Colombia: 300 Campesino Leaders Killed in 2015
Campesino leaders say the government is criminalizing their movements and does not protect their rights. | Photo: @marchapatriota
teleSUR – November 21, 2015
At least 300 campesino leaders have been killed in Colombia in 2015, according to Andres Gil, human rights leader and spokesperson of the Marcha Patriotica.
Many of these deaths have come as campesino leaders are attempting to defend their land and their natural resources. Another 7,000 campesino leaders have been jailed.
Land distribution in Colombia is extremely unequal. Less than 1 percent of the population owns roughly half of the land, and 70 percent of the population owns only 5 percent of the land. Campesinos who fight for their land are often risking their lives.
At least three campesinos leaders where killed just in the last two weeks, including the young Afro-descendent leader Jhon Jairo Ramirez Olaya in the Valle region; the environmental and campesino leader Daniel Abril, in the Orinoquia region; and the representative of Afro-descendent victims from Cordoba, Luis Francisco Hernandez Gonzales.
Another young campesino leader allegedly killed by the armed forces last Friday, according to Marcha Patriota.
According to Verdad Abierta — an investigative project on the armed conflict of Colombia’s Semana magazine — Abril accused various state officials of corruption, and was fighting against multiple oil corporations with extensive land interests.
Feliciano Valencia, another indigenous leader from the region of Cauca who was controversially sentenced to 18 years in jail, was also victim of a homicide attempt on Tuesday, as four men opened fire on his home, according to local social organizations.
Still in Cauca, in the end October, the armed forces were recently involved in the murder of indigenous leader Alfredo Bolaño, the 58th victim from security forces in the region, one of the most affected by violence because of its highly fertile lands.
On Friday, the Colombian army killed one campesino and wounded five others after it raided a rural area in what military officials said was an effort to “manually eradicate” illegal coca crops.
According to the local community, the armed forces opened fire on a peaceful march last Thursday in Argelia, Cauca.
The country’s ombudsman Fabian Laverde told teleSUR that this issue was rooted in several causes.
“First, the national government refuses to recognize the existence of paramilitarism. Second, the complaints from the social movements made about situations of threats or concrete actions against residents of these territories have been completely ignored,” he said.
Onlinecensorship.org Tracks Content Takedowns by Facebook, Twitter, and Other Social Media Sites
New Project Will Gather Users’ Stories of Censorship from Around the World
EFF |November 19, 2015
San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Visualizing Impact launched Onlinecensorship.org today, a new platform to document the who, what, and why of content takedowns on social media sites. The project, made possible by a 2014 Knight News Challenge award, will address how social media sites moderate user-generated content and how free expression is affected across the globe.
Controversies over content takedowns seem to bubble up every few weeks, with users complaining about censorship of political speech, nudity, LGBT content, and many other subjects. The passionate debate about these takedowns reveals a larger issue: social media sites have an enormous impact on the public sphere, but are ultimately privately owned companies. Each corporation has their own rules and systems of governance that control users’ content, while providing little transparency about how these decisions are made.
At Onlinecensorship.org, users themselves can report on content takedowns from Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, and YouTube. By cataloging and analyzing aggregated cases of social media censorship, Onlinecensorship.org seeks to unveil trends in content removals, provide insight into the types of content being taken down, and learn how these takedowns impact different communities of users.
“We want to know how social media companies enforce their terms of service. The data we collect will allow us to raise public awareness about the ways these companies are regulating speech,” said EFF Director for International Freedom of Expression and co-founder of Onlinecensorship.org Jillian C. York. “We hope that companies will respond to the data by improving their regulations and reporting mechanisms and processes—we need to hold Internet companies accountable for the ways in which they exercise power over people’s digital lives.”
York and Onlinecensorship.org co-founder Ramzi Jaber were inspired to action after a Facebook post in support of OneWorld’s “Freedom for Palestine” project disappeared from the band Coldplay’s page even though it had received nearly 7,000 largely supportive comments. It later became clear that Facebook took down the post after it was reported as “abusive” by several users.
