Spanish council joins boycott of Israel
MEMO | January 12, 2016
Spain’s United Left party has adopted the call for the global boycott of Israel (BDS), with the support of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, as members of the Castrillon City Council in the Asturias province voted in favour of the campaign.
Having reviewed the reasons for adopting the BDS campaign, the general coordinator of the Unified Left, Jose Luis Garrido, called on other Spanish cities to take the same action and to boycott Israel at all levels until it withdraws from the occupied territories and respects international law and the rights of the Palestinian people to independence and freedom.
In his speech before members of the municipal council he highlighted international laws and United Nations resolutions that Israel has not implemented. He also mentioned the illegality of the settlements and the Separation Wall, in addition to the issue of refugees, Israel’s racist policies and the suffering of the residents of the Gaza Strip.
This move comes in light of similar decisions to boycott Israeli which were made by other Spanish institutions, the most recent being the University of Barcelona.
‘Don’t let people die’: Turkish TV show investigated after caller’s plea for end to violence
RT | January 12, 2016
A TV show in Turkey has been accused of “terrorist propaganda” and faces an investigation after a caller lamented the deaths of civilians, including children, who have been killed in the on-going conflict between Kurdish forces and the Turkish army.
The prosecutor’s office in Bakirkoy district, Istanbul, said it was checking the recording of Friday night’s Beyaz Show broadcast on Kanal D. It is also investigating the caller, the host and those responsible for the program, according to leading Turkish newspaper Milliyet.
On January 8, well-known Turkish host Beyazit Ozturk, who had never previously brought politics into his show, received a call from a woman identifying herself as Ayse Celik, a teacher from the southeastern Diyarbakir province.
“Are you aware of what is happening in the southeast?” she asked, as quoted by newspaper Today’s Zaman.
She continued, saying that what is being shown on Turkish TV “is very different from what we are experiencing [in the region].”
“Do not remain silent. Please have some kind of sensitivity as a human. See us, hear us and please extend a helping hand to us. It is a pity. Don’t let people die, don’t let children die and don’t let mothers cry,” she said.
Ozturk initially thanked the woman for her remarks and the audience applauded.
“We have been trying to get people to hear about what is happening as much as we can. What you said has taught us a lesson. We will continue to do more. I hope your wishes for peace come true as soon as possible,” he said.
But later he backtracked and apologized for the remarks.
Following the incident Kanal D, a nation-wide Turkish television channel and part of Dogan Media Group, said they had been subjected to provocation.
“The Kanal D administration will launch all necessary legal action against this person in the face of this provocation,” the statement read.
In the meantime, the Education Ministry released a statement claiming that Celik, the caller, was not a teacher in Diyarbakır.
Turkey has repeatedly been accused of increasing censorship and a media crackdown. In December the authorities fined Twitter 150,000 Turkish lira (US$51,000) for not removing content allegedly containing “terrorist propaganda, encouraging public acts of violence and hatred,” sources in Turkey’s communication technology watchdog told media outlets.
Ankara also previously temporarily blocked Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for failing to remove content deemed illegal or banned.
In November a Turkish prosecutor asked a court to imprison the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper, pending trial for espionage and treason. The outlet had published photos of weapons it said were then transferred to Syria by Turkey’s intelligence agency.
Metadata Comes Home With New ‘Threat Score’ Policing Tools
Law enforcement agencies rolling out technology that lets them dig into metadata to determine a citizen’s potential for violence

New software like “Beware” calculates a “threat score” using metadata, which critics say threatens civil liberties and privacy rights. (Photo: Jeffrey Smith/flickr/cc)
By Nadia Prupis | Common Dreams | January 11, 2016
Police in the U.S. are rolling out new technology that gives them “unprecedented” power to spy on citizens and determine their “threat score” based on metadata, the Washington Post reported on Monday.
Fresno, California’s police department was one of the first to adopt the software, known as “Beware,” which allows officers to analyze “billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records, commercial databases, deep Web searches and… social-media postings” to calculate an individual’s alleged potential for violence, the Post explained.
Officers say the tool, made by a company called Intrado, can help them thwart mass shootings and other attacks like the ones that took place in Paris and San Bernardino last year. But critics say it’s just another weapon in the mass surveillance arsenal, one that further threatens privacy and civil liberties and fuels police overreach.
Journalist D. Brian Burghart, who operates FatalEncounters.org, a searchable database of police killings of citizens, told Common Dreams that the swell of surveillance technology was an “outgrowth” of post-9/11 fear-mongering. “I’m not sure what’s new about this except they put a name on it,” Burghart said. “I don’t think it’s going to get any better. Nobody ever puts away technology.”
