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Israel ‘benefiting from re-displacing Palestinians’

Palestine Information Center – September 8, 2015

-238750677ALGERIA – Dr. Abdul Razzaq Muqri, head of the Algerian Movement for a Society of Peace (MSP), said Monday that Israel would benefit from re-settling Palestinian and Syrian refugees in Europe.

He also held western countries responsible for the suffering of Palestinian and Syrian refugees, charging that western countries were the main reason for the instability in the region.

“Today, Europe is in dire need for immigration as new demographic studies confirm that Europe would need to bring one million new immigrants every year, a total of 47 million immigrants until 2050 in order to maintain positive growth rates.”

There is no doubt, Dr. Muqri continued, that Israel was delighted when New Zealand declared intention to receive 500,000 Syrian and Palestinian refugees. Instead of finding a solution for Israeli settlers who came to Palestine from all over the world, the land owners became asylum seekers fleeing from the oppression.

September 8, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Operation Flavius and the Killer Cameron

By Craig Murray | September 8, 2015

Exactly twenty years ago the European Court of Human Rights found that the British Government had acted illegally in shooting dead three IRA members in Gibraltar, even though the court accepted that the government had a genuine belief that they were planning a bombing attack. Indeed the court accepted the victims were terrorists, and refused compensation to their families on those grounds. But the court refused to accept there was no possibility of foiling the plot through methods other than summary execution.

In the light of the decision that Operation Flavius contravened Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, it is difficult to understand how the government can claim its killing of British men in Syria, with no trial, is anything other than murder. I personally find it difficult to imagine technically how men journeying in a car in Syria were imminently able to instantly wreak havoc in the UK so that it was impossible to prevent by any method other than their execution without trial. The level of certainty required for that decision would involve sufficient knowledge of what was to happen in the UK to stop it here. If there was vagueness about what was actually to happen in the UK, there cannot have been the certainty about the threat claimed. It is a logical impasse.

Frankly in twenty years of experience working with British security services their level of accuracy (remember Iraqi WMD) was never that good. And everybody is fortunately now deeply sceptical about the continual claims by the security services that there are thousands of dedicated Islamic terrorists in the UK conducting hundreds of plots every year, and yet miraculously never actually managing to kill anybody.

Just in case anybody had not worked out yet that the Guardian is a disgraceful neo-con rag, it has an article by its “legal correspondent” Joshua Rozenberg, married to the even more rabid Zionist militarist Melanie Phillips (who still believes the Iraqi WMD exist, hidden in the bed of the Euphrates). Rozenberg assures us it is absolutely legal for the British government to kill us without trial if it wants. He even suggests the murdered Mr Khan would not object:

“If he was waging war on British troops and civilians, he can hardly complain the UK’s armed forces were one step ahead of him.”

Astonishingly for a lawyer, the disgraceful Rozenberg does not seem to notice that the opening “if” is rather important. “If Mr Jones was engaged in insurance fraud, he can hardly complain at being banged up for twenty years”, so according to Mr Rozenberg we can dispense with all that nonsense about trials and evidence and just take the government’s word for it. Not to mention that the government has now instituted summary execution without trial in a country that does not even have the death penalty.

As I have argued, it is not unusual for British people to go to fight abroad. There were British citizens in the Israeli Defence Forces participating in the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza last year. Our neo-con governments of both blue and red Tories have positively encouraged the mercenary companies Executive Outcomes/Sandline/Aegis of Tony Buckingham and Tim Spicer. There are Britons fighting now in the Ukraine. We started by positively encouraging factions in the Syrian civil war, with the Saudis and CIA arming and training them and some of those factions helped constitute ISIL. There is no evidence at all that Islamic State had any interest in attacks in the UK until we started to attack it. (That is not to say it is not a very bad organisation and did not commit actions against UK citizens in its “Caliphate area”. But it did not threaten the UK).

For the government to claim the right to kill British people through sci-fi execution, based on highly unreliable secret intelligence and a secret declaration of legality, is so shocking I find it difficult to believe it is happening even as I type the words. Are we so cowed as to accept this?

September 8, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Why do Police Ignore Federal Guidelines and Shoot at Moving Vehicles, Killing Occupants?

By Noel Brinkerhoff and Steve Straehley | AllGov | September 7, 2015

Federal guidelines recommend police avoid shooting into moving vehicles because innocent people can be killed and it’s ineffective at stopping cars. Police continue to use this deadly tactic, however.

An investigation by The Guardian found at least 30 incidents in 2015 of police firing their weapons into moving cars or trucks, killing at least one person each time.

Black men made up more than 25% of those, although they comprise only 6% of the driving-age population, Jon Swaine, Jamiles Lartey and Oliver Laughland wrote.

