No One is Exempt from Riot Prosecution in the UK

Forces have been united across the country, determined to send a clear message to those involved in the physical destruction of our streets, sustained violence against officers and spread of online hate.

“I am pleased we have now made more than 1000 arrests and almost 600 charges. We expect these figures to continue rising in the coming weeks as investigations continue and our communities begin to recover.

“While the situation seems to have stabilised over the last few days, I know it will leave an imprint on our communities and on our officers for years to come and I’d like to thank them once again for their continued support.”

Chief Constable BJ Harrington, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) lead for public order

 

This week our prosecutors have continued to work round-the-clock to authorise charges speedily and secure convictions for those involved in the ugly disorder and violence we have seen – and as of yesterday evening the Crown Prosecution Service had charged 389* people.

“We expect this number to grow as we continue to authorise more charges – and it is likely that we will see some of the most serious offences coming through the system in due course.

“Our close joint working with police forces across the country has allowed us to respond quickly to violent unrest to maintain public order and see swift justice served – and we will continue to make sure that those causing disruption in our communities, and inciting violence and hate online, face the consequences of their actions.”

Kris Venkatasami, Chief Crown Prosecutor for CPS South East and National Protest Lead

National Police Chiefs' Council, U.K.

 

 Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has made it abundantly clear that anyone and everyone, regardless of who they are, what their status is, how old or how young they are, will be punished for their role in participating in the recent riots occasioned by ordinary Brits speaking and acting their minds with the influx of economic migrants to Britain, and the economic and social burden their presence represents. And their resentment of a government that has failed to take firm, meaningful action to dam the flow of foreign internationals. 

Prosecutors warned a 13-year-old girl wearing a cream jumper holding her mother's hand as she pleaded guilty to taking part in the recent riots in Britain, that she could face a custodial sentence for kicking and punching the door of a hotel for asylum seekers in Aldershot on July 31. She was among a notable number of schoolchildren and elderly who were arrested throughout a week of disorder across England. Riots in which participants targeted hotels housing asylum seekers, looted shops and libraries and injured scores of police.

Passersby and curiosity-seekers, themselves not part of the rioters were also arrested, informed they were at the wrong spot at the wrong time and their presence was a provocation, since they lent themselves by being there, to the general disorder. They too will be liable to answer to the law, and the law will reciprocate by judging them and issuing a penalty in recognition of their participation, however unplanned and slight.

Far-right agitators are being blamed from the prime minister down through the chain of command, for the eruption of violent protests, named as provocateurs for fuelling the disturbances. Supporters of the former English Defence League in particular, founded in 2009 as an 'Islamophobic' group is being accused of adding fuel to the fire of racism and public malcontent. 

Police in Northern Ireland laid the blame on protests there, naming pro-U.K. loyalist paramilitaries for their role in stoking agitation in Belfast. The ensuing violence heightened official concerns at the phenomena of the sudden appearance of mobilized crowds across the nation. Swift justice against those involved was the vow of PM Keir Starmer, branding these citizens of discontent with government action/inaction to their complaints as "thugs".

Authorities appear to have overlooked issues of some depth that blight deprived, disaffected communities. An 11-year-old boy charged with offences including possession of petrol bombs in Belfast, and two 12-year-old boys convicted of violence against police in Manchester. Some 50 youths under age 18, according to police numbers, have been charged. While in Liverpool a 69-year-old man has been accused of vandalism. 19-year-old Kieron Gatenby's family was distraught when he was sentenced to 16 months of detention for throwing an egg during riots in Hartlepool.

Photograph:Alamy

What sparked the riots was a dreadful mass stabbing in Southport in north-east England where three girls were killed while they were involved in a Taylor Swift-themed dance event. People assumed the stabbing was carried out by a Muslim migrant leading them to attack a mosque, although the suspect was identified as having been born in Wales to Rwandan parents.

Local resident in Southport, Patrick 22, spoke to the AFP noting it was "idiotic" for the rioters to target a mosque. On the other hand, he averred, widespread and deep-rooted anger toward the establishment was responsible for the attacks on police. Riots took place in seven of Britain's ten most deprived neighbourhoods. Many of the places affected happen to hold higher than average numbers of asylum seekers.

These are poor neighbourhoods, where the residents are badly in need of government assistance. That assistance has been waylaid by government deciding to accommodate asylum seekers funded involuntarily by taxpayers, giving precedence over the perceived needs of migrants as opposed to the needs of the country's underprivileged population. Little wonder there is resentment and that those target populations burdened with a larger than average share of migrants -- seeing funding released for their needs while their own go unaddressed.

