Archive for December 4th, 2011
Israel “Occupying” USA domestic security agencies? How insidious the training of the US police forces? Part 1
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 4, 2011
Part 1. Israel “occupying” USA domestic security agencies? How this Israelification is insidious?
Margaret Flowers posted on Dec. 4, 2011 under “The Israelification of America domestic security”.
This lengthy article describes how the State of Israel and its various lobbies in the USA have infiltrated US domestic security agencies and have taken root through sponsored trips to attending various programs within Israel security agencies and services.
I had to split the article into two parts after minor rearrangement.
I didn’t think much comments were necessary and the article could fall within the rubric “NO COMMENT“.
The first part is on how Israel is breaking up the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Collaboration between US and Israeli cops is just the tip of the iceberg.
Training alongside the US police departments and internal security apparatus at Urban Shield was theYamam, an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations.
Actually, the Yamam is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and its long record of repression and abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel cooperation unleashed in full force against the Occupy Wall Street Movement, has taken place at every level of law enforcement, and in areas that have yet to be exposed.
The phenomenon has been documented in bits and pieces, through occasional news report that typically highlight Israel’s national security prowess without examining the problematic nature of working with a country accused of grave human rights abuses.
This insidious “cooperation” has never been the subject of a national discussion.
“The New York Police Department’s disclosure that it deployed “counter-terror” measures against Occupy protesters encamped in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park is just the latest example of the so-called War on Terror creeping into every day life.
Revelations like these have raised serious questions about the extent to which Israeli-inspired tactics are being used to suppress the Occupy movement.
Karen Greenberg, director of Fordham School of Law’s Center on National Security and a leading expert on terror and civil liberties, said the Israeli influence on American law enforcement is so extensive it has bled into street-level police conduct.
“After 9/11, we reached out to the Israelis on many fronts and one of those fronts was torture. The training in Iraq and Afghanistan on torture was Israeli training. There’s been a huge downside to taking our cue from the Israelis and now we’re going to spread that into the fabric of everyday American life?
Israel’s counter-terrorism creep. And it’s exactly what you could have predicted would have happened.
After 9/11 we had to react very quickly, but now we’re in 2011 and we’re not talking about people who want to fly planes into buildings. We’re talking about young American citizens who feel that their birthright has been sold.
If we’re using Israeli style tactics on them and this stuff bleeds into the way we do business at large, were in big trouble.”
Through its Law Enforcement Education Program (LEEP), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) claims to have arranged Israeli-led training sessions for over 9,000 American law enforcement officials at the federal, state and municipal level. Richard Fuentes, the NJ State Police Superintendent, said after attending a 2004 JINSA:
“The Israelis changed the way we do business regarding homeland security in New Jersey.” Fuentes was part of a sponsored Israel trip and a subsequent JINSA conference alongside 435 other law enforcement officers.
A few of the police chiefs who have taken part in JINSA’s LEEP program have done so under the auspices of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a private non-governmental group with close ties to the Department of Homeland Security.
Chuck Wexler, the executive director of PERF, was so enthusiastic about the program that by 2005 he had begun organizing trips to Israel, sponsored by PERF, bringing numerous high-level American police officials to receive instruction from their Israeli counterparts.
What were the immediate benefits?
PERF gained notoriety when Wexler confirmed that his group coordinated police raids in 16 cities across America against “Occupy” protest encampments. As many as 40 cities have sought PERF advice on suppressing the “Occupy” movement and other mass protest activities. Wexler did not respond to my requests for an interview.
Margaret Flowers wrote:
“the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department turned parts of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban battlefield. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote “mutual response,” collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations.
At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it attacked the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical condition and dozens injured.
According to Police Magazine, (a law enforcement trade publication): “Law enforcement agencies responding to…Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.”
Urban Shield also featured a unit from the military of Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by opening fire on protest camps and arresting wounded demonstrators when they attempted to enter hospitals.
While the involvement of Bahraini soldiers in the drills was a novel phenomenon, the presence of quasi-military Israeli police – whose participation in Urban Shield was not reported anywhere in US media – reflected a disturbing and all-too-common feature of the post-9/11 American security landscape.
Having been schooled in Israeli tactics, and perfected during a 63-year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous Palestinian population, local US police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities.
Meanwhile, former Israeli military officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of innocent, unsuspecting people.
The process of Israel’s insidious meddling in US domestic security began in the immediate wake of 9/11, when national panic led federal and municipal law enforcement officials to beseech Israeli security honchos for “advice and training”.
