ZIONIST HANDPUPPET

US president calls Israeli killing of Turkish American activist in West Bank an 'accident'

‘Apparently it was an accident -- it ricocheted off the ground, and she got hit by accident,’ Biden told reporters

WHAT PART OF ASSASSINATED BY SNIPER DON'T YOU GET

Diyar Güldoğan |11.09.2024 - 

Crowds hold vigil in California for Aysenur Ezgi killed by Israeli soldiers in West Bank

WASHINGTON

US President Joe Biden called the shooting last week of a Turkish American activist in the head by an Israeli sniper in the occupied West Bank an "accident."

"Apparently it was an accident -- it ricocheted off the ground, and she got hit by accident. I'm working that out now," Biden told reporters Tuesday.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was fatally shot by Israeli forces on Friday during a protest against illegal Israeli settlements in Beita, a town just outside of Nablus.

The Israeli army said Tuesday that it is “highly likely” that Eygi was “indirectly and unintentionally” hit by fire from its forces.

Earlier, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel’s killing of Eygi was "unprovoked and unjustified" and that it is "unacceptable."

Eygi, born in Antalya, Türkiye in 1998, graduated in June from the University of Washington, where she studied psychology and Middle Eastern languages and cultures.

She arrived in the West Bank last Tuesday to volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement as part of an effort to support and safeguard Palestinian farmers.

THAT'S SCARY

US treats Aysenur Eygi’s killing by Israel with the same concern as for any American citizen: Envoy

Robert Wood says US officials remain in contact with Israeli authorities to gather all the details

Merve Gül Aydoğan Ağlarcı |11.09.2024 - TRT/AA



HAMILTON, Canada

US deputy envoy to the UN Robert Wood reacted Tuesday to criticism over Washington’s response to the killing of Turkish American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli forces, emphasizing that there is "no difference between American citizens" when it comes to such tragedies.

Responding to a question from Anadolu at the UN headquarters in New York about the killing of Eygi in the occupied West Bank last Friday, Wood said he had seen the preliminary findings from Israel’s investigation.

"The Israelis said and they believe that she was unfortunately killed, not intentionally by the IDF," he said.

Wood said he expresses deep concern over the death of any American citizen and noted that US officials remain in contact with Israeli authorities to gather all the details.

'It is a tragedy'

Conveying his condolences to the family of the slain Turkish American activist, Wood said "it is a tragedy."

"We want to try to limit these things from ever happening again," he added.

When pressed about the perceived difference in the US administration's response to Eygi’s death compared to the swift reaction following the killing of other American citizens like Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was among six hostages recently found dead in Gaza, Wood said he did not know the exact details of "what has transpired."

"The president was very concerned about this issue. He has been in close touch with his advisors about it," he said.

Emphasizing that President Joe Biden’s team is also in constant communication with its Israeli counterparts, Wood said: "So please don't take the fact that he may not have already met or already spoken with somebody from the family to mean that there's some kind of a difference here. There's no difference between the two Americans or Americans."

Biden has a long history of reaching out to bereaved victims' families, including the family of Goldberg, who was killed in Hamas captivity after being taken hostage during the Palestinian group’s Oct. 7 cross-border attack on Israel.

Biden spoke repeatedly with Goldberg's parents, Jon and Rachel, while he was in captivity and after he was killed.

It is unclear if the White House is trying to set up a call with the Eygi family.

Eygi, 26, a dual US and Turkish citizen, was fatally shot by Israeli forces on Friday during a protest against illegal Israeli settlements in Beita, a town just outside the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

Witnesses reported that Israeli soldiers opened live fire on demonstrators. Though she was standing away from the main protest area, she was fatally shot in the head. Despite being rushed to a hospital, medical workers were unable to save her.

Eygi, born in Antalya, Türkiye in 1998, graduated in June from the University of Washington, where she studied psychology and Middle Eastern languages and cultures.

She arrived in the West Bank on Tuesday to volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement as part of an effort to support and safeguard Palestinian farmers.

Eygi's family released a statement urging the Biden administration to order an independent investigation into her killing.

