It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, December 28, 2021
Russia extends prison term for researcher of Stalin purges
Mon, December 27, 2021
MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian court on Monday extended the prison term handed to an activist who investigated Stalin-era repression to 15 years on what he says are trumped-up charges.
Yuri Dmitriyev, 65, rose to prominence after uncovering mass graves of victims of Stalinist repressions. He was arrested on charges of sexually abusing his adopted daughter, which rights activists have dismissed as fabricated and politically motivated.
Dmitriyev was accused of making child pornography, indecent acts and illegal possession of a part of a weapon. He was acquitted in 2018, only to have the case reopened a few months later. In July 2020, he was found guilty of sexual assault against his daughter and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, which several months later was extended to 13 years. He has already spent five years in prison. On Monday, the sentence was extended yet again, to 15 years, by the Petrozavodsk city court in the Russian region of Karelia, on the border with Finland. Dmitriyev’s defense lawyers plan to appeal the ruling.
According to the investigators, Dmitriyev was accused of making pornographic materials by taking naked photos of his daughter. Experts during the first trial found the photographs were not pornographic.
Dmitriyev used to head the Karelian branch of the human rights centre Memorial, which recognizes him as a political prisoner. The European Union and several prominent Russian cultural figures have called on Russian authorities to drop the charges.
Memorial’s Human Rights Center, a prominent group that studies and documents political repression in the Soviet Union, is facing closure in Russia for alleged failures to use the “foreign agent” label on all its publications, and for justifying terrorism. The court hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
Russia extends prison sentence for Gulag historian who researched Stalin's purges to 15 years
John Haltiwanger Mon, December 27, 2021 Russian President Vladimir Putin looks at a flag with portraits of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin while visiting Ivanovo, Russia, on March 6, 2020.Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images A Russian Gulag historian had his prison sentence extended to 15 years.
The historian, Yuri Dmitriev, has uncovered mass graves from Stalin's purges.
Critics say the charges against Dmitriev are politically motivated due to his work.
A Russian court extended the prison sentence of a prominent historian and activist, Yuri Dmitriev, as part of a sex abuse case that critics have condemned as politically motivated, Reuters reported on Monday.
Dmitriev had two more years added to his 13-year sentence, and is now set to spend 15 years behind bars. Last July, Dmitriev was found guilty of sexually abusing his adopted daughter. He's vehemently denied the allegations against him.
Dmitriev was first arrested in late 2016 on child pornography charges but was acquitted in 2018. But a second criminal case was opened against him several months later and he was eventually sentenced to three and a half years in prison. His sentence was abruptly extended to 13 years last year, not long before Dmitriev was set to be released.
Supporters and critics say the charges against Dmitriev are fabricated and punishment for uncovering mass graves from the Stalin-era containing the bodies of people held in Soviet prison camps known as Gulags. During the Great Purge (1936-38), also known as the "Great Terror," Joseph Stalin engaged in a brutal campaign to neutralize anyone perceived as disloyal or a threat to his rule. It's estimated at least 750,000 were killed during this period.
When Dmitriev's sentence was extended last year, a spokesperson for the US embassy in Moscow decried the move as "another step backwards for human rights and historical truths in Russia."
Experts with the UN have also condemned Russia over the treatment of Dmitriev, who's been lauded by human rights groups for his work.
"In response to Mr. Dmitriev's relentless search for the truth, the Russian authorities have sought to silence him by attacking his personal integrity, and thus the legitimacy of his historical work," a group of UN human rights experts said in February. "By so doing, they are preventing millions of family members whose relatives were imprisoned or perished in the Gulags from finding answers on what happened to their loved ones."
"Not only are the Russian authorities failing to uphold the right to truth owed to the victims, their families and to the larger society, they are attempting to prevent legitimate research and to re-write the history books to play down the true extent of the crimes committed during the Great Purge," the experts added. Dmitriev is the chief of the Karelia branch of Memorial human rights group, a Moscow-based group that has spearheaded efforts to document crimes against humanity in the Soviet Union. The Russian government is threatening to shutter the group, founded in the late 1980s — over allegations it's violated Russia's "foreign agents" act. Memorial has dismissed the charges as politically motivated.
"Memorial employees are now regularly questioned and investigated by police," Anne Applebaum, a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in The Atlantic earlier this month. "Dictators distort the past because they want to use it. Putin certainly wants to use the past to stay in power. If Russians are nostalgic for their old dictatorship, then they have less reason to push back against the new one. He may also want to use the past to give legitimacy to violence." In a June 2017 interview, Putin lamented that "excessively demonizing Stalin is a means to attack Soviet Union and Russia." Referring to Stalin as a "complex figure," Putin added that he was against forgetting the horrors of Stalinism. Putin also said he thought "the overwhelming majority of the citizens of the former Soviet Union admired Stalin."
Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he was responsible for organizing purges such as the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and officials.[1] Beria would later also orchestrate the forced upheaval of minorities from the Caucasus as head of NKVD, an act that was declared as genocidal by various scholars and in 2004 as concerning Chechens by the European parliament.[2][3][4][5][6] He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state, and acted as the de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of NKVD field units responsible for barrier troops and Soviet partisan intelligence and sabotage operations on the Eastern Front during World War II. Beria administered the expansion of the Gulag labour camps, and was primarily responsible for overseeing the secret detention facilities for scientists and engineers known as sharashkas.
After the war, he organised the communist takeover of the state institutions in central and eastern Europe. Beria's ruthlessness in his duties and skill at producing results culminated in his success in overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project. Stalin gave it absolute priority, and the project was completed in under five years.[7]
Turkey probes Istanbul municipality staff over alleged militant ties
Mon, December 27, 2021 By Can Sezer
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey has launched an investigation into hundreds of staff at the opposition-run Istanbul municipality accused of links to militant groups, drawing fierce criticism from the city's mayor on Monday over the handling of the probe.
Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu is from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and is seen as a potential challenger to President Tayyip Erdogan. ERDOGAN'S REICHSTAG FIRE 2016 Since a failed 2016 coup, Turkey has investigated and tried tens of thousands of people accused of militant links in a crackdown which rights groups say has been used as pretext to quash dissent. The government has said its actions are necessary given the gravity of the threats faced by Turkey.
The Interior Ministry said on Twitter on Sunday it had begun a probe of 455 people working at the municipality and related companies accused of connections to Kurdish militants, along with more than 100 allegedly linked to leftist and other groups.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said the investigation was not directed at the city council itself.
"Our business is not with anyone's municipality. Our business is with the fight against terror and we have to keep Turkey on alert," Soylu told reporters.
He said those targeted are "not just those who clean and sweep the streets" but could also include some in senior posts. Imamoglu criticised the ministry statement, made via Twitter, saying it suggested those set to be investigated had already been judged.
"You give a number (of suspects) and make a judgement and then launch an investigation," Imamoglu said in comments to reporters. "What sort of an investigation is it? If you have reached a decision then take them by the ear to prison."
He said the ministry had not provided information regarding those being probed, two weeks after Soylu had first referred to them, adding that municipality procedures for employing staff included checking whether applicants have criminal records. Opinion polls show Erdogan's approval rating has hit a six-year low and that he may lose to potential presidential rivals in elections scheduled for 2023.
Imamoglu took office in 2019 after defeating the candidate of Erdogan's ruling AK Party. While he has been touted as a potential challenger, he told Reuters this month his only focus is on doing his job as mayor.
(Additional reporting by Ezgi Erkoyun; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Ece Toksabay and Peter Graff)
ZIONISM EATS ITS OWN
Israeli minister gets 24/7 guard, blames Jewish extremists Israel's government minister for public security Omer Barlev speaks to the media at the scene of a Palestinian shooting attack in Jerusalem's Old City, Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021. Barlev says he is now under round-the-clock protection after coming under threats from Jewish extremists. Barlev sparked an uproar earlier this month when he criticized a wave of violence by West Bank settlers against Palestinian civilians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
(AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Mon, December 27, 2021
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's government minister for public security on Monday said he is now under round-the-clock protection after coming under threats from Jewish extremists.
Omer Barlev also accused members of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's pro-settler Yemina party of contributing to the fraught atmosphere.
Barlev sparked an uproar earlier this month when he criticized a wave of violence by West Bank settlers against Palestinian civilians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Barlev, who oversees the national police force, said U.S. officials had raised concerns about the settler violence with him and that he pledged to address the issue.
“I will continue to fight Palestinian terrorism as if there is no extremist settler violence — and extremist settler violence as if there is no Palestinian terrorism,” he said at the time.
Right-wing politicians, including members of the coalition government, lashed out at Barlev, and Bennett played down the violence as the acts of a “marginal” few. Opposition politicians have gone further, saying his comments have invited Palestinian violence.
In a Twitter post on Monday, Barlev said he was now under 24-hour protection. “I'm threatened by Israeli Jews,” he wrote.
At a weekly meeting of his Labor Party, Barlev blamed fellow coalition members from Bennett's Yamina party for “turning me into the enemy of all settlers, and one who doesn’t understand security and terrorism by Palestinians against Israeli citizens.”
ILLEGAL AIR STRIKE Israeli air strike targets Syrian port of Latakia: state media
Syria (AFP/Valentina BRESCHI)
Mon, December 27, 2021, 9:10 PM·2 min read
An Israeli air strike hit Syria's Latakia port on Tuesday, the second such attack on the key facility this month, according to Syrian state media.
Since the outbreak of Syria's civil war in 2011, Israel has routinely carried out air strikes on its strife-torn neighbour, mostly targeting Syrian government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters.
"At around 03:21 AM, the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression with several missiles from the direction of the Mediterranean... targeting the container yard in Latakia port," Syrian state news agency SANA cited a military source as saying.
The strike caused "significant material damage" and led to fires, it added.
Asked about the strike, an Israeli army spokesman said: "We don't comment on reports in foreign media".
On December 7, Israel carried out strikes on an Iranian arms shipment at Latakia, located in President Bashar al-Assad's western Syrian heartland, without causing any casualties.