Jennifer Lynch, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Post, “This is something that’s been building since September 11. First funding went to the military to develop this technology, and now it has come back to domestic law enforcement. It’s the perfect storm of cheaper and easier-to-use technologies and money from state and federal governments to purchase it.”
Rob Nabarro, a civil rights lawyer in Fresno, added, “It’s a very unrefined, gross technique. A police call is something that can be very dangerous for a citizen.”
The Post continues:
Nabarro said the fact that only Intrado — not the police or the public — knows how Beware tallies its scores is disconcerting. He also worries that the system might mistakenly increase someone’s threat level by misinterpreting innocuous activity on social media, like criticizing the police, and trigger a heavier response by officers.
A potential threat that comes from an individual should not be addressed by a machine, he said.
In addition to Beware, police departments are equipping officers with tools like Media Sonar, which analyzes social media for “illicit activity,” among other technology, the Post reported.
Others criticized the implementation of such law enforcement tools while police brutality remains widespread and activists continue to call for an overhaul of the policing system.
Matt Cagle, an attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, told the Post, “We think that whenever these surveillance technologies are on the table, there needs to be a meaningful debate. There needs to be safeguards and oversight.”
The Post described one incident in which the Fresno police department demonstrated Beware at a town hall meeting following constituent complaints about the use of invasive surveillance technology:
[One] council member referred to a local media report saying that a woman’s threat level was elevated because she was tweeting about a card game titled “Rage,” which could be a keyword in Beware’s assessment of social media.
Councilman Clinton J. Olivier, a libertarian-leaning Republican, said Beware was like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel and asked [Fresno Chief of Police Jerry] Dyer a simple question: “Could you run my threat level now?”
Dyer agreed. The scan returned Olivier as a green, but his home came back as a yellow, possibly because of someone who previously lived at his address, a police official said.
“[Beware] has failed right here with a council member as the example,” Olivier said.
As Burghart added, “I spend eight hours a day researching police violence, so I don’t know how many times I’ve typed the words ‘police killed.’ I imagine I’d probably score pretty good on this thing. Most journalists would.”
HDP deputies: Killings of 12 young men in Van, eastern Turkey were executions
ANF News, published by Kurdish Daily News, January 10, 2016
VAN – 12 youths aged between 18-25 have been executed as a result of a house-raid conducted by Turkish terrorists in the central Edremit district of Van province early this morning. ID details of the youths remain unknown.
HDP Van MP Lezgin Botan who spoke to ANF about the incident said bodies of 12 youths, all aged 18-25, have been taken to a hospital morgue. Botan said the youths were shot in the head, and described the incident as not a clash but mass execution. He added that police forces have blockaded the scene of the executions and hospital where youths are being held now.
HDP Van deputy Tugba Hezer told that; “Apart from one, all have been shot in the head. They are all young people in civilian clothes, as has been conveyed to us by those who saw the bodies. Not every single one of them can possible be shot in the head during a clash. It is not possible. This is a mass execution. Police have evacuated and entirely blockaded the hospital.”
Police disperse protesters in Turkey’s east, deputy injured
By Cihan News Agency, published by Hurriyet Daily News, January 11, 2016
VAN, eastern Turkey – Police dispersed protesters who were staging a sit-in against a Jan. 10 police raid into a house of militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the eastern province of Van’s Edremit district on Jan. 11, detaining many.
Members of the provincial center of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) gathered in front of its headquarters to make a press statement as some shopkeepers in the district also refused to open their shops to protest the recent police raid. HDP provincial organization members staged a sit-in before the statement. However, police dispersed the crowd with pressurized water and detained a number of protesters.
Meanwhile, HDP Van deputy Lezgin Botan was injured during the police action and has been reported to be in good condition.
Police special forces raided a two-story house around 5 a.m. on Jan. 10, following a tip-off that its occupants were planning a large-scale attack in Van. Twelve suspected PKK militants in the house, along with an officer identified as Önder Ertas, were killed in the raid, which also injured two other officers, as the security forces seized weapons and ammunition in the house.
URGENT CALL FROM TURKEY’S HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
Human Rights Foundation of Turkey | January 6, 2016
With the interruption of the peace talks, the government of Turkey started, in mid-August, to implement a security policy that unlawfully restricts fundamental rights and freedoms in those cities and towns largely populated by Kurds.
