Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Israeli forces detain activist who filmed fatal shooting of Hebron man

File Photo
Ma’an – | June 2, 2018

HEBRON – Israeli soldiers on Saturday briefly detained a local activist who filmed the fatal shooting of a Palestinian worker earlier in the morning in the southern occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

Locals told Ma’an that Israeli forces detained Aaref Jaber, who filmed the moment when Israeli forces shot and killed Rami Sabarneh, 36, and that Jaber taken into the Kiryat Arba settlement in Hebron.

Official Palestinian Authority (PA)-owned Wafa news agency reported that Israeli forces confiscated Jaber’s phone.

The Israeli army alleged that Sabarneh, who worked in construction in the area, attempted to run soldiers over with a bulldozer. However, no injuries were reported among the soldiers.

Jaber denied the Israeli army’s account, saying that “Sabarneh was driving a Bobcat excavator while another worker walked next to him, Israeli soldiers asked them to stop when he was at least 10 meters away from them, the walking worker stopped, but Sabarneh apparently did not hear the soldiers and continued his way so they opened fire at him until he was killed.”

Last week, Israeli lawmakers proposed a new bill in the Israeli Knesset that would criminalize the photographing or recording of Israeli soldiers while on duty.

The bill was proposed with the support of right-wing Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and if passed, those found in violation of the law could face a prison sentence of up to five years.

June 2, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian ‘Medical Volunteer’ Killed by Israeli Fire in Gaza

Paramedic Razan al-Najjar was shot dead by an Israeli sniper on the Gaza border on June 1. (Photo: via Twitter)
Palestine Chronicle – June 1, 2018

A Palestinian woman – reportedly a medical volunteer – was shot dead by Israeli soldiers on Friday, Gaza’s health ministry has reported, as protests continued on the border with Israel.

Razan al-Najjar – a 21-year old volunteer with the ministry of health – was shot by Israeli forces on the eastern border of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

There is little information yet on how Najjar was killed.

Friday’s death marks weeks of demonstrations on the Gaza border, beginning 30 March, which has seen at least 123 Palestinian protesters killed by Israeli gunfire.

The protests – dubbed “the Great Return March” – called for the right of return of refugees, and peaked on 14 May when the US moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the contested city of Jerusalem.

Over 61 Palestinians were killed and 2,400 injured on that day, while tens of thousands protested along the besieged strip’s border.

Israeli snipers fired live rounds and tear gas at the protesters, with condemnation from the UN and human rights groups.

June 1, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , | 3 Comments

Palestinian Youth injured by Israeli gunfire in blockaded Gaza

Palestine Information Center – May 31, 2018

GAZA – A Palestinian youth was shot and injured by the Israeli military east of the Bureij refugee camp, in central Gaza Strip on Wednesday evening.

A PIC news correspondent said a bullet fire by Israeli soldiers penetrated a 15-year-old child’s back. He was rushed to the Shuhadaa al-Aqsa Hospital, in Deir Balah, so as to be treated for his wounds, reported critical.

According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Health Ministry, 118 Palestinians were killed and 13,300 others injured by Israeli gunfire unleashed toward Palestinian protesters as they joined the Great March of Return, launched on March 30.

May 31, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

‘Israel’s detention of freedom flotilla is a crime’

A ship carrying 20 Palestinians set out from the Port of Gaza in the hopes of breaking Israel’s decade-long maritime embargo of the Gaza Strip [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]
MEMO | May 30, 2018

Head of the Popular International Committee to Support Gaza, Dr Essam Yousef, called on the international community to pressure Israel to immediately release the passengers of a ship that set sail yesterday from Gaza heading to Cyprus in an effort to break the 12 year siege of the enclave.

Israeli occupation forces flanked the ship as it reached nine nautical miles from Gaza’s shores only for them to force it on to the Israeli port of Ashdod to the north of Gaza.

In a press statement today, Yousef condemned “the latest crime which is to be added to the occupation’s criminal record against the Palestinian people and the people of Gaza, who have been besieged for 12 years. This is a violation of all international conventions, laws, and legislations.”

Yousef held the Israeli authorities completely responsible for the safety of the ship’s passengers, who are “ill, students and unarmed civilians”.

