Gazette 082514

Monday August 25th 2014

Netanyahu warns Gaza civilians after Israel destroys apartment block

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Palestinian civilians on Sunday to leave immediately any site where militants are operating, one day after Israel flattened a 13-story apartment block in Gaza.
Israeli aircraft fired a non-explosive rocket at the building as a signal to residents to get out before attacking it on Saturday. Seventeen people were wounded in the strike on the structure, which Israel said had housed a Hamas command center.
"I call on the inhabitants of Gaza to evacuate immediately from every site from which Hamas is carrying out terrorist activity. Every one of these places is a target for us," Netanyahu said in public remarks at a cabinet meeting.
With no end in sight to fighting in its seventh week, Netanyahu's tough talk seemed to indicate a move toward bolder strikes against Hamas targets in densely populated neighborhoods, even at the risk of raising more international alarm.
Hours after Netanyahu spoke, a cluster of 10 homes, one belonging to a Hamas member, was destroyed in an air strike in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, neighbors said.
Ten people were wounded by flying debris, but no fatalities were reported. Neighbors said about 10 minutes before the attack, a warning missile was fired and residents fled.
In Gaza City, an Israeli strike on a car killed Mohammed al-Ghoul, described by the Israeli military as a Hamas official responsible for "terror fund transactions".
Ghoul was targeted three days after Israel assassinated three top Hamas commanders in the southern Gaza Strip.

Iraq urges global action against Islamic State, Iran vows solidarity

Iraq's Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi said on Sunday during talks with Iran's foreign minister that international efforts would be necessary to destroy Islamic State Sunni militants who have seized swathes of his country and of Syria.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran, a Shi'ite Muslim regional power likely to wield influence over the formation of Abadi's new cabinet, reaffirmed Tehran's support for Iraq's territorial unity and its fight against militants.
"Abadi pointed to the presence of many dangers posed in the region as a result of the existence of the terrorist gang Islamic State which requires regional and international efforts to exterminate this terrorist organization," his office said in a statement after the talks with Zarif.
The advance of Islamic State through northern Iraq has alarmed the Baghdad government and its Western allies, prompting the first U.S. air strikes in Iraq since U.S. occupation forces pulled out in 2011.
The Sunni Muslim militant group sees Shi'ite Muslims -- a majority in Iraq -- as infidels who deserve to be killed and has driven thousands of non-Muslims from their homes.
Bombings across Iraq killed at least 35 people on Saturday in apparent revenge attacks after Shi'ite militiamen machine-gunned a Sunni Muslim mosque in Diyala Province on Friday, killing 68 worshippers in an attack that further deepens the country's sectarian conflict.
Critics have accused Iraq's outgoing prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite like Abadi, of fueling the conflict by pursuing a narrowly sectarian agenda that excluded Sunnis from positions of power and influence.

Iran 'will arm Palestinians' after Israeli drone downed 

Tehran pledges to "accelerate" arming Palestinians in West Bank after airing footage of 'Israeli drone' it claims to have shot down over Iran 

Tehran will "accelerate" arming Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for Israel deploying a spy drone over Iran, which was shot down, a military commander said on Monday.

"We will accelerate the arming of the West Bank and we reserve the right to give any response," said General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, commander of aerial forces of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, in a statement on their official website sepahnews.com.

The warning comes a day after the Guards said they had brought down an Israeli stealth drone above the Natanz uranium enrichment site in the centre of the country.

Iran's state TV broadcast footage on Monday purported to show an Israeli drone the country's Revolutionary Guard claimed it shot down near an Iranian nuclear site.

Arabic-language Al-Alam aired the brief video filmed in a desert area showing what the channel says are parts of the drone. A TV scroll says the drone was downed on Saturday.

Peter Theo Curtis, U.S. Journalist Missing Since 2012, Freed By Kidnappers In Syria

Kidnappers in Syria have freed an American writer missing since 2012, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday, following what Qatari-owned TV station Al Jazeera said were efforts by the Gulf Arab state to win his release.

Kerry said in a statement announcing the release of Peter Theo Curtis that the United States was using "every diplomatic, intelligence and military tool" at its disposal to secure the release of other Americans held hostage in Syria.
News of Curtis's release emerged just days after the militant group Islamic State posted a video on the Internet showing one of its fighters beheading American journalist James Foley, who was kidnapped in Syria in 2012.

