Ethnic cleansing of Shuhada Street in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron)
International Solidarity Movement | March 6, 2016
Hebron, occupied Palestine – Since the 1994 Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre, the majority of Shuhada Street – once the thriving Palestinian market and main thoroughfare connecting north and south al-Khalil (Hebron) – has been closed to Palestinians. They are completely barred from accessing it, except for a small stretch in the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood.

Photos of the same portion of Shuhada street – a thriving market before 1994, now an empty street where no Palestinians are allowed to enter (published by B’Tselem)
This tiny strip that is legally still accessible for Palestinians is restricted by the recently ‘renovated’ Shuhada checkpoint at the beginning of the street and ends where the street begins to border the illegal settlement of Beit Hadassah, beyond which Israeli forces assure that no Palestinians exist. Further down Shuhada street, clearly marked with yet another military post barring anyone who might attempt to enter the street, are even more Israeli settlements – all illegal under international law – located directly in the city center of al-Khalil.
The settlements on Shuhada Street are connected via a settler-only road to the much larger settlement of Kiryat Arba on the outskirts of al-Khalil; settlers can also reach the illegal Tel Rumeida settlement easily by traversing the tiny stretch of Shuhada Street still open to some Palestinians and the road leading up into Tel Rumeida from Shuhada checkpoint, now encompassed within the closed military zone. While Palestinians are allowed to walk on this part of Shuhada Street, Palestinian vehicles, including ambulances, are forbidden from driving there. Since Israeli authorities declared the area part of a closed military zone on 1st November 2015, the already barely existent access has been further restricted – Isreali forces only allow entry to Palestinians registered with them residents, while any Israeli settler, regardless of whether they are residents or not, can pass freely and without ever being harassed, stopped, detained, arrested, or threatened by the ever-present military forces.

Map of the city center of al-Khalil including Shuhada Street (the longest street marked in red) by B’Tselem
At the line demarcated by Daboya checkpoint (Checkpoint 55), where the illegal settlements on the street begin and Palestinians are no longer allowed, a steep flight of stairs leads up to Qurtuba school and into the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood. These stairs, the only way for Palestinians to continue traveling in the same direction above the street as they are not allowed to continue down Shuhada Street itself, have been closed by the Israeli forces with a metal gate since November 2015.

Stairs with the closed gate leading down to Shuhada Street
Even though this gate is currently not locked, Israeli forces deny any Palestinian, except for the students and teachers of Qurtuba school during school-time, to use these stairs. As a result Palestinian residents of this neighbourhood, once they have passed Shuhada checkpoint – an ordeal that can take several hours – have been denied to reach their homes by walking down Shuhada Street and the stairs leading up to Qurtuba school, forcing them instead to take a much longer detour around. With yet another way denied for Palestinans, navigating the maze of Israeli military-enforced checkpoints, complete bans on travel, roads where Palestinians cannot drive, settler-only roads, closed military zones and new arbitrary closures has become even more arduous.
Israeli forces are thereby also clearly working to minimise the number of Palestinians who will actually use this last portion of Shuhada Street – now a complete dead-end – as they bar Palestinians not only from going farther down the closed street but also declare the stairs, formerly an alternate route, yet another closed zone. This illustrates the Israeli attempts to rid Shuhada Street entirely of Palestinians. Ethnic cleansing in al-Khalil, and all across Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands is not a sudden, headline-grabbing event; it progresses gradually as Palestinians are restricted in certain areas, barred from driving there, prohibited from even being there, forced out to facilitate the expansion of the illegal settlements. Ethnic cleansing happens slowly, by erecting new and ‘fortifying’ existing checkpoints, advancing one more closure at a time.
GCC not after protecting Lebanon: Hezbollah chief
Press TV – March 6, 2016
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, says the Arab member states of the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council ([P]GCC), which recently listed the resistance group as terrorists, do not have the interests of Lebanon in mind.
During a live televised speech on Sunday, Nasrallah said those who assume that the Arab regimes will protect Lebanon have “pinned their hopes on a fantasy.”
