| Armed contractor with criminal record was allowed on elevator with Obama |
| A security contractor with a gun and three prior convictions for assault and battery was allowed on an elevator with President Obama during a Sept. 16 trip to Atlanta, violating Secret Service protocols, according to three people with familiarity of the incident. The incident occurred as Obama appeared at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to discuss the U.S. response to the Ebola crisis. |
| Read more |
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Armed contractor with criminal record was allowed on elevator with Obama
UN rights expert says Israel’s ‘self-defense’ claim in Gaza ‘untenable’, urges accountability
UN rights expert says Israel’s ‘self-defense’ claim in Gaza ‘untenable’, urges accountability
by aletho
MEMO | September 30, 2014
A top UN rights expert has expressed alarm at the impact of Israel's
attack on Gaza for civilians, concluding that "Israel's claim of
self-defense against an occupied population living under a blockade
considered to be illegal under international law is untenable." Makarim
Wibisono, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human […]
30 Hikers Were Filming on Mt. Ontake When Suddenly They Saw Smoke Rising Over Their Heads
Raw Video: 30 Hikers Were Filming on Mt. Ontake When Suddenly They Saw Smoke Rising Over Their Heads
Three dozen hikers are feared to have been killed by
the volcanic eruption of Mount Ontake in Japan this weekend. This raw
video captures the shock of the eruption and the tragic implications of
what might happen at any moment when man comes face-to-...
Read more…
CDC has confirmed an Ebola case in Texas
| Report: CDC has confirmed an Ebola case in Texas |
| The
Dallas-Fort Worth CBS affiliate is reporting that a patient who was
being evaluated for Ebola has tested positive for the virus. According
to Reuters, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the
case -- the first time Ebola has been diagnosed in the United States. The CDC will hold a press conference at its Atlanta headquarters at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Reuters reported. |
| Read more |
Mexican Bishop Claims Allowing Gay Couples To Marry Will Lead To Man-Dog Unions
Mexican Bishop Claims Allowing Gay Couples To Marry Will Lead To Man-Dog Unions
Jose
Maria de la Torre Martin, the bishop of the Diocese of Aguascalientes,
Mexico, found himself in hot water after criticizing a proposed state
law that seeks to allow gay couples to marry
US Judge Claims Argentina ‘in Contempt’ of Court
US Judge Claims Argentina ‘in Contempt’ of Court
by aletho
teleSUR | September 30, 2014
U.S. Judge Thomas Griesa, who has repeatedly sided with vulture funds,
has declared Argentina in contempt of court for its attempts to pay back
over US$200 million in interest to creditors. The Argentinian debt case
reached a new landmark on Monday, as U.S. Judge Thomas Griesa ruled Argentina “in contempt” […]
Michael Phelps arrested in Md. on DUI charges
| Report: Michael Phelps arrested in Md. on DUI charges |
| Olympic medalist Michael Phelps was arrested Monday night in Maryland for driving under the influence, WBAL-TV reports. |
| Read more |
Governor signs measure banning single-use plastic grocery bags in California
Governor signs measure banning single-use plastic grocery bags in California
Los Angeles Times | September 30, 2014 | 9:57 AM
Gov. Jerry Brown today signed a measure phasing out
single-use plastic bags for California supermarkets, convenience stores,
liquor stores and pharmacies.
The action creates a statewide standard after 127 cities and counties in California, including the city of Los Angeles, have adopted local bag ordinances.
On July 1, the ban will take effect for grocery stores and pharmacies. Stores will offer paper and reusable plastic bags for at least 10 cents each. On July 1, 2016, the ban will extend to convenience and liquor stores.
For the latest information go to www.latimes.com.
Here’s Why Moldova Could be the Next Ukraine
Here’s Why Moldova Could be the Next Ukraine
by aletho
By Andrew Korybko | Russia Insider | September 30, 2014
Lost among the talk of Ukraine’s Civil War and the ISIL threat is the
coming Russia vs. West clash in Moldova. The country is sandwiched
between Romania and Ukraine, and the region of Transnistria has been
de-facto independent for about two decades already. As Moldova […]
Moscow rejects Kiev’s ‘virtual’ gas price, seeks $3.9bn to resume supplies
Moscow rejects Kiev’s ‘virtual’ gas price, seeks $3.9bn to resume supplies
by aletho
RT | September 30, 2014
Russia is ready to resume gas deliveries to Ukraine only after it pays
$2 billion of its debt and makes a $1.9 billion advance payment for
future supplies, Russian Minister of Energy Aleksandr Novak said. “There
will be no new supplies if part of the debt is not paid. Otherwise, […]
UK Home Office issues threat against the functioning of democracy
UK Home Office issues threat against the functioning of democracy
by aletho
RT |September 30, 2014
Powers banning extremists from appearing on TV and which allow police
to vet “harmful” individuals’ social media activity would be enforced if
the Conservatives return to power next year, Home Secretary Theresa May
is set to announce. The party manifesto will also pledge to introduce
time-limited Extremist Disruption Orders to curb […]
Secret Service agent who tackled intruder was off duty
| Secret Service agent who tackled intruder was off duty |
| The
man who jumped over the White House fence and sprinted through the main
floor of the mansion could have gotten even farther had it not been for
an off-duty Secret Service agent who was coincidentally in the house
and leaving for the night. The agent who finally tackled Omar Gonzalez had been serving on the security detail for President Obama’s daughters and had just seen the family depart via helicopter minutes earlier. He happened to be walking through the house when chaos broke out and the intruder dashed through the main foyer, according to two people familiar with the incident. |
| Read more |
Syria’s heritage in ruins: before-and-after pictures
Posted: 30 Sep 2014 08:26 AM PDT
The
war in Syria has claimed more than 130,000 lives and, as these images
reveal, it is also laying waste to its historic buildings and
Unesco-listed sites
Umayyad mosque, Aleppo – pictured in 2012, before fighting destroyed it in 2013. Photograph: Alamy
They were sleepy tree-lined boulevards where people lived and worked,
time-worn markets where they came to trade and exquisitely detailed
mosques where, throughout the ages, they prayed.
All now stand in ruins, ravaged by a war that is not only killing generations of Syrians but also eradicating all around them, including sites that have stood since the dawn of civilisation. Across Syria, where a seemingly unstoppable war is about to enter a third year, a heritage built over 5,000 years or more is being steadily buried under rubble.
The Old Souk, Aleppo. Above in 2007 and below in 2013. Photographs: Corbis, Stanley Greene/Noor/Eyevine The
destruction of towns and villages is regularly revealed by raw, and
often revolting, videos uploaded to the web, which many people stopped
watching long ago. Only seldomly do the shaky images reveal the damage
being done beyond the battle – to ancient churches, stone Crusader
fortresses and ruins that have stood firm during several millennia of
insurrection and purge but are being withered away by this unforgiving
war.
Syria’s war has claimed more than 130,000 lives. At least two million of its citizens have fled into neighbouring states and more than two million others have been displaced within its borders. Industry and economy has long ground to a halt. Hope too has been on a relentless slide. Syria has six Unesco sites, representing at least 2,000 years of history. All have been damaged.
al-Kindi hospital, Aleppo. Above in 2012 and below in 2013. Photographs: Getty These
before and after pictures show the old world order of Syria reflected
for decades in history books; where people bought wares in marketplaces
or mingled in mosque courtyards. They also reveal the shocking scale of
devastation in all corners of the country and the damage done to Syria’s
soul and identity.
In Aleppo, one of the oldest covered marketplaces in the world is now in ruins; its maze of stone streets has been one of the most intense battlefields in the country for the past 18 months, bombed from above by air force jets and chipped away at ground level by close quarter battles that show no sentiment towards heritage. Those who dare raise their heads above the ruins, towards the ancient citadel that stands at the centre of the city, can also see damage to several of its walls.
A street in Homs, in 2011 (above) and 2014 (below) Several
hundred miles south, just west of Syria’s third city, Homs, one of the
most important medieval castles in the world, Krak des Chevaliers, has
taken an even heavier toll. Directly struck by shells fired from jets
and artillery, the hilltop fortress now stands in partial ruin.
Homs itself has fared even worse. A residential street, where cars not long ago parked under gum trees, has been destroyed. Life has ceased to function all around this part of the city, as it has in much of the heartland of the country. In one shot, a destroyed tank stands in the centre of a street. The old minaret next to it has also been blown up. This photograph is thought to have been taken in the countryside near Hama, to the north of Homs. But it could just as easily encapsulate the damage done in parts of the capital, Damascus, or in towns and villages from Idlib in the north to Deraa in the south, where the first stirrings of insurrection in March 2011 sparked the war.
Omari mosque in Deraa. Above in 2011 and below in 2013. Photographs: Reuters In
May 2012, Emma Cunliffe, a Durham University PhD student, and member
of the Global Heritage Network, prepared a report on the damage done to
Syria’s heritage sites, detailing the tapestry of civilisations that
helped build contemporary Syria.
“Numerous bronze-age civilisations left their successive marks, including the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Hittites,” she said. “They, in turn, were replaced by the Greeks, the Sasanians, the Persians, the Romans and the Arabs, many of whom chose Syrian cities as their capitals. The European Crusaders came and left some of the most impressive castles known and the Ottoman Empire also made its mark. All these cultures co-existed and conflicted, forming something new and special and found nowhere else in the world.”
Souq Bab Antakya, Aleppo. Above in 2009 and below after an attack in 2012. Photographs: Alamy, Reuters Speaking
this week, she said the threat to Syria’s heritage was now greater than
ever. “Archaeological sites in Syria are often on the front lines of
conflict and are experiencing heavy damage. Economic hardship and
decreased security mean even sites away from the fighting are looted.
This is denying not only Syrians but the world a rich heritage which can
provide a source of income and inspiration in the future.”
With little or no access to the country, satellite imagery is being used to track the destruction. The Global Heritage Fund’s director of Global Projects, Dan Thompson said: “All of the country’s world heritage sites have sustained damage, including the Unesco site cities, and a great many of the other monuments in the country have been damaged, destroyed or have been subject to severe looting.
Umayyad mosque, Aleppo, pictured in 2012 (above) and 2013 (below). Photographs: Alamy, Corbis “Shelling,
shooting, heavy machinery installed in sites, and major looting are the
leading causes of damage and destruction to the sites, although I would
not discount that vandalism is also playing a part. As far as we know,
no concrete action is being taken to combat the damage in the present
moment.”
All now stand in ruins, ravaged by a war that is not only killing generations of Syrians but also eradicating all around them, including sites that have stood since the dawn of civilisation. Across Syria, where a seemingly unstoppable war is about to enter a third year, a heritage built over 5,000 years or more is being steadily buried under rubble.
The Old Souk, Aleppo. Above in 2007 and below in 2013. Photographs: Corbis, Stanley Greene/Noor/Eyevine The
destruction of towns and villages is regularly revealed by raw, and
often revolting, videos uploaded to the web, which many people stopped
watching long ago. Only seldomly do the shaky images reveal the damage
being done beyond the battle – to ancient churches, stone Crusader
fortresses and ruins that have stood firm during several millennia of
insurrection and purge but are being withered away by this unforgiving
war.Syria’s war has claimed more than 130,000 lives. At least two million of its citizens have fled into neighbouring states and more than two million others have been displaced within its borders. Industry and economy has long ground to a halt. Hope too has been on a relentless slide. Syria has six Unesco sites, representing at least 2,000 years of history. All have been damaged.
al-Kindi hospital, Aleppo. Above in 2012 and below in 2013. Photographs: Getty These
before and after pictures show the old world order of Syria reflected
for decades in history books; where people bought wares in marketplaces
or mingled in mosque courtyards. They also reveal the shocking scale of
devastation in all corners of the country and the damage done to Syria’s
soul and identity.In Aleppo, one of the oldest covered marketplaces in the world is now in ruins; its maze of stone streets has been one of the most intense battlefields in the country for the past 18 months, bombed from above by air force jets and chipped away at ground level by close quarter battles that show no sentiment towards heritage. Those who dare raise their heads above the ruins, towards the ancient citadel that stands at the centre of the city, can also see damage to several of its walls.
A street in Homs, in 2011 (above) and 2014 (below) Several
hundred miles south, just west of Syria’s third city, Homs, one of the
most important medieval castles in the world, Krak des Chevaliers, has
taken an even heavier toll. Directly struck by shells fired from jets
and artillery, the hilltop fortress now stands in partial ruin.Homs itself has fared even worse. A residential street, where cars not long ago parked under gum trees, has been destroyed. Life has ceased to function all around this part of the city, as it has in much of the heartland of the country. In one shot, a destroyed tank stands in the centre of a street. The old minaret next to it has also been blown up. This photograph is thought to have been taken in the countryside near Hama, to the north of Homs. But it could just as easily encapsulate the damage done in parts of the capital, Damascus, or in towns and villages from Idlib in the north to Deraa in the south, where the first stirrings of insurrection in March 2011 sparked the war.
Omari mosque in Deraa. Above in 2011 and below in 2013. Photographs: Reuters In
May 2012, Emma Cunliffe, a Durham University PhD student, and member
of the Global Heritage Network, prepared a report on the damage done to
Syria’s heritage sites, detailing the tapestry of civilisations that
helped build contemporary Syria.“Numerous bronze-age civilisations left their successive marks, including the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Hittites,” she said. “They, in turn, were replaced by the Greeks, the Sasanians, the Persians, the Romans and the Arabs, many of whom chose Syrian cities as their capitals. The European Crusaders came and left some of the most impressive castles known and the Ottoman Empire also made its mark. All these cultures co-existed and conflicted, forming something new and special and found nowhere else in the world.”
Souq Bab Antakya, Aleppo. Above in 2009 and below after an attack in 2012. Photographs: Alamy, Reuters Speaking
this week, she said the threat to Syria’s heritage was now greater than
ever. “Archaeological sites in Syria are often on the front lines of
conflict and are experiencing heavy damage. Economic hardship and
decreased security mean even sites away from the fighting are looted.
This is denying not only Syrians but the world a rich heritage which can
provide a source of income and inspiration in the future.”With little or no access to the country, satellite imagery is being used to track the destruction. The Global Heritage Fund’s director of Global Projects, Dan Thompson said: “All of the country’s world heritage sites have sustained damage, including the Unesco site cities, and a great many of the other monuments in the country have been damaged, destroyed or have been subject to severe looting.
Umayyad mosque, Aleppo, pictured in 2012 (above) and 2013 (below). Photographs: Alamy, Corbis “Shelling,
shooting, heavy machinery installed in sites, and major looting are the
leading causes of damage and destruction to the sites, although I would
not discount that vandalism is also playing a part. As far as we know,
no concrete action is being taken to combat the damage in the present
moment.”Fourth prison term for conscientious objector Udi Segal. Full details and calls for action and support below.
Fourth prison term for conscientious objector Udi Segal. Full details and calls for action and support below.
Udi Segal a, 18 years old from ,was reported on 29/9/2014 to 
military induction base in Tal Hashomer and declared
his refusal to serve for reasons of conscience due to his opposition to
the occupation of the Palestinian people and discrimination against
Palestinians inside Israel, and his refusal to to the attack on Gaza.
Udi was sentenced to 10 days in military prison no. 6 near Atlit.
You can find more news items regarding Udi's refusal visit: https://www.facebook.
His prison address is:Udi Segal
Military ID 08062238Military Prison No. 6Military Postal Code 01860, IDF
Israel
Fax: ++972-4-9540580
Since
the prison authorities often block mail from reaching imprisoned
objectors, we also recommend you to send them your letters of support
and encouragement via e-mail to: messages2prison@
Recommended Action
First
of all, please circulate this message and the information contained in
it as widely as possible, not only through e-mail, but also on websites,
social networks, conventional media, by word of mouth, etc.
Other recommendations for action:
1. Sending Letters of Support
Please send Udi letters of support to the prison address above and via e-mail to: messages2prison@
2. Letters to Authorities
It is recommended to send letters of protest on the objectors’ behalf, preferably by fax, to:
Mr. Moshe Ya'alon,
Minister of Defence,
Ministry of Defence,
Hakirya,
Tel-Aviv 61909,
Israel.
E-mail: s...@mod.gov.il or pni
Tel.: ++972-3-6975220
Fax: ++972-3-6962757
Copies of your letters can also be sent to the commander of the military prison at:
Commander of Military Prison No. 6,
Military Prison No. 6
Military Postal Code 02507, IDF
Israel
Fax: +972-4—9540580
Another useful address for sending copies would be the Military Attorney General:
Denny Efroni,
Chief Military Attorney
Military postal code 9605, IDF
Israel
Fax: ++972-3-569-45-26
It
would be especially useful to send your appeals to the Commander of the
Induction Base in Tel-HaShomer. It is this officer that ultimately
decides whether an objector is to be exempted from military service or
sent to another round in prison, and it is the same officer who is
ultimately in charge of the military Conscience Committee:
Gil Ben Shaul,
Commander of Induction Base,
Meitav, Tel-HaShomer
Military Postal Code 02718, IDF
Israel.
Fax: ++972-3-737-60-52
For
those of you who live outside Israel, it would be very effective to
send protests to your local Israeli embassy. You can find the address of
your local embassy on the web.
Here is a generic sample letter, which you can use in sending appeals to authorities on the prisoners’ behalf. Feel free to modify this letter or write your own:
Dear Sir/Madam,
It has come to my attention that Udi Segal (military ID 08062238),
a conscientious objector to military service, has been imprisoned for
the fourth time for his refusal to become part of the Israeli army, and
is held in Military Prison no. 6 in Atlit.
The
imprisonment of conscientious objectors such as Segal is a violation of
international law, of basic human rights and of plain morals. The
repeater imprisonment of conscientious objectors is an especially grave
offence, as it means sentencing a person more than once for the same
offence, and has been judged by the UN working Group on Arbitrary
Detention to constitute a clear case arbitrary detention.
I therefore
call for the immediate and unconditional release from prison of Udi
Segal, without threat of further imprisonment in the future, and urge
you and the system you are heading to respect the dignity and person of
conscientious objectors, indeed of all persons, in the future.
Sincerely,
military induction base in Tal Hashomer and declared
his refusal to serve for reasons of conscience due to his opposition to
the occupation of the Palestinian people and discrimination against
Palestinians inside Israel, and his refusal to to the attack on Gaza.
Udi was sentenced to 10 days in military prison no. 6 near Atlit.
You can find more news items regarding Udi's refusal visit: https://www.facebook.
His prison address is:Udi Segal
Military ID 08062238Military Prison No. 6Military Postal Code 01860, IDF
Israel
Fax: ++972-4-9540580
Since the prison authorities often block mail from reaching imprisoned objectors, we also recommend you to send them your letters of support and encouragement via e-mail to: messages2prison@
Military ID 08062238Military Prison No. 6Military Postal Code 01860, IDF
Israel
Fax: ++972-4-9540580
Since the prison authorities often block mail from reaching imprisoned objectors, we also recommend you to send them your letters of support and encouragement via e-mail to: messages2prison@
Ministry of Defence,
Hakirya,
Tel-Aviv 61909,
Israel.
E-mail: s...@mod.gov.il or pni
Tel.: ++972-3-6975220
Fax: ++972-3-6962757
Military Postal Code 02507, IDF
Fax: +972-4—9540580
Chief Military Attorney
Military postal code 9605, IDF
Israel
Fax: ++972-3-569-45-26
Commander of Induction Base,
Meitav, Tel-HaShomer
Military Postal Code 02718, IDF
Israel.
Fax: ++972-3-737-60-52
I therefore call for the immediate and unconditional release from prison of Udi Segal, without threat of further imprisonment in the future, and urge you and the system you are heading to respect the dignity and person of conscientious objectors, indeed of all persons, in the future.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Voices from Solitary: At War With My Own Self
Voices from Solitary: At War With My Own Self
by Voices from Solitary
This
following account was written by Anthony Lamar Davis, 34, who has been
incarcerated for 11 years of a 22-year sentence. He has spent more than
six of those years in solitary confinement. In New York State prisons,
about 13,000 sentences to solitary confinement in
the Special Housing Units, or SHUs, are handed out each year, most of
them for nonviolent disciplinary violations, and close to 4,000 people
are in isolated confinement at any given time. Here, Davis writes about
a suicide attempt that took place last year, and his ongoing battles
with the effects of extreme isolation. He can be reached by writing:
Anthony Lamar Davis, #04-A-3293, Green Haven Correctional Facility, 594
Rt. 216, Stormville, New York 12582-0010. --Lauren Denitzio
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Model of a New York State SHU cell created by the New York Civil Liberties Union.
On
August 4, 2013, while waiting for an officer to handcuff and escort me
back to the cell that awaited me after showering, I sat on the floor
holding a razor used for shaving. Today was the day I decided to end my
life. My decision came from a mixture of things. Things like the living
nightmare that I called my childhood, my loneliness, the fact that I
have been incarcerated for 11 years and had not seen one single
family member – including my own children – in that time. Hundreds of
things ran through my mind. Including being in extreme isolation.
In
my 11 years of incarceration, I've been in and out of solitary
confinement for about 6 1/2 years and a 3 year sanction had just been
imposed on me (it has since been modified) for an accusation for which I
was falsely accused, causing me to be removed from a facility located
about 20 minutes outside of New York City (Sing Sing Correctional
Facility) – where I am from – to a zoo-like facility build to house
prisoners in solitary confinement, which is located hours away from my
city where my children are.
On
August 4, 2013, I've had enough. And, truth-be-told, I was not at all
afraid, excited, anxious, or nervous as I broken the guard on the razor
and cut my wrist / forearm to the point where I had to be taken to an
outside hospital for stitches. I felt no pain. Nothing. I knew that
suicide was an effective way to get rid of all the difficulties
that surrounded my life. What the hell is the purpose of living if one
does not experience happiness?
Again,
I have done over 11 years in prison off of a 22 year sentence (New York
state prisoners do 85% of their determinate sentences if they "behave")
so I do have a release date. But in the way that I have been
affected by extreme isolation, I fear that I will not be productive in
society. I have no family. If I was to be released from prison today, I
would be completely lost; like being born as a full grown adult.
Furthermore, I am not the same person I once was. The charming, funny,
handsome, charismatic individual whom I used to be is gone. His soul
snatched away by the psychological effects of solitary confinement. I
have now become this soul-less, bitter, fraction of myself who is
emotionally unstable and full of rage. This is not how I want to live;
who I want to be.
I
am aware of the effects that extreme isolation has had on me. These
effects are not just limited to being in solitary confinement. I will be
released from solitary confinement in May of this year (2014), but I
will still be a product of solitary confinement. My pain will not end
because I have been relocated to general population. There, it will be
much difficult for me. I still will have no family. I still will be lonely (I literally feel hollow inside), I still
will be bitter and full of rage. Now, there are no people around me, so
when my rage surfaces, I bruise my knuckles by punching the concrete
walls or screaming (my anger has reached dangerous highs). When I get
back to general population – assuming that I have the strength to get
through the remainder of my time in solitary confinement – my rage will
still be with me and now there will be people to punch and not concrete walls. I am fearful of my future in general population.
I
am at war with my own self and it has become a constant struggle to
wake up and face the day. I have become a monster created by life and
taught by the effects of solitary. I've come to realize that this is who
I am now and I don't like what I see when I stare at the monster in the
mirror. The fight. The war. I take solace in the possibility that I
could wake up one morning, defeated. Not wanting to fight anymore.
And what happened on August 4, 2013, will happen again. But this time the results would be final.
U.S.-Afghan deal allows American troops to remain past 2014
| U.S.-Afghan deal allows American troops to remain past 2014 |
| The United States and Afghanistan have signed a security agreement permitting U.S. troops to remain in Afghanistan past 2014. The Bilateral Security Agreement allows for 9,800 U.S. soldiers to stay in the country to help train, equip and advise Afghan military and police forces. |
| Read more |
Data divulges racial disparity in Chicago’s issuance of gun permits
Data divulges racial disparity in Chicago’s issuance of gun permits
In Chicago's South Side earlier this month, a 16-year-old boy ... more
US Police Urge Residents to Outfit Homes With Police-run Surveillance Cameras
Posted: 29 Sep 2014 02:34 PM PDT
For $10 a month, residents of New Orleans suburb can hook home cameras up to law enforcement surveillance grid just like in the USSR… at least this is optional and not mandatory, for now…
Police in Louisiana are urging residents to add surveillance camera security systems to their homes and then to hand over control of those systems to law enforcement, an effort they claim will help make neighborhoods safer.
Part of a sprawling surveillance strategy dubbed "Project NOLA," citizens' security cameras would be integrated with footage shot from other law enforcement cameras already installed around the St. Bernard Parish area near New Orleans, and would give the sheriff's department the ability to tap into those cameras at a moment's notice.
"All you have to do is, you can go to a map and click on an icon for that camera in that area and pull up that camera and it'll give us a live feed from that area," St. Bernard Sheriff Jimm Pohlmann told CBS affiliate WAFB, adding that access to cameras on private property would eliminate the need for police to visit homes in person. "I think the more cameras out there, the more successful the program will be."
Started by former New Orleans police officer Bryan Lagarde, who now owns a digital surveillance wholesale company, Project NOLA is reportedly "the largest networked HD city-wide crime camera system in America," according to their website, and currently has access to more than 1,000 cameras around New Orleans.
A $10 monthly fee is required for residents interested in granting police access to their existing home camera systems, but those who don't yet have cameras can purchase entire kits from the officer's business for $295. For another $150, you can also get those cameras professionally installed.
"This is great for NOPD," writes Jules Bentley for AntiGravity Magazine, "firstly because they don't have to pay for any of this, the costs are borne by the home or business owner and the increasingly grant-funded Project NOLA nonprofit and secondly because private cameras can do things the government's not allowed to." Like shirk pesky privacy or constitutional issues.
A network consultant also told Bentley that increasing the number of surveillance devices could compromise NOLA's intended mission.
"With increasing transmission and storage of data come increasing risks to the security and soundness of the data and the network on which it travels... The larger and more complex a storage and transmission service is, the more points of vulnerability are multiplied as well as the cost and personnel needs," the consultant said.
When asked if people's home cameras could also be vulnerable to hacking, the consultant told Bentley, "That's not a subject I'm comfortable getting specific about... Let's just say any system is only as smart as its administrators. I'd say the intended functionality, Bryan [Lagarde] surrounded by monitors like Batman in The Dark Knight, is already weird enough."
There's also the fact that footage shot by homeowners' cameras would be subject to Lagarde's discretion. "Legally binding assurances of due process, security, and accountability: Project NOLA has none of these in place," writes Bentley. "All the data from all the Project NOLA cameras and all decisions about who sees what rest entirely in the hands of Lagarde."
One resident told WAFB he sees how the cameras could help police "keep law and order," but he also raised concerns over the Big Brother-style intrusion and questioned whether police could possibly misuse their new powers.
"I'm all for it if it's all for the good, but things do get abused," said Mereaux resident Christian Delosryes.
Sheriff Pohlmann pledged, however, that police would never look at footage unless they needed to.
"We're not gonna sit there and monitor it unless something happens in that area or we have reports of suspicious activity going on in that area," Sheriff Pohlmann said.
Indeed, a surveillance camera system in the hands of a former police officer who operates with minimal accountability and who reports directly to law enforcement agencies should give New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish residents cause for concern.
US police get antiterror training in Israel on privately funded trips
US police get antiterror training in Israel on privately funded trips
NOW READING PIECE 10 OF10
By Ali Winston / September 16, 2014
An
officer aims his rifle during a protest in Ferguson, Mo. The protests
have reignited concerns about the militarization of U.S. law
enforcement.
Credit: Charlie Riedel/AP
The
clouds of tear gas, flurries of projectiles and images of police
officers outfitted in military-grade hardware in Ferguson, Missouri,
have
reignited concerns about the militarization of domestic law enforcement
in the United States.
But
there has been another, little-discussed change in the training of
American police since the 9/11 attacks: At least 300 high-ranking
sheriffs and police from agencies large and small – from New York and
Maine to Orange County and Oakland, California – have traveled to Israel
for privately funded seminars in what is described as counterterrorism
techniques.
For
some, dispatching American police to train in a foreign country
battered by decades of war, terror attacks and strife highlights how
dramatically
U.S. law enforcement has changed in the 13 years since al-Qaida
airplane hijackers crashed into New York’s World Trade Center. In many
places, the image of the friendly cop on the beat has been replaced by
intimidating, fully armed military-style troops. And Israel has played
part in that transition.
As
these trips to Israel became more commonplace, the militarization of
U.S. law enforcement also was driven by the creation of various homeland
security initiatives and billions of dollars of surplus military-grade
equipment donated to local departments through the 1033 program after 9/11.
Shakeel
Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern
California, described the tactics he sees American police use today as
“a near replica” of their Israeli counterparts.
“Whether
it is in Ferguson or L.A., we see a similar response all the time in
the form of a disproportionate number of combat-ready police with
military gear who are ready to use tear gas at short notice,” Syed said.
“Whenever you find 50 people at a demonstration, there is always a SWAT
team in sight or right around the corner.”
The
law enforcement seminars in some ways resemble other privately funded
trips to Israel, such as the birthright trips for Jewish young adults
and programs for politicians, educators and other professionals. Stops
on the law enforcement tours include not just the Western Wall, but also
West Bank border checkpoints, military facilities and surveillance
installations.
Participants
speak highly of the experience. Former U.S. Capitol Police Chief
Terrance W. Gainer called Israel “the Harvard of antiterrorism” after taking part in a 2005 trip sponsored
by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Capt. Brad
Virgoe of the Orange County Sheriff's Department in California called
the 2013 session he took part in an “amazing experience,” recalling
visits to checkpoints in Eilat at the Israeli-Egyptian border and in the
West Bank near Bethlehem.
Since
2002, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s
Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs have sent police chiefs, assistant chiefs and
captains on fully paid trips to Israel and the Palestinian territories
to observe the operations of the Israeli national police, the Israel
Defense Forces, the Israeli Border Patrol and the country’s intelligence
services. Tax documents from the Jewish Institute show the organization
spent $36,857 on the trips in 2012.
The
U.S. program began less than a year after 9/11, when the Jewish
Institute brought nine American police officials to Israel to meet with
Uzi Landau, Israel’s public security minister at the time. Participants
represented the New York and Los Angeles police departments, the Major County Sheriffs' Association,
the New York and New Jersey Port Authority police and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority police.
Recently, the seminars drew attention during
the Ferguson protests because the former chief of the St. Louis County
Police Department, who retired in January, had participated in a 2011
trip to Israel sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League.
Israeli
security forces’ history of training police in counterinsurgency
tactics predated that trip. In Mexico’s Chiapas state, Israeli military
officials have been training police and military to combat the Zapatista uprising since 1994. The most recent Israeli training mission to Chiapas took place in May 2013.
Topics
covered have included preventing and responding to terrorist attacks
and suicide
bombings, the evolution of terrorist operations and tactics, security
for transit infrastructure, intelligence sharing, and balancing crime
fighting and antiterrorism efforts. The training also touches on ways to
use Israel’s counterinsurgency tactics to control crowds during
protests and riots.
Virgoe told CIR that he and his Israeli counterparts frequently discussed protests and crowd control methods.
“Around
Bethlehem, they deal with it on a daily basis,” he said. “Rock
throwing, it happens all the time, and they've become very proficient at
dealing with large crowds on a moment’s notice.”
Virgoe also recounted the Israeli national police’s efficiency in dealing with hundreds of thousands of Sephardic Jews who poured into Jerusalem for the funeral of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in October.
Demonstrators
protest the Anti-Defamation League's Israel training trips for U.S.
police in front of the group’s office in San Francisco.
Credit: Ali Winston for CIR
The
head of the Maine State Police, Col. Robert Williams, joined a trip
sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League in
early 2013. Speaking to the Bangor Daily News after his return, he
noted that his Israeli counterparts had decades of experience in dealing
with protests and he was impressed with their ability to suppress
demonstrations.
“They call it riots and we call it civil unrest,” Williams told the newspaper.
San
Diego Assistant Police Chief Walt Vasquez was on the same
October 2013 trip as Virgoe and described a week of travel and training
with the national police, Israel Defense Forces and intelligence
officials. Vasquez also recalled “lots of discussions about crowd
control” tactics. He was intrigued by a demonstration of the extensive
surveillance camera network that covers Jerusalem.
Crowd
control training provided by Israeli authorities to American law
enforcement officials disturbs Human Rights Watch researcher Bill Van
Esveld, who studies Israel and Palestine.
In Israel, “in a majority of cases, you’re seeing demonstrations that start with rock-throwing and devolve into
tear gas, rubber bullets and sometimes live rounds being fired at people who are throwing stones,” he said.
Van
Esveld added that his research has shown the risks for law enforcement
are not as high in Israel, where he said officers and soldiers
frequently disobey orders governing lethal force against demonstrators
and rarely face discipline or other consequences.
“It
is very rare that you get a soldier or policeman thrown in jail for
killing or injuring someone – in practice, there’s a lot of looking the
other way,” he said.
Israel’s
use of less-lethal munitions in crowd control received international
attention in 2009, when American activist Tristan Anderson was struck in
the face with a high-velocity tear gas canister during a West Bank
demonstration against Israel’s border wall. His skull was shattered,
leaving him in a coma for months. Now, he uses a wheelchair.
Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, said the seminars reflect a militarized
mindset diametrically opposed to traditional police-community relations in the United States.
“If
American police and sheriffs consider they’re in occupation of
neighborhoods like Ferguson and East Harlem, this training is extremely
appropriate – they’re learning how to suppress a people, deny their
rights and use force to hold down a subject population,” said Khalidi, a
longtime critic of the Israeli occupation.
He
pointed out a fundamental difference between the American and Israeli
justice systems: Jewish residents fall under Israeli criminal law, but
Palestinians are subject to Israel’s military justice
system. Khalidi said Americans are learning paramilitary and
counterinsurgency tactics from the Israeli military, border patrol and
intelligence services, which enforce military law.
The
most tangible evidence that the training is having an impact on
American policing is that both countries are using identical equipment
against demonstrators, according to a 2013 report by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem and photographs of such equipment taken at demonstrations in Ferguson and Oakland and Anaheim, California.
Tear
gas grenades, “triple chaser” gas canisters and stun grenades made by
the American companies Combined Systems Inc. and Defense Technology
Corp. were used in all three U.S. incidents, as well as by Israeli
security forces and military units.
Footage shot by
activist Jacob Crawford in Ferguson last month revealed law enforcement
used a long-range acoustic device that sends out high-pitched, painful
noises designed to scatter crowds. Israeli forces first used such
devices in response to West Bank protests in 2005, according to the
B'Tselem report.
David
Friedman, the Washington, D.C., regional director of the
Anti-Defamation League, organized the dozen Israel seminars
hosted by his organization for law enforcement leaders. For logistical
reasons, he said, participation has been limited to “the highest levels
of law enforcement.” However, Friedman confirmed that the University of
Wisconsin’s police department participated, and news coverage as well as news releases from his organization show other smaller agencies and campus police began participating in the mid-2000s.
Last year, the league brought American law enforcement to meet with Palestinian police in Bethlehem for the first time.
Friedman
declined to reveal how much the seminars have cost his group. The main
focus is on strategies and tactics, he said, but the Israeli officials
are not “giving guidance or instruction on these matters.”
Friedman
emphasized that counterterrorism is the focus of the seminar, though he
acknowledged that crowd control does figure into the training, with
Israeli officials showing footage and presentations from protests and
demonstrating the equipment they
use.
The
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and the American Jewish
Committee did not respond to interview requests about the law
enforcement training seminars they sponsor.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated who is subject to Israel's military justice system.
Netanyahu’s Speech at the United Nations General Assembly September 29, 2014
[Transcription] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech at the United
Nations General Assembly September 29, 2014 Thank you, Mr. President,
Distinguished delegates, I come here from Jerusalem to speak on behalf
of my people, the people of Israel. I've come here to speak about the
dangers we face and about the opportunities we see. I've come here to
expose the brazen lies spoken from this very podium against my country
and against the brave soldiers who defend it.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The people of Israel pray for peace.
But our hopes and the world's hope for peace are in danger. Because everywhere we look, militant Islam is on the march.
It's not militants. It's not Islam. It's militant Islam. Typically, its first victims are other Muslims, but it spares no one. Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Kurds – no creed, no faith, no ethnic group is beyond its sights. And it's rapidly spreading in every part of the world. You know the famous American saying: "All politics is local"? For the militant Islamists, "All politics is global." Because their ultimate goal is to dominate the world.
Now, that threat might seem exaggerated to some, since it starts out small, like a cancer that attacks a particular part of the body. But left unchecked, the cancer grows, metastasizing over wider and wider areas. To protect the peace and security of the world, we must remove this cancer before it's too late. Last week, many of the countries represented here rightly applauded President Obama for leading the effort to confront ISIS. And yet weeks before, some of these same countries, the same countries that now support confronting ISIS, opposed Israel for confronting Hamas. They evidently don’t understand that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree.
ISIS and Hamas share a fanatical creed, which they both seek to impose well beyond the territory under their control.
Listen to ISIS’s self-declared caliph,Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. This is what he said two months ago: A day will soon come when the Muslim will walk everywhere as a master… The Muslims will cause the world to hear and understand the meaning of terrorism… and destroy the idol of democracy. Now listen to Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas. He proclaims a similar vision of the future: We say this to the West… By Allah you will be defeated. Tomorrow our nation will sit on the throne of the world.
As Hamas's charter makes clear, Hamas’s immediate goal is to destroy Israel. But Hamas has a broader objective. They also want a caliphate. Hamas shares the global ambitions of its fellow militant Islamists. That’s why its supporters wildly cheered in the streets of Gaza as thousands of Americans were murdered on 9/11. And that's why its leaders condemned the United States for killing Osama Bin Laden, whom they praised as a holy warrior.
So when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas.
And what they share in common, all militant Islamists share in common: • Boko Haram in Nigeria; • Ash-Shabab in Somalia; • Hezbollah in Lebanon; • An-Nusrah in Syria; • The Mahdi Army in Iraq; • And the Al-Qaeda branches in Yemen, Libya, the Philippines, India and elsewhere.
Some are radical Sunnis, some are radical Shi'ites. Some want to restore a pre-medieval caliphate from the 7th century. Others want to trigger the apocalyptic return of an imam from the 9th century. They operate in different lands, they target different victims and they even kill each other in their quest for supremacy. But they all share a fanatic ideology. They all seek to create ever expanding enclaves of militant Islam where there is no freedom and no tolerance – Where women are treated as chattel, Christians are decimated, and minorities are subjugated, sometimes given the stark choice: convert or die. For them, anyone can be an infidel, including fellow Muslims.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Militant Islam's ambition to dominate the world seems mad. But so too did the global ambitions of another fanatic ideology that swept to power eight decades ago.
The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith. They just disagree about who among them will be the master… of the master faith. That’s what they truly disagree about. Therefore, the question before us is whether militant Islam will have the power to realize its unbridled ambitions.
There is one place where that could soon happen: The Islamic State of Iran. For 35 years, Iran has relentlessly pursued the global mission which was set forth by its founding ruler, Ayatollah Khomeini, in these words: We will export our revolution to the entire world.
Until the cry "There is no God but Allah" will echo throughout the world over… And ever since, the regime’s brutal enforcers, Iran's Revolutionary Guards, have done exactly that.
Listen to its current commander, General Muhammad Ali Ja'afari. And he clearly stated this goal. He said: Our Imam did not limit the Islamic Revolution to this country… Our duty is to prepare the way for an Islamic world government… Iran's President Rouhani stood here last week, and shed crocodile tears over what he called "the globalization of terrorism." Maybe he should spare us those phony tears and have a word instead with the commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. He could ask them to call off Iran's global terror campaign, which has included attacks in two dozen countries on five continents since 2011 alone. To say that Iran doesn't practice terrorism is like saying Derek Jeter never played shortstop for the New York Yankees.
This bemoaning of the Iranian president of the spread of terrorism has got to be one of history’s greatest displays of doubletalk.
Now, Some still argue that Iran's global terror campaign, its subversion of countries throughout the Middle East and well beyond the Middle East, some argue that this is the work of the extremists. They say things are changing. They point to last year's elections in Iran. They claim that Iran’s smooth talking President and Foreign Minister, they’ve changed not only the tone of Iran's foreign policy but also its substance. They believe Rouhani and Zarif genuinely want to reconcile with the West, that they’ve abandoned the global mission of the Islamic Revolution.
Really? So let's look at what Foreign Minister Zarif wrote in his book just a few years ago: We have a fundamental problem with the West, and especially with America. This is because we are heirs to a global mission, which is tied to our raison d'etre… A global mission which is tied to our very reason of being.
And then Zarif asks a question, I think an interesting one. He says: How come Malaysia [he’s referring to an overwhelmingly Muslim country] – how come Malaysia doesn't have similar problems? And he answers: Because Malaysia is not trying to change the international order.
That's your moderate. So don’t be fooled by Iran’s manipulative charm offensive. It’s designed for one purpose, and for one purpose only: To lift the sanctions and remove the obstacles to Iran's path to the bomb. The Islamic Republic is now trying to bamboozle its way to an agreement that will remove the sanctions it still faces, and leave it with the capacity of thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium. This would effectively cement Iran's place as a threshold military nuclear power. In the future, at a time of its choosing, Iran, the world’s most dangerous state in the world's most dangerous region, would obtain the world’s most dangerous weapons.
Allowing that to happen would pose the gravest threat to us all. It’s one thing to confront militant Islamists on pick-up trucks, armed with Kalashnikov rifles. It’s another thing to confront militant Islamists armed with weapons of mass destruction. I remember that last year, everyone here was rightly concerned about the chemical weapons in Syria, including the possibility that they would fall into the hands of terrorists. That didn't happen. And President Obama deserves great credit for leading the diplomatic effort to dismantle virtually all of Syria's chemical weapons capability. Imagine how much more dangerous the Islamic State, ISIS, would be if it possessed chemical weapons. Now imagine how much more dangerous the Islamic state of Iran would be if it possessed nuclear weapons. Ladies and Gentlemen, Would you let ISIS enrich uranium? Would you let ISIS build a heavy water reactor? Would you let ISIS develop intercontinental ballistic missiles? Of course you wouldn’t. Then you mustn't let the Islamic State of Iran do those things either.
Because here’s what will happen: Once Iran produces atomic bombs, all the charm and all the smiles will suddenly disappear. They’ll just vanish. It's then that the ayatollahs will show their true face and unleash their aggressive fanaticism on the entire world. There is only one responsible course of action to address this threat: Iran's nuclear military capabilities must be fully dismantled. Make no mistake – ISIS must be defeated. But to defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win the battle and lose the war.
To defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win the battle and lose the war.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The fight against militant Islam is indivisible. When militant Islam succeeds anywhere, it’s emboldened everywhere. When it suffers a blow in one place, it's set back in every place. That’s why Israel’s fight against Hamas is not just our fight. It’s your fight. Israel is fighting a fanaticism today that your countries may be forced to fight tomorrow.
For 50 days this past summer, Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel, many of them supplied by Iran. I want you to think about what your countries would do if thousands of rockets were fired at your cities. Imagine millions of your citizens having seconds at most to scramble to bomb shelters, day after day. You wouldn't let terrorists fire rockets at your cities with impunity. Nor would you let terrorists dig dozens of terror tunnels under your borders to infiltrate your towns in order to murder and kidnap your citizens. Israel justly defended itself against both rocket attacks and terror tunnels. Yet Israel also faced another challenge. We faced a propaganda war. Because, in an attempt to win the world’s sympathy, Hamas cynically used Palestinian civilians as human shields. It used schools, not just schools - UN schools, private homes, mosques, even hospitals to store and fire rockets at Israel.
As Israel surgically struck at the rocket launchers and at the tunnels, Palestinian civilians were tragically but unintentionally killed. There are heartrending images that resulted, and these fueled libelous charges that Israel was deliberately targeting civilians.
We were not. We deeply regret every single civilian casualty. And the truth is this: Israel was doing everything to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties. Hamas was doing everything to maximize Israeli civilian casualties and Palestinian civilian casualties. Israel dropped flyers, made phone calls, sent text messages, broadcast warnings in Arabic on Palestinian television, always to enable Palestinian civilians to evacuate targeted areas.
No other country and no other army in history have gone to greater lengths to avoid casualties among the civilian population of their enemies. This concern for Palestinian life was all the more remarkable, given that Israeli civilians were being bombarded by rockets day after day, night after night. As their families were being rocketed by Hamas, Israel's citizen army – the brave soldiers of the IDF, our young boys and girls – they upheld the highest moral values of any army in the world. Israel's soldiers deserve not condemnation, but admiration. Admiration from decent people everywhere.
Now here’s what Hamas did: Hamas embedded its missile batteries in residential areas and told Palestinians to ignore Israel’s warnings to leave. And just in case people didn’t get the message, they executed Palestinian civilians in Gaza who dared to protest.
No less reprehensible, Hamas deliberately placed its rockets where Palestinian children live and play. Let me show you a photograph. It was taken by a France 24 crew during the recent conflict. It shows two Hamas rocket launchers, which were used to attack us. You see three children playing next to them. Hamas deliberately put its rockets in hundreds of residential areas like this. Hundreds of them.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a war crime. And I say to President Abbas, these are the war crimes committed by your Hamas partners in the national unity government which you head and you are responsible for. And these are the real war crimes you should have investigated, or spoken out against from this podium last week.
Ladies and Gentlemen, As Israeli children huddled in bomb shelters and Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system knocked Hamas rockets out of the sky, the profound moral difference between Israel and Hamas couldn’t have been clearer: Israel was using its missiles to protect its children. Hamas was using its children to protect its missiles.
By investigating Israel rather than Hamas for war crimes, the UN Human Rights Council has betrayed its noble mission to protect the innocent. In fact, what it’s doing is to turn the laws of war upside-down. Israel, which took unprecedented steps to minimize civilian casualties, Israel is condemned. Hamas, which both targeted and hid behind civilians – that a double war crime - Hamas is given a pass.
The Human Rights Council is thus sending a clear message to terrorists everywhere: Use civilians as human shields. Use them again and again and again. You know why? Because sadly, it works.
By granting international legitimacy to the use of human shields, the UN’s Human Rights Council has thus become a Terrorist Rights Council, and it will have repercussions. It probably already has, about the use of civilians as human shields.
It’s not just our interest. It’s not just our values that are under attack. It’s your interests and your values.
Ladies and Gentlemen, We live in a world steeped in tyranny and terror, where gays are hanged from cranes in Tehran, political prisoners are executed in Gaza, young girls are abducted en masse in Nigeria and hundreds of thousands are butchered in Syria, Libya and Iraq. Yet nearly half, nearly half of the UN Human Rights Council's resolutions focusing on a single country have been directed against Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East – Israel. where issues are openly debated in a boisterous parliament, where human rights are protected by independent courts and where women, gays and minorities live in a genuinely free society.
The Human Rights… (that’s an oxymoron, the UN Human Rights Council, but I’ll use it just the same), the Council’s biased treatment of Israel is only one manifestation of the return of the world’s oldest prejudices. We hear mobs today in Europe call for the gassing of Jews. We hear some national leaders compare Israel to the Nazis. This is not a function of Israel’s policies. It's a function of diseased minds. And that disease has a name. It’s called anti-Semitism.
It is now spreading in polite society, where it masquerades as legitimate criticism of Israel. For centuries the Jewish people have been demonized with blood libels and charges of deicide. Today, the Jewish state is demonized with the apartheid libel and charges of genocide. Genocide? In what moral universe does genocide include warning the enemy's civilian population to get out of harm's way? Or ensuring that they receive tons, tons of humanitarian aid each day, even as thousands of rockets are being fired at us? Or setting up a field hospital to aid for their wounded? Well, I suppose it's the same moral universe where a man who wrote a dissertation of lies about the Holocaust, and who insists on a Palestine free of Jews, Judenrein, can stand at this podium and shamelessly accuse Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
In the past, outrageous lies against the Jews were the precursors to the wholesale slaughter of our people.
But no more.
Today we, the Jewish people, have the power to defend ourselves. We will defend ourselves against our enemies on the battlefield. We will expose their lies against us in the court of public opinion. Israel will continue to stand proud and unbowed.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Despite the enormous challenges facing Israel, I believe we have an historic opportunity.
After decades of seeing Israel as their enemy, leading states in the Arab world increasingly recognize that together we and they face many of the same dangers: principally this means a nuclear-armed Iran and militant Islamist movements gaining ground in the Sunni world.
Our challenge is to transform these common interests to create a productive partnership. One that would build a more secure, peaceful and prosperous Middle East.
Together we can strengthen regional security. We can advance projects in water, agriculture, in transportation, in health, in energy, in so many fields.
I believe the partnership between us can also help facilitate peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Many have long assumed that an Israeli-Palestinian peace can help facilitate a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab World. But these days I think it may work the other way around: Namely that a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world may help facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
And therefore, to achieve that peace, we must look not only to Jerusalem and Ramallah, but also to Cairo, to Amman, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and elsewhere. I believe peace can be realized with the active involvement of Arab countries, those that are willing to provide political, material and other indispensable support. I’m ready to make a historic compromise, not because Israel is occupying a foreign land. The people of Israel are not occupiers in the Land of Israel. History, archeology and common sense all make clear that we have had a singular attachment to this land for over 3,000 years.
I want peace because I want to create a better future for my people. But it must be a genuine peace, one that is anchored in mutual recognition and enduring security arrangements, rock solid security arrangements on the ground. Because you see, Israel's withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza created two militant Islamic enclaves on our borders from which tens of thousands of rockets have been fired at Israel.
These sobering experiences heighten Israel's security concerns regarding potential territorial concessions in the future. Those security concerns are even greater today. Just look around you.
The Middle East is in chaos. States are disintegrating. Militant Islamists are filling the void.
Israel cannot have territories from which it withdraws taken over by Islamic militants yet again, as happened in Gaza and Lebanon. That would place the likes of ISIS within mortar range – a few miles – of 80% of our population.
Think about that. The distance between the 1967 lines and the suburbs of Tel Aviv is like the distance between the UN building here and Times Square. Israel’s a tiny country. That’s why in any peace agreement, which will obviously necessitate a territorial compromise, I will always insist that Israel be able to defend itself by itself against any threat. Yet despite all that has happened, some still don't take Israel’s security concerns seriously. But I do, and I always will. Because, as Prime Minister of Israel, I am entrusted with the awesome responsibility of ensuring the future of the Jewish people and the future of the Jewish state.
And no matter what pressure is brought to bear, I will never waver in fulfilling that responsibility.
I believe that with a fresh approach from our neighbors, we can advance peace despite the difficulties we face.
In Israel, we have a record of making the impossible possible. We’ve made a desolate land flourish. And with very few natural resources, we have used the fertile minds of our people to turn Israel into a global center of technology and innovation.
Peace, of course, would enable Israel to realize its full potential and to bring a promising future not only for our people, not only for the Palestinian people, but for many, many others in our region.
But the old template for peace must be updated. It must take into account new realities and new roles and responsibilities for our Arab neighbors. Ladies and Gentlemen, There is a new Middle East. It presents new dangers, but also new opportunities. Israel is prepared to work with Arab partners and the international community to confront those dangers and to seize those opportunities. Together we must recognize the global threat of militant Islam, the primacy of dismantling Iran’s nuclear weapons capability and the indispensable role of Arab states in advancing peace with the Palestinians.
All this may fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but it’s the truth. And the truth must always be spoken, especially here, in the United Nations.
Isaiah, our great prophet of peace, taught us nearly 3,000 years ago in Jerusalem to speak truth to power. לְמַעַן צִיּוֹן לֹא אֶחֱשֶׁה וּלְמַעַן יְרוּשָׁלִַם לֹא אֶשְׁקוֹט עַד-יֵצֵא כַּנֹּגַהּ צִדְקָהּ וִישׁוּעָתָהּ כְּלַפִּיד יִבְעָר.
For the sake of Zion, I will not be silent.
For the sake of Jerusalem, I will not be still.
Until her justice shines bright, And her salvation glows like a flaming torch.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Let's light a torch of truth and justice to safeguard our common future.
Thank you.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The people of Israel pray for peace.
But our hopes and the world's hope for peace are in danger. Because everywhere we look, militant Islam is on the march.
It's not militants. It's not Islam. It's militant Islam. Typically, its first victims are other Muslims, but it spares no one. Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Kurds – no creed, no faith, no ethnic group is beyond its sights. And it's rapidly spreading in every part of the world. You know the famous American saying: "All politics is local"? For the militant Islamists, "All politics is global." Because their ultimate goal is to dominate the world.
Now, that threat might seem exaggerated to some, since it starts out small, like a cancer that attacks a particular part of the body. But left unchecked, the cancer grows, metastasizing over wider and wider areas. To protect the peace and security of the world, we must remove this cancer before it's too late. Last week, many of the countries represented here rightly applauded President Obama for leading the effort to confront ISIS. And yet weeks before, some of these same countries, the same countries that now support confronting ISIS, opposed Israel for confronting Hamas. They evidently don’t understand that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree.
ISIS and Hamas share a fanatical creed, which they both seek to impose well beyond the territory under their control.
Listen to ISIS’s self-declared caliph,Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. This is what he said two months ago: A day will soon come when the Muslim will walk everywhere as a master… The Muslims will cause the world to hear and understand the meaning of terrorism… and destroy the idol of democracy. Now listen to Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas. He proclaims a similar vision of the future: We say this to the West… By Allah you will be defeated. Tomorrow our nation will sit on the throne of the world.
As Hamas's charter makes clear, Hamas’s immediate goal is to destroy Israel. But Hamas has a broader objective. They also want a caliphate. Hamas shares the global ambitions of its fellow militant Islamists. That’s why its supporters wildly cheered in the streets of Gaza as thousands of Americans were murdered on 9/11. And that's why its leaders condemned the United States for killing Osama Bin Laden, whom they praised as a holy warrior.
So when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas.
And what they share in common, all militant Islamists share in common: • Boko Haram in Nigeria; • Ash-Shabab in Somalia; • Hezbollah in Lebanon; • An-Nusrah in Syria; • The Mahdi Army in Iraq; • And the Al-Qaeda branches in Yemen, Libya, the Philippines, India and elsewhere.
Some are radical Sunnis, some are radical Shi'ites. Some want to restore a pre-medieval caliphate from the 7th century. Others want to trigger the apocalyptic return of an imam from the 9th century. They operate in different lands, they target different victims and they even kill each other in their quest for supremacy. But they all share a fanatic ideology. They all seek to create ever expanding enclaves of militant Islam where there is no freedom and no tolerance – Where women are treated as chattel, Christians are decimated, and minorities are subjugated, sometimes given the stark choice: convert or die. For them, anyone can be an infidel, including fellow Muslims.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Militant Islam's ambition to dominate the world seems mad. But so too did the global ambitions of another fanatic ideology that swept to power eight decades ago.
The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith. They just disagree about who among them will be the master… of the master faith. That’s what they truly disagree about. Therefore, the question before us is whether militant Islam will have the power to realize its unbridled ambitions.
There is one place where that could soon happen: The Islamic State of Iran. For 35 years, Iran has relentlessly pursued the global mission which was set forth by its founding ruler, Ayatollah Khomeini, in these words: We will export our revolution to the entire world.
Until the cry "There is no God but Allah" will echo throughout the world over… And ever since, the regime’s brutal enforcers, Iran's Revolutionary Guards, have done exactly that.
Listen to its current commander, General Muhammad Ali Ja'afari. And he clearly stated this goal. He said: Our Imam did not limit the Islamic Revolution to this country… Our duty is to prepare the way for an Islamic world government… Iran's President Rouhani stood here last week, and shed crocodile tears over what he called "the globalization of terrorism." Maybe he should spare us those phony tears and have a word instead with the commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. He could ask them to call off Iran's global terror campaign, which has included attacks in two dozen countries on five continents since 2011 alone. To say that Iran doesn't practice terrorism is like saying Derek Jeter never played shortstop for the New York Yankees.
This bemoaning of the Iranian president of the spread of terrorism has got to be one of history’s greatest displays of doubletalk.
Now, Some still argue that Iran's global terror campaign, its subversion of countries throughout the Middle East and well beyond the Middle East, some argue that this is the work of the extremists. They say things are changing. They point to last year's elections in Iran. They claim that Iran’s smooth talking President and Foreign Minister, they’ve changed not only the tone of Iran's foreign policy but also its substance. They believe Rouhani and Zarif genuinely want to reconcile with the West, that they’ve abandoned the global mission of the Islamic Revolution.
Really? So let's look at what Foreign Minister Zarif wrote in his book just a few years ago: We have a fundamental problem with the West, and especially with America. This is because we are heirs to a global mission, which is tied to our raison d'etre… A global mission which is tied to our very reason of being.
And then Zarif asks a question, I think an interesting one. He says: How come Malaysia [he’s referring to an overwhelmingly Muslim country] – how come Malaysia doesn't have similar problems? And he answers: Because Malaysia is not trying to change the international order.
That's your moderate. So don’t be fooled by Iran’s manipulative charm offensive. It’s designed for one purpose, and for one purpose only: To lift the sanctions and remove the obstacles to Iran's path to the bomb. The Islamic Republic is now trying to bamboozle its way to an agreement that will remove the sanctions it still faces, and leave it with the capacity of thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium. This would effectively cement Iran's place as a threshold military nuclear power. In the future, at a time of its choosing, Iran, the world’s most dangerous state in the world's most dangerous region, would obtain the world’s most dangerous weapons.
Allowing that to happen would pose the gravest threat to us all. It’s one thing to confront militant Islamists on pick-up trucks, armed with Kalashnikov rifles. It’s another thing to confront militant Islamists armed with weapons of mass destruction. I remember that last year, everyone here was rightly concerned about the chemical weapons in Syria, including the possibility that they would fall into the hands of terrorists. That didn't happen. And President Obama deserves great credit for leading the diplomatic effort to dismantle virtually all of Syria's chemical weapons capability. Imagine how much more dangerous the Islamic State, ISIS, would be if it possessed chemical weapons. Now imagine how much more dangerous the Islamic state of Iran would be if it possessed nuclear weapons. Ladies and Gentlemen, Would you let ISIS enrich uranium? Would you let ISIS build a heavy water reactor? Would you let ISIS develop intercontinental ballistic missiles? Of course you wouldn’t. Then you mustn't let the Islamic State of Iran do those things either.
Because here’s what will happen: Once Iran produces atomic bombs, all the charm and all the smiles will suddenly disappear. They’ll just vanish. It's then that the ayatollahs will show their true face and unleash their aggressive fanaticism on the entire world. There is only one responsible course of action to address this threat: Iran's nuclear military capabilities must be fully dismantled. Make no mistake – ISIS must be defeated. But to defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win the battle and lose the war.
To defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win the battle and lose the war.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The fight against militant Islam is indivisible. When militant Islam succeeds anywhere, it’s emboldened everywhere. When it suffers a blow in one place, it's set back in every place. That’s why Israel’s fight against Hamas is not just our fight. It’s your fight. Israel is fighting a fanaticism today that your countries may be forced to fight tomorrow.
For 50 days this past summer, Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel, many of them supplied by Iran. I want you to think about what your countries would do if thousands of rockets were fired at your cities. Imagine millions of your citizens having seconds at most to scramble to bomb shelters, day after day. You wouldn't let terrorists fire rockets at your cities with impunity. Nor would you let terrorists dig dozens of terror tunnels under your borders to infiltrate your towns in order to murder and kidnap your citizens. Israel justly defended itself against both rocket attacks and terror tunnels. Yet Israel also faced another challenge. We faced a propaganda war. Because, in an attempt to win the world’s sympathy, Hamas cynically used Palestinian civilians as human shields. It used schools, not just schools - UN schools, private homes, mosques, even hospitals to store and fire rockets at Israel.