“By collecting these reports, we’re not just looking for trends. We’re also looking for context, and to build an understanding of how the removal of content affects users’ lives. It’s important companies understand that, more often than not, the individuals and communities most impacted by online censorship are also the most vulnerable,” said Jaber. “Both a company’s terms of service and their enforcement mechanisms should take into account power imbalances that place already-marginalized communities at greater risk online.”
Onlinecensorship.org has other tools for social media users, including a guide to the often-complex appeals process to fight a content takedown. It will also host a collection of news reports on content moderation practices.
For Onlinecensorship.org:
https://onlinecensorship.org
Contact:
Jillian C. York
Director for International Freedom of Expression
jillian@eff.org
Ramzi Jaber
Co-founder and co-director of Visualizing Impact
Ramzi@visualizingimpact.org
Why Boycott Coca Cola?
US Palestinian Community Network | January 31, 2015
In 2005, Palestinians issued a call for a campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, because of its violations of international law and attacks on Palestinian rights. BDS is now a worldwide movement against Israeli Apartheid, and USPCN wants to work with you to target Coca-Cola, as our contribution to the campaign. Do not contribute to helping Zionist Israel steal and occupy more Palestinian land. Do not contribute to helping Israel continue its colonization of Palestine, and its suppression of Palestinian rights. With every single penny you spend on Coca-Cola, you are indirectly contributing to Israel’s crimes.
Why Boycott Coca-Cola?
The Central Bottling Company (Coca-Cola Israel), an Israeli company that manufactures and distributes CocaCola in Israel, has subsidiaries in the illegal settlements of Katzrin (in the Syrian Golan Heights) and Shadmot Mechola (in the Besan Valley, northeastern tip of the West Bank). The company also owns Tara, whose subsidiary, Meshek Zuriel Dairy, has a dairy farm in the occupied section of the Jordan Valley. In return for $55 million in tax breaks, Coca-Cola built a plant in Qiryat Gat, which sits on stolen land (the villages of Al-Falluja and Iraq al-Manshiya) in 1948 Palestine. The residents were ethnically cleansed in 1949, in contravention of International Law. In October 2005, Coca-Cola increased its investment in Israel by buying a 51% controlling interest in the Tavor Winery. Tavor Winery is an Israeli company based on occupied Palestinian land, at the foot of Mount Tavor, overlooking the Sea of Galilee.
The Government of Israel Economic Mission honored Coca-Cola at an Israel Trade Award Dinner for its continuous support over the previous 30 years, and for “refusing to abide by the Arab League economic boycott of Israel.” (from The Southern Shofar—American Jewish newspaper of Alabama).
Environmentalists have long criticized Coca-Cola for posing a serious threat to communities across the world. In India, the Mehdiganj Coca-Cola plant was recently closed by Indian officials, because of its over-utilization of natural water resources, which depleted the local groundwater and released pollution above legal limits.
Coca-Cola, which has always been strongly anti-union, is involved in the intimidation, kidnapping, torture, and murder of union leaders in Latin American, especially for years in Colombia. Labor unionists there have constantly been under threat from paramilitary death squads supported by Coca-Cola.
Businesses in Turkey and India are shunning Coca-Cola over the current Israel – Gaza conflict, according to several news sources.
The Coca-Cola conflict comes as part of the boycott movement targeting Israeli goods and those companies that do business in Israel. Coca-Cola has had a bottling plant in Israel since the 1960s, Haaretz reported.
Pepsi, which left Israel during the Cold War in response to the Arab boycott, has also been spurned in this bout of intensified boycotts.
In Mumbai, India, Muslims called for a boycott of PepsiCo, Kraft Foods Group, and Nestle in addition to Coca-Cola, the Jakarta Globe reported.
Omar Shaikh, a restaurant owner in Mumbai, said “This is our way of showing our anger against Israel. For us, Coke and Pepsi is human blood. They are financing the war against Palestine.”
Israeli Spin in The NY Times: The Annals of Absurdity
By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | November 20, 2015
Five men died in Israel and the West Bank yesterday, the victims of shooting and stabbing attacks by Palestinians. The assaults took place in Tel Aviv and in the Etzion illegal settlement bloc, and their deaths, according to The New York Times, marked “the deadliest day in the recent wave of violence.”