*Serife Cetin contributed to this story from New York

Israeli soldier 'shouted for joy' after shooting Turkish-American activist: Palestinian eyewitness

Israeli activist, protesting Israeli policies, says soldier who shot Aysenur Ezgi Eygi 'took a kill shot,' adds: 'That kill shot was no isolated incident'

Enes Canli |09.09.2024 -


WEST BANK, Palestine

Palestinian eyewitness Mounir Khdair said that the Israeli sniper who killed Turkish-American citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi in the West Bank last Friday cried out for joy after shooting her.

Khdair told Anadolu: "After shooting her, he was happy, he shouted for joy."

'It's time this murder leads to accountability'

Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli activist who who has been taking part in protests against Israel in the region for many years, said that on the day of the shooting in the village of Beita, near Nablus, soldiers quickly dispersed protesters after Friday prayers in the village with tear gas and live bullets.

He added: “The soldier who did this took a kill shot. That kill shot was no isolated incident. It happens in the context of the escalation and violence in the West Bank. The bullet that killed Aysenur is the same bullet that killed people in Nur Shams and Jenin.

"It’s the same bullet that killed a 13-year-old girl the same day just a few kilometers south of here. These are the same American-funded bullets that Israel uses to perpetrate genocide in Gaza with complete impunity.

"This happens because the world doesn’t demand accountability and the world, shamefully, supports Israel. It's time that if anything, this murder will bring about some accountability and an end to Israeli colonialism over the Palestinian people.”

On the Israeli army claim that the soldiers opened fire since they felt threatened by people throwing stones, Pollak underlined that things were very calm when the shots were fired.

The Israeli army spokesperson's office did not respond to Anadolu on questions about Eygi's death.

Eygi, 26, a dual Turkish-US citizen, was shot dead by Israeli forces during a Friday protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita in the occupied West Bank.

Eygi’s killing echoes the case of American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed in a similar way in 2022, drawing widespread outrage.

The violence against West Bank protests takes place amid Israel’s continued devastating military offensive in the Gaza Strip since a Hamas attack last October that claimed 1,200 lives and around 250 others were taken as hostages.

Nearly 41,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, mostly women and children, leaving vast tracts of Gaza in ruins and most of the population homeless and in desperate need of aid.

*Writing by Serdar Dincel

Anadolu Agency website contains only a portion of the news stories offered to subscribers in the AA News Broadcasting System (HAS), and in summarized form. Please contact us for subscription options.

Related topics

US Oil and Gas Production Surged to Record Highs Under Both Trump and Biden-Harris

by Valerie Thomas

 September 11, 2024
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Oil drilling sites in the Gulf of Mexico. Map: National Centers for Environmental Information, NOAA.

The United States is producing more oil and natural gas today than ever before, and far more than any other country. So, what roles did the Trump-Pence and Biden-Harris administrations play in this surge?

The answer might surprise you, given the way each has talked publicly about fossil fuels: former President Donald Trump embracing them, and President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris focusing on reducing fossil fuel use to fight climate change.

Under each of the three most recent presidencies, Republican and Democratic alike, U.S. oil and gas production was higher at the end of the administration’s term than at the beginning.

That production has both pros and cons. Together, oil and gas account for nearly three-quarters of U.S. energy consumption. Producing oil and gas in the U.S. provides energy security, and high production generally keeps prices down. Burning oil and gas, however, releases carbon dioxide into the air, contributing to climate change. And natural gas is mostly methane – another potent greenhouse gas.

As a scholar who works on both energy and public policy, I follow the federal government’s actions involving oil, gas and coal. With Trump and Harris facing off in the November presidential election, let’s take a look at how each influenced fossil fuel production and emissions.

Boosting and restricting oil and gas drilling

Both the Trump-Pence administration and the Biden-Harris administration took actions that supported additional oil and gas drilling. Both also took actions that restricted additional oil and gas drilling.

Trump has been aggressively pro-fossil fuels in his rhetoric and actions, dating back to his first run for office. Under his administration, the federal government leased more land for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and in the Utah wilderness.

To further help the industry, Trump urged agencies to waive environmental reviews and loosen regulations in ways that could speed up permits for pipeline construction and other energy infrastructure.