Kerry said Curtis had been held by Nusra Front, al Qaeda's official wing in Syria whose rivalry with Islamic State has fueled war among the insurgents themselves.
The U.N. issued a statement confirming Curtis's release.
"The United Nations can confirm that it facilitated the handover of Peter Theo Curtis. He was handed over to UN peacekeepers in Al Rafid village, Quneitra, the Golan Heights, at 6:40 p.m. (local time) on 24 August 2014. After receiving a medical check-up, Mr. Curtis was handed over to representatives of his government."
Curtis, 45, also goes by the name Theo Padnos, according to his family, who described him as a journalist and a writer.
White House national security adviser Susan Rice said in a statement that Curtis was "safe outside of Syria, and we expect he will be reunited with his family shortly."
A man who answered the phone at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of Nancy Curtis, Theo Curtis's mother, said she was not speaking to the media. The man declined to comment, but said the family was very happy over the news of Curtis's release

Libya in chaos as Islamists seize capital’s airport

In recent months, Tripoli has become the battleground of a brutal contest for power between a myriad armed factions and now Islamist fighters seize international airport 

Islamist militias seized Libya’s international airport, amid chaotic scenes that marked a major victory in their increasingly violent struggle to take political and military control of the country.

Armed factions fought their way in after waging a month-long battle against a rival militia from the Libyan town of Zintan that has transformed the capital Tripoli into a war zone.

“We took control of the airport, and today we have forced Zintan from their two remaining bases. The bases are now under our control,” said Abubaker al-Huta, a member of the Libya Shield, one of the most powerful Islamist groups.

The capital has in recent months become the battleground of a brutal contest for power between a myriad armed factions from rival cities and tribes, but which can be broadly divided between Islamists and those of more secular and nationalist bent.

Libya’s new parliament, elected in June, condemned the move, declaring that the Islamist fighters who took the airport, most of whom are from the coastal city of Misrata, to be “terrorists”.

Stampede at Hindu procession kills 10 people in India

NEW DELHI –  A pre-dawn stampede killed 10 people Monday as tens of thousands of Hindus were worshipping in an annual procession in central India, police said.
Some 50,000 devotees had been marking the holy day of Somvati Amavasya by walking or lying down and rolling for 3 miles in a wide circle around the spot where the Hindu god Ram is believed to have spent time during his 14 years in exile.

During the procession, a live electrical wire shocked one woman and set off a panic, triggering the stampede, local deputy police superintendent S.R. Yadav said. A large number of temples are located along the path in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh state.
Aside from the 10 people killed, another 12 were being treated at a hospital for injuries, Yadav said from district police headquarters. Information from the site 50 miles away was still trickling in, he said.
The religious procession has meanwhile resumed.
The state's top elected official, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, said families of those killed would receive compensation payments of $3,300 each.

Ukraine crisis: Russia 'to send new aid convoy'

Russia plans to send another humanitarian convoy into eastern Ukraine "in the next few days", Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

Mr Lavrov said the humanitarian situation there was "deteriorating".
Ukraine did not authorise the first convoy, which returned to Russia at the weekend, fearing it carried military equipment for pro-Russia separatists.
Ukrainian officials said a column of armoured vehicles crossed from Russia on Monday, sparking heavy clashes.
The crossing was reported close to the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
"The Ukrainian border has been breached by a convoy of several dozen tanks and armoured vehicles," security spokesman Leonid Matyukhin told Agence France-Presse.
"The convoy has been stopped by border guards... The battle is ongoing."
More than 2,000 people have died in recent months in fighting between Ukrainian government forces and the separatists. Some 330,00 people have been displaced.
The Russian and Ukrainian presidents are scheduled to meet in Minsk, Belarus, on Tuesday for talks on the crisis.
'Armoured column' Mr Lavrov said he had sent a note to the Ukrainian foreign ministry on Sunday informing it of the new convoy.
He told a news conference on Monday: "The humanitarian situation is not improving but deteriorating.

Tony Blair advises Kazakh president on publicity after killing of protesters

Former British PM criticised for suggesting strategy following Zhanaozen incident in which police shot dead 15 civilians

