Israel ‘arrests TV director, confiscates equipment’
Ma’an – May 17, 2012
JENIN – Israeli forces arrested the director of a Jenin-based satellite channel on Thursday after raiding his home, the executive director of the channel said.
Saher Qassem, chief of the Al-Asir channel, told Ma’an that a group of soldiers arrested Baha Khayri Ata Musa, 32, after raiding his home in Mirka village.
Soldiers confiscated the TV station’s broadcasting equipment from Musa’s home, preventing the channel from being able to continue its coverage, Qassem said.
Al-Asir, or ‘the prisoner’, channel also has offices operating in Bahrain, Qassem said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said one person was detained in Jenin overnight, but could not provide the identify of the person.
In late February, Israeli forces raided Watan TV and Al-Quds Educational TV’s offices in Ramallah, confiscating broadcasting equipment.
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US: New proof of executing the innocent
By Cassandra Stubbs | ACLU Capital Punishment Project | May 15, 2012
The State of Texas, long the nation’s leader in executions, has now earned the dubious title of the state most likely to execute the innocent. In 2004, Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham, despite compelling evidence that he was actually innocent of the arson which caused the death of his three small children. Now, newly assembled evidence suggests that Carlos DeLuna, executed by Texas in 1989, was also innocent. A team of researchers from Columbia Law School today released a new report about DeLuna’s case, Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction. The full report, along with video clips and interviews about the case, are available at the Columbia Human Rights Law Review’s website.
In 1983, Wanda Lopez was a 24-year-old single mother working at a gas station in Corpus Christi, Texas, when she was tragically stabbed to death. The central proof against DeLuna was the testimony of a single eyewitness (mistaken eyewitness identifications are the single largest cause of wrongful convictions). In DeLuna’s case, the eyewitness described the murderer as a Hispanic man with a full mustache. Although the eyewitness identified DeLuna — who had no mustache — after DeLuna was arrested, the witness later admitted that he was uncertain about the identification.
Worse than the mistaken identification is the failure of the police to investigate evidence pointing to a different killer, and the failure of the police and prosecutors to turn over or even acknowledge the evidence existed. From the time of his arrest until the time of his execution, DeLuna insisted on his innocence, saying that the crime was committed by an acquaintance named Carlos Hernandez. Hernandez had a long history of violent knife assaults against women and had bragged that he killed Wanda Lopez and that his “tocayo” (meaning a person with the same name) took the fall. The two men looked so much alike that even friends and family couldn’t easily tell their photos apart.
Although the police had leads that pointed to Hernandez — who later died in prison — as the killer, they failed to give that information to the defense. The prosecution argued in court that Hernandez was just a figment of DeLuna’s imagination. The new report documents these failures and others, and presents compelling evidence of Hernandez’s guilt. It shows the numerous systemic breakdowns that allowed Texas to convict, and then execute, an innocent man.
The problem of executing the innocent is not confined to Texas, as anyone who followed the Troy Davis case knows only too well. As Justice Antonin Scalia has bluntly told us, we cannot rely on our Constitution to protect the innocent from execution. The only guarantee that this tragedy will not be repeated is to end the death penalty.
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Related articles
- WRONG MAN EXECUTED: Study Shows Carlos DeLuna Paid the Ultimate Price (blippitt.com)
- Oops: Probe Uncovers Texas Man’s Wrongful Execution (dreamindemon.com)
- Columbia Human Rights Law Review devotes entire issue to wrongfully executed Carlos DeLuna (boingboing.net)
German citizen sues CIA for abduction, torture
Press TV – May 16, 2012
A German citizen, who says was abducted in Macedonia by the CIA and taken to a prison in Afghanistan and tortured, has demanded justice from Europe’s human rights court.
Khaled El-Masri of Lebanese descent says he was brutally tortured and interrogated at a secret CIA-run prison in Afghanistan for more than four months after being kidnapped from Macedonia in 2003, the Associated Press reported.
On Wednesday, Masri took his case to the European Court of Human Rights.
“Mr. El-Masri has spent the last eight years seeking legal redress for the crimes that were committed against him,” said James Goldston, who is the executive director of the Open Justice Initiative, a rights group that campaigns against the US extraordinary rendition practice.
Extraordinary rendition is a practice enabling the US apprehension and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one state to another.
He noted, “There is abundant evidence, including data on CIA flights to and from [Macedonia’s capital] Skopje.”
Masri was eventually released after the CIA realized it had mistaken him for another suspect.
He is also suing the Macedonian government for its role in the kidnapping, an accusation that the authorities in Skopje deny.
