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EFF Posts Documents Detailing U.S. Law Enforcement Collection of Data From Social Media Sites

By Marcia Hofman | Electronic Frontier Foundation | March 17, 2010

EFF has posted documents shedding light on how law enforcement agencies use social networking sites to gather information in investigations. The records, obtained from the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Justice Criminal Division, are the first in a series of documents that will be released through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case that EFF filed with the help of the UC Berkeley Samuelson Clinic.

One of the most interesting files is a 2009 training course that describes how IRS employees may use various Internet tools — including social networking sites and Google Street View — to investigate taxpayers.

The IRS should be commended for its detailed training that clearly prohibits employees from using deception or fake social networking accounts to obtain information. Its policies generally limit employees to using publicly available information. The good example set by the IRS is in stark contrast to the U.S. Marshalls and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Neither organization found any documents on social networking sites in response to EFF’s request suggesting they do not have any written policies or restrictions upon the use of these websites.

The documents released by the IRS also include excerpts from the Internal Revenue Manual explaining that employees aren’t allowed to use government computers to access social networking sites for personal communication, and cautioning them to be careful to avoid any appearance that they’re speaking on behalf of the IRS when making personal use of social media.

The Justice Department released a presentation entitled “Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites.” The slides, which were prepared by two lawyers from the agency’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, detail several social media companies’ data retention practices and responses to law enforcement requests. The presentation notes that Facebook was “often cooperative with emergency requests” while complaining about Twitter’s short data retention policies and refusal to preserve data without legal process. The presentation also touches on use of social media for undercover operations.

Over the next few months, EFF will be getting more documents from several law enforcement and intelligence agencies concerning their use of social networking sites for investigative purposes. We’ll post those files here as they arrive.

March 17, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Yet Another Political Show Trial: Why the Prosecution of Demjanjuk is Malicious

By Dirk Steil | Aletho News | March 17, 2010

John Demjanjuk, who turns 90 next month, is on trial in Munich for having allegedly been an accessory to the killing of 27,900 people at a labor camp at Sobibor in Poland during the second World War. This trial is for the benefit of a group of obsessive Jews within the holocaust industry and as a shallow public relations stunt by the German government to “atone”, as it were, for having failed to prosecute known mass murderers many decades ago.

In a proper court case, the prosecution would have to prove that the numbers of people alleged were murdered at the camp during the period in question, that Demjanjuk was present there, and that he assisted willingly, in the sense of having had an option to simply refuse such activities.

The first point, the alleged murders, was not subject to challenge, even though much controversy and opaqueness surrounds the circumstances there at that camp.

The second point, that Demjanjuk was present there, has not been proven conclusively either because Demjanjuk denies having been at the location, and no affirmative corroboration has been presented.

Even if one accepts the first two points above, the court must present evidence that Demjanjuk was a willing participant. This central aspect is now unravelling. Yesterday and today, an expert witness associated with the University in Munich, who had written a doctoral dissertation on the circumstances during that period in Galicia, appeared at the trial to answer questions. This mainstream scholar has corroborated the following key arguments maintained by Demjanjuk and his defense for years:

The testimony from decades ago – by a man (now dead) claiming that he and Demjanjuk participated in the killing of prisoners – is unreliable because it is very likely, that it was coerced under torture.

Circumstances in the camps for Soviet red army prisoners, of which Demjanjuk was one, were so awful that millions (more than half of them) died, and that volunteering to assist the Nazis instead was a means of avoiding death by starvation or disease.

Prisoners from the Red Army who volunteered were not told what they would be required to do.

Once these prisoners were sent to other camps to work as guards, refusing orders or being caught after an unsuccessful attempt to escape would have likely resulted in death.

These key facts should not come as a revelation because this information was already known beforehand. The prosecution certainly must have know this too but decided to proceed nonetheless. That is why this case is another political show trial, just as a prior case Demjanjuk had to endure decades ago in Israel was also a propaganda show trial, for the sake of shamelessly perpetuating the Jewish holocaust narrative. Demjanjuk was exonerated on appeal in that case in which he had initially been sentenced to death.

