The Killing of Serena Shim & the ‘Suicide’ of Former BBC Journalist Jackie Sutton…
The Burning Blogger of Bedlam | October 20, 2015
Exactly a year ago – on October 19th, 2014 – the journalist Serena Shim was killed after reporting from Kobani in Syria as a war correspondent. Her death was almost certainly the work of the Turkish intelligence community.
It’s a rather remarkable, and depressing, ‘coincidence’ that just as I was sitting down to put together a post in tribute to her, I’ve just come across news that another journalist and activist, Jacky Sutton, has just been found dead in Turkey – exactly a year to the date of Serena Shim’s suspicious death.
Former BBC journalist, Jacky Sutton (aged 50) is reported to have been found dead in a toilet in Istanbul’s main airport. The British journalist (pictured below), who had been working as Iraq director for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), was in Turkey en route to Irbil in Northern Iraq. Turkish sources have allegedly suggested that she has killed herself after missing a flight connection – a rather poor, even insulting, suggestion, which colleagues of Ms Sutton are dismissing. In her role as acting Iraq head of the (London-based) IWPR, Jackie Sutton’s role has been to support local journalism in countries affected by war and crisis. As The Guardian notes, the organisation’s previous Iraq director, Ammar Al Shahbander, was killed in a car-bomb in Baghdad on 2nd May this year. It is claimed the British woman’s body has been found hanging from boot laces.
Sudipto Mukerjee, a director with the UN Development Programme, has said, according to The Independent; “Very difficult to believe that my colleague in Iraq, staffer and seasoned traveller Jacky Sutton committed suicide.” Ms Sutton had, among other things, previously worked for the BBC World Service, reporting from Africa, the Middle East and London.
As I said, this latest suspicious death in Turkey comes on the precise one-year anniversary of the equally suspicious death of Serena Shim, who was killed in a car ‘accident’ on the Turkey-Syria border in 2014, and again illustrates both the dangers faced by truth-seeking journalists and the extent to which a corrupt Turkish state stands in need of investigation by international authorities.
Serena Shim (October 10th 1985 – October 19th 2014) was an American-Lebanese journalist. The car ‘accident’ in which she was killed hadn’t taken place inside the dangerous war-zone she had been reporting from, but had occurred on her way back to ‘safety’. It is also highly significant that Shim had very clearly expressed her concerns for her safety just prior to the ‘accident’.
Shim had described her harassment by security forces as particularly unusual, noting that she had dealt with police and intelligence services before in various different countries, but that the Turkish activity was a targeted response to something very specific. She had said her own instinct was that Turkish security people were tracking her not because of her reporting in Kobani but on account of possible matters of far greater, more damaging, information she might’ve exposed concerning a concerted geo-political conspiracy.
On October 17th last year, just two days before her death, Shim had told Press TV that the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) had accused her of “spying”. She stated it was “probably due to some of the stories she had covered” about Turkey’s role in the Islamic State terror group and particularly in regard to the militants in Kobani. It was Shim who had reported on ISIL militants being smuggled across the Turkish border into Syria in trucks deceptively bearing the symbols of NGOs like the World Food Organisation. The 29 year-old Shim had even said on air that she was “a bit frightened” by the danger posed to her by Turkey’s MİT.
She died on October 19th 2014, having been on the way back to her hotel. She had been returning to Suruç with her cousin Judy Irish in a rental car which then collided with a heavy vehicle (a cement mixer, according to Turkish media). Supposedly, Shim died in the crash while her cousin Judy Irish was injured and taken to Suruç State Hospital. According to the Turkish Doğan News Agency, the driver of the heavy vehicle was subsequently arrested. Shim’s employer at the time, Press TV, disputed this, alleging that both driver and vehicle had “disappeared”.
There was also the curious report that Shim and Irish were for some reason taken to different hospitals after the crash.
Shim’s sister appears to have been in no doubt that the journalist was murdered for various reasons. “She caught them bringing in ISIS high-ranked members into Syria from Turkey into camps, which are supposed to be Syrian refugee camps,” Fatmeh Shima said. “I think it was planned and plotted. There’s no pictures of Sassy in the car. There is not one scratch on my sister’s body. They took them to two different hospitals. Why? Why were there Army men on the ground, why weren’t there police?”