Leading to the situation where across the country about 1,024 people have been arrested, with 575 criminally charged. Rioters were charged with affray -- assaulting police officers and racially aggravated violence. A 22-year-old tossed a vacuum cleaner through a house window and faces a 26-month jail sentence, while another man has a three-year term in prison for grasping the baton of a police officer.

Police in Liverpool were able to create a buffer zone between groups of protesters  PA

The Holy Month of Ramadan in Israel

“Once again, extremists have hijacked the holy month of Ramadan. Once again, young thugs are shooting fireworks at police out of the third-holiest mosque in Islam. Once again, terror groups seek to leverage this into a broader confrontation with Israel."

"And once again, such behavior has gone uncriticized by moderate Arab states like Jordan. This pattern brings the region to the brink of war each year, with Ramadan wielded cynically as the predicate.”  Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President for Research, Federation for Defence of Democracies

 

“Palestinian extremists are once again inciting to violence at sensitive religious sites during Ramadan and Passover."

"They seek to take advantage of a pre-established media and political narrative that refuses to acknowledge a clear causal connection between the violence and reasonable Israeli security steps to constrain it."

"This framing not only misleads readers but fans the flames, with dangerous consequences for the people of the region.” 

Mark Dubowitz, CEO, Federation for Defense of Democracies

Police respond to Palestinian riots on Temple Mount, Israeli officer injured

"Several law-breaking youths and masked agitators [fortified the mosque] in order to disrupt public order and desecrate the mosque."  

"After many and prolonged attempts to get them out by talking to no avail, police forces were forced to enter the compound in order to get them out with the intentions to allow the Fajr [dawn] prayer and to prevent a violent disturbance." 

"When the police entered, stones were thrown at them and fireworks were fired from inside the mosque by a large group of agitators." 

Israeli Police report

Scores of Palestinians were arrested at Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli police early Wednesday in Jerusalem's Old City. Stun grenades were fired while Palestinians hurled rocks and fireworks, a burst of violence not entirely surprising given the tensions built up over the past months with Palestinian random attacks against Israelis increasing in numbers as a lead-up to Ramadan. In Gaza Palestinian terrorists attacked southern Israel with rocket fire, and repeated Israeli airstrikes ensued.

 

Muslims are marking their holy month of Ramadan, a time for introspection, prayer and sobering thought. It has also become a month of threats against Israel followed by violence, a ritual not entirely in keeping with the purpose of the holy month. Just as Jews in Israel and around the world were preparing for the onset of Passover, incitement to violence by Palestinian leadership led to frenzied activity on the Temple Mount around the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

 

Young Palestinian men were once again assembling rocky projectiles within the mosque, along with fireworks with the intention of attacking the Israeli Police whose function is to maintain calm and security during this time when thousands of Muslim worshippers are expected to throng to prayer at the mosque. The Palestinian militants barricaded themselves in the mosque while throwing rocks and fireworks at the police, preventing peaceful Muslims from either entering or exiting the mosque.

 

Al-Aqsa Mosque interior, Reuters

By morning, calm prevailed on the compound and shortly afterward it was reopened to worshippers. Dozens of Palestinians have time and again attempted to remain overnight in the mosque, barricading themselves within, stockpiling projectiles. Nightly, police entered to evict them. Palestinian terrorist groups gave warning of additional confrontations on the way. 

 

Medics of the Palestinian Red Crescent described 50 people having been injured at the mosque, while Israeli police spoke of 350 arrested. Most of those arrested from Al-Aqsa were released by early afternoon, while 50 remained in detention to have their cases heard on Friday. 

 

Smoke rises above buildings in Gaza City as the IDF launches air strikes on the Hamas-operated Palestinian enclave late April 6, 2023   Mohammed Abed/AFP

 

An Israeli soldier was shot and moderately wounded in the West Bank. A total of 34 rockets were fired by Palestinians, with air raid sirens sounding in the region just as residents prepared for the weeklong Passover holiday."We don't want this to escalate, [but] we will respond very aggressively", stated Lt.Col. Richard Hecht, an army spokesman, referring to the intercepted rockets to which the IDF responded with airstrikes hitting Hamas weapons storage and manufacturing sites.

The 'Trump' of Latin America

A view shows the damage caused following Brazil's anti-democratic riots, at the Supreme Court building in Brasilia, Brazil, January 9, 2023. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes

"They will not succeed in destroying Brazilian democracy. We need to say that fully, with all firmness and conviction."

"We will not accept the path of criminality to carry out political fights in Brazil. A criminal is treated like a criminal."

Justice Minister Flavio Dino, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

"Bolsonarism mimics the same strategies as Trumpism."

