KIEV – Ukraine’s government has closed several checkpoints on the border with Russia in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions, explaining the measure by public security considerations.
“To prevent the emergence of threats to the population’s life or health as a result of dangerous events taking place in certain areas, the cabinet agreed with the State Border Service’s proposal to stop the operation of checkpoints,” the government press service said in a press release on Thursday.
In Ukraine’s Lugansk region, the operation of the following checkpoints has been stopped: Dolzhansky, Chervonopartizansk, Krasnaya Mogila, Novoborovtsy and Severny. In the Donetsk region, the Marinovka checkpoint will be closed.
The Ukrainian government has instructed the Foreign Ministry to inform Russia about the decision.
One of the most important Palestinian feature films ever, Omar, is the deepest expose of the diabolical nature of the Israeli occupation and the inhuman situation imposed on Palestinians by the Jewish State. It also throws light on the tragic and depressing Palestinian struggle against a sophisticated, demonic enemy — an on-going battle that so far has led nowhere.
In his latest film, Palestinian director Hany Abu Assad sets Omar (Adam Bakri), a young freedom fighter in an impossible, yet common, Palestinian dilemma, caught in a devastating triangle between his patriotic commitment, romance and the omnipresent Jewish State – a brutal, Orwellian, Big Brother that sees everything, knows everything, sets people against each other and controls everything through a network of collaborators even within the resistance.
Once captured by the IDF and being subject to some horrendous physical and mental torture by Israeli intelligence, Omar is set into a hellish scenario. He eventually manages to buy the Israeli’s trust, he lets them believe that he is willing to cooperate. At that moment Omar pretty much seals his fate. He is destined to lose everything.
Though we, comfortable in our cinema seats, know that he never compromised his commitment to his people, one by one, the Palestinians around him, led to believe he is a traitor, they turn their backs on him. Losing the love of his life to his friend — clearly a collaborator — he is ostracised by fellow warriors and their families. Omar, a Palestinian patriot, becomes a pawn in an evil Israeli game. As his situation deteriorates and his tragedy unfolds in front of our eyes, he remains aware of it all, and we, who witness this emerging tragedy, also can see no way out.
Agent Rami (Waleed Zuaiter), the veritable ‘good cop’ is the Israeli intelligence operator who recruits Omar. He appears to be humane, he never uses physical pressure, he also has his own family matters to handle, wife, kid etc’. But all those ‘humane’ symptoms are there to cover a deeply sinister and hideous character. Rami is in fact a cold blood Israeli monster who shatters the lives of others in a mass scale. He systematically makes empathy and human affection into a highly functional instruments of total abuse.
One hardly need to say that Rami, like Omar, is a symbol of his people and indeed, there is a clear cultural and ideological continuum between Rami, Shimon Peres and the entire Jewish Left. I refer here to the deceitful nature embedded in contemporary Jewish political culture, that intention to present empathy and humanism only to conceal a sinister, self-centric agenda that cares only for the members of the tribe.
At the start of this film we meet a young, handsome and joyful, Palestinian patriot who leaps over the gigantic Israeli Wall and who, against all odds, lays claim to his land. Ninety minutes later, the same man is a defeated soul. Physically and mentally tortured, Omar simply can no longer climb the wall and bridge the divide imposed on his people by the Jewish State.
By the end of the film, Omar, like Palestine itself, is a tormented and defeated soul. For him, there is no hope but martyrdom.
Since 2010, I have been Press TV’s Canadian correspondent based in Calgary, Alberta. I have been forced by the actions and statements of Canada’s ruling neoconservatives to hone in on the role Zionists and the organized Jewish community play in Canadian society.
Canada’s current government has shifted this country from being a comparatively benign and peaceful nation to being a warmongering de facto colony of Israel. I believe the evidence suggests this didn’t just happen by accident; the Zionization of Canada was a carefully planned, well-oiled operation.