“How can a state with an arsenal of deadly weapons as big as Israel and which considers itself a regional force superior to the rest of the region’s countries on a military level, pursue a ship carrying the ill and students who’s only aspiration is to leave the besieged Gaza Strip for treatment and education?” Yousef asked.

“Isn’t this state ashamed of itself, as it acts like a rogue state above the law, building its strength and force on the remains of innocent, starving and oppressed Palestinian people,” he added.

Yousef called on the governments of the free world and humanitarian and human rights organisations, as well as all international institutions to continue to pressure the occupation to lift the illegal and immoral siege imposed on two million people in Gaza, posing a blatant violation of all international charters related to human rights.

He also stressed the “Palestinian people’s right to move in and out of their country for treatment, education, work and any other activity, like the rest of the peoples of the world. No force on earth can continue to imprison and suffocate an entire nation who aspires for freedom and a dignified life.”

May 30, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | 2 Comments

Drones, Murder and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 70: the Cases of Reyaad Khan and Abdul Raqib Amin

By T.J. Coles | CounterPunch | May 30, 2018

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is 70 this year. But you wouldn’t know it from the impact it’s had on human lives. For example, Donald Trump has sharply increased drone attacks, especially in Yemen and Somalia, with virtual silence from Western media. Article 11 of the UDHR states: “(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.”

As I document in my new book Human Wrongs (Iff Books), the alleged terror suspects blown apart by drone operators are not even charged let alone given the chance to plead their innocence in a national or international court: and that’s quite apart from the women, children and babies (“collateral damage”) that happen to be nearby when the Hellfire missiles are launched.

In Britain, the age-old common law, presumption of innocence, faced a slight setback in the so-called “war on terror.” Since US drone operators murdered Afghan civilians in the first-ever lethal drone strike in 2002 (followed by Yemenis in the same year), the US has murdered about 2,500 people with drones alone. Providing targeting information and communications links, the UK plays a significant role, all in violation of the principles of the UDHR.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Execution, Philip Alston, writes: “A State killing is legal only if it is required to protect life (making lethal force proportionate) and there is no other means, such as capture or nonlethal incapacitation, of preventing that threat to life (making lethal force necessary).” So, a person in Afghanistan, for example, cannot be lawfully slain by a British drone operator on the pretence that the person is about to pose an imminent threat to the UK, unless for instance the person is about to give an order over the phone let’s say to, for instance, a terror cell in Briton, instructing it to detonate a bomb. Needless to say, this is a ludicrous scenario in the real-world.

Murdering Its Own

The British state murdering “its own people” is nothing new. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defence waged a dirty war in Northern Ireland. Units from the Military Reaction Force (MRF) murdered Protestants and Catholics as a part of strategy of tension. Northern Irish persons murdered and/or shot by MRF operatives include:Patrick McVeigh (shot in the back), John and Gerry Conway (travelling to a fruit stall), Aiden McAloon and Eugene Devlin (travelling in a taxi), Joe Smith, Hugh Kenny, Patrick Murray and Tommy Shaw (drive-by shootings) and Daniel Rooney and Brendan Brennan (walking on a road).

The British government does in fact possess the proverbial license to kill. It is a “license” granted to itself and one not grounded in international law. Targeted killings (murder) hitherto depended on the authorization of the Secretary of State. The Intelligence Services Act 1994, Section 7(1), frees intelligence operatives from liability in acts of killing abroad, “if the act is one which is authorised to be done by virtue of an authorisation given by the Secretary of State.”

In the case of Reyaad Khan and Abdul Raqib Amin, the killings were not carried out by MI6 (which is covered by the Intelligence Services Act 1994), but by the Royal Air Force. In 2015, the government started murdering Britons allegedly suspected of involvement in terrorism, making no attempt to apprehend them and put them on trial, as international law requires.

In August 2015, Reyaad Khan and Abdul Raqib Amin, were travelling in a vehicle in Raqqa, Syria. RAF drone operators ended their lives. Then-PM David Cameron told Parliament that Khan was the target (murdered) and Amin was killed alongside him (manslaughter). A third unidentified, alleged Islamic State fighter was killed with them, though the third person was not “identified as a UK national.” By implication, the third person’s life is not important, hence no details emerged.

Cameron claimed the killings were “an act of self-defence,” because Khan was: “involved in actively recruiting ISIL sympathisers and seeking to orchestrate specific and barbaric attacks against the west, including directing a number of planned terrorist attacks right here in Britain, such as plots to attack high profile public commemorations.”

