Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Mumia Abu Jamal to Begin Receiving Hepatitis C Treatment

Mumia Abu Jamal

Mumia Abu Jamal | Photo: Campaign to Bring Mumia Home
teleSUR | March 31, 2017

U.S. revolutionary activist Mumia Abu Jamal will begin receiving treatment for hepatitis C next week, Philly Voice reports, citing recently-released court papers.

Jamal, who is serving a life sentence at the Mahanoy State Correctional Institution in Philadelphia, has been demanding treatment since 2015, when he suffered from a renal failure.

Now, he will receive antiviral medication that consists of one pill per day for 12 to 24 weeks, Philly Voice adds. The medication has an estimated 90-percent cure rate.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, DOC, was ordered on Monday to begin providing medication after it lost its appeal to withhold treatment in the state’s Third Circuit court.

“For the last 53 days, the DOC, prison medical staff, and Legal Department have stood in contempt of court following the order to treat Mumia,” Jamal’s legal representatives wrote in a statement.

“The DOC in defiance of the Injunction filed a stay, hoping the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals would bail them out and block Mumia’s treatment.”

The ruling marks a major victory for Mumia and others in similar circumstances. Now, thousands of prisoners who suffer from hepatitis C will be able to receive treatment because the federal court order sets a precedent, Prison Radio reports.

The treatment, however, will not solve all of his medical problems. Mumia, who suffers from cirrhosis of the liver, is now at greater risk for other health complications and potential liver cancer. This is a direct consequence of being denied treatment for two years, according to his legal representatives.

“We must stay vigilant,” they wrote in a statement.

“We must insist that the treatment be given and completed in full, and we need to support the lawsuits Abu-Jamal vs. Kerestes and Abu-Jamal vs. Wetzel as they continue to hold the Pennsylvania DOC accountable.”

Jamal, a former member of the Black Panther Party, was arrested and charged with killing white police Officer Daniel Faulkner in Philadelphia in December 1981. One year later, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.

In 2011, the United States Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional in his case, and he was re-sentenced to life in prison without parole. He and many activists have maintained that he is innocent.

April 1, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s Little Known but Once Flourishing Slave Trade

By Yves Engler | Dissident Voice | March 29, 2017

We love our tales about how “Canada” offered sanctuary to US slaves for decades, but the unabridged version is it sustained African bondage for much longer.

In a recent Rabble.ca story titled “Canada’s earliest immigration policies made it a safe haven for escaped slaves”, Penney Kome ignores the fact that Africans were held in bondage here for 200 years and that the Atlantic provinces had important ties to the Caribbean plantation economies.

According to Kome, Canada’s relationship to slavery consisted of the oft-discussed Underground Railway that brought Africans in bondage north to freedom. But, she ignores the southbound “underground railroad” during the late 1700s that took many Canadian slaves to Vermont and other Northern US states that had abolished slavery. Even more slaves journeyed to freedom in Michigan and New England after the war of 1812.

For over 200 years, New France and the British North America colonies held Africans in bondage. The first recorded slave sale in New France took place in 1628. There were at least 3,000 African slaves in present-day Québec, Ontario and the Maritimes. Leading historical figures such as René Bourassa, James McGill, Colin McNabb, Joseph Papineau and Peter Russell all owned slaves and some were strident advocates of the practice.

After conquering Quebec, Britain strengthened the laws that enabled slavery. In The Blacks in Canada, Robin Winks explains:

On three occasions explicit guarantees were given to slave owners that their property would be respected, and between 1763 and 1790 the British government added to the legal structures so that a once vaguely defined system of slavery took on clearer outlines.

It wasn’t until 1833 that slavery was abolished in today’s Canada and across the rest of the British Empire.

“Canadians” propped up slavery in a number of other ways. Canada helped the British quell Caribbean slave rebellions, particularly during the 1791-1804 Haitian Revolution, which disrupted the region’s slave economy. Much of Britain’s Halifax-based squadron arrived on the shores of the West Indies in 1793, and many of the ships that set sail to the Caribbean at this time were assembled in the town’s naval yard. Additionally, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick provided “sticks for the furnishing of a variety of naval stores, especially masts and spars, to the West Indies squadron at Jamaica, Antigua, and Barbados.”