The British newspaper reported police involved in those shootings justified the use of deadly force by claiming the vehicles they shot at posed a threat to them or their colleagues. But The Guardian found almost all of the incidents were examples of police ignoring federal guidelines that say officers should open fire only if a driver presents a separate deadly threat, such as a gun. In the cases examined by the newspaper, none of those killed were pointing guns at police, and in only three cases were police aware there was a weapon in the vehicle.

“If an officer puts himself in a position where they have no alternative but to use deadly force, they will use deadly force,” Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, told The Guardian. “What you really want them to do is think ‘I should not stand in front of this car. I should not put myself in a position where I have no alternative.’”

The U.S. Department of Justice does not recommend shooting into moving cars because experts say it is widely viewed as ineffective for stopping oncoming vehicles, and doing so poses risks to innocent parties. Police departments in Denver, New York City, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Miami Beach, Los Angeles and Albuquerque, among other cities, heed this recommendation.

Others haven’t adopted it. Police in Indianapolis, for example, have twice in recent months shot and killed drivers in their cars. That department’s policy states that police may fire into vehicles if it’s “reasonably perceived that the vehicle is being used as a weapon against the officer or others.”

To Learn More:

Moving Targets (by Jon Swaine, Jamiles Lartey and Oliver Laughland, The Guardian )

Should Police Shoot at Moving Cars? (by Michael Anthony Adams, Indianapolis Star )

Denver Police Change Policy on Shooting at Cars (by Noelle Phillips, Denver Post )

Police Shoot to Death One Unarmed Person Every 3 Days in U.S. (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov )

Police Officer Goes on Trial for Firing 49 Shots at Two Unarmed Drug Users (by Danny Biederman and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov )

September 7, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

SodaStream to shut down West Bank factory, new factory near planned township where Bedouins are being forcefully transferred

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IMEMC News & Agencies | September 6, 2015

SodaStream announced, today, that it will finalize the closure of its West Bank factory in two weeks.

SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum commented, earlier, that the boycott only had a “marginal” effect on their business and accused the movement of “antisemitism”, PNN reports.

Mahmoud Nawajaa, The Palestine Boycott National Committee (BNC) General Coordinator, said:

“Coming just as French multinational Veolia has abandoned the Israeli market following a 7-year campaign against its support for settlements that cost it billions of dollars, SodaStream’s announcement today provides further proof that the BDS movement is increasingly able to hold corporate criminals to account for their role in Israeli apartheid and colonialism.

“SodaStream may wish to try and smear our movement, but it is clear that BDS campaigning and the Scarlett Johansson controversy has persuaded retailers across Europe and North America to drop SodaStream and contributed to SodaStream’s share price to tumble by half in the space of a year.

“Even when this closure goes ahead, SodaStream will remain implicated in the displacement of Palestinians. Its new Lehavim factory is close to Rahat, a planned township in the Naqab (Negev) desert, where Palestinian Bedouins are being forcefully transferred against their will. Sodastream, as a beneficiary of this plan, is complicit with this violation of human rights.

“Israel willfully destroys the Palestinian economy in the West Bank, leading to unemployment and economic crisis. The way to tackle this is to challenge Israel’s system of colonialism and apartheid.

“The BDS movement is opposed to all forms of racism, including anti-semitism and Islamaphobia.”

The BNC is the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), the broad coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations that works to support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

September 7, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Slammed Over Plans to Demolish 17,000 Palestinian Buildings

Sputnik – 07.09.2015

Israel has plans to demolish 17,000 Palestinian-owned buildings located on mostly occupied land of the West Bank, a UN report has revealed, with concerns the demolitions will cause poverty and leave many families in a “state of chronic uncertainty”.

A report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) concluded that as a result of new and outstanding demolition orders, up to 17,000 structures, including houses, sheds and animal shelters could be knocked down, despite the fact that 77 percent of the buildings are located on privately owned Palestinian land.

The structures under the threat of demolition are located in Area C, a zone in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank where the state of Israel retains full security and administrative control.

Around 300,000 Palestinians live in Area C, which covers 60 percent of the West Bank, and is also the location of many Israeli settlements with a population of around 360,000 — which are deemed illegal under international law.

Close to 4,500 demolition orders are to affect the land of Palestinian Bedouins, who human rights activists say are under threat of losing their homes in exchange for more Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The UN report raised concerns about the impacts such proposed demolitions might have on Palestinians living in affected areas.

“These orders heighten the vulnerability of thousands of poor Palestinian households, some of whom are at imminent risk of forcible displacement.”

It also pointed out that the manner in which demolition orders are handled adds to the suffering of locals.

“Structures built without permits are regularly served with demolition orders. While only a minority of the orders issued are executed, these orders do not expire and leave affected households in a state of chronic uncertainty and threat,” the report found.