That earlier attack, which was the first on the facility since the start of the war, triggered a series of explosions, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor with a wide network of sources in Syria.
In November, three soldiers and two Syrian fighters affiliated with Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah were killed in Israeli strikes, according to the monitoring group.
While the Jewish state rarely comments on individual strikes it carries out on its northern neighbour -- with which it is officially at war -- it has confirmed hundreds since 2011.
According to a report by the Israeli army, it hit around 50 targets in Syria in 2020.
In the deadliest operation since the strikes began, Israel killed 57 regime force members and allied fighters in eastern Syria overnight on January 13, 2021.
The Israeli military has repeatedly defended the operations as a bid to prevent its archfoe Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep.
Israel's head of military intelligence, Major General Aharon Haliva, has accused Iran of "continuing to promote subversion and terror" in the Middle East.
In a shadow war, Israel has targeted Iran's military sites in Syria and also carried out a sabotage campaign in Iran against its nuclear programme.
Tehran has been a key supporter of the Syrian government in the decade-old conflict.
It finances, arms and commands a number of Syrian and foreign militia groups fighting alongside the regular armed forces, chief among them Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah group.
The conflict in Syria has killed nearly 500,000 people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations.
Bur-rh/lb/dva
Israeli missiles hit targets near a Russian military airbase [video]
DAMASCUS, ($1=2,512.55 Syrian Pounds) – Early Tuesday morning, December 28, Israel launched an airstrike on targets near the port of Syria’s Latakia, learned BulgarianMilitary.com, citing Russian, Syrian, and Israeli sources.
According to the information provided at the moment, the Israelis have hit Iranian targets in the port of the Mediterranean city, which is only 15-20 km from the largest Russian airbase in Syria – Khmeimim. The airstrikes caused major explosions and fires.
Russian military experts have commented on the situation, questioning the effectiveness of Russia’s air defense systems in the region, which have not responded to airstrikes. Analysts at BulgarianMilitary.com suggest that there was a notification from Tel Aviv to Moscow that such strikes would be carried out. This claim is supported by the fact that in recent months Israel has avoided strikes near the Russian airbase in order not to activate Russian air defense systems. Today’s silence on the S-300 from the Khmeimim base is clear evidence of prior notification from Israel.
Photo credit: The Times of Israel
The Syrian military says fighter jets have been used to strike at the port of Latakia, but this is unlikely as airspace over Syria is closed, except for Russian planes.
Today’s Israeli attacks have targeted Iranian targets, who are believed to be using the port of Latakia to transport weapons to be used in the next phase of attacks on Israel. There is no information about victims, but there is serious material damage. Israeli-Iranian proxy war / cold war
Communication between Israel and Iran is mostly threatening and hostile. Such has been the relationship between the two countries for a very long time. This situation is known as the proxy conflict, the proxy war, or the Cold War between the two countries.
The conflict “appeared” on the world map after the Iranian revolution in 1979. In all the years to this day, Iran aims to destroy Israel as a state. Tehran supports groups and organizations that are hostile to the Jewish state and people. On the other hand, Israel is worried about Iran’sIran’s nuclear program. The proximity of the two countries worries Tel Aviv that Iranians could use them against Israel if Iran has nuclear weapons. Israel also finds its allies in the face of the United States and Saudi Arabia, which are apparent opponents of Iran.
Thus, this conflict gradually turned into an Israeli-Iranian war. The competition has been going on since the start of the Syrian civil war. According to Iran, Israel rules by an illegitimate “Zionist regime,” a Tehran problem. Iran’sIran’s other point of reference is that the United States is hostile to Muslims because it supports Israel.
The civil war in Syria
The Syrian civil war has been going on for almost a decade. Attempts by movements such as the Syrian Democratic Forces to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have failed.
The Syrian democratic forces are armed by allies and the United States, while the Syrian army is armed mainly by Russia. Russia is the only country officially invited to Syria by President Bashar al-Assad.
In 2017, the United States launched a massive missile strike on Bashar al-Assad’s forces after a report emerged that the Syrian president had used chemical weapons to attack his people in the country. Syria and Russia deny such actions.
During his tenure, US President Donald Trump decided to withdraw much of US troops from Syria, leaving several troops to guard Syria’s oil fields on the pretext of “falling into the hands of Islamic State.”
With the withdrawal of the United States, Turkey comes to the fore, declaring it necessary to deal with the Kurds and the PKK movement in the northern part of the country, which borders Turkey. That is why Erdogan is sending troops in an attempt to build a stable and secure 30km zone between Syria and Turkey, which will prevent future terrorist attacks on Turkish territory, as it is.
***
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Israeli warplanes strike Syria’s Latakia port SANA says attack caused ‘significant material damage’
Ibrahim Mukhtar
|28.12.2021 ISTANBUL
Israeli warplanes struck the Syrian port of Latakia early Tuesday, in the second such attack this month, according to the state news agency SANA.
"The Israeli enemy carried out an air aggression at dawn today, with missiles from the direction of Mediterranean, west of the city of Latakia, targeting the container yard in the commercial port in Latakia," SANA said, citing a military source.