As Israel surgically struck at the rocket launchers and at the tunnels, Palestinian civilians were tragically but unintentionally killed. There are heartrending images that resulted, and these fueled libelous charges that Israel was deliberately targeting civilians.
We were not. We deeply regret every single civilian casualty. And the truth is this: Israel was doing everything to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties. Hamas was doing everything to maximize Israeli civilian casualties and Palestinian civilian casualties. Israel dropped flyers, made phone calls, sent text messages, broadcast warnings in Arabic on Palestinian television, always to enable Palestinian civilians to evacuate targeted areas.
No other country and no other army in history have gone to greater lengths to avoid casualties among the civilian population of their enemies. This concern for Palestinian life was all the more remarkable, given that Israeli civilians were being bombarded by rockets day after day, night after night. As their families were being rocketed by Hamas, Israel's citizen army – the brave soldiers of the IDF, our young boys and girls – they upheld the highest moral values of any army in the world. Israel's soldiers deserve not condemnation, but admiration. Admiration from decent people everywhere.
Now here’s what Hamas did: Hamas embedded its missile batteries in residential areas and told Palestinians to ignore Israel’s warnings to leave. And just in case people didn’t get the message, they executed Palestinian civilians in Gaza who dared to protest.
No less reprehensible, Hamas deliberately placed its rockets where Palestinian children live and play. Let me show you a photograph. It was taken by a France 24 crew during the recent conflict. It shows two Hamas rocket launchers, which were used to attack us. You see three children playing next to them. Hamas deliberately put its rockets in hundreds of residential areas like this. Hundreds of them.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a war crime. And I say to President Abbas, these are the war crimes committed by your Hamas partners in the national unity government which you head and you are responsible for. And these are the real war crimes you should have investigated, or spoken out against from this podium last week.
Ladies and Gentlemen, As Israeli children huddled in bomb shelters and Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system knocked Hamas rockets out of the sky, the profound moral difference between Israel and Hamas couldn’t have been clearer: Israel was using its missiles to protect its children. Hamas was using its children to protect its missiles.
By investigating Israel rather than Hamas for war crimes, the UN Human Rights Council has betrayed its noble mission to protect the innocent. In fact, what it’s doing is to turn the laws of war upside-down. Israel, which took unprecedented steps to minimize civilian casualties, Israel is condemned. Hamas, which both targeted and hid behind civilians – that a double war crime - Hamas is given a pass.
The Human Rights Council is thus sending a clear message to terrorists everywhere: Use civilians as human shields. Use them again and again and again. You know why? Because sadly, it works.
By granting international legitimacy to the use of human shields, the UN’s Human Rights Council has thus become a Terrorist Rights Council, and it will have repercussions. It probably already has, about the use of civilians as human shields.
It’s not just our interest. It’s not just our values that are under attack. It’s your interests and your values.
Ladies and Gentlemen, We live in a world steeped in tyranny and terror, where gays are hanged from cranes in Tehran, political prisoners are executed in Gaza, young girls are abducted en masse in Nigeria and hundreds of thousands are butchered in Syria, Libya and Iraq. Yet nearly half, nearly half of the UN Human Rights Council's resolutions focusing on a single country have been directed against Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East – Israel. where issues are openly debated in a boisterous parliament, where human rights are protected by independent courts and where women, gays and minorities live in a genuinely free society.
The Human Rights… (that’s an oxymoron, the UN Human Rights Council, but I’ll use it just the same), the Council’s biased treatment of Israel is only one manifestation of the return of the world’s oldest prejudices. We hear mobs today in Europe call for the gassing of Jews. We hear some national leaders compare Israel to the Nazis. This is not a function of Israel’s policies. It's a function of diseased minds. And that disease has a name. It’s called anti-Semitism.
It is now spreading in polite society, where it masquerades as legitimate criticism of Israel. For centuries the Jewish people have been demonized with blood libels and charges of deicide. Today, the Jewish state is demonized with the apartheid libel and charges of genocide. Genocide? In what moral universe does genocide include warning the enemy's civilian population to get out of harm's way? Or ensuring that they receive tons, tons of humanitarian aid each day, even as thousands of rockets are being fired at us? Or setting up a field hospital to aid for their wounded? Well, I suppose it's the same moral universe where a man who wrote a dissertation of lies about the Holocaust, and who insists on a Palestine free of Jews, Judenrein, can stand at this podium and shamelessly accuse Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
In the past, outrageous lies against the Jews were the precursors to the wholesale slaughter of our people.
But no more.
Today we, the Jewish people, have the power to defend ourselves. We will defend ourselves against our enemies on the battlefield. We will expose their lies against us in the court of public opinion. Israel will continue to stand proud and unbowed.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Despite the enormous challenges facing Israel, I believe we have an historic opportunity.
After decades of seeing Israel as their enemy, leading states in the Arab world increasingly recognize that together we and they face many of the same dangers: principally this means a nuclear-armed Iran and militant Islamist movements gaining ground in the Sunni world.
Our challenge is to transform these common interests to create a productive partnership. One that would build a more secure, peaceful and prosperous Middle East.
Together we can strengthen regional security. We can advance projects in water, agriculture, in transportation, in health, in energy, in so many fields.
I believe the partnership between us can also help facilitate peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Many have long assumed that an Israeli-Palestinian peace can help facilitate a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab World. But these days I think it may work the other way around: Namely that a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world may help facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
And therefore, to achieve that peace, we must look not only to Jerusalem and Ramallah, but also to Cairo, to Amman, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and elsewhere. I believe peace can be realized with the active involvement of Arab countries, those that are willing to provide political, material and other indispensable support. I’m ready to make a historic compromise, not because Israel is occupying a foreign land. The people of Israel are not occupiers in the Land of Israel. History, archeology and common sense all make clear that we have had a singular attachment to this land for over 3,000 years.
I want peace because I want to create a better future for my people. But it must be a genuine peace, one that is anchored in mutual recognition and enduring security arrangements, rock solid security arrangements on the ground. Because you see, Israel's withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza created two militant Islamic enclaves on our borders from which tens of thousands of rockets have been fired at Israel.
These sobering experiences heighten Israel's security concerns regarding potential territorial concessions in the future. Those security concerns are even greater today. Just look around you.
The Middle East is in chaos. States are disintegrating. Militant Islamists are filling the void.
Israel cannot have territories from which it withdraws taken over by Islamic militants yet again, as happened in Gaza and Lebanon. That would place the likes of ISIS within mortar range – a few miles – of 80% of our population.
Think about that. The distance between the 1967 lines and the suburbs of Tel Aviv is like the distance between the UN building here and Times Square. Israel’s a tiny country. That’s why in any peace agreement, which will obviously necessitate a territorial compromise, I will always insist that Israel be able to defend itself by itself against any threat. Yet despite all that has happened, some still don't take Israel’s security concerns seriously. But I do, and I always will. Because, as Prime Minister of Israel, I am entrusted with the awesome responsibility of ensuring the future of the Jewish people and the future of the Jewish state.
And no matter what pressure is brought to bear, I will never waver in fulfilling that responsibility.
I believe that with a fresh approach from our neighbors, we can advance peace despite the difficulties we face.
In Israel, we have a record of making the impossible possible. We’ve made a desolate land flourish. And with very few natural resources, we have used the fertile minds of our people to turn Israel into a global center of technology and innovation.
Peace, of course, would enable Israel to realize its full potential and to bring a promising future not only for our people, not only for the Palestinian people, but for many, many others in our region.
But the old template for peace must be updated. It must take into account new realities and new roles and responsibilities for our Arab neighbors. Ladies and Gentlemen, There is a new Middle East. It presents new dangers, but also new opportunities. Israel is prepared to work with Arab partners and the international community to confront those dangers and to seize those opportunities. Together we must recognize the global threat of militant Islam, the primacy of dismantling Iran’s nuclear weapons capability and the indispensable role of Arab states in advancing peace with the Palestinians.
All this may fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but it’s the truth. And the truth must always be spoken, especially here, in the United Nations.
Isaiah, our great prophet of peace, taught us nearly 3,000 years ago in Jerusalem to speak truth to power. לְמַעַן צִיּוֹן לֹא אֶחֱשֶׁה וּלְמַעַן יְרוּשָׁלִַם לֹא אֶשְׁקוֹט עַד-יֵצֵא כַּנֹּגַהּ צִדְקָהּ וִישׁוּעָתָהּ כְּלַפִּיד יִבְעָר.
For the sake of Zion, I will not be silent.
For the sake of Jerusalem, I will not be still.
Until her justice shines bright, And her salvation glows like a flaming torch.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Let's light a torch of truth and justice to safeguard our common future.
Thank you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
