US adopts lethal Israeli tactic to “protect” civilians

A Palestinian man searches for victims in the ruins of the Dheir family home, destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza, on 29 July 2014. The attack killed 19 people, including 9 children, despite the firing of a so-called warning missile.
Eyad Al BabaThe Electronic Intifada

Rania Khalek-29 April 2016

The US military has adopted an Israeli procedure known as “roof-knocking” in its war on Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh, adding yet another failed Israeli tactic to its counterterrorism toolkit.

Roof-knocking entails striking the roof or upper story of a home or building with a mortar shell or missile prior to bombing it with even bigger munitions, in a supposed effort to warn civilians inside that they should evacuate.

Israel used this tactic to absolve itself

of liability for killing civilians in Gaza. But human rights investigators found the tactic to be ineffective and at times deadly to the very civilians it was allegedly supposed to protect.

Two years later, however, the US is copying it.

Air Force Major-General Peter Gersten, deputy commander for operations and intelligence for the anti-ISIS coalition, told reporters on Tuesday that the US employed Israel’s roof-knocking tactic in the killing of an alleged ISIS financial operative in Mosul, Iraq, in early April.

The ISIS “finance emir,” as Gersten called him, “was the major distributor of funds to Daesh fighters,” which raises questions about the lawfulness of targeting a person for death while they’re not engaged in combat.

“We watched him come and go from his house, we watched his supplies, we watched the security that was involved in it. And we also watched occasionally a female and her children in and out of the quarters,” he said.

Gersten then invoked the familiar Israeli and American excuse for civilian casualties, saying, “They are using the civilian force as human shields.”

Inspiration from Israel

According to Gersten’s retelling, the US devised a strategy to avoid harming the woman and children inside.

“We went as far as actually to put a Hellfire [missile] on top of the building and air-burst it so it wouldn’t destroy the building, simply knock on the roof to ensure that she and the children were out of the building,” he explained. “And then we proceeded with our operations.”

Gersten went on to confirm that Israel was the inspiration.

“We took the tactics and technique and procedure from” Israel, he told reporters. “We’ve certainly watched and observed their procedure.”

Gersten noted that the US also dropped leaflets to warn people below of the coming bombardment, another method Israel employed in Gaza despite there being nowhere safe to flee.

But just like in Gaza, these tactics failed to prevent civilian deaths. The woman whose life Gersten claims the US military was trying to protect was killed in the US strike.

Gersten acknowledged that the US operation “ultimately ended up in a civilian casualty.”

“So, as much as we tried to do exactly what we wanted to do and minimize civilian casualties, post-weapons release, she actually ran back into the building,” he said.

Defying logic

Gersten should have known – by examining the actual record of the Israelis – that the roof-knocking procedure is no way to protect civilians.

Israel’s military assault killed 2,251 Palestinians in Gaza in the summer of 2014.

According to the independent inquiry commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, the vast majority –1,462 – were civilians, including 299 women and 551 children, 68 percent of whom were under the age of 12.

Another 11,000 Palestinians were injured, including 3,540 women and 3,436 children, nearly 10 percent of them suffering permanent disabilities.

In November 2014, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey claimed that the US military had sent a “lessons-learned team” to Israel weeks after its war on Gaza to study and emulate “the measures [Israel] took to prevent civilian casualties.” Dempsey specifically applauded Israel’s roof-knocking tactic.

But in a statement to The Electronic Intifada, the Pentagon denied that the US was seeking Israel’s advice, noting that Israel did not do enough to avoid civilian casualties.

Ineffective

Meanwhile, human rights investigations have consistently found roof-knocking to be wildly ineffective.

The independent inquiry commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council concluded “that the ‘roof-knocking’ technique is not effective.”

It noted that the explosions often caused confusion and gave residents little time to react.

Israeli airstrikes usually followed within 3 to 5 minutes of the roof knock, according to the report, giving occupants little time to flee, especially small children, the elderly and disabled.

On 29 July 2014, Israel launched a guided bomb at the Dheir family house in Rafah in southern Gaza, totally destroying it.