It is rather interesting to note, that thus far there has still not been any independent report in the German news media about the proceedings during the past two days. Telling the public that the prosecution’s case has fallen apart in light of the expert testimony is apparently not “politically correct”.

As has already been suggested by legal experts before the trial got underway, Demjanjuk cannot be legitimately convicted of the charges brought against him. However, that does not mean that the court will not convict him anyway because, after all, this is a political show trial, where facts are secondary and propaganda is what matters.

March 17, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

The War on Afghan Civilians

Expecting Gen. McChrystal to Protect Afghan Civilians is Like Hiring Ted Bundy to Combat Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

By DAVE LINDORFF | March 17, 2010

Three months after it initially lied about the murder by US forces of eight high school students and a 12-year-old shepherd boy in Afghanistan, and a month after it lied about the slaughter by US forces of an Afghan police commander, a government prosecutor, two of their pregnant wives and a teenage daughter, the US military has been forced to admit (thanks in no small part to the excellent investigative reporting of Jerome Starkey of the London Times), that these and other atrocities were the work of American Special Forces, working in conjunction with “specially trained” (by the US) units of the Afghan Army.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the US war effort in Afghanistan, says he is taking over “direct charge” of Special Forces operations because of “concern” that they were not following his orders to make limiting civilian casualties a “paramount” objective. McChrystal is quoted as saying the US military “carries the burden of the guilt” for the “mistakes” made by those Special Forces.

This has to be a sick joke. These incidents were not mistakes; they were planned actions. It’s all the sicker because we know that the US is busy training the Afghan Army to take over this kind of dirty work. And besides, even if McChrystal does assume direct command over Special Forces, that would leave unaccounted for the tens of thousands of private mercenary units hired by the US who are working completely in the shadows for the CIA or other organizations. (One such group hired buy the Defense Department, which posed as an intelligence-gathering operation, was recently exposed as actually being a privately run death squad.)

McChrystal, recall, was in charge of a huge and brutal death squad operation in Iraq before he was given his new assignment in Afghanistan, and at the time he was put in charge of the Afghanistan War, it was reported that he was planning to put in place a similar operation in Afghanistan, designed to take out the Taliban leadership in the country.

What we have been seeing in Afghanistan–and this goes way back to before the appointment of McChrystal, or even the election of President Barack Obama, and his subsequent escalation of the war–has been a vicious campaign of terror against the Afghan people.

It should be no surprise that this is so. It is the way the US has always done counterinsurgency. In a war in which the insurgents (or patriots, if you will–the people fighting against foreign occupiers, or in out case, the US) are a part of the people, and American forces are the invaders, the goal is to drive a wedge between those fighters and the rest of the population.

In Pentagon propaganda, this is referred to as “winning the hearts and minds” of the people, but in reality, the US military doesn’t give a damn about hearts and minds. It simply wants the people to become unwilling to hide or support the enemy fighters it is facing. If it can accomplish that by making people afraid, then that is what it will do, and making people afraid is much easier than “winning hearts and minds.”

How do you make people afraid of supporting or hiding and protecting enemy fighters like the Taliban? You terrorize them. You bomb their homes. You conduct night raids on their homes. You bomb their weddings and their excursions to neighboring towns or markets. You shoot them when they get too close to your vehicles.

Statistics show that the US has, in both Iraq and now Afghanistan, routinely killed more civilians than actual enemy fighters. That tells us all we need to know about what is really going on. America is fighting a war of terror against the people of Afghanistan.

No amount of feigned public hand-wringing by the blood-stained Gen. McChrystal, or of assertions that he is going to assume direct control (from whom? are we to assume that they were operating without direction before?) of the Special Operations troops in the country, will alter that fact. Civilians–including especially women and children–in Afghanistan will continue to die in prodigious numbers because that is how the US fights its wars these days.

The people of Afghanistan know this. That’s why the majority of them want the US out of their country.

It’s Americans who don’t know the truth, and it’s Americans who are really the target of statements from the Pentagon and from Gen. McChrystal claiming that the US is taking steps, nine years into this war, to “reduce civilian casualties” in Afghanistan. It doesn’t help that news organizations like the New York Times propagate that propaganda, as the paper did today in a lead headline that said: “US is Reining in Special Forces in Afghanistan. General Takes Control. McChrystal has Raised Civilian Casualties as a Concern.” It simply wouldn’t do to tell Americans that their country is conducting a war of terror. We are supposed to be the good guys who are bringing peace and democracy to a benighted land.

So let’s just face the facts squarely. The US is not the good guy in Afghanistan. It is an agent of death and destruction. Just check out the town of Marjah, largely destroyed over the last few months in order to “save” it from a handful of Taliban fighters. Over 30 civilians died in that American show of force, and the message of those deaths was clear: allow the Taliban to operate in your town, and we’ll kill you–not just your men, but your wives and your children, too.

March 17, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Deutsche Bank *really* wants us to trade carbon

Joanne Nova | March 15, 2010

Six months ago, Deutsche Bank was overcome with concern about the planet—bless its soul–and launched this 70 ft. vision of climate doom opposite Madison Square Gardens, New York. You can feel relieved. The bank paid for the carbon credits (no doubt through one of its own funds), so the 40,960 low-energy light-emitting diodes are “carbon-neutral.”

Kevin Parker for Deutsche Asset Management said: “We hope with this sign that it is going to foster a sense of urgency about the problem, raise public awareness, create a need for education and really spur a call for action”

Spurring action indeed. “Sign Copenhagen; Sign Cap N Trade; Give us that $2 trillion dollar market based on meaningless paper permits, and funded by consumers everywhere. Please!”

In a more candid moment, Parker said: “Well, what we’d like to see is a price on carbon. That is absolutely foremost in everyone’s minds involved in the climate change debate. The governments around the world have to get on with regulations…”

Yes, the real agenda is the legislation: forced payments from citizens.  We all know we aren’t going to see the Deutsche Bank Top-Soil Clock coming soon highlighting the problem of erosion, or the Deutsche Bank Falling Fish Stock Clock…or the Deutsche Bank program to save the spotted owl.

In a brazen ambit, Parker suggested we all might like to invest more in renewable energy: $45 trillion more (over 40 years), and that’s only going to solve half the problem”. There is no end to the audacity.

Is this anything other than blatant advertising for a Cap N Trade scheme? Ponder if Exxon launched a similar billboard with the “costs” of carbon mitigation, it would be vandalized, scorned, and disparaged even by august associations like the Royal Society.

A NASA official would call for corporate heads to be jailed for crimes against humanity.

It’s ok for bankers managing $695 billion-dollar funds to take sides in a science debate…. That’s not the same as corporations trying to influence policy.

See also:

In a report for investors, the Deutsche Bank says that more action is needed to reduce emissions and prevent runaway climate change. Carbon markets are most likely going to fail in the short term to achieve this goal, so stronger incentives, like feed-in tariffs, are recommended. The Bank also recommends auctioning the emissions permits, to get revenue to finance the decarbonization of societies (link).

March 17, 2010 Posted by | Deception | Leave a comment

Rachel Corrie’s sister: U.S. encouraged family to sue Israel

By Akiva Eldar | Haaretz | March 12, 2010

This is Sarah Corrie Simpson’s first visit to Israel. Her younger sister, Rachel Corrie, was killed by an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer in Gaza in 2003, at the age of 23. Now, the family is suing the state in the Haifa District Court.

“I’m glad the day is finally here, that the eyewitnesses are having a chance to talk in a court of law,” she said in an interview with Haaretz on Thursday. “It’s been seven long years.”