Had Lebanon waited for a unified Arab strategy in the face of Israel instead of opting to resist against the occupying regime, “then the fate of this territory would have been the same as the fate of the territories Israel has taken control of,” he said.
On Wednesday, the six-nation Arab bloc issued a statement labeling Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The [P]GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
“Many of these Arab countries today, who designate us as terrorists, what do they have to do with this resistance and these victories and these achievements?” Nasrallah said.
Israel unleashed an all-out offensive on Lebanon 10 years ago under the pretext of releasing Israeli soldiers allegedly captured by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The invasion claimed the lives of nearly 1,200 Lebanese people, most of them civilians.
The Tel Aviv regime was, however, forced to retreat without achieving any of its objectives after Hezbollah fighters displayed heavy resistance against the Israeli military.
“Back then, we said to them (the Arab countries) ‘we don’t want anything from you… Today, we also say to them, to these regimes, ‘We don’t want anything from you. We don’t want money, nor do we want weapons, nor do we want support or blessing,” he said. “Just leave this resistance alone, leave this country alone, and leave this people alone.”
He blamed some Arab regimes for conspiring against anyone standing against Israel.
Nasrallah also underlined the assistance provided by the resistance group to the Iraqi government in its fight against the Takfiri terror group Daesh and reminded that Hezbollah did not wait for any orders to initiate its anti-terror fight in Syria and only fulfilled its religious commitment.
The secretary general of Hezbollah also addressed the tension that has been bubbling up between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, causing the former to take a raft of hostile measures against the latter.
“If it’s angry with us, it has the right to. I understand Saudi Arabia’s anger. Why? Because when one fails, at the very least he will be angry,” Nasrallah said.
He went on to explain that the Saudi rage has emanated from the kingdom’s failures in Yemen and Syria.
“In Syria, there’s a very great Saudi anger because what they had calculated in Syria [was that] in two or three months, ‘Syria would fall into our hands,’” Nasrallah said.
Hezbollah has been successfully aiding the Syrian military against foreign-backed militant groups.
“He, who confronts Saudi Arabia in Syria is the real defender of the Lebanese national interests,” Nasrallah said.
“The same goes for Yemen. The estimations of the new Saudi leadership was that ‘we will decide the battle in Yemen. We will teach a lesson to all the Arab countries and the Arab world… and we will impose ourselves on the Arab world,’” he said.
Saudi Arabia launched a campaign of military aggression against Yemen in late March last year in a bid to bring fugitive former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a Riyadh ally, back to power and undermine Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement.
Riyadh has, however, failed in accomplishing either of the two objectives, and has become entangled in a prolonged expensive war, whose adverse economic impacts—along with economic mismanagement—have gradually been giving rise to domestic discontent inside Saudi Arabia.
Texas’ Annual Roundup of the Working Poor
By Trisha Trigilio | ACLU of Texas | March 4, 2016
March 5th marks the beginning of the annual Great Texas Warrant Roundup. It sounds like quite a lot of fun, another cowboy extravaganza from a state famous for its stock shows and rodeos.
But what it is, in practice, is a shakedown of Texas’s working poor.
The Great Texas Warrant Roundup is an annual statewide collaboration of courts and law enforcement agencies. Their goal is to collect payment of overdue fines and fees from Texans who have outstanding warrants for unpaid traffic tickets and to arrest and jail those who can’t pay. What little press is dedicated to the Roundup focuses on praising cities for the so-called “amnesty” period that precedes it.
The state’s unreasonable traffic ticket scheme and the devastation it can wreak on low-income Texans receive considerably less attention.
Depending on the jurisdiction, a ticket for failing to signal a lane change — the trooper’s justification for Sandra Bland’s tragic traffic stop — will cost you around $66. But the state tacks on $103 in court costs and a host of fees, some bordering on Kafkaesque. Texas will charge you a public defender fee, even though courts refuse to appoint a public defender for traffic ticket cases. If your fine is already too expensive to afford, Texas charges a fee to put you on a payment plan. You’ll even pay an “administrative fee” for the privilege of handing money over to the court. For people who are too poor to pay their traffic fines, a $66 fine can balloon to over $500 because of these court costs and fees, as well as late fines and warrant fees when towns try to arrest the poor (at times illegally) to collect money they simply do not have.
