Thursday, April 24, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Palestinians to form unity govt in weeks
http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0423/610464-israel-palestine/
RTE News
Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Gaza-based Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestine Liberation Organisation have agreed to implement a unity pact, both sides announced in a joint news conference.

The move envisions forming a unity government within five weeks and holding national elections six months after a vote of confidence by the Palestinian parliament.
Palestinians have long hoped for a healing of the political rift between the PLO and Hamas, which won a Palestinian election in 2006 and seized control of Gaza from forces loyal to Western-backed Mr Abbas in 2007.

But Arab-brokered unity pacts reached between the two sides have yet to be implemented, leaving many Palestinians sceptical about their leaders' reconciliation pledges.

"This is the good news we tell our people: the era of division is over," Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh told Palestinian reporters to loud applause.

Hamas has repeatedly battled Israel, which it refuses to recognise.

Mr Abbas said the pact did not contradict peace talks he is pursuing with Israel.
He said that an independent state living peacefully alongside Israel remained his goal.

Before the announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cautioned Mr Abbas over the unity efforts, saying he had to choose between peace with Israel or Hamas.
Mr Abbas's Fatah party has remained in control of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank and pursued troubled peace talks with Israel, which are set to expire on 29 April.

An Israeli air force jet struck northern Gaza wounding six people, one seriously, Hamas said shortly after the announcement.

The raid came as thousands took to the streets of Gaza City to celebrate the agreement to form a unity government to end seven years of divided administration.
Israel has cancelled a planned session of peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
In a statement, Mr Netanyahu's office said: "Israel has cancelled a negotiations meeting that was expected to be held this evening." It did not provide further details.

The United States said it was disappointed by the unity pact and said it could seriously complicate peace efforts.

"The timing was troubling and we were certainly disappointed in the announcement," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told a regular news briefing.

"This could seriously complicate our efforts. Not just our efforts but the efforts of the parties to extend their negotiations."


Raidió Teilifís Éireann
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Raidió Teilifís Éireann[3] (Irish pronunciation: [ˈradʲo ˈtʲɛlʲəfʲiːʃ ˈeːrʲən] ( listen); Radio [and] Television of Ireland; abbreviated as RTÉ) is a semi-state company and the national public service broadcaster of Ireland. It both produces programmes and broadcasts them on television, radio and the Internet. The radio service began on 1 January 1926,[4] while regular television broadcasts began on 31 December 1961,[5] making it one of the oldest continuously operating public service broadcasters in the world.

RTÉ is financed by a television licence fee and through advertising. Some RTÉ services are only funded by advertising, while other RTÉ services are only funded by the licence fee. RTÉ is a statutory body, run by a board appointed by the Government of Ireland

Radio Éireann, RTÉ's predecessor and at the time a section of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, was one of 23 founding organisations of the European Broadcasting Union in 1950



Hamas and the PLO have pledged to form a unity agreement, but “Arab-brokered unity pacts” have yet to be achieved, and many Palestinians are doubtful of the outcome. If it does come into being, the two parties will form a unity government and hold elections six months after a vote of confidence by the Palestinian parliament.

Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestine Liberation Organisation have different stances. Hamas refuses to recognize Israel as a nation and the PLO is oriented more toward Western ideas. Abbas has said that he can still pursue peace with Israel and that his goal is an independent Palestinian state living in peace beside Israel. Israel's Netanyahu, however, has “cautioned” Abbas that he must choose between Israel and Hamas.

The peace talks between the PLO and Israel are set to expire on April 29 of this year. US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki is concerned that the agreement will “complicate” the peace efforts. I must say, however, that the peace negotiations have been almost hopeless for the whole time I have been watching the news, with Israel being as recalcitrant as Palestine, and a unified Palestine might be a step toward greater internal peace and prosperity. I do hope it works out for the good internationally.





Pro-Russian Separatists Slain During 'Anti-Terrorism' Drive – NBC
Alexander Smith
First published April 24 2014


Ukrainian troops continued their push Thursday to wrest back control of the east of the country from pro-Russian militias, clearing several towns and checkpoints manned by the separatists.

The interior ministry said its forces had killed "up to five" pro-Russian separatists during its operation to retake the city of Slaviansk, one of the nine towns and cities in the Donetsk region under the de facto control of pro-Russian forces.
Earlier, troops riding in five light armored vehicles cleared a checkpoint north of the city, Reuters reported.