The witnesses, who include Rachel’s colleagues in the left-wing International Solidarity Movement, say Rachel climbed atop a mount of dirt to be sure the driver could see her, Simpson said. When he nevertheless kept coming at her, she tried to flee, but tripped and fell. “The bulldozer driver kept driving with the blade down, pushing the dirt over Rachel, and stopped when her body was under the cab.”

“My father served in the military in Vietnam and was responsible for bulldozer operations,” Simpson added. “He said there is no way that what happened to Rachel would have happened on his watch.”

She rejects the IDF’s claim that the area was an active combat zone. The witnesses claim no shots were being fired, she said, so the army could have stopped the operation and removed the demonstrators. But in any case, she added, international law requires soldiers to try to protect civilians even in a war zone.

What brought Rachel, a girl from a good family in Washington state, to the town of Rafah, on the Gaza-Egypt border?

According to Simpson, the September 11, 2001 terror attacks pushed Rachel into political activism. She wanted “to find out what was going on in the world, especially in the Middle East.” She studied Arabic and began meeting with peace activists, including former Israeli soldiers. She wanted to understand America’s role in the Middle East.

Rachel was a pacifist and a pluralist, Simpson added, her views informed by growing up in a Christian family with Jewish, Sikh, Hindu and Muslim in-laws.

After Rachel’s death, Simpson said, “our lives changed instantly.” Her father quit his job, and she herself has devoted herself fully to the political and legal effort to force the IDF to take responsibility for Rachel’s death. Her goal, she said, is to ensure “that something like this will never happen again to any civilian … whether Israeli, Palestinian or internationals.”

Though the Military Police investigated Rachel’s death, neither the family nor the American authorities consider the probe credible.

“There are pieces of evidence we have never been given,” Simpson said. For instance, out of about six hours of video, in color, with complete audio, the family received “14 minutes of tape, a grainy black copy, with incomplete audio.”

Would you want to meet the bulldozer driver?

“Yes, I would. Ultimately, in order to have any kind of restorative healing process occur, I need to be able to hear directly from him what happened that day and how he feels about it. As well, I hope he would be able to hear and somehow understand the impact this has had on my life and the life of my family. A credible investigation is important … but in the end, it is also important that my family and the man who killed Rachel look each other in the eyes. This would be the most difficult and painful thing I can imagine doing, but it’s something I feel is extremely important. But I have no control over this, the Israeli government won’t release his name.”

Asked whether the family was getting support from the U.S. government, Simpson said it was a U.S. government official who first encouraged them to sue the Israeli government.

The family has met with many senior American officials, she added, and more than 70 congressmen signed a letter demanding a serious investigation.

March 16, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

‘Government knew of Jewish terrorist’s plan to open fire on Shfaram bus’

By Jack Khoury | Haaretz | March 16, 2010

Newly discovered footage of a terrorist attack perpetrated by an Israel Defense Forces soldier in the Arab town of Shfaram five years ago indicates that authorities were aware of plans to commit the attack, a lawyer representing Israeli Arabs suspected of taking part in the subsequent lynching of the gunman said Sunday.

In August 2005, Eden Natan-Zada opened fire in a passenger bus in Shfaram with his army-issued M-16 assault rifle, killing four. Immediately following the attack, a large crowd gathered around the bus, surrounding the gunman and beating him to death.

Last year, prosecutors charged 12 individuals with taking part in the lynching of Natan-Zada, a move that ignited criticism from the Israeli-Arab community.

An attorney representing some of the lynch suspects recently became aware of the existence of the aerial footage which was taken moments before, during and after the attack.

The lawyer, Maher Talhami, said the cameras followed the trail of the bus in which Natan-Zada rode in entering Shfaram. Immediately after the attack, the footage shows angry mobs gathering at the scene.

Talhami argues that the camera’s focus on the bus suggests that authorities were aware of the impending attack. The lawyer obtained the footage while combing through the evidence gathered in the case.

According to Talhami, the unmanned aerial vehicle flew at an altitude of three kilometers over the town and was filming just as Natan-Zada’s bus entered Shfaram.

The footage shows the bus until the moment of the attack, which took place at 5:22 P.M. Police helicopters then hovered over the scene of the attack and continued filming.

Talhami said the timing of the filming indicates that defense officials knew of Natan-Zada’s plan to perpetrate the attack.

“We are talking about video shot by a drone,” Talhami said. “Obviously not every private individual or civilian agent operates a drone on his own volition.”

“The method of surveillance of the bus proves that there was early information available to the defense establishment,” Talhami said.

March 16, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Obama threatens to veto greater intelligence oversight

By Glenn Greenwald | March 16, 2010

One of the principal weapons used by the Bush administration to engage in illegal surveillance activities — from torture to warrantless eavesdropping — was its refusal to brief the full Congressional Intelligence Committees about its activities.  Instead, at best, it would confine its briefings to the so-called “Gang of Eight” — comprised of 8 top-ranking members of the House and Senate — who were impeded by law and other constraints from taking any action even if they learned of blatantly criminal acts.

This was a sham process:  it allowed the administration to claim that it “briefed” select Congressional leaders on illegal conduct, but did so in a way that ensured there could be no meaningful action or oversight, because those individuals were barred from taking notes or even consulting their staff and, worse, because the full Intelligence Committees were kept in the dark and thus could do nothing even in the face of clear abuses.  The process even allowed the members who were briefed to claim they were powerless to stop illegal programs.  That extremely restrictive process also ensures irresolvable disputes over what was actually said during those briefings, as illustrated by recent controversies over what Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats were told about Bush’s torture and eavesdropping programs.  Here’s how Richard Clarke explained it in July, 2009, on The Rachel Maddow Show:

MADDOW:  Do you think that the current system, the gang of eight briefing system, allows the CIA to be good at spying and to be doing their work legally?

CLARKE: I think briefings of the gang of eight, those very sensitive briefings, as opposed to the broader briefings – the gang of eight briefings are usually often a farce. They catch them alone, one at the time usually. They run some briefing by them.

The congressman can‘t keep the briefing. They can‘t take notes. They can‘t consult their staff. They don‘t know what the briefings are about in advance. It’s a box check so that the CIA can say it complied with the law. It‘s not oversight. It doesn‘t work.

To their credit, Congressional Democrats — over the objections of right-wing Republicans — have been attempting since the middle of last year to fix this serious problem, by writing legislation to severely narrow the President’s power to conceal intelligence activities from the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and abolish the “Gang of Eight” process.  After all, those Committees were created in the wake of the intelligence abuses uncovered by the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, and their purpose is “to provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States.”  But if they’re not even told about what the Executive Branch is doing in the intelligence realm, then they obviously can’t exert oversight and ensure compliance with the law — which is the purpose of keeping them in the dark, as the last decade demonstrated.

Yet these efforts to ensure transparency and oversight have continuously run into one major roadblock:  Barack Obama’s threat to veto the legislation.  Almost immediately after leading Democrats on the Intelligence Committee unveiled their legislation last year, the Obama White House issued a veto threat with extremely dubious (and Bush-replicating) rationale:  such oversight would jeopardize secrecy and intrude into “executive privilege.”  In response to Obama’s veto threat, Democrats spent the last nine months accommodating the White House’s objections by significantly diluting their legislation — their new bill would actually retain the “Gang of Eight” briefings but impose notification and other oversight requirements — and two weeks ago the House passed that diluted bill.

But no matter:  as Walter Pincus reports today in The Washington Post, Obama is now threatening to veto even this diluted bill, and is echoing GOP talking points when doing so:

The White House has renewed its threat to veto the fiscal 2010 intelligence authorization bill over a provision that would force the administration to widen the circle of lawmakers who are informed about covert operations and other sensitive activities. . . .