The court will consider whether Macedonian agents actually kidnapped Masri, and, if they did, whether they knew what would happen to him after they handed him over to US authorities.
NYPD loses face and first Occupy Wall Street trial
By Katerina Azarova – RT – May 16, 2012
This case could have been a slam dunk for the NYPD, had it not been for one thing: the video showing police claims of disorderly conduct during an OWS protest to be completely untrue.
Hundreds have been arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests, but photographer Alexander Arbuckle’s case was the first to go to trial – and after just two days, the Manhattan Criminal Court found him not guilty.
Supporters of the OWS protest movement have already hailed the ruling as a major legal victory.
Arbuckle was arrested on New Year’s Day for allegedly blocking traffic during a protest march. He was charged with disorderly conduct, and his arresting officer testified under oath that he, along with the protesters, was standing in the street, despite frequent requests from the police to move to the sidewalk.
But things got a little embarrassing for the NYPD officer when the defense presented a video recording of the entire event, made by well-known journalist Tim Pool.
Pool’s footage clearly shows Arbuckle, along with all the other protesters, standing on the sidewalk. In fact, the only people blocking traffic were the police officers themselves
His lawyers said the video proving that testimony false is what swayed the judge, and the verdict a clear indication that the NYPD was over-policing the protests.
The irony of the case, however, is that Arbuckle was not a protester, or even a supporter of the Occupy movement. He was there to document the cops’ side of the story.
A political science and photography major at NYU, Arbuckle felt the police were not being fairly represented in the media.
“All the focus was on the conflict and the worst instances of brutality and aggression, where most of the police I met down there were really professional and restrained,” the student said.
However, his good intentions only landed him in trouble. As with all the other detained protesters, the police offered Arbuckle an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal (ACD), which basically means he would be let off the hook if he agreed not to fight the charges. But to Arbuckle, that meant an admission of guilt, and he decided to take the case to trial.
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The Empire Holds Its War Council in Chicago
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | May 16, 2012
If anyone has doubts about what it means here at home when the U.S. seeks to militarily dominate the world, take a trip to Chicago, this week. There, you’ll see the Chicago police, the second largest force in the country, reinforced by cops from Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, and backed up by two high decibel noise machines that were first used against American civilians in Pittsburgh to blow out the eardrums of protesters, back in 2009. Overall security for the NATO summit meeting is overseen by the FBI and the Secret Service, who in recent months have been given unprecedented police state powers, thanks to President Obama and a bipartisan Congress.
With dignitaries on hand from the more than 50 countries that have done Washington’s bidding in Afghanistan, there will be lots of opportunities for the feds to invoke their new powers to put demonstrators in prison for up to ten years if they set foot on property containing any person under the protection of the Secret Service. That could include huge chunks of the city. And, of course, who knows what kinds of plots the FBI is conjuring up through its squads of agent provocateurs embedded in the ranks of demonstrators. Thanks to the preventive detention without trial legislation signed into law by President Obama this past New Year’s Eve, every American has lost her Constitutional right to due process of law. Which means that a reconfigured and far more principled U.S. anti-war movement now confronts a growing fascist infrastructure here at home, as it opposes imperial crimes, abroad.
The Chicago police claim they don’t plan to turn the eardrum-busting sound cannons on full volume against the demonstrators – just loud enough to convey “messages” to the crowd. The protesters are sending their own message, one that has become far more popular and general than could have been imagined, a year ago. Since the emergence of the Occupy movement, last October, millions of Americans have come to understand what Latin American peasants have always known: that the nexus of war in the world is Wall Street, and the Pentagon is its servant – as is the White House and most of the Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. War is waged for the purpose of global economic subjugation and, therefore, peace can only be won by dethroning the financial bad guys: the Lords of Capital. So, much of the peace movement now sees itself as an expression of the 99 Percent, against the warlike and greedy 1 Percent.
Once that lesson is learned, it cannot be shouted out by police sound-blasters.
President Obama has made skillful use of NATO, to make it appear that he is not a go-it-alone cowboy, like George Bush. Obama has drawn closely to his side the old imperialists of Europe, who looted and pillaged the earth for five hundred years, establishing the planetary racial hierarchy that has only recently begun to crumble. The Black man in the White House is seen, ironically, as the last best hope of the old colonial racial order and the rule of capital. The Global One Percent can only be maintained in power by the U.S. war machine. Ultimately, the world needs only one thing from the American people: that they dismantle the machine.