Serena Shim’s sister complained that the family received inconsistent reports about the specifics surrounding her death. “There are so many different stories. The first story was that Serena’s car was hit by a heavy vehicle who proceeded to keep on driving,” Fatemeh Shim told RT, also complaining about Turkish authorities’ inability to find the vehicle or the driver.
Fox News also quoted Shim’s mother as saying that the scene looked “staged” and that her death wasn’t an accident.
Her tragic death came just two days after a video interview in which she claimed Turkish intelligence agents had threatened her after her report on the ISIL extremist jihadists being smuggled into Syria from Turkey.
In her own words; ‘I am a bit worried because… Turkey has been labeled by Reporters Without Borders as the largest prison for journalists, so I am a bit frightened about what they might use against me.’ She continues, ‘We were some of the first people on the ground, if not the first people to give that story of those Takfiri militants going in through the Turkish border. It was very apparent that they were Takfiri militants by their beards and by the clothes that they wore and they were going in there with NGO trucks and I just find it very odd, they went to several local residents here and asked about me. The other reports that I had done were about at the time, the so called Free Syrian Army going in, and catching these Takfiri militants and getting the passport stamps and getting firsthand information that they were actually inside while Turkey was still hiding them.’
‘I think this has a lot to do with it and I think they want to know why I’m back,’ Serena Shim said. ‘I’ve been stopped by them before, but not necessarily to this level, just by police basically. But for the intelligence to actually look for me, that’s rather odd, so I think that they’re trying to get the word out to journalists to be careful so much as to what they say…’
Within two days of this report, Serena Shim was dead.
No independent investigation has been conducted by the United States over her death, despite her US citizenship.
Serena Shim also wasn’t the first journalist affiliated with Press TV to have been killed. Maya Nasser was shot dead by a sniper while on air delivering a report from Damascus, Syria, in 2012. A statement posted to Nasser’s Facebook page claimed that “armed terrorists” had simply driven up in vehicles and additional snipers shot from the rooftops of nearby buildings.
The 29 year-old Serena Shim was married and had two young children. Her tragic death was almost certainly an unlawful assassination designed firstly to silence her from reporting further on Turkey’s involvement in the rise of ISIL/Daesh, and secondly to act as a violent warning to other journalists to stay away from trying to expose the true nature of the war in Syria and the cynical manufacturing of the ‘Islamic State’ for geo-political purposes. The United States’ lack of interest in pursuing the matter of her death also suggests the US is complicit in that warning too.
In October 2014 Serena Shim herself joined the roll-call of brave journalists over the years who’ve risked – and ultimately sacrificed – their lives for the sake of uncovering the truth. Her bravery is all the more meaningful in the context of how most mainstream, corporate-owned journalism has been either reluctant or unwilling to dig deeper beyond the superficial surface of the ‘ISIS’ story and report more honestly about the origins of the crisis.
Certainly at the time of her death this time last year, mainstream journalists were almost entirely conforming to the approved corporate/political script, even if more meaningful journalism has started to gradually emerge in isolated spurts between then and now. But Shim was one of the few who was risking life and limb in dangerous territory to report on what was really going on. And she paid with her life.
____________________
Reporters Without Borders has labelled Turkey the ‘world’s largest prison for journalists’. In the supposedly democratic nation with EU membership aspirations, press freedom is pretty much non-existent. In an atmosphere of intimidation and fear, Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other modern nation; in spite of this tight control of information, people like Serena Shim and others have nevertheless managed to expose Turkey’s criminal role in supporting the Islamic State terror group and sustaining/funding the War in Syria that has killed over a quarter-of-a-million Syrians.
Meanwhile the killing of journalists and activists, either as tragic consequences of reporting from danger zones or by deliberate, targeted assassination, is an ongoing crime all over the world. The highly suspicious death of Jacky Sutton in a Turkish airport, just announced this evening, demonstrates that Serena Shim wasn’t the first and won’t be the last journalist to lose their life in the field, and that she is part of a long line of journalists who’ve been killed for various reasons over the years, including the likes of Max Hastings, Hunter S. Thompson, Garry Webb, Daniel Pearl, Maya Nasser and many others. According to the International Press Institute, 64 journalists have been killed so far in 2015.
This, this, this and this are all examples of the very real, mortal dangers journalists and photo-journalists face when putting themselves on the line for the sake of information or the sake of exposing inconvenient truths.
Change.org is petitioning the United States Department of Justice to investigate Shim’s death; you can add your signature to the petition here. Anonymous also launched #OpSerenaShim in memory of the deceased journalist.
