Government Version of Student Massacre Discredited Again
teleSUR – July 16, 2016
An inquiry published Saturday has revealed that there is virtually no physical evidence to support the Mexican government´s version of the 2014 disappearance of 43 students traveling by bus to Mexico City. Government officials insist that a drug gang kidnapped the students at gunpint, killed them and burned the bodies at a dumpsite near the southwesten town of Iguala, but the report, based on forensic records requested by the Associated Press, revealed no signs of a fire on the night in question.
But the notes of a forensic examination of the Cocula dumpsite in Guerrero state in western Mexico shows that investigators could not confirm a fire on the night that the students vanished on September 26, 2014. The AP obtained the documents under a freedom of information request permissible under Mexican law.
The AP inquiry is the latest in a series of independent investigations that undermines the Mexican government´s version of events. Police say that five suspects have confessed to the crimes but an international panel of experts earlier this year concluded that the confessions were obtained by torture.
Earlier this year the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) found animal and human remains at the dumpsite but said none of the remains corresponded to the government´s allegation that the bodies were incinerated by members of the Guerreros Unidos cartel. The Attorney General’s Office in April presented evidence of a huge fire and the discovery of the remains of at least 17 adults but the bone fragments were too badly burned to identify, the Argentine team said.
The government´s handling of the case has triggered massive protests that include parents and friends of the students, trade unons and grassroots organizations who believe that law-enforcement authorities are complicit in the slayings of the 43 students, who had effectively stolen a bus, ironically enough, to attend the commemoration of a 1968 police massacre of students.
The case has marred the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office promising to reduce violence, curb corruption, and human rights abuses in the country.
Mainstream Media’s Main Source on Syrian Conflict Is a T-Shirt Shop – No, Seriously
By Darius Shahtahmasebi | ANTIMEDIA | July 14, 2016
Western media regularly quotes the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) on statistics regarding the current Syrian conflict. Take, for example, this recent article from the Guardian, which reported the “UK-based monitor says dozens have died after [an] attack near [the] border with Turkey.” Referring to the SOHR as a “monitor” or “monitoring group” is a common practice corporate media employs to lend the organization legitimacy.
So who—or what—is the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights?
The truth is stranger than fiction.
At the time of this article’s publication, the official SOHR website has been down for several days. However, an archived version last captured on July 5, 2016, reveals details about the organization. Founded in May 2006, the SOHR is a group of people—not associated with or linked to any political body—that documents the Human Rights situation in Syria. They assert their goals and aspirations are democracy, freedom, justice and equality. The founder and director of SOHR is Rami Abdulrahman, a Sunni Muslim who fled to the United Kingdom after being arrested numerous times in Syria. He never returned.
In December 2011, Reuters provided some insight into how this so-called Observatory, “arguably Syria’s most high-profile human rights group,” operates:
‘Are there clashes? How did he die? Ah, he was shot,’ said Rami Abdulrahman into a phone, the talk of gunfire and death incongruous with his two bedroom terraced home in Coventry, from where he runs the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Reuters further stated:
“[W]hen he isn’t fielding calls from international media, Abdulrahman is a few minutes down the road at his clothes shop, which he runs with his wife.”
According to the New York Times, Abdulrahman relies on four men from inside Syria to help collate and report data from more than 230 activists on the ground. The Times admitted the SOHR is, essentially, “a one-man band” operating out of a “semi-detached red brick house on an ordinary residential street” using the “simplest, cheapest Internet technology available.”
He relies on money from his clothes business, as well as small subsidies from the European Union and one European country he refuses to identify.
According to an interview with RT published last year—in which the SOHR director proved to be very elusive before he was eventually tracked down by the reporter—Abdulrahman acknowledged he personally has not been back to Syria in over 15 years, adding:
But I know some of the Observatory activists through common friends. This organization only takes new members following a six-month trial period and the candidate has to be familiar to someone from the organization or to a reliable outside contact.
To date, his informants remain anonymous, and he is the only individual listed as working for SOHR. Abdulrahman has no journalistic or legal qualifications, is not based in Syria, and relies on phone calls–yet the corporate media quotes his reports without question. This is particularly damning for Russia, as prominent outlets like the International Business Times have released articles treating the SOHR as an authority:
SOHR, which collects information from several ground sources in Syria, in a statement on its website, accused the regime and Russian air forces of bombing areas without distinguishing between the civilian and militant targets.
The ridiculousness of this reporting has been, in turn, chastised by Russia. As stated by the Russian Foreign Ministry through its spokesperson, Maria Zakharova:
“This information appears with reference to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based in London. As we all understand, it is very ‘convenient’ to cover and observe what is happening in Syria without leaving London and without the ability to collect information in the field.”
Sounds reliable.
However, it could be the case that Abdulrahman scrutinizes every piece of information from his sources to the best of his ability. It could be the case that his sources are the most reliable sources inside Syria and are not trying to push a particular agenda. However, statements like, “I came to Britain the day Hafez al-Assad died, and I’ll return when Bashar al-Assad goes” seem to suggest the “Observatory” may not always be a neutral source.
But how would we know, anyway? How does the corporate media know to trust these reports?
They don’t, yet they quote this so-called Observatory on a regular basis, peddling a pro-war agenda in the process. The media treats its coverage of Syria like war is a game—as if innocent lives won’t be lost and the repercussions of a war with Syria are not massive.
When did the corporate media become so lazy? The fact that Western media resorts to quoting a t-shirt shop stationed thousands of miles from the Syrian conflict reveals something about the availability of actual evidence, especially when such reports purport to document the atrocities the Syrian and Russian regimes are committing inside Syria. This is not to say Russian and Syrian forces have not caused widespread damage and inflicted suffering on many Syrians. But surely, if the credible evidence existed to support those peddling anti-Assad propaganda, news outlets would likely not use a t-shirt shop in England as a regular source.
That being said, my girlfriend’s family has a barbecue business at the front of their house; perhaps I can start documenting human rights abuses in the Middle East for the establishment media, as well.
French PM Manuel Vas: ‘We Must Learn to Live with the Terror, Like Israel’
21st Century Wire | July 15, 2016
In the aftermath of last night’s bizarre ‘terrorist’ attack in Nice, France, one of the most poplar talking points which appears throughout much of the western media coverage is this idea that terrorism is now a ‘normal part of our everyday lives’ and that a permanent state of military alert at home is something the public needs to get used to.
One of the central voices of this police state talking is French Prime Minister and avid Israeli advocate Manuel Valls. Earlier today Valls stated that, “France has to learn to live with terrorism.”
In this way, the security state is attempting to integrate terrorism as a day-to-day 24/7, 365 day per week agenda issue – which is said to require a hyper-militarized security state, just like Israel (notice how Israel is invoked by neoconservatives and western Zionist supports ad nauseam in the security conversation), to deal with ‘the threat.’
This seems to be the cornerstone of Valls’ political relevance, which he has basically repeated over and over, for the better part of the last two years despite the fact that both the Charlie Hebdo and Paris Bataclan events exhibited very clear signs of GLADIO-style domestic terror stage play.
Back in February, at the Munich Security Conference he stated the exact same thing:
“We have entered – we all feel it – a new era characterised by the lasting presence of ‘hyper-terrorism.’
“We must be fully conscious of the threat, and react with a very great force and great lucidity. There will be attacks. Large-scale attacks. It’s a certainty. This hyper-terrorism is here to stay.”
TERROR SUMMIT: Admitted Zionist Manuel Valls pictured together with Israel’s fundamentalist Zionist leader Benjamin Netanyahu
In January 2016, while addressing an Israeli lobby delegation, Valls read off a list of ‘ISIS’ terrorist attacks along with other ‘terrorist’ incidents in Israel, claiming that this was proof that, “we are in a world war”, while not ever uttering a word about Israel’s brutal, militarized occupation and their systematic ethnic cleansing regime waged against the native Palestinian residents since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
Israeli CRIF spokesman Roger Cukierman applauded Valls’s single-sided adherence to the Israeli lobby, by saying, “On a number of occasions, you said very powerful things: That anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, that France without its Jews is no longer France,” Cukierman said. “This makes you a dear politician.”
Is this a case of the state and its transnational security conglomerates manipulating the public into unquestioningly accepting an indefinite siege mentality and a permanent, full-blown police state?
It appears once again, that we are witnessing an attempt to transform large parts of western society – through a further realignment of public and state political and economic priorities into what is commonly referred to as “security theatre,” which, in reality, has nothing to do with actual security, and everything to do with domestic political and geopolitical theatre.
Right to play? Palestinian children in occupied al-Khalil
International Solidarity Movement | June 29, 2016
Hebron, Occupied Palestine – In occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), possibilities for Palestinian children to play are scarce. With the help of the Playgrounds for Palestine project, a brand-new playground was installed at Qurtuba school in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of al-Khalil.
Right to play – can you imagine that as a child, when playing, you’d need to be scared of being attacked, your parents worried whenever you’re out playing, and playing with your friends and enjoying something that is denied to you by a foreign occupying army?
The Tel Rumeida neighborhood is in the H2 area of al-Khalil, under full Israeli military control. After more than six months of collective punishment by the means of a ‘closed military zone’, deliberately designed to affect only the Palestinian population, this measure was officially lifted on 14th May 2016. Despite the lifting of some of the measures intended to forcibly displace the Palestinian population – and thus only a slightly disguised attempt at forced displacement, many of the restrictions applying on Palestinians have remained in place.
A staircase leading to Qurtuba school at the end of the tiny strip of Shuhada Street where Palestinian pedestrians are still allowed to be, is still under a complete closure – for Palestinians, whereas settlers, Israeli forces and anyone resembling a tourist is allowed to pass freely. This apartheid measure severs all the families accessing their homes through these stairs, as well as visitors to the Muslim cemetery and a weekly second-hand market of their main access, forcing them to take long detours. The many restrictions have also forced the project to carry large amounts of the materials through the neighborhood, as Palestinian cars are not allowed in the area. On one day, the workers were prevented from continuing their work on the playground and forced to leave by Israeli forces.
Palestinians carrying materials to the playground
For the children growing up in this area, childhood is short. Child-arrests, even of children less than 12 years and thus illegal even under Israeli military law that is universally applied on the Palestinian population in the Israeli occupied West Bank, are not uncommon, as are humiliations and intimidations by the Israeli forces and settlers under the full protection of the Israeli forces.
The right to play, for Palestinian children, is only a theoretical concept, that often lacks any practical meaning, when growing up next to illegal settlements under a foreign military occupation. Playing on the streets of their neighborhood for most children is dangerous, as settlers do not even restrain from attacking children. In a nearby Palestinian kindergarten, Israeli settlers overnight stole a large roll of artificial grass intended to be part of the play-area for the children attending the kindergarten. With no institution to address this, the artificial grass is merely lost and missing in the play-area.
The installation of the playground at Qurtuba school, thus, is a sign of hope for the Palestinian children. An opportunity for the children to be exactly that: children. To play with their friends and enjoy their childhood, have fun and laugh.
Israeli forces kill 1 Palestinian youth, injure 1, and detain 1 other
Fares Khader al-Rishq
Ma’an – July 13, 2016
RAMALLAH – A Palestinian youth was killed and another injured by Israeli forces while a third was detained early on Wednesday, as soldiers opened fire at the youths’ vehicle in the town of al-Ram in the occupied West Bank’s Jerusalem district.
The youth who was killed was identified as Anwar al-Salaymeh, 22, and the two survivors were identified as Fares Khader al-Rishq, 20, who remains critically injured, and Muhammad Nassar, 20, who was detained by Israeli forces after the incident.
Locals told Ma’an that Israeli forces opened fire at three Palestinians youths, all residents of al-Ram, in a vehicle inside the town around dawn, as the three were seemingly unaware that Israeli forces were deployed in the town and conducting raids.
An Israeli army spokesperson said that the presence of Israeli authorities in the town was due to the fact that Israeli forces, border guards and police reportedly found a blacksmith workshop in al-Ram that manufactured weapons.
Witnesses confirmed that Israeli forces and military vehicles raided al-Ram, closed the main street and raided a blacksmith workshop in the area.
The Israeli spokesperson added that during the military raid, border guards allegedly “saw a speeding vehicle heading towards them” and opened fire, killing one of the passengers and injuring another while a third was detained and transferred for interrogation.
According to locals, al-Rishq’s vehicle arrived near the area where the raid was taking place, and Israeli soldiers opened fire at the car from a close distance, injuring al-Rishq and al-Salaymeh, who later died.
Witnesses said that Israeli forces prevented Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances from reaching the injured.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that an unidentified teen from al-Ram succumbed to his wounds after being critically injured by Israeli live fire aimed at the car, while another was injured during the same incident.
Locals added that clashes erupted between youths and Israeli forces, while soldiers opened live fire, rubber-coated steel bullets, stun grenades and tear-gas bombs.
An unidentified youth was also reportedly detained during clashes.
Lieberman Appoints IDF Chief Rabbi Who Endorses Rape to Improve Troop Morale
By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | July 11, 2016
Yediot Achronot: “New Army Chief Rabbi: Rape in Wartime is Permitted”
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s new defense minister, has announced a series of military promotions. The most glaring one is the religious figure elevated to be the army’s new chief rabbi. He is Eyal Krim. His main claim to infamy is that in a religious publication (Hebrew), he was asked if the Book of Deuteronomy permits an Israelite to rape women of an enemy tribe, how does this correspond to modern military policy.
He told readers that it would be permissible for Jewish soldiers to rape attractive Arab women (Krim’s statement is translated into English here) among the enemy because it would improve military morale and redound to the greater good of the nation in pursuing its military objectives:
It is permitted to break the bounds of modesty [a series of halachic injunctions governing prohibited sexual relations] and training. So it’s permissible to eat treif and to satisfy evil [sexual] urges through having sexual relations with attractive non-Jewish women against their will, out of consideration for the hardships of war and for the good of the whole [army’s objectives].
In comparing treif to rape, it seems the holy rabbi struck a nice balance between consuming treif and “consuming” women (sarcasm intended).
IDF chief rabbi Krim, advocate of rape as tool of war (Nir Arieli)
The key to Krim’s reasoning is that most nations fight wars of choice whereas Israel’s wars are always wars of “obligation.” In other words, wars in which the entire life of the Jewish people is at stake (his thinking, not mine). Because the survival of the whole is paramount, then traditional religious commands concerning sexual relations may be abrogated to encourage the troops to fight their best. It goes without saying that the holy rabbi has no consideration for the woman involved as she is not Jewish and hence of no value or significance except as an object to satisfy the Jewish soldier’s “evil urge.”
Krim denounced the enlistment of “girls” (his word, not mine) in the IDF and said it was “absolutely forbidden,” because the harm done to the modesty of the woman and to the nation (as a result of women fighting) is the deciding factor.
Haaretz also reports that Krim told his Orthodox audience that wounded Palestinian attackers were not human, but rather animals who should be summarily executed. This is a criminal act for which Elor Azarya is now being prosecuted.
He also said homosexuals should be treated mercifully as if they were “sick or deformed.” Jews should hope that gays can redeem themselves from their unnatural behavior and return to a natural approach to sexuaity, meaning a relationship between man and woman. Homosexuality, he found, “destroyed” the natural order. Man, he believed, had free choice to behave according to nature and should choose to do so.
The ruling that women could not testify in court was intended to protect them, since their “sentimental” nature would not permit them to withstand the rigorous nature of cross examination.
When asked his views about the “Jewish jobs” movement which attempts to force businesses to employ Jews only, he responded that it was not racist since it’s intent was to help Jews.
If a Jew found a copy of the New Testament he should burn it. treating it with “extreme brutality.” Doing so was right and just since Christian doctrine was considered “idolatry” and harmed the world.
He was asked whether Druze or Bedouin should serve in the IDF. He replied that those who serve loyally were permissible, but that the lives of Jewish soldiers always “came first.”
The IDF Responds
When Haaretz asked the IDF public affairs office whether these statements represented the policies and values of the army, it refused to respond.
It’s worth nothing that when Yossi Gurvitz wrote his 972 post on the rabbi’s earlier statements and sought a response from the IDF public affairs unit, the response was that Krim made these statements when he was not in military service. Therefore they do not reflect on the army at all. Given the response below, that strategy seems to have changed. Now, they simply claim he didn’t mean what he said.
The official army response was that the rabbi’s statements were “taken out of context.” Krim doesn’t support the rape of women on the field of battle and affirms that the Torah does not sanction such an act. Anyone who says otherwise is mistaken. But there is the wee small problem of what he actually wrote on the printed page and what an army spokesperson now says second-hand in his name. Who’re you gonna believe? the IDF or your lyin’ eyes?
The IDF’s typical posture above is simply to lie and claim, against the evidence, that Krim doesn’t believe what he actually said. It’s been able to get away with such cynical obtuseness for decades and seems to be prepared to continue in this fashion indefinitely.
The army also notes in Krim’s favor that he’s ruled that male soldiers do not have to abandon military ceremonies at which women’s voices would be heard singing (a ruling proposed by other Orthodox rabbis), as long as the male soldiers don’t see the singers. But this distorts what he actually said: that IDF choirs performing at public ceremonies should be male and not female in order to respect the feelings of (male) Orthodox soldiers. He added that if such an arrangement was not practical, that male soldiers should be permitted to listen to a female choir.
His predecessor, Rabbi Avichai Rontzki, authorized war crimes including the murder of civilians in pursuit of IDF objectives. Rontzki was his rabbinic teacher and they both attended the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva. It appears Krim is in excellent company. One of Ateret Cohanim’s goals is to restore the sacred priestly rite of animal sacrifice and rebuild the Holy Temple, a project which would require demolition of the Muslim holy sites of Haram al-Sharif.
One way that the far-right Orthodox transform the army into an ideological-theocratic tool to advance their political interests is by founding military preparatory schools which feed directly into the officer corps. In this way, rabbis like Krim produce thousands of hard-right future officers who fill the ranks and determine the future strategy and orientation of the military. So it is no accident that IDF soldiers refuse to protect Palestinian civilians from the pogroms of settlers.
As far as I’m concerned, Meir Kahane in death has succeeded far beyond his wildest dreams. The Kahanist slogan: “Kahane was right” is wrong. The new slogan should be: “Kahane won.” He commands the IDF. The State is his. His followers have triumphed and they are positioned in almost every position of power and influence. They are turning Israel into a monstrous parody of a Jewish state. In which Kahanist racialism and ethnic cleansing are state policy. This isn’t a Jewish state. It’s a Judean state–of, by and for the settlers. It’s a form of idolatory where, instead of worshipping traditional Biblical prophetic values of tolerance, justice, and equality, it worships land and power.
While appointing a rabbi who endorses battlefield rape, Lieberman has made even more important appointments in the vital sector of Israeli defense industries. He just appointed a Yisrael Beitenu Party hack, Uzi Landau, as CEO of Rafael Industries. This will be a huge gravy train for the Party and its machine. Imagine the jobs the Party can dole out to the faithful, the contracts it can also distribute to businesses allied with the Party! This is the way business is conducted in a corrupt garrison state like Israel. If any of you are so naïve as to doubt this will happen, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
Palestinian youth activist and former prisoner arrested by Israeli occupation forces
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – July 12, 2016
Palestinian youth activist and former prisoner Hassan Karajah was arrested this evening, 12 July, by Israeli occupation forces at Beit Ur checkpoint west of Ramallah, reported family sources to Samidoun. They are concerned about his situation, especially because he spent 22 months in Israeli prisons after being targeted for his work as a human rights defender.
He was arrested on 23 January 2013 and freed on 19 October 2014, facing an Israeli military court on allegations of participation in a prohibited organization (all Palestinian political parties are prohibited organizations) and contact with an enemy state (frequently used to target Palestinians who travel to Lebanon for conferences and other events.)
Karajah, well known for his work in a number of civil society organizations, including the Stop the Wall Campaign and the Partnership for Development Project, and his advocacy for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, was the subject of an international campaign for his release, which highlighted the Israeli targeting of Palestinian human rights defenders.
A letter Karajah wrote from prison was widely distributed: “Here, we draw our energy to continue from you. We, the newly detained prisoners, our hearts are full of happiness when, while being transported from prisons to court, we meet prisoners we have heard about for decades, whose photos and posters we have carried in the streets, prisoners from whom we learned our readiness to struggle since childhood.
In conclusion, I affirm to you that they will never be able to bring about our end. We are stronger than they are able to weaken us. We are higher than they are able to lower us. We are deeper than they are able to reach us. We continue.
I say to you at the end of this message – I will see you soon. I will come out as you have known me and better, and I will greet you with the single word, ‘Freedom.’”
Louisiana Governor: “Follow the Directions of Law Enforcement;” Or else.
By Robert Fantina | Aletho News | July 12, 2016
As United States police officers continue their policy of shooting Americans for such heinous violations of the law as having a burned-out bulb in the taillight of their car, the nation seems to have decided that enough is enough. Thousands have protested across the country since the murders of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling last week in response to those crimes, and, also in response, a U.S. army veteran used his training to kill five police officers in Dallas, Texas.
As political leaders of all stripes call for calm, which is standard procedure after any white officers assassinate an unarmed black man, occasionally one of them states what is really at the core of the issue. This week, it was Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who uttered one sentence that seems to sum up government policy:
“It is critically important that you follow the directions of law enforcement.”
One wonders if this was a statement, or a thinly-veiled threat. It appears that, in the view of Mr. Edwards, the ‘directions of law enforcement’ must be followed to the letter, with the violation of that being capital punishment, administered instantly by the police.
In Baton Rouge, police officers at various protests, there to ‘serve and protect’, were armed with military equipment, and a widely published photograph showed one officer aiming her machine gun at protesters. It seems that ‘law enforcement’ in Louisiana will be accomplished, regardless of the means required to do so.
Now, perhaps we can look for a moment at the First Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits government interference with the right to peaceful assembly. One must suppose that ‘peaceful’ would need to be further defined, but it appears that the police in Baton Rouge would have all protestors marching slowly in lockstep down the street, chanting softly, and behaving in a way as to attract very little attention. Being loud, boisterous, slightly disorganized and even obnoxious will simply not do. Such behavior, or the shocking action of the press to document it, will cause the protestors to look down the barrel of a police-officer wielded machine gun. Huffington Post Senior Crime Reporter David Lohr found himself in just that position.
In another iconic picture, Leshia Evans, a 28-year-old, unarmed black woman wearing a flowing dress, stands calmly as two white police officers in full riot gear arrest her. Behind them are dozens of additional police officers, also arrayed in full riot gear. She obviously did not heed Mr. Edwards injunction to ‘follow the directions of law enforcement’. Her crime, apparently, was to stand in the street, looking at the police.
Fortunately for the citizens of Baton Rouge, there were numerous police officers there with tear gas, automatic weapons, and all the hardware required in any war zone to deal with Ms. Evans. The good residents of that city can rest easy tonight, knowing that the threat of an unarmed woman standing in the street has been eliminated.
On Friday, as news of the deaths of five police officers in Dallas screamed across computer and television screens, statements from political pundits and government officials indicated their shock, horror and revulsion at such a crime. Corporate-owned entertainment media, generally referred to as news programs, highlighted the crime, reported on each of the victims, and interviewed family and friends. Their alleged heroism, service to the city and the nation, and all their saintly qualities as husbands, fathers and citizens were presented to a citizenry that is instructed in who it must grieve for; whom it must be angry with; whom it must condemn and with whom it must sympathize. Philando Castile and Alton Sterling? Ho-hum. Five Dallas police officers? Shock, sorrow, grief, sympathy, anger at the perpetrator(s), fear of a coming race war, etc., etc.
Now, this writer does not condone the killing of these police officers, and sympathizes with their families. Neither does he condone the killing of Messrs. Castile and Sterling, or of Michael Brown, Eric Garner or the hundreds of other unarmed, innocent and disproportionately black men routinely killed by mostly white police officers in the U.S., usually with complete impunity, and he sympathizes with their families. Yet he recognizes a basic fact that seems to escape the media, and those who, for inexplicable reasons, take their cue on how to react from it. And that is simply this: An authority figure has no more or less intrinsic value as a human being than a common citizen.
There; it has been said. Shocking? Possibly, but it is what this writer believes. When an police officer shoots an unarmed, innocent and defenseless member of the public, this writer believes the officer should be charged with murder. This, of course, goes against the conventional wisdom that police officers can do no wrong, and that people must ‘follow the directions of law enforcement’, but there you have it.
But why is there so much violence and brutality demonstrated by the U.S. police? One commentator, John Miranda, suggests a reason:
“As for the increase in police brutality within the United States, I think this definitely can be pointed towards the Israeli training that the Department of Homeland Security is giving all of American police officers.”
Journalist Rania Khalek, in December of 2015, said that “U.S. police officers are being tutored by Israel on how to employ the tactics that have brought death and serious injury to huge numbers of Palestinians in the past few months.”
This writer has suggested that all people are equal. He will go even further: an Israeli terrorist is not innocent of killing defenseless Palestinians, simply because he or she is Israeli, and his/her victim is Palestinian.
What? Can this writer actually believe these things? Are not Israeli’s God’s chosen people? Some naive people may say that the Bible is a scriptural record, written for the spiritual guidance of individuals and religions that choose to so use it. But enlightened people know it is actually a document to be used to govern nations. Yes, that is why we stone adulterers and non-believers, and shun any and all who tell lies.
Oh, wait. We don’t actually do those things. This writer will get it right yet. Passages in the Bible are to be cherry-picked to support the arguments of the people in power, who represent the 1% and have the money. There, now he thinks he understands.
As of this writing, several hundred people have been arrested in protests against the latest police murders of two innocent black men. Increased resistance to state crimes will bring increased repression; this is yet another model used by Israel that the U.S. follows.
Where will it end? At what point in the future will young black men be able to wear hoodies without the police seeing them as instant targets? When will all Americans be able to drive their cars through any city street, or stroll along any city boulevard, without fearing for their lives? This writer is not optimistic that it will be any time soon.
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