Deadliest day? For Israelis, yes, but not for Palestinians. As the Times has reported, Israeli soldiers shot and killed six young men in Gaza during demonstrations at the border fence on Oct. 9. Days later, on Oct. 20, five more Palestinians died at the hands of Israeli troops within the span of 12 hours (in this case, the newspaper remained silent and made no effort to report their deaths).
Nevertheless, Isabel Kershner in the Times today insists that the five deaths (one involving a Palestinian working in Israel and one involving an American visitor) are the high point in violence since a wave of lone wolf attacks against Israelis broke out at the beginning of October.
Nothing could provide more certain evidence of the Israeli bias in the Times. Palestinian deaths do not register on their tally of casualties; violence refers only to Palestinian aggression.
Kershner’s story acknowledges that some 90 Palestinians have died since the beginning of October, compared with 16 Israelis, but in explaining this discrepancy she manages once again to blame the victims. The Palestinians died, she says, while attacking or attempting to attack Israelis or “in clashes with Israeli security forces.”
Nothing is said of those who died in what human rights groups call apparent extrajudicial executions: the youth shot as he tried to extract his identity card from his pocket, the young woman killed as she stood with her hands over her head. It seems the Times wants us to believe the often dubious claims of Israeli forces responsible for Palestinian deaths.
Today’s story lists all of the victims by name and gives a detailed account of one of them, an American teenager who had “distributed food and candy to Israeli soldiers” the day he was killed. The Oct. 9 story about the deaths in Gaza gives the name of not a single Palestinian.
Kershner, however, has provided us with some context here, and the result is bizarre. She manages to link the five deaths to a long-awaited agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority “granting Palestinian cellphone carriers 3G high-speed cellular services in the West Bank.”
The attacks came “hours after” this agreement, she writes, and she goes on to imply that Palestinians should have taken this contract as something of a white flag, a sign that a truce is in effect.
“The move,” Kershner states, “intended to bolster economic development, had indicated a possible effect, or desire, to return to calm after weeks of violence.” She then quotes an Israeli minister who claims, “We always agree to confidence-building measures with the Palestinians to help with their economy.”
It is difficult to reconcile this assertion of goodwill with the fact that Palestinian cellphone carriers have been requesting the right to use 3G services since 2006 and only at this point has Israel agreed to allow this now outdated technology. Yet Kershner reports it without a hint of irony.
Readers are to take from this that the Palestinians have no right to protest, let alone to resort to violence. Israel, Kershner is saying, has their well-being at heart.
Missing, as usual, is the context of the brutal occupation, the ever-tightening pressure of settlement building that robs Palestinians of land, water, basic livelihoods and the right to move freely. Missing also are the arrests and abuse of young Palestinians, some as young as 6, and the heavy use of administrative detention, which denies detainees the right to a defense or even to know the charges against them.
If Kershner wanted to peg her story to recent developments, she could have mentioned the crackdown on the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel; the slap on the wrist meted out to the police officer who brutally beat an American Palestinian teenager last year; or the collective punishment of home demolitions, which can leave a wide trail of devastation beyond the stated targets.
Instead, readers are told that Israeli “goodwill” has been spurned by ungrateful Palestinians and that Israelis alone are the victims of violence. Thus, the Times and Kershner give dominance to Israel spin even as their efforts turn the news into an exercise in distortion and absurdity.
Follow @TimesWarp on Twitter
YouTube Terminates PINAC Account for “Violent” Police Videos, the Latest Shutdown on Independent Media
By Andrew Meyer | PINAC | November 20, 2015
On October 27, YouTube terminated the main channel of Photography is Not a Crime, claiming the channel posts too many videos that are “violent or graphic content that appears to be posted in a shocking, sensational, or disrespectful manner.”
Because of that, PINAC lost hundreds of videos it had posted on the channel.
The videos found on the PINAC YouTube channel are typically also aired by national and local television news stations now that police violence has become national news.
However, PINAC’s account was suspended in August for airing footage of the Virginia reporters getting shot to death, which many news stations chose not to run.
“We did so because we wanted to give readers the choice to view the full video if they wanted rather than make the decision for them,” said PINAC Founder and Publisher Carlos Miller. “While many news stations chose not to run that video, Washington Post media analyst Erik Wemple was quoted in an interview that not running the video in its entirety is ‘coddling’ the readership – which was our viewpoint all along.”