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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The Empire Holds Its War Council in Chicago
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | May 16, 2012
If anyone has doubts about what it means here at home when the U.S. seeks to militarily dominate the world, take a trip to Chicago, this week. There, you’ll see the Chicago police, the second largest force in the country, reinforced by cops from Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, and backed up by two high decibel noise machines that were first used against American civilians in Pittsburgh to blow out the eardrums of protesters, back in 2009. Overall security for the NATO summit meeting is overseen by the FBI and the Secret Service, who in recent months have been given unprecedented police state powers, thanks to President Obama and a bipartisan Congress.
With dignitaries on hand from the more than 50 countries that have done Washington’s bidding in Afghanistan, there will be lots of opportunities for the feds to invoke their new powers to put demonstrators in prison for up to ten years if they set foot on property containing any person under the protection of the Secret Service. That could include huge chunks of the city. And, of course, who knows what kinds of plots the FBI is conjuring up through its squads of agent provocateurs embedded in the ranks of demonstrators. Thanks to the preventive detention without trial legislation signed into law by President Obama this past New Year’s Eve, every American has lost her Constitutional right to due process of law. Which means that a reconfigured and far more principled U.S. anti-war movement now confronts a growing fascist infrastructure here at home, as it opposes imperial crimes, abroad.
The Chicago police claim they don’t plan to turn the eardrum-busting sound cannons on full volume against the demonstrators – just loud enough to convey “messages” to the crowd. The protesters are sending their own message, one that has become far more popular and general than could have been imagined, a year ago. Since the emergence of the Occupy movement, last October, millions of Americans have come to understand what Latin American peasants have always known: that the nexus of war in the world is Wall Street, and the Pentagon is its servant – as is the White House and most of the Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. War is waged for the purpose of global economic subjugation and, therefore, peace can only be won by dethroning the financial bad guys: the Lords of Capital. So, much of the peace movement now sees itself as an expression of the 99 Percent, against the warlike and greedy 1 Percent.
Once that lesson is learned, it cannot be shouted out by police sound-blasters.
President Obama has made skillful use of NATO, to make it appear that he is not a go-it-alone cowboy, like George Bush. Obama has drawn closely to his side the old imperialists of Europe, who looted and pillaged the earth for five hundred years, establishing the planetary racial hierarchy that has only recently begun to crumble. The Black man in the White House is seen, ironically, as the last best hope of the old colonial racial order and the rule of capital. The Global One Percent can only be maintained in power by the U.S. war machine. Ultimately, the world needs only one thing from the American people: that they dismantle the machine.
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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Hunger strike deal ‘does not end administrative detention’
Ma’an – 16/05/2012
BETHLEHEM – A deal struck early Tuesday to end the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike will not halt administrative detention, prisoners groups said Wednesday.
The document signed by prisoners representatives states that prisoners will halt hunger strikes and “security activity” inside Israeli jails in exchange for Israeli “facilitation” on policies toward solitary confinement, family visits and living conditions.
Prisoners society official Qaddura Fares told Ma’an the document outlines the core issues, while further details will be agreed in talks between prisoners representatives and the Israeli authorities.
The agreement is a “successful victory,” he said, while warning that it is “not clear enough” on the issue of detention without charge.
Prisoners representatives have secured clear commitments that five administrative detainees on long-term hunger strike will be released at the end of their term, while Mahmoud Sirsik is still negotiating the date of his release, Fares said.
Meanwhile, Israel committed not to renew the administrative detention of all 322 Palestinians held without charge if there is no new information that requires their imprisonment, he noted.
However, Fares warned: “Who can check this new information … no one can be sure.”
Under Israel’s administrative detention policy, prisoners can be held without formal charges for renewable periods of six months. Defendants and their lawyers are not given access to the evidence used to imprison them.
Prisoners rights group Addameer said after the hunger strike deal it is “concerned that these provisions of the agreement will not explicitly solve Israel’s lenient and problematic application of administrative detention, which as it stands is in stark violation of international law.”
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Detainee Sharawne to continue in his hunger strike
Palestine Information Center – 16/05/2012
AL-KHALIL — Detainee Ayman Sharawne has urged the Egyptian government to put an end to the Israeli violations of the Egyptian-brokered prisoners’ exchange deal after he was arrested only three months after his release in that deal.
Human rights sources told the PIC on Wednesday that Sharawne was adamant on persisting in his hunger strike until the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) releases him.
The IOA claims that he was detained anew in light of “secret information”, which was not disclosed in court.
Sharawne attended a hearing into his case on Tuesday in which three judges presided over the court in Ofer to look into the Israeli prosecution’s demand for his re-arrest to serve his remaining sentence.
He had served ten years of his 38-year sentence when he was released in the exchange deal.
The court adjourned ruling into his case for two weeks.