It said the attack caused “significant material damage”.
The agency said the Israeli attack targeted “oils and spare parts for machinery and cars”.
A hospital and a number of buildings sustained damage in the attack, SANA said, without giving any reports of casualties.
There was no comment from the Israeli military on the report.
In the last four years, regime-controlled areas in Syria have come under frequent Israeli attacks targeting sites and military bases used by regime forces and Iran-backed militias.
ECONOMIC WARFARE Syria reports 2nd Israeli attack on vital port in a month In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, firefighters work at the scene of missiles attack, at the seaport of the coastal city of Latakia, Syria, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021. Israeli missiles fired from the Mediterranean struck the Syrian port of Latakia early Tuesday, igniting a fire in the container terminal, Syrian state media reported, in the second such attack on the vital facility this month. (SANA via AP)More
Mon, December 27, 2021
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Israeli missiles fired from the Mediterranean struck the Syrian port of Latakia early Tuesday, igniting a fire in the container terminal, Syrian state media reported, in the second such attack on the vital facility this month.
It is also a rare targeting of the port handling most imports for Syria, which has been ravaged by a decade-old civil war and western-imposed sanctions.
The state news agency SANA quoted a military official as saying that Israeli missiles fired from the west of Latakia hit the port's container terminal, igniting fires that caused major damage. The unidentified official said firefighters were battling the flames for nearly an hour after the attack.
Syria's state-run Al-Ikhbariyah TV ran footage showing flames and smoke rising from the terminal. It reported damage to residential buildings, a hospital, shops and some tourist sites near the port.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the missile attacks, which activated Syrian air defenses, according to SANA.
A similar attack was reported on Dec. 7, when Israeli warplanes targeted the container terminal, causing fires and explosions.
An Al-Ikhbariyah TV reporter in the area said Tuesday's attack appeared to have been larger and the explosions could be heard in Tartus, another coastal city more than 80 kilometers (nearly 50 miles) away. The reporter said ambulances were rushed to the scene but it remained unclear if there were any casualties.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitoring group, said at the time that the Dec. 7 airstrike hit arms shipments for Iran-backed fighters.
There was no comment from the Israeli military, which has conducted hundreds of airstrikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria during its 10-year civil war, but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.
Some past strikes have targeted the main airport in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Israel has acknowledged that it targets bases of Iran-allied militias, such as Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group, which has fighters in Syria. It says it attacks arms shipments believed to be bound for the militias.
Israel hits Syrian port for second time this month - Syrian army Firefighters douse flames after Syrian state media reported an Israeli missile attack in a container storage area, at Syrian port of Latakia
Mon, December 27, 2021
AMMAN (Reuters) -Israel launched an air strike on Syria's main port of Latakia on Tuesday in the second such attack this month, the Syrian army said, setting ablaze the container storage area where two port sources said Iran has been storing munitions.
An Israeli military spokesperson declined to comment saying: "We don't comment on foreign reports."
Official Syrian reports made no mention of any casualties. A source familiar with the operations of the port said the strike hit a container area where large consignments of Iranian munitions that had arrived last month were stored.
"These blasts and huge fires were caused by the explosions from the munitions stored in a warehouse close to commercial cargo," the source who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter told Reuters.
Syrian state news agency SANA quoted the head of the Latakia fire brigade as saying the containers targeted in the strike contained oils and spare parts for machines and cars.
Israel has mounted frequent attacks against what it says are Iranian targets in Syria, where Tehran-backed forces led by Lebanon's Hezbollah have deployed over the last decade in support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's civil war.
Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz, visiting an Israeli air-force base did not speak about the specific incident on Tuesday but warned his country would not allow Iran to use Syria to threaten Israel.
"I call upon the region's countries to stop Iran from violating their sovereignty and people. Israel will not allow Iran to funnel balance-breaching weapons to its proxies and threaten our citizens," Gantz said.
Another Syrian source familiar with Iranian military movements in Syria said Tehran had in recent months transferred weapons by sea as it sought to dodge intensified Israeli strikes that struck eastern Syria near a weapons supply corridor along the border with Iraq.
The drone strikes disabled several large weapons convoys sent by Tehran from Iraq, he added in information confirmed by a Western intelligence source.
Iran has expanded its military presence in Syria in recent years where it now has a foothold in most state-controlled areas where thousands of its militias and local paramilitary groups are under its command, Western intelligence sources say.
Citing a military source, SANA said Israel had carried out the air strike targeting the container storage area at 3.21 a.m. (0121 GMT), causing a fire and leading to "big material damages".
Fire fighters were working to extinguish the blaze, it quoted the head of the Latakia fire brigade as saying. Syrian state TV footage showed flames and smoke in the container area.
Citing its correspondent, state-run broadcaster al-Ikhbariya said a number of residential buildings, a hospital and a number of shops and tourist facilities had been damaged by the power of the blasts.
Russia, which has been Assad's most powerful ally during the war, operates an air base at Hmeimim some 20 kms (12 miles) away from Latakia.