Wemple stated the following in that interview:
“If you really want to understand enormity and the horror of what happened, I’m afraid airing the video is one way to get that across,” he says.
“I don’t see the point in not telling the full story,” Wemple adds.
News outlets are not showing the images and posting the videos because, as the The New York Times put it, “we didn’t want to force people to see it,” he says.
“I think that’s coddling the audience a little much,” Wemple says.
YouTube then suspended the account again in September after PINAC aired a video of Delaware police shooting and killing a man in a wheelchair.
And the last straw was in October over a video of a Canadian cop repeatedly running over a dog before stepping out of his patrol car and shooting it to death.
That was when we received the following email.
YouTube continues to host thousands of channels that could also be described as “violent” content providers, including channels specializing in professional fighting highlights, clips of people fighting in the street and other channels with nearly identical content to PINAC.
Mark Dice, who has posted videos exposing the Bilderberg Group and other topics blacklisted from corporate “mainstream” media also had his channel deleted in March of 2014. When Dice made a video drawing attention to this blatant censorship on his secondary channel, that channel was then also deleted without explanation, despite zero negative history against it.
YouTube has a long history of shutting down alternative media channels, including those of Russia Today, Federal Jack, Stefan Molyneaux, and Alex Jones. And YouTube is not alone in their censorship of alternative media.
Luke Rudkowski, who runs the emerging news outlet WeAreChange, had his Facebook account suspended, while an Infowars reporter was repeatedly banned from Twitter.
PINAC Executive Director Grant Stern made the following statement:
It’s upsetting that YouTube would destroy a year’s worth of news journalism, including numerous worldwide exclusive videos. Our numerous YouTube Live interviews with key sources from the Baltimore Uprising were due to be arranged into a feature length movie, but now it appears all of that hard work was for naught.
The summary deletion of our YouTube account harms the public interest in knowing how our government officials behave when caught on camera, and breaks countless hundreds of news stories around the country who linked to our videos.
We have appealed each suspension only to be quickly denied. We appealed the last decision but don’t expect YouTube to restore our channel judging by their denials on previous appeals.
However, others have had the suspensions of their accounts typically overturned, but it often requires a fight from the audience. To help restore PINAC’s YouTube channel, post on your Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube itself using # YouTubeCensorship and #PhotographyIsNotACrime.
But we’re not holding our breath, so we are now using this channel as our main YouTube channel.
France Privacy Loss Preceded and Failed to Stop Attacks
Who What Why | November 19, 2015
Is giving up civil liberties in exchange for more “security” from terrorists a good deal?
Here’s a surprisingly candid take from former New York State homeland security adviser Michael Balboni, who was interviewed by New York radio station WNYC on November 17:
“One of the things that is very disturbing about what happened in France is that after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January, the nation of France undertook some of the most significant and severe surveillance laws, and what I mean by severe is no warrant needed to do real-time monitoring of your emails, and now they’ve suspended any requirements before they do a search,” he said, referencing measures granted to police under France’s state of emergency.
“That’s something we wouldn’t tolerate here in the United States, but nonetheless, even with that, (the attackers) were able to amass this amount of weapons and conduct this.”
Israeli forces close several main roads in Nablus
Ma’an – November 20, 2015
NABLUS – Israeli forces closed several main roads in the Nablus district on Friday until further notice for alleged security purposes, Palestinian security sources said.
Palestinian security sources told Ma’an that they were informed by Israeli authorities of the decision to shut the main entrances of the villages of Burin, Awarta, Osarin, Aqraba.
The entrances were closed at 10 a.m. and will be closed indefinitely due to the “deterioration of the security situation,” the sources added.
Locals told Ma’an that Israeli forces had also placed large dirt mounds across another road leading into Burin as well as a main road inside of Awarta.
An Israeli army spokesperson did not have immediate information on the closures.
Nablus is one of several areas in the occupied West Bank to come under increased measures from Israeli authorities since the beginning of last month including home demolition, road closures, and high levels of arrests.
Earlier this month, a Palestinian was shot dead after carrying out a vehicular attack that left three Israelis injured at the Tappuah Junction, south of the villages.