If I was wrong in my analyses of the interface between Canada’s government and pro-Israel forces, I believe I would have been invited on one of the many Zionist-controlled media organs here, debated by some high-IQ Zionist intellectual and exposed as erroneous and foolish. I believe it is because we at Press TV are accurate in our analyses of Canadian power and politics that a segment of the organized Jewish community has decided to turn to coercion.
I would like to make available an email I received from the Jewish Defense League, a group described in an FBI report entitled “Terrorism 2000/2001” as a “violent extremist organization:”
“Mr Blakeney,
In the middle of the last century, Jews had no right or means of response when they were demonised, persecuted and attacked by your ideological soulmates. Today, the world is a very different place. When we are attacked by hate-filled antisemites like you, we respond with all the resources at our disposal, and with extreme prejudice.
You clearly enjoy indulging your pathological hatred of Jews, but there are three things that you should remember: The code that we live by is ‘never again’; our loathing of those who incite hatred against Jews is stronger than their hatred of us; we didn’t choose you as an enemy, you chose us.”
There are several fallacies committed in this unpleasant email. Firstly, I am not a “hate-filled anti-Semite.” I define Anti-Semitism as an “irrational hatred of all Jews generically.” You have to dislike all Jews and irrationally so to qualify as an Anti-Semite in my book. I merely oppose the actions, arguments and assumptions of those Jews who are oppressors, warmongers, apologists for Israel and proponents of a Zionist exeptionalist police state, etc. Some Jews agree with me, some almost agree with me and others evidently hate me. Either way, criticizing those in power, regardless of their ethnicity, is a natural right which I embrace zealously.
Unlike the JDL, who claim they intend to act with “extreme prejudice” against me, I’m guided by post-judice insofar as my conclusions are derived from an analysis of the factual record. My analyses are rational, logical and evidence based. Evidence emerged of Israeli involvement in 9/11 and then I deduced that Israel conducts false-flag terrorism against the US. The evidence came first, then my conclusion.
Equally misguided is to characterize my alleged “hatred of Jews” as “pathological.” The usage of psychoanalytic verbiage to quash criticism of Jews is the product of Sigmund Freud and members of the Frankfurt School, Jewish thinkers who popularized their ethnocentric doctrines in the first half of the 20th Century. By describing my criticism of certain Jews as “pathological,” the writer of the email exempts himself from addressing the content of my criticisms. If my criticisms are the product of a psychopathology, then they have no relation to the real world and thus need not be addressed. How convenient.
Some academicians and law experts have advised me to take this threatening email to the authorities here in Canada. However, I am intuitively averse to having the state decide which emails are good and which are bad. I’d rather engage in debate and dialogue with my interlocutors. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that Canada’s current regime would ever prosecute Jewish ethnic activists like the members of the JDL. That would be in contravention of the Jewish-exceptionalist ideology that seemingly governs this country at the present time.
The Canadian state has defenestrated the values of British Common Law that once guided Canadian society (such as freedom of speech, freedom of expression, adversarial argumentation, habeas corpus and freedom of movement) in favor of the eliminationist ideology of Jewish exceptionalism. Critics of Jews find themselves arrested for “hate speech” or “inciting genocide” and non-Canadian citizens are barred from the country or deported.
For example, it has now been demonstrated that Canada’s ruling neoconservatives barred pro-Palestinian peace activist and parliamentarian George Galloway from Canada in 2009 at the behest of the JDL. This is one reason I don’t fear the JDL per se; there was a time when they had no political clout and thus had to actively engage in their own thuggery and aggression toward those whose perspectives they sought to suppress. Now they have Canada’s MPs and politicized police forces at their disposal to do their dirty work for them. If Mr. Galloway had turned up at the Canadian border in mid-2009, the police would have arrested and incarcerated the six-times-elected British MP, based on lobbying efforts by the JDL. In this epoch, the JDL can sit back and let Israel’s client regime in Ottawa do all the work.
The extent of the Zionization of Canada is revealed by the very presence of the JDL in this country. The militant organization is reportedly proscribed in the US and in many EU countries. In spite of this, periodically Meir Weinstein, leader of the JDL in Canada, pops up on our TV screens as if he is a moderate Canadian political pundit. Quite what the members of the JDL contribute to Canadian society other than aggressive censoriousness and ethnic tension is unclear.