America’s Israel lobby exploited the climate of hysteria, providing thousands of top cops with all-expenses paid trips to Israel and stateside training sessions with Israeli military and intelligence officials. Police chiefs of major American cities who have not been on junkets to Israel are the exception.
US Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said:
“Israel is the Harvard of antiterrorism...”
Cathy Lanier, the Chief of the Washington DC Metropolitan Police, said:
“No experience in my life has had more of an impact on doing my job than going to Israel.”
Barnett Jones, the police chief of Ann Arbor, Michigan, said of Israel: “One would say it is the front line. We’re in a global war.”
Note: You may read the follow-up post https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/part-2-israel-occupy-usa-domestic-security-agencies-how-insiduous-is-this-invasion/
Is crime against a devout young girl worse than the one committed on girls in the early hours?
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 4, 2011
Is crime against a devout young girl worse than the one committed in the early hours?
Setting of the crime: A young Lebanese woman of 28, “single and devout”, walked to a nearby abandoned church in the woods in Sahel Alma (close to the port town of Jounieh). She disappeared for two days and was found dead in the forest. Details of the crime and its motives are not made public, but the news media focused the attention on the fact that the criminal is a Moslem Syrian and that Meriam is devout and climbed the small hill to pray her rosary…
The Christian Maronite Patriarch demanded in a public speech that ground keepers and gate keepers in Christian churches and properties should not be non-Christian Lebanese…The Syrian ground keeper of the church was arrested and after torture confessed of the crime. What crime? Rape? Rape before the killing, after the killing, crime of rage, of frustration, of baffled promises…? We don’t know and the family of the victim will not know…These matters are State secrets falling under the category of disturbing community precarious unity and security…
A TV channel covered the gruesome event and focused on foreign immigrant workers…People published posts on atrocities committed by foreign immigrants on “virgin devout girls” and demanding that their “outrage” be “shared” on social platform…
A week before this killing, the internal security forces uncovered a gang of 6 Christians (Armenians?) in the district of Nabaa (Beirut)that has been murdering taxi drivers and older women in the past three years, for small cash just to enjoying nights of drinking and bingeing… No Patriarch (Maronite, Armenian, Orthodox…) took the stand to denounce this serial mass killing for nothing more than the need of small cash…No Patriarch or politician launched a campaign against anything related to the case and we didn’t hear any diatribe condemning the horrors…
Do you believe that a similar crime committed on a girl coming out in the early hours would have raised an eyebrow? Is crime against a devout young girl worse than a crime against a young devout boy? Is crime against a “virgin” young girl worse than a crime against a virgin young boy? So many car victims are done by reckless young drivers (less than 19) who got their driving licence by bribes or didn’t even had one…are the victims of car cases less gruesome and harrowing than individual killing?
I watched part of a movie on ARTE last night. It is about four Greek men in their late thirties, having nothing to do and spending their days lounging in front of their friend’s tiny shop. After lunch they get together to play a few soccer games in the tiny empty space…This bunch of companions hate immigrants coming from Albania who are “steeling” their jobs…The dog attached outside barks on only Albanians, they claim…
It turned out that one of these Albanians was the son of the mother of the shop keeper…Actually, the shop keeper is the younger brother of the Albanian that the elder confirmed with a photo with their mother when she was living in Albania, and confirmed by the mother…The younger brother demand from his elder not to come and visit his mother again and go together shopping and dining: “This is my house, and I don’t want you to disturb my comfort zone…”
The conversation revolves around whether the mother is indeed Albanian because she speaks Albanian, whether the shop keeper is indeed Albanian even if he spent most his life in Greece and does not speak Albanian…These sort of conversations that begin a process of serious reflection on the condition of man, nationality, language, newer waves of immigrants…Is Greece actual financial trouble a result of years of relying on the “honor” of being a member of the Euro zone, simply on mythical basis that European culture is “fundamentally” Greek?
Lebanon is going through one more of its succession of “critical periods”, this time blamed on the Syrian crisis. The frequent waves of sectarian media coverage for supporting one sectarian political party against another sectarian political party or an alliance of stupid sectarian and isolationist political parties…, alliances not meant to establishing a true central power to give the Lebanese a semblance of citizens… Sectarian vociferous speeches sending the message that they don’t mind a civil war in Syria if the prize is the head of Bashar el Assad…Those sort of things…
Lebanon never confronted the calamities and future shocks of his long and protracted civil war (17 years) because the warlords of sectarian militias emerged in the government and Parliament to lead Lebanon to a better future…The younger generation, born during the civil war, are not that sane and nobody cares and no “educational” programs have been contemplated to demonstrate the rotten state of affairs, before and after the civil war…
A few comeback Schools recess: Spilling-over financial transactions recesses?