As for this very unlikely explanation given by Turkish sources for the sudden suicide of Jacky Sutton, we will have to wait and see if British authorities push for a better explanation and if an investigation uncovers anything more. In her career, Jacky Sutton hasn’t been a stranger to danger and is not someone at all characterised as having been thin-skinned or emotionally vulnerable. This article here recounts much of her life in her own words.
As for Serena Shim, she was killed doing what American writer Walter Lipmann once called the ‘highest law’ in journalism – working to tell the truth and ‘shame the devil’. It might not be sufficient comfort to her friends, family or children, but it is ultimately the highest possible calling for any journalist.
Syria ‘opposition’ says will boycott UN-backed peace negotiations
Press TV – October 11, 2015
Syria’s main foreign-backed opposition group says it plans to boycott peace negotiations proposed by the United Nations in protest against Russian airstrikes in the Arab country.
The so-called Syrian National Coalition (SNC) made the announcement in a statement on Sunday, saying it did not favor the talks proposed by UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura.
The opposition group said it had “decided not to participate in the consultative working groups and considers adherence to the Geneva communique and UN Security Council resolutions and an end to Russian” airstrikes targeting Daesh militants in Syria as a basis for the resumption of peace talks.
The opposition was pointing to a document agreed by some states in 2012, which outlined a roadmap to resolve the crisis in Syria, including the formation of a transitional governing body and the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power.
Back in July, the UN envoy proposed the formation of working groups for both opposition and government representatives to address their concerns.
Since September 30, Russia has been carrying out its airstrikes in coordination with the Syrian government and has repeatedly voiced its support for a solution which includes Assad.
A report released by the Wall Street Journal last week said Russian airstrikes were also targeting militants backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Syria.
Russian air force jet fighters have reportedly demolished numerous vehicles, command posts, communication centers, fuel and ammunition depots, plants used for making bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), as well as several training camps, all used by Daesh.
Hundreds of Daesh militants, including a number of commanders, have reportedly been killed in the Russian airstrikes.
Syria has been fighting a foreign-sponsored militancy since March 2011. So far, more than 250,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict.
Turkish journalist detained over tweets critical of Erdogan
Press TV – October 10, 2015
Turkish police have arrested the editor-in-chief of the English-language newspaper, Today’s Zaman, for reportedly posting a series of tweets critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Bulent Kenes was detained after police raided the newspaper’s headquarters in the Turkish city of Istanbul on Friday.
The detention was televised live, while a crowd of supporters gathered outside the paper’s office with placards reading, “Free media cannot be silenced!”
The arrest came after an Istanbul judge agreed to a request by prosecutors to apprehend Kenes, claiming that tweets he had posted in August insulted Erdogan.
The journalist, however, denied the accusations, emphasizing that he was instead exercising free speech.
“I will continue to oppose turning this country into an open-air prison and an unlawful, oppressive and arbitrary administration,” he said.
Back in June, Kenes was also given a 21-month suspended jail sentence over similar charges.
Meanwhile, the Turkish Journalists’ Union published a statement, saying that the case was “another example of intimidation of the media” ahead of elections in the country.
On October 3, Turkish journalists held a demonstration in Istanbul to protest against what they called the growing suppression of media and threats against reporters in the country.
The Turkish government has been under fire for alleged clamping down on journalists and sentencing them to long prison terms.
In June, center-left Turkish daily Cumhuriyet released a video, implicating the country’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) in assisting the Daesh Takfiri militants operating against the Syrian government.
Irked by the revelations, the Turkish president, however, threatened that Can Dundar, Cumhuriyet’s editor-in-chief, would “pay a heavy price” for publishing the video.
US slams Russia for striking terrorists
Press TV | October 7, 2015
The United States has condemned Russia for striking the Western-backed militants in Syria and denied that it is cooperating with Moscow in this regard.
Speaking at a press conference in Rome, Italy, on Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter called the airstrikes against terrorists “a fundamental mistake”.
“I have said before that we believed that Russia has the wrong strategy — they continue to hit targets that are not ISIL. We believe this is a fundamental mistake,” Carter claimed, using an acronym for the Daesh terrorist group.
“Despite what the Russians say we have not agreed to cooperate with Russia so long as they continue to pursue a mistaken strategy and hit these targets,” he added.
Earlier in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry said it was considering proposals from the US to coordinate operations against ISIL terrorists.