In total, 19 family members were killed including nine children and seven women. One of the women was pregnant. This attack followed a roof knock.

But according to the UN report, the family members “did not understand that the strike was a warning until they were told by a neighbor that they had to flee. While on their way out, 19 out of the 22 individuals present in the house died.”

In other instances, “families fled buildings following an airstrike on the roof or top floor believing that the strike was a warning, only to be struck by a targeted missile once outside the house and on the street.”

As Amnesty International’s Philip Luther stated, “There is no way that firing a missile at a civilian home can constitute an effective ‘warning.’ Amnesty International has documented cases of civilians killed or injured by such missiles in previous Israeli military operations on the Gaza Strip.”

Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch, 

similarly declared: “Warning families to flee fighting doesn’t make them fair targets just because they’re unable to do so, and deliberately attacking them is a war crime.”

Amnesty went further in a detailed report that accused Israel of knowingly bombing homes and buildings full of civilians without any warning at all, wiping out entire families in the process.

Even US military officials, no strangers to war crimes, were appalled by Israel’s behavior in Gaza.

“It’s not mowing the lawn,” commented one senior US military officer, using Israel’s euphemism for its routine assaults on the Gaza Strip. “It’s removing the topsoil.”

The Israeli model doesn’t work

Despite some acknowledgement of Israel’s atrocious conduct, the US has made a habit of adopting Israeli policies as its own, with dreadful consequences.

Israel’s “targeted killing” policy, though condemned by the Bush administration in 2001, has been embraced as the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism strategy.

What was once a highly controversial Israeli method to suppress Palestinian resistance is now used by the US tokill thousands of people in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria and, once again, in Iraq.

The CIA cited an Israeli court ruling to justify its worldwide network of secret torture dungeons that subjected prisoners to water-boarding, sleep and sensory deprivation, sexual torture, threats to kill and rape loved ones, mock executions, electrocution and medically unnecessary “rectal feeding.”

In his book, Consequence: A Memoir, former US interrogator Eric Fair reveals that Israeli forces trained US interrogators in how to use a torture device known as the “Palestinian chair.”

Fair says that the Israeli-developed torture technique, which immobilizes its victims in an excruciating stress position, was used on Iraqis in Fallujah.

It is no coincidence that the US “war on terror” bears a striking resemblance to Israel’s occupation and colonization in Palestine.

After all, the “war on terror” doctrine was first pushed by Israel to justify its criminal conduct against Palestinians and their neighbors.

The US applied a similar framework to its imperial project in the Middle East and the consequences have been nothing short of catastrophic.

The US “war on terror” has coincided with a nine-fold increase in terrorism-related deaths around the world since 2000, while generating the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War.

These Israeli tactics have clearly backfired, producing anger, hatred and blowback against the US while making the world a less free and more dangerous place.

Yet the pattern continues.

Islamic State suicide attacks kill 32 in southern Iraq

Civilians gather at the site of a car bomb attack in Samawa, south of Baghdad, May 1, 2016.

REUTERS/ALAA AL-MARJANI

Mourners react during a funeral of a victim who was killed in a bomb attack in Samawa, south of Baghdad, Iraq May 1, 2016. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

Sun May 1, 2016

Two suicide car bombs claimed by Islamic State killed at least 32 people and wounded 75 others in the centre of the southern Iraqi city of Samawa on Sunday, police and medics said.

The first blast was near a local government building and the second one about 60 metres (65 yards) away at a bus station, police sources said. The death toll was expected to keep rising.

Unverified online photographs showed a large plume of smoke rising above the buildings as well as burnt out cars and bodies on the ground at the site of one of the blasts, including several children. Police and firefighters carried victims on stretchers and in their arms.

Islamic State said it had attacked a gathering of special forces in Samawa, 230 km (140 miles) south of the capital, with one car bomb and then blew up the second when security forces responded to the site.

Islamic State holds positions mostly in Sunni areas of the country's north and west, far from the mainly Shi'ite southern provinces where Samawa is located. Such attacks are relatively rare.