(Reporting by Yasmin Hussein and Alaa Swilam in Cairo and Jeffrey Heller and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Writing by Alaa Swilam/ Tom Perry/ Suleiman al Khalidi; Editing by Michael Perry, Gareth Jones and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
Fire contained after reported Israeli attack on Syrian port 1 / 9 In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, flames and smoke rise from burning containers at the scene of a missile attack, at the seaport of the coastal city of Latakia, Syria, early Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021. Israeli missiles fired from the Mediterranean struck the Syrian port of Latakia early Tuesday, igniting a fire in the container terminal, Syrian state media reported, in the second such attack on the vital facility this month.
(SANA via AP) SARAH EL DEEB Tue, December 28, 2021
BEIRUT (AP) — Firefighters contained a blaze that raged for hours in Syria's port of Latakia on Tuesday, officials said, hours after Israel launched missiles from the Mediterranean Sea, igniting the fire in the container terminal. It was the second such attack on the vital facility this month.
The early morning raid targeted the port that handles most of the imports to Syria, a country ravaged by a decade-old civil war and Western-imposed sanctions. Another attack took place Dec. 7, when Syrian media reported Israeli warplanes hit the container terminal, also igniting a major fire.
Syrian officials and state media said Tuesday's attack caused more damage and the explosion could be heard miles away. Syrian air defenses were activated when the missiles started to fall on the terminal at around 3:20 a.m., state media reported.
A military official said Israeli missiles were fired from the sea, west of Latakia, hitting the terminal and igniting fires that caused major damage. The unidentified official quoted by the official state news agency SANA said firefighters battled the flames after the attack.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the missile attack, according to SANA.
Syria's state-run Al-Ikhbariyah TV ran footage showing flames and smoke rising from the terminal. It later aired images of broken glass and other damage at residential buildings and cars parked in the area near the port. It said a nearby hospital was also impacted.
An Al-Ikhbariyah reporter said Tuesday’s attack could be heard in Tartus, another coastal city more than 80 kilometers (nearly 50 miles) away.
Maj. Mohannad Jafaar, head of the Latakia fire department, said 12 fire trucks worked for hours to contain the fire. He said the containers that were hit held spare auto parts and oil but there were no casualties. Footage from the area showed large black plumes of smoke over the port as various fires burned around the terminal.
Port manager Amjad Suleiman told Al-Ikhbariyah the damage was much larger than that caused by the Dec. 7 attack and required a major effort to move in-tact containers away from the flames.
At the time of the Dec. 7 attack, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitoring group, said the airstrike hit arms shipments destined for Iran-backed fighters.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the reported strikes in Syria. But in a year-end statement issued by the military, chief of staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi boasted of success in disrupting weapons shipments to Israel’s enemies in the region.
“The increase in the scope of operations over the past year has led to a significant disruption of the movement of weapons into the various arenas by our enemies,” he said. The statement did not elaborate.
In its year-end assessment, the Israeli military confirmed carrying out strikes on dozens of targets in Syria in what it called “the campaign between the wars.” Three targets also were struck in Lebanon, it said. It gave no further details.
It also reported about 100 operations by the Israeli Navy, including dozens of “special operations.” It did not elaborate, but the navy operates in both the Mediterranean and Red seas.
The Israeli military rarely comments on individual attacks or discusses details of such operations.
Some past strikes have targeted the main airport in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
Israel says it targets bases of Iran-allied militias, such as Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group, which has fighters in Syria. It says it attacks arms shipments believed to be bound for the militias.
___
Associated Press writer Joseph Federman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
ILLEGAL OCCUPATION
Syria denounces Israeli plans to double number of Golan settlers
FILE PHOTO: Fences are seen on the ceasefire line between Israel and Syria in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights
Mon, December 27, 2021,
BEIRUT (Reuters) -Syria on Monday condemned Israeli plans to double within five years the number of Jewish settlers in the Golan Heights captured from Syria in 1967 as a "dangerous and unprecedented escalation", Syrian state media reported.
"Syria strongly condemns the dangerous and unprecedented escalation by the Israeli occupation authorities" in the Golan, the state-run SANA news agency said, adding Damascus would seek to use all legally available means to retake the territory.
Speaking to Syrian TV station al-Ekhbariya, foreign minister Faisal Mekdad called Israel's actions against Syria "criminal" and said they violated the 1981 U.N. Resolution 497 declaring Israel's effective annexation of the Golan as "null and void."
Israel has mounted frequent attacks against what it describes as Iranian targets in Syria, where Tehran-backed forces including Lebanon's Hezbollah have deployed over the last decade to support President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's war.
Israel annexed the 1,200-square-kilometre (460-square-mile) Golan Heights in 1981, an action not recognised by the international community. Syria demands the return of the Golan, which also overlooks Lebanon and borders Jordan. (Reporting by Omar FahmyAdditional reporting by Lilian Wagdy Writing by Ahmad Elhamy in Cairo and Timour Azhari in Beirut;Editing by Howard Goller)
Massive New Bird Flu Outbreak Could Be 2022’s Deadly Pandemic
Noga Tarnopolsky Mon, December 27, 2021
Israel’s National Security Council has assumed control of a massive bird flu outbreak in the Galilee, which scientists warn could become a “mass disaster” for humans.