“Where the orders have been implemented, they have resulted in displacement and disruption of livelihoods, the entrenchment of poverty and increased aid dependency.”

‘Nearly Impossible’ Permits

While Israeli officials claim that the buildings are under threat as a result of not having the correct planning permission, others point out the extreme difficulty many face in trying to secure proper construction permits.

According to data from the governing body in charge of affairs in the West Bank — the Israeli Civil Administration — Palestinians submitted 2,020 applications for building permits in Area C between 2010 and 2014, while only 33 were approved.

The report said that planning and zoning rules made “it is nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits in most of Area C.”

Israeli officials have been accused of widespread discrimination over their treatment of Palestinians in Area C, with only one percent of the zone legally earmarked for Palestinian development.

This is contrasted to the 235 illegal Jewish settlements and outposts that have been constructed in the area in recent years. Many critics have argued that while authorities are harshly critical of Palestinian constructions, they turn a blind eye to any potential breaches in Jewish settlements.

The report follows international outrage over Israeli plans to demolish the West Bank village of Khirbet Susiya in July, with EU officials specifically asking Israel to stop the “forced transfer of population and demolition of Palestinian housing” in the area.

September 7, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Turning the Cradle of Civilization Into its Graveyard

By Diana Johnstone | CounterPunch | September 7, 2015

Paris – This Monday, September 7, seven Syrian citizens go to court in Paris to pursue their civil suit against French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. The five men and two women all lost family members and close friends in massacres by armed rebels supported by Fabius in word and deed. They are asking for one euro of symbolic damages.

In the end the suit will almost surely be thrown out. The September 7 hearing is on an appeal against an earlier ruling that the courts cannot judge acts of the government in this case, even if the complaint is founded. And yet this futile lawsuit makes a crucial point that Western politicians and media would much prefer to ignore.

Western leaders share major responsibility for making much of the world unfit for normal human habitation. And so far, they are getting away with it. The massive refugee crisis swamping Europe is just the beginning of the troubles that these unscrupulous leaders have brought on their own countries.

Laurent Fabius can fairly be called a French neoconservative. His alignment with Israeli policies is seen in the fact that he was the most reluctant of the foreign ministers involved in the Iranian nuclear negotiations to agree to the final settlement.

He has been one of the most gung-ho advocates of regime change in Syria, a country long on the neocon hit list for its Arab nationalism and support for the Palestinian cause.

The Syrian plaintiffs note that:

* On May 29, 2012, Fabius declared that France would intervene against the Syrian regime.

* On August 17, 2012, Fabius declared that Syrian President Bashar el Assad “did not deserve to be alive on earth”.

* On December 14, 2012, speaking out against the Obama administration decision to designate the Al Nusra Front as a terrorist group, Fabius objected that the Al Nusra Front was “doing a good job on the ground”.

* On March 13, 2013, Fabius announced that France and Britain were going to deliver arms to the rebels.

As a group, the plaintiffs maintain that by his declarations, Foreign Minister Fabius stirred up civil war in Syria and encouraged armed rebel attacks against the existing government. Individually, each of the plaintiffs lost family members and close friends in armed attacks and massacres carried out by the al Nusra militia allied rebel groups.

Israel’s Ghastly Twin: the “Islamic State”

Under U.S. leadership and Israeli influence, French political leaders have championed “regime change” in Libya and Syria on the tacit assumption that civil war would be better for the people of those countries than living under a “dictatorship”. In practice, however, most people can get along better without a vote than without a roof over their heads. Or without their heads.

It is hardly surprising that the carefully filmed and diffused videos of “Islamic State” (IS) disciplinary methods have caused panic among people living in their path of conquest.

War causes people to become refugees. Western media pay close attention to refugees only when they like the “story”. Huge attention was paid to Kosovo Albanians fleeing temporarily from the 1999 NATO war against the Serbs, because those refugees could be described as victims of Serbian “ethnic cleansing” and thus as justification of the NATO war itself.

But no such media concern was aroused over the much greater number of refugees who fled from the 2003 United States invasion of Iraq and have never returned. Over a million Iraqi refugees fled into Syria, where they were well received.

The situation in the Middle East is critical. Armed by leftover U.S. military equipment in Iraq, enriched by illicit oil sales, its ranks swollen by young Jihadis from all over the world, the Islamic State threatens the people of Lebanon and Jordan, already struggling to take care of masses of refugees from Palestine, Iraq and now Syria. Fear of the decapitating Islamic fanatics is inciting more and more people to risk everything in order to get to safety in Europe.

The Islamic State is truly the horrible enemy caricature of the “Jewish State”, another political entity based on an exclusive religious identity. Like Israel it has no clearly defined borders, but with a vastly larger potential demographic base.