Since August 2015, long-term and consecutive curfews have been declared in the provinces of, and the towns attached to Şırnak, Mardin, Diyarbakır, Hakkari and Muş, and are still underway in certain cities and towns. During these prohibitions, national and international media, human rights or professional organizations as well as representatives of the parliament who wanted to identify violations of rights have been denied access to these cities and towns. According to the findings in reports drawn up by the very small number of civil society organizations which could make their way into the region in the face of huge obstacles, it has been determined that the civilian population has become the target of both snipers and heavy weaponry, which has been used in an arbitrary fashion.
According to reports prepared by rights based organizations, 1,3 million people have been impacted by the curfews; more than 120 civilians –including children and the elderly– have lost their lives[1]. Many people have been injured, and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced. Arbitrary detentions and arrests have occurred; and civilians are being subjected to torture and maltreatment in detention centres and in the open. Intrusion in telecommunication networks restricts the right to information and freedom of communication. By an official decision to send away teachers from the region, education has been disrupted without a deadline, and health services have also been suspended. Due diligence in protecting civilians is not being demonstrated in any sense and they are not even provided the opportunity to meet minimum daily needs such as the right to food and water. After the curfews, no immediate and explicitly effective investigations have been conducted. Trial and punishment of those security forces that violate rights are being rendered impossible. The policy of impunity expands and continues, getting more severe.
Although curfews have been declared pursuant to article 11/C of the Provincial Administrations Law, with the justification “apprehending the members of the terrorist organization” and “ensuring the physical safety of the people and their properties”, jurists largely agree that the aforementioned law does not entitle the relevant senior public officer to declare such a prohibition, which would impact the rights and freedoms of the entire people living in a city or a town. Pursuant to constitutional article 13, such a restriction can only be introduced through ‘law’. Curfews declared upon the governorate’s instructions are in breach of the constitution. The fact that the framework of the curfews and the sanctions thereof are not subject to the law means that security operations conducted in this period and rights violations too are not subject to any legal supervision.
Other than in times of war, in populated areas where a state of emergency or martial law has not been declared, the security forces are not entitled to use heavy weaponry and ammunition in violation of the principle of absolute necessity without ensuring evacuation of the civilian population. During the planning, command and control of operations alleged to serve the purpose of protecting the lives of civilians from unlawful violence, it is unacceptable to perpetrate arbitrary and disproportionate force which does not accord to the duty of care expected from the state in a democratic society. The lethal force used by the government of Turkey in the aforementioned provinces and districts is currently in gross violation of the principle of proportionality to be ensured between the intended objective and the force used for this purpose in a democratic society.
The environment of conflict unfolding has turned human rights defenders into targets of state violence and political assassination. President of the Diyarbakır Bar Association and human rights defender Tahir Elçi was killed while he was delivering a press statement whereby he called for an end to security operations and resumption of peace negotiations.
The situation is dire and our call is urgent!
As civil society organisations we demand the international community to remind the Government of Republic of Turkey that:
- curfews declared in the absence of any legal basis are unacceptable,
- lethal force cannot be used by any means whatsoever in a disproportionate and arbitrary fashion,
- during security operations obligations stemming from international human rights law, international criminal law as well as the humanitarian law cannot be suspended,
- human rights organisations, professional organisations, representatives of local government and of the Parliament, struggling to end, identify and penalise right violations and to reflect the process in total transparency to the international community, should be supported, and
- we call for a bilateral ceasefire, the cessation of conflict and the resumption of peace negotiations to be carried out in an official and transparent manner in the presence of independence observers.
—
Signatory members of the Coalition Against Impunity
Batman Bar Association, Diyarbakır Bar Association, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly – Turkey, Human Rights Agenda Association, Human Rights Association, Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, Şırnak Bar Association, Truth, Justice and Memory Center
[1] Updated numbers on violations of the right to life as a result of curfew by different sources are as follows: According to figures of Human Rights Foundation of Turkey’s Documentation Center, as of January 6, 2016, at least 151 civilians have lost their lives within the period of the declared curfews in 17 towns of 7 districts. According to Human Rights Association’s Documentation Unit, from the start of armed conflict in July 24, 2015 until January 6, 2016, 134 civilians living in cities with declared curfews have lost their lives. 12 people have lost their lives in the year 2016 during curfews in towns of Sur, Cizre and Silopi. People’s Democratic Party’s Information Center which also daily monitor the violations of the right to life, state number of people who lost their lives to be 152 as of January 6, 2016.
Turkey Bans Media From Publishing Information on Istanbul Explosion
Sputnik — 12.01.2016
Turkish authorities introduced a gag order on the media on Tuesday to restrict the dissemination of information about the explosion that shook Istanbul earlier that day, local media reported.
The ban on the distribution of information will affect all kinds of news, interviews, analyses and other article formats in the printed press, on television, on the radio, via social networks and on the Internet, Anadolu news agency reported.