But Cameron also revealed that Khan was not a threat to the UK: “there was nothing to suggest that Reyaad Khan would ever leave Syria.” If Cameron is to be believed, Khan was issuing instructions to terror cells in the UK. But if this is the case, it therefore becomes a matter for the British police.

Changing Stories

The pretext for the murder was later changed by the UK’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, who wrote that the killings were somehow justified in the “collective self-defence” of Iraq, where Britain is supposedly helping the government to defeat ISIS. The trouble is that Khan was not in Iraq when he was killed. Inverting international legal norms, Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Fallon, “who authorised the lethal drone strike” (Press and Journal ), appealed to Article 51 of the UN Charter, the right of collective and/or individual self-defence. Attorney General Jeremy Wright’s advice has not been published, indicating that the killings are violations of domestic and international law.

It later transpired that the RAF is working its way through a “kill list” of alleged British terror suspects fighting with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Both jets and drones are used; the latter are controlled by operators in RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. “When we know where they are we kill them,” said a Ministry of Defence spokesperson. The “kill list” revelations prompted Lord Macdonald, former Director of Public Prosecutions, to co-sign a letter to PM May, calling for the release of the government’s Intelligence and Security Committee report into the murder of Reyaad Khan and names of other targeted suspects.

Lucy Powell MP and Kirsten Oswald MP, both co-chairs of the informal All-Party Parliamentary Group, called for a debate on Britain’s use of targeted murder. Defence Secretary Fallon who authorized the murder of Khan claimed that by February 2017, 85 Britons had been killed in Syria, but it wasn’t clear if this meant as part of the RAF’s kill list.

T. J. Coles is a postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University’s Cognition Institute and the author of several books, including Fire and Fury (Clairview Books ) and Human Wrongs (Iff Books ).

May 30, 2018 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The flames that killed Fathi Harb should make us all burn with guilt and shame

By Jonathon Cook | The National | May 27, 2018

Fathi Harb should have had something to live for, not least the imminent arrival of a new baby. But last week the 21-year-old extinguished his life in an inferno of flames in central Gaza.

It is believed to be the first example of a public act of self-immolation in the enclave. Harb doused himself in petrol and set himself alight on a street in Gaza City shortly before dawn prayers during the holy month of Ramadan.

In part, Harb was driven to this terrible act of self-destruction out of despair.

After a savage, decade-long Israeli blockade by land, sea and air, Gaza is like a car running on fumes. The United Nations has repeatedly warned that the enclave will be uninhabitable within a few years.

Over that same decade, Israel has intermittently pounded Gaza into ruins, in line with the Israeli army’s Dahiya doctrine. The goal is to decimate the targeted area, turning life back to the Stone Age so that the population is too preoccupied with making ends meet to care about the struggle for freedom.

Both of these kinds of assault have had a devastating impact on inhabitants’ psychological health.

Harb would have barely remembered a time before Gaza was an open-air prison and one where a 1,000kg Israeli bomb might land near his home.

In an enclave where two-thirds of young men are unemployed, he had no hope of finding work. He could not afford a home for his young family and he was about to have another mouth to feed.

Doubtless, all of this contributed to his decision to burn himself to death.

But self-immolation is more than suicide. That can be done quietly, out of sight, less gruesomely. In fact, figures suggest that suicide rates in Gaza have rocketed in recent years.

But public self-immolation is associated with protest.

A Buddhist monk famously turned himself into a human fireball in Vietnam in 1963 in protest at the persecution of his co-religionists. Tibetans have used self-immolation to highlight Chinese oppression, Indians to decry the caste system, and Poles, Ukrainians and Czechs once used it to protest Soviet rule.

But more likely for Harb, the model was Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in late 2010 after officials humiliated him once too often. His public death triggered a wave of protests across the Middle East that became the Arab Spring.

Bouazizi’s self-immolation suggests its power to set our consciences on fire. It is the ultimate act of individual self-sacrifice, one that is entirely non-violent except to the victim himself, performed altruistically in a greater, collective cause.

Who did Harb hope to speak to with his shocking act?

In part, according to his family, he was angry with the Palestinian leadership. His family was trapped in the unresolved feud between Gaza’s rulers, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. That dispute has led the PA to cut the salaries of its workers in Gaza, including Harb’s father.