“On the whole, these proposals could be put in place,” defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
He added that US and Russian military officials were discussing technical details on Wednesday.
“What we will do is continue basic, technical discussions on the professional safety procedures for our pilots flying above Syria,” Carter said.
“That’s it. We will keep the channel open because it’s a matter of safety for our pilots,” he added.
A new US intelligence assessment has found Russia has targeted militant groups backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Syria.
The assessment, shared by commanders on the ground, has led American officials to conclude that Russian warplanes have intentionally struck CIA-backed militants in a string of attacks running for days, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Meanwhile, US foreign policy expert Zbigniew Brzezinski, a strong supporter of the Obama administration, says the United States should retaliate if Russia does not stop bombing its assets in Syria.
Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski
Moscow’s apparent decision to strike CIA-trained militants “at best” reflects “Russian military incompetence,” and worst, “evidence of a dangerous desire to highlight American political impotence,” Brzezinski, the national security adviser for former President Jimmy Carter, wrote in an article published by the Financial Times on Sunday.
He added that if Moscow continues to target these people, then Washington should retaliate against Russians.
Obama administration officials are debating how the United States can come to the aid of its proxy forces on the ground without risking a broader conflict, according to the Wall Street Journal.
US officials said Russia’s moves in Syria posed a direct challenge to the Obama administration’s foreign policy on the Middle East.
Iraq to officially request Russian military action against Daesh
Press TV | October 7, 2015
Iraq is planning to officially ask Russia for airstrikes against Daesh in a bid to purge the Takfiri militant group from the territories it controls in the west and north of the Arab country.
“We might be forced to ask Russia to launch airstrikes in Iraq soon. I think in the upcoming few days or weeks Iraq will be forced to ask Russia to launch airstrikes and that depends on their success in Syria,” the head of the Iraqi parliament’s defense and security committee, Hakim al-Zamili, said on Wednesday, urging Moscow to play a bigger role than the United States in fighting terrorists in Iraq.
Baghdad has long criticized the ineffectiveness of the aerial military campaign by Washington and its allies against alleged Daesh positions in Iraq. However, Moscow’s recent military intervention against the terrorists in Syria has raised hopes of a similar move in Iraq.
“We are seeking to see Russia have a bigger role in Iraq. … Yes, definitely a bigger role than the Americans,” Zamili said.
The senior Iraqi legislator also expressed hope that a newly-established security and intelligence-sharing command center which includes Iran, Iraq and Syria and Russia and is set to begin work in Iraq, could make the anti-Daesh battle more effective.
“We believe that this center will develop in the near future to be a joint operation command to lead the war against Daesh in Iraq,” he added.
Russia has been pounding the positions of Daesh and other militant groups in Syria for a week, a move which has clearly irritated the United States and other Western governments. Washington accuses Russia of targeting the so-called moderate militants in Syria, but Moscow denies the charges, saying it chooses its targets based on intelligence provided by the Syrian army. Russia has also sought to play down the significance of US-fabricated distinction between militants in Syria.
Earlier in the day, Russian officials said they would consider an airborne operation against Daesh Takfiri terrorists in Iraq if they received a formal request from the Arab country on the issue.
Valentina Matviyenko, the Russian Federation Council speaker, said Russian leaders would be open to study “the political and military expediency” of an operation in Iraq in case of official request by Iraq.
Putin slams ‘illegal’ US support for militants in Syria
Press TV | September 27, 2015
Russian President Vladimir Putin has denounced US support for militants in Syria as illegal and ineffective.
“In my opinion, provision of military support to illegal structures runs counter to the principles of modern international law and the United Nations Charter,” he told US media on Sunday ahead of a meeting with President Barack Obama.
The Russian leader said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad deserves international support because he is fighting terrorist organizations, Reuters reported.
Putin said that Russia’s support for the Assad government was in accordance with the UN Charter, since “we have been providing assistance to legitimate government entities only.”
Russian support has come in the form of “weapons supplies to the Syrian government, personnel training and humanitarian aid to the Syrian people,” he stated.
The Russian president then pointed to the Pentagon’s $500 million program to train and equip militants in Syria, which US military and intelligence officials have branded as a failure.
“It turns out that only 60 of these fighters have been properly trained, and as few as four or five people actually carry weapons,” Putin said. “The rest of them have deserted with the American weapons to join ISIS,” he said, using another acronym for the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group.