Over half a billion migrating birds pass through the area every year, heading for warm African winters or balmy European summers, making this a catastrophic location for a major bird flu outbreak—right at the nexus of global avian travel.
The virus can be deadly if it infects people. The World Health Organization says more than half of the confirmed 863 human cases it has tracked since 2003 proved fatal. Most strains or variants of avian flu, H5N1, are relatively difficult to transmit to people.
“There could be a mutation that also infects people and turns into a mass disaster,” said Leshem, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University and director of the International Center for the Study of Bird Migration at Latrun.
So far, at least 5,400 wild cranes have died infected with the new H5N1 avian flu, which Israeli authorities fear could expand into a global emergency.
Of the 30,000 Eurasian cranes passing this winter at the Hula Nature Reserve, 17 percent are dead, and scientists fear the worst for their surviving brethren, at least 10,000 of which appear to be ailing. The infection of the cranes is the same strain of avian flu which infected chicken coops throughout northern Israel, and led to the cull in recent days of nearly 1 million birds.
Israelis will be without their beloved chicken schnitzel—and without eggs—until a supply chain of imported birds is established.
The deaths of thousands of wild birds in the Hula Nature Reserve, one of the world’s premier bird sanctuaries, “is an extraordinary event with global ramifications,” warned Tel Aviv University Professor of Zoology Noga Kronfeld Shor in an interview with Reshet Bet Radio.
Shor, who is also the chief scientist at Israel’s Ministry of the Environment, noted that the carcasses of other waterbirds, such as pelicans and egrets, have already been found.
Israelis have been warned not to approach any wild bird that looks sick, and not to touch any bird droppings.
Yoav Motro, a specialist in vertebrates and locusts at Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture, said that for now, H5N1 is presenting “like the opposite of COVID. Compared to COVID, the chances of [humans] catching this are very, very slight—but unlike COVID, the risks of dying from it if you do catch it are very high.”
“It is a tragic ecological event,” he said. “And we simply do not know how it will end, or where it will lead.”
Israeli scientists don’t yet know the full scale of the die-off in Israel because of the dangers inherent in fishing around marshes and wetlands. Observing birds that shy away from human contact and the urgent matter of retrieving bird carcasses is proving even more challenging because of the lack of waterproof protective gear currently available in the arid country.
While the disaster is evident in the Hula Valley, in Israel’s fertile north, crane mortality has also been observed in other sites, though not yet in Jerusalem, according to Yotam Bashan of the Jerusalem Bird Observatory.
“There is no way to know what is going to happen,” Motro said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “When you identify avian flu in chicken coops you kill all the chickens and disinfect the coops. In the wild, at this level of infection, I don't know where it will lead. I’m worried.”
Shalom Bar Tal, an experienced wildlife photographer, told The Daily Beast that he was one of the only people allowed nocturnal access to observe the dead and dying birds. “It could turn into an ecological disaster no less significant than the corona epidemic,” he said.
For now, no Israeli is known to be infected with H5N1, but Israelis who were exposed to wild birds are taking the antiviral Tamiflu.
Both Motro and Bar Tal noted the heartrending scenes of weak, infected cranes leaning over their dead. Cranes mate for life and live in strong family units, Motro said. “That means that when one dies, the rest of the family—I don’t know how to define it—but it mourns.”
The cranes’ close physical proximity to one another and tight-knit family structure almost ensures, he said, that when one crane dies, “a close family member will be the next to die.”
“There is no treatment,” he said, “no way to help.”
We can only hope it doesn’t mutate and jump species.
Bird flu kills thousands of cranes in Israel, poultry also culled
Cranes gather during the migration season on a foggy morning at Hula Nature Reserve, in northern Israel
JERUSALEM (Reuters) -An outbreak of avian flu has killed more than 5,000 migratory cranes in Israel, prompting authorities to declare a popular nature reserve off-limits to visitors and warn of a possible egg shortage as poultry birds are culled as a precaution.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met his national security adviser and other experts to discuss efforts to contain the outbreak and prevent it passing into humans. So far no human transmission has been reported, Bennett's office said.
Israeli media said children who had visited the reserve may have touched a stricken crane and thus contributed to the spread of the flu. "This is the worst blow to wildlife in the country's history," Environment Minister Tamar Zandberg tweeted as rangers in hazardous material suits collected carcasses of the cranes from the lake at the Hula Nature Reserve and outlying marshes.
Hundreds of thousands of chickens had been culled, she said.
Authorities were looking to ease import quotas and bring in eggs from abroad to head off an egg shortage due to the cull.
(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Aliosn Williams)
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M Miami payday loan operator promised investors huge returns. SEC says they lost millions
Jay Weaver Tue, December 28, 2021
After his mother underwent brain surgery for cancer last year, Andres Zorrilla desperately needed to raise money for her post-op treatment and so he tried to withdraw $30,000 that he had invested in a Miami payday loan company.