The Trump administration also opened more U.S. coastal waters for oil and gas leasing, but Trump later rolled this back, banning coastal drilling for 10 years in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. At the time, opposition to drilling in those states threatened several Republican candidates’ 2020 election bids.

The Biden-Harris administration focused on clean energy and climate change. It issued several regulations targeting fossil fuels, including efforts to reduce methane leaks from natural gas pipelines and increasing the royalties that companies pay for production on federal lands. In 2021, it issued a moratorium on new federal leases for oil and gas, but that was blocked by a federal judge.

However, the Biden-Harris administration also gave the go-ahead for the nation’s largest oil drilling operation, ConocoPhillips’ vast Willow project in Alaska. And the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, considered the administration’s signature climate law, included additional oil and gas leasing and incentives to capture carbon dioxide for use in enhanced oil recovery.

Choices in one administration affect the next

When land is leased for drilling, it takes some years for production to begin. So, the increased oil and gas production during the Biden administration is to some extent a result of leases issued during the Trump administration. Trump auctioned off the leases; the Biden administration signed the permits.

In many cases, presidents have little discretion and are essentially required to approve when permits meet the legal requirements.

Global events can also have large effects on production.

The COVID-19 pandemic reduced U.S. oil demand as activity slowed worldwide in 2020.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to greater energy demand from Europe. Natural gas has to be liquefied to ship it overseas, however, and the U.S. has limited export capacity. To send more supply to Europe, the U.S. had to reroute natural gas exports intended for other countries.

The Biden-Harris administration paused approvals for additional liquefied natural gas terminals in 2024, but a federal judge blocked the move.

What caused oil production to surge?

Drilling technology has been an important driver of the industry’s success.

U.S. oil production had reached a peak in 1970 and went into a slow decline that lasted more than three decades. It was widely believed that the U.S. had pumped its best reservoirs and that the country would be inexorably dependent on foreign oil.

Then, in the early 2000s, innovations in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling changed everything. These techniques gave drillers access to previously hard-to-reach fossil fuels and opened up opportunities for oil and gas drilling at lower cost and in greater quantities. Since around 2009, U.S. oil production has surged.

Natural gas followed a similar trajectory. U.S. natural gas production had peaked in 1972 and leveled off. But with fracking, natural gas production has risen since around 2005. Trump supports fracking. Harris opposed fracking in the past, but she told CNN in August 2024 that she won’t ban it.

What about coal?

U.S. coal production is a different story. It peaked in 2008 and has been going down sharply since then.

Coal is more susceptible to government actions than oil and gas – 40% of it is produced on federal land, compared with 24% for oil and 11% for natural gas. And it has seen federal policy swings.

For example, in 2016, then-President Barack Obama banned new coal-mining leases in the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming, where the majority of coal production on federal land takes place. The Trump administration lifted that freeze a year later, but a court ordered a pause of Trump’s move. The ban was eventually revoked by a court during the Biden administration. Then the Biden administration again ended new leases in the Powder River Basin.

But coal’s decline was also about economics. As natural gas became cheaper, it increasingly replaced coal in U.S. electricity production.

The decrease in coal production is the main reason U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have been falling even as fossil fuel production rises. Rising renewable energy production and increasing efficiency in some technologies have also helped cut emissions.

The bottom line

Trump can take credit for allowing more leases for oil and gas drilling. The Biden-Harris administration, while it issued permits for oil and gas drilling and production increased on its watch, established several rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

Presidents’ actions can matter for the industry’s future, but the major factors in U.S. oil and gas production so far have been increased production efficiency, increased global demand and the lower cost of natural gas compared with coal.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Valerie Thomas is a Professor of Industrial Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Opinion


Why a ruling against the Internet Archive threatens the future of America’s libraries

The decision locks libraries into a predatory ecosystem. Congress must act.