The rise of the ultra-hardline Sunni insurgents has exacerbated Iraq's sectarian conflict, mostly between Shi'ites and Sunnis, which emerged after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

The quota-based governing system put in place by the United States at the time is being challenged by hundreds of protesters who camped out overnight in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone after storming the parliament building.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Haider Kadhim; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Alison Williams)

Sacked workers in Saudi Arabia set fire to buses in protest over unpaid salaries

50,000 foreign labourers have been sacked by the Binladin Group and some have not been paid salaries in at least four months

Seven buses were set ablaze in Mecca on Saturday by workers over unpaid salaries (Twitter)

Rori Donaghy-Sunday 1 May 2016

Workers at one of Saudi Arabia’s largest employers set fire to buses on Saturday amid protests at being laid off and told to leave the kingdom without being paid for several months work.

Footage uploaded to YouTube showed employees of the Binladin Group protesting outside the construction company’s offices in Mecca province, and setting fire to several buses.

Saudi daily Okaz reported that fires on seven buses in Mecca had been extinguished without any fatalities, adding that local authorities had launched an investigation into the incident.

However, the newspaper did not mention the cause of the fire, which was by angry former Binladin employees.

The protesting workers are among 50,000 foreign labourers who have been sacked by the private company as the kingdom’s revenues have declined due to low oil prices, which have forced government spending cuts.

Saudi daily al-Watan reported on Friday that Binladin had given the sacked foreign workers a permanent exit visa to leave the country but many of them do not want to leave because they claim not to have been paid properly. 

Watan said some of the workers had not been paid in at least four months, and that they are now holding daily protests in front of the company’s offices.

The mass sacking by Binladin constitutes a 25 percent reduction of its total 200,000 workforce, according to its LinkedIn page.

The company, which was established in 1931 by the father of the late al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, is one of Saudi Arabia’s largest employers and it has been responsible for large construction projects including building towers in the capital Riyadh, and universities and airports in the western port city of Jeddah.

But the company has reportedly been suffering from debts of up to $30bn and it has been engaged in a series of pay disputes with workers, which in March led to protests outside their offices in Riyadh.

Binladin may also be feeling the pinch because of a catastrophe at one of its projects last year, when a crane in the holy city of Mecca collapsed and killed 107 people.

The incident prompted the government to suspend the company from future contracts, and led to an investigation by the finance ministry into its existing state projects.

Saudi Arabia has been forced to cut its government spending as oil prices, which account for the majority of the kingdom’s income, have plummeted by up to 70 percent in two years.

The Binladin group has not issued a statement about the reported sacking and the pay dispute with workers. 

Do Ukraine’s Leaders Understand Freedom of the Press?

When it comes to the treatment of journalists, Kiev is starting to look a lot like Moscow.

BY ANNA NEMTSOVA-APRIL 30, 2016

On Tuesday, Ukrainian authorities banned the country’s top television anchor, Savik Shuster, from working in the country. Shuster, who is a Canadian citizen, hosts the country’s leading Russian-language talk show,Shuster LIVE, which is watched by four million people each week. The government’s action prompted corresponding outrage. Mustafa Nayem, a former journalist who is one of the leading reformists in parliament, assailedthe move on his Facebook page, calling it a fresh example of the government’s “idiocy.” Vitaly Klitschko, the mayor of Kiev, also condemnedthe measure, and offered Shuster a slot on a TV channel run by the city.

Later in the week, another Ukrainian agency blocked the ban, saying that Shuster’s case required closer scrutiny. But that’s no guarantee that the final decision will go his way. In any case, the ban has already struck a blow to Ukraine’s image as an aspiring liberal democracy — coming as it does after a series of other moves that call into serious question the authorities’ commitment to freedom of speech.

“I’ve already been banned before once, in Putin’s Russia, in 2004,” Shuster told me earlier this week. In the 1990s he was a star on the Russian airwaves, first as the head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s bureau in Moscow, then as a reporter for the private broadcaster NTV. His talk show Freedom of Speech enjoyed a high profile during the late 1990s and early 2000s, even, at first, surviving a crackdown on his network organized by President Putin.