"Our January 8 -- an unprecedented manifestation in Brazilian politics -- is clearly copied from January 6 in the Capitol."

"Today's sad episodes represent yet another attempt to destabilize democracy and demonstrate that the authoritarian, populist radicalism of Brazil's extreme right remains active under the command of former president Bolsonaro, the 'Trump of Latin America'."

Paulo Calmon, political-science professor, University of Brasilia

 This past Sunday Brazilians whose political framework refuses to accept the victory vote in the recent general election that brought leftist Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva back to power in Brazil rampaged through the capital in a fury of rejection of the change of government, calling for the return of defeated president Jair Bolsonaro. The populist ex-president still has a passionate following in his country and they deplore the return of Lula de Silva.

 

Protesters on Sunday flowed in numbers into Congress, into the Supreme Court and into the presidential palace grounds, calling for the return of the former president and calling on the Brazilian military to restore Bolsonaro by coup. A pro-Bolsonaro encampment located outside a military building was broken up by police the following day, detaining about 1,200 people.

 

According to Brazil's minister of institutional relations, the buildings that had been stormed on Sunday would be inspected for evidence, including fingerprints and video images to ensure that those who were involved could be tracked down and held to account. There were further fears that the rioters intended to inspire similar such events across the country.

 

Dressed in the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag, rioters took to breaking windows, turning over furniture, tossing computers and printers to the ground outside buildings. A huge canvas of a nationalist painting at the presidential palace was slashed and destroyed, along with other works of art. At the Supreme Court, the U-shaped table that seats justices when they convene, was overturned, a door was ripped off one office, and an iconic statue standing outside the court was vandalized.

 

Governmental buildings and their interiors were left in shambles. On Sunday, 300 people were arrested, caught in the act of destroying public property. According to public prosecutors, local security forces had been negligent; the regional government had been temporarily suspended by a Supreme Court justice, and another justice placed blame on authorities for failing to quickly crack down on emerging neo-fascism in Brazil.

 

Hardcore supporters of ex-president Bolsonaro were convinced the electronic voting system was prone to fraud following the October 30 electoral defeat of the sitting government. Bolsonaro himself is no longer in Brazil. He left for Florida where he was admitted to an Orlando hospital with "abdominal pain", resulting from having been attacked and stabbed in 2018 while he was campaigning for the presidency, causing gut blockages and multiple hospitalizations over the years.

 

This is Brazil; the hard-core right susceptible to violent clashes with authorities in a polarized political arena where deeply left opponents cause their own type of violence in personal attacks meant to be lethal assassinations of those they deplore. Following his lost re-election, Jair Bolsonaro simply left the scene, neither accepting defeat nor congratulating his political opponent.

"I don't agree with what happened in Brasília - it was a nightmare. I don't agree with those who believe that with democracy you can use your power to destroy democracy."

"I want to show to the world and our country that even though there are thousands of people who believe the elections weren't valid, here in Brazil, we have a gigantic number of people who believe we can trust our government, we can trust in our democracy."

Gabriel, pro-Democracy rally, Sao Paulo, Brazil

A pro-democracy march in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil, around 1,200 miles (1931km) from the capital Brasilia, where the riots happened   Reuters

A Pox On Both Their Houses

"Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols from 16 January through at least 20 January, and at the U.S. Capitol from 17 January through 20 January,"

"While our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products, the FBI is supporting our state, local, and federal law enforcement partners with maintaining public safety in the communities we serve."

"Our efforts are focused on identifying, investigating, and disrupting individuals that are inciting violence and engaging in criminal activity."

FBI Bulletin

 

"We're keeping a look across the entire country to make sure that we're monitoring, and that our Guards in every state are in close co-ordination with their local law enforcement agencies to provide any support requested."  

Army Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau

 

"A lot of people were energized by what happened last week, State capitals are a natural place where people might want to show up, especially assuming that they think there might be a huge presence of police and military in D.C. because of what happened last week."

"[The Capitol siege demonstrated the emergence of a new movement of] Trumpist extremists, so caught up in the cult of personality around Trump that they may be willing to break the law or engage in violence purely in support of Trump and whatever he wants."

Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow, Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism

 

"The FBI just can't passively sit in websites and forums and social media platforms, waiting to see who's going to present a direct threat versus just someone who is being highly radicalized."

"There has to be an investigative predicate for the FBI to then start even the lowest form of an investigation."

Javed Ali, former FBI senior intelligence officer

A team of FBI agents gather as demonstrators rally outside of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

"In light of events of the past week and the evolving security landscape leading up to the inauguration [the Secret Service has been instructed to begin security operations on January 13 rather than January 19]."

