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Why We Should Be Concerned About Christian Zionism

Christian’s United For Peace:

This is a letter from a Palestinian Christian to the news director and lead anchor of EWTN News, the news division of the Eternal Word Television Network, a Catholic broadcast network with Zionist leanings.

Dear Raymond Arroyo,

I was watching your world over segment last night on EWTN and I had some concerns. My name is Mary. I’m a conservative Catholic from Bethlehem, Palestine.

I know you didn’t think we existed – don’t worry, you’re not the only one.

Besides, Israel propaganda does a great job making sure people think Palestinians only consist of mean crazy Muslims fighting the innocent virtuous God chosen people.

I couldn’t help but notice you were one of them, which struck me as very odd considering you work for a religious channel not political, and even if you yourself had your biases it should not be portrayed on your show.

Let me clarify some things if I may, sir. I have three cousins that are priests an uncle who is a Bishop look them up Bishop William Shomali, Fr. Ibrahim Shomali and Fr. Issa Shomali.

My mother lived in Rome for ten years, she almost got ordained to become a nun.

Yes we are pretty conservative and we are proud of our faith. Growing up in occupied Palestine just made our faith even stronger.

Watching on a daily basis Israeli jeeps with huge rifles sticking out from the back of the jeep threatening to shoot us at any moment just because we happened to live on the wrong side of town.

On the way to my St Joseph all-girls Catholic school I saw them making dirty comments, staring me in the face, mocking me.

I saw them shoot little children because they threw rocks at them, and sometimes for absolutely no reason.

In my peaceful town of Beit Sahour, mostly Christians, the first boy to get killed by Israelis was 16 years old.

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He was walking home from the store when Israeli soldiers dropped a huge rock on his head from the top of a building and watched him crawl home bleeding until he died at the front steps of his home. He was Christian, he did nothing to them.

Yet you don’t feel any sympathy for him. The second boy was at home in the kitchen watching his mom making fries.

An Israeli settler — you know, those guys who built a home illegally on Palestinian land and are armed — shot him through the window and killed him in front of his mom.

His name was Salam, it means peace. He was a Christian, not involved in anything. Yet you wouldn’t feel any sympathy for him because he’s not Jewish.

I can go on and on and on about how Israel was created, the wars literally kicking people out of their homes and moving in them, the massacres.

The times when they would put the whole town on house arrest, which means we can’t leave the home or look out the window. It would take weeks sometimes.

We are Christians and yet you wouldn’t feel any sympathy for us. When they would set us free they would shout in the microphone in their jeeps “home arrest is off you dogs and cows and donkeys”. And yet it’s all justified.

One time a Christian nurse from my home town took home a young boy who was wounded by Israeli soldiers. He was involved in a protest against occupation and must have thrown a rock at one of the jeeps (oh the horror!)

The soldiers went to her home, and arrested and imprisoned her for years for treating a wounded boy; how dare she!!

And when the town had many protests to free her they released her to Jordan and she was never allowed back to her home. And yet we are the terrorists and you have no sympathy for us.

My ancestors come from that land back in the days when people lived in caves even.

What if we are the original Christians that followed Jesus 2000 years ago — wouldn’t we have the same right to live there in dignity and yet we have none.

And you don’t care. We will continue to carry the cross proudly on our shoulder and suffer, we will continue to pray for our enemy and for peace.

We will not hate, we will only tell the truth. This is what our Bible teaches; you should try doing the same. Peace be with you my friend.

Love, Mary Alshomaly from the Holy Land of Jesus

August 29, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 5 Comments

German Media On The Prophets Of NASA: “Prophesizing Gigantic Floods” – 200 Years In The Future!

Pre-Paris hype

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | August 28, 2015

The German media have been buzzing some with the recent NASA publication warning of rising sea levels for the future, and that we need to be very worried.

Maybe I’m reading more into the lines than I should, but I get the feeling that the increasingly dubious NASA climate science organization is no longer being taken 100% seriously by some major German outlets, who have started to label NASA scenarios and projections as “prophecies”.

For example Germany’s normally politically correct, devout green NTV here has the article bearing the title: “NASA prophesizes gigantic floods.”

Prophecies are more the sort of things one typically expects to hear from prophets. The trouble today is that anyone who claims to be a prophet or to possess prophet-like powers almost always gets equated to being a kook, quack, or charlatan. Moreover being labeled a prophet doesn’t get you much respect either. So you have to wonder about the NTV’s choice of words for the title of its story.

Could NTV journalists really be so dim and naïve as to actually believe in climate prophets?

NTV writes of an organization that seems to fancy itself as having visionary power to see the end of the world. NTV tells us:

An unavoidable sea level rise of at least one meter in the coming 100 to 200 years is the result of the latest research data.”

The NTV report then cites NASA prophet Tom Wagner:

NASA scientist Tom Wagner says that when the ice sheets break down on each other, even the risk of a sea level rise of three meters over the coming 100 to 200 years is thinkable.”

Okay, these visions may be still a bit fuzzy, but the NASA scientists prophets know almost for sure they are out there. And again the prophecy of doom gets repeated at the end of the article by prophet Steve Nerem:

‘Things will probably get worse in the future,’ prophesizes Nerem as a result of global warming.”

Again this is the NTV using the word “prophesizes”.

Of course there are only a few teensy-weensy problems with NASA’s prophecies of doom:

1) The hundreds of coastal tide gauges show no acceleration in sea level rise and they show a rise that is much less than what has been measured by the seemingly poorly calibrated satellites,

2) polar sea ice has recovered over the past years,

3) polar temperatures have flattened, or are even declining,

4) global temperatures have flattened, and 5) there’s a growing number of scientists who are now telling us that we should be expecting global cooling over the coming decades.

Moreover, new Greenland data show growing ice (more on this tomorrow).

I’ll let the readers judge for themselves on whether NASA scientists are true prophets, or if they are behaving more like snake oil peddling charlatans.

Myself I’ve lost all respect for the space organization. It’s become a grossly distorted caricature of what scientific research is about.

200 years in the future… yeah, right!

August 29, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

Long term exposure to tiny amounts of Monsanto’s Roundup may damage liver, kidneys – study

RT | August 29, 2015

Long-term intake of the Monsanto’s most popular Roundup herbicide, even in very small amounts lower than permissible in US water, may lead to kidney and liver damage, a new study claims.