The decision will take effect immediately, once all Turkish media outlets have been officially notified by Ankara, according to the agency.
At least 10 people died and 15 were injured in an explosion in Istanbul’s historical center earlier on Tuesday, according to local authorities.
Madaya hunger reports aim to demonize government: Syria
Press TV – January 12, 2016
Syria’s ambassador to the UN says media reports of starving civilians in the southwestern town of Madaya have been fabricated in an attempt to defame the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
“Actually, there was no starvation in Madaya,” Bashar Ja’afari told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York, where the UN Security Council met to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Syria.
Jaafari said journalists from the Qatari-owned al-Jazeera broadcaster and the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV network are “mainly responsible for fabricating these allegations and lies.”
He said false information about starvation deaths in the Syrian town are aimed at “demonizing” Damascus and “torpedoing” peace negotiations due in the Swiss city of Geneva on January 25.
The Syrian diplomat also said aid delivered to Madaya in October had been looted by terrorist groups and sold to civilians at high prices.
“The Syrian government is not and will not exert any policy of starvation on its own people,” he said, adding the “terrorists are stealing humanitarian assistance.”
On Monday, a convoy of 44 trucks loaded with food, baby formula, blankets and other supplies entered Madaya. An equivalent amount of aid would also arrive in two other besieged towns of Foua and Kefraya.
The Syrian government recently agreed to facilitate the flow of relief aid into Madaya, which has been the scene of fierce clashes between pro-government forces and Takfiri elements.
Locals told the Lebanese al-Manar TV on Sunday that terrorist groups had stored aid packages for Madaya and sold it to the locals at inflated prices.
According to the UN, up to 4.5 million people live in hard-to-reach areas of Syria which has witnessed a deadly conflict fueled by foreign-sponsored Takfiri terrorists since March 2011.
Over 260,000 people have reportedly lost their lives while millions of others have been forced to flee their homes due to the violence.
Nobel Peace Prize-Winner Obama Dropped 23,144 Bombs in 2015
Sputnik – January 11, 2016
The United States in the past year dropped more than 20,000 bombs on Muslim-majority countries Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, according to a study by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
In an article published January 7, Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at CFR, states that since January 1, 2015, the United States has dropped an estimated 23,144 bombs in those six countries: 22,110 in Iraq and Syria; 947 in Afghanistan; 58 in Yemen; 18 in Somalia; and 11 in Pakistan.
“This estimate is based on the fact that the United States has conducted 77 percent of all airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, while there were 28,714 US-led coalition munitions dropped in 2015. This overall estimate is probably slightly low, because it also assumes one bomb dropped in each drone strike in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, which is not always the case,” Zenko writes.
Despite dropping tens of thousands of bombs over the past 17 months, Washington’s strategy has failed to defeat Daesh and other Islamic militant groups, Zenko observed.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban control more territory than at any point since the 2001 US invasion, according to a recent analysis in Foreign Policy magazine.
Zenko notes that the primary focus of Washington’s counter-terrorism strategy is to kill extremists, and that far less attention is paid to prevent a moderate individual from becoming radicalized.
As a result, “the size of [Daesh] has remained wholly unchanged,” Zenko writes.
In 2014, the Central Intelligence Agency estimated the size of Daesh to be between 20,000-31,000 members. On Wednesday, Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the US-led coalition, estimated the group at 30,000 members, despite Pentagon claims that 25,000 Daesh members have been killed in US air strikes.
At the same time, the Pentagon claims that only six civilians have “likely” been killed in the course of the bombing campaign.
The Real Terrorists: The .01%
By Paul Buchheit | Common Dreams | January 11, 2016
They consist of 16,000 individuals, about the size of a crowd at a professional basketball game. The inequality horror they’ve fomented is reaching far beyond the half of America that is in or near poverty, for it now impacts those of us well above the median, those of us in the second highest of four wealth quartiles.
1. The .01% Have as Much Wealth as 80% of America
The combined net worth of the 16,000 richest Americans is approximately the same as the total wealth of 256,000,000 people. Details for this statistic and other facts to follow are at You Deserve Facts.
2. Americans with up to a Quarter-Million Dollars are Part of the Nearly 80% of Americans with Less Wealth Than the .01%
The 80% includes all Americans with a net worth up to about $277,000.
3. The .01% Own about as Much as 75% of the Entire World
The world’s poorest 75% own roughly 4 percent of total global wealth, approximately the same percentage of wealth owned by the .01% in the United States. Again, calculations are shown here.