The only force that can stop the Islamic State from expanding its fanatic rule over all of Mesopotamia and beyond is the Syrian State led by Bashar al Assad. The choice is not between Assad and “Western democracy”. The choice is between Assad and the Islamic State. But Western leaders have still not fully dropped their demented cry: “Assad must go!”

Refugees, Migrants and Terrorists

The results of this madness are washing up on the shores of the Mediterranean. Images and sentiment have replaced thinking about causes and effects. One photo of a drowned toddler causes a media and political uproar. Are people surprised? Didn’t they know that toddlers were being torn to pieces by U.S. bombing of Iraq, by U.S. drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen? What about the toddlers obliterated by NATO’s war to “free Libya” from its “dictator”?

The current refugee crisis in Europe is the inevitable, foreseeable, predicted result of Western policy in the Middle East and North Africa. Gaddafi’s Libya was the wall that kept hundreds of thousands of Africans from migrating illegally to Europe, not only by police methods but even more effectively by offering them development at home and decently paid jobs in Libya. Now Libya is the source both of economic migrants and of refugees from Libya itself, as well as from other lands of desperation. In order to weaken Sudan, the United States (and Susan Rice in particular) championed creation of the new country of South Sudan, which is not a country at all but the scene of rival massacres driving more and more fugitives toward unwelcoming countries.

The famous photo of little Aylan drowned in the Mediterranean is used very largely to make Europeans feel guilty. The leaders should indeed feel guilty – and not least the rich egomaniac Bernard-Henri Lévy, who prides himself on having talked the French government of Nicolas Sarkozy into starting war against Libya, where, he claimed, there were no Islamic extremists, but only pro-Westerners yearning for democracy. Thanks to NATO, Islamic extremists have since run roughshod over the whole country.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has agreed to take in eight hundred thousand Syrian refugees. This is admirable on humanitarian grounds. Germany is economically strong and demographically weak; with its gradually shrinking population, middle class Syrians, many of them terrified Christians, may seem to be a welcome addition to the population. But it deepens political divisions within Germany and in Europe.

This is particularly the case in the new EU countries of Eastern Europe. Starting with Hungary, their leaders are making it clear that those countries are above all concerned with their ethnic identity, and don’t want to take in a lot of people who don’t speak their language. Unlike countries of Western Europe, the Eastern European tier of ethnic states have no tradition of taking in immigrants and no ideological attachment to the Western human rights ideology. In Eastern Europe, “human rights” sounded good to use against Russia and the Soviet Union, but stops there.

The Greek crisis already put heavy strains on the unity of the European Union. For the first time, many people are questioning the whole idea. The crisis showed that there is no real sense of solidarity between the peoples of Europe; when it comes to the crunch, Germans are Germans and Greeks are Greeks, and “European” is an abstraction. The refugee crisis is showing new cracks in “European unity”.

Most of Europe today is suffering from massive unemployment, especially the Southern countries where refugees first land: Greece, Italy, Spain. European Union economic policies, already strangling Greece, do not favor job creation for hundreds of thousands of newcomers. Even professionally qualified refugees will find it difficult or impossible to get around rules protecting their professions in host countries. Most jobs they manage to get will probably be low level and illegal, undercutting wages and working conditions in the host countries.

Moreover, it is impossible in the present mass movement of people to distinguish “refugees” from economic “migrants” – that is, from men simply seeking better work opportunities. The EU today has little to offer then, and resentment of this unsought immigration is certain to improve the political fortunes of the nationalist right.

There is another reason that many European citizens feel less than enthusiastic about welcoming hundreds of thousands of unknown foreigners into their communities. The Islamic State has openly boasted of sending terrorists into Europe among the refugees, with the clear intention of committing violent acts to destabilize the West. Of course, the threat of terrorism is being used cynically by governments to enforce police state measures, but that does not mean that the threat of terrorism is unreal. Unfortunately, it exists – thanks very largely to the policies of those very same Western governments.

The refugee crisis should be seen as the warning signal that the United States and its NATO allies – especially Britain and France – are bringing the world to a state of chaos that is going to keep spreading and that is approaching a point of no return.   It is quick and easy to break things. Putting them back together may be impossible. Civilization itself may be more fragile than it seems.

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her new book, Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton, will be published by CounterPunch in September 2015. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr

September 7, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel building separation wall to keep refugees out

Press TV – September 6, 2015

Amid what is being referred to as the worst refugee crisis since WWII, the Israeli regime has announced construction of a separation wall to keep them out.

During a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that a 30-kilometer fence is being constructed along Israel’s border with Jordan to stop “migrants,” he associated with terrorists, to enter Israel.

Israel finished the construction of a 230-kilometer wall along the Egyptian border in 2013; it also has set up fences along the border with Lebanon and along the line between Syria and Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Most of the West Bank has also been split by a barrier.