A number of prominent Canadian-born (or based) individuals fought to capture and re-establish slavery in the French colonies. Dubbed the “Father of the Canadian Crown”, Prince Edward Duke of Kent departed for the West Indies aboard a Halifax gunboat in 1793. As a Major General, he led forces that captured Guadalupe, St. Lucia and Martinique. Today, many streets and monuments across the country honour a man understood to have first applied the term “Canadian” to both the English and French inhabitants of Upper and Lower Canada.

In what may be “Canada’s” most significant contribution to the British war effort in the Caribbean, a dozen Nova Scotia privateers captured at least 57 enemy vessels in the West Indies between 1793 and 1805. Licensed by the state to seize enemy boats during wartime, “privateers were essential tools of war until the rise of large steam navies in the mid-nineteenth century.” But Nova Scotia privateers weren’t solely motivated by reasons of state. They sought to protect a market decimated by French privateers. In A Private War in the Caribbean: Nova Scotia Privateering, 1793-1805, Dan Conlin writes that “in a broader sense privateering was an armed defence of the [Maritimes’] West Indies market.”

Outside of its role in suppressing Caribbean slave rebellions, the Maritimes literally fed the slave system for decades. In Emancipation Day, Natasha Henry explains:

Very few Canadians are aware that at one time their nation’s economy was firmly linked to African slavery through the building and sale of slave ships, the sale and purchase of slaves to and from the Caribbean, and the exchange of timber, cod, and other food items from the Maritimes for West-Indian slave-produced goods.

A central component of the economy revolved around providing the resources that enabled slavery. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland generated great wealth selling cheap, high-protein food to keep millions of “enslaved people working 16 hours a day.” In Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Mark Kurlansky explains:

In the 17th century, the strategy for sugar production, a labor-intensive agro-industry, was to keep the manpower cost down through slavery. At harvest time, a sugar plantation was a factory with slaves working 16 hours or more a day — chopping cane by hand as close to the soil as possible, burning fields, hauling cane to a mill, crushing, boiling. To keep working under the tropical sun the slaves needed salt and protein. But plantation owners did not want to waste any valuable sugar planting space on growing food for the hundreds of thousands of Africans who were being brought to each small Caribbean island. The Caribbean produced almost no food. At first slaves were fed salted beef from England, but New England colonies [as well as Newfoundland and Nova Scotia] soon saw the opportunity for salt cod as cheap, salted nutrition.

In Capitalism and Slavery, post-independence Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Eric Williams highlights the role of cod in the Caribbean plantations:

The Newfoundland fishery depended to a considerable extent on the annual export of dried fish to the West Indies, the refuse or ‘poor John’ fish, ‘fit for no other consumption’.

High quality cod from today’s Atlantic Canada was sent to the Mediterranean while the reject fish was sold to Caribbean slave-owners.

From 1770-1773 Newfoundland and Nova Scotia sent 60,620 quintals (one quintal equals 100 pounds) and 6,280 barrels of cod to the West Indies, which comprised 40% of all imports. These numbers increased significantly after the American Revolution resulted in a ban on US trade to the British Caribbean colonies. In 1789 alone 58 vessels carried 61,862 quintals of fish from Newfoundland to the Caribbean Islands.

When it comes to our histories, we choose where and how to focus our lens. A bird’s eye view of the historical landscape quickly reveals that “Canada” did a great deal more to support African enslavement than undermine it.

Yves Engler is the author of A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Canada in Africa: 300 years of aid and exploitation.

March 30, 2017 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Why This Isn’t the Time for a Public Option or Medicare for Some

By Margaret Flowers – Health Over Profit – March 28, 2017

This has been a tumultuous week for healthcare reform. First there was the pleasantly quick defeat of the American Health Care Act in the House of Representatives Friday afternoon. Then, that evening, Senator Sanders spoke at a town hall in Vermont with Senator Pat Leahy and Representative Peter Welch where he announced that he would introduce a Medicare for All bill. Medicare for All and Bernie supporters lit up social media with their excitement over the announcement. This should have been great news, but it wasn’t exactly.

Over the weekend, more information was revealed in a series of interviews with Sen. Sanders. Sunday, he said on CNN that single payer legislation wouldn’t have the votes, so the first priority will be to improve the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with a public insurance, called a public option, and possibly lowering the age of Medicare eligibility to 55.