Sharawne started the hunger strike on 17 April along with the other prisoners but did not end it with them after their demands were met.
He said that he would continue in his strike to highlight his case along with other similar cases.
The IOA re-arrested six Palestinians, who were released in the deal in the West Bank, at the pretext they violated conditions of the deal and returned to resistance activity. One of them was Hana Shalabi, who was deported to Gaza after her release from her second detention.
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Uniformed US soldiers involved in killing of six Honduran civilians
Defensores en Linea | May 15, 2012
TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS–Although we have not read the official reaction of the U.S. Embassy about the tragic military actions of the Drug Enforcement Agency in detriment of the civilian population of the municipality of Ahuas in La Mosquitia, we can draw three preliminary conclusions.
The first one is that the operation launched at night against suspected drug dealers early Friday, was led by U.S. military uniformed agents of the DEA.
Mayor Baquedano from Ahuas confirmed it, and Commissioner Ramirez del Cid, a former liaison between the US Embassy and Casamata, admitted it.
The second conclusion is, then, that a foreign army protected under the new hegemonic concept of the “war on drugs”, legalized with reforms to the 1953 Military Treaty, violates our territorial sovereignty and kills civilians as if it was in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya.
Two pregnant women, two children and two adult males were killed by shots fired from helicopter gunships piloted by U.S. soldiers on a boat on River Patuca returning to their community. They were workers in the local lobster and shellfish diving industry.
The third conclusion drawn from the above is that the “failed state” of Honduras gave way to the foreign military occupation under the script of the “war against the drugs cartels”, similar to what has happened in the past eight years in Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala.
And this reality, from the perspective of a human rights organization, is unacceptable and reprehensible.
In a country under military occupation, as it occurred between 1979 and 1990, as part of the strategy of low intensity warfare against armed insurgencies in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, the main victims were civilians.
The so called Honduran authorities have the ethical and political duty to demand from the US Department of State an explanation and a public apology, and to punish those responsible for the Ahuas massacre.
To keep an act of terror covered up in the midst of media confusion was always a strategy of psychological warfare, a special chapter of state terrorism.
We should not accept this. We demand an official statement immediately!
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Israeli occupation authority renews administrative detention of MP Rejoub for fourth time
Palestine Information Center – 15/05/2012
AL-KHALIL — The Israeli occupation authority has renewed the administrative detention of MP Nayef Al-Rejoub for six months for the fourth time running, his son said on Monday.
He said that the Negev prison administration informed his father of the decision despite the fact that his past detention order still ends after 17 days on 1st June.
He said that the early decision was a clear indication that the Israeli prison service was eluding the agreement announced earlier on Monday with the Palestinian prisoners, who have been on hunger strike for four weeks, not to renew administrative detention among other articles.
The IOA had arrested MP Rejoub in 2010 and renewed his administrative detention, without charge, on three previous occasions each time for a period of six months.
A PIC reporter said that the Negev prison administration had renewed the administrative custody of a number of other prisoners.
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Canada: An alleged democracy
99pourcentQC | May 7, 2012
Made with publicly available footage from spring 2012, mostly in Montreal.
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Matt Bracken: US Plans Massive MOAB Strike on Iran?
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New Book
The silver that medicine dropped — four thousand years of clinical use, four decades to erase.
Colloidal Silver — First Edition, 2026, Paperback
Lies are Unbekoming | October 16, 2026
Silver was medicine. Not alternative medicine. Not folk medicine. Medicine. In surgery. In obstetrics. In the burn ward. In water treatment. In the household medicine chest. Every physician before 1938 knew this.
By the 1870s, silver nitrate was standard in surgical wound care across the leading hospitals of Britain, Germany, and the United States. Colloidal silver preparations — Collargol, Argyrol, Protargol — entered European and American practice through the 1890s and early 1900s and became standard antiseptics in military field medicine. By the time Fleming grew his first penicillin mould in 1928, silver was the first-line antimicrobial of the Western pharmacopoeia. The Lancet and the British Medical Journal carried the clinical reports in volume. The practice ran continuously through the Victorian era, the Edwardian era, the First World War, the interwar period. By 1980, almost all of it was gone.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a four-thousand-year clinical record disappeared from mainstream medicine within four decades of the Flexner Report — and what the honest account of silver looks like once that record is reassembled.
Colloidal Silver reconstructs the pre-1938 record from The Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and the primary literature of the era; recovers Robert Becker’s bioelectric framework from the regeneration research the pharmaceutical model buried; and places silver inside a practical terrain-paradigm guide to its current place — in water, on the body, inside the body, and in the chronic conditions where antibiotics have failed. … continue
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