Tony Blair's role advising countries with poor human rights records has come under scrutiny again after he gave Kazakhstan's president advice on how to avoid his image being tarnished by the killing of 15 civilian protesters by police.
In a letter to Nursultan Nazarbeyev, Blair told the autocratic ruler that the December 2011 deaths, "tragic though they were, should not obscure the enormous progress that Kazakhstan has made". Blair advised Nazarbeyev that when dealing with the western media, he should tackle the events in Zhanaozen, when police opened fire on protesters, including oil workers demanding higher wages, "head-on".
In the letter, obtained by the Sunday Telegraph he also suggested passages to be inserted into a speech the president was giving at the University of Cambridge aimed at counteracting any bad publicity. One read: "By all means make your points and I assure you we're listening. But give us credit for the huge change of a positive nature we have brought about".
The former Labour leader's consultancy, Tony Blair Associates, set up in the capital, Astana, in October 2011, signing a multi- million pound deal to advise Kazakhstan's leadership on good governance, just months after Nazarbeyev was controversially re-elected with 96% of the vote and weeks before the massacre.
The government blamed the opposition for events in Zhanaozen, jailing alleged ringleader Vladimir Kozlov amid an international outcry and closing his party.
Activists say Blair's appointment has produced no change for the better or advance of democratic rights. In its World Report 2014, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the country's "poor human rights record continued to deteriorate in 2013". It said torture remained common and referred to restrictions on free speech, dissent and religious worship.

France thrown into political turmoil after government dissolved

France has entered uncharted political waters after the prime minister, Manuel Valls, presented his government's resignation amid a political crisis triggered by his maverick economy minister who called for an end to austerity policies imposed by Germany.
The prime minister, a social democrat who has been compared to Tony Blair, acted with characteristic swiftness in a bid to reassert his authority. His aides had let it be known on Sunday that the economy minister, Arnaud Montebourg, had crossed a "yellow line" for his dual crime of criticising both the president of France and a valued ally.
Montebourg, 51, fired his first broadside in an interview with Le Monde on Saturday and followed up with a speech to a Socialist party rally the following day. In a veiled reference to President François Hollande, he said that conformism was an enemy and "my enemy is governing". "France is a free country which shouldn't be aligning itself with the obsessions of the German right," he said, urging a "just and sane resistance".
He was joined in his criticism by the education minister Benoit Hamon, who on Monday denied that he had been disloyal. A third minister, Aurélie Filipetti, also appeared in danger of losing her job after wishing a "good day" on Twitter to her two dissident colleagues.
Hollande, who is politically weakened with his approval rating at an all-time low of 17%, asked Valls to form a new government "consistent with the direction set for the country", which is expected to be announced on Tuesday. Valls has pledged to stick to a course in which deficits would be cut while the tax burden on businesses would be eased, bringing him into conflict with the left wing of the party represented by Montebourg. The changes have not yet been carried out, unemployment is at nearly 11% and growth in 2014 is forecast to be only 0.5%.

Two inmates beheaded and two more killed as prisoners take over jail in Brazil

Rioting prisoners take guards hostage and kill fellow inmates at Cascavel state correctional center

Two prisoners were beheaded and at least one other died after being thrown off the roof in a riot that erupted Sunday in a prison in southern Brazil, authorities said.

Inmates of the penitentiary in the city of Cascavel took at least two agents and several other inmates hostage in the uprising, said military police Capt. Ricardo Pinto. He said negotiations for better conditions in the prison were still under way 12 hours later.

Prisoners set some objects on fire and were using metal poles to cause damage to the 928-bed prison that housed more than 1,000 inmates at the time. Authorities initially said two men were decapitated, and later learned of a third prisoner who was also killed after he was thrown off the building.

Elson Faxina, a state judicial spokesman, said: "A group of prisoners took six inmates hostage; they killed four and have injured two. They also took hostage two guards," he said.

The revolt began before sunrise when a prison guard was captured during breakfast, Pinto added.
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Michael Brown's father calls for peace ahead of funeral

The father of an unarmed black teenager who was shot dead by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, has called for calm ahead of his son's funeral.

"Tomorrow all I want is peace," Michael Brown Snr told hundreds of people at a rally in St Louis on Sunday.
The killing of his son sparked protests and violent clashes, but tensions appear to have eased in recent days.
Michael Brown, 18, was killed on 9 August after being stopped by a police officer for walking in the street.
The National Guard, which was deployed to deal with violent clashes in Ferguson last week, started to withdraw from the area on Saturday as tensions showed signs of easing.
But there are concerns violence may flare up again when Mr Brown is buried in St Louis at 10:00 local time (15:00 GMT) on Monday.
There will be a heavy security presence around the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist church, where thousands are expected to gather to pay their respects.