Shuster kept the show going long after most of his colleagues had left the country, but was ultimately forced to follow them into exile. The Kremlin was particularly angered by his coverage of the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002. Shuster allowed the relatives of the hostages to come on his show, where they begged the authorities to open negotiations with the Chechen terrorists who were holding their family members captive. (Ultimately 133 hostages and 40 terrorists were killed when Russian special forces stormed the theater.) Shuster says that the Russian president, who has always declared a tough line on terrorism, took his show as a direct affront. “Putin did just the same thing that Poroshenko is doing now,” Shuster told me. “First the Kremlin banned me from working at NTV, and then from living in Russia.”

In this latest case, it looks as though Shuster may have provoked Poroshenko’s personal ire as well. Shuster often conducts impromptu polls of the studio audience during his live broadcasts, and last week he asked them what they thought of the president’s recent claim to have “shown determination” in the fight against corruption. Ninety-three percent of the audience disagreed. “We carefully chose our 100 participants to represent the full range of political views in today’s Ukraine,” Shuster told me. “We actually have Ukraine in our studio.” The result of the vote, he said, “was the last thing the Ukrainian authorities wanted to hear.”

Despite Kiev’s claims that it’s trying to adopt European-style rule of law, “Ukraine has not become closer to Europe in the way its authorities wield power,” said Masha Lipman, an analyst with George Washington University. As she noted, the Ukrainian government has banned 12 Russian television channels from broadcasting in Ukraine, and has blacklisted dozens of Russian cultural figures, including journalists. “Unlike Russia,” Lipman said, “Ukraine still has opposition parties, but the tools used by the Ukrainian government are not much different from those used in Russia.”Earlier this month Kiev issued a law banning the showing of Russian-made films — part of a tit-for-tat culture war fueled by the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists are at war with the Ukrainian government.

Needless to say, Russia has also banned Ukrainian cultural figures and harshly suppressed any criticism of the Kremlin’s policies toward Ukraine. Russia’s parliament has been churning out oppressive laws at a startling rate. In February, a Russian court sentenced a woman to 320 hours of “corrective labor” merely for sharing criticism of Moscow’s annexation of Crimea on social media. Earlier this month, the Russian government outlawed the Tatar Assembly, which peaceably represented the Tatar ethnic minority in Crimea for years, after declaring it “an extremist group.” The Kremlin routinely denounces civic groups — even the most inoffensive ones — as “foreign agents,” a definition that curtails their ability to work and raise funds. Pro-government thugs routinely result to violence. This week some of them stormed an event commemorating Stalin’s terror, where they poured green antiseptic over Russian writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya and audience members.

Ukraine hasn’t quite reached that level of paranoia yet. Even so, it is clearlyheaded in a bad direction. In the heady days of the Euromaidan uprising, when Ukrainian activists took to the streets to denounce then-President Viktor Yanukovych and demand European-style reforms, many of their Russian counterparts looked up to them as models. One wonders if that would still be the case.

Now Yanukovych’s successor, President Poroshenko, is feeling increasingly besieged in his own right. The war in the East continues to simmer. The economy is weak. Popular anger at the failure to deliver on promises of reform is rising. And his own hold on power looks increasingly fragile: The latest polls give him a dismal approval rating of 19 percent.

Given this dire situation, one can easily imagine that the temptation to crack down on his critics is growing. Will Poroshenko be able to resist it?

Photo by STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Leaked TTIP documents cast doubt on EU-US trade deal

Greenpeace says internal documents show US attempts to lower or circumvent EU protection for environment and public health

Protesters wear masks of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel as they demonstrate against TTIP free trade agreement. Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters

Arthur Neslen in Brussels-Sunday 1 May 2016

Talks for a free trade deal between Europe and the US face a serious impasse with “irreconcilable” differences in some areas, according to leaked negotiating texts.

The two sides are also at odds over US demands that would require the EU to break promises it has made on environmental protection.

President Obama said last week he was confident a deal could be reached. But the leaked negotiating drafts and internal positions, which were obtained byGreenpeace and seen by the Guardian, paint a very different picture.