THE INTERNET ARCHIVE IS MIRRORED IN CANADA THANKS TO TRUMP

By Chris Lewis
September 11, 2024

Stephanie Arnett/MIT Technology Review | NYPL (lion), Adobe Stock, Envato

I was raised in the 1980s and ’90s, and for my generation and generations before us, the public library was an equalizing force in every town, helping anyone move toward the American dream. In Chantilly, Virginia, where I grew up, it didn’t matter if you didn’t have a computer or your parents lacked infinite money for tutors—you could get a lifetime's education for free at the public library. A ruling from the US Second Circuit against the Internet Archive and in favor of publisher Hachette has just thrown that promise of equality into doubt by limiting libraries’ access to digital lending.

To understand why this is so important to the future of libraries, you first have to understand the dire state of library e-book lending.


Libraries have traditionally operated on a basic premise: Once they purchase a book, they can lend it out to patrons as much (or as little) as they like. Library copies often come from publishers, but they can also come from donations, used book sales, or other libraries. However the library obtains the book, once the library legally owns it, it is theirs to lend as they see fit.

Not so for digital books. To make licensed e-books available to patrons, libraries have to pay publishers multiple times over. First, they must subscribe (for a fee) to aggregator platforms such as Overdrive. Aggregators, like streaming services such as HBO’s Max, have total control over adding or removing content from their catalogue. Content can be removed at any time, for any reason, without input from your local library. The decision happens not at the community level but at the corporate one, thousands of miles from the patrons affected.


Then libraries must purchase each individual copy of each individual title that they want to offer as an e-book. These e-book copies are not only priced at a steep markup—up to 300% over consumer retail—but are also time- and loan-limited, meaning the files self-destruct after a certain number of loans. The library then needs to repurchase the same book, at a new price, in order to keep it in stock.

This upending of the traditional order puts massive financial strain on libraries and the taxpayers that fund them. It also opens up a world of privacy concerns; while libraries are restricted in the reader data they can collect and share, private companies are under no such obligation.

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Some libraries have turned to another solution: controlled digital lending, or CDL, a process by which a library scans the physical books it already has in its collection, makes secure digital copies, and lends those out on a one-to-one “owned to loaned” ratio. The Internet Archive was an early pioneer of this technique.

When the digital copy is loaned, the physical copy is sequestered from borrowing; when the physical copy is checked out, the digital copy becomes unavailable. The benefits to libraries are obvious; delicate books can be circulated without fear of damage, volumes can be moved off-site for facilities work without interrupting patron access, and older and endangered works become searchable and can get a second chance at life. Library patrons, who fund their local library’s purchases with their tax dollars, also benefit from the ability to freely access the books.

Publishers are, unfortunately, not a fan of this model, and in 2020 four of them sued the Internet Archive over its CDL program. The suit ultimately focused on the Internet Archive’s lending of 127 books that were already commercially available through licensed aggregators. The publisher plaintiffs accused the Internet Archive of mass copyright infringement, while the Internet Archive argued that its digitization and lending program was a fair use. The trial court sided with the publishers, and on September 4, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reaffirmed that decision with some alterations to the underlying reasoning.

This decision harms libraries. It locks them into an e-book ecosystem designed to extract as much money as possible while harvesting (and reselling) reader data en masse. It leaves local communities’ reading habits at the mercy of curatorial decisions made by four dominant publishing companies thousands of miles away. It steers Americans away from one of the few remaining bastions of privacy protection and funnels them into a surveillance ecosystem that, like Big Tech, becomes more dangerous with each passing data breach. And by increasing the price for access to knowledge, it puts up even more barriers between underserved communities and the American dream.

It doesn’t stop there. This decision also renders the fair use doctrine—legally crucial in everything from parody to education to news reporting—almost unusable. And while there were occasional moments of sanity (such as recognizing that a “Donate here” button does not magically turn a nonprofit into a commercial enterprise), this decision fractured, rather than clarified, the law.

If the courts won’t recognize CDL-based library lending as fair use, then the next step falls to Congress. Libraries are in crisis, caught between shrinking budgets and growing demand for services. Congress must act now to ensure that a pillar of equality in our communities isn’t sacrificed on the altar of profit.

Chris Lewis is president and CEO of Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group that works to shape technology policy in the public interest. Public Knowledge promotes freedom of expression, an open internet, and access to affordable communications tools and creative works.