According to Bibi, the wall would connect with the Egyptian barrier and that construction has started along Israel’s eastern border between the city of Eilat and near the site of a new airport in Timna Valley.

“We will continue the fence up to the Golan Heights,” said the Israeli premier. “We will not allow Israel to be submerged by a wave of illegal migrants and terrorist activists.”

Golan Heights has been under the Israeli occupation since the 1960s. The Tel Aviv regime captured 1,200 square kilometers of the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War of 1967 and annexed the region in 1981.

Netanyahu cited Israeli’s “very small” size and lack of “geographic depth or demographic depth” as the reasons behind the measures.

His comments came amid a refugee crisis in Europe due to influx of asylum seekers from conflict-ridden countries in Africa and the Middle East.

The United Nations estimates that 300,000 people have left the Middle East and North Africa for Europe this year, but 2,500 have died in their attempt, mainly through dangerous voyages across the Mediterranean in rickety boats. Media reports, however, say 350,000 have crossed into Europe this year.

Many of the world’s asylum seekers are ill-fated Syrians, fleeing the violence perpetrated by the Daesh Takfiri group.

According to documents from Israeli hospitals, the regime’s army has paid millions of dollars for the costs of treatment to the foreign-sponsored militants, injured during battles with Syrian government forces since 2011.

September 6, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Rise of the Inhumanes

By Paul Craig Roberts – Sputnik – 02.09.2015

America’s descent into totalitarian violence is accelerating. Like the Bush regime, the Obama regime has a penchant for rewarding Justice (sic) Department officials who trample all over the US Constitution. Last year America’s First Black President nominated David Barron to be a judge on the First US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

Barron is responsible for the Justice (sic) Department memo that gave the legal OK for Obama to murder a US citizen with a missile fired from a drone.

The execution took place without charges presented to a court, trial, and conviction. The target was a religious man whose sermons were believed by the paranoid Obama regime to encourage jihadism.

Apparently, it never occurred to Obama or the Justice (sic) Department that Washington’s mass murder and displacement of millions of Muslims in seven countries was all that was needed to encourage jihadism. Sermons would be redundant and would comprise little else but moral outrage after years of mass murder by Washington in pursuit of hegemony in the Middle East.

Barron’s confirmation ran into opposition from some Republicans, some Democrats, and the American Civil Liberties Union, but the US Senate confirmed Barron by a vote of 53-45 in May 2014. Just think, you could be judged in “freedom and democracy America” by a fiend who legalized extra-judicial murder.While awaiting his reward, Barron had a post on the faculty of the Harvard Law School, which tells you all you need to know about law schools. His wife ran for governor of Massachusetts. Elites are busy at work replacing law with power.

America now has as an appeals court judge, no doubt being groomed for the Supreme Court, who established the precedent in US law that, the Constitution not withstanding, American citizens can be executed without a trial.

Did law school faculties object? Not Georgetown law professor David Cole, who enthusiastically endorsed the new legal principle of execution without trial. Professor Cole put himself on the DOJ’s list of possible federal judicial appointees by declaring his support for Barron, whom he described as “thoughtful, considerate, open-minded, and brilliant.”

Once a country descends into evil, it doesn’t emerge.

The precedent  for Obama’s appointment of Barron was George W. Bush’s appointment of Jay Scott Bybee to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Bybee was John Yoo’s Justice (sic) Department colleague who co-authored the “legal” memos justifying torture despite US federal statutory law and international law prohibiting torture.  Everyone knew that torture was illegal, including those practicing it, but these two fiends provided a legal pass for the practitioners of torture.  Not even Pinochet in Chile went this far.

Bybee and Yoo got rid of torture by calling it “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  As Wikipedia reports, these techniques are considered to be torture by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, medical experts who treat torture victims, intelligence officials, America’s allies, and even by the Justice (sic) Department.Others who objected to the pass given to torture by Bybee and Yoo were Secretary of State Colin Powell, US Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora, and even Philip Zelikow, who orchestrated the 9/11 Commission coverup for the Bush regime.

After five years of foot-dragging, the Justice (sic) Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that Bybee and his deputy John Yoo committed “professional misconduct” by providing legal advice that was in violation of international and federal laws. The DOJ’s office of Professional Responsibility recommended that Bybee and Yoo be referred to the bar associations of the states where they were licensed for further disciplinary action and possible disbarment.

But Bybee and Yoo were saved by a regime-compliant Justice (sic) Department official, David Margolis, who concluded that Bybee and Yoo had used “poor judgement” but had not provided wrong legal advice.

So, today, instead of being disbarred, Bybee sits on a federal court just below the Supreme Court. John Yoo teaches constitutional law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Boalt Hall.

Try to imagine what has happened to America when Harvard and Berkeley law professors create legal justifications for torture and extra-judicial murder, and when US presidents engage in these heinous crimes.  Clearly America is exceptional in its immorality, lack of human compassion, and disrespect for law and its founding document.