Cornel West: “He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency” 

Cornel West is a professor at Union Theological Seminary and one of my favorite public intellectuals, a man who deals in penetrating analyses of current events, expressed in a pithy and highly quotable way.
I first met him nearly six years ago, while the financial crisis and the presidential election were both under way, and I was much impressed by what he had to say. I got back in touch with him last week, to see how he assesses the nation’s progress since then.
The conversation ranged from Washington, D.C., to Ferguson, Missouri, and although the picture of the nation was sometimes bleak, our talk ended on a surprising note.
 and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, Last time we talked it was almost six years ago. It was a panel discussion The New Yorker magazine had set up, it was in the fall of 2008, so it was while the financial crisis was happening, while it was actually in progress. The economy was crumbling and everybody was panicking. I remember you  speaking about the financial crisis in a way that I thought made sense. There was a lot of confusion at the time. People didn’t know where to turn or what was going on. 
I also remember, and this is just me I’m talking about, being impressed by Barack Obama who was running for president at the time. I don’t know if you and I talked about him on that occasion. But at the time, I sometimes thought that he looked like he had what this country needed.
So that’s my first question, it’s a lot of ground to cover but how do you feel things have worked out since then, both with the economy and with this president? That was a huge turning point, that moment in 2008, and my own feeling is that we didn’t turn.
No, the thing is he posed as a progressivea national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair. And that’s a very sad moment in the history of the nation because we are—we’re an empire in decline. Our culture is in increasing decay. Our school systems are in deep trouble. Our political system is dysfunctional. Our leaders are more and more bought off with legalized bribery and normalized corruption in Congress and too much of our civil life. You would think that we needed somebody—a Lincoln-like figure who could revive some democratic spirit and democratic possibility.

Clinton ignores questions on Ferguson

Hillary Clinton, who has yet to comment about the protests over the death of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, ignored questions about the incident on Sunday.

After signing more than 700 books at Books & Books in Westhampton Beach, Clinton was asked by two reporters for her reaction to the controversy.

Clinton ignored both questions and left the bookstore.

Liberal activists and civil rights leaders have asked Clinton for her response, saying she is the presumed front-runner for her party's presidential nomination in 2016 and that she has commented on major news stories in the past.

Michael Brown was shot dead earlier this month by a Missouri police officer. The shooting sparked large protests in the St. Louis suburb, which were highlighted by looting and a sizable police presence.

Attorney General Eric Holder visited Ferguson last week to check in on the federal civil rights investigation into the shooting, and President Barack Obama's White House has begun to look into the equipment the federal government provides to police forces.

At a rally earlier this month about the killing, Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights leader and host on MSNBC, said, "Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, don’t get laryngitis on this issue."

He then added, "Nobody can go to the White House unless they stop by our house and talk about policing."

Rep. Gowdy says he’ll bring prosecutor’s focus, fairness to Benghazi probe

WASHINGTON — Rep. Trey Gowdy’s got a late-night habit.
“He eats a ridiculously lot of pizza,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah. “Even if he goes out and has dinner, he’s got to have his late-night pie. I don’t know how he does it.”
It’s a tasty vice for the South Carolina congressman, even as he displays a distaste for national politics while his profile rises inside Republican ranks.
Since his election to Congress in 2010, Gowdy has been known inside the Washington Beltway less for his politics than for his hair, a sometimes silvery tangle that Buzzfeed once dubbed “the most confusing hair in Congress.”
But the Greenville, S.C., native has found a springboard to possible Washington stardom _ whether wanted or not _ with his appointment last spring as chairman of a special House of Representatives select panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans were killed when militants raided the compound.
Despite fierce partisan tension over an issue that has been a go-to political pinata for Republicans to bash the Obama administration, Gowdy appears to have placated the Republicans and mollified some Democrats. He has employed a quiet, nonpartisan approach that likely hails from his days as a federal prosecutor.

How Al Sharpton is using Obama, Ferguson and MSNBC to boost his influence

Al Sharpton is again working both sides of the street, and it’s paying off for him.
As he’s inserted himself into the tense situation in Ferguson, he’s had an assist from none other than the president of the United States.

And he continues to bask in the spotlight at MSNBC, where he uses his nightly cable show to advance the causes he fights for as a civil rights activist.
But these two roles are increasingly coming into conflict. It happened last year with the killing of Trayvon Martin, and it’s happening again with the death of Michael Brown.
Sharpton is scheduled to deliver the eulogy at Brown’s funeral today. On Saturday, he led a rally on Staten Island to protest the death of a black man who police had placed in a chokehold. Tonight, on his show “Politics Nation,” he’ll undoubtedly be covering the very same events.
This is wrong on so many levels, and most news organizations wouldn’t allow it. MSNBC has defended this outrageous conflict of interest, saying people know who Sharpton is and where he stands.
But you can’t be a player and cover the game at the same time. That’s especially true now that we know more about Sharpton’s role as essentially an Obama operative.
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