“Discussions on cosmetics remain very difficult and the scope of common objectives fairly limited,” says one internal note by EU trade negotiators. Because of a European ban on animal testing, “the EU and US approaches remain irreconcilable and EU market access problems will therefore remain,” the note says.

Talks on engineering were also “characterised by continuous reluctance on the part of the US to engage in this sector,” the confidential briefing says.

These problems are not mentioned in a separate report on the state of the talks, also leaked, which the European commission has prepared for scrutiny by the European parliament.

These outline the positions exchanged between EU and US negotiators between the 12th and the 13th round of TTIP talks, which took place in New York last week.

The public document offers a robust defence of the EU’s right to regulate and create a court-like system for disputes, unlike the internal note, which does not mention them.

Jorgo Riss, the director of Greenpeace EU, said: “These leaked documents give us an unparalleled look at the scope of US demands to lower or circumvent EU protections for environment and public health as part of TTIP. The EU position is very bad, and the US position is terrible. The prospect of a TTIP compromising within that range is an awful one. The way is being cleared for a race to the bottom in environmental, consumer protection and public health standards.”

US proposals include an obligation on the EU to inform its industries of any planned regulations in advance, and to allow them the same input into EU regulatory processes as European firms.

American firms could influence the content of EU laws at several points along the regulatory line, including through a plethora of proposed technical working groups and committees.

“Before the EU could even pass a regulation, it would have to go through a gruelling impact assessment process in which the bloc would have to show interested US parties that no voluntary measures, or less exacting regulatory ones, were possible,” Riss said.

The US is also proposing new articles on “science and risk” to give firms greater regulatory say. Disputes over pesticides residues and food safety would be dealt with by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Codex Alimentarius system.

Environmentalists say the body has loose rules on corporate influence, allowing employees of companies such as BASF, Nestle and Coca Cola to sit on – and sometimes lead – national delegations. 

Some 44% of its decisions on pesticides residues have been less stringent than EU ones, with 40% of rough equivalence and 16% being more demanding, according to Greenpeace.

GM foods could also find a widening window into Europe, with the US pushing for a working group to adopt a “low level presence initiative”. This would allow the import of cargo containing traces of unauthorised GM strains. The EU currently blocks these because of food safety and cross-pollination concerns.

The EU has not yet accepted the US demands, but they are uncontested in the negotiators’ note, and no counter-proposals have been made in these areas.

In January, the EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström said [pdf] the precautionary principle, obliging regulatory caution where there is scientific doubt, was a core and non-negotiable EU principle. 

She said: “We will defend the precautionary approach to regulation in Europe, in TTIP and in all our other agreements.” But the principle is not mentioned in the 248 pages of TTIP negotiating texts.

The European commission has also promised to safeguard environmental laws, defend international standards and protect the EU’s right to set high green benchmarks in future.

But the new leak will not placate critics of the deal, who have pointed to attempts by fossil fuel firms and others to influence its outcome, as a sign of things to come.

The EU negotiators internal note says “the US expressed that it would have to consult with its chemical industry on how to position itself” on issues of market access for non-agricultural goods.

Where industry lobbying in regulatory processes is concerned, the US also “insisted” that the EU be “required” to involve US experts in its development of electrotechnical standards.

State of emergency declared in Baghdad as protesters take Iraqi parliament

Demonstrators climbed over blast walls surrounding Baghdad’s highly fortified Green Zone and could be seen streaming into the parliament building.

By Loveday Morris and Mustafa Salim-April 30

BAGHDAD — Protesters stormed Iraq’s parliament Saturday in a dramatic culmination of months of demonstrations, casting uncertainty over the tenure of the country’s prime minister and the foundations of the political system laid in place after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Security forces declared a state of emergency in the Iraqi capital after demonstrators climbed over blast walls and broke through cordons to enter Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone,

also home to ministries and the U.S. embassy. Many were followers of Iraq’s powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has been urging his supporters onto the streets.

Lawmakers fled the building in panic, with some berated and struck as they left. Others were trapped in the basement for hours, too afraid to face the crowds who complain that the country’s political class is racked by corruption.