There are a number of reasons why this isn’t the time for tinkering with the ACA. We have a healthcare crisis now and the means to solve it. The ACA is fundamentally flawed and cannot be tweaked into a universal program. And Sanders’ proposals are exactly the same ones used in 2008-10 to divide and weaken the movement for National Improved Medicare for All. We can’t be fooled into going down that path again.

The Current Crisis and its Solution

Right now in the United States almost 30 million people have no health insurance. On top of that, tens of millions of people who have health insurance can’t afford health care. When people experience a serious accident or illness, they face a stark choice: seek care and risk financial ruin or go without it and risk disability or death. Hundreds of thousands of families go bankrupt each year due to medical illness and an estimated 29,000 people die each year due to lack of access to care.

Think about how the country galvanized when 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on 9/11 or when the 2,000th soldier was killed in Iraq, but that amount of death happens ten times a year or more in the US and we hardly hear a peep of outrage.

Health outcomes in the United States are not very good. A recent study found:

Notable among poor-performing countries is the USA, whose life expectancy at birth is already lower than most other high-income countries, and is projected to fall further behind such that its 2030 life expectancy at birth might be similar to the Czech Republic for men, and Croatia and Mexico for women. The USA has the highest child and maternal mortality, homicide rate, and body-mass index of any high-income country, and was the first of high-income countries to experience a halt or possibly reversal of increase in height in adulthood, which is associated with higher longevity. The USA is also the only country in the OECD without universal health coverage, and has the largest share of unmet health-care needs due to financial costs.

Yet, of all of the industrialized nations, the United States spends the most per person on health care, in some cases double the amount and those countries cover everyone. We are already paying for universal comprehensive health coverage, but we aren’t getting it because the bottom line of the system in the US is profits for a few rather than health for all.

The US has the most complex and heavily bureaucratic system in the world because it is a market-based system with a few public programs to try to fill in the gaps. A third of our healthcare dollar goes to administration for the hundreds of different insurance plans with their differing coverage, networks and rules. And we pay the highest prices, by far, for health services and pharmaceuticals because there is no rational system to set a fair price.

To begin to solve the healthcare crisis in the US, we need a system that is based on health and the money to pay for it. The proven solution is a universal not-for-profit, publicly-funded system that provides all medically-necessary care. House Resolution 676: “The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act,” which has 72 co-sponsors, is the model for that system. This would address the fundamental causes of the healthcare crisis.

The good news is that not only do we have the money to pay for this system, but there is also widespread support for it. For decades many independent polls have shown more than 60% support by the general public, plus more than 80% support by Democratic Party voters, rapidly growing support by Republicans who earn under $75,000 and majority support by health professionals.

Why a Public Option and Medicare for Some Plans will fail

Steve Bannon, President Trump’s chief strategist, had an interesting statement in the New York Magazine recently. He criticized the Republican’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) because it was “written by the insurance industry.” That same criticism can be made of the Democrat’s ACA, which was basically written by Liz Fowler, a former executive for WellPoint. She also oversaw the regulations’ process.

The ACA is fundamentally flawed because it treats health care as a commodity, not a public necessity. It has achieved the best that it can do, and similar to other attempts at the state level that don’t address the roots of the crisis, it is starting to deteriorate with stagnant coverage and rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

Attempts to improve the ACA with a public insurance or Medicare for some will bring coverage to a few more, but they will similarly fail over time because they will not change the system or control healthcare costs.

Sen. Sanders and others are pushing a public option. This would be a public insurance that people could choose instead of private insurance. It sounds good in theory but has not worked in practice because it draws the sickest patients and struggles to cover their care while keeping premiums and out-of-pocket costs affordable. Private insurers are experts at attracting the healthiest enrollees. In fact, I have argued that a public insurance is just what the private insurers want (though they are unlikely to admit it) because it serves as a relief valve to take sick people off their hands. That leaves private insurers to focus on the young, employed and wealthy, from which they can collect premiums and who won’t need much in the way of health care.

Sen. Sanders is also raising the possibility of lowering the age of Medicare to 55, just as Alan Grayson suggested in 2010. This is another gift to the insurance industry because it takes a group that is more likely to have health problems off of their books. It will place more of a burden on the Medicare system without bringing the cost savings needed to cover health needs. I call this Medicare for some to contrast it with Medicare for all.