But Zorrilla says Efrain Betancourt Jr., the CEO of Sky Group USA, LLC, blew him off, ignoring his stream of calls and an email about the “family crisis” along with an attached photo of his mother showing the surgical stitches on her head.
“That’s when I started to get suspicious and worried,” said Zorrilla, 38, who also referred his wife, her brother and several other business associates to Betancourt as investors in his Miami-based payday loan business.
“I found out it was all bulls---. ... The guy was just stealing money.”
All told, hundreds of investors — most from South Florida’s Venezuelan-American community — were dazzled by Betancourt’s polished sales pitch of high-interest returns on their investments in his short-term loan operation. Their faith in Betancourt, who falsely claimed to have law and computer engineering degrees in the United States, cost them dearly, according to court and other legal records.
In September, the Securities and Exchange Commission in Miami filed a civil lawsuit against Betancourt and his company, accusing them of committing securities violations in a scheme that authorities described as “affinity fraud.” In the civil enforcement action, the SEC says Betancourt and Sky Group sold more than 500 investors fraudulent promissory notes totaling $66 million. In effect, Betancourt raised millions from them to finance high-interest loans made to borrowers across the country.
According to the SEC complaint, Betancourt spent most of the money on a luxurious lifestyle — including a new Miami waterfront condo and a wedding to his fourth wife in Monaco — while using at least $19 million Ponzi-style to make interest payments to some investors to keep them at bay.
Betancourt, 33, and his company, Sky Group, are named as defendants in the SEC civil matter; they have not been charged criminally. Loan defense
Betancourt’s defense attorney in the SEC case, Mark David Hunter, did not return several email and phone messages seeking comment. In a motion to dismiss the SEC’s complaint, Hunter argued that promissory notes are not securities like stocks and bonds but rather are loans; therefore, his client and Sky Group did not break the law when they failed to pay back the lenders.
Zorrilla, who works in real estate financing in Miami, said he felt badly not only for himself but for his wife, her brother and several others whom he had introduced to Betancourt.
“He made a lot of money and went a little crazy with the money,” said Zorrilla, whose immediate family invested a total of $150,000 and received some interest payments but lost all of their principal. “That’s how he was able to get away with this Ponzi scheme for so long.”
Betancourt’s alleged scheme, outlined in the SEC complaint, lasted from January 2016 to just before the coronavirus pandemic struck the country in March 2020. As countless borrowers defaulted on their payday loans, his company, Sky Group, incurred a severe cash-flow problem and was unable to make interest payments on investors’ promissory notes.
Miami attorney Rick Diaz, who is representing Zorrilla, his wife, Melissa Montoya, and her brother, Juan Pablo Montoya, in efforts to recover their investment losses, described Betancourt as a “mini-Madoff.” His reference is to the late New York financial adviser, Bernard Madoff, who ran the biggest Ponzi scheme in the nation’s history.
“I’ve handled and deposed and defended Ponzi schemers over the years,” Diaz told the Miami Herald. “Efrain Betancourt is the smoothest, cruelest and most arrogant, selfish and narcissistic of them all.”
Earlier this month, Betancourt gave a deposition in which he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination while being questioned by Diaz. In a prior deposition, Betancourt, who was born in Venezuela and raised in the Miami area, admitted that he did not have law and computer engineering degrees in the United States. But he insisted that his payday loan business was legitimate, despite charging interest rates much higher than Florida’s annual cap of 18 percent. He also said that the people who invested in his company were “lenders” involved in financing short-term, high-interest loans. He called them “business transactions.”
“I made it very clear that they were investing into a payday portfolio,” Betancourt told Diaz in a May 2021 deposition. “Now the payday portfolio has risks.” Promise of high returns
According to the SEC’s complaint, Sky Group and Betancourt falsely told investors that the company would use investors’ money solely to make payday loans and cover the costs of such loans, promising them annual rates of return as high as 120 percent on the notes.
In reality, the complaint says, Betancourt misappropriated at least $2.9 million for personal use. Among his expenses: an extravagant wedding at a chateau on the French Riviera, vacations to Disney resorts and the Caribbean, and costs associated with the purchase of a luxury Miami condominium at Epic Residences on Biscayne Boulevard. He also used some of the money for service on his personal Piper airplane, SEC officials said.
Epic Residences has also sued Betancourt, claiming he owes more than $65,000 in condo and hotel assessments, according to court records.
Betancourt is also accused of transferring at least another $3.6 million to friends and family, including his ex-wife, Angelica Betancourt, and to EEB Capital Group LLC for “no apparent legitimate business purpose,” according to the SEC complaint. That company’s bank accounts were controlled by Betancourt and his current wife, Leidy Badillo, the complaint says.
In court papers, EEB Capital’s lawyer, James Sallah, acknowledged that Betancourt and his current wife, Badillo, were signatories on the company’s bank accounts but denied the SEC’s allegation that EEB received $1.5 million of Sky Group investors’ funds for “no apparent legitimate purpose.”
