claim that the Russian plane had violated Turkish air space was dubious at best. By their account, the plane had intruded over a sliver of Turkish territory for 17 seconds.

In other words, whatever these U.S. “allies” do – no matter how brutal and reckless – the Obama administration at least publicly rushes to their defense. Otherwise, the neocon/liberal-hawk “group think” would be offended – and many angry editorials and columns would follow.

While this strange reality may make sense inside Official Washington – where careerism is intense and offending the Israel Lobby is a sure career killer – this pusillanimous approach to these grave problems is endangering U.S. national interests as well as the world’s future.

Not only has the neocon/liberal-interventionist obsession with “regime change” turned the Middle East into a vast killing field but it has now spread instability into Europe, where the fabric of the European Union is being shredded by dissension over how to handle millions of Syrian refugees.

The United Kingdom may vote to leave the E.U., removing one of the original anchors of the European project which — for all its faults — has deservedly gotten credit for replacing a history of European blood-soaked conflicts with peaceful cooperation.

The spreading disorder has had political repercussions in the United States, too, where panic over terrorism is reshaping the presidential race.

Yet, instead of practical solutions such as pressuring all rational sides in the Syrian conflict to engage in peace talks and hold free elections that give the Syrian people the power to decide who their future leaders will be, Official Washington instead generates “talking points,” such as calling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a “magnet for terrorism” who “must go” – although his forces have done the most to stop an outright victory by Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

If one buys this “magnet” theory, then you’d also have to seek “regime change” in every country that’s been attacked by terrorists, including the United States, France, United Kingdom, Spain, etc. In the case of Syria, what’s remarkable is that the sponsorship of terrorism by U.S. “allies” and indeed by the U.S. government itself has been so blatant. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Climbing into Bed with Al Qaeda.”]

However, as far as Official Washington is concerned, it doesn’t really matter what Assad has or hasn’t done. What’s important is that “regime change” in Syria has been on the neocons’ to-do list since at least the mid-1990s – along with the brilliant idea of “regime change” in Iraq. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Israel Out-Foxed US Presidents.”].

The Infallible Neocons

And since the neocons are infallible – as far as they’re concerned – the goal can’t be changed. The only option is to escalate the “regime change” planning to include other countries that get in the way, including Iran and now nuclear-armed Russia.

Yes, that’s the ultimate neocon idea – make the Russian economy scream, overthrow the calculating Vladimir Putin and risk having him replaced by some extreme and unstable nationalist with his or her hand on the nuclear button. That may be how life on the planet ends – but there will be evermore “group thinks” and “talking points” right up to the moment of Armageddon. The neocons can never stop generating false narratives.

Meanwhile, the “liberal interventionists” can boast of their own “regime change” – in Libya, a policy promoted by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who delighted at the gruesome torture-murder of Muammar Gaddafi – “we came, we saw, he died,” she laughed – after having ignored his warnings that the overthrow of his secular government would open the oil-rich country to chaos from radical jihadists, a prediction that has been fulfilled.

Yet, despite this record of spreading chaos and death around the world, the grip that the neocons and liberal hawks have on Official Washington remains almost absolute. They control most of the think tanks – from the Brookings Institution to the American Enterprise Institute – as well as the editorial pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times and pretty much the rest of the mainstream media.

In case you haven’t noticed, the Times’ “news” coverage of the Middle East and Russia has been consistently slanted to favor neocon/liberal-hawk positions. Just as the Times eagerly joined President George W. Bush’s bogus case for invading Iraq in 2003, “the newspaper of record” has peddled false and misleading articles about the crises in Syria and Ukraine as well as promoting anti-Russian propaganda.

In this climate of manufactured “reality,” any old-fashioned foreign policy “realist” – especially one who has criticized Israel – cannot expect to win Senate confirmation to any senior position, establishing what amounts to a blacklist against “realists,” such as happened to ex-U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman whose intelligence appointment was dropped by Obama in his early days out of fear of offending the Israel Lobby and its many neocon backers.

As the rise of those neocons has played out since their emergence during the Reagan administration, the “realists” who were known for cold-hearted foreign policy calculations to protect American interests have aged, died out or otherwise disappeared. They have been largely replaced by ideologues, either neocons with their intense devotion to right-wing Israeli interests or liberal interventionists who almost invariably side with the neocons but cite “humanitarian” concerns to justify “regime change” wars.

Blocking Obama

No matter how foolhardy and deadly these policy prescriptions have been, there is almost no way to dislodge the neocons and liberal hawks inside Official Washington, since they monopolize almost all levers of political and media power.

Even when President Obama tried to collaborate under the table with President Putin to reduce tensions in Syria and Iran in 2013, Obama was quickly outmaneuvered by neocons and liberal hawks inside the State Department who pushed for the putsch in Ukraine in 2014 that effectively destroyed the Obama-Putin cooperation. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]

I have long argued that the only way to begin to challenge the neocon/liberal-hawk “group thinks” is to release facts about pivotal events, such as the 2013 Syria-sarin case, the 2014 sniper attacks at Kiev’s Maidan square, and the 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine. The neocons/liberal hawks currently control all those narratives, using them as clubs to advance ideological agendas just as they did with the false claims about Iraq’s WMD. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Power of False Narrative.”]

But other evidence suggests very different scenarios. Obama and his national security team could either release evidence to confirm the accuracy of the “group thinks” or puncture that self-certainty. Instead Obama has chosen to withhold what the U.S. intelligence community knows about these events, all the better to protect the dominant propaganda narratives.

So, the Obama administration continues down a road of tolerating or condoning outrages by its Mideast “allies” as the President and his timid intelligence bureaucrats do nothing to empower the American people with the truth. It is a recipe for worldwide catastrophe.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

January 5, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Why Did the Venezuelan Supreme Court Accept a Challenge to Election Results?

teleSUR – January 4, 2016

On Dec. 30, 2015, the electoral chamber of the Venezuelan Supreme Court accepted a request to challenge the results of the Dec. 6 parliamentary elections in the states of Amazonas, Yaracuy, and Aragua, as well as one of the seats reserved for Indigenous peoples.

The Supreme Court also accepted a request for an emergency precautionary measure in the state of Amazonas, which temporarily suspended the swearing in of four candidates, three from the opposition and one from the ruling socialist party.

In the decisions posted online, the court did not specify the reasons for upholding the challenge, however the candidates who submitted the challenge cite a number of electoral irregularities, including possible fraud, a high number of blank votes, and, most importantly, vote buying.

The allegation that candidates and politicians were engaged in vote buying in the state of Amazonas emerged shortly after the elections and well before the court ruled to suspend the four candidates.

On Dec. 16, Jorge Rodriguez, a leading figure inside Venezuela’s socialist party and the head of that party’s campaign, released a recording that allegedly provides evidence of vote buying and implicates Victoria Franchi, an associate of the opposition governor of Amazonas.

In the recording Franchi can be heard speaking to an unidentified person, described as an undercover agent, concerning a plot to pay people to accompany seniors and people with low literacy on voting day in order to ensure that these people vote for candidates from the opposition coalition.

Franchi is also heard offering to pay for people to pose and vote on behalf of the deceased.

“We want to win by any means necessary,” says Franchi toward the end of the recording.

Should the allegations of vote buying be proven to be true, it would constitute a crime under Venezuela’s electoral law. Authorities would then need to determine if the crime was severe or significant enough to warrant new elections in the affected state.

Rodriguez called on authorities to investigate the allegations.

“We insist that results should be recognized, but attacks against the constitution … attacks against electoral laws, attacks against the electoral system, and finally attacks against a voter’s intention, should be investigated,” said Rodriguez.

Venezuela’s intelligence service, known as Sebin, subsequently detained Franchi, who was later released.

Past Incidents of Fraud in Amazonas State

The governor of Amazonas, Liborio Guarulla, denies Franchi is a person of significance inside his government, but nonetheless came to her defense, first by posting a message of support on his Twitter account and then offering to have her legal expenses covered by his government.

“This is how the national government acts: Sebin detains Victoria Franchi and they are torturing her with the aim of finding justification for their defeat in Amazonas.”

The involvement of Governor Guarulla brings up an intriguing and relevant piece of history.

He sits as governor of Amazonas thanks to the intervention of the Supreme Court and electoral authorities after regional elections were held in 2000.

In the 2000 election, Bernabe Gutierrez, of the opposition Democratic Action party, had initially been declared the winner, besting Guarulla by only 221 votes. Guarulla challenged the results, as he was entitled to do under electoral law.

The Supreme Court ultimately agreed there was basis to believe fraud had occurred and annulled the results from seven voting stations. The National Electoral Council held a re-vote in the affected voting areas.

Guarulla subsequently won the election and was sworn in as governor Feb. 13, 2001, due in thanks to the intervention of the Supreme Court and electoral authorities.

The MUD coalition, which Guarulla supports, says it will not recognize the court’s ruling and will attempt to have their suspended candidates forcibly take office.

Such has been the pattern of the Venezuelan opposition, only respecting electoral authorities when it suits them.

Ahead of the Dec. 6 election the opposition had refused to commit to recognizing the result, they warned that should they fail to win they would cry fraud. It was only when results emerged indicating their victory that they recognized the results.

In other electoral contests where the opposition has lost, they have leveled unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

That they now refuse to recognize the perfectly legal decision by the Supreme Court should surprise no one.

January 5, 2016 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

U.S. Senator Menendez Claims Venezuelan ‘Regime’ Obstructing Democracy

teleSUR – January 5, 2016

A key U.S. lawmaker accused the Venezuelan government on Monday of interfering in the National Assembly, which will convene for the first time on Tuesday.

“I write to urge you and your administration to take immediate steps to ensure that Mr. Maduro’s regime is denied the space to obstruct Venezuela’s path to democratic order,” U.S. Senator Robert Menendez wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama. “I believe you can accomplish this with a combination of close monitoring of key international organizations and meaningful, internationally imposed penalties.”

Mendendez suggests petitioning the Organization of American States to invoke the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which would apply pressure on member states accused of anti-democratic activity.

Menendez was indicted on federal corruption charges last year, accused of trading political favors for money and gifts.

Since the December 6 elections that saw Venezuela’s opposition win a majority in the National Assembly, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his PSUV party have organized numerous meetings to defend the Bolivarian Revolution. On Monday, Maduro announced the creation of a new block of PSUV deputies tasked with revealing what he claims is the opposition’s true agenda of rolling back gains for the poor and working class.

Maduro’s most controversial move since the election has been his announcement of an Emergency Economic Plan that grants more autonomy to the central bank, insulating it from opposition pressure. That plan drew fire for bypassing the now opposition-dominated National Assembly, which would like to overhaul the body.

U.S. Department of State spokesman John Kirby also expressed concern Monday that the Venezuelan Supreme Court could prevent 13 legislators from taking office due to election irregularities.

President Maduro has defended the court’s investigation, accusing the opposition of cheating to win. “(The right) had electoral success because they deepened their line of action outside the rules of the game: the economic, criminal and electrical warfare, among others, and then they hid behind a buddy,” said Maduro. He also reproached the United States for interfering in Venezuelan politics, saying the country would “not accept imperialism.”

January 5, 2016 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | 1 Comment

Mexico: Almost 100 Mayors Targeted for Assassination Since 2006

teleSUR – January 5, 2016

Nearly 100 mayors and over 1,000 municipal officials in Mexico were targets of assassination attempts over the past decade, according to an association that represents local governments.

The group, the Association of Local Authorities of Mexico, demanded an end to the impunity of the criminal organizations which it said have not been held accountable for any of the assassination attempts.

​The association reported its findings following the murder on Saturday of the mayor of Temixco, one of the most violent municipalities in Morelos, just south of Mexico City. Gisela Raquel Mota was in office for just one day before the shooting.

Police arrested three suspects—including a minor and a 32-year-old woman—and two others were killed in a shootout with law enforcement. The purported assassins were allegedly paid US$30,000 and were reported by El Universal to belong to the Los Rojos cartel.

Mota, 33, was part of the center-left Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD) and had earlier announced she would ratify the Mando Unico, or single command, allowing state police into the municipality.

Half of the 33 municipalities in Morelos oppose the police command, fearing retribution like assassination of Mota, but the state governor Graco Ramirez said in a press conference on Sunday that all would be subject to the security protocol.

According to the local government association, mayors are by far the most targeted local officials: even if they choose to cooperate with a criminal gang, they invite revenge from a rival group. Even lower officials are affected, with AFP reporting that over 100,000 local council members killed since 2006 amid a militarized crackdown on narcotrafficking.

January 5, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | , , , , | Leave a comment