Sweeping restrictions are typically implemented following attacks on Israeli military and settlers in the occupied West Bank.
Such restrictions on access apply only to Palestinian residents, while facilitating the movement of Israeli settlers living illegally in the area.
Death-Squad Organizer Is NYT’s Source on Ben Carson’s Lack of Foreign Policy Smarts
By Adam Johnson & Jim Naureckas | FAIR | November 19, 2015
In its effort to vet one of the leading GOP presidential candidates, Dr. Ben Carson, the New York Times didn’t properly vet its primary source in this vetting, former CIA officer Duane Clarridge—an indicted liar and overseer of Contra death squads in Central America.
While the Times’ Trip Gabriel briefly notes the former, he completely omits the latter, instead offering this starry-eyed description:
Mr. Clarridge, described by Mr. Carson’s top adviser, Armstrong Williams, as “a mentor for Dr. Carson,” is a colorful, even legendary figure in intelligence circles, someone who could have stepped out of a Hollywood thriller. He was a longtime CIA officer, serving undercover in India, Turkey, Italy and other countries, and sprinkles his remarks with salty language.
As head of Reagan’s CIA division in Latin America in the 1980s, Clarridge took part in the effort to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government by illegally supplying funds and arms to the Contras—a right-wing terrorist movement that committed brutal war crimes. This was not an unforeseen consequence, but the point of the operation; asked by CIA Director William Casey to come up with a strategy for dealing with the Sandinista revolution, Clarridge writes in his memoir A Spy for All Seasons :
My plan was simple:
- Take the war to Nicaragua.
- Start killing Cubans.
Clarridge acknowledges that his plan, “stated so bluntly, undoubtedly sounds harsh.”
He also boasts of having come up with the idea of mining Nicaragua’s harbors to interfere with shipping:
I remember sitting with a glass of gin on the rocks, smoking a cigar (of course), and pondering my dilemma, when it hit me. Sea mines were the solution…. To this day I wonder why I didn’t think of it sooner.
The mines were, as conservative icon Sen. Barry Goldwater pointed out, an “act of war”—and predictably resulted in the deaths of civilians, something that doesn’t trouble Clarridge overly much. Or, apparently, the New York Times.
The Times vaguely alludes to the Iran/Contra scandal but without mentioning what it entailed, namely that Clarridge had an operational involvement with terrorist death squads.
In addition to this bloodsoaked past, Clarridge has more recently been a freelance hit-list generator for the Defense Department in Afghanistan ( New York Times, 3/14/10)–part of what the Times referred to as “an off-the-books spy operation.”
The kid-glove treatment would even extend to ethnic slurs, which the Times glosses over without citing specifically. Gabriel quotes Clarridge dismissing the notion—spread by right-wing media—that there are Chinese troops in Syria, “using an ethnic slur for the Chinese.” If a top adviser to a leading presidential candidate is referring to Chinese people as “Chinks”—or the equivalent—isn’t that a newsworthy fact that the New York Times ought to report?
It’s not a surprise a New York Times Beltway insider like Trip Gabriel would whitewash Clarridge’s brutal resume to the point of unrecognizability, but it doesn’t make using a grotesque violator of human rights and a known liar to kneecap Carson any less sleazy. On the issue of policy knowledge, it is more than fair to point out Carson’s shortcomings. But the bigger story here—that a leading candidate’s primary international adviser is a CIA goon with a bloody (or as the Times would put it “colorful”) past—is buried in a story about a routine DC pissing match.
This is how America’s war crimes are laundered, by absorbing the most complicit and criminal into respectable circles by passing them off as “experts” with “legendary” pasts. The Times would have better served its readers by pointing out, in clear and honest terms, what this “colorful, even legendary” past amounted to. It would help put Clarridge’s testimony—and Carson’s potential nomination—into historical and moral context.
Cops Claim LSD Killed this Dad, but Autopsy & Video Confirms they Hogtied Him to Death
By Justin Gardner | The Free Thought Project | November 19, 2015
Memphis, TN – An independent autopsy has found that 30-year-old Troy Goode died from being hog-tied face-down for an extended period of time. The Southaven, Mississippi police department tried to blame Goode’s death on LSD, but there is no scientific basis for this claim.