In 1995 German ethnic-activist and historian Ernst Zundel had his house firebombed by Zionist terrorists who disagreed with his historical conclusions. A group called the Jewish Armed Resistance Movement claimed responsibility for the attack but the Toronto Star later claimed that the group had ties to the JDL. Instead of locking up those aggressors who arrogated to themselves the right to revoke Mr. Zundel’s freedom of speech and destroy his property, the police incarcerated Zundel under so-called anti-terrorism legislation, which was later found to be unconstitutional.
Another falsehood in the email is the claim that “we didn’t choose you as an enemy, you chose us.” I grew up in a philo-Semitic household with holidays to Israel and visits to Auschwitz (and I’m not even Jewish!). It was primarily Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and proven involvement in false flag attacks on Western countries that spurred me to voice criticism of certain Jews. Within recent days, Australia’s former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has confirmed that Israel deliberately attacked the USS Liberty in June 1967. Is he a “pathological” “antisemite” too?
So, to repeat, my conclusions are post-judicial not prejudicial (I actually pre-judged Jews favorably). The Zionists want to use countries like Britain, Canada and the US as playthings to advance Israeli geopolitical goals, expending the blood and treasure of us stupid goyim rather than that of Jews. Certain Zionist fanatics in my view declared war on my historically philo-Semitic people not vice-versa.
I’m keen to engage in dialogue with my detractors. It seems because I have the moral high ground and evidence on my side that some Zionists are now resorting to coercion to silence me.
In my view, the pen is mightier than the sword. The JDL should take a leaf out of my book instead of trying to eliminate anybody who criticizes them and their fellow Zionist ideologues.
The exhibit is an opportunity for Canadians to view imagery that captures the humanity of a real situation (Public ART/Facebook)
The woman behind the exhibit is artist Rehab Nazzal, a Canadian citizen born in Jenin, an historic town located in Palestine in a territory under occupation since 1967. Nazzal’s exhibit of 1700 photographic images along with four short videos, were collected by her over the fourteen years. Segments of these images depict life in the experience of occupation.
Nazzal’s premise of this collection is based on the idea that people leave traces of their existence and the traces in this case are part of the collective memory of occupied Palestine. Not being the first time this collection has been exhibited, it was also featured in Toronto at the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival 2013.
Stumbling across the exhibit at Ottawa’s City Hall in the Karsh-Masson Gallery, the Israeli Ambassador to Canada felt that such an exhibit should prohibited. The Ambassador operating outside of his mission, met with Mayor Jim Watson and Deputy City Manager Steven Kanellakos of the City of Ottawa, to demand closure of the exhibit, stating it “glorified terrorism”. Somehow in the unidentified 1700 images and four videos, the Ambassador was able to single out seven individuals he described as terrorists.
The 4th Geneva Convention that Israel and Canada are signatories as well as the Hague Regulations, provides that people under occupation have the right to resist their occupiers. Palestinians are in a situation where they are resisting occupation. The Israeli government and their representatives dispute this occupation in spite of the presence of its military. Terrorism terminology by Israel has become so common and so pervasive that many inside and outside of Israel perceive Palestinians as terrorists – a racist generalization that is pejorative and isolating.
Nazzal’s work reveals human cost of military violence and war, and it is not a call for more human loss, contrary to the Ambassador’s allegations. It is a catalog of Palestinian history, creativity and expression for Forgotten Survivors; a lament for their homeland; and sadness for those who have died in a long hopeless conflict. Her work is a strong counter-narrative articulated creatively using visual vocabulary, transforming the oppressive tools of Israel and its discriminatory policies into elements of hope and life. Her political art communicates messages of dignity and liberation and has undoubtedly inspired many, not just Arabs but non-Arabs as well. The strong media attention certainly indicates that her message is worthy of consideration and appreciation.