4. The .01% – Who Are They?
It starts with the billionaires, the Forbes 400 and 136 more, for a total of 536 individuals with a total net worth of $2.6 trillion at the end of 2015.
It continues with more Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWIs). These loftily-named people, over 15,000 of them, are worth hundreds of millions of dollars apiece, bringing the total .01% wealth to about $6.2 trillion, based on 2013-14 data. But U.S. wealth has grown by about 30 percent in three years, and the Forbes 400 has grown by 38 percent, and thus the total wealth of the .01% has grown to over $9 trillion.
In contrast, a recent Institute for Policy Studies report calculated that the bottom half of America has about $732 billion in total wealth, and further calculations on the same data show that the bottom 75% of America owned about $6.2 trillion in 2013.
5. The Unique Brand of .01% Terror: Making a Game of Tax Avoidance While 2,500,000 Children Experience Homelessness
Wealth ownership is not contemptible if the owners of that wealth accept their responsibility to the society that makes their great fortunes possible. But instead of paying taxes, the wealthiest Americans have formed an “income defense industry” to shelter their riches, with, according to the New York Times, “a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.”
On the corporate end, over half of U.S. corporate foreign profits are now being held in tax havens, double the share of just twenty years ago. Yet for some of our largest corporations, according to the Wall Street Journal, over 75 percent of the cash owned by their foreign subsidiaries remains in U.S. banks, “held in U.S. dollars or parked in U.S. government and corporate securities.” Thus they get the benefit of our national security while they eagerly avoid taxes.
The .01% go about their self-serving tax avoidance while 2.5 million children experience homelessness every year. The corporations of the .01% hoard hundreds of billions overseas while nearly two-thirds of American families don’t have enough money to replace a broken furnace.
This is real terror, facing life without shelter and warmth and sustenance, without a semblance of security for even one day in the future. It is terror caused in good part by the 16,000 people who don’t feel it’s necessary to pay for the benefits heaped upon them by a perversely unequal society.
Paul Buchheit is the editor and main author of “American Wars: Illusions and Realities” (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.
Health of Palestinian journalist on hunger strike in Israeli jail ‘deteriorating’
Press TV – January 11, 2016
A Palestinian official says the health condition of a Palestinian journalist on hunger strike in an Israeli prison is worsening.
The Palestinian minister of prisoner affairs, Issa Qaraqe, said on Monday that Mohammed al-Qeq, 33, is in “critical condition” on the 48th day of his hunger strike. The journalist was arrested in November 2015, when Israeli forces blew up the front door of his house and took him in for interrogation.
Following his arrest, and for several days, he was not allowed to contact either his wife or his attorney.
He has been protesting his detention without trial or charge with the hunger strike.
Sources close to al-Qeq said he was interrogated for “journalistic incitement,” and when he refused to cooperate, he was put in administrative detention for a period of six months.
According to the sources, Israeli forces tortured al-Qeq during his interrogation, when he was subjected to beatings, sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, and other forms of abuse.
Administrative detention is a sort of imprisonment without trial or charge that allows Israel to incarcerate Palestinians for up to six months. The detention order can be renewed for indefinite periods of time.
Birzeit University condemns Israeli ‘military attack’ on campus
Ma’an – January 11, 2016
BETHLEHEM – Birzeit University on Monday condemned an Israeli army raid into its campus in Ramallah overnight, during which it said Israeli forces confiscated and damaged university equipment.
“Birzeit University condemns this attack and the direct violation of the sanctity of the university campus,” the university said in a statement. “This is a belligerent military attack on the university and our right to education and all the principles involved in the freedom of education.”
The university said that Israeli soldiers raided the campus in more than 15 military vehicles shortly before 3 a.m., breaching the campus’ western gate and storming the university’s student council and faculty of science.
“The military confiscated equipment and computers used in the activities of the students council and destroyed and damaged furniture leaving a great deal of havoc behind,” the university said.
“This is a blatant attack on our student council and the sanctity of democratic values. This violation of the campus is a part of a blatant and systematic attack on the right of education and freedom of expression.”
Birzeit University condemned a range of other “outrageous acts” by Israel, including the detention of some 80 students, including more than 25 taken into Israeli custody since a wave of unrest swept the occupied Palestinian territory in October.
“Stealing our students’ lives and working to destroy the sanctity of our university campus and our right to education is an atrocious and obvious attempt to destroy the will of the Palestinian people,” the university said.
The university added that the “constant” attacks against it would “strengthen the university’s commitment to its noble cause — education.”
The Israeli army confirmed that the raid took place. An army spokesperson said that Israeli forces had “seized material, including propaganda belonging to Hamas.”