In a letter sent to the senior members of the intelligence panels, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter R. Orszag said Gang of Eight notifications are made in only “the most limited of circumstances” affecting “vital interests” of the United States, arguing that the new requirement would “undermine the president’s authority and responsibility to protect sensitive national security information.”

Orszag also opposed a Senate bill provision that required notification of “any change in a covert action,” which he described as setting up “unreasonable burdens” on the agencies, particularly the CIA . The House bill also requires notification of intelligence “significant undertakings,” a term that Orszag described as “vague and uncertain.”

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), ranking minority member of the House intelligence panel, noted that the White House objections were similar to those raised by Republicans, especially regarding notifications provisions. . . .

Orszag wrote that the notification provisions were one of three items in the bills that would draw a veto recommendation from the president’s advisers. Another such provision would give the Government Accountability Office legal authority to review practices and operations throughout the intelligence community. The White House contends that broadening the GAO’s purview would upset current relations with the office, which already has access to some intelligence activity, and adversely affect oversight relationships between the committees and the community. The provision would also permit any committee of Congress with an arguable claim of jurisdiction over an intelligence activity to request a GAO investigation of that activity.

In other words, the Obama White House — just as was true for the Bush White House, and using the same rationale — does not want any meaningful oversight (i.e., briefings beyond the absurd Gang of Eight sham) on whether it’s breaking the law in the conduct of its intelligence activities.  One of the Intelligence Community’s most loyal Congressional servants — Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein — told The Post that she thinks a deal can be worked out with the White House, meaning that the bill needs to be diluted even further, to the point of virtual nothingness, in order for the White House to accept it.

It’s critical to note that this is far from an abstract concern, because the Obama administration has almost certainly been hiding intelligence activities from the Intelligence Committees, thus ensuring it operates without oversight.  Read this October, 2009 article from The Hill — headlined:  “Feingold sees similarities between Bush and Obama on intelligence sharing” — in which Senate Intelligence Committee Member Russ Feingold explains “his suspicion that the Obama administration is continuing some of the stonewalling practices of the George W. Bush administration when it comes to providing full intelligence briefings to the relevant committees in Congress.”  And indeed, all year long, there’s been a series of disclosures about highly controversial intelligence programs that appear to be “off-the-books” and away from the oversight of the Intelligence Committee.  In late January, it was revealed that the President was maintianing a “hit list” of American citizens he had authorized to be assassinated far from any “battlefield,” followed by yesterday’s story describing the use of shadowy private contractors to collect intelligence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

All of this is sadly consistent with the Obama administration’s devotion to extreme levels of secrecy and resistance to oversight.  Last month, Eli Lake reported that Obama has simply failed to make a single appointment to, or even activate the budget of, the The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the body created pursuant to the report of the 9/11 Commission to safeguard civil liberties in intelligence activities; it has thus been completely dormant.  And, with a few very mild exceptions, Obama — since he was inaugurated — has affirmately embraced one radical secrecy doctrine after the next that used to be controversial among Democrats (back when Bush used them).

The refusal of the Bush administration to brief the Intelligence Committees on its most controversial intelligence programs was once one of the most criticized aspects of the Bush/Cheney obsessions with secrecy, executive power abuses, and lawlessness.   The Obama administration is now replicating that conduct, repeatedly threatening to veto legislation to restore real oversight.

UPDATE:  Marcy Wheeler notes what is probably the worst part of all of this, something I consider truly despicable:  the administration is also threatening to veto the bill because it contains funding for a new investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks, on the ground that such an investigation — in the administration’s words — “would undermine public confidence” in the FBI probe of the attacks “and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions.”

As I’ve documented at length, not only are there enormous, unresolved holes in the FBI’s case, but many of the most establishment-defending mainstream sources — from leading newspaper editorial pages to key politicians in both parties — have expressed extreme doubts about the FBI’s case and called for an independent investigation.  For the administration to actively block an independent review of one of the most consequential political crimes of this generation would probably be its worst act yet, and that’s saying quite a bit.