The research, conducted by an international group of scientists from the UK, Italy and France, studied the effects of prolonged exposure to small amounts of the Roundup herbicide and one of its main components – glyphosate.

In their study, published in Environmental Health on August 25, the scientists particularly focused on the influence of Monsanto’s Roundup on gene expression in the kidneys and liver.

In the new two-year study, which extended the findings from one conducted in 2012, the team added tiny amounts of Roundup to water that was given to rats in doses much smaller than allowed in US drinking water.

Scientists say that some of the rats experienced “25 percent body weight loss, presence of tumors over 25 percent bodyweight, hemorrhagic bleeding, or prostration.”

The study’s conclusions indicate that there is an association between wide-scale alterations in liver and kidney gene expression and the consumption of small quantities of Roundup, even at admissible glyphosate-equivalent concentrations. As the dose used is “environmentally relevant in terms of human, domesticated animals and wildlife levels of exposure,” the results potentially have significant health implications for animal and human populations, the study warned.

“There were more than 4,000 genes in the liver and kidneys [of the rats that were fed Roundup] whose levels of expression had changed,” the study’s leading scientist, Michael Antoniou, head of the Gene Expression and Therapy Group at King’s College London, said, as quoted by the Environmental Health News.

“Given even very low levels of exposure, Roundup can potentially result in organ damage when it comes to liver and kidney function,” he added. “The severity we don’t know, but our data say there will be harm given enough time.”

The results of the study have received mixed reviews in the scientific community, although many scientists have expressed their concern about possible negative health effects from Roundup use.

Taking into account that the team “used very low dose levels in drinking water … this study should have some kind of public health influence,” said Nichelle Harriott, the science and regulatory director at Beyond Pesticides, a Washington, DC based nonprofit organization, as quoted by the Environmental Health News.

“We don’t know what to make of such changes, they may be meaningful and may not,” said Bruce Blumberg, a professor from the University of California, who did not take part in the study.

“They can’t say which caused what, but what you have is an association – the group treated with a little Roundup had a lot of organ damage and the gene expression findings supported that,” he added.

Meanwhile, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, the use of glyphosate in herbicides has increased by more than 250 times in the United States in the last 40 years.

Research conducted in 2014 and published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health linked the use of Monsanto’s Roundup to widespread chronic kidney disease that took the form of an epidemic in Sri Lanka. Another study showed that Monsanto agrochemicals may have caused cellular and genetic diseases in Brazilian soybean workers.

Additionally, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has recently determined that Roundup’s glyphosate is ‘number one’ among carcinogens, “possibly” causing cancer.

However, Monsanto has continuously and consistently insisted that its products are safe, citing other research supporting their claims. The latest such study was conducted by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessments (BfR) and deemed that Monsanto’s Roundup was safe.

So far, Monsanto has made no comment concerning the research conducted by the group led by Michael Antoniou.

August 29, 2015 Posted by | Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 1 Comment

Tower block in Ukraine goes up in flames

RT | August 29, 2015

Two firemen have suffered injuries after a fire engulfed a luxury high-rise in Odessa, Ukraine. The fire was able to spread due to flammable materials being used for insulation.

The 22-storey Gagarin Plaza is still under construction, and was empty, save for builders, when the fire started at about noon Saturday.

Eyewitnesses told the local 112 Ukraine TV channel that the fire began at the top floor of the building, and rapidly spread downward to the ground floor.

Emergency services dispatched 13 vehicles to the site, with over 40 firemen deploying six hoses. But they were unable to access the top floors of the building.

“Our ladders only reach the 9th floor,” complained Nikolay Chechetkin, the head of the country’s emergency services, to NewsOne channel. “To put out a fire this high up, you need water pressure, which can only be provided by electric-powered pumps. But the building has not been connected to the mains.”

The fire department of the coastal city said the most they could do now was to contain the blaze. One of their personnel suffered airways burns, due to inhaling smoke; the injuries of another have not been specified.

Chechetkin blamed synthetic insulation materials chosen by the architects for the ease with which the flames were able to spread.

In May, 17 people died in Baku, Azerbaijan, when unsafe Chinese-made plastic paneling – also used for insulation – caught fire in another high-rise.

August 29, 2015 Posted by | Video | Leave a comment

Gospel science: We found only one-third of published psychology research is reliable – now what?

What does it mean if the majority of what’s published in journals can’t be reproduced?

By Maggie Villiger | The Conversation | August 27, 2015

The ability to repeat a study and find the same results twice is a prerequisite for building scientific knowledge. Replication allows us to ensure empirical findings are reliable and refines our understanding of when a finding occurs. It may surprise you to learn, then, that scientists do not often conduct – much less publish – attempted replications of existing studies.

Journals prefer to publish novel, cutting-edge research. And professional advancement is determined by making new discoveries, not painstakingly confirming claims that are already on the books. As one of our colleagues recently put it, “Running replications is fine for other people, but I have better ways to spend my precious time.”

Once a paper appears in a peer-reviewed journal, it acquires a kind of magical, unassailable authority. News outlets, and sometimes even scientists themselves, will cite these findings without a trace of skepticism. Such unquestioning confidence in new studies is likely undeserved, or at least premature.

A small but vocal contingent of researchers – addressing fields ranging from physics to medicine to economics – has maintained that many, perhaps most, published studies are wrong. But how bad is this problem, exactly? And what features make a study more or less likely to turn out to be true?

We are two of the 270 researchers who together have just published in the journal Science the first-ever large-scale effort trying to answer these questions by attempting to reproduce 100 previously published psychological science findings.

Attempting to re-find psychology findings

Publishing together as the Open Science Collaboration and coordinated by social psychologist Brian Nosek from the Center for Open Science, research teams from around the world each ran a replication of a study published in three top psychology journals – Psychological Science ; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ; and Journal of Experimental Psychology : Learning, Memory, and Cognition. To ensure the replication was as exact as possible, research teams obtained study materials from the original authors, and worked closely with these authors whenever they could.

Almost all of the original published studies (97%) had statistically significant results. This is as you’d expect – while many experiments fail to uncover meaningful results, scientists tend only to publish the ones that do.

What we found is that when these 100 studies were run by other researchers, however, only 36% reached statistical significance. This number is alarmingly low. Put another way, only around one-third of the rerun studies came out with the same results that were found the first time around. That rate is especially low when you consider that, once published, findings tend to be held as gospel.

The bad news doesn’t end there. Even when the new study found evidence for the existence of the original finding, the magnitude of the effect was much smaller — half the size of the original, on average.

One caveat: just because something fails to replicate doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Some of these failures could be due to luck, or poor execution, or an incomplete understanding of the circumstances needed to show the effect (scientists call these “moderators” or “boundary conditions”). For example, having someone practice a task repeatedly might improve their memory, but only if they didn’t know the task well to begin with. In a way, what these replications (and failed replications) serve to do is highlight the inherent uncertainty of any single study – original or new.

More robust findings more replicable

Given how low these numbers are, is there anything we can do to predict the studies that will replicate and those that won’t? The results from this Reproducibility Project offer some clues.

There are two major ways that researchers quantify the nature of their results. The first is a p-value, which estimates the probability that the result was arrived at purely by chance and is a false positive. (Technically, the p-value is the chance that the result, or a stronger result, would have occurred even when there was no real effect.) Generally, if a statistical test shows that the p-value is lower than 5%, the study’s results are considered “significant” – most likely due to actual effects.

Another way to quantify a result is with an effect size – not how reliable the difference is, but how big it is. Let’s say you find that people spend more money in a sad mood. Well, how much more money do they spend? This is the effect size.

We found that the smaller the original study’s p-value and the larger its effect size, the more likely it was to replicate. Strong initial statistical evidence was a good marker of whether a finding was reproducible.

Studies that were rated as more challenging to conduct were less likely to replicate, as were findings that were considered surprising. For instance, if a study shows that reading lowers IQs, or if it uses a very obscure and unfamiliar methodology, we would do well to be skeptical of such data. Scientists are often rewarded for delivering results that dazzle and defy expectation, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Although our replication effort is novel in its scope and level of transparency – the methods and data for all replicated studies are available online – they are consistent with previous work from other fields. Cancer biologists, for instance, have reported replication rates as low as 11%–25%.

We have a problem. What’s the solution?

Some conclusions seem warranted here.

We must stop treating single studies as unassailable authorities of the truth. Until a discovery has been thoroughly vetted and repeatedly observed, we should treat it with the measure of skepticism that scientific thinking requires. After all, the truly scientific mindset is critical, not credulous. There is a place for breakthrough findings and cutting-edge theories, but there is also merit in the slow, systematic checking and refining of those findings and theories.

Of course, adopting a skeptical attitude will take us only so far. We also need to provide incentives for reproducible science by rewarding those who conduct replications and who conduct replicable work. For instance, at least one top journal has begun to give special “badges” to articles that make their data and materials available, and the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences has established a prize for practicing more transparent social science.

Better research practices are also likely to ensure higher replication rates. There is already evidence that taking certain concrete steps – such as making hypotheses clear prior to data analysis, openly sharing materials and data, and following transparent reporting standards – decreases false positive rates in published studies. Some funding organizations are already demanding hypothesis registration and data sharing.

Although perfect replicability in published papers is an unrealistic goal, current replication rates are unacceptably low. The first step, as they say, is admitting you have a problem. What scientists and the public now choose to do with this information remains to be seen, but our collective response will guide the course of future scientific progress.

August 29, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Decentralization Reform in Ukraine

By Halyna Mokrushyna | CounterPunch | August 28, 2015

One of the sources of the ongoing, and deepening, political and economic crisis in Ukraine is the excessive concentration of power in Kyiv’s hands. It is a key issue underlying the civil war in the east of the country.

Kyiv has always maintained a policy of ‘one nation, one language’ for Ukraine. Even two Russian-speaking presidents of Ukraine from the Russian-speaking southeast of the country–Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych–remained loyal to that mantra, betraying electoral promises they had made to grant the Russian language a status as a second, official language of Ukraine.

In the realm of the economy, Kyiv has always kept the lion’s share of taxation revenues, denying a fare share to the regions. According to Tatiana Muntian, a lawyer and activist defending the interests of ordinary Ukrainians, under Yanukovych, this share constituted 80 per cent of revenue, with only 20 per cent remaining in the regions. The new, “democratic” regime in Kyiv is today taking 82%.

The delegation of powers to different levels of government is a feature of Western democracies, more pronounced in some than in others. Local autonomy is particularly important in countries composed of diverse regions with different histories, languages and cultures. It provides regions with the opportunity to manage their own finances and define their own social, educational, economic, and health policies and preserve distinctive cultural or regional identities.

One of the main reasons for the current civil war in Ukraine is the refusal of Kyiv to grant such autonomy to the regions of the country. The people of the Donbas region (Donetsk and Lugansk) rebelled because they did not approve of the extreme-nationalist ideology and interpretation of history being imposed on the whole country by the pro-Western regime which came to power in Kyiv as a result of the coup d’état of February 2014 (or call it the “Revolution of Dignity”, if you will). If Donbas and other regions of Ukraine had more autonomy in deciding how to spend the money they raise through taxation and which languages receive official status, the present war would not have happened. Kyiv refused to grant the autonomy, so Donbas had no choice but to fight for it.

Russia, in turn, provided political support to Donbas’ grievances by repeatedly requesting of the Kyiv government that it respect Donetsk and Lugansk and negotiates with them as equals and by getting involved in working on a peaceful solution of the conflict through Minsk agreements. Russia also supports the rebel region by sending its own humanitarian aid convoys, facilitating others, and declining to follow Western diktats that it block the movement and activities of Russian volunteers supporting the insurgency.

Europe hints that it understands the situation. European Union leaders encourage Ukraine’s leadership, which aspires so desperately to join Europe, to decentralize power. Ukraine is required under the terms of the Minsk-2 ceasefire agreement of February 12, 2015 to write and approve a much-talked about legislation on decentralization. This is not only crystal clear in the agreement, but it is also very much needed for a variety of compelling reasons internal to the country. Clause number 11 of Minsk-2 stipulates that Ukraine must adopt and apply by the end of 2015 a new constitution that has as a key element a decentralization which takes into consideration the “particularities” of “certain districts” of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts, agreed upon with the representatives of these districts.

Ukraine has pledged to adopt by the end of 2015 permanent legislation on the special status of “certain districts” of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts. Note 1 of the agreement spells out detailed measures that must be included in the legislation. (The Russian original of Minsk-2 can be found on the website of the OSCE; the English version can be found on UNIAN news agency).

The evasive formula of “certain districts of Donetsk and Lugansk” is a compromise between Russia and Europe, the latter as represented by France and Germany. The presidents of these countries plus Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko and Russian president Vladimir Putin negotiated these agreements during unprecedented several-hours talks in Minsk in February of this year. It is clear from this phrasing, and confirmed by Russia’s own declarations, that Russia had no intention of recognizing the rebellious Donbas regions as independent political entities or accepting them into membership of the Russian Federation. Otherwise, the “certain districts” would be called by their self-identification names – Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). For its part, the leaders of Europe, who refused to see DNR and LPR as legitimate formations, recognized in Minsk the distinctive character of this region of Ukraine.

Footnote 1 of the Minsk agreements is a clear and simple roadmap for the creation of an autonomous entity of Donbas as part of the Ukrainian state: in addition to guaranteeing the exemption from punishment, persecution and discrimination of individuals “involved in the events that took place in certain districts of Donetsk and Lugansk Regions”, Ukraine pledged to assure that:

– these regions would have linguistic self-determination;

– local government would participate in the appointment of the heads of the Prosecutor’s office and courts;

– local executive power organs would be able to sign agreements with the central organs of the executive power (the Cabinet of Ministers) regarding the economic, social, and cultural development of “certain districts”;

– the Ukrainian state would support the socio-economic development of the districts; central executive bodies would assist the districts in their cross-border cooperation with regions of the Russian Federation;

– local councils would have the authority to create people’s militia units in order to maintain public order;

– the powers of local council deputies and officials, elected in early elections, called by the Verkhovna Rada according to this law, could not be prematurely terminated.

All of these provisions are already written and adopted as a law of Ukraine “On a special local government order in certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions”, which came into effect on September 16, 2014. However, this “special order”, according to the law, will be temporary – only for three years. Ukraine avoided granting autonomy to Donbas on a permanent basis.

The bill on decentralization, which was proposed to the Verkhovna Rada by President Poroshenko on July 1, 2015, had the same flaw – it stipulated only in the “transitional provisions” in its concluding section that the local self government in certain regions of Donetsk and Luhansk regions are determined in a separate law. This has provoked criticism by representatives of Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics that the provision for their autonomy is not included in the main body of the Constitution of Ukraine. The representative of the DPR Denis Pushilin, stated also that Ukraine did not send its proposed amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine to the Lugansk and Donetsk working groups of Minsk-2 which are supposed to work on implementing the agreement. This failure by Ukraine is in violation of clause 11, according to which constitutional reform should be “agreed with representatives of these “districts of Donetsk and Lugansk”.

The official proposals of Donetsk and Lugansk on decentralization, sent in May of 2015, were completely ignored by Kyiv, stated Pushilin. He said that the republics will insist on a detailed formulation of their special status in the main body of the Constitution of Ukraine, not just an interim passim in the “transitional provisions”. The Kremlin, through the words of Dmitri Peskov, the press-secretary of President Putin, reiterated the criticism formulated by the DPR and LPR. Volodymyr Hroysman, the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, stated in May 2015 that the constitutional commission of Ukraine did not receive any “official” proposal on behalf of the DPR and LPR. So, Kyiv still refuses to treat DPR and LPR representatives as partners in negotiations, ignoring their legitimate requests, based on Minsk-2 agreements.

Criticism by Donetsk, Lugansk and Russia of the Ukraine’s bill was duly noted by the West. Leaders in Europe and the United States covertly put pressure on Kyiv to amend the bill. The vice-speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Oksana Syroid, stated recently that on July 14, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande telephoned the speaker of the Rada, Volodymyr Hroysman, urging him to ensure that the bill is voted for .

On July 15, one day before the bill was scheduled for a vote in the Rada, Victoria -“f*** the EU”- Nuland flew to Kyiv to assist her disciples in the science of democracy and vote correctly. On the same day, Poroshenko tabled a new, revised draft of the bill, in which the provision that the local governments in certain regions of Donetsk and Luhansk regions are determined in a separate law was moved from “transitional provisions” to chapter XV “Transitional provisions” of the main body of the Constitution. No elaborate formulation of this “local government”, no permanent status, neither. On the day of the vote on July 16, three high officials from the West were present in the Rada to make sure that their Ukrainian disciples do the right thing and vote for the bill. These officials were the Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Payette, and the Head of the EU delegation to Ukraine Jan Tombinski.

Having voted for the revised bill, the Rada sent it to the Constitutional Court, which verified the bill for the validity of statute and on July 30 delivered the verdict that the bill conforms to the Constitution of Ukraine. Now the bill is to be voted for the second time in the current session, which will expire on August 31. It will be voted for the third time in a new session due to open on September 1. At the second and third reading, the bill must receive the support of 300 deputies. It received 288 votes at the first reading. Two factions in the Rada, the Radical Party of Oleh Liashko and Samopomich (Self-reliance), voted against.

The bill has been criticized in several points by the Radicals and Samopovich. Liashko, who is known for highly emotional speeches in the Rada and for reciting poems and singing of the national anthem, stated that his party will never vote for a constitution which contains a clause providing special status of Donbas. “Our volunteers did not fight for the country so that Motorola, Givi [military leaders of the Donbas rebellion] and other terrorists obtain a special status”, stated Liashko, although Poroshenko himself acknowledged from the podium of the Rada, that the proposed changes to the Constitution “only admit the possibility of a specific order of the realization of the local (stress by Poroshenko) government in certain administrative and territorial units of Lugansk and Donetsk regions, which is determined by a separate law”. So here we go: no special status, no autonomy, only a “temporary”, special local government.

The bill on decentralization has been criticized by the Radical Party and by many others, including the former leader of the Socialist Party, Olexandr Moroz, and the Samopomich party, for centralizing power instead of delegating it to the regions. The bill provides for the introduction of the institution of prefects, which will replace current heads of regional state administrations. Prefects would exercise executive power on a local level and would be appointed directly by the President of Ukraine on the proposal of the Cabinet of Ministers, being accountable before both. They would supervise local governments to ensure the compliance of their actions with the constitution and laws of Ukraine, as well as the compliance of the “territorial organs of the central organs of the executive power”. (This latter formula is vague and hard to understand, as are many passages of the bill on decentralization).

A prefect will have the power to decree acts which will be mandatory for the respective territory (article 110) and to block the acts of local governments if a prefect deems them anti-constitutional (article 144). In cases where a local government or its head adopts an “act” which does not respect the Constitution of Ukraine or threatens state sovereignty, territorial integrity or the national security of Ukraine, the president of the country is empowered to veto this act, suspend the offending local government (councils) and appoint an interim “state representative” who will “direct and organize” the work of the local executive organs of power. The president would concomitantly send a request to the Constitutional Court to examine the act in question and determine whether it violates the constitution. In cases where the Constitutional Court decides that a local act does violate the constitution, the Rada, upon the proposal of the president, would terminate the powers of the head of the local government or of the entire local council and call early elections (article 144).

The current regional and district administrations do not have the power to dismiss local councils and cannot stop or suspend the decision of local governments, as Liashko rightly remarks. Moreover, local councils can dismiss the head of the state administration if two thirds of the deputies of local councils express non confidence. In such a case, the President of Ukraine is required to decree the dismissal of the head of the local administration (http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/zweb2/webproc4_1?pf3511=55812 ).

The head of the parliamentarian fraction of Samopomich party, Oleh Bereziuk, criticizes the institution of prefects because it introduces a dual executive power on the local level – both prefects and regional or city councils will have it. However, the prefects also have control and coordination functions, which imply a possibility of punishment – prefects can intimidate local councils by threatening to dissolve them, since the president has the power to dissolve the council upon prefect’s suggestion.

The member of the Opposition Bloc fraction in the Rada, Mikhail Papiev, also voiced cautions of his party regarding the decentralization bill. He believes that prefects should only effectuate a state supervision, not to be the head of the executive power; the executive local organs should have the full executive power. Papiev also cautioned that imprecise wording of the clause would allow, or open the door to, the president to suspend (or, in the literal translation from Ukrainian, temporarily halt) activities of a local council. The Constitutional Court would then examine immediately whether the decisions of the council are anti-constitutional, threatening a situation where in territories out of favor with the central power, there would be no councils and state commissioners would perpetually rule the region. Papiev also reminded that the proposed bill was not discussed and agreed upon with the representatives of Donetsk and Lugansk and that the special statute of Donbas is not written explicitly as an article in the Constitution. A special law, which is mentioned instead in the proposed bill, could be declared as anti-constitutional and revoked.

The representative of the Batkivshchyna [Fatherland] Party, Ihor Lutsenko, noted that there is no provision for the revocation of the right of a prefect to suspend legal acts adopted by a local government. Nobody can hold him accountable on the local level. Under such circumstances, a prefect can become a sole source of power in the region, an autocrat who watches over the local government. It can be interpreted as the interference of the state power into the local governance. The right of the president to suspend local governments and to appoint an interim state commissioner means that the Rada could allow the president in peacetime to halt the functioning of local authorities on some far-fetched pretext and introduce direct rule. For instance, under the current legislation, even corruption is considered a threat to national security of Ukraine. Lutsenko qualified this provision as a “legal perversion”.

The former head of the Socialist Party of Ukraine, Olexandr Moroz, stressed that the prefect will be the “the man in charge” in the region, which goes against the affirmation that the power in the region is controlled by the population. It is not clear, according to the proposed changes to the Constitution, what exact powers a prefect will have, what his status will be or what he/she will do, outlined Moroz.

I have already mentioned that the bill on decentralization suffers from many vague formulations. For instance, in the chapter on the prefect’s powers, it is stipulated that he/she “coordinates the activities of the territorial organs of the central organs of the executive power”. What are these territorial organs? The central organs of executive power in Ukraine are the Cabinet of Ministers and various ministries, state agencies and services. There is no such thing as “territorial organs” in the current political-administrative system of Ukraine. Probably, they will be created as part of the planned reform in Ukraine.

According to the proposed article 133, the new administrative-territorial division (ATD) of Ukraine will consist of communities (hromady), districts (rayony), and regions. The community is the primary, the smallest unit. It is called “a territorial community”. Communities form a district, and several districts form a region. In the current administrative-territorial system in Ukraine, a village is the smallest unit. A district is a formation of many villages and towns, with a city as an administrative centre of a district. An oblast is a regional formation, regrouping several districts. The planned reform of the ATD in Ukraine was outlined, prior to the proposed bill on decentralization, in the law of Ukraine “On the voluntary merging of territorial communities”, adopted by the Rada on February 5, 2015. The goal of this law was to solve a chronic problem of the Ukrainian state: shortages of funds for the financing of schools, hospitals or first-aid centres, other elements of social infrastructure, and the bureaucratic apparatus of village and city councils. The goal was to reduce the number of villages and districts, thus reducing the costs of administration and of services.

The voluntary merging, according to the law, is initiated by the head of a village or a city, deputies of the village or city council (at least one third of them), or members of a “self-organization” of the population (again, they have to represent the interests of at least one third of the members of the local community). The question has to be publicly debated, and after that the local council adopts a decision on the voluntary merger. The decision is then directed to the regional state administration which approves it.

The territorial communities of neighboring villages, towns, and cities are the subjects of the voluntary merging. An administrative centre of a newly formed territorial community should be a locality that has a developed infrastructure and is situated close to the geographical centre of the community. The name of that locality becomes the name of the territorial community.

Territorial communities will form districts (raions), which will be much bigger than the existing ones. Currently there are dozens of raions within an oblast. In the new system, these dozens will be amalgamated into 4-7 larger raions, with the population of each to be between 150,000 to 400,000 residents. In total, around 120-130 enlarged raions will be created in Ukraine. The geographical borders of oblasts will remain the same, but instead of oblasts they will be called rehiony (regions).

In regions and raions both, there will be local governments as well as organs of state power, similar to current state administrations. The central power will be represented by prefects. The executive power will be given to the executive committees of raion and region councils.

At the lowest level of governance,–a territorial community–there will be no representative of the central power. A community will take over the major part of services to the population, which currently are provided by raion centers. A universal centre of administrative services will be created in each community (ibid).

The bill stipulates that heads of communities, as well as deputies of the councils of communities, raions, and oblasts, are elected in a free election, by exercising a general, equal and direct right to vote through a secret ballot. What “oblast councils”, if no such administrative unit will exist anymore?

In general, the terminology of the administrative division of Ukraine is a weird patchwork of various historical terms. To start with, hromada is an old Ukrainian word which denotes more than a type of settlement—it denotes a collectivity of people, united by common life, interests and a territory. Therefore, to use it in the sense of an administrative unit is not appropriate. Raion comes from the former Soviet administrative system, while the word “region” has been employed in Ukrainian in the sense of a geographical entity which is larger than an oblast and has its own cultural, historical, and natural particularities, such as the Donbas region, Carpathian region, Southern Ukraine region etc. The new proposed terminology is awkward and confusing.

The bill on decentralization states that the territorial community directly or through the community council will manage the communal property, form a budget and control its implementation, adopt programs of social-economic and cultural development and control its implementation; establish local taxes and fees and other local matters in its competencies (article 143). However, the proposed article 142 significantly reduces the competencies of the communities because it stipulates that the state “ensures the commensurability of financial resources and the scope of competencies of organs of local governance” and that “a change in the competency of the organ of local self-governance is made concomitantly with the respective changes in the repartition of financial resources”. What does that mean? According to the Ukrainian philosopher and blogger Serhiy Datsiuk, it means that the state determines the scope of formal competencies of the local governments by equating it with the finances available, and the state itself determines the scope of finances. That is, the state continues to distribute resources to regions “in a manual mode”, without strict rules and principles. Again, it means that the budgets will be formed not from the bottom up but from the top down, which goes against the logic of decentralization.

The bill also stipulates that the raion and oblast councils adopt raion and oblast budgets and “resolves other issues in its competency, determined by the law”. The oblast councils also adopt a regional program of the social-economic and cultural development of the oblast. So, again, what we are talking about here – a region or an oblast? And why is the raion council not involved in the adoption of these programs, only the community and oblast councils?

One paragraph later, the bill stipulates that the law (which law?) delimits powers of local governments on the three levels of self-governance “on the principle of subsidiarity” (art. 143), without explaining what exactly this principle means.

And speaking about elections on the local level, following the old schedule they will take place in October of this year. The elected officials will then carry out the major part of their administrative duties while the central power organs will carry out the reform. New local elections will then take place in October of 2017, and the new local governments, provided for in the bill, will start functioning fully. The question that I have, given the dire economic situation in the country is, why not start implementing the reform now, keeping the current local self-governance organs in place, and then, once the transitional period is over and a new power structure is in place, to call local elections then? I guess an answer to this question, at least partly, maybe that the power holders in Kyiv need to assure the presence of their fellow party members on the local level, especially in the “non-reliable” regions of Southern and Eastern Ukraine, where many of the former Party of Region members (the party, of sorts, of President Yanukovych) work in local councils.

My conclusions, after a long analysis of the proposed bill on decentralization, are that it is not really decentralization but, rather, a reinforcement of the presidential “vertical” power. It is a document written hastily and without clear formulations. It is a document that was pushed through the Verkhovna Rada by President Poroshenko and Prime-Minister Yatsenyuk in order to please their Western allies and to pretend that the current regime in Kyiv is fulfilling its obligations under the Minsk-2 agreement. This document has not been discussed with the representatives of Donetsk and Lugansk, which undermines negotiations which are already practically non-existent and it undermines a possible political solution between Kyiv and Donbas.

As to the roadmap of real decentralization, which Ukraine desperately needs, this bill will need to be significantly improved to remove vague formulations and make the clauses more precise and clear. As it is, the bill is but a variation of the existing administrative-territorial division of Ukraine and a reshuffling of the current legislation. The old adage “the more things change, the more they remain the same” holds true in Ukraine.

Halyna Mokrushyna is currently enrolled in the PhD program in Sociology at the University of Ottawa and a part-time professor. She holds a doctorate in linguistics and MA degree in communication. Her academic interests include: transitional justice; collective memory; ethnic studies; dissent movement in Ukraine; history of Ukraine; sociological thought.  Her doctoral project deals with the memory of Stalinist purges in Ukraine. In the summer of 2013 she travelled to Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Donetsk to conduct her field research. She is currently working on completing her thesis. She can be reached at [email protected].

August 29, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

$1.8 bln IMF Ukraine Bailout Funds Discovered in Kolomoyskyi’s Cyprus Kitty

Sputnik | August 29, 2015

A huge chunk of the $17 billion in bailout money the IMF granted to Ukraine in April 2014 has been discovered in a bank account in Cyprus controlled by exiled Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the German newspaper Deutsche Wirtshafts Nachrichten (DWN) reported on Thursday.

In April last year $3.2 billion was immediately disbursed to Ukraine, and over the following five months, another $4.5 billion was disbursed to the Ukrainian Central Bank in order to stabilize the country’s financial system.

“The money should have been used to stabilize the country’s ailing banks, but $1.8 billion disappeared down murky channels,” writes DWN.

Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the former governor of Dnipropetrovsk, is one of Ukraine’s richest businessmen, with a business empire that includes holdings in the energy, media, aviation, chemical and metalwork industries. At the center of Kolomoyskyi’s wealth is PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest financial institution, which claimed the bulk – 40 percent – of the bailout money which had been earmarked for stabilizing the banking system.

“Theoretically, the IMF should retain direct control over the distribution of funds. In fact, it seems that the banks chose their own auditors.”

DWN notes that the IMF reported in January 2015 that the equity ratio of Ukraine’s banking system had dropped to 13.8 percent, from 15.9 percent in late June 2014. By February 2015 even PrivatBank had to be saved from bankruptcy, and was given a 62 million Euro two-year loan from the Central Bank.

“So where have the IMF’s billions gone?”

The racket executed by Kolomoyskyi’s PrivatBank was uncovered by the Ukrainian anti-corruption initiative ‘Nashi Groshi,’ meaning ‘our money’ in Ukrainian.

According to Nashi Groshi’s investigations, PrivatBank has connections to 42 Ukrainian companies, which are owned by another 54 offshore companies based in the Caribbean, USA and Cyprus. These companies took out loans from PrivatBank totaling $1.8 billion.

These Ukrainian companies ordered investment products from six foreign suppliers based in the UK, the Virgin Islands and the Caribbean, and then transferred money to a branch of PrivatBank in Cyprus, ostensibly to pay for the products.

The products were then used as collateral for the loans taken out from PrivatBank – however, the overseas suppliers never delivered the goods, and the 42 companies took legal action in court in Dnipropetrovsk, demanding reimbursement for payments made for the goods, and the termination of the loans from Privatbank.

The court’s ruling was the same for all 42 companies; the foreign suppliers should return the money, but the credit agreement with Privatbank remains in place.

“Basically, this was a transaction of $1.8 billion abroad, with the help of fake contracts, the siphoning off of assets and violation of existing laws,” explained journalist Lesya Ivanovna of Nashi Groshi.

In March Kolomoyskyi was dismissed from his position as governor of Dnipropetrovsk after a power struggle with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko; the fraud was carried out while he was governor of the region in East-Central Ukraine.

“The whole story with the court case was only necessary to make it look like the bank itself was not involved in the fraud scheme. Officially it now looks like as if the bank has the products, but in reality they were never delivered,” said Ivanovna.

Such business practices have earned Kolomoyskyi a fortune currently estimated by Forbes at $1.27 billion, and were known to investigators beyond Ukraine’s borders; Kolomoyskyi was once banned from entering the US due to suspicions of connections with international organized crime.

Despite these suspicions, it appears that Kolomoyskyi is unlikely to face justice, as he is currently living in exile in the US; he fled Ukraine earlier this year. Ukraine has been granted a further $3.6 billion in debt relief from creditors. Russia, despite its membership in development lending institutions, has refused to contribute funds to Ukraine due to concerns emanating from this and other instances of widespread graft.

August 29, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | 1 Comment

Canada’s Role in the “War” on Libya

Defied UN Resolutions 1970 and 1973

By Yves Engler | August 29, 2015

Since the start of the Canadian election campaign a series of posts have detailed the Harper Conservatives repeated abuse of power. The Tyee published “Harper, Serial Abuser of Power”, which listed “70 Harper government assaults on democracy and the law.” But the widely disseminated list omitted what may be the Conservatives’ most flagrant – and far-reaching –lawbreaking. In 2011 Ottawa defied UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR) 1970 and 1973, which were passed amidst the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi’s four-decade rule in Libya.

In direct contravention of these legally binding resolutions, Canadian troops were on the ground in the North African country. On September 13, three weeks after Tripoli fell to the anti-Gaddafi National Transition Council, Canada’s state broadcaster reported: “CBC News has learned there are members of the Canadian Forces on the ground in Libya.”

A number of other media outlets reported that highly secretive Canadian special forces were fighting in Libya. On February 28, CTV.ca reported “that Canadian special forces are also on the ground in Libya” while Esprit du Corp editor Scott Taylor noted Canadian Special Operations Regiment’s flag colours in the Conservatives’ post-war celebration. But, any Canadian ‘boots on the ground’ in Libya violated UNSCR 1973, which explicitly excluded “a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.”

The Conservative government also directly armed the rebels in contravention of international law. Waterloo-based Aeryon Scout Micro supplied the rebels with a three-pound, backpack-sized Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. The director of field support for the company, Charles Barlow, traveled 18 hours on a rebel operated boat from Malta to the rebels training facility in Misrata. There, Barlow taught the rebels how to operate this Canadian-developed drone, which was used to gather intelligence on the front lines. In an interview after Gaddafi’s death, Barlow said: “I hope we did a little tiny part to help get rid of that man.”

According to various reports the drone was paid for out of Libyan government assets frozen in Canada. Aeryon CEO Dave Kroetsch said the company was “approached by the Canadian government.” But, in April 2011 Foreign Affairs officials advised then foreign minister Lawrence Cannon that providing military assistance to the Libyan rebels contravened UNSCR 1970. Based on documents uncovered through the Access to Information Act, Project Ploughshares reported: “A ‘Memorandum for Action’ signed by the Minister on April 11, noted that under the UN Security Council resolution that established the arms embargo against Libya, ‘Canada generally cannot permit the export of arms to Libya without the prior approval of the UN 1970 Sanctions Committee.’ The memo also stated that the arms embargo ‘encompasses any type of weapon … as well as technical assistance such as the provision of instruction, training or intelligence.’ It confirms that the UN arms embargo on Libya precluded the transfer of the Canadian surveillance drone to Libyan opposition forces.

However, the memo also provided an interpretive feint for Canada by which it could allow the drone to be exported. It noted that Security Council Resolution 1973 contains language that key partners the US, the UK and France interpreted as permitting provision of arms to Libyan opposition forces as part of ‘all necessary measures … to protect civilians.’ The memo was clear that this interpretation was not shared by many other states, including NATO allies Italy and Norway.”

The government failed to inform all departments about its interpretive feint. In early 2012 a Canadian Forces website plainly stated that UNSCR 1970 “called for an international arms embargo on Libya” and “[UNSCR] 1973 of 17 March, which strengthened the arms embargo.”

Montréal-based security firm Garda World also contravened international law. Sometime in the “summer of 2011”, according to its website, Garda began operating in the country. After the National Transition Council captured Tripoli (six weeks before Muammar Gaddafi was killed in Sirte on October 20, 2011) the rebels requested Garda’s assistance in bringing their forces “besieging the pro-Qaddafi stronghold of Sirte to hospitals in Misrata”, reported Bloomberg. [iv] UNSCR 1970 specifically mandated all UN member states “to prevent the provision of armed mercenary personnel” into Libya.

Resolution 1973 reinforced the arms embargo, mentioning “armed mercenary personnel” in three different contexts. In an article titled “Mercenaries in Libya: Ramifications of the Treatment of ‘Armed Mercenary Personnel’ under the Arms Embargo for Private Military Company Contractors”, Hin-Yan Liu points out that the Security Council’s “explicit use of the broader term ‘armed mercenary personnel’ is likely to include a significant category of contractors working for Private Military Companies (PMCs).”1

Canadian officials probably introduced the rebels to Garda, the world’s largest privately held security firm. In fact, Ottawa may have paid Garda to help the rebels. As mentioned, the federal government used some of the $2.2 billion it froze in Libyan assets in Canada to pay Aeryon Scout to equip and train the rebels with a UAV.

After Gaddafi was killed the Conservatives spent $850,000 on a nationally televised war celebration for the troops that fought in Libya. Harper called it “a day of honour… Soldier for soldier, sailor for sailor, airman for airman, the Canadian Armed Forces are the best in the world.”

But don’t expect the Prime Minister to discuss Libya during the election. “Since Colonel Gaddafi’s death in Sirte in October 2011,” the BBC reported recently, “Libya has descended into chaos, with various militias fighting for power.” ISIS has taken control of parts of the country while a government in Tripoli and another in Benghazi claim national authority

The Conservatives’ violation of international law delivered a terrible blow to Libya. If international affairs weren’t largely defined by the ‘might makes right’ principle, Harper would find himself in the dock.

Footnote

  1. Hin-Yan Liu, Mercenaries in Libya: Ramifications of the Treatment of ‘Armed Mercenary Personnel’ under the Arms Embargo for Private Military Company Contractors, Journal of Conflict & Security Law, Vol 16, No 2, 2011

Yves Engler is the author of The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s foreign policy. His Canada in Africa — 300 years of Aid and Exploitation will be published in September and he will be speaking across the country in the lead up to the election.

August 29, 2015 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

Russia has accepted over 1mn Ukrainian refugees forced out of homes by Donbass war

RT | August 28, 2015

Over 1 million people have moved to Russia from southeast Ukraine since the beginning of the armed conflict and about 600,000 of them decided never to return home, the head of the Federal Migration Service says.

Konstantin Romodanovsky said in an interview with Interfax that about 114,000 Ukrainian refugees took part in the government program of resettlement and received material aid and a short track in getting Russian citizenship.

Romodanovsky also said that the influx of refugees from Ukraine had led to improvement of Russians’ attitudes towards migrants in general. According to a recent poll conducted by the independent Levada research center, 41 percent of Russians hold that the best way to tackle illegal migration was to help the refugees find jobs and receive legal status – twice as many as the 19 percent who gave the same answer just one year back.

In the same interview, Romodanovsky said that his agency was actively fighting illegal migration and over the past 2 1/2 years they have managed to detain and send back about 1.5 million people who tried to get in to Russian territory by bypassing the rules.

In mid-June this year the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that in 2014 the influx of Ukrainian citizens seeking refuge on Russian territory put the Russian Federation in first place in the world by number of asylum applications.

The UN confirmed that the military conflict in Ukraine’s Donbass region was the main reason for the surge in asylum applications. Over 271,000 requests came from Ukrainian citizens, making 99 percent of the total number, the report reads. The report also stated that Russian authorities proved to be much more tolerant in their approach to Ukrainian applicants than their colleagues from Western countries.

Russia and Belarus fulfilled 90 percent of the asylum requests while nations such as the UK, France, Poland or Finland accepted no more than 10 percent of Ukrainian asylum seekers. The US, Canada and Germany proved to be more hospitable, fulfilling between 35 and 65 percent of requests, but these numbers are still far lower than the Russian figures, wrote the UN researchers.

The report also stated that in 2014 Ukraine surpassed the previous years’ leader, Syria, by number of people who wanted to flee their homeland. About one-fifth of a total 1.47 million asylum requests was made by Ukrainians and 94 percent of these requests were made in Russia.

READ MORE: Russia had world’s highest number of asylum applications in 2014 – UN

August 29, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Two people violently arrested at peaceful demonstration in Nabi Saleh

International Solidarity Movement | August 28, 2015

Occupied Palestine – On Friday the 28th of August 2015, two peaceful demonstrators were violently arrested and a child viciously attacked by Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian village Nabi Saleh in occupied Palestine. Every Friday the people of Nabi Saleh protest against the illegal settlement build on the villages’ land.

Israili soldier threatning Palestinian women and children at non violent demonstration in Nabi Saleh. Photo credit: Karam

Israeli soldier threatening Palestinian women and children at non violent demonstration in Nabi Saleh. Photo credit: Karam

Today at around 3 pm one Palestinian male, Mahmoud Tamimi, and one international activist were arrested in the Palestinian village Nabi Saleh close to Ramallah. They were arrested during a Friday demonstration against the illegal settlements on the land belonging to the people of Nabi Saleh.

Only a few minutes after the protesters peacefully started their march towards the gate, which is regularly blocked by the military preventing any movement in- or outside of the village, the Israeli army began attacking the non-violent protesters with dozens of rounds of tear gas.

The soldiers then ambushed the demonstrators escaping the clouds of tear gas by surrounding them. They attacked and then arrested Mahmoud Tamimi, shoving him down the hill towards the illegal settlement, where he was forced to lie on the ground.

Israili soldier strangulationa Palestinian boy at non violent demonstration in Nabi Saleh. Photo credit: Karam

Israeli soldier strangling a Palestinian boy at non violent demonstration in Nabi Saleh. Photo credit: Karam

Around the same time, a Palestinian boy was violently attacked by a soldier throwing him to the ground, choking and almost suffocating him in the process. “While the boy was screaming in pain his family came to rescue him from the soldiers’ vicious assault”, Josephine, a Danish activist explains.

Israili soldier attacking Palestininan boy at non violent demonstration in Nabi Saleh. Photo credit: Karam

Israeli soldier attacking Palestinian boy at non violent demonstration in Nabi Saleh. Photo credit: Karam

A group of peaceful international demonstrators trying to document the attack on the boy, was ambushed by another group of soldiers, who violently pushed a 31-year old Italian man to the ground and proceeded to arrested him.

Both the Palestinian and the international were being held captive in a military jeep by the Israeli army for almost nine hours, before being brought to a police station.

August 29, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | 1 Comment