The basic reasons that Medicare for all works are because the administrative simplicity of one universal plan provides over $500 billion a year in administrative savings and its ability to negotiate fair drug prices means over $100 billion per year in savings on pharmaceuticals. The savings offset the cost of paying for care and getting rid of out-of-pocket costs that currently keep people from seeking necessary care.

Rather than wasting time and effort on a public option or Medicare for some, which will still leave people out and maintain the high costs of health care, we need to mobilize to win national improved Medicare for all. Like other industrialized nations, we need to create a universal high quality health system. It doesn’t make sense to leave anybody out when we have the resources to achieve it and public support for it. The only thing lacking is support from members of Congress. But as we witnessed last week with the defeat of the AHCA, changing the minds of members of Congress is within the power of the public.

The public option and Medicare for some are being used to divide and distract supporters of Medicare for all in order to weaken them and make them believe they are asking for too much, just as happened during the health reform efforts in 2008-10. We can’t be taken off track again.

What is the real purpose of a public option or lowering the age of Medicare when neither is an effective nor a lasting solution? It is only because the Democrats are unwilling to take on the powerful health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. The problem is that we can’t solve the healthcare crisis until we do.

Margaret Flowers is co-director of It’s Our Economy, co-host of Clearing the FOG Radio and an organizer of the occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC. She is also with the Health Care is a Human Right campaign in Maryland.

March 29, 2017 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

‘Any Data They Can Intercept’: US Congress Will Let Companies Sell Browsing Data

Sputnik – 29.03.2017

Following in the Senate’s footsteps, the US House of Representatives has approved a piece of legislation that would allow massive telephone and cable companies to sell the data generated by internet users’ browsing habits.

On March 28, the US House narrowly passed a bill that analysts say is a huge win for the bloated telecommunications industry, and a commensurately large invasion on citizens’ privacy – or lack thereof. The resolution cleared its way through the lower chamber of the legislature by a 215-205 vote.

If US President Donald Trump signs the resolution into law, companies will legally be able to create profiles about every internet user, then sell those profiles to the highest bidder, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a statement.

“Considering how much access [internet service providers, or ISPs] already have to highly sensitive data, it is absolutely unacceptable for them to monetize personal information,” Representative Mike Pocan of Wisconsin said Tuesday.

The ability for service providers to collect “essentially any data they can intercept and read for themselves” was supposed to be an opt-in only policy, giving consumers a choice whether to disclose their data, but instead telecommunications companies will have the ability to generate revenue off of the public’s browsing habits, said Matt Erickson on Radio Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary with Eugene Puryear. Erickson is a director with the Digital Privacy Alliance.

​”Google and Facebook collect large amounts of information in ways that should be very concerning to people,” Puryear said.

The news comes as a major setback for privacy advocates and a major victory for Comcast, TimeWarner, AT&T and Verizon, which “will have free rein to hijack your searches, sell your data, and hammer you with unwanted advertisements,” the EFF said.

What’s more, at a time when nearly every major financial institution, electrical utilities company, defense and aerospace firm, and governmental agency is seeking to bolster its cyber defense systems, there are a host of reasons to think that these new rules would be detrimental to the US’ collective cybersecurity.

By recording your traffic and building a profile about you, for instance, hackers gain a new target database to breach.

March 29, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘We had him booted out’: Palestinian won’t get top UN post, US envoy Haley tells AIPAC

RT | March 28, 2017

The US won’t allow a Palestinian to secure “one of the highest positions” at the UN, US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said, explaining why the US had blocked a former Palestinian prime minister’s appointment to lead the UN’s Libya mission.

“So when they decided to try and put a Palestinian [former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad] in one of the highest positions that had ever been given at the UN, we said no and we had him booted out,” Haley said at the annual Policy Conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Monday.

“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a nice man,” she continued, adding “that doesn’t mean he wasn’t good to America.”

Haley added that, until Palestine “comes to the table, until the UN responds the way they’re supposed to, there are no freebies for the Palestinian Authority anymore.”

Haley added that when the UN passed a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlement building on occupied Palestinian land, “the entire country felt a kick in the gut.”

“Never do we not have the backs of our friends. We don’t have a greater friend than Israel. And to see that happen was not only embarrassing, it was hurtful,” she said.

Haley also criticized a UN report released in March, in which author Richard Falk, a Princeton professor emeritus, describes Israel as an “apartheid state.”

“And a ridiculous report, the Falk Report, came out. I don’t know who the guy is or what he’s about, but he’s got serious problems. Goes and compares Israel to an apartheid state. So the first thing we do is we call the secretary general and say, this is absolutely ridiculous,” she said.

According to the US ambassador to the UN, the days of “Israel-bashing” are over.

“I wear heels. It’s not for a fashion statement,” she said, explaining “it’s because if I see something wrong, we’re going to kick them every single time. So how are we kicking? We’re kicking by… putting everybody on notice, saying that if you have our back – we’re going to have the backs of our friends, but our friends need to have our back too.”

The US blocked Fayyad’s appointment to lead the UN’s political mission in Libya in February, accusing the United Nations of being “unfairly biased” towards the Palestinian Authority.

Fayyad served as a Palestinian prime minister between 2007 and 2013.

Haley also noted that the Trump administration “was disappointed” by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ intention to appoint Fayyad as the UN’s next special representative to Libya, which was announced in a letter to the Security Council.

“For too long, the UN has been unfairly biased in favor of the Palestinian Authority to the detriment of our allies in Israel,” Haley said.

Her statement was praised by Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, who stated that “this is the beginning of a new era at the UN, an era where the US stands firmly behind Israel against any and all attempts to harm the Jewish State.”

Palestine is a non-member observer state at the United Nations, and its independence has been recognized by 137 of the 193 UN member nations so far. Back in February, Haley noted that US doesn’t recognize a Palestinian state “or support the signal” that Fayyad’s appointment would have sent within the United Nations.

In 2011, UNESCO voted to admit Palestine as a full member, noting that the decision had been made as “a mark of respect and confidence.”

READ MORE: US backs Israel by blocking ex-Palestinian PM’s appointment to lead UN mission in Libya

March 28, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Arms Race Fears Roused in Sweden by Saab’s Indiscriminate Campaigning

Sputnik – 27.03.2017

As the Swedish manufacturer Saab experiences growing problems trying to market its Gripen fighter jet, the company is forced to try and woo previously unbeknown markets. This, however, has attracted criticism from peace researchers, who claim the move contradicts Sweden’s long-lasting foreign policy goals.

A group of peace researchers from Uppsala University condemned Saab’s campaigning in Botswana, saying the move was in direct conflict with Sweden’s foreign policy goals. These are peace, human rights and poverty reduction, according to an opinion piece published by the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet.

In 2016, a high-ranking Swedish delegation, led by Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist, toured Botswana. The subsequent scandal involving ballooning costs diverted Swedes’ attention from more pressing issues, such as Sweden’s plans to market JAS 39 Gripen fighter jets to the African nation. According to peace researchers Johan Brosché, Kristine Höglund and Sebastian van Baalen, the deal is highly controversial, especially given the bribery scandals that followed a similar deal with South Africa.

Firstly, in Botswana, which has long been touted as an African success story in terms of equality, human rights and economic development, democracy has gradually eroded. The country’s government is hardly an eligible partner for Sweden, which is trying to emerge as a champion of human rights on the international arena. Botswana, according to Uppsala University researchers, is clearly heading in an authoritarian direction, with growing surveillance, reduced opportunities for freedom of expression and reprisals against anti-government views.

Secondly, a Saab deal would contradict Sweden’s goal of combating poverty, as Botswana is facing major economic problems. Over a fifth of its population of two million live in absolute poverty and subsist on less than two dollars a day, despite the country’s large diamond resources. The billions to be invested in fighter jets would undermine efforts to curb unemployment, and fight drought and corruption.

Third, the idea of Botswana acquiring a fleet of advanced fighter aircraft may trigger a regional arms race, with Namibia and other neighboring countries to follow suit, with detrimental consequences for everyone but the arms dealers. At present, Botswana is not faced with any direct external threat and it is unclear why huge sums must be invested in the acquisition of advanced fighter jets. Whereas the need to protect the country’s tourism industry, combat poaching and monitor the flow of refugees previously were indicated as reasons, none of these problems can be solved with advanced fighter jets.

The Swedish researchers concluded that the arms deal with Botswana would worsen the economic and democratic development in the country, undermine regional security and mar Sweden’s reputation in Southern Africa.

The Saab JAS 39 Gripen is a light single-engine multi-role fighter aircraft in the same class as Airbus’ Eurofighter Typhoon, the Rafale by Dassault and Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter.

Despite Saab’s ambitious hopes for the Gripen to “dominate the market,” the company’s bids were consequently rejected by Norway, Poland, Denmark and the Netherlands. The Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon are also regarded as favorites in Malaysia, where the government will decide on an aircraft fleet upgrade.

So far, Sweden remains the largest consumer of the Gripen, with an order of 60 new-generation Gripens placed by the Defense Ministry. Saab’s agreement with Brazil on 36 planes worth 40 billion SEK ($4.5bln) remains the company’s largest overseas success. Other Gripen consumers include South Africa and Thailand, while the Czech Republic continues to rent Gripens from Sweden.

March 27, 2017 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel bans annual Nakba march

Ma’an – March 25, 2017

BETHLEHEM – Israeli police have refused to grant a permit for the annual March of Return this year organized by Palestinians to commemorate the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” alongside Israeli independence day, Israeli media reported on Thursday.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israeli police claimed that the event was refused due to their inability to provide police presence necessary for a march expected to be attended by 25,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel and their supporters, saying that “it’s unfortunate that the organizers decided to conduct the march exactly on the day of Independence Day, when there are hundreds of approved events throughout the country.”

The march, which has been held for 18 consecutive years, is aimed at highlighting the internationally-recognized right of Palestinians who remain refugees or internally displaced to return to their homes and villages in Israel, a right which is upheld in United Nations Resolution 194.

Each year, the march is launched from a site of a Palestinian village destroyed by Israeli forces in 1948.

Muhammad Bassam, an attorney from the Israeli rights group Adalah, reportedly said that if the permit for the march was not granted by Israeli police, the group would appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court. “The police decision is very strange and raises concerns that the refusal to approve the event is politically motivated,” he said.

Others pointed out to Haaretz that the organizers had already discussed the march with local police in the Israeli coastal city of Nahariya in order to launch the march from the destroyed Palestinian village of al-Kabri.

The Nahariya police had toured the planned route of the march two weeks prior, Haaretz reported, with the police already setting the police requirements for the march, leading some to suspect that the permit rejection was politically motivated.

The March of Return is usually held on Israel’s independence day to commemorate the Nakba, referring to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and villages during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that established the state of Israel.

The official commemoration of the Nakba is held on May 15 and is observed by millions of Palestinians and rights activists around the world.

Some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their lands in 1948 and were scattered across refugee camps in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Today, there are over five million Palestinian refugees who remain displaced from their original homes and villages following the mass expulsion that occurred almost 70 years ago.

March 25, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian former prisoner Mazen Fuquha assassinated in Gaza

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – March 25, 2017

Former Palestinian prisoner, released in the 2011 Wafa al-Ahrar prsoner exchange, Mazen Fuquha, was assassinated with four shots to the head with a silenced gun yesterday evening, 24 March, outside his home in Tal al-Hawa, south of Gaza City in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. Fuquha, 38, is from Tubas in the West Bank, and was forcibly displaced to Gaza after the prisoner exchange.

Fuquha was well-known as a leader in Hamas, and was sentenced to nine life sentences before his release, accused of participation in the armed Palestinian resistance. His father spoke with Asra Voice radio station, and said that the Israeli occupation army had broken into the family home in Tubas on multiple occasions and threatened his son, demanding the father tell his son to stop his activity.

Palestinian political parties and resistance factions condemned the killing of Fuquha and placed responsibility for the crime with the Israeli occupation forces. Internal security police in Gaza are investigating the killing and seeking evidence as to how the assassination was carried out.

Khalil al-Hayya of Hamas said that “the only beneficiary of this assassination is the occupation; the martyr Fuquha had no quarrels with anyone.”  The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine denounced the killing as a “cowardly crime” of the occupation that attempts to target Palestinian resistance, emphasizing the importance of protecting Palestinian fighters.  The Islamic Jihad movement said in a statement that the assassination is a “treacherous crime on the agenda of the occupation and carrying the fingerprints of its terror.”

Fuquha grew up in Tubas before attending An-Najah National University in Nablus, where he became involved with the Islamic Bloc and later the Hamas movement. He was arrested three times by Palestinian Authority security and by the Israeli occupation army on 5 August 2002 after a siege that lasted six hours. He was accused of organizing Palestinian armed actions and was sentenced to nine life sentences, and was one of the high-profile prisoners released in the Wafa al-Ahrar exchange. Nearly 60 prisoners released in the exchange, including the longest-serving prisoner Nael Barghouthi, have been targeted for re-arrest and the reimposition of their former sentences by Israeli occupation forces.

March 25, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Accused ETA Militant Extradited to Spain Despite Torture Claims

Former Basque politician Nekane Txapartegi, Sept. 2016

Former Basque politician Nekane Txapartegi, Sept. 2016 | Photo: Berria
teleSUR | March 23, 2017

Swiss officials announced on Thursday they would extradite a former Basque politician and purported ETA activist to Spain after denying her request for asylum given allegations she was brutally tortured while in a Spanish prison.

Nekane Txapartegi had fled to Switzerland after a 2007 conviction for supporting the Basque separatist group ETA’s activities, later claiming asylum on the basis that she had been suffocated with a plastic bag, raped, beaten and subjected to electroshock treatment while in a Spanish prison after a 1999 arrest.

At the time of her arrest, Txapartegi was an elected city councilor in Asteasu in the Basque region of northern Spain and was later elected mayor while still in prison awaiting trial.

After several years underground in Switzerland, Txapartegi was arrested in Zurich, Switzerland in April 2016 on an international warrant and has been in detention awaiting the judgment in her asylum request case.

The World Organization Against Torture had intervened in Txapartegi’s case noting that her confession of supporting illegal ETA activities had been extracted via torture, allegations supported by a prison doctor who examined Txapartegi after her detention and found injuries consistent with torture.

In 2010 a Spanish court found four police officers guilty of torturing suspected ETA militants, sentencing them to prison and ordering them to pay compensation to their victims.

The ETA was founded in 1959 in response to Spanish dictator Francisco Franco’s brutal repression of Basque culture and independent politics.

For over 40 years the ETA carried out clandestine attacks on police and military officials as well as Francoist politicians, sometimes killing civilians in the process.

The ETA was eventually labeled a terrorist organization by both the Spanish and U.S. governments for its fight to achieve Basque independence.

In 2011, the ETA declared a permanent ceasefire.

March 24, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Two UK universities cancel speeches by author of UN anti-Israel report

Press TV – March 24, 2017

Two British universities have cancelled lectures by international law professor Richard Falk after he co-authored a UN report which concludes that Israel is an “apartheid” regime.

Falk said Middlesex University called off his speech, citing “health and safety” concerns, while University of East London cancelled his lecture, claiming that the approval for the speech had not followed proper procedures.

“As far as I can tell, there is a growing kind of feeling that the educational establishment in Britain, specifically in England, has been kind of intimidated in dealing with those who are seen as critics of Israel,” Falk told the Middle East Eye news portal.

Falk denounced the cancellations as the “intensification” of a trend of restricting academic freedom on university campuses, warning that depriving students of delving into controversial issues restricts their experience for becoming engaged citizens.

Falk said he has experienced similar assaults on his character after serving as UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights from 2008 to 2014.

Since the UN report was published, the Princeton University professor has faced attacks and accusations of bias and anti-Semitism.

He dismissed such criticism as being far from reality and said that Zionist NGOs are trying to “shoot the messenger, rather than address the issues raised in the message.”

“It has been used against a variety of other people – playing the anti-Semitic card rather than dealing with the substance of Palestinian grievances or Israeli violations of international law,” Falk said.

The prominent law professor noted that supporters of Israel will be on weak grounds to discuss the realities in the occupied Palestinian territories, as Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians has fallen below the level of acceptable moral behavior and international legal standards.

Falk’s co-authored report, which was reviewed by three “internationally renowned” jurists before it was published, was withdrawn from the UN website after prompting international uproar.

It documents “apartheid” patterns of discrimination that fragment Palestinian society through “distinct laws, policies and practices.”

“It appears to be an instance where the new UN Secretary-General [Antonio Guterres] gave way to pressure coming particularly from Washington, but also from Israel,” Falk said.

Last week, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary for UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) Rima Khalaf resigned in protest after Guterres ordered the study to be removed from the UN website.

Falk said the controversy over the report gave it an international visibility that it may not have enjoyed had it been just “one more UN report.”

March 24, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Court Rules in Favor of Police Who Pounded on Wrong Door, Didn’t Identify Themselves, Then Killed Innocent Man for Holding a Gun

By John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | March 23, 2017

ATLANTA, Ga. — According to a federal appeals court, police will not be held accountable for banging on the wrong door at 1:30 am, failing to identify themselves as police, and then repeatedly shooting and killing the innocent homeowner who answered the door while holding a gun in self-defense. Although 26-year-old Andrew Scott had committed no crime and never fired a single bullet or lifted his firearm against police, he was gunned down by police who were investigating a speeding incident by engaging in a middle-of-the-night “knock and talk” in Scott’s apartment complex.

In ruling in favor of qualified immunity for police, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has given law enforcement agencies further incentives to engage in aggressive “knock and talk” practices, which have become thinly veiled, warrantless exercises by which citizens are coerced and intimidated into “talking” with heavily armed police who “knock” on their doors in the middle of the night.

“Government officials insist that there is nothing unlawful, unreasonable or threatening about the prospect of armed police dressed in SWAT gear knocking on doors in the middle of night and ‘asking’ homeowners to engage in warrantless ‘knock-and-talk’ sessions,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “However, as Andrew Scott learned, there’s always a price to pay for saying no to such heavy-handed requests by police. If the courts continue to sanction such aggressive, excessive, coercive ‘knock-and-shoot’ tactics, it will give police further incentive to terrorize and kill American citizens without fear of repercussion.”

On July 15, 2012, Deputy Richard Sylvester spotted a speeding motorcycle while on patrol in Lake County, Florida. Sylvester pursued the motorcycle in his patrol car but lost sight of it. Subsequent reports caused Sylvester to believe that the motorcyclist might be armed, was wanted by another police department, and had been spotted at a nearby apartment complex. Arriving at the complex around 1:30 a.m., Sylvester and three other deputies began knocking on doors close to where a motorcycle was parked, starting with Apartment 114, where a light was on inside. Apartment 114 was occupied by Andrew Scott and Amy Young, who were playing video games and had no connection to the motorcycle or any illegal activity.

Assuming tactical positions surrounding the door to Apartment 114, the deputies had their guns drawn and ready to shoot. Sylvester, without announcing he was a police officer, then banged loudly and repeatedly on the door, causing a neighbor to open his door. When questioned by a deputy, the neighbor explained that the motorcycle’s owner did not live in Apartment 114. This information was not relayed to Sylvester. Unnerved by the banging at such a late hour, Andrew Scott retrieved his handgun before opening the door. When Scott saw a shadowy figure holding a gun outside his door, he retreated into his apartment only to have Sylvester immediately open fire. Sylvester fired six shots, three of which hit and killed Scott. A trial court subsequently ruled in favor of the police, ruling that Scott was to blame for choosing to retrieve a handgun before opening the door.

On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Sylvester was protected by “qualified immunity,” reasoning that the use of excessive force did not violate “clearly established law.” Four judges dissented with the majority’s ruling, likening the “knock and talk” to a “knock and shoot” and rejecting the idea that Scott caused the shooting by exercising his Second Amendment right through his possession of a firearm.

March 23, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces raid Tulkarem print shops, confiscate equipment

Ma’an – March 23, 2017

TULKAREM – Israeli forces raided and sacked two Palestinian print shops in the northern occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem at dawn on Thursday and confiscated equipment.
Ali Abu Saleh, the owner of the two print shops, told Ma’an that large numbers of Israeli troops raided his home in the Shweika neighborhood and demanded that he let them access his stores.

Abu Saleh said that Israeli soldiers searched his shop in the Shweika area, where they confiscated equipment, printed materials, and destroyed security camera footage.

Israeli forces also raided Abu Saleh’s other print shop in central Tulkarem, breaking the front door and also confiscating equipment and materials.

An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that Israeli forces had raided the shops because they printed “inciting material.”

However, Abu Saleh rejected the army’s claims, calling them baseless, adding that 20 people were out of work following the raids.

Israeli forces had also aided another Tulkarem print shop earlier this month.

Israeli forces have previously targeted printing shops where posters commemorating Palestinians killed by Israeli forces were manufactured.

Since the beginning of the year, one Palestinian from Tulkarem was killed and another from the city succumbed to fatal injuries, after being shot by Israeli forces for allegedly attempting to commit attacks.

In the past year, Israel has targeted Palestinian media institutions and civilians, including activists and journalists, alleging that a wave of unrest that swept the occupied Palestinian territory in October 2015 was encouraged largely by “incitement.”..

March 23, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »