Saturday 9 November 2019

العقلانية والواقعية لا التهويل والحرب النفسية


نوفمبر 9, 2019

ناصر قنديل

– الحراك الشعبي الذي لا يزال تعبيراً عن غضب الشعب اللبناني بشرائحه الواسعة من فشل وفساد أداء السلطات المتعاقبة، في المجلس النيابي والحكومة والمرافق المالية والقضاء، ليس صاحب نصوص قرآنية أو إنجيلية لا تقبل النقاش، خصوصاً أن الغضب أسوأ موجّه للسياسة، في بلد شديد الحساسيات السياسية، وبصورة أخصّ أن الشعارات والمواقف الوافدة على الحراك سواء عبر الإعلام أو عبر الجمعيات المنظمة التي تلقي شعاراً وتواكبه بحملة تسويق، ليست ثوابت لا يستطيع الحراك التحرّر منها. وها نحن أمام تحوّلين كبيرين في مسار الحراك لصالح إعادة نظر في عناوين طبعته منذ يومه الأول.

– اتهم كل مَن نادى بانسحاب الحراك من قطع الطرقات، وشرح حجم الأذى الذي يتسبّب به ذلك العناد المشاغب على الناس ومدى الضرر الذي يلحقه بالحراك نفسه، ويؤدي لانفضاض الشعب عنه وفقدانه صفة التمثيل الجمعي للوجدان اللبناني، بأنهم جماعة السلطة الفاسدة وحماة الفساد. وعندما تراجع الحراك عن قطع الطرقات لأنه بدأ يستشعر الضمور والتراجع وانفكاك الناس، حاول الراكبون على موجة الحراك لتحويله أداة أحقادهم هم وسياساتهم هم، وأغلبهم لا يميّزون بين الحراك الشعبي وحركة 14 آذار التي يمجّدونها وهم ينعون فشلها كل يوم، لأن قادتها لم يخلصوا لها، وسادتها في الخارج لم يثبتوا دفاعاً عن سقوفها المستحيلة. وبالطبع ينتقم هؤلاء الأربعتش آذاريون من انتصار المقاومة التي ناصبوها العداء بمحاولة جعل الحراك هزيمة لها، بينما تراجع الحراك عن قطع الطرقات تأكيد لصدق المقاومة مع الحراك، ولفرص تلاقي الحراك مع المقاومة.

– بالطريقة ذاتها تمّ دسّ شعار إسقاط الحكومة على الحراك، ومن خلفه تمّ دسّ شعار حكومة تكنوقراط، بمثل دسّ قطع الطرقات، ومثلما لقطع الطرقات حسابات أمنية لا تمتّ للحراك بصلة، لإسقاط الحكومة وحكومة التكنوقراط حسابات سياسية لا تمتّ للحراك بصلة، وتخدم أهداف أصحابها بقوة استعمال الحراك، وسهل استنتاج الآثار المدمّرة لاستقالة الحكومة على الحراك والبلد، بمجرد تخيّل الوضع لو لم تستقل الحكومة وبقيت تطبق ورقتها الإصلاحية، سواء لجهة العفو العام وقوانين مكافحة الفساد وقروض الإسكان، والسير بمؤتمر سيدر. فالأكيد أن الوضع المالي والنقدي كان أفضل، والطريق نحو إقرار قانون جديد للانتخابات وصولاً لحكومة من غير المرشحين تشرف على الانتخابات في الربع الأول من العام المقبل بسلاسة تمهيداً لانتخابات مبكرة تجري على أساسه في الصيف أو الخريف من العام المقبل. وخير دليل على مراجعة الحراك مضمون دعوته لاستقالة الحكومة القائمة على ركيزتين، كلن يعني كلن و حكومة تكنوقراط ، أن الحراك بغالبية مكوّناته وساحاته شهد مراجعة وتراجعاً عن شعار كلن يعني كلن بإيجاد مبررات واقعية وعقلانية لاستثناء رئيس الحكومة سعد الحريري من هذا الشعار ليس لتبرئته من المسؤولية، بل لمنع تصوير استبعاده إخلالاً بتوازن طائفي بين الرئاسات، ولضمان تحقيق المرتجى من مؤتمر سيدر حيث لوجوده دور أساسي، والدليل الثاني أن الحراك الذي رفع شعار حكومة تكنوقراط، نقض شعاره ومضمون الثقة العمياء بالتكنوقراط بخوض معركة مواجهة مع أبرز رموز التكنوقراط في لبنان وأكثر المشهود لهم بالخبرة، وأكثرهم ثقة في الخارج، وهو حاكم المصرف المركزي، وصولاً لرفع الحراك شعار يسقط حكم المصرف . وهذه كلها دلائل على أن شعارات الحراك ليست قرآناً ولا إنجيلاً، وعلى أن الحراك يعيد النظر بشعاراته بعقلانيّة وواقعيّة، ولا يحتاج للمبخّرين أو المخبرين وبينهما مجرد اختلاف ترتيب حروف.

– مخاطبة الحراك بالدعوة للعقلانيّة والواقعية لحكومة جديدة تشكل تلبية للحاجة المزدوجة لتكنوقراط ملتزم بالسياسات الوطنية والشعبية، ولا تشكل تحقيقاً لأجندات خارجية وداخلية بتحقيق مكاسب سياسية لا صلة لها بحقوق الناس ولا تخدمها، هي مخاطبة تشبه دعوة الحراك للانسحاب من قطع الطرقات، وقد لاقت تجاوباً، ومشابهة لما فعله الحراك بقبول بقاء الرئيس الحريري، وما فعله باستثناء منظومة التكنوقراط من القدسية والتأليه، ما يسهّل فرص تصحيح خطأ استقالة الحكومة، التي لم تخدم الحراك ولا البلد ولا الناس، ويفتح الطريق لحكومة تلتزم برنامجاً إصلاحياً يوسّع مضمون الورقة الإصلاحية وصولاً لقانون انتخابات جديد، على اساس الدائرة الواحدة والنسبية، لكنها حكومة لا تخلّ بالتوازنات التي جاءت بها الانتخابات النيابية، ضماناً لاحترام نتائج الانتخابات المقبلة التي يطالب الحراك أن تكون مبكرة، ولا مصلحة له بتسجيل سابقة عدم احترام تمثيل الحكومات لنتائج الانتخابات.

– ما يجري الآن هو لحس مبرد يستثمر عليه داخل وخارج يسرعان بلبنان نحو الانهيار، بالاستقواء بكذبة عنوانها، أن الحراك لن يقبل إلا بنسف المعادلات السياسية التي ثبتتها الانتخابات، ليمتطي بعض الداخل والخارج هذا النسف للقبض على لبنان، بحكومة يسمّيها هذا الداخل والخارج ويستثني فيها من يريد من معادلة كلن ، ويصيب بها من يريد، هي حرب نفسية قاسية تُخاض في أروقة المصارف وعلى شاشات التلفزة، ولا يهمّ أصحابَها أن يفقد اللبنانيون فيها ودائعهم، ومصادر رزقهم، وتسقط ليرتهم بالضربة القاضية، في ظل هتاف، ثورة ثورة ثورة.

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Vegan Washing: How Israel Uses Veganism to Gloss Over Palestinian Oppression



By Alan Macleod
Most of us are now aware that we constantly receive micro-targeted advertisements in our social media feeds based on our interests, location or habits. Those in the vegan community are no exception.
However, an increasing number of  promoted posts targeted at vegans on apps like Facebook or Twitter are clearly Israeli Defense Force (IDF) propaganda. Most of these are videos discussing, in English, how accommodating to the plant-based lifestyle the IDF is and how easy it is to be a vegan soldier.
Israel, its government tells us, is a vegan paradise of tolerance and open-mindedness, where its soldiers can serve their country according to their ethical principles, eating vegan food and wearing clothes free from leather, wool, or other animal products. There are now around 10,000 vegan soldiers in the IDF, and that figure is quickly rising. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv markets itself to foreigners as the “vegan capital of the world”.
Israel Defense Forces
✔@IDF
The perfect place to be vegan doesn’t exi-

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Apartheid Isn’t Vegan

There is a fundamental contradiction between veganism and apartheid. Veganism at its core is an ideology of radical compassion for and non-violence towards all sentient beings. As vegan website Live Kindly explains, it means “to live in a way which shows appreciation to our humanity, our home and those who share it with us.” It should go without saying that this is completely incompatible with successive Israeli governments going back to 1948 and Israel’s commitment to being a Jewish supremacist state. Thus, in Israel, a country that cares about animals more than its indigenous human population, you can be vegan, but you can’t support Palestinian rights.
Nevertheless, Israel continues to use the fact that thousands of its soldiers abscond from animal products as proof that it is a forward-thinking, progressive nation. Mainstream and corporate media have, unsurprisingly, parroted this assertion. The BBC, for instance, tells the story of an IDF soldier, Daniella Yoeli, so moral that “had the army not been able to provide conditions that had harmed no living creatures, she might not have enlisted in a combat unit where she would not have been able to provide her own food.” Unexplored in the article was whether or not Palestinian humans qualified as human beings to her.
More alarming, however, is how many vegetarian and vegan outlets have swallowed the bait as well. Veg News reports how Israeli soldiers march to war in leather-free boots and have plentiful plant-based ration optionsLive Kindly noted how the IDF’s deputy chief of staff is a vegetarian and how it recently appointed its first vegan officer. Meanwhile, PETA went so far as to advise the Swiss Army to “take a leaf out of the Israel Defense Forces’ book”. But especially troubling is that none of the articles even mentioned any criticism of the IDF, the government, or their actions, effectively amplifying Israeli propaganda worldwide.
Israel Vegans
With a host of celebrity advocates, including Tobey Maguire, Emily Deschanel and Zac Efron, veganism is growing exponentially across the West. Noting that a quarter of 25-34 year old Americans are vegetarian or stricter, The Economist labeled 2019 the “year of the vegan.” Yet uncritical regurgitation of IDF press releases subtly presents the Middle East region as liberal, forward-thinking Israelis vs. backward, close-minded Arab Muslims.
This framing is particularly misleading for a number of reasons. Firstly, much of the most commonly celebrated Israeli vegan food (falafel, hummus, baba ghanoush, stuffed vine leaves) is simply the appropriated cuisine of the local peoples Israel displaced during its creation. Secondly, the great irony is that the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development statistics show that Israelis actually consume the most poultry per capita in the world, with 80% of the population eating it every day. As a whole, Israelis eat over 200 pounds of meat every year, more than even the famously carnivorous Americans.
Furthermore, as the Palestinian Animal League notes, while 3% of Israeli Jews are vegan, the number of their Palestinian Israeli counterparts is twice as high. Therefore, the narrative begins to disintegrate upon even modest inspection.

From Vegan Washing to Pink Washing

In a similar fashion, Israel presents itself as a haven of acceptance for the LGBT community in a region of intolerance. After winning the event in 2018, the country received the right to host the Eurovision Song Contest, a continent-wide celebration of flamboyantly gay music and culture (despite not being a European nation).
The Israeli government saw the country’s victory as a huge diplomatic triumph, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring winning performer Netta Barzilai as its “best ambassador.” Barzilai flew back home to perform at a government-sponsored victory celebration. The same day the IDF slaughtered at least 58 Palestinians. There was a considerable amount of pushback to the idea of Israel hosting the competition this year, with some acts refusing to perform. Nevertheless, the show went ahead as planned in Tel Aviv, another coup for the government.
While Israel is indeed a land that is both comparatively tolerant of LGBT people and accommodating to vegans, the general progressiveness that implies does not extend to the realm of politics, where the country continues to lurch ever more rightward to the point where even its former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, has warned that the country is “infected” with fascism and the government must be stopped. Thus, in the Jewish-only state, female bulldozer drivers can destroy Palestinian villages, vegan tank commanders can run over wheelchair-bound children, and transgender pilots can bomb wedding receptions. The trick the IDF is trying to play is to get as much of the world to concentrate on its (limited) liberal inclusivity and ignore its near-genocidal military policy. And it appears to be working.

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Friday 8 November 2019

Leaked footage shows moment Israeli policewoman shoots Palestinian in the back ‘for fun’

  • Israeli policewoman alleged to have shot Palestinian after telling him to run away
  • She was later sacked after the offence was released and may face charges
  • Video of the incident was released by Israel’s Channel 13 news agency
  •  Believed to have been recorded at the al-Zaim checkpoint outside of Jerusalem
  • Human rights group B’Tselem said the incident was down to ‘culture of impunity’

William Cole – Mail Online Nov 5, 2019

This is the shocking moment an Israeli police officer was recorded shooting a Palestinian man in the back ‘for fun’.
Leaked footage, believed to be from the al-Zaim checkpoint outside of Jerusalem, shows the man falling to the floor in howls of pain after being hit with a sponge-tipped bullet.
Broadcast on Israeli television, the cruel footage shows border officers shouting at the young man to ‘get out of here!’ in Arabic.
One officer then points his rifle at the Palestinian man, who holds his hands up and starts to calmly walk away.
However, Channel 13 news agency report that the police then continue to shout contradicting instructions at him as he begins to panic, before one of them shoots him in the back.
They report the police as saying the man was not seriously hurt, although newspaper Haaretz reported that he was ‘seriously wounded’.
Israeli police said they removed the policewoman from the force after learning of the incident, while other police involved in the incident were re-assigned.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the justice ministry had opened an investigation into the incident, which he said took place a year and a half ago.

Israeli Soldier Shoots Unarmed Palestinian in the Back



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Israel’s Supreme Court — Upholding “Targeted Assassinations” and Torture

By Stephen Lendman
Global Research, November 08, 2019

Time and again, Israel’s high court upholds human and civil rights abuses committed by the state.
In 2006, the court upheld its targeted assassinations policy, claiming they’re OK when no other choices exist to protect against dangers to national security — that don’t exist it failed to say.
The policy contravenes Israeli law, the laws of war, and human rights law. Time and again, Israel falsely calls legitimate self-defense by Palestinians “terrorism,” unjustifiably justifying its lawless actions, most often upheld by its high court.
In Public Committee against Torture in Israel et al v. the Government of Israel et al (1999), Israel’s Supreme Court banned the practice it earlier OK’d, ruling “psychological pressure (and) a moderate degree of physical pressure” are permissible.
Israel’s 1987 Landau Commission condemned harsh interrogations amounting to torture, but approved the practice to obtain evidence for convictions in criminal proceedings, saying these tactics are necessary against “hostile (threats or acts of) terrorist activity and all expressions of Palestinian nationalism.”
Despite calling the 1984 UN Convention against Torture “absolute (with) no exceptions and no balances,” Israel’s high court OK’d coercive interrogations in three cases.
It permitted violent shaking, painful shackling, hooding, playing deafeningly loud music, sleep deprivation, and lengthly detainments.
Loopholes in the high court’s 1999 ruling OK’d abusive practices amounting to torture despite banning the practice.
It notably allowed physical force in so-called “ticking bomb” cases, giving Israeli interrogators and others wide latitude on their actions.
The court effectively ruled both ways, approving torture and other abusive practices despite banning it.
International law is clear and unequivocal on this issue, banning it at all times, under all circumstances with no allowed exceptions.
In 2015, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition by human rights groups and political movements that called for overturning the Anti-Boycott Law.
At the time, the Global BDS Movement and Coalition for Women for Peace called the bill “one of the most dangerous anti-democratic laws promoted” by Knesset members, adding:
“Boycott is a nonviolent, legal and legitimate means to promote social and political aims that are protected in civil rights of freedom of expression, opinion and assembly. The bill constitutes a fatal blow to all these civil rights.”
The police state law punishes entities or individuals that call for boycotting Israel, or an economic, cultural, or academic boycott of its illegal settlements.
According to the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Israel’s Supreme Court “ignored the chilling effect of this law, and missed the opportunity to tell legislators that there are limits to their anti-human rights actions. This law encourages discrimination against the Arabs in Israel.”
The 2012 Nakba Law “harms both the freedom of expression and the civil rights of Arab citizens, even before its implementation.”
“Because the law’s formulation is so broad and vague, many institutions have already begun and will self-censor in order not to risk incurring penalties.”
Israel’s high court upheld the law, falsely claiming it “does not raise difficult and complex questions.”
It violates Arab history, culture, heritage, and the right to express, teach, or disseminate it freely.
Arab intellectual Constantin Zureiq earlier called the Nakba “the worst catastrophe in the deepest sense of the word, to have befallen the Arabs in their long and disaster-ridden history.”
Compromising their ability to publicly denounce what happened compounds the high crime against them.
Speech, press, and academic freedoms in Israel are gravely endangered. In 2017, legislation was enacted that banned foreign nationals who support BDS from entering the country.
Last April, Israel’s Jerusalem district court ruled against Human Rights Watch’s Israeli office director Omar Shakir, a US citizen, ordering him deported for supporting the global BDS movement, his lawful free expression right.
HRW appealed the ruling, petitioning Israel’s Supreme Court to overturn the injustice. It got an injunction to let Shakir stay in the country until the high court heard his case.
On Tuesday, the court ruled against him, Shakir tweeting:
“Breaking: Israeli Supreme Court upholds my deportation over my rights advocacy. Decision now shifts back to Israeli gov; if it proceeds, I have 20 days to leave…(W)e won’t be the last.”
Critic of Israeli human rights abuses Amnesty International said
“the court has made it explicitly clear that those who dare to speak out about human rights violations by the Israeli authorities will be treated as enemies of the state.”
Israel’s Supreme Court ruled against free expression. Without it, all other rights are jeopardized.
Compromising speech, press, and academic freedoms is the hallmark of totalitarian rule — the new normal in the US, other Western societies and Israel, affirmed by its high court.
Is is just a matter of time before Western ones rule the same way?
Is digital democracy in the West and Israel endangered?
Are abuses against Chelsea Manning, other whistleblowers, Julian Assange, and other independent journalists prelude for much more severe crackdowns against fundamental freedoms ahead?
*
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Featured image is from IMEMC


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ISRAELI ADVANCED DAVID’S SLING INTERCEPTOR MISSILE FELL INTO RUSSIAN HANDS: REPORT

South Front
Israeli Advanced David's Sling Interceptor Missile Fell Into Russian Hands: Report
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Russia is allegedly in possession of an advanced Israeli interceptor missile, Chinese news outlet Sina reported on November 6thIn Jule 2018, two interceptor missiles were fired by the David’s Sling missile defense system.
An internal Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) investigation revealed that the David’s Sling system determined that at least one of the Syrian missiles would land in Israeli territory, and it was decided to launch an interceptor. When it became clear that the attacking missile’s course had changed, it was decided to destroy the interceptor in mid-air.
However, a second interceptor that was launched shortly afterward did not hit its target and landed in Syria Syrian territory allegedly without suffering any major damage.
Thus, the Syrian military salvaged it and provided it to the Russian side to reverse engineer it.
According to SINA, Israel and the United States asked Russia to return the missile. Neither Russia nor the Israel Defense Forces provided a comment on the report.
There’s really no conformation of the report being true, if it is then it is rather concerning for Rafael.
“I don’t know if it’s true” Brig.-Gen (res.) Zvika Haimovitch, the former Aerial Defense Division Commander, told The Jerusalem Post about the Chinese report. But he stressed Israel always assumes her foes are trying to get their hands on sensitive information. “I think that we should always be concerned and worried about our secrets and information and our data that our enemies could get their hands on it. I assume that our enemies are always looking for very sensitive data and about our capabilities and gaps and failures. It’s part of the way that we need to think, that our enemies are always trying to get this sensitive information.”
The David’s Sling interceptor is designed to deal with missiles coming from between 40 kilometers and 300 kilometers away, making up the middle tier of Israel’s advanced air defense array. Each interceptor launched by the system costs an estimated $1 million.
Israel also has the Iron Dome system for short range projectiles, and the Arrow 3, which is designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles.
David’s Sling, which was declared operational in April 2017, and is meant to replace the Patriot missile systems in Israel’s defense infrastructure.
It was formerly known as Magic Wand and is an advanced missile defense system jointly developed by Rafael and Raytheon. It is designed to intercept enemy planes, drones, tactical ballistic missiles, medium- to long-range rockets and cruise missiles.
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خيار المقاومة ليس في أزمة

Image result for ‫خيار المقاومة‬‎
نوفمبر 7, 2019

ـ يتخيّل بعض المتربصين بالمقاومة أنّ المنطق المعتدل الذي تعتمده في التعامل مع الوضع الذي يعيشه لبنان ناتج عن قلق المقاومة على وضعها في ظلّ ما تقوله عن مشروع أميركي لاستهدافها، متناسين الفرق بين وجود المشروع وما تملكه قوى المقاومة لمواجهته.

ـ ما لا تريده المقاومة هو المبادرة لخيارات دفاعية تحتفظ بها إذا قرّر الأميركيون الخروج من الشراكة العملية في السلطة في لبنان، سواء عبر تمثيل الجماعات التي تراهن على مشروعهم وتشكل التجسيد اللبناني له بنسب مختلفة، أو عبر دورهم المالي في إبقاء لبنان بعيداً عن الإنهيار المالي الذي أسّس الأميركيون للإمساك به عبر سياسات الإستدانة المفتوحة وما رافقها من إنفاق تفوح منه روائح الفساد برعاية أميركية عبّرت عن نفسها بمواصلة منح التمويل والديون لمواصلة فساد تراه وترعاه.

ـ تدرك المقاومة أنّ الخروج الأميركي من هذه الشراكة وصولاً للانهيار المالي يؤذي لبنان ولقتصاده وشعبه، خصوصاً مع انهيار سعر صرف الليرة اللبنانية، ولذلك فالمقاومة لا تبادر لوضع هذا الخيار كمشروع لها بمثل ما تتعامل مع مشروع الحرب بمبادرة ذاتية على كيان الاحتلال، فهاتان حربان لا تريدهما وتعرف الخسائر والأكلاف فيهما لكنها تثق بربحهما ولذلك إذا فرضتا فهي لا تخشاهما.

ـ نموذج اقتصاد من نوع مختلف موجود على مقربة من المقاومة في سورية حيث مستوى المعيشة رغم حرب السنوات التسع أفضل من لبنان وأسعار الخدمات أرخص والأزمات في ملفات الكهرباء والنفايات وسواها أقلّ.

ـ منع السفر وحجز الأموال والأملاك لكلّ الذين تولوا الحكم خلال السنوات الثلاثين الماضية وفتح ملفات الفساد واسترجاع الأموال المنهوبة بلا رحمة واستثناءات سيكون الشق الثاني من هذا المشروع نحو اقتصاد المقاومة حكماً.

ـ الانفتاح على السوق السورية والعراقية والإيرانية بخطة تكامل في مجالات النفط والكهرباء وسكك الحديد وتكامل أسواق المنتجات والخدمات والسياحة مشروع جاهز، وإدخال لبنان في منظومة شرقية روسية صينية يوفر التمويل والنهوض بديل جاهز، لكنه بديل دفاعي وليس بديلاً هجومياً كما هو مشروع استهداف العمق «الإسرائيلي» والدخول إلى الجليل بديل على طاولة المقاومة، لكن كردّ دفاعي على الحرب إذا فرضت وليس خياراً يؤخذ بمبادرة…

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Who Stole the Dreams of the Lebanese People? Hezbollah Executive Chief : “We’ve Been Defending People’s Demands All Along”

Who Stole the Dreams of the Lebanese People?
Who Stole the Dreams of the Lebanese People?
Video here Translated

Hezbollah Executive Chief Tells BBC “We’ve Been Defending People’s Demands All Along”

Hezbollah Executive Chief Tells BBC “We’ve Been Defending People’s Demands All Along”
Chief of Hezbollah Executive Council His Eminence Sayyed Hashem Safieddine said that the Lebanese resistance movement has been supporting the people’s demands all along, stressing that the demands of the protesters in Lebanon are rightful.
In an interview with the BBC, Sayyed Safieddine added that Hezbollah will transfer all the demands to any future government.
The Hezbollah senior official, however, warned of the economic track that is pushing the country to the abyss.
“In order for the honest cries of most of the people who are suffering in different Lebanese areas to be purposeful, it should be filtered from all the leaderships, sides and embassies that “rode the wave” for political goals.”
Sayyed Safieddine stressed further that “Hezbollah had a reform raft that was way bigger than what was agreed on in the Cabinet,” noting that Hezbollah’s political track provides that the taxes shouldn’t be paid by the poor people.
He also emphasized that the talks on forming the new government have seriously began, adding that communications are still in the first stage.
“We are still approaching the pains, rhetoric, emotions of the squares, and we carry such demands. We also don’t consider there is a link between what is happening in Lebanon and the protests in Iraq,” Sayyed Safieddine concluded.
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Saudi Arabia Recruits Twitter Employees Charged For Spying

Saudi Arabia Recruits Twitter Employees Charged For Spying
The Saudi government, frustrated by growing criticism of its leaders and policies on social media, recruited two Twitter employees to gather confidential personal information on thousands of accounts that included prominent opponents, prosecutors announced on Wednesday.
Twitter
The complaint unsealed in US District Court in San Francisco detailed a coordinated effort by Saudi government officials to recruit employees at the social media giant to look up the private data of Twitter accounts, including email addresses linked to the accounts and internet protocol addresses that can give up a user’s location.
The accounts included those of a popular critic of the government with more than one million followers and a news personality. Neither was named.
Two Saudi citizens and one US citizen worked together to unmask the ownership details behind dissident Twitter accounts on behalf of the government in Riyadh and the royal family, the US justice department said.
According to a court filing, they were guided by an unnamed Saudi official who worked for someone prosecutors designated “Royal Family Member-1,” which The Washington Post reported was Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or MBS as he is commonly known.
Those charged were Twitter employees Ali Alzabarah and Ahmad Abouammo, along with Ahmed Almutairi, a marketing official with ties to the royal family.
“The criminal complaint unsealed today alleges that Saudi agents mined Twitter’s internal systems for personal information about known Saudi critics and thousands of other Twitter users,” said US lawyer David Anderson.
“US law protects US companies from such an unlawful foreign intrusion. We will not allow US companies or US technology to become tools of foreign repression in violation of US law,” he said in a statement.
The lawsuit comes as US-Saudi relations continue to suffer strains over the brutal, Riyadh-sanctioned murder one year ago of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who wrote for, among others, The Washington Post newspaper
A critic of MBS, Khashoggi was killed and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
According to the Post, US intelligence has concluded that the prince himself was closely linked to the murder.
The criminal allegations reveal the extent the Saudi government went to control the flow of information on Twitter, said Adam Coogle, a Middle East researcher with Human Rights Watch.

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Accused of Treason and Imprisoned Without Trial: Journalist Kirill Vyshinsky Recounts His Harrowing Time in a Ukrainian Prison

Eva Bartlett sat down with recently released Ukrainian journalist Kirill Vyshinsky. Vyshinsky endured 15 months of appalling conditions in a Ukrainian prison after being falsely accused of treason.
October 28th, 2019
In November 2018, I became aware of the case of Kirill Vyshinsky, a Ukrainian-Russian journalist and editor imprisoned in Ukraine without trial since May 2018, accused of high treason.
Soon after, I interviewed Vyshinsky via email. He described his arrest and the accusations against him as politically-motivated, “an attempt by the Ukrainian authorities to bolster the declining popularity of [then] President [Petro] Poroshenko in this election year.” 
Vyshinsky noted that his arrest was advancing the incessant anti-Russian hysteria now prevalent among Ukrainian authorities, as he holds dual Ukrainian and Russian citizenship. He noted that the charges against him, which pertain to a number of articles he published in 2014 (none of them authored by Vyshinsky), became of interest to Ukrainian authorities and intelligence services four years after they were published. To Vyshinsky, this supports the notion that neither the articles nor their editor were a security threat to Ukraine, instead, he says, they were a political card to be played.
In early 2019, I traveled to Kiev to interview Vyshinsky’s defense lawyer Andriy Domansky about the logistic obstacles of his client’s case. Domansky viewed the Vyshinsky case as politically motivated and expressed concern that he could himself become a target of Ukraine’s secret service for his role in defending his client, an innocent man.
Domansky told me at the time,
The Vyshinsky case is key in demonstrating the presence of political persecution of journalists in Ukraine. As a legal expert, I believe justice is still possible in Ukraine and I will do everything possible to prove Kirill Vyshinsky’s innocence.”
To the surprise of those following the case against Vyshinsky, in late August 2019 he was released with little fanfare after serving more than 400 days in a Ukrainian prison but still faces all of the charges brought against him by the Ukrainian government and is “obliged to appear in court or give testimony to investigators if they deemed it necessary.”
By early September, Kirill Vyshinsky was on a plane to Moscow. Despite never being tried or officially convicted, he found himself the subject of a prisoner exchange between the Russian and Ukrainian governments.
A banner reading “Freedom to Kirill Vyshinsky” is held at a June 16, 2019 rally in Moscow. Maxim Shemetov | Reuters
I interviewed Vyshinsky in Moscow in late September. He told me about his harrowing ordeal, the Ukrainian detention system, other persecuted journalists, and what lies ahead for him.
He also touched on the inhumane conditions he experienced in Ukrainian prisons. He noted that a pretrial detention center as we know it in Western nations is a very different entity in Ukraine and that Ukrainian prisons were so over-crowded that it was common for inmates to sleep in three shifts in order to allow enough standing room for inmates crammed into a cell.

