June 12, 2013 | 13:50

Turkish riot police have moved into Istanbul’s Taksim Square, which has been occupied by anti-government protesters for close to two weeks, the BBC reports.

Officers fired tear gas and rubber bullets, leading many protesters to flee the square into adjoining Gezi Park, where many have been camping.

Some activists responded by hurling fireworks, fire bombs and stones at police.

The unrest began after a police crackdown on a protest over Gezi Park.

The protests then widened, with demonstrators accusing Mr Erdogan’s government of becoming increasingly authoritarian and trying to impose conservative Islamic values on a secular state.

‘If they (the Western Leaders) were concerned and sincerely committed to the peace process, they would immediately cease supporting a terrorist organization which is linked to al-Qaeda and which is involved in atrocities and killings in Syria.’

Press TV has talked with Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal, to get his opinions on the role of the Israeli regime in the ongoing foreign-backed unrest in Syria.

Below is a transcript of the interview, posted on Global Research.ca.

– Mr. Chossudovsky, today we have Israel threatening Moscow possibly with force. How does Israel play into this equation and how much physical involvement can we expect from Israel?

– Well, first I should say that Israel is supporting the insurgency. In other words, it is supporting al-Qaeda in Syria. This is not known to public opinion. Through the Golan Heights, it is supporting terrorist units of al-Nusrah, which are fighting the Syrian government. It has logistics, weapons supplies, Israeli vehicles going into Syrian territory; it also has a hospital facility for the rebels located in the Golan Heights.

So, in effect, right from the outset Israel has been involved in supporting the various factions, the so-called Islamist factions, which are, as we know, mercenaries trained in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

So, in effect, we have to ask ourselves who are the main military actors in the Syrian war theater. The al-Nusrah rebels, which allegedly represent the opposition, are supported by the Western military alliance and Israel.

These are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance and they are waging a war against the Syrian people.

Now when the European Union decides to lift the arms embargo, what they really have in mind is to channel military aid to this mercenary force, which is supported by foreign powers.

That is a very different position to that of Russia or Iran for that matter, which provide military assistance to a sovereign country to a government through bilateral agreements.

In effect what we are also dealing with is Western and Israeli military aid channeled to a terrorist entity, which is illegal under the international law but it is also in violation of the US’ anti-terror legislation.

– Mr. Chossudovsky, recently US senator John McCain went to Syria via Turkey. How do you interpret this visit?

– Well, John McCain is actually in blatant violation of the US’ guidelines on anti-terrorism.

There is an anti-terrorist list, there is a list of terrorist organizations, which is made up by the State Department and John Kerry is negotiating, interfacing, with representatives of that terrorist organization and the same thing is true for John McCain when he crosses into Syria, and the same thing is true with regard to the former ambassador to Syria Robert Steven Ford, who is also supporting these terrorists.

So we have to distinguish between military aid through official channels, from government to government, which is what the Russians are providing to Syria on the one hand, and the type of assistance which Israel, Britain, France, the United States, is channeling to an illegal organization (according to their own criteria).

So in other words these Western officials should be arrested on anti-terrorist charges because they are in violation of international law.

– Despite the fact that the European Union has lifted the arms embargo on Syria, how optimistic are you that the Geneva II talks would bear fruit and resolve the Syrian crisis politically?

– Well, I think that the Western leaders are, in effect, attempting to build peace and democracy by threatening war. Essentially that is what they are doing, heightening the threats, channeling weapons to the terrorists, incidentally those terrorist have been decimated by the Syrian Armed forced, so in effect the Western military alliance is in a dead end. So, they are now considering all the options. But essentially if they were concerned and sincerely committed to the peace process, they would immediately cease supporting a terrorist organization which is linked to al-Qaeda and which is involved in atrocities and killings in Syria.

PanARMENIAN.Net – A representative of a Turkish NGO Dur De (Say No to Racism and Nationalism) Cengiz Algan expressed intention to restore a monument to the victims of the Armenian Genocide, initially installed in Taksim Square in 1919, Demokrat Haber reported.

“We’ll install a new monument in the same location the old one used to be. The past cannot be forgotten. The monument was installed 4 years after the Armenian Genocide and dismantled in 1940,” Algan said.

“Although scores of Armenians had been exterminated, thousands have survived and are now trying to prove the massacre of their ancestors, annihilated in these lands,” Algan said.

ISTANBUL – Doğan News Agency

Clashes between protesters and police erupted in the often-tense Istanbul neighborhood of Gazi late June 7 as demonstrations sparked by the demolition of Gezi Park continued for the 12th day.