However it was clear that the separatists were not prepared to go down easily. Slaviansk's self-appointed separatist mayor, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, told a news conference Wednesday night that "we will make Stalingrad out of this town," referring to the Soviet Union's five-month city defense against the Germans in World War II.

Ukrainian special forces take up positions in Slaviansk, Ukraine, on Thursday.
Ukraine announced Wednesday it was restarting an "anti-terrorism" operation to clamp down on the armed separatists who seized buildings and demanded a referendum to join Russia earlier this month.

The first action of this renewed drive came when the interior ministry announced it had "liberated" the resort town of Svyatohirsk "from unlawful armed groups," according to the Kiev Post.

This was followed in the early hours of Thursday by another announcement that the City Hall in Mariupol had been cleared of the separatists who had been occupying it.

However there was some confusion about the details of this incident. Interfax reported Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov as saying the position was cleared by security forces, but he added that "the role of civic activists was great."

Yulia Lasazan, a spokeswoman for Mariupol's police department, told The Associated Press that 30 masked men with baseball bats stormed the building and started beating the pro-Russian protesters. The pro-Russians called the police and five people were taken to hospital, the AP reported.




Ukrainian troops have cleared “several towns and checkpoints” of the separatist control. In the town of Mariupol the role of “civic activists” in the Ukrainian takeover was acknowledged by Avakov, while Yulia Lasazan of Mariupol's police department said that 30 masked men with baseball bats “stormed the building and started beating” the separatists, five of whom were taken to the hospital. I must say, the Russian separatists have been the aggressors, and if Kiev succeeds in overcoming them that's all to the good. I do hate to see a bully complain when his victim fights back.




South Korea Ferry Crew: We Were Ordered to Abandon Sinking Ship – NBC
Reuters
First published April 24 2014

A crew member on the sunken South Korean ferry said on Thursday she and her colleagues were "under command" to abandon ship while passengers were trapped on board.

The unidentified crew member spoke briefly to reporters on the way from court back into detention. She was wearing a surgical mask and a baseball cap with a jacket hood.
Investigations are focused on human error and mechanical failure, but authorities have expressed anger at the actions of the crew, most of whom survived after abandoning the Sewol while passengers were still on board.

Hundreds of passengers died after being told to stay in place rather than escaping the ship.

South Korea's president Park Geun-hye on Monday accused the captain and crew of the country's sunken ferry of "unforgivable, murderous behavior."

More than 300 people, most of them students and teachers from the same school, are dead or missing presumed dead in the April 16 disaster. As the ferry began sinking, the crew told the children to stay in their cabins.




This event is not only profoundly sad, it is shocking. Whatever happened to the idea that the captain and crew are supposed to try to the very last to save the passengers? This captain will surely go to prison at the very least and so should the crew, because they should have known that if he did order them to leave the ship, it was an illegal and immoral order. I will watch for news on the trials that will surely come.




GOP Scrambles to Condemn Rancher's Remarks on Race – NBC
By Carrie Dann
NBC's Kasie Hunt contributed.
First published April 24 2014

Offering words of encouragement for a rancher leading an armed standoff against federal rangers turns out to be not so great of a political move – especially when the rancher in question muses publicly about the benefits of slavery.

Republicans – including possible 2016 candidate Rand Paul -- are scrambling to distance themselves from defiant Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy after he made startling comments about slavery and African-Americans in a New York Times article published Wednesday night.

From the Times’ Adam Nagourney:
“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Bundy had previously drawn support from some GOP lawmakers for his clash with the Bureau of Land Management.

After Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Bundy and his allies “domestic violent terrorist wannabes,” fellow Sen. Dean Heller countered last week that they are “patriots.” Paul urged Reid to “calm the rhetoric” and criticized the federal government for what he described as an intimidating presence during the standoff. “The federal government shouldn’t violate the law, nor should we have 48 federal agencies carrying weapons and having SWAT teams,” he told a Kentucky radio station.

In statements after Bundy’s remarks, both Paul and Heller condemned his comments.
"His remarks on race are offensive and I wholeheartedly disagree with him,” said Paul.
And a spokesman for Heller told the Times that the senator “completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way.”