But Harb undoubtedly had a larger audience in mind too.

Until a few years ago, Hamas regularly fired rockets out of the enclave in a struggle both to end Israel’s continuing colonisation of Palestinian land and to liberate the people of Gaza from their Israeli-made prison.

But the world rejected the Palestinians’ right to resist violently and condemned Hamas as “terrorists”. Israel’s series of military rampages in Gaza to silence Hamas were meekly criticised in the West as “disproportionate”.

The Palestinians of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where there is still direct contact with Israeli Jews, usually as settlers or soldiers, watched as Gaza’s armed resistance failed to prick the world’s conscience.

So some took up the struggle as individuals, targeting Israelis or soldiers at checkpoints. They grabbed a kitchen knife to attack Israelis or soldiers at checkpoints, or rammed them with a car, bus or bulldozer.

Again, the world sided with Israel. Resistance was not only futile, it was denounced as illegitimate.

Since late March, the struggle for liberation has shifted back to Gaza. Tens of thousands of unarmed Palestinians have massed weekly close to Israel’s fence encaging them.

The protests are intended as confrontational civil disobedience, a cry to the world for help and a reminder that Palestinians are being slowly choked to death.

Israel has responded repeatedly by spraying the demonstrators with live ammunition, seriously wounding many thousands and killing more than 100. Yet again, the world has remained largely impassive.

In fact, worse still, the demonstrators have been cast as Hamas stooges. The United States ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, blamed the victims under occupation, saying Israel had a right to “defend its border”, while the British government claimed the protests were “hijacked by terrorists”.

None of this can have passed Harb by.

When Palestinians are told they can “protest peacefully”, western governments mean quietly, in ways that Israel can ignore, in ways that will not trouble consciences or require any action.

In Gaza, the Israeli army is renewing the Dahiya doctrine, this time by shattering thousands of Palestinian bodies rather than infrastructure.

Harb understood only too well the West’s hypocrisy in denying Palestinians any right to meaningfully resist Israel’s campaign of destruction.

The flames that engulfed him were intended also to consume us with guilt and shame. And doubtless more in Gaza will follow his example.

Will Harb be proved right? Can the West be shamed into action?

Or will we continue blaming the victims to excuse our complicity in seven decades of outrages committed against the Palestinian people?

May 28, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 3 Comments

Gaza boats will attempt to break Israel Navy siege on Tuesday

Palestinian fishermen seen waving the Palestinian flag in Gaza’s coast [Anadolu]
MEMO | May 27, 2018

The Gaza Strip will set off a flotilla of ships on Tuesday in a bid to break the 12-year-long Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory.

“This trip will carry the hopes and dreams of the Palestinian people for freedom,” Salah Abdul-Ati, a member of a Palestinian committee tasked with breaking the siege, told a press conference in the Gaza City on Sunday.

He said the first ship will set sail on Tuesday morning, with a number of injured Gazans and patients aboard.

He, however, did not specify the first stop of the ship.

According to Abdul-Ati, Israeli forces twice attacked boats and ships seeking to break the Israeli siege on Gaza in the past two weeks.

He called on the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority to lift “penalties on the Gaza people to boost their steadfastness and ease the humanitarian crisis caused by the blockade”.

He also appealed to the international community to pressure Israel to lift the blockade on the Gaza Strip and on international NGOs to provide protection to anti-siege ships.

Tuesday’s Gaza flotilla will coincide with the 8th anniversary of an Israeli attack on the Turkish “Mavi Marmara” flotilla, in which nine Turkish activists were killed when the Israeli navy attacked the vessel in international waters. A tenth activist died nearly four years later, succumbing to injuries sustained during the raid.

The incident served to cause a political crisis between Turkey and Israel, which ended when the latter agreed to Turkish conditions to normalize ties, including offering apology and compensating families of the victims.

Home to nearly two million Palestinians, the Gaza Strip has been reeling under a crippling Israeli blockade since 2006 when Palestinian resistance group Hamas was voted to power in a parliamentary election.

May 27, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | 3 Comments

Let’s talk about Mohammad Tamimi’s 2nd detention

5-25-18 mo tamimi.JPG

Palestine Home | May 24, 2018

The unthinkable is absolutely routine in the occupied Palestinian territories. This particular outrage involves a familiar face – that of 15-year-old Mohammad Tamimi.