March 16, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Iran dismisses report on nuclear arms quote

Press TV – March 15, 2010

Iran has dismissed a recent report by an American paper which claimed Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons in the late 1980s.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast described the report as a “propaganda ploy that shows Washington’s ultimate frustration.”

In a Sunday article titled ‘Iran’s attempted deal with Pakistan,’ The Washington Post, quoted Abdul Qadir Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, as claiming that Tehran had attempted to purchase nuclear weapons and know-how from Islamabad.

The Post bases its report on “never officially disclosed” material written by Khan while under house arrest in 2004, but does not provide a source for its story.

“The US is using such allegations to deprive the Iranian nation of its nuclear rights, which have been internationally recognized,” Mehmanparast said Monday, adding that Washington was following an “Iranophobia project” to justify its military presence in the Middle East.

The Washington Post report comes while Abdul Qadir Khan has repeatedly dismissed such allegations.

Abdul Basit, Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman, also rejected the report on Monday and said, “It is yet another repackaging of fiction which surfaces occasionally for purposes that are self-evident.”

March 16, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

EU found guilty at first session of Russell Tribunal

Ewa Jasiewicz and Frank Barat, The Electronic Intifada, 15 March 2010
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine aims to translate the language and expertise of law into everyday activism. (David Vilaplana/imagenenaccion.org

The first session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RTP) was heard in Barcelona, Spain earlier this month. The RTP is a peoples’ legal initiative designed to systematically try key actors responsible for the perpetuation of human rights violations in Palestine.

In the frame this time was the European Union (EU). Two days and 21 expert witness testimonies later, the RTP found individual states and the EU as a whole guilty of persistent violations and misconduct with regards to international and internal EU law. These included: assistance in perpetrating the crime of apartheid — deepened in definition as applicable to the violation of the inalienable right of return for refugees and the collective punishment and ghettoization of Gaza; aiding the procurement of war crimes and crimes against humanity particularly with regards to Gaza; and violating the Palestinian right to self-determination, aiding illegal colonization, the annexation of East Jerusalem and theft of natural resources.

We may all know this, but knowing exactly how and through which laws and mechanisms allows for a water-tight case for justice for Palestine and the denormalization of Israel’s occupation.

The RTP’s endorsement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) as a means to hold Israel and its collaborator states accountable under international law was also a boost to European civil society groups and prominent figures sitting on the fence about the tactic.

The RTP aims to reenergize and popularize the necessary delegitimization of Israeli apartheid, occupation and human rights violations. It’s not just about preventing the crime of silence but also about providing a forum for speaking out, active witnessing and active listening, and to tool up civil society on how to publicize and pressure their governments to abide by the law.

The reason the EU and violation-abetting or non-compliant states have continued to treat the observance of international law and Palestinian rights as a policy issue rather than a legal obligation is because civil society has given them this choice through a lack of pressure in these areas. These states should not have a choice; these legal frameworks are not voluntary or optional once signed, they are obligatory.

The language of international human rights law is dense, inert and dispassionate despite the fact that it has been generated through global anti-colonial, anti-occupation struggle and sacrifice. Nevertheless, it’s a language movements should strategically learn and connect to the real-time, felt-on-the-body, resistance and endurance of the Palestinian people and the policy-makers in our parliaments.

Contextualizing the violence of policies of violation in the small print of complicated contracts and treaties, or in casual conversations in presidential dining rooms in Tel Aviv, was enabled by the RTP.

At the RTP, Veronique De Keyser, a European Member of Parliament from Belgium, testified that during a trip to Israel as part of a delegation of European MPs, she was told by then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that the Israeli government was intent on instrumentalizing Fatah to undermine Hamas. According to her testimony, Olmert and Livni added that Israel had no interest in recognizing a unity government.