This rancher is the same man who was recently in the news for putting up an armed resistance, along with some of his other "Patriot" friends, against Federal agents who had rounded up his cattle, which were grazing illegally on government land. For the Tea Party, or any Republican representatives to defend these “domestic violent terrorist wannabes,” is to me a scandal. The “Patriot” movement is known to be racist and anti-government at the least, with a number of actual crimes on their record as well, and all those Federal agents did was to remove the cattle. They didn't even try to arrest Bundy.

Right-wing politicians should be careful how extreme their playfellows are. Rand Paul was in the news recently trying to make a case for his eligibility for the office of President of the US. That should require freedom from radical viewpoints, in my book. He has some good sounding ideas, but also some that are appalling. I certainly would never vote for him.




Israel's Nightmare: Mobsters Trained by Country's Own Military – NBC
By Jeff Moskowitz, GlobalPost Contributor
First published April 24 2014

JERUSALEM — In the last year, fewer Israelis were killed by terrorist attacks than at any point since the outbreak of the second intifada. But as Palestinian terrorism has receded, bombings haven’t stopped. In fact, they may be increasing. This time the perpetrators aren’t jihadists, but rather much more technologically advanced organized crime groups. Israelis are discovering the drawbacks of a society where everyone serves in the army: a whole lot of citizens know how to use explosives.

In October of last year, a known criminal living in the northern Israeli city of Haifa was gunned down in an underground parking garage. Three days later in Ashkelon, in the south, a powerful car bomb shook the buildings downtown, gravely injuring two alleged associates of the Domrani crime family who were inside the vehicle. One later died of his wounds.

These were the opening shots fired in a mob war that has been raging throughout Israel for much of the last six months. There have been at least twenty assassinations and attempted assassinations of organized crime figures since October — many of them using powerful explosives and carried out in major cities in broad daylight. The attacks have included motorcycle hitmen gunning down a rival on the Tel Aviv beachfront and a grenade thrown into a busy market in Petach Tikvah, east of Tel Aviv. And mafiosos haven’t been the only victims — a city councilman in Lod, a Tel Aviv district prosecutor and the deputy mayor of Petach Tikvah have all been targeted, as well.

In February, Chief of Police Yohanan Danino said he considers the underworld hits a form of “terrorism,” and called for the same tools employed by the Shin Bet (the unit responsible for dealing with Arab terrorism) to be used against organized crime. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the incidents “a threat to the rule of law.”
The ebb of terrorist attacks and rise of organized crime in recent years has sparked drastic changes in police enforcement. “In 2001 we were dealing with 80 percent terrorism and 20 percent criminal and now it’s the opposite,” national police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld says. “In 2014 the police deal with 80 percent criminal and organized crime and only 20 percent terrorism.”

"Now it’s trendy, it’s easier to get a bomb … they’re using them on guys that are nobodies."

According to Rosenfeld, the police arrested roughly 500 people connected to the major Israeli organized crime families in 2013, but their job has been made more difficult by the frequent use of targeted explosives. These devices leave no fingerprints and are easy to acquire — partly because the entire population serves in the army, so there are a large number of civilians capable of building precision detonators.

Ben Hartman, veteran crime reporter for Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post, says that the bombs are “stolen from IDF depots, or they’re actual IDF munitions, mines and amateur pipe bombs. And there are a ton of grenades.” Hartman estimates that the street price for one is about 1,000 shekels, roughly the cost of a low-end washing machine.
He says it’s not just the explosives that are raising alarm, but also their targets. “They’ve always had bombings in the [criminal] underworld, but to get blown up you had to be a big guy. Now it’s trendy, it’s easier to get a bomb … they’re using them on guys that are nobodies.”

The criminals have other tools at their disposal as well. When a well-timed police raid in February caught a crime family safe house by surprise, officers were shocked to find equipment for tracking the cellphones of rivals, sophisticated devices for hi-resolution mapping of their movements, and screens showing footage of the targets under surveillance by the gang’s field operatives. Officers on the scene compared the technology to that used by an intelligence agency and had to call in the cyber crime unit for advice.

The police have had a few successes in addition to the safe house. In October they managed to arrest and charge six members of the Domrani family plotting a hit as revenge for a bombing targeting two of their operatives. Officers in Jaffa succeeded in intercepting three relatives of a man killed in Tel Aviv who were on their way to avenge his death.