Obama and Putin are set to meet on Monday after Putin’s much-anticipated speech at the 70th UN General Assembly in New York, 10 years after his last speech at the annual event.
According to the Kremlin’s press secretary, Syria will be topping the agenda of the meeting. “If there is enough time,” the Ukrainian conflict will also be discussed, Dmitry Peskov said.
Russia has been beefing up its military presence in Syria, equipping Damascus with advanced military aircraft such as the Mikoyan MiG-31 fighter jets and and other sophisticated equipment.
A secret US intelligence assessment predicts that Russia will launch military strikes in Syria to boost the Syrian government and stop advances by Daesh terrorists.
The intelligence, provided to the White House, says the airstrikes would be carried out by Russian fighter jets that were flown to Syria over the last week, The Los Angeles Times reported.
US officials said Russia moved warplanes to a base near the coastal city of Latakia last week. Russia has also stationed T-90 tanks there, and has increased the number of its military flights to the same airfield.
Moscow’s military support for Assad, however, goes against the current US policy, which calls for the Syrian president’s ouster.
Hamas: PA and Israel are behind anti-Hamas Daesh video
Salah Bardawil
MEMO | September 4, 2015
The Palestinian Authority and Israeli intelligence services are behind messages in which Daesh members make threats against Hamas and accuse it of blasphemy, a senior Hamas leader has said.
In statements to Quds Press, Salah Bardawil downplayed the importance of videos which apparently show Daesh members making threats against Hamas, accusing the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Service and the occupation of spreading them to confuse Hamas and to implement projects which harm the Palestinian cause.
He said the investigations conducted by the Ministry of Interior in Gaza revealed that this is a plot orchestrated by the intelligence that used Daesh’s name to smear Hamas’s name.
Bardawil added that Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are trying to attack Hamas. He added that the movement’s objective is “clear”: Resisting the occupation.
A video thought to have been published by the Islamic State’s Wilayat Damascus division appears to show two masked men warning that Daesh does not differentiate between Hamas, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Israeli occupation, and it will fight them all.
International Solidarity Movement honors Kayla Mueller
International Solidarity Movement | February 9, 2015
Occupied Palestine – Kayla Mueller volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement from August to September of 2010.
On 4 August 2013 Kayla, 26, originally from Prescott, Arizona, was working with Syrian refugees when she was kidnapped after leaving a Spanish Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo. Since that time she has been held in captivity by Da’esh (ISIS). This information was not previously released publicly out of concerns for her safety. On February 6th, Da’esh announced that she had been killed by Jordanian airstrikes in Raqqa, northern Syria. The validity of their announcement has not been confirmed.
Our hearts are with Kayla, her family, friends, and all those who have lost liberty, lives and loved ones in the global struggle for freedom and human rights.
With the ISM, Kayla worked with Palestinians nonviolently resisting the confiscation and demolitions of their homes and lands. In the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Occupied East Jerusalem, she stayed with the Al Kurd family to try and prevent the takeover of their home by Israeli settlers.
Kayla accompanied Palestinian children to school in the neighborhood of Tel Ruimeda in Al-Khalil (Hebron) where the children face frequent attacks by the Israeli settlers and military. She stayed with villagers in Izbat Al Tabib in a protest tent to try to prevent the demolition of homes in the village. She joined weekly Friday protests in Palestinian villages against the confiscation of their lands due to Israel’s illegal annexation wall and settlements.
Kayla published writing online about her work in Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement in August and September 2010. “How can I ignore the blessing of freedom of speech when I know that people I deeply care for can be shot dead for it?” she wrote.
Below are excerpts from two of Kayla’s posts.
October 29, 2010:
“I could tell a few stories about running desperately from what you pray are rubber-coated steel bullets launched from the gun tip of a reckless and frightened 18-year old.”
“I could tell a few stories about sleeping in front of half demolished buildings waiting for the one night when the bulldozers come to finish them off; fearing sleep because you don’t know what could wake you. . . . I could tell a few stories about walking children home from school because settlers next door are keen to throw stones, threaten and curse at them. Seeing the honest fear in young boys eyes when heavily armed settlers arise from the outpost; pure fear, frozen from further steps, lip trembling.”