Not satisfied with the responses from the Canadian public and City of Ottawa, the Ambassador has escalated his inflammatory language including allegations of “blood libel” and descriptors such as “child murderers”. Is this the role of a foreign diplomat to Canada? His call on Jewish groups to demand action is of great concern. Individuals who have yet to see the exhibit but have read the Ambassador’s false and inflammatory statements, are responding through promotion of these false allegations in blogs, emails to City Hall and online comments. Canadians are being presented with a bias that perpetuates this terrorism label.
The Israeli suppression of the Palestinian narrative appears to now be officially part of the Canadian art and political stream of understanding. It has no place nor is it appropriate. Instead of approaching the situation as an ethnic denial of people, that would appear racist to Canadians, the Ambassador of Israel instead invokes falsely the understandably reactionary term – terrorist.
Censorship of art, especially political art has a history associated with oppressive regimes. Artists in Canada of all faiths, backgrounds and cultures have the full right to artistic expression as granted by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Therefore uncensored artists are able to explore difficult themes; which is a victory for democracy and freedom of expression.
Realizing that Mayor Watson and his staff have stood by the Charter, the Ambassador requested that Mayor Watson review the process of selecting future art exhibitions at the Karsh-Masson Gallery. This is also censorship. Does this mean future exhibitions could be at risk? That the City of Ottawa should influence the selection panel of professional artists? Do we want elected politicians interfering with these processes, and especially at the behest of a foreign country and its diplomatic body?
The situation is of concern to Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and other ethnic minority artists who may not be featured by galleries across Canada due to the fear of facing the public wrath of Jewish groups and/or the Israeli government. As Canadians, we don’t want to be controlled in how our art is expressed.
We know from the history of others, that when governments and special interest groups control the message of art, that in many cases, target groups who are censored are in danger of future marginalization. In Europe in the 1930’s a number of countries excelled in this practice further legitimizing their hateful actions against minorities, including Roma and Jews. For some countries this was the beginning of their marginalization process against an ethnic minority. Canada must uphold its values for this reason as our laws and freedoms are for everybody, and not to be denied for a specified group, especially under pressure from an outside country.
The exhibit created by Nazzal is an opportunity for Canadians to view imagery that captures the humanity of a real situation. People are not exploited in their suffering or celebrations, they are living an experience that is untold by the media and has been for as much as four decades.
To be Palestinian is not anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli. In actuality it is a culture that is centuries old in its cuisine, dance, literature, art, architecture, music, costume and other elements we all embrace in our own.
Canada, a country of hundreds of cultures, cannot be part and parcel of this type of denial, and should not be afraid in embracing its citizens. Removing this show would set a precedence that would allow one group at odds with another group to demand censorship in the Canadian milieu. Influencing selection committees of art galleries, are creating the environment of fearing to present a Palestinian artist would also be an act of censorship and stifling our right to the freedom of expression. This is not a Canada we want.
– Rana Abdulla is a Canadian professional accountant, living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Shawn Robinson is a Canadian artist in graphic design and creative writing. She lives in Ottawa.
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For full version of these videos, please contact: info@vtape.org OR info@rehabnazzal.com
Jon Faine, of Radio 774 ABC Melbourne, interviews and insults former Australia Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser, in the process attempting to defend the indefensible, Israel.
In his book, Dangerous Allies, Mr Fraser’s suggests that it is time for Australia to formulate its own foreign policy and not, in future—as Captain Kirk might have put it—To blindly go where its current allies seek to lead it (my phrase, not Mr Fraser’s).
Faine is almost as rude and overbearing to this guest as he was towards Kevin Bracken, who was (at the time I made a video about his encounter with Faine), Victorian Branch Secretary of the Maritime Union and the President of the Victorian Trades Hall Council and was attempting to point out some of the many anomalies in the official 9/11 report, but was prevented from doing so by Faine’s obnoxious monologues.
In this video, I show excerpts from the Kevin Bracken video, which was uploaded in October, 2010, as well as from Friends of Israel — Enemies Inside the Gates, from which Jon Faine appears to have learned nothing. He is a gatekeeper for Israel, and has no business being in front of a microphone in the studios of the publicly-funded Australian Broadcast Corporation.