It was a day of high drama for a country that is no stranger to revolution and that has seen all of its leaders overthrown from the time the state was established in 1921 until the U.S. invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. At issue now is the quota system introduced when the U.S.-led coalition put together Iraq’s first post-invasion government, which determines Iraq’s political positions according to sect and ethnicity.

The turmoil threatened to unseat the already embattled prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, with whom the United States has partnered in the fight against Islamic State militants in Iraq but whose efforts at reform have stumbled. U.S. officials have expressed concern that the unrest could affect the battlefield as Iraq also struggles with an extreme budget crisis caused by a plunge in oil prices.

“Today the people announced their revolution,” said Sadr, who led a violent resistance against U.S. troops during the Iraq War, in a statement Saturday night. “History will record the birth of a new Iraq, from the ashes of corruption and the corrupt.”

Entering the parliament building, which, like the rest of the Green Zone, has been off-
limits to the public for the past 13 years, protesters reacted with jubilation. To many, the area has become a symbol of corruption, the place where Iraq’s political elite live walled off from the rest of the country.

They crammed the building’s main hall, chanting and waving flags.

“I was thrilled to be in that room. It was like being in a place you only see on television,” said 26-year-old Abdullah al-Zaidi. “When I entered I was looking at chairs, and I wanted to break them because the politicians are killing us and stealing from us from these chairs.”

He said he didn’t, as organizers urged protesters to remain peaceful. However, television footage showed that some others did.

As evening fell, Zaidi and thousands of other protesters had moved their sit-in to a parade ground near the Hands of Victory monument — an arch shaped from crossed swords and one of the capital’s most famous landmarks — putting them less than a mile from the U.S. Embassy compound.

The embassy denied that it had begun evacuating staff or had provided safe haven for Iraqi politicians. Organizers urged protesters not to attack embassies or other properties in the area.

Still, members of parliament, many of whom live in the Green Zone, went into hiding, and some left the country.

Shwan Dawoodi, a Kurdish lawmaker, said they were “scared for their lives.”

“What’s happening in the streets is terrifying,” he said by phone. He said he was attacked as he left parliament.

Ammar Toma, a politician with the Shiite Fadhila Party, was also accosted as he tried to leave. “Hit him, hit him!” one protester shouted. Five Kurdish lawmakers were rescued by Kurdish peshmerga forces after locking themselves in a room in the building for safety.

One video posted online showed protesters riding around on a military vehicle.

Many politicians said the day’s events marked a turning point.

“This is an end to the political system put in place after 2003,” said Dawoodi, speaking by phone after he fled the parliament building. “A big part of the blame for this is on America, which left Iraq without solving this crisis it created.”

He blamed the prime minister for putting lawmakers’ lives at risk, after local television reports cited Abadi as saying he had ordered that protesters be allowed into the Green Zone. Abadi’s office issued a statement denying that he had done so.

A soldier at one gate into the Green Zone recounted an exchange between security forces trying to hold back protesters near parliament. “There were orders to stop them and to not allow them to enter, but the soldiers responded that they couldn’t,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

At another gate, security forces pushed back demonstrators with tear gas as the sound of gunfire broke out, video from the scene showed.

“That’s it for Abadi,” said parliamentarian Hisham al-

Suhail, who said dozens of lawmakers were exchanging messages saying the prime minister is not fit to run the country. “What’s happened has ruined everything we’ve built over the last 13 years. The Green Zone represents the whole government of Iraq.”

The speaker of parliament, Salim al-Jubouri, who a group of rebel parliamentarians attempted to oust in a vote last week, said the attack on the legislature was an “attack on the prestige of the state,” with its members “servants” of the Iraqi people.

But protesters say that Iraqi politicians are corrupt and stealing the county’s oil wealth.

Street protests began last summer, when tens of thousands demonstrated against corruption and a lack of services. They were reinvigorated when Sadr put his weight behind them earlier this year, calling for Iraq’s government to be replaced by technocrats.

Under immense pressure, Abadi has tried to reshuffle his cabinet and meet the demonstrators’ demands.