Meir Margalit, a former member of the Jerusalem city council, spoke of soldiers demolishing a Palestinian home in the presence of an EU Commissar. When this fact was brought to the attention of the mayor of Jerusalem at the time, Ehud Olmert, it resulted in a delay in the destruction of the home until no MPs were present to witness.

Charles Shamas, a Palestinian legal consultant and founder of the MATTIN group, a voluntary human rights-based partnership in Palestine which focuses on international human rights and international humanitarian law enforcement and third-party state responsibility, mapped the mechanisms by which international law obligations can be triggered in the EU. He explained this could be achieved by targeting obscure internal regulations within EU legal frameworks, deciphering obscure clauses and regulations within EU treaties and targeting them at the appropriate bodies.

Shamas demystified the means by which laws are effectively changed when the EU collaborates in contracts and treaties with Israel. By accepting Israeli definitions of international law rather than its own, the EU is in fact violating its own internal and international laws. For example, a new agreement on civil aviation between the EU and Israel could legitimize the occupation of the Palestinian territories through recognition of airspace and the airports in occupied territory as part of Israel. Shamas cited a challenge to a draft agreement between Europol and the Israeli police authorities which was regarded as unlawful as the police were headquartered in occupied East Jerusalem.

Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers in the UK presented his own experiences to the RTP of attempting to use the British domestic courts to challenge the UK’s failure to fulfill its obligations under international humanitarian law with respect to Israeli activities during its invasion of Gaza last winter. A British court found his claim, which was coordinated with the Palestinian legal organization Al-Haq, to be a matter for “high foreign policy” and denied it. Shiner suggested seeking more compliant alternative EU member state courts to file similar cases.

The applicability of existing international law on conventional weapons was dissected in the context of Israel’s invasion of Gaza by Colonel Desmond Travers, a member of the UN-sponsored Goldstone commission. In his testimony, Travers provided forensic analysis of the flight-path of a flechette dart within the human body. He also discussed Israel’s suspected use of Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) weapons and depleted uranium. Travers also scrutinized Israel’s use of white phosphorous as a weapon rather than an obscurant. Aside for the need for political action to stop Israeli impunity, Travers explained that a ban on certain weaponry altogether including white phosphorous, urgent environmental clean-up and the need for new laws were necessary and should be advocated.

Expert researcher and Middle East specialist Agnes Bertrand detailed the EU’s passive complicity with Israeli violations. Israel has caused an estimated 56.35 million euros worth of infrastructural damage to works funded by the European Community since 2000, with damage suffered during last year’s Gaza invasion amounting to around 12.35 million euros. The EU Commission has no intention of filing for damages or compensation, instead passing the buck to the Palestinian Authority, stating that as the construction aid was given to the PA, it would have to make the claim for it. Yet no legal advice has been forthcoming on how the PA is supposed to do this. The EU’s Association Agreement with Israel, in particular Article 2 and the framing of the dialogue between the EU and Israel were found to be in breach of articles of the International Law Commission and the 1966 covenant on Civil and Political Rights in their exclusion of the observance and inclusion of international law and any references to occupation.

Translating the language and expertise of law into everyday activism as a tool against the attack on the legitimacy of our movement and Palestinian rights is the challenge ahead that the RTP can play a part in. The Barcelona session is only the beginning. The next RTP session will take place in London at the end 2010 and will focus on international corporations profiting from the occupation as well as labor rights in Israel-Palestine. It will be followed by sessions in South Africa focusing on apartheid, and in the United States focusing on the American and UN role in the conflict.

Full findings/conclusions of Barcelona session of Russell Tribunal on Palestine are available at http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.net/.

Ewa Jasiewicz is a freelance journalist, union organizer and coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement. She was one of the witness for the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.

Frank Barat is coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. He can be reached at russelltribunaluk A T googlemail D O T com.

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March 15, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | Leave a comment

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