"[Federal, state, and local agencies] will continue to coordinate their plans and position resources for this important event."

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf

Warning that "armed protests" could arise around events linked to the January 20 presidential inauguration in Washington, the FBI made it clear that all fifty state capitals in the U.S. will be susceptible to the potential for rampaging mobs to make their dissatisfaction with the removal of President Trump from office clear, in a nation bifurcated by toxic left-right disagreement. A totally polarized population has resulted from suspicion, fear and anger, well nourished by both the Democratic and Republican parties' elites.

The National Guard has been authorized to ensure that up to 15,000 troops will be on hand in Washington. Tourists are to be barred from access to the Washington Monument until January 24. The theme of the January 20 ceremony to inaugurate Joe Biden, the president-elect is to be "America United", as absurd and tone-deaf a chosen theme under the current toxic circumstances as any that might be imagined. The Democratic Party is playing nice now that one of their own is moving into the Oval Office.

When the Republican choice for president of the United States was elected four years earlier, the Democrats incited their faithful to demonstrate long and loud against an admittedly flawed personage with no experience, yet the choice of a majority of voters. Donald Trump, like him or loathe him, was duly, democratically elected. Indignant crowds of faithful Democrats came out to express their disgust that the White House would be ruled by a crass and crude man for the next four years, and they wanted him removed.

 

 

The Democratic Party itself did all it possibly could to restrain President Trump, to portray him as inept and disloyal to the country, themselves unwilling to sit as lawmakers under a man whom the world viewed askance and whose volatile and ill-chosen statements struck doubt in the hearts of allies. Yet, the democratic process so allegedly dear to Americans' hearts elected the unelectable fairly and squarely. America is decidedly anything but united. Over 70 million Americans voted for a candidate they held trust in and whom senior Democrats slurred. Wounding their own institutions in the process.

The country remains aghast that the bastion of democracy in the United States was attacked. No less so that the man who is their outgoing president did his best to incite the rioters to their task after having built their belief in a 'stolen' election both prior to and following the election that left him a one-term president. Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser is anxious that last week's "unprecedented terrorist attack", not be repeated.

State capitals are preparing for the possibility of virulent protests disturbing the peace of the presidential transition at a remote on and around January 20. To that possibility they have responded by taking proactive, preventive measures of their own. On Monday the Michigan State Capitol Commission unanimously voted on banning the open carry of firearms inside the state capitol building, voting 6-0 for the measure.

 

"Given what's going on across the country, we moved up our meeting to consider the issue. It's now done and will be implemented by Michigan State Police", announced John Truscott, vice-chairman of the commission. No one wants a repeat of an event that sent lawmakers into fearful hiding, a riot, invasion and threat to America's democracy that took the lives of five people. Dozens who were part of the rampaging mob have been charged in the violence they took part in, with many more yet to be arrested.

 

Hong Kong in Extremis 

"If they [protesters] continue such dangerous actions, we would have no choice but to use minimum force, including live rounds."
Louis Lau, Hong Kong police spokesman

"The protesters have been reacting to the police."
"We haven't fought back as much as we could. I would be prepared for jail. We are fighting for Hong Kong."
Joris (last name withhold) 23, civil engineer

"Hong Kong's Chief Executive has the responsibility to do everything possible to prevent a massacre. She must order the police to exercise restraint and not to use live ammunition or other forms of lethal force."
"A bloodbath on a Hong Kong campus would be devastating for Hong Kong as a whole."
Malcolm Rifkind, former British foreign secretary

A protester arrested while trying to leave the campus  Reuters

The demonstrations have been ongoing for five months. While Beijing denies it has been interfering in the civil operations of Hong Kong, blaming foreign influences for inciting the people of Hong Kong to engage in violent riots against the police, demonstrators attest to the fact that it is the hand of the Chinese Communist Party exercising its options from Beijing under the direction of President Xi Jinping to wrest total control into the mainland orbit that has caused them to react to protect the island state's semi-autonomy.

Over the weeks of protests vociferous claims and counter-claims, actions and reactions have escalated with violence on both sides turning Hong Kong into a totally disrupted metropolis in virulent discontent with the status quo. Beijing's move to impose greater authority precipitated the unrest and its obvious agenda has strengthened the resolve of protesters. Adult children whose parents are in support of the status quo, including Beijing's transparent entitlement aspirations join the protests in defiance of authority while not disclosing their involvement.

Trapped inside Hong Kong's Polytechnic University with police water cannons and armoured vehicles laying siege on the periphery, raging battles have continued day and night with students determined to escape arrest and incarceration and to carry on with their chosen path of defiance. Students have responded to police tactics by making petrol bombs and hurling bricks with improvised catapults. Someone shot an arrow through a policeman's leg.