But he has been hampered by a deeply divided parliament, and sessions have descended into chaos as lawmakers have thrown water bottles and punches at one another.

Protesters outside have watched the school-yard behavior with growing impatience.

Earlier in the day, not enough lawmakers had turned up to officially convene a session in which Abadi was due to present names for a cabinet reshuffle.

Sadr held a news conference from the southern city of Najaf.

“They are against reform. They hope to behead the will of the Iraqi people,” he said of the country’s politicians. “I’m with the people, no matter what they decide. I’m standing and waiting for a major uprising of the Iraqi people.”

Shortly afterward, protesters pushed through the multiple security cordons around parliament.

After the breach, security forces announced that they had closed all roads into the capital, but they did not go as far as to reinstate a curfew.

“We are in the highest degree of readiness,” said Col. Ibrahim al-Baydani, a spokesman for the military, noting that Baghdad was already on high alert because of a Shiite pilgrimage. The Islamic State attempted to bomb pilgrims on the route Saturday morning. Unable to get near the pilgrims, the suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb among crowds at a busy sheep market instead, an official said.

“The enemy might try to take advantage of the exceptional situation of the country to carry out attacks inside the capital,” he said, adding that commanders on the street had been given the authority to set up checkpoints or close roads as they see fit, without permission from central command.

Concerns that Iraq’s political crisis could hamper its battle against the Islamic State have prompted a flurry of high-level visits by U.S. politicians in recent weeks, most recently by Vice President Biden on Thursday.

“Our focus remains the defeat of ISIL,” Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S. military, tweeted on Saturday. “Our operations continue, and we have not been interrupted.”

Abadi called for protesters to return to areas of the capital that have been designated for demonstrations. The security situation, he said, was “under control.”

But as night fell, young Iraqis used Facebook’s “check in” feature to mark their locations at landmarks in the Green Zone, in what was for some of them their first visit to the heart of the capital.

May Day rallies turn violent in Europe, Turkey as police & protesters clash (VIDEOS)

German police use pepper spray against right-wing protestors during a demonstration in the town of Plauen, Germany, May 1, 2016 © Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters

Published time: 1 May, 2016 21:11

Thousands have taken to the streets globally to mark International Workers' Day. In several European countries demonstrations which began in a generally peaceful way turned violent and tear gas and water cannon were both deployed.

Labor Day protests in Turkey resulted in at least one death, with one man being killed in an incident in Istanbul. He was run over by a police water cannon vehicle, as the riot police presence was huge on the streets of Turkey's largest city. Some 25,000 officers were on duty, AFP reported, with central Taksim Square having been cordoned off. To prevent people from joining the protests' hotspot, police fired tear gas and water cannon. Over 200 people were detained, the agency reported citing the Istanbul governor's office. Dozens of Molotov cocktails, hand grenades and fireworks were reportedly seized from protesters.

READ MORE: 1 dead, police disperse Istanbul May Day protesters with tear gas, water cannon (VIDEOS)

In the French capital, May Day celebrations coincided with nationwide escalating protests by trade unions and students taking a stand against labor reforms proposed by the French government and set to come before parliament next week. Sporadic clashes with police were reported on the streets of Paris. Riot police resorted to tear gas as groups of troublemakers in masks reportedly aimed to confront security forces. Three young people were detained, Reuters reported. Having called attacks and violence against law enforcement "unacceptable," the country's Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Sunday that authorities would "respond with the greatest of determination to these troublemakers," as cited by AFP.

READ MORE: Protesters clash with riot police at May Day rally in Paris (VIDEO)

German police used water cannon against protesters in the city of Plauen in Saxony. Around 500 right-wingers and some 1,500 left-wing protesters took to the streets of the eastern German city, RT’s sister video agency Ruptly reported. While the right-wing group named "The Third Way" marched in the city, counter-protests of left-wingers also gathered, which resulted in clashes between opposing demonstrators.