As Mohammad was walking in his village, Nabi Saleh, 4 Israeli agents disguised as Palestinians jumped him, threw him in a car, and drove out of the village.

The abduction of a young man, even a minor, is a completely ordinary event in the occupied West Bank of Palestine where, during the last 12 months, Israel has held a minimum of 6,000 prisoners at any given time, 280 or more of whom have been minors. This is scandalous but typical.

What makes Mohammad’s kidnapping singularly outrageous is his previous experience with Israeli military. It bears repeating.

Target practice

On 15 December 2017, during the weekly village protest, Mohammad peeked over a wall into an area where Israeli soldiers generally hang out – illegally occupying an empty villa for the purpose of enforcing an illegal occupation – and when they saw his head, they shot at it. From only a few yards away.

Mind you, these would have been heavily armed, bullet-proof vested, combat-helmeted soldiers. They had nothing to fear. Nevertheless, they shot Mohammad.

14-year-old Mohammad Tamimi spent 4 days in a medically-induced coma after being shot in the face by Israeli forces.

14-year-old Mohammad Tamimi spent 4 days in a medically-induced coma after being shot in the face by Israeli forces.

The bullet entered near his nose and lodged in the back of his skull; he was bleeding heavily. A Red Crescent ambulance rushed in.

The Israeli soldiers at first refused to let the ambulance leave.

Eventually, Mohammad made it to the hospital, where part of his skull had to be removed due to severe inflammation of his brain. Since then, he has been recovering from this life-threatening injury.

“The slap that was heard around the world”

Moments after the shooting, his cousin Ahed heard the news. Furious and distraught, she screamed at an IDF soldier loitering on her property and delivered “the slap that was heard around the world.” It was a light slap, but resulted in a midnight home invasion by the IDF and a ride to prison.

Culture Minister Miri Regev considered the incident “damaging to the honor of the military and the state of Israel.” Education Minister Naftali Bennett proposed that Ahed receive a life sentence. Deputy Knesset Speaker Bezalel Smotrich tweeted that violence would have been an appropriate response: “In my opinion, she should have gotten a bullet, at least in the kneecap. That would have put her under house arrest for the rest of her life.”

Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi enters a military courtroom escorted by Israeli Prison Service personnel

Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi enters a military courtroom escorted by Israeli Prison Service personnel

Ahed was charged with 5 counts of assault: “threatening a soldier, attacking a soldier under aggravated circumstances, interfering with a soldier in carrying out his duties, incitement, and throwing objects at individuals or property.” She is now serving an 8-month sentence.

The soldier who had shot her cousin in the face is a free man, likely still carrying a weapon.

Mohammad’s 1st detention

Fast-forward 2 months, to 26 February. In a midnight raid on the village of Nabi Saleh, Mohammad Tamimi and 9 other Palestinian youths (5 of them, including Mohammad, minors) were arrested for alleged stone-throwing. His parents begged the police to wait a few weeks, till after the surgery to reconstruct his skull. His interrogators were unmoved. They went forward with high pressure questioning (Mohammad asserts that he was beaten) in which he “confessed” that his severe head injury had been self-inflicted, from a bicycle accident.

Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) Major General Yoav Mordechai rushed excitedly to Facebook, where he posted (in Hebrew and Arabic), “Wonder of wonders. Today, the boy himself confessed to the police and to COGAT that in December his skull was injured when he was riding his bicycle. The culture of lies continues among young and old in the Tamimi family.”

A later statement from COGAT added that  “The truth is always our guiding light and we will continue to present the truth in order to expose the Palestinian incitement apparatus.” And so, “bicycle accident” was the truth – until Mohammad’s doctor showed an X-ray of Mohammad’s skull with a bullet lodged inside.

How in the world did General Mordechai think he would get away with the coerced bicycle confession, given the high visibility of the events surrounding it?

Maj. Gen. Mordechai, head of Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT)

Maj. Gen. Mordechai, head of Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT)

Once the doctor’s report (and the actual bullet) appeared, the army’s account changed – but only slightly. When asked by Ha’aretz for a comment, army sources said they could not confirm the origins of his injury. So much for “we will continue to present the truth.”