Ukrainian prisons like a “concentration camp”

Aleksey Zhuravko, a Ukrainian deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of V and VI convocations recently published photos taken inside of an Odessa pretrial detention center showing utterly unsanitary and appalling conditions. Zhuravko noted, “I am shocked at what was seen. It is a concentration camp. It is a hotbed of diseases.”
Another Ukrainian journalist, Pavel Volkov, was subjected to the same types of accusations lobbed against Vyshinsky. Volkov spent over a year in the same pretrial detention center as Vyshinsky. He was arrested on September 27, 2017, after Ukrainian authorities carried out searches of his wife and mother’s apartments without the presence of his lawyer and with what he says, was a false witness.
Volkov spent more than a year in a pretrial detention center on charges of “infringing on territorial integrity with a group of people” and “miscellaneous accessory to terrorism.” On March 27, 2019, he was fully acquitted by a Ukrainian court.
Volkov shared his thoughts on the persecution of journalists in Ukraine, saying:
The leaders of the 2014 Euromaidan movement, who subsequently occupied the largest positions in the country’s leadership, repeatedly stated that collaborators from World War II who participated in the mass extermination of Jews, Russians, and Poles are true heroes in Ukraine, and that the Russian and Russian-speaking population of Ukraine are inferior people who need to be either forcibly re-educated or destroyed.
They also believe that anyone who wants peace with the Russian Federation, and who believes that the Russian language (the native language for over sixty percent of Ukraine’s population) should be the second state language, is the enemy of Ukraine.
These notions formed the basis of the new criminal law, designed to persecute politicians, public figures, journalists, and ordinary citizens who disagree with the above.
Since 2014, security services have arrested hundreds of people on charges of state treason; infringing on the territorial integrity of Ukraine; and assisting terrorism for criticizing the current government in the streets or on the Internet.
People have been in prison for years without a conviction. And these are not only the journalists included in the ‘Vyshinsky list’.
Activists from Odessa, Sergey Dolzhenkov and Evgeny Mefedov, have spent more than five years in jail just for laying flowers at a memorial to the liberators of Nikolaev [Ukrainian city] from Nazi invaders.
Sergeyev and Gorban, taxi drivers, have spent two and a half years in a pretrial detention center because they transported pensioners from Donetsk to Ukraine-controlled territory so that they could receive their legal pension.
The entrepreneur Andrey Tatarintsev has spent two years in prison for providing humanitarian assistance to a children’s hospital in the territory of the Lugansk region not controlled by Ukraine.
Farmer Nikolay Butrimenko received eight years of imprisonment for paying tax to the Donetsk People’s Republic for his land located in that territory.
The 85-year-old scientist and engineer Mekhti Logunov was given twelve years because he agreed to build a waste recycling plant with Russian investors. The list is endless.
People often incriminate themselves while being tortured or under the threat of their relatives being punished, and such confessions are accepted by the courts, despite the fact that lawyers initiate criminal proceedings against the security services involved in the torture. These cases are not being investigated.
The only mitigation that has happened in this direction after the change of government was the abolition of the provision of the Criminal Procedure Code stating that no other measure of restraint other than detention can be applied to persons suspected of committing crimes against the state.
This allowed some defendants to leave prison on bail, but not a single politically-motivated case has yet been closed. Moreover, arrests are ongoing.
The only acquittal to date from the so-called journalistic cases on freedom of speech is mine. However, it is still being contested by the prosecutor’s office in the Supreme Court.
Ninety-nine percent of the media continue to call all these people ‘terrorists’, ‘separatists’, and ‘enemies of the people’, even though almost none of them have yet received a verdict in court.”
Volkov’s words lay bare the true nature of the allegations made against Kirill Vyshinsky as well as the countless other journalists and citizens of Ukraine that have fallen victim to the heavy hand of Ukrainian authorities.
Feature photo | Kirill Vyshinsky poses while covering Ukraine’s Maidan protests in 2014. Photo | Zenit-ka.ru
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and occupied Palestine, where she lived for nearly four years. She is a recipient of the 2017 International Journalism Award for International Reporting, granted by the Mexican Journalists’ Press Club (founded in 1951), was the first recipient of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism, and was short-listed in 2017 for the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. See her extended bio on her blog In Gaza.

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