NOTES & LINKS
A recoding of the radio broadcast of May 9th, 2014 featuring Jon Faine, Damien Kingsbury and Malcolm Fraser can be found here: http://tunein.com/topic/?TopicId=7312…
David Attenborough was my favorite wildlife cinematographer and each year I fed my students numerous clips to make biology and ecology come alive. Researching the plight of the polar bears, I began to worry that “my hero” had decided to use his spectacular wildlife videos to promote catastrophic climate change.
The first example that raised my suspicions was his portrayal of polar bears feeding on walruses, with a narration suggesting it was a new behavior desperately driven by climate change. But for us ecologists who know better: shame on you David Attenborough. He ignored documented wildlife history and cherry-picked a dramatic scene to promote climate fear.
First view this older BBC video pitting polar bears against walrus. Notice how many bears are converging on the walrus herd and that they are coming from the land. Then view Attenborough’s “new and improved video” that puts a very misleading slant on polar bears and walruses.
If you want to read historical facts about walruses and polar bears, I suggest reading Francis H. Fay’s 1982 “Ecology And Biology Of The Pacific Walrus, Odobenus rosmarus, Divergens Illiger.” In the 1950s, Fay was concerned that the walrus was headed for extinction due to over-hunting for ivory and blubber so Fay set out to document everything there was to know about walruses.
In his tome, Fay published early 1900 observations by Russian researchers who admired the polar bears’ varied and clever tactics for hunting walrus.
“The walruses on Peschan Island are frequently bothered by bears, which creep up to them under cover of uneven terrain and of driftwood, of which there usually is an abundance, along the shore. Sometimes the bears dig pits in the sand or make a pile in front of themselves in order to hide from the walruses. We saw a bear in a pit dug in the driftwood within 50 m of the herd, where it watched for a long time. Suddenly, it leaped from its concealment and plunged along the flat terrain toward the walruses. The animals, upon seeing the running bear, rushed into the water, and when the bear reached those on shore, only a few large males remained, and these gradually pivoted into the water, threatening with roars and swinging tusks. The bear in his misfortune was unable to decide whether or not to enter the water and only brandished his paws helplessly and growled in discontent. Not infrequently, in the confusion, the adult walruses crush some young; possibly, at the time of the attack, the bears hope to profit from such accidentally crushed or abandoned young.”
Anyone familiar with the scientific literature knows polar bears have been hunting walruses since recorded history and most certainly before that time. More recently researchers reporting to the Polar Bear Specialist Group meeting speculated that hunting walruses on land was likely to be a behavior that has allowed bears to survive the lack of sea ice that was far more common through out the Holocene Optimum.
For example, Wrangel Island is both home of one of the largest known polar bear denning areas in the Arctic as well as the location of several traditional walrus land haul-outs each summer. Because walruses often get trampled at these haul-outs, bears eagerly supplement their diet by feeding on the trodden carcasses. In addition, polar bears will wait at these haul outs anticipating the summer wave of walrus herds that typically come ashore and then dine on weak or young walruses. Seasoned bears know to avoid a healthy bull.
In 2007 the 2nd greatest decrease in Arctic sea ice was observed in the waters surrounding Wrangel Island. That summer researchers observed the greatest number of polar bears on the island. However, contrary to the less ice-means-starving-bear theory, there were no signs of increased nutritional stress. Quite the opposite.
Anticipating the seasonal haul-out of walruses, the bears concentrated along the beaches where they were easily observed by researchers who determined that less than 5% of the Wrangel Island bears were designated skinny or very skinny. That compared very favorably to the 7 to 15% of skinny bears observed in previous years with heavier ice. Furthermore researcher determined that not only did 29% of all bears look “normal”, the remaining 66% were fat or very fat. Those polar bear experts wrote, “Under certain circumstances, such as were observed on Wrangel Island in 2007, (Ovsyanikov and Menyushina 2008, Ovsyanikov et al., 2008), resources available in coastal ecosystems may be so abundant that polar bears are able to feed on them more successfully than while hunting on the sea ice.”