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 4, 2011
A few comeback Schools recess? Spilling-over financial transactions recesses?
Schools in the USA eliminated recess decades ago and shortened the lunch period to 20 minutes: teachers take their lunch at the end of the day. Why should anyone be obligated to eat in such as rush? What could be the reasons behind shortening students’ time in school?
Apparently, school teachers wanted classes to be over and quickly out of the confinement in school premises; it is kind the teachers were feeling schools are prisons, and worse, living among turbulent kids who do not appreciate the hard work teachers are sacrificing for developing kids’ minds…But what about the well-being of kids, physical, emotional, and mental?
In universities, classes are no longer than 45-minute, on the assumption that people are unable to focus beyond that time constraint, as if people ever focused more than 5 minutes at a time. And most university students select courses to fall in 3 days or 2 days a week…However, school kids have to attend successive classes without any recesses so that teachers get off schools early on to tend to better chores…
Working parents surely prefer their kids to stay in school the longer, until they are back from standard work-days. For example, parents are willing to pay daily fines for late pick up of their kids, as long as reasonable money fines is the sole incentive…
Extending school day is never a problem to kids, as long as many recesses are available to play and have fun. Kids love to play with kids, and returning home too early is liable to spending far more time in front of the TV or playing Nintendo-kind of games…
In Lebanon schools terminate before 3 pm, though they take two recesses: one of 15 minutes at 10:30 and lunch break of 30 minutes. I don’t think that is satisfactory for kids. The backpacks of children are growing heavier and I could not raise my niece backpack with both hands. Every year, as schools open after 3 long summer months, mothers and dailies and news media remind school management of the growing back pain and deformed spine of children: Lebanon does not enjoy a true State of citizenship to remedy to people’s complaints…
Three decades ago, we enjoyed two long recesses and we played volley ball and…I didn’t participate in collective games because I wore corrective glasses and had suffered disastrous consequences when I did. In the few games, “my teammates” made sure I never touch the ball, and covered whatever positions I was supposed to fill…what of my totally uncoordinated movement…
As long as teachers are not paid enough to seeking another part-time job to make ends meet, what other alternative incentives could be offered teachers to accept extended school-day for the benefit of kids?
REBECCA VEVEA (rvevea@chicagonewscoop.org) wrote in “Recess Is Making a Comeback in Schools”: “Restoring recess is part of a broader health push by parents, advocacy groups and some Chicago city officials to bring more exercise and better nutrition to both schoolchildren and preschoolers. Why not extend the push to middle school and high school students? Are they eligible to seeking part-time earning jobs?
The Department of Chicago Public Health first set preschool health standards in 2009, and some preschools and day care centers have already adopted them. Bechara Choucair, the city’s health commissioner, said that the department would begin enforcing the new requirements in November but that it had not yet determined how.
Beginning in November, the city’s Department of Public Health will require children who attend preschool or day care centers in Chicago to spend less time in front of television or computer screens — 60 minutes or less — and more time, at least an hour a day, participating in physical activity”.
At snack or meal time, milk cannot have a fat content higher than 1 percent, unless a child has written consent from a doctor. Only 100 percent juice can be served. In Chicago, 22% of children are overweight before they enter school, more than twice the national average, according to research compiled by the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children, a group of organizations and health advocates.
Tracy Moran, a researcher at the Erikson Institute, a graduate school focused on early childhood development and education, said: “The requirements were important for young children to develop healthy lifestyles to prevent conditions like high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. The lack of recess could certainly stunt any progress made early on.”
For example, last spring, the parent organization Raise Your Hand campaigned to have teachers vote on waivers that would move their lunch period back into the middle of the school day. The change allows students to have 45 minutes to eat lunch and go outside for recess.
(Again, why only 45 minutes? Why not at least two recesses of 45 minutes? Why the entire problem should revolve around teachers being anxious to be over with and out of school premises? Shouldn’t school reform include ways of making teachers happier and more welcoming of extended school-days? In what ways will teachers regard schools a fun and enjoyable environment?)
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is currently offering to give up to $150,000 in discretionary money and a roughly 2% raise for teachers to any school that lengthens its day by 90 minutes. The extended time could include a 45-minute block for recess and lunch. So far, teachers at nine schools have voted to accept that offer.
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