Police attacked a group of around 5,000 protesters that had erected barricades on the road with tear gas and water cannon. The protesters reportedly responded with fireworks and slingshots.

Tension had risen two days ago in the suburb, a neighborhood that is known for its oppositional sentiment and its high Alevi population.

One protester, Duran Akbaş, was injured during the clashes on the night of June 6 after allegedly being hit in the head by a tear gas canister. The demonstrator is still in critical condition, doctors have said.

PanARMENIAN.Net – Official Baku has repeatedly harmed the social, humanitarian and cultural contacts of Nagorno Karabakh, isolating it from the outside world, research fellow at the Black Sea-Caspian Region Institute for Political and Social Studies said.

“However, it gradually becomes more difficult for Baku to do that,” Andrey Areshev told PanARMENIAN.Net citing famed opera singer Montserrat Caballé’s visit to Nagorno Karabakh to prove his point.

“It seems that no notes of protest and aggressive media publications will prevent Karabakh from expanding its relations with the cultural elite of modern Europe,” the expert said.

“Causes of conflicts sometimes get unique interpretations. No doubt, Montserrat Caballé’s visit to Artsakh will foster further popularization of Karabakh and Armenian culture in Europe. Interest in Artsakh may stir up interest in Europe’s Christian identity,” Mr. Areshev said.

By Greg Botelho and Matt Smith, CNN

(CNN) — America’s top intelligence official on Thursday night challenged news reports claiming Facebook posts, Gmail messages and more have been intercepted for years in a vast data-mining operation, saying the reports “contain numerous inaccuracies.”

The Guardian, a British newspaper, and the Washington Post reported Thursday that U.S. intelligence agencies had access to the central servers of nine of the country’s biggest technology firms including Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo and Facebook.

The Post reported the program — called PRISM — underwent “exponential growth” since its founding in 2007. In fact, the newspaper said the program has become the leading source of raw material for the National Security Agency, the secretive U.S. intelligence operation that monitors electronic communications.

Yet several tech giants whose servers were reportedly ensnared in the program denied any knowledge of it Thursday.

And James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, questioned the Guardian and Post articles in a statement Thursday night.

He referred to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which he noted was recently reauthorized by Congress — one of the bodies, along with the executive branch and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, with oversight over aspects of intelligence gathering.

Section 702, Clapper added, “is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States.”

“It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States,” he said in his statement.

While he made no mention of data mining, Clapper did defend the American intelligence effort generally, saying, “Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.”

Clapper also called out the person or people behind “the unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program,” saying such apparent leaks are “reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans.”

The Post reported that its reporters had been provided a detailed briefing presentation document on the PRISM program.

The program has been running since 2007 and has undergone “exponential growth” since then, the Post reported. It is now the leading source of raw material for the National Security Agency, the secretive U.S. intelligence operation that monitors electronic communications.

According to a briefing slide published by the Guardian, PRISM began with data from Microsoft in 2007. The program began collecting data from Yahoo in 2008 and from Google, Facebook and the message system PalTalk in 2009. YouTube became a source in 2010, Skype and AOL in 2011 and Apple in late 2012, the slide claims.

The NSA declined to comment, but several companies — many of them using similar language — denied Thursday any knowledge of such a program.

Microsoft, for instance, said in a statement it only provides user data when legally required and for specific accounts — adding that “if the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it.”

Jodi Seth, a spokeswoman for Facebook, said the social media giant works to “carefully scrutinize any … request for compliance” and does not give government agencies “direct access” to its servers.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling offered a similar response — saying Apple hands over information only when a government agency gets a court order. Dowling added that his company has never heard of PRISM.

“We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully,” a Google spokesman said in response to the stories. “From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data.”

Even with these denials and Clapper’s defense, President Barack Obama’s administration has come under growing scrutiny in recent days over his record on balancing citizens’ right to privacy and the government’s efforts to combat terrorism.

Patriot Act at center of Verizon phone log controversy

That includes news, first reported on Wednesday by the Guardian and commented on by U.S. politicians, that the FBI and National Security Agency have been collecting the phone records of millions of Americans — specifically Verizon customers and perhaps others — over a several year period.

Days after taking office in 2009, Obama vowed, “Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.” But on Thursday, the left-leaning Huffington Post conflated Obama with his predecessor George W. Bush while a New York Times editorial said “the administration has now lost all credibility” when it comes to overreaching in the name of fighting terrorism.

“Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it,” the Times’ editorial said.