But Hartman and others have also called out a worrisome trend in the past six months. Though the police are making a lot of arrests for organized crime, many of the suspects go free days later when it becomes clear that the authorities don't have the evidence to make a case against them. Hartman and other observers speculate that some of the arrests may be more for show than anything else.

"That theory — it's inaccurate and misleading," responded Rosenfeld, when asked about Hartman's analysis. He stressed that the police were working not only to make cases but also to prevent the crimes from happening in the first place, often by catching suspects in the planning stages and on their way to commit the act. Rosenfeld declined to compare conviction rates in Israel to those of other countries, saying that "you can't compare" Israel's data sets to those of the US, for example: "The scale is much smaller."

He added, however, that "the Israeli police commissioner has told the 433 unit [police intelligence] that organized crime should be their main emphasis."
Israel's police force should not operate by the same rules as the military, a former police officer says — but they do deserve more funding.

Avi Dawidowicz, who served in the Israeli police for more than thirty years — including as head of investigations in the unit responsible for pursuing international organized crime — believes that the police are doing the best they can under the circumstances. He pointed to the drop in murder rates Danino presented at a Knesset hearing on organized crime in March as an example of improvement.
Dawidowicz cites budgetary constraints as the main impediment to further progress. “Only the army, without the Shin Bet or the Mossad, spends 62 billion shekels a year. The police spend only 9 billion,” he says. “The police want more authority, more money.”

However, Dawidowicz doesn’t think the police should be operating in the style of those fighting terrorism. “I don’t agree with the comparison to terror that Danino and the politicians have been making,” he says. “There are a lot of similarities, but we don’t want the police to use the tools the Shin Bet does.” It’s not appropriate for a country’s police to operate by the same rules as its military, he adds.
According to a document recently released by the Ministry of Public Security, the police force has big plans for 2014. They are cooperating with the US Department of Homeland Security to increase the use of DNA databases, smart street cameras that flag dangerous behavior, and other advanced crime-fighting tools.

This past weekend, police capped off a two-month undercover investigation by arresting eight individuals involved in plans to steal IDF materials from bases and sell them to organized crime groups. Among those arrested were an IDF serviceman and three non-commissioned officers. A vehicle the police confiscated, according to the Times of Israel, was carrying 10 shoulder-fired anti-tank rockets, 30 shrapnel grenades and 50 explosive bricks.

It’s a big victory for the police, who say these eight had long been shuttling IDF arms to criminal groups. Reading like a conspiracy out of an Ian Fleming novel, however, the case also reveals the sophistication of the network the police are up against.

When asked about the arrests and the ongoing issue of army weapons and techniques showing up in the criminal underworld, an IDF spokesman declined to give specifics.
"Because the incident ... is currently under both Israel Police and Military Police investigations we unfortunately cannot comment about the case," the spokesman said by email.

"We can however say that the IDF views any illegal and criminal activity involving IDF soldiers and/or property with the utmost seriousness."




A serious crime wave involving criminal gangs is taking place in Israel. Cases involving organized crime have become much more common than terrorist crimes, amounting to 80% of the total crime as opposed to its former 20%, while the terrorist crimes o the other hand have diminished to 20%. This is odd to me. I would expect both to be high. The fact that a group of members of the IDF have been arrested for stealing grenades and other bombs from the military stockpiles and transferring them to the gangs is another matter.

“This past weekend, police capped off a two-month undercover investigation by arresting eight individuals involved in plans to steal IDF materials from bases and sell them to organized crime groups. Among those arrested were an IDF serviceman and three non-commissioned officers. A vehicle the police confiscated, according to the Times of Israel, was carrying 10 shoulder-fired anti-tank rockets, 30 shrapnel grenades and 50 explosive bricks.” A raid on a gang run safe house uncovered a great deal of electronic equipment for surveillance use also. In 2013 a whopping five hundred gangland criminals were arrested by the police.

“They (the Israeli police) are cooperating with the US Department of Homeland Security to increase the use of DNA databases, smart street cameras that flag dangerous behavior, and other advanced crime-fighting tools.” I hope they discover, while they are arresting mafiosi, why the terrorist attacks have gone down. Maybe it's unrelated, but it doesn't make sense to me.