As we reported in July, Goode and his wife attended a concert in Southaven where they took LSD. Goode began acting funny in a parking lot, and someone thought it was necessary to call the police.
The cops’ answer was to hog-tie Goode and place him face-down, which is known to be a potentially deadly position.
Bystander footage shows Goode being hog-tied, thrashing around, and then being placed into an ambulance. Several onlookers state their disbelief that cops would place someone in this dangerous position, with one even saying it’s good they are getting video “in case he dies.” Goode was pronounced dead an hour after arriving at the hospital.
A friend of the family contacted the Free Thought Project and said that Goode was asthmatic and he was denied his inhaler. We were also told that cops threatened to arrest friends and family if they visited Goode at the hospital.
The family has never accepted the official story and believes that excessive force and the manner of restraint killed Goode.
Not wanting to wait six to eight months for a state autopsy to be performed, Goode’s family had an independent one performed. Attorney Tim Edwards released the results at a news conference in Memphis.
He was suffocating. His heart increased into what is called tachycardia. There is no scientific basis to attribute his death to LSD.
This was lethal force, putting someone in a prolonged hog-tied position. This was not a situation where a 300-pound man attacked a police officer in the dark. This was a science nerd.
The toxicology report … rules out any drug-related causes. That takes that off the table. LSD does not cause heart failure.
Edwards is seeking a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, and the family will file a lawsuit in January.
DeSoto County District Attorney John Champion declined to comment on the results of the independent autopsy. The DA and the police department will likely cling to the false excuse that LSD killed Troy Goode.
Southhaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite issued a statement defending the officers and said Goode posed a danger to himself and others. He also claims that Goode threatened officers and resisted arrest, and continued violent behavior in the ambulance. Musselwhite stated that Goode never said he couldn’t breathe, but the video and bystander reactions indicate that Goods was showing signs of distress.
The autopsy found no evidence of pre-existing disease that would have caused the death, and there is no known case of a person dying from LSD overdose. Troy Goode was having a bad trip, but it was the cops’ use of a dangerous restraint tactic that killed this husband and father.
Israeli officer gets community service for brutal assault on US teen
Ma’an – November 19, 2015
BETHLEHEM – An Israeli border policeman responsible for brutally assaulting a Palestinian-American teenager last year has escaped a jail sentence,Israeli media reported Wednesday,instead receiving six weeks of community service.
Tarek Abu Khdeir, 15, was severely beaten by masked Israeli police officers last summer in the Shufat neighborhood of East Jerusalem amid clashesfollowing news that his cousin, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, was kidnapped and burned alive by Jewish extremists.
Video footage capturing the beating emerged later that evening and went viral as word spread that Tarek was an American citizen.
Muhammad, 16, had been kidnapped and burned alive by suspected Jewish extremists two days prior.
The Israeli policeman who repeatedly beat and kicked Tarek in his head, face, shoulders, and upper body was given the six-week verdict Tuesday despite the prosecution’s request for a seven-month sentence in prison, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
Israeli Judge Dana Cohen-Lekac considered “mitigating circumstances such as the policeman’s lack of a criminal record, positive character references and the fact that the policeman lost his job after the incident,” when making the decision.
Israeli police said at the time of Tarek’s detention that he was wearing a mask and carrying a slingshot. Tarek denied he was involved in the demonstration.
The teen required medical treatment following the severe force used by the policeman, and was later sentenced to nine days under house arrest.
Prisoners’ rights group Addameer at the time called on international rights organizations and the US consulate to attend Tarek’s court hearing following his detention.
“State-sanctioned violence against children is unlawful and unacceptable,” Addameer said, urging the bodies to “investigate the intensified aggression against Palestinian children.”
The policeman — whose name remains under a gag order — was initially indicted on Sept. 2014 in an investigation the family and rights groups said was only carried out due to Tarek’s US citizenship.
South Africa Follows Suit with Spain, Issues Arrest Warrant for Israeli Officials
IMEMC News & Agencies | November 18, 2015
South Africa issued, on Tuesday, an arrest warrant against four Israeli officials over their role in deadly attacks on pro-Palestinian international activists.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Against the Israeli occupation in Africa said, in a statement: “South Africa’s Directorate of the Priority Crimes Investigation Unit has issued warrants of arrest against four Israeli commanders from the Israeli Navy and Israeli Defense Forces.”