With that scientific background, view Attenborough’s rendition and ask yourself if he is objectively narrating the video. He ignores the bears and walruses’ natural history to suggest polar bears have only recently attacked walruses out of desperation. Attenborough suggests the lone bear had been desperately swimming for days trying to reach the island. However, without a radio-collar on the bear, one must wonder if Attenborough is using creative license. And why is Attenborough “serendipitously“ set up in this location to film this event??? Is it a traditional walrus hunting spot and not the rare event his video suggests?
Researchers have documented instances of younger bears who have not mastered hunting walrus that resulted in injury, but it is a matter of a younger bears evolving experience. Attenborough marries an uncommon hunting failure to climate change. Playing sad music, he suggests that bears only attack walruses as an unnatural last resort; suggesting that, in essence, it is a climate change driven act that is suicidal and doomed to increase.
To my increasing dismay, my former wildlife hero seems to be plunging more deeply into climate propaganda. Attenborough has a new series on Discovery called Africa but it might as well be called “Let’s Push Climate Fear“.
Take for instance his video segment, shown below, on Green Turtles. He accurately tells us that unlike humans who determine gender via the X and Y chromosomes, Green Turtles (as well as several other reptiles) determine the next generation’s gender based on the temperature of the developing eggs. Researchers realized this when trying to save endangered sea turtles from depredation and dug up their eggs to “safely” incubate them. Fearing that buried eggs at the bottom of the pile had not benefited equally from the sun’s warmth, the eggs were laid out evenly on trays so all could incubate at the same temperature. The result was uni-sex baby turtles.
However, turtles have been around since the dinosaurs and their temperature-gender system has been completely successful throughout monumental periods of climate change, massive extinctions, and epochs with far warmer temperatures than today. Attenborough should tell his audience that micro-climates are far more critical to their success as well as informing the public that temperatures drop off dramatically with depth in the sand. Nonetheless he warns that due to global warming, female turtles will soon have great difficulty finding a male. Shameful propaganda Sir David!
* Author Jim Steele is Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University.
Literature cited
Fay, F. (1982) Ecology and Biology of Odobenus rosmarus the Pacific Walrus, divergens. US. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, North American Fauna, No. 74.
Ovsyanikov N.G., and Menyushina I.E. (2008) Specifics of Polar Bears Surviving an Ice Free Season on Wrangel Island in 2007. Marine Mammals of the Holarctic. Odessa, pp. 407-412.
Some 140 participants representing 22 countries will be attending the 62nd annual Bilderberg meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark. The newly released list is a who’s who of business, academia, and the political world.
As is usually the case with the renowned summit, this year’s Bilderberg – which will take place May 29 to June 1 – has attracted a cadre of influential experts, including notable attendees such as NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former director of the US National Security Agency Keith Alexander, and former US national security advisor to the White House Thomas E. Donilon.
The Bilderberg meeting, which the BBC has referred to as “possibly the most influential discussion network in the world,” first began in 1954, has over the years attracted a considerable amount of media attention, both for its formidable attendee lists as well as the perceived aura as an opportunity for the world’s elite to mingle. In addition to the yearly attendees, the Bilderberg Steering Committee is likewise a list of powerful financiers, which includes Peter D. Sutherland, Chairman of Goldman Sachs International, as well as Peter Thiel, president of Thiel Capital.
Bilderberg operates under the “Chatham House Rule,” which stipulates that neither the identity nor affiliation of a speaker’s quotes may be revealed by other participants, including any media in attendance. Though it may be intended to promote the free exchange of ideas among the well-heeled, such rules have fed directly into what detractors say is an unnecessary cloud of secrecy, as well as a range of conspiracy theories that liken the summit to a shadowy gathering for architects of the “New World Order.”
Already fueling such wild speculation ahead of this year’s summit were the arrests of independent reporters Luke Rudkowski and Dan Dicks, who attempted to confront staff at the Copenhagen hotel where Bilderberg is set to take place. Video of the encounter quickly spread online.