Normalcy is elusive; neither the police nor the demonstrators are willing to cede to the other; not to restore calm and reassurance to the business community and international investors, nor to placate the wild emotions of defiant rage against authorities imposing their stealth agenda on the city and its millions of residents. There are injuries aplenty among the protesters.

Some people on the front lines have been injured; scalding chemical burns from the water cannon jets have injured others; the chemicals no doubt related to the colours in the water jets, to enable police to identify those involved in the protests; if they're on the front lines, they must be protest leaders and therefore arrests are mandatory to interrupt the leaders' influence.

Frantic to escape the university siege, activists trapped at the Polytechnic were anxious for release. "If we can only hold on till dawn, more [protesters] might come", one exhausted protester said with faint hope. Among the protesters there were some busy, building fires inside campus buildings. China's financial hub in wild disarray, with major highways blocked off, the tunnel link between the Kowloon peninsula and Hong Kong disrupted, has created chaotic confusion.

Three of the protesters have so far been shot. Universities abroad have recalled their students, enabling their transfer out of Hong Kong, to return to their places of origin, in the U.K. and Canada, leaving the exchange programs in Hong Kong behind. "We've been trapped here, that's why we need to fight until the end. If we don't fight, Hong Kong will be over", 19-year-old Ah Lung declared.

Masks of any kind were outlawed by the administration weeks ago, but that hasn't stopped the wearing of gas masks or the use of handkerchiefs to tie over mouths and noses as protection from the miasma of tear gas floating about. Protesters on the university roof fired arrows and threw flaming projectiles with their catapults toward police lines.

Petrol bombs played havoc on Sunday when violence was at a high-water mark setting fire to armoured police vehicles.

More than 200 devastated parents are sitting outside #PolyU and hoping to see their kids. Several hundred students are still locked in PolyU and these parent are helpless. They can only wait. Nathan Law, Hong Kong

Venom in a Vacuum?

"I was pleased that she did not respond [to the provocations and jeers as she showed up for work wearing her police uniform]. She has thick skin, just like an elephant, and that's important in our society. Silence is the best response."
"We are part of this society [as Israeli citizens], so we should serve it. The people attacking her are a gang of wild kids with nothing better to do with their lives. They should go find themselves and think about what, if anything, they have actually done on behalf of their community [in a predominately Arab town in Israel]."
Ali Saadi, Arab Israeli, Bedouin village of Basmat Tabun

"The new generation that has grown up sees the truth and feels a sense of belonging and identification. It understands the mood in the community much better than you and realizes that many of the problems facing Arab society are the result of those slogans, lies, and conspiracy theories that you have been peddling to us to benefit yourselves."

Mohammad Kabiya, Israel Defense Forces air force member, from the Bedouin northern Israeli village of Kaabiyye

Sabrin Saadi, Facebook

The Injaz Center for Professional Arab Local Governance in Israel conducted a comprehensive study published in 2015 on the scope of crime and violence in Israel's Arab sector. It found that a dramatic rise in that sector in crime occurred since 2007, in parallel with an associated rise in incarcerated Arabs. Arabs made up 42% of all prisoners in Israeli jails in 2010. That figure rose by 2014 to 49% and statistics further showed an over-representation of youthful Arabs between the ages of twelve and eighteen, when Arabs represent 20% of the total population of Israel.

In response to that very real problem, new police stations were positioned in two Arab villages in the north of Israel; Jisr az-Zarqa, and Kafr Kanna. In an effort to assure the population of a shoring up of the presence of police to address the situation, the two stations were properly staffed and prepared to act as required to protect the towns' populations. A swift response erupted mere days later when a short video showed up on Facebook.

In the video a young policewoman from a nearby Bedouin village was shown in uniform wearing a hijab on her way to the Kafr Kanna station. Assembled around her was a group of young demonstrators, loudly cursing her and spitting their contempt toward her. Policewoman Sabrin Saadi appeared to take no notice, continued on her way, and entered the police station to begin her day's work.

She may not have visibly reacted to the virulently hateful provocation, calling her a traitor to the Palestinian 'cause', aiding the 'occupation' in the vilest of taunting terms, but when she returned home after her shift, she spoke with her father, telling him how she had been affected by the demonstration. He encouraged her to continue on just as she was doing, that her aspiration to become a police officer spoke to her dedication to her country, and her wish to represent it in the critical maintenance of law and order.