Most news sources, both Israeli and American, had little or nothing to say when the evidence came to light. That’s how Mordechai got away with his audacious fabrication: mainstream news knows how to quit while Israel is ahead.

Mohammad’s 2nd detention

On, then, to current events. Mohammad was abducted again on the morning of 20 May, about 5 months post-shooting, 3 months post-bicycle “confession.” He was held till 11 pm, long after he was supposed to break the Ramadan fast with his family and take his medication.

Israeli police denied having detained him; no one had seen the abduction. The family feared he may have fallen and injured himself. The whole village went into search mode. But then as suddenly as he’d disappeared, he was back.

His mother, Manal, believes that Israel wants Mohammad imprisoned, but backed down this time because of his condition. “They are waiting for him to get better… They will try in the next two or three months to arrest him again,” she predicted.

Mohammad’s father, Fadel, reported that Israeli intelligence had called one of Mohammad’s doctors, informing him that Mohammad would be re-arrested once he recovered.

Fostering a culture of fear

Dawoud Yusef, who works with Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer, explained that the continual detention and release of Palestinians is meant to “make the individual feel that they are never safe from the forces of the occupation.” The use of Israeli agents posing as Palestinians is particularly unnerving.

Add to that Israel’s use of surveillance balloons in Nabi Saleh that observe residents and collect intelligence on them 24/7, and one might say that Israel is winning the psychological battle.

Indeed, Mohammad’s mother disclosed, “We feel like anyone in the village can get kidnapped by the Israelis at any time,” she said. “We are scared to allow our children on the street.”

Nabi Saleh is targeted because of its years of peaceful resistance and its alleged refusal to stop “making Israel look bad.”

The fact is, Israel makes itself look bad: when its “moral army” is allowed to shoot children who pose no threat, to use snipers against kites and rocks, to kill with impunity. When its government discriminates against people of color, takes food out of the mouths of widows and orphans, persists in breach of international humanitarian law. Israel is managing its negative publicity quite well on its own.

In a land where it is somehow okay to arrest a boy recovering from brain surgery, where a slap deserves a life sentence but shooting in the face does not, reputation is the least of their worries.

May 27, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | 1 Comment

Ugly Canadians active in Brazil

By Yves Engler · May 23, 2018

New revelations about Brazilian military violence offer an opportunity to reflect on Canadian support for that country’s 1964 coup and how Ottawa’s policy towards our South American neighbour is similar today.

A spate of international and Brazilian media have reported on a recently uncovered memo from CIA director William Colby to then US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, detailing a meeting between president Ernesto Geisel and three Brazilian generals. At the 1974 meeting the new Brazilian president is reported to have supported extending “summary executions” of enemies of the military dictatorship. An army officer, Geisel ordered National Information Service head João Baptista Figueiredo — who would replace him as president — to authorize the executions.

While it has long been accepted that the military dictatorship was responsible for hundreds of murders — a 2014 national truth commission blamed it for 191 killings and 210 disappearances — military backers have sought to put the blame on lower level officers. But the uncovered memo clearly reveals Geisel, who was considered more moderate than other top military leaders, was directly responsible for some deaths.

Ottawa passively supported the military coup against elected President João Goulart that instituted the 1964–85 military dictatorship. “The Canadian reaction to the military coup of 1964 was careful, polite and allied with American rhetoric,” notes Brazil and Canada in the Americas. Prime Minister Lester Pearson failed to publicly condemn the ouster of Goulart.

Washington played a pivotal role in the overthrow of Brazilian democracy. At one point President Lyndon Johnson urged ambassador Lincoln Gordon to take “every step that we can” to support Goulart’s removal. In a declassified cable between Gordon and Washington, the ambassador acknowledged US involvement in “covert support for pro-democracy street rallies … and encouragement [of] democratic and anti-communist sentiment in Congress, armed forces, friendly labor and student groups, church, and business.”

Washington, Ottawa and leading segments of Brazil’s business community opposed Goulart’s Reformas de Base (basic reforms). Goulart wanted to expand suffrage by giving illiterates and low ranking military officers the vote. He also wanted to put 15% of the national income into education and to implement land reform. To pay for this the government planned to introduce a proportional income tax and greater controls on the profit transfers of multinational corporations.