According to an official press release, this year’s summit will be focusing on a variety of topics, including the future of democracy and the “middle class trap,” China’s political and economic outlook, and the ongoing situation in Ukraine. Interestingly, the agenda also includes the topic of privacy, as well as “the relationship in intelligence sharing,” which suggests the meeting may be used to address last year’s onslaught of NSA leaks by former intelligence contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden.
BETHLEHEM – Israeli forces on Tuesday detained four Palestinian girls in the south Hebron hills after a settler accused them of stealing cherries, human rights group B’Tselem said.
The girls, aged 11 to 15, were on their way home from school with an Israeli army escort when Israeli police arrested them. They were taken to an Israeli police station in Hebron with no adult accompaniment and held for four hours until being handed over to Palestinian police and released.
“The absurdity and injustice of holding four girls on suspicion of such a minor offense is disgraceful and outrageous, especially given that the authorities systematically refrain from enforcing the law on settlers who attack these girls and their families,” B’Tselem said.
International volunteers from Operation Dove filmed the incident.
An Italian reporter and his interpreter may have been shot dead and a French photographer has been wounded near the city of Slavyansk, in eastern Ukraine, as their car came under fire, Russian media report.
The injured French journalist identified as William Roguelon has been taken to a local hospital where he received treatment and managed to leave the facility on his own.
Roguelon, from the hospital reached Agence France Presse (AFP) and described how out of nowhere their vehicle was bombarded with mortar shells.
“Before that we heard Kalashnikov shots,” Roguelon was quoted by the Italian tgcom24. “Then the mortar shells rained down all around,” he said claiming to have heard up 60 explosions as they tried to hide in the “middle of a ditch.”
The man, who works as a freelance photographer, has told Russian media that after the shooting he saw his Italian colleagues lying on the ground not moving, Rossiya 24 channel reported.
“In the village of Andreyevka, not far from Slavyansk, an Italian journalist and his interpreter have been shot dead and a French correspondent wounded. Their car came under fire,” a source from the self-defense forces has told RIA Novosti.
The area around the city of Slavyansk has been gripped by violence on Saturday, a day before the scheduled presidential election. Shooting was reported in the village of Semyonovka, where a psychiatric hospital has been partly ruined in a fight between Kiev troops and self-defense forces. Witnesses said a shell hit the roof of the hospital.
According to reports, shooting, artillery and machine-gun fire have been heard in the outskirts of Semyonovka starting Friday night.
Shell-holes can be seen in the ground all around the village. Smoke was reportedly seen billowing from at least three locations in Slavyansk on Saturday.
Video footage obtained by a human rights group Monday showed the chilling shooting deaths of two Palestinian children by Israeli occupation forces last Thursday.
Israeli soldiers shot dead teenagers Mohammed Odeh Abu al-Thaher and Nadim Siyam Nawara during a protest coinciding with the 66th anniversary of the Nakba outside Israel’s Ofer prison near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Israel had claimed it fired rubber bullets during the May 15 protest to disperse the protesters.
But footage released by the Defence for Children International (DCI) captured from a security camera at a nearby house shows the youths, believed to be aged 16 and 17, being shot dead as they calmly walked.
The video shows the first victim walking in the opposite direction of the occupation forces before he is struck by a bullet in the back. Onlookers immediately rushed to his aid.
The second victim is shot in the chest in the same location as he walked slowly. He falls to the ground and struggles to get back up as others assist him and signal for the occupation forces to cease fire.
Both children were unarmed.
“Israeli forces continue to use excessive force and recklessly fire live ammunition and rubber-coated metal bullets on unarmed protesters, including children, killing them with impunity,” Rifat Kassis, executive director of DCI-Palestine, said in a statement.
The report said a third, 15-year-old victim was shot in the back and left lung during the protest and is recovering at a Ramallah hospital.
International human rights groups have repeatedly condemned Israel’s use of deadly force against Palestinian protesters and civilians in the West Bank and Gaza.
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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