Hitler and Stalin would be astonished at the ease with which totalitarianism has marched through American institutions. Now we have a West Point professor of law teaching the US military justifications for murdering American critics of war and the police state. Also here. The professor’s article is here.

William C. Bradford, the professor teaching our future military officers to regard moral Americans as threats to national security, blames Walter Cronkite for loosing the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War by reporting the offensive as an American defeat.  Tet was an American defeat in the sense that the offensive proved that the “defeated” enemy was capable of a massive offensive against US forces. The offensive succeeded in the sense that it demonstrated to Americans that the war was far from over. The implication of Bradford’s argument is that Cronkite should have been killed for his broadcasts that added to the doubts about American success.

The professor claims to have a list of 40 people who tell the truth who must be exterminated, or our country is lost. Here we have the full confession that Washington’s agenda cannot survive truth.

I am unaware of any report that the professor has been censored or fired for his disrespect for the constitutionally protected right of freedom of expression.

However, I have seen reports of professors destroyed because they criticized Israel’s war crimes, or used a word or term prohibited by political correctness, or were insufficiently appreciative of the privileges of “preferred minorities.”

What this tells us is that morality is sidetracked into self-serving agendas while evil overwhelms the morality of society.

Welcome to America today.  It is a land in which facts have been redefined as  enemy propaganda, a land in which legally protected whistleblowers are redefined as  “fifth columns” or foreign agents subject to extermination, a land in which America is immune from criticism and all crimes are blamed on those whom Washington intends to rule.

Barron, Bybee, Yoo, and Bradford are members of a new species—the Inhumanes—that has risen from the poisonous American environment of arrogance, hubris, and paranoia.

September 6, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza water shortage catastrophic: ‘We can’t drink, cook or wash with it’

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RT | September 6, 2015

More than 90 percent of the Gaza Strip’s water is undrinkable. The rest is quickly running out. A combination of factors is rapidly depriving the population of this most basic of needs. RT investigated day-to-day life under these conditions.

Just one fresh water source exists today, according to the locals – a coastal aquifer beneath the ground that is shared with Israel and Egypt. But Gaza is situated downstream from Israel, and Palestinians accuse the Jewish state of using the situation to its advantage, employing water deprivation as a tactic against the civilian population.

The grim water statistics are part of a recent UN report on Gaza, which says the strip will become uninhabitable by 2020. A number of reasons compound the problems, according to the document by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The Gaza Strip’s GDP dropped 15 percent in 2014, with 72 percent of households suffering extremely low food security and unemployment at a record high of 44 percent. Further stress was added by relentless Israeli assaults. With three military operations in the last six years, coupled with eight years of economic blockade, prospects for recovery are looking very bleak.

The UN says that 500,000 people have been displaced in Gaza as a result of last year’s Israeli operation alone. More than 20,000 Palestinian homes were destroyed, and 148 schools and 15 hospitals and 45 primary health-care centers were severely damaged. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

But worse still is when the populace is deprived of the prime source of life – water. Without it, no reconstruction and no rebuilding of lives can take place. Medicine, sanitation, hygiene and crucial facilities that depend on water all suffer.

RT investigated the extent of the hardship under these conditions.

“We can’t drink it, cook with it, or wash in the kitchen with it… we are forced to buy all the clean water separately,” said Umm Ibrahim Amna Abdel’al, as she stood in her kitchen, little more four bare cement walls and a sink.

A delivery pickup truck trundled through the streets outside with a water tank sitting in the back.

“The last war on Gaza, of course, resulted in the destruction of some of the infrastructure, the water holes and the pumping stations were [heavily hit.] More than 50 percent of the water infrastructure could not be accessed,” said Mahmoud Elkhafif, UNCTAD’s special coordinator for assistance to the Palestinian people.

“Part, of course, vanished,” he added.

RT’s Lizzie Phelan tasted what remains of the Strip’s water for herself: “This coffee tastes like it has salt not sugar in it. That’s because the water that’s used to wash it – like much of Gaza’s water – is contaminated with sea water.”

The woman went on to describe how “tiny kids suffer from cramps and colic” – a syndrome commonly associated with stomach infections.

“See my hand?” she pointed to the irritated skin on her palm. “It is because of the salty water. I have a skin infection. The water is full of salt. It is like sewage.”

And salt isn’t the only problem. The water coming into homes is also full of nitrate – a carcinogen. The levels rose even higher last year, during Israel’s bombardment of sewage pipes and clean water pipes. Now, the two chemicals have mixed.

But even though the water is filthy, Gazans pay exorbitantly for it.

Elkhafif put it bluntly: “Gaza suffers a catastrophic issue with water quality and water supply. And it’s a shame on the world that they are still watching this.”