For her part, Angelica Betancourt denied that she received $1.2 million from Sky Group, as alleged in the SEC complaint. She said she only earned an annual salary of $60,000 from the payday loan company, according to her lawyer, Diaz, who also represents Zorrilla and others who sued her ex-husband.
In addition to the SEC complaint, there are at least a half-dozen lawsuits and arbitration cases filed against Betancourt and Sky Group.
Among the plaintiffs: Victor Segura and his daughter, Johanna Segura, who lost $200,000 after investing in his alleged loan scheme. They saw themselves as “investors,” not “lenders,” as Betancourt has tried to portray them and others in his defense. But the Seguras’ lawyers, Gerardo Vazquez and Steven Herzberg, counter that Betancourt has merely construed their investments as promissory notes to make them look like loans, not securities.
According to the Seguras’ federal lawsuit, “Sky Group and Betancourt used substantial investor funds for purposes other than the cash advances [to Payday loan borrowers], including paying for operating expenses and compensation to Sky Group’s executives ... along with payment of commissions to its unregistered advisors, brokers and sales agents.” SEC alleges fraud
SEC officials accused Betancourt of lying to his payday loan investors.
Their complaint alleges that Betancourt and Sky Group misled investors by promising extraordinary returns on their promissory notes and representing that the payday loan business was profitable, even though Sky Group did not generate enough revenues to cover principal and interest payments due to investors. Betancourt was able to circumvent Florida’s caps on usury rates by making the payday loans through Utah, which allows far higher loan terms, until his business model collapsed.
“The scheme unraveled in July 2019, when Betancourt told investors that Sky Group was suspending investor repayments on the notes,” according to the SEC complaint filed in Miami federal court. “Even then, Betancourt and Sky Group continued to lie, falsely blaming the suspension of repayments on a vendor responsible for processing the company’s investor repayments.”
“We continue to caution investors to be wary of any investment that promises returns that are too good to be true,” said Eric I. Bustillo, director of the SEC’s Miami Regional Office.
The SEC is seeking permanent injunctions against and financial penalties from the defendants.
Stereotypes about homelessness don’t measure up to reality. It’s more complex than it seems
Sara Busick Mon, December 27, 2021
I was taking an Uber to the CATCH office one day, when the usual small talk about who I am and what I do for a living ensued. “I work for CATCH. We work with people experiencing homelessness and help them find solutions to their housing crises as quickly as possible.”
“BAH!” the Uber driver replied. “From what I can tell most of them want to be homeless.”
Sara Busick
Forgetting how polarizing homelessness can be, I replied, “Well, the folks out here have experienced incredible amounts of trauma, and that is the main reason they are in the situation they’re in.”
The Uber driver scoffed, “Trauma? We all have trauma, don’t you have trauma? I have trauma, and I turned out fine. It’s people who don’t want to work for a living.”
At this point we pulled up to CATCH, and I exited the car. I was frustrated with this man and how he talked about the people I serve.
But then my social worker training kicked in. The driver’s life experiences had led him to believe that people experiencing homelessness are there because of a failing of their own moral character, and not as a victim of incredible and insurmountable circumstances.
People do not like to be around situations that make them uncomfortable. We tend to try to avoid or rationalize them to restore our own comfort. And let me tell you, the reality of homelessness is extremely uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable to think about experiencing homelessness yourself, and it is uncomfortable to think about the fact that we live in a system, as a nation, where homelessness is seen as something acceptable as long as you’ve done something to “deserve it.”
Homelessness is more complex than anyone might realize. People experiencing homelessness in Ada County are incredibly vulnerable. They are generally disabled in some way, physically, mentally, or both. Sixty percent of the people I work with have an income and are victims of circumstance to a booming housing market. One in four of them is over the age of 62. And roughly 1/3 of the families we serve are women who are fleeing domestic violence.
Those are uncomfortable statistics and to stomach it, we dehumanize it. We attach that moral failing of character as the why behind someone’s homelessness. We tell ourselves that these are “bad people” who “chose this life,” that fixing the issue is “on them,” and that it’s simply “their fault.”
In reality, it’s more complex than that. There are many things outside of their realm of control: generational poverty; growing up in broken systems; survival; systemic racism; inadequate resources; and so much more. What we are seeing is the fallout of unstable systems play out right here in our community. And that can be scary.
I know this to be true through the work that I do. It is an uphill battle. Working in homeless services, I’ve met some of the kindest, funniest, and wisest people I’ve ever known, with amazing stories of resilience. And it is for them that I continue to fight for solutions.
Join me in ending homlessness in the Treasure Valley. Educate yourself and others on the reality of homlessness. Connect service providers, like those of us at CATCH, with property developers and owners to provide housing. Volunteer for organizations that are often understaffed and overworked. And more than anything, when you encounter someone experiencing homelessness, choose to look them in the eye and honor them with the same dignity you would any other human.
Sara Busick serves as CATCH’s Program Director for Our Path Home Connect. The program works with 50+ partnership agencies to connect people experiencing a housing crisis to resources aimed at resolving their situation as quickly as possible.
