Eye-witness account of a murder: ‘They didn’t want her alive, they want her dead, they meant to kill her”
International Solidarity Movement | November 16, 2015
Hebron, Occupied Palestine – On 25th October 2015, 17-year old Dania Arsheid was gunned down by Israeli forces in front of the Ibrahimi mosque in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron) and left to bleed to death. One of the shopkeepers nearby the Ibrahimi mosque witnessed the events leading up to this ruthless murder and agreed to make a statement.
After school finished around 1:20pm on that fateful Sunday, Dania was on her way from the Palestinian souq (market) in the Old City of al-Khalil towards the Ibrahimi mosque. She passed the first revolving gate and the metal detector without any problems – the metal detector did not indicate any metal objects. When passing the second revolving door, soldiers at the nearby checkpoint at the entrance of the mosque called for her to come there. Upon hearing this, the witness, who owns a shop, just meters away from the revolving gate, decided to go through the checkpoint to make sure that the girl was okay.
Dania passed yet another metal detector at the checkpoint at the mosque entrance and put her bag on the table there, as requested by the Israeli forces. They searched her entire bag but they were not able to find anything. Regardless of that, Israeli forces kept asking
Dania ‘where is the knife’ over and over again – completely ignoring her answer that ‘there is no knife’. When one of the soldiers suddenly shot a bullet between her feet yelling at her, she raised her hands and moved back down the stairs. Nevertheless, the soldiers continued questioning her aggressively about a knife – even though she had her hands raised and her bag had been searched with no knife found; and Dania repeatedly asserting that she did not have any knife.
After the first shot was fired, more and more soldiers arrived to the checkpoint, so that it was impossible to tell how many of them shot the 6-7 fatal bullets at Dania – a girl who had her hands up in the air, who had been searched extensively and who had at no point posed any threat. Immediately after she was gunned down, Palestinians in the area – including the witness – were forced to move back through the checkpoint into the souq. The soldiers pointed their assault rifles at the witnesses pushing them out of the area and immediately afterwards closed off the checkpoint for anyone to enter and exit for about an hour.
The first ambulance arrived about 15 minutes after Dania was gunned down. “They didn’t want her alive, they want her dead, they meant to kill her”, explains the witness, stating that they could have easily arrested her. At no point after her body was perforated with bullets was any first aid provided, and the shooters left her lying on the ground slowly bleeding to death. Instead of giving first aid, Israeli forces proceeded to block the view so nobody but them would be able to see the 17-year old school-girl bleed to death.
“She came [to the checkpoint] and didn’t do anything – and then she was killed.”
France Has a Powerful and Controversial New Surveillance Law
By Arik Hesseldahl – <re/code> – November 14, 2015
As it plans its response to a series of six terrorist attacks Friday night that killed 129 and injured 352, the government of France will likely step up its efforts to keep tabs on the movements and communications of people within its borders.
As it happens, the attacks have occurred only a few months after legislators in that country passed a sweeping new surveillance law that gives the government broad powers to closely monitor the mobile phone and Internet communications of French citizens.
Passed by the French Parliament in May in response to the attacks on the Paris-based magazine Charlie Hebdo, the law allows the government to monitor phone calls and emails of people suspected of connections to terrorism without the authorization of a judge.
But it goes further than that. The law requires Internet service providers to install “black boxes” that are designed to vacuum up and analyze metadata on the Web-browsing and general Internet use habits of millions of people using the Web and to make that data available to intelligence agencies.
In exceptional cases, the law allows the government to deploy what are called “ISMI catchers” to track all mobile phone communications in a given area. These catchers are basically designed to impersonate cell towers, but they intercept and record communications data from phones within its range, and can also track the movements of people carrying the phones.
Finally, the law allows government agents to break into homes of suspected terrorists for the purpose of planting microphone bugs and surveillance cameras and installing keyloggers on their computers, devices that capture data on every keystroke and mouse click.
Critics of the law complain that there’s not much oversight and that the conditions under which the law’s powers can be triggered are vague. As The Verge noted in July, the government can authorize the surveillance for “major foreign policy interests” or to counter “organized delinquency.”
Surveillance operations are overseen by a nine-person committee led by Prime Minister Manuel Valls. But that committee has only an advisory role, and cannot overrule decisions by the prime minister.
Will British MPs vote to bomb Syria? Cameron, Corbyn diverge on Paris attack response
RT | November 16, 2015
Prime Minister David Cameron says he wants Britain to take part in airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria, but still needs to convince MPs to back an intervention. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn meanwhile has warned bombing will not defeat the jihadists.
Cameron said he won’t hold a vote in Parliament on extending UK airstrikes from Iraq into Syria until he can be sure MPs will back it.
The PM told BBC radio if a vote on airstrikes against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) is defeated in the house it could damage Britain’s reputation on the global stage.
France has launched a series of “massive” strikes against IS in its stronghold of Raqqa in northern Syria following Friday’s terror attacks in Paris.
The UK is currently involved in bombing raids against IS targets in Iraq, but Parliament rejected a vote to extend airstrikes to Syria in 2013.
Speaking to the BBC, Cameron said he wants Britain to join a bombing campaign in Syria.
“I have always said I think that it is sensible that we should. ISIL don’t recognize a border between Iraq and Syria and neither should we, but I need to build the argument, I need to take it to Parliament, I need to convince more people,” Cameron said.
“We won’t hold that vote unless we can see that parliament would endorse action because to fail on this would be damaging, it is not a question of damaging the government it is a question of not damaging our country and its reputation in the world.”
The PM said he would take immediate direct action if British interests were at stake, citing RAF drone attacks launched in August against British citizens fighting for IS.
However Conservative MP Crispin Blunt has expressed doubts about military action in Syria without a wider international plan.
He told BBC Pienaar’s Politics the international community must redouble its efforts to reach a consensus on Syria and progress to a transitional arrangement had been made at talks in Vienna.
Jeremy Corbyn has warned airstrikes against IS will cause “more mayhem and more loss” in the region.
The Labour leader said the only way to deal with the threat posed by IS is to achieve a political settlement to Syria’s ongoing civil war.
“Does the bombing change it? Probably not. The idea has to be surely a political settlement in Syria,” he told ITV1’s Lorraine program.
“We have to be careful. One war doesn’t necessarily bring about peace – it often can bring yet more conflicts, more mayhem and more loss.
“I am not saying ‘sit round the table with ISIS,’ I am saying bring about a political settlement in Syria which will help then to bring some kind of unity government – technical government – in Syria,” he said.
Corbyn said it is important to ask “very big questions” about how IS has become so powerful in the region.
“Who is funding ISIS? Who is arming ISIS? Who is providing safe havens for ISIS? You have to ask questions about the arms that everyone has sold in the region, the role of Saudi Arabia in this. I think there are some very big questions,” he said.
Corbyn’s comments appear to contradict remarks by Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary Lord Falconer on Sunday indicating Labour could back military action against IS in Syria without a UN resolution.
Labour’s current policy, established at party conference, is to only support extending airstrikes into Syria with a UN mandate.
Lord Falconer suggested the party could ease this position, as Russia has so far blocked moves for a UN resolution on military action in Syria.
“ISIS can only be defeated by the international community as a whole, if possible through a UN sponsored process, but if not that, then nations come together,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
“I think NATO will be a part of it. It is much too early to say whether it is appropriate or possible to evoke article five, but NATO will be part of the group of nations that have got to come together to look at it.”
Article Five states that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all.
Falconer made clear any move to intervene in Syria must come with a strategy to deal with the civil war.
“You need a plan, and that plan has got to deal with the Syrian issue. I’m not urging troops on the ground, but ultimately ISIS have to be defeated. It can’t just be from the air.”
The Vienna agreement that no one seems to have noticed…
OffGuardian | November 15, 2015
On the day after the Vienna talks, and the announcement of a tentative agreement between the US and Russia over the Syrian crisis, this was the front page of the Guardian…
And this was the World page of the Guardian…
And this was the Middle East page of the Guardian
In fact, to cut a long story short we haven’t been able to find a single news item on the Graun about the Vienna talks at all.
We find this strange.
Other corporate outlets at least managed to squeeze in a mention. Bloomberg, for example, and even the WSJ. The Independent mentioned it, but apparently thinks it’s not as important as a Mexican theatre troupe lampooning Donald Trump, and their headline is pure fiction:
Yes, 129 people died in Paris, and yes this is tragic. We understand that the corporate media is required to promote these western European deaths as being much more relevant and terrible than the thousands upon thousands of non-European people dying in unimportant places such as Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria. We also understand that endless, prurient lip-smacking stories about “blood”, “grief” and “horror” are now considered appropriate rather than disrespectful, and there are only so many column inches to spare.
But surely the Graun could at least have mentioned the Vienna thing? Surely the media in general could have accorded it a slightly more prominent place?
Does anyone get the impression it doesn’t fit the current approved narrative? After all it basically consists of the US conceding to Russia, on paper at least. This is not cool for the Empire of Exceptionalism, and the lunatic faction in Washington no doubt wants no part of it.
Convenient for them that the Paris attacks happened just when they did isn’t it. Kerry has been effectively sidelined for the moment and the agreement he and Lavrov signed is now likely to be ripped up before the ink is dry, and without most readers of corporate news even knowing it happened.