Unless the situation is resolved, the Strip stands on the brink of a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe much greater than any airstrikes can cause.

September 6, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Labeling Israeli Settlement Products Not Good Enough

By Stephen Lendman | September 6, 2015

Last spring, 16 European foreign ministers urged EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to require labeling of all Israeli settlement products – so consumers can buy or avoid them at their discretion.

Labeling is “an important step in the full implementation of EU longstanding policy,” they said. At best, it’s symbolic. At worst, a weak-kneed gesture with no meaningful effect on Israel’s economy.

By year-end or sooner, the EU is expected to decide up or down on labeling. Mogherini said “(t)he work is close to being finished but it is still ongoing.” If implemented, it’ll only be a guideline, not mandated policy. Individual EU states can do what they please – showing what’s being considered is a sham, an insult to long-suffering Palestinians.

Some EU nations already intend to require labeling – regardless of what the European Commission decides. “We have to make sure that consumers can distinguish products that come from the territories occupied by Israel,” Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said.

Over 600,000 Israelis live on stolen Palestinian land – in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Numbers keep increasing exponentially – Palestinians forcibly displaced from their land for exclusive Jewish development.

Palestinian human rights groups justifiably demand a total boycott of all Israeli settlement products. In 2013, Al Haq prepared a report titled “Feasting on the Occupation: Illegality of Settlement Produce and the Responsibility of EU Member States under International Law.”

“Given that trading in settlement goods amounts to a form of recognition and supports the sustainability of entities that violate peremptory norms of international law, a ban on settlement products… is to be considered amongst those actions that Third Party States should undertake to comply with their customary international law obligations,” it states.

Al Haq director Shawan Jabarin said products from settlements “help to sustain their very existence.”

“As things stand, the EU is doing little more than ticking a box by acknowledging that settlements are illegal. Until they support this rhetoric with action and ensure that no assistance or recognition are provided to settlements, even indirectly, any such criticism will continue to be meaningless.”

The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner. Settlement products represent a minuscule percent of Israeli exports. At the same time, they’re important “for the economic viability of many settlements,” the report said.

Economist Shir Hever said “(t)he significance of ending the import of colony products is much larger than the direct financial effect.”

“It (would be) a strong statement reminding Israel of the illegality of the colonization of the West Bank, and a blow to many Israeli and international companies who have turned the occupation into a source of profit.”

It would be a shot across the bow against all Israeli enterprises – a hopeful first step toward greater boycott and divestment from an apartheid state, aiming for total isolation.

Currently, nothing indicates business as usual changing. The 2000 EU/Israel Association Agreement governs relations between the Parties, including strengthening economic cooperation and trade.

Human rights groups blasted the enhanced partnership – showing EU officials say one thing and do another, effectively supporting Israeli high crimes.

After decades of mass slaughter and destruction, ethnic cleansing, illegal occupation and oppression, as well as international complicity with Israeli ruthlessness, mandated boycott, divestment and sanctions more than ever are essential – continued until Israel:

  • recognizes Palestinian self-determination unconditionally;
  • strictly observes international laws, norms and standards;
  • ends its illegal occupation and Gaza blockade unconditionally;
  • ends illegal aggression and all other hostile acts;
  • dismantles its Separation Wall;
  • frees all Palestinian political prisoners unconditionally;
  • grants Israeli Arabs equal rights as Jews;
  • ends apartheid racism;
  • complies with UN resolution 194, affirming the right of diaspora Palestinians to return to their homes and property or be fully compensated for loss or damage if they prefer;
  • recognizes East Jerusalem as Palestine’s exclusive capital within June 1967 borders; and
  • gives Palestinians control over their land, borders, air space, coastal waters and resources.

Ending Israeli high crimes against defenseless Palestinians is long overdue. Nothing less than its full observance of international law is tolerable.

September 6, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Hunger strikes continue: Protests across Palestine demand freedom, end of administrative detention

Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | September 5, 2015

Nidal Abu Aker, Munir Abu Sharar, Badr al-Ruzza, Ghassan Zawahreh, and Shadi Ma’ali are engaged in the “Battle of Breaking the Chains” for the seventeenth day, continuing in their hunger strike to demand the end of administrative detention. All five are imprisoned by the Israeli military without charge or trial on the basis of “secret evidence” and have launched a hunger strike to demand not only their freedom personally, but an end to the policy that has been used against them.

Several more Palestinian prisoners have joined in the hunger strike and its demands: Bilal Daoud Saifi, who like Abu Aker, Zawahreh and Ma’ali is a Palestinian refugee who lives in Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem, who started his strike on 30 August; Suleiman Eskafi of Al-Khalil, an administrative detainee on strike since 1 September; and Amir Shammas of Al-Khalil, an administrative detainee who previoulsy engaged in a hunger strike, had been promised that his detention would not be renewed, but since has had his detention renewed. In addition, Noor Shoukri Jaber, a Palestinian prisoner sentenced to life imprisonment, began a hunger strike on 2 September in protest of lack of medical care and his arbitrary transfer.

hunger-strikers

All of the striking prisoners have been thrown into isolation in an attempt to pressure them to end their strike and to stop other prisoners from joining the strike.

The “Battle of Breaking the Chains” is sparking actions of support in various cities in Palestine. A permanent tent of support has been set up at the main entrance of Dheisheh refugee camp, where four of the strikers – and three of its leaders – live, and demonstrations of support have been organized in Nablus, Al-Khalil, Bethlehem city, and Ramallah, among other cities.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network expresses its strongest solidarity with the striking prisoners, and calls for international actions, mobilizations and events to demand their freedom. We cannot wait until these brave strugglers are facing death to act and demand not only their freedom as individuals, but the abolition of administrative detention – on the road to freeing every Palestinian prisoner held in Israeli occupation jails. It is not the case that Israeli military courts are any more legitimate, fair or acceptable than administrative detention – they are just as arbitrary, racist and illegitimate. But administrative detention is a weapon of mass terror used against the Palestinian people, and it is critical to bring this practice to an end. These Palestinian prisoners have put their bodies on the line in order to end administrative detention – and it is imperative that we act to support them. These prisoners’ struggle is not only about their individual freedom – it is part of their struggle for return and liberation for Palestine.

Take Action!

1. Sign on to this statement in support of the prisoners’ demand to End Administrative Detention. Organizational and individual endorsements are welcome – and organizational endorsements particularly critical – in support of the prisoners’ demands and their actions. Click here to sign or sign below:http://bit.ly/EndAdministrativeDetention

2. Send a solidarity statement. The support of people around the world helps to inform people about the struggle of Palestinian prisoners. It is a morale booster and helps to build political solidarity. Please send your solidarity statements to samidoun@samidoun.net. They will be published and sent directly to the prisoners.

3. Hold a solidarity one-day hunger strike in your area. Gather in a tent or central area, bring materials about Palestinian prisoners and hold a one-day solidarity strike to raise awareness and provide support for the struggle of the prisoners and the Palestinian cause. Please email us at samidoun@samidoun.net to inform us of your action – we will publicize and share news with the prisoners.

4. Protest at the Israeli consulate or embassy in your area.  Bring posters and flyers about administrative detention and Palestinian hunger strikers and hold a protest, or join a protest with this important information. Hold a community event or discussion, or include this issue in your next event about Palestine and social justice. Please email us at samidoun@samidoun.net to inform us of your action – we will publicize and share news with the prisoners.

5. Contact political officials in your country – members of Parliament or Congress, or the Ministry/Department of Foreign Affairs or State – and demand that they cut aid and relations with Israel on the basis of its apartheid practices, its practice of colonialism, and its numerous violations of Palestinian rights including the systematic practice of administrative detention. Demand they pressure Israel to free the hunger strikers and end administrative detention.

6. Boycott, Divest and Sanction. Hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law. Don’t buy Israeli goods, and campaign to end investments in corporations that profit from the occupation. G4S, a global security corporation, is heavily involved in providing services to Israeli prisons that jail Palestinian political prisoners – there is a global call to boycott it. Palestinian political prisoners have issued a specific call urging action on G4S.

September 5, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli settlers pepper spraying Palestinians in Hebron attacks

Ma’an – September 5, 2015

HEBRON – Israeli settlers from the illegal settlement of Beit Hadasa in Hebron on Saturday attacked a young Palestinian man with pepper spray, witnesses said.

A Ma’an reporter identified the Palestinian man as Ayman al-Fakhori, and said that he had been transferred to Hebron hospital for medical treatment.

An activist group, Youth Against Settlement in Hebron, released video footage of the incident that appears to show the Palestinian scuffling with masked men and one Israeli soldier.

The masked men, identified by the activist group as settlers, then beat the Palestinian, before one of them sprays pepper spray directly into his face.

The masked men then run from the scene along with the Israeli soldier.

Earlier on Saturday, the official Palestinian Authority news agency Wafa reported another incident of a Palestinian being attacked and pepper-sprayed by Israeli settlers in Hebron.

Wafa identified the Palestinian as Jadawi Hani Abu Haykal, 21.

Abu Hakyal’s family reportedly told Wafa that he was attacked near the illegal Israeli settlement of Tel Rumeida and that his body was left severely bruised.

He was reportedly taken to hospital following the incident.

Settler attacks are a routine occurrence in Hebron, where 700 settlers live in 80 homes in the city center, surrounded by nearly 200,000 Palestinians.

September 5, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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