“The smell and taste of tear gas has lodged itself in the pores of my throat and the skin around my nose, mouth and eyes. It still burns when I close them. It still hangs in the air like invisible fire burning the oxygen I breathe. When I cry tears for this land, my eyes still sting. This land that is beautiful as the poetry of the mystics. This land with the people who’s hearts are more expansive than any wall that any man could ever build. Yes, the wall will fall. The nature of impermanence is our greatest ally and soon the rules will change, the tide will turn and just as the moon waxes and wanes over this land so too the cycles of life here will continue. One day the cycle will once again return to freedom.”
“Oppression greets us from all angles. Oppression wails from the soldiers radio and floats through tear gas clouds in the air. Oppression explodes with every sound bomb and sinks deeper into the heart of the mother who has lost her son. But resistance is nestled in the cracks in the wall, resistance flows from the minaret 5 times a day and resistance sits quietly in jail knowing its time will come again. Resistance lives in the grieving mother’s wails and resistance lives in the anger at the lies broadcasted across the globe. Though it is sometimes hard to see and even harder sometimes to harbor, resistance lives. Do not be fooled, resistance lives.”
On New Year’s Day of 2011, Kayla received news that Jawaher Abu Rahma, from the village of Bil’in where Kayla had demonstrated in solidarity with her and her family, had been killed by tear gas asphyxiation. On the first of January 2011, Kayla wrote:
“I felt compelled to blog on this today. The first day of 2011, the actual day that she died, just a few hours ago in a village called, Bil’in.”
“Every Friday in Bil’in villagers and international/Israel activists march to the barbed wire fence where an enormous and expanding illegal settlement is visible to protest the theft of their land and their livelihoods. The Palestinians are armed with rocks, the other activists with cameras and collectively they are armed with their bones. Each Friday the demonstration is met with violence; rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas and sounds bombs are the usual choice of artillery. Lives are taken as a result of the violence and Jawaher Abu Rahmah’s life was taken today.
I have been to this village,
I demonstrated in this village,
I demonstrated arm in arm with her brothers,
and I knew her.”
……………
“My first demonstration in Palestine was in Bil’in and that is when I met Ashraf, Jawaher’s brother. Despite his broken English he always made a point to make sure we were ok when we were at the demonstration in his village, to help us cough up the tear gas and walk off the anxiety. He showed us his village and we played with the kids. Ashraf would bring us water or tea and help us find rides out of the village back to the cities. In the summer of 2008, Ashraf was participating in the demonstration and was detained by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). After he was blind-folded and his hands bound, an IDF soldier shot him in the foot from a distance of about 2 meters shattering his toes and leaving him in trauma as one could imagine.”
(As with all of these video clips, the content may be too graphic for some, please use discretion).
“Just the next year in 2009 Ashraf’s brother, Bassem Abu Rahma, was participating in the demonstration and was attempting to communicate with the IDF soldiers telling them to stop shooting the steel-coated rubber bullets as an Israeli activist had been shot in the leg and needed medical attention. Not soon after an Israeli soldier illegally used a tear gas canister as a bullet hitting Bassem in the chest, stopping his heart and killing him instantly.”
And now just today, the daughter of the Rahmah family, Jawaher, has been asphyxiated from tear gas inhalation. Jawaher was not even participating in the weekly demonstration but was in her home approximately 500 meters away from where the tear gas canisters were being fired (by wind the tear gas reaches the village and even the nearby illegal settlement often). There is currently little information as to how she suffocated but the doctor that attended her said a mixture of the tear gas from the IDF soldiers and phosphorus poisoned her lungs causing asphyxiation, the stopping of the heart and death this afternoon after fighting for her life last night in the hospital. The following is a clip from today showing hundreds of Palestinians, Israelis and international activist carrying her body to her families home where they said their final goodbyes.
“This family has a tragic story, but it is the story of life in Palestine.”
“Thank you for reading. Ask me questions and ask yourself questions but most importantly, question the answers.
Forever in solidarity,
Kayla”
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Who Rules America?
The Power Elite in the Time of Trump
By James Petras | Axis of Logic | September 6, 2017
Introduction
In the last few months, several competing political, economic and military sectors – linked to distinct ideological and ethnic groups – have clearly emerged at the centers of power.
We can identify some of the key competing and interlocking directorates of the power elite:
- Free marketers, with the ubiquitous presence of the ‘Israel First’ crowd.
- National capitalists, linked to rightwing ideologues.
- Generals, linked to the national security and the Pentagon apparatus, as well as defense industry.
- Business elites, linked to global capital.
This essay attempts to define the power wielders and evaluate their range of power and its impact. … continue
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