According to Days of Palestine, the statement announced arrest warrants issued against former Israeli chief of staff Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, former Navy commander Major General Eliezer Marom, former head of Military Intelligence Major General Amos Yadlin and former head of Air Force intelligence Brigadier General Avishay Levy.
“This decision,” African BDS said, “follows a four-year-long case involving a South African journalist, Gadija Davids, who was on board the Mavi Marmara when it was attacked by Israeli commandoes while in international waters in 2010.
“Davids laid her first complaint with the South African Police Services and South Africa’s National Prosecutions Authority in January 2011.
“In November 2012, South Africa’s Priority Crimes Litigation Unit, found that the case met the necessary jurisdictional requirements and that reasonable grounds exist to investigate the alleged crimes that were committed during the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara.”
Arrest in Spain
Just days ago, a Spanish judge reopened a case that, theoretically, could lead to the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon, MK Benny Begin and several former top Israeli officials over their role in the same incident.
Three Spanish citizens aboard Mavi Marmara had originally filed a lawsuit against the Israeli occupation in 2010, but the court decided it no longer had the authority to prosecute foreign nationals for alleged crimes committed outside of Spain.
In recent days, Judge Jose de la Mata found a legal loophole that allowed him to relaunch the case against Netanyahu and the other Israelis if they entered Spanish territory.
University of Liverpool students vote for BDS
MEMO | November 19, 2015
Students at the University of Liverpool have voted to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, in a significant victory for Palestinian solidarity campaigners.
The motion commits the Liverpool Guild of Students to, among other things, advocate divestment from companies complicit in the Israeli occupation, and to lobby the university to similarly divest. The motion also mandates the Guild to stop stocking Israeli products.
The full BDS motion can be read here.
More than 1,000 students participated in the Liverpool Guild of Students preferendum, in which they were presented with three options: ‘Yes’, ‘No’, or an alternative solution that rejected BDS, but encouraged the union to “raise awareness of the issue.”
Under the preferendum system, students could choose their favourite option from the three choices, or “your top two or rank all three in order of preference.” Points were then assigned “to each option based on the order of preference.”
There were a total of 1,866 points in support of BDS, with 934 opposed to the motion and 1,479 points supporting the alternative solution.
In a press release responding to the victory, the University of Liverpool Friends of Palestine (ULFOP) hailed “a landslide victory” despite a voting system they claimed meant the odds were against them.
“The ballot had one option to pass the motion and two options not to pass the motion. If students didn’t rank all of these options, then their one chosen option was given less weight.”
Despite this and other challenges, ULFOP stated that “the scale of the victory for BDS clearly shows that a large majority of the student body is, or has been made, aware of Israel’s apartheid regime and oppression of the Palestinians, and is prepared to make a stand against it.”
Zohra, a ULFOP member quoted in the press release, described the result as “a genuine reflection of the mood on campus – where students from all faiths and backgrounds believe that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people and their territories is unjust, akin to an apartheid system and thus cannot be allowed to continue.”
In a reference to objections by Israel’s defenders, ULFOP said “they wholeheartedly reject any claims that BDS is divisive on campus, instead recognising that the BDS movement is a non-violent and effective means of applying pressure on the Israeli government and the companies benefitting from the occupation of Palestine.”
Meanwhile, the Union of Jewish Students, who sent an official to Liverpool to support the ‘No’ campaign, described the result as “disappointing”, vowing to work with the Liverpool Jewish Society to continue making “the case against BDS” on campus.
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From the Archives
Confronting the Threat of Ethnic Bioweapons
By Tony Cartalucci – New Eastern Outlook – 29.11.2017
The United States Air Force’s 59th Medical Wing’s molecular biology branch recently was revealed to have been collecting specifically Russian RNA and synovial (connective) tissue samples, prompting fears in Russia of a possible US directed ethnic-specific bioweapons program. … continue
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- 60 Minutes won’t tell the full truth about Israeli settler violence
- Nearly 50,000 women, girls killed or severely injured in Gaza since October 2023: UN Women
- ADL is working with AI companies to suppress alleged ‘antisemitism’
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