One civilian dead, four injured in southeast Turkey clashes
Press TV – November 16, 2015
At least one civilian has been killed and four others have been injured in new clashes between Turkish security forces and members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey’s southeastern province of Mardin.
Police sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the clashes broke out in the city of Nusaybin, situated 792 kilometers (492 miles) east of the capital, Anakara, on Sunday.
A 44-year-old woman was killed during the exchange of gunfire. Her daughter and son along with two men were also wounded.
On Sunday, 10 PKK members surrendered to security forces elsewhere in southeast Turkey.
The Turkish military announced that the Kurdish militants turned themselves in to police in the town of Silopi, in the province of Sirnak.
Turkey has been engaged in a large-scale military campaign against the PKK in its southern border region in the recent past. The Turkish military has also been conducting offensives against the positions of the PKK in northern Iraq.
The operations began in the wake of a deadly July 20 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc, an ethnically Kurdish town located close to border with Syria. Over 30 people died in the Suruc attack, which the Turkish government blamed on Takfiri Daesh terrorists.
After the bombing in Suruc, the PKK militants, who accuse the government in Ankara of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of supposedly reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, in turn prompting the Turkish military operations.
Putin: ISIS financed from 40 countries, including G20 members
RT | November 16, 2015
President Vladimir Putin says he’s shared Russian intelligence data on Islamic State financing with his G20 colleagues: the terrorists appear to be financed from 40 countries, including some G20 member states.
During the summit, “I provided examples based on our data on the financing of different Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) units by private individuals. This money, as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them,” Putin told the journalists.
Putin also spoke of the urgent need to curb the illegal oil trade by IS.
“I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” he said.
“The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon,” Putin added, comparing the convoy to gas and oil pipeline systems.
It’s not the right time to try and figure out which country is more and which is less effective in the battle with Islamic State, as now a united international effort is needed against the terrorist group, Putin said.
Putin reiterated Russia’s readiness to support armed opposition in Syria in its efforts to fight Islamic State.
“Some armed opposition groups consider it possible to begin active operations against IS with Russia’s support. And we are ready to provide such support from the air. If it happens it could become a good basis for the subsequent work on a political settlement,” he said.
“We really need support from the US, European nations, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran,” the president added.
Putin pointed out the change in Washington’s stance on cooperation with Moscow in the fight against the terrorists.
“We need to organize work specifically concentrated on the prevention of terrorist attacks and tackling terrorism on a global scale. We offered to cooperate [with the US] in anti-IS efforts. Unfortunately, our American partners refused. They just sent a written note and it says: ‘we reject your offer’,” Putin said.
“But life is always evolving and at a very fast pace, often teaching us lessons. And I think that now the realization that an effective fight [against terror] can only be staged together is coming to everybody,” the Russian leader said.
According to Putin, first of all it should be decided which groups in Syria can be considered terrorist organizations and which can be attributed to an armed, but still legitimate part of the Syrian opposition.
“Our efforts must be concentrated on the battle with terrorist organizations.”
Putin also disagreed with Western criticism of Russia’s actions in Syria, where the country has been carrying out a large-scale air campaign against Islamic State and other terror groups since September 30.
“It’s really difficult to criticize us,” he said, adding that Russia has repeatedly asked its foreign partners to provide data on terrorist targets in Syria.
“They’re afraid to inform us on the territories which we shouldn’t strike, fearing that it is precisely where we’ll strike; that we are going to cheat everybody,” the president said.
“Apparently, their opinion of us is based on their own concept of human decency,” he added.
Putin told the media that Russia has already established contact with the Syrian opposition, which has asked Moscow not carry out airstrikes in the territories it controls.
Terrorism and the Question of Humanity
By Brenda Heard | Aletho News | November 16, 2015
On 15 November, The New York Times published an article entitled “Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten.” It highlights the disparity between the global solidarity expressed for Paris following the deadly 13 November attacks and the lack thereof expressed for Beirut after it too was attacked the day prior. But the headline suggests a petulant attitude from Lebanese who “feel forgotten,” as though they were a bratty child or a sniveling spouse.
Granted The Times expresses a degree of compassion for Beirut’s victims, who like those in Paris “were killed at random, in a bustling urban area, while going about their normal evening business.” But The Times also seems to be trying to wiggle out of appearing heartless in a previous Times article’s headline–“Deadly Blasts Hit Hezbollah Stronghold in Southern Beirut”—a headline that it now explains was “changed to be more precise.” The Times withdrew the headline’s phraseology “Hezbollah Stronghold,” which it admitted, “risks portraying a busy civilian, residential and commercial district as a justifiable military target.”
With images of civilian victims in circulation, the casual sneer of “Hezbollah stronghold,” quickly trumpeted by Reuters and the Associated Press, did seem rather. . . misleading. Yet despite even The Times’ own characterization of the stricken Bourj el-Barajneh municipality as typical “working-class Beirut, where Palestinians, Christians and Syrian refugees (mostly Sunnis) live, work and shop,” these descriptions are colored with an overriding exemption: “Hezbollah maintains tight security control” of the area. Only Reuters gives slight mention to the contradiction of this so-called “Hezbollah Bastion” hosting numerous Lebanese Army checkpoints.
So with a curious twist, The Times manages to undo the cliché “innocent civilian” as victim of a terror attack. The Beirut victims may have been civilian, the article concedes, but how dare they consider themselves innocent and thus worthy of solidarity. After all, the article tells us, Hezbollah is highly popular there. So why change and half-apologise for the phrase “Hezbollah stronghold”? Because The Times asserts that a Hezbollah stronghold would be a “justifiable military target.” And that assertion comes dangerously close to approving of this ISIS bombing, dangerously close to the sentiment expressed by a commenter on one of the initial UK reports: “So one bunch of barbaric Islamist terrorists has declared war on another bunch of barbaric Islamist terrorists. We should be celebrating. A win-win for the West and the civilized world.”
Sadly, this comment is mild in comparison to many across the web. They laugh and they rage with a brute callousness that is diametrically opposed to the compassion and solidarity expressed toward the French. When The Times article discussed how the Lebanese felt “forgotten,” it missed the point. It quoted Lebanese blogger Dr Elie Fares saying that “When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colors of their flag.” But if you read his article in its entirety, you will see that he was not bemoaning a lack of attention. Equally disturbed by the lack of concern from his fellow Lebanese, Fares was lamenting a lack of shared humanity. As he stated in a previous article, “The politics maybe change, but with so many victims dying for so little, petty politics become irrelevant.”
As Westerners, of course we are sickened by the violence inflicted upon our neighbors in Paris. We rightfully feel sad and scared. But the challenge is to be able to feel the pain of non-Western societies as well. How many times do we scroll right past headlines of a bombing in an Iraqi marketplace? a mass shooting in Latin America? a typhoon in Asia? Their skin may be brown or black, they make speak what sounds like noise to us, they may even eat with their hands. But they are parents and children, friends and lovers, brothers and sisters. They enjoy a cup of tea and laugh at a funny television show. But even if they view god or government differently than we do, their falling victim to indiscriminate killing should be neither accepted, nor applauded. Unless we want to live forever in fear, we need to condemn brutality and to nurture the notion of live and let live—consistently.
Brenda Heard is the founder and director of Friends of Lebanon, London. She is the author of Hezbollah: An Outsider’s Inside View (2015). She can be contacted at: [email protected].
US sends more weapons to militants in Syria: Report
Press TV – November 16, 2015
The US military has reportedly delivered a new consignment of weapons and ammunition to a group of militants fighting against the Syrian government.
The weapons were delivered by land to the so-called Syrian Arab Coalition which Washington regards as a “moderate rebel group,” a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Reuters news agency on Sunday.
The official did not say who transported the ammunition into Syria but added that US troops did not drive them into Syria.
The first delivery to the group was carried out by an air drop back in October. US Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said the ammunition was for those “moderate” militant groups whose leaders were “appropriately vetted by the United States and have been fighting to remove ISIL from northern Syria.”
Since the Syria conflict started in 2011, the US and its allies have been providing military and financial aid to the militants who are accused of widespread war crimes and crimes against civilians.
The US has on several occasions airdropped weapons for anti-Damascus militants, which ended up in the hands of the Daesh terrorists.
The years-long crisis in Syria has claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people and displaced millions of others.
The United States and its regional allies, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have been backing militants fighting against the Syrian government and people.
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How the CIA hid their MKULTRA mind-control program
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | September 17, 2021
Back in the early 1990s, I spoke with John Marks, author of Search for the Manchurian Candidate. This was the book (1979) that helped expose the existence and range of the infamous CIA MKULTRA program.
Marks related the following facts to me. He had originally filed many Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests for documents connected to the CIA’s mind-control program. He got nothing back.
Finally, as if to play a joke on him, someone at the CIA sent Marks 10 boxes of financial and accounting records. The attitude was, “Here, see what you can do with this.”
I’ve seen some of those records. They’re very boring reading.
But Marks went through them, and lo and behold, he found he could piece together MKULTRA projects, based on the funding data.
Eventually, he assembled enough information to begin naming names. He conducted interviews. The shape of MKULTRA swam into view. And so he wrote his book, Search for the Manchurian Candidate.
He told me that three important books had been written about MKULTRA, and they all stemmed from those 10 boxes of CIA financial records. There was his own book; Operation Mind Control by Walter Bowart; and The Mind Manipulators by Alan Scheflin and Edward Opton. … continue
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