Ms. Saadi and other Bedouin, Arab and Druze citizens of Israel who choose to serve their country's military and police services are in the minority, but they represent Israelis who value their citizenship and the nation that promotes their place in society as equals even while the majority choose to oppose the very notion of a Jewish state. The irony here is that most Arab Israelis prefer to live within Israel rather than under the Palestinian Authority, and they oppose any notion of transferring their villages to Palestinian rule under a nascent Arab state.

A Palestinian protestor lights a tire on fire during clashes with Israeli security forces in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on December 29, 2017, following the weekly Muslim Friday prayers (AFP / Musa al Shaer)

With the American declaration of the recognition of east Jerusalem as Israel's capital meriting the official move of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem where all Israel government offices are located, the Palestinian 'resistance' and anti-'normalization' went into overdrive. Outrage and resistance to the U.S. administration's controversial move was instant and virulent, with promises of violent reaction materializing in a new intifada, incited by fiery defiance speeches by President Mahmoud Abbas, and echoed by Hamas.

Palestinian youth nursed and nourished from the cradle through their formative and educational years on hatred and opposition to Israel and the presence of a Jewish State took to the new intifada with enthusiasm as more reason to riot, storm the streets and enact their opposition in time-honoured Palestinian flourishes of burning tires, rocket barrages and rock-throwing along with Molotov cocktails at Israeli security.

The exception was those among the Arab population who have recognized and sought out their futures with Israel. For Sabrin Saadi it meant she is not on her own, there are friends who will support her and defend her, among them Mohammad Kabiyya who had enlisted in the IDF and who takes pains to speak with her almost daily with the promise that he and his friends are determined to do all they are able to reassuring her she has chosen to do the right thing. Those led by the Islamic Movement will be restrained from harming her or other young Arabs following her example.


According to IDF airman Kabiyya, activists from the Arab Balad party joined their opposition with the Islamist demonstrators who speak of the new police stations as an Israeli plot to gain control over Arab villages. A member of the Israeli Knesset, Jamal Zahalka, who is the Balad party chairman, took part in one of those demonstrations reviling Sabrin. Arab Israelis are able to elect their own representatives to reflect their interests in Israel's Parliament, and as parliamentary members go out of their way to suborn the state, serving the anti-'normalization' interests of Islamists.

 

"This is no friendly hello. The Israel Police are spreading lies. We have seen that there has been no drop in crime rates in those settlements in which a police station has already been established", claimed Zahalka, that the stations have been placed in Arab villages for one purpose; to track young Arabs for security purposes, and not the stated reason linked to community safety. His purpose, to condemn the initiative of Israeli Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan.

In point of fact, when public safety and security violations take place with impunity in villages and towns it is the residents who suffer from crime and violence. And since most of the violence is done at the hands of those youth, it makes eminent good sense to 'track' them for 'security purposes', since tracking them is completely linked to the goal of achieving community safety. But this MK's purpose in condemning the initiative and slandering its purpose spurns logic and courts a backlash of the very type of violence he claims to be non-existent.

Palestinian protesters run for cover as tear gas is fired towards them by Israeli security forces during clashes in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on December 29, 2017, following the weekly Muslim Friday prayers. (AFP / Musa al Shaer)

In the village of Salem, in northern Israel, children there are bedded down in bathroom bathtubs at night so they won't be hit by random gunfire. Violence in the Arab sector continues. A report published in Haaretz described the gun battles that take place each night in the village of Salem. Policewoman Saadi's father feels that the verbal assaults his daughter copes will won't evolve into physical violence, since there are many from his village and from Kafr Kanna who have offered support and encouragement to his daughter.

Several lawyers from the Arab sector have offered to represent her pro bono, to help her and any other young people, should she decide to bring charges of defamation against those who attack her.
In the greater scheme of things, there are so many loud voices calling for 'resistance' against the 'oppressor', in the process of winning influence and control over the young and the malleable who want to believe that a great wrong has been done their community, the uphill battle of Mr. Saada and his daughter seems impossible.

A young boy insults US President Donald Trump and threatens Israel during a Hamas rally in Gaza, December 2017. (Screen capture: MEMRI video)

In a shocking display of just how influential Palestinian groups like Fatah (the PLO group of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority) and Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip are in their mind-control over vulnerable young Palestinians, a boy of no more than eight years of age, fully dressed in Hamas military gear complete with face mask, screamed a diatribe at a December 15 Hamas rally in Gaza threatening "Trump the idiot", and "Netanyahu, son of Jewish woman". The video clip has been shared widely on Palestinian social media.

"This is a message to Trump the idiot. You idiot, your promise to Israel will not be successful. You idiot, Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine for all eternity."
“I say to that idiot Benjamin Netanyahu, you son of a Jewish woman, you don’t know your own origins. Here in Gaza, we will trample the heads of your soldiers underfoot, like we did in Nahal Oz [A Hamas gunmen attack from a tunnel, infiltrating an Israeli army base, killing five soldiers in 2014]."
"Here in Gaza there are men who do not fear death. Get it, you son of a Jewish woman? You have no source in history. Get it, you son of a Jewish woman? Jerusalem is ours, it is our capital. We will not relinquish a single inch of the land of Palestine. Get it, you son of a Jewish woman? Get it, you son of a Jewish woman?"
"You have never existed in history. Get it, you idiot? If you don’t get it, we, the children of Gaza, will trample you underfoot until you get it. Get it, you son of a Jewish woman? Peace and Allah’s mercy and blessings upon you."
Ahmad Idriss, Gaza

Palestinian Muslim worshipers take part in a demonstration against the US president’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, outside the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City’s al-Aqsa mosque compound on December 29, 2017. (AFP / Musa al Shaer)AFP / Ahmad Gharabli)

From Gaza, groups like Islamic Jihad fire missiles over the border into Israel in an expression of their cordial respects for the Jewish State. Hamas repeatedly emphasizes a new intifada, inciting all Palestinians to violently confront soldiers and settlers. At the Gaza border fence where Gazan Palestinians cross into Israel -- including family members of the leaders of Hamas -- for expert medical care at Israeli hospitals, Ismail Haniyeh the Hamas leader, gives high praise to the "blessed intifada", urging that Jerusalem be liberated.

One young mother dressed in a black burqa, her face mask etched with the Hamas emblem, brought her baby to the rally, so he would come "to love Hamas and the Al-Qassam Brigades" (the terrorist armed wing of Hamas). "We bring our small children to teach them to love Hamas. No matter what the Jews or the Arab world do to Hamas, we will support it", she said to an interviewer, above the screams of her baby.

Security in Canadian Prisons

"They [incarcerated rioting convicts] ripped beds off walls, heavy steel beds. Desks were thrown into a pile. They used them to block doors. Windows were smashed out, they were setting fires to mattresses, smashed the fridges and microwaves."
"It was confined to one portion of the medium security area -- an area that housed approximately 185 inmates. It was in the living unit."
"At the point when this happened -- everybody -- 185 inmates -- refused to go to their programs, their work, their school. At that point, normally, we lock up. But when they went to close the area, the inmates refused to go into their cells."
"In the rioting area, every window is smashed out and all the heat registers are pulled off the walls and smashed. So the place is completely destroyed."
"From my members, they said [the trouble] had been bubbling for a few days for sure. There are a few different stories right now about what could have been the actual trigger, I guess."
James Bloomfield, Union of Canadian Correctional Officers

"Firearms use is very strictly regulated and controlled [by prison guards] and it's used as a means of last resort to make sure the incident is brought back under control."
"[Corrections staff discharged firearms] to bring the situation under control."
Jeff Campbell, Correctional Service Canada spokesman

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Thomas Porter/File   A section of the Saskatchewan Penitentiary in Prince Albert.

 

Some of the inmates in the medium-security wing of the prison barricaded themselves on ranges while others caused the violent damage. Three inmates "were discovered with injuries that appeared to result from assaults by other inmates", according to a Corrections Service news release. They were taken to hospital in serious condition, where one of the assaulted inmates died from the stab wounds he had suffered.

The 43-year-old, serving a 31-month sentence for breaking and entering, was pronounced dead 40 minutes after arriving at hospital.

Another six inmates after the massive riot that took place at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary for a 24-hour period, were left with non-life-threatening injuries caused by guards firing shutgun pellets in an effort to return order to the prison. It was after negotiations with prison staff broke down after inmates refused to return to their lock-ups that the riot began.

A lockdown was soon instituted and then expanded to include the maximum-security wing of the prison. It was after the unit was secured that the injured inmates were discovered by prison staff. A guard was also taken to hospital when he was exposed to blood after dealing with one of the stabbed inmates.  The Saskatchewan Penitentiary is geared to accommodate the housing of 900 to 1,000 prisoners.

Some 400 correctional officers are on staff at the prison. Inmates in the medium-security area serve sentences reflecting a full range of crimes, including that of murder, a charge that seems far more fitting to have anyone convicted of murder serving out their time in the maximum security wing, if common sense is applied.

The dead man's murderer appears not yet to be known to authorities, since no arrests followed the riot. According to the RCMP, an autopsy has been scheduled for the coming week. Increasingly in Canadian prisons, vicious assaults by some inmates against others take place. This has become so commonplace that prisoners witnessing such assaults go about their business seemingly unconcerned, and guards appear in no great hurry to respond.