READ MORE: 400 arrested in Stuttgart, protesters clash with police outside AfD party congress (VIDEOS)

In Italy police also had to interfere when far-left protesters in Turin, in northern part of the country, staged a counter-demonstration to oppose supporters of the ruling Democratic Party (PD), who had gathered in the city. The protesters lit flares and held banners denouncing the PD leader and Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Renzi. Clashes broke out between security forces and far-left activists who attempted to confront PD supporters. Police responded by charging at the protesters in order to separate the two groups.

READ MORE: Clashes erupt as protesters slam PM Renzi in Italy 

Elsewhere in the world, May Day rallies have been generally peaceful, with tens of thousands people having taken to the streets for both spring festivities and rallies in support of broader workers' rights. In Moscow, some 100,000 people gathered in the Russian capital's Red Square for a cheerful parade. In Vienna, Chancellor Werner Faymann addressed less friendly crowds, with some 80,000 people gathered in the capital of Austria, where the government is currently losing to far-right movement in the first round of presidential election. Tens of thousands of workers also protested in South Korea, expressing displeasure with planned labor reforms.

Malaysia: Hundreds of workers march in May Day rally to demand better wages

May Day 2016 rally in Kuala Lumpur. Image via Facebook.

1st May 2016

DEMANDING better working wages and conditions, several hundreds of protesters marched in a peaceful rally in the Malaysian capital this morning.

The crowd had gathered outside a shopping mall called Maju Junction in Kuala Lumpur this morning in a bid to push for a host of various issues affecting workers nationwide.

According to The Star, the main agenda was the call to increase the minimum wage from the existing RM900 (US$230) to RM1,500 (US$380).

High cost of living, the Goods and Services Tax (GST), and freedom of the press, were also among the issues raised during the rally, which was jointly-organised by a socialist political party and civil society groups.

The paper also noted a factory workers’ association’s called for the Government to introduce a special to assist retrenched workers until they found other employment, while a small group of participants made calls for greater gender equality.

Diversity, a non-governmental organisation called Diversity said had made calls for reforms on laws that encouraged gender discrimination

One of its members, Yee Shan, 32, was quoted saying that it was important for the people who share similar beliefs to take this opportunity and voice out their grouses.

At press time, the rally had gone on without any reported incident as police were monitoring the situation.

A Wife Finds A Loophole For Her Husband’s Greedy Dying Wish

 By Elyse Wanshel

Maya Angelou once poignantly said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Many of us strive for this. We do good, moral, and upright things because we want to leave a positive legacy in our wake.

Unfortunately, not all of us feel this way. Some people give in to their more selfish emotions, wanting to enjoy their lives on their own terms regardless of how it affects others, and one of the most common ways people do this is by succumbing to greed.

One widow, in a story that has haunted me for years, was nothing like her late spouse. Her husband was a man who worked very hard for his money and felt that because he did, he deserved to keep it all to himself. Guided by this kind of moral compass, he also expected his honorable wife put her morals on the line to grant him a dying wish. At the funeral of her husband, however, she figured out a way of keeping her integrity while granting his wish, and the idea is nothing short of brilliant…


“There was a man who had worked all of his life and has saved all of his money.

He was a real cheapskate when it came to his money. He loved money more than just about anything, and just before he died, he said to his wife, ‘Now listen, when I die I want you to take all my money and place it in the casket with me. Because I want to take all my money to the after life.’

So he got his wife to promise him with all her heart that when he died she would put all the money in the casket with him. When one day he died.”

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“He was stretched out in the casket, the wife was sitting there in black next to their best friend. When they finished the ceremony, just before the undertakers got ready to close the casket, the wife said, ‘Wait a minute!’

She had a shoebox with her, she came over with the box and placed it in the casket. Then the undertakers locked the casket and rolled it away.”

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“Her friend said, ‘I hope you weren’t crazy enough to put all that money in there with that stingy old man.’
She said, ‘Yes, I promised. I’m a good Christian, I can’t lie. I promised him that I was to put that money in that casket with him.’

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‘You mean to tell me you put every cent of his money in the casket with him?’

‘I sure did,’ said the wife. ‘I got it all together, put it into my account and I wrote him a check.’ ”

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