As important as following Washington’s lead, Pearson’s tacit support for the coup was driven by Canadian corporate interests. Among the biggest firms in Latin America at the time, Brascan was commonly known as the “the Canadian octopus” since its tentacles reached into so many areas of Brazil’s economy. A study of the Toronto-based company that began operating in Brazil in 1899 noted, “[Brazilian Traction’s vice-president Antonio] Gallotti doesn’t hide his participation in the moves and operations that led to the coup d’état against Goulart in 1964.” After the elected government was overthrown, Brazilian Traction president Grant Glassco stated, “the new government of Brazil is … made up of men of proven competence and integrity. The President, Humberto Castello Branco, commands the respect of the entire nation.”

Overthrowing the Goulart government, which had made it more difficult for companies to export profits, was good business. After the 1964 coup the Financial Post noted “the price of Brazilian Traction common shares almost doubled overnight with the change of government from an April 1 low of $1.95 to an April 3 high of $3.60.” Between 1965 and 1974, Brascan drained Brazil of $342 million ($2 billion today). When Brascan’s Canadian president, Robert Winters, was asked why the company’s profits grew so rapidly in the late 1960s his response was simple: “The Revolution.”

As opposition to the Brazilian military regime’s rights violations grew in Canada, Ottawa downplayed the gravity of the human rights situation. In a June 1972 memo to the Canadian embassy, the Director of the Latin American Division at Foreign Affairs stated: “We have, however, done our best to avoid drawing attention to this problem [human rights violations] because we are anxious to build a vigorous and healthy relationship with Brazil. We hope that in the future these unfortunate events and publicity, which damages the Brazilian image in Canada, can be avoided.”

The military dictatorship’s assassination program has contemporary relevance. In 2016 Workers Party President Dilma Rousseff was impeached in a “soft coup” and the social democratic party’s candidate for the upcoming presidential election, Lula da Silva, was recently jailed. The night before the Supreme Court was set to determine Lula’s fate the general in charge of the army hinted at military intervention if the judges ruled in favour of the former president and election frontrunner.

While they’ve made dozens of statements criticizing Venezuela over the past two years, the Justin Trudeau government seems to have remained silent on Rousseff’s ouster, Lula’s imprisonment and persecution of the left. The only comment I found was a Global Affairs official telling Sputnik that Canada would maintain relations with Brazil after Rousseff was impeached. Since that time Canada has begun negotiating to join the Brazilian led MERCOSUR trade block (just after Venezuela was expelled).

As many Brazilians worry about their country returning to military rule, Canadians should demand their government doesn’t contribute to weakening the country’s fragile democracy.

May 25, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Simple Dreams

Al-Haq | May 24, 2018

May 24, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | 1 Comment

For US Congress, Running a Torture Prison Is a Good Career Move

By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 24.05.2018

Gina Haspel has now been confirmed as the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by a Senate vote of 54 to 45. She had previously been approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee by 10 votes to 5, with six Democrats joining all but three of the committee’s Republicans. Haspel seems fully qualified in terms of her experience to do the job, though it is admittedly difficult to make that judgement because her full professional biography has not been revealed by CIA. Claims by supporters seeking to enhance her record that she was “under cover” for 32 years are meaningless as many officers who serve at Agency Headquarters in Langley have that status.

Accurate information on Haspel is hard to come by. Access to a top secret memo reportedly prepared by Committee Democrats concerning her possibly illegal activities has been restricted even among Senators. Nevertheless, as the first woman to become head of the Agency one might reasonably say that Haspel has certainly broken through several glass ceilings to obtain her new position.

During the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings Haspel vowed that, if approved, she would never again permit torture to be employed by the Agency. It was, of course, a necessary though empty gesture in that it appears quite clear that she did not demur at torture being used in the past. Intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden expressed his opinion with a tweet when news of the confirmation became public, writing that “Gina Haspel participated in a torture program that involved beating an innocent pregnant woman’s stomach, anally raping a man with meals he tried to refuse, and freezing a shackled prisoner until he died. She personally wrote the order to destroy 92 tapes of CIA torture.”

Haspel did indeed do all that and possibly more, but my objection to her is somewhat different. To be sure, torture should never have been employed by any federal government agency, but the confirmation of Haspel sends the clear message that there is no accountability for anyone who is at or near the top of the bureaucracy. Haspel’s willing participation in running a black site prison where torture was carried out was illegal then just as it is illegal now, no matter what some slimy government lawyer whose job depended on pleasing his boss the president might have said. Gina Haspel could have turned the assignment down if she was bothered by what was going, but ambition drove her to accept the position and all it entails, making her current disavowing of torture a bit hard to accept.

The approval of Haspel by the Senate suggests that there is no crime that a government official cannot get away with if it is justified under the aegis of the “war on terror.” On that basis alone, Haspel should have been rejected, but instead she has been rewarded by a government that generally prefers to look the other way. Gina’s success at avoiding any consequences for her action is reminiscent of the slap on the wrist received by former CIA Director David Petraeus, who revealed highly classified information to his lover/biographer Paula Broadwell.

All of which is not to suggest that government officials never get punished. Lower level officials are fair game when the criminal justice system is seeking to demonstrate that no one is above the law. Former CIA officer John Kiriakou was sentenced to prison after he revealed that torture in secret Agency prisons was taking place. Another CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling was imprisoned for allegedly revealing classified information to journalist James Risen. The government could not even prove that he had done so, but he was convicted anyway because “it had to be him.”

If it is now a matter of public record that running a torture prison is a good career move, supported by both parties in Congress. And it is also interesting to note how fiercely the CIA fought to keep from having to reveal details of Haspel’s career or even the records of the torture prison. It is unlikely that reports relating to events that took place sixteen years ago could continue to be classified because they would reveal “intelligence sources and methods.” Rather, they remain top secret because they are potentially embarrassing to the participants, to those who directed and approved the activity and to the organizations involved. In that light, the Haspel confirmation’s acceptance of zero accountability is a perfect example of precisely what is wrong with the United States government.

May 24, 2018 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

Haspel is Not the Problem. The CIA is the Problem.

By Ron Paul | May 21, 2018

As a general rule, when Dick Cheney favors a foreign policy position it’s best to be on the opposite side if you value liberty over war and authoritarianism. The former vice president’s enthusiastic endorsement of not only Gina Haspel as CIA director but of the torture program she oversaw should tell us all we need to know about Haspel.

Saying that Haspel would make a great CIA director, Cheney dismissed concerns over the CIA’s torture program. Asked in a television interview last week about the program, Cheney said, “if it were my call, I’d do it again.”

Sadly, the majority of the US Senate agreed with Cheney that putting a torturer in charge of the CIA was a good idea. Only two Republicans – Senators Paul and Flake – voted against Haspel. And just to confirm that there really is only one political party in Washington, it was the “yes” vote of crossover Democrats that provided the margin of victory. Americans should really be ashamed of those sent to Washington to represent us.

Just this month, the New York Times featured an article written by a woman who was kidnapped and sent to the secret CIA facility in Thailand that Haspel was said to have overseen. The woman was pregnant at the time and she recounted in the article how her CIA torturers would repeatedly punch her in the stomach. She was not convicted or even accused of a crime. She was innocent. But she was tortured on Haspel’s watch.

Is this really what we are as a country? Do we really want to elevate such people to the highest levels of government where they can do more damage to the United States at home and overseas?

As the news comes out that Obama holdovers in the FBI and CIA infiltrated the Trump campaign to try and elect Hillary Clinton, President Trump’s seeming lack of understanding of how the deep state operates is truly bewildering. The US increasingly looks like a banana republic, where the permanent state and not the people get to decide who’s in charge.

But instead of condemning the CIA’s role in an attempted coup against his own administration, Trump condemned former CIA director John Brennan for “undermining confidence” in the CIA. Well, the CIA didn’t need John Brennan to undermine our confidence in the CIA. The Agency itself long ago undermined the confidence of any patriotic American. Not only has the CIA been involved in torture, it has manipulated at least 100 elections overseas since its founding after WWII.

As President Trump watched Gina Haspel being sworn in as CIA director, he praised her: “You live the CIA. You breathe the CIA. And now you will lead the CIA,” he said. Yes, Mr. president, we understand that. But that’s the problem!

The problem is not Haspel, it’s not John Brennan, it’s not our lack of confidence. The problem is the CIA itself. If the president really cared about our peace, prosperity, and security, he would take steps to end this national disgrace. It’s time to abolish the CIA!

May 21, 2018 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 16 Comments

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »