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Israel continues to besiege Palestinian towns, breach international law in occupied West Bank

International Solidarity Movement | July 3, 2016

Occupied Hebron – In the last three days Israeli military forces have implemented several blockades isolating the cities of Yatta and Bani Na’im south of Hebron. It is reported that cement roadblocks, earth mounds, gates and checkpoints have been installed across the region, with no timeline for when they may be removed.

The blockades are only implemented to restrict the movement of Palestinians as illegal Israeli settlers can still pass the checkpoints. This discrimination is a clear apartheid strategy and limits Palestinians to not only being unable to attend work but also reaching basic human services such as hospitals. This strategy clearly violates Palestinian’s right to freedom of movement (Art.13 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

By enforcing these illegal blockades Israel is also restricting Palestinian movement during the final days of the holy month of Ramadan where thousands of Muslims wish to travel to the most significant religious sites for prayer and visit their families.

This act is also another example of Israel using collective punishment techniques, which are also illegal under international law. Israeli forces continually use collective punishment in the form of revoking travel and work permits, blockading cities and punitive house demolitions.

Operation Dove have compiled the following interactive map to illustrate the extent of the blockade.

The innocent people who are living under siege in Yatta and Bani Na’im are significantly impacted by the Israeli forces implementing such blockades, which have been condemned internationally by human rights organisations and NGOs.

July 3, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

How the EU pushed France to reforms of labour law

Corporate Europe Observatory | June 27, 2016

The current struggle in France over labour law reforms is not just between the Government and trade unions – a European battle is waged. The attacks on social rights stem in no small part from the web of EU-rules dubbed ‘economic governance’, invented to impose austerity policies on member states.

Strikes and actions across France against reforms of the country’s labour protections, known as the El Khomri Law, demonstrate the immense unpopularity of the measures proposed by the French Government. Chiefly among them, to give preference to local agreements on wages and working conditions, when the conditions in those agreements are less favourable than the national norm inscribed in national law. This is an open attempt to undermine collective bargaining and roll back the influence of trade unions.

Ultimately, the French Government has formal responsibility for the weakening of labour protection. But there is no denying that the European Union is playing an important and perhaps decisive role in the attacks on labour rights. What we see is the EU throwing its rulebook in the French workers’ faces. Practically all the new rules on so-called ‘economic governance’ adopted following the eurocrisis have been applied, and make France look like an EU test-case. The European Commission, with the backing of the Council, has used the rules on member states’ deficits to exert pressure, threatening with sanctions, should the French Government not give in and seriously reform its labour laws. Simply put, France has been required flat out to ensure higher profitability for businesses by driving down wages.

How does all of this work?

Sanctions more likely today

First and foremost, the reforms in France are related to the country’s deficit. Like most other EU member states, the state’s finances looked pretty bad in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. In 2009, a case was opened against France for breaching EU rules which stipulate that its deficit must be no higher than 3 per cent of GDP. If taken to the extreme, this ‘excessive deficit procedure’ can result in a fine of billions of euro, and – not least in the case of France – a severe loss of face to its EU partners.

The ‘excessive deficit procedure’ was given more teeth with the so-called ‘Six-Pack’ set of EU rules in 2011 – a key part of the austerity-focused economic governance package – which introduced a reverse majority vote in the Council: if the Commission does decide to fine a member state, like it has threatened to do to France, there will have to be a qualified majority against the measure from other member states to block it. Good reasons for the French Government to be slightly scared – and a weapon to be used in its attempt to convince parliamentarians. The likelihood of sanctions for not meeting the budget deficit targets is much bigger than in the past, when both Germany and France escaped humiliation. But how to meet the Commission’s strict targets, and how to behave to the satisfaction of the Commission, is what clearly links the El Khomri Law in France to the austerity regime being rolled out from Brussels.

Enabling demands of ‘structural reforms’

Being ‘in the procedure’, means you’re under close surveillance by the Commission, and with regular intervals, the case of the French deficit has been brought up at meetings with member states ministers, who have assessed if France (in this case) has made sufficient efforts to remedy the problem. Specific recommendations have been made, though until 2013 the labour law was hardly mentioned. The recommendations stuck to the development of the deficit, whether it went down at the required pace. But in 2013, there was a new tone in the Commission’s recommendations. France was asked to meet its deficit targets “by comprehensive structural reforms” in line with recommendations from the Council “in the context of the European Semester”. Structural reforms are no small matter. They are defined as changes that affect “the fundamental drivers of growth by liberalising labour, product and service markets”. Such ambitions were starting to be pushed on France at the European Semester.

But what is the European Semester? It is a procedure involving the Commission and the Council that ends with a set of recommendations for reforms to each and every member state, based on a proposal from the Commission. At the beginning in 2011, the recommendations were non-binding, but in 2013, a new set of rules went into force under the so-called Two-Pack, another part of the economic governance package intended to enforce austerity. One of the regulations of the two in the package was about measures to ensure deficits were corrected, and among other things, it made a link between the deficit procedure and the European Semester.  If a member state is under the deficit procedure – like France – it would have to draw up an ‘Economic Partnership Programme’ that includes the recommendations from the Council –typically the kind of structural reforms that would have a clear impact. If the programme is not followed, then it will have a bearing on the Commission’s decision to initiate the final phase of the deficit procedure: sanctions in the form of a fine worth billions.

So, when the Two-Pack entered into force in early 2013, the tone of the messages to France on its deficit changed. France was now asked to implement “comprehensive structural reforms” of its labour law and the pension system. This had a bearing on how France would be treated under the deficit procedure and whether it would come in for sanctions, and for that reason, recommendations started looking more like demands.

In other words: whereas earlier country specific recommendations adopted under the European Semester were just that, with the Two-Pack from 2013, non-compliance could lead the Commission to take the next step towards sanctions.

“Slash wages now!”

There’s more.

In the early stages of the eurocrisis another procedure was introduced that was to work in parallel to the deficit procedure: the ‘Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure’. This procedure allows the Commission to monitor the development of member states’ economies based on a predefined set of indicators. One of them – perhaps the most important one – measures how high the labour costs are developing (unit labour costs). If wages are not kept at bay, competitiveness suffers, and measures have to be taken, so the logic goes.

The ‘Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure’ is also a potent weapon, as it can lead to a fine if a Eurozone member state crosses the line repeatedly and for a long time. And France has been in the crosshairs of the Commission for quite a while. Commission staff have investigated French labour law and identified what factors contribute “to  limiting the ability of firms to negotiate downward wage adjustment”,  and the French Government has been warned – as have many other member states – about developments in wages. In 2014, the Commission said “unit labour cost growth is relatively contained but shows no improvement in cost competitiveness. The profitability of private companies remains low, limiting deleveraging prospects and investment capacity.”

The calls for action to improve the profitability of private companies have been sent to France from Brussels on numerous occasions over the past couple of years, and have gained in strength. Thus far, the climax was in February 2015, when the Commission stepped up the procedure and singled out Bulgaria and France as the most pressing cases. The decision put France only a small step from the last stage of the imbalance procedure, the dreaded ‘excessive imbalance procedure’ which entails – exactly like the deficit procedure – a massive fine. If all fines are put together – from the deficit procedure and the imbalances procedure – they could amount to 0.5 per cent of GDP, or in the case of France, approximately €11 billion.

The final countdown

Such a prospect must be terrifying for the French Government, and in 2015, then, it would have to come up with something of substance to appease the European Commission and its partners in the Council. In March France was given two more years to bring its house in order, and if there was any doubt over the way to get there, the message to France in July was clear. Country Specific Recommendation number 6 to France under the European Semester, includes a call to “reform the labour law to provide more incentives for employers to hire on open-ended contracts. Facilitate take up of derogations at company and branch level from general legal provisions, in particular as regards working time arrangements.” In other words, the very reforms now at the centre of dispute with the El Khomri law.

The recommendation was copy-pasted from a Commission proposal;  one that struck a chord among business lobby groups. In the annual ‘Reform Barometer’ of BusinessEurope, a procedure set up to influence the European Semester, the French employers association MEDEF was enthusiastic about the move, and dubbed it “extremely important” in its contribution to the Reform Barometer 2016.

End game

Who exactly has done what since the summer of 2015 is the subject of intense debate. French media outlet Mediapart suggests the German Government might have played a big role in designing the French reforms, while others believe the specifics were entirely homemade.  In any case, there is no denying that the reforms were pushed heavily by the European Union, more specifically by the Commission and the Council. And the push was based on the web of rules on member states’ economic policies, sometimes called ‘economic governance’, that has been spun thread by thread since 2010. The strengthening of the deficit procedure, the European Semester, the Two-Pack, and the macroeconomic imbalance procedure have all been used for the purpose they were invented: to exert maximum pressure on member states to adopt austerity policies.

There are other similar examples in Europe at the moment. In Italy and Belgium too, you see the effect of the new tools handed over to the European Union since 2010. But France is special for its size and its power in the EU. The ongoing struggle in France can be seen as a major test case for European economic governance. If a big, powerful EU member state can be pushed to attack fundamental traits of its labour protection law, then the risk of new and stronger measures are much more likely in the future. Even if French workers are unaware of it, they’re fighting a European battle.

July 3, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Ban Ki-moon’s farewell to the occupied Palestinian territories

MEMO | July 2, 2016

On Tuesday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon finished his farewell trip to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. He is due to step down in December and used the occasion to urge some political will for a two-state solution as “the only way to meet the national aspirations of both peoples.” Ban also criticised the blockade of Gaza which, he said, “Suffocates its people, stifles its economy and impedes reconstruction efforts.” Interestingly, he added that it is “collective punishment for which there must be accountability.”

Speaking in Ramallah, the UN chief expressed an understanding of Palestinian frustration: “I’m aware that many Palestinians question the feasibility of reaching a just and lasting peace with Israel. They hear talk of peace but they see violence. They still live a life of checkpoints, permits, blockade, demolitions and profound economic hardships faced with growing indignities and the humiliating occupation that will soon enter its 50th year.”

During his time as Secretary General, Ban has condemned the status quo verbally but the organisation he leads has failed to take concrete action. Under his tenure, Gaza has been strangled by a tight blockade and its residents have witnessed three major Israeli offensives. In over half of his time at the top of the UN, the West Bank settler population has grown by 23 per cent (from the beginning of 2009 until the beginning of 2014), and at least two rounds of direct talks have failed. In 2014, more Palestinians were killed by Israel than in any other year since 1967. Violence and fatalities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, meanwhile, were at their highest since the beginning of his tenure in 2007.

Following the most recent Israeli war against Gaza in 2014, a UN inquiry found that Israel was responsible for striking seven official sites used by the organisation as civilian shelters, during which 44 Palestinians were killed and 227 others were injured. Releasing the report, Ban condemned the attacks “as a matter of the utmost gravity.” He noted that it was the second time during his tenure as secretary general that he had been obliged to establish a board of inquiry into incidents involving UN premises and personnel in Gaza that have occurred during the course of “tragic conflicts” in the Gaza Strip. Concerning the children killed in the war, he commented during an earlier visit, “I met so many of the beautiful children of Gaza. More than 500 were killed in the fighting – many more were wounded. What did they do wrong? Being born in Gaza is not a crime.”

However, his inaction during the conflict forced 129 organisations and distinguished individuals to sign an open letter to him. “Until today,” they wrote, “you have taken no explicit and tangible measures to address the recent Israeli attacks in the occupied Palestinian territories since 13 June. Moreover, your statements have been either misleading, because they endorse and further Israeli false versions of facts, or contrary to the provisions established by international law and to the interests of its defenders, or because your words justify Israel’s violations and crimes.”

The number of Palestinian children killed during the 2014 war led to efforts to include the Israel Defence Forces on a UN list of serious violators of children’s rights. However, while the UN chief should have supported that inclusion made by Leila Zerrougui, the UN special envoy for children and armed conflict, he didn’t. He was accused of caving into pressure and omitting the Israeli military from the list. UN sources described the decision to override Zerrougui’s recommendation as “unusual”, while Human Rights Watch called it “a blow to UN efforts to better protect children in armed conflict.”

On his farewell visit to Gaza, Ban Ki- Moon told residents that, “The UN will always be with you.” As the two-year anniversary of the beginning of the 2014 Gaza war draws near, most of the 11,000 homes destroyed and 6,800 severely damaged or rendered uninhabitable remain in ruins, largely as a result of the Israeli-led blockade. As his time as UN leader comes to a close, the Palestinians will be hoping that his successor will give them more than words.

July 2, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Guess Who Wants Authority to Murder by Drone

By David Swanson | Let’s Try Democracy | July 1, 2016

“I am persuaded no constitution was never before as well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, April 27, 1809.

“We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time.” –Herman Melville, 1850.

“I chant the new empire.” –Walt Whitman, 1860.

“Our frontiers today are on every continent.” –John F. Kennedy, 1960.

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” –Frederick Douglas.

If you haven’t been hiding under a partisan rock for the past several years, you’re aware that President Barack Obama has given himself the sort-of legalish right to murder anyone anywhere with missiles from drones.

He’s not the only one who wants that power.

Yes, President Obama has claimed to have put restrictions on whom he’ll murder, but in no known case has he followed any of his self-imposed non-legal restrictions. Nowhere has someone been arrested instead of killed, while in many known cases people have been killed who could have easily been arrested. In no known case has someone been killed who was an “imminent and continuing threat to the United States,” or for that matter just plain imminent or just plain continuing. It’s not even clear how someone could be both an imminent and a continuing threat until you study up on how the Obama administration has redefined imminent to mean theoretically imaginable someday. And, of course, in numerous cases civilians have been killed in large numbers and people have been targeted without identifying who they are. Lying dead from U.S. drone strikes are men, women, children, non-Americans, and Americans, not a single one of them charged with a crime or their extradition sought.

Who else would like to be able to do this?

One answer is most nations on earth. We now read news stories from Syria of people dying from a drone strike, with the reporter unable to determine if the missile came from a U.S., U.K., Russian, or Iranian drone. Just wait. The skies will be filled if the trend is not reversed.

Another answer is Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders, but not Jill Stein. Yes, those first three candidates have said they want this power.

Another answer, however, should be just as disturbing as those already mentioned. Military commanders around the world want the authority to murder people with drones without bothering to get approval from civilian officials back home. Here’s a fun quiz:

How many zones has the United States divided the globe into for purposes of complete military domination, and what are their names?

Answer: Six. They are Northcom, Southcom, Eucom, Pacom, Centcom, and Africom. (Jack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack were already taken.) In normal English they are: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Western Asia, and Africa.

Now here comes the hard question. Which of those zones has a new would-be commander who was just encouraged by a prominent Senator in an open Congressional hearing to acquire the authority to murder people in his zone without getting approval from the U.S. president?

Clue #1. It’s a zone with the empire’s headquarters not even located in the zone, so that this new commander speaks of killing people there as playing “an away game.”

Clue #2. It’s a poor zone that does not manufacture weapons but is saturated with weapons made in the United States plus France, Germany, the U.K., Russia, and China.

Clue #3. Many of the people in this zone have skin resembling people who are disproportionately targets of U.S. police department killings.

Did you get it right? That’s correct: Africom is being encouraged by Senator Lindsay Graham, who a short time back wanted to be president, to blow people up with missiles from flying robots without presidential approval.

Now here’s where the morality of war can wreak havoc with humanitarian imperialism. If a drone killing is not part of a war, then it looks like murder. And handing out licenses to murder to additional people looks like a worsening of the state of affairs in which just one person claims to hold such a license. But if drone killing is part of a war, and Captain Africom claims to be at war with Somalia, or with a group in Somalia, for example, well then, he wouldn’t need special permission to blow up a bunch of people with manned aircraft; so why should he need it when using robotic unmanned bombers?

The trouble is that saying the word “war” doesn’t have the moral or legal powers often imagined. No current U.S. war is legal under either the U.N. Charter or the Kellogg-Briand Pact. And the intuition that murdering people with a drone is wrong can’t be a useful one if murdering people with a piloted plane is right, and vice versa. We actually have to choose. We actually have to set aside the scale of the killing, the type of technology, the role of robots, and all other extraneous factors, and choose whether it’s acceptable, moral, legal, smart, or strategic to murder people or not.

If that seems too much of a mental strain, here’s an easier guide. Just imagine what your response would be if the ruler of Europe Command asked for the authority to murder at will people of his choosing along with anybody too close to them at the time.

July 1, 2016 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Leaked FBI doc reveals secret policy of targeting journalists, sources

RT | July 1, 2016

FBI documents sought after in Freedom of Information Act requests for the last year are now available, thanks to a leak to the Intercept. They lay out secret rules for collecting phone records of journalists, bypassing normal judicial processes.

The documents, published Thursday, outline how FBI agents would utilize National Security Letters in obtaining journalists’ phone records. They date back to 2013, the same year the agency’s overseer, the US Department of Justice, amended its standards for subpoenaing for such records.

However, the newly leaked papers are marked “last updated October 2011,” and they seem to conflict with DOJ policy as well as reveal information that many say never should have been secret in the first place.

The FBI’s National Security Letters, or NSLs, are used like search warrants, but unlike a normal warrant, they are not signed off on by any judge or court. They are approved in-house without even a requirement to notify the target. For the purposes of these documents, that means not even the news organization employing the journalist would necessarily be informed. Furthermore, they nearly always come with some form of a gag order, preventing the target from talking about their NSL case.

Getting an NSL authorized typically requires the signatures of the FBI’s general counsel and its National Security Branch’s executive assistant director as well as other chain of command OK’s following the agent making the request, the Intercept reported. That is, as long as the NSL is deemed “relevant” to an investigation pertaining to national security.

Except in investigations over a leak, such as how these FBI documents came to be available, when the purpose of an NSL is “to identify confidential news media sources,” according to the documents, the general counsel and executive assistant director defer to the DOJ National Security Division’s assistant attorney general. To identify a leaker, however, the DOJ is not needed for NSL approval.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation sued the DOJ for a more complete release of these rules, since they had previously been divulged under ample redaction in 2011, along with the rest of the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, or DIOG.

“These supposed rules are incredibly weak and almost nonexistent — as long as they have that second sign-off they’re basically good to go,” Trevor Timm, the executive director of the media advocacy group told the Intercept. “The FBI is entirely able to go after journalists and with only one extra hoop they have to jump through.”

FBI spokesman Christopher Allen gave little comment to the Intercept, only to say the agency was “very clear” that “the FBI cannot predicate investigative activity solely on the exercise of First Amendment rights.”

Press advocates have criticized President Obama’s administration harshly, as it has pursued more cases, including under the Espionage Act, against publishers, leakers and reporters than prior administrations.

In 2013, in response to backlash over its seizing the phone lines of the Associated Press and keeping tabs on Fox News’s James Rosen, the DOJ released new “Media Guidelines” that conveyed a tightening up of the practices. The information just leaked to the Intercept, though, “makes a mockery” of those guidelines, the Freedom of the Press Foundation wrote Thursday.

It is important to note that NSLs are covered by rules wholly separate from the DOJ’s media guidelines.

Efforts on Capitol Hill to loosen restrictions on NSLs have failed recently, but only by slim margins, and the fight does not seem to be letting up. An amendment to a Senate criminal justice funding bill failed last week by just two votes, while this past Monday, a similar amendment allowing the FBI to demand email header information, web browser history, social media account access and other metadata was blocked by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Reuters reported.

July 1, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

New report demonstrates previous US Government claims on drones have been false

Reprieve | June 30, 2016

Ahead of an announcement from the White House on civilian casualties from drone strikes, expected as early as Friday July 1st, international human rights organization Reprieve has released a report demonstrating how the Administration’s previous statements on the issue have proved to be false.

From CIA Director John Brennan’s June 2011 assertion that “there hasn’t been a single collateral death” to President Obama’s claim that strikes only take place when there is “near certainty” that civilians won’t be killed, the Administration’s statements, both on record and off, have been undermined by Government leaks and independent assessments.

The CIA itself had recorded a civilian casualty from a Pakistan drone strike just two months before Mr Brennan’s claim that there hadn’t been any “for nearly a year.” Meanwhile, independent investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and others identified 45 civilian casualties from a strike on a meeting of local elders  in March 2011.

The President’s claims on “near certainty” were themselves contradicted by internal CIA documents which, according to McClatchy, “show[ed] that drone operators weren’t always certain who they were killing despite the administration’s guarantees.”

In addition, his 2013 policy on the ‘Use of Force in Counterterrorism Operations’ has since been undermined by revelations that ‘signature strikes,’ which target people based on patterns of behavior without knowing their identities, have secretly been allowed to continue in Pakistan and possibly Yemen.

According to the report, which is available on Reprieve’s website,

What little the Obama Administration has previously said on the record about the drone program has been shown by the facts on the ground, and even the US Government’s own internal documents, to be false.  Any claim of low numbers of civilian casualties will therefore have to be read against the more rigorous work of organizations such as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), which estimates a low of 492 civilian casualties across Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and a high of potentially 1138.

But more importantly, it has to be asked what bare numbers will mean if they omit even basic details such as the names of those killed and the areas, even the countries, they live in.  Equally, the numbers without the definitions to back up how the Administration is defining its targets is useless, especially given reports the Obama Administration has shifted the goalposts on what counts as a ‘civilian’ to such an extent that any estimate may be far removed from reality. In US drone operations, reports suggest all “military aged males” and potentially even women and children are considered “enemies killed in action” unless they can “posthumously” and “conclusively” prove their innocence.

July 1, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Chagos islanders forcibly evicted by UK told they STILL can’t go home

RT | June 30, 2016

Chagos islanders forcibly removed from their homes by the British government to make way for a US military base have been told they are still barred from returning in a UK Supreme Court ruling.

Britain’s highest court said the islanders could not go back to their homeland because life on the archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean is too precarious, despite the fact over 4,000 US and UK military personnel live on the island Diego Garcia.

Since their forced eviction in the 1960s and 1970s, the islanders have campaigned for the right to return to their homes, supported by politicians such as Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The Supreme Court ruling is the latest in a protracted legal battle against the UK government.

In 2000, the High Court ruled the Chagos islanders could return to all islands except Diego Garcia, the site of a large US military base. This was overturned in 2008 by a 3/2 majority.

Thursday’s ruling by the same majority is the latest setback in the islanders’ struggle for justice, however they have not been deterred by the decision.

“It is impossible to accept that other people can live and work on our birthplace while we are not able to,” said Chagos Refugee Group leader Louis Olivier Bancoult.

“We will not give up. Chagossians will be on Chagos very soon.

“It’s time for the UK government to put an end to all our suffering. We have not lost all the battle. It’s not the end of the road. Our case is a just case. We are asking for our dignity as people and fundamental rights as human beings.”

July 1, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Millions rally to mark International Quds Day

Press TV -July 1, 2016

Millions of people have attended the International Quds Day rallies across Iran and other countries to show their solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people and condemn Israeli atrocities.

The rallies in Iran, organized by the Islamic Propagation Coordination Council (IPCC), started at 10:30 local time (06:00 GMT) in Tehran and 850 others cities across the country.

Demonstrators, including Iranian Jews and other religious minorities, braved the sizzling heat of the summer, with the mercury touching 42°C in the capital.

People taking part in the rallies sought to communicate to the world the deplorable status of the Palestinians and press the Israeli regime to respect Palestinian rights.

Nine routes have been identified for the rallies throughout the Iranian capital, which witnessed the commencement of the demonstrations.

The late founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Imam Khomeini, named the last Friday of the lunar fasting month of Ramadan as the International Quds Day.

Each year, millions of people around the world stage rallies on this day to voice their support for the Palestinian nation and repeat their call for an end to the Tel Aviv regime’s atrocities and its occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (seen below) also joined the Friday rallies in the capital.

President Rouhani told reporters during the rally that the message of the Iranian people is that the Palestinians are not alone in their struggle against occupation and oppression.

He said the Israeli regime is bound by none of the internationals norms and rules and is a base for the US and the global arrogance in the region.

“Today, any country that fights this base and any country that wants stability and security in this region, is looked upon unfavorably by the global arrogance,” the Iranian president said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also took part in the rallies in Tehran. He said during the demonstration that, with their participation in the rallies, Iranian people are telling the world that they do not condone such wrong policies as occupation.

“The Muslim people of the region and the world,” Dr. Zarif said, “still identify the Zionist regime (Israel) as the biggest threat to the Islamic world and international peace and security.”

Other senior Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is the head of the country’s Expediency Council, Parliament (Majlis) Speaker Ali Larijani, and Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli-Larijani also took part in the rallies.

Israel & Arab governments

Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a top military adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, said the Israeli regime and its sponsors are behind all miseries and the insecurity in Islamic and Arab countries from North Africa to West Asia.

The objective behind the creation of the Israeli regime, Maj. Gen. Rahim Safavi said, was “to create insecurity in and establish dominance over Arab and Islamic countries… and to plunder the natural resources of… these countries.”

“The Israeli regime, with US help, is after normalizing [its] ties with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and some other Arab states,” he said, adding, “Hand-in-hand with some Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, the [Tel Aviv] regime seeks to stoke war between Sunnis and Alawites and Shias in Islamic countries [like] Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Lebanon and Yemen.”

Rallies are also underway in other countries, including in Iraq, where people took to the streets of the capital, Baghdad, on Friday.

Mohammad Marandi, a professor at the University of Tehran, told Press TV that there is hardly any access to information about Israeli atrocities against Palestinians in the United States.

He said people trying to inform Americans of such Israeli behavior face acute antagonism.

Final statement

At the end of the rallies, a statement was issued that called, among other things, for continued resistance in the face of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, unity among various Palestinian factions and continued support for Palestinian resistance, and maintaining unity in the Islamic world.

The final statement also condemned the proxy wars as well as the terrorist activities of Salafi and Takfiri groups in Islamic countries.

It also described the US as the number-one enemy of the Iranian nation, and called for vigilance in the face of US attempts to influence Iranian politics.

July 1, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Italian television reports on Kiev’s war in eastern Ukraine

Rai TG2 from June 13th, 2016, airing time 20:30.

Reporter Giovanni Mesotti reports from the front line of the conflict.

Original source: http://www.rai.tv/dl/replaytv/replayt…

June 30, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Video, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention slams Israeli human rights breaches in Hares Boys case

The Hares Boys, one of whom is the XXXXX referred to in the UN Working Group's Opinion

The Hares Boys, one of whom is the XXXXX referred to in the UN Working Group’s Opinion
By Julie Webb-Pullman – Gaza Scoop – June 30, 2016

In an opinion released on June 29, 2016 The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention slammed Israel for its treatment of a Palestinian child arbitrarily detained, tortured, and forced to sign a document without first reading it. The Group also noted the discriminatory nature of the arrest based on the nationality of the victim, who was referred to as XXXXX, but acknowledged to be one of the children in the notorious Hares Boys case.

In the advance unedited version of the opinion, the Working Group “recommends the Government Israel to provide full reparations to XXXXX, starting with his immediate release,” and decided to refer the allegations of torture to the Special Rapporteur on torture for appropriate action.

Israeli authorities did not refute that on 16 March 2013 XXXXX was strip searched and locked in a small room for a long time, during which he was obliged to stay nakedly in stressful positions. In an interrogation room he was shackled, by hands and feet to a chair and was questioned for several hours. He was also subjected to verbal abuses and threats and was forced to sign a document that he was prevented from reading beforehand. For 21 days, XXXXX was held in solitary confinement with no access to the outside world and he was deprived of visits from his family and lawyer.

On 5 April 2013, he was transferred to Megiddo prison in northern Israel, where he was again held in solitary confinement for 19 days.

The Working Group noted that XXXXX was deprived of liberty when he was 17 years old, and had the right to be tried by a juvenile justice system in a speedy manner.

“Military Tribunals cannot be competent for civilians in accordance with relevant international human rights law. He was arrested without a warrant, was not informed of the reasons of the arrest and was not allowed to receive visits from his lawyer for several days following the date of his arrest. During interrogation,he was tortured and forced to sign a document without reading it first,” the Group found.

The Working Group concluded that the detention of XXXXX between 15 March 2013 and 9 April 2013 was arbitrary, being without any legal basis, nor any charge or trial.

It was also of the opinion that those acts from Israeli authorities are in violation of articles 9 and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), as well as articles 9, 10 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and that detention of XXXXX was based in his Palestinian origin therefore was discriminatory in nature.

The Working Group has a mandate to investigate allegations of individuals being deprived of their liberty in an arbitrary way or inconsistently with international human rights standards, and to recommend remedies such as release from detention and compensation, when appropriate.

June 30, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Free Marwan Barghouthi” banner returns to Paris-area city hall after legal victory

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Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – June 30, 2016

The Administrative Court of Montreuil in France rejected on Tuesday, 28 June an appeal by the Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture (representing the central French state), demanding the removal of a banner supporting Palestinian prisoner and leader Marwan Barghouthi from the front of the city hall of Stains, in a victory for supporters of Palestinian political prisoners and Stains’ mayor Azzedine Taibi.

The court found that the prefecture’s arguments were inadmissible and invalid, despite an earlier temporary order that the banner must be removed. Azzedine Taibi, the mayor of Stains and a representative of the French Communist Party, said that “This is not a personal victory but a collective victory! … Marwan Barghouthi will remain an honorary citizen of our city and I know that one day, he will be on our side, here in Stains, the city of popular resistance! The struggle and the mobilization will only grow for the liberation of Marwan Barghouti and all Palestinian political prisoners…”

The prefect – representing the government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who has urged prosecution of BDS activists and the suppression of the movement to boycott Israel – argued that the banner was “not of local interest” and likely to lead to a “disturbance of public order.” Manuel Valls, as Minister of the Interior, previously intervened in the case of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah – after intervention from US Secretary of State and now presidential candidate Hillary Clinton – to block the release to Lebanon on parole of the Lebanese Communist prisoner and struggler for Palestine who has been imprisoned in French jails for 32 years.

The prefect’s case was dismissed, as was a complaint filed against the mayor by the BNCVA, a pro-Zionist organization that nominally combats anti-Semitism but in practice focuses on attempts to suppress Palestine solidarity and the boycott of Israel, which accused Taibi of “public apology for terrorism” for his support of Barghouti.

Stains is one of a group of 23 French municipalities who have named the imprisoned Fateh leader and Palestinian Legislative Council member an honorary citizen. A delegation of 16 French mayors was prohibited from visiting Barghouthi in Gilboa prison in Palestine by the Israeli occupation on 14 June; the mayors participated later in a press conference in support of the campaign to nominate Marwan Barghouthi for a Nobel Peace Prize, a campaign supported by Belgian parliamentarians, Desmond Tutu, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, and the Tunisian winners of the 2015 Peace Prize.

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Taibi hosted a ceremony outside the Stains City Hall on Wednesday night, 29 June, celebrating the victory and the official unveiling and replacement of the “Free Marwan Barghouthi” banner to the front entrance of the Stains city hall.

The Stains victory is one of several in France against attempts to criminalize or suppress the Palestine solidarity movement or the boycott of Israel. A court in Créteil dismissed a prosecution for “incitement to discrimintion” against Jean-Claude Lefort pursued by the Association France-Israel and “Lawyers Without Borders” on 24 June, because he had called for a boycott of Israeli products; the court noted that this was a matter of expression on a “debate of general international interest.” In addition, the municipality of Bondy voted on Thursday, 23 June to refuse to purchase goods made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Today, 30 June, 4 BDS activists will face a trial in Toulouse; they are accused of “obstructing the normal exercise of economic activity of three stores” for distributing leaflets in public squares in support of the boycott of Israeli goods. The prosecution was initiated by LICRA, a French pro-Israel advocacy organization; activists are mobilizing outside the courthouse at 1 pm in support of the 4 accused organizers.

June 30, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Forbidden Palestinians in North America

By Paul Larudee | Dissident Voice | June 29, 2016

The survivors of the 1948 massacres in and expulsions from Palestine are everywhere.  Scattered to the four corners of the earth, we have only to look in our own communities to find them. Seven million Palestinians live outside Palestine, compared with five million inside. At least half a million live in Chile alone. Why, then, should we bring Palestinians from the refugee camps in Lebanon to tell their stories in North America?

Many have said that we should not. They say that these Palestinians are toxic, that they are hardliners, resistance fighters, fanatics and terrorists, and that there is no benefit in trying to engage them.  We believe the opposite, that because they have a different viewpoint, the full Palestinian story cannot be told without their voices, and that, in fact, they speak for many other Palestinians who think as they do.

The western groups that invite Palestinian speakers from Palestine inevitably act as a filter. It is easy to find Palestinians that preach nonviolence and reconciliation, but how often have we heard from the rest? How many speakers from Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been on speaking tours of North America? Do they not have a viewpoint and should we not hear it?

That is, of course, impossible. Our societies will not allow it. So we decided instead to bring sympathetic voices of people who are from these societies but have no affiliation to any of the political parties or resistance groups. Unlike Palestinians in other countries, their societies have been frozen in refugee camps since 1948, because they are considered foreigners and refugees in Lebanon, without permission to work, own land, or partake in the life of the country. They are stateless, with no citizenship of any kind and few, if any, opportunities to travel. It was something of a miracle to get their US visas. In many ways, their condition has not changed since the time of their expulsion.

The North America Nakba Tour, sponsored by the Free Palestine Movement, the Northern California chapter of the International Solidarity Movement and Al-Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition, brought 86-year-old Mariam Fathalla from the Ein el-Helweh camp in southern Lebanon and 22-year-old Amena Ashkar from the Bourj el-Barajneh camp near Beirut to San Francisco at the beginning of April, 2016. In the next nine weeks they logged more than 11,000 miles by car and spoke at 26 events throughout North America. Sadly, their Canadian visa did not arrive in time, so those five events were conducted by electronic connection.

The tour was an acclaimed success. More than seventy organizations sponsored the events, including Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups, as well as university, social justice and community organizations. Astonishingly, there were few confrontational situations. The primary outcome was greater understanding.

Mariam and Amena delivered a message that they want all their rights restored: their lands, their properties and their country. Everyone in the camps has lost everything they ever had in Palestine. There is nothing left to preserve. The issues at the “peace talks” are meaningless to them. They don’t want a Palestinian state. They want Palestine. They don’t want land in Palestine. They want their land in their village in Palestine. They don’t even want equality with Israelis. They want justice.

One questioner asked, “What is the solution? Two states? A single state for all? A binational state?” Amena responded, “I don’t accept any of those, because none of them restores what we lost, and doesn’t give us our rights.  International law is on our side.” Her message was understood, with sympathy, and there was no confrontation.

• If you missed the live presentation, you can see one filmed in Denver on May 20, 2016 at The North American Nakba Tour: Exiled Palestinians living in Lebanon

Paul Larudee is one of the founders of the Free Gaza and Free Palestine Movements and an organizer in the International Solidarity Movement.

June 29, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

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