If you can’t afford to keep up with these fees, the state will suspend renewal of your driver’s license (add another $30 for the License Renewal Suspension Fee), and you’ll be unable to register your car, making it illegal for you to drive to the job you need to take care of your kids and pay off your spiraling debt. An expired registration means you’re certain to be pulled over and put back at square one, with new tickets, new fines, new fees, and no hope.
Case in point: Valerie Gonzales, one of the original plaintiffs represented by the Texas Fair Defense Project in a class action lawsuit against the City of Austin. Valerie is a 31-year-old mother of five children with disabilities. She and her family live in poverty. After receiving two traffic tickets nine years ago, not only had Valerie’s tickets multiplied and her fines ballooned into the thousands of dollars, she lost a job after she was unconstitutionally jailed without the benefit of a court-appointed attorney.
When people like Valerie are arrested in the coming warrant roundup, judges across Texas will follow their usual plan of demanding a payment in exchange for liberty. Without asking questions about financial circumstances, judges literally order people to turn over all the money they happen to be holding when they are arrested. “Give me what’s in your pockets” is not a phrase that should be uttered in a courtroom. What’s worse, when the working poor don’t have enough money to hand over, judges send them to jail without a fair hearing or a second thought.
Jailing people for debt is both unjust and profoundly counterproductive. Not only does it deprive people of their liberty and separate them from their children and families, it also renders them incapable of paying off their fines and costs the taxpayer (by conservative estimates) $51 per person per day of incarceration. It’s in everyone’s best interests to keep Texans with their families and out of jail.
There are sensible alternatives. Courts can consider ability to pay before assessing unmanageable fines or waive debts for people who have made a genuine effort to pay what they can. So why don’t they?
This is what makes the roundup so nefarious. Courts are hoping that the threat of jail will frighten people into turning over whatever they can scrape together in exchange for protection from arrest. Rather than praising amnesty, we should address the systemic injustices that keep low-income Texans in perpetual debt to the state.
1st edition of Turkish Zaman daily after govt takeover sees smiling Erdogan on front page
RT | March 6, 2016
The editorial policy of Turkey’s best-selling Zaman newspaper, formerly critical of the government, has apparently gone through a change. The Sunday edition, under a newly appointed administration, now appears to support the official line.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can be seen on the new Zaman daily’s front page, smiling in an article announcing a presidential reception on upcoming Women’s Day (March 8). A costly governmental project of a new bridge to be built across Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait was also headlined, as well as reports on the funerals of “martyrs” killed in clashes with the Kurds.
More articles supporting the government could be found in the Sunday edition of the paper that has an estimated circulation of 650,000, AFP reported. Containing just 12 pages, the paper is a slimmer version of its previous self, and the content is sparse, according to Reuters.
Protests that erupted following what was widely seen as the seizure of Zaman’s headquarters in Istanbul by the government were glossed over in the new edition, Reuters reported. On Saturday, police used tear gas, water cannon and fired rubber bullets to disperse hundreds-strong crowds of Zaman readers.
Police also raided Zaman’s building, forcefully imposing a Turkish court order to put the media under administration. The newspaper’s editor-in-chief Abdulhamit Bilici was fired by the new trustees.
“The Sunday edition was not produced by Zaman’s staff,” one of the newspaper’s journalists told AFP, adding, “internet has been cut off, we are unable to use our system.”
“It’s impossible to continue to work at Zaman daily because the trustees who were assigned by the government will fire us a couple of days later. All of us will be fired from the newspaper. But if they don’t, of course we will resign, because it’s impossible to work with the government, we will not write what they want,” Emre Soncan, a journalist from Today’s Zaman newspaper, an English version of Zaman daily, told RT on Saturday.
Zaman’s website has been offline, while Today’s Zaman online services have not been updated since Saturday. Government affiliates have also taken control of and blocked access to the outlet’s Cihan news agency, Today’s Zaman earlier reported.
The Zaman newspaper’s former team has launched a new paper of their own, Yarina Bakis (Look to Tomorrow), local media reported, saying that journalists had decided to remain in line with their previous editorial policy. The new paper reported on the weekend protests in Istanbul.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu denied any links between the government takeover of the paper and changes in its editorial policy, saying the seizure had nothing to do with the paper’s criticism of the authorities.
“There are many media outlets in Turkey that criticize our government. None of them are subjected to legal procedures,” Davutoglu told A Haber television on Sunday, as quoted by AFP. “What’s in question here is not merely press activity, but rather an operation targeting a legitimate government that came to power with popular support,” he added, referring to Zaman’s affiliation with now US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, a fierce critic of President Erdogan, who was put on a “most-wanted terrorist list” by Ankara.
Britain to Spend Additional $905 Million on Nuclear Submarine Program
Sputnik – 05.03.2016
The British Government is going to spend additional $905 million on its nuclear submarine program, media reported.
British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon announced the new investment Friday, although the Parliament has not yet voted whether to go ahead with the program, UPI reported. The vote is scheduled later this year.
According to Fallon, the additional funding will support construction of new facilities and the purchase of submarine parts, as well as the development of new submarines that are to replace the royal Navy’s current Vanguard-class submarines.
A significant part of this funding — about $317 million — will be spent on new facilities at BAE Systems at Barrow-in-Furness, England, where the submarines will be assembled. There will also be a significant investment in the joint UK/US collaborative R&D called the ‘Common Missile Compartment’, a unified launcher system for new ballistic missiles that will replace current Trident II/D5 missiles, used by both the United Kingdom and the United States.
This initiative, however, is not exactly backed by the Labour party. According to Labour representatives, nuclear submarines will soon become redundant, since underwater drones are becoming advanced enough easily track down and destroy them.
“Tell that to the Americans, the Russians, and the Chinese who are all modernizing their nuclear-armed submarines,” Fallon said to The Guardian. “Perhaps these drones will be so sophisticated they can track down Nessie while they are at it,” he added, implying that cost-effectiveness ratio of both technologies is a subject for discussion.
The Labour party’s position on nuclear weapons is generally negative, since they view the whole concept as an extremely expensive political symbol that will never be used.
During 2015, Russia has launched two nuclear Project 877/636 submarines, armed with Kalibr cruise missiles (NATO designation “Sizzler”), capable of carrying nuclear warheads, while two more are scheduled for launch in 2016, which would make a total of six ships. Project 877/636 has been dubbed ‘Black hole’ for its extremely low noise emission and radar visibility.
The People’s Republic of China has also reportedly launched a new Jin-class nuclear submarine during 2015. According to different sources, the PRC Navy has from 4 to 8 active Jin-class submarines that are supposed to be capable of reaching any point on US territory, should the ship be located near the Hawaiian islands.
Costs of Storing US Nuclear Weapons Rising $4.4Bln More Than Planned
Sputnik — 05.03.2016
The cost of storing and safeguarding all US nuclear weapons from 2021 through 2025 will be $4.4 billion higher than previously estimated, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced in a report.
The US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has stated that the cost will need to be addressed as part of fiscal year 2017 programming, the GAO pointed out.
“The ‘Fiscal Year 2016 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan’ includes estimates for 2021 through 2025 that are $4.4 billion higher than the same time period… for funding levels that were included in a joint report by the Department of Defense and Department of Energy,” the report, released on Friday, said.
Budget estimates for safeguarding the US nuclear stockpiles over the next 25 years increased by 13.2 percent over the nominal values in the fiscal year 2015 plan, the report noted.
The NNSA fiscal year 2016 estimates for efforts related to modernizing the US nuclear weapons stockpile total $297.6 billion for the next 25 years, the report added.