This riot situation appears to have been used as a handy screen for someone wanting to kill someone else. Human nature at its most base. And perhaps reflective of the general state of psychosocial debasement of many locked up in such institutions, though by no means all. It's hard to imagine that a prisoner could be serving time for a non-violent crime only to become victimized by another inmate with no compunction about visiting lethal violence on others when opportunity arises.

American Race Relations

"I'm a man first, a black man second, a husband, a father and a son. There's a lot of things I am before a trooper, but the one thing I am is an honest man. I'll stand for what's right. Even if this uniform is wrong. I'll tell you it's wrong. If we're right, I'll tell you we're right." 
Captain Ron Johnson, Missouri Highway Patrol

"We should be able to walk the streets, we should be able to go to the store without being shot in cold blood."
"We don't feel safe in these streets. Never. Ever. Report that. Tell that. Don't go around sugar-coating things to the media."
Woman protesting, Ferguson, Missouri

People defy a curfew Sunday, Aug. 17, 2014, before smoke and tear gas was fired to disperse a crowd protesting the shooting of teenager Michael Brown last Saturday in Ferguson, Mo. Brown’s shooting in the middle of a street following a suspected robbery of a box of cigars from a nearby market has sparked a week of protests, riots and looting in the St. Louis suburb. AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

He's a 51-year-old police professional, a Missouri Highway Patrol officer who has been tasked with heading up security for the daily often-violent demonstrations taking place in this suburb of St. Louis. Informing yet another heckler that it is his job to maintain the peace, to ensure that their rallies remain peaceful,to avoid any further bloodshed and young black men can have the opportunities that 18-year-old Michael Brown can never now enjoy, and he means to do just that, to the best of his ability.

The state government appointed this tall African-American, a black officer in the white-dominated force with its multi-jurisdiction face policing the protest rallies to try to restore order and trust in government and the local security agents. "Capt. Johnson wavers sometimes between wanting to be the community presence and then being the tactical commander", explained Steven Hawkins of Amnesty International. "In some ways he's being forced to wear both hats, and really, you can't wear both hats."

And he has his work cut out for him to wear either of those hats independently of one another, or co-jointly. As a black man in a position of authority he presents himself as an example of equality. But the people living in Ferguson have experienced too many incidents throughout their lives of inequality and they're finding it pretty difficult to trust a lone representative of their community who represents the privileged white entities who fear young black males and whose fear compels them to commit the irreversible.

"He's a brother, he's an honest man and he's a spiritual man, and with those qualities ... you are all right with me", said 30-year-old Richard Fairley, a "dark-skinned black" who affirmed his own experiences of constant traffic stops. "My experience was the same as Mike Brown, but I'm alive to tell it", he said. The fatal shooting by a white police officer of an unarmed black teen is all too familiar to the majority-black residents of Ferguson.

Police claim the officer who shot the teen was pushed into his squad car, physically assaulted and a struggle took place to gain his weapon. Witnesses claim that the teen's hands were raised above his head before he was shot repeatedly on August 9, and killed. While the pathologist said his team cannot be certain exactly how the wounds were inflicted without additional information, it does appear that Michael Brown was defenceless when he was shot to death.

Michael Brown's companion described seeing the officer grab his friend's neck, attempting to pull him into the police car before raising his weapon. Michael, he said, began to run and the officer pursued him, firing the multiple shots; at least six times, twice in the head. It remains to be seen whether the officer, Darren Wilson, will be charged in the death of Michael Brown.

A law enforcement officer on a tactical vehicle watches after a device was fired to disperse a crowd Sunday, Aug. 17, 2014, during a protest for Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer last Saturday in Ferguson, Mo. As night fell Sunday in Ferguson, another peaceful protest quickly deteriorated after marchers pushed toward one end of a street. Police attempted to push them back by firing tear gas and shouting over a bullhorn that the protest was no longer peaceful.  AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

In the meanwhile, Capt. Johnson acknowledges that some of his fellow police officers are angry that he ordered them not to charge looters one night. Others feel dismay that Capt. Johnson's attempts to lower the tone of the police approach, having them wear regular uniforms rather than military-type fatigues, and evincing a more passive approach to try to help restore calm; that is, until matters become violent.

For his part, Capt. Johnson has praised officers under his command for courage, describing police "screaming" for help over the radio as they came under fire early on Tuesday morning from within the crowd of protesters. And another African-American has another approach to his opinion of a token African-American on the force: "That's somebody they put out; he's a black man, so they think he can